• John Deere tractor owners and third party repair centers have been granted the same ability to repair the devices as the company's own service technicians under a 10 year agreement with the FTC.  (AP News)
  
  Doesn't mean they're repairable, just means the company can't forbid you to try.
  
  
  
• Speaking of settling Elon Musk has done so with the SEC over his purchase of Twitter back in the late Bronze Age.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  He was fined $1.5 million, which represents approximately thruppence in comparison to my own bank account.

• Microsoft's share of the global desktop operating system market has fallen to just 56.5%.  (Linuxiac)
  
  Coming in second at around 20% is...  Apparently something called "This survey is garbage".
  
  
  
• Grok 4.5 is here.  (x.ai)
  
  I noticed Grok having a stroke recently; no data lost but it had to reload all my documents and restart the conversation.  That may have been the model switch.
  
  Anyway, Grok is now smarter than Claude Opus but still not quite as smart as Claude Fable.
  
  
  
• AMD's upcoming Zen 6 10-core CPU squishes existing 10-core laptop models like the Ryzen 365.  (WCCFTech)
  
  But there's something a little odd here.  The results show two core clusters, with four cores in the main cluster and six in the second cluster.
  
  That would still be a laptop chip, because the 10-core desktop chips we're expecting will have a single core cluster.  Given that, the performance increase of 29% single-threaded and 22% multi-threaded is more than respectable.
  
  
  
• Astronomers have discovered a potentially habitable exoplanet orbiting a start about 25 light years away.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Bit of a commute but it's in a good neighbourhood.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 09 2026 10:11 PM (1zWbY)

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• Samsung has posted an 1800% increase in quarterly profits, catapulting the company past Nvidia to become most profitable company in the world.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Expectedly.
  
  
  
• Hold my shorts says Shenzhen Longsys Electronics - more familiar as the brand Lexar - which is expected to post a profit increase of more than 60,000%.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Admittedly their margins kinda sucked last year.

• Hold all of our shorts says the entire US ISP industry, slavering over an FCC rule change that would let them hide fees again.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Lovely people.  Let's give them a state.  Maybe Minnesota.
  
  
  
• Sorry, were you wearing that says SpaceX as it files with the FCC to launch 100,000 third generation Starlink satellites.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Each with advanced phase array beamforming, 4Tbps of aggregate bandwidth, and a wave motion gun in case regulators get any ideas.
  
  
  
• All your shorts are belong to us say JP Morgan and Bank of America as they look forward to bypassing federal laws capping debit card fees.  (MSN)
  
  There are days when a wave motion gun would come in really handy.  This is three of them.
  
  
  
• The AVX-512 instruction set may be making a return in Intel's upcoming Nova Lake processors.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's been notably absent from Intel's recent desktop and laptop chips, leaving AMD the only option for users who, uh, use it.
  
  Still available in Intel server processors though.

Spoilers.

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 09 2026 02:00 AM (OZ5fe)

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• Beelink has launched its EQi Wildcat Lake mini-PC build around Intel's new low-end Core 3 304 CPU.  (Liliputing)
  
  Starting at $509 with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD, and limited to just one performance core (and four efficiency cores) it's not going to set the world on fire.
  
  Just give you hearburn.
  
  
  
• Minisforum meanwhile has announced its NAB9S mini PC starting at just $399.  (WCCFTech)
  
  True, that includes neither memory nor storage, but what it does include is a 24-core Intel 13900HX laptop processor, which is close to four times as fast in multi-threaded tasks as the Core 3 304.
  
  If you already have a bunch of DDR4 SODIMMs and are worried about the hardware around them aging out, this looks like a pretty good solution.  Would handily beat my 5560U mini PC or my 11800H laptop.

Tech News

• SpaceX is just letting satellites burn up in the atmosphere!  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The comments point out that 50 tons of meteoroids enter the atmosphere every day, a far greater burn rate than SpaceX.
  
  
  
• AMD is matching Nvidia by offering its own wildly overpriced non-upgradable AI workstation.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Systems based on the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 128GB appeared last year priced around $2000.  By cutting out the middle man AMD had managed to reduce the price to $4000.
  
  
  
• Speaking of AI workstations, the price per million tokens quoted by different AI services is meaningless.  (Jan Ilowski)
  
  Because nobody can agree on what a token is.
  
  It's like buying fruit by the foot when a foot is defined as "a measure of distance usually between and inch and a yard".
  
  
  
• Microsoft has laid off nearly 5000 people, including 1600 from its Xbox division.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  On the other hand, that's only 2.1% of the company's staff.
  
  Also given how dire the Xbox situation is, even if they don't all deserve this they had to have known it was coming.

• AI companies led by OpenAI and Anthropic say they're definitely not going to put hundreds of millions of people out of work so please don't lynch them.  (MSN)
  
  Sorry, best I can do is a meteor strike.
  
  
  
• Companies making the heaviest use of AI are...  Hiring the most humans?  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Everyone gets a meteor strike!

• Xbox is a disaster.  (The Verge)
  
  A few years ago Microsoft went on a massive acquisition spree, throwing billions of dollars at individual studios with legendary game titles under their belts.
  
  Since which time they ain't produced squat.
  
  The only thing keeping them alive is Sony, which has challenged Microsoft in a race to the bottom.
  
  
  
• Samsung's profit in 2026 is projected to exceed its cumulative profits for the past forty years.  (WCCFTech)
  
  No they're not.  The projected and actual profits relate only to the semiconductor division of the corporate group.
  
  On the other hand, they're expecting to make $200 billion this year.  That puts Korean national plans for $1 trillion in tech industries into perspective.
  
  
  
• The latest version of the TypeScript compiler, which translates TypeScript into JavaScript, is now ten times faster.  (InfoWorld)
  
  After being rewritten in Go, because both the source and destination languages suck.

Posted by: Robin Munn at Monday, July 06 2026 07:07 PM (Hd3OR)

Posted by: Rick C at Tuesday, July 07 2026 02:07 AM (8cApG)

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• Apple's upcoming A20 Pro phone CPU could be the company's first chip to use LPDDR6 memory - and to increase the bus width from 64 bits to 96 bits.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The 96-bit width is actually a natural result of DDR6 architecture, which instead of having two 32-bit subchannels (each with optional ECC) is broken down into four 24-bit channels (each comprised of two 12-bit subchannels) with extra ECC bits coming from a multi-word burst.  If you read twelve 12-bit words from memory, for example, you get four 32-bit words plus 16 bits of error-correcting data.
  
  Which means that while all DDR5 memory has on-die ECC, all DDR6 memory has both on-die and end-to-end ECC.
  
  And 50% more bandwidth.  Actually more than that in time, as DDR6 will support higher speeds than DDR5.
  
  
  
• Though you won't be able to afford it.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Budget phones are expected to disappear for at least a couple of years as memory prices simply push them out of the market.  If manufacturers have to spend $200 for 8GB of RAM, saving $5 on the CPU makes no sense.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Retail memory price increases are set to slow for the simple reason that nobody can afford it anymore.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The third derivative of distance is called jerk, just like Sam Altman.
  
  
  
• Smaller electronics companies will be turning to products that use minimal amounts of memory, like this fancy typewriter-styled keyboard from Epomaker.  (WCCFTech)
  
  But does it have the Four Essential Keys?
  
  Yes?
  
  Very good then.  Carry on.
  
  
  
• Score one for Bluesky?  (Tech Crunch)
  
  The denizens there were properly scornful of a Google ad showing the Founding Fathers using Gemini to draft the Declaration of Independence.
  
  They might hate America, but they hate AI even more.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which, Grok has started illustrating answers to questions...  Some of the time.  Helpful - well, not actually helpful, but notable - in illustrating a geodesic through a four dimensional planetary structure.
  
  Thankfully it didn't illustrate the question I posed about the plausibility of decapitating an Amphicyonid with a single sword blow.
  
  (I am probably on a list somewhere simply titled "Huh?")
  
  
  
• Lenovo has started including YMTC-manufactured SSDs in its mainstream computers.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Not available in the US, as the Chinese memory makers CXMT and YMTC are both under sanctions.  I actually have a couple of YMTC SSDs I bought early this year, as they are not under sanctions here in Australia, and they were the last models to increase in price.
  
  
  
• Speaking of which wars are blurring the lines between corporate and national security.  (MSN)
  
  The link to this article posed it as a question so I was planning to hit it with an inverse Betteridge's Law, but the article simply states it as fact, with good reason.
  
  
  
• Italian investment group Bending Spoons has held a successful IPO giving it a valuation of $18 billion.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Who?
  
  You might not have heard the name, but they own the remnants of former high-flying American tech companies like Meetup, Eventbrite, Vimeo...  And AOL.
  
  
  
• Supergirl is not the box office disaster suggested by its disaster at the box office.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Even the comments are suggesting the Ars staff need to go a little lighter on the shrooms.
  
  
  
• In the big Amazon Prime Day sale I picked up a subscription to anime streaming service Hidive at 75% off.
  
  Wow.  That stuff is bad.  Mostly.
  
  They do at least have Gate.
  
  Worth the A$2.25 I paid, but not worth keeping once it reverts to full price.

My Gift Lvl 9999 Unlimited Gacha: Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon, I'm Out for Revenge: Every major character in this story is either a psychopath or quickly turns into a psychopath.  Well, there's one who's just slightly crazy and only in it for the fights, but apart from that, it's mostly watching people torture each other to death.  Not recommended unless you like that sort of thing.

HELL MODE: The Hardcore Gamer Dominates in a World With Garbage Balancing: Predictable but not entirely meritless.  It certainly delivers what it says on the tin: A gamer looking for an unreasonable challenge is scooped up and reincarnated by the god of a world looking for someone to take on an unreasonable challenge.  And succeeds, because of course he does.

The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: An otome-game isekai without the charm of Bakarina or Bertia, but at least the villain of the piece whose life our heroine has been reincarnated into was a thoroughgoing villain.  Falls off sharply when she gets done with making up for her villainy (that never happened because she was reincarnated at an earlier point in the game) and starts solving every problem under the sun, and then there's a whole new season even beyond that point that I have no desire to watch.

Hero Without a Class: Who Even Needs Skills: Not an isekai; merely slop. Not particularly objectionable, but with no particular redeeming qualities either.

Yeah, there are better things to watch on Hidive; unfortunately I've already watched most of them.  I think I might give Danmachi a try since I've only seem part of that one.

Update: Well, at the least the art in Danmachi is on an entirely different level to Isekai Slopfest.

• Happy birthday, America!  You don't look a day over 240!
  
  (Actually you look a lot better than you did at 240, but we won't go into that.)
  
  
  
• US life expectancy is expected to hit a record high as drug overdoses decrease.  (CNN)
  
  Unexpectedly.  Turns out you can just do things.
  
  
  
• Sitting - or lying down - for more than 30 minutes at a time has been linked to an increased risk of dying of cancer.  (The Guardian)
  
  So has drinking water and breathing air.

• Looks like I need to buy another PC case.  (Hyte)
  
  (Checks price.)
  
  (Checks shipping rates.)
  
  Uh.  Yeah, at close to $1200 I'll wait and see if this shows up at local retailers.
  
  
  
• GitHub has announced plans to distribute physical media of popular repositories.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  This is Microsoft poking fun at Sony.
  
  
  
• Intel has added a 65W 22 core Nova Lake part with BLERK to its upcoming lineup.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Allegedly.  BLERK stands for "Big Last-Level Cache" and is Intel's answer to AMD's X3D parts.  65W stands for, probably, about 150W.  (AMD's 65W parts use 89W peak, for comparison.)
  
  We'll see.
  
  
  
• Intel just increased the price on a broad range of its CPUs.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Mostly its server chips - which have increased by closed to 30% in some cases - but also its desktop parts.
  
  
  
• Bloober Team Ditches Cronos Survival Dread for Aggressive Combat as Lazarus Lands on PC, PS5, Xbox Series, and Switch 2.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I recognised at least one of those words.
  
  
  
   
• AOOOSTAR has launched its own competitor to Valve's Steam Machine, priced at $849.  (Liliputing)
  
  It's a compact system measuring 8"x8"x3", and features Radeon 7600 XT graphics (a little faster than the Steam Machine's 7600M), and a Ryzen 7940HX CPU, which is dramatically faster than the semi-custom processor in the Steam Machine.
  
  What it doesn't have is any memory (apart from the 8GB on the graphics card) or storage.  Well, I assume it's 8GB; I doubt they've included a 16GB card.

• SK Hynix - the third of the Big Three memory manufacturers after Micron and Samsung - is planning to invest $712.5 billion to expand production.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Which I am pretty sure is still a lot.
  
  The article says the total amount involved us 1.1 trillion won (KRW), but that's a mistake; it's actually 1.1 quadrillion won. 
  
  $64 billion goes to expanding the company's existing facilities at Cheongju for producing NAND flash and packaging chips.  $389 billion goes the the new campus at Yongin with initial production planned for next year and meaningful scale in 2028.  The site was originally planned for completion in 2045, but that's been accelerated to 2033 - still a fair way out, but factories will come online in stages throughout those years.
  
  And $259 billion to a brand new campus that they have not even settled on a location for just yet.

• SpaceX has categorically denied that it is working on an AI device thinner than an iPhone running a proprietary operating system that is coloured mint green and makes random South American frog noises when you drop it into wet cement.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Seems oddly specific.
  
  
  
• Intel is planning to restart supply of 10th, 12th, 13th, and 14th generation processors...  In China.  (WCCFTech)
  
  14th - and for some reason, 12th - generation chips are still readily available, and Intel has committed to continued production.  13th generation chips have disappeared from the market but nobody really misses them because they are the same as 14th generation chips only slightly worse.
  
  
  
• The Rootboard is a Linux-base handheld computer based around a Raspberry Pi.  (Liliputing)
  
  Aren't Raspberry Pi board extremely expensive now, I hear two of you ask.
  
  Well, yes, but actually no.  This project is built around the Pi Zero family, which while low-end (all versions have 512MB of RAM) has weathered the DRAM Apocalypse better than other models.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Disclaimer: Plink.

• Sony has announced it will stop releasing PlayStation games on disc in 2028.  (BBC)
  
  But that's okay.  Sony doesn't have a habit of abruptly cancelling access to content you've already bought and refusing to offer refunds.
  
  Oh.

• Anthropic's Fable is back.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  US customers already have access and apparently I'm in the US because so do I.
  
  I'll see if it actually makes a difference.
  
  
  
• Google has turned the rest of the internet into sopranos.  (9to5Google)
  
  Google acquired GIF library service Tenor in 2018, and just recently cut off API access so nobody else can integrate with it.
  
  If you're wondering why most of the GIFs on Twitter disappeared, well, wonder no more.  They've switched to an alternative service but it has a small fraction of the content.  The staples are there, like "Sure, Jan", and "Oh no...  Anyway", but it's a pretty spartan platter.
  
  
  
• You had one job.  (Easy Opt Outs)
  
  Apple's "Hide my email" service doesn't.
  
  
  
• Meta is looking to lease out its unused datacenter capacity to functional AI companies.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Probably a good idea.
  
  
  
• Before the DRAM Apocalypse, Micron was viewed as nothing more than a commodity component manufacturer.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Now it's viewed as a commodity component mafia.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 02 2026 11:40 PM (nQDMq)

Posted by: John Donigan at Friday, July 03 2026 04:16 AM (VAiJm)

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• South Korea's national and regional governments and major industrial groups have jointly committed to $1 trillion in investment to expand production of chips and bots.  (Ars Technica)
  
  $585 billion to increase chip production, with a particular focus on doubling memory production within five years.
  
  $357 billion to construct new datacenters to, uh, use up all that extra memory.
  
  And still more billions to expand production of robots and build 8 gigawatts of new generating capacity to power it all.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Speaking of which, Henrico County in Virginia is asking schools to open the blinds and turn off the lights to save electricity.  (404 Media)  (archive site)
  
  Henrico County has 37 datacenters and is constructing 17 more right now.
  
  
  
• Meta - which is to say Facebook - is reusing its DDR4 memory in DDR5 servers.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  That doesn't work, so what they've done is create a custom CXL-to-DDR4 adapter chip, which allows the servers to access memory over PCIe.
  
  
  
• G Skill's new ultra low latency 32GB memory kits cost just $1100.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Thanks, but no.
  
  
  
• For those experiencing difficulties with the latest iteration of Microsoft Notepad, there is a solution.  (GitHub)
  
  Though you will need to assemble it yourself.
  
  It should come to about 2686 bytes and has full feature compatibility with classic Notepad.
  
  
  
• The Redmagic Astra 2 is a large small tablet with a 2400x1504 185Hz OLED display.  (Liliputing)
  
  With its 9" screen it's really pushing the boundaries of a small tablet, but it's only about 20% heavier than the 7" Nexus 7.
  
  It runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and has up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.  Pricing in China starts at $780 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage and goes up from there.
  
  The previous model - no longer available - started at $549, so it's gotten a lot more expensive.
  
  
  
• The GPD Win Max 3 is a mini-laptop with, curiously enough, a 9" 2400x1504 OLED display.  (Liliputing)
  
  With a 165Hz refresh so it's the display used in the previous Redmagic Astra tablet.
  
  Apart from that, it has up to a Ryzen 395 processor with 128GB of RAM, and M.2 2280 and 2230 slots for storage.
  
  And a detachable 97Wh battery, which is a lot given its size.

Posted by: FreeKnight at Thursday, July 02 2026 03:10 AM (gXw+B)

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, July 02 2026 06:52 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Rick C at Thursday, July 02 2026 11:43 PM (nQDMq)

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• South Korea is planning to invest $520 billion to expand chip production at Samsung and SK Hynix.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, sort of.  Only about $20 billion of that is direct South Korean public spending, with the remainder coming from regional governments and private investment.  
  
  The government will also help fast-track approvals to bring construction plans forward by as much as twelve years.
  
  
  
• Meanwhile the Big Three - Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix - have been hit with a private antitrust lawsuit by litigants in California.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The suit seems to be focused on decreased production of DDR4 and DDR3, which is legal, but alleges they colluded to do so, which may not be.

• IMEC has laid out its roadmap towards a 0.3nm process in 2038.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The article notes that this is marketing nonsense - well, the part you can read doesn't, but it's there in the details that you can't read - with actual feature sizes in the 10-20nm range.  Since a single silicon atom has a diameter of 0.2nm, you can rest assured they're not building circuits that size.
  
  The 0.3nm instead refers to the effective density thanks to increased use of 3D production to stack transistors vertically.
  
  
  
• The Steam Cube hasn't even started shipping and the first clones are here.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Meta PC's Steamroller is a micro ATX system with a Ryzen 9600X and a Radeon 7600 - both a little faster than the components in the Steam Machine - 16GB of DDR5 RAM, 8GB of VRAM, and a 1TB SSD, for $1299.
  
  It ships with SteamOS, so no Windows tax.
  
  
  
• Everything new is old again: Nvidia's RTX 3060 has returned from the dead.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It was a pretty decent card, and its 12GB of VRAM gives it a boost over current 8GB models like the 5060 and the base model 5060 Ti
  
  
  
• It can also run PhysX games, which Nvidia half-killed on the 5000 series.  But now so can AMD graphics cards.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Thanks to open-source library ZLUDA.
  
  
  
• The war against woke could end US science as we know it.  (The Verge)  (archive site)
  
  Promise?

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, June 30 2026 11:38 PM (s6adZ)

Posted by: normal at Wednesday, July 01 2026 09:11 AM (SV7Jd)

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