• 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

• 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)

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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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• Tokenmaxxing is dead.  Long live tokenmaxxing.  (12 Grams of Carbon)
  
  We have reached a tipping point where spending infinite amounts of money can sometimes make the result better rather than worse.
  
  
  
• AI coding costs are on track to match human payrolls.  (Infoworld)
  
  But you are still spending infinite amounts of money.

• Why Wall Street thinks Micron is the next Nvidia.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Wow, they really hate Nvidia over there.
  
  
  
• Chinese CPU maker Loongson has announced its upcoming 3C3000 CPU, with 16 cores and the performance of a...  Don't know.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  The company positions its higher-end 3C6000 against the low-end Intel Xeon 4314, or about half the speed of an AMD 16 core laptop CPU.  Presumably it will be faster than last year's 3A6000, which was dogshit.
  
  
  
• The best time to buy a Mac Studio was a year ago.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The second-best time is in 2028 when the M7 Ultra CPU is expected to make an appearance.  There may yet be an M5 Ultra, but that will drop into an otherwise unchanged MacStudio.
  
  
  
• If you want a slightly fancier watch that won't break the bank, Casio has two more options for you.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Still digital, and adding a pedometer and Bluetooth connectivity, starting at $80.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 29 2026 11:15 PM (GNgpN)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 29 2026 11:17 PM (GNgpN)

Posted by: PatBuckman at Tuesday, June 30 2026 12:36 AM (s6adZ)

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• You might not be interested in Langford's basilisk, but Langford's basilisk is interested in you.  (Nerds.xyz)
  
  Langford's basilisk is a science fiction concept where images can be crafted specifically to rewire the brain.
  
  This doesn't work well on humans - and a good thing too, because in the original story it was instantly fatal.  But guess what can also see and in some sense understand images and has no separation of instructions and data?

• Scientists have deciphered a 2000 year old lump of charcoal.  (Smithsonian)
  
  The charcoal was originally a scroll from Herculaneum, destroyed along with the rest of the city in the eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79.  And much of it was destroyed again in 19th and 20th century attempts to decipher the carbonised chunk.
  
  If you think I'm exaggerating the scroll's condition, the article has pictures.
  
  
  
• Speaking of carbonised scrolls, why were two scientific papers by Max Planck retracted?  (Science)
  
  Because computers are dumb.
  
  
  
• A tiny coffee table the size of a scorpion is forcing scientists to rethink carpentry.  (Scitech Daily)
  
  Because headline writers are also dumb.
  
  
  
• With DDR3 and even DDR2 RAM prices on the increase, how about DDR1?  Is that still safe?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Maybe.  And you can run Windows 11 on it if you can find the rest of the parts in working order.  IoT Edition, anyway, which doesn't have the pointless restrictions of the desktop version.
  
  
  
• Analysts expect memory prices to double by the end of the year and increase by another 40% next year, before easing slightly in 2028 maybe.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Yay.
  
  
  
• Reservations for Valve's Steam Machine are being resold on eBay for $2700.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That's for an entry level computer that is already wildly overpriced at $1349 thanks to the DRAM Apocalypse.  Not clear if that includes the cost of the Gabe Cube or if it's just the reservation.
  
  
  
• The PlayStation 6 is expected to cost at least $1000.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Sony is not planning to delay its release because things are only going to get worse.
  
  
  
• Speaking of getting worse, Sony will be removing 551 films from the libraries of PlayStation Network customers in the UK and Europe.  (Notebook Check)
  
  And no, they won't be getting refunds.
  
  
  
• Casio has reintroduced three models of its classic digital watches in the US, priced at $55.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Wait.  That's actually not terrible.  What's going on here?
  
  
  

Not At All Tech News

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 29 2026 01:24 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: Rick C at Monday, June 29 2026 01:25 AM (1zWbY)

Posted by: normal at Tuesday, June 30 2026 11:01 AM (SV7Jd)

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• OpenAI has restricted ChatGPT 5.6 to a select list of customers, saying such regulations shouldn't be the norm.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  After spending years pushing for regulatory capture.
  
  The captor, captioned.

• Apple's upcoming M7 processor is expected to bring nearly 60% more memory bandwidth than the M5, and AI performance gains with a similar or greater margin.  (WCCFTech)
  
  If I can't reuse the RAM that I'm paying $25 per gigabyte for, I want the best CPU performance I can possibly get.  If that means an M7 Max, so be it.
  
  The M7 is expected in the first half of next year, after a lame-duck rollout of the M6 later this year.  There won't be an M6 Pro or Max version.
  
  
  
• Apple is seeking access to RAM from China's CXMT, previously blacklisted over dumping allegations.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The allegations were that CXMT was dumping DDR4 chips on the market not only below manufacturing cost for the Big Three, but below the price of second-hand modules.
  
  The allegations were true, but that hardly matters at this point.
  
  
  
• Apple is also planning to upgrade the iPhone 20 from the current 8GB to...  9GB.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Thanks, tech industry.
  
  
  
• Which way DDR4 owner?  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  AMD's 5800X3D matches Intel's 14700K in gaming performance when both are paired with DDR4 memory, but the 20 core Intel chip mops the floor with the 8 core AMD model for multi-threaded productivity workloads.
  
  On the other hand, the 5800X3D used a maximum of 120W in testing; the 14700K drew over 300W.
  
  
  
• Also, you can't get a 5800X3D.  (Notebook Check)
  
  It sold out.
  
  
  
• Intel's upcoming Nova Lake chips, built on the latest 2nm class processes, will deliver relief from these power budgets, right?  Right?  (WCCFTech)
  
  The high-end Nova Lake models will have a peak power consumption of 474W and require three EPS 8-pin additional power connectors on the motherboard.
  
  
  
• Polish memory module maker Goodram has reintroduced 4GB DDR4 modules.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The same stuff that was being ripped out of corporate PCs as they were trashed just a couple of years ago.
  
  Make friends with your IT guy.  He probably has a treasure trove of old parts like these.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: PatBuckman at Sunday, June 28 2026 12:03 AM (s6adZ)

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• As we saw yesterday, Micron has locked in contracts delivering the company 90% margins.  (The Register)
  
  For the next five years.
  
  
  
• Apple has raised prices on everything except its phones by between 20% and 30%.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Apple's memory prices were starting to look almost reasonable given the chaos going on in the PC market.
  
  No longer.
  
  Also, all the high-end models like the 512GB Mac Studio are simply gone.
  
  The MacBook Neo now starts at $699 rather than $599.
  

• The most expensive Mac now costs $14,399 - and it only has 96GB of RAM.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I bought 96GB of RAM six months ago for $300.  Yes, it was older, slower DDR4, but that was already months into the Rampocalypse and Apple now charges that much for 12GB.
  
  
  
• Apple will not be releasing M6 Pro or Max versions.  (WCCFTech)
  
  Those will wait for the M7 range.
  
  Meanwhile we're still waiting for the M5 Ultra - there was no M4 Ultra - but not making any plans to buy it given the pricing of the M3 Ultra models I just mentioned.
  
  
  
• The Chuwi UniBook, featuring Intel's low-end Wildcat Lake processor, is now available in the US for $449.  (Liliputing)
  
  It has a lower resolution screen than the MacBook Neo, but has ten I/O ports including wired Ethernet compared with just three on the Neo.  Weight is almost identical as well.
  
  And it's now significantly cheaper rather than just barely.
  
  
  
• Re-reviewing AMD's Ryzen 5800X3D.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  It's back and it's exactly the same as it was before but $100 cheaper.
  
  If you mostly want to play games and you have a good graphics card and already have a bunch of DDR4 memory, it might make sense.  But at $350 the eight core 5800X3D costs more than the sixteen core 5900XT, and unless you only play games it might not be the best choice.
  
  I think I might go for the 5900XT.  I checked the Passmark subscores and it actually performs well except on a couple of specific tests where it is limited by the DDR4 bandwidth.   For the stuff I tend to do it will be twice as fast as the 5800X3D.
  
  
  
• If you're looking for a cheap DDR5 CPU, AMD's 9600X and 7600X are discounted right now.  (WCCFTech)
  
  To $180 and $150 respectively.
  
  
  
• Xbox prices are going up again, and the 2TB model is going away.  (WCCFTech)
  
  I have an Xbox Series X.  In my closet.  In the original packaging.  Which it has never left.
  
  
  
• On the plus side, Microsoft has extended free Windows 10 updates to October 2027.  (Bleeping Computer)
  
  So there's that.
  
  
  
• Anthropic says that Chinese competitor Alibaba must be punished for infringing on their copyright on Claude.  (Ars Technica)
  
  Stop laughing, this is serious.
  
  
  
• IBM has demonstrated its first chip made on a 0.7nm process.  (IBM)
  
  This isn't expected to reach production for another five years, but in the photos you can see the true scale of the advance because you can count the individual silicon atoms.  They use a transmission electron microscope to scan the chip, and it can actually resolve that level of detail.
  
  
  
• Qualcomm is preparing new server CPUs for launch in 2028.  (WCCFTech)
  
  The Dragonfly C1000 will feature 256 cores running at 5GHz and will support PCIe 7.0.
  
  
  
• At the other end of the server scale is the Rmatamini P99M.  (Liliputing)
  
  It's a compact 8"x8"x6" box with a sixteen core Intel CPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD, and an Nvidia graphics card, and starts at just $239.
  
  There's a catch or two: The CPU is an Intel Xeon E5-2698v3 from 2014, the memory is DDR4 (which might be good or bad depending), and the Nvidia GPU starts with the GTS 450 from 2010.  For $369 you get upgraded to the much more capable GTX 1650.

• Walmart has signed a deal to buy 176 megawatts of nuclear power for 15 years.  (MSN)
  
  Enough, says the article, to power 150,000 homes, assuming those homes have gas heating and no gaming PCs.
  
  
  
• The Trump administration has announced $17.5 billion in loans for 10 new nuclear reactors.  (AP News)
  
  Coming soon to a Walmart near you.  Well, soon is about ten years from now.  Soonish.

• Grand Theft Auto VI will come in an empty box and cost $80.  (The Verge)
  
  They promised a physical edition.  Technically they didn't promise to put anything in it.
  
  
  
• Disney Wanted to buy Twitter and the James Bond franchise and to merge with Apple.  (The Verge)
  
  None of this came to pass, and considering the train wrecks they made of everything they did acquire during Bob Iger's tenure, we can be glad of that.
  
  
  
• Slate Auto's new electric truck is here, starting at $24,950.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Any colour so long as it's gray.
  
  
  
• Robot from the future Mike Pall is working on LuaJIT 3.0.  (GitHub)
  
  LuaJIT is a compiled version of the Lua programming language, that is tiny, bug-free, and impossibly fast.  That's why its creator got termed "a robot from the future".
  
  
  
• Microsoft's Majorana is poop, says a quantum computing researcher.  (The Register)
  
  Microsoft recently announced Majorana 2, a major breakthrough in quantum computing.  A new paper in Nature says not so fast, and maybe not at all.
  
  
  
• The memory crunch is paying off for this US company.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Spoiler: It's Micron, the only major US player in the memory space.  I was hoping for some story about a plucky startup recycling e-waste into working components or, well, literally anything else.  I am disappoint.
  
  
  
• My new tablet arrived.  They said it would, but deliveries to country towns in Australia can often take years.  It has 12GB of RAM.
  
  
  
• Apple was infamous for years for slapping a 1000% markup on memory in their phones and computers.  Now the memory companies are doing exactly the same thing to Apple.  (WCCFTech)
  
  If Apple wants to keep its old margins you could end up paying $200 per GB.
  
  
  
• The RedMagic Gaming Tablet 5 Pro is a new small Android tablet.  (Notebook Check)
  
  I'm a big fan of small Android tablets, but I just got one today - on top of the one I already have, and the other one I have that sucks so I never use it - so I don't need to care for five years of so.

Posted by: J Greely at Thursday, June 25 2026 11:07 PM (oJgNG)

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• It was Prime Day again.  Here are the deals you missed.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  There was a reasonable price for the 4TB Samsung 9100 Pro SSD, but not on Amazon and the deal is over and they're out of stock.
  
  
  
• For me, the deal of the day was on the Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3, cut from A$1000 to A$500.  Also not on Amazon, but I scooped one up from local electronics chain JB Hifi.*
  
  They also had the new Gen 5 model (the Gen 4 was a China exclusive), listed at A$1500.  It's about 20% faster than the Gen 3 and has a 20% higher resolution screen, which is not enough to convince me to spend 200% more.  Particularly since neither of those are issues with the Gen 3 anyway.
  
  * Long time readers may recall that I bought one of these on sale last year.  Yes.  And now I will have two.

• The coming loop.  (Pocoo)
  
  This is a reaction to yesterday's article on AI becoming loopy, and points out that just because something may be inevitable doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.
  
  
  
• F3 is a file format for the future.  (GitHub)
  
  For the future of what?
  
  Shut up.
  
  
  
• Anthropic's Mythos AI tool has discovered a memory leak in Squid.  (The Register)
  
  First, who still uses Squid?  Second, who still uses Mythos?  Anthropic blocked all access to it.
  
  
  
• Elon Musk's nefarious plan to deliver fast, affordable internet access to literally the entire planet.  (The Verge)
  
  The Verge seems to be Big Mad that Starlink is delivering on its promises rather than stealing tens of billions in taxpayer funds.
  
  
  
• Not FSD but CDH.  (Notebook Check)
  
  The latest Tesla crash claimed to be an issue with automated self-driving mode again turns out to be driver error - FSD was disengaged and the accelerator was at 100% when the vehicle left the road and crashed into a house at 73 mph.
  
  
  
• Meta has launched a line of ugly clunky smart glasses that are $80 cheaper and don't carry the Ray-Ban log.  (The Verge)
  
  Okay.  Honestly I think these are pretty useful, even if jerks are determined to spoil everything for the rest of us.
  
  
  

Musical Interlude

Posted by: Rick C at Wednesday, June 24 2026 10:15 PM (1zWbY)

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• Valve's Steam machine is here, starting at $499 $599 $699 $1049.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Or almost almost here.  You can enter a lottery right now, which will offer winners the chance to buy the Cube from June 29.  Delivery will take place sometime after that.
  
  
  
• You can get more powerful PCs for similar amounts of money.  (Notebook Check)
  
  But the Cube is compact and almost silent.
  
  
  
• And overall, it doesn't suck.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Valve got steamrolled by the DRAM Apocalypse just like the rest of us, but it does deliver what they promised.  Mostly.  4k was always a stretch.

• Lenovo's Legion Tab Gen 5 is here - and you can actually buy one.  (Notebook Check)
  
  It launched in China a little while ago, but is now available internationally.  MSRP is a hefty $850 but it's discounted to a still pretty hefty $650 for now.
  
  Also, the older Lenovo Legion Tab Gen 3 is now on clearance, discounted as much as 50%.
  
  At that price it is - adjusted for inflation - actually cheaper than the iconic 2013 Nexus 7, while offering a higher resolution screen, larger battery, six times the memory, eight times the storage, ten times the CPU performance, and literally a hundred times the graphics performance.  To be fair, the Nexus 7 was kind of bad at 3d gaming.
  
  No wireless charging, but it has dual USB-C ports rather than one failure-prone micro-USB socket.
  
  
  
• Fuck you Microsoft GameInput.
  
  But at least I know that it wasn't a hardware problem.
  
  
  
• Canada is planning a nuclear renaissance with ten new reactors to be built by 2040 at a cost of $100 billion.  (CBC)
  
  They achieved this using one simple trick: They targeted an operational date of 2010 on a budget of $5 billion.
  
  
  
• DDR3 and DDR2 are the next victims of the Apocalypse.  (The Register)
  
  I have 96GB of DDR3.  Much less DDR2 - maybe 32GB across four old systems.
  
  
  
• The AI world is getting loopy.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Do tell.
  
  (Reads article.)
  
  No.  Don't tell.
  
  
  
• Anthropic says Claude may want to see your license, registration, and insurance.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Not just no, but fuck no.

Special Bonus Apocalyptic Musical Interlude