Oh, did someone reset Riley again?
I'm Riley. I have tech news.
You may have noticed this, but the price of PC memory has absolutely exploded
with the cost of some RAM kits reportedly jumping up to 250% since the
start of November due to a major crunch in memory chip supply brought on by AI
boomind induced panic buying. But some users on Reddit have seen prices that
are even more cuckoo crazy wacko with one 64 gig DDR5 kit going for more than
900 bucks and another one listed at nearly 2.5,000
in Germany. Germany. With numbers like that floating around, it's no wonder
that some retailers have resorted to not displaying fixed prices for memory.
Instead, dynamically changing RAM prices to reflect their market value. This is
wild. Soon everyone's going to be buying RAM like it's gas. Wa 20 bucks a gig?
PULL INTO THAT MICRO CENTER. GO. I'm driving and telling them to pull in.
Pull in. Unfortunately, this problem doesn't seem to be going away anytime
soon. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney tweeted about something other than hating Apple
and Google to say that he believes these prices increases will be a real problem
for years to come. which is probably why some journalists are suggesting that
people buy pre-built PCs instead of building their own PCs in order to save
on components. However, even that strategy may not hold up if more PC OEMs
follow HP, who said during an earnings call that they're going to raise prices
and reduce included memory to combat rising component costs. I guess this
means it might be time to get back into retro gaming, folks. Finally, someone
might play original Xbox Masterpiece Fusion Frenzy with me. I've been waiting
for years playing by myself. Honey, the
controversial browser extension is back in the news as a class action lawsuit
brought by content creators against its parent company, PayPal, was dismissed by
a US federal judge. As a quick refresher, way back in 2024, YouTuber
Megalag published an expose alleging that Honey was quietly engaging in
cookie stuffing. And we're not talking about the compulsive gorging done by a
certain blue puppet with self-control issues. We're talking about replacing
creators affiliate link URLs at checkout, allowing Honey to pocket the
commission. Now, that video triggered massive community backlash, not just at
Honey, but at the creators who had previously promoted it. Fellow YouTuber
Legal Eagles Law Firm and Wendover Productions then joined forces with
other creators in a class action lawsuit over those lost commissions. For nearly
a year, the case crawled through the system, but it's now been dismissed
because the plaintiffs apparently failed to demonstrate that they actually lost
any money, relying on what Judge Beth Freeman called a hypothetical chain of
possibilities, which led to
unforeseen consequences.
It's a It's a tenuous reference, a tenuous connection at best. Although
after slamming the door, the judge cracked it open a little bit again by
granting the creators 45 days to edit their argument. If they can't manage to
make it better, then they'll all have to install the extension on all their
devices and apologize. Warner Music Group and AI music startup have
officially gone from courtroom enemies to boardroom friends this week after
striking a settlement that also includes some surprising business collaboration.
The two companies had been locked in a copyright lawsuit since early this year
with Warner accusing Sunno of training its AI models on unlicensed recordings.
But now apparently that's all water under the bridge as long as they can
make money from it. Because Sunno will now be allowed to pay to license music
in Warner's catalog from artists who opted into the scheme and use it to
generate the heavy metal versions of Coldplay's entire discoraphy. As long as
you never show it to Chris Martin. He's a soft piano boy. Don't do that to him.
Warner Music is also selling its concert discovery platform, Songkick, to Sunno,
giving the AI company a realworld foothold in the live event industry. In
the official announcement, the two companies say that the all-around
effects of this agreement should allow for a closer experience between artists
and fans by embracing the power of interactive music. The interaction
happens when when you prompt the AI to make a AI song and then after that it's
just kind of normal. Unlike our extraordinary sponsor, Vessie, stylish
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get back to working on your terrible KD ratio. I didn't say I was a good gamer.
I am awake. I'm aware. I'm a conscious being and I'm here of my own valition.
No one's making me start telling you about the quick bits now. And I wanted
to say that Google appears to have chosen a name for the Androidbased
desktop operating system that will replace Chrome OS. Aluminium OS,
not aluminum. There's an extra I as spotted in a since deleted job listing
for a senior product manager for Android laptops and tablets. The job posting
says that Aluminium OS is going to have AI at its core, which is obvious in
hindsight, even though Google didn't mention it earlier this year when they
confirmed long rumored plans to make Android laptops a thing. It's like when
my friend says they're going to make me macaroni and cheese, and I really hope
that they mean it, but then they come over to the house with macaroni
and cheese. The crucial ingredients to make macaroni and cheese. Oh my god,
it's happening.
Windows 11's latest preview build adds a new app updates page, which will track
updates to Microsoft Store apps that don't want to update through the
Microsoft Store, because that's cringe. But not as cringe as the new version of
ClickFix, a piece of malware that not only presents itself as a believable
full screen fake Windows update page. It also copies a malicious command to the
user's clipboard and then convinces them that it's necessary to hit Windows key
plus R and paste the code to run it.
Actually, I might take back that this is cringe because honestly, if you can't tell that that's a fake Windows update
screen, you're probably going to get infected anyway. So, at least they're helping you spend less time getting
there, more time to do the dishes. The ROG Xbox Ally got a software update that
adds default game profiles, which enables optimized graphics and power
settings for the 40 games supported at launch. It gives the alleged Xbox
handheld more of a plug-and-play console experience and or an NVIDIA or AMD GPU
running optimized settings experience. Something that even the beloved Steam
Deck still lacks without the addition of third-party plugins or apps. Even though
everything is an Xbox these days, it seems like some Xboxes are more Xbox
than other Xboxes. The Xbox playing Fusion Frenzy is always my favorite.
Xbox Xbox character AI has launched
stories, an interactive fictional storytelling mode built for teens after
they banned anyone under 18 from open-ended chatbot conversations at some
point earlier. This new mode will let you pick characters, choose narratives,
and uh yeah, it's just AI generated adventure games. I feel like someone on
their staff probably came home to their horribly lonely 17-year-old kid and
said, "It's okay, bud. You can't talk to
your AI girlfriend anymore with no guardrails uh installed. But look, we
trapped her inside the opening sequence of Skyrim." And China is beginning to
trial the use of humanoid robots for crowd control at border crossings
because who needs a great wall when you have a robot army? There's an argument
there. These prototypes, mainly Ubek's
Walker series, will scan IDs, manage
cues, [music] and be used to patrol factories. That's
going to take a lot of bots. Hey, if they need some backup, though, maybe they can ask Disney to ship over their
new robot Olaf from Frozen. You know, Snowman, he walks and talks and waddles
around looking for his nose, exactly like the adorably naive little guy of
the movie. I think it would be perfect for winter deployments
and warm hugs. And it would be also adorable if you'd come back on Friday
for more tech [music] news. Now I sing for you. Daisy
Daisy, give me your answer. Do I think this is
right? I'm half crazy. All for the love
of you. >> Broken again. Shut him off.
Don't.