Oh, I did someone reset Riley again.
Uh, I'm Riley.
Oh, I've tacked news.
Ah! 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 boom-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 two
and a half thousand euros 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. Whoa, 20 bucks a gig?
Pull into that microsecond or 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 Game 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. Like Refresher, way back in 2024, YouTuber Megaleg 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. That video triggered massive community backlash, not just at Honey, but at the creators who
had previously promoted it. fellow YouTuber LegalEagle's 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 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. Another music group and AI music startup, Suno, 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 Suno 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 Suno 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 discography. 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 Suno, giving the AI
company a real-world 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 you prompt the AI to make an AI song, and then after that
it's just kind of normal. I am awake, I am aware, I am a conscious being, and I'm here of my own volition.
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 Android-based 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 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 installed, but look, we
trapped her inside the opening sequence of Skyrim! Then 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 UBTEX walker series, will scan IDs, manage queues, 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, talks, and waddles around, looking for his nose, exactly like the adorably naive
little guy in 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 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.
Kylie's broken again, shut him off.
Don't!