Saturday, December 13

Daily News Stuff 13 December 2025

Planting Plants Edition

Top Story

• In April, District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple had wilfully violated her 2021 order to open up the App Store.

Apple appealed.

The Ninth Circuit just upheld the decision, ruling that Apple has been acting in bad faith, as everyone paying attention already knew. (Ars Technica)

"But we’re only worth $4 trillion! We need that 30% cut of transactions that don’t even take place on the App Store!"

Tech News

• Can the Steam Machine really run games at 4k 60Hz as Valve claims?

In many cases, yes. (Hot Hardware)

The Steam Machine isn’t out yet, but the specs are public and they’re very close to an existing AMD CPU and GPU so it is possible to build and equivalent system and test performance right now.

On indie titles like Hollow Knight: Silksong it delivers 4k at 120Hz, or close to it. That’s not a particularly demanding title so it’s not a huge surprise.

On big-budget titles like Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, and Monster Hunter Wilds you can expect 60Hz at 1440p, but at 4k only two of these titles achieved a consistent 60Hz.

And this is with graphical settings and upscaling tweaked appropriately, not with everything simply set to maximum quality. But this is not a high-end system, and isn’t expected to have a high-end price. It’s supposed to just work.

Will I buy one when it comes out? Maybe. Depends on the price. I just picked up that mini-PC with a faster CPU (though a slower GPU) and a lot more memory for around $600, so it would have to compare well with that.

Edit: Now that I compare those benchmark scores, the Steam

Deck Machine doesn’t offer me that much. The processor on my new mini-PC is 39% faster and the graphics 36% slower than the Steam Machine, and it has 64GB of shared memory rather than 16GB plus 8GB of DRAM. Since I also have a full desktop system and an Xbox (gathering dust) I think I’m good.

• Framework has increased memory prices by 50% on its DIY laptops. (Framework)

That doesn’t seem too bad given that retail prices have increased by around 300% in the past couple of months.

Pre-built laptops and the Framework Desktop which comes with up to 128GB of RAM have not increased in price, nor have prices changed for existing pre-orders.

• Russian hackers have deployed new ransomware that encrypts all of your files - with an interesting twist. (The Register)

The twist is that the decryption key is hardcoded into the ransomware so you can just decrypt all your files youself.

• Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, come on and join the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands. (Reclaim the Net)

Berlin’s regional government has brought back the Stasi.

• I planted my plants. I had 16 native shrubs of various sorts sitting in pots waiting - several different bottlebrushes and grevilleas, a westringia, a boronia, and a babingtonia, plus a few kangaroo paws in various colours.

All but the kangaroo paws got planted today.

Needed to wait for it to rain to break up the ground where I planned this - it had been dry for a while and the soil was rock hard - and then wait for it to stop raining to get some supplies delivered. Then it rained again and that ground got covered in weeds.

So today I pulled out all those weeds, dug out some regular grass which I didn’t want growing into this area, dug out some patches of native tussock-grass which is not technically a weed but which I also didn’t want there, dug in some gypsum to help break up the soil and some potting mix tailored for native plants to improve it, and then dug eleven holes (hitting rocks several times and on two occasions large metal staples left behind by the builders), filled those holes with more potting mix, and planted everything but those kangaroo paws, which will go in another part of the garden.

Which will all look great in a year or so as it grows in but right now, ouch.

Need to go back and cover it with bark chips, but that will definitely be another day.

Apple Bacon Interlude

Turns out that bacon-flavoured apples taste bad. Who knew?

Musical Interlude

Song is King by Kanaria, covered by Hololive’s Mori Calliope and Gawr Gura. Gura wasn’t the most technically skilled vocalist in Hololive (she now streams independently but still as a fish, having found her niche there) but she has a way of putting her emotions into a song that makes her stand out.

Disclaimer: Sameko Saba? Literally shark-girl mackerel?

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