Daily Tech News 16 November 2025

• The jury in a federal court case has sided with medical equipment manufacturer Masimo and awarded them $643 million in their lawsuit against Apple over patent infringement in the Apple Watch. (Tech Crunch)
  
  The patent applies to blood oxygen monitoring, which is a little curious since such devices are now everywhere.
  
  Also - according to Apple - this applies to a single very specific patent that expired in 2022.
  
  Of course, Apple would say that. But it also doesn't mean it's not true.
  
  
  

• I was reading through the service manual for the HP 9121 disk drive that I found on Bitsavers - it rained this weekend - and it turns out it did in fact run at 600 rpm, twice as fast as was common for other 3.5" drives.
  
  I then asked Grok to check some details for me, and was swiftly reminded that Grok is less reliable than random half-remembered facts I read in a long out-of-print publication twenty years ago.
  
  I asked if there were any historical 10-bit processor architectures, and it gave me a couple of examples from the late 60s and early 70s. It even gave me the detailed opcode format of one of the models and a bunch of links for further details.
  
  The machines were real.
  
  They were not 10 bit, though; they were 16 bits, which is hardly a rarity.
  
  The opcode format was entirely fictional, which is actually a little impressive. Very minimal but it could have worked.
  
  The links were also entirely fictional.
  
  
  
• Some models of Intel's Arrow Lake Refresh CPUs have more cores. (WCCFTech)
  
  The 250K, which replaces the 245K, and the 270K, which replaces the 265K, both add 4 efficiency cores, taking them from 6 + 8 to 6 + 12 and 8 + 12 to 8 + 16 respectively.
  
  The high-end 290K is basically a 285K but 1.8% faster... And also just 1.8% faster than the new 270K making it ENTIRELY POINTLESS.
  
  
  
• Copy-and-paste is now the leading cause of corporate data leaks. (SCWorld)
  
  Because people are copying and pasting data into AI to get it to lie to them.
  
  
  
• Google has filed a sweeping lawsuit against one of those companies that are constantly spamming you with fake SMS messages. (BGR)

  Google's legal action is comprehensive and is intent on completely dismantling Lighthouse's operations. The search giant is bringing claims under RICO, the Lanham Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).

  I'm not sure yet how it will turn out that this is a bad thing.
  
  
  
• No uncertainty with this one, though: A group of developers has been working tirelessly behind the scenes to restore a lost video game AND IT'S FUCKING CONCORD. (Aftermath)
  
  Concord came out in August last year and quickly achieved notoriety for two reasons: First, it cost $400 million and took eight years to develop, and second, it made absolutely no money whatsoever because it was so bad Sony shut down the servers and refunded everyone after just two weeks.

  Concord wasn't a bad game

  Yes it was. Objectively so. It cost $400 million to make, sold just 25,000 copies in total at $40, and was gone in just two weeks.
  
  Until now. Until now, you bastards.
  
  
  
• The International Energy Agency now predicts we will reach Peak Oil by 2050 maybe. (CNBC)
  
  Okay.
  
  
  
• Scientists have confirmed what is inside the Moon. (Science Alert)
  
  Cheese sauce?

  A thorough investigation published in May 2023 found that the inner core of the Moon is, in fact, a solid ball with a density similar to that of iron.

  Ah. Cheese and garlic sauce. An important distinction.
  
  Thanks scientists.
  
  
  
• Turkey is stuffed, seasoned, and in the oven. We'll see how it goes.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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