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AMD says it will buy Intel, completing the strangest reversal in chip history (www.techspot.com)
submitted 6 months ago by [A] to c/technology@lemmy.world
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article texthappy April fool's btw

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[–] 5 points 6 months ago* (5 children)

There is nothing in the headline that is joke adjacent; it falls flat as a joke and therefore isn’t a good April Fools joke.

The Onion get this correct, that a joke has to have some context to be funny. This ain’t it.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    The joke is obvious for anyone who knows the situation with AMD and Intel for the last few decades. AMD buying Intel would be a monopoly issue, and AMD has survived as the smaller company keeping Intel from being a monopoly.

    This is as obviously a joke as saying that the New England Patriots will be changing their name to the New England Redcoats. Sure, you need to know who the Patriots and Redcoats are to get the joke, but if you know literally anything about football and US history the joke is obvious. Or a hockey team choosing to change to focus on ice dancing. Or a Thai restaurant choosing to forgo spices.

    All of those require a small bit of context to be funny. All humor requires context to be funny. Just because you didn't understand the context doesn't make it funny.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

    The problem with your explanation is that Intel is troubled enough to be purchased, and the US currently has no issue allowing monopolies. In a world in which Paramount is buying Warners, and Sysco is buying Restaurant Depot, AMD buying struggling Intel is not an obvious joke. Or at least it isn’t without some additional tag. “AMD set to buy beleaguered Intel in an all-DDR5 deal.”

    Look at any of the websites trying to be the Onion. They seldom get the thing that makes Onion headlines just right.

    Your Patriots joke works (and would be a pretty good April Fools joke) because it’d come out of nowhere. If you make the same joke but about the Washington Commanders changing their name to the Corporals (a joke structured the same way as yours), it wouldn’t be as obviously a joke because that team has a history of name changes and Trump telling them to change their name isn’t out of the realm of possibility. Your Patriots joke also works because the joke isn’t that they’re changing their name, it’s that they are changing their name to the opposite. “New England Patriots changing their name” isn’t funny. “AMD buying Intel” contains the same amount of information; that is to say nothing funny.

    I said before that a joke has to have context to make sense. That’s not quite right. It has to have context and we all have to kinda agree what that context is. You assuming that an AMD/Intel monopoly is impossible is what makes the headline a joke for you, but if I disagree about the context (that said monopoly is possible) than it doesn’t work. Judging from the other replies, I don’t think I’m the only one for whom it doesn’t work.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    The impossible monopoly is part of why it is obviously a joke. The fact that AMD was the small dog by a significant margin for all of that time period and Intel running themselves into the ground enough for getting bought out a possibility is another part. There are a lot of things going on that make it funny.

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