I once thought that the Monopoly man had a Monopoly, but then I remembered it's a
fourplayer game, but then I remembered he's not even playing it. So, what is he
doing there? Anyway, tech news. The US
government has officially approved the sale of NVIDIA's H200 accelerator cards
to China with a few caveats. Under the new rules, shipments are only allowed to
be sold to approved customers, require third-party reviews of every unit sold,
and come with a 25% kickback to Uncle Sam. On paper, this means it's all good
news for Chinese companies that have been struggling for the last year to get
them into the country, except for one very important piece of bad news.
According to Reuters sources, Chinese customs were quietly told this week that
H200 chips are not permitted to enter the country and domestic tech firms were
summoned and warned not to buy them unless absolutely necessary. Officials
didn't clarify if this is a full ban, a temporary pause, or something being
stalled until an upcoming US China talk,
but it is funny to see China blocking the same cards that the country was
originally banned from buying. But why?
China probably doesn't want to rely on Western tech, but you don't know. Maybe
they're joining the ranks of the AI doomers that are really harshing NVIDIA
CEO Jensen Wong's vibe lately. Mocking
these hardworking tech bros is, according to Jensen, extremely hurtful,
and it's even causing some of them to secondguess whether blindly investing
our entire economy into an unproven technology that still hallucinates
nonsense half the time is worth it at all.
>> Extremely hurtful. >> They're thinking about morality and stuff. Icky.
Speaking of investing our entire economy, Microsoft just announced a
community first approach to AI data centers, pledging to pay their fair
share of electricity costs so your power bill doesn't spike every time someone
asks Co-Pilot how to uninstall Copilot. In a blog post by Microsoft President
Brad Smith, the company outlined five commitments. First, they'll ask
utilities to set electricity rates high enough to cover data center
infrastructure costs. basically volunteering to pay what they probably
should have been paying all along. Smith wrote that it's both unfair and
politically unrealistic for our industry to ask the public to shoulder added
electricity costs for AI. This is a guy that works for Microsoft. Are we sure?
This came one day after President Trump posted on Truth Social that AI companies
must pay their own way. He also reminded everyone that America is the hottest
country in the world, which obviously.
Have you ever even seen the Appalachian Mountains? They got got. I could hike
the Cumberland Gap all day, if you know what I'm saying. I want to those
mountains. Microsoft also committed to community development through providing
training programs for AI technology, and achieving 40% better water efficiency by
2030, funding $25 million in water
infrastructure for Leburg, Virginia, and not requesting local tax breaks. Oh,
good for you paying your taxes. Uh, now
can you maybe I don't know, stop pumping Windows full of ads
myself? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's fair. NVIDIA is reportedly cutting back on
higher VRAM graphics cards and doubling down on 8 GB models as memory shortages
continue to squeeze the [music] market. According to supply chain chatter from
Chinese forum board channels, NVIDIA is expected to ramp up production of 8 GB
RTX 5060 and 560Ti models this year
while quietly scaling back the 16 GB variants. The reason should feel
familiar by now. Ongoing memory constraints around GDDR6 and 7 are
making larger VRAM configurations harder to source and significantly more
expensive, especially in the low to mid-range markets where margins are
apparently already tight. From NVIDIA's perspective, the move could be pretty
pragmatic. Shipping more 8 GB cards would allow them to say they're trying
to keep prices lower, although the same post indicates that more price increases
could be on the way, too. I just hope they're not cutting costs even more by
claiming they've got 8 gigs when they've really got less. Like, are they
measuring from the base or the bus interface? Sometimes when people are
compensating for something, they pay for a bigger tool. I mean, hey, who who
wouldn't take an extra gig or two? That's probably exactly what happened
when 42 people found the deal of the century on RTX5090s listed at a
measily,000 bucks on Amazon. Wow.
Imagine their surprise when they received a package full of fanny packs
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The Quickbits have a favorite board game, Hungry Hungry Hippos. It's all
about speed and feral intimidation displays. Meta
just laid off over 1,000 Reality Labs employees and shut down three VR game
studios, Twisted Pixel, Szaroo, and Armature. A Meta spokesperson said
they're shifting investment from metaverse stuff towards wearables and
AI. The pivot is partially due to demand for Ray-B band meta glasses being on
course for the moon, while Reality Labs
has lost over 70 billion dollars since 2021. As they shift their priorities
moving forward, they plan instead to lose that money on AI and more cool
chains to make Zuck seem a little bit less like an alien. The music hosting
and publishing site Band Camp has banned AI generated music entirely. Any use of
AI to impersonate artists is also prohibited. And Band Camp reserves the
right to remove content on suspicion of being AI generated. DID YOU HEAR THAT
BREAKING RUST? You're going to have to get your millions OF LISTENS ON SPOTIFY.
BAND CAMP DON'T WANT YOU. GOD, I WISH I COULD quit you. The policy also bans
training AI models on Band Camp content.
That's why all my experimental newwave Prague trash electronic disco funk pop
music is only going on Band Camp. Cannot
let these robots hear my bleeps and bloops lest they become too strong. GOG
owner Mikal Kisinsk, I tried, announced
his intent to go toe-to-toe with Steam this week, stating that Steam's market
domination actually makes it easier to take market share from them, which makes
total sense as long as you don't think about it at all. Kasinski isn't planning
to challenge Steam on AAA releases like Epic tried to do. Instead, he's focusing
on deals with smaller developers and publishers like indie devro lane, who
announced that he is delisting his free roglike card game, Hardest from Steam on
January 30th because it used AI art and his girlfriend of one month convinced
him AI is unethical. We here at Techlink applaud the move and just want to say
congratulations to Lane for getting a girl to listen to you talk about your
computer card game long enough for her to have an opinion on it. Police
departments using Flock Safety's license plate surveillance system accidentally
leaked millions of surveillance targets by failing to redact license plate data
in public records releases. The unredacted Flock safety audit logs have
been compiled into a searchable website called have Ibenflock.com which now
contains 2.3 million license plates and reveals sensitive information including
search reasons, active investigations, and the surveillance targets. Flock
responded by frantically trying to take the website down and threatening the
website creator, claiming intellectual property violations and public safety
concerns. Because as we all know, your license plate number and police data is
in fact the property of an incompetent mass surveillance company. Fun fact. And
you can now put a deposit on a hotel room on the moon. A startup called Grew
Space is taking $1,000 non-refundable
applications towards future lunar hotel reservations priced anywhere from
250,000 to 1 million big ones. That
those are refundable supposedly. Listen up. We are going to steal
RENTAL DEPOSITS ON THE MOON. I don't know. The pitch is luxury accommodation
in orbit adjacent real estate made from inflatable habitats and moon bricks
constructed from lunar regolith formed
by geopolymers whatever that means. It's
the moon. Currently the goal is to do their first launch at some point in the
next decade. Grrew is also hiring a single engineer to help design the
entire lunar habitat because there's only one guy who could possibly do that
job. Dr. Nefario.
It's a reference. There's been a murder. Ha. Just kidding. That was just a clue
for what would happen if you don't come back on Friday for more tech news. Clue.
A board game. All right. But anyway, see you.