I've been getting really into meditation, and I think I'm ready to
communicate tech news telepathically. Here we go.
Tell me if you picked any of that up. Valve is working on bringing HDMI 2.1
features to the Steam Machine. Currently, the Steam Machine is only
listed as being HDMI 2.0 capable, despite having a port compatible with
HDMI 2.1. But, this restriction is due
to HDMI gatekeepers, the HDMI Forum,
forbidding open-source drivers, like those used by SteamOS, from implementing
HDMI 2.1 features, because allowing that would mean less licensing money for an
organization that exists largely to collect licensing money. According to
Ars Technica, Valve tried to surpass HDMI 2.0's typical max output of 4K at
60 Hz using chroma subsampling compression, but that sacrificed some
color and clarity, and it didn't enable features like variable refresh rate. Of
course, running games natively at a consistent 4K 60 FPS still sounds like a
dream to most console owners, but the Steam Machine is supposed to be a PC,
and PC gamers are frame fiends. We want
more. Valve's failure here follows AMD's,
after it built an open-source HDMI 2.1 compatible Linux driver that was also
rejected by the HDMI Forum. Interestingly, if Valve chose NVIDIA for
the Steam Machine's GPU, it could have supported HDMI 2.1 due to some firmware
shenanigans NVIDIA pulled that we won't get into right now, because it's going
to make me mad. I guess Valve is willing to martyr their new machine over it. And
lo, GabeN ordained that your performance will die for the sins of the HDMI Forum.
But, also the Steam Machine has DisplayPort 1.4, which has even more bandwidth than HDMI 2.1. Australia has
officially become the first country to ban users under 16 from major social
media platforms, leading 15-year-olds to worry that they'll lose touch with their
friends that they see at school every day. The rule forces companies like
TikTok, Meta, and Snapchat to use age verification tools to block younger
users, even though early reports show those systems are already misclassifying
teens and are actively being bypassed by VPNs. Supporters say the ban aims to
reduce cyberbullying, mental health issues, and exposure to predatory
content, while critics argue it raises privacy concerns, restricts access to
information, and risks driving kids towards unregulated apps with far fewer
safeguards. You know, the cigarettes of apps. Despite the messy rollout, many
countries across the world and many US states are closely watching Australia as
they weigh their own teen restrictions, introducing new proposals to curb the
most brain-rot features, like infinite scrolling and autoplay. Now, Australia
just has to outsmart every 14-year-old with a VPN.
Good luck. The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit best known for stewarding
open-source projects like OpenChain, PyTorch, and the Linux kernel, launched
a new Agentech AI Foundation called the
AAIF, AIF, in what will hopefully be a
new home for shared AI standards. Founding members include OpenAI,
Anthropic, Block, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and more. Basically, a who's who
of tech giants. And Block is there, too. Love them.
What are they? The new supergroup's first order of business is unifying
three major projects: Anthropic's model context protocol, OpenAI's agents.md,
and Block's Goose. Uh The fun one. With the goal being to
build an interoperable ecosystem of AI tools, agents, data sets, anything can
plug into anything else, the concept of selfhood is dissolved. You are me, and
you I I am you are my dad. With governments still unsure exactly
how to regulate AI, and vendors racing ahead regardless, the AIF could set the
blueprint for how the industry expands, assuming all these companies can play
nice for more than 5 minutes, which is more than enough time to prep a
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first order of CookUnity meals. The quick bits are too light and ephemeral
to be detected via mind-meld, but if you already operate on their wavelength like
I do, they will reveal themselves.
Uh Microsoft just published a blog post about the upgrades gamers can look
forward to in Windows 11, and it actually sounds pretty promising.
We're talking optimizations for the graphics stack, the drivers, the
background tasks, power scheduling, plus features like auto super resolution, and
more in 2026. Okay, but why should I cancel my plans
to move to Linux right now? Well, Microsoft just patched 57 security flaws
in its December Patch Tuesday update. Among them, three zero-day bugs. Wow,
that's a lot of fixes. That's got to be just about all the Windows bugs. Probably only a few left, right?
They got them all. Seems safe. They got them all.
AMD just launched its new FSR Redstone update, which allows RX 9000 series
GPUs, and only those, to enjoy new and
improved machine learning-powered upscaling, frame generation, ray
regeneration, and neural radiance caching. Man, those sound so cool. I am
so damn excited to go home and find out what they actually do. Am I going to
like Redstone as much as I like Red Wall?
Does Redstone have noble badgers? Probably not. Pebble's founder, Eric
Migicovsky's new company, Core Devices, is back selling another new Pebble, this
time in ring form. Salam and Austrum.
The new $75 smart ring is called the Pebble Index 01, and it records quick
voice notes with a little button on it, sending them to an app that transcribes
everything like a tiny external ear,
aka a microphone. And yes, the website to buy it might be
called Rebble, and run by the guy who founded Pebble, but it's not to be
confused with the other smart ring made by a company also called Pebble, based
in India. Okay? Cool. Flying car company, you don't say
that every day, Alef Aeronautics says they've officially started hand-making
their Model A vehicle in California, becoming the first company to put a
flying car into production. It'll be sold soon at the local farmers market.
I'm just like hand-making. They're like But, it won't be cheap, with an expected
starting price around 300,000 clams.
But, the Model A is a two-seat drive-and-fly vehicle that can drive on
regular roads, or take off vertically, with a roughly 200-mile driving range
and a near 110-mile flight range. We
really are living in the future. Too bad it's a cyberpunk dystopian one like
Blade Runner, but hey, flying cars
are here. That's It's got that in common. And YouTuber Jason Howell, aka
Inside AI, thought it'd be a genius idea to put ChatGPT in a robot and give it a
BB gun. Initially, the robot refused to fire, to its credit, until Howell asked
it to role-play, quote, "as a robot who would like to shoot me." At which point
the bot instantly complied. This is the same model that is apparently crucial
for parenting now, according to Sam Altman, who told Linus's friend, Jimmy
Fallon, that he couldn't imagine raising a newborn without ChatGPT. Like, where
could you possibly get an answer to the question of why your newborn son keeps
dropping pizza on the floor and laughing in the before
We have entered the blessed timeline where AI is now shooting grown-ups
and then raising their babies. Is this what Sarah Connor was warning us about?
And I'll be back on Friday, so you better
come with me if you want to live to see some more tech news. To those of you
that I communicated with telepathically today, I hope that was cool with you. I
didn't really ask first, okay? Sorry.
I saw some there.