The things life throws at you sometimes. Triumphs, betrayals, literal tons of
tech news. It can be a lot, but don't worry cuz I'm here
to add more of that last one to the pile. You're strong. You can take it.
Microsoft has apparently had enough of being called Microslop and has
officially banned the word from the official Copilot Discord server.
Naturally, this went as well as you could probably expect. After the filter
went live, users responded with the maturity of well, Discord users and
flooded the chat with creative variants of the Microsoft name like Microslop
with a zero or Sloppysoft,
which was my nickname in college. A day later, the constant turmoil
eventually led to the server's moderators disabling message history and
restricting posting altogether. What was Microsoft's strategy here? Fix Copilot's
reputation by telling their most online users exactly which words they aren't
allowed to say? The internet loves that.
Maybe CEO Satya Nadella was just grumpy that apparently no one had listened to
his blog post from December urging us to move past the idea of slop versus
sophistication. He had a point. 10 years
from now, you're going to feel pretty foolish when you're slurping happily
from the trough with all the other piggies. So, stop calling it slop.
Investors can hear you. The Mobile World Congress kicked off today in Barcelona
featuring a surprise guest, the new iPhone 17E just announced by Apple. They
almost never participate in big tech conferences. The entire court is
speculating that it's simply a ruse to impress the Duke's frail cousin.
Muriel? Apple has finally fixed the largest complaint budget buyers had with
the 16E by equipping the 17E with MagSafe. They also doubled the base
storage to 256 GB while maintaining the $599 price point. They're so good to us.
Apple has also bumped the chip in the iPad Air from an M3 to an M4 while
keeping its $600 MSRP, 128 GB of base
storage, and 12 GB of RAM, which is so exciting. You'll probably want to not
pre-order it on March 4th because it hits shelves on March 11th.
Don't do it. Not even once. Don't even line up. Apple's sudden appearance had
the Android phones a little bit of fluster, but Xiaomi still managed to
show off the Leica Lights phone 17 Ultra
blurring the line between phone and DSLR camera by putting a big circle on the
back. My brain is confused. >> What is it? Motorola showed off the Razr
Fold, its first book-style foldable, and intriguingly, an enterprise-focused
partnership with the GrapheneOS Foundation. You know, the privacy-focused Android fork you can
already install yourself, but now it will come in a suit. Maybe
made of a single layer of carbon atoms. You never know with these guys. But phones got to connect somehow, so it's a
good thing that Qualcomm announced their next-gen modem, which supports native 5G
over satellite. And I'm just happy this wasn't a thing back in the year 2000, or
Cast Away starring Tom Hanks would have been a terrible film.
>> immediately. But if you thought MWC was just for, you know, mobiles, you clearly
underestimated just how much R&D money these companies leave completely
unsupervised. Xiaomi unveiled the Vision GT electric supercar concept, which is
going to be in the Gran Turismo racing game.
You guys I can't wait. >> Meanwhile, Lenovo brought enough
concepts to Barcelona to fill a whole separate convention center. First, they
showed off a concept for the Legion Go Fold, a foldable Windows gaming
handheld, because the one thing missing from your portable Steam library is a
mechanical hinge and inevitable repair bill. Lenovo also showed off a ThinkBook
modular AI PC concept, the result of a Framework laptop and an Asus Zenbook Duo
having a baby in the worst worst way you can imagine.
>> it like that. It's essentially a system of magnetic
modular screens, keyboards, accessories, and ports so you can build the laptop
you want, then swap out anything on the fly, which is genuinely awesome.
I make jokes. It's awesome. It's such a great concept that I can't wait to never
be able to buy it. But it wouldn't be a tech event without
at least one robot. Lenovo explored the concept for a desktop AI workmate that
is literally a robot arm with puppy dog eyes. Look at his little face.
>> [laughter] >> He wants to help you optimize your spreadsheets.
And if that wasn't enough robotics for you, Honor unveiled its robot phone, a
futuristic device sporting a little motorized robotic gimbal arm right on
the back. Not only does this 200 megapixel mechanical limb offer
cinematic video stabilization and autonomous subject tracking, but it it
physically nods, shakes his head, and dances to music, which it did alongside
Honor's actual robot backed by a full dance crew.
It's hard to be mad at the inevitable robot uprising when it starts with a perfectly choreographed underground
Berlin-style dance session. Still, I bet
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I know that was a lot of tech news to take in just now, but I have wonderful
news. There's still five more quick bits, and you've got to finish them all.
I know you can do it. There's going to be a treat after.
Open wide. AMD is launching its Ryzen AI 400 Pro
series desktop CPUs, which confusingly are replacing the Ryzen 8000G lineup.
But, we're far beyond any of these chip names making any sense at this point.
There are six new AM5 processors that pair Zen 5 CPU cores with RDNA 3.5
integrated graphics, and also an NPU.
I guess. These new chips are basically upgraded laptop CPUs meant for OEMs and business
PCs. At least with the new NPU, you won't get too hot and sweaty in the
sheets with Copilot trying to work out naming conventions.
Put that robot arm to good use. Spreadsheets. Seems like everyone just
found out about California's Digital Age Assurance Act passed in October 2025,
mandating all operating systems, including Linux and Steam OS, to ask for
your age during setup by January 1st, 2027. The OS will send your age signal
to apps, so they know which content to flag as restricted. But, despite the
non-compliance fines that can run up to a $7,500,
age setup is completely self-reported. No photo ID upload required. It's
foolproof. So, prepare for a shocking demographic shift of Linux users
magically born on January 1st, 1900,
which is exactly how old I feel when a youth mentions jester maxing or mogging.
YouTube is testing yet another AI feature for shorts.
All your favorite things in one story. This time it's add object, which allows
users to insert items into a scene and reimagine, which can generate video from
a single frame of a different short, whether it's yours or someone else's.
Do ours do it. Don't want your likeness to be used in fever dreams created by
strangers? I do. You can opt out. I won't. But that disables all regular
remixing on your channel. And if I can't remix other people's
shorts, what is there even to post there? Original content. >> Post something so I can post it. A new
machine from Nobel Prize winning chemist Omar Yaghi can pull up to 1,000 L of
drinkable water per day straight out of your butt. It's uh
straight out of desert air, even in humidity as low as 20%. Stop laughing,
Riley. The shipping container-size system uses special materials called
metal-organic frameworks. Basically, ultra-porous molecular sponges that grab
water vapor from the air and release it when heated by sunlight. It can run
off-grid using just wind and solar energy, meaning remote communities could
literally generate water from thin air. I guess the only question is
can we get an invite to the inaugural pool party? >> Not you. You've been rude.
>> This pool is dry. And a developer named Victor Larios has recreated a 1994 era
Linux desktop environment that runs in your browser, complete with a recreation
of the classic CDE interface and XEmacs
text editor, and in true '90s fashion, Netscape Navigator. The reports say it's
about as stable as Linux. I mean, as stable as uh you'd expect for something
pretending to be three decades old. The open-source project runs as a modern web
app, though reports say it's about as stable as you'd expect for something pretending to be three decades old. You
can also download it from GitHub and run it locally. If you want to, although I'm not totally
sure why you would. Although you're a Linux user. Uh
>> [laughter] >> so it might make sense. Now we just needed it to run Doom. After all, '94
was the year the game was ported to Linux. Fun fact, Ah! I knew that and you
didn't. I also know you're going to come back here on Wednesday for more tech
news because you're a fortuitous person.
You have what it takes to get hit with everything life throws at you and keep
standing. Stand tall, player.
And you just might shoot the high score. What am I saying?
>> [laughter] >> There's so many different ways to take this >> make IT TO THE CHAMPIONSHIPS! OKAY.