Quick, quick, drop whatever you're doing.
And Intel seems to have implicitly confirmed rumors that they'll release a
more powerful Arc Battle Mage GPU if
some tweets are anything to go by. And when are they not? In response to
multiple fans pleading for an ARC B770,
which would sit above the existing B570 and B580 in Intel's naming scheme, the
official Intel Twitter account replied with various versions of stay tuned with
an eyes emoji, which in influencer means
watch this space. Sparkles. Despite not having officially confirmed the
existence of the B770, Intel said another fan who wants one is a gamer
with great taste and called the card, which so far only exists in liinal
space, a solid pick, which is like me congratulating you on picking me for
your baseball team. Yeah, I might show up, but my schedule's all up in the air
right now. Now, Intel said the same thing to the one reply guy or gal who
asked about a B780, which makes me think either
they're also making that card, or this account is like an AI that will also
tell you to stay tuned when you ask for an Intel ARC BLT cheese sandwich. But
really, who knows what we're going to see at Computex next week. There have
been rumors about a 24 gig version of the ARC B580, which is probably actually
a pro card. But another fresh rumor this week indicates a third-party card
manufacturer is prepping a dual GPU
graphics card with two B580 chips on a
single board. Maybe they'll be stacked like a cheese
sandwich. Stay tuned. Google is testing out adding an AI mode button to the main
search page. Users have reported seeing it replace the I'm feeling lucky button
that takes you directly to the top result of your search, while others
report seeing it as an additional button in the search bar. So to make sure I
understand, Google forced AI overviews into your normal searches and made you
first perform an AI enabled search before you can even select the option to
search without AI. And instead of making normal web searches more accessible,
they're adding an extra button that injects even more AI that very well
might tell you that rocks are edible. Very cool. We're making products for
human people. We're not being evil. Got it. But you know what? It's okay because
Google is offsetting this nonsense with improved spam and scam protections for
Android, which will stop you from disabling Google Play Protect,
sideloading, or granting extra permissions while on a call. and it'll
warn you about scams if you open a banking app while screen sharing with an
unknown contact, which I probably should just also not do that. Uh, these add to
the existing scam detection tools in calls and messages added this year,
which are entirely processed on device
supposedly. And oh, there's also a new key verifier feature that will let you
confirm the identity of the contact you're talking to using cryptographic
keys. Somebody send this to the Department of Defense stat. Google also
showed off and confirmed the new design language that had previously leaked
coming with Android 16 called Material 3
Expressive, which is definitely going to bring in so many Gen Zers who were like,
I thought Android was cringe, but I see myself here. Color blocks on the Google
logo. Make that a gradient, and I'm on board. Watch this space. House
Republicans have slipped language into the proposed budget reconciliation bill
that could ban US states from enforcing any locally passed AI regulations for 10
years. It's a strange move because the rest of the bill is about completely
unrelated stuff like cuts to Medicaid. But it's not the only wacky AI related
bill in the House right now. Senator Tom Cotton introduced his own bill that
proposes putting tracking chips in all high performance AI processors so we can
uh protect children. Uh this kind of
legislation is going to be relevant because the Trump administration just
rescended Biden's AI diffusion rule which was horribly named to be fair. Uh
that placed strict limits on US companies shipping AI chips. Although
China's uh you know still a no-go. The Middle East, however, is fair game,
which is why Saudi Arabia's hot new AI company, Humane, with with an I in it.
So, it's Humi Human Humane, is
immediately buying 10 billion worth of AMD GPUs and 18,000 NVIDIA GPUs to
start, while the United Arab Emirates wants to buy over a million GPUs. Okay,
hold on there, Sparky. I mean, they're going to need chips to power all of
these data centers being built over there in the desert because according to
a recent statement from the US Commerce Department, anyone using Huawei's Ascend
AI chips anywhere in the world could be subject to disciplinary action by the
US. And also, don't make fun of the tariffs online. It's bad for the
nation's youth. You know what's good for the youth? Video games. Like our
sponsor, War Thunder. The game that immerses you in intense combat with more
than 2500 incredibly detailed tanks, planes, helicopters, and ships, and one
of the most sophisticated vehicle damage models in gaming. We're talking
individual components like engines, fuel tanks, weapons, and even crew members.
This is still a video game. They're a component all susceptible to damage or
disabling by enemy shells or missiles. Different types of which behave
differently according to the type of armor you have equipped. You can learn
about how all of those things interacted to cause you to blow up using the X-ray
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using our links. Okay, you're still watching. That's good. I thought I saw
you looking at reels for a second there. Hey, hey, eyes up here. Yesterday,
Samsung announced the Galaxy S25 Edge,
which does not have a curved edge on the
screen like the discontinued Edge phones from Days of Yore. This Edge is just
amazingly thin and an amazing example of the exact reasons why everyone reacted
to rumors of ultra thin phones with but
why? With a 6.7 in screen, the S25 Edge
is basically an S25 Plus, but worse,
while being slightly more expensive at $1,100 US. The battery is a,000 milliamp
smaller at 3900, it's got weaker wired
only charging and no telephoto lens. And
while it's got a 200 megapixel main camera now, it uses the same size sensor
as the 50 megapixel one in the rest of the lineup.
On the plus side though, you won't get
uh bullied for having a phone with a normal thickness. I I I don't get it.
Nintendo published proper tech specs for the Switch 2, so the Digital Foundry
team at Eurogamer, who did a lot of Switch 2 hardware sleuththing before the
official announcement, dove into analysis mode. The biggest takeaway is
that the Switch 2 has a much larger gap in performance between handheld and
docked mode, probably partially due to the new dock having a fan in it. So, get
hyped to play on the TV, but don't be disappointed when you can't see the
sweat glistening on your Cyborg GF in
Cyberpunk. Wouldn't be a problem with a real girl. You'd see their sweat just
fine. And that's just an idea. Users who bought a lifetime subscription to VPN
provider VPN Secure had those subscriptions cancelled because the
company's new owners say they had never heard about it when they were in the
buying process. It's not their fault. Nobody told me. After enduring customer
backlash, the new VPN Secure agreed to give the lifetime subholders two free
years. So, I guess after that they'll
die. Thanks. Couple super quick bits here because I didn't know where else to
put them. HBO is changing the name of its streaming service back to HBO Max 2
years after rebranding as just Max in an
effort to signal that it's not just The Sopranos and stuff on there. There's
there's a lot of worse shows, too. And Uber has announced Uber Route Share,
route share, whatever you want, which involves drivers following set routes
and arriving at stops every 20 minutes. Yes, it's a bus. This Silicon Valley
innovation is relentless. And scientists at the FOM Institute for Molecular and
Atomic Physics in Amsterdam built a robot powered entirely by air being
pushed through tubes like a wacky inflatable tube man. But he's alive now.
Apparently, without any programming, the robot's leg movements begin as a chaotic
mess, but then naturally synchronize through the power of raw physics, unlike
other robots, which don't involve physics at all. The bot even switches to
an alternating limb method in water. Wild. I'm not going to lie, though. The
real reason I included the story is because RS Technica's title and subtitle
sounds like a string of creative insults. You're a brainless robot that
runs on air. You're a starting gazelle that swims like a dog. You have an air
of stilted rapidity about you. Be gone.
Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. Okay, look, how about to make it up to
you, you come back here on Friday for more tech news and we'll call it even.
Okay, don't look away yet.