It's day four of our CES coverage, and I'll admit it, I'm losing it a bit. I'm
more machine than man now. Twisted and evil,
but I know you guys want that tech news. Robots. NVIDIA's keynote focused on AI
and robotics with a handful of robot cameos. But how about everyone else's
bots? Qualcomm just unveiled a full robotics tech stack built to power
everything from home robots to industrial machines and of course,
humanoids. And were there ever some humanoid bots around the CES show floor
this year? LG showed off their Cloyd home robot designed to help with
household chores. And now it can also recognize faces. Cloyd, that's my worst
uncle. If he tries to high-five you, you just roll away, pal. Stiff that guy. Not
to be outdone, Switchbot unveiled Onero H1, another robot butler, but this one
comes with modular attachments, and it's got a bit of a slowmoving Slenderman
vibe to it, which I'm sure some somewhere might want. Don't fret,
robotics aren't just about replacing a millionaire's human cleaning staff.
They're also about taking over industrial manufacturing. Case in point,
Boston Dynamics productionready Atlas, which can now carry heavier components
while maintaining balance and is powered by Google's Gemini AI. This brick sh
house is headed to Hyundai factories for 2028 to start building cars, making it
even more clear that some robots are definitely coming for some human jobs.
Outside CES, robot sports are booming. As CNN notes, humanoid bots racing and
playing soccer are really showing how fast this tech is advancing. So,
athletes might be losing some of their jobs soon, too. I'm sorry, LeBron. You
might not get to play basketball until you're 50 after all. Did you see the
Onire H1's physique? I bet that thing can hoop. It wasn't just humanl looking
robots that we got at CES. We also saw a bunch of oddball droids built for doing
chores or whatever the hell the Lynx M20 Pro allterrain robot is meant to do. It
actually won an innovation award. And although it might just seem like a robot
dog that can stomp or roll its way through the desert, once you see it jump
on a set of stairs like something out of a skateboard video, you might find yourself saying, "Screw it. Give this
thing a trophy." As for more practical bots, we got Anker's new Yuthi S2 robot
vacuum, which doubles as an aroma therapy diffuser, so your house will
smell clean and smell nice. La dah. That's very fancy. But can it climb
stairs? Because Robo Rock's new experimental Soros Rover certainly can.
And look at those legs. Damn, maybe this
thing can ball, too. Speaking of stupid, sexy robots, Motion Spino S1 Pro pool
cleaning robot can pull itself out of the water like a Bond girl. Or Bond
himself. You remember those little shorts? Wow. Intel and AMD have been
exchanging words this week. After Intel launches Panther Lake chips, the first
built on their new 18A process, one of their execs told PC World that AMD is
selling ancient silicon, while we're selling up-to-ate processors
specifically designed for the gaming handheld market. AMD's Raul Tiku fired
back, calling Intel's benchmark comparisons not even a fair fight since
Intel compared their highest end chip to AMD's mid tier. He also called Panther
Lake a Swiss Army knife that carries all of this baggage from its chiplet
architecture, implying it's not purpose-built for handhelds like AMD's Z
series. But you know what? That ancient silicon is actually selling. AMD's Ryzen
7 5800X, a Zen 3 chip from 2020, just
outsold every other CPU on Amazon Germany last month, moving nearly 2,000
units. Turns out when DDR4 is half the price of DDR5, people are happy to build
ancient AM4 systems. After taking shots at Intel, AMD climbed into the nextG AI
chip arena with NVIDIA. Lisa Sue gave us a glimpse of AMD's MI500 series
performance, claiming a 1,000 times performance uplift over their older
MI300X. Uh-oh. Look out, NVIDIA. AMD is a
thousand times better. Except maybe it's not. Those numbers are comparing an 8GPU
MI300X node to an entire MI500 rack with
how many GPUs? Nobody knows. Basically,
AMD is that kid in high school who had a girlfriend who lives in Canada. Turns
out Canada is actually a real place. And if you visit, you can use our sponsor,
Sy. Hi, I'm Terminator. Send back to protect John Kana. And yes, I'll be back
online instantly with SY. My mission
can't be compromised by suspicious SIM dealers outside terminals. They could be
T1000s. I downloaded the ESIM and that's
it. I stay connected as I move through countries like a machine on a mission.
Sale will be useful if John Connor decides to check out the hot news tech
at CES 2026 in Las Vegas. I think some
of my ancestors will be there. You get it? Cuz I'm a robot from the future. No
roaming chaos. No searching for Wi-Fi when time is critical. Global plans keep
me operational everywhere. I'm a learning computer on iPhone or Android
with a chat support system available 24/7. The future is not set, but with SY
staying connected is so say a leavista baby to bad coverage. Get an exclusive
50% discount on sale eim data plans by downloading the sale app and using code
TechLinked at checkout.
The quickest bits are the friends we made along the way. Transient,
meaningful, and still your friend on Facebook 15 years later. Shanghai is
gearing up to massproduce chips made from malibdinum dulfide, a 2D material
just a few atoms thick. Why does it matter? As silicon chips shrink, they
hit physical limits that cause energy leakage and overheating. 2D materials
let electrical signals move more efficiently with way less heat. The Wuji
chip packs 5900 transistors, which is nothing compared to the billions in your
phone. But the previous world record for this type of 2D chip was 115. So they
just 50x the technology. Shanghai Atomic Technology plans to have the production
line fully operational by June 2026 with
targets of 90 nanometer equivalent processes this year, 28 nanometer by
2027 and 5 or 3 nanometer by 2028. For
reference, TSMC's cutting edge is currently 3nm. So if China's timeline
holds, which is a big if, they could have a fundamentally different approach
to chipmidsteps the silicon limits everyone else is
running into. Then again, remember how hype you were for graphing? OpenAI
launched Chat GBT health this week. It's a non-hippaco compliant, non-enttoend
encrypted health assisted. All you have to do is connect it with B.Well and give
Sam Alman access to your complete medical history and all your device
data. In exchange, you get health advice that OpenAI explicitly says is not
intended to provide diagnosis or treatment guidance. Meanwhile, Utah just
became the first state to let an AI system legally prescribe medication. For
$4 per prescription, Dr. Chatbot can renew 190 different chronic condition
meds. Pharmacists are thrilled. One called it a complicated and unnecessary
solution since pharmacists could just renew scripts themselves. Another said,
"It's insulting professionally that the state trusts a computer more than me."
While that sounds bad, according to Doctrronic's own non-perviewed study,
their AI matches real doctor's diagnosis 81% of the time. So, only one in five of
you might have a problem. Pretty good for our audience, honestly. [laughter]
Google announced Gmail's quote unquote biggest update in 20 years. And
surprise, it's all AI. Front and center
is AI overviews in email search. Remember how hard it was to hit F or use
the search bar? Now you can finally give your exhausted pinky finger a break. All
you have to do is let Google read all of your emails and then you can ask Gemini,
"Who have I told you that I have a girlfriend up in Canada?" And Gemini
will dig through your inbox and let you know all the people you've lied to in
your life. There's also a new AI inbox view that prioritizes your to-dos and
identifies your VIPs. If users don't want the service, then they have to opt
out of it. Users have to opt out, not in. And if you don't, then Google's
going to read all your emails. I mean, they probably already were, but now
they're going to be weird about it. Bose is officially letting its sound touch
smart speakers reach their end of life and will shut down cloud support this
spring. But instead of just bricking them all like most companies do these
days, Bose is releasing the API and documentation. Now developers and
enthusiasts can build their own tools and keep the devices useful. Bose is
apparently keeping things like AirPlay, Spotify Connect, Bluetooth, and local
app control working as basic features. Please, everyone else, learn from this.
It's crazy that Bose looks like an absolute hero for just not bricking
something that people have paid for. We're living in the age of the bare
minimum level of decency here. It's so depressing. Thank you, Bose. After
several lawsuits, Roblox has decided that child safety is important. The
company announced that they now require facial age verification for users to use
chat. Users have to let the app scan their face. Then it'll guess their age
and sort them into discrete age groups to ensure that users are only
communicating with other people their age, which means teenagers could end up
chatting with Jennifer Aniston, Kiana Reeves, or other time travelers. Roblox
claims that images are deleted immediately after processing. Despite
this, both Texas and Louisiana have filed lawsuits over new child safety
concerns. Meanwhile, GitHub is also playing Content Cop, but with a lot less
explanation. The platform recently banned or suspended around 80 to 90
repositories from 40 to 50 developers making mods for adult games and sex
toys. Most weren't told what rules they broke. GitHub updated its acceptable use
policy in October to ban sexually themed content, but hasn't clarified how that
applies to code for vibrator plugins. Some accounts were mysteriously
reinstated after a journalist started asking questions. Still with no
explanation though, effective developers are now migrating to alternatives like
GitGon, which is exactly what it sounds like.
And if you don't know, please don't ask because I can't explain more or YouTube
will demonetize us with explanation.
Speaking of YouTube, please come back to it tomorrow for the last of our five
days in a row of CES tech news. Who knows what kind of crazy could
happen? I certainly don't. And Lord knows I'm confused and scared as hell. I
heard Rally will be here, though.