Oh, hey bud. Can't wait to see what kind of interesting tech news you brought
today for me. I got What's that? You
don't have any? [sighs] Hey, that's okay. You can have some of
mine.
>> [snorts] >> Reviews are up for Intel's new Panther Lake laptop processors, aka the Core
Ultra 300 series, led by the flagship Intel Core Ultra X9
388H. Yes, Intel complicated their naming
scheme again by throwing some X's in there. But before you use that pitchfork
in your hand to do something you'll regret, listen to this. These chips are
pretty good. In single core, the X9388H
is at the front of the pack for Windows laptop chips, only being beaten by the
Apple M4 and M5. While in multi-core, it
beats the M4 and nearly matches the M5,
which, you know, runs at a much lower wattage, so it's got less power to work
with, but it looks like it's pretty efficient, too. And we haven't even
talked about the integrated ARC B390 graphics. My favorite hyperfocused
YouTuber, the Fox, found that when matched watt for watt, it even beat AMD
Stricks Halo, aka the most powerful chip you can get in a gaming handheld in some
games. Although, yeah, they went back and forth. But do you get Do you
understand, guys? Are you picking up what is being placed on the ground?
Intel's back. As the Verge says, call it
a comeback. You can indeed do that. Now,
time to chill us out here for a second, okay? [music] Because yes, these are
still laptop chips, and it remains to be seen how good the desktop Nova Lake
lineup will be when it launches this fall. But Intel seems confident. Team
Blue's graphics guru Tom Peterson told 386 that they're not bothering to build
their own version of Stricks Halo because AMD's integrated GPUs are not
that competitive. The vast majority of gaming handhelds and consoles use AMD
graphics, while there's like two Intel
ones, so I'm not sure what competition Tom is referring to here, but we love
the confidence. Yes, Intel. Microsoft has confirmed that it handed over Bit
Locker encryption keys to US law enforcement during an investigation
early last year, reopening the long-running debate over who actually
controls your encrypted data. According to multiple reports, the company
provided a set of Bit Locker recovery keys to the FBI to help unlock suspects
laptops. And Microsoft has been very clear that this wasn't a one-off event.
Apparently, the company gets requests for keys around 20 times a year. And
guess what? If the government asks under the right legal process, THEY DO IT
AGAIN. We don't care. We're Microsoft.
The key detail is how this happens. Microsoft says it can only provide keys
that are already stored in its servers. If you sign into Windows with a
Microsoft account, Bit Locker keys are automatically backed up, linking them to
every machine you sign into. From Microsoft's perspective, turning those
keys over is no different than responding to any other lawful data
request. But it's worth pointing out that at one time it was normal and
expected for companies like Apple and Google to fight said requests and try to
protect their users privacy a little more. Microsoft may have forgotten that,
but privacy advocates haven't with Senator Ron Weiden saying it is simply
irresponsible for tech companies to ship products in a way that allows them to
secretly turn over users encryption keys. Say louder for the people in the
back. I'll wait. Luckily, Windows workarounds
for signing in with a local account only seem to still work. And Microsoft does
say that they will delete the keys at your request. So, it's not all bad.
Still, the real alternative is to just install Linux if you don't want the big
man upstairs finding your just enormous
stash of cat photos. Yes, you have a
problem. But maybe the government isn't the best entity to lead your
intervention. Tik Tok users panicked a little bit after the US version of the
app, now officially controlled by the mostly American Tik Tok USDS joint
venture LLC, prompted them to accept the new terms of service and privacy policy.
Posts quickly spread online claiming there was all sorts of scary new
clauses, including one about collecting info on a user's immigration status,
gender identity, or sexual orientation. But it turns out that stuff was already
in there pre-americanization and mostly lines up with the type of
data collected by other social media apps. Don't worry, they collect pretty
much everything about you, which is normal. However, there were three major
changes that may be concerning. Precise GPS location is now up for grabs if you
give the Tik Tok app permissions for that. interactions with AI features
weren't even mentioned in the previous policy, and now those can be collected,
too. And that data can be used to personalize ads elsewhere on the web,
not just on Tik Tok. So, concerning stuff for sure, but it's more like the
bog standard privacy concerns we've gotten used to, rather than new concerns
about getting disappeared by the US government, which is very much a concern
for many right now. But the stuff in this privacy policy, that's familiar.
here. I mean, this almost feels nostalgic. Now, as if to emphasize all
of this, hubbhub, Tik Tok had a big outage today, which combined with the
privacy concerns may have driven Tik Tok alternative upscrolled to the number 12
spot on the iOS app store. But if you ask me, instead of trying that, you
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Okay. How how are those? Do do those feel okay? You you don't you want to
pick one of the quick bits, maybe? Okay. It's just, you know, it's just like
beggars can't be choosers, you know, like you didn't you didn't you didn't
bring anything. And that's fine. Microsoft is dealing with yet another
patch Tuesday faceplant after admitting their latest Windows 11 security update
left some PCs completely unable to boot,
sticking users with an unmountable boot volume error. The company admits it
doesn't know yet what combination of hardware or settings triggers the issue,
only that reports of the bug are limited, and it only seems to affect
real computers, not virtual machines,
because those aren't real. Hey, remember back when updates actually fixed things
instead of just making them worse? And here's the part where Grayson wants me
to do a very specific reference to Ford versus Ferrari. Can we have more of
that, please? More of that, old girl. The good
updates. The team behind the Stop Killing Games movement in the EU
announced that 1.3 million of the total
1.4 million signatures collected for the EU citizens initiative have been
verified. only 1 million were needed to ensure that the issue is discussed at
the European Commission. So now it'll no doubt be discussed 0.3 million harder.
The goal of Stop Killing Games is not to force companies to host live service
games forever. It's just to give gamers an option to keep playing. Whether
that's locally hosted servers or a proper offline mode, whatever, just
something. And the country that apparently cares the most about that is
Germany, where they know that game companies waiting to fix this until
after people have complained. It's just inefficient. It's much simpler to make
it perfect the first time. Try try it.
The US Department of Transportation plans to use Google Gemini to draft new
regulations, [music] aiming to dramatically speed up rulemaking by
having the weird new alien robot thing make them up. Per internal records,
leadership isn't seeking perfection or even very good rules. Apparently, they
just want good enough. Considering this agency handles railways and uh freaking
airplanes, is good enough really the goal? Maybe Gemini can hallucinate some
regulations on in-flight entertainment. The last time I flew, The Mask of Zoro
wasn't available. And to calm down in the middle of the air, I really need my
Spanish sword fighting movies, man. JBL's new Bandbox speakers come with an
offline AI button that can split songs into individual stems, letting you
selectively mute parts of songs such as
vocals or individual instruments. The processing happens locally on the
speaker, not in the cloud. Sort of giving you the same effect as a
multi-track recording instead of just listening to an MP3. JBL pitches it as
the perfect little speaker for practice karaoke remixing stuff on the fly. And
hey, if you use it to remove the guitar from AC/DC songs, maybe you'll finally
unlock Angus Young's mystical powers of flight. Still a mystery to science. And
YouTuber Retro Game Addict successfully ordered Domino's Pizza.
And that's the end. Congrats to him. Now, he did it using a 20-year-old
Nintendo Wii. Thanks [music] to the Wii Link project, resurrecting Nintendo's
long deadad online services, the aptly named Food Channel started life as the
Japan-only Demay channel back in 2006
before Nintendo shut everything down in 2017. We link, a community project
launched in 2020, rebuilds those servers
and pipes your orders through the modern API used by Domino's. I would never have
guessed there's a secret society of Nintendo Wii playing pizza lovers who
refuse to let this eccentric method of ordering die,
but learning that there is makes me so happy. But it would make me even happier
if you came back here for more tech news on Wednesday. And maybe, you know, you
could bring some of your own tech news next time, too. You know, as was
discussed at length in the email Sharon sent out multiple times. Do you need
help fixing your internet? Because I can. I just just just, you know, looking
forward to seeing it. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Okay. Bye.