monday's here and we've got some exciting news to help
you deal with the reality of yet another work week micron has just announced that
they've begun large scale production of gddr6 video memory which
i mean this is memory that is specifically for video cards and there
are no video cards shipping currently with it obviously so which probably
indicates then an announcement of a new GPU or more from at least one of NVIDIA
or AMD gddr6 is fast with microns parts
delivering up to 56 gigabytes per second of bandwidth from a single package a 17
increase over gddr5x but don't expect 17 more
FPS in the latest titles i mean obviously better vram could help with
handling high quality assets at very high resolutions but the big draw here
is for ai and machine learning including self-driving cars as gddr6 has better
parallelism than its predecessors maybe this will eventually help tesla pick the
highway exit with the shortest drive-through line at mcdonald's
hopefully for micron the money they make from gddr6 will offset a potentially
huge fine they're facing from the chinese government the prc's
anti-monopoly bureau first got micron on their radar last year when it noticed
unusual patterns in the pricing of dram and now
micron along with samsung and sk hynix are being accused of price fixing and
since these three firms represent over 90 percent of the worldwide market for
dram the consequences could be
consequential the three companies are looking at up to
eight billion us dollars
in fines and i'm sure the chinese haven't forgotten that these companies
already got themselves in hot water with american authorities in 2002 for a
previous price fixing incident well i for what i'm stunned that the corruption
goes all the way to the top levels of this industry
speaking of the top levels microsoft has its sight set on a totally legal kind of
fixing specifically fixing what it sees as problems with the usbc connector a
microsoft patent was recently published entitled ultra thin usbc connector
isn't that great so unlike some other patents we're not exactly in the dark as
to what it is and what it might be used
for although it will remain compatible with the current usb-c connector the new
design features a new housing that's easier to install inside devices as it
wouldn't need support plates and could be attached more directly with glue
bolts or even just made part of the device chassis itself microsoft claims
in the patent that the design would not only be more aesthetically pleasing but
that it could reduce strain on the cable something that's led to the demise of
many a charging cable in the past when it's bent off the side of a tablet
although nothing's confirmed yet we could be seeing the slim down connector
on new surface devices later this year i guess microsoft is trying to make losing
weight for the winter a thing
and now it's time for quick bites brought to you by ourselves specifically
ltx 2018 our meetup and tech event that's coming up on july 14th at the
richmond olympic oval here in beautiful british columbia that is if you believe
what it says on our license plates meet the Linus tech tips team and
participate in everything from a cable management challenge to a lan tournament
to playing games in vr to trying out our 12k gaming station
that's only a small amount of what's on offer so come and check it out tickets
are just 35 canadian loonies which is whatever that converts to in your local
currency plus cost of hotel food and airfare okay so it's not feasible for
everyone but do your best now on to the quick bits for some reason
microsoft is just now getting around to implementing mouse and keyboard support
on lots of titles for the xbox one which includes a partnership with razer to add
chroma support for games but if fancy lighting isn't your thing
xbox one should support other keyboard brands as well speaking of games bose
might have some more competition in the noise cancelling headphone space very
soon as apple is reportedly releasing air pods with that technology next year
as well as a more traditional full-sized pair
what does this have to do with games
pricing is currently unavailable but given that it's apple
i highly doubt that your dreams of an affordable way to shut out irritating
people around you will be coming any time soon
and it sounds ha ha like apple was trying to drown out some
unwanted noise of its own as they are now offering either free repairs or
possibly refunds on previous repairs for
users who experienced sticky macbook keys with a design flaw some folks paid
over 700. for a fix that was well
seems by their own admission squarely apple's fault crippling their budgets
for more shiny eye devices with crappy repair policies of their own will
someone please think of the children who own apple devices
but something that won't cost nearly as much is the new flip grip a crowdfunded
contraption that allows you to mount the nintendo switch vertically in your hands
making for a better experience in traditional portrait-oriented arcade
games like icarunga donkey kong and pac-man it costs 12 dollars to pre-order
and liberate yourself from the scourge of vertical video that you deal with
enough on youtube and instagram's new video thing and finally researchers at
the university of michigan have set a new record for the world's smallest
computer stealing the title back from ibm with a tiny cubic device measuring
just point three millimeters on each size on each size point three
millimeters for our yankee friends out there that's really small that means
even a grain of rice absolutely dwarfs
this thing the diminutive computer comes with processing RAM and io although even
that slim type-c connector probably won't fit in it and might be used for
medical applications in the future however there's no word yet if their
rivals at ohio state have any plans to one-up the tiny system or
one down it as it were and that's the news join us back here on
wednesday for more scandal drama and tired jokes about apple