You came for tech news, so that's what I'll give you.
If you also want to hear my sci-fi series pitch, just let me know at any point.
Microsoft has reiterated that it will not budge on including TPM 2.0 or the Trusted Platform
Module as a hardware requirement for Windows 11, with senior product manager Stephen Hosking
writing in the company's IT Pro blog that the security feature is non-negotiable.
Unless you're a business and opt for the IoT Enterprise LTSC version of Windows 11,
which doesn't require it, or if you're following guides from Microsoft themselves,
as well as others that tell you how to install Windows 11 on an unsupported PC.
But other than that, it's off the table. The double down comes as Microsoft is ramping up pressure on Windows 10 users to upgrade,
which for many means upgrading their hardware too, because of the phantom menace requirement
different TPM. The whole issue is complicated by the fact that the real requirement, keeping
some users from upgrading, isn't even TPM 2.0. There are a couple generations of Intel and AMD
processors that have that feature, but aren't included in the list of supported processors
for Windows 11. So what does Microsoft actually want your PC to have to let you upgrade your OS?
The right vibe? They actually don't even want you to upgrade. They just like popping ads up in
your face. I got them. You're sick. Intel finally unveiled their second gen
ARC GPUs yesterday after busting them out of freshly fired CEO Pat Gelsinger's office.
He was fired because he wouldn't let the company launch them? That's not true. I'm just looking
for a reason that makes sense. Linus Tech Tips has a full breakdown, but the TLDR is the ARC
B580 will launch for $250 on December 13th with the B570 launching at $220 on January 16th
in a number of colors and flavors, thanks to Intel having more board partners on board this time.
Despite having a power draw on the lower side with the limited edition reference design only
sporting a single 8-pin connector, Intel says the B580 is 24% faster than the previous gen
ARC A750, a higher tier board, and delivers 64% better ray tracing performance than an RTX 4060.
Now you might say, I don't care about ray tracing. Well, Indiana Jones and The Great Circle just
became the first mainstream game to require hardware ray tracing support. You want to give
it with the times or have an atypically swashbuckling archaeologist say that you belong in a museum?
That would not feel good. Alongside architecture improvements, Intel's upgraded their Xe Super
Sampling Tech to Xe SS2, which now has frame generation like NVIDIA's DLSS3 and AMD's FSR3,
along with a low latency feature. Intel is leaning hard into its aggressive pricing here,
saying the battle mage cards have 25% better performance per dollar than NVIDIA and AMD's
60-tier cards. And they've got about a month to convince gamers that's the case,
before Team Red and Green start dropping their own next gen GPUs. NVIDIA is heavily expected
to announce the RTX 50 series at CES, and AMD's own recently released code references both the
RX 8800 and RX 8600. Look at me. You're going to wait for the reviews this time before shooting
your mouth off, right? You can do it. Stay strong. OpenAI has announced 12 days of OpenAI,
which means that, starting tomorrow at 10 a.m. Pacific, it'll host a live stream every day
for 12 days to launch or demo new AI features, a holiday tradition of tech bros since days of
your, or so Chachibi tells me. But Google seized this opportunity to give Sam Altman a taste of his
own preempt your competitor's AI announcements, medicine. The tech giants suddenly opened access
to their VO video generator through their Vertex AI platform, along with their Imogen 3 image
generator. But more importantly, they unveiled Genie 2, a foundation world model that one ups the
World Labs demo for Monday's episode and generates 3D game worlds you can run around in, or sail
around in, for up to a minute before reality starts to deco here. DeepMind says that Genie 2
generates game content that's plausible, which I was going to say is the bare minimum for games,
but then I remembered Kingdom Hearts exists. Unlike D-Carts AI generated Minecraft simulation,
Genie 2 can actually make it so the world looks the same, or at least similar, when you turn
around, imagine, and can generate gameplay in multiple perspectives, like first person,
third person, and isometric. A few demos even showed characters interacting with objects
in ways that stretch the meaning of the word plausible, but again, Death Stranding shipped so.
Genie 2 can render game protagonists as well as NPCs and lead to some fun situations, like this
one where the player just stood in a garden and didn't move at all and eventually a ghost appears.
Huh? If that's not creepy enough, the Googlers took their previously announced
generalist AI agents capable of operating in any game and dropped them into these
nonsensical dream worlds, presumably as a kind of prank.
Hey, wait a sec, is this AI? Yeah, just like you. Just like me. Aw, that's funny.
Oh, DeepMind also showed their new GenCast AI weather forecasting system
outperforming the current best-in-class model, but that's like actually practical stuff.
A thousand years in the future, a space travel experiment has torn the fabric of reality and there's portals everywhere. Also, humans have evolved tails again. They came
back. I'm working on it. But first, quick bits. In response to the US tightening export restrictions
even more, China said it would ban rare minerals crucial to tech production
from being exported to the US, who said it's just now realizing how much rejection can hurt.
The banned minerals include gallium and germanium, of which China is the biggest producer.
On the plus side, if stuff isn't being exported to the US, then it can't be subject to tariffs,
so at least American companies won't have to pay extra for it. Win-win.
The FBI and CISA, America's cyber defense agency, have warned the nation about the dangers of using
unencrypted messaging, such as text messages sent between iPhones and Android phones.
It's a bit of a strange warning coming from the FBI, which has historically
opposed encryption, which makes it harder to get into people's phones for national security purposes.
The thing is, it looks like Chinese hackers still have deep access to American communication
after using a government backdoor to break in. So please make sure to use encrypted messaging
apps until we can get these hackers out of here, and then we can go back to unencrypted,
so the right government can spy on you properly. Ubisoft has announced it's shutting down its
free-to-play shooter, X Defiant, less than a year after launching and less than two months after
denying reports that it was going to do this very thing. While the game's Season 3 content
will still launch with servers remaining live until June 2025, the news also means the shutdown
of three different production studios and 277 employees being laid off. My heart goes out to
those developers, one of whom I really hope brought up the fact that that name sounds like a call of
duty parody game they made up for a B movie to avoid licensing fees. X Defiant. It sounds like
a translation error. And the FTC won't let scummy companies be proposing orders yesterday
that would ban location data firms Ventel and Mobile Walla from selling location data,
which can reveal details about consumers visits to medical clinics and places of worship,
sensitive areas. The ban would prevent these companies, which are some of the most prominent
of their kind, from conducting their main business, providing location information to
advertisers as well as government agencies like the IRS, DAA, and FBI. Man, they're not going to
be able to arrest anyone soon. Thankfully, the proposal is subject to public comment for 30 days
before it can be made final, so go let the FTC know if you really want weird companies to still
be able to dox you. And let me know if you want more tech news by coming back here on Friday for
more. I think I'm going to take a page from Tim Cook and keep doing this until the voice in my
head says it's time. It hasn't said it yet. It says all kinds of other fun things though.