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 Coyd home robot
designed to help with household chores. And now it can also recognize faces.
Coyd, 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 slow moving slender man vibe to it. Which I'm sure someone 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 production ready Atlas
which can now carry heavier components while maintaining balance and is powered
by Google's Gemini AI. This brick 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 Onero H1's physique? I bet that thing can hoop.
It wasn't just human looking robots that we got at CES, we also saw a bunch of oddball droids built
for do-and-chores or whatever the hell the Lynx M20 Pro all terrain 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 Ufie S2 robot vacuum
which doubles as an aromatherapy diffuser. So your house will smell clean and smell nice la-dee-da.
That's very fancy, but can it climb stairs? Because Roborock's new experimental Soros rover
certainly can and look at those legs.
Damn, maybe this thing can fall too. Speaking of stupid sexy robots,
Mamosion's 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 PCworld that AMD is selling ancient silicon while we're selling
up-to-date 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 next-gen 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 1,000 times better. Except maybe it's not.
Those numbers are comparing an eight GPU MI300X node
to an entire MI500 rack with how many GPUs?
Nobody knows. Basically, AMD is that kid you knew 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,
Saili. 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 mass-produced chips made from molybdenum disulfide,
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 Woojee chip packs 5,900 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 five or three nanometer by 2028.
For reference, TSMC's cutting edge is currently three nanometers.
So if China's timeline holds, which is a big if, they could have a fundamentally different approach
to chip making that sidesteps the silicon limits that everyone else is running into.
Then again, remember how hype you were for graphing?
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health this week.
It's a non-hippocompliant, non-end-to-end encrypted health assisted.
All you have to do is connect it with B.Well and give Sam Altman 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, Doctronics Chatbot can renew
190 different chronic condition meds. Pharmacists are thrilled.
One called it a complicated and unnecessary solution since pharmacists could just reduce scripts themselves.
Another said it's insulting professionally that the state trusts a computer more than me.
While that sounds bad, according to Doctronics own non-pure reviewed studied,
their AI matches real doctors diagnoses 81% of the time.
So only one in five of you might have a problem.
Pretty good for our audience, honestly. 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 control 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 to be 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 gonna read all your emails.
I mean, they probably already were, but now they're gonna 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, Keanu 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 GitGoon,
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 shit could happen? I certainly don't and Lord knows
I'm confused and scared as hell. I heard Raleigh will be here though.