You may know this is a virtual set, but you probably don't know that I'm a virtual host.
I'm not actually Riley Murdock, I'm someone else, and they're deep faking me to look like
Ned Flanders. Apple prognosticator Mark Germanus, who wanders the Girmick Plains,
talked of Apple's plans to make an iPhone with no ports in his newsletter this week,
saying the tech giant didn't do that for the upcoming iPhone 17 Air for fear of
repercussions from the EU, who traumatized the company by making them switch from their
proprietary Lightning connector to USB-C, the connector for poor people. Well,
9 and 5 Mac took the liberty of asking the EU about this directly, who said,
yeah, actually, that would be fine. They probably said it with a European accent, though.
iPhone with no ports? Only Mac safe, Georgie? Very cool. I don't know what's wrong with me.
The idea isn't that crazy. Macworld writer David Price says he's had the iPhone 16 Plus
for six months and he's never used his iPhone's USB-C port, and I'd love to ask him some questions.
But while the EU is chill about a portless iPhone, they are still very much not chill
about Apple's walled garden approach. The block just ordered Apple to make notifications,
background execution, and a number of other iOS features available for third-party devices like
smartwatches to use. These are changes that Apple has said would be bad for our products and our
users, because sure, other operating systems support those things and their users seem fine,
but what is it doing to their immortal souls? Sin has befouled your heart.
The EU's order comes right after Pebble founder Eric Migikowski unveiled two new
Pebble OS-powered smartwatches from his new company, Core Devices. They're called the Core Time 2
and the Core 2 Duo. So named because, as Eric told the Verge, it's like a Pebble 2,
but it's made by Core Devices and then Duo is for Do-over, which...okay, sure. Anyway,
Eric wrote a blog post about how iOS doesn't let third-party watches do a bunch of things,
but maybe they will now in Europe anyway. The EU also charged Google today with breaching the
Digital Markets Act by preferencing its own products in Search and Google Play, prompting Google to
blog about how changing anything would be hurting consumers and businesses. You sure about that?
You sure about that? You sure about... This morning, NVIDIA kicked off their GPU
Technology Conference, an event CEO Jensen Huang hyped up as the Super Bowl of AI,
but with less fun commercials and more pleading for investors to stay hodling.
Team Green made the rumors of RTX Pro GPUs come true. The flagship Blackwell RTX Pro 6000 GPU will
use the same base chip as an RTX 5090, but with up to 96 gigabytes of VRAM or 24 gigs on laptop
versions. Jensen also unveiled what he called two personal AI supercomputers. One is Project
Digits, the mini-PC first revealed at CES, but it's been renamed to DGX Spark. And in addition
to NVIDIA's own design, OEMs like ASUS, Dell and HP will be selling their own versions powered by
NVIDIA's GB10 Super Chip, a term investors probably love way more than APU. The other
personal supercomputer is the DGX station, which fits the company's brand new Blackwell Ultra
GB300 chip with 784 gigabytes of unified memory onto a standard desktop size motherboard. It's
like a mini version of the giant NVL72 units with 72 Blackwell Ultra GPUs also unveiled by NVIDIA,
alongside an updated roadmap promising Rubin GPUs in 2026 and Feynman GPUs in 2027, the former of
which will also pair with Vera, the company's first CPU with fully custom ARM CPU cores.
It's a lot of AI stuff, so thank goodness NVIDIA took a second to announce the accelerated quantum
research center, a supercomputer facility to hopefully help research on quantum computers
give us something other than overhyped bullshit. Shout out to Microsoft, but NVIDIA is definitely
not slowing down on AI. They just announced a consortium with Microsoft, BlackRock and MGX
to spend $100 billion on AI data centers, with Jensen promising that we'll soon be able to see
these huge server farms from space. Also, anyone with a Sigma grind set can break social media
algorithms with AI slop. Yes, get that bag. Can you see the deep fake yet? Like when I make certain
movements, it's like a bit off. I'll try to do the quick bits just like Riley. After full unboxing
videos of the Pixel 9a were posted earlier this week, Google officially revealed the phone in
all its camera bumpless glory. It starts at 500 bucks for 128 gigs of storage and 8 gigs of RAM,
and compared to the Pixel 8a, it's got a slightly larger and brighter 6.3 inch screen,
with seven years of included Android updates and IP68 dust and water resistance up from IP67.
Hey, sounds deez. Deez nuts because as because as they unveiled the 9a, they also delayed its
launch to April to check on a component quality issue, which is weird because that has never
caused Google to hesitate before. It's a good sign that they're taking Pixel hardware more
seriously though, and also they're finally adding undo and redo buttons to their keyboard. That's
unrelated, but it's good. Windows 11 has a couple updates on the way that are even cooler than the
one that just deleted co-pilot. A recent insider build includes a new virtual keyboard for game
controllers, which at the very least should allow gamers with Windows handhelds to type stuff without
taking their hands off the controls so they can keep working on giving it that nice sweat patina.
Another insider build feature adds a FAQ section to Windows 11's about this PC section,
which appears to provide an explanation for why you're losing every valorant match.
It's because your PC sucks, and your team does too. It's never you. We know that.
Chinese car manufacturer BYD claimed last week that its upcoming Super E platform
will support electric vehicle charging at up to a thousand kilowatts, fully charging some vehicles
in as little as five minutes. That technology would leapfrog competitors whose chargers usually
top out at around 350 kilowatts-ish. Five minutes is really fast. I mean, that's barely enough time
to grab some pork skins from 7-Eleven and get back to your car before it explodes. And Korean
researchers have genetically engineered a strain of E. coli bacteria to produce plastics, which...
sort of the opposite of what I thought we were trying to do. But, uh, oh, but if I keep reading
Riley's script, remember I'm not him, I'll find out that the plastics are actually glucose-based
polymers, which can be broken down by other also engineered bacteria. Make it and degrade it.
Seems circular. Why are we doing this again? Look, I'm gonna head out and let the real Riley
give you some more tech news on Friday. Can we turn the deep fake off now? That felt weird.