I once thought that the Monopoly Man had a Monopoly, but then I remembered it's a four-player game,
but then I remembered he's not even playing it. So what is he doing there? Anyway, tech news.
The US government has officially approved the sale of NVIDIA's H200 accelerator cards to China,
with a few caveats. Under the new rules, shipments are only allowed to be sold to approved customers,
require third-party reviews of every unit sold, and come with a 25% kickback to Uncle Sam on paper.
This means it's all good news for Chinese companies that have been struggling for the last year to get
them into the country, except for one very important piece of bad news. According to Reuters sources,
Chinese customs were quietly told this week that H200 chips are not permitted to enter the country,
and domestic tech firms were summoned and warned not to buy them unless absolutely necessary.
Officials didn't clarify if this is a full ban, a temporary pause, or something being stalled
until an upcoming US-China talk. But it is funny to see China blocking the same cards that the
country was originally banned from buying. But why? China probably doesn't want to rely on western tech,
but you don't know, maybe they're joining the ranks of the AI doomers that are really
harshing NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Wong's vibe lately. Mocking these hard-working tech pros is,
according to Jensen, extremely hurtful. And it's even causing some of them to second guess
whether blindly investing our entire economy into an unproven technology that still hallucinates
nonsense half the time is worth it at all. They're thinking about morality and stuff, icky.
Speaking of investing our entire economy, Microsoft just announced a community-first
approach to AI data centers, pledging to pay their fair share of electricity costs so your
power bill doesn't spike every time someone asks co-pilot how to uninstall co-pilot.
In a blog post by Microsoft President Brad Smith, the company outlined five commitments. First,
they'll ask utilities to set electricity rates high enough to cover data center infrastructure
costs, basically volunteering to pay what they probably should have been paying all along.
Smith wrote that it's both unfair and politically unrealistic for our industry to ask the public
to shoulder added electricity costs for AI. This is a guy that works for Microsoft, are we sure?
This came one day after President Trump posted on TruthSocial that AI companies must pay their own
way. He also reminded everyone that America is the hottest country in the world, which obviously,
have you ever even seen the Appalachian Mountains? They got got. I could hike the Cumberland Gap all
day if you know what I'm saying. I want to f*** those mountains. Microsoft also committed to
community development through providing training programs for AI technology and achieving 40%
better water efficiency by 2030, funding $25 million in water infrastructure for Leesburg,
Virginia, and not requesting local tax breaks. Oh good for you paying your taxes.
Now can you maybe stop pumping Windows full of ads?
NVIDIA is reportedly cutting back on higher VRAM graphics cards and doubling down on 8GB
models as memory shortages continue to squeeze the market. According to supply chain chatter from
Chinese forum board channels, NVIDIA is expected to ramp up production of 8GB RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti
models this year while quietly scaling back the 16GB variants. The reason should feel familiar by
now. Ongoing memory constraints around GDDR6 and 7 are making larger VRAM configurations harder to
source and significantly more expensive, especially in the low to mid-range markets where margins
are apparently already tight. From NVIDIA's perspective, the move could be pretty pragmatic.
Shipping more 8GB cards would allow them to say they're trying to keep prices lower,
although the same post indicates that more price increases could be on the way too.
I just hope they're not cutting costs even more by claiming they've got 8GB when they've really
got less. Like are they measuring from the base or the bus interface? Sometimes when people are
compensating for something, they pay for a bigger tool. I mean hey who wouldn't take an extra gig
that's probably exactly what happened when 42 people found the deal of the century
on RTX 5090s listed at a measly thousand bucks on Amazon. Wow! Imagine their surprise when they
received a package full of fanny packs instead. The QuickBits have a favorite board game,
Hungry Hungry Hippos. It's all about speed and feral intimidation displays.
Meta just laid off over 1,000 Reality Labs employees and shut down three VR game studios,
Twisted Pixel, Sansaru, and Armature. A meta spokesperson said they're shifting investment
from metaverse stuff towards wearables and AI. The pivot is partially due to demand for Ray-Ban
meta glasses being on course for the moon, while Reality Labs has lost over 70 billion dollars
since 2021. As they shift their priorities moving forward, they plan instead to lose that money on
AI. And more cool chains to make Zuck seem a little bit less like an alien. The music
hosting and publishing site Bandcamp has banned AI-generated music entirely. Any use of AI to
impersonate artists is also prohibited and Bandcamp reserves the right to remove content on suspicion
of being AI-generated. Did you hear that breaking rust? You're gonna have to get your millions
of listens on Spotify! Bandcamp don't want you! God, I wish I could quit you.
The policy also bans training AI models on Bandcamp content. That's why all my experimental
new wave prog trash electronic disco funk pop music is only going on Bandcamp.
Cannot let these robots hear my bleeps and bloops, lest they become too strong.
GOG owner Michal Kacinsk announced his intent to go toe-to-toe with Steam this week, stating that
Steam's market domination actually makes it easier to take market share from them, which makes total
sense as long as you don't think about it at all. Kacinsk isn't planning to challenge Steam on AAA
releases like Epic tried to do. Instead, he's focusing on deals with smaller developers and
publishers like IndieDev Eero Lane, who announced that he is delisting his free roguelike card game
Hardest from Steam on January 30th because it used AI art and his girlfriend of one month
convinced him AI is unethical. We here at TechLink applaud the move and just want to say congratulations
to Lane for getting a girl to listen to you talk about your computer card game long enough for
her to have an opinion on it. Police departments using Flock Safety's license plate surveillance
system accidentally leaked millions of surveillance targets by failing to redact license plate data
in public records releases. The unredacted Flock Safety audit logs have been compiled into a
searchable website called HaveIbeenFlock.com, which now contains 2.3 million license plates and
reveals sensitive information, including search reasons, active investigations, and the surveillance
targets. Flock responded by frantically trying to take the website down and threatening the website
creator, claiming intellectual property violations and public safety concerns. Because as we all know,
your license plate number and police data is in fact the property of an incompetent mass
surveillance company. Fun fact. And you can now put a deposit on a hotel room on the moon.
A startup called GruSpace is taking $1,000 non-refundable applications towards future
lunar hotel reservations priced anywhere from $250,000 to $1,000,000 big ones that those are
refundable, supposedly. Listen up, we are going to steal rental deposits on the moon. I don't know.
The pitch is luxury accommodation in orbit adjacent real estate made from inflatable habitats and
moon bricks constructed from lunar regolith formed by geopolymers. Whatever that means.
It's the moon. Currently, the goal is to do their first launch at some point in the next decade.
Gru is also hiring a single engineer to help design the entire lunar habitat,
because there's only one guy who could possibly do that job. Dr. Nefario.
Hey, it's a reference. There's been a murder. Ha, just kidding. That was just a clue for what
would happen if you don't come back on Friday for more tech news. Clue. A board game. All right.
Anyway, see ya.