O come ye tech news, joyful and disruptive, O come ye to Teck, LinkedIn, learn the news.
It's December 3rd. Is that too early for Christmas music? What's it? Oh, uh. Intel now owns 1% of the gaming GPU market.
Huzzah! We did it! Yes!
Now according to John Petty Research, Intel, the multi-billion-dollar tiny underdog of the
discrete GPU market has crawled its way up from a nearly 0% market share.
So although 1% is a minuscule foothold, at least they're on the mountain.
JPR also shows AMD has moved up to a 7% share of the gaming GPU market,
leaving NVIDIA to still control a whopping 92%.
Speaking of AMD though, it's been reported that both their CPUs and GPUs are about to see
price increases, with claims suggesting that AMD's 16GB cards could rise as much as $40.
However, the good news is that the 25% import tax on Chinese-made electronics that could have
spiked PC component costs even more has been delayed again all the way to November 2026,
so maybe you'll be able to afford a GPU after all.
If you do buy a new GPU, from Best Buy at least, hopefully it's actually a GPU.
And not just ROX, which is apparently what Redditor Nardead received.
Upon submitting a customer service claim, they were notified by Best Buy that
after its investigation, Best Buy would NOT be replacing or refunding the $1,200 purchase.
Talk about a ROCKY customer service experience.
Micron has announced it's killing its consumer memory brand crucial after 29 years,
but it's not because they don't love you. It's because they love money more.
The company says it needs to improve supply and support for larger strategic customers
in faster growing segments. Which is CorpoSpeak for AI Data Centers Equals Cash.
Ah, who got cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching? Bling bling coins.
Crucial products will continue shipping through February 2026.
Then it's Goodbye Forever to the brand that's been stuffing RAM into gaming PCs
since you cried to the I'm Still Here song from Treasure Planet
as it played on a demo TV in Radio Shack. Remember that?
I know you do. I was there. And it's not just Micron.
The memory market has gotten so chaotic that one report claims
Samsung Semiconductor Division is now negotiating supply contacts with themselves.
With LPDDR5X prices more than doubling this year,
Samsung can allegedly only fulfill about 70% of its existing DRAM orders.
They're renegotiating the contract terms with their own mobile division
to continue putting Samsung memory into Samsung devices.
You know, family dynamics. It's tough sometimes. Now Samsung released a statement saying they have not rejected certain customer requests.
But that's not really what we're talking about here, Samsung. Are you okay?
SK Hynix doesn't expect the shortage to be resolved until at least the first half of 2027.
But despite this, both Korean giants will not be ramping up production,
choosing to prioritize long-term profitability and to minimize the risk of oversupply.
Which is Corpo speak again for, Holy f**k, bubble my burst at any moment, taking the US economy with it,
and we have bunkers we're trying to finance. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
So if you're planning to upgrade your RAM anytime soon,
maybe take out a second mortgage. Or just accept that 16 gigs is plenty.
It's fine. It's definitely enough to play a pirated copy of the official treasure planet game
on a Game Boy Advance emulator. And that's all that matters. It's the only game.
That's good. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has declared a code red.
And not in the fun Mountain Dew way. Marshaling all hands to improve chat GBT as Google's Gemini 3 steamrolls past it in industry benchmarks.
Now that's according to a Wall Street Journal report, and it's a wild turning of the tables compared to three years ago.
When Google declared its own code red after chat GBT launched.
Since Gemini 3 rolled out on November 18th, monthly active users have surged to 650 million up from 450 million in July.
And in response, OpenAI is reportedly pulling back on extra bells and whistles,
like its pulse recommendation feature, additional AI agents for shopping and healthcare,
and plans to bake ads into chat GBT.
All the focus, all of their efforts on not getting bodied by Google.
Altman says they'll release a new reasoning model next week
that beats Gemini 3 in their internal evaluations.
Evaluations like, who is Sam's favorite boy?
And who thinks Sam is absolutely rocking those crew next letters?
It better be you new chat GBT. Meanwhile, Google is using its definitely superior AI
to replace headlines in Google's Discover Feed with unrelated clickbait.
For example, it turned this headline about a Baldur's Gate 3 in-game exploit
into, BG3 players exploit children.
All while Grock limps along in the back of the pack as it justifies genocides to save Elon Musk's brain from theoretical vaporization.
So, AI's going great everyone. Everything's gonna be fine.
Especially if you check out our sponsor, Time for quick bits, five stories, 30 seconds each,
zero time to process your emotions. Let's go! India's government has decided not to force all new phones shipped in the country
to come pre-installed with a government-made cybersecurity app.
The government drew sharp criticism over the plan from the public
and from Apple, who reportedly refused to go along with it,
saying the mandate didn't jive with its privacy policies.
And that's not a quote, but just imagine Tim Cook talking about stuff not jiving with him.
I think he would. Sorry, Linda. That ain't gonna jive this time.
I'm really happy about this because when I'm in India, the only thing I want immediately installed is some delicious shahi paneer
and naan in my belly, you know what I'm saying? So, Samsung just introduced the Galaxy Z tri-fold, its first triple-fold phone.
The tri-fold is thin and pocketable, like a phone.
Powered by a customized Snapdragon 8 Elite chip,
but unlike a phone that is not like this phone, it folds out into a full 10-inch screen.
As the first tri-fold phone that I'm aware of to have an official North American release planned,
it's gonna cost you, though, with 16GB of memory and 512GB of storage priced at $2,449.
When it comes to the tri-fold, the real question is, who's gonna fold and pay those prices? Probably a surprising amount of people.
New York now has a new law that forces retailers to disclose when they use
consumers' personal data to set prices, aka surveillance pricing.
Online shoppers in the US state are now seeing a blunt new line under some prices.
This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data.
The law is probably clinging a lot of people into the fact that this apparently
has already been happening. Now, you'll know when you might be paying more just because your profile is yelling,
Hey, I'm shopping here and I have very low price sensitivity.
Also, I'm from New York, by the way.
Android 16 is getting a batch of new features, including AI notification summaries and an AI-powered
notification organizer. Kind of a wild move considering how poorly Apple's initial attempt
at the same feature went. It was suspended after a BBC complaint about factual errors in their
news alerts. So your notifications are about to lie to you and your Google Home app is getting
worse, because sadly, some features are being quietly removed, like the Call Home feature,
which used to let you call your Google Home devices from your phone.
This has left a lot of parents, including mine, frustrated because their easy check-in method is gone.
I don't care the dinner is in five minutes, mom, I'm almost finished the solar server level on
Treasure Planet. Oh, you're so annoying. I should have moved out already, probably.
And robotics company Engine AI just unveiled the T-800. Yes, it's named after that T-800,
a 1.73 meter humanoid robot that, in their video, kicks in a pair of saloon doors and then starts
throwing spin kicks like my 14-year-old cousin after a white monster energy drink. It's scary,
the kid. The video also has the T-800 walk by a smaller robot about the size of Unitree's popular
G1 robot, and Unitree took that personally. They responded by dropping a video of their
1.8 meter H1 robot absolutely wailing on the 1.3 meter G1. And I'm not sure what they were hoping
for, but it looks like a fully grown adult beating up a fourth grader. So if my cousin shows up at
your Christmas party with a white monster, you know who to call. Unitree, eliminate the threat
of children forever. And that's a wrap. See you Friday for more tech news, more AI chaos,
and probably more reasons to wonder if we're living in a simulation that's running out of memory.
It's getting a little confused. Just kidding.