Tech news is coming in a sec, but first, whale facts.
Sperm whales can sleep vertically, whale facts. When I was five, I thought a whale lived in the deep end
of the pool at the community center by my house and as a result, didn't learn to swim until I was 12.
Whale facts, there's a whale land happening on February 21st in 20 seconds.
So buy tickets at the link below. It's about gaming, not whales so much,
but NVIDIA reportedly isn't releasing any new RTX gaming GPUs in 2026
with rumored RTX 60 series now being potentially delayed
until 2028. According to insiders who spoke to the information,
the problem is supply constraints on VRAM,
if you could believe it. NVIDIA says demand for GeForce cards is strong,
but supply remains tight, forcing the company to focus on shipping existing models
instead of launching new ones, which is funny because NVIDIA is also reportedly cutting production
of some current GPUs by around 20%
and prioritizing lower VRAM cards to stretch available memory.
Even worse, delaying the refresh would mean that mass production of the RTX 60 series
wouldn't actually start until the tail end of 2027.
Now, considering that previous rumors had the RTX 5070 Ti Super sporting 24 gigs of GDDR7,
I guess I can kind of see where NVIDIA is coming from.
I mean, you know, we didn't want new GPUs anyways. We know those are only for data centers now.
Giving gamers GPUs, that would be funny.
There is one small silver lining here though. NVIDIA may resurrect older GPUs to help stabilize supply,
so you don't get new GPUs. You don't even get current gen GPUs.
You'll get an old, crusty GPU. We fished out from behind the kitchen cabinet,
if you behave. Apple's lockdown mode is in the news this week
after the security feature successfully kept FBI investigators from accessing data
in a journalist's iPhone 13. After federal agents raided the home
of Washington Post reporter Hannah Nathanson as part of a classified leaks investigation,
the FBI forensic unit couldn't extract data from her iPhone
because it was set to lockdown mode. Apple's extreme security setting built for people
more likely to be targeted by digital threats, but available to anyone who turns it on in settings.
It basically breaks a bunch of features on purpose,
blocking unknown connections, limiting attachments, restricting web connectivity and preventing access
by device management tools. Essentially, it turns your smartphone
into an incredibly paranoid brick. The FBI filing notes that they could have
disabled lockdown mode by compelling Nathanson to unlock it using Face ID,
because fun fact, they are legally allowed to do that.
You know, I've always liked PIN codes better anyway. But the reporter had Face ID disabled on her iPhone,
and the FBI can't force you to disclose your PIN code
until we all have government mandated Neuralinks. It'll happen.
Unfortunately for Nathanson, she did have Touch ID set up on her Mac,
so the authorities were able to access data from that.
It's another reminder that despite a truly annoying
elitist vibe and a lot of anti-competitive behavior,
Apple has leaned harder into privacy features than probably any other big tech company.
They even have a nifty shortcut, where pressing the power button five times
on your iPhone disables biometric sign-in and requires a PIN to unlock it.
Isn't that cool? Just don't press the power button five times on Android,
most of the time that we'll directly call 911, which, you know, is different.
The European Commission has preliminarily found TikTok
in breach of the EU's Digital Services Act for its addictive nature.
TikTok's basically in trouble for being too enjoyable.
Better call the fun, police, lame.
The commission says TikTok's design rewards compulsive scrolling,
and that existing safeguards like parental controls
aren't cutting it, especially when the vast majority of people doing that scrolling now are adults anyway.
The commission has ruled that TikTok needs to disable infinite scroll,
implement screen time breaks, and overhaul its recommendation system.
So basically change everything about the app.
This comes on the heels of a series of US lawsuits taking the big tobacco approach to social media,
arguing these platforms are addictive products causing personal injury.
The EU's investigation has been running since early 2024,
and has already found TikTok guilty of insufficient advertising transparency.
TikTok now has the chance to defend itself before the investigation concludes,
and a spokesperson for the company told the Financial Times, they will take whatever steps are necessary
to keep the app as it is, as addictive as possible.
Clearly unaware of what side of history they're on there.
If TikTok can't make a case for keeping the app the same
and doesn't comply with the EU's requested changes, they face fines of up to 6% of total global revenue.
You know, at a certain point we gotta be asking how much are these apps really worth?
At least smoking had the benefit of making you look cool.
TikTok just lets your uncle share his big shrimp conspiracy theory
in a medium where all your friends can make fun of him. Dave, you gotta stop posting about big shrimp
and Kathy is worried. We all are, even our sponsor.
The QuickBits once spent three years aboard a deep sea vessel in the Pacific
in an obsessive pursuit of a colossal white whale.
They were never the same after that. When they returned, the sense of playfulness
that danced in their eyes had fled.
The Internet Archive just launched a WordPress plugin
that automatically fixes Linkrot by redirecting dead URLs to archived versions
on the Wayback machine, which is great because roughly 38% of links from the past decade
are already broken. The new plugin scans posts in the background,
creates snapshots when needed, and even restores links if pages come back online.
This is huge because it might finally fix all those busted Sonic fan fiction redirects
on those sketchy forum sites. What does Sonic sound like?
Whoa, I swear that chili dog just disappeared inside me, Amy.
I don't know what happened.
It's another, this is his friend, Sonic's friend. You clearly haven't read enough Sonic fiction.
Windows 11's latest security update is reportedly causing dropped frames
and artifacting in games. And NVIDIA says the fix right now
is to just uninstall it. You know the mandatory security patch?
Yeah, the workaround is just not just uninstall that. Some users report major FPS drops and visual glitches
until the games eventually just break. On the bright side,
the latest Windows Insider build added shared Bluetooth audio.
So now you and a friend can both hear people screaming
in CSGO lobbies about dropped frames. I mean, you could do that before,
if you were playing together, but you get it. iPhone is going to space, baby.
NASA administrator Jared Isaacman has announced that astronauts
on the Crew 12 and Artemis II missions will be allowed to bring smartphones to space
for the first time, replacing the decade old Nikon DSLRs
and GoPros they were stuck with. Apparently, astronauts are so addicted to TikTok
that NASA decided it would be dangerous to set them up without it.
There's way too many movies about people going crazy in space. Artemis II will be the first crewed moon mission since 1972.
So we're about to get the first smartphone photos from Lunar Orbit, which is great for the astronauts.
But if I get told one more time on a commercial flight that I can't use my phone during takeoff
while we're letting people use them during space flights,
I'm gonna lose it. Substax CEO Chris Best informed users on Tuesday
that they had just discovered a data breach that occurred in October, 2025.
The hackers gained access to email addresses, phone numbers and internal metadata.
Luckily, credit card numbers and passwords were not compromised.
It's unclear how many users were impacted, but Bleeping Computer reported
that someone on breach forums leaked a database containing almost 700,000 records
of allegedly stolen Substax data. So head on over there if you wanna find out
which of your friends has a monthly subscription to the Sonic the Hedgehog versus Minion slash fiction blog.
Two Sonic jokes in one video?
A momentous day. And Senator Elizabeth Warren is pressing Google
for answers about Gemini's upcoming built-in checkout feature,
which would let users buy products directly through the AI chatbot
using a new protocol co-developed with Shopify, Walmart and Target.
Warren is concerned Google could merge its massive user data
with retailer data to manipulate consumers into spending more.
Pointing out Google already admitted the feature will help retailers upsell users on premium products,
which is pretty embarrassing for her. We're supposed to let tech companies move fast
and break things, even society in general and then talk about how it's bad,
but we can't do anything about it because everyone's addicted to the bad thing that's melting our brains.
Besides, Google is way smarter than us
because they make $400 billion a year. How much do you make working for the Senate?
Probably not even a billion. Shut up, Elizabeth Warren.
Just let me give my credit card info to a chatbot that will get prompt injected into buying me 10,000 Zorb balls.
It knows what I want. And what I want is for you to get some tickets
to the whale land and to come back on Monday for more tech news, of course.
One more whale fact. Whale earwax can reveal their age, like trees.
Whales, the trees of the water.