Today's tech news is chock-full of vitamins and nutrients, like a, well, potato.
Sorry, I can't get potatoes out of my head, you know, I can boil them, mash them, stick
them in a stew, you know. Apple allegedly halted M2 chip production for two months according to a report from
Korean outlet, TheElec. They claim this was due to global Mac sales plummeting, possibly due to getting your partner
the same card and flowers you get them for Valentine's Day every year, and not the Mac
book they deserve. TheElec spoke to a number of companies that are normally sent Apple silicon wafers by
TSMC for modification prior to being installed in Macs, and these firms didn't receive
a single wafer all January or February, not even for Valentine's Day.
TheElec speculates the only explanation is that Apple halted production due to decreased
demand, and not because the silicon fairy already put thousands of processors under
Tim Cook's pillow. I don't know how that works, do you put money under there?
The fairy may need to apologize to Amcona, one of those wafer receiving companies.
Their dedicated Apple chip packaging line sat idle for two months.
If Apple has paused production of M2 chips for MacBooks, it kind of makes sense.
After all, their Q1 2023 Mac revenue was 29% lower than the same quarter last year, which
brought in record high revenue, and Apple could have sworn it was going to continue
indefinitely. That's so weird. But neither Apple nor TSMC have mentioned this pause, so we can't really confirm the
reason for it until one of them comments, or until Tim Cook complains of waking up with
terrible neck pain. As a funny April Fools gag, ASUS pretended they were trying to compete with the Steam
Dick. But because companies can't make simple jokes anymore, and instead must play some sort of
non-linear four-dimensional chess match on Twitter when the calendar strikes April 1st,
actually the thing is real. It's a real thing. They call it the ROG Ally, and I believe them because of all the rainbow RGB.
According to reports, the Ally is powered by a custom AMD SoC built on TSMC's 4nm
process and features a 7-inch 120Hz FHD Plus display with a peak brightness of 500 nits.
Wow. Also like the ROG X13 and Z13, the Ally can be paired with the XG Mobile, which allows
it to benefit from up to an RTX 4090 laptop GPU if you want to spend 2 grand more than
however much the Ally will cost at launch. At this point in the story, I'm also obligated to say that LTT does a great job discussing
the Ally in today's preview video. I have to say that because Linus knows where I live.
And many of the elite Twitterites thought they were victims of the most elaborate April
Fools prank this weekend when they got to keep their legacy checkmarks.
Despite having lost the ability to read, because Twitter's posts said they'd start removing
checkmarks on April 1st. Which is why I'm still verified on Twitter, despite practically begging for them to get
it over with. Please. Twitter has also stopped distinguishing Twitter blue from legacy verified ticks, which was
previously the only way to know whether someone has an affinity for expensive stickers.
But the one account everyone seemed to notice was missing a checkmark was the New York Times,
who had publicly stated they wouldn't be paying the $1,000 a month Twitter is charging businesses
for gold checkmarked verification. They aren't the only account to publicly proclaim they won't be paying the look at
me I have a fancy sticker next to my name subscription. LeBron James said the same thing, yet he still has a blue checkmark, probably because he's
a basketball player and not a publication that has done horrible things, like quoting
words spoken by Elon Musk in articles and such.
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NVIDIA's RTX 4070 may be launching relatively soon if listings spotted on manufacturer websites
are anything to go by and not a psychological trick played on our minds by Chibi Jensen-Huang.
The leaks suggest the cards could launch with an MSRP of $599 US, which is reasonable.
I mean, it's $100 more than the 3070's MSRP, but that card launched 2.5 years ago,
which is before every company decided that pretty much everything is at least $100 too
cheap. How are CEOs supposed to retire early?
Germany may be considering joining Italy's temporary ban on chat GPT.
Regulators in multiple European countries are following up with the Italians on their
findings, but Germany's data security commissioner has stated outright that Germany may ban chat
GPT on the same grounds as Italy. No word yet on whether Japan will be getting it on the action.
Come on Japan, get the ban back together.
Don't worry about what happened last time, it's fine, it's been a while.
NASA has announced the four astronauts that will be flying around the moon next year and
what will be the first time anyone has bothered to visit the poor thing in over 50 years.
How do you think the moon feels? The space agency is knocking out some world firsts with their crew lineup.
We got the first woman to visit the moon, the first person of color, and even more amazingly,
the first Canadian astronaut to visit the moon will be on the crew.
We finally a win for the little guy. At least in terms of population to area ratio, we have hardly anybody who lives here.
He is the tallest one, does that kind of make sense? Nintendo has finally announced the new company it created with Japanese mobile firm DNA,
who Nintendo previously partnered with on a number of mobile games.
The new joint venture is called Nintendo Systems, okay?
Probably because Nintendo owns 80% of the company since it's unclear whether DNA also
has a popular Italian plumber mascot, we are looking into that.
But what they do have is the goal of developing and operating systems related to the digital
part of Nintendo's business. They also have a very pretty website.
It's nice. And singer Robin Thicke might be the reason why we'll never see a worldwide release
of Mother 3, the final installment of the series known as Earthbound in the West.
According to lawyer slash YouTuber Moon, the 2006 Japan exclusive game contains too
many musical references to bands like The Beatles. I mean, there's a bat enemy with a light motif similar to the opening theme of the 1960s
Batman TV series. Back to Robin Thicke though, he and Pharrell Williams were found guilty of copyright infringement
because their 2013 song Blurred Lines sounded like Marvin Gaye's 1977 single Gotta Give
It Up. Nintendo's scared of being sued into oblivion if they try to localize it.
And this is why we can't have nice things. Literally, this is the reason.
But you can have nice things if you only just come back on Wednesday for more tech news.
The things we have for you are so nice.