Every company in Silicon Valley says they're making the world a better place.
We're not gonna do that. We're just gonna tell you what those companies actually did this week,
which is usually much worse. Okay, tech news time. Google Research published a blog post this week
on TurboQuant, a compression algorithm
that shrinks an AI model's working memory by six times
with zero accuracy loss, leading people to ask.
Is the memory crisis over? Can we buy RAM yet?
Well, we're here to give you a definitive, maybe?
You see, TurboQuant targets the key value cache.
Basically, when you chat with an AI, it keeps a running record of your conversation
so it doesn't lose context. As a result, that cache eats more GPU memory
the longer you talk, and you talk for a long time,
making it one of the biggest bottlenecks in running these models at scale.
Most existing compression methods carry memory overhead,
which decreases their efficiency. But TurboQuant eliminates that through circle math.
Is this real? Yeah, you said to simplify it, right?
They use circle math, leading to up to an eight-time speedup
on NVIDIA H100 GPUs. The underlying research is actually about a year old,
but it's getting attention now ahead of its presentation at ICLR 2026.
The news sent finance bros into a tailspin, and memory stocks like Micron and Sandisk
tumbled in response. However, analysts say this is likely
another deep-seek moment, where the release of a cheaper AI model back in 2025
caused a trillion-dollar market panic before everyone realized that cheaper AI
just means more people using AI.
Sandisk's CFO told Bank of America analysts
that he expects the improved efficiency will boost demand by making AI deployments cheaper.
So if you were holding your breath, hoping that this killed the memory crunch,
maybe hold your breath a little less hard, stop, stop holding your breath, you're dead, you're gone.
Breathe, please live. Apple has officially confirmed
they are discontinuing the Mac Pro, with no plans for future hardware.
The company quietly pulled the former king of Macs
from its website yesterday, where the buy page now just redirects to the Mac homepage.
Kind of like how your landlord changes the locks while you're at work all the time.
The iconic cheese grater design debuted in 2019
after the thermal disaster of the Trashcan era.
Well, I liked it. But Apple only ever gave it one Silicon update,
the M2 Ultra in 2023, before leaving it to collect dust
at its $7,000 starting price, or collect trash.
The Mac Studio, which already has the newer M3 Ultra
for $5,000 less, is now Apple's top-end desktop,
with an M5 Ultra refresh expected later this year.
Also gone is the infamous $700 wheel kit.
No, the $300 feet kit. Oh, wow.
And as of earlier this month, the older Pro display XDR and its $1,000 stand.
Apple is clearly Marie condoing everything
from the 2019 Pro launch, but how am I supposed to grate
my incredibly expensive mature Coolia cheese
while rendering on Silicon that's three generations out of date now?
You didn't think of that, Apple, did you? Oh gosh, I'm sorry, Riley.
I'll make something else screamingly expensive for you.
Thank you, Tim Cook. God. AMD has announced the Ryzen 9 9950X3D2 dual edition.
And yes, that is a real product name. It's the world's first desktop CPU
with 3D vCash stacked on both chiplets,
meaning it packs a staggering 208 megabytes
of total on-chip cash across its 16 Zen 5 cores.
That's enough cash to make it feel at home in the vault of the Bellagio in Ocean's 11.
And you don't even need to squeeze an ordinary gymnast into a room service card to access it.
AMD is pitching this less as a gaming chip and more as a productivity monster
for game devs and creators with five to 10% gains
over the already beastly 9950X3D, no to,
in tools like Blender, DaVinci Resolve and Unreal Engine.
Notably, AMD didn't share a single gaming benchmark,
which really tells you where they think this thing shines.
The trade-off though, a 200 watt TDP,
the highest of any AM5 chip and a boost clock that actually dropped 100 megahertz.
No price yet, but it launches April 22nd. Oh, and both AMD and Intel are raising CPU prices up to 15%
thanks to the whole global supply crunch fiasco. So, game devs can breathe a sigh of relief
knowing they won't have to optimize their games or their budgets.
At least you can get a deal with our sponsor. Much like Erlich Bachman's incubator,
we have crammed way too many quick bits under one roof
and are hoping nobody asks any follow-up questions. A new revision of the RCS messaging standard
has been finalized and it's a big one. RCS Universal Profile 4.0 adds native video calling
right inside your messaging app, including group calls with up to 32 people.
If you can convince 32 people to use the same messaging app as you.
It also brings smarter media sharing, letting devices figure out which formats
the other person supports, as well as rich text formatting,
like bold, italics, and strike through, finally. We'll have to wait for tech companies
to add these features to their default texting apps, but it's still cool.
So while the cost of living might be skyrocketing, you'll at least be rich in text.
Hmm. Apple just handed over the real identity
of the user behind one of its iCloud hide my email aliases to the FBI.
After a man named Alden Rumel used an aliased email address
to send violent threats to FBI Director Kash Patel's girlfriend.
Two horrible things. This kind of compliance might seem uncharacteristic
for Apple, who famously blocked the government from breaking into the iPhone owned by a suspected terrorist.
But unlike their device level encryption, alias to account mapping is stored on Apple servers,
and as a result, can be subpoenaed. The hits keep coming for Patel, though,
as Iranian hacker group, Handila, breached Patel's personal Gmail account
and posted some of his most cringe vacation photos
on Telegram. Oof! Handila did him dirty here.
The vibe of these is less international man of mystery
and more high school jazz band study abroad trip.
It's an important experience. Sony is hiking PS5 prices across the board
for the second time in less than a year, starting on April 2nd.
The PlayStation portal handheld jumps up $50.
The standard PS5 and digital edition both jump up $100,
and the PS5 Pro climbs a cool 150
all the way up to $900 for a console.
Sony blamed continued pressures in the global economic landscape, which is fair.
Lucky for us, though, Sony has decided to bravely pass those costs onto their consumers.
They got mouse to feed. We, you know, we will survive.
Wikipedia has officially banned the use of AI to generate or rewrite articles
with editors voting overwhelmingly in favor of the new policy.
LLM generated text was found to regularly violate the site's core context rules
around verifiability and sourcing, which, yeah, hallucinations will do that.
Editors can still use AI for basic copy editing
and translation assistance, but only with human review.
So maybe your middle school teacher was right all along. That's one for you, Madam Ruzel,
but I should still be allowed to chew gum in class, so I still don't like you.
And a delivery robot made by Serv Robotics
has smashed through the glass wall of a bus stop shelter in Chicago
before sheepishly blinking and then shambling away,
shamefully. The footage, which is hilarious,
went viral on social media and it comes amid growing backlash
against delivery robots in the city. According to the Chicago Sun Times,
a separate Coco Robotics bot smashed into yet another bus shelter that same week,
making the successful delivery to smashed bus stop ratio
lower than residents would hope. It's not what we're going for.
Just like I hope to see you back here on Monday for more tech news.
I'll be here next week pretending I understand what half these companies actually do,
which as far as I can tell, is something to do with something called
middle out compression? I don't know. Anyway, see you then.