It's time for tech news, and you know what that means.
I know what it means, but why don't you say it? So I know you know.
OpenAI just had a weekend that puts the one at Bernie's
to shame. The twists and turns have honestly made my head hurt,
but here's our summary. Late Friday evening, CEO Sam Altman
was fired by the four other members of the OpenAI board
while President Greg Brockman was removed as chairman.
They wanted an Altman. You're too much of a normal man. Upon hearing the news, Greg quit
and tweeted his account of recent events, implying, possibly unintentionally,
that OpenAI chief scientist and board member, Ilya Sutskiver, was the brutee in this Shakespearean drama.
Most of you will get that. What's that knife for, bro? You two brutes?
Shit. It's still not clear what the board's exact reasons
for the shakeup were, and the story is complicated by OpenAI's truly weird corporate structure,
where the non-profit board controls the capped profit company.
But some speculate that Sam seeking investment for a new AI chip company played a role
as OpenAI's board accused him of being not consistently
candid in his communications with them. Despite a later memo from OpenAI's COO,
Brad Lightcap, cool name, definitively claiming
that Sam was not fired for malfeasance,
a French word meaning weasel. If that confused you, then you know how everyone,
including the OpenAI board, felt this weekend. They apparently agreed to step down
and bring back Sam and Greg, right before Microsoft swooped in
and announced they'd hired Sam, Greg, and a bunch of other OpenAI employees.
Right after that, OpenAI hired Twitch co-founder,
Emmet Scheer, as interim CEO, replacing day and a half old interim CEO, Mura Murati,
presumably because she just needed more experience, and her name sounds like a car.
We can't have that. But really, Emmet may have been chosen because, like the safety-minded board members,
he said he wants AI development to slow down.
He also said that CEO jobs could be replaced by AI,
so slowing down means he could enjoy his new position for longer than five minutes, so that's probably.
Emmet may soon be captain of a ghost ship, though, a letter from OpenAI employees threatening to resign
unless the board steps down and brings back Sam.
And calling back bars to the break room. And what? Was signed by 650 of the company's 770 employees
on Monday morning, including Ilya Sutskiver.
A2, Brute? What? Brute?
You're back. What are you doing here? Confusingly, Ilya tweeted that he deeply regrets
his participation in the board's actions.
A tweet Greg reposted with a heart emoji.
Mura Murati also replied with a heart to Sam's tweet
saying, I love OpenAI, so I don't know whether these people are actually still trying
to be friends despite all the drama, or whether they just don't know what emojis mean.
Now, here's the real kicker. The Verge claims multiple sources are saying
that Sam and Greg's Microsoft situation isn't a done deal
and that they are still willing to return to OpenAI if the board resigns.
And Sam did recently imply that the OpenAI team
are all going to work together some way or the other.
As for Microsoft, well, they've invested billions in OpenAI, so whether they get Sam
or Sam returns to OpenAI with a new board, this is really a win-win for them.
And hey, how about a seat for old Satya while we're playing musical chairs, eh?
Ah, okay, back to work making a digital god.
This whole thing sounds like the most hard to follow polycule I've ever heard of.
Honestly, I'm just proud of myself for following it all the way through. Sunbird, the company nothing partnered with
on their nothing chats iMessage compatible app for Android has apparently comically misrepresented
the security of their services. Multiple professional and amateur investigators
have claimed that the full contents of messages sent through Sunbird service are accessible in plain text
by not only Sunbird, but by anyone with a smattering of hacker know-how, despite Sunbird claiming
not to collect any data because they use end-to-end encryption.
On Twitter, Sunbird tried to dismiss security researchers' concerns,
but all of their points seem to have been systematically refuted by a team from texts.com.
When enough had been enough, nothing removed the chance beta
from the Play Store on Saturday, saying they were delaying the launch
to fix several bugs. In what, the Sunbird team's brains?
These are probably like Southern Hemisphere bugs. Like rhino beetles. Yeah.
And Sunbird themselves put their services on hold.
Now this is another story where it's very unclear
what's actually going on. A text.com engineer was banned from Sunbird's Discord
after making a tool that lets users delete Sunbird's copies of their stored data,
which Sunbird is apparently storing.
You know what, I think we better delay the launch though. Yeah, just let all blow over.
Yeah! Nice bits you got there.
Be a shame if someone quickened them.
Reviews are out for AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 7970X
and 7980X, and the general consensus is
that these chips are sick AF. If your name isn't Brutus, that means they're good.
Not only that, but they stand as a formidable and currently uncontested entry into the niche
of prosumer processors for high-end desktops.
Ironically, a term coined by Intel doesn't feel good.
The top SKU, the 7980X model has 64 cores, 128 threads,
a base block of 2.5 gigahertz and a turbo clock that can add up to 5.1 gigahertz.
Finally, a fitting heir to the Threadripper 3000 series.
Here's hoping AMD won't get bored and completely skip a generation like they did
with the purely hypothetical Threadripper non-pro 5000 series.
It's leaving the throne unfilled. It's not right. Drop your crown, King.
Here. YouTube seems to be intentionally slowing itself down
on Firefox and Safari, at least for some users.
It looks like a hard-coded five-second delay that disappears when the site is fooled
into thinking it's running on Chrome. Now, it's tempting to assume that Google
is simply punishing users for using a competing browser,
but it's also plausible that this is a bug introduced by Google's heavy-handed ad block filtering.
Always remember, hand lawns razor and never attribute to malice
what can adequately be explained by neglect or incompetence,
except in this case, it's, you know, it's Google.
I've done this before, but we don't know. NVIDIA and SK Hynex are working together
on a new GPU design, according to Korean news site, Joong-ang.
The design would have HBM-4 memory chips stacked directly on top of the GPU,
like a hat that makes you much better at remembering what you said to Amanda in fourth grade.
Like, what were you thinking? Get it off. This structure sounds similar to AMD's 3D Vcash
used in the company's X3D processors, which are really good at gaming
because they help you remember where the bomb sites are in Counter-Strike 2.
That's what I think they do. I don't design processors.
And, you know, Valorant for the win. I don't play that either.
Details of Intel's upcoming Lunar Lake MX have leaked,
showing that the CPU, GPU, and memory will all be on the same SOC,
like Apple's unified memory architecture. Ooh.
Whoa. No, my watch. Stop that. This will be the first commercial release
of the technology that Intel showed off to the press earlier this year at their Arizona fab.
This leak is so big, it almost makes you forget that Meteor Lake U,
the architecture Lunar Lake MX is meant to replace,
hasn't actually been officially released yet, despite Intel's promise of a 2023 launch.
But I haven't forgotten, Pat. Your mind tricks don't work on me.
And if you paper launch the Meteor Lake U, I'm not sending you a Christmas card this year.
Oh my God, I came out of nowhere. You're getting cold. An auto tech company, Vallejo,
is suing NVIDIA after a video call Gaff
exposed a Ledge Trade secret theft. Basically, a Vallejo employee left for a job in NVIDIA
and took Vallejo's work with him.
This came to light months later when he accidentally screen-shared stolen code
during a video call with Vallejo employees, all because one employee couldn't make
a normal video call mistake, like forgetting to wear clothes.
It wouldn't be nearly as embarrassing or criminal. And you shouldn't forget to come back on Wednesday
for more tech news. Also, you know,
gotta put some pants on. Just basic, basic respect for me.