I will continue writing the tech news in English, but I could switch to another language at
any time. Not saying which one, just stand your toes.
NVIDIA's rumored ARM-based laptop chip may be arriving this year, if details from multiple
data miners, leakers, and scoundrels are to be believed.
Not like bad scoundrels, like hand solo types, like, ah, use scamp.
Lenovo laptop model names and job listings were spotted by Walking Cat and Huang Anfu
on Twitter that included references to a chipset codenamed N1X, which doesn't match any of
the usual suspects in terms of CPU manufacturers.
Lenovo's platform codes use I for Intel, A for AMD, and Q for Qualcomm, so it makes
sense that N would be NVIDIA, unless Lenovo's also working on another version of its Steam
OS handheld that runs Nintendo software, but that's silly.
Even if it was officially licensed, Nintendo might sue anyway, it's an addiction.
They need help. Leaker QQ Timmy further shared supply chain info pointing to two chip variants, a high
end N1X and a mid-range N1, which could break cover at Computex.
And in case you think this is coming out of left field, Jensen pretty much said they're
working with ARM CPU maker MediaTek to launch mainstream products for end users, which I
think is NVIDIA's term for users who will end soon, because why do we need people when
we have robots? TikTok's hearing with the US Supreme Court last week reportedly didn't go super well,
so faced with their favorite app probably being banned on suspicion of ties to the Chinese
government, TikTokers have flocked to the even more Chinese social media app, Xiaohang
Xu aka Red Note, catapulting it to the top downloaded spot on Apple's US App Store.
The second most downloaded app? Lemon8, an Instagram competitor also owned by TikTok parent company ByteDance, who has
been pushing TikTokers to migrate to Lemon8 with sponsored posts.
This account is almost entirely videos of other creators sending people to the other
app. This is bad. Meta should stick to American platforms like Facebook, where Meta began blocking any posts
linking to pixel fed, another Instagram type platform.
Meta said the post removals were a mistake, but it echoed Elon Musk's blocking of Twitter
posts linking to Substack and Mastodon last year.
The creator and CEO of Mastodon, Oigen Rockko, doesn't want any single person to have that
kind of control, so he's transferring management of the decentralized social network to a
non-profit. Meanwhile, the FreeRFeeds project aims to raise billions to create more easily switchable
alternative social platforms built on Blue Sky's AT protocol, which has received some
criticism for not being decentralized enough.
But if this project is excellent enough for Alex Winter aka Bill from Bill and Ted's
excellent venture who co-signed the project, then it's excellent enough for me.
The outgoing Biden administration has just announced new restrictions on exports of AI
chips that more or less divides the world into three tiers of access based on whether
you replied to Joe's Christmas card. He spends a lot of time on those.
China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea will still be essentially banned from buying American
AI chips. About 120 other countries will have quotas of some kind, while 18 close US allies can
gorge themselves on AI chips. The White House confusingly called the order a rule on AI diffusion, which sounds like
they're trying to address the internet's infestation by growing hordes of stable diffusion
generated waifus. But the chip industry isn't confused about this.
The semiconductor industry association called the rules onerous and rushed, while NVIDIA
labeled it sweeping overreach. The tech giant went on to say that America wins by sharing our technologies with the
world, not by retreating behind a wall, and then went on to announce that they would open
source their GPU drivers and CUDA, because otherwise that would sound a little hypocritical.
Qwikas Bitus is actually the Latin name for when you're running so fast in the Circus
Maximus that you trip and skid over the finish line on your butt, so you didn't know that.
It looks like the Nintendo Switch 2 may be revealed this Thursday, January 16th.
That info was first shared on the Nate the Hate podcast, and then corroborated by Tom
Warren and Video Games Chronicle and Eurogamer and the Verge ads.
They think there will be an announcement of the reveal the day before on Wednesday.
You know, a reveal of a reveal is somehow perfect for a console that was pre-announced
this many times. The madness can finally end!
TSMC's chip making facility near Phoenix, Arizona has started producing 4nm chips that
are on par with those produced in Taiwan in terms of quality, according to US Commerce
Secretary Gina Raimondo, as reported by Reuters.
It's the first time a process node that cutting edge has been manufactured on American soil.
In Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday that TSMC could go ahead with
their plans to bring production of more advanced 2nm chips overseas as well.
Did the Ministry also say anything about bringing more bubble tea franchises to North America?
No, which is a shame because that shit's delicious.
Sonos announced this morning that their CEO of 8 years, Patrick Spence, is stepping down.
Probably because the last one of those years was a freaking gong show.
Sonos rolled out an app update that users said wasn't just poorly designed.
It was riddled with bugs that rendered some systems unusable.
I bet Spence is hoping to find ex-Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger at the bar to bond over their
shared pain. But he'll be disappointed because Pat will be at home making Bible verse inspired TikToks
with his loving family. He's busy, Spence! And a Sony patent spotted by techforgamers.com describes a system that could predict and
execute player inputs using a camera to watch the player's hands, detecting a thumb moving
towards a button, and triggering that button to press before the player does.
The system could also apparently detect incomplete controller actions and surmise what the player
was trying to do and then do that.
Now you might feel like, pfft, what's the point of playing a game when it can just predict
how I'll play it and take the reins from there.
Exactly. I get home from work and I'm tired. This is going to make button mashing 10 times more effective.
PS5, take the wheel.
I'm playing right now. And you should wheel yourself back here on Wednesday for more tech news.
Or maybe we can predict what the news is going to be and put out an early episode on Tuesday.
No thanks.