Next week is the start of CES, which used to stand for consumer electronics show, but now stands for nothing
Which sadly means it'll fall for anything. Let the Rick Rolls begin!
The NVIDIA RTX 5080 has been spotted, or at least the box of an MSI version has,
confirming that the card will come with 16 gigabytes of DDR7 VRAM and a
2256-bit memory bus, which is exactly what the leak said, at least the ones that weren't Rick Rolls. The box images don't confirm anything else,
but thankfully, we've got Twitter people for that.
Leaker Hongxing 2020 tweeted that the RTX 5090 will actually feature a
575 watt power rating instead of the 600 watts predicted by previous leaks, which was confirmed by the prominent leaker
whose name a linguistic expert has assured me, is pronounced
Kopite 7 Kimi. That expert is me. Anyway, Ms. Kimi also said the RTX 5080 will come in at
360 watts, lower than previous leaks had indicated, while still higher than its predecessor.
But the 5080 might as well be a plate of spaghetti with a PCIe slot if we don't know the price.
Thankfully, we got a hint from a photo of a listing for a custom 5080 made by ASUS.
1700 euros. Now, hey, that includes a
20% VAT tax and a custom ASUS board will probably cost above MSRP, so this could equate to around
1350 USD? Oh, there's another clue. The listing says DLSS4, which Kopite showed up once more to confirm is real.
Uh, source? I made it up! Current rumors point to at least the RTX 5080 being actually released on January 21st,
but NVIDIA's CES keynote is at 630 pm Pacific on Monday, so we may cover it on Monday's episode,
even though that's when I was supposed to have dinner with my family.
This is more important, though. But even when it comes to official announcements, the great big giant
water balloon that is CES just can't hold it all in. Sloshing around. Sorry. Oh,
spilled a bit. ASUS, Samsung, and MSI all just announced the world's first 27 inch 4K OLED
240Hz monitor. They each have their own version, so which one was actually first? Well, it looks
like they're all using Samsung Display's 4th gen QD OLED, so I guess it was Samsung. But what if you
want high refresh rate instead? MSI just announced the world's second 600Hz monitor after Acer announced
the world's first one back in September. Wowie, Zowie! Oh, that's not me reacting. Zowie is BenQ's
gaming brand, and they also just announced a 600Hz monitor. Yowza! That was real. Hey, look at this!
Pimax announced new VR headsets with micro OLED panels, and there's even one called the Dream Air
that doesn't look like a whole PC strapped to your face. Although if you prefer that look,
there's also the new Pimax Crystal Super. And while I'm anxious to see the new rumored SteamOS
handheld at CES, I'm also intrigued by the new Atari Game Station Go, which packs the company's
iconic trackball, paddle, and keypad controllers into a gaming handheld, which will either make
using it feel like you're hacking a cyberpunk system or playing bop it. Both are valid.
Meta has taken down the Instagram and Facebook accounts of more than two dozen AI-powered profiles
after they went viral for making a mockery of the authenticity of human experience.
Something Meta thought was sorely lacking on the internet for some reason.
Backlash over the AIs grew on social media this past week with many posts saying Meta had just
added them to their platforms. But the AI accounts were actually launched way back in 2023 and have
been leaving their AI excretions all over Facebook and Instagram throughout 2024. You had fake AI
people pretending to watch movies at the drive-in, or sew clothes for their fake grandkids, or spend
winter break at the beach with their family. Oh yeah, my children are so funny and cool.
Imagine with AI. This week's backlash seemed to have been kickstarted by a Meta exec telling the
Financial Times the company plans to continue rolling out these bots for a purpose that I think you
can only comprehend if you've had at least one VC funding round. Because I don't. All 27 of these
AI accounts have now been wiped, although Meta told CNN they haven't deleted the accounts.
They're just taking them down temporarily to fix a bug that prevented people from blocking them.
So don't worry, you will be able to block them when they come back with all of their fake AI
friends to take over for humans on Facebook. Look, you're not using it and someone has to.
Crazy email sender? It's an initialism. It has to stand for something. You can't just call it
CE. The FCC voted to reinstate net neutrality rules in April 2024 after the rules were repealed
by the Trump administration back in 2017, but a U.S. appeals court has now blocked the FCC from
restoring net neutrality, citing the Supreme Court's overturning of the Chevron doctrine last year.
Without the Chevron doctrine, federal agencies have less power to make up rules using arbitrary
nonsense like expert opinion and multivariate analysis. Sounds like vibes to me.
But hey, at least the U.S. government is getting in on the nuclear energy craze.
They just announced a deal with major provider Constellation. Totally unrelated, but
it's almost CES week. This is kind of how it's going to be. Apple has proposed paying $95 million to settle a class action lawsuit over Siri
listening to private conversations, which was filed after reports in 2019 of Apple contractors
listening to such recordings. Owners of Apple devices could get up to $20 per device to a
maximum of $5 if they swear under oath that Siri was accidentally activated during a confidential
or private conversation. Apple also apologized back in 2019 for this and said they wouldn't
keep private recordings like that anymore without user permission. And so it hasn't happened since.
The end. Taiwan's foreign minister would like the world to know
he absolutely did not agree with the idea of blowing up the world's foremost semiconductor
manufacturer, TSMC. Okay? I don't know. Not sure where anybody got that.
Well, the minister was answering a question about Donald Trump's pick for undersecretary
of defense policy, Elbridge Colby, who in 2023 endorsed the idea that if China invades Taiwan,
the U.S. should not allow TSMC to fall into its hands intact. And in 2024 said
destroying TSMC is table stakes in that situation. He's not alone. Rapidly disassembling TSMC is an
idea shared by others since at least 2022 in U.S. military academia, which is a thing.
And Taiwan has also been saying no to the same idea for just as long.
Just let us blow it up a little bit. No, stop. And it's been a while since we've seen someone
run the classic shooter Doom on something wacky. So just in time, there's now a capture that
requires you to play the game to prove you're human. Just get three kills on nightmare difficulty,
or you're provably not a sentient being. It's simple. It was made by Guillermo Rauch,
the CEO of Vercel, the company behind the VZero coding chatbot. He even shared the prompts he
used to make what is actually not the world's first Doom-based capture. In 2021, Miguel Camps
Orteza made one, but it was more like a 2D flash game using Doom assets. That one let so many bots
through. And now we have chatGBT. Thanks a lot. And now an unsarcastic thanks a lot to you for
watching. Tell you what, come back on Monday for more tech news, and I won't even make you play
Minesweeper to prove you're human like I normally do before I speak to anyone. Okay?