Full Computex, Google I.O, Microsoft Build,
somehow even more stuff, you know, it's a good thing I had a nice relaxing long weekend
because it turns out what I was coming back to is tech news, hell, there's gnashing of teeth
and magic smoke. Let's start with the biggest news out of Computex,
new GPUs, AMD finally officially revealed
the RX9060XT will launch on June 5th
with an eight Gigabyte variant for 300 USD and a 16 Gigabyte version for 350.
That places the 16 gig one quite favorably
compared to NVIDIA's $380 RTX 5060 Ti 8 Gigabyte.
I just hope AMD isn't lying about it having 15% more gaming performance per dollar
because CEO Lisa Sue is a doctor and that would be medical malpractice.
AMD also announced new professional Threadripper 9000 series CPUs with up to 96 cores
and a Radeon AI Pro R9700 GPU
with 32 gigabytes of VRAM, VRAM that is.
Let's hope AMD provides drivers for their new GPUs
ahead of time so reviewers can do their job, which, you know, is normally what happens,
but you never know in these wacky times when, according to myriad tech reviewers,
NVIDIA only allowed some outlets to publish previews
ahead of the RTX 5060's launch on Monday
under strict conditions, including being limited to testing certain games
and capping every email back to NVIDIA with Hale Jensen.
Despite being at Computex, once the public drivers dropped hardware unboxed,
stayed up through the night like champions to test the 5060 with some loaned parts from MSI
and some other proper reviews are starting to trickle out as well,
which actually they don't make the $300 card look too bad
in terms of price to performance, although the eight gigs of VRAM trips it up in places
and MSRP is a social construct with no inherent meeting,
just like the concept of outside. Meanwhile, Intel didn't reveal more gaming cards,
instead unveiling the ARC Pro B50 and B60
at around $300 and $500, respectively.
That's a ballpark because they'll only be available inside pre-built workstations
in a variety of fun third-party designs, like the dual GPU version from Max Sun.
So cool. What's even cooler though is Intel's name
for their new multi-GPU feature, Project Battle Matrix.
Just fuck yeah. It'll allow up to eight ARC Pro GPUs to link together
to make up to 192 gigabytes of pooled VRAM available
for AI workloads. On paper, that's actually more capable
than an NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000, which would still be much more expensive.
So watch out NVIDIA, you're going down any day now.
I feel it. Now it's Google's turn on the mic,
which is an appropriate thing to say, because at their IO conference,
the tech giants showed off another existential crisis
generator, I mean AI video generator. Their newest model, VO3,
can generate photorealistic video and sound effects
and lip synced spoken dialogue from a single prompt.
I am an idiot sandwich.
I'm not sure I can go on.
I am also not sure I can go on, but at least it's all marked right in the metadata
with Google's synth ID. Now that might make it easier
to identify non-consensual intimate images,
including deep fakes, which were just made illegal
with the passing of the take it down act, a seemingly well-intentioned law
that privacy groups are concerned could be used for censorship.
There's lots to talk about there, but there's no time. Google VO3 is available in the Gemini app
or in the new Google Flow AI video editing tool
for subscribers to Google AI Ultra,
a brand new all-you-can-slop $250 plan
that also has YouTube premium in there, just for fun.
Google did their usual thing where they mixed together a whack ton of announcements
for things you can try now, along with things that exist
in a liminal non-real dimension known as the coming months.
So here's the stuff that's available now-ish. For AI subscribers,
Gemini is finally getting baked into Chrome and Gemini is going to start adapting its responses
using your personal context, just like Apple said Siri would do
before they scrubbed most of their online references to it.
Google said this will allow you to generate more personalized replies in Gmail
so you can be a better friend who tricks your loved ones
into thinking you took the time to write a reply when you didn't.
They look so dumb right now. This is friendship. Gemini Live with camera and screen sharing
is now available for everyone, which is cool,
while AI mode is getting a wider rollout to infect more search queries in the US only.
That's good, keep it contained. A beta for real-time speech translation
is available in Google Meet and developers are getting new coding agents and tools,
including jewels, stitch, and the very literally named Gemini Code Assist.
It didn't get a nickname, not cool enough yet. Google also updated the Gemini API and SDK
with support for Anthropics model context protocol,
which is catching on as a kind of USBC of AI,
allowing models and systems to speak politely with each other,
helping Google's AI ultra-exclusive project,
Mariner, computer use agent, use computers,
which it needs to do. Now, for the coming later stuff,
when Mariner is less experimental, it'll roll out more widely in the Gemini app
as agent mode, not to be confused,
with AI mode in search, which will be updated with a lighter version
of deep research called Deep Search and also with Search Live,
which is just Gemini Live, but in search. I swear they are trying to annoy us.
But look, let's not let them, okay? Because there are a couple actually cool things shown off.
Google's hyper-realistic video call tech that makes it feel like you're in the same room
as the other person, known as Project Starline is now Google Beam
and will be rolling out in some form later this year. And also Google confirmed
they're working on an enhanced desktop mode in Android 16,
which still makes me happy, despite Android desktop modes
never really working out for anyone.
But it might work for us, just like our sponsor.
All right, you're not quite caught up in everything yet. There's still the quick bits, just hold on.
At their build dev conference, Microsoft also announced a whack ton of stuff,
but thankfully most of it is too niche and I could safely skip some of it,
except for Windows 11 getting MCP support,
which will make it much easier to let AI assistants actually control your PC.
When you want them to, did they put that in the code? That seems important. MCP is also a big part of Microsoft's NL web initiative,
which will make it easier for AIs and websites to all talk to each other.
It's described as kind of the HTML for the agentic web,
which sounds like a spider-verse plot element. Also the Windows subsystem for Linux is now open source.
And see, I probably could have skipped that too. It's really niche.
Linux people, yes it is. I can't believe this story is way down here,
but Fortnite is back on the iOS app store in the US
with support for external payment options with no Apple fees.
This is crazy. Five years after intentionally getting kicked off
the app store and suing Apple over it, Epic Games actually won for now.
Although it seems like this might stick just because everyone's just fed up with Apple
at this point. In their letter to Epic last week, Cupertino said they were denying Epic's
Fortnite app submission until after their request for a stay on the judge's order was reviewed.
And when the judge saw it, she was like, no, do it now, you turds.
If you're curious about the history of all of this, I made a big old tech longer video somewhere,
about three years ago, I'm just saying. We've seen laptop tablet things
with one big foldable display before, but Huawei's looks real fancy.
The MateBook Fold Ultimate Design is a 13 inch foldable tablet that when unfolded
is just 7.3 millimeters thick, thinner than an iPhone 16.
It runs Huawei's Harmony OS and is only available in China for the equivalent
of $3,300, but I just like knowing it's out there.
And Noctua has teamed up with Pulsar to build a version of the second company's Feynman F01
with a built-in Noctua fan. It's a mouse, by the way, I probably should have said that.
It's not the first mouse with a fan. The Marsback Zephyr Pro has been around for a few years,
cooling these sweaty hands of many a thankful gamer,
but it is the first one with a fan, the color of old hospital walls.
I mean, how could you say no? And how could you say no to coming back for more tech news on Friday?
Was that too rude to Noctua? I don't, there's a ton of Computex stuff,
at least that we didn't cover today. So don't go online for a couple of days
and then come watch my show. It's a reasonable request.