We're just a bunch of tech boys making tech noise. If you don't include the quiet, tech, unenthused non-boys.
I'm a tech man. I'm gonna regret bringing these intros back.
NVIDIA has reportedly been rated by French authorities,
and I say reportedly because the country's competition regulator never named names in
their press release, only stating they rated a company suspected of having implemented
anti-competitive practices in the graphics card sector.
But thankfully, geniuses at the Wall Street Journal were able to crack that incredibly
obvious mystery. Apparently, the surprise Wednesday morning raid was tied to a larger investigation into
the cloud computing market published in June that concluded new companies would be unlikely
to compete with established brands. That investigation didn't mention NVIDIA, focusing on Amazon, Google, and Microsoft,
but according to sources, French authorities have been interviewing market players about
NVIDIA's powerful position in the AI accelerator market.
Fast forward to today, and we now know the entire EU is beginning a probe into alleged
anti-competitive abuses in that same market, in which NVIDIA is dominating, like John Cena,
in a cage match against a newborn baby. That's not fair, you can't even see him.
If NVIDIA hasn't been fighting fair, NVIDIA might have to fight that baby's mom.
And that baby's mom is the EU, played by Dwayne The Rock Johnson.
If you smell what the EU is cooking.
Reddit, the site known for making incredibly popular decisions this year, has continued
that winning streak by removing users' ability to block targeted ads based on their site activity.
On Wednesday, Reddit announced the site will make several changes to its privacy settings
over the next few weeks, with head of privacy Jutta Williams saying they want to improve
ad performance and simplify descriptions of privacy settings.
And it's true, removing user choice about whether your Reddit activity data is collected
and used for personalized ads is way simpler.
This does sound a bit funny, considering that when Reddit announced their controversial API
changes, they justified it by saying, we have an obligation to our communities to be responsible
stewards of all the user generated data and content on the site.
And what does a responsible steward do except sell the thing being stewarded on to other
stewards who use them for advertising? Typical steward stuff.
And this is all on top of the content monetization contributor program Reddit announced this week
that has been criticized for incentivizing posts that generate the most reactions through
controversy. Although that might not actually be the case.
I don't think Reddit's privacy update post has made them any money at all.
Burn! AMD has finally launched FSR3, complete with fluid motion frames, the company's
more open alternative to NVIDIA's DLSS3 frame generation technology.
To guarantee that many gamers would be able to see the effects of this revolutionary technology,
the first games to feature the software are two of the biggest, most successful titles
to come out this year, for spoken and immortals of avium.
Now, to explain why my previous comment is sarcastic, let's go to the data.
See, if we look over here at immortals of avium, we see numbers that are bad.
And if we look over here at the forespoken region of Metacritic, we see even worse numbers.
Now, some of you might take this to mean that AMD isn't confident in their product,
but chances are they chose these games because they're some of the most graphically
intensive games released this year and therefore could really show off what FSR3 can do.
Don't worry, the new version of FSR will eventually be coming to other games too,
like SpaceMMO, EVE Online. Personally, I cannot wait for it to get FSR3 support.
I'll be able to fill out the built-in excel sheets so fast.
Starfield? Hello? Hello? AMD?
Hey, I uh, just heard back from your doctor and he uh,
he said you tested positive for quick bits.
Details of NVIDIA's next-gen Blackwell GPUs have been leaked by everyone's favorite
confusingly-named Twitter user, Kopite7Kimi.
Copied? I like, I'm gonna say the other way. SeniorKimi implies that Blackwell will have up to 11% more CUDA cores in its AI compute-focused GPU
and up to 33% more cores in its consumer-focused GPU,
as long as NVIDIA doesn't change fundamental aspects of its GPU's structure.
Obviously, take this claim with a grain of salt, but if it's true,
NVIDIA wouldn't have any reason to be anti-competitive, because Blackwell GPUs may be powerful enough to create a hole in space-time
that'll suck the money out of everyone's wallets. Many Discord users who have tried to access the platform
have been met with a message saying they've been blocked because they triggered the security solution.
Alcohol is my only solution.
But actually, a Discord just goofed up.
Their support began to work on the issue this morning, and fortunately, they appear to have now fixed the issue.
Oh, thank goodness. For a second there, I thought I was gonna have to go outside
and miss out on all the hot goss on my Monk server, where we chat about our love for the Emmy award-winning TV series starring Tony Shaloup.
You don't wanna go outside? It's a jungle out there. There's no Tony Shaloups out there at all. I hope he is outside.
The new Raspberry Pi 5 is done, but it's hot,
so it's gently cooling on the ledge until October.
It's reportedly a significant advancement over two to three times faster than its predecessor.
It also contains the Raspberry Pi Foundation's first-ever chip designed in-house
in collaboration with Broadcom. The Pi will now have double the input-output performance,
and it will be able to handle two 4K displays at 60fps.
It's also significantly more power efficient, meaning that the Pi won't easily overheat.
Don't eat it, though. Google will be allowing US teens from 13 to 17
to use its generative AI search, because they're gonna do it anyway,
and Google would rather they did it at home. Google's not a regular mom. It's a cool mom.
Google has apparently strengthened the guardrails on its search function,
as well as a feature that provides additional context to AI-generated answers.
Sure, those guardrails haven't really helped adults cope with the reality of AI-generated
misinformation, but I'm sure they'll definitely work on 14-year-olds.
And Amazon is launching an Echo Show you can finally use as a digital photo frame,
as long as you pay a subscription. This is so crazy.
The Echo Show 8 photos edition is functionally identical to the Echo Show 8,
but costs $10 more for a six-month subscription to Amazon's Photos Plus service,
which lets you look at a 30-second slideshow of your grandkids.
I just love how fast technology advances. After those six months are over, you'll have to pay two bucks a month,
if you ever want to see your grandkids again. Or you could just open photos on your phone, print out actual pictures,
and frame them, or tack them to a cork board. There are many less stupid options.
Or just buy a Google Nest Hub, or literally anything other than that.
But the smartest option is to come back on Monday for a brand new talk linked.
This one's a long one. It'll be a couple of tech boys making tech noise, and no one else.
Hell yeah, brother.