Reviews are out for AMD's RX 7700 XT and the 7800 XT, and these cards are a triumph,
kind of. Maybe sort of, I guess. This 7700 XT is a decent jump from the last gen 6700 XT,
but it's also competing with the RX 6800, which has more memory, a better bus width, and cost less.
And it's not just its predecessors the 7700 XT has to worry about. The 7800 XT has 16
gigabytes of VRAM, rather than 12, and is up to 20% faster for only 50 bucks more,
making the 7700 XT redundant before it even comes out, like me, compared to my older siblings.
AMD isn't even making their own version of the 7700 XT, leaving that up to their board partners,
if they even care enough to bother. The RX 7800 XT itself is a solid, though not spectacular,
improvement over the last gen that's $150 less at launch, but notably the RX 6800 XT
launched smack dab in the middle of a global GPU shortage. The new cards come with DisplayPort 2.1
and AV1 support if you really need them, but otherwise, you're not missing much. AMD's pricing,
however, is at least aggressive enough that NVIDIA has climbed out of their Scrooge McDuck money
to reduce the price of the poorly reviewed RTX 4060 Ti by another 50 bucks to match the RX 7700 XT.
Microsoft will finally respect Windows 11 users' default browser choice and stop forcing them to
use Edge like a pushy stage parent. Don't get too excited, that's only if the user happens to live
in Europe. They get everything. It's unclear why Microsoft has had this strange geographically
specific change of heart, but the likely answer is to avoid further regulatory scrutiny. Of course,
in July, the European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation into Microsoft's practice
of bundling teams and allegedly forcing installation and blocking removal of the software for millions
of users. This week, Microsoft announced that they would no longer be bundling teams with the
rest of their productivity suite in the European market for no particular reason. Zoom, obviously an
entirely disinterested party, has suggested that the FTC should open a similar investigation in the
United States. Zoom also announced its new AI smart assistant and generative tools similar to
Microsoft's own co-pilot smart assistant and refused to answer follow-up questions as to why it now
had the same haircut as Microsoft and what it was doing with so many pictures of Sacha Nadella and
Bill Gates. Huawei's latest Mate 60 Pro flagship smartphone seems to be powered by a homegrown
Chinese chip despite international attempts to slow Chinese chipmaking down.
The Kira 9000SSOC is suspected to have been created by China-based SMIC using its second-gen
7nm process, according to semiconductor researchers at Tech Insights, who performed a teardown of
the Mate 60 Pro. Little is officially known about the Kira 9000S in part because it's shy,
but also because it was made in defiance of US sanctions. The US government blacklisted Huawei
in 2019 over espionage concerns and levied export controls to prevent Chinese companies from acquiring
advanced chip fabricating equipment late last year. It's not clear that these attempts to curb
Chinese production of high-end chips have been entirely ineffective. It's more likely that the
Chinese government and industry have been putting a massive amount of resources into
overcoming them. If the Cold War proved anything, it's that a nation with enough money and determination
can accomplish amazing things, like Jell-O made of boiled eggs or shooting a dog into space,
or pretending to be first to the moon.
Stanley Kubrick? Wait, when are the quick bits happening? After this intro,
I already knew that, but I'm playing along with what the script says.
The Museum of Classic Chicago Television nearly lost its 60-year-old YouTube channel dedicated
to preserving TV history after posted episodes of Bewitched, a 60-year-old series owned by
Sony Pictures Entertainment. The copyright strikes were actually
sent by a firm hired by Sony, so the museum was unable to discuss the matter with Sony directly.
Fortunately, Sony eventually offered to get the channel back up,
and all it took was the story being picked up by a publication with enough clout to contact Sony
and receive a response. The system works. Geo-media owners of Gizmodo have laid off the
small editorial team of Gizmodo en EspaÃ±ol, which will from now on publish machine-translated
articles from the English site. The transition has been less than seamless with readers complaining
that some articles will start and smash only to switch to English halfway through. Geo-media,
which also owns The Onion and Jezbel, has been experimenting with AI-generated articles since
at least July, raising the possibility that we might soon see articles that are written,
then translated into another language entirely without human intervention.
If Geo thinks that won't cause problems, then all I can say is,
estoy muy embarazada para ti.
Apple has signed a new long-standing deal with ARM, according to initial public offering documents
filed by ARM on Tuesday. The deal extends beyond 2040, meaning corporations have
beat humanity again. You'll never see a human worth billions of dollars staying in a marriage for
20 years, but Apple still hasn't escaped their last relationship because Intel Foundry Services
has decided to invest in ARM, possibly to give them an excuse to text their ex.
It's like a love triangle, but between faceless and emotionless corporations.
Apple also might launch low-cost MacBooks to compete with Chromebooks in the education sector,
according to a questionable rumor from allegedly bad guesser Digitimes.
They claim industry sources say the new laptops will differ from MacBook Pros and Airs
by having a shell made from different material and have cheaper components.
If true, Apple will finally take a break from making the world's most premium
future e-waste for the elite to make cheap future e-waste for the people.
And a new study of 25 car makers by the Mozilla Foundation found that every car brand they looked
at had massive privacy concerns. There are some standouts though. Tesla failed every single one
of Mozilla's privacy criteria. Nissan and Kia both say they can collect data on your sex life
for targeted ad purposes in their privacy policies. And six of the car companies say they can collect
your genetic information or genetic characteristics. So whatever you do, don't have sex with your car
again. But you should definitely come back on Friday for more TechLinked. We won't collect
your genetic information, but not for lack of trying.