What's that boy? The tech news fell down a well? Oh, it's currently still falling down a well?
It's like a bottomless well situation? So we can't do anything.
You just wanted me to know. Good boy.
Discord announced today that it's rolling out global age verification
starting next month, taking a teen by default approach,
meaning that without verification, the app will default to an experience appropriate for teens.
Which would include updated communication settings, restricted access to age-gated spaces,
and content filtering. And will not include hanging out
in a blockbuster video parking lot, firing Roman candles into my friend Kyle's Honda Civic,
like I initially assumed. In order to validate their age,
users will need to either complete a facial age estimation video by a selfie,
or submit a photo of their government ID to one of Discord's third-party vendor partners.
As an added bonus, this also protects adults from being bullied by teens
in age-gated servers where they come together to innocently discuss
their mutual love of the minions' extended cinematic universe.
Discord initially tested the system in the UK and Australia last year,
but now it's being rolled out globally. Critics are quick to point to the October 2025 data breach
in which one of Discord's third-party vendors was compromised and approximately 70,000 users
had their age verification data exposed, including images of the government IDs.
But it's important to note that that leak was the product of a legacy age verification system
that was introduced in 2020. Some of you weren't even born yet.
And Discord has terminated its contract with that vendor.
According to Savannah Batalich, Discord's global head of product policy,
the new system uses similar face scan and ID-based verification,
but with a few key differences. Facial age estimation is now done entirely on-device.
Any ID documents submitted to vendors are, in most cases, deleted immediately
after age confirmation, and Batalich says that if the age estimation
from the selfie is incorrect, users can appeal it or verify
with a photo of a government ID instead. Discord is also rolling out an age inference model
that runs in the background and analyzes metadata like the types of game a user plays,
their activity on Discord, and behavioral signals to estimate age.
So if Discord notices that you're listening to S-Club 7 and pausing your game every 30 minutes or so to go pee,
it will assume correctly you're 45 years old and probably also hopefully send a message
to your urologist. Or remind you about what the actual daily recommended intake
is for Mountain Dew. It's zero, unless it's Co-Red.
Then it's a lot. AMD's beastly Strix Halo APU has arrived
in another handheld, the Ioneo Next 2.
But unlike existing Strix Halo handhelds, this one doesn't need an external battery
or external validation, she knows who she is. And that's a handheld with a mass
of 116 watt-hour internal battery. It's bigger than most gaming laptop batteries
and could even cause you trouble at the airport. So that's how you know it's bad.
Thank you, Jeff. They won't take me down. You're gonna have to pat me down.
The Next 2 has some other impressive specs too, which I guess is partially why Ioneo is okay
with pricing the base model at $2,700 US dollars.
Although the early bird price on Indiegogo is 2,300.
And that's expensive, but like this is a new generation flagship Windows handhelds for the future
masterpiece beyond imagination we're talking about here. And sure, you could also say that the other Strix Halo
handhelds, the GPD Win 5 starting at $2,500
and the One X Player One X Fly Apex for $2,200
are also handhelds for the future masterpiece beyond imagination,
but they need external battery packs. Regardless, they're all too expensive.
So hopefully soon we'll see handhelds sporting those two new Strix Halo variants
that AMD announced at CES 2026 with fewer CPU cores,
but the same graphics power as the flagship Ryzen AI Max Plus 395,
which could end up being a bit cheaper. I think I might like one wearing
a little battery backpack though. I can imagine it's carrying its favorite treasures in there.
For me, that's our sponsor. Ha, didn't see that one coming.
All right, we got the tech news out of the well, but what's that?
The quick bits are down there now? God damn it!
Intel may have canceled the release of its Core Ultra 9 290K plus
Aero Lake Refresh desktop processor. And I don't really know whether to mourn its death or not
because we only just heard about it today. So sad.
Insider sources apparently told videocards.com of the cancellation,
but said other Aero Lake Refresh parts, a 270K plus and a 250K plus are still coming.
And there is some weight to the Aero Lake Refresh rumor since ASUS posted and deleted tweets about it
featuring these images with graceful robot hands
holding motherboards. They're coming for your hand model jobs.
Some a reliable leaker, HXL slash 9550 Pro
claimed the embargo will lift on March 23rd in a tweet with a saddening lack of robot hands.
Or any hands at all. At least you got a job, pal. Great news, everybody.
They don't write these voices and I just do those. They've added co-pilot to the Windows 11 setup experience.
So if you need to download a large update when booting your new PC for the first time,
you can chat with Microsoft's helpful little harbinger of humanities downfall
and even ask it to generate images of yourself doing what you're doing.
Talking to a computer as if it's people. Really, if you could, please do anything with co-pilot.
Microsoft would love to tell their investors, you guys did that once or twice.
VPN provider, Windscribe has claimed that Dutch authorities
who are the best authorities seized one of their physical servers just yanked it right out of the rack without a warrant.
Noting that because they use RAM disk servers, the cops won't find anything on there
unless you count the unredacted E.P. Stein files.
How does that, how can they say that?
Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any supporting evidence that this seizure
actually happened other than Windscribe's own tweet, leading some observers to be skeptical of the whole thing.
The vibe is off. It's like, Dbrand did edgy marketing so I can do it too?
I'm not so sure. OpenAI is allegedly scaling back its first consumer hardware product,
a pair of AI earbuds developed in partnership with Apple's famous designer, Johnny Ive.
According to Twitter leaker, smart Pikachu, a patent filing in China revealed that the earbuds
will go to market under the name Dime or Demave, you're Spanish.
And while initially billed as a device with phone level computing power,
it's now being scaled back to something more like
regular earbuds. No! Smart Pikachu was apparently banned from Twitter
for bringing us this information. I guess not so smart. According to the post, soaring memory costs
made the original bill of materials too expensive so the enhanced features have been delayed.
The memory crisis tolls for these, that moment!
Speaking of ex and losers, Elon Musk announced on ex yesterday that SpaceX,
that's so many exes, has shifted its near-term focus from settling Mars to building a self-growing city
on the moon. Whatever that means. This is a complete 180 for Musk,
who just last year called the moon a distraction.
Why they change your heart? In his tweet, Musk cites the moon's proximity
as the reason for the shift, evidently only now realizing that Mars
is farther from Earth than the moon.
By a lot! Truly a genius of our time. Ours technically made the point
with the success of Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket flights
and their team going all in on lunar exploration, Musk needs to get there first
or risk losing the economic high ground. Also the dick-measuring contest.
So much like shifting Tesla factories to robot production
or pushing full self-driving subscriptions to unlock his trillion-dollar pay package
for Elon. It's less about human advancement
and more about getting that cake. Leaving no crumbs.
I mean, what's the point of unleashing hordes of potentially murderous robots and cars onto the world
if you can't even retreat to your own self-growing moon city if things go sideways?
You don't have eight months to get to Mars? There's no point.
Do you need a self-growing city? And Harvard engineers have 3D-printed soft robots
that bend, twist, and grasp on command by embedding air channels directly into the material
using a rotating nozzle. You pump air through the channels and the structure moves in whatever direction
was programmed during printing. The team demonstrated a gripper with articulated fingers
that curl around objects and a spiral actuator
that unfurls like a flower. The team says they intend to use the technology
for advanced surgical tools and wearable devices and definitely not for sex.
Unlike Moya, Droid Up's new humanoid robot that the company is calling the world's first
fully bio-mimetic robot in which we're calling an obvious attempt to make a real-life anime waifu.
Somebody has to. She's not Japanese, Riley. Like all the best waifus,
Moya walks with 92% human-like accuracy.
I'm willing to wager that 8% matters. Maintains a body temperature between 89.6 and 96.8 degrees
Fahrenheit and has a bunch of promo videos that feature an unusually high number of shots of its ass.
I ain't buying any robot with no ass. And that's all the news we're pulling out of the well today.
Come back Wednesday when the tech news inevitably falls back in.
It is famously uncoordinated. Way too big of an ass.
Wagon. Can't block. Absolute rump.