Hoo! Well, thank goodness you can't put a tariff on tech news. Am I right?
The RTX 5090, a graphics card NVIDIA claims was in stock and actually launched last week,
is reportedly being rendered useless by a driver update, according to many people who
similarly claim to have purchased one, although I'm still not convinced what we're witnessing
isn't just a bunch of people larping a GPU release. What? It's finally here!
Can't wait to plug this in! Reports initially described PCs being unable to identify the China-only RTX 5090D after updating
it to the latest driver, but there have been some reports of the same thing happening to
standard 5090s as well. Thankfully, some users have apparently found that the issue can be fixed
by setting their motherboard's PCIe slots to use PCIe 4 instead of 5,
vindicating the warnings made by hardware testers like Der Bauer. But others have said
this doesn't fix it, presumably to make the whole plot a little more interesting.
Others were also trying to contribute in this regard by reporting that the RTX 4090 cable
melting scandal was repeating itself, but turns out that was user error. So don't worry,
the cables probably won't melt when you pretend to plug them in to your make-believe GPU.
It seems like anyone wanting a real RTX 50 series card will have to wait a while longer.
The retailer Overclockers UK says the ETA for more 5090s is 3-16 weeks. By that time, we may have
an RTX 5060 or 5060 Ti option, according to a supply chain source. All this for graphics cards
that have been heavily criticized by reviewers and famous government surveillance whistleblower
Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle on NVIDIA, offering F tier value for S tier prices. Yeah,
he had to flee the US and live as a fugitive in Russia, but he still got that gamer in him.
I watched the Linus review, but what does Edward Snowden say?
On Saturday, the Trump administration officially imposed a 25% tariff on most imports from Canada
and Mexico, and an additional 10% on imports from China. But if you think us Canucks, we're about
to take that lying down. You're host for sure, bud. Canada announced they'd answer with a 25%
tariff on electric vehicles from the US. Premier of Ontario Doug Ford canceled the province's
$100 million contract with Starlink, said they'd ban American companies from any provincial contracts,
and pulled American liquor from store shelves, along with other provinces, including British
Columbia, where I am. An American alcohol related joke would be great here, but I pretty much only
drink Guinness about three times a year, so I won't. It would have been good though. Some Canadians
even floated the idea that, since it accounts for 90% of America's electricity imports,
Canada could shut off the power. A pretty dumb idea, but oh, it might have worked after it was
announced that the Mexico tariffs would be paused for a month for entirely unrelated reasons.
Outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Canada's tariffs would be delayed as well,
in return for Canada taking various measures to secure the border, which includes reinforcing it
with new choppers. Sorry, sorry. For context, the vibe of Trudeau saying choppers instead of
helicopters is like if you put a hat on backwards and try to do a kickflip with the kids at the
skate park. And he didn't use slang in the French version of the tweet, so why...
Canada will commit to deploying many more choppers. And I will commit to deploying
this segue to our sponsor. You definitely can't put a tariff on the quick bits. Many have tried.
Choppers took them out. OpenAI has answered Google's Deep Research feature for Gemini
with their own version, also called Deep Research. They tried generating some other names,
but ChatGPT was grumpy that day. ChatGPT Deep Research uses OpenAI's top-end O3 reasoning model,
and, like Google's version, promises to perform multi-step, complex research on the internet
so you don't have to. You just have to write a prompt and then apparently answer a bunch of
questions ChatGPT will ask you. Hey, I asked the questions around here. The lines are beginning
to blur, as evidenced by Deep Research getting the highest score ever on an AI benchmark ominously
called Humanity's Last Exam. It's normal. What? Everything's normal. The battery performance
update for the Pixel 4a that Google rolled out last month is a bit of a mess, according to Hector
Martin, a developer that did some digging. Even if users redeem the free battery upgrade offered by
Google, the 4a's new firmware, which is the only firmware available now that Google wiped the older
versions, kills battery life anyway. And if you want the 50 bucks in cash instead, you have to
provide personal identification or your social security number. Want the $100 Google Store credit?
Sure. You just can't use it for anything that's on sale. The cherry on top is the
evidence that this update was thrown together by a potentially inexperienced Google engineer
on their personal machine. I don't see what the big deal is, guys. Just buy a new phone. There's no
tariffs anymore. YouTuber Emily the Engineer published a video documenting the process of
Jerry Rigging, a 3D printer, to print a tattoo on the leg of her friend Dan, something he apparently
wanted her to do, despite being advised against it by nearly everyone he asked. But they did add
a panic button to stop the process, just in case the machine got any crazy ideas. I really didn't
think that tattoo artists would be the profession that AI comes for next, but at least they'll never
take my job, he said, far too confidently. And remember that story about the consumer drone
that punched a hole in the side of a plane just trying its best to fight the California wildfires?
Turns out the pilot of that drone was none other than Peter Ackermann, the co-founder of
Treyarch, one of the game studios that spits out a Call of Duty game every couple years.
Ackermann pled guilty to unsafe operation of an unmanned aircraft and will cover the
damage to the plane and complete 150 hours of community service. I never wanted to admit this,
but turns out video games do cause violence. But you know what doesn't? Tech news. So come back
here on Wednesday for more. I mean, if anything, it should make you less violent as you learn how
fruitless it would be in the face of the robot apocalypse. Well, see you later!