Tech news, you better believe we got some of that.
We've got all of it. In fact, please take some on your way out.
We're running out of space. Apple has been the most valuable publicly traded company
since 2011 when it usurped the oil giant ExxonMobil.
But Cupertino might be in for some usurping themselves
by their long time rival and overall nerdy company, Microsoft.
After chasing Apple's lead for over a decade, the tech giant's market cap crossed the $3 trillion mark
twice this month. And right now it's sitting at 3.01 trillion
compared to Apple's paltry, 2.9 trillion.
The week that Satya Nadella celebrates his 10-year
anniversary as CEO of Microsoft. And that's apparently for a good reason.
The milestone is being treated by the tech media as an opportunity to ask how Nadella was able
to stay winning. A big part of the answer is continual investment
into cloud infrastructure, as that tech was taking off, and having quick enough feet to sidestep
the type of scandals and controversies that plagued Microsoft's tech giant, brethren.
Cambridge Analytica, I've never heard of a.
Microsoft has obviously invested heavily in AI
while Apple has taken things a lot slower. But could Apple catch up later this year
when they've said they'll reveal some big AI news?
I don't know, Microsoft has a pretty big lead and they continue to push into the AI sphere.
Just today they announced an AI-infused partnership with Semaphore, a news website founded by veterans
of BuzzFeed News, The New York Times, and Bloomberg Media Group in 2022,
which kind of makes sense because I've never heard of it. The partnership will see Semaphore journalists
using AI tools to search news sources across multiple languages,
but still write the articles themselves, which sounds like a much better use of Microsoft AI
than a poll in the sidebar, asking readers to vote on the woman
in the story's cause of death. See, Satya wasn't involved with that at all.
The demand for RTX 4090 GPUs in China
is driving up prices in other Asian countries.
Despite NVIDIA releasing the Chinese exclusive 4090D variant
to comply with US export regulations, a black market has grown for the original full-fat non-D.
It probably tastes like the delicious milk I love.
It's gotten so bad that retailers in places like Taiwan,
Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam have stopped selling the graphics cards individually
and are putting them inside of pre-built systems in an attempt to stop scalpers.
But someone in Taipei allegedly still made a profit
spending $91,000 US dollars on 20 pre-builds
and selling their GPUs to China's AI segment,
where the 4090s are being used as alternatives to NVIDIA's more expensive
and also more heavily regulated A100 and H100 cards.
Allegedly, the 4090 black market is so efficient, Chinese AI startups can reportedly receive product
in just three to four days. And that makes sense.
A consumer card like the 4090 is much easier to get ahold of than one of NVIDIA's enterprise AI cards,
especially with how serious the US has been about controlling their export.
Just last week, the United States blocked a shipment of 24 A100s to the Australian subsidiary
of a Chinese company. Out of fear, the cards would end up in China.
Now the Aussies have to gerry-rig their own AI using chicken salt, fairy bread, and huntsman spiders.
Ah, it's the same as my grandma Ma's old recipe.
For... Vigemite?
The Vision Pro has now been thoroughly analyzed by the revered knowledge keepers of our time.
In a post, one redditor was disappointed by the small field of view and reflections in the lenses,
which are both apparently normal, according to Apple. A true being of culture decided to comment
on that same post lamenting the lack of support for the thinking man stimulation.
3D porn. Now, for some reason, that comment was deleted,
but not before we learned in the replies that you can disable one of your hands
in the Vision Pro's accessibility settings. Let me know in the comments if that makes sense to you,
because I don't get it. At least for the field of view issue,
there may be a solution, using the headset without its light seal.
According to some users, this increases the FOV by 15 degrees at the expense of making Tim Cook cry.
That is not right. No.
That's especially cruel when the poor man is still dealing
with part one of iFixit's Vision Pro teardown,
where they detail the tech that makes the weird eyesight feature on the outside of the headset work.
Not only is it apparently a repair nightmare, but removing a certain component
will squish together the eyes on the external display.
And after seeing that, I may never sleep again. But it's not all bad news for the Vision Pro.
The platform may inspire devs to make more interesting
AR apps that could even benefit Meta's quest headsets.
Imagine watching Formula One races from every angle,
or even motivating yourself to finally vacuum your disgusting floor, just to get all
the imaginary gold coins down there. You won't ever see it because you'll live inside
the headset, but at least you know then that it's okay.
Quick bits are notoriously hard to quantify, but thankfully we've come up with a formula.
Unfortunately, I can't tell you what it is. Samsung's head of customer experience,
Patrick Chomey, has claimed there's no such thing
as a real picture to defend the Samsung Galaxy's
generative edit feature. In an interview with TechRadar, Chomey states that
since you're reproducing what you're seeing with sensors,
it doesn't mean anything, end quote. And if you used AI to even optimize the zoom,
quote, there is no real picture, full stop.
Chomey also compared the generative edit feature to adding filters to photos on Instagram.
If I'm following here, that means my mom may be an AI.
But we're still working through what he said. Honestly, wouldn't be that surprising.
A first of its kind AI heist cost a multinational company
$25 million using sophisticated deep fake technology.
Yeah, it's pretty wild. After sending a phishing message to the company's
Hong Kong branch, scammers were able to convince a worker
to give up the funds by jumping on a video conference call
featuring the company's chief financial officer and other employees.
Except the only real person in that call was the victim,
who then transferred large sums of money to five different local bank accounts.
The scam was uncovered a week later, likely when the CFO never showed up to the employee's house
after promising a rousing game of catch.
Bamboo Lab has removed their A1 3D printer from sale
and issued a recall due to issues with the heatbed cables.
Apparently less than 0.1% of printers sold
have the problem, but the company doesn't know why
the problem exists, which isn't a great situation to be in.
Bamboo Lab is recommending people stop using their printers
until they can figure out the cause. They tried to consult an expert detective,
but unfortunately, Mr. Monk, as played by Tony Shalhoub,
has solved his last case in the TV movie, Mr. Monk's Last Case,
and he's tired of telling people he's retired. Japan's slim moon lander is still technically alive,
but might not be for much longer. The spacecraft's solar panels caught some rays
during the tail end of the lunar day, but it must now survive a full lunar night,
which lasts for 14 Earth days and features temperatures as low
as negative 208 degrees Fahrenheit or negative 130 degrees Celsius.
But even if slim can't survive, it may live on in spirit.
Its precision landing technology will be used in future lunar missions.
Hopefully that will be some comfort to slim as it spends two weeks rattling its little jimmies
in the moon cold. And a YouTuber has managed to build
a functioning 16-bit CPU inside Microsoft Excel
complete with its own memory, output, and a custom assembly language.
Computer enthusiast Inkbox posted a video detailing how they made this Excel processor
with a blazing fast clock speed of three hertz,
128 kilobytes of RAM, and a 16 color output display.
It's a gamer's dream. Inkbox's CPU also doesn't use any visual basic scripts
or plugins. It is pure Excel, the way nature intended.
Now, Inkbox can get any desk job he wants.
And you should want to come back on Wednesday for more tech news.
We don't know what we'll report on yet, but oh boy, it's gonna be good.