Tech news isn't out there. It's not some abstract concept.
It's in here, in this building. There's way too much of it.
We're wading around in it all day. My legs are tired.
NVIDIA will finally let the RTX 5090, 5080, and 5070
see the light of day at CES in January 2025,
according to sources who spoke to WCCF tech,
which I just learned stands for where consumers come first.
Well, I hope so. WCCF tech specs for the top two cards
match up with the specs posted by Prolific Leaker Copight 7 Kimmy.
We're talking a whopping 600 watt power rating and 32 gigabytes of VRAM on the 5090.
Unfortunately, people are less jazzed about the 5080,
allegedly having less than half the 5090's GPU cores
and the 5070 only having 12 gigabytes of VRAM.
Some games already use more than that to push ultra settings at 4K.
And it's also the same amount of VRAM as the RTX 4080
that NVIDIA eventually unlaunched due to backlash that almost immediately dissipated
thanks to NVIDIA giving us a fun new word. Unlaunched?
Didn't know you could do that. If you are mad about the 12 Gigabyte thing,
well, PC Gamer points out that NVIDIA has said they're more into GPU cache than memory capacity right now.
Since if the cache is big and fast enough, you have to dip into the VRAM less.
So maybe consider being mad at NVIDIA for any of the many other good reasons.
They're overpriced. Linux drivers suck. Jensen cornered the leather jacket market
and now I can't find affordable options. All equally valid.
He's paid off all the tanners. The Full House family?
Yesterday, Intel officially unveiled Arrow Lake,
AKA the Intel Core Ultra 200S series of desktop processors
and true to the leaks from earlier this week, the chip's shining achievement is using about half the power
of their Raptor Lake 14th gen predecessors to achieve similar performance.
Intel is being very upfront about their goal being to maintain gaming performance
because what gamers want most of all is a steady hand to guide the ship.
A massive jump in performance? Oh, no, no, I'm good where I'm at.
Thank you kindly. I'll do the same work for less. Now that we have those previously leaked slides in English,
we can see Intel's own graphs, ostensibly meant to convince people to buy these processors,
showing the flagship Core i9 Ultra 285K
losing to not only an Intel Core i9 14900K,
but also a Ryzen 99950X and 7950X3D.
On the plus side, obviously greater power efficiency
could lead to more powerful chips down the line. Arrow Lake seems to be a bit cheaper
than AMD's direct competitors right now. And at least Intel isn't lying through their teeth
inflating their numbers like they used to. I'm hoping that's true.
And there totally won't be a microcode issue this time. After all, AMD's got their own eggs in the oven.
They just launched fifth gen Epic Turin data center chips,
which look pretty good, as well as the Instinct MI325X AI accelerator,
which is not an NVIDIA chip and that's good.
Plus the Ryzen 99900X3D was just spotted in Cinebench,
meaning AMD is still aware that sometimes people play games on a computer.
Well, you guys don't have PS5s? At Tesla's WeRobot event yesterday,
the company finally unveiled their long-hyped RoboTaxi prototype,
apparently using an online synonym generator to come up with the car's actual name, CyberCab.
Why not CompuCar? TechnoRickshaw.
Anyways, it'll cost $30,000 and launch in the next two years,
since it doesn't have a steering wheel or pedals and so will rely entirely
on Tesla's full self-driving technology, which science has proven is always two years away
at any point on the time-space continuum. Tesla showed the CyberCab
pulling into a specialized station to charge via inductive charging,
which it uses exclusively, and have specialized robots clean its two seats.
Because yeah, despite being about the same size as other cabs with four or more seats,
this thing seats two people. Three, if you squish.
Maybe you cut one and a half. Making it a great example of a company
challenging themselves to make their own product again,
but worse. Also, I'm sorry, Tesla themselves seem confused
about what this thing is called. They're still referring to the RoboTaxi and RoboVan,
because oh yeah, there's a RoboVan. Two, you get two seats or 20, there's no in between.
Honestly, the more interesting part of the event for me were the Optimus Robots,
which the Tesla website calls Tesla Bot.
Is it like a naming free for all at Tesla HQ? What's happening?
Elon paraded the bots out during the event, describing them as R2-D2 or C3PO, but better.
Better at what? R2-D2 can fly. Elon goes on to say Optimus will do anything you want.
It can be a teacher, babysit your kids.
And of course babysitting was the second thing that Elon thought of.
He's trying to spread his genes over the planet like a virus. And yet avoid all his kids at times.
And I think this will be the biggest product ever
of any kind. Very big, very good.
What he didn't actually say was whether these robots were operating autonomously or being controlled remotely,
as in many of the company's previous demos.
Hear me out, strings. Tech evangelist Robert Scoble asked one of the robots,
how much of you is AI? Some or none?
To which the obviously human voice replied, it might be some.
Okay, but, but the robots themselves were pretty impressive
at translating the human operator's motion. So the bodies themselves do look kind of impressive.
Not enough to impress investors though, since Tesla shares tumbled nearly 8% after the show.
Just wait two years. Now quick bits, those are out there somewhere.
That's why we have to wait for them to arrive. Oh God.
I feel them coming. Internet archives The Way Back Machine
suffered a data breach this week, affecting 31 million users.
Visitors to the site were cleverly able to piece this information together,
thanks to a JavaScript alert created by the hacker, directing 31 million people to have I Been Pwned,
a site specifically designed for checking if your email address was in a data breach.
Are they detectives? While this is terrible news for the internet archive,
and also millions of people, it's pretty great news for fidelity investments.
It reported a much smaller data breach the same day the internet archive one broke.
The best way to hide corporate incompetence is comparison. Instagram and Threads moderation
has started driving away users due to multiple baffling decisions,
deleting or restricting accounts for linking to articles with controversial topics,
locking accounts for joking about wanting to die,
and instantly removing posts mentioning saltines
or crackerjacks. Instagram and Threads boss Adam Massari
has addressed the issues, claiming that human moderators were responsible
for the takedowns, not AI. Are they though?
It's multiple people's Instagram accounts were deleted for being under 13,
even when those people uploaded IDs proving otherwise.
And that sounds like some robot shit to me. A software engineer learned he was being dumped
from an AI tech summary. Nick Spreen was using the Apple intelligence beta
on his iPhone 15 Pro, when it summarized a breakup text from his now ex
as no longer in relationship, wants belongings from the apartment.
It was also his birthday, but that's not really the AI's fault, just sucks.
Spreen told Ars Technica that he didn't hate the level of distance the summary created.
And think of the time savings too, instead of agonizing over every word
written by the person he thought he was building a life with, he could go straight to crying in the bathtub.
Much more efficient. Sounds like a software engineer. Scientists think they can fix serious medical issues
by injecting little discs in your brain.
It's science. Deep brain stimulation is an established treatment
for conditions like Parkinson's, epilepsy, and even obsessive compulsive disorder.
Unfortunately, DBS requires invasive and risky surgeries.
Researchers believe these new nano discs can be injected into precise regions of the brain
and activated with an external electromagnet. Extra special bonus,
now your cranial microplastics will have a friend.
Let's hope they don't team up. And startup Vast has released mockups
for the world's first commercial space station that it plans to potentially launch next year.
And honestly, it looks good.
The design features soft and padded interior walls
that are occasionally broken up by wooden paneling. Basically, it looks like someone asked Ikea
to design an extraterrestrial insane asylum. Though I will say this,
the sleeping arrangements look comfy. I'd sleep on that wall for sure,
which I don't get to say that often. When a shape-shifting alien breaks in,
they are gonna have the best time. I swear, I'm the real captain.
This is nice. You shouldn't sleep on more tech news though.
So come back on Wednesday for more. Don't come here on Monday.
It's a holiday due to Canadian Thanksgiving, which is like American Thanksgiving, but earlier.
Also, there's Tim Hortons. But we did it first, so we win.