Sometimes technology can seem a bit dystopian and sad but it also gives us little gadgets with
switches and clicky buttons and those and those are fun to you know.
So as long as those are around I think we'll be fine.
DeepSeq R1, the Chinese AI model that matches OpenAI's O1 for a fraction of the cost,
has the entire AI world panicking, partially because it costs a fraction of what it takes to
run O1 and it's open weights so you can run it locally.
But investors really started to freak out when DeepSeq surged to the top of the free
apps list on the iOS app store, passing chat GPT, threads and even block blast.
As a victory lap, DeepSeq also dropped a multimodal model this morning called Motown.
Nope, just wanted to keep the M's going. It's called Janus Pro which they say beats OpenAI's Dolly 3 on a couple of benchmarks
that apparently still means something. The whole thing has investors shook, leading to massive drops in tech stocks across the board.
Even NVIDIA dropped by a whopping 16% as confused, non-techy investors struggled to figure out
whether this means companies still need literal shiploads worth of GPUs from Team Green.
NVIDIA tried to explain through Bloomberg that AI models are still going to have to run on something,
although it's unclear whether it's going to be DeepSeq R1 for much longer.
The company says it's weathering a cyber attack, so it's limiting new signups,
which were apparently only being allowed for users with a Chinese phone number,
but that notice is now gone. Whether it comes back or not, DeepSeq has given American AI companies a kick in the pants,
with Meta reportedly setting up war rooms to analyze DeepSeq's tech.
Zuck needs to know how they did this. Did they learn Jujitsu and try to make Joe Rogan like them?
What's their secret? Intel has released their highly anticipated second field update for their core Ultra 200S
desktop processors, which the company promised would deliver a massive performance boost
to the troubled Aero Lake lineup. To get the fix, you have to update to both a BIOS with Intel's new fixes,
as well as update Windows 11 to the correct version.
Making me wonder, who really did all the work here?
Thankfully, KitGuru has already tested it out, and they first asked us to check ourselves.
Because in Cinebench Multicore, the Core 9 Ultra 285K is right where it always was
at the top of the chart, and I didn't know that. It also got a massive boost in Cyberpunk 2077, where it's actually better than its 14th gen
predecessor now. Wow. It just goes to show that, oh, but it barely got better in other games,
and in some of them the older chips actually improved more.
Good news for everyone then. Gplay, a Bulgarian PC retailer, has revealed some interesting details about the mystery
of AMD's Radeon RX9070 pseudo-launched. Gplay confirmed they do have RX9070 XTs in stock,
despite AMD recently saying the cards would launch in March.
They also hinted at the original pricing, which, when translated and calculated by
videocards.com with a Z, indicates the RX9070 XT had an original MSRP of around $900,
while the RX9070 non-XT would have been around $750, with an originally planned
launch date of January 23rd before Intel and then NVIDIA came with low-priced competitor cards and
just f**ked it all up. It's kind of what we all expected, but it just hits different being
calmly explained by a Bulgarian in plaid. Here's a bone for the AMD fanboys, though.
Team Red says the integrated GPU in their Ryzen AI Max 395 laptop APUs
demolish the mobile versions of NVIDIA's RTX 4070 by up to 68%. Awesome! Can I plug it into my PC,
though? No. So, now I get to press the quick bits button.
Meta says their Meta AI chatbot will now personalize its responses using users' Facebook and
Instagram account data, so it'll be able to give you activity recommendations based on things like
the home city listed in your profile and photos that you've uploaded, whether you want it to or
not. Yeah, Meta told TechCrunch that users won't be able to opt out of giving their AI a more
personal touch. But Meta AI can also now remember things that you've explicitly told it in messages,
and you can ask it to forget those things, like say you've already told Meta AI that you're vegan.
You can delete that because it's so fun to keep reminding people. Google has taken down almost three years' worth of firmware images for the Pixel 4a
previously hosted on a support page, only providing the most recent firmware,
which many 4a users say has tanked their devices' batteries. Google did announce earlier this month
that the update, which is required to improve stability, basically kills the battery. So
they offered free battery replacements, or a payment of 50 bucks USD, or a $100 discount
on the purchase of another Pixel phone, which is fine. I would just love to know what horrible
risk Google is mitigating through basically forcing people to stop using a lot of otherwise
perfectly good phones. All they have to say is that it's haunted and I'll be fine.
Michigan has officially passed a bill into law requiring the American state's high schools
to offer at least one in-person computer science class. It's a great step forward for
technological literacy. It's just maybe a bit late, given that soon we're not going to have
to use computers at all because open source Chinese AI is going to do all of our work for us.
As long as we don't ask it about Tiananmen Square. Good job, Michigan.
And a hardware modder going by Crastinator Pro has shown off his custom steam brick,
so-called, because it's a steam deck with everything except the internals removed.
He says he did this because A, the steam deck didn't fit in his backpack,
and B, he is not a smart man. His words, not mine. The real reason is this guy only ever used a
device made for handheld gaming by plugging it into a TV or his smart glasses. Now if you have
any suggestions for stuff he should add to the brick, I'm going to stop you right there. He says
it's not about adding, it's about removing. But he is considering giving it an assortment of hats.
And I hope you wear the Techlinked Viewer hat once again on Wednesday because you'll come back
for more tech news and you're not allowed to watch unless you wear the hat. What do you mean
you haven't been wearing it this whole time? What are we doing?