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I was thinking about starting this video by singing the song TikTok by Kesha,

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but I don't think anyone waking up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy is a good vibe right now.

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The United States has officially passed a law banning TikTok,

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next year, if certain conditions aren't met. The bill actually gives parent company ByteDance 270 days

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to sell the app. Otherwise, it'll be barred from US app stores.

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Of course, Android users could always just side load the app,

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but iOS users would be forever blocked from redownloading this specific flavor

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of heavy duty brain rot. The not yet a ban passed as part of a larger foreign aid package

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in support of Ukraine and Israel. They just snuck it in there like a mouse turd

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in a box of raisins. TikTok has promised to fight the law in court,

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calling it an unconstitutional suppression of its American users' freedom of speech,

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a freedom best expressed by lip syncing along to a recording of a joke that somebody else said.

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Even if ByteDance was willing to sell, the sale might be blocked by China,

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which imposes export restrictions on governing algorithms such as TikToks.

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Further, a sale or ban might not even protect American users from Chinese information collection,

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given that the Chinese government can probably buy most of this information off the open market.

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Speaking of collecting information, the US government also renewed

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the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, AKA FISA, including an amendment

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which has been criticized for expanding government surveillance without a warrant.

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Honestly, the best possible outcome of this would be if the hot new teen trend was a dance craze,

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criticizing lack of judicial oversight for federal intelligence agencies.

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Let's make it happen. Let's go guys. Qualcomm has officially unveiled

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its full upcoming lineup of Snapdragon X series CPUs,

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including a list of names that look like Qualcomm's marketing head passed out on the keyboard.

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Their top model is the X1E-84-100,

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the X standing for X, the one indicating the chip's generation,

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the E standing for elite, the 84 being the SKU,

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and the 100 standing for nothing.

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No, really, it doesn't mean anything. At least not yet.

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That section of the name is reserved for future use,

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so all of the names currently end in 100.

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Wouldn't you stick 100 on the end of something?

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If you wanted to? My child, baby 100.

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Baby 100. It's not clear why the names would need to be so complicated

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when there's a grand total of four chips,

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only one of which even falls into the lower tier plus category.

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While the plus sports 10 cores, the three elite chips all have 12,

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with the top two models, the X1E-84 and X1E-80,

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coming with dual core boost at 4.2 and four gigahertz respectively.

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That's actually a 0.1 gigahertz drop from what was originally promised for the X1E-84.

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What's a tenth of a gigahertz between friends? What's important is that we're overthrowing

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the x86 Windows ecosystem, okay? That's, stay focused.

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It has been a terrible first quarter for Tesla,

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in part because its profit margin shrank by 55%

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and sales dropped by 8.5%, despite substantial price cuts.

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The company now has an excess of stock and a shortage of cash,

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which makes this an absolutely terrible time for the public to find out that the Cybertruck

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isn't even waterproof. How?

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At least one owner claims to have accidentally bricked his ride by taking it through the car wash

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and hosing sand out of the truck's bed without setting his vehicle to car wash mode first.

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Rookie mistake. Leading the vehicle's infotainment system

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to die like a smartphone after being dropped in the toilet.

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While the rest of the truck is technically operational,

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the Cybertruck incorporates several key gauges,

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such as its battery level and speedometer, into its digital display, which was dead.

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Worse, it's almost impossible to see out of the Cybertruck's narrow rear window

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at the best of times. And when the truck bed is closed, the cover blocks the window completely.

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That means that the drivers are wholly dependent on the rear camera, whose feed is also part

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of the digital display. So if you want to back up without it, you need to keep the back of the truck open,

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which is going to be a problem because the bed isn't waterproof, apparently.

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Get a really big bag of rice. Now, just as a reminder, this is a vehicle

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with an actual wade mode that's supposed to let it

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ford rivers. We were told it was going to have an optional package,

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letting it transform into a boat. Now, lest you think this is an isolated incident,

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many Cybertruck buyers have reported that its stainless steel exterior panels

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have already started to rust, apparently because Tesla thought it was more important

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for the vehicle to be bulletproof than weatherproof. They should have made it out of cast iron instead,

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so you could just season it. Funnily enough, Elon Musk actually suggested

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during a call with investors that Tesla might be able to take advantage of the unused compute power

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of idle vehicles to provide cloud services.

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So at least disappointed customers might still be able to use their broken Cybertrucks to mine Bitcoin.

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Hey, why not get a quick bite before you sit down for some quick bits? Well, it's because you're probably not going to have time

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to finish your food. Let's go. Google has delayed its plan

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to phase out third-party tracking cookies in Chrome yet again.

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This is actually the third time since 2020, but it's not Google's fault.

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It's those mean regulators at the UK Competition and Markets Authority who are concerned

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that Google's replacement for cookies, the so-called privacy sandbox,

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will give it an anti-competitive chokehold on tracking an information collection,

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which yeah, yeah, yeah, I probably will. This newest delay likely means

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that Google will miss its proposed phase-out date of the end of this year.

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So in the meantime, you can feel free to continue browsing

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while only being constantly tracked in the manner you've become desensitized to.

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You're being watched exactly as much as usual. The Rabbit R1, the multimodal AI device

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that gathered 50,000 pre-orders following its CES debut,

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has officially launched just over a week after the humane AI pin endured a brutal flogging

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in the public square. In early impression pieces, there's a surprising amount of optimism

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from some of the same reviewers who gave the AI pin a real tongue lashing.

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It probably helps that the R1 costs $200

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instead of 700 plus a monthly subscription. I mean, sure, it could literally just be an app

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instead of a cute little Pokedex looking thing, but then you wouldn't have a cute little Pokedex thing

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you'll forget about faster than the Vision Pro.

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I thought that was a burn. ASUS released a BIOS update for its Z790 motherboards

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in response to massive claims of CPU instability

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reported by users of flagship 13th and 14th gen processors.

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Unfortunately, the update also appears to reduce performance of these high-end Intel CPUs

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by up to 9%. At least for the Core i9-14900K,

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the new update sets the CPU power limit to Intel's recommended 253 watts

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instead of the previous, practically unlimited limit

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of 4,095 watts. So it's not that your CPU has gotten worse per se.

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ASUS has essentially just stopped injecting it with steroids, meaning your processor

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will get to enjoy a longer life and it won't need to worry about its testicle shrinking.

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Nissan has unveiled a solution to the age-old problem

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of how to deal with babies in the backseat of your car. And that solution is an animatronic,

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fluffy blob creature mounted in front of your child that will play peek-a-boo and wave its arms around

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as if pleading for someone to please get it down from there.

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Release it from this mortal plane. It's called Iruyo, apparently meaning I'm here in Japanese

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and not only will it sing songs in response to parents' voice commands,

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it will signal to a smaller robot in the front seat

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which will close its eyes when the child falls asleep.

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Because why use a standard car seat mirror when you can monitor your child through a robot

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that looks like the Pokemon that evolves into Elmo? And you asked for it,

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you can finally buy a robot dog with a flamethrower strapped to its back.

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The Thermonator, created by the aptly named company

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Throw Flame, is now available for purchase for less than $10,000.

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That's right, for the low price of 9,420,

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you can blaze it. And the it, in blaze it, in this case,

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means anything within the Thermonator's 30-foot flamethrowing range, blaze it up.

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According to Throw Flame's website, flamethrowers are legal and unregulated in most countries.

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Fun fact, and we all know big robot dog has been lobbying against sensible robot dog control laws

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for decades. Cybernetic canines don't even need to be leashed.

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And we'll unleash more tech news on you.

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If you come back on Friday for the next episode of TechLinked, if not, flamethrower dog.