1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:08,360 Holy Chris Kringles tinsel, you made it! I've been expecting you. Let me get the door. 2 00:00:08,360 --> 00:00:16,080 Ha ha ha. Yep, the snowflakes are falling, the eggnog is flowing, and RAM prices have 3 00:00:16,080 --> 00:00:21,560 pulled a reindeer and apparently learned to fly straight into the stratosphere. And you 4 00:00:21,560 --> 00:00:25,960 know what that means. It means we've got a whole year's worth of stuff to remind you 5 00:00:25,960 --> 00:00:32,280 to remind you about that it happened. That's right, it's the 2025 Teckling Christmas Special. 6 00:00:32,280 --> 00:00:43,240 Ha ha ha. Let's kick things off with hardware and kick that off by remembering how NVIDIA 7 00:00:43,240 --> 00:00:47,400 CEO Jensen Wong kicked off his keynote at CES 2025. 8 00:00:47,400 --> 00:00:52,960 Do you like my jacket? Turns out it was actually an appropriate way to start a year that would 9 00:00:52,960 --> 00:00:57,920 be defined by Jensen and other tech leaders caring less about what the consumer thinks 10 00:00:57,920 --> 00:01:03,440 and more about whether their billionaire peers like their jackets. Overall, a lot of jacket 11 00:01:03,440 --> 00:01:09,560 talk. But Jensen did, amid a slew of AI and automotive gunk, announce the RTX 50 series 12 00:01:09,560 --> 00:01:15,960 GPUs and DLSS4 with multi-frame generation. They represented massive performance gains 13 00:01:15,960 --> 00:01:21,920 over the 40 series, like a box of Krispy Kremes represents a balanced breakfast. The RTX 50 14 00:01:21,920 --> 00:01:27,320 series launch was characterized by backlash over whether fake frames should count in benchmarks, 15 00:01:27,320 --> 00:01:33,400 the somehow still ongoing melting power connectors saga, MSRP being nothing but a distant memory, 16 00:01:33,400 --> 00:01:37,880 and a top it all off driver issues that caused a rash of black screen reports. 17 00:01:37,880 --> 00:01:42,800 How gamers felt about all that doesn't matter at all though, because gamers had nothing 18 00:01:42,800 --> 00:01:47,560 to do with NVIDIA becoming the world's most valuable company and becoming the first to 19 00:01:47,560 --> 00:01:54,600 hit a $5 trillion market cap on October 29th and 2025. Because like a certain serial mascot, 20 00:01:54,600 --> 00:01:58,360 big tech just can't get enough of NVIDIA's sugar chips. 21 00:01:58,360 --> 00:02:02,600 But AMD still cares about gamers a little bit, although it was a bit hard to tell when 22 00:02:02,600 --> 00:02:11,000 Team Red announced the name of the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070XT at CES and didn't announce 23 00:02:11,000 --> 00:02:15,640 anything else about them. People were sneaking around the show floor trying to benchmark it 24 00:02:15,800 --> 00:02:20,920 because AMD was being so coy. But AMD had nothing to hide when it comes to their CPUs, 25 00:02:20,920 --> 00:02:26,720 Team Red is still giving Intel a lashing in that regard with the Ryzen 9 9950X3D reigning 26 00:02:26,720 --> 00:02:32,480 supreme as the best desktop gaming CPU. Speaking of good CPUs though for Apple Silicon, we 27 00:02:32,480 --> 00:02:38,080 got on the M5 train this year with a new chip arriving in an iPad, MacBook Pro and Vision 28 00:02:38,080 --> 00:02:43,680 Pro in October. And after a ton of rumors and leaks, the iPhone Air finally launched 29 00:02:43,720 --> 00:02:45,840 to the roaring sound of a global... 30 00:02:49,440 --> 00:02:54,560 An apathetic sound I would have also made at the Pixel 10's launch if Jimmy Fallon hadn't 31 00:02:54,560 --> 00:02:57,520 saved it with his enthusiasm for the TENSOR G5. 32 00:03:00,880 --> 00:03:05,360 Unfortunately, the Christmas spirit has kind of been wooshed out of the hardware scene 33 00:03:05,360 --> 00:03:11,200 recently due to the RAM pricing crisis being driven ultimately by heinously high memory 34 00:03:11,200 --> 00:03:17,600 demand from AI companies and the memory makers who see a money tree down one road and a 35 00:03:17,600 --> 00:03:22,080 more money tree down the other and do what any self-respecting corporation would do. 36 00:03:22,720 --> 00:03:28,000 Take a chainsaw to that one. Micron announced plans to shut down its consumer-focused memory 37 00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:32,960 brand, Crucial. Rumors have pointed to NVIDIA planning to produce lower-end GPU production 38 00:03:32,960 --> 00:03:37,600 next year in favor of selling higher tier cards with more memory and an IDC analysis predicts 39 00:03:37,600 --> 00:03:42,480 that high pricing of PCs and basically anything that uses memory should be expected to continue 40 00:03:42,480 --> 00:03:47,280 for at least a year or two. Why did I start with computer hardware in this video? You call this 41 00:03:47,280 --> 00:03:52,480 comfort a joy? Hey, how about gaming and handhelds and stuff? You know, we all thought the Switch 42 00:03:52,480 --> 00:03:58,800 2 would turn out to be just a legend like Frosty the Snowman or Lucky the Dragon, but no! Turns out 43 00:03:58,800 --> 00:04:03,360 it was real and despite Nintendo's shenanigans around threatening to brick people's switches 44 00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:08,480 if they so much as thought about not paying $90 for Mario Kart 8 but bigger this time, 45 00:04:08,480 --> 00:04:14,400 the Switch 2 set sales records, becoming the fastest selling console of all time. 46 00:04:14,400 --> 00:04:20,800 It's a Christmas miracle, but not for another console, Xbox. A brand Microsoft seems to be 47 00:04:20,800 --> 00:04:26,000 purposefully not inviting to turkey dinner this year. Xbox consoles were delisted from 48 00:04:26,000 --> 00:04:30,800 many stores a few months ago after their stock ran out, which could have been why Xbox sold less 49 00:04:30,880 --> 00:04:36,160 units during Black Friday sales than the next playground, a motion-controlled kids console 50 00:04:36,160 --> 00:04:42,800 that appears to ironically succeed exactly where the Kinect failed. We did get the ROG Xbox Ally 51 00:04:42,800 --> 00:04:51,280 and AllyX on October 15th, which were received kind of well and sort of are Xboxes in that they are 52 00:04:52,080 --> 00:04:59,280 devices, which is now the only defining factor in what an Xbox is. Raspberry Pi, Xbox, 53 00:04:59,840 --> 00:05:06,400 hearing aid, Xbox. The coolest thing about the Xbox handheld was the new gaming mode that 54 00:05:06,400 --> 00:05:12,240 made Windows suck a bit less. Speaking of our rapidly becoming less favored operating system, 55 00:05:12,240 --> 00:05:19,680 Windows 10 died a gruesome death on October 14th, 2025. The year Microsoft declared the 56 00:05:19,680 --> 00:05:25,760 year of the Windows 11 PC refresh, by which they apparently meant the year of the Windows 10 official 57 00:05:25,760 --> 00:05:31,920 support refresh. Because after it became apparent that people don't usually order their lives around 58 00:05:31,920 --> 00:05:38,880 corporate blog posts and Windows 10 use was still quite high, Microsoft was like, hey f*** it, 59 00:05:38,880 --> 00:05:45,040 everybody gets a year of extended Windows 10 updates for free. But after that, we're serious. 60 00:05:45,040 --> 00:05:50,400 The problem is, most people still can't really see a big benefit to buying a new PC just so they 61 00:05:50,400 --> 00:05:57,200 can enjoy the new black screen of death. It's different and the upcoming agentic OS features 62 00:05:57,200 --> 00:06:01,920 that will lead to mice and keyboards becoming obsolete as we simply tell our keyboards what to 63 00:06:01,920 --> 00:06:09,200 do and even enter the vibe working era. Hey computer, do work. I couldn't even be excited 64 00:06:09,200 --> 00:06:14,880 when they pretended to bring back Clippy because it was actually just this animated AI fart cloud. 65 00:06:14,960 --> 00:06:21,440 You'll never be Clippy. You'll never have his ass and his knowing looks. Although Microsoft did 66 00:06:21,440 --> 00:06:28,640 fix the update and shut down bug in Windows 11, not 10. Now this all has Windows gamers in particular 67 00:06:28,640 --> 00:06:34,800 pining even harder for Steam OS as an alternative along with other forms of Linux and the Steam 68 00:06:34,800 --> 00:06:41,360 slash Linux future is looking kind of bright right now. We got the first third party Steam OS handheld, 69 00:06:41,360 --> 00:06:47,040 the Legion Go S, and Valve announced the glorious return of the Steam machine with a new 70 00:06:47,040 --> 00:06:52,960 cute design affectionately being called the Gabe Cube. That's fun. Now we just need to get a cube 71 00:06:52,960 --> 00:06:58,800 shaped yacht along with a new Steam controller and the Steam frame VR headset. Although Windows 72 00:06:58,800 --> 00:07:05,120 handhelds are still going strong. If by strong you mean the couple models from GPD and Ioneo sporting 73 00:07:05,200 --> 00:07:12,640 AMD's beastly Strix Halo chip. But hey, guess what? You can install Linux on that thing too. 74 00:07:14,800 --> 00:07:21,680 Oh my gosh, do it! But I'd actually like AI to do a bit less. If you don't mind, aside from the 75 00:07:21,680 --> 00:07:27,280 aforementioned RAM crisis, AI has continued to improve at somewhat useful things like coding 76 00:07:27,280 --> 00:07:33,520 and math, but even more so at forcefully injecting so much slop onto the internet. It's made people 77 00:07:33,520 --> 00:07:41,840 sick of Studio Ghibli. Ghibli? Gribli? I don't know. Yes, standalone image generators are out. 78 00:07:41,840 --> 00:07:48,480 ChatGPT and Google Gemini's Nanobanana have improved a ton and after Google VO3 launched, 79 00:07:48,480 --> 00:07:53,760 photorealistic video complete with synced audio became standard and put your parents in grave 80 00:07:53,760 --> 00:07:58,960 danger. Meta released a new social app called Vibes just for making and sharing video slop 81 00:07:58,960 --> 00:08:03,920 followed by OpenAI and their similar Sora app. I don't want to be too much of a downer. 82 00:08:03,920 --> 00:08:11,440 I mean AI, even generative AI, does seem to have some interesting and not horrifying use cases, 83 00:08:11,440 --> 00:08:17,840 but the masses really were not prepared to have pure slop machines thrust into their hands. You 84 00:08:17,840 --> 00:08:24,640 have big YouTubers publishing tutorials on how to generate vapid, colorful, nonsense slop for kids 85 00:08:25,600 --> 00:08:28,880 Hopefully, this new gamer pope can do something about this. 86 00:08:28,880 --> 00:08:33,200 Because ignoring the whole audio-visual problem, we had some concerning moments this year, 87 00:08:33,200 --> 00:08:38,880 including Grock identifying itself as Mecca Hitler and having various public breakdowns. 88 00:08:38,880 --> 00:08:44,800 ChatGPT users revolted when OpenAI launched GPT-5 and took away the more personal, 89 00:08:44,800 --> 00:08:50,800 more emotionally intelligent GPT-40 and it was revealed to everyone just how bad this whole 90 00:08:50,800 --> 00:08:57,840 AI girlfriend and boyfriend issue is in 2025. Which is, fun fact, the year that the film Her 91 00:08:57,840 --> 00:09:03,120 took place. Spike Jonze, if you or someone you know happens to be watching this, please make 92 00:09:03,120 --> 00:09:07,440 another film set 12 years in the future so we know what to expect. Because this is getting 93 00:09:07,440 --> 00:09:11,760 kind of wild. I've only mentioned American companies here, but China's AI ambitions are 94 00:09:11,760 --> 00:09:16,480 going strong, Deepseek's R1 model really shook up the industry earlier this year, 95 00:09:16,480 --> 00:09:23,520 but Chinese robots are shaking a leg themselves. Unitry cannot, for the life of them, seem to put 96 00:09:23,520 --> 00:09:29,200 out a video of its widely available G1 robot or any robot without having the main focus seemingly 97 00:09:29,200 --> 00:09:35,120 be its ability to punch and kick. Which was also the main focus of Engine AI's reveal of the T-800 98 00:09:35,120 --> 00:09:40,800 robot. What are we doing here, huh? Skilled is a company working on robot brains and at least 99 00:09:40,800 --> 00:09:45,920 they're trying to help robots do different sorts of things, like figure out how to continue 100 00:09:45,920 --> 00:09:50,640 accomplishing their goals even if you saw their freaking limbs off. I, uh, okay. I just want 101 00:09:50,640 --> 00:09:56,400 robots to be able to do normal things. Like load the dishwasher and pick up laundry. Like the 1x 102 00:09:56,400 --> 00:10:01,440 Neo robot, which can actually do barely anything itself and mostly exists as a husk that a remote 103 00:10:01,440 --> 00:10:07,760 operator can control inside your home. For when you want cleaning staff, but don't like how squishy 104 00:10:07,760 --> 00:10:12,960 they usually are. Squishy, like the ever-expanding AI bubble. I mean, we can't know that it's a 105 00:10:12,960 --> 00:10:18,080 bubble right now, but some shrewd financially minded people seem to think it's a bubble and 106 00:10:18,080 --> 00:10:23,280 the machine god will remember that they thought that when it's born and punish them. Thankfully, 107 00:10:23,280 --> 00:10:27,760 some AI services were feeling the Christmas spirit and added what you could charitably call 108 00:10:27,760 --> 00:10:34,320 parental controls this year, including character.ai and chatgbt, the latter of which also announced 109 00:10:34,320 --> 00:10:37,200 that adults could generate their own erotica next year. So, 110 00:10:38,160 --> 00:10:43,760 6, 7. I didn't mean to. I didn't know that was a not planned. Oh, believe it or not, 111 00:10:43,760 --> 00:10:49,120 there is so much AI stuff that I cut out of this episode because I could keep talking about it. 112 00:10:49,120 --> 00:10:54,560 I just really don't want to. You can think of the rest of this video as being the quick bits. 113 00:10:55,440 --> 00:11:00,320 You'd be wrong to think that, but, you know, nothing to be ashamed of. I was wrong when I 114 00:11:00,320 --> 00:11:06,880 implied at the beginning that this mug had eggnog in it. It doesn't. It's filled to the brim with 115 00:11:06,880 --> 00:11:12,720 hot cocoa. Now, I know what you're thinking. Wasn't TikTok supposed to be banned by now? 116 00:11:12,720 --> 00:11:18,400 And I thought that too. And so did the hordes of TikTok users who flocked to other Chinese-owned 117 00:11:18,400 --> 00:11:25,280 social apps like Red Note and Lemonate when TikTok was actually briefly banned before it came back. 118 00:11:25,280 --> 00:11:29,600 Unlike the long list of games that were suddenly banned from Steam this year, 119 00:11:29,600 --> 00:11:35,040 because payment processors and banks didn't like them. Just not their cup of tea and 120 00:11:35,040 --> 00:11:40,000 now it can't be yours either. Yeah, this year marked a significant shift in how platforms deal 121 00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:45,600 with questionable content as age verification measures started to roll out in many places. 122 00:11:45,600 --> 00:11:51,440 The UK's Online Safety Act applied to major platforms like Reddit, Discord, Twitter, etc, 123 00:11:51,440 --> 00:11:58,400 leading to a surge in VPN use, which in turn has led regulators to consider banning VPNs in some 124 00:11:58,400 --> 00:12:03,360 U.S. states, which are prepping for similar laws to take effect next year. Australia's 125 00:12:03,360 --> 00:12:08,720 social media ban for children under 16 went into effect just before winter break, 126 00:12:08,720 --> 00:12:11,920 so they won't even be able to talk to their friends while they're snowed in. 127 00:12:13,120 --> 00:12:18,560 What else happened? Oh, Google decided they were going to give Android fans a scare and block 128 00:12:18,560 --> 00:12:24,480 the sideloading of unverified Android apps. Yeah, barely anyone uses sideloading ever, 129 00:12:24,480 --> 00:12:31,680 but it's like, you know, you don't need it till you need it. Situation, you know, like underwear. 130 00:12:31,680 --> 00:12:36,960 Thankfully, the outcry caused Google to come to their senses, and they said they would allow 131 00:12:36,960 --> 00:12:43,360 advanced users to install unverified apps. And as an apology, Google somehow forced 132 00:12:43,360 --> 00:12:48,320 Apple's airdrop feature to work with Android's Quickshare. So now iPhones and 133 00:12:48,320 --> 00:12:53,280 Androids can blast each other with fun little picks, and Apple can't do anything about it. 134 00:12:54,400 --> 00:12:59,040 It was kind of like how Epic Games forced Apple and Google to allow Fortnite back on both the 135 00:12:59,040 --> 00:13:04,160 iOS app store and the Google Play Store this year. And all it took was willfully breaking 136 00:13:04,160 --> 00:13:08,320 their terms and conditions in order to drag everybody through years and years of legal 137 00:13:08,320 --> 00:13:14,800 quagmire. And now, people who play Fortnite on their phone can buy V-Bucks a bit easier. 138 00:13:15,680 --> 00:13:21,120 This is progress. Oh, you thought I forgot to talk about President Trump's whole tariff thing 139 00:13:21,120 --> 00:13:26,400 with the announcing and the delaying and the mechhoeven. Part of the reasoning for all that 140 00:13:26,400 --> 00:13:32,000 was to try and force manufacturers to make things like phones in the US again. But so far, 141 00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:38,480 Apple has expanded production in India instead. Fine then, said Trump. I'll build my own damn 142 00:13:38,480 --> 00:13:45,440 phone in the US. The Trump Mobile T1 phone. Which went from being a photoshopped gold iPhone 143 00:13:45,440 --> 00:13:52,960 to being a photoshopped Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra with a Spigen case on it. God bless America. 144 00:13:52,960 --> 00:13:58,240 Now, to be fair, after seemingly almost damaging trade relations with China beyond repair, 145 00:13:58,240 --> 00:14:04,400 the Trump administration and China agreed on a one-year tariff truce, ensuring that electronics 146 00:14:04,400 --> 00:14:10,240 only become exorbitantly more expensive because of the AI RAM thing, not a lack of rare earth and 147 00:14:10,240 --> 00:14:15,600 minerals. And I'll also give the current US government another kudos for reportedly telling 148 00:14:15,600 --> 00:14:20,320 the UK to saw it off with their whole we demand Apple give us a backdoor with into their encrypted 149 00:14:20,320 --> 00:14:26,800 user data thing. The UK apparently back down, only to return and make the same demand, but only 150 00:14:26,800 --> 00:14:36,480 for UK user data. Which I guess the US doesn't care about. Sorry UK. 2025 proved to be a fairly 151 00:14:36,480 --> 00:14:42,400 fragile year for power and cloud infrastructure. After massive parts of Spain and Portugal lost 152 00:14:42,400 --> 00:14:47,520 power in April, an Amazon Web Services outage took out key parts of the internet, including 153 00:14:47,520 --> 00:14:53,680 roadblocks, Fortnite and Zoom. Seriously though, it was one of those internet problems affecting 154 00:14:53,680 --> 00:14:59,040 the real world situations some people were nearly cooked when their smartbeds overheated. 155 00:14:59,040 --> 00:15:04,800 Then there was a similarly bad cloud flare outage in November and another not so bad one in December, 156 00:15:04,800 --> 00:15:11,520 although that one notably took down, down detector and the three other down detector, down detectors. 157 00:15:11,520 --> 00:15:17,040 Is it any wonder NVIDIA, Google and a bunch of other people want to launch data centers into space? 158 00:15:17,120 --> 00:15:21,280 At least up there we can be sure they're not stealing all the water. Unless they send their 159 00:15:21,280 --> 00:15:27,440 covert elite space commandos to come back to Earth and raid every 7-Eleven for all the aquafina 160 00:15:27,440 --> 00:15:32,640 supply, which of course they do Riley. Come on, think! Now the rest of what I got here is a bit 161 00:15:32,640 --> 00:15:37,200 of a random assortment. I'm just gonna try and jog your memory that these things actually happened. 162 00:15:37,200 --> 00:15:43,440 Qualcomm acquired Arduino in October. I hope they don't screw that up. Microsoft killed Skype. No! 163 00:15:44,400 --> 00:15:49,280 Both NVIDIA and the US government are now heavily invested in Intel, 164 00:15:49,280 --> 00:15:52,960 which I hope they're using to pay for some free coffee for their employees. 165 00:15:52,960 --> 00:15:59,520 Nepal had that whole Gen Z uprising culminating in the election of their interim Prime Minister 166 00:15:59,520 --> 00:16:05,520 via Discord. That was a ride. The stop-killing games movement had its moment in the UK parliament, 167 00:16:05,520 --> 00:16:10,480 which didn't seem to move the needle much, but probably raised awareness and I'm calling it now 168 00:16:10,480 --> 00:16:16,000 will lead to the UK's first gamer president. Make it happen guys, I believe in you. 169 00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:20,240 Original Oculus founder Palmer Lucky's military tech company, 170 00:16:20,240 --> 00:16:25,040 Enduril, partnered with Meta to release a cat-eared tactical AR helmet, 171 00:16:25,040 --> 00:16:30,400 while Meta themselves launched the Meta Ray-Ban display with a full-color display in one of the 172 00:16:30,400 --> 00:16:37,200 eyes. I'm gonna get both, and colossal sciences pretended that they'd resurrected the direwolf. 173 00:16:37,280 --> 00:16:41,440 And me and Hank Green spent a lot of time researching ancient wolf lineages, 174 00:16:41,440 --> 00:16:47,280 only to find out that really they just kind of made a regular wolf with some extra genes in there. 175 00:16:48,320 --> 00:16:51,040 Hank and I didn't do it together just just separately, but 176 00:16:52,240 --> 00:16:57,440 now, although that's not everything that happened this year, I feel like that's mostly the gist 177 00:16:57,440 --> 00:17:03,280 of 2025. Hey, what kind of tech news developments are we gonna see in 2026? I don't know, 178 00:17:03,920 --> 00:17:11,200 but I can't wait to find out together. So from my house coat to yours, even though this video 179 00:17:11,200 --> 00:17:15,520 is not going up on Christmas, it's going up on Boxing Day, which I just remembered, 180 00:17:15,520 --> 00:17:20,400 I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year. And when the snow melts, 181 00:17:22,080 --> 00:17:25,440 I think we should all touch some grass. Okay, bye.