As like a tech guy, current events
mostly have me imagining whatif scenarios where I got into other
hobbies. Like I could have uh done crochet news videos and been spared this
pain. The high of Nintendo's Switch 2 Direct yesterday, filled with juicy
details that gamers have been waiting on for years, was immediately followed by
the inevitable emotional crash as fans grappled with the $450 price of the
console and games costing $80 to $90.
But just as some were starting to come to terms with it, Nintendo announced it
was delaying pre-orders for the Switch 2 in the US to assess the impact of the
fresh tariffs. President Trump imposed shortly after the Switch to stream on
dozens of countries, including China and Vietnam, where the Switch is at least
partially produced. More on that later. Nintendo also explained why the Switch
2's backwards compatibility is a bit complicated. Its NVIDIA SOC is different
enough from the Switch 1's that to make existing games playable, Nintendo had to
go for something in between a software emulator and hardware compatibility.
something alive. Cut to the little guy cranking the gears inside. Hi, I'm a
prisoner. The good news is that new NVIDIA SOC means the Switch 2 benefits
from Team Green's DLSS and ray tracing
tech as well as G-Sync in handheld mode.
That was the only way Nintendo could save enough power to include dollar
store Discord. Speaking of dollars, hold yours tight because Trump's
affforementioned tariffs are so wide ranging, they're expected to raise the
price of tech products and almost everything else, too. Gifting the stock
market with its worst day since 2020. The tariffs ranging from 10 to 49% with
China's total tariff now at 54% were
supposedly meant to reciprocate tariffs placed on the US by the affected
countries. But economist James Surroouki
noticed Trump's numbers are actually based on America's trade deficit with
those countries divided by their exports to the US which the White House
essentially confirmed. The whole approach is very strange and there's
some evidence that the administration based the plan off chatbot responses.
Ironically, this might mean that AI was used to hamper American AI companies who
aren't sure whether these tariffs will apply to the heinous amounts of GPUs
they're stealing from the real victims, little gamer boys and girls. It seems
like semiconductors are exempt, although Trump told reporters that tariffs on
chips proper will be starting very soon.
But products with chips inside them are not exempt and system integrators like
Main Gear are warning of price hikes of at least 20%. Then there's the executive
order Trump signed right after announcing the tariffs that closes the
dimminimous loophole which made cheaper single packages exempt from tariffs.
Meaning that Teimu and Shien may lose their status as the go-to platform for
fans of filling your home with cheap garbage. Now, Trump did reiterate that
he's open to reducing these tariffs for companies that offer something quote
phenomenal, like, according to Trump, if China approved the sale of Tik Tok
before the April 5th deadline, which is
tomorrow. Instead, China announced retaliatory tariffs of 34% on all US
imports alongside additional export restrictions on rare earth elements used
in electronics manufacturing. Trump responded by saying China played it
wrong. They panicked and then uh he
extended the Tik Tok deadline by another 75 days and then that's it. This time in
a blessed return to non-tariff news. Now
Intel and TSMC have reportedly reached a preliminary agreement to form a joint
chipmaking venture. According to the information who got this information
from sources of information, presumably
the deal would see TSMC take a 20% stake
in Intel's foundry business. A move that, if true, could help prevent Team
Blue from the toilet flush spiral it currently finds itself in. There have
been a number of rumors about Intel mergers, acquisitions, and agreements in
recent months. So hopefully we finally get some real answers at the company's
Foundry Direct Connect on April 29th. I
mean, when there's smoke, there's probably fire or a guy who blows the
sickest clouds you've ever seen. And he's got some good ideas. You should
listen to him. And listen to our sponsor, Ground News. They're trying to
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plan by using our link in the description. I don't think there would
be enough new developments in the crocheting world for a three times a
week news show. I don't want to assume. I I just haven't
looked. Anyway, here's Quickbits. For Microsoft's 50th birthday, the tech
giant gifted a ton of new features to its AI assistant, Copilot, which is not
normally how birthdays work, but okay. Copilot can now do basically anything
ChatGpt and Gemini can do, including web search and deep research. It can
remember stuff you tell it to, see your computer screen, use your computer for
you with actions, and even generate yepy podcasts hosted by imaginary
Manhattanites, just like Google's Notebook LM. Speaking of, Notebook LM
can now search for more sources than the ones you feed into it. And MidJourney
released V7, their first image model, in
almost a year. And you can kind of see why when it's prompted to do this studio
Giblly thing. Ah, no. Um. Ah, no. That needs a few more minutes to cook. Put it
back. The PC gamer debate over whether NVIDIA's laptop GPUs should share the
same names as their desktop counterparts was given new fodder by notebook
check.net, whose review of the Shanker Neo16 laptop showed the RTX 5090 version
performing only 10 to 15% better than the RTX 5080 version. The gap between
the desktop versions of those cards is more like 55%. So, what are we supposed
to do when someone says, "I got an RTX 5090." And then we're like, "Really?"
And then they're like, "Yeah, I can't believe NVIDIA fitted into my new
laptop." What? Like, like, do we say, "Yeah, that's sick." And then go find a
couch to punch. What do I do? And a new social media platform has a bold new
idea to keep the toxicity at bay. Only have the site open for 3 hours a day. As
The Verge explains, it's called 7:39 due
to its opening hours being 7:39 p.m. to
10:39 p.m. Eastern time. And users get an email 1 minute before opening time to
let them know, "Okay, time to socialize.
Post your meme nonsense or hot takes and
know that others are also definitely online to interact with it or not
interact with it, making it way more easy to tell if your post was not even
bad in an ironic way. The site's landing
page advertises no endless scrolling and no FOMO. I mean, it's a great
idea. It's a great idea. Oh, an also
great idea I just had was, "Hey, uh,
what if you came back on Monday for more tech news?" Yeah, I know. It just it
just popped into my brain. I I actually have a lot of great ideas in my journal.
Maybe I'll show you.