Four score and seven years ago,
there was no tech news.
But if there was,
it definitely wasn't included in any YouTube videos.
They were making videos about the Spanish civil wars,
I don't know.
Being poor.
AMD has confirmed the existence of its Ryzen Z2 Extreme processor,
the successor to the Z1 Extreme,
powering gaming handhelds like Lenovo's Legion Go
and the Asus ROG Ally X.
According to Digital Trends,
in a joint briefing with Microsoft at the IFA 2024 conference,
AMD said they're targeting a release date
of early 2025 for the Z2 Extreme,
which would presumably arrive inside of new handheld devices,
not floating down from the sky with little parachutes
after being shot out of an air cannon.
I don't know who keeps putting that idea in the script.
It's very stupid.
No specs for the chip were given,
but AMD exec Jack Huynh said he wants to play Black Myth Wukong
for three hours instead of the 45 minutes current handhelds can muster.
And Jack, he gets what he wants.
Team Red also said they're working with several partners,
which could include Valve.
The Steam Deck did not use a Z1 chip,
but it did use AMD chips.
So we may see the Z2 Extreme power the Steam Deck too,
or, Valve might follow Acer,
who went with a Ryzen 7 8840HS in their recently announced handheld
and energy drink from 2010, the Nitro Blaze 7.
Intel was having a great week following its reveal of Lunar Lake
as a compelling answer to Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series laptop chips.
But then Intel had to go and mess it up
by announcing it's outsourcing the production of Lunar Lake's successor, Arrow Lake,
to external partners.
It's not a great look,
as the plan has been to manufacture Arrow Lake on the Intel 20A node for years.
But don't worry, Intel found a good way to spin this.
You see, they've had early success on Intel 18A,
which enables them to shift engineering resources from Intel 20A earlier than expected.
We're giving up on our own technology
and outsourcing production to our competitors,
but that's a good thing.
We went for coffee with them.
And they're really, they're not so bad.
They're good guys.
The news is inviting speculation
about whether CEO Pat Gelsinger really is the chosen one,
prophesied to bring balance to the fabs.
According to Reuters,
it's also making Qualcomm consider trying to acquire different pieces of Intel,
like a Vulture planning which giblets is gonna pick off a half-dead antelope
dragging itself across the Savannah.
That's a gruesome image.
Who put this in here?
This is a kid's show.
This is, kids gotta learn.
Death is a part of life.
That's tech news, baby.
The Internet Archive has lost its attempt to appeal the final ruling
from its March 2023 court battle with the Association of American Publishers,
in which the archive's operation as a nonprofit digital library was found to be copyright infringement.
Publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, and Penguin, Random House
sued the Internet Archive in 2020 over its controlled digital lending system.
In the recent appeals decision, the judges ask,
is it fair use to scan copyrighted physical books
and distribute as many digital copies as you have physical copies for free?
As if you're some kind of library or something?
No!
You buy your books like the Founding Fathers intended.
I don't know, we're Canadian.
I don't know the amendments.
Okay, that was close.
Except, like other libraries,
the Internet Archive does buy books,
which, as author Malcolm Harris points out on Twitter,
means they're not really taking sales away from individual authors.
But I admit, we're not legal experts,
and the only place the Internet Archive has left to take this case is the Supreme Court,
so we'll see how things play out there.
Though this does make me agree with Twitter user Gentlemanbug,
if scanning books doesn't count as fair use,
where is the publisher lawsuit against OpenAI?
I mean, last I heard, they had scanned some things.
Their butt.
Don't let weirdos scan your butt.
The Quick Bits are so fast,
we can't say four score in seven years ago.
We just say 87 years ago.
We don't have time to be poetic.
Ah!
Version 6.0 of the Bluetooth standard has been released,
a mere eight years after the last major version.
Yes, I know 5.4 came out last year,
but shh, ah, that doesn't...
Why do you know so much about Bluetooth standards?
In addition to reducing power consumption and increasing efficiency,
Bluetooth 6's channel sounding feature will allow centimeter level accuracy
for device tracking over considerable distances.
This could allow Google's Find My Device network to catch up to Apple's,
which currently uses ultra-wideband tech for precision tracking.
Or Apple could ditch the ultra-wideband chips
in their devices and make them cheaper for customers.
And I'm just kidding, that's not gonna happen.
Phone maker Honor is using AI to fight nearsightedness.
Nearsightedness, or myopia, a condition from which I sadly suffer,
occurs when eyes grow longer to better focus on close objects,
something that has apparently grown more commonplace, in a world full of screens.
Where are the people?
Some of Honor's devices, like the Magic V3 foldable phone,
use advanced display and AI tech to defocus certain colors.
Apparently, this may help slow the progression of myopia.
Could this also be solved with less screen time?
Maybe,
but Honor also has an AI-powered deep fake video detector.
And yes,
maybe that problem would also be solved with less screen time,
but can I have one positive AI story?
Please just let me have this.
U.S. Navy chiefs got in trouble
for illegally conspiring to install a Starlink satellite dish on their warship.
Apparently, the internet on Navy ships is often restricted to preserve bandwidth
and maintain operational security.
But the big dogs on board wanted to check sports scores
and stream movies uninterrupted.
Is that real?
So they smuggled the dish on board
and bolted it to a wooden pallet strapped to the ship.
They may have gotten away with it too,
if they bothered to hide their network's SSID.
Instead, rank and file sailors started asking why
there was an unexplained wifi network named Stinky.
And that just didn't smell right.
California-based startup Reflect Orbital
has the modest goal of being able to sell sunlight
in the middle of the night using giant sky mirrors.
While physically plausible,
it's not actually clear Reflect Orbital
even has the technology to pull this kind of orbital sun mirror stunt.
I think it's plausible.
The company has yet to launch anything into space,
but it's currently taking four minute reservations
via its website for late next year.
As part of the reservation process,
they ask you why you want your very own nighttime patch of sun.
Perhaps because they also don't know why anyone would buy this over a hundred dollar spotlight.
Do they?
And engineers from Cornell and Florence University
have created a new bio-hybrid robot
that uses electrical signals from an edible mushroom to control a mechanical body.
Why do we have to say it's edible?
Mushrooms can sense different chemical signals from the world all around them.
Which allows the bio-robot to dynamically respond to its environment.
Obvious applications include recreating the predator-prey relationship
as a form of enrichment for vegans.
This isn't an entirely new concept.
Nearly a decade ago,
the Open Worm Project created a digital version of a worm's brain
that could be uploaded into a Lego robot
in a kind of black mirror, but for invertebrates concept.
What are we doing here?
Why?
What's next?
I created a cyborg celery.
Why?
Here's another concept.
Come back on Monday for more tech news.
I'm gonna hold my breath until then to make sure you show up.
If you don't,
I won't take another breath and I could die.
Please.