- [Riley mumbling]
- [James] Uh, Riley?
- What the?
What the? I didn't know we were ready.
You should knock first.
After announcing the welcome news last week
that users could install Windows 11
on hardware that's not officially supported,
as long as they're okay dealing with potential issues,
yesterday, Microsoft made it clear that they themselves
would definitely be the source of one of those issues,
telling the Verge that such unsupported installs
aren't entitled to get Windows updates,
whether that be new features, security patches, or drivers.
The VC community is obviously in an uproar,
as this is just the latest misstep
in Microsoft's Windows 11 marketing strategy.
Now, it seems kind of unlikely
that Microsoft would actually follow through with this,
at least when it comes to security updates,
since it continued to support Windows 7
long after it said they were through.
It's over!
Just kidding!
This seems to happen all the time with Microsoft,
and the solution seems to be
to bully them into changing their mind.
Let's all threaten to switch to Chrome.
- [James] Clamoring! Clamoring!
- Ah, come on. What's the matter you, huh?
- [James] Let's rabble.
- Who do you think you are, Microsoft? Apple?
Sony is quietly releasing a slightly tweaked model
of the PlayStation 5.
And thanks to a teardown by Austin Evans,
the internet got to take a peek
at the new model's significantly smaller heat sink.
- [James] Was it worth it?
- Oh, yeah.
Many were concerned the smaller cooling unit
would make the PS5 run hot.
And indeed, Evans noticed thermal exhaust temperatures
that were higher than the reference model
by three to five degrees Celsius.
However, while Evans concludes this is a bad thing,
many internet engineers are pointing out
that evidence by itself doesn't actually say anything
about the new unit's cooling ability.
The heat sink may be smaller
because the cooling system was actually designed
to be more efficient.
And the exhaust is hotter because it's removing more heat
from the system components.
- [James] Because it's straight fire!
- Yeah, get it.
Austin, listen, you know we love you,
but maybe you should do an epic collab with Steve
to sort this out.
That's not a joke. Do it.
And you may be familiar with the saga
of Arm's Chinese subsidiary,
whose CEO refused to leave after being ousted by the board
for using his position
to enhance his own personal business last year.
Well, that CEO, Allen Wu,
has remained in power at Arm China since then,
keeping representatives from the real Arm
out of the Arm China building with private security
and firing dissenters.
- [James] The severed Arm crawling around on its own.
(laughs)
- And now, the tech heist of the century has been completed.
During a glitzy announcement event,
Arm China rebranded itself with a new name
that roughly translates to Arm Limited
or Amu Technology, according to Google?
- [James] Forearm, that's what that's called.
- For Arm!
The new company will be developing its own processors
and selling them to its existing partners in China,
who may or may not know about the whole thing.
- [James] Or care, Riley.
- Yeah, it's a chip.
Betcha can't eat just one.
Wow, I wish Arm had listened to that age-old advice:
don't get into a land war in Asia
or hire supervillain masterminds
as the CEO of your foreign subsidiary.
This is just basic stuff.
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Quick Bits?
Mmm, yeah, okay.
In other China-related news,
the country has further limited the length of time
that kids under 18 can play video games.
Before, they got one and a half hours per day
and three hours on holidays.
Now, there's no video games-
- [James] Only school.
- from Monday to Thursday,
and you can play for one hour, listen to this,
on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays,
only from 8:00 to 9:00 PM.
- [James] Everyone's online at the same time
so you can matchmake-
- That's what I was just gonna say!
I can get behind the idea of limited gaming time,
especially when the parents won't do it, but...
At least the servers will be full.
Matchmaking won't be a problem.
And one more China story.
The nation's Supreme Court has ordered
that nearly 500,000 AMD Radeon RX 470 graphics cards
be returned to a crypto mining company called Genesis
after a dispute with its hosting provider.
The only problem is China has banned crypto mining
in many of its provinces.
- [James] And video games, for that matter.
Send them over here!
- Yeah, so Genesis could set up shop in a different country
if they find some way to transport half a million GPUs,
or they could sell them and maybe help the GPU market even
because prices are starting to rise again.
Come on!
What can you run with an RX 470? League?
Big fan?
Who do you main?
Well, with the chip shortage still going strong,
maybe it's not so exciting to hear
that new Threadripper CPUs are on the way from AMD,
with listings found for the 64-core,
128-thread Threadripper PRO 5995WX.
How much is a thread worth to you, James? Fifty bucks?
- [James] Is it ripped?
- They have to come in a bundle, though.
Over in Belarus, hackers are attempting
to disrupt the regime of its dictatorial leader,
Alexander Lukashenko, whose election win in September 2020
is widely considered as fraudulent.
And the ethical hackers are reportedly being assisted
by government workers on the inside,
helping to leak information and cover for protests.
I miss the days when "Watch Dogs" was
a futuristic hell scenario.
I miss a lot of things.
And Instagram really, really wants to know your birthday,
obviously because they are getting you a delicious cake
and not because they're gonna restrict your experience
if you're under 18.
Just kidding; it's probably the second one.
But moves like this are actually being recommended
by analysts concerned that social media,
like Instagram and TikTok,
are responsible for pretty much every bad thing
that's happening right now: crises of mental illness,
hyper-political polarization, climate change,
that nasty oil spill, my knee kind of hurts.
It's the Instagram.
- [James] It is.
- But don't worry; we won't ask for your birthday
yet.
We only ask you to come back on Wednesday
for more tech news.
There will be cake.