- Daddy's home! That's right, I'm back from pat leave.
- What? - Because I hate my family.
- [Riley] Aw, don't call yourself "Daddy." That's...
- I like working. - You're right in front of me.
- Intel's been going on a bit of a promo tour
for their Arc graphics cards.
They even waltzed onto our set uninvited on Friday.
Very rude.
So maybe it's not exactly a coincidence
that a presentation slide listing prices
and performance tiers for the whole lineup of Intel GPUs
has strategically leaked.
The slide indicates you'll be paying
fewer than 400 US dollars for Intel's flagship A770.
It'll compete with the RTX 3060 Ti
and the Radeon 6650 XT,
so "flagship" might be stretching it a little.
Just below the A770 sits the A750,
which looks like it'll go toe-to-toe with the 3060 and 6600
at slightly lower cost.
Assuming that this slide is true,
which you should probably not do,
but we will, for fun,
Intel may be compensating
for the disappointing benchmarks we've seen so far
by actually choosing reasonable prices-
- What! - For their cards.
- [Riley] Huh?
- It's enough to make a gamer wanna see an Arc A870!
But Intel has shot down rumors that a higher-end card
that would compete in the enthusiast market would exist.
Not because they can't make it, of course.
- Oh, yeah. - They don't want to.
They just don't feel like it.
Stop being so pushy.
- Leave me alone. - Just chill.
Mostly pretty reliable Apple leaker Mark Gurman
has said that new MacBook Pros
featuring Apple's new M2 chip are in the works,
and unlike the currently available 13-inch MacBook Pro,
they might actually be worth buying.
- [Riley] Oh!
- Wow! - Got 'em!
- One will be a 14-inch model
while the other will have a 16-inch display,
and while it sounds like we shouldn't expect much
in terms of different design or outward features,
Apple appears to be hoping
the new M2 Pro and M2 Max variants
will be enough to entice prospective buyers.
If you bought one last year, upgrade already,
because otherwise it's just...
It's like the same laptop.
And not only that,
but we could also be getting a new Mac Pro
with an M2 Extreme Extreme! - Oh!
- Is that real?
- Yeah! - There was no M1 Extreme.
It went M1, then M1 Pro, Max, and Ultra,
which was two M1 Maxes put together, uh...
So what's an Extreme?
- [Riley] It's folded into a paper airplane.
- Everyone's talking about the images
from the James Webb Telescope,
and with how detailed they are,
you might think it has a crap-ton of onboard storage.
But according to a new IEEE report,
it only has 68-gigabyte SSD?
Which is smaller than what's probably
sitting in your computer or phone right now.
- [Riley] Oh, don't assume. I'm a minimalist.
- You're so much better than this stupid satellite
that's named after a different James.
But NASA chose this storage system
because it was specifically designed
to withstand the rigors of space,
which are so rigorous,
and given that it sends all the data back to Earth
once a day using a satellite band connection,
it actually doesn't need a ton of storage.
Is this TechLinked or Techquickie?
One thing to keep an eye on though
is that NASA expects the capacity
to fall to 60 gigabytes in 10 years
due to both drive wear and the impact of space radiation.
So rigorous!
Hopefully the drive trim enabled.
- [Riley] And hopefully it gained some superpowers
from that cosmic...
Like the Fantastic Four.
- Ah, yeah, yeah. - Did you see...
- John Krasans...
His, Kris...
Zit... (beep)
Now it's time for the Quick Bits,
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You could almost use it for your whole esports career
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and check out Secret Lab today.
Quick Bits are just one way of connecting
to the great cosmic mystery of tech news.
There are other ways,
but they're unnatural. (sinister music)
In the ever-spinning rumor mill
regarding the RTX 4000 series,
we've got another one for you.
It's now being claimed by a leaker
that the only card we might see
before the end of the year is the RTX 4090,
while everything further down the product stack
will be delayed until '23.
The delay is likely being caused
by oversupply of current-gen GPUs,
in a natural systemic process
that occurs without any human intervention
that may or may not make Nvidia more money.
- [Riley] Nothing we can do.
- Hey, at least you can buy something.
- That's true. - Huh?
The chair of the FCC
wants to increase America's broadband standard
to 100 megabits down and 20 up from the current mark,
which is 20 down and 3 up.
Pretty ambitious for a chair.
The old standard has been in place since early 2015,
and growth in both overall data usage and work from home
has caught the FCC's eye.
If the standard is increased,
the FCC can take more action to promote deployment,
but current political deadlock
makes it unclear when that will ever happen.
- [Riley] Oh!
- This could've been a statement
about any policy change ever.
- [Riley] Usually they get so much done.
- Yeah.
Speaking of politics, two US representatives
have asked the Federal Trade Commission...
That's the FTC, Riley. - Ah, got it.
- To take harder action against VPN services
that misrepresent how well they protect user privacy.
Their concerns revolve not just around deceptive advertising
but also that it's currently challenging
to audit any claims VPNs make.
But it's not clear if or when
the FTC will actually do anything about it.
Again, broadly applicable.
- [Riley] I mean, it's like the VPNs are in office.
- Instagram has rolled out a feature
allowing users to make purchases from chats.
The idea is that you can ping an account
with any questions about products, and if you wanna buy,
check out directly inside the conversation, baby.
Don't add cart, add to chat.
Coincidentally, I've also set up
all my normal conversations with my friends this way.
Insert coin to check my availability for pub night.
- [Riley] Are you available?
- And the mechanical hard drive
continues to get pushed out of the market
as only 45 million drives were shipped
in the second quarter of this year.
And while that sounds like a lot of drives,
it's 33% fewer than last year.
Wow!
Repeating, of course.
Although it isn't likely that the hard drive
will disappear completely anytime soon,
it could get pretty close.
So hold your spinners tight.
Savor these moments.
Something else. - And that's the end.
- And you get to savor tech news again on Wednesday,
but for today, you must stop savoring.
- Ah! - Swallow it already, dammit.
- [Riley] Oh no, I already savored.