- Okay. We're trying something new today.
- [Linus] What is it?
- You have to guess. - Oh.
- It's that "see if you spot anything different".
- [Linus] Tech news?
(Riley stutters)
- The USB Implementers Forum has, yet again,
angered fans of reasonable naming conventions
with the announcement of USB4 Version 2.0.
Yeah, now this wouldn't even be that bad in a vacuum.
USB4 V2, you know?
- [Linus] Yeah, yeah.
- I can see that. Annoying, but I could get used to it.
- [Linus] What gen though?
- (sputters) There's no gens anymore.
The really annoying thing is it represents
yet another departure from previous USB naming schemes
which were responsible for monstrosities
like USB 3.2 Gen 2x2.
Why couldn't they just call this USB 4.1, that would...
Well, as developer Benson (stutters)
Leung? (screen beeps)
Well, as developer Benson Leung points out,
the term version means that this announcement
is mainly geared towards developers
who know that this is simply the second version
of the spec document for USB4.
Instead of seeing "USB4 Version 2.0" on a product box,
consumers will probably see USB4 20 gigabits per second
or USB4 80 gigabits per second.
- [Linus] Actually acceptable.
- Which is actually more syllables and is worse.
- [Linus] But comprehensible.
- Come on, Benson.
JK. I appreciate the tweets.
He tweeted at us. - Hi.
- Good news, if you didn't pick up on it just there,
is that version 2.0 could allow your existing USB4 cables
to support 80 gigabits per second,
double their current max speed, depending on the cable.
- [Linus] Shut the front door.
- I won't. Maybe this is just a fact of life, you know.
Things get faster and then they make less sense.
That's relativity.
- [Linus] People slow down.
- Einstein knew about this.
The debate around AI art has been inflamed once more,
following the news that a man named Jason Allen
won a Colorado state fair art competition
by submitting an AI-generated image.
The twist? Jason Allen is an AI.
(intense music)
(Riley chuckles)
Allen actually submitted the image
as "Jason Allen via Midjourney",
the name of the art generator he used.
But state fair judges in Colorado understandably
didn't appear to know what that implied.
- [Linus] Always coming from Midjourney.
(Riley laughs)
- And Allen didn't seem to think it was necessary
to be more explicit about how the artwork came about since-
- [Linus] Dumb. (Riley laughs)
- [Riley] Since he used a special prompt
which he will be publishing at a later date.
- [Linus] That's art, baby.
- Now the idea of creating "prompts"
as a specialized skill might seem weird
but already there are marketplaces like PromptBase
where such special prompts are being sold
by prompt engineers.
- I'm quitting. (Riley laughs)
- James and I talked about this
for half an hour yesterday on TalkLinked,
so listen to that if you need some time to process
this wild new reality.
- [Linus] We're really smart.
- It's happening.
And processor design company Arm
has sued one of its biggest licensees,
processor design company Qualcomm
over the latter's acquisition
of processor design company Nuvia over a year ago.
It's a bit of a Cain and Abel situation.
They're just attacking.
You know, the Bible? (chuckles)
See, Arm's upset because Nuvia's licensed
to develop chips using Arm technology expired in March
and mostly covered the creation of server CPUs.
But Qualcomm is making chips for laptops,
smartphones, cars and more,
which was covered by Qualcomm's license
under which Nuvia should technically now fall.
It's a weird case, made all the more confusing
by the fact that Arm only stands to gain
if Qualcomm succeeds in the laptop and server markets
where Arm-based tech isn't as strong as X86.
It's like shooting yourself in the foot
trying to hit a spider,
but the spider's trying to steal your shoe.
- [Linus] Is there any shoes?
- Trying to get away with it, so you shoot
and oops! - Do you know how many feet
spiders got?
- Too many.
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Quick bits weren't always like this.
They were different before.
Intel has held up their promise to show
how competitive their Arc gaming GPUS are
against NVIDIA's offerings when it comes to ray tracing.
Blue dudes, Tom Petersen and Ryan Shrout posted a new video
to the Intel Graphics channel today
with benchmark showing the Arc A770
performing about 14% better on average than an RTX 3060
in 1080p gaming with ray tracing enabled.
You know, they're really trying, you know.
And I honestly feel like bumping that 14% up a few points
just for that.
Like, good job, guys. Love a positive attitude.
Google has expanded user choice billing for the Play Store
from the European Economic Area
to include now India, Australia, Indonesia, and Japan.
- [Linus] What about us?
- Nope. We're not special.
Where developers will now be able to apply
to accept payment methods other than Google Pay.
If developers are approved,
they'll get a 4% discount on Play Store fees
which could mean devs that are already qualify
for a lower 15% standard cut
could pay as little as 11%.
That's...
It's not bad.
See? Corporations can do good things.
You just have to continually mount public campaigns
and threaten them with lawsuits and federal regulation.
That's how it's always been.
It's how the cavemen did it.
The US government has banned chip makers like NVIDIA and AMD
from selling their most powerful AI processors to China
in order to prevent such chips from being potentially used
by the Chinese military.
Much better to force them to innovate
and possibly create something even more powerful.
- [Linus] Only a matter of time.
- NVIDIA will, however, be allowed to continue producing
its flagship H100 chips in China
but once the chip is finished,
it must be sealed in wax and launched out of a can
and over the sea to land safely in America.
- [Linus] We'll be waiting with our mouths open.
(Riley laughs)
- Ohio-based company Folio Photonics
thinks they have the answer to the problem
of long-term data storage,
CD-freaking-ROMs.
Okay, they're not CDs.
They're called ACTIVE discs, which can store
up to a terabyte for more than a century
while being resistant to changes in temperature and humidity
and being immune to radiation and electromagnetic pulses.
- [Linus] Ooh, I love a good pulse.
- You would.
They're also like five bucks a terabyte,
so the cockroaches are gonna go wild for these things.
Did you, 'cause when a nuke happens...
And Halo Infinite's developers, 343 Industries,
have announced that the game
will not support split-screen co-op.
- Boo! - A favorite feature
seen as a franchise staple among hardcore Halo fans.
- [Linus] Boo.
- Yeah, the news comes after company representatives
explicitly addressed earlier games' lack of the feature
and promised it would return in both 2017 and 2019.
This is only one of the many complaints
gamers have about this particular game
and virtually every other game.
- [Linus] Don't they have siblings?
- We are done making this TechLinked.
Come back on Monday for more tech news
and you can let me know if you spotted the new, weird thing.
It was weird.
Run behind me.
I thought you were gonna hit me.