- We could talk about tech news.
Yeah.
Yeah, we could talk about tech news.
Dell has made some good computers in their day.
Ever heard of the OptiPlex?
The XPS notebook?
Marcus?
- Nope. - Never heard of...
Oh, he doesn't know about computers.
Well, the company's Precision 7-series laptops
look pretty good as well,
except for one small problem:
they've got a proprietary memory connector,
according to some leaked presentation slides
courtesy of iGPU Extremist on Twitter.
So it looks like you will be able
to upgrade these laptops' DDR5 memory,
but only by using Dell's probably overpriced
Compression Attached Memory Modules, or CAMMs.
This, along with Dell's proprietary GPU modules,
makes the company just a little bit more like Apple.
They're not gonna hug you, bro.
It does look like Dell's system
could allow scaling laptop memory
up to 128 gigabytes, which is great,
bit if you put "scalable" in front of "CAM,"
you get "SCAM," so...
You don't need that much RAM.
Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter that Tesla
will no longer include the mobile connector accessory
by default with new vehicle purchases because, quote,
"Usage statistics were super low, so seemed wasteful."
Wait, sorry, it seemed wasteful to include the thing
that lets owners of an electric vehicle
charge it with a regular wall outlet?
It just seemed like more people wanted to spend 500 bucks
on a wall connector, so...
You can still buy the mobile connector separately.
Musk said they're lowering the price to $200,
though it's still listed on Tesla's site at $275,
and also is out of stock,
so maybe that contributed to this decision.
I mean, the usage statistics showed
that people just aren't using the mobile connector
because we're not making them anymore, so...
And smart home company Insteon
has apparently shut down its office and servers
without so much as an email to its thousands of users,
removing functionality from their devices and apps.
Multiple executives purged their LinkedIn accounts
of any reference to the company,
and some appear to have deleted their accounts entirely.
Thankfully, the Insteon community
has figured out some plugins and workarounds
that can keep the lights on.
(chuckles) That's...
But the incident serves as a warning
against investing in the wrong smart home company.
Thankfully, the industry seems to be moving
more towards open and interoperable standards, like Matter,
instead of the proprietary technology
that Insteon was known for.
Of course, there's always the option
to just go with a dumb home.
I mean, I find they have a certain charm.
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We could do some Quick Bits.
We could definitely do some Quick Bits.
A report from Insider claims Microsoft
may allow brands to display ads in free-to-play Xbox games,
but they wouldn't take a cut of the ad revenue.
It seems like the strategy
is just to attract more free-to-play game developers
towards the Xbox platform, which is great.
More soulless, microtransaction-infested multiplayer games.
That's what Xbox needs.
I mean, they did just buy a bunch of Massive studio's,
so these ad-ridden games will balance out
the deeper single-player games.
You don't want too many of those.
It's too much quality.
The hackers that stole more than $600 million worth
of cryptocurrency from the NFT game "Axie Infinity"
were based in North Korea, according to the FBI.
North Korea's Lazarus Group has reportedly been responsible
for stealing over $1 billion in crypto in recent years,
contributing greatly to the country's economy.
And your parents tell you to get a real job.
Some leaks are making it seem
like Twitter's upcoming edit button
could include functionality
to display a tweet's history after it's been edited,
which could allay some concerns
about the feature being used to hide bad takes.
Who knows, maybe this will normalize the idea
that it's okay to change your mind about stuff.
I'm already feeling the edit instinct.
The heavily anticipated Playdate handheld gaming toy thing
is finally out after many delays,
and the internet is full of tech reviewers
singing its praises.
It's a $180 2D Game Boy-looking thing
with 24 simple games built in
and a crank in addition to a D-pad and buttons.
And while you're not gonna feel the excitement
of taking down kaiju while playing it,
you might experience some feelings of quaintness, whimsy.
And a recent paper published in Nature
describes how scientists at the Wyss Center in Germany
managed to fit a brain-computer interface
onto a man with complete locked-in syndrome,
meaning he was entirely paralyzed,
which allowed him to learn to compose simple messages.
Using only his thoughts,
he was able to communicate with his son,
and even asked for specific foods.
Now, some of you are hearing this and thinking,
"Whoa, a way to never leave my chair again?"
No, that's the...
That's not the right takeaway.
Now I have to take myself away, so come back on Wednesday
and we can talk about whatever you want.
As long as it's tech news.