Isaac Schrödinger

The GPU market

A proper launch

That image of the in-store GPU stock was unreal. Only a handful of the new Nvidia cards while there are hundreds of cards from AMD! Looks like AMD had the correct strategy. They couldn't compete at the high-end. So, might as well flood the market and win mind and market share.

What The Hell?

Defective Silicon

I've been following tech news for over two decades. This is, by far, the worst GPU launch ever. Here's a list of the problems:

• Fake MSRPs. Sold out at nearly 50% higher prices.
• Fake frames to pump up the FPS numbers. In reality, mediocre performance increases from the previous generation.
• Real flames: melting power cables because of idiotic cost-cutting measures. Worse, they've known about this problem for over two years. Instead of fixing it, they boosted the power requirement on their top card!
• Drivers issues: black screens or BSOD.
• Removing PhysX.
• Imagine, paying a ridiculous $3,000 for their flagship card, only to learn that it has hardware defects.

Scummy gym

I agree. We definitely need less cat in the video. I repeat, less cat. LESS CAT!

Just a few scratches

Diverse customer support

"Multi-failure generation"

Just awful behavior from the biggest company in the world. Near-zero supply, pointless MSRPs, melting power connectors on $3,000 GPUs, fake frames, real flames, wonky drivers, black screens, and now hardware defects. They practically own the market; they could have delayed the launch to fix these issues. Instead, their reputation takes a beating.

At least it doesn't melt

A $1,000 GPU with a small chance of defect:

As Nvidia confirmed yesterday, a handful of RTX 50 GPUs have been affected by a manufacturing defect resulting in fewer ROPs than specified. The impacted GPUs, per Nvidia, include the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5070 Ti [...]

I bet that a majority of the customers who get the slightly defective 5070 Ti won't even be aware of that fact since it still gets 90-95% of the performance. Those who complain will get replacements while the returned cards will be sold back in the market at slightly lower prices.

Very shrewd of Nvidia.

Magnificent

This is one of the software engineers working with Elon Musk on DOGE to reduce our country's excessive spending problem.

Unfathomably based pic.twitter.com/F7UjAWoBUy

— Alex Cohen (@anothercohen) February 3, 2025

What is it sensing?

We are going to have a lot of angry 5090 customers in the coming months.

Very Hot Power!

Why does Nvidia insist on one cable that can't handle all that power? That 150 degrees Celsius is a disaster waiting to happen. Forget the $3,000 graphics card and the power supply, it can take out a decent chunk of one's residence. The damage could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Imagine if children or pets get hurt. That's going to be one massive lawsuit. Just shockingly dumb behavior from a company worth $3 trillion.

For customers who want to use the 5090, a sensible option would be to limit the power of the GPU to 450-500 watts. The performance hit is worth the minimization of risk.

FAFO

Scan retina to buy food

Lawyers will be very busy with discrimination lawsuits because of the combination of AI, facial recognition, and targeted pricing. Even though it's not intended, the racial component will become obvious.

Pump up those frames!

After two and half years, we get the new flagship that's 30% faster for a 25% higher price. No wonder, Nvidia is touting multi-frame generation which is going to make the 5090 look so much more powerful.

More than four decode rings!

I don't know what AMD was thinking by naming all their big three so closely.

9070 is a graphics card.
9950X3D is a desktop CPU.
9955HX3D is a mobile CPU.

And then add a few dozen other similarly named components in the mix. If professional reviewers have trouble following the insane naming schemes, then the average customer has no chance.

Very Bad Truck!

Tesla Cybertruck Voted 'Worst Vehicle' By National Association Of Terrorist Car Bombers https://t.co/Tir7Kf3ZWD pic.twitter.com/y5e2xIOxN9

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) January 2, 2025

ASUS GAS

G-Good A-At S-Screwing

It is impressive to get worse performance for a computer that costs $800 more than what one can just buy and build. Seriously, it's a shoddy setup and horrific value. Expected better from this premier Taiwanese company.

A famous Italian relaxes

Money well spent

Elon is such a dumbass. He spent $44 billion on Twitter and all he got was control of all 3 branches of the federal government.

— Whole Mars Catalog (@WholeMarsBlog) November 6, 2024

So very dumb

Surely, Google wouldn't be stupid enough to hide an interview with the upcoming POTUS that has nearly 35 MILLION views?

There is massive far left censorship at Google/YouTube https://t.co/vwNLYvaPy1

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2024

Just checked. Lots of short clips show up but not the interview. Shocking! I linked to the 3-hour conversation yesterday, clicked it, and people are complaining in the comments about the fact that Google is hiding it from the search results!

Keeping those margins high

My PC had 16GB of RAM in 2012. Apple finally decided to offer that as their base spec:

Apple is refreshing its 24-inch iMac, making it the first Mac the company is updating to its M4 lineup of processors. [...]

In a welcome move, every single iMac now starts with 16GB of unified memory. This is likely due to the performance demands of Apple Intelligence, but it's nice to see Apple start to phase 8GB out. For $200, you can bump up to 24GB of RAM, while configuring to 32GB costs another $200. (32GB models are also only available with 512GB or more storage, though I can't imagine most people who want 32GB of RAM would deal with a 256GB drive).

Yup. It's the usual ploy to offer bigger and sensible drives at unreasonable prices. I wouldn't even recommend 256GB in a phone in 2024; buying that in a desktop today is absurd. This way Apple can advertise "low" prices but getting a decent computer is going to add a lot of change.

Hyperactivated AI

Researchers and engineers using OpenAI’s Whisper audio transcription tool have said that it often includes hallucinations in its output, commonly manifested as chunks of text that don't accurately reflect the original recording. According to the Associated Press, a University of Michigan researcher said that he found made-up text in 80% of the AI tool’s transcriptions that were inspected, which led to him trying to improve it.

As the article mentions, this is used with patients. Errors in transcription could have lethal consequences. What is strange, though, is the bizarre output from the AI. It's not even close to what the speaker said.

For example, one speaker said, “He, the boy, was going to, I’m not sure exactly, take the umbrella,” but Whisper transcribed, “He too a big piece of a cross, a teeny, small piece … I’m sure he didn’t have a terror knife so he killed a number of people.” Another recording said, “two other girls and one lady,” and the AI tool transcribed this as “two other girls and one lady, um, which were Black.” Lastly, one medical-related example showed Whisper writing down “hyperactivated antibiotics” in its output, which do not exist.

The really scary part?

Despite the above news, Nabla, an ambient AI assistant that helps clinicians transcribe the patient-doctor interaction, and create notes or reports after the visit, still uses Whisper. The company claims that over 45,000 clinicians across 85+ health organizations use the tool, including Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Mankato Clinic in Minnesota.

Lawyers must be salivating at the future cases from this nonsense.

Expensive crumbs for gamers

I was stunned when Nvidia released the 3080 with 10GB of VRAM while their top card, the 3090, came out with 24GB. I initially thought that Nvidia was saving a 16GB card, to be released a few months later, while they sell out their premium 3090. Yeah, that didn't happen.

That insane gulf really impacted gamers when the newest games at the time peaked at 11-13GB usage. So, there definitely will be a few games that can use over 16GB next year. Time to fork over $2,000 for a graphics card if you want the best experience.

Nightmare for reviewers

Microsoft is the major culprit in this non-sense. Reviewers and diligent customers will now have to pay extra attention to their software as "bad installs" can incur a huge penalty.

Nothing works anymore

AMD had a golden opportunity to win huge market share from Intel after their CPU degradations and deaths. Instead, we got an undercooked processor line-up with incomplete software patches.

As the author mentions: what was the hurry? A month or two delay would have been prudent. Why, AMD, why!?

Thanks Steve!

Poor Pat! He feels so sorry for chopping up the Intel family. Seriously, the fact that Intel had some idea about bizarre CPU behavior and failures for nearly two years makes them super sleazy. Lawyers are going to make a lot of money from Intel.

Tech darling of the Internet Age

AMD came back from the dead with Ryzen and Nvidia dominates in the graphics arena while Intel has no answer. Now, their stock is getting scorched with dragon fire:

The shares fell more than 26% after trading opened in New York on Friday, wiping out about $32 billion in market value. This marks the stock’s biggest biggest intraday drop since since at least 1982, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Sales for the current quarter will be $12.5 billion to $13.5 billion, the company said Thursday. Analysts had projected $14.38 billion on average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Intel will have a loss of 3 cents a share, excluding certain items, versus expectations for a profit of 30 cents.

Intel is losing money. So, it logically follows:

It’s also suspending dividend payments to shareholders starting in the fourth quarter, and will continue that until “cash flows improve to sustainably higher levels,” according to the statement. The company has paid a dividend since 1992.

They wasted their dominance in the 2010s. Instead of accelerating their tech lead and destroying AMD, they released incremental upgrades of their CPUs. Instead of making low-power and efficient processors for the phone market, they stuck with their power-hungry architectures. Not to mention, all the diversity BS didn't help.

Intel used to make CPUs for Apple products. Today, Apple can literally buy Intel with their cash reserves!

This FAFO goes to 11

You will own nothing!

I admit it. I laughed at the cloud bit. Then, I subscribed.

Sexy beast

pic.twitter.com/Vl8rZxQRZz

— Kyle (@iamkylehansen) July 10, 2024

The crazy we need

Some filters are more equal than others

Amazon AI pic.twitter.com/sSxnUAgI7E

— I,Hypocrite (@lporiginalg) July 2, 2024

Of course, AI is RAYCISS

Cue the accusations of racism in 3, 2, 1, .....

— Dorsal Morsel (@DorsalMorsel) June 10, 2024

The Tech Mafia

No photoshop for you!

Called it. https://t.co/DSqBVG9QW9 pic.twitter.com/AYAuGtCVen

— Possum Reviews (@ReviewsPossum) June 6, 2024

Let's see how long it takes for Adobe to ban a customer for his VERY BAD MEMES.

Steam survey says!

I bought 16GB of RAM in 2012 for CAD$120.

Steam just released its monthly hardware survey, and there are a few noteworthy trends worth commenting on. While the majority of Steam users have 16GB of RAM (47.08%), a good number are quickly migrating to 32GB.

Of all the components in the PC, RAM is by far the easiest to upgrade. When premium graphics cards go for over $1,000, there's no sense in getting or not upgrading 16GB of main memory. Given all that, this was quite shocking:

While we cannot explain the increases for computers with less than 8GB RAM, the small jump in 8GB systems could be explained by the existence of ultrabooks and gaming laptops that still come with just 8GB of RAM out of the box — something we will never recommend that you buy, unless you plan to upgrade it swiftly.

The increase in systems with 8GB RAM could also be attributed to Apple, especially as all its Macs and MacBooks start with that default quota, except for the 16-inch MacBook Pro, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro. Even though Apple claims 8GB equals 16GB on PCs, many say that it’s nowhere near enough for professional workloads.

That was a shit move by Apple. When phones come with 12GB of RAM, using 8 on a computer is absurd.

"This is a total scam now!"

Refurbished inception!

I was surprised when the guy got his fifth (or was it sixth?) motherboard. No point dealing with dishonest clowns. Just go to a different motherboard brand. It can't be any worse.

Those Crazy Koreans!

I wonder what Samsung will break next. Will they stop updating their earphones software? That would definitely piss off a lot more customers.

Google censorship

The AI has been trained to shadow ban the pesky peasants who go against the Narrative:

I just tried to leave a 1-star review for my local Walmart (for only hiring East Indians) and noticed that my total number of reviews didn't increase by one after I clicked Save. I could see my review in my profile but it still showed the same total as before I wrote it.

When I viewed the Walmart page on Google Maps in Private Browsing mode, the most recent review was from a few weeks ago and mine didn't show up. Straight away knew a filter was being applied and it was a very bad sign.

Asus generic response

Electrifying enrichment!

The mugshots should be interesting.

Tesla Supercharger station in Bay Area hit by thieves with every charging cable cut pic.twitter.com/ro38DkJKqQ

— Clown World ™ 🤡 (@ClownWorld_) May 13, 2024

Continuing with RMA hell

Impressively sleazy behavior from Asus:

A Canadian ASUS customer has shared his recent experience with Asus service, claiming the firm quoted an egregious amount — about $2,748.49 (CAD 3,758) — to repair an RTX 4090 GPU that needed its 16-pin power connector replaced. The price is exceptionally high, especially given that the graphics card, purchased two weeks prior, retails for $2,050 (CAD 2,799).

The cost to "repair" that Asus graphics card is 134% of the retail price of the card. What are these people smoking?

"Feels like a scam"

What the hell is going on with all these tech companies? The Sony earphone battery issues, the Nvidia melting connector problems, and Asus screwing their customers by not honoring their warranties.

I used Asus motherboards for my last five computer builds. Likely not for the next one.

Died Very Suddenly

In a press conference held this morning, Boeing sadly announced that a whistleblower had shot himself in the back while falling off a skyscraper directly into a wood chipper while wearing cement shoes.

Though the shocking incident is the second such death of a Boeing whistleblower in as many months, the company saw no correlation between the two terrible tragedies that were in no way the results of any type of foul play and were clearly instances of suicide.

It could happen to anyone. Personally, I think it's climate change.

The magic of chips

Save the carrots!

Quite a takedown. Also, soon, we'll all be Nazis.

Thumbs on the scale

HOLY SHlT. Google just quietly changed its search results for "bloodbath definition" pic.twitter.com/3AnPCetQpv

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 21, 2024

John Barnett didn't kill himself

Switch to Airbus

At least 50 people were hurt when a Boeing 787 operated by LATAM Airlines dropped abruptly mid-flight from Sydney to Auckland on Monday, according to the airline and a New Zealand health service organisation that treated the injured.

Always wear your seat belt. Otherwise, this can happen:

"Some of the roof panels were broken from people being thrown up and knocking through the plastic roof panels in the aisle ways. And there was blood coming from several people's heads." Jokat, who was not injured in the incident, said. He said passengers who were doctors on the plane provided bandages and neck braces for people who were severely injured.

That's some serious trauma.