TT Show Episode 13 - JerryRigEverything, RTX 4090 sold as AI GPU, OLED burn-in study, and more!
The TT Show is back, and Episode 13 covers a big week of news and fun happenings in the tech, gaming, and science space. This week, Jak and Kosta dive into the YouTube channel JerryRigEverything's lawsuit against a billion-dollar company, how the final batch of GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs in China are being repurposed for AI, and how a new rigorous study into OLED panels is ultimately good news even if the results show that all OLED displays eventually show signs of burn-in.
Oh, and then there's the curious case of Ubisoft's 'technical error' where players saw in-game full-screen pop-up ads while playing Assassin's Creed! The duo also looks at the state of cloud gaming and services like GeForce NOW, which NVIDIA is increasingly pushing to gain a foothold. And with the shift to the cloud and all things digital, there's also a lengthy tangent all about the importance of physical media in an age where content can disappear.
On the fun side, you definitely want to listen or watch the full episode as the final story involves a Meta Quest 3 and "magical pooping." And, as always, a little bit of GrandTheft auto 6 talk. The latest episode of TweakTown's official podcast can be viewed above or listened to on your favorite podcast service around the globe.
Intel's next-gen Clearwater Forest Xeon CPU has only E-Cores, but up to 288 cores
Intel's next-gen Xeon, codenamed Clearwater Forest, will feature up to 288 cores with an updated CPU architecture, but those 288 cores will exclusively be E-Cores, not the higher-performance P-Cores that Intel has on its CPUs.
This is according to new leaks on the scene, which tease that Intel's 2nd Gen Xeon CPU family will be based on the E-Core CPU architecture, while the first E-Core-only CPUs are codenamed Sierra Forest, which Intel will release in the 2H of 2024. If Intel stays on track, that means we should expect to see Clearwater Forest CPUs sometime in 2025... but this could slip into 2026 easily.
Intel's new Clearwater Forest architecture will feature an updated version of the Skymont E-Core architecture, which it'll be the 5th Gen E-Core architecture, with Gracemont being the first. Intel's next-gen Gracemont architecture will be launching on the new Meteor Lake CPUs, which will be making their debut on December 14 at Intel's upcoming "AI Everywhere" event.
Xbox exec: 'With AI, anyone can be a game developer'
Xbox gaming CFO Tim Stuart shares how AI could make game development more efficient, but it could also lead to job eliminations in the $185 billion entertainment sector.
A bit ago, Microsoft announced that it was integrating generative AI into its Xbox gaming toolset in an effort to make games more efficient. At a time when the games industry has seen mass layoffs with thousands of people losing work, the news was seen as controversial, with Microsoft claiming that the AI could generate quests, stories and dialog.
Now Xbox gaming CFO Tim Stuart discusses how AI could handle processes like localization, scripting, and dialog sequences via tools that could lead to more game development roles being eliminated through this automation process. Stuart also touches upon how everyday people can become 'citizen creators' through AI, effectively allowing anyone to become a game developer.
Continue reading: Xbox exec: 'With AI, anyone can be a game developer' (full post)
Microsoft seeks partners to build Xbox mobile store
According to Microsoft's lawyers, mobile was the main impetus for the $68.7 billion Activision-Blizzard acquisition. Now Microsoft wants to make its own storefront to ensure it maximizes returns for that investment...but the company may not be able to do it alone.
Microsoft is seeking partners to help realize its ambitious vision for a Universal Store. This plan would see games being sold across consoles, PC, and mobile, the last being a critical part of the Activision-Blizzard buyout and a front where Microsoft has traditionally been weak in. In order to pull this off and ensure the mobile fork of the Universal Store doesn't just peter out, Microsoft wants to team up with other developers and publishers to challenge Google's and Apple's mobile stores.
"It's an important part of our strategy and something we are actively working on today not only alone, but talking to other partners who'd also like to see more choice for how they can monetize on the phone,'' Xbox gaming CEO Phil Spencer said at the CCXP23 event in Brazil.
Continue reading: Microsoft seeks partners to build Xbox mobile store (full post)
NVIDIA and AMD GPU frame generation can be combined for 3x faster FPS - but it's a silly idea
Falling under the category of 'harebrained schemes' is a project that combined NVIDIA's frame generation (DLSS 3) with Team Red's own take on this tech, AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF).
Surprisingly, it is possible to stack up and use both these rival technologies together, and doing so can boost frame rates massively - up to tripling them, in fact - but the full story is a lot more than just frames per second.
QuasarZone (a Korean tech site) carried out this experiment (flagged up by VideoCardz), using a PC with two graphics cards inside, one NVIDIA and one AMD as you'd expect.
Raspberry Pi 5 with AMD Radeon RX 460 can run Portal, Minecraft
Raspberry Pi can do a million things, but run a discrete graphics card it cannot... that is, until the new Raspberry Pi 5 and Jeff Gerling, who is running an AMD Radeon RX 460 and playing popular games like Minecraft and Portal through his Pi 5.
The newer Raspberry Pi 5 doesn't have any PCIe connectors, but it can be forced up to PCIe Gen3 specs (up to 10GT/s) compared to the Raspberry Pi 4, which was limited to PCIe Gen2 specs and simply didn't have enough bandwidth to accommodate an external GPU.
The previous versions of Raspberry Pi didn't only have limited bandwidth through its PCIe 2.0 interface, but also the Broadcom BCM2711 processor had multiple PCIe-related bugs that made running an external GPU almost impossible.
Continue reading: Raspberry Pi 5 with AMD Radeon RX 460 can run Portal, Minecraft (full post)
Meta announces its stopped five political influence campaign from China
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has announced it removed nearly 5,000 fake accounts that were attempting to influence US politics, and these accounts can be linked back to China.
The parent company of Facebook and Instagram announced that it deleted 4,800 fake accounts that it says were part of a China-based influence campaign whose goal was to post polarizing content ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Meta writes that the influence operation was one of two campaigns detected by Meta during the third quarter of 2023 and that these accounts actively posted in English about US politics and US-China relations, criticizing both sides of the US political spectrum.
Meta explained that these accounts used what appears to be "copy-pasted partisan content from people on X" and that these accounts acquired their information from both liberal and conservative sources. Additionally, these accounts mixed in resharing into their posts by resharing genuine content from politicians and news outlets.
Amazon is the latest company to release its own AI image generator
Amazon is the latest company to release a text-to-image generator, joining other big tech companies such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and numerous start-ups that are all jumping on the AI-powered train.
Amazon's AI-powered image generator is called Titan and was officially unveiled at the AWS re: Invent 2023 conference that was held on November 30. The new AI-powered tool is currently available to AWS customers on Bedrock, Amazon's AI development platform. So, what can it do? Amazon has equipped Titan with the capability to create images from text prompts while also giving it the power to customize existing images. An example would be swapping out the background of an image.
The company explained that the Titan Image Generator was trained on a "diverse set of datasets" that encompass a "broad range of domains". Engineers have implemented mitigation techniques for toxicity and bias, but it's currently unknown how effective those mitigation techniques are without public testing. Additionally, Amazon didn't reveal where it acquired its datasets or if it will be compensating creators of the images used to train Titan.
Continue reading: Amazon is the latest company to release its own AI image generator (full post)
X advertisers say they won't be returning after Elon Musk told them to 'f***' off
Elon Musk took to the stage at the 2023 DealBrook Summit in New York on Wednesday and was pressed about the relationship between his "antisemitic" tweets that led to big advertisers such as Apple and Disney to suspend advertising expenditure on the social media platform.
Musk responded to the question by saying he hoped that advertisers who paused expenditure with X over his tweets wouldn't return to the platform. The company CEO added that anyone who attempts to "blackmail" him with money should "go f*** yourself". Known companies that have paused ad spending on X are as follows: Disney, Apple, IBM, Comcast, Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount Global, and Lions Gate Entertainment.
Now, industry analysts are assessing whether or not advertisers will be returning to the platform following Musk's apology for the post and his harsh words to companies that tried to "blackmail" him. The New York Times and Reuters have reported that advertisers won't be returning to the social media platform, and Reuters mentions one executive at a major global ad-buying firm, who declined to be named, said only one major client was continuing to advertise on X.
Analyst says the Cybertruck launch should make Tesla a $1 trillion company
The wait is finally over, with Tesla delivering its first Cybertrucks to customers starting on November 30. The company revealed more details about the highly anticipated electric vehicle during an event officially called the Cybertruck Delivery Event.
The event was helmed by none other than Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who took to the stage to showcase the impressive capabilities of the Cybertruck. The presentation consisted of displaying the previously undisclosed information about the Cybertruck - power, composition, payload capacity, pull strength, and, of course, speed. Now, tech analysts are predicting that the launch of the Cybertruck will skyrocket Tesla's value, with the product launch being described as a "big moment" for the company.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote that the launch of the Cybertruck is important for Tesla's "growth story over the coming years" and will be proof to doubters of Musk's capability to "expand the Tesla halo effect". Additionally, Ives wrote that the Cybertruck launch is unlikely to "move the financial needle" for the company throughout 2024, but show investors Tesla's determination toward innovation and separating itself from legacy automakers in the EV market.