How do you get $5 billion out of Tesla to invest into your AI startup? You poll your followers on X if you're Elon Musk, which is exactly what he did:

The Tesla and SpaceX founder asked his followers "should Tesla invest $5 billion into xAI, assuming the valuation is set by several credible outside investors? (Board approval & shareholders vote are needed, so this is just to test the waters).

He posted a poll which had 958,086 votes with 67.9% of his followers voting "yes" while 32.1% voted "no". I guess we'll see in the coming weeks if Tesla announces a $5 billion investment into xAI, we'll know where it's coming from. The public voting, and Elon using that as leverage to get Tesla to invest $5 billion into xAI is... different, to see.

Moor Insights & Strategy founder, CEO, and chief strategist Patrick Moorhead had some choice words for the AI market to come crashing down anytime soon, where in a chat with YahooFinance, he said: "This whole notion of AI coming to a screeching halt anytime soon is fiction".

Moorhead's comments are coming from some companies worried of an AI bust, and the entire market coming to a screeching halt, including SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won who recently said at the 47th KCCI Jeju forum, who compared the AI boom to the gold rush, and that "without making money, the AI boom could vanish, just as the gold rush disappeared".

The chat with YahooFinance was just the start of it, with Moorhead taking to his X account to continue with some even better comments on the AI market. Moorhead replied to Edward McKernan, who said "need to frame this within power demand over next few years... something most on Wall St don't know yet".

Apple's work on a foldable iPhone isn't surprising, but now we're hearing that the foldable iPhone is in its conceptual stage, will arrive in a clamshell design, and will be released in 2026.

The Information reported in February 2024 that Apple was in the early stages of developing two foldable iPhone prototypes, but now the outlet is reporting that Apple has settled on a design, which should be a clamshell foldable iPhone codenamed "V68."

Apple's new codename V68 foldable iPhone, according to The Information, "the idea has moved beyond the conceptual stage" and is now "in development with suppliers". Apple is reportedly working on flattening the crease on foldable smartphones we have on the market from the likes of Samsung and Motorola, when the phone is unfolded, as well as Apple wanting to make its foldable iPhone is thinner.

Morgan Stanley has said that the global supply chain will see a huge boost in orders from the industry for AI servers, with NVIDIA continuing (and clawing even more) market share to dominate the AI industry further.

NVIDIA is expected to ship between 60,000 and 70,000 units of its Blackwell GB200 AI servers, which will bring in $210 billion. Each server costs $2 million to $3 million, so 70,000 GB 200 AI servers at $3 million each = $210 billion. NVIDIA is making the NVL72 and NVL36 GB200 AI servers, as well as B100 and B200 AI GPUs on their own.

Morgan Stanley estimates that if NVIDIA's new NVL36 AI cabinet is used as the biggest seller by quantity, the overall demand for GB200 in 2025 will increase to 60,000 to 70,000 units. The big US cloud companies are the customers lining up -- or have already purchased -- NVL36 AI cabinets, but by 2025 we could expect NVL72 AI cabinets to be shipping in higher quantities than NVL36.

AMD was all set to launch its next-gen Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series "Granite Ridge" CPUs on July 31, but the company has just moved it up to August 15 over some QA issues with the first wave of chips.

We can now expect AMD's new Ryzen 9000 series CPUs to launch on August 15, hitting retail shelves and online e-tailers like Amazon and BestBuy on that day, however the releases will be staggered. On August 15, AMD will launch its 6-core and 8-core Zen 5 chips with the releases of the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X processors on August 8.

The higher-end 12-core and 16-core Zen 5 processors in the Ryzen 9 9900X and Ryzen 9 9950X chips will launch starting August 15.

Microsoft is aiming for a new cloud-based tier for Xbox Game Pass, sources tell Windows Central's Jez Corden.

Reports indicate that Microsoft may be considering, working on and/or developing a standalone Xbox Cloud Gaming tier as part of its digital subscription aspirations. Sources have told Windows Central that the trillion-dollar firm could be readying such an offering in its Xbox Game Pass subscription in an effort to reach consumers more broadly. The big selling point would be that users would not have to buy an Xbox console in order to play games--and this could help Microsoft reduce its unprofitable console production cycles.

Leaked documents from the FTC v Microsoft trial show that the company is aiming to considerably grow its Xbox Game Pass subscription base to 110 million subscribers by 2030. Cloud is expected to be a big contributor to this growth with 29% of the sum, or about 32 million subscribers.

Capcom acknowledges that digital delivery has helped offset the high risk factors of the games industry through cost reduction and higher volume of readily-available game sales.

Consumers have mostly shifted towards digital game sales through a combination of convenience and insistence among publishers; games companies can pull specific levers through digital distribution, including frequent sales and discounts that aren't available through traditional retail channels.

This tactic has worked very well for most of gaming's biggest players, including Japanese publisher Capcom, who has achieved consecutive year-over-year operating profit growth for 10 years running. The company attributes these results in part to the digital landscape, which has helped Capcom lower the risk factors and general volatility that it used to face across international markets.

While publishers ultimately call the shots with pricing schemes and delivery, consumers are able to effect change through one of the most powerful levers in the space: Review bombing.

Review bombing campaigns have proven to be one of the most effective ways to send a message to publishers. Billion-dollar titans like Sony Interactive Entertainment, Electronic Arts, and even Take-Two Interactive are not immune to mass negative feedback on public storefronts; these negative reviews are a kind of scarlet letter that deter players while sending shockwaves among shareholders. Bad reviews--whether it be on aggregators like Metacritic or the aforementioned Steam--are a clear red flag to investors, and can spook stakeholders into selling their stocks.

Two recent examples of mass review bombing effecting change come to mind: The disastrous PR nightmare of Helldivers II, and the more recent backlash against Apex Legends. Both of these games have contributing significantly to their respective publishers, with Helldivers II's amazing 12 million sales helping boost SIE's earnings at a critical point, and Apex Legends' revenues helping consistently drive EA's multi-billion dollar live service empire.

Windows 11 might get more adverts soon (again), although they could appear in an area of the operating system that you're not too fussed about - or never even visit, perhaps.

Can you guess where this new vehicle for potential adverts - or suggestions, as Microsoft call them - might be? Score a point if you were thinking of the Microsoft Store, as this is where the software giant is making its latest move in the world of promotional activity within Windows 11.

Although we should note that the idea is still in testing - in the Beta channel for Windows Insiders to be precise - it involves suggestions popping up when you search for apps or games in the Microsoft Store.

Electronic Arts and Respawn have reversed one of the most unpopular business decisions in recent memory.

A bit ago, Respawn revealed a new battle pass for Apex Legends, the live service FPS darling that has generated billions of revenue since launching in 2019. There was one big change to Season 22's battle pass: Gamers could no longer spend Apex Coins to get the premium battle pass. Instead, they'd have to shell out a flat $9.99 for S22's premium battle pass.

This predictably led to mass backlash among the Apex faithful. The push for heavier monetization comes at a retraction point in the games industry, with nearly every single video games company on the planet shrinking its employee base with mass layoffs in order to maximize revenues and profits. EA is no different--the company shed itself of thousands of workers despite making $7.1 billion in revenue in FY23; "During FY24, EA returned $1.505 billion to stockholders," reads the company's latest financial report.

As the games industry moves towards digital-based game sales, Japanese publisher Capcom has no plans to discontinue physical disc-based games any time soon.

While digital sales are taking over gaming, physical media remains an important part of the $180 billion interactive entertainment industry. Consumers still buy millions of discs a year at retailers like Walmart, Target, and Amazon, and publishers like Capcom, Electronic Arts, and even Sony Interactive Entertainment are still keen on producing disc-based games.

In a recent Q&A with shareholders, Japanese publisher Capcom was asked how the company plans to deal with the increasing digital-based needs of consumers. Capcom's answer was pretty clear-cut: The firm will continue delivering physical games as long as there is demand.

UPDATE from CrowdStrike 7/24/2024 at 5:22pm CDT: "That claim is false. CrowdStrike did not send gift cards to customers or clients. We did send these to our teammates and partners who have been helping customers through this situation. Uber flagged it as fraud because of high usage rates."

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company that was responsible for rolling out a faulty driver update to its software that caused 8.5 million Windows machines to enter endless blue screen of death boot loops is now offering customers partners $10 Uber Eats gift cards as a way of saying sorry for the inconvenience.

Reports indicate CrowdStrike is sending out emails to its partners offering a $10 Uber Eats gift card as an apology. Multiple sources have reported receiving these emails from the cybersecurity company, with one source speaking to Tech Crunch and saying CrowdStrike recognizes the "additional work that the July 19 incident has caused" and for that "your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!"

Google has announced that it will no longer continue with its plan to completely phase out third-party cookies on its Chrome browser and will instead take a more user-friendly approach.

Google's Privacy Sandbox VP Anthony Chavez wrote the announcement and explained Google has received concerns from developers, privacy advocates, regulators, publishers, and others about the removal of third-party cookies. Google has heard this feedback and has come up with a new plan that won't include the complete removal of third-party cookies, which allows companies to serve targeted advertisements to users based on the activity of the user around other parts of the internet.

Notably, Google said back in 2020 that it was working toward blocking all third-party cookies in 2024, and the company even tested the removal in January when 1% of Chrome users had all third-party cookies blocked. The concerns from regulators come from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, which is likely concerned Google will favor its own profits in advertisements if third-party cookies are blocked.

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company behind one of, if not the biggest IT outage in history, has explained where it went wrong after pushing out an update to its malware software that nuked a staggering 8.5 million Windows machines.

The update was released last Friday, and approximately 8.5 million Windows machines were thrown into infinite boot loops with blue screens of death, impacting many aspects of everyday society, such as airlines, supermarkets, telecommunications, emergency services, and more. Since then, CrowdStrike has been quiet on how it missed the faults within the driver throughout internal testing, which it has now explained in a new update.

Here's how it works. CrowdStrike's Falcon Sensor, the software that was updated and ultimately led to the global outage, uses what is called "Sensor Content," which is software that defines what Falcon Sensor is capable of. The software is updated with "Rapid Response Content" which is designed to enable the software to detect and collect information on any new threats.

Intel recently confirmed it has found the root cause of the instability problems reported by users of its 13th and 14th Gen CPUs, but, unfortunately, the chipmaker has made things quite confusing with a convoluted and seemingly contradictory response.

Intel officially published a statement about the instability reports for its Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs in the 13th and 14th Gen families. These instability reports have been stacking up for months now, and very little has been done on Intel's part to provide remedies for customers of the affected products or an explanation as to why the faults are occurring. Now, we have official confirmation from Intel that excessive voltage and oxidation are part of the problem.

The chipmaker posted a statement about the instability problems, citing an issue in the microcode algorithm that is causing incorrect voltage requests to the processor, resulting in elevated voltages. Intel said it was targeting mid-August for a microcode algorithm update. Notably, this statement didn't mention anything about oxidation, leading many to believe voltage was the root cause, and general instability problems will all be ironed out in an update in August.

A team of researchers discovered a new source of oxygen at the bottom of the ocean, and it's discovery has led to more questions being asked than answered.

The discovery was detailed in a new paper published in the scientific journal Nature Geoscience, which explains the new oxygen source is called "dark oxygen," which is likely a reference to dark matter in astronomy as it can be measured but not seen. Much like dark matter, researchers first discovered dark oxygen when they discovered oxygen levels at the seafloor were rising, which would be impossible at depths of 13,000 feet, particularly without any photosynthetic processes.

Meta has announced its release of Llama 3.1 405B, which is what the company is describing as the "world's largest" open-source large language model.

Meta explains via a new blog post that Llama 3.1 405B is "in a class of its own" with "state-of-the-art capabilities" that rival the leading AI models currently on the market when it comes to general knowledge, steerability, math, multilingual translation, and tool use. Meta directly compares Llama 3.1 405B with competing AI models, such as OpenAI's various GPT models, showcasing the recently released model trained on 15 trillion tokens. A token can be considered a fragment of a question and an answer.

To achieve the training of this 405 billion parameter model, Meta used 16,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, which cost $25,000 each. This means the AI model was trained by $400 million worth of NVIDIA GPUs, which required 30.84 million GPU hours and produced approximately 11,390 tons of CO2.

Support for AMD's FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) upscaling and Frame Generation technology is improving, thanks to the launch of FSR 3.1. The latest version of the technology brings notable improvements to FSR 2's image quality when upscaling alongside decoupling and improving Frame Generation. With FSR 3.1, GeForce RTX 20 and 30 Series owners can enable AMD's Frame Generation alongside NVIDIA DLSS upscaling, which is very cool to see.

FSR 3.1 support has arrived in a handful of PlayStation PC games, including Horizon Forbidden West, Ghost of Tsushima, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Including games with FSR 3 and FSR 3.1 and those coming soon, over 60 titles support AMD's DLSS alternative. Hundreds if you count games with FSR 2 upscaling.

With that, we've compiled a handy list, accurate as of July 2024, of all known games with FSR support, available now and coming soon, broken down into each version. Let's get to it.

Spotify first announced it was working on implementing a new "HiFi" or lossless audio quality into its product offering stack, providing consumers with an option of listening to high-quality music for a $5 increase in their monthly subscription.

Spotify announced its development on HiFi three years ago, and since then, there hasn't really been much talk about the new service, but the company's CEO Daniel Ek, recently touched on it during an earnings call where he said HiFi will likely be bundled with other Premium-level features, such as AI-powered playlists, additional control of the application, and other unannounced features.

The bundling of these features with HiFi is likely to provide more value to a buyer who will have to pay $20/month to access this deluxe version of the music-streaming platform. Ek said despite HiFi being announced three years ago it's still "in early days" of development. Reports previously estimated the new subscription tier, which would be above the current Premium tier, would be priced around $20 as Ek said this deluxe tier would be approximately "$5 above the current premium tier".

One of the rarest Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games of all time is currently up for auction, with the current bid over at auction house Goldwin sitting on a whopping $130,000. The game in question is the 1990 Nintendo World Championships cartridge, created by Nintendo America and given out to 26 lucky readers of the Nintendo Power magazine.

Yeah, with only 26 produced, this gold-colored cartridge is legendary - and the one going up for auction comes from Patrick King of Cheyenne, who can be found in Nintendo Power #18 from 1990. The game and cartridge were created to commemorate the 1990 Nintendo World Championships and contain specialized time-limited versions of Super Mario Bros., Rad Racer, Tetris, and other games. The visible dip switch on the front allows the time to be adjusted.

Nintendo created 350 gray-colored cartridges for the time-trial speedrunning competition. However, these limited gold versions are highly sought after - making this a rare piece of videogame history that rarely shows up in this form.