Along the way, I have found oft-repeated steps that can be automated, and a few of us are working on building those into a tool specifically for Go programming: sketch.dev. It’s very early, but so far, the experience has been positive.

Background

I am typically curious about new technology. It took very little experimentation with LLMs for me to want to see if I could extract practical value. There is an allure to a technology that can (at least some of the time) craft sophisticated responses to challenging questions. It is even more exciting to watch a computer attempt to write a piece of a program as requested and make solid progress.

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The good news is that three of its four new RTX 50-series GPUs are the same price or slightly cheaper than the RTX 40-series GPUs they're replacing. The RTX 5080 is $999, the same price as the RTX 4080 Super; the 5070 Ti and 5070 are launching for $749 and $549, each $50 less than the 4070 Ti Super and 4070 Super.

The bad news for people looking for the absolute fastest card they can get is that the company is charging $1,999 for its flagship RTX 5090 GPU, significantly more than the $1,599 MSRP of the RTX 4090. If you want Nvidia's biggest and best, it will cost at least as much as four high-end game consoles or a pair of decently specced midrange gaming PCs.

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The laptop, which Lenovo says is coming out in June, builds on a concept that Lenovo demoed in February 2023. That prototype had a Sharp-made panel that initially measured 12.7 inches but could unroll to present a total screen size of 15.3 inches. Lenovo's final product is working with a bigger display from Samsung Display, The Verge reported. Resolution-wise you're going from 2,000×1,600 pixels (about 183 pixels per inch) to 2,000×2,350 (184.8 ppi), the publication said.

Users make the screen expand by pressing a dedicated button on the keyboard or by making a hand gesture at the PC's webcam. Expansion entails about 10 seconds of loud whirring from the laptop’s motors. Lenovo executives told The Verge that the laptop was rated for at least 20,000 rolls up and down and 30,000 hinge openings and closings.

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The Pixel 4a, released in the summer of 2020, was discontinued at the end of 2022. It received its last official software update in the summer of 2023, followed by a surprise security update in November 2023. Throughout 2024, there were no updates. This week, owners of the 4a (and likely many former owners) are getting a new update, along with an email titled "Changes coming to your Pixel 4a."

The email addresses "an upcoming software update for your Pixel 4a that will affect the overall performance and stability of its battery." The automatic software update to Android 13 "introduces new battery management features to improve the stability of your device," which will "reduce your battery's runtime and charging performance."

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For example, one false summary suggested to at least one user that Luigi Mangione, the alleged murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, had committed suicide. The notification in question was meant to summarize the most important tidbits from 22 BBC news app notifications, according to a widely circulated screenshot.

Apple hasn't publicly specified exactly what will be changed to better inform users—only that it will be a software change that will "further clarify" when the notifications have been generated via the feature that resides under the Apple Intelligence umbrella.

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According to Fubo’s announcement today, the unified company will be known as Fubo, and Fubo executives will run it. People will also continue to be able to subscribe to Fubo without subscribing to Hulu + Live TV and vice versa. Also part of the announcement is the revelation that Fubo has settled its antitrust lawsuit against Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) over Venu, a joint venture sports app that the companies plan to launch and that Fubo was seeking to block, citing the three firms' allegedly anticompetitive practices.

Fubo had previously claimed that Disney, Fox, and WBD had forced it to pay for irrelevant channels that don’t appeal to sports fans by bundling those networks with sports networks. Fubo’s lawsuit accused Disney and Fox of forcing it to spend millions on unwanted content and forcing it “to drop valuable channels” through price hikes.

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Today the company is expanding the Ryzen AI 300 lineup with a batch of updated high-end chips with up to 16 CPU cores and some midrange options for cheaper Copilot+ PCs. AMD has repackaged some of its high-end desktop chips for gaming laptops, including the first Ryzen laptop CPU with 3D V-Cache enabled. And there's also a new-in-name-only Ryzen 200 series, another repackaging of familiar silicon to address lower-budget laptops.

Ryzen AI 300 is back, along with high-end Max and Max+ versions

We came away largely impressed by the initial Ryzen AI 300 processors in August 2024, and new processors being announced today expand the lineup upward and downward.

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Both processors include additional CPU cores compared to the 9800X3D that launched in November. The 9900X3D includes 12 Zen 5 CPU cores with a maximum clock speed of 5.5 GHz, and the 9950X3D includes 16 cores with a maximum clock speed of 5.7 GHz. Both include 64MB of extra L3 cache compared to the regular 9900X and 9950X, for a total cache of 144MB and 140MB, respectively; games in particular tend to benefit disproportionately from this extra cache memory.

But the 9950X3D and 9900X3D aren't being targeted at people who build PCs primarily to game—the company says their game performance is usually within 1 percent of the 9800X3D. These processors are for people who want peak game performance when they're playing something but also need lots of CPU cores for chewing on CPU-heavy workloads during the workday.

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Although they're all part of the "Ryzen Z2" family, each of these three chips is actually much different under the hood, and some of them are newer than others.

The Ryzen Z2 Extreme is what you'd expect from a refresh: a straightforward upgrade to both the CPU and GPU architectures of the Ryzen Z1 Extreme. Based on the same "Strix Point" architecture as the Ryzen AI 300 laptop processors, the Z2 Extreme includes eight CPU cores (three high-performance Zen 5 cores, five smaller and efficiency-optimized Zen 5C cores) and an unnamed RDNA 3.5 GPU with 16 of AMD's compute units (CUs). These should both provide small bumps to CPU and GPU performance relative to the Ryzen Z1 Extreme, which used eight Zen 4 CPU cores and 12 RDNA 3 GPU cores.

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This means that there won't be any more Dell XPS clamshell ultralight laptops, 2-in-1 laptops, or desktops. Dell is also killing its Latitude, Inspiron, and Precision branding, it announced today.

Moving forward, Dell computers will have either just Dell branding, which Dell’s announcement today described as “designed for play, school, and work,” Dell Pro branding “for professional-grade productivity,” or be Dell Pro Max products, which are “designed for maximum performance." Dell will release Dell and Dell Pro-branded displays, accessories, and "services," it said. The Pro Max line will feature laptops and desktop workstations with professional-grade GPU capabilities as well as a new thermal design.

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AMD mentioned that RDNA 4 cards were on track to launch in early 2025 during a recent earnings call, acknowledging that shipments of current-generation RX 7000-series cards were already slowing down. CEO Lisa Su said then that the architecture would include "significantly higher ray-tracing performance" as well as "new AI capabilities."

The preview the company is providing today provides few details beyond those surface-level proclamations. The compute units will be "optimized," AI compute will be "supercharged," ray-tracing will be "improved," and media encoding quality will be "better," but AMD isn't providing hard numbers for anything at this point. The RDNA 4 launch will begin with the Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070 at some point in Q1 of 2025, and AMD will provide more information "later in the quarter."

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The new specification is named HDMI 2.2, but compatible cables will carry an "Ultra96" marker to indicate that they can carry 96GBps, double the 48 of HDMI 2.1b. The Forum anticipates this will result in higher resolutions and refresh rates and a "next-gen HDMI Fixed Rate Link." The Forum cited "AR/VR/MR, spatial reality, and light field displays" as benefiting from increased bandwidth, along with medical imaging and machine vision.

A bit closer to home, the HDMI 2.2 specification also includes "Latency Indication Protocol" (LIP), which can help improve audio and video synchronization. This should matter most in "multi-hop" systems, such as home theater setups with soundbars or receivers. Illustrations offered by the Forum show LIP working to correct delays on headphones, soundbars connected through ARC or eARC, and mixed systems where some components may be connected to a TV, while others go straight into the receiver.

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Intel is rounding out the rest of the Core Ultra 200 family today at CES, and the most important thing to know is that it's Arrow Lake, and not Lunar Lake, that is powering all of these new processors (though with a major caveat for 200U series chips, more on that in a bit).

This means that none of them are fast enough to earn the Copilot+ label or use upcoming features like Windows Recall, and none of them will have integrated graphics that are as good as the Core Ultra 200V. But it will make them a better fit for gaming laptops and other kinds of systems that prioritize CPU performance or include an external graphics card, as well as less-expensive ultraportable laptops.

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This year, Mehdi is back with another prediction: 2025 will be "the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh." This year is also, not coincidentally, the year that most Windows 10 PCs will stop receiving new security updates.

Mehdi's post includes few, if any, new announcements, but it does set the tone for how Microsoft is handling the sunsetting of Windows 10, attempting to strike a balance between carrot and stick. The carrots include Windows 11's new features (both AI and otherwise) and the performance, security, and battery life benefits inherent to brand-new PC hardware. The stick is that Windows 10 support ends in October 2025, and Microsoft is not interested in extending that date for the general public or in expanding official Windows 11 support to older PCs.

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Consider the interview Dylan gave to The Wall Street Journal in December 2022. (You can read the whole thing on BobDylan.com.) The piece was, notionally, about Dylan's book, The Philosophy of Modern Song. But it quickly morphed into a meditation on creativity in the era of on-demand streaming content, along with a discussion about how Dylan had spent his time during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Dylan claims that he spent the pandemic replacing door panels on a ’56 Chevy, painting some landscapes, and re-reading “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” while pondering the mysteries of opium. Okay. He also had time left over to stream some TV:

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But boosted performance and slower advancements in chip manufacturing technology mean that the 5090's maximum power draw will far outstrip the 4090's, according to leakers. VideoCardz reports that the 5090's thermal design power (TDP) will be set at 575 W, up from 450 W for the already power-hungry RTX 4090. The RTX 5080's TDP is also increasing to 360 W, up from 320 W for the RTX 4080 Super.

That also puts the RTX 5090 close to the maximum power draw available over a single 12VHPWR connector, which is capable of delivering up to 600 W of power (though once you include the 75 W available via the PCI Express slot on your motherboard, the actual maximum possible power draw for a GPU with a single 12VHPWR connector is a slightly higher 675 W).

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The Common Charger Directive demands that a "USB-C receptacle" be equipped on "radio equipment" that is "equipped with a removable or embedded rechargeable battery" and "can be recharged via wired charging." If it has a battery and can be powered by up to 240 watts through a USB-C connection, it's generally subject to the EU's USB-C requirements. The directive applies to devices "placed on the market"—sent to a distributor or buyer—after December 28, even if they were initially designed and sold before that date.

Laptops get until April 2026 to comply, but most other things—phones, tablets, handheld gaming devices, computer accessories, and wireless headphones—will have to be powered by USB-C to be sold inside the EU from now on. Drones, for the time being, are largely unaddressed by the directive, but the EU will likely get around to them.

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Those who have dealt with 3D glasses may be relieved to hear that the Odyssey 3D doesn't require them. According to the South Korean company’s announcement, the monitor's use of a lenticular lens that is “attached to the front of the panel and its front stereo camera" means that you don't have to wear glasses to access the monitor's “customizable 3D experience.” Lenticular lenses direct different images to each eye to make images look three-dimensional. This is a notable advancement from the first 3D monitor that Samsung released in 2009. That display used Nvidia software and Nvidia shutter glasses to allow users to toggle between a 2D view and a 3D view through a few button presses and supported content.

Another advancement is the Odyssey 3D's claimed ability to use artificial intelligence “to analyze and convert 2D video into 3D.” We’ve recently seen similar technology from brands like Acer, which announced portable monitors in 2022 and then announced laptops that could convert 2D content into stereoscopic 3D in 2023. Those displays also relied on AI, as well as a specialized optical lens and a pair of eye-tracking cameras, to create the effect. But unlike Acer's portable monitors, Samsung claims that its monitor can make 2D content look like 3D even if that content doesn’t officially support 3D.

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Maybe you agree with me and maybe you don't! I'm not necessarily trying to convince you one way or the other. But I am here to say that even if you agree with me, we can all celebrate the one unambiguously positive thing that the generative AI hype cycle has done for computers this year: the RAM floor for many PCs and all Macs is now finally 16GB instead of 8GB.

Companies like Apple and Microsoft have, for years, created attractive, high-powered hardware with 8GB of memory in it, most egregiously in $1,000-and-up putative "pro" computers like last year's $1,599 M3 MacBook Pro or the Surface Pro 9.

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One key area of interest is how the world’s largest software provider packages popular Office products together with cybersecurity and cloud computing services, said one of the people, who asked not to be named discussing a confidential matter.

This so-called bundling was the subject of a recent ProPublica investigation, which detailed how, beginning in 2021, Microsoft used the practice to vastly expand its business with the US government while boxing competitors out of lucrative federal contracts.

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