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Westworld For Real
00:21:56
All the headlines from Nvidia’s big event yesterday. Can Apple make fetch happen with foldable phones cause nobody else seems to be able to. One hour deliveries is the new, screw it, we’re doing five razorblades. And the robots are really coming to Disney theme parks, right now.
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Brian McCullough
Welcome to the Techboot write home for Tuesday, March 17th, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, all the headlines from Nvidia's big event yesterday. Can Apple make fetch happen with foldable phones? Because nobody else seems to be able to do it. One hour deliveries is the new Screw it, we're doing five razor blades and the robots are really coming to Disney theme parks right now. Here's what you missed today. In the world of tech, Nvidia held a big event yesterday and announced a whole bunch of things. For example, the Nvidia Grok 3LPX, an inference server rack featuring 256 Grok 3 LPUs, 125 gigabytes of SRAM and 40 PBPS of SRAM bandwidth available in the second half of this year. Also, Nemo Claw, which combines the OpenClaw agent platform with components of Nvidia's agent toolkit to add privacy and security controls. Also, a liquid cooled server rack with 256 Verus CPUs, each of which features 88 custom Olympus cores, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Then there was this. Just months after announcing DLSS 4.5 at CES, Nvidia has unveiled its next major upscaling technology for graphics, the DLSS5. The company is doubling down on AI for this next iteration, claiming DLSS5 infuses pixels with photo real lighting and materials using a real time neural rendering model when it arrives this fall. Quoting and Gadget so what does this mean in practice? In an OnStage demo at Nvidia's GTC 2026 keynote, CEO Jensen Huang showed off the technology with Resident Evil, Requiem, Hogwarts, Legacy, and Starfield. DLSS5 adds a noticeable amount of detail to a character's hair and skin tone, but it also appears it's being compared to those games without any DLSS features turned on. It's unclear how much of a difference it makes compared to DLSS 4.5 with path tracing and all of its features turned on. DLSS 5 takes a game's color and motion vectors for each frame as input, and uses an AI model to infuse the scene with photoreal lighting and materials that are anchored to source 3D content and consistent from frame to frame, Nvidia said in a blog post. The company also notes that the technology runs in real time and it works at up to 4k, but quoting in Gadget, you can sum up the gamer response to Nvidia's DLSS5 announcement with the ever relevant Fallout 4 meme. Everyone disliked that across social media and Reddit last night. I couldn't find anyone who's genuinely positive about the potential for DLSS5, which uses AI to add photorealistic lighting and materials to in game models and environments. Instead, it's mostly complaints about the feature being another avenue for AI slope. And you know what? I agree. It's not unusual to see gamers being reflexively angry about new technology on the Internet, especially when it's being pitched by Nvidia as the biggest breakthrough in computer graphics since its RTX 20 series GPUs arrived in 2018 with real time ray tracing. There was already plenty of suspicion around DLSS's original AI upscaling model, as well as the fake frames generated by later iterations. But the few demos we've seen of DLSS5 basically look like a yassified AI filters for popular games, end quote. This led Nvidia to subsequently rush out and say game developers, quote, have artistic control over DLSS5's effects following an overnight backlash alleging that the AI rendering tech alters the source material. Oh, there was also data centers in space, of course. Quoting CNBC Nvidia announced the launch of computing platforms for orbital data centers on Monday during its GTC 2026 conference, a highly anticipated next step for artificial intelligence in space. The final frontier has arrived, said CEO Jensen Huang. As we deploy satellite constellations and explore deeper into space, intelligence must live wherever data is generated. In a press release, the company said that its Vera Rubin Space 1 module, which includes the IGX, Thor and Jetson Orin, will be used on space missions led by multiple companies. The chips are specifically engineered for size, weight and power constrained environments. Partners include Axiom Space, Star, Cloud and Planet. Huang said Nvidia is working with partners on a new compute for orbital data centers. But there are still engineering hurdles to overcome. In space, there's no convection, there's just radiation, huang said during his GDC keynote. And so we have to figure out how to cool these systems out in space, but we've got lots of great engineers working on it, end quote. But after all that, what got most of the headlines was this, quoting Bloomberg at the heart of Huang's message, demand for computing power continues to soar, and Nvidia is uniquely equipped to meet the challenge. I believe that computing demand has increased by 1 million times in the past two years, he said. It is the feeling that we all have. It is the feeling every startup has, end quote. TechCrunch Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang threw out a lot of numbers, mostly of the technical variety, during his keynote Monday to kick off the company's annual GTC conference in San Jose, California. But there was one financial figure that investors surely took notice of his projection that there will be $1 trillion worth of orders for Nvidia's Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips, a monetary reflection of a booming AI business. About an hour into his keynote, Won noted that last year Nvidia saw about $500 billion in demand for its Blackwell and upcoming Rubin chips through 2026. Now, I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but $500 billion is an enormous amount of revenue, he said. Well, I'm here to tell you that right now, where I stand, a few short months after GTC DC, one year after the last GTC, right here where I stand, I see through 2027 at least $1 trillion, end quote. The Rubin computing chip architecture, which was first announced in 2024, has been described by Huang as the state of the art in AI hardware that outperforms its Blackwell predecessor. The company said in January, when it officially started production of Rubin, it would operate three and a half times faster than the Blackwell architecture on model training tasks and five times faster on inference tasks, reaching as high as 50 petaflops. Nvidia has said it expects to ramp up production in the second half of the year, end quote. So I guess foldables continue to not be a thing until Apple proves the market right. Question mark Samsung says it is winding down sales of its $2,899 Galaxy Z Trifold in South Korea and the US once it clears its inventory after just three months on the market. Quoting Bloomberg, the Korean company will begin by halting sales in its home market, then discontinue business in the US Once it clears remaining inventory. A company spokesperson said the move had been anticipated. This month, Samsung's website stopped teasing future restocks of the bleeding edge foldable, which has two hinges and unfurls into a large 10 inch tablet. It now simply says the Tri Fold is sold out. Buyers have successfully managed to find stock at Samsung Experience stores in Frisco, Texas and Queens, New York, in recent days, according to reports on social media and Reddit indicating that at least some units remain available for now. Samsung introduced the device late last year as a showcase of its engineering prowess, but the device's cost immediately relegated it to a niche purchase for the most affluent early adopters. It debuted in South Korea on December 12 at a price of 3.59 million won. A US release followed in January. Samsung has hyped the expansive screens. Multitasking potential Though the device has its share of compromises, the Tri Fold was only available for purchased directly from Samsung. Mobile carriers and retailers never offered it to consumers. Another hint of the Trifold's short lived fate. In an interview last month, Won Jun Choi, chief operating officer of Samsung's Mobile Experience business, said the company hadn't decided on whether the Tri Fold will get a sequel, citing its manufacturing complexity. But some of the device's core benefits, like a widescreen aspect ratio that's ideal for media consumption, could come to Samsung's less expensive foldables over time. End quote.
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Brian McCullough
Amazon has begun three hour deliveries in around 2,000 US cities and towns, and one hour deliveries in hundreds of those areas after recent pilots. More than 90,000 products are eligible for this super fast delivery. Quoting CNBC Our customers are busier than ever and are looking for new ways to save time while keeping their households running, udit Madan, Amazon's senior vice president of worldwide operations, said in a statement. More than 90,000 products are eligible for delivery in three hours or less, including pantry items, cleaning supplies, over the counter, medications, clothing and toys. Amazon said it expects to bring the service, which started via small scale tests late last year, to more areas of the country in the coming months. We're excited to say that two decades after prime launched, we're still innovating to make delivery even faster while maintaining the same everyday low prices and vast selection Amazon is known for, madan said. Amazon added a storefront shopping page in areas where the options are available, and shoppers will be able to filter search results for products that can't be delivered in one hour or three hours or less. Users can also check ultra fast delivery options on Amazon's Get It Fast site. Amazon got consumers hooked on fast shipping when it introduced free two day delivery alongside its prime loyalty program in 2005. By 2019, it made one day shipping the standard, and in the years since, it has poured money and resources into expanding same day delivery. Same day orders typically arrive within a few hours. In its quest to make deliveries even faster, Amazon has experimented with a number of programs that sought to leverage its sprawling fulfillment network and legions of on demand flex gig workers. The company in 2021 shut down its standalone prime now fast Delivery service. In 2024, Amazon discontinued a service that promised speedy delivery from mall and brick and mor retailers. More recently, the company has been testing 30 minute deliveries of household essentials and fresh groceries with a program called Amazon Now. The service is being piloted in Seattle, Washington and Philadelphia Pennsylvania, along with international markets like the United Arab Emirates, India, Brazil and Mexico. End quote. I guess it's not just sexy time mode in an old all hands meeting OpenAI CEO of Applications Fiji Simo apparently has described a strategy shift at OpenAI to refocus on coding and business users, urging staff to avoid side quests, quoting the Journal, OpenAI's top executives are finalizing plans for a major strategy shift to refocus the company around coding and business users, recognizing that a do everything all at once strategy has put them on the defensive. Fiji Simo OpenAI, CEO of Applications, previewed the changes to employees in an all hands meeting, telling them that top leaders including CEO Sam Altman and Chief Research Officer Mark Chen were actively looking at which areas to deprioritize. They expect to notify staff about the changes in the coming weeks. We cannot miss this moment because we are distracted by sidequests, simo told staff last week, according to remarks reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. We really have to nail productivity in general and particularly productivity on the business front. Last year, OpenAI announced an array of new products, including the video generator Sora, a web browser called Atlas, a new hardware device, and e commerce features for ChatGPT. Sam Altman has previously likened this approach to betting on a series of startups inside of OpenAI, and the strategy helped burnish the company's reputation as the pioneer of the AI era. OpenAI is under growing pressure from rival Anthropic, which has become the dominant AI provider for businesses thanks to the viral success of its Claude code and cowork offerings. These products, which include so called agents that can autonomously carry out complex tasks for users, have become all the rage in Silicon Valley and even sparked a global stock market sell off last month. Anthropic has placed fewer product bets than OpenAI has, focusing its efforts on the enterprise and coding market. The company has so far avoided image and video generation products. As an example. OpenAI and Anthropic have taken steps toward public listings that could take place as soon as this year, plans that have added extra urgency to the ferocious competition between the two companies. Neither company has disclosed specific timeline, but in some discussions OpenAI raised the prospect of an initial public offering in the fourth quarter of this year, the Wall Street Journal has reported. Simo told staff Anthropic success should serve as a wake up call for the company and that it had to regain the lead among software developers and enterprise customers. Current and former employees said that last year's do everything approach sometimes created a lack of focus and that it was at times difficult to understand OpenAI's strategic direction. That is a problem in many organizations. But the stakes are higher at OpenAI and other frontier labs, where the central issue is how to spend and allocate scarce computing capacity between projects. Computing resources often shifted from one team to another at the last minute, and the company's organizational structure grew complicated, the employees said. For example, OpenAI's Sora team was housed under the research division even though it was responsible for launching one of the company's most high profile products, they said. End quote. Finally, the robots are coming to Disney something something. Westworld Afterworld. To paraphrase Kurt Cobain quoting the Verge, Olaf from Frozen is coming to Disneyland Paris on March 26 and Hong Kong Disneyland this summer. The rare robot that crosses the uncanny valley as long as he keeps moving. And that is because Disney animators helped him train himself, sticking 100,000 virtual copies of the physical Olaf robot into a Nvidia powered simulation and rewarding him for screen accurate moves. It took just two days to train Olaf with an Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU. This absolutely is the future of how we're building robot characters, disney Imagineering Senior Vice President of R and D Kyle Laughlin tells the Verge. He says reinforcement learning is the true unlock that could let Disney populate entire lands full of interactive characters now that entire robots can be built in months instead of years. And while Disney Imagineering has done some of this with its Star wars droids before those were robots being robots, said Laughlin, this is our first animated character that we brought to life. To be crystal clear, Olaf is not artificially intelligent. The 35 inch tall, 33 pound robot may have 25 articulators and three computers, including an Nvidia Jetson Orin NX and a Raspberry PI. But it's not speaking for itself. It plays pre recorded lines from Olaf's voice actor Josh Gad while it performs animated moves. While Olaf blinks autonomously, it can't see you or look at you. That requires the operator to flick a joystick. The Steam Deck's other joystick tells Olaf where to walk, and the operator can swipe across a touchpad to quickly access page after page of conversation options. In my early demo, it wasn't yet get enough to carry on a conversation. A quick of course or sure was often all I got. Olaf was a challenge to develop, the team says, because robots traditionally don't have big weighty heads that rest on a small neck, it puts a lot of strain on that joint, making it prone to overheating. Olaf's clomp clomp clomp walking was a noisy challenge to solve as well. But in the reinforcement learning simulation, Disney was simply able to reward the 100,000 virtual Olafs who move without overheating that joint or making too much noise. It's like telling my 6 year old to stop running through the house. Can you just be a little bit quieter? That's pretty much what we had to do for Olaf, says Laughlin. It won't always be a human with a Steam deck at the controls, though. Olaf can be part of time coded performances tied directly into Disney's live entertainment choreography systems. Laughlin says that's one of the first ways he'll appear at Disneyland Paris. Those performances may even get more intriguing, Laughlin suggests, as Disney creates more robots, you can expect to see more robots from franchises together so they can interact. The real power is going to come from Olaf interacting with characters that he knows and loves. Not only performers, but also other characters that we haven't been able to bring to life without robotics, he hints. Disney Research has published an eight page white paper on how it created Olaf, including some of the exact components and formulas it used. End quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.