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Linus Sebastian
Oh wow, what a sight. The face of a huge nerd eager for a fresh helping of tech news. Well, I'm happy to oblige. A Microsoft blog post published this morning made it seem like the company was announcing a time limit on their free upgrade offer for Windows 10 users. The blog post has now been taken down, but when it was live, its title read free Upgrade to Windows 11 for a limited Time only. Ooh, it's a little too casual. You might be screwed. Whoopsie. It could be that Microsoft isn't planning to restrict free Windows 10 to 11 upgrades, at least more than they already have through hardware requirements. But setting an upgrade deadline to coincide with the end of Support for Windows 10, which is coming October 14 this year, would mesh with the company's plans for 2025, which it called the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh in in some kind of Oprah inspired manifestation exercise. It also wouldn't be unprecedented. Microsoft limited free upgrades to Windows 10 from systems running 7 and 8 to one year, but kept allowing users to activate Windows 10 using keys from those older OSs. Interestingly, one reason Microsoft may have taken down the article is that the limited time upgrade thing wasn't referenced at all in the actual text. But it did mention that Office apps, which are now called Microsoft 365 apps much simpler, will also be losing support on Windows 10 devices on the same day as the OS itself October 14th. Which means even if you pay the 30 bucks a year for extended security updates on Windows 10, the same can't be said for Word and PowerPoint. Now Microsoft does say in a support document that the apps will keep working. It's just, well, if you don't pay for protection, you might encounter performance and reliability issues over time. What can you do? You know it's a rough neighborhood. Nvidia has published new performance charts for their RTX 50 series GPUs that shows just how important DLSS4 with multi frame generation is to Nvidia's extremely bold claims of double the 40 series performance. And at CES last week compared to the old charts for the 5090, 5080, 5070 ti and 5070, which you can find in our news sources link in the description. The new charts add a Resident Evil 4 benchmark that was run without DLSS and it looks like compared to their 40 series non super counterparts, the 50 series shows pure traditional rendering uplifts of around 30% for the 5090 and and 15 to 20% for the others, which is not double and furthermore seems to scale linearly with the extra wattage each card is getting. So you're telling me this architecture is better? I could do that. In answer to complaints over their GPUs relying on so called fake frames to achieve high performance, Nvidia seems to be saying yeah, so what? Apparently 80% of RTX players turn on DLSS. Sure, a lot of the time it's on by default, but the point is, upscaling and frame gen have pretty much already been normalized. So it makes total sense that Nvidia is trying to tell reviewers the right way to review their AI cards that happen to generate pixels on your screen. Rumors are pointing to RTX 5090 reviews going up on January 24th with 5080 reviews on the 30th. Unless that was hallucinated by ChatGPT. I mean the biggest fake frame of them all. Speaking of AI, Google has dropped its separate Gemini Add on for Google Workspace and will be adding Gemini powered features for Gmail, Docs meet, et cetera to existing workspace plans for free alongside a small price increase. Microsoft answered Google by relaunching yet another thing called Copilot. Copilot Chat is free for commercial customers with the ability to create and work with task specific agents on a pay as you go basis. Copilot is of course based on tech from OpenAI, who also just announced a couple of new agentic tools. Paying ChatGPT users can now ask it to track tasks and set reminders to say give me a daily weather update. Just make sure you set another reminder to ask ChatGPT if that update was a hallucination. It it's going to rain today. Is it though? Hmm. Thinking oh, nah, it won't. You're the best. If you're not stoked on all of this AI stuff, I guess you must hate local news because OpenAI also just announced they're funding news outlet Axios to develop local newsrooms in four new locations in the US And Google just made a deal with the Associated Press to swap content and tools. Sure, it just came out that Meta and probably every other AI company intentionally trained models on pirated books and probably pirated everything else but what you hate local news? Ah, come on. Come on over to look at our sponsor Squarespace, the all in one platform that empowers anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored to their unique needs. Just like we did with linusmediagroup.com, your website has to be special, so make use of Squarespace's two decades of industry leading design expertise and cutting edge design intelligence AI features to unlock your strongest creative potential and your earning potential. Because Squarespace Payments is the easiest way to manage your payments in one place. Get started in just a few clicks and start receiving payments right away through popular methods like Klarna, Apple Pay and Clearpay. Start building your website today and get 10% off your first purchase at squarespace.com techlinked still hungry? What's the tech news without a quick bits dessert? This is weird. I'm sorry. The FBI says they had no choice but to hack thousands of computers in the US to remove malware planted there by a China backed hacking group, which is almost a shame because their name is Mustang Panda. I feel like they should get some leeway for that. The Fed said that owners of infected PCs were typically unaware of the infection, so stands to reason they wouldn't be aware of the FBI breaking into their computer to fix it for them. You're welcome. Although they did apparently tell Internet service providers of affected IP addresses that they should inform their customers. The disclosure of the operation comes a year after the FBI did something similar to de infect routers being used as part of a botnet. The FBI's just hacking stuff all the time for good for good reasons. Samsung is apparently preempting Apple's iPhone 17 Air with their own Galaxy S25 Slim, as detailed by reputable leaker OnLeaks and news site SmartPrix. They showed renders of the phone, which will reportedly launch in May at a thickness of just 6.4 millimeters, which will enable owners to what, Jimmy a lock with it? Why do we want this? The White House is continuing to go ham with the restrictions on China before President Biden leaves office, adding more companies to a list of entities affected by trade restrictions. The Biden administration also finalized its proposed rule that will effectively ban Chinese cars and Chinese car components from the US in what I have to assume is a fit of rage. Chinese drone company dji, which could be facing its own ban at some point, removed its geofencing feature that stops drones from flying in no fly zones the week after one of them crashed into a plane fighting the California wildfires. So that's where international politics are at right now. The ftc, Illinois and Minnesota have sued John Deere over the company's anti consumer repair practices, alleging the tractor manufacturer has monopoly power over the repair market. And I really hope this is a wake up call for John Deere because what they think they're Apple? I can understand artsy baristas using the Genius bar, but you're gonna tell farmers they can't fix stuff. You make tractors. And a coder going by adding 2210has baked a playable instance of Doom 1993 into a PDF file. Yeah, they apparently did this thanks to the JavaScript support in PDFium, the engine that renders PDFs in Chromium based browsers. It supports WASD movement and other keyboard controls. You just have to click the text box first, and then you're free to play Doom in perhaps the worst way imaginable. But the best way to get more tech news is to come back here on Friday, when we'll probably have news about the Switch 2. Nintendo did not reveal the reveal for the Switch 2 today, probably because everyone talked about it so much and they're shy. So. Damn it. Shut sh. It always. It always comes right for me. Just settle down.
TechLinked Podcast Summary Episode: Win11 Upgrade Nonsense, RTX 50 Benchmarks, Many AI Updates + More! Release Date: January 16, 2025 Host: Linus Media Group
Linus Sebastian opens the episode by addressing recent developments surrounding Microsoft's Windows 11 upgrade offer. A blog post initially suggested that Microsoft would impose a time limit on the free upgrade for Windows 10 users. Although the post was subsequently removed, its title—"Free Upgrade to Windows 11 for a Limited Time Only"—raised concerns among users about potential restrictions.
Linus Sebastian [00:45]: "The blog post has now been taken down, but when it was live, its title read free Upgrade to Windows 11 for a limited Time only. Ooh, it's a little too casual. You might be screwed. Whoopsie."
He speculates that Microsoft might not intend to limit upgrades beyond the existing hardware requirements. However, aligning the upgrade deadline with the end of Windows 10 support on October 14, 2025, would be consistent with Microsoft’s plans for 2025, which they have dubbed the "year of the Windows 11 PC refresh."
Additionally, Microsoft announced that support for Microsoft 365 apps on Windows 10 will also cease on October 14, 2025. This means that even with extended security updates, applications like Word and PowerPoint might experience performance and reliability issues post-deadline.
Linus Sebastian [03:15]: "Which means even if you pay the 30 bucks a year for extended security updates on Windows 10, the same can't be said for Word and PowerPoint."
The discussion shifts to Nvidia's latest release—the RTX 50 series GPUs. Nvidia has published new performance benchmarks claiming that the RTX 50 series offers double the performance of the 40 series, primarily leveraging DLSS4 with multi-frame generation.
Linus Sebastian [04:30]: "Nvidia has published new performance charts for their RTX 50 series GPUs that shows just how important DLSS4 with multi frame generation is to Nvidia's extremely bold claims of double the 40 series performance."
However, upon closer examination, the benchmarks reveal that the performance improvements are more modest—about a 30% uplift for the RTX 5090 and 15-20% for the other models compared to their 40 series counterparts. This suggests that the performance gains scale linearly with the increased wattage of the new GPUs, challenging Nvidia’s assertion of doubling performance.
Linus criticizes Nvidia's reliance on DLSS and frame generation techniques, emphasizing that while 80% of RTX players have DLSS enabled, the actual traditional rendering improvements don’t support the "double performance" claim.
Linus Sebastian [05:50]: "So you're telling me this architecture is better? I could do that. In answer to complaints over their GPUs relying on so called fake frames to achieve high performance, Nvidia seems to be saying yeah, so what?"
Rumors suggest that reviews for the RTX 5090 and 5080 are expected on January 24th and 30th, respectively, though Linus humorously doubts the accuracy of these dates.
The episode delves into the rapid advancements in AI technologies from major players:
Google Workspace Enhancements: Google has discontinued its separate Gemini Add-on for Google Workspace, integrating Gemini-powered features directly into existing plans at no additional cost, coupled with a modest price increase.
Microsoft Copilot Relaunch: In response, Microsoft has relaunched Copilot Chat, making it free for commercial customers. This tool allows businesses to create and utilize task-specific agents on a pay-as-you-go basis, leveraging OpenAI’s technology.
Linus Sebastian [07:15]: "Microsoft answered Google by relaunching yet another thing called Copilot. Copilot Chat is free for commercial customers with the ability to create and work with task specific agents on a pay as you go basis."
Linus Sebastian [08:00]: "Paying ChatGPT users can now ask it to track tasks and set reminders to say give me a daily weather update."
Beyond these product updates, OpenAI is also investing in journalism by funding Axios to establish local newsrooms in four new US locations. Similarly, Google has forged a content-sharing deal with the Associated Press, reinforcing the integration of AI in news dissemination.
Linus Sebastian [09:30]: "If you hate local news, come on over to look at our sponsor Squarespace... Oh, you hate local news? Ah, come on."
The podcast highlights the FBI’s proactive measures in cybersecurity, revealing that they have hacked thousands of US computers to eliminate malware installed by the China-backed hacking group Mustang Panda.
Linus Sebastian [11:00]: "The FBI says they had no choice but to hack thousands of computers in the US to remove malware planted there by a China backed hacking group, which is almost a shame because their name is Mustang Panda."
The FBI disclosed that most affected users were unaware of the infections, and although the agency notified Internet service providers to inform their customers, there remains a layer of controversy regarding the legality and ethics of such operations.
Samsung appears to be positioning itself against Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 17 Air with the announcement of the Galaxy S25 Slim. According to reputable leaker OnLeaks and news outlet SmartPrix, the Galaxy S25 Slim will boast a slim profile of 6.4 millimeters, slated for a May launch.
Linus Sebastian [12:45]: "Samsung is apparently preempting Apple's iPhone 17 Air with their own Galaxy S25 Slim... which will reportedly launch in May at a thickness of just 6.4 millimeters."
The ultra-thin design aims to offer enhanced portability, though Linus humorously questions the practical benefits of such a feature.
The geopolitical tensions between the US and China continue to escalate, with the White House expanding its list of companies subject to trade restrictions. The Biden administration has also finalized a proposed rule that would ban Chinese cars and car components from entering the US market.
Linus Sebastian [14:20]: "The White House is continuing to go ham with the restrictions on China before President Biden leaves office, adding more companies to a list of entities affected by trade restrictions."
In the drone sector, DJI, a leading Chinese drone manufacturer, has removed its geofencing feature—a safety measure that prevents drones from entering no-fly zones—following an incident where one of their drones collided with a firefighting plane during California wildfires. This move places DJI under further scrutiny and could potentially lead to a broader ban.
Linus Sebastian [15:10]: "Chinese drone company DJI, which could be facing its own ban at some point, removed its geofencing feature that stops drones from flying in no fly zones the week after one of them crashed into a plane fighting the California wildfires."
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with Illinois and Minnesota, has filed a lawsuit against John Deere, accusing the tractor manufacturer of anti-consumer repair practices. The allegation centers on John Deere’s monopoly over the repair market, preventing farmers from fixing their own equipment or seeking third-party repair services.
Linus Sebastian [16:40]: "The FTC, Illinois and Minnesota have sued John Deere over the company's anti consumer repair practices, alleging the tractor manufacturer has monopoly power over the repair market."
Linus expresses hope that this lawsuit will serve as a wake-up call for John Deere, emphasizing the importance of consumer rights in product maintenance.
In a display of creative coding, a developer known as 2210 has managed to embed a playable version of the classic game Doom (1993) within a PDF file. This was achieved by exploiting the JavaScript capabilities of PDFium, the rendering engine used in Chromium-based browsers.
Linus Sebastian [17:55]: "A coder going by adding 2210 has baked a playable instance of Doom 1993 into a PDF file. Yeah, they apparently did this thanks to the JavaScript support in PDFium..."
Users can play the game using keyboard controls like WASD, provided they click on the text box within the PDF. While innovative, Linus remarks that the experience might not be optimal.
Looking ahead, Linus hints at potential news regarding the Nintendo Switch 2 in the upcoming Friday episode. Despite widespread speculation, Nintendo has yet to officially reveal details about the new console, maintaining an air of mystery.
Linus Sebastian [19:30]: "But the best way to get more tech news is to come back here on Friday, when we'll probably have news about the Switch 2."
Conclusion
This episode of TechLinked provided a comprehensive overview of significant tech developments, ranging from software updates and hardware benchmarks to AI advancements and geopolitical influences on technology. Linus Sebastian effectively navigates through complex topics, offering insightful commentary and critical analysis to keep listeners informed about the ever-evolving tech landscape.