SanDisk aims to produce petabyte-scale SSDs through its new UltraQLC platform, though the company has not specified a release timeline. The technology, it said, combines SanDisk's BICS 8 QLC 3D NAND with a proprietary 64-channel controller featuring hardware accelerators that offload storage functions from firmware to reduce latency and improve reliability.

The initial UltraQLC drives will use 2Tb NAND chips to reach 128TB capacities, with future iterations targeting 256TB, 512TB, and eventually 1PB as higher-density NAND becomes available. The controller dynamically adjusts power based on workload and employs an advanced bus multiplexer to handle increased data loads from high-density QLC stacks, the company said.

NAND flash prices are expected to slide due to oversupply, forcing memory chipmakers to cut production to match lower-than-expected orders from PC and smartphone manufacturers. From a report: The superabundance of stock is putting a financial strain on suppliers of NAND flash, according to TrendForce, which says growth rate forecasts are being revised down from 30 percent to 10-15 percent for 2025.

"NAND flash manufacturers have adopted more decisive production cuts, scaling back full-year output to curb bit supply growth. These measures are designed to swiftly alleviate market imbalances and lay the groundwork for a price recovery," TrendForce stated.

Shrish Pant, Gartner director analyst and technology product leader, expects NAND flash pricing to remain weak for the first half of 2025, though he projects higher bit shipments for SSDs in the second half due to continuing AI server demand.

"Vendors are currently working tirelessly to discipline supply, which will lead to prices recovering in the second half of 2025. Long term, AI demand will continue to drive the demand for higher-capacity/better-performance SSDs," Pant said. Commenting on the seasonal nature of the memory market, Pant told The Register: "Buying patterns will mean that NAND flash prices will remain cyclical depending on hyperscalers' buying behavior."

California is "considering state ownership of one or more oil refineries," reports the Los Angeles Times.

They call the idea "one item on a list of options presented by the California Energy Commission to ensure steady gas supplies as oil companies pull back from the refinery business in the state." "The state recognizes that they're on a pathway to more refinery closures," said Skip York, chief energy strategist at energy consultant Turner Mason & Co. The risk to consumers and the state's economy, he said, is gasoline supply disappearing faster than consumer demand, resulting in fuel shortages, higher prices and severe logistical challenges.

Gasoline demand is falling in California, albeit slowly, for two reasons: more efficient gasoline engines, and the increasing number of electric vehicles on the road. Gasoline consumption in California peaked in 2005 and fell 15% through 2023, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Electric vehicles, including plug-in hybrids, now represent about 25% of annual new car sales... The drop in demand is causing fundamental strategic shifts among the state's major oil refiners: Chevron, Marathon, Phillips 66, PBF Energy and Valero.

Already, two California refineries have ceased producing gasoline to make biodiesel fuel for use in heavy-duty trucks, a cleaner-fuel alternative that enjoys rich state subsidies. More worrisome, the Phillips 66 refinery complex in Wilmington, just outside Los Angeles, plans to close down permanently by year's end. That leaves eight major refineries in California capable of producing gasoline. The closure of any one would create serious gasoline supply issues, industry analysts say. But both Chevron and Valero are contemplating permanent refinery closures. The implications? "Demand will decline gradually," York said, "but supply will fall out in chunks." What's unknown is how many refineries will close, and how soon, and how that will affect supply and demand...

A state refinery takeover seems like a radical idea, but the fact that it's being considered demonstrates the seriousness of the supply issue. It's one of several option laid out by the California Energy Commission, which is fulfilling a legislative order to find ways to ensure "a reliable supply of affordable and safe transportation fuels in California." The options list is disparate: Ship in more gasoline from Asia; regulate refineries on the order of electric utilities; cap profit margins; and many more.
92% of California's gas is produced in refineries, the Times reports. But the special gasoline blends required to reduce air pollution "also drive up gasoline prices and raise the risk of shortages, because little such gasoline is produced outside California."

Yahoo Finance shares an interesting prediction. Amazon has an "under-the-radar robot push" that "could boost its profit margins big-time, Morgan Stanley managing director Brian Nowak said." Nowak said Amazon has quietly developed six significant next-generation fulfillment centers in the past three years that bring automation front and center... Amazon now has industrial robots that can increase efficiencies across the storage, inventory management, pick and packing, and sorting order fulfillment processes.

Fulfillment costs make up about 20% of Amazon's retail revenue, so he reasoned that automation could have a significant impact on long-term operating profit potential. Nowak says if 30% to 40% of Amazon's US units were fulfilled through next-generation robotics-enabled warehouses by 2030, it could lead to $10 billion-plus of savings... The investments in robots may already be paying off. Amazon's North America retail operating margins on a trailing 12-month basis have risen for five straight quarters. North America operating margins improved to 6.2% from 4.6% a year ago.
Nowak made the remarks on a Yahoo Finance podcast (at the top of their article) after touring one of Amazon's robot-enhanced sites in Louisiana. He believes robotics can drive down Amazon's costs compared to other retailers like Target (which he sees as lagging behind Amazon on robotics).

Meanwhile workers at an Amazon facility in North Carolina held a vote Saturday on whether to unionize. But roughly 75% of the workers voted against unionization.

Hackaday reports: Good news for everyone who cannot get enough from improbably shaped boats that get referred to as a bench: the current owner (NTI Group) of the copyright has announced that 3DBenchy has been released into the public domain. This comes not too long after Prusa's Printables website had begun to purge all derived models to adhere to the 'no derivatives' license. According to NTI, the removal of these derived models was not requested by NTI, but by a third-party report, unbeknownst to NTI or the original creator of the model. Recognizing its importance to the community, 3DBenchy can now be downloaded & modified freely.

NTI worked together with the original creator [Daniel Norée] and former Creative Tools CEO [Paulo Kiefe] to transition 3DBenchy and the associated website to the public domain More details at Tom's Hardware and Fabbaloo.

New York City's Department of Transportation is offering delivery workers the opportunity to swap out uncertified e-bikes for safer UL-compliant models. "Millions of people rely on such workers for timely deliveries, yet the low wages and brutal conditions of the job have forced many riders to seek out low-cost electric bicycles to perform the work -- exactly the kind of e-bikes that are least likely to have received safety certifications," reports Electrek. From the report: The NYC DOT has already begun accepting applications for the new E-Bike Trade-In Program, which is open to delivery workers with non-compliant electric bicycles as well as the often-seen electric scooters/mopeds that don't really qualify as e-bikes, despite their ubiquitous use in the industry. Interestingly, the program even accepts gasoline-powered mopeds that are not able to be legally registered with the DMV, including those that lack VINs. In exchange for trading in a non-certified vehicle, the delivery worker will receive a new UL-certified electric bike with a spare UL-certified battery.

There are a few requirements for eligibility. The worker has to have earned at least US $1,500 by working in the food delivery industry last year in 2024, live in one of the five New York City boroughs, be at least 18 years old, and own/use one of the eligible devices for trade-in. The program is free to participate in with no additional cost for the delivery workers. However, the supply of free electric bicycles is described as "limited." Those interested need to submit an application before the window closes on March 10, 2025.

Electricity demand is set to increase sharply in the coming years as people around the world use more power to run air conditioners, industry and a growing fleet of data centers. From a report: Over the next three years, global electricity consumption is set to rise by an "unprecedented" 3,500 terawatt hours, according to a report by the International Energy Agency. That's an addition each year of more than Japan's annual electricity consumption.

The roughly 4% annual growth in that period is the fastest such rate in years, underscoring the growing importance of electricity to the world's overall energy needs. "The acceleration of global electricity demand highlights the significant changes taking place in energy systems around the world and the approach of a new Age of Electricity," Keisuke Sadamori, IEA's director of energy markets and security, said in a statement. "But it also presents evolving challenges for governments in ensuring secure, affordable and sustainable electricity supply."

Western Digital plans to introduce its first heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) drives in late 2026, with 36TB conventional magnetic recording (CMR) and 44TB shingled UltraSMR variants. Volume production won't begin until the first half of 2027, following qualification by cloud data center providers in late 2026.

The company projects that HAMR technology, combined with OptiNAND, increased platter count, and mechanical improvements, will enable drives reaching 80TB CMR and 100TB UltraSMR capacities around 2030 -- a departure from Western Digital's previous commitment to microwave-assisted magnetic recording (MAMR) in 2017, which evolved into the energy-assisted perpendicular magnetic recording (ePMR) technology used in current drives.

Arm will reportedly start making its own chips this year after signing Meta as a customer, according to the Financial Times (paywalled). TechCrunch reports: The chip is expected to be a CPU for servers in large data centers and can be customized for various customers. Arm will outsource its production. The first in-house Arm chip will be unveiled as early as this summer, the Financial Times also reported.

This is a notable change in strategy for the semiconductor company, which usually licenses its chip blueprints to companies like Apple and Nvidia. Making its own chips will turn some of its existing customers into competitors.

Apple CEO Tim Took took to X today to tease a special Apple product launch happening next week on Wednesday, February 19. 9to5Mac reports: Few specific details were shared, but Cook did include a brief video featuring the Apple logo in silver plus the following words: "Get ready to meet the newest member of the family. Wednesday, February 19. #AppleLaunch" [...] The most likely product is the brand new iPhone SE 4, which rumors suggest will pack a variety of powerful upgrades. [...] There are several other hardware possibilities for the February 19 launch. We're currently expecting at least three other products to debut in the near future: the M4 MacBook Air, an M3 iPad Air, and a new 11th generation base model iPad.

Reading into the teaser, the silver color does subtly give off Mac vibes, so perhaps the M4 MacBook Air is coming. The circle design in the video has some wondering if AirTag 2 could be the focus of the launch. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, however, doesn't believe that's the case. Gurman suggests the iPhone SE 4 will be the new product. That would make the circle a potential reference to the device's single rear camera.

The biggest utility in Virginia, home to the global hotspot Data Center Alley, saw demand from data centers in development almost double in the last half of 2024. From a report: Total data center power capacity under contract with Dominion Energy in Virginia, which includes projects from preliminary to advanced stages of development, increased to 40.2 gigawatts in December from 21.4 gigwatts in July, the company said on its earnings call Wednesday.

Demand for power is surging with the development of data centers and artificial intelligence, along with manufacturing and the increasing electrification of the economy. Northern Virginia, which has the biggest concentration of the facilities in the world, has earned the nickname of Data Center Alley.

Apple is developing robots for its smart home ecosystem, though mass production is unlikely to begin before 2028, according to widely reliable TF Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. The project remains in early proof-of-concept testing, with Apple exploring both humanoid and non-humanoid designs, he wrote in a post on X.

The company is focusing on how users interact with robots rather than their physical appearance, prioritizing sensing hardware and software as core technologies, Kuo said. The tech giant has taken an unusual approach by publicly sharing some of its robotics research during this early stage, possibly to recruit talent, the analyst noted. The proof-of-concept phase, which precedes formal product development, serves as Apple's testing ground for product ideas and core technologies. Apple's foldable phone project is also currently in the proof-of-concept phase, he said.

Longtime Slashdot reader schwit1 shares a report from Popular Science: In 2021, NASCAR unveiled its Next Gen platform that included a number of rule changes from the previous iteration. Now fully symmetrical and using composite body panels instead of metal, the latest NASCAR vehicles are more like the street versions of the Chevrolet Camaro, the Ford Mustang, and the Toyota TRD Camry. Race car driving isn't an inexpensive sport, and one of the goals for the Next Gen platform was to reduce operating costs and create parity across the board. Technique Chassis, the sole chassis manufacturer for the NASCAR Cup Series, builds a modular offering in three parts. As a result, everyone is starting with the same platform, and finding a competitive advantage is in the tiniest details. One smart way to differentiate from the competition is 3D-printed parts. But this isn't your hobbyist level 3D printing.

Minnesota-based Stratasys specializes in "additive manufacturing," the process of creating an object by building it one layer at a time. Stratasys Senior Global Director of Automotive & Mobility Fadi Abro explains that this term is synonymous with 3D printing. However, the industry often reserves that description for hobby-level projects on smaller, non-industrial printers, while additive manufacturing represents robust industrial solutions. Additive manufacturing is the exact inverse of subtractive manufacturing, which requires cutting away at a solid chunk of material to achieve a final product. In art terms, additive manufacturing would be like sculpting with modeling clay while subtractive is akin to carving a shape from a block of marble. As it relates to NASCAR, Stratasys provides parts like ducts, covers, brackets, and tubing. Together with the racing organization, Stratasys reviews the current driver needs and makes recommendations for other parts and modifications. [...]

The kind of printers Stratasys builds aren't the type you buy at your local electronics store, either. Each industrial-grade 3D printer costs anywhere from $20,000 to $600,000. Using this kind of equipment isn't without precedent, and builds at SEMA's annual extravaganza feature 3D parts we wouldn't have dreamed of a few years ago. [...] In the past few months, Stratasys has been on a roll, signing an extension to its 20-year partnership with the Joe Gibbs Racing team and earning the title of "Official 3D Printing Partner of NASCAR." Competition for this market continues to heat up, however, as there are startups and legacy companies pushing hard. Around the world, 3D printing companies abound. Stratasys has one major factor on its side: 35 years of experience. What's new is that today's printing is more accurate, it's faster, the materials are more robust, Abro says. "I think what's changed drastically over the past five to seven years has been all about material development," Abro explains. "We're seeing materials that are just incredible, whether it's how resistant to heat they are or how strong they are compared to how much they weigh."

"It's better, faster, cheaper. It's faster to print something than to mill it, and then it's certainly cheaper in a multitude of different ways. Number one, there's not as much skill required for 3D printing as there is in CNC machining; you need a more traditional manufacturing method."

For the first time since 2004, PassMark's global CPU benchmark data shows a decline in average processor performance, with laptop CPUs dropping 3.4% and desktop CPUs falling 0.5% year-over-year. Tom's Hardware reports: We see the biggest drop in laptop CPU performance results. PassMark recorded an average result of 14,632 across 101,316 samples last year. But, in 2025, the average score sat at an average of 14,130 points between 25,541 samples, decreasing the average score by 3.4%. The average desktop PC result in 2024 netted 26,436 points for 186,053 samples. But for 2025, the average score currently sits at 26,311 points for over 47,810 samples -- a 0.5% drop from last year. While that drop is small, we should only see a continued progression of faster performance.

[...] Passmark itself mused on X (formerly Twitter) that it could be that people are switching to more affordable machines that deliver lower power and performance. Or maybe Windows 11 is depressing performance scores versus Windows 10, especially as people transition to it with the upcoming demise of the latter. We've certainly seen plenty of examples of reduced performance in gaming with some of the newer versions of Windows 11, particularly as Intel and AMD struggled to upstream needed updates into the OS. [...] PassMark also muses that bloatware could contribute to the sudden decline in performance, but that seems like a longshot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Two owners of Nvidia's new RTX 5090 Founders Edition GPUs have reported melted power connectors and damage to their PSUs. The images look identical to reports of RTX 4090 power cables burning or melting from two years ago. Nvidia blamed the issue on people not properly plugging the 12VHPWR power connection in fully and the PCI standards body blamed Nvidia.

A Reddit poster upgraded from an RTX 4090 to an RTX 5090 and noticed "a burning smell playing Battlefield 5," before turning off their PC and finding the damage. The images show burnt plastic at both the PSU end of the power connector and the part that connects directly to the GPU. The cable is one from MODDIY, a popular manufacturer of custom cables, and the poster claims it was "securely fastened and clicked on both sides (GPU and PSU)." While it's tempting to blame the MODDIY cable, Spanish YouTuber Toro Tocho has experienced the same burnt cable (both at the GPU and PSU ends) with an RTX 5090 Founders Edition while using a cable supplied by PSU manufacturer FSP. Plastic has also melted into the PCIe 5.0 power connector on the power supply.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Telegraph: Volkswagen has teased plans for a "China-killer" electric vehicle that will cost just €20,000 ($20,664 USD or £16,700) as the German carmaker gears up to take on a flood of Beijing-backed low-cost rivals. The company on Thursday shared its first images of a new vehicle expected to be called the ID.1, which will go into production from 2027.

The low-cost EV is intended to go head to head with all-electric brands from Chinese carmakers such as BYD, which overtook Tesla in British sales for the first time last month. Previous images of the vehicle suggest it will be an electric hatchback. Thomas Schäfer, the VW chief executive, said the new model would be "an affordable, high-quality, profitable electric Volkswagen from Europe, for Europe". Quentin Willson, the motoring journalist and founder of FairCharge, said the car could be a "possible China EV killer". Dan Caesar, of Electric Vehicles UK, added: "Cheaper EVs are exactly what legacy auto-makers need to be competitive during this critical time. We would expect the ID.1 to be warmly welcomed by motorists." Ginny Buckley, of consumer advice website Electrifying, said Volkswagen had been "clear about its intent to compete with China's low-cost EVs"...

The German carmaker is planning to cut 35,000 jobs by 2030 as it grapples with stalled demand for EVs in Europe and growing competition from Chinese rivals.
Volkswagen executives describe the upcoming EV will be a "true Volkswagen for everyone," according to the article

It also notes that the number of EVs sold across Europe "fell by 3% to 3 million during 2024, according to data from analysts Rho Motion."

Thursday the White House "moved to halt a $5 billion initiative to build electric vehicle charging stations," reports Politico, "by instructing states not to spend federal funds previously allocated to them..." NPR described the move as "putting in limbo billions of dollars allocated to states with current and future projects..."

Politico notes the move "appears to upend years of precedent in which federal promises of funds for highway projects had given states an all-but-guaranteed assurance that they were free to spend them. It also raises legal questions... Funding experts had told POLITICO last year that decades of legal precedent would largely insulate the charging money... Andrew Rogers [deputy administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, or FHWA, in the Biden administration] said in a text message that the new letter "appears to ignore both the law and multiple restraining orders that have been issued by federal courts." Rogers, who is now a senior vice president at Boundary Stone Partners, said the move appears to be "in direct violation" of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, a Watergate-era law that prohibits presidents from unilaterally canceling congressionally approved spending. Trump has contended that the law is unconstitutional.
Politico also got a quote from the chief analyst at analytics firm Paren, who predicts lawsuits from affected states and that the final impact of the move will be "just causing havoc and slowing things down for awhile." [A letter to state transportation directors from the Federal Highway Administration] clarifies that states will be able to receive reimbursements for "existing obligations" to design and build stations "in order to not disrupt current financial commitments." According to the letter, FHWA plans to publish new draft guidance on the NEVI program in the spring, followed by a comment period, before issuing new final guidance. Only then will states be able to resubmit their annual implementation plans for all fiscal years of the program.
"But that doesn't mean that the program is going to be sunset or the funds are not going to be made available again to the states," Nick Nigro, the founder of Atlas Public Policy consultancy told NPR: Several experts tell NPR that as a result of its overwhelming bipartisan support at the time, attempts to overturn it within the executive branch are likely to be challenged in court. Nigro believes the funding will resume eventually...

So far, 56 stations [with multiple chargers] are up and running as a result of the program, while more than 900 sites in total have been "awarded" to date, according to Loren McDonald, chief analyst at Paren, another research analytics firm. McDonald said several hundred of the awarded sites are currently under construction and expected to open this year. He does not believe the FHWA has the authority to pause or rescind any aspect of the NEVI program... "I assume lawsuits from states will start soon, and this will go to court and Congress," McDonald said in a statement.
The move has "confounded states, which had been allocated billions of dollars by Congress for the program," the New York Times reported Friday. "[S]ome state officials said that as a result of the memo from the Trump administration, they had stopped work on the charging stations. Others said they intended to keep going."

The Washington Post reports that a Texas Department of Transportation official "said it would continue to deploy federal funds for EV chargers until it receives further guidance," and that Ryan Gallentine, managing director at the national business association Advanced Energy United, said that states "are under no obligation to stop these projects based solely on this announcement." Politico adds: Also on Thursday, FHWA took down several internet pages providing information on NEVI and its sister program, the $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure grant program... Amid the confusion, at least six states — Alabama, Oklahoma, Missouri, Rhode Island, Ohio and Nebraska — have put their NEVI programs on hold, according to McDonald. Rhode Island and Ohio had been considered leading states in implementing the program.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Boston Dynamics Wednesday announced a partnership designed to bring improved reinforcement learning to its electric Atlas humanoid robot. The tie-up is with the Robotics & AI Institute (RAI Institute), earlier known as The Boston Dynamics AI Institute. Both organizations were founded by Marc Raibert, a former MIT professor who served as Boston Dynamics' CEO for 30 years. The Institute, founded in 2022, allows Raibert to continue the research that served as the foundation for Boston Dynamics.

Both have ties to Hyundai. The Korean carmaker acquired Boston Dynamics back in 2021; Hyundai also funds the Institute, giving Raibert free rein to explore more experimental and bleeding-edge technologies than is possible in a commercial company. The Institute mirrors Toyota's creation of TRI, or Toyota Research Institute, which announced its own partnership with Boston Dynamics in October, focused on the use of large behavior models. (LBMs). The twin partnerships are designed to improve the way Boston Dynamics' electric Atlas humanoid learns new tasks. The Robotics & AI Institute deal is specifically focused on reinforcement learning, a method that operates through trial and error, similar to the way both humans and animals learn. Reinforcement learning has traditionally been extremely time-intensive, though the creation of effective simulation has allowed many processes to be carried out at once in a virtual setting.

The Boston Dynamics/RAI Institute union kicked off earlier this month in Massachusetts. It's the latest in a number of collaborations between the pair, including a joint effort to develop a reinforcement learning research kit for the quadrupedal Spot robot by Boston Dynamics (which is its familiar robot "dog"). The new work focuses on both transferring simulation-based learning to real-world settings and improving how the company's humanoid Atlas moves through and interacts with physical environments. Pertaining to the latter, Boston Dynamics points to "dynamic running and full-body manipulation of heavy objects." Both are examples of actions that require synchronization of the legs and arms. The humanoid's bipedal form factor presents a number of unique challenges -- and opportunities -- when compared with Spot. Every activity is also subject to a broad range of forces, including balance, force, resistance, and motion.

In 2022, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" to describe the gradual deterioration of a service or product. The term's prevalence has increased to the point that it was the National Dictionary of Australia's word of the year last year. The editors at Ars Technica, having "covered a lot of things that have been enshittified," decided to highlight some of the worst examples the've come across. Here's a summary of each thing mentioned in their report: Smart TVs: Evolved into data-collecting billboards, prioritizing advertising and user tracking over user experience and privacy. Features like convenient input buttons are sacrificed for pushing ads and webOS apps. "This is all likely to get worse as TV companies target software, tracking, and ad sales as ways to monetize customers after their TV purchases -- even at the cost of customer convenience and privacy," writes Scharon Harding. "When budget brands like Roku are selling TV sets at a loss, you know something's up."

Google's Voice Assistant (e.g., Nest Hubs): Functionality has degraded over time, with previously working features becoming unreliable. Users report frequent misunderstandings and unresponsiveness. "I'm fine just saying it now: Google Assistant is worse now than it was soon after it started," writes Kevin Purdy. "Even if Google is turning its entire supertanker toward AI now, it's not clear why 'Start my morning routine,' 'Turn on the garage lights,' and 'Set an alarm for 8 pm' had to suffer."

Portable Document Format (PDF): While initially useful for cross-platform document sharing and preserving formatting, PDFs have become bloated and problematic. Copying text, especially from academic journals, is often garbled or impossible. "Apple, which had given the PDF a reprieve, has now killed its main selling point," writes John Timmer. "Because Apple has added OCR to the MacOS image display system, I can get more reliable results by screenshotting the PDF and then copying the text out of that. This is the true mark of its enshittification: I now wish the journals would just give me a giant PNG."

Televised Sports (specifically cycling and Formula 1): Streaming services have consolidated, leading to significantly increased costs for viewers. Previously affordable and comprehensive options have been replaced by expensive bundles across multiple platforms. "Formula 1 racing has largely gone behind paywalls, and viewership is down significantly over the last 15 years," writes Eric Berger. "Major US sports such as professional and college football had largely been exempt, but even that is now changing, with NFL games being shown on Peacock, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. None of this helps viewers. It enshittifies the experience for us in the name of corporate greed."

Google Search: AI overviews often bury relevant search results under lengthy, sometimes inaccurate AI-generated content. This makes finding specific information, especially primary source documents, more difficult. "Google, like many big tech companies, expects AI to revolutionize search and is seemingly intent on ignoring any criticism of that idea," writes Ashley Belanger.

Email AI Tools (e.g., Gemini in Gmail): Intrusive and difficult to disable, these tools offer questionable value due to their potential for factual inaccuracies. Users report being unable to fully opt-out. "Gmail won't take no for an answer," writes Dan Goodin. "It keeps asking me if I want to use Google's Gemini AI tool to summarize emails or draft responses. As the disclaimer at the bottom of the Gemini tool indicates, I can't count on the output being factual, so no, I definitely don't want it."

Windows: While many complaints about Windows 11 originated with Windows 10, the newer version continues the trend of unwanted features, forced updates, and telemetry data collection. Bugs and performance issues also plague the operating system. "... it sure is easy to resent Windows 11 these days, between the well-documented annoyances, the constant drumbeat of AI stuff (some of it gated to pricey new PCs), and a batch of weird bugs that mostly seem to be related to the under-the-hood overhauls in October's Windows 11 24H2 update," writes Andrew Cunningham. "That list includes broken updates for some users, inoperable scanners, and a few unplayable games. With every release, the list of things you need to do to get rid of and turn off the most annoying stuff gets a little longer."

Web Discourse: The rapid spread of memes, trends, and corporate jargon on social media has led to a homogenization of online communication, making it difficult to distinguish original content and creating a sense of constant noise. "[T]he enshittifcation of social media, particularly due to its speed and virality, has led to millions vying for their moment in the sun, and all I see is a constant glare that makes everything look indistinguishable," writes Jacob May. "No wonder some companies think AI is the future."

During the fourth quarter of 2024, AMD surpassed Intel in datacenter sales for the first time in history -- despite weaker-than-expected sales of its datacenter GPUs. Tom's Hardware reports: AMD's revenue in Q4 2024 totaled $7.658 billion, up 24% year-over-year. The company's gross margin hit 51%, whereas net income was $482 million. On the year basis, 2024 was AMD's best year ever as the company's revenue reached $25.8 billion, up 14% year-over-year. The company earned net income of $1.641 billion as its gross margin hit 49%. But while the company's annual results are impressive, there is something about Q4 results that AMD should be proud of.

Datacenter business was the company's primary source of earnings, with net revenue reaching record $3.86 billion in Q4, marking a 69% year-over-year (YoY) increase and a 9% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) rise. Operating income also saw substantial improvement, surging 74% YoY to $1.16 billion. By contrast, Intel's datacenter and AI business unit posted $3.4 billion revenue, while its operating income reached $200 million. But while the quarter marked a milestone for AMD, market analysts expected AMD to sell more of its Instinct MI300-series GPUs for AI and HPC. You can view AMD's 2024 financial results here.