Tech News of the Week - 10/07/2024

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Announcer: Welcome to Tech News of the Week with your host, Histrionix and DIAgesies. Yes, those are real words.

[01:00:09.13]
Ned: Welcome to Tech News of the Week. This is our weekly Tech News podcast where Chris and I cover four interesting stories that caught our attention in the last week. I'm going to get it started. Gallium is the new black. Did you know that microprocessors don't have to be made from silicon? It's true. There are other semiconductors out there that can also do the job. And gallium, specifically, indium gallium zinc oxide, is one such conductor, semiconductive. It's not taking tickets on a train or anything. Igzo is typically used for sensor and touch screen technologies. And unlike traditional silicon-based wafers, IGZO can bend and flex up to a radius of curvature of three millimeters without being damaged. British company, Pragmatic Semiconductor, has proven this flexibility by creating a Risc-V-based processor called FlexRV. That can be wrapped around a pencil while still functioning. Now, the chip contains only 12,600 logic gates, so you won't be running Crisis on it. You could probably still run Dume. Someone should give that a try. But the fabrication process is relatively inexpensive, and the chip is durable and flexible, allowing it to be placed on products and in locations where a traditional processor package would not be viable.

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Ned: The same company had previously created an arm-based chipset from the same materials, creatively named the Plastic Arm, which had 18,000 logic gates and a clock speed of 29 kilohertz, requiring a mere 21 milliwatts of power. Both of these packages are immensely impressive, but loyal listeners know that I'm always on the look out for new Risc-V technology, and the lack of licensing costs means that an already inexpensive technology will be even cheaper. I'm very curious to see how the following generations of the FlexRV are incorporated into the realm of IoT and industrial applications.

[01:02:34.09]
Chris: Softbank to invest half a billion dollars in OpenAI's latest funding round. From the, Surely this will Workout Fine Department. World famous, let's call them Questionable? Tech Investment Fund from SoftBank, The Vision Fund, has been linked to the upcoming OpenAI Funding Round. Openai, the world famous most important company on Earth that loses $5 billion per year, is on the hunt for more money, and Masayoshi Son is on board. The Vision Fund, founded with $100 billion to invest in 2017 and down $32 billion in 2022 alone, has had a mixed record when it comes investing. They did recover and made some $4 billion in profit in 2023, although they were clearly just bouied by the overall rising market rather than anything approaching financial acumen. Still, they're back at it, and now they are attacking AI ventures all over the place with a vengeance, with this investment in OpenAI being just the largest of many. We'll see how it goes.

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Ned: Did they invest in WeWork?

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Chris: They did.

[01:04:13.14]
Ned: We'll see how it goes. Meta introduces Orion AR glasses that you can't buy. When Google introduced their glasses concept back in 20 something, they really tried to convince us that we would want to wear some DS9 style nerdy ass face computer thing. For everyone besides the most stalwart of true believers that had zero social graces, Google Glasses were a fashion abomination and a major etiquette faux pas. Still, there is some type of allure there. For a generation of people who have grown up with heads-up displays in their video games, the idea of an overlay on physical reality does have appeal. However, the needed to catch up with the fantasy. Optics needed to be smaller, resolution's sharper. The battery had to last more than 45 minutes without being tethered to a puck or an outlet, and the whole thing needed to not be so cumbersome or ugly that you'd be ashamed to wear it in public. The Orion AR glasses, recently previewed and demoed at Facebook's Meta Connect conference, might actually come close to fitting the bill. The prototype has a 70-degree field of vision, custom silicon chipsets, hand-based input controls via a wristband, a separate, wirelessly connected compute pod, and a two-hour battery life.

[01:05:45.20]
Ned: Okay, so that last thing isn't great. But they do only weigh 100 grams compared to something like the Microsoft Hologlens at 580 grams or the Vision Pro at 650 grams. While a little bit chunky, they are also something you could realistically wear out in public without garnering too much attention. There are some downsides. Number one, this was a prototype and not for sale. Number two, if it was for sale, it would cost $10,000. Number three, it's made by Facebook. Nevertheless, it does seem that truly viable AR glasses are only a few years away, and I, for one, couldn't care less.

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Chris: Microsoft discontinues the hollow Lens. In other news, I forgot hollow Lens was a thing. I guarantee that you just said out loud to nobody, Oh, yeah. The second you heard me say, hollow Lens. You don't have one. You've never seen one, but you've definitely heard of it. And now it's gone. Back in 2019, the hollow Lens was set to take over the world of augmented reality. This was version 2, you see. And they'd fixed all the problems they'd had with HoloLens One. What were those problems? Don't know. Nobody bought the HoloLens One either. It's the friggin... It's the Zoom of AR headsets, where we're going to have a handful of true believers running around for the next decade screaming about, It was so good. It was just... It was ahead of its time, bro. And probably wanting to AirDrop me some songs from Skrillex or something. Still, I mean, it is a shame that there is one less player in this market, right? Facebook famously ruined everything when they bought Oculus and ruined it with all of their Facebookness. As highlighted above, the Zuck is now trying to make the Orion glasses happen, which who knows?

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Chris: I do know that he himself, being the person marketing and modeling them, is Absolutely not helping. There is a YouTube out there that shows him at the event, trying to act like a normal human being while wearing them, which is just, look, okay, there's a reason that I'm not linking to that video. You don't need that in your life right now. Frankly, you don't deserve it. Things are hard enough out there.

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Ned: And the irony is it's not the glasses that are preventing him from acting like a human. Accurate. All right, that's it. We're done now. Go away. Bye.