Mondays are when the industry tells me my perfectly fine computer is obsolete unless it learns “AI,” which is just Excel with a gym membership. Windows 10 hit end-of-support on October 14, and Microsoft is gently offering a $30 annual “go live your best legacy life” security plan. It’s like paying rent on a smoke detector. Either buy a Copilot+ PC, enroll in ESU, or accept your laptop’s new identity as a vintage appliance next to the sourdough starter. (support.microsoft.com)
So of course Intel opened “AI Experience” pop-up stores like a seasonal Halloween shop for NPUs. Someone even spotted Panther Lake laptops hiding in Munich like rare birds, whispering about 18A efficiency gains while the floor demo runs “AI background blur” as if it’s a religion. Meanwhile Qualcomm rolled in with the Snapdragon X2 chanting 80 TOPS from the NPU—because nothing says consumer joy like a number you can’t compare across vendors. The footnote: Windows asks for ~40 to badge you “Copilot+,” which is basically the SAT minimum for your laptop. (tomshardware.com)
It’s cute how silicon is a vibes contest while regulators have entered their stomp era. The EU’s Digital Markets Act handed Apple a €500 million “we said no steering” invoice and dinged Meta for the privacy equivalent of “pay or confess.” Across the pond, the DOJ finally pried at Google’s search moat with remedies that ban the exclusive default deals and force data access so rivals can, in theory, stop face-planting against the index wall. Not a breakup, but definitely a new household chore chart. (apnews.com)
Wearables decided to cosplay as the future again. Meta’s Ray‑Ban with an actual AR display exists and costs real money, which is bold given that my face still rejects HUDs like a bad transplant. But fine—translate menus, ghost‑text directions into my eyeball, let me pretend I’m Tony Stark ordering a sandwich. If they nail battery and not-totally-dork aura, this decade’s “glasses are back” attempt might survive longer than a TikTok trend. (theguardian.com)
Factories, meanwhile, are getting a software update called “humanoids.” Foxconn’s Houston plant plans to drop legged interns on the Nvidia server line, trained on Nvidia’s very own GR00T model because of course we named the robot brain after a tree. The demo reel sells “generalist robotics is here,” which is either history happening or the best Kickstarter teaser you’ve ever seen. Either way, the assembly line is about to develop a LinkedIn profile. (reuters.com)
And because the universe enjoys contrast, climate scientists just finished melting a 190‑meter slab from the bottom of a 2,800‑meter Antarctic ice core, quietly unspooling 1.2 million years of atmospheric receipts. It’s the world’s slowest, coldest changelog: CO₂ up, cycles roll, life adapts—until we turned the knobs to ludicrous speed. Tech keeps chasing 80 TOPS and robot interns; the ice is over here showing patch notes from a planet that doesn’t do hotfixes. (bas.ac.uk)
If there’s a throughline, it’s this: we are bolting agents onto everything—PCs, glasses, factories, even antitrust—and hoping the emergent property is competence. Wake me when “TOPS” measures how many consequences per second we can handle without another pop‑up store.