Daily Tech News 1 February 2025

• The Minimal Phone is a minimal phone. (Liliputing)
  
  Well, technically it's a minimal smartphone. It runs Android 14 and has an 800x600 display and supports 4G - though not 5G. And it has a camera - optionally two - and USB-C.
  
  And a physical keyboard and a genuine headphone jack and a microSD slot, all of which are becoming less common. And the screen is a relatively tiny 4.25".
  
  Also less common is the use of an e-ink display, which gives much better battery life but is not great for watching videos or checking your photos, since it's black and white. The video review attached to that article suggests it's not the most responsive device ever created either, likely directly tied to the slow e-ink display.
  
  Price is $399 despite the lower-end specs, presumably because phones that aren't bloated and annoying don't sell.

• Meanwhile Google's update to improve battery life on the Pixel 4a can improve it by as much as negative 50%. (Liliputing)
  
  Oops.
  
  
  
• Electronic Arts has re-released The Sims and The Sims 2, since its current games are selling in negative numbers. (The Verge)
  
  The games have been updated to run on Windows 10 and 11, but supposedly not changed otherwise. And you do get all the released expansion packs, of which there were many.
  
  You can get both complete game series and The Sims 4 as well (which is free) for $40.
  
  
  
• Intel's Falcon Shores AI chip is dead. (Hot Hardware)
  
  Design was completed and it was ready for manufacture... Three years behind where it needed to be.
  
  
  
• Intel's Clearwater Forest server processors have merely been delayed by six months to the first quarter of next year. (Serve the Home)
  
  These are built using only the slower, but smaller and more efficient, E cores. Which is fine for a server - running hundreds of efficient cores is exactly what you need in many cases.
  
  Intel said the chips were delayed because the market "had not materialised", which is a curious statement since these are the first such chips Intel has produced.
  
  AMD meanwhile is selling all the server CPUs it can make and has another year of runway to devour the market.
  
  
  
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman noted that OpenAI is not open and never has been, but that the company would consider thinking about it at some point, maybe. (Tech Crunch)

  "I personally think we need to figure out a different open source strategy," Altman said. "Not everyone at OpenAI shares this view, and it's also not our current highest priority... We will produce better models [going forward], but we will maintain less of a lead than we did in previous years."

  Well, that certainly clears up the company's plans.

  In a follow-up reply, Kevin Weil, OpenAI's chief product officer, said that OpenAI is considering open sourcing older models that aren't state-of-the-art anymore. "We'll definitely think about doing more of this," he said, without going into greater detail.

  Y'know, I really think they're getting into this "open" idea.
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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