Meta is permanently cutting the price of its Quest 2 VR headset to $250 following the launch of the Quest 3, according to a Quest Blog update spotted by TechCrunch. The Quest 2 has been on sale at that price since Black Friday anyway, but the new retail price might spell even better deals for the previous-gen model. 

"We knew we could do even more to make VR more affordable and bring even more people into the community... that's why we’re permanently lowering prices on Quest 2 and its accessories, effective January 1," the company wrote. To wit, the 128GB Quest 2 is now $250, while the 256GB model is $300. Meta is also dropping the prices for refurbished units to $230 and $270, respectively. Similar pricing can be found on Amazon. 

Quest 2 accessories are also carrying lower prices, with the Elite Strap with battery receiving the biggest drop from $120 to $90. The regular Elite Strap is now $50, the carrying case has dropped to $45, the Active Pack is now $60 and the Quest 2 Fit Pack falls from $50 to $40. 

The Quest 2 became one of the more popular VR headsets thanks to the low $300 launch price, but the buzz died down when Meta jacked the price to $400 in mid-2022. The Quest 3 was a big step forward with improved screens and lenses, a more compact design, faster performance, mixed reality cameras and more. 

With hundreds of VR titles available — including Resident Evil 4, the new Roblox game and ever-popular Beat Saber — the Quest 2 is still a great entry into the world of VR, though. It's now even more attractive at that price, and we might see it drop even lower via sales over the next year. 

NVIDIA may have figured out a way to go around the US export restrictions on China, but apparently ASML, the Dutch firm behind the key chipmaking equipment, isn't having much say on this end. According to Bloomberg, Biden's administration reportedly reached out to ASML "weeks before" the January 1, 2024 export ban deadline, requesting the firm to halt some pre-scheduled shipments of its deep ultraviolet lithography (DUV) machines to its Chinese customers. This came after the revelation that SMIC used ASML tech to manufacture Huawei's latest flagship processor, the 7nm HiSilicon Kirin 9000S.

In addition to DUV machines, ASML also manufactures extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machines for making more advanced chips — with node processes of 5nm or less — for the likes of Apple and Qualcomm. While ASML was never allowed to sell EUV equipment to China, the Dutch government did grant licenses to the firm for shipping DUV machines to China until the end of 2023.

Bloomberg reports that things changed when the US government — National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, specifically — allegedly contacted the Dutch government regarding some of ASML's final shipments to China, to which his team was asked to reach out to ASML directly. "Shipments of a limited number of machines" were affected.

While China had been able to source lithography machines from elsewhere, they tended to be off less advanced methods. Not to mention the joint effort between the US, Japan and the Netherlands on limiting China's access to such equipment. That said, China had since been pushed to beef up its own silicon ecosystem, to the point where it surprised the world with its homegrown 7nm mobile 5G chip. It's no wonder the US was desperate to halt ASML's final DUV shipments to China, though doing so before the agreed deadline may be a questionable move. 

A few weeks ago, NASA’s robotic Mars explorers were given some time off from hard work while the agency waited out Mars solar conjunction, a natural phenomenon that could interfere with their communications. Leading up to the pause, the Curiosity rover was put in park — but its Hazard-Avoidance Cameras (Hazcams) kept snapping away. In a first for the rover, Curiosity recorded the passage of a Martian day over 12 hours from its stationary position, capturing its own shifting shadow on the landscape as the sun moves from dawn to dusk. It held onto the images until after the conjunction ended on November 25.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Curiosity was given instructions to record the 12-hour sequences a few days before the conjunction began in mid-November, according to NASA. The idea was to see if it could catch any weather events that might crop up. That didn’t end up happening, but the images Curiosity snapped on November 8 are still pretty enchanting. They’ve been pieced together in two videos showing the view from its front and rear Hazcams.

Curiosity’s Hazcams are normally used to help drivers avoid terrain that could be dangerous to the rover. But with the rover parked ahead of its pause in duties from November 11 to November 25, the cameras were freed up for a bit of sight-seeing. Curiosity recorded from its position at the base of Mars’ Mount Sharp from 5:30AM to 5:30PM. It and the other Mars explorers have since resumed their normal activities.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

Vizio TVs’ “effective” refresh rates have been confusing customers for years, and the company may now owe payments to some buyers who were misled by the term. As spotted by The Verge, Vizio recently agreed to settle a class action lawsuit in California over what plaintiffs claim is “false and misleading” advertising. While some Vizio TVs are marketed as having a “120Hz Effective Refresh Rate” or “240Hz Effective Refresh Rate,” that describes a result achieved using motion clarity technology. Their actual, native refresh rate in most cases is 60Hz.

Vizio has denied any wrongdoing on its part, but agreed to a $3 million settlement covering all Vizio TVs purchased in California that were advertised with the above descriptions, going back to April 30, 2014 and up until the final court judgment. The final approval hearing is right now set for June 20, 2024. People may be entitled to payments of up to $50, but claims must be in by March 30, 2024. The claim form can be found here. Vizio also agreed to stop marketing its TVs this way and to “provide enhanced services and a limited one-year warranty to all Settlement Class Members.”

NASA’s campaign to gather names for a sort of “message in a bottle” that will fly with its upcoming Europa Clipper mission closes after this weekend, so if you were hoping to participate but haven’t yet made your submission, you’d better hurry up and do so. The signatures will accompany a poem written for Europa by US Poet Laureate Ada Limón, which will be engraved in Limón’s handwriting on a metal plate attached to the spacecraft. Europa, one of Jupiter’s largest moons, is thought to have a deep saltwater ocean beneath its icy crust — and there, the conditions could be suitable for microbial life.

To enter the Message in a Bottle campaign, you just need to go to NASA’s website and fill out a short signup form. The deadline is tomorrow, December 31. So far, more than 2.4 million people have added their names. According to NASA, the names of everyone who participated will be stenciled in tiny, tiny letters onto microchips using an electron beam that can create lines of text smaller than 1/1000th the width of a human hair. These microchips will be affixed to the plate containing the poem.

The Europa Clipper spacecraft is scheduled to launch in October 2024, and it’ll be another six years from then before it reaches Jupiter’s orbit. Once there, it’ll investigate Europa’s potential habitability through a series of close flybys. Europa is one of an estimated 95 moons circling Jupiter and among the longest known to humanity. 

What do you do when the tech world mostly grinds to a halt at the end of December? You reheat your hot takes, force a narrative thread on a company's ups and downs and edit it all up for consumption. 

Yes, it's a little quiet at the end of the year (barring Apple Watch bans), but that won't stop TMA from finding something for me to talk to himself about. We’re looking at a few of the major stories from the last 12 months and .. some other things where I just has to say my piece. And if not on a short YouTube video that's clipped, cropped and pushed into socials, then where? On X? Pschh.

This week:

🤖💬🤖 How OpenAI's ChatGPT has changed the world in just a year

📲🔋 Apple's switch to USB-C on the iPhone 15 brings more cable confusion

🎮🎮🎮 Microsoft officially owns Activision Blizzard

And read this:

I couldn't cover all the big things in tech in one tiny video. I'd recommend taking a look at all of the big tech wins in 2023 (and all the big losses), and it's definitely worth reading through our picks of the best games of the year. 

Like email more than video? Subscribe right here for daily reports, direct to your inbox.

A few days ago, Microsoft released a standalone Android app for Microsoft Copilot, giving you a quick way to access the AI assistant. Turns out the iOS and iPad versions weren't far behind, because they're now available from Apple's App Store. Just like in Copilot on desktop and other AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, you can type in your question and wait for responses generated by artificial intelligence. In Copilot's case, you'll get responses spun by OpenAI's GPT-4, the company's latest large language model. The free version of ChatGPT, in comparison, is powered by the older ChatGPT-3.5, and you'll need to pay for ChatGPT Plus to get access to the newer model. 

In addition, Copilot on iOS has the capability to turn your words into images. That particular feature is powered by OpenAI's DALL-E 3 text-to-image AI system, which the company previously said is "significantly better" at being able to grasp the final product you want to achieve with the text prompt you type in. DALL-E 3 was also designed to be better at rendering the elements its predecessors were having trouble with, such as human hands. 

This is but the latest Copilot product Microsoft has released since it rebranded Bing Chat. The company also brought Copilot to Windows 10 and then to Windows 11, giving around a billion devices — based on the platforms' user numbers — access to the AI chatbot. With these mobile rollouts, Microsoft is expanding Copilot's reach even more, especially since the apps are free to use. 

Firefly Green Fuels, a UK-based company, has developed a new form of jet fuel that is entirely fossil-free and made from human waste. The company worked with experts at Cranfield University to confirm that the fuel they developed had a 90 percent lower carbon footprint than what is used in aviation today, according to the BBC. Tests by independent regulators validated that what Firefly Green Fuels has developed is nearly identical to standard A1 jet fuel.

In 2021, the company received a £2 million grant from the Department of Transport to continue developing its sustainable aviation fuel. Although it’s not yet available commercially, the company says it is on track to bringing its fuel to the global market and it will have its first commercial plant operating within 5 years. The company has already inked a partnership with the budget airline Wizz Air — the name of the company and the source of its potential combustibles could scarcely be a more perfect pairing — to supply it with fuel starting in 2028.

It currently sources its waste from water companies in the UK and takes the refined sewage through a process called hydrothermal liquefaction, which converts the liquid waste into a sludge or crude oil. Solid by-products can also be made into crop fertilizer. The company claims that the carbon intensity of the whole process — which measures how much carbon is needed to produce energy — is 7.97 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule (gCO²e/MJ). Comparatively, the ICCT says carbon intensity recorded for jet fuel ranges from 85 to 95 gCO²e/MJ.

Organic matter, as the company points out, takes millions of years to develop into the fossil fuels that power cars and planes. Firefly’s solution makes it possible to generate fuel in a matter of days — and more importantly, human waste is a widely available resource. It's unclear if sustainable jet fuel will be more or less expensive than what is currently available. The company could not immediately be reached for comment. However, in a statement, the company’s CEO James Hygate made mention that using human waste is a “cheap and abundant feedstock [that] will never run out.”

The achievement of carbon neutrality in our airspaces has been a longtime goal for regulators and leaders in Europe and the US. While EVs have made headway in the car industry, it might be a while before we see battery powered commercial jets. So in the meantime, solutions for creating more environmentally-friendly jet fuel are welcome.

NVIDIA is set to release a low-powered version of the GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card specifically for the Chinese market to comply with US export rules, as reported by The Verge. The RTX 4090D already has a product page on the company’s Chinese website and it boasts fewer CUDA cores than its similarly-named cousin. It also features a lower power draw of 425W instead of 450W.

Most of the other specs remain the same between the two versions, but the fewer CUDA cores and decreased power draw force a five percent reduction in speed when gaming and using creative applications, according to Reuters. Even with the performance dip, NVIDIA still says the 4090D is a "quantum leap in performance, efficiency and artificial intelligence-driven graphics.”

This is all due to US export restrictions on high-end computer chips shipped to China and Russia, in an attempt to curb both nations from developing technology that could be used in applications like weapons making and surveillance. These rules were announced back in 2022 but officially put into place this year, leaving manufacturers like NVIDIA scrambling to find a solution that met the needs of both Chinese consumers and US regulators.

We knew that the company was going to make new chips specifically for the massive Chinese market, as the restrictions prevented it from selling the original RTX 4090 and a bevy of AI-related GPUs. NVIDIA says the updated GPU “has been designed to fully comply with US government export controls” and added that it “extensively engaged with the US government” throughout development of the chip.

The RTX 4090D will be available throughout China at some point in January, at a price of ￥12,999 or around $1,836 USD. This should help lessen demand for powerful graphics cards in the country, as the aforementioned restrictions have reportedly led to the repurposing of factories to focus on AI accelerators instead of the banned RTX 4090. 

Donald Trump’s former “fixer,” Michael Cohen, used Google Bard to cite made-up legal cases that ended up in a federal court. The New York Times reported Friday that Cohen admitted in unsealed court papers that he passed on documents referencing bogus cases to his lawyer, who then relayed them to a federal judge. Cohen reportedly wrote in the sworn declaration he hadn’t stayed on top of “emerging trends (and related risks) in legal technology.”

Cohen’s legal team filed the paperwork in a motion asking for an early end to court supervision from his 2018 campaign finance case, for which he served three years in prison. After Cohen’s attorney, David M. Schwartz, presented the legal documents to the federal court, Judge Jesse M. Furman of the Federal District Court said he was having trouble finding the three decisions cited by Schwartz (via Cohen).

Judge Furman told Schwartz that if he couldn’t provide documentation of the cases, the attorney needed to provide “a thorough explanation of how the motion came to cite cases that do not exist and what role, if any, Mr. Cohen played in drafting or reviewing the motion before it was filed.” Schwartz must also explain why he shouldn’t be sanctioned “for citing nonexistent cases to the court.” Cohen is a former lawyer who was disbarred after pleading guilty to multiple felonies.

Enter Bard. Cohen said he didn’t realize the AI bot “was a generative text service that, like ChatGPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not.” Cohen also blamed his lawyer, saying he didn’t realize Schwartz “would drop the cases into his submission wholesale without even confirming that they existed.”

Although lawyers using AI chatbots to cite hallucinated cases makes for easy comedy, this flub could have profound implications for a critical case with potential political ramifications. Cohen is expected to be the star witness in the Manhattan criminal case against Trump for allegedly falsifying business records. The Bard flub gives Trump’s lawyers new ammunition to discredit the onetime fixer.

Cohen joins the company of ChatGPT Lawyer Steven Schwartz, who cited made-up cases (sourced through OpenAI’s chatbot) in a civil case earlier this year. He was allegedly joined by the attorney for Fugees rapper Pras Michel. In October, the artist accused his lawyer of using an AI program he may have had a financial stake in to produce his closing arguments.