• Well, that was probably the lamest CES ever.
  
  The one bright spot was - oddly - Nvidia's "Super" series of video cards.
  
  The 4070 Super is 20% faster than the 4070 at the same price.  The 4080 Super is not even 5% faster than the 4080, but is $200 cheaper.
  
  And the 4070 Ti Super is 90% of a 4080, but $400 cheaper.  True that it's no longer competing against the 4080, but the 4080 Super, so it's only $200 cheaper, but it's still a top-of-the-line gaming card (excluding the 4090 as a semi-professional card) at an only mostly insane price.
  
  
  
• Still trying to get a Calliope Mori limited edition case from Hyte, and the Amelia Watson case is supposed to launch this month, and they look to be launching three Nijisanji-branded cases as well.
  
  I'd particularly like to get the Calli and Ame cases because there are matching custom keyboards available, and there's no Pomu in the Nijisanji lineup so I'm less worried about those.  But Hyte seems determined to save me money.
  
  
  

Tech News

• Space X has revealed why the second Starship test flight blew up: Too much fuel.  (WCCFTech)
  
  They loaded extra fuel to simulate the mass of a payload, and were in the process of venting liquid oxygen when the fire and resulting explosion happened.
  
  So the take-away here is don't do that.
  
  
  
• The FiiO CP13 is a portable cassette player that charges over USB-C.  (Liliputing)
  
  It costs $165, which is not cheap but is also not remotely in the crazy audiophile price range, making it doubly odd.
  
  This is one of the standout products of CES.  That's how lame it was.
  
  
  
• Do 480Hz monitors actually make any perceptible difference at all?  The answer may surprise you.  It's yes.  The answer is yes.  (The Verge)
  
  The difference is small, but it is perceptible to normal humans.   I'd rather see reasonably-priced 5K monitors - again, the difference is small but perceptible - but at least they aren't chasing stuff that makes no difference at all.
  
  
  
• Just thinking about those Neuro-sama videos I posted the other day.
  
  Sure, she's kind of dumb - "The architecture and landscape suggest Scandinavia, probably Sweden" when looking at a palm tree - but let's consider what she can do, albeit not consistently:
  
  - Respond to verbal instructions
  - Talk
  - Read
  - Remember things
  - Identify foreign languages including non-Latin alphabets
  - Analyse images
  - Use Google
  
  She correctly identified Portugal from a road sign when I was guessing Spain, and northern Italy the same way when I was guessing Switzerland.
  
  If she were a five-year-old she'd be a prodigy, though clearly still a five-year-old.
  
  What Vedal is doing here is more interesting than the combined efforts of OpenAI and Amazon and Google.