• The best graphics cards for gaming in 2026.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  At #2 is Nvidia's 5070 Ti, and at #5 is the 5060 Ti, both of which have ceased to exist.
  
  
  
• The best options for building a new PC with DDR4 RAM you already have.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Both systems include the 5060 Ti, which as we have just noticed, has gone to the great parts bin in the sky.
  
  
  
• Nvidia has rebutted claims that the 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti are "end-of-life", insisting that all cards are still shipping and are just shagged out after a long render.  (PC Magazine)
  
  The fact that you can't actually buy them is clearly a skill issue.  Git gud, scrub.
  
  Hardware Unboxed - an Aussie hardware review channel - was planning a market roundup of currently available 5070 Ti models, and reached out to their industry contacts for review cards.  There were no review cards to be had anywhere.  (YouTube)
  
  Their contacts in the Australian retail market confirmed that there was no stock of the 5070 Ti at distributors at all, echoing recent reports from Germany and Japan.  And Asus told them, and subsequently confirmed, that the 5070 Ti was "end-of-life", had ceased production, and would not be restocked.
  
  Then Nvidia... Clarified...  That all RTX 5000 series cards are still in production, and Asus walked back earlier comments and agreed that the 5070 Ti is still in production.
  
  Hardware Unboxed requested - again - a review sample.  There has been no response as yet.
  
  
  
• AMD meanwhile is working with its board partners to prevent GPU price hikes.  (Notebook Check)
  
  Good luck with that.  The 8GB 9060 XT seems to have bounced back up from its recent low price - it was briefly selling below MSRP - but it and the three 16GB cards (9060 XT, 9070, and 9070 XT) are all in stock.  As is the 32GB 9700, though that model is quite expensive.

• TSMC plans to spend $56 billion on new production facilities and equipment this year.  (WCCFTech)
  
  That's equal to three Nanyas.
  
  
  
• Reprompt is - or was, it's just been patched - a Copilot exploit that, once you clicked on the link, kept stealing your data even after you closed Copilot.  (Hot Hardware)
  
  It worked like most so-called "Prompt Injection" vulnerabilities: It asked the AI for your data, and the AI helpfully handed it over because it has less self-interest than the average mycoplasma.
  
  This particular instance has been patched, but it was active in the wild for four months before Microsoft took action.  This is why even people who use AI tools are up in arms about Microsoft integrating it directly into their operating system. 
  
  If you use AI through your browser, it stops the moment you close the tab.  Copilot never stops until you kill it with fire.  Hot Hardware has a detailed article on removing it that involves running unsigned code directly out of GitHub because that may actually be safer than leaving Windows untouched.
  
  
  
• US senators are demanding answers from X (Twitter), Meta (Facebook), and Alphabet (Google) on sexualised deepfakes.  (Tech Crunch)
  
  Answers to questions like "How do I do it?", "Does it have pictures of Sydney Sweeney?", and "You're not recording this are you?  Stop recording right now!"
  
  
  
• Italy's privacy watchdog is under investigation for corruption and embezzlement.  (Reuters)
  
  I am shocked, shocked, to see corruption and embezzlement going on in here!
  
  
  
• The Minisforum N5 Air is a $499 5-bay NAS.  (Liliputing)
  
  It's a cheaper version of the N5 with a plastic rather than metal case, but otherwise almost identical.  Apart from five 3.5" drive bays, it has room for three M.2 SSDs (with two running only at PCIe 4.0 x1 speed and one at x2), and includes a Ryzen 255 CPU, room for two DDR5 SODIMM modules (none as standard, so beware of that), and a whole lot of ports: OCuLink, two USB4 ports, 10Gb and 5Gb Ethernet, three USB3 10Gb ports, and HDMI.  One of those USB3 ports is inside the system to host a boot device so that you can dedicate all the drives to data.
  
  
  
• The best office mini-PCs review by Notebookcheck.  (Notebookcheck)
  
  Top spot goes to the Apple Mac Mini M4 Pro.  With 64GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD, though, it costs more than three times as much as the same configuration for the Minisforum AI X1 at #5.  (They list the 32GB model, but I bought the 64GB model.)
  
  
  
• The FDA has announced a recall of chocolate bars from Spring & Mulberry.  (Southern Living)
  
  Then we have number four: Crunchy Frog.
  
  We use only the finest baby frogs, dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in the finest quality spring water, lightly killed, and sealed in a succulent, Swiss, quintuple-smooth, treble-milk chocolate envelope, and lovingly frosted with glucose.
  
  And what is this one: Spring Surprise?
  
  Ah, that’s one of our specialities.  Covered in dark, velvety chocolate, when you pop it into your mouth, stainless steel bolts spring out and plunge straight through both cheeks.
  
  
  
• Everything I ordered during my definitely not drunken New Years Eve shopping spree has now shipped.
  
  The SSDs doubled in price and the memory tripled the next day.  I do need to pick up an AM4 CPU to use it all - the motherboard is on its way - but those are cheap and readily available.
  
  
  

Bananya Interlude

Musical Interlude