We've been hinting that this year is going to be huge, and we're ready to share why… in two weeks on Feb 25th, at our Framework (2nd Gen) Event! We're holding this launch event live in San Francisco and streaming to our YouTube channel at 10:30am Pacific that day. You can sign up now to get notified when the stream starts. The last time we held a live launch event was in March 2023, when we unveiled Framework Laptop 16 and two new versions of Framework Laptop 13. It's been amazing seeing the interest in these products and the incredible ways the community has been using and extending on them. We've been heads down working for the last two years on an even bigger set of announcements.

For this event, in addition to bringing in press and partners, we're opening a pool of invites to the Framework Community to attend the event in person, meet the team, and get hands on with our newest products. If you're a current Framework fan and are in the San Francisco area (or are able to handle your own travel to us), you can apply to attend in this sign-up form. We expect we'll see a lot more interest than we have available seats in our venue, so we'll likely need to downselect from applicants.

Businesses across every industry are rolling out AI services this year. For Microsoft, Oracle, Perplexity, Snap and hundreds of other leading companies, using the NVIDIA AI inference platform—a full stack comprising world-class silicon, systems and software—is the key to delivering high-throughput and low-latency inference and enabling great user experiences while lowering cost. NVIDIA's advancements in inference software optimization and the NVIDIA Hopper platform are helping industries serve the latest generative AI models, delivering excellent user experiences while optimizing total cost of ownership. The Hopper platform also helps deliver up to 15x more energy efficiency for inference workloads compared to previous generations.

AI inference is notoriously difficult, as it requires many steps to strike the right balance between throughput and user experience. But the underlying goal is simple: generate more tokens at a lower cost. Tokens represent words in a large language model (LLM) system—and with AI inference services typically charging for every million tokens generated, this goal offers the most visible return on AI investments and energy used per task. Full-stack software optimization offers the key to improving AI inference performance and achieving this goal.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc, a leading innovator of mass-capacity data storage, announced its sustainability collaboration with e-commerce site eBay. The agreement establishes Seagate's official storefront on eBay as a direct channel for consumers to access factory-recertified hard drives as part of the Seagate Circularity Program.

As a founding member of the Circular Drive Initiative—a partnership of global leaders in digital storage, data centers, sustainability, and blockchain collaborating to reduce e-waste—Seagate is committed to enabling the secure reuse of storage devices and reducing hard drive shredding. Hard drive shredding entails breaking down a hard drive into tiny pieces so that data cannot be recovered. As rare earth materials contained in those parts cannot be reused, hard drive shredding harms the environment and is not a sustainable practice.

Earlier teardowns of 13-inch Apple M3 MacBook Air models revealed a pleasing storage performance upgrade. Popular American e-commerce watchdog, iFixit, has joined in on the fun—CEO Kyle Wiens has confirmed that the 15-inch M3 MacBook Air 256 GB base model also houses two 128 GB flash storage chips. A provisional repairability score of 5 out of 10 has been awarded—this verdict could change once iFixit staffers finish up in-depth investigations into Apple's latest thirteen and fifteen inch ultraslim notebooks. A revised figure might appear online once the site publishes its full how-to-guides.

iFixit's video teardown demonstrates that not much has changed when comparing the new models to Apple's M2 MacBook Air family of products. Tinkerers will face the usual obstacles, mainly dreaded pentalobe screw designs. The team discovered plastic pull-tabs during the removal of M3 MacBook Air batteries—a pleasing alternative to older (headache inducing) adhesive-fastened methods of securing power cells in place. The iFixit team had to deal with many fiddly screws and brackets during excavation efforts—they noted that Apple's interior design does not include any labelling, and the screws are not numbered. Framework's Laptop 16 was cited as a shining example of doing things correctly.

Razer Fintech, the financial technology arm of Razer Inc., together with its B2B payments unit, Razer Merchant Services (RMS), announced a dynamic rebranding initiative today. The company unveils a new single name, logo, and identity as Fiuu, signifying its ambitious plans to become a leading force in the future of digital payments. Fiuu, set to operate as a standalone subsidiary of Razer Inc. moving forward, aims to empower both the businesses and individuals by their evolving payment needs. This strategic move reflects the company's commitment to providing innovative payment solutions to merchants worldwide.

A part of this rebranding exercise, Lee Li Meng will be passing the helm to Eng Sheng Guan as Chief Executive Officer and will take on a new role as Executive Chairman of Fiuu, effective 1 March 2024. With Mr Eng's extensive experience of more than 25 years in the payments industry and proven leadership, his appointment heralds a new chapter of growth and innovation for the company. Sheng Guan's vision and dedication align with Fiuu's commitment and delivering top-notch solutions and services. With his guidance, Fiuu aims to reach new heights in the fintech industry.

Newegg Commerce, Inc., a global e-commerce leader for technology products, today announced the launch of Newegg's GPU Trade-In Program, allowing customers to trade in an eligible GPU device and receive a trade-in value credit toward the purchase of a new qualifying graphics card also known as a graphics processing unit (GPU).

Newegg's GPU Trade-In Program not only helps customers upgrade to a newer GPU model, the program also helps limit electronic waste. By offering a resource for customers to exchange their unwanted GPUs for new ones, the program simultaneously contributes to waste reduction and facilitates cost-effective PC upgrades.

NVIDIA is stepping up to manufacturers of counterfeit graphics card in China according to an article published by MyDrivers - the hardware giant is partnering up with a number of the nation's major e-commerce companies in order to eliminate inventories of bogus GPUs. It is claimed that these online retail platforms, including JD.com and Douyin, are partway into removing a swathe of dodgy stock from their listings. NVIDIA is seeking to disassociate itself from the pool of unlicensed hardware and the brands responsible for flooding the domestic and foreign markets with so-called fake graphics cards. The company is reputed to be puzzled about the murky origins of this bootlegging of their patented designs.

The market became saturated with fake hardware during the Ethereum mining boom - little known cottage companies such as 51RSIC, Corn, Bingying and JieShuoMllse were pushing rebadged cheap OEM cards to domestic e-tail sites. The knock-off GPUs also crept outside of that sector, and import listings started to appear on international platforms including Ebay, AliExpress, Amazon and Newegg. NVIDIA is also fighting to stop the sale of refurbished cards - these are very likely to have been utilized in intensive cryptocurrency mining activities. A flood of these hit the market following an extreme downturn in crypto mining efforts, and many enthusiast communities have warned against acquiring pre-owned cards due to the high risk of component failure.