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Friday's top tech news: Let's leave it to the laptops of CES

Friday's top tech news: Let's leave it to the laptops of CES




It's always tempting to focus solely on the weird and wonderful gadgets that came out of CES, but today I'd like to highlight some of the interesting laptops announced at the show.

First up are the new Razer Blade 16 and 18, the latter of which has a massive 18-inch display. But it's actually the 16-inch version I'm more interested in after reading my colleague Monica's hands-on, thanks to its Mini LED Display, which has a thousand local dimming zones for better HDR performance.

And if you're after something less bleeding edge, Lenovo's ThinkBook Plus Twist has you covered thanks to its 12-inch Color E Ink display, which comes in addition to its more standard 13.3-inch OLED touchscreen. Or if you want to go the opposite direction, there's this Lenovo Yoga Book 9i, which has two screens and no E Ink.

Finally, it's nice to see Asus' collaboration with PC fan specialists Noctua. It recently announced a Noctua version of the RTX 4080 graphics card, which, if past collaborations are anything to go by, should result in a GPU that can run beautifully quiet even under heavy loads. Shame there's no price or availability yet.

And now, here's a silly tweet to start your day:

Throwing the book at the speed of Clearview AI moved into scary facial recognition. You may remember New York Times writer Kashmir Hill from the episode Hacking a Stranger's Smart Home Via Google, Exposing Facebook's Shadow Profiles to Track People Who Don't Have Facebook Accounts, and Companies doing their best to stay online without the big five tech companies. Now he has announced the release date of his book on Clearview AI, the facial recognition firm he once called "The Secret Company That's Might and Privacy as We Know It."
Your Face Belongs to Us is a gripping true story about the rise of a tech superpower long feared by the civil liberties community and long desired by governments and authoritarian regimes. And it's a powerful reminder that in the absence of vigilance and government regulation, this type of technology will fundamentally change our ability to remain anonymous.

Netflix Heard You Loved Wednesday. Despite Netflix's Wednesday series being a surprise hit, there was no guarantee that the streamer was going to bring the series back — especially given the trend of show cancellations. But in Wednesday's case, the future is looking bright as Netflix has announced its plans for season two. Unsurprisingly, the video doesn't detail any of the next season's plot or when it might air. But in a statement published Wednesday on Netflix's Tudum blog, co-showrunners Miles Millar and Alfred Gough said they "can't wait to dive headfirst into the second season and explore the scary, scary world of Nevermore."

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