HandBrake, the popular free and open source video transcoder, has been updated to version 1.6.0. This major point upgrade is notable for facilitating AV1 video encoding for the first time in a general release. Moreover, those with Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV) enabled processors, and those with Intel Arc GPUs will be able to encode AV1 video with hardware acceleration. From a report: HandBrake 1.6.0 can encode AV1 videos on any of its supported systems. In the current release its SVT-AV1 encoder offers the widest support, encoding on your processor through software. However, those with Intel QSV supporting CPUs or discrete Arc graphics can use the QSV-AV1 encoder for hardware accelerated processing. QSV isn't supported if your CPU is an 'F' suffixed model (i.e. it doesn't have an iGPU), or it is older than the Skylake generation. If you are lucky enough to have multiple QSV accelerators in your system, support for Intel Deep Link Hyper Encode should accelerate processing further. While AMD and Nvidia have AV1 encoders available for their latest GPUs, they currently aren't integrated with HandBrake. AV1 video is set to become the dominant codec across app-based streaming services and the wider internet, offering attractions such as; an open and royalty-free architecture, improved compression enabling efficient 8K video streaming, and support for the newest HDR standards.

With an energy crisis hitting Europe, governments are exploring ways to recycle electricity used on social-media scrolling, conference calls and video streaming to help heat homes and offices. From a report: Electricity-hungry data centers are seeing huge growth in usage, leading to pressure from European officials to funnel the excess heat generated by their computer chips into municipal heating networks. After years of discussions about putting residual heat to work rather than simply venting it outdoors, more such projects are becoming a reality. In the last year, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft have started connecting, or announced plans to connect, major data centers to district heating systems in Ireland, Denmark and Finland. Alphabet's Google says it is assessing opportunities to recover heat from its data centers across Europe.

Meta Platforms has been recovering excess heat from its data center in Odense, Denmark, since 2020. The Facebook parent is currently expanding that base, with plans to provide enough excess heat to warm about 11,000 homes as of next year. Other data-center operators are providing heat to networks, particularly in Northern Europe, including Equinix, which is expanding its district heating project in Helsinki, and working on new ones in Germany and other countries. In the Netherlands, there are 10 data centers already supplying heat, and another 15 projects being built or researched, according to the Dutch Data Center Association, a trade group. Higher energy prices, stemming from Russia's decision to effectively cut off natural-gas deliveries following its invasion of Ukraine, have boosted the financial incentive for tech companies to invest in systems necessary to sell off their excess heat, energy and tech sector officials say.

Of the billions of dollars in customer deposits that disappeared from FTX in a flash, $200 million was used to fund investments in two companies, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which charged founder Sam Bankman-Fried with "orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors." From a report: Through its FTX Ventures unit, the crypto firm in March invested $100 million in Dave, a fintech company that had gone public two months earlier through a special purpose acquisition company. At the time, the companies said they would "work together to expand the digital assets ecosystem."

The other deal the SEC appears to have referenced was a $100 million investment round in September for Mysten Labs, a Web3 company. In total, it was a $300 million funding round that valued Mysten at $2 billion and included participation from Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs and Andreessen Horowitz's crypto fund.

Solana, the blockchain network once championed by Sam Bankman-Fried, is drawing intense scrutiny as industry watchers wonder whether its former close ties to the disgraced crypto mogul and his now-defunct FTX empire will jeopardize its future. From a report: Its founders are doing everything they can to break that connection. The price of Solana's crypto token, SOL, has plummeted 96% from its all-time high of $260 in November 2021 to about $10, hurt first by a year-long crypto rout that engulfed the whole market and then again by FTX's fall. SOL dropped as much as 12% on Wednesday alone on concern large holders are offloading the token, which is used as the base cryptocurrency for financial transactions on the blockchain.

Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, the startup that developed the blockchain, said in an interview earlier this month that he doesn't usually comment on price, and that the focus instead should be on "the technology and having people build something awesome that's decentralized." But the collapse of FTX is having an impact -- both personal and professional -- on Solana and its founders. And the token's drop can be seen as an expression of waning confidence in the whole platform, which at its peak sported a market value of almost $80 billion and is now a tiny fraction of that.

Yakovenko said roughly 4% of teams building projects on Solana now were acutely affected by FTX's collapse. Some platforms had funds custodied on the crypto exchange. About 80% of teams on Solana's blockchain had no exposure at all to FTX, Yakovenko said, referring to survey data, adding that he was connecting severely impacted founders with investors who could potentially provide emergency capital. "There's definitely more to Solana than FTX," Yakovenko said. Still, the network's longstanding ties to FTX and Alameda Research, the crypto trading firm co-founded by Bankman-Fried, may make it hard for some to move past the association. The two firms helped support Solana by purchasing SOL tokens in bulk from the Solana Foundation, the nonprofit that helps support the blockchain. Alameda also bought large quantities of SOL from Solana Labs. [...] Alameda and FTX's venture arm also invested in multiple projects that operated on Solana, while FTX built its own projects on the network, including the decentralized finance platform Serum. These types of efforts, from an industry leader with substantial influence in the market, helped introduce Solana to many crypto users, Gokal said.

Chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company began mass production of its most advanced chips in southern Taiwan on Thursday and the company's chairman said it would continue to expand capacity on the island. From a report: The long-awaited mass production of chips with 3-nanometre technology comes as attention focuses on the world's largest contract chipmaker's investment plans at home and abroad. TSMC has a dominant position as a maker of advanced chips used in technology from cellphones to fighter jets. "TSMC is maintaining its technology leadership while investing significantly in Taiwan, continuing to invest and prosper with the environment," TSMC Chairman Mark Liu told a ceremony marking the production and capacity expansion in the southern city of Tainan. Liu said demand for the firm's 3-nanometre chip was "very strong", driven by new technologies including 5G and high-performance computing products. He did not elaborate.

Sales of VR headsets in the U.S. this year declined 2% from a year earlier to $1.1 billion as of early December, according to data shared with CNBC by research firm NPD Group. CNBC reports: [D]ata from analyst firm CCS Insight reveals that worldwide shipments of VR headsets as well as augmented reality devices dropped more than 12% year over year to 9.6 million in 2022. Taken together, the estimates of VR headset sales and shipments create a problematic picture for Meta, whose stock price has lost about two-thirds of its value this year. Zuckerberg has said he's playing the long game with the metaverse, expecting it take up to a decade to go mainstream and projecting it will eventually host hundreds of billions of dollars in commerce. Sales of Meta's flagship Quest device dropped in 2022, a decline that can be attributed to the device's big year in 2021, said Ben Arnold, NPD's consumer electronics analyst. [...]

A confluence of factors contributed to lower sales and shipments in 2022. The Quest 2 has been around for a few years and, like any consumer electronics device, has lost some appeal as it's aged. And while Meta released a new VR headset in fall, the Quest Pro, that device is geared toward businesses and costs $1,100 more than the Quest 2, pushing it even further out of reach for many VR enthusiasts.

Next year is expected to be another "slow year" for the VR market, CCS Insight said in its latest report, citing a weak economy and inflation. [Leo Gebbie, an analyst at CCS Insight] said "consumer budgets will be tightening," and "non-essential purchases like VR headsets are likely to be the casualty of this."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Twitter rivalMastodon has rejected more than five investment offers from Silicon Valley venture capital firms in recent months, as its founder pledged to protect the fast-growing social media platform's non-profit status. Mastodon, an open-source microblogging site founded in 2016 by German software developer Eugen Rochko, has seen a surge in users since Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October amid concerns over the billionaire's running of the social media platform.

Rochko told the Financial Times he had received offers from more than five US-based investors to invest "hundreds of thousands of dollars" in backing the product, following its fast growth. But he said the platform's non-profit status was "untouchable," adding that Mastodon's independence and the choice of moderation styles across its servers were part of its attraction. "Mastodon will not turn into everything you hate about Twitter," said Rochko. "The fact that it can be sold to a controversial billionaire, the fact that it can be shut down, go bankrupt and so on. It's the difference in paradigms [between the platforms]."

Rochko is Mastodon's sole shareholder and, according to its 2021 annual report, he paid himself 2,400 euros per month last year, a figure he said has since risen by 500 euros. Mastodon will continue to rely on donations to fund the platform. The site has more than 8,500 donors on the membership platform Patreon, through which it is raising over 25,000 pounds a month. This compares with total earnings of just over 55,000 euros in the six months from June to December 2021. Rochko said his long-term ambition for Mastodon was to replace Twitter and other commercial social networks. "It's a long road ahead but at the same time, it's bigger than it ever has been."

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it will require anyone arriving by air from China to provide a negative Covid test, following a surge of Covid-19 cases across China as Beijing has eased its strict zero-Covid rules. Politico reports: Under the new rules, which will take effect on Jan. 5, anyone two years and older will need to show a negative result from a test taken within two days of their departure from airports in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, administration officials told reporters in a briefing. The move reflects the Biden administration's alarm about the potential spillover of new Covid variants linked to soaring Covid infections in China. The Chinese government ended its draconian Covid-zero policy -- hinged to mass testing, tracing and lockdowns -- on Dec. 7 following mass protests in November fueled by anger about the strategy. According to health authorities in Milan, almost half of the passengers on flights from China were found to have COVID-19. They, too, will begin testing all arrivals from China and will be sequencing the tests to see if there are new variants.

In an advertisement on Facebook and Instagram, a middle-aged man holding a dumbbell says testosterone "literally changed my life," restoring his energy and happiness. What the October ad from telehealth startup Hone Health doesn't say is that the unidentified man is an actor who has never used the prescription drug. From a report: It doesn't mention that testosterone is approved by the Food and Drug Administration only for men with specific disorders and that among its risks are heart attacks and stroke. Similar telehealth companies are flooding TikTok, Instagram and other platforms with ads that don't conform to longtime standards governing the marketing of prescription drugs and healthcare treatments. They feature actors posing as customers, tout benefits of drugs with no mention of side effects and promote medications for uses not approved by the FDA.

Since the pandemic, online advertising has drawn hundreds of thousands of people to telehealth companies such as Cerebral and Done for treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and other medical conditions. Some employees and patients have said their marketing practices contributed to the abuse of controlled substances. In a four-week period spanning October and November, about 20 companies ran more than 2,100 ads on Facebook and Instagram that described benefits of prescription drugs without citing risks, promoted drugs for unapproved uses or featured testimonials without disclosing whether they came from actors or company employees, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of ads collected by the nonprofit Algorithmic Transparency Institute from Meta Platforms' ad library.

The popular Chinese video app TikTok has been banned from all U.S. House of Representatives-managed devices, according to the House's administration arm, mimicking a law soon to go into effect banning the app from U.S. government devices. From a report: The app is considered "high risk due to a number of security issues," the House's Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) said in a message sent to all lawmakers and staff on Tuesday, and must be deleted from all devices managed by the House. The new rule follows a series of moves by U.S. state governments to ban TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, from government devices. As of last week, 19 states have at least partially blocked the app from state-managed devices over concerns that the Chinese government could use the app to track Americans and censor content.

The artificial intelligence algorithms behind the chatbot program ChatGPT -- which has drawn attention for its ability to generate humanlike written responses to some of the most creative queries -- might one day be able to help doctors detect Alzheimer's Disease in its early stages. EurekaAlert: Research from Drexel University's School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems recently demonstrated that OpenAI's GPT-3 program can identify clues from spontaneous speech that are 80% accurate in predicting the early stages of dementia. Reported in the journal PLOS Digital Health, the Drexel study is the latest in a series of efforts to show the effectiveness of natural language processing programs for early prediction of Alzheimer's -- leveraging current research suggesting that language impairment can be an early indicator of neurodegenerative disorders.

The current practice for diagnosing Alzheimer's Disease typically involves a medical history review and lengthy set of physical and neurological evaluations and tests. While there is still no cure for the disease, spotting it early can give patients more options for therapeutics and support. Because language impairment is a symptom in 60-80% of dementia patients, researchers have been focusing on programs that can pick up on subtle clues -- such as hesitation, making grammar and pronunciation mistakes and forgetting the meaning of words -- as a quick test that could indicate whether or not a patient should undergo a full examination.

GPT-3, officially the third generation of OpenAI's General Pretrained Transformer (GPT), uses a deep learning algorithm -- trained by processing vast swaths of information from the internet, with a particular focus on how words are used, and how language is constructed. This training allows it to produce a human-like response to any task that involves language, from responses to simple questions, to writing poems or essays. GPT-3 is particularly good at "zero-data learning" -- meaning it can respond to questions that would normally require external knowledge that has not been provided. For example, asking the program to write "Cliff's Notes" of a text, would normally require an explanation that this means a summary. But GPT-3 has gone through enough training to understand the reference and adapt itself to produce the expected response. Link to the paper.

Google has so far taken steps to streamline without mass layoffs, but employees are girding for deeper cuts. From a report: Google workers in Switzerland sent a letter this month to the company's vice president of human resources, outlining their worries that a new employee evaluation system could be used to cull the work force. "The number and spread of reports that reached us indicates that at least some managers were aggressively pressured to apply a quota" on a process that could lead to employees getting negative ratings and potentially losing their jobs, five workers and employee representatives wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times. The letter signaled how some Google employees are increasingly interpreting recent management decisions as warnings that the company may be angling to conduct broader layoffs. From the impending closure of a small office and the cancellation of a content-moderation project to various efforts to ease budgets during 2023 planning meetings, the Silicon Valley behemoth has become a tinderbox of anxiety, according to interviews with 14 current and former employees.

In some cases, Google employees have reacted to a program that the company began in July to simplify operations, cut red tape and make itself more productive. In other instances, they have had budget conversations, with some teams unable to hire more next year, the people said. And workers have also fretted over decisions made months ago that, to some, have taken on new meaning, they said. The worries have grown as Google's tech industry peers have handed out pink slips amid a souring global economy. Last month, Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, purged its ranks by 11,000, or about 13 percent of its work force. Amazon also began laying off about 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs, or about 3 percent of its corporate employees.

TikTok will no longer be allowed on any device managed by the US House of Representatives. Ars Technica reports: On Tuesday, the House's Chief Administrative Office announced the ban of the popular video-sharing app, a move that comes just a week after legislation that would bar TikTok from all federal devices was introduced. Congresspersons and their staffers will not be able to download the app on managed devices, the CAO's Office of Cybersecurity said in an email seen by Reuters. The mobile app is a "high risk to users due to a number of security risks," the email said. "If you have the TikTok app on your House mobile device, you will be contacted to remove it," the email continued.

Potential federal bans aside, TikTok is already at least partially banned from government-owned devices in 19 states. And the federal omnibus spending bill passed last week will put the kibosh on TikTok when it comes to all federally managed smartphones and devices.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Android Headlines: In a recent voice assistant test conducted by popular YouTuber MKBHD, Google Assistant emerged as the best voice assistant, outperforming Apple's Siri, Samsung's Bixby, and Amazon's Alexa. There are several reasons why Google Assistant stands out as the top voice assistant. Firstly, it is backed by Google's powerful artificial intelligence, which helps it to understand and interpret user requests accurately. Secondly, Google Assistant has access to a vast amount of data from its users, which allows it to provide a more personalized experience. The company also collects data from various services such as search, maps, and email to improve the functionality and performance of Google Assistant. However, one of the biggest reasons behind Google Assistant's win is its strong conversation skills. Google's AI uses natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to understand the meaning and context of words and phrases, which helps to keep the conversation going.

Apple's Siri took second place in the competition. It performed well when asked to complete tasks like setting a timer and searching the internet, but struggled when asked to answer more complex or conversational questions. Additionally, Siri was unable to perform tasks that required interacting with apps. In contrast, Samsung's Bixby excelled in device control thanks to its integration with Samsung devices. This integration enables Bixby to control system settings and integrate more deeply with apps than any other voice assistant. Bixby can send text messages, check sports scores, turn down screen brightness, check your calendar, launch apps, and more.

Of all the digital assistants, Amazon's Alexa performed the worst in the voice assistant test. This is due to several factors. Firstly, Alexa is not integrated into smartphones, which means it lacks the personalized touch of other voice assistants. This can make it feel less intuitive and less convenient to use. Secondly, Alexa's inaccuracy in finding facts, inability to interact with other apps and poor conversational models all combine to create a subpar experience when used on a phone. These issues make it difficult for Alexa to provide useful and reliable information, which is a key expectation of voice assistants. In addition, the inclusion of Amazon advertisements between tasks can be annoying and disrupt the user experience.

Southwest canceled more than 2,900 flights Monday -- at least 70% of its schedule for the day -- and more than 2,500 flights Tuesday as of 9:10 a.m. ET -- at least 60% of its schedule, according to flight tracker FlightAware. NPR reports: The number of canceled flights for Southwest Monday was more than 10 times higher than for Delta, which had the second-most cancellations by a U.S. airline with 265 flights called off. Other airlines have also ordered large-scale cancellations in the past week. Southwest spokesperson Chris Perry told NPR the airline's disruptions are a result of the winter storm's lingering effects, adding that it hopes to "stabilize and improve its operation" with more favorable weather conditions. Other issues that have exacerbated the airline's struggle to accommodate the holiday rush include problems with "connecting flight crews to their schedules," Perry said. That issue has made it difficult for employees to access crew scheduling services and get reassignments.

Kyle Potter, executive editor of Thrifty Traveler, called it an incredibly complex task for an airline with a network as vast as Southwest's to coordinate staffing and scheduling, particularly after weather delays. But with many areas seeing clear skies on Monday, the airline would seem to have few obvious reasons to cancel so many flights. Potter calls it a "full-blown meltdown." "This is really as bad as it gets for an airline," Potter said. "We've seen this again and again over the course of the last year or so, when airlines really just struggle especially after a storm, but there's pretty clear skies across the country." The U.S. Department of Transportation called the cancellations "unacceptable," and will be investigating the airline to see whether cancellations were controllable and if Southwest is complying with its customer service plan (PDF).

Baidu, the Chinese internet giant that became known for its search engines, is making some big strides in autonomous driving. From a report: Starting this week, the public can ride its robotaxis in Wuhan between 7 am and 11 pm without safety drivers behind the wheel. Previously, its unmanned vehicles could only operate from 9 am to 5 pm in the city. The updated scheme is expected to cover one million customers in certain areas of Wuhan, a city of more than 10 million people.

Like most autonomous vehicle startups, Baidu combines a mix of third-party cameras, radars, and lidars to help its cars see better in low-visibility conditions, in contrast to Tesla's vision-based solution. In August, Baidu started offering fully driverless robotaxi rides, charging passengers at taxi rates. In Q3, Apollo Go, the firm's robotaxi hailing app, completed more than 474,000 rides, up 311% year over year. Accumulatively, Apollo Go had exceeded 1.4 million orders as of Q3. That sounds like a potentially substantial revenue stream for Baidu, but one should take such figures with a grain of salt and ask: how many of these trips are subsidized by discounts? How many of them are repeatable, daily routes rather than one-off novelty rides taken by early adopters? To juice up performance numbers, it's not uncommon to see Chinese robotaxi operators enticing the public to ride in their vehicles with perks.

The number of GPU startups in China is extraordinary as the country tries to gain AI prowess as well as semiconductor sovereignty, according to a new report from Jon Peddie Research. From a report: In addition, the number of GPU makers grew worldwide in recent years as demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC), and graphics processing increased at a rather unprecedented rate. When it comes to discrete graphics for PCs, AMD and Nvidia maintain lead, whereas Intel is trying to catch up.

Tens of companies developed graphics cards and discrete graphics processors in the 1980s and the 1990s, but cut-throat competition for the highest performance in 3D games drove the vast majority of them out of business. By 2010, only AMD and Nvidia could offer competitive standalone GPUs for gaming and compute, whereas others focused either on integrated GPUs or GPU IP. The mid-2010s found the number of China-based PC GPU developers increasing rapidly, fueled by the country's push for tech self-sufficiency as well as the advent of AI and HPC as high-tech megatrends.

In total, there are 18 companies developing and producing GPUs, according to Jon Peddie Research. There are two companies that develop SoC-bound GPUs primarily with smartphones and notebooks in mind, there are six GPU IP providers, and there are 11 GPU developers focused on GPUs for PCs and datacenters, including AMD, Intel, and Nvidia, which design graphics cards that end up in our list of the best graphics cards. In fact, if we added other China-based companies like Biren Technology and Tianshu Zhixin to the list, there would be even more GPU designers. However, Biren and Tianshu Zhixin are solely focused on AI and HPC for now, so JPR does not consider them GPU developers.

The U.S. Copyright Office has completed its public consultations on the use of technical measures to identify and protect copyrighted content online. From a report: For many years, U.S. lawmakers have considered options to update the DMCA so it can more effectively deal with today's online copyright issues. Many proposals have come and gone, without resulting in any significant updates. Calls to change current legislation persist, however. Following repeated nudges from Senators Thom Tillis and Patrick Leahy, the Copyright Office launched a consultation on automated tools that online services can use to ensure that pirated content is less easily shared.

The Copyright Office also asked stakeholders whether it's desirable to make certain standard technical measures mandatory for online platforms. Such measures could include upload filters to block pirated content from being reuploaded. This month the Copyright Office presents its conclusions, which are also shared with Senators Tillis and Leahy in two letters. After reviewing thousands of responses and input from stakeholders in plenary sessions, the overall conclusion is one of clear disagreement. Most parties agree that it's impossible to design an error-free takedown process but disagree on what error rate is acceptable when takedowns are automated. Opponents of filtering technology warn that fair use and First Amendment rights are at stake.

Rightsholders did not dispute that but noted that these issues don't play a role when full copies of copyrighted content are shared. When it comes to the implementation of voluntary measures, the Copyright Office doesn't have any concrete suggestions. Instead, it will continue to back existing initiatives, while facilitating dialogue between various stakeholders. "The public comments and the consultations confirmed that there cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach to voluntary technical measures, and that there remains a lack of consensus in this area," the Office writes. "Nevertheless, the consultations served as valuable opportunities for dialogue among stakeholders, which may lead to further voluntary action. The Copyright Office proposed options to continue its role as convener of these conversations in the future."

The Bitcoin network hashrate has dropped by more than 38.8% from its peak, as many U.S.-based miners have been forced to switch down their facilities due to deadly blizzards. From a report: Bitcoin hashrate, the level of computing power used for mining and processing transactions, came in at 155.28 exahashes per second on Saturday, down from 253.88 exahashes on Wednesday, according to data from IntoTheBlock. A winter storm has claimed at least 32 lives across the U.S., as of Monday morning in Hong Kong, according to media reports.

Raymond Chen, writing for Microsoft DevBlogs: In the mid-1980's, Microsoft produced an expansion card for the IBM PC and PC XT, known as the Mach 10. In addition to occupying an expansion slot, it also replaced your CPU: You unplugged your old and busted 4.77 MHz 8088 CPU and plugged into the now-empty socket a special adapter that led via a ribbon cable back to the Mach 10 card. On the Mach 10 card was the new hotness: A 9.54 MHz 8086 CPU. This gave you a 2x performance upgrade for a lot less money than an IBM PC AT. The Mach 10 also came with a mouse port, so you could add a mouse without having to burn an additional expansion slot. Sidebar: The product name was stylized as MACH [PDF] in some product literature. The Mach 10 was a flop.

Undaunted, Microsoft partnered with a company called Portable Computer Support Group to produce the Mach 20, released in 1987. You probably remember the Portable Computer Support Group for their disk cache software called Lightning. The Mach 20 took the same basic idea as the Mach 10, but to the next level: As before, you unplugged your old 4.77 MHz 8088 CPU and replaced it with an adapter that led via ribbon cable to the Mach 20 card, which you plugged into an expansion slot. This time, the Mach 20 had an 8 MHz 80286 CPU, so you were really cooking with gas now. And, like the Mach 10, it had a mouse port built in. According to a review in Info World, it retailed for $495. The Mach 20 itself had room for expansion: it had an empty socket for an 80287 floating point coprocessor. One daughterboard was the Mach 20 Memory Plus Expanded Memory Option, which gave you an astonishing 3.5 megabytes of RAM, and it was high-speed RAM since it wasn't bottlenecked by the ISA bus on the main motherboard. The other daughterboard was the Mach 20 Disk Plus, which lets you connect 5 1/4 or 3 1/2 floppy drives.

A key detail is that all these expansions connected directly to the main Mach 20 board, so that they didn't consume a precious expansion slot. The IBM PC came with five expansion slots, and they were in high demand. You needed one for the hard drive controller, one for the floppy drive controller, one for the video card, one for the printer parallel port, one for the mouse. Oh no, you ran out of slots, and you haven't even gotten to installing a network card or expansion RAM yet! You could try to do some consolidation by buying so-called multifunction cards, but still, the expansion card crunch was real. But why go to all this trouble to upgrade your IBM PC to something roughly equivalent to an IBM PC AT? Why not just buy an IBM PC AT in the first place? Who would be interested in this niche upgrade product?