WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.120 Okay, this is going to sound weird, but I think I'm stuck in a time loop. Like 00:00:03.480 --> 00:00:08.360 I'm pretty sure I've done this exact episode before. 00:00:06.560 --> 00:00:10.600 But it doesn't matter that I'm trapped in an infinite cycle of delivering tech 00:00:09.720 --> 00:00:14.520 news until the heat death of the universe. You need to know about this 00:00:13.240 --> 00:00:18.440 computer stuff. >> Important. Microsoft announced on Friday 00:00:16.360 --> 00:00:21.880 that Phil Spencer, CEO of their gaming division, and more importantly the guy 00:00:20.040 --> 00:00:27.000 you'd think of if someone said the Xbox guy, is retiring. Spencer, who joined 00:00:24.160 --> 00:00:31.960 Microsoft in the 1900s and took over Xbox in 2014 after the disastrous Xbox 00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:35.520 One launch, is widely credited with turning the brand around and despite 00:00:33.960 --> 00:00:39.680 being one of the public faces of an increasingly reviled tech giant, 00:00:37.920 --> 00:00:44.360 lighting up the room with his boyish smile. >> Oh, Phil. Xbox president Sarah Bond is 00:00:43.080 --> 00:00:48.800 also leaving the company, which according to The Verge's Tom Warren, 00:00:46.640 --> 00:00:53.520 many employees are relieved about. Bond had reportedly been pushing the Xbox 00:00:51.480 --> 00:00:57.680 everywhere strategy that deemphasized console hardware in favor of mobile and 00:00:55.560 --> 00:01:02.520 cloud, gifting us with that most brilliant of marketing slogans, This 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:08.480 isn't an Xbox, which ironically has made it harder than ever to say with 00:01:04.120 --> 00:01:10.440 certainty just what an Xbox is. Is this? 00:01:08.480 --> 00:01:15.120 That strategy coincided with three consecutive years of declining hardware 00:01:12.560 --> 00:01:19.000 revenue. Replacing Spencer is Asha Sharma, now former president of 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:23.480 Microsoft's core AI division, which given the Microslop moniker that Windows 00:01:21.280 --> 00:01:27.400 has picked up, is causing concern within the Xbox community. Sharma joined 00:01:25.360 --> 00:01:31.360 Microsoft just two years ago in 2024, and before that she was VP of product 00:01:29.400 --> 00:01:35.560 and engineering at Meta and chief operating officer at Instacart. 00:01:33.320 --> 00:01:40.680 >> This is fine. That corporate pedigree isn't inspiring optimism from Xbox fans 00:01:38.480 --> 00:01:45.400 and is causing outright concern for some that her background is a harbinger of 00:01:42.680 --> 00:01:47.760 doom for their favorite console. Doom's a game? 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:52.040 >> This is fine. After the announcement, Sharma laid out three commitments: great 00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:57.040 games, the return of Xbox, and the future of play, whatever that means. On 00:01:54.800 --> 00:02:01.600 AI, she drew a line saying we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our 00:01:59.160 --> 00:02:05.960 ecosystem with soulless AI slop. Games are and always will be art crafted by 00:02:03.720 --> 00:02:10.080 humans. Okay. Whether Sharma is the savior or executioner of Xbox remains to 00:02:08.360 --> 00:02:15.360 be seen. There's also a third option where she sort of just continues keeping 00:02:12.240 --> 00:02:17.480 Xbox in a wraith-like neither dead nor 00:02:15.360 --> 00:02:22.000 alive undead kind of state. >> think that that's the one probably. 00:02:20.040 --> 00:02:26.880 Zbox. Wikipedia has officially blacklisted archive.today, the paywall 00:02:24.840 --> 00:02:31.400 bypassing tool often confused with the nonprofit archive.org, not the same. 00:02:29.520 --> 00:02:35.040 After editors discovered it was fueling DDoS attacks and tampering with web 00:02:33.520 --> 00:02:39.360 snapshots. Following community discussion, English Wikipedia is purging 00:02:37.400 --> 00:02:43.320 roughly 695,000 links citing security and reliability 00:02:41.320 --> 00:02:47.440 risks. Kind of like what your therapist might suggest to you do with your ex's 00:02:45.200 --> 00:02:52.680 texts. The drama centers on the author of a blog called Gyrovag, Yanni 00:02:50.080 --> 00:02:57.560 Patokallio, who exposed some alleged aliases used by the archive.today 00:02:54.959 --> 00:03:02.519 maintainer, including Deni Petrov and Masha Rabinovich, Rabin Whatever. In 00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:08.000 retaliation, archive.today reportedly embedded malicious code in its CAPTCHAs 00:03:05.160 --> 00:03:11.640 to funnel DDoS traffic towards Gyrovag. Wikipedia editors also noticed that 00:03:09.519 --> 00:03:16.080 archive.today was editing its CAPTCHAs of web pages. A blog post linked in a 00:03:13.840 --> 00:03:19.480 Gyrovag article was tampered with to have its author changed from Nora to 00:03:18.360 --> 00:03:25.320 Yanni Patokallio, again. Patokallio. 00:03:22.760 --> 00:03:28.840 >> Yeah. The double L is messing you up. To top it all off, in an email exchange 00:03:26.880 --> 00:03:34.160 telling Patokallio to delete his blog post, the archive.today maintainer made 00:03:31.040 --> 00:03:35.280 bizarre threats about posting a OSINT, 00:03:34.160 --> 00:03:39.080 an open-source intelligence investigation into Patokallio's Nazi 00:03:37.640 --> 00:03:43.160 grandfather and creating a Gyrovag-branded 00:03:40.760 --> 00:03:47.720 gay dating app, which is potentially the most terminally online threat ever. Ew, 00:03:45.880 --> 00:03:50.562 and we wouldn't want your socially conservative mother to see that, would 00:03:49.640 --> 00:03:56.720 we? No. >> [laughter] >> Despite the chaos, the archive.today 00:03:54.240 --> 00:04:01.200 person claimed this campaign turned out pretty well and plans to scale down the 00:03:58.920 --> 00:04:04.680 DDoS attacks. Hey, we just had a little bit of fun. It was just a little bit of 00:04:02.480 --> 00:04:08.959 fun. I'm done now, guys. Security researchers just blew the lid off 00:04:06.600 --> 00:04:14.480 Persona, the age verification provider Discord got absolutely flamed for trying 00:04:11.880 --> 00:04:18.640 to quietly test on UK users. One of the researchers, named Celeste, found 00:04:16.320 --> 00:04:22.640 Persona's entire front-end code base exposed to the open internet on a US 00:04:20.880 --> 00:04:27.200 government server. And what was in those files goes way beyond checking your age. 00:04:25.720 --> 00:04:31.919 According to the hackers, Persona's software performs 269 not nice 00:04:30.080 --> 00:04:36.000 individual verification checks, screening users against watchlists for 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:40.080 terrorism and espionage, comparing selfies to watchlist photos using facial 00:04:38.440 --> 00:04:45.120 recognition, and flagging people as suspicious entities based on their face 00:04:42.680 --> 00:04:49.360 alone, which explains why all my verification attempts kept returning as 00:04:47.640 --> 00:04:53.080 "weird vibes server error" whenever I would wear a beret. Where did you get 00:04:51.160 --> 00:04:57.600 that beret? It's none of your artistic business. I like to smoke long 00:04:54.800 --> 00:05:01.520 cigarettes sometimes. From Al Qaeda? The internet rumor mill started spinning 00:04:59.320 --> 00:05:05.880 when the exposed code had references to a deployment named Onyx, which shares a 00:05:03.919 --> 00:05:10.760 name with an AI surveillance platform purchased by ICE for $4.2 million. 00:05:08.680 --> 00:05:15.520 Critics online connected that to Peter Thiel's Founders Fund being a major 00:05:13.040 --> 00:05:20.400 Persona investor, and then connected that to Thiel's co-founding of the 00:05:17.640 --> 00:05:24.720 surveillance firm Palantir, jumping to the conclusion that Persona had to be 00:05:22.400 --> 00:05:29.280 funneling biometric data to federal agencies. What other explanation could 00:05:27.360 --> 00:05:32.919 there be with so much circumstantial evidence? Well, here's what the 00:05:30.880 --> 00:05:36.760 researchers actually found. Zero direct references to ICE, Palantir, or 00:05:35.120 --> 00:05:41.040 immigration enforcement in the source files. Celeste publicly asserted this, 00:05:39.120 --> 00:05:44.160 noting that a lot of misinformation was spreading about their findings and 00:05:42.480 --> 00:05:47.960 wanting to set the record straight. The surveillance capabilities in the code 00:05:45.720 --> 00:05:52.640 are real, but the government conspiracy angle was not confirmed. To his credit, 00:05:50.200 --> 00:05:56.280 Persona CEO Rick Song didn't send lawyers. He emailed Celeste directly, 00:05:54.720 --> 00:06:00.120 acknowledged the exposed code was an oversight, and explained that the Onyx 00:05:58.400 --> 00:06:03.360 name actually came from a co-worker's favorite Pokémon. It's a rock snake, you 00:06:02.640 --> 00:06:09.600 guys. >> I did not just think of that just now. Celeste asked Song to answer a number of 00:06:07.360 --> 00:06:13.680 questions in writing, and Song agreed. He then posted the full email exchange 00:06:11.360 --> 00:06:16.680 on X in the interest of transparency. Celeste credited Persona for fixing the 00:06:15.320 --> 00:06:21.919 issue quickly and acknowledged some of the flag security concerns were not severe. Reading through the emails, this 00:06:19.840 --> 00:06:26.919 exchange was constructive, civil, dare I say flirty? And to summarize, the 00:06:24.560 --> 00:06:31.160 surveillance tools baked into Persona's code are real, so we'll keep our guard 00:06:29.360 --> 00:06:35.480 up for now, but whether they were ever pointed at Discord users is unknown. And 00:06:33.400 --> 00:06:39.919 I'm shipping Celeste and Song hard right now. Almost as hard as I'm shipping our 00:06:37.240 --> 00:06:44.040 sponsor, Squarespace is an all-in-one website platform that helps you build a 00:06:41.880 --> 00:06:47.320 bespoke digital identity across your entire online presence. 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We actually use Squarespace for 00:07:24.200 --> 00:07:30.400 the Linus Media Group website, and we love it, and you love that website, we know, cuz we see you on there. Start 00:07:28.560 --> 00:07:34.360 building your website today and get 10% off your first purchase at 00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:38.360 squarespace.com/techlinked. >> them on I see them. The quick bits are 00:07:36.480 --> 00:07:41.800 immune to the time loop thing because they move too fast for the fabric of 00:07:39.919 --> 00:07:45.560 space-time to catch them. They're frictionless. 00:07:43.280 --> 00:07:50.800 Must be nice. OpenAI CEO and walking snow patrol song Sam Altman attempted to 00:07:48.360 --> 00:07:55.800 justify AI's energy consumption at the AI Impact Summit by saying, "It also 00:07:53.480 --> 00:07:59.280 takes a lot of energy to train a human." So You know. Yeah. The pizza pops, the 00:07:58.760 --> 00:08:04.040 water. >> Think about it. He went on to drive home his lack of understanding of basic 00:08:02.080 --> 00:08:08.320 humanity by stating that it takes like 20 years of life and all the food you 00:08:06.040 --> 00:08:12.880 eat during that time before you get smart. I'm so sorry, Sam. I never 00:08:11.320 --> 00:08:17.080 considered that by living life so inefficiently I might be taking power 00:08:14.800 --> 00:08:20.400 and water away from hard-working AIs that would make better use of it than I 00:08:18.800 --> 00:08:24.400 ever could. I'm pooping half of this away. At this point, Altman seems like 00:08:22.680 --> 00:08:27.840 the kind of guy who, when presented with the trolley problem, advocates for the 00:08:26.440 --> 00:08:33.560 trolley. You're just going to switch the tracks it's on? It's got places to be. 00:08:31.320 --> 00:08:37.560 AMD has allegedly stopped updating Windows drivers for the Ryzen Z1 00:08:35.400 --> 00:08:40.919 Extreme, a chip notably used in many popular gaming handhelds. According to 00:08:39.320 --> 00:08:44.960 post on the creative forum DC Inside, where a Lenovo support agent reportedly 00:08:42.719 --> 00:08:49.040 said there are no more plans for further updates. Similar claims have surfaced in 00:08:47.120 --> 00:08:53.320 Lenovo community threads and on Reddit. Notably, neither an Asus nor Lenovo have 00:08:51.320 --> 00:08:58.360 released a new Z1 Extreme driver update in roughly 6 months, which adds some 00:08:55.880 --> 00:09:02.400 credence to the theory. AMD hasn't publicly confirmed any end of support 00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:07.080 and the systems this chip is featured in are only 2 years old, but the Z2 is 00:09:05.520 --> 00:09:11.080 still getting regular updates. So, what the heck, AMD? Where are the other ones? 00:09:09.400 --> 00:09:14.240 Maybe they just forgot about half the user base. You guys are still using 00:09:12.760 --> 00:09:17.800 those? Ew. >> Ew. >> [laughter] 00:09:16.120 --> 00:09:23.640 >> Rumors suggest Intel's next mainstream desktop platform, code named Nova Lake 00:09:20.200 --> 00:09:26.520 S, the S meaning standard desktop, may 00:09:23.640 --> 00:09:30.280 not arrive until CES 2027. These leaks come from posts on Twitter and Weibo and 00:09:28.120 --> 00:09:35.160 were later echoed by BenchLife's post claiming AMD Zen 6 Olympic Ridge desktop 00:09:33.280 --> 00:09:39.400 chips are also being delayed with the same time frame. By the same time frame. 00:09:37.640 --> 00:09:43.120 Who by the same time frame. None of this is confirmed yet. However, it would be 00:09:41.080 --> 00:09:47.320 nice to get a CES with some proper good old fashioned gaming CPUs for once, you 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:50.960 know? Go to Vegas for a reason. I mean, the sooner is always better, but still. 00:09:49.160 --> 00:09:55.160 Researchers at MIT have developed a multi-material 3D printer capable of 00:09:53.040 --> 00:09:59.920 producing a fully functional linear electric motor in a single print. Why 00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:02.840 should you care? This system uses four extrusion methods to deposit five 00:10:01.640 --> 00:10:07.440 different materials including the conductive ones needed for, you know, 00:10:05.160 --> 00:10:09.800 electric motors. Vroom vroom. Wait, no. What if you printed an electric motor 00:10:08.760 --> 00:10:15.040 gun? The only thing needed to be done after printing was to actually magnetize the 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:19.160 motor's coil for it to work. Even more impressively, the total bill of 00:10:16.280 --> 00:10:22.920 materials only came to about 50 cents potentially marking a huge breakthrough 00:10:21.360 --> 00:10:28.840 in electric motor manufacturing. I wonder if they sell things in their dorms with it. Maybe something rubbery. 00:10:27.120 --> 00:10:33.160 Electric? I think this is a sex toy joke. And Kohler just unveiled the 00:10:30.640 --> 00:10:37.320 Anthem Evo cycle, a smart shower system that recirculates and filters your water 00:10:35.040 --> 00:10:40.520 in real time so you can stay clean while using less of it. It's like the bath of 00:10:39.400 --> 00:10:44.120 showers, you know? You're in your own filth. After putting cameras in toilets, 00:10:42.480 --> 00:10:47.920 they've now moved on to creating a way for you to spray yourself with hot 00:10:45.680 --> 00:10:51.640 filtered piss. It's even gold colored for obvious reasons. And it also has 00:10:49.920 --> 00:10:55.720 other available smart accessories so you can listen to Jerry Jeff Walker's song 00:10:53.800 --> 00:10:59.920 Pissing in the Wind except now it's about showering while you clean out all 00:10:57.560 --> 00:11:03.520 those pesky jellyfish stings. That's not advice, by the way. That actually makes 00:11:01.080 --> 00:11:07.640 it way, way worse and whoever told our culture that that's a thing is perfectly 00:11:05.480 --> 00:11:10.560 wrong. David Schwimmer. And that's the show. Now I have to go 00:11:09.040 --> 00:11:13.480 fall in love with Andie MacDowell to break the loop or else I'm doing this 00:11:12.120 --> 00:11:16.360 again tomorrow. Do you get the reference? 00:11:15.120 --> 00:11:22.839 Groundhog Day. It's Groundhog Day. I never saw that one. I'll put that You know what? I'm going to put that on my 00:11:19.080 --> 00:11:22.839 movie list. I'm going to put it.