Between Avatar 1 and two, the humans went from harvesting unoptanium to
slurping up alien whale brain juice. It's a cautionary tale about how they
should have been harvesting tech news from the get- go. Also, something about
colonialism. Did you see Avatar 2 >> in 3D?
Now that's technology. Discord has confirmed a data breach in which hackers
were able to access government ID. Discord says that the hackers hit one of
their third-party customer service providers and gained access to some
personal information shared by users with that provider, including users
names, emails, and other contact details, IP addresses, messages with
support agents, and a small number of
images of government IDs. Again, which is crazy because I thought the UK
government rolled out age checks only after they made all the hackers promise
to leave the IDs alone. Hopefully all the other hackers stick to the agreement
and we won't see any more IDs get compromised from the hundreds of other
popular platforms that have also collected them. Microsoft is assuring
gamers that their Xbox hardware isn't going anywhere. Console elves won't
steal it away in the middle of the night. When Microsoft announced they'd be raising the price on multiple tiers
of their Game Pass subscription service, rumors began to spread that this focus
on profiting from software and membership fees marked the end for Xbox
hardware. However, Microsoft has now stated that they are still investing in
upcoming firstparty consoles and devices made by Xbox. It makes sense that
Microsoft isn't totally giving up on Xbox hardware because apparently they're
still figuring out exactly how to make those gaming services profitable.
According to The Verge, Microsoft is considering launching a free ADUP
supported Xbox cloud gaming service, while a Bloomberg report came out saying
Microsoft lost almost $300 million in sales by putting Call of Duty 6 on Game
Pass. So, so yeah, maybe it's not time
to jump ship on building hardware quite just yet. That said, it doesn't look
like Xbox is doing a good job of releasing hardware either because
apparently a firstparty Xbox handheld was cancelled when Microsoft wouldn't
commit to filling AMD's minimum order requirements for the chips inside the
hardware. We really just don't know if we're going to sell that many. So, I was like, can
we just do like baker's dozen or the Xbox brand is 23 years old now and like
many others its age, it's clearly going through a bit of an existential crisis.
something that routinely happens at age 23 these days.
>> I don't know. >> It's true though. Hey, I hope you figure
out who you want to be. Xbox. I maybe time to go backpacking to find yourself.
You know who seems to be really figuring themselves out recently? Xbox's first
party hardware partner AMD, who has entered into another lucrative
partnership, this time with OpenAI. The new partnership was announced today and
will see OpenAI deploy what they describe as six gigawatts worth of AMD's
Instinct AI GPUs, which I guess translates to potentially millions of
GPUs over the next several years, beginning with 1 gawatt of the upcoming
Instinct MI450 GPU in the first half of
2026. Great, Scott. What a missed opportunity for these nerds to have
referenced the 1.21 21 gigawatts used to
try time time travel and back to the future. But whatever.
The deal is worth tens of billions of dollars a year for AMD and gives OpenAI
the ability to acquire up to 10% of that company for a penny per share. Not only
is this deal seemingly great for AMD's wallet, but it also highlights growing
confidence in their AI GPUs, which could help them become more competitive with
NVIDIA, who obviously dominates that field. Yet, the production demands of
making all of these enterprise AI GPUs has PC gamers concerned that AMD's head
is in the cloud. Woo! Rimshot! instead of the desktop
market which is already dealing with a storage and memory related pricing
apocalypse. I don't think Dr. Lisa Sue will forget about us. She took an oath
to protect the vulnerable, heal the sick and and all that stuff, you know, right?
Sadly, she can't do anything about data brokers selling your personal info
online. That's where our sponsor, Delete Me, comes in. They're the pros at
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the video description and check out Delete Me today. Now in the way of
water, the second Avatar movie. Sure, those Met Cena clan kids can swim fast,
but there's no way they're beating the Quickbits.
Quickbits don't even have to hold their breath.
Intel's imminent Panther Lake mobile CPUs are reportedly set to feature
another kind of chip branding. Yay!
Every Panther Lake CPU will allegedly include integrated graphics, but the
models with the highest spec will be referred to as Core Ultra X. Elon has
got to be hyped on this. And you can expect to see a Core Ultra X9 and X7
chip. Make it stop. Like Jason X, these
Core Ultra X CPUs are going to be beefier than their compatriots. The CPUs
will use 12 XE3 GPUs cores, a big jump
from the 8 XE2 cores found on Lunar Lake processors. So, Intel is clearly focused
on making more powerful iGPUs to compete with AMD's APUs. For a while there, we
thought about combining TechLink with Jackass to create Techl X, but there
were just too many casualties. The Nintendo Switch 2 supports multiple
versions of NVIDIA's DLSS as discovered
by Digital Foundry in one of their recent YouTube videos. One version is
practically the same as the one you'd find on NVIDIA's PC GPUs, but the second
version is a sort of DLSS light that prioritizes performance and appears
built to upscale games beyond 1080p on the Switch 2. This lighter version is
far less resource inensive, but becomes more apparent during camera motion,
revealing unfiltered pixels. >> No good. >> Destroy them. According to some
reporting by Digital Foundry, game developers working on Switch 2 titles
are able to choose which DLSS variant best suits their performance targets. Do
a Mario impressions saying, "It's a me a
super sampling." OpenAI and Johnny IV
are hitting some roadblocks on the way to creating their secretive AI device.
According to a report by the Financial Times, OpenAI and IV, the legendary
Apple product designer, are working to build a palmsized piece of hardware that
doesn't have a screen, but uses audio and visual cues to serve as your AI
assistant. However, they are running up against the privacy concerns created by
designing hardware that is always listening and or watching, along with
concerns about how much compute power is needed for a mass consumer product to
run OpenAI's suite of models. So far,
this all sounds a bit like that AI friend product Lionus tried on Short
Circuit named Riley, and he seemed to hate,
but that's only because there can only be one AI Riley.
Wait, Activision's ricochet anti-che appears to be doing what it's supposed
to. Thank god. Cheating is the scourge of many competitive online games, in
case you didn't know. But with the launch of Call of Duty Black Ops 7's
early access beta, Ricochet appears to be catching cheaters hyperefficiently.
Uh-oh. They claim to be stopping 97% of
cheaters within 30 minutes of their first signin, and that fewer than 1% of
cheating attempts are making it into matches. This is great news. Hopefully,
Ricochet's work sets an example for the rest of the gaming industry. But the
standard they've set for themselves also needs to be maintained because the game
is only in early access and concurrent gameplay numbers have been lackluster
for a Call of Duty game. As the anti-cheing ramps up, people care less
about the game. The Astros aren't in the MLB playoffs and they're clearing
cheaters off of a COD game. Maybe there is hope for fair play after all. I'm
sure that joke makes sense >> to someone. Yeah. Yeah. >> But I I wouldn't know. And in Japan, NT
East Group has teamed up with Cheba Prefecture to protect the poultry
industry with drones equipped with lasers. This doesn't need to be said,
but this is badass. Chicken defending laser drones. Sadly, the more I tell you
about these drones, the more pedestrian and logical this plan all sounds. But
I'm gonna do it anyway. Lasers aren't going to set fires or anything like
that. that they're actually being used to scare other birds away from
interacting with the chickens in order to avoid any spread of aven flu, which
will help to avoid having to call the chickens. We're living in the future,
baby. I'm going to start shooting a laser pointer at my nephew whenever he
comes at me with a runny nose. Get away from me, Goopy. And that's why you're
not a parent. And you should get away from me, too.
But come back on Wednesday for more tech news. I've got to get my Nevi language
lessons in. I'm trying to learn it before fire and ash, that's Avatar 3. So
I don't have to use any subtitles. Hey
means until next time.