It's Star Wars day, so May the fourth be
with that baby Yoda movie or whatever
that's coming out soon because
CO Bibble knows they're going to need
it. GameStop has just put forward a $56
billion offer to buy eBay. The
e-commerce giant was evidently caught
off guard by the bid and responded with
the energy of every girl I asked out in
middle school, saying it received no
communication from GameStop prior to the
entirely unsolicited offer. Sounds like
what happens on Snapchat these days. To
give you a sense of scale, eBay has a
market cap over four times the size of
GameStop itself, making this a wild
swing for the retailer. Again, much like
my middle school attempts at romance.
It's funny because I really kept to
myself. The funds for the proposal are
evidently split 50/50 between cash and
GameStop stock. Though it's unclear from
the wording if they're referring to
shares or $28 billion worth of scratched
up trade-in crash bandicoot CDs. A
middle schooler's fortune. According to
CEO Ryan Cohen, it's part of a larger
strategy to pivot into ecommerce,
leveraging GameStop's retail locations
as a fulfillment network. However, Cohen
likely has a more personal motive as his
incentive structure guarantees him $35
billion in stock if he can boost
GameStop's market value to a hundred
billion. God, that's that's a lot of
Funko Pops. The FCC has unanimously
voted to advance a proposal banning all
Chinese testing Labs from certifying
US-bound electronics with FCC chair and
former witch king of Angmar Brendan Carr
citing national security concerns before
he screamed LIKE A BANSHEE.
IT'S PART OF A wider crackdown that has
already seen the agency ban the import
of new Chinese-made consumer routers and
drones. This move is expected to have a
significant impact on consumer
electronics since roughly 75% of
US-bound devices are currently tested in
Chinese Labs, forcing manufacturers to
reroute certification through Labs in
the US, Europe, or Taiwan. According to
the new rule, existing devices can still
be sold for up to 2 years after their
certification date, but the expectation
is that older devices that have to be
retested will probably just be pulled
instead. It's unclear how manufacturers
will deal with the drop in available
testing facilities, but if the router
ban is any indication, at least one
random company will probably get a
lastminute exemption, which is totally
above board and unrelated to any kind of
favors. Please don't sue us, Netgear.
Uh, Toyota's woven city, the fully
surveiled corporate utopia they use to
test robotic stuff at the base of Mount
Fuji. This is real.
>> That's sick.
>> Wow. Sounds like a from a spy novel or
something. Anyway, they just got a new
AI overlord called the Woven City AI
vision engine, which sounds totally
believable and not weird.
>> All hail AI overlord.
>> You seek to enter the woven city.
Anyway, this model ingests feeds from
cameras, vehicles, traffic signals, and
user inputs across the city to predict
what residents are about to do, which is
fine because the residents are all
Toyota employees and their families who
presumably sign something. About a 100
people currently live there in a city
built for about 2,000. So, the cameras
to civilian ratio is generous to say the
least. Toyota also confirmed that
chairman Akio Toyota has been uploaded
to the cloud as Akia Toyota AI,
a chatbot trained on a decade of his
speeches and writings so he can keep
dispensing leadership and wisdom long
after his meat form retires. Honestly,
getting trapped in a panopticon run by a
sentient AI CEO sounds stressful. At
least we can blow off some steam with
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even better offer. We'll have that
linked down below. Now, I know it would
be probably really good to do the quick
bits here, but what if instead we just
had Darth Maul show up again? You guys
like him, right?
>> Darth Maul.
>> Subscribe. Microsoft's April Windows 11
update keeps finding new ways to ruin
your day. After triggering boot loops,
besides, and boring Bit Locker, it's now
breaking third-party backup apps like
Macrium and Acronis. This time on
purpose, though. We're happy about this.
Microsoft blacklisted the kernel driver
that these apps use over a security flaw
and is telling users not to uninstall
the patch. So, your options are keep
your backups or keep your PC from
getting owned. Pick one, loser. Oh, you
want to back up your PC? Get a grip.
Maryland just became the first state to
ban AIdriven surveillance pricing in
grocery stores. Yay. Unfortunately,
critics say the bill is riddled with
carveouts and exemptions. Boohoo. What a
wa what a roller coaster. Consumer
advocate and the internet's cool older
brother who's looking out for you, Cory
Doctoro, called the law all loophole.
Anyway, Cory warned that lobbyists have
drafted it to gut consumer protections.
The criticism is welltimed as several
other states are currently drafting
similar bills. So, here's hoping this
will let us take a bite out of grocery
store surveillance pricing. A court in
Hongghu, China, ruled that companies
can't legally fire workers just because
AI is cheaper after a tech firm tried to
demote a quality assurance employee from
25,000 yuan a month to 15,000 and canned
him when he refused. The court said
adopting AI is a business choice, not an
unforeseeable disaster that voids your
employment contract. A take so worker
friendly, it probably won't survive the
boat ride west. BlackBerry stock jumped
over 10% today after a Wall Street
Journal profile reminded everyone that
the company didn't die, it just pivoted.
QNX, their software division, makes the
operating system running Lane Keep,
adaptive cruise, and crash detection in
275 million cars. And it's now expanding
into NVIDIA robotics and German
submarines, of course, which means the
company that couldn't survive the iPhone
is now keeping you alive at crush depth.
Sleep tight, sailors. And a Cleveland
startup called Sonic Fire Tech is
selling a fire suppression system that
uses inaudible infrasound waves instead
of water or chemicals. and they just
demoed putting out a kitchen grease fire
with sound alone, which everyone tries
at first, but it doesn't do anything.
A backpack version for wildland
firefighters is also in testing, which
I'm sure will go great until they find
all the dead woodland creatures.
Chipmunks are just not a thing anymore.
Ah, the fire's out. Oh god, mama. and
I'll be setting you on fire in a video
game if you don't come back Wednesday
for more tech news. Now, if you'll
excuse me, I have to go back to
pretending Star Wars doesn't exist until
the next Jedi Survivor sequel or they
make something else as good as Andor
because otherwise, what's the point?
Okay, see you.