In the future, tech news will be delivered by a holographic host. It'll
be just like the doctor from Star Trek Voyager, except it'll probably be me or
Lionus or Riley instead of Robert Picardo. But we are in talks with
Picardo. Steam has set a new concurrent player record for itself. Data from
Steam TV shows that Valve's platform recently surpassed 41.6 million
simultaneous users. That's more than the population of Canada, bud. and nearly
double the player count from just five years ago. Seems like PC gamer growth
accelerated after the WHO declared a pandemic, the only world event that was
notable enough to include on their chart. I bet about half that player jump
was from Among Us. >> Pretty silk.
>> Steam's new record high comes after Battlefield 6, Hades 2, and Hollow
Knight Silkong all broke their own franchise player records as well. So
clearly the lesson for gaming companies here is to keep pumping out sequels.
That's what we all want, right? for Star Wars. >> Do it like the movies do. That said, I
can't help but notice that the total number of users increased more than the
number of users in game, which reads to me like people are spending more time
staring at their bloated Steam backlog than actually playing their games. Let
this be a call to action to you. Go beat something off the backlog. It's time to
finally play Discolesium or Red Dead Redemption 2. No new games until you
beat those ones. Open AAI has stopped letting people generate fake videos of
Martin Luther King Jr. at the request of the late Dr. King's estate. Apparently,
his family wasn't jazzed about OpenAI's slop only Tik Tok clone being filled to
the brim with disrespectful depictions of MLK delivering a stirring speech on
the beauty of the female form. >> That's not it was he was doing something
more vulgar, James. >> Ah, it's yet another feature roll back
from OpenAI who only seems to focus more on the latter part of the move fast and
break things. But at least OpenAI isn't pulling a Facebook and rumaging through
your phone's local storage and editing one of your photos with AI without you
even asking it to like a cat bringing you a dead mouse.
>> What am I supposed to do with this? >> I'm thankful that feature rolled out in
beta this past summer and is now launching more widely for some reason.
You can opt out at any time if you're aware that it's happening in the first
place and didn't absent mindly press okay when the prompt asked you to and it
just popped out like you know just how it does that and you're trying to do something else. Big tech is looking for
extra uses for AI that people don't even want. It's no wonder they're all
bringing back nuclear power. And even if that is probably a good idea, we should
probably still want to set some ground rules for how AI is used. See MLK Jr.
So, Pope Leo I 14th hosted a seminar at the Vatican this week urging global
cooperation in regulating the technology. The Pope reminded attendees
that AI is above all else a tool. He's he's American though, right?
>> He did the accent was weird. >> And so, we must be careful that in using
it, we do not ourselves act like tools.
Amen. And amen to our sponsor, Ground
News, who are trying to do something about the fact that algorithms have divided up the internet into these
information bubbles that stop you from getting a more complete picture of what
the heck's going on because you're packed in. There were so many people you
agree with and their breath is fogging up the glass. Ah, pop that bubble with
ground news. They aggregate news stories breaking down the political leanings and
ownership of each outlet. Take for example the recent story about Apple and
Formula 1 signing a 5-year exclusive streaming agreement. 38% of the coverage
leans left while only 13% leans right. Even though this is about cars going
fast, which I thought was always a conservative thing, even though NASCAR
races are just one big left turn. >> I guess I got to question my biases.
>> Find out who's reporting on what, so you can understand why. Take the first step,
get the transparency you deserve from the news, and save 40% on ground news
Vantage Plan by using our link in the description. Robert Peardo frequently
collaborates with director Joe Dante, who just so happens to be one of the
Quickbits favorite directors. Gremlins is a Christmas classic and Phil Hartman
is sublime in Small Soldiers. Small soldiers.
>> Yeah, >> Kip Kelligan. >> They need We need a sequel to that. I'll take a sequel to that.
>> What? There might have been a sequel. >> I don't think so. >> Apple is apparently cutting production
of the new iPhone Air. According to Japan's Mizuo Securities, while the
iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max models are seeing higher sales than their
predecessors, the new iPhone Air is a
sales letdown. Now, Apple is chopping production of the
Air down by up to 1 million units this year. Down by up to what the language.
Similarly, a report from News PIM in Korea alleges that Samsung has halted
work on the Galaxy S26 Edge letting employees know that the product line is
to be discontinued. The news isn't totally unexpected. The S25 Edge didn't
sell well, and like Gizmodo said, slim phones might be on thin ice. Well, it
looks like these thin phones are about to be skinny dipping in the discount
bin. >> Splash. >> Got them. So good. Google Workspace is
trying to steal some of Microsoft's business customers with the power of SAS
sauce. >> Oh, or sauce if you're in the UK. After
calling out the architectural brittleleness in Microsoft's infrastructure and saying Microsoft 365
crashes are a question of when and for how long, not if, which I'm pretty sure
is the software engineers equivalent of a glove slap. Google talks up its new
cost-effective Google Workspace plans meant to help businesses transition away
from Office, which is now called Microsoft 365. What a boring and
confusing name. Wouldn't you rather subscribe to a workplace plan called
business continuity or work transformation set?
Wouldn't you? Uber is launching a new program that allows its contractors to
earn additional cash by telling jokes as
they drive. you know, testing out new bits. I'm just joking. Um, it's
additional cash by completing micro tasks that train AI models. That's way
worse. These tasks include everything from voice recordings to capturing and
uploading images to submitting documents in a certain language in exchange for
variable rewards. In this example, if you upload a picture from a Spanish
restaurant menu, you could earn a whole shiny dollar. One, a green back. I've
always dreamed of being a mental blood bag for AI. This move could help Uber
use its army of freelance workers to challenge companies that train AI models
by having humans annotate and label data. And besides, they're already
constantly feeding customers via Uber Eats. Why not feed the hungry machine
your time, energy, and knowledge as well? It's the same thing.
>> It's that's my job. >> And PayPal's blockchain partner, Paxos,
mistakenly minted $300 trillion in PYUSD
stable coin. As pointed out by both CNBC and Ingadget, 300 trillion of these
stable coins are worth more than double the world's estimated total GDP. It just
seems like there's something terribly wrong when you can just accidentally
mint more money than the global GDP. Thank thankfully this all appears to be
a huge and embarrassing gaff. And don't worry, Paxos tweeted to assure folks
that the issue was a technical error and that their customers funds are safe.
Paxos even says they've burned the excess PYUSD.
I've been known to burn through a lot of excess money myself, but I really hope
that's not what they mean. The coin's still pegged. Don't worry, guys.
>> Yeah. >> And you should know what I mean when I say peg when I tell you to come back on
Monday for more tech news. I can't promise you we'll have holograms by
Monday, but I swear I'm working really hard on Picardo.