WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.560 As you can see, it is a new year, one that we can now verify contains some bonkers tech news 00:00:08.560 --> 00:00:15.120 right off the bat. So here's some of it. The Nintendo Switch 2's motherboard has leaked in 00:00:15.120 --> 00:00:20.480 photos posted on Reddit. And while normally I'd sprinkle in some alleged leads in here, 00:00:20.480 --> 00:00:25.520 the sheer quantity of Switch 2 leaks in recent months is making it pretty easy to see which 00:00:25.600 --> 00:00:30.880 ones overlap. This motherboard not only has USB-C ports in the right places on the top and 00:00:30.880 --> 00:00:36.000 bottom, but it matches up with a previous leak showing the other side of the PCB attached to 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:42.320 what is certainly the Switch 2 panel. And I've never been more sure of anything in my life. 00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:46.400 Do we live in a simulation? I don't know, but that's the Switch 2! 00:00:46.400 --> 00:00:51.840 One image shows the NVIDIA processor, with text indicating it was built on a slightly older 00:00:51.840 --> 00:00:58.000 Samsung 8nm node, leading some to express concerns that the console's graphics won't be able to 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:05.120 render Mario's nipples at the 4K and 60fps they deserve. Others, like YouTuber TheWolften, 00:01:05.120 --> 00:01:11.120 aren't as worried. LOL RATION! In fact, Nintendo just filed a patent yesterday, 00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:17.280 spotted by Laura Kate Dale on Blue Sky, that describes upscaling techniques. And since NVIDIA's 00:01:17.280 --> 00:01:24.160 DLSS is the best in the game, I'm sure the Switch 2 will do justice to whatever nips may slide on 00:01:24.160 --> 00:01:29.600 to its display. Sounds painful. So when the heck is Nintendo going to speak up about this console? 00:01:29.600 --> 00:01:34.000 Well, they're going to talk about it sometime in the next three months, according to the Game 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:39.440 Awards Twitter account for some reason. Look, Jeff Kealy's just protecting his shy Japanese 00:01:39.440 --> 00:01:45.200 mega-corporation friend. See, they're just not ready yet! 00:01:46.080 --> 00:01:51.760 That was Jeff Kealy. I haven't worked on it. In other leaks that seem surprisingly legit news, 00:01:51.760 --> 00:02:00.640 Half-Life 3. It seems like it's happening. YouTuber and data miner Gabe Follower, 00:02:00.640 --> 00:02:05.040 who's been responsible for some reliable info in the past, claims his sources say 00:02:05.040 --> 00:02:10.880 Valve has begun friends and family playtesting for the project codenamed HLX, 00:02:10.880 --> 00:02:15.840 which is strongly believed to be Half-Life 3. His video goes through many more breadcrumbs, 00:02:15.840 --> 00:02:22.080 but speculation was truly set ablaze when Mike Shapiro, the voice actor for Half-Life characters 00:02:22.080 --> 00:02:29.520 G-Man and Barney, tweeted a video speaking in a G-Man-esque voice and teasing unexpected 00:02:29.520 --> 00:02:37.200 surprises in the new year. Unexpected surprises. The last time Shapiro did something like this 00:02:37.200 --> 00:02:44.640 was back in 2020 during the launch of Valve's VR title, Half-Life Alyx. Now, this may be solid proof 00:02:44.640 --> 00:02:52.640 that we can soon expect at least another Half-Life game. It may also be a promo for Shapiro's own 00:02:52.640 --> 00:02:58.320 music, given that the painting shown in the video is the art from the two-week-old Mike Shapiro 00:02:59.120 --> 00:03:12.320 best long dog. If that's the case, I will be disappointed but happy for Mike and his reportedly 00:03:12.320 --> 00:03:19.200 very good and lengthy pet. California's ban on what it calls addictive feeds for miners on social 00:03:19.200 --> 00:03:24.960 platforms was approved by a federal judge on New Year's Eve in the world's latest attempt to 00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:30.800 stop whatever is happening to Gen Alpha. We don't understand it, but we know its aura is 00:03:30.800 --> 00:03:35.200 High Key Ohio, which is not goals at all. Did you understand that? 00:03:35.200 --> 00:03:38.320 High Key Ohio? Yes. Why Ohio? 00:03:38.320 --> 00:03:44.720 Just gotta look it up. The ruling means companies like Meta, Snap, and Bite Dance will be forced to make significant 00:03:44.720 --> 00:03:50.880 changes to their social apps to prevent miners from accessing algorithmic feeds fed by their 00:03:50.880 --> 00:03:56.160 personal data. Why don't those companies sue to stop this? Well, they did. 00:03:56.160 --> 00:04:03.680 After Bill SB976 was signed into law in September, industry group NetChoice sued to block it from 00:04:03.680 --> 00:04:09.840 taking effect. And indeed, Judge Edward J. De Villa did block many of the Bill's key elements, 00:04:09.840 --> 00:04:16.320 but upheld the ban on addictive feeds. Social platforms will also not be able to send miners 00:04:16.320 --> 00:04:24.560 notifications from 8am to 3pm and from midnight to 6am. Go to sleep kids, you can have brain rot 00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:29.360 for breakfast. Oh, turns out there are quick bits in the New Year too, which I honestly wasn't 00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:36.560 expecting, but okay. Honey, the scam posing as a coupon finding service has been hit by a class 00:04:36.560 --> 00:04:42.000 action lawsuit filed by a group of lawyers and YouTubers, including Wendover Productions and 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:48.160 Legal Eagle, aka Devin Stone, who says after watching YouTuber Megalag's recently posted 00:04:48.160 --> 00:04:53.920 expose, he was furious, presumably because he found out about Honey stealing influencers 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:58.800 affiliate link commissions and not because he couldn't understand Megalag's Kiwi accent. 00:04:59.760 --> 00:05:05.760 What? I understood him fine. I just thought, isn't it cool that people talk differently? 00:05:05.760 --> 00:05:11.840 Pornhub parent company ILO has blocked access to its network of adults websites in Florida 00:05:11.840 --> 00:05:18.320 and South Carolina, who just joined a list of 16 other US states who have passed age verification 00:05:18.320 --> 00:05:24.560 laws to prevent miners from accessing adult content. It was 17 other states, but a judge 00:05:24.560 --> 00:05:30.560 blocked the law in Tennessee, and an investigative redditor from the state confirmed they can still 00:05:30.560 --> 00:05:36.080 access the site. Doing the hard work so you don't have to, or in case you can, that was a pun. 00:05:36.080 --> 00:05:42.160 A map from 404 Media shows that ILO sites are now blocked across nearly half the country, 00:05:42.160 --> 00:05:47.360 if you're going by landmass. Which, I don't know why you would. 00:05:47.360 --> 00:05:52.800 The US Treasury Department says that Chinese hackers broke into several workstations and 00:05:52.800 --> 00:05:58.800 accessed classified documents in what the agency called a major cybersecurity incident, 00:05:58.800 --> 00:06:04.400 as opposed to the normal ones that happen every Tuesday. The breach comes as US government officials 00:06:04.480 --> 00:06:10.560 are still trying to get hackers out of the country's telecoms networks, which is hard when they can 00:06:10.560 --> 00:06:15.120 squeeze through gaps the width of a pencil or the length of a human hair or something. 00:06:15.120 --> 00:06:23.440 They squish their bones flat or something. I don't get it. And a software engineer helping to maintain the diaspora, Federated Social Network, said that 00:06:23.440 --> 00:06:29.040 while investigating load spikes in the project's infrastructure, he discovered that around 70% 00:06:29.120 --> 00:06:35.680 of requests received by those websites are sent by bots collecting data to train large language 00:06:35.680 --> 00:06:42.080 models. Bots from OpenAI, Amazon, and Anthropic apparently come back to crawl the same webpage 00:06:42.080 --> 00:06:49.200 every six hours and manage to evade every attempt to block them, unlike the crawlers from Google 00:06:49.200 --> 00:06:54.640 and Bing, which still remember how to behave decently. These younger bots, though, they're 00:06:55.280 --> 00:06:58.480 skibbity-rizzing all over the place. I never did that. 00:06:58.480 --> 00:07:02.880 But I did ask you to come back for tech news, and so I shall again. 00:07:02.880 --> 00:07:06.080 Friday is when there will be more, so see you then. 00:07:08.800 --> 00:07:10.720 What? Why are you still looking at me? 00:07:12.560 --> 00:07:15.280 Well, well, this is awkward.