And tech news, oh, oh, almost hit that.
Close one.
Well, that would have been bad.
Intel CEO LitBootan had some harsh truth to deliver to employees during a company-wide
address this week. As reported by the Oregonian, Tan stated,
we are not in the top 10 semiconductor companies, Intel.
We're talking Intel. This is like a Michael Jordan switches to baseball moment.
Tan also indicated it's not even worth trying
to compete with NVIDIA in the market for advanced GPUs used for AI training,
saying, on training, I think it is too late for us.
Ah, I've never wanted to play a JoJo song
so badly on this show. No, not Siwa, the good one.
Now, some, like Gizmodo, are pointing to Intel's weakness
as a reason that Apple, not feeling any kind of pressure,
is deciding to launch its next MacBook Pro with an M5 chip next year instead of this fall.
At least they are according to the star of hit young adult TV drama,
Girming Up Girm, Mark Gerber of Bloomberg.
It was either that or Boys and Girm's. I should save that.
But the last MacBook Pro came out in October 2024,
so early 2026 wouldn't even be the longest gap
Apple has had between pros. So the reason for the supposed delay is unclear,
but you know what is clear? Intel X CEO, Pat Gelsinger,
could have turned this whole thing around. If not economically, then spiritually.
He had vibes for days. And now his new company, Glue,
has just launched the flourishing AI benchmark,
which measures AI's capacity to help humans develop
in the seven areas that contribute to human flourishing, which are of course, good character, relationships,
happiness, meaning spiritual growth, physical health,
and finances. Very cool, except which one does knowing
how many ours are in strawberry belong to? Someone will have to run that benchmark on GROC
because Elon Musk's XAI did in fact release
their updated GROC four chat bot on Wednesday night.
The live stream wasn't hour late, but the team had some not so small bugs to deal with.
Check out our previous episode for the DL on that.
Elon claimed that GROC four is so intelligent
that he expects it to literally discover new technologies
that are actually useful no later than next year, and maybe end of this year,
and it might discover new physics next year, and within two years almost certainly.
So just let that sink in. Oh, it has sunk.
Coming from the guy that promised full self-driving next year for like a decade,
this is almost like a promise that neither of those things will happen.
Now to be fair, by all accounts, GROC four's performance is top of the line
on a number of AI benchmarks, including humanity's last exam and ARC AGI,
and it does something else no other chat bot does too.
It checks Elon's stance before giving its opinion
on controversial topics, a behavior first spotted by Micah Airfan,
but quickly replicated by others, which seems less maximally truth seeking
and more maximally dad glazing.
Oh, now GROC four does this specifically
when asked about its own stance on a controversial topic.
It seems to ignore Elon's opinion when asked about issues using a more passive voice.
So what is going on here? Although GROC three previously said
it was built by XAI to incorporate Elon's voice
and public perspectives, it doesn't seem like Elon or XAI
specifically coded this behavior in as it's not in the system prompt.
What is there is an instruction to search for sources
that represent all parties slash stakeholders,
which yeah, Elon's a pretty big one of those.
And as it notes during its thinking process, if the user is asking for an opinionated response,
not a neutral one, I mean, who better to get opinions from
than your meat daddy? Wow, why did I do this?
Krafton, the publisher of highly anticipated survival game Subnautica 2,
is embroiled in a messy fight with the two co-founders
and the CEO of the game's developer, Unknown Worlds.
The three execs were fired earlier this month, but have now announced they're suing Krafton.
So it's mutiny then, if that's what you call throwing the cap and overboard
and then he climbs back on the ship and sues you. See, this week Bloomberg reported that Krafton
was supposed to pay the Unknown Worlds devs a bonus totaling $250 million
if they hit pre-specified revenue targets by the end of 2025,
which they might have hit if they were allowed to launch the game in early access
later this year as planned. But two days ago, Krafton delayed the launch to 2026,
citing feedback from early tests, leading many to suspect they were just trying
to avoid paying the devs. But according to a pop-up now appearing
on the Krafton homepage, this is not the case
and the state of the game really was that bad and also the ousted studio leads were behaving badly.
Obviously, the community is siding with the devs here,
showering the latest Subnautica 2 gameplay trailer
with comments about the game, predicting that an evil corporation
would steal money and resources from an Unknown World.
Oh, because that's the plot of the game?
I haven't had time to play it, I've been making this show.
Quick bits, they're like the other bits, but shorter.
Belkin announced they're shutting down all smart home devices under the Wemo brand
on January 31st, 2026, saying that some customers with Wemo devices
that are under warranty may be eligible for a partial refund.
It's the latest example of smart home companies bricking their own devices.
I mean, what, are they supposed to continually put resources into maintaining support for gadgets
that most people purchased with the expectation that the company would do that? Yes.
Google is currently rolling out its second software update this year
that will nerf the battery of a Pixel phone to the point of it being unusable.
Like the Pixel 4a, Google says that the batteries in some Pixel 6a's
have defects that could make them explode or something,
whatever, but Google has a support page you can use to check if yours is an impacted device
and register to get a battery replacement or if that's not available in your country,
cash or a gift card, which won't stop your phone from exploding,
so just be aware. At least they're being upfront about what's happening this time with the Pixel 4a.
The whole vibe was a lot more like, listen, your phone don't work no more.
Why don't you be a good little schmuck and hand it over to Vinnie here and then shut your fish mouth.
The FBI has taken down NSW2U,
which is surprisingly not a website promoting tourism
in the Australian site of New South Wales, but rather one of the most popular websites
used to distribute pirated Switch games. Great to see that America's esteemed law enforcement agencies
have their priorities all in order. This is probably the best thing
they could focus their efforts on. And security researchers Ian Carroll and Sam Curry
were able to access a database with the personal information
of 64 million McDonald's job applicants
by logging into the web portal for the company's McHire Chatbot
using the username and password 123456.
After disclosing the issue to McDonald's, the company behind the Chatbot, Paradox AI,
promptly investigated the issue and resolved it within a few hours of being notified.
Is this a joke? How many vibe coders does it take to change a password?
It's a good thing they fixed it because having the applicant's personal information leak
would have been the cherry on top after the infuriatingly dense Chatbot
gave them all a free mechanism. That is my name.
Hey, you know what would put a cherry on top of this whole episode?
You promising me that you'll come back on Monday for more tech news.
It would just, it would just really make my day.
So say it, okay? Say you'll come back.
Say it.