We make these videos in a single day, so saving time is super important, which is why I'm just
gonna tell you that Magical is sponsoring this video and move on, okay? I'll tell you more
later, don't worry about it. The United States Department of Justice sued Apple on Thursday for
monopolizing smartphone markets, which is a bolder and broader claim than even Epic Games made
in their lawsuit. They should have thought of that before they became a video game company
instead of a government institution. The sheer scope of the DOJ's complaints make this probably
the largest antitrust case since the DOJ sued Microsoft back in 1998, which led to the company
pinky swearing to not be so monopolistic in shoving Internet Explorer down consumers'
throats. But when you change the browser name to Edge, pinky promises don't count. That's
playground rules. In a nutshell, the reason for the DOJ's lawsuit is basically summarized by Tim
Cook's now classic line, buy your mom an iPhone. Join me or be cast into the piercing void with
the rest of your contemptible kind, unworthy scum. Cook said this in response to a reporter talking
about how pictures and videos look like grainy garbage when they're sent between iPhones and
Androids, and it's even quoted in the DOJ's complaint. They also mentioned the iOS app store's
restrictive rules, specifically claiming that Apple blocks super apps like WeChat, which basically
serves as an app platform in itself in China. And they also bring up hardware incompatibility,
citing the Apple Watch's lack of Android support. But that's apparently not for a lack of trying.
Apple told 9to5Mac that it spent three years investigating whether Android support could
be added to Apple Watch, ultimately deciding it would never work because of technical limitations.
Pretty much any issue with iOS you've ever heard of is cited in this lawsuit. And it's clear the
DOJ thinks Apple's walled garden approach isn't cool anymore. In a statement issued to the press,
Apple says the lawsuit threatens who we are. And yeah, yeah, it does. That's kind of the whole
point. You're toxic. I'm slipping under. But for me, the most scandalous part of all of this
is that Tim Sweeney can't even tweet about it until he's done giving testimony in the Australian
Epic Games vs. Apple trial. What does he think? If he does tweet, it spins the opposite way.
Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain computer interface company posted a live stream on Twitter proving
that their first human patient is not only alive, he is killing it at chess.
Nolan Arbach received the wireless implant in January and can now easily move a mouse cursor
with his mind well enough to play Civilization 6 for eight hours straight, only stopping because
he had to charge it. Now, while this is certainly impressive, BCI experts have pointed out that
the basic technology here isn't new. I mean, here's a video from 2007 of a guy controlling
a mouse cursor with his mind. Academic researchers and startups like Synchron and BlackRock,
the Neurotech company, not the one you're thinking of, have all achieved similar results.
But it's clear that Neuralink is trying to create the iPhone moment for BCIs with its minimalist
design and sexy neural threads that get all up inside your brain. And to be fair, it does seem
like Neuralink has stirred up a lot of hype, thanks in no small part to Elon making claims
like this one, where he says it's possible to shunt brain signals past a spinal injury so
paralyzed people can walk again, which would obviously be awesome. But I've also seen a lot
of this guy's rockets explode, so I just don't know. Microsoft has hired the CEO and founder of
Inflection AI, the company behind the popular Pi Chatbot, to head up its Microsoft AI division.
Also hired by Microsoft, most of Inflection's other 70 employees in what many in the industry
are calling an aqua hire and what a smaller group is calling a higher-quisition. It's just me
saying that, you know, I don't even like it. Microsoft will also pay Inflection $620 million
to license their Pi models and another $30 million to keep their lips shut about the whole poaching
a whole company thing. Don't spread this around. In a blog post, the survivors at Inflection
referred to the gutting of their company as an important change to how we'll work.
But analyst Tony Wang, and everyone else with eyes, says this is basically an acquisition
of Inflection without having to go through regulatory approval. It's clear that Microsoft
CEO Satya Nadella is serious about his company's dominance in AI. In the wake of this story,
a quote has gone viral from one of his interviews back in November,
when Microsoft was briefly going to hire open AI CEO Sam Altman and much of that company's staff.
Asked about the possibility of open AI folding, Nadella said Microsoft would be fine because,
quote, we have all the IP rights and all the capability. We have the people, we have the
compute, we have the data, we have everything. We are in there, we are below them, above them,
around them. We are the Senate. He didn't say that last part.
AMD has announced FSR 3.1, which not only adds substantial improvements to its upscaling technologies,
but also greatly expands access to frame generation. The update allows for the decoupling of AMD's
frame generation tech from its FSR 3 upscaling, allowing other upscaling solutions like NVIDIA's
DLSS or Intel's XESS to use Team Red's frame generation feature. Apparently,
NVIDIA RTX 20 series cards and above are supported. Though AMD's upscaling also got some love, FSR
3.1 improves temporal stability and reduces ghosting, which AMD demonstrated using GIFs
that are definitely from Ratchet and Clanked Rift Apart and totally aren't just AI-generated
acclaimation. Why are they so small? Look how good this looks!
SUYU, a non-profit open source Nintendo Switch emulator based on the recently defunct Yuzu,
released its first build on Wednesday, only to have it immediately pulled down by GitLab
on the grounds that it's a fork of a public repo against which we previously received a DMCA
notice. However, the SUYU team says they will still continue the project. The build is available
for Windows, Linux, and macOS, and they've apparently added several fixes and removed
all telemetry, which is probably a good idea given what happened to the last guy who tangled with
Nintendo's enforcers. Those goombas look not threatening, but...
At a virtual event, Microsoft unveiled the brand new Surface Pro X and Surface Laptop 6.
For business. No, but seriously, if you're excited about the new ARM powered devices,
don't be. For these, these products use Intel Core Ultra chips, which are still new.
The rumored Snapdragon X Elite notebooks won't be coming until May, but it might be worth the
wait. Qualcomm claims most Windows games should just work on their processors. You know what else
works? Co-pilot. Before announcing the new Surface devices, Microsoft rehashed all of their AI's
greatest hits. Like a Rolling Stones concert. If no one wanted to listen to the Rolling Stones.
How they gonna tick it? Apple's M-series chips have an un-patchable side-channel vulnerability
allowing attackers to extract encryption keys from Macs. A team of researchers from multiple
universities detailed an attack called GoFetch, which uses an app that doesn't require any root
access to the target Mac. Only the same user privilege is needed by most third-party macOS apps.
The vulnerability is due to the design of the silicon itself, so it can't be patched,
only mitigated by software defenses that could severely affect performance. I also have an
un-patchable flaw that affects my performance. It's called depression. And security researchers
say that around 13,000 buildings, predominantly hotels from around the world, are currently
vulnerable to an exploit that allows a master key to be created for the entire building using just
an NFC-enabled Android device and a key card from that hotel. It can also be used to override
deadbolts, so you're gonna want to hope that little chain can hold. This vulnerability affects
safflock locks created by Dormacaba. Dormacama is aware of the issue and had so far replaced or
patched 36% of the affected locks. Wow. There are no known cases of this exploit being used in the
wild. This is very much a horror we have uncovered for ourselves in captivity, much like the Zonki,
the unholy offspring of a zebra and a donkey. That's Jessica's fun fact. Fun horror for the day.
And you'll uncover more tech news if you come back on Monday for another episode of TechLinked.