WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.200 Twitter has officially begun rebranding itself to Elon Musk's favorite letter, X. 00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:09.280 The platform is not a Twitter anymore. It's an X Twitter. 00:00:09.280 --> 00:00:12.320 If you're not a fan of puns, you're about to have a bad couple days on the internet. 00:00:12.320 --> 00:00:17.440 I'm Riley Murdock, this is TechLinked, and this is the letter X in the monotype special 00:00:17.440 --> 00:00:24.160 alphabets for font, which also looks similar to a standard character added to Unicode in 2001, 00:00:24.160 --> 00:00:28.880 which is why Elon could tweet the new logo of his massive social media company as 00:00:28.960 --> 00:00:33.760 literal text. To be fair, Elon has said that they will change the logo to something a bit more 00:00:34.560 --> 00:00:39.200 permanent, but it was still kind of sad for me to read this thread by Martin Grasser, 00:00:39.200 --> 00:00:44.160 telling the story of how he and two other designers created Twitter's iconic bird logo 00:00:44.160 --> 00:00:48.880 before I caught myself being sentimental about marketing for a tech giant and hit the X on the 00:00:48.880 --> 00:00:54.720 tab after I found the right one. The rebrand comes soon after Musk handed the CEO reigns to 00:00:54.720 --> 00:01:01.680 Lindo Yaccarino, who apparently shares Elon's passion for building X into the Everything app, 00:01:01.680 --> 00:01:08.880 capable of serving all four fundamental human needs, audio, video, messaging, and banking, 00:01:08.880 --> 00:01:12.400 with a little sprinkle of AI to make things feel extra dystopian. 00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:17.680 The new X.com is Elon's latest adventure in trying to brand literally everything he's involved in 00:01:17.680 --> 00:01:23.040 with an X in some way, including PayPal. There's a whole story there, but this time, 00:01:23.040 --> 00:01:29.680 it's not just the platform. Tweets will now be called X's. I X'd an X this morning, 00:01:29.680 --> 00:01:37.120 but no one X'd back at me. Didn't even get any sub X's. Re X? If you're looking to X it, 00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:42.480 the platform, I'm sorry, the Twitter alternative landscape isn't looking super compelling. 00:01:42.480 --> 00:01:48.480 Threads just got an update with new features, but Meta won't say what they are. Although TikTok 00:01:48.480 --> 00:01:55.360 just added text posts. And to be frank, the CCP having all my data has never seemed less problematic. 00:01:55.360 --> 00:02:00.320 When Google's new extension API for Chrome made it more difficult for ad blocking extensions 00:02:00.320 --> 00:02:05.200 to function, Mozilla managed to implement a workaround keeping ad blockers working. 00:02:05.200 --> 00:02:10.240 Fortunately for Google, a new proposal by four of the company's engineers promises to find a 00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:16.880 completely new way to have the internet be full of nice, orderly, auto-playing videos that follow 00:02:16.960 --> 00:02:21.200 you down the page as you scroll. Where are you going? There's nothing down there. What are you 00:02:21.200 --> 00:02:27.920 looking for the FAQs? Lewis Rossman called the proposal, known as the web environment integrity 00:02:27.920 --> 00:02:33.440 explainer, one of the scariest things he's ever heard in his life, and he's talked to Linus off 00:02:33.440 --> 00:02:38.880 camera. Google's engineers propose that websites ask for tokens from users' machines, which have 00:02:38.880 --> 00:02:46.880 been verified by attesters, controlled by, yep, Google. This would most likely break most ad 00:02:46.880 --> 00:02:51.840 blockers and with Google controlling which websites and browsers are seen as trustworthy, 00:02:51.840 --> 00:02:56.880 could put nails in the coffin of the open web, which is why many critics on GitHub are calling 00:02:56.880 --> 00:03:03.760 the scheme DRM for websites. Look, it's okay. This internet just turned into network television, 00:03:03.760 --> 00:03:08.400 but we can probably start a different web, free of government and corporate control. 00:03:08.880 --> 00:03:14.560 You mean the dark web? A different one than that. Apple has begun sending out developer kits for the 00:03:14.560 --> 00:03:21.920 Vision Pro Mixed Reality headset and, oh, I thought Tim Cook was going to send assassins for not 00:03:21.920 --> 00:03:27.680 saying spatial computing instead of mixed reality. The kits are supposed to be kept super secret 00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:33.280 and not reviewed by anyone in a YouTube video, so do not listen to Marquez here. Think of your 00:03:33.280 --> 00:03:38.080 waifu and chibi figurines. What will they do when the assassins come? Some developers will 00:03:38.080 --> 00:03:44.800 use the kits to optimize their apps for virtual, I mean, for spatial computing, but according to 00:03:44.800 --> 00:03:50.960 Markham's Girmatron at Bloomberg, Netflix and many other high-profile developers will not be 00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:57.600 optimizing their apps for the rather small Vision Pro user base, if when it exists. After all, 00:03:57.600 --> 00:04:06.480 recent reports say Apple only expects to ship 150,000 units in 2024 about 500 times smaller 00:04:06.560 --> 00:04:12.080 than the market for Apple's other devices. Sure, Netflix has an incentive to optimize a Vision 00:04:12.080 --> 00:04:18.720 Pro app so users don't just watch Apple TV Plus instead, but I don't know, maybe Netflix knows 00:04:18.720 --> 00:04:23.680 that Apple's star-studded, well-reviewed shows automatically look way better than 00:04:23.680 --> 00:04:29.280 Hot Love on the Beach Island 20-day fiancee Battle Royale. They got season two somehow. 00:04:29.840 --> 00:04:32.960 Bits taste good every time, with or without milk. 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:41.840 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's other startup trying to fundamentally change human life on the planet as 00:04:41.840 --> 00:04:47.600 we know it, Worldcoin, has launched its global rollout after already scanning the eyeballs of 00:04:47.600 --> 00:04:54.000 two million users with its creepy orb thing, which is actually not that scary according to this 00:04:54.080 --> 00:05:00.160 crypto reporter. But don't worry, in return, the human receives some Worldcoin cryptocurrency, 00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:06.000 which actually shot up in value following today's news, and more importantly, a world ID, 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:11.440 which can theoretically be used to prove said humans aren't robots. Which I guess will be more 00:05:11.440 --> 00:05:16.240 necessary than ever thanks to OpenAI unleashing their chatbot into the world. He may have let 00:05:16.240 --> 00:05:21.040 the bull into the China shop, but he came prepared with lots. He's got lots of tape. 00:05:21.040 --> 00:05:26.240 A leaked hands-on video of Sony's upcoming Project Q PlayStation streaming handheld 00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:32.080 has revealed that the device runs some version of Android, or at least this one does, 00:05:32.080 --> 00:05:37.520 igniting the hopes of many tinkers who no doubt dream of circumventing Sony's restrictions. 00:05:37.520 --> 00:05:42.640 I mean, it's supposed to only be able to stream PlayStation 5 games on a local network, which 00:05:42.640 --> 00:05:46.640 seems kind of ridiculous until you see the picture with the screen taken off and realize, 00:05:47.200 --> 00:05:50.800 I mean, you can't do anything else because there's nothing in there. That's all they 00:05:50.800 --> 00:05:55.760 could manage. It looks like one half of the weirdest waffle iron ever. I want to cook a waffle 00:05:55.760 --> 00:06:01.760 in there. ASUS has announced plans to begin mass production of its RTX 4070 graphics card 00:06:01.760 --> 00:06:07.680 without an extra power connector that it revealed back in Computex as soon as this fall is when 00:06:07.680 --> 00:06:12.240 they'll begin mass production. But the card requires a specific ASUS motherboard with an 00:06:12.240 --> 00:06:18.400 additional connector slot next to the standard PCIe x16 slot, which is powered by a 16 pin 00:06:18.400 --> 00:06:24.400 connector on the back of the motherboard. So, calling it connector less as many are doing 00:06:24.400 --> 00:06:29.040 online isn't quite accurate. It rubs me the wrong way and frankly puts me in a bad mood, 00:06:29.040 --> 00:06:34.400 even though it does come in a very nice minimalist white color. I might buy one to hang on my wall, 00:06:34.400 --> 00:06:40.640 but not for gaming. In other GPU news, gaming handheld maker GPD has released a video 00:06:40.640 --> 00:06:45.600 showing that the company's external GPU dock works with one of the company's main competing 00:06:45.600 --> 00:06:54.240 products, the Steam Deck. What a quirky situation. What's even quirkier is that you have to open up 00:06:54.240 --> 00:07:02.080 the deck and remove its M.2 SSD in order to use GPD's Oculink adapter and then leave the back off 00:07:02.080 --> 00:07:10.320 and run Windows instead of SteamOS off of a micro SD card. Oh man, but you're gonna get a few more 00:07:10.320 --> 00:07:15.280 frames on that thing. It's gonna be pretty good. And isn't that all worth it? And in case you missed 00:07:15.280 --> 00:07:20.080 it, Neopets is entering a whole new era this week and they've got a new brand ambassador along for 00:07:20.080 --> 00:07:26.640 the ride, music legend John Legend, who excitedly posted to his Instagram followers the big news 00:07:26.640 --> 00:07:33.280 on the weekend. Like, wow, congrats to Neopets for landing a big celebrity for the job, but there's 00:07:33.280 --> 00:07:39.200 also evidence of John's claim that the game has long been a favorite in his family's house. 00:07:39.200 --> 00:07:46.400 Chrissy Teigen was tweeting about the game back in 2018. Back when tweets could just be tweets. 00:07:47.840 --> 00:07:54.720 Exes? Come on! And you come on back on Wednesday for more tech news, delivered by me, a human verified 00:07:54.720 --> 00:08:01.040 by the world coin world government. As long as they're still happy with me, we'll have to see.