Oh, thank God you're here now.
I just, uh, the thought of you out there with no tech news.
You're okay. We're okay. More than 1.1 million battery banks are being recalled by Anchor in the United States after
the company says they received 19 reports of fires and explosions.
Two of those led to minor burn injuries, and 11 of them involved property damage totaling
over $60,700. And the cherry on top is that all those people's phones are still dead.
Now only one specific model of Power Bank is being recalled, the Powercore 1000, and
only the A1263 model, so no need to start looking at your other power banks like they're
trying to kill you, although obviously I can't speak for them. If you do have one, fill out the form and you can get a $30 gift card for other Anchor
products or a free different Power Bank that's fine, they promise.
Unless someone proves otherwise, I'm going to assume this all may have played a role
in the massive Google Cloud outage that caused multiple services to go offline for hours
yesterday, including Spotify and Google Home.
However, after fixing it, Google said the issue actually occurred due to an invalid
automated quota update to their API management system which was distributed globally, causing
external API requests to be rejected, but I don't know, that sounds made up.
The Intel Battle Mage GPU ID, BMG G31, has been added by Intel to a driver database more
or less confirming that Intel is at least working on another Battle Mage GPU more powerful
than the Arc B580. Every Battle Mage news item is like it might be dead, and then it's not dead, maybe.
This was spotted by Videocards.com who also reported that a reference to an unreleased
Intel Arc GPU was spotted on the PCI-SIG integrators list with support for a full 16-lane PCI-E
5.0 interface. Now you don't have to, but I choose to believe Intel's going to give us a higher end gaming
card, because gamers, it's been said before, but we need Intel to light a fire under Team
Green and Red's rectum. Leaker, I didn't have to put that in, but was that allowed?
Leaker Mega-sized GPU claims NVIDIA's desktop RTX 5050 will use GDDR6 memory instead of
the faster GDDR6X, just like the Radeon RX 9000 series.
Although we can't be too mad at AMD, they also just randomly launched the Ryzen 5 5500X3D
3D Cache Gaming CPU for the rest of us.
Five years after the first Ryzen 5000 series launched, they've been shaking the box this
whole time and that one just kind of came out. They knew something was stuck in there.
In AI News, fans watching the NBA Finals this week were treated to a fully AI-generated
ad for Kelshi, the platform that seemingly views everything in the world as simply
raw material to fuel gambling addiction. So a frenetic, nonsensical video full of fake humans is kind of on brand.
I mean, you could tell Kelshi, but these aren't real people and they'd say, neither are you,
betcha 50 bucks. AI filmmaker PJ Aseturo took responsibility for the ad, he apparently made it for $2,000
worth of VO3 credits in just two days, and then reposted it on YouTube with the title
The Disney Approved Our Insane AI Ad to Run During the NBA Finals.
Ahahahahaha. That's what that emoji sounds like, BTDeps.
But if you think AI video isn't art, acclaimed filmmaker Darren Aronofsky disagrees with you.
He produced a short film written and directed by Eliza McNitt that combines live action
and AI-generated footage to depict a baby in the womb and some animals that look pretty
AI-generated to me. But what do I know? I'm not being shown at the Tribeca Film Festival, unless someone is playing this video on a
theater screen at the Tribeca Film Festival, in which case, hi guys, this is Cinema.
There is some useful AI news. Google's starting to make some search results available as an AI podcast, and I hate the
AI overview stuff normally, but this could let you listen to search results while you're
driving or something. But also, don't do that.
Microsoft's co-pilot app on Windows 10 and 11 can see your screen now in the US, and
a Windows Insider build features a settings agent that can help you find stuff and even
change settings itself if you let it.
Not so useful is the meta AI discover public feed, since tons of people apparently don't
know they are posting on it. You've got people uploading audio recordings, asking the AI why some farts stink a certain
way, and Business Insider spotted a guy role playing, talking to his wife, who died from
cancer. It's not great. Now you do have to click multiple buttons to post on the feed, but do you expect some
boomers at least to understand what they're clicking?
Please check your parents and grandparents' phones stat, and then check out our sponsor.
Okay, good job. Hey, hey, hey, don't run away yet.
You gotta finish your quick bits. Another little Switch 2 mini-hack has been demoed, this time by YouTube channel Naga,
who coaxed the new console into running grid autosport and alien isolation at higher graphics
settings than the default. They did this by modifying a save file for those games on a jailbroken Switch 1 and then
syncing that save file to a Switch 2. And you might think the risk of Nintendo bricking your console isn't worth it to have slightly
better graphics in your game, but you don't get it. For people like Naga, that is the game.
They probably love Kelshi. A new vulnerability called Smart Attack has been discovered that could allow attackers
to use smartwatches to intercept ultrasonic signals from air-gapped systems, aka computers
that are physically isolated from external networks, from up to 6 meters away.
The possibilities for someone to dress up like a watchdog's character and crouch behind
the desk next to the desk where the computer is that they're hacking while a guard walks
by right next to them without seeing them are endless.
Of course, you can't see you. You're in cover mode. The Pirelli Cyber Tire, which has sensors to give a vehicle's driver information about
their surroundings, has been rolling around for a while.
But Pirelli says the tires will now take part in a new pilot program to monitor roads in
the Italian region of Apulia, so the government can know how healthy the road is.
Has it been eating its quick bits? Unfortunately, Pirelli probably won't be able to do the same thing in the States thanks
to the US ban on Chinese car-related hardware and software.
Huh? Yeah, Pirelli has a Chinese investor who's probably hacked their whole system by now.
Maybe with a smartwatch. And I couldn't believe it yesterday when I saw that a sequel to the 1987 Star Wars
parody Spaceballs is happening.
Spaceballs 2 will bring back 98-year-old Mel Brooks as a producer and to play Yogurt,
the character, alongside Bill Pullman as Lone Star, Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet, and Daphne
Zuniga as Princess Vespa.
The movie is being described as a non-prequel, non-reboot sequel part two, but with reboot
elements franchise expansion film. And it's being made by Amazon, which means that Disney's, mostly bad, Star Wars run
is going to be parodied by one of their biggest streaming competitors.
Get em, Amazon! And then you die too. Okay, I can't believe it's actually time to send you back out into the world.
Yes, you've got tech news, but is that enough? Please, come back on Monday.
And I'll give you some more, otherwise it's just gonna sit in the fridge.