You know what they say, the more things change, the more they change.
It's called tech news or entropy. Nintendo is suing Tropic Hayes,
the makers of Yuzu, which, according to Google, is either an emulator for the Nintendo Switch
or a small yellow citrus fruit similar to a lemon.
Who can say? Tropic Hayes sounds like a Gatorade flavor.
In the 41-page lawsuit, Nintendo claims that Yuzu knowingly facilitates piracy on a massive scale.
As part of its case, Nintendo likewise suggests that Yuzu's technology was used to play pirated copies
of the legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom,
a bold claim, which was illegally downloaded over a million times in the weeks
before its official release, around 5% of the amount of official copies sold.
According to Nintendo, around 20% of download links
pointed prospective pirates to Yuzu. Now to win, Nintendo will have to prove one key fact,
that the Yuzu emulator was created primarily
to circumvent anti-piracy protections, rather than its more above-board uses,
like enabling legitimate owners of a game like Tears of the Kingdom to play it
on an Android, Linux, or Windows device with a decent frame rate and a controller
designed for big, meaty adult hands. I'm just a big guy.
After at least a decade of work behind the scenes, Apple has reportedly killed plans
to build its own self-driving electric vehicle,
a project that Apple has never officially acknowledged,
but which we all know about because they had to get a bunch of car-related permits
and there were like 2,000 people working on it. What's Tim Cook supposed to do?
Swear them all to secrecy and force them to live in an isolated community in the middle of the Nevada desert?
I become death. If you break NDA, Barbara and I will find you.
At least some of those employees will be shifted over to Apple's AI division, perhaps unsurprisingly,
given that AI's star has risen even as EV sales have significantly slowed.
Another thing Apple has moved to kill is iOS support for progressive web apps in the EU,
claiming that the feature will be too difficult to continue offering in compliance
with the Digital Markets Act, which requires interoperability
with browser engines other than Apple's own web kit, something that Apple never designed it to do.
It could break. Another browser? Are you insane?
The European Commission, who are being very ungrateful
at this thoughtful gesture from Apple, are investigating this decision
and have asked developers for feedback concerning the change.
But Apple isn't the only killer still on the streets because Netflix is killing off Apple payment
for legacy in-app iOS subscribers. Netflix removed the ability to subscribe
via its iOS app back in 2018 in order to duck Apple's 15 to 30% cut,
but grandfathered in pre-existing subscriptions
who were still responsible for them paying a cut to Apple.
Now, Netflix can finally be free. Well, not that kind of free, that'll be $15.
Please and thank you. You don't want to miss Love is Blind, season whatever it is.
I don't like these shows. Intel has officially added an ambitious 10A,
equivalent to one nanometer, chip process to its 2027 roadmap for development
and possibly production in the last half of 2027.
Another 14A or 1.4 nanometer node
is scheduled for production sometime in 2026.
The A here actually stands for angstrom, which is just a different unit of measurement.
CEO, Pat Gelsinger, voted world's sexiest Pat Gelsinger 62 years in a row.
That's right. Sorry, other Pat Gelsinger. You're never gonna win, okay?
He has bet Intel's entire future on the success of its upcoming 18A node,
which of course equals 1.8 nanometer. See, we're learning together.
But as aggressive as this new roadmap is, it's not clear just how much we should trust it
as a realistic timeline, given Intel's recent record of over-optimistic projections.
Back in 2012, Intel promised that in 2015,
they'd launched their 10 nanometer chips, which they only managed to launch four years later in 2019.
Not only that, but their fab capacity charts don't even have a y-axis.
Intel is also planning hyper-automated
AI-powered fabrication plants at some indefinite time in the future.
For the near present, however, the company is at least planning to invest $100 billion
into expanding production over the next five years, which will include heavy use of co-bots,
which just seem to be robots designed to work alongside humans,
a co-worker robot, if you will. So presumably you won't.
Go workers, co-bots in the skies.
You will be the co-bot. Hmm, quick bit?
No, thanks. That's how I turned into a vampire. And it sucks!
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, yes!
Adobe has revealed a new generative AI tool that allows users to both generate and edit music,
customizing tempo, intensity, melodic structure,
and use of air horns, the four elements of music.
Only the avatar. The tool's just a prototype right now,
which explains why it was named Project Music Gen AI Control,
by either an AI or a human who are both terrible at naming.
Of course, many generative AI music tools exist, but the innovation here is the editing capability
and the fact that Adobe will probably integrate it
into Premiere and Audition, like they integrated generative fill into Photoshop,
ensuring the last remains of humanity will wither and perish
in the rubble of their destroyed cities. Oh, sorry, there's a few steps in between those.
I skipped them. Yada, yada, yada. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
The White House has released an executive order aimed at stamping out the sale
of American citizens' sensitive personal data to foreign adversaries of the United States,
most pointedly, China and Russia, which I think is a failure to foresee
the growing Liechtenstein menace. They're hiding it in plain sight.
The order means that the DOJ will need to draft a rule
requiring U.S. companies and data brokers to ensure that entities purchasing large amounts of data
from them will not then turn around and sell that information to a hostile foreign power.
That might be important in a landscape where the information collected by companies
is getting weirder and more invasive all the time,
like Meta's plan to start collecting anonymized data
about quest headset usage, including body movement and eye tracking,
and even data about the physical environment you're in,
not virtually. You better not tell Kim Jong-un about my eyeballs, Zuckerberg.
That's between you and me. Tumblr and WordPress.com want to sell user data
to mid-journey and open AI, according to documentation seen by 404 Media.
The documents don't seem to specify what data is being sold,
but the Tumblr data appears to include public post content
between 2014 and 2023. Tumblr users now have to opt out of third-party sharing
for their blogs to prevent their data from being sold. Hopefully, everyone does that.
I can't think of anything worse than a chatbot trained on nearly 10 years of posts
written by pretentious 14-year-olds. No one understands my dark mind.
They're just discovering so much about the world. Odysseus, the first private spacecraft
to make a soft landing on the moon, has less than a day left to live
because it landed with its solar panels at the wrong angle.
It tipped over as soon as it landed. And you would too. That was an exhausting trip.
If this sounds familiar, it's because you're thinking of Slim,
the first Japanese probe to land on the moon that had less than a day to live
because it landed with its solar panels at the wrong angle. This is so tired.
Knock it out. Slim, however, has managed to survive
in the cold of a lunar night, which is about 15 Earth days long,
despite not being designed to do so. It's like a modern-day Japanese Hanaka?
Yes. Whatever they end up calling it, I can't wait to hear Smokey Robinson mispronounce it.
I don't know what Chinooka is. Oh, I wish I knew this reference before now.
And Honda has figured out why VR hasn't gone mainstream yet.
No one's tried riding the company's new hands-free personal mobility device
while playing what looks like a cereal box CD-ROM game from the late 90s.
It just makes the case right away. Rollercoaster Tankoomies.
The mobility device is called the Uni One
because Uni One Uno Solo was a bit redundant.
And beyond being used as a callback to decade-old VR demos
when it's shown off at South by Southwest in March, the device is apparently designed
so that people with lower limb impairments can sit with their head closer to the eye level
of the average standing person. That way, you can both wear Apple Vision Pros,
stare into each other's cold, stretched out virtual eyes
and agree that your purchases were a mistake. You could upgrade your wheelchair for those prices.
Well, you did apparently in this scenario. That one was not a mistake. It actually looks kind of cool.
But it won't be a mistake to come back on Friday for more tech news.
Just make sure you're not watching TechLinked instead of watching the stove top.
The tech news won't burn your house down if you look away. Although I've never tested this.
No guarantees.