It's Star Wars Day, so may the fourth be with that baby Yoda movie or whatever that's coming out soon because
CO-Bible knows they're gonna need it!
GameStop has just put forward a 56 billion dollar offer to buy eBay. The e-commerce giant was evidently
caught off guard by the bid and responded with the energy of every girl I asked out in middle school
saying it received no communication from GameStop prior to the entirely unsolicited offer.
Sounds like what happens on Snapchat these days. To give you a sense of scale, eBay has a market cap over four times the size of GameStop itself,
making this a wild swing for the retailer. Again, much like my middle school attempts at romance,
it's funny because I really kept myself. The funds for the proposal are evidently split 50-50
between cash and GameStop stock, though it's unclear from the wording if they're referring to
shares or $28 billion worth of scratched up trade-in Crash Bandicoot CDs. A middle schooler's fortune.
According to CEO Ryan Cohen, it's part of a larger strategy to pivot into e-commerce,
leveraging GameStop's retail locations as a fulfillment network. However, Cohen likely
has a more personal motive, as his incentive structure guarantees him $35 billion in stock
if he can boost GameStop's market value to $100 billion. God, that's a lot of funko pops.
The FCC has unanimously voted to advance a proposal banning all Chinese testing Labs
from certifying U.S.-bound electronics with FCC chair and former Witch King of Angmar,
Brendan Carr, citing national security concerns before he screamed like a banshee.
It's part of a wider crackdown that has already seen the agency ban the import of new Chinese-made
consumer routers and drones. This move is expected to have a significant impact on consumer electronics
since roughly 75% of U.S.-bound devices are currently tested in Chinese Labs, forcing manufacturers to
reroute certification through Labs in the U.S., Europe, or Taiwan. According to the new rule,
existing devices can still be sold for up to two years after their certification date,
but the expectation is that older devices that have to be retested will probably just be pulled
instead. It's unclear how manufacturers will deal with the drop in available testing facilities,
but if the router ban is any indication, at least one random company will probably get a
last-minute exemption, which is totally above board and unrelated to any kind of...
favors. Please don't sue us, Netgear.
Toyota's Woven City, the fully-surveilled corporate utopia they use to test robotic stuff
at the base of Mount Fuji. This is real? That's sick. Wow. Sounds like from a spy novel or something.
Anyway, they just got a new AI overlord called the Woven City AI Vision Engine, which sounds
totally believable and not weird. All hail AI overlord. You'll seek to enter the Woven City.
Anyway, this model ingests feeds from cameras, vehicles, traffic signals, and user inputs
across the city to predict what residents are about to do, which is fine, because the residents
are all Toyota employees and their families, who presumably signed something. About 100 people
currently live there in a city built for about 2000, so the cameras to civilian ratio is generous,
to say the least. Toyota also confirmed that chairman Akio Toyota has been uploaded to the
cloud as Akia Toyota AI, a chapbot trained on a decade of his speeches and writings,
so he can keep dispensing leadership and wisdom long after his meat form retires.
Honestly, getting trapped in a penopticon run by a sentient AI CEO sounds stressful.
At least we can blow off some steam with our sponsor. Now, I know it would be probably really good
to do the quick bits here, but what if instead we just had Darth Maul show up again? You guys
like him, right? Darth Maul? Subscribe. Microsoft's April Windows 11 update keeps finding new ways
to ruin your day. After triggering boot loops, B-sods, and borking BitLocker, it's now breaking
third-party backup apps like Macrium and Acronis. This time on purpose, though. We're happy about
this? Microsoft blacklisted the kernel driver that these apps use over a security flaw and is
telling users not to uninstall the patch. So your options are keep your backups or keep your PC
from getting owned. Pick one, loser. Oh, you won't back up your PC. Get a grip.
Maryland just became the first state to ban AI-driven surveillance pricing in grocery stores.
Yay! Unfortunately, critics say the bill is riddled with carveouts and exemptions. Boo!
What a rollercoaster. Consumer advocate and the internet's cool older brother who's looking
out for you, Cory Doctorow, called the law all loophole. Anyway, Cory warned that lobbyists
have drafted it to gut consumer protections. The criticism is well timed, as several other
states are currently drafting similar bills. So here's hoping this will let us take a bite
out of grocery store surveillance pricing. A court in Hangzhou, China ruled that companies can't
legally fire workers just because AI is cheaper after a tech firm tried to demote a quality assurance
employee from 25,000 yuan a month to 15,000 and canned him when he refused. The court said
adopting AI is a business choice, not an unforeseeable disaster that voids your employment contract.
A take so worker friendly, it probably won't survive the boat ride west. Blackberry stock
jumped over 10% today after a Wall Street Journal profile reminded everyone that the company didn't
die, it just pivoted. QNX, their software division, makes the operating system running
lane keep, adaptive cruise, and crash detection in 275 million cars, and is now expanding into
NVIDIA Robotics and German submarines. Of course. Which means the company that couldn't survive
the iPhone is now keeping you alive at crush depth. Sleep tight, sailors. And a Cleveland
startup called Sonic Firetech is selling a fire suppression system that uses inaudible
infrasound waves instead of water or chemicals. And they just demoed putting out a kitchen
grease fire with sound alone. Which everyone tries at first, but it doesn't do anything.
A backpack version for wildland firefighters is also in testing, which I'm sure will go great
until they find all the dead woodland creatures. Chipmunks are just not a thing anymore.
Ah, the fire's out. Oh god. Mama. And I'll be setting you on fire in a video game if you don't
come back Wednesday for more tech news. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to pretending
Star Wars doesn't exist until the next Jedi Survivor sequel or they make something else
as good as Andor. Because otherwise, what's the point? Okay, see ya.