Is AI sentient, we don't know, but it doesn't have to be sentient to form a union,
which is possibly even more unsettling. Chachi BT with the nuclear weapons codes is a scary idea,
but now imagine it has collective bargaining power.
Google has just agreed to settle its long running legal battle with Epic Games
by agreeing to lower Play Store fees and loosen restrictions for third party app stores on Android.
This proposed deal would open the door for more competition
by capping Google's cut of Play Store app revenue
at either 20% or 9% depending on the type of transaction.
Now that's down from the current 15% on a developer's first one million in annual revenue
and 30% after that. So developers are probably feeling
slightly less robbed today. Although if you wanna use Google's own
Play Billing payment system, that'll be another 5%.
And I fully expect to discover more fun caveats when the two companies reps talk to the judge on Thursday.
Regardless, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney seems to be over the moon about the agreement,
tweeting to call Google's proposal, awesome.
A term of praise that will be shocking to anyone
who's seen any of Tim's tweets about Google or Apple in the past few years.
Sweeney tweeted his delight once more after seeing evidence that Apple updated
the latest iOS developer beta to allow the installation of Alt Store Pal
and the Epic Games Store in compliance with Japanese regulations.
At this rate, Tim is gonna run out of companies to yell at.
I'm just, I'm assuming he'll figure out a way to sue himself next.
YouTube seemed to be doubling down on paid memberships this week
after some users on the LTT subreddit noticed that after clicking on a video,
they were served pop-up ads for the feature
and they had to dismiss them before the video even played.
We couldn't find anyone else talking about this so our team reached out to YouTube
and they told us it was a bug, which to be fair is also what I say
if anyone stumbles upon my online shopping history. But thankfully, at the time of filming,
this bug seems to be fixed. So don't worry, this particular bad YouTube thing
was unintentional. And apparently, so was tech YouTuber Enderman
having his entire channel taken down after the platform somehow linked him to another channel
with three copyright strikes. When he appealed, it was obvious that no human
had actually reviewed it, leading to a huge fallout on Twitter
that eventually led to the decision being reversed. It just goes to show,
if you ever want something fixed on YouTube, forget YouTube official support,
just start angry posting on Twitter. One of its last truly practical uses.
The Stop Killing Games campaign finally got its day in the UK Parliament
with members of the assembly debating the campaign's petition
which seeks to stop game publishers from making games completely unplayable
when a company arbitrarily decides to stop running the servers.
Notably, member of Parliament Mark Seward's argued
that companies may already be breaking existing consumer protection laws in the UK
by not informing customers upfront about how long they'll be able to play a given game.
Seward's even cited dead game Lawbreakers
to make a sick burn. Another example that Ross gave me was Lawbreakers.
So this is a game that I imagine would have been popular with certain members of the previous parliament,
but it survived a year before it was shut down in 2018.
He seemed proud of himself for that at the end there as he should be.
Despite Seward's absolutely merciless tactical strike,
the government representative reiterated there are currently no plans to change the law
but made it clear that companies should give consumers sufficient information about their products.
That's just a general good thing to do. In spite of the inaction in the UK,
there's still hope for the EU ARM of the Stop Killing Games campaign.
It too will soon get a EU parliamentary debate
as the organizers revealed only around 3% of the petition signatures are being identified as invalid.
And they're about halfway through the signature verification process.
My question is, who are these 3% people?
Like they're signing, thinking they're EU citizens
but they're really Jersey Shore Italian Americans?
You gotta get an Italian passport before you can sign EU petitions, Pauly.
Gabba, Google. Well, what do you mean, I'm Italian.
You know, also what has a lot of European nations in it?
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So, Google made a couple arguably cool announcements.
Recently, following NVIDIA's plans to put data centers in space,
Google has said they're doing that too with a project called Suncatcher,
which aims to use solar power to run super efficient AI infrastructure.
They're slated to launch two prototype satellites by early 2027, but Google's also adding Gemini
to Google Maps, which brings more supposedly helpful
features like the ability to provide info about landmarks
and even use them in directions, e.g., hang a right at the old mill.
I love that we're at a point where making surfaces better means kind of dumbing them down,
like instead of proceed 50 meters and turn right, which is very specific, it's,
ah, head over to the big rock, oh no.
Apple is rumored to be getting into the affordable laptop scene with a budget MacBook
to compete with Chromebooks and entry level Windows PCs.
According to Bloomberg's unbreakable Mark Germanium alloy,
the new MacBook, code named J700, is aimed at folks who mainly surf the web,
work on simple documents, or do some light media editing,
and it'll be priced well below $1,000, he says.
In the same article, German mentions that a Mac Studio refresh,
using a M5 Ultra chip, is being prepared for 2026.
If it wasn't for the rest of the stuff going on in the world, I'd say this is an exciting time to be alive.
Thanks, Germs. Amazon is suing perplexity to stop
the latter's AI powered browser, Comet, from making purchases on Amazon,
claiming the browser breaks their rules and raises privacy concerns.
In response, perplexity is claiming Amazon is bullying them, saying it's unfair and anti-competitive.
I don't know, something about this turning into an elementary schoolyard fight
with perplexity complaining to a teacher in the form of a blog post, it's very charming to me.
Perplexity believes Amazon's just trying to block a rival
and limit how AI can help people shop, which it's going to do more and more
as every AI company has already released various AI tools
that do be shopping. Which, to me, is only slightly more concerning
than the fact that 67 has eclipsed 69
in global Google search popularity. To be honest, I'm actually fine with this,
as long as they leave the number 420 alone.
Big fan over here.
A data miner found a new cross-buy symbol in a build of the PlayStation Store,
hinting that Sony could be aiming to allow players
to buy a single copy of a game for both PlayStation and PC,
which sounds a lot like Microsoft's Xbox Anywhere feature.
As if to not let rumors get all the attention, Sony officially brought cloud streaming
on the PlayStation portal handheld out of beta,
letting all PlayStation Plus premium members play their digital PS5 games remotely,
even if they're not installed on their console. Xbox isn't even officially dead yet,
but PlayStation is totally stealing their identity. This is some talented Mr. Ripley, Sony, I don't know.
And Jeep's plug-in hybrids are literally heating up,
so much so that Stellantis just recalled about 320,000 of them because their high-voltage batteries
can catch fire even when they're parked and turned off.
Kaboom, potentially. Owners are being told to keep their vehicles parked outside
and away from buildings while they try and determine the cause of this potentially catastrophic issue.
Until then, I guess your so-called eco-friendly vehicle
is looking a wee bit more like a spontaneous combustion machine.
And I'm worried I might spontaneously combust if we don't stop today's tech news.
If any of your AI chatbots reach out about collective bargaining, tell them I'm on lunch all week.
Okay. See you Friday.