WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.120 This tech news would sound a little better if it had been open a few hours ago, but uh... 00:00:07.040 --> 00:00:14.880 I think it still passes the smell test. Microsoft has finally completed their 69 billion dollar acquisition of Activision Blizzard King 00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:21.600 after a year and a half of being grilled and harassed by the government to make sure they won't 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:25.600 set every Xbox to self-destruct. Uh, exhausting. 00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:30.400 The biggest buyout in gaming history went ahead right after the UK's Competition and 00:00:30.400 --> 00:00:36.480 Markets Authority approved an altered deal that will see Ubisoft holding the cloud gaming rights 00:00:36.480 --> 00:00:41.920 to current and future Activision Blizzard games outside of the European Economic Area. 00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:48.960 And if you think that sounds confusing, yeah, basically if you purchase an Activision Blizzard 00:00:48.960 --> 00:00:55.200 game and you live in the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, or Norway, you'll have a license to 00:00:55.280 --> 00:01:01.840 stream that game from any cloud gaming streaming service of your choice, assuming they have the 00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:08.320 game on that service available to stream. But if you live anywhere else, it'll be up to Ubisoft 00:01:08.320 --> 00:01:15.280 to grant licenses for Activision Blizzard games to cloud gaming services, meaning Microsoft will 00:01:15.280 --> 00:01:21.600 have to license the games owned by the companies it now owns if it wants those games to be streamable 00:01:21.600 --> 00:01:27.280 on Game Pass Ultimate outside of Europe. Okay, and you might be saying, Riley, can you shut up 00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:31.440 about cloud gaming? No one cares about that, to which I'd say everyone said the same about 00:01:31.440 --> 00:01:36.960 mobile games, and now those make the most money in the gaming industry. But hey, it was all worth 00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:42.960 it for Xbox to own Call of Duty and more importantly, Crash Bandicoot. Meanwhile, the FTC says they're 00:01:42.960 --> 00:01:48.000 still focused on stopping the deal and are preparing an argument to submit to an appeals court in 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:52.880 December. Bit harder to stop something from happening after it's already happened, but hey, 00:01:52.880 --> 00:01:58.480 you know, best of luck. We have to go back in time. We have to go back, Marty. Best Buy will no 00:01:58.480 --> 00:02:05.120 longer sell movies in their physical form starting in 2024, meaning you'll have to buy your DVDs or 00:02:05.120 --> 00:02:11.040 4K Blu-rays from the trunk of Paulie's car just like in the good old days. The news was initially 00:02:11.040 --> 00:02:16.480 reported by The Digital Bits and later confirmed by Best Buy, who told Variety in a statement 00:02:16.480 --> 00:02:22.000 that the way we watch movies and TV shows is much different today than it was decades ago, 00:02:22.640 --> 00:02:28.960 to state the obvious. Unless I'm mistaken, I'm not looping film reels over top of my 00:02:28.960 --> 00:02:34.320 television and using the light to try and see the pictures in there, okay? We have computers now. 00:02:34.320 --> 00:02:38.880 Of course, while the move is bad news for preservationists, it's somewhat unsurprising. 00:02:38.880 --> 00:02:43.360 It's been five years since Best Buy stopped selling music CDs, and according to Josh 00:02:43.360 --> 00:02:49.360 Fairhurst, CEO of Limited Run Games, there are rumblings of Walmart's dropping sales of physical 00:02:49.360 --> 00:02:55.120 games soon. However, while retailers are retreating from the physical world, Netflix is looking to 00:02:55.120 --> 00:03:02.880 enter it. CEO Ted Sarandos announced plans to open something called a Netflix house in two locations, 00:03:02.880 --> 00:03:07.120 and I don't know what that sounds like except something I wouldn't let my daughter visit. 00:03:07.120 --> 00:03:14.080 The houses will have merch, food, and fan experiences, but unlike Disneyland, Sarando says 00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:19.840 you might visit a couple times a month, not just once every couple of years. You know, 00:03:19.840 --> 00:03:26.000 like getting beers with the boys, but instead of wings, you order the Demogorgon roast? I have no 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:31.120 context for what this place is going to be. I just, what is it? And the CEO of Risk Five 00:03:31.120 --> 00:03:36.480 International, which oversees the open source chip architecture, has written in opposition to the 00:03:36.480 --> 00:03:42.480 idea that the US should block China's access to technology based on Risk Five because it's an 00:03:42.480 --> 00:03:49.840 open source standard. And that's not how they work. Last week, a group of US lawmakers petitioned 00:03:49.840 --> 00:03:55.920 the Biden administration to cut China off from Risk Five, an idea that, I mean, doesn't seem 00:03:55.920 --> 00:04:01.360 particularly concerning to the Chinese members of Risk Five International, including Alibaba Cloud, 00:04:01.360 --> 00:04:07.520 Huawei, ZTE, and Tencent, who haven't commented one way or the other, the CEO of a leading Chinese 00:04:07.520 --> 00:04:13.520 Risk Five chip company told the South China Morning Post that since Risk Five is, again, 00:04:13.520 --> 00:04:20.000 an open standard, the US could only block exports from US companies to China, but they wouldn't be 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:25.280 able to block China from building their own products with Risk Five, which they have been doing 00:04:25.280 --> 00:04:29.440 already for quite a while. I don't know, maybe the US government should be worried less about 00:04:29.440 --> 00:04:34.320 China and more about the chair of Risk Five International, who recently said he wanted 00:04:34.320 --> 00:04:41.200 every chip in the world to be Risk Five, showing a slide titled, all your cores are belong to us. 00:04:42.320 --> 00:04:48.720 Terrifying. Arrest this man. Quick bits aren't what you think they are. Wait, 00:04:48.720 --> 00:04:56.080 what do you think they are? No, you're way off. Oneplus will be launching its first foldable, 00:04:56.080 --> 00:05:01.280 the Oneplus Open, on October 19th. It's not clear yet how much the phone will cost, 00:05:01.280 --> 00:05:07.600 but Oneplus is offering $200 off for pre-orders and up to $1,000 in trade and credit, so it's 00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:13.520 definitely way more than that. Despite the air of mystery, the device is essentially a rebadged 00:05:13.520 --> 00:05:20.000 version of the Find N3 from Oppo, who have already allowed YouTuber Jagat Review to post a hands-on 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:25.120 with the device, where he compares it to the Galaxy Z Fold 5. The Open seems to have a wider 00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:30.240 inside and outside display, and a far more subtle hinge crease in the screen, like somebody 00:05:30.240 --> 00:05:36.720 airbrushed a butt crack, leaving only a single, shiny, mono cheek. What a glorious image. 00:05:36.720 --> 00:05:43.440 A judge has thrown out a 2022 decision that found Google had infringed five of Sonos' patents, 00:05:43.440 --> 00:05:51.440 because two out of five were filed in 2019, not 2006, as Sonos claimed. Bad billion-dollar company, 00:05:51.520 --> 00:05:58.240 BAD. The original decision granted Sonos $32.5 million in damages, but rather than pay 00:05:58.240 --> 00:06:04.000 licensing fees for the features, Google pushed a software update that removed the group speaker 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:09.040 features from devices that paying customers had already bought. Consumers are basically babies, 00:06:09.040 --> 00:06:17.120 they lack object permanence. Google, of course, celebrated the recent decision by immediately 00:06:17.200 --> 00:06:21.760 pushing another software update, restoring the features they had previously taken away, 00:06:21.760 --> 00:06:26.560 presumably causing users to clap their hands and drool into light like a game of peek-a-boo. 00:06:26.560 --> 00:06:30.400 There's the features! It's the features! It's back! 00:06:31.680 --> 00:06:38.400 In videos, Jensen Huang has topped a recent most popular CEO survey, no doubt due to that 00:06:38.400 --> 00:06:42.160 sexy leather jacket. Can't stay mad at him. 00:06:42.880 --> 00:06:46.800 Based on a survey conducted by the professional social network Blind, 00:06:46.800 --> 00:06:54.000 over 96% of the 13,000 verified NVIDIA employees there said they approved of Wong's leadership, 00:06:54.000 --> 00:07:00.560 numbers rarely seen outside of North Korea. Tim Apple, CEO of Cook, also came in the top five 00:07:00.560 --> 00:07:07.120 with 83%, while the average was only 32%, with at least two CEOs landing at zero. 00:07:07.760 --> 00:07:10.880 I don't know exactly what's going on at Western Digital and Nordstrom, 00:07:11.520 --> 00:07:18.240 but it's not good. It involves lying, I think. Speaking of CEOs, Google's current leader Sundar 00:07:18.240 --> 00:07:23.120 Pichai had a fairly reasonable take on the issue of the search engine being set as the default in 00:07:23.120 --> 00:07:30.000 Safari back in 2007, according to emails revealed during the ongoing USV Google trial. Pichai, 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:33.840 who was part of the search team back then, thought that Apple's idea of offering two 00:07:33.840 --> 00:07:39.440 separate versions of Safari, one for Google and one for Yahoo, was maybe not as good as just 00:07:39.440 --> 00:07:44.960 adding a drop-down menu allowing users to switch search engines. It's nice to see a tech executive 00:07:44.960 --> 00:07:48.880 thinking about the end user experience while coordinating massive payments to have their 00:07:48.880 --> 00:07:55.040 product presented as the default. And after many Counter-Strike 2 players were inexplicably banned, 00:07:55.040 --> 00:08:02.000 Valve has warned anyone playing on AMD GPUs to switch off Team Red's anti-leg plus feature, 00:08:02.000 --> 00:08:07.200 which arrived earlier this week in a driver update until Valve can fix the issue. The feature 00:08:07.200 --> 00:08:12.800 minimizes input lag, but it does so by injecting itself into the game's code, making it look 00:08:12.800 --> 00:08:18.720 like unauthorized tampering is occurring and leading to a vac ban. You can hardly blame players 00:08:18.720 --> 00:08:23.120 for trying to make the game smoother, although along with the lag issues, it's also brought 00:08:23.120 --> 00:08:28.800 some hidden treasures. I mean, T-Bagging's got nothing on T-Twerking. And I would certainly 00:08:28.800 --> 00:08:33.360 be reading a segue about Twerking if Jacob was here, but he's off today. So I'll simply tell 00:08:33.360 --> 00:08:37.520 you to please return on Monday for more tech news, please. Thank you!