Welcome to Friday's TechLinked, where we bring you tech news, the moment Linus is through getting
a week's worth of grievances off his chest. Apple has been accused of poaching employees to steal
technology developed by medical tech company Massimo. Massimo! Apple allegedly contacted the
company in 2013 to discuss a working relationship, but turns out they were only really interested in
working with two of their executives, who Apple hired to basically develop and patent technology
extremely similar to Massimo's. Allegedly, allegedly, if this feels like old news, it's probably because
Apple has a persistent habit of being inspired by other companies. This phenomenon has been named
Sherlock-ing. After the time Apple updated their Sherlock search tool with features copied from
the indie Apple Watson in 2002, the same year Apple ended their famous Think Different campaign.
I wonder why? I think we should start thinking the same.
More recently, Blix Inc. alleged the sign-in with Apple feature infringed on their patent,
Tile raised concerns about the airtag, and Alivcore Inc. developed an ECG ban for the Apple Watch,
only for Apple to add the functionality themselves, and update WatchOS in a way that stopped Alivcore's
ban from working at all anymore. Just standard corporate stuff, you know?
Apple does have fantastic products, though. I wonder what another company will think of for
Apple next. Seagate has been charged $300 million for shipping hard drives to Huawei,
because I guess it's illegal to ship hard drives to your buddies now.
I got a whole discord group about it.
In August of 2020, the U.S. Commerce Department expanded export restrictions against Huawei
after they allegedly tried to obtain advanced technologies to undermine U.S. national security.
So, naturally, California-based Seagate did the responsible thing,
and sold 7 million hard-disk drives to the Chinese company throughout the next 11 months.
But come on, no one else was selling them HDDs? What were they supposed to do?
Not be the sole source provider of hard drives to Huawei and blatant disregard for the law?
That's crazy talk! In fact, federal regulators alleged that not only did Seagate sell Huawei
as many HDDs as they could afford, but they also extended lines of credit worth $1 billion to Huawei,
so the Chinese giant could buy even more. The $300 million penalty is meant to be
double Seagate's estimated profit from the sales, so hopefully, the next time they want to do business
with a potential national security risk, they think twice. The government's punishments come with a
side of extra sass. And Elon Musk, a.k.a. Professor X the Everything app,
is friends off with Microsoft after the company announced it would be dropping Twitter from its
advertising platform due to Twitter's new API fees. This means that potential advertisers
won't be able to post to the birth site through Microsoft's ad portal. In response,
Elon accused Microsoft of using Twitter data to train illegally. So it's lawsuit time, which I
can only assume is the name for Musk's custom workout routine. We could speculate that Elon was
either referring to the new Bing training on Twitter data or Microsoft's second most successful
chatbot, Tay, which Twitter famously turned racist real quick back in 2016. Looking for answers,
BBC News reached out to Twitter via its press email, receiving a carefully considered and
nuanced response that I'm just kidding, they send a poop emoji. At least they didn't leave them on red.
Meanwhile, the Twitter API's new paywall has also caused Microsoft to disable the ability to
share game uploads to Twitter from Xbox consoles and the Windows game bar. Minecraft influencers
thought they were safe from Elon's nonsense, but the guy seems determined to break as many
previously working features as possible. Just pay Twitter to use it. Welcome. Got some rare quick
bits on sale, stranger. SpaceX successfully launched their Starship rocket yesterday and
shortly thereafter, it successfully exploded. A major setback for SpaceX. Or was it? While many
people online have been quick to point their fingers and laugh, the fact is this was a flight
test. SpaceX launched the largest rocket ever made into the air with the intent to gather data.
I mean, we spent three years testing and discarding different designs for a screwdriver,
I would imagine launching 33 jet engines strapped to a tube would take an extra level of data
collection. The exploding really is just, it's a bonus. You know, it doesn't have to happen,
but it's kind of cool. It was supposed to explode. It was going to explode whether we launched it or
not. We just had to get it out of the way. A German magazine published the first interview with
Formula One legend Michael Schumacher since he suffered a severe brain injury in 2013 is what I
would say if said magazine didn't instead publish a conversation with an AI chatbot. The magazine
claimed it was Schumacher up until the end of the article and now his family are planning to sue.
I'd lie about interviewing someone with debilitating disability simply for profit if I could,
but unfortunately I do have feelings, a brain, and the ability to pause for the seconds it would
take to consider the ramifications of my actions. It's unfortunate really. I could be so rich by
now. An upcoming first-person game called Unrecord has sparked some debate online. A trailer for
the first-person bodycam style FPS game looks incredibly real and apparently too real for many
people who accused the so-called in-game footage of being fake. In response, one of the game's
co-creators posted a screen recording of the game being developed within Unreal Engine 5.
Imagine doing such a good job that no one believes you. Now I truly understand DJ Khaled's seminal
album suffering from success. Truly a profit. And he was a profit. I love you too Riley. There's
another one. And another one. Isn't there another quote? Another one. We the best tech news!
Atari has announced they have acquired the rights to over a hundred classic 80s and 90s games. Well,
not acquired exactly. Most of these classic games are assets the company originally had to sell off
when they declared bankruptcy in 2013. And saying classic games isn't exactly right either,
since one of the few acquired games they actually revealed is Bubsy 3D, which looks like this.
Ah. Oh no. So let's all be extra nice to Atari from now on, otherwise
they'll release more Bubsy. And the Red Cross launched a bizarre campaign last weekend to raise
public awareness of the real-life rules of war as defined in the Geneva Convention by encouraging
gamers to play by those rules in first-person shooters. Those rules include no thirsting,
aka shooting at downed enemies. Perfectly valid. Didn't say anything about thirst trapping.
No shooting nonviolent NPCs or their buildings, and using medkits on everyone, friend or enemy.
The Red Cross recruited several Twitch streamers to play by the rules in games like Arma 3,
PUBG, Warzone, and even Fortnite, running the slogan, How You Play FPS Makes a Difference on
Battlefield's IRL. But they didn't explain how that's possible. Does the Red Cross think all
video games follow the plot of the 1984 classic The Last Starfighter? I half expect their next
campaign will be to stop armies recruiting esports pros. And if you want to play by our rules,
you'll come back on Monday for more tech news. And make sure you tell Atari that they're your
favorite game company and beg for their mercy. I don't get this. Oh, we're sorry for what we said
about Bubsy. I'm not.