1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,680 In the future, tech news will be delivered by a holographic host. 2 00:00:03,680 --> 00:00:10,320 It'll be just like the Doctor from Star Trek Voyager, except it'll probably be me or Linus or Riley instead of Robert Picardo. 3 00:00:10,320 --> 00:00:16,560 But we are in talks with Picardo. Steam has set a new concurrent player record for itself. 4 00:00:16,560 --> 00:00:23,360 Data from SteamDB shows that Valve's platform recently surpassed 41.6 million simultaneous users. 5 00:00:23,360 --> 00:00:26,480 That's more than the population of Canada, bud, 6 00:00:26,480 --> 00:00:29,520 and nearly double the player count from just five years ago. 7 00:00:29,600 --> 00:00:34,400 Seems like PC gamer growth accelerated after the WHO declared a pandemic, 8 00:00:34,400 --> 00:00:37,840 the only world event that was notable enough to include on their chart. 9 00:00:37,840 --> 00:00:40,640 I bet about half that player jump was from among us. 10 00:00:43,200 --> 00:00:47,520 Steam's new record high comes after Battlefield 6, Hades 2, and Hollow Knight Silk Song all 11 00:00:47,520 --> 00:00:54,480 broke their own franchise player records as well. So clearly the lesson for gaming companies here is to keep pumping out sequels. 12 00:00:54,480 --> 00:00:58,800 That's what we all want, right? More Star Wars. Do it like the movies do. 13 00:00:58,800 --> 00:01:03,120 That said, I can't help but notice that the total number of users increased more 14 00:01:03,120 --> 00:01:09,360 than the number of users in-game, which reached me like people are spending more time staring at their bloated Steam backlog 15 00:01:09,360 --> 00:01:13,280 than actually playing their games. Let this be a call to action to you. 16 00:01:13,280 --> 00:01:18,960 Go beat something off the backlog. It's time to finally play Disco Elysium or Red Dead Redemption 2. 17 00:01:18,960 --> 00:01:26,080 No new games until you beat those ones. OpenAI has stopped letting people generate fake videos of Martin Luther King Jr. 18 00:01:26,080 --> 00:01:33,280 at the request of the late Dr. King's estate. Apparently his family wasn't jazzed about OpenAI's sloppily TikTok clone being filled 19 00:01:33,280 --> 00:01:38,640 to the brim with disrespectful depictions of MLK delivering a stirring speech on the beauty 20 00:01:38,640 --> 00:01:39,760 of the female form. 21 00:01:44,240 --> 00:01:48,640 It's yet another feature rollback from OpenAI who always seems to focus more on the 22 00:01:48,640 --> 00:01:55,440 latter part of the move fast and break things. But at least OpenAI isn't pulling a Facebook and rummaging through your phone's local storage 23 00:01:55,440 --> 00:01:59,760 and editing one of your photos with AI without you even asking it to, 24 00:01:59,760 --> 00:02:02,960 like a cat bringing you a dead mouse. What am I supposed to do with it? 25 00:02:02,960 --> 00:02:08,960 I'm thankful. That feature rolled out in beta this past summer and is now launching more widely for some reason. 26 00:02:08,960 --> 00:02:13,840 You can opt out at any time if you're aware that it's happening in the first place 27 00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:18,320 and didn't absentmindly press okay when the prompt asked you to and it just popped out like, 28 00:02:18,320 --> 00:02:21,600 you know, just how it does that and you're trying to do something else. Yeah. 29 00:02:21,600 --> 00:02:24,880 Big Tech is looking for extra uses for AI that people don't even want. 30 00:02:24,880 --> 00:02:28,080 It's no wonder they're all bringing back nuclear power. 31 00:02:28,080 --> 00:02:32,240 And even if that is probably a good idea, we should probably still want to set some ground 32 00:02:32,240 --> 00:02:35,840 rules for how AI is used to see MLK junior videos. 33 00:02:35,840 --> 00:02:39,600 So Pope Leo the 14th hosted a seminar at the Vatican this week, 34 00:02:39,600 --> 00:02:42,640 urging global cooperation and regulating the technology. 35 00:02:42,640 --> 00:02:46,640 The Pope reminded attendees that AI is above all else a tool. 36 00:02:46,640 --> 00:02:47,840 He's American though, right? 37 00:02:50,880 --> 00:02:56,320 And so we must be careful that in using it, we do not ourselves act like tools. 38 00:02:57,360 --> 00:03:02,000 Amen. Robert Percardo frequently collaborates with director Joe Dante, 39 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:05,680 who just so happens to be one of the quick bits favorite directors. 40 00:03:05,680 --> 00:03:10,560 Gremlins is a Christmas classic and Phil Hartman is sublime in Small Soldiers. 41 00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:14,560 Small Soldiers. Yeah. Kip Kelligan. We need a sequel to that. 42 00:03:14,560 --> 00:03:17,840 I'll take a sequel to that. Well, there might have been a sequel. 43 00:03:18,880 --> 00:03:22,320 Apple is apparently cutting production of the new iPhone Air. 44 00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:29,440 According to Japan's Mizuho Securities, while the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max models are seeing higher sales than their predecessors, 45 00:03:29,440 --> 00:03:32,720 the new iPhone Air is a sales let down. 46 00:03:34,240 --> 00:03:39,040 Now Apple is chopping production of the Air down by up to 1 million units this year, 47 00:03:39,040 --> 00:03:48,880 down by up to what the language. Similarly, a report from News Pym in Korea alleges that Samsung has halted work on the Galaxy S26 Edge, 48 00:03:48,880 --> 00:03:52,400 letting employees know that the product line is to be discontinued. 49 00:03:52,400 --> 00:03:57,840 The news isn't totally unexpected. The S25 Edge didn't sell well and like Gizmodo said, 50 00:03:57,840 --> 00:03:59,920 slim phones might be on thin ice. 51 00:04:00,880 --> 00:04:05,120 While it looks like these thin phones are about to be skinny dipping in the discount bin. 52 00:04:08,160 --> 00:04:11,920 Google Workspace is trying to steal some of Microsoft's business customers 53 00:04:12,720 --> 00:04:19,360 with the power of SaaS or SaaS if you're in the UK. 54 00:04:20,080 --> 00:04:23,920 After calling out the architectural brittleness in Microsoft's infrastructure 55 00:04:23,920 --> 00:04:28,960 and saying Microsoft 365 crashes are a question of when and for how long not if, 56 00:04:28,960 --> 00:04:32,880 which I'm pretty sure is the software engineer's equivalent of a glove slap, 57 00:04:32,880 --> 00:04:36,560 Google talks up its new cost-effective Google Workspace plans 58 00:04:36,560 --> 00:04:39,760 meant to help businesses transition away from office, 59 00:04:39,840 --> 00:04:44,080 which is now called Microsoft 365. What a boring and confusing name. 60 00:04:44,080 --> 00:04:48,560 Wouldn't you rather subscribe to a workplace plan called business continuity 61 00:04:48,560 --> 00:04:50,640 or work transformation set? 62 00:04:52,320 --> 00:04:58,640 Wouldn't you? Uber is launching a new program that allows its contractors to earn additional cash 63 00:04:58,640 --> 00:05:02,640 by telling jokes as they drive, you know, testing out new bits. 64 00:05:02,640 --> 00:05:08,320 I'm just joking. It's additional cash by completing micro tasks that train AI models. 65 00:05:08,320 --> 00:05:13,360 That's way worse. These tasks include everything from voice recordings to capturing and uploading images 66 00:05:13,360 --> 00:05:18,080 to submitting documents in a certain language in exchange for variable rewards. 67 00:05:18,080 --> 00:05:21,520 In this example, if you upload a picture from a Spanish restaurant menu, 68 00:05:21,520 --> 00:05:25,760 you could earn a whole shiny dollar. One, a greenback. 69 00:05:25,760 --> 00:05:29,360 I've always dreamed of being a mental blood bag for AI. 70 00:05:29,360 --> 00:05:32,960 This move could help Uber use its army of freelance workers 71 00:05:32,960 --> 00:05:37,920 to challenge companies that train AI models by having humans annotate and label data. 72 00:05:37,920 --> 00:05:41,360 And besides, they're already constantly feeding customers via Uber Eats. 73 00:05:41,360 --> 00:05:44,880 Why not feed the hungry machine your time, energy and knowledge as well? 74 00:05:44,880 --> 00:05:48,080 It's the same thing. That's my job. 75 00:05:48,080 --> 00:05:51,120 And PayPal's blockchain partner, Paxos, 76 00:05:51,120 --> 00:05:56,240 mistakenly minted $300 trillion in PYUSD stablecoin. 77 00:05:56,240 --> 00:06:04,560 As pointed out by both CNBC and Engadget, $300 trillion of these stablecoins are worth more than double the world's estimated total GDP. 78 00:06:04,640 --> 00:06:10,560 It just seems like there's something terribly wrong when you can just accidentally mint more money than the global GDP. 79 00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:15,440 Thankfully, this all appears to be a huge and embarrassing gaffe. 80 00:06:15,440 --> 00:06:19,280 And don't worry, Paxos tweeted to assure folks that the issue was a technical error 81 00:06:19,280 --> 00:06:24,720 and that their customers' funds are safe. Paxos even says they've burned the excess PYUSD. 82 00:06:25,600 --> 00:06:30,640 I've been known to burn through a lot of excess money myself, but I really hope that's not what they mean. 83 00:06:30,640 --> 00:06:33,280 The coin's still pegged. Don't worry, guys. 84 00:06:34,240 --> 00:06:39,440 And you should know what I mean when I say, Peck, when I tell you to come back on Monday for more tech news. 85 00:06:39,440 --> 00:06:45,200 I can't promise you we'll have holograms by Monday, but I swear I'm working really hard on Picardo.