WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.680 In the future, tech news will be delivered by a holographic host. 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. 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. 00:00:16.560 --> 00:00:23.360 Data from SteamDB shows that Valve's platform recently surpassed 41.6 million simultaneous users. 00:00:23.360 --> 00:00:26.480 That's more than the population of Canada, bud, 00:00:26.480 --> 00:00:29.520 and nearly double the player count from just five years ago. 00:00:29.600 --> 00:00:34.400 Seems like PC gamer growth accelerated after the WHO declared a pandemic, 00:00:34.400 --> 00:00:37.840 the only world event that was notable enough to include on their chart. 00:00:37.840 --> 00:00:40.640 I bet about half that player jump was from among us. 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 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. 00:00:54.480 --> 00:00:58.800 That's what we all want, right? More Star Wars. Do it like the movies do. 00:00:58.800 --> 00:01:03.120 That said, I can't help but notice that the total number of users increased more 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 00:01:09.360 --> 00:01:13.280 than actually playing their games. Let this be a call to action to you. 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. 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. 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 00:01:33.280 --> 00:01:38.640 to the brim with disrespectful depictions of MLK delivering a stirring speech on the beauty 00:01:38.640 --> 00:01:39.760 of the female form. 00:01:44.240 --> 00:01:48.640 It's yet another feature rollback from OpenAI who always seems to focus more on the 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 00:01:55.440 --> 00:01:59.760 and editing one of your photos with AI without you even asking it to, 00:01:59.760 --> 00:02:02.960 like a cat bringing you a dead mouse. What am I supposed to do with it? 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. 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 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, 00:02:18.320 --> 00:02:21.600 you know, just how it does that and you're trying to do something else. Yeah. 00:02:21.600 --> 00:02:24.880 Big Tech is looking for extra uses for AI that people don't even want. 00:02:24.880 --> 00:02:28.080 It's no wonder they're all bringing back nuclear power. 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 00:02:32.240 --> 00:02:35.840 rules for how AI is used to see MLK junior videos. 00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:39.600 So Pope Leo the 14th hosted a seminar at the Vatican this week, 00:02:39.600 --> 00:02:42.640 urging global cooperation and regulating the technology. 00:02:42.640 --> 00:02:46.640 The Pope reminded attendees that AI is above all else a tool. 00:02:46.640 --> 00:02:47.840 He's American though, right? 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. 00:02:57.360 --> 00:03:02.000 Amen. Robert Percardo frequently collaborates with director Joe Dante, 00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:05.680 who just so happens to be one of the quick bits favorite directors. 00:03:05.680 --> 00:03:10.560 Gremlins is a Christmas classic and Phil Hartman is sublime in Small Soldiers. 00:03:10.560 --> 00:03:14.560 Small Soldiers. Yeah. Kip Kelligan. We need a sequel to that. 00:03:14.560 --> 00:03:17.840 I'll take a sequel to that. Well, there might have been a sequel. 00:03:18.880 --> 00:03:22.320 Apple is apparently cutting production of the new iPhone Air. 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, 00:03:29.440 --> 00:03:32.720 the new iPhone Air is a sales let down. 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, 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, 00:03:48.880 --> 00:03:52.400 letting employees know that the product line is to be discontinued. 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, 00:03:57.840 --> 00:03:59.920 slim phones might be on thin ice. 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. 00:04:08.160 --> 00:04:11.920 Google Workspace is trying to steal some of Microsoft's business customers 00:04:12.720 --> 00:04:19.360 with the power of SaaS or SaaS if you're in the UK. 00:04:20.080 --> 00:04:23.920 After calling out the architectural brittleness in Microsoft's infrastructure 00:04:23.920 --> 00:04:28.960 and saying Microsoft 365 crashes are a question of when and for how long not if, 00:04:28.960 --> 00:04:32.880 which I'm pretty sure is the software engineer's equivalent of a glove slap, 00:04:32.880 --> 00:04:36.560 Google talks up its new cost-effective Google Workspace plans 00:04:36.560 --> 00:04:39.760 meant to help businesses transition away from office, 00:04:39.840 --> 00:04:44.080 which is now called Microsoft 365. What a boring and confusing name. 00:04:44.080 --> 00:04:48.560 Wouldn't you rather subscribe to a workplace plan called business continuity 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:50.640 or work transformation set? 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 00:04:58.640 --> 00:05:02.640 by telling jokes as they drive, you know, testing out new bits. 00:05:02.640 --> 00:05:08.320 I'm just joking. It's additional cash by completing micro tasks that train AI models. 00:05:08.320 --> 00:05:13.360 That's way worse. These tasks include everything from voice recordings to capturing and uploading images 00:05:13.360 --> 00:05:18.080 to submitting documents in a certain language in exchange for variable rewards. 00:05:18.080 --> 00:05:21.520 In this example, if you upload a picture from a Spanish restaurant menu, 00:05:21.520 --> 00:05:25.760 you could earn a whole shiny dollar. One, a greenback. 00:05:25.760 --> 00:05:29.360 I've always dreamed of being a mental blood bag for AI. 00:05:29.360 --> 00:05:32.960 This move could help Uber use its army of freelance workers 00:05:32.960 --> 00:05:37.920 to challenge companies that train AI models by having humans annotate and label data. 00:05:37.920 --> 00:05:41.360 And besides, they're already constantly feeding customers via Uber Eats. 00:05:41.360 --> 00:05:44.880 Why not feed the hungry machine your time, energy and knowledge as well? 00:05:44.880 --> 00:05:48.080 It's the same thing. That's my job. 00:05:48.080 --> 00:05:51.120 And PayPal's blockchain partner, Paxos, 00:05:51.120 --> 00:05:56.240 mistakenly minted $300 trillion in PYUSD stablecoin. 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. 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. 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:15.440 Thankfully, this all appears to be a huge and embarrassing gaffe. 00:06:15.440 --> 00:06:19.280 And don't worry, Paxos tweeted to assure folks that the issue was a technical error 00:06:19.280 --> 00:06:24.720 and that their customers' funds are safe. Paxos even says they've burned the excess PYUSD. 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. 00:06:30.640 --> 00:06:33.280 The coin's still pegged. Don't worry, guys. 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. 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.