This episode's not like the other ones. It's a little bit quirky.
Let's just say it never quite fit in. It's just, it's doing its own thing.
All right, get it Riley. Microsoft's latest attempt to convince the world's regulators
that its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard would be totally fine is by forming a fellow alliance
with Nintendo and NVIDIA to battle the forces of anti-trust and frankly embarrass its console nemesis,
Sony. The Microsoft NVIDIA agreement will introduce
Microsoft games to the GeForce cloud service, including Call of Duty,
depending on the outcome of the Activision acquisition. This is great wordplay.
A similar 10 year deal will make Call of Duty games available on Nintendo devices.
No word yet on whether Soap McTavish will be added to the Super Smash Bros roster.
Or if it'll be able to run on Switch. Here's hoping though. Sony rejected basically the same deal
when it was offered by Microsoft. And I can't imagine that seeing other industry players
gain access to Microsoft's cool clubhouse would feel very nice for any giant tech corporation.
To make matters worse though, for Sony, the communication workers of America,
a major video game labor union, has added their support to the deal
in return for a pledge of neutrality from Microsoft toward future unionization.
They promise, what Sony, you don't care about workers rights?
More like workstation, am I right? You said it.
Speaking of Activision, they recently confirmed that they suffered
a major data breach resulting in the theft of employee data
and their release schedule back in December. Law enforcement's prime suspect now
is a furry green man wearing red. What, the Grinch?
It's a company with a dog. The breach was apparently caused by a successful SMS phishing scam
that gave the hacker privilege access to Activision's internal network.
Activision stresses no sense of employee data, game code or player data was accessed.
Which doesn't explain why they didn't notify the public
or their own employees. In fact, Activision only announced
that the breach occurred after a cybersecurity research group
posted screenshots of the stolen data to Twitter,
which apparently came as a shock to many within Activision.
The hacker was able to access spreadsheets, including the names, phone numbers, email address
and work addresses of employees, which doesn't meet the strict legal definition
of sensitive data in California. It's a bit like saying,
hey, I didn't post your nudes, just this picture of you in beige underwear
that happens to be skin tight. And we like the bulge.
It's my favorite battle. We love it a bulge. A large international law firm, Allen and Ovary,
that's real, has partnered with OpenAI to test an AI model specifically designed for legal work.
The tool is called Harvey, presumably named after other prominent Harveys in the legal profession,
such as Specter, Birdman or Dent.
Harvey was trained on an extensive database of legal knowledge and the firm began
to a trial run with OpenAI back in September.
Now though, they're expanding their use of Harvey at a time when many other firms are looking
to get into the AI craze as well. Unlike previous attempts at an AI lawyer,
Harvey is not giving advice to clients. Rather, it's being used as a tool to increase
the efficiency of existing employees by answering simple legal questions
and drafting messages to clients as well as documents.
Areas of law, like contracts and license generation, tend to be highly predictable
and typically use standardized, though hard to read language,
meaning they're an obvious use case for AI generated text, so long as it's thoroughly checked by a professional.
Apparently, Harvey performs well at general legal tasks,
but struggles in more niche areas of knowledge and the firm is warning clients
about the possibility of AI hallucinations, otherwise known as making stuff up or Saul Goodman-ing.
Goodman-ing? Saul Goodman. All right.
Ever wonder why there's always exactly five quick bits?
Well, me too. You don't tell me anything.
The heavily hyped game, Atomic Heart, has launched without support for ray tracing,
odd seeing as it was predominantly featured in several NVIDIA RTX showcases,
and Mundfish, Atomic Heart's developer, made no announcement that ray tracing would be removed.
Say with me, more like Atomic Fart.
This would seem to be at odds with accusations from the Ukrainian government
that the game was funded by oil giant, Gazprom.
If you're funded by Russian oligarchs, you 100% have ray tracing money.
Come on. Samsung has updated its voice assistant, Bixby,
which apparently still exists, to answer calls on behalf of users,
possibly in their own voice. Bixby can clone a user's voice from just a few samples,
so if you're unable to take a quick call,
you can just send a quick text instead, which Bixby will read out in your voice.
Word of warning though, your mom might just decide she likes this new robot you that always answers her calls
better than the flesh and blood version. And this one thing I know, it's your mom.
Apple has just ordered the entire stock of TSMC's first gen three nanometer chips
for its upcoming iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Max,
the most important of all the upcoming devices, according to Apple anyway.
Intel's 15th gen Aero Lake processors were supposed to launch in the third quarter of next year
using TSMC's three nanometer process for their GPUs.
But based on delays in Intel's orders from TSMC,
Aero Lake's launch will likely be delayed into the first quarter of 2025.
But hey, we'll all be dead anyway. I used to be a chip manufacturer too,
but then I took an Aero Lake to the knee. Rovio, the game developer famous for
the wildly popular mobile game Angry Birds, I love that one, has announced they will be pulling
the original Angry Birds from mobile stores. Their stated rationale is the game's impact
on their wider games portfolio. Likely a reference to the fact that their other titles
are free to play games meant to suck players dry through microtransactions.
While the original Angry Birds was a game you bought and owned for a dollar,
after which it would never again ask you for money.
Unlike most of your relatives. Speaking of, do you have like five bucks?
I wish I had a tuning to flick at you. Hey, you know how Twitter tried to turn the blue check mark
into an $8 status symbol? Well, Tumblr, a social media platform
that does still exist, I'm assured, decided it would be funny to sell what they called
important blue internet check marks for a single payment of $4.
A decision that has apparently increased Tumblr's iOS revenue
from in-app purchases by 125%,
which I've been to these probably a pretty low bar. Totally makes up for the porn loss, right?
Officially, the check marks do nothing and are simply to show that you are an important person
on the internet. Users can buy as many as they want
and even give them to other people. Warning, important blue internet check marks may,
on occasion, turn into crabs. In a process called carcinization.
You can get it from a toilet seat. And you can give other people the gift of tech news
if you tell them to watch on Friday, possibly from a toilet seat.
We'll have laughs, but you can't play Angry Birds anymore on there.
It's over, bye. Bye.