Microsoft announced a generative AI feature called Copilot for, I think, the fourth time at their
September 21st event, which they aptly named the September 21st event. Yet they neglected to
invite Earth, Wind, and Fire. I'm Riley Murdoch. This is TechLink, and you could actually use
Copilot for Windows 11 on September 26th, the same day that Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty
expansion comes out. Now do you play with that or your new Microsoft-assigned mandatory best friend?
They're not happy about it either. After announcing GitHub Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and
Windows Copilot back in May, this new Copilot for Windows, with a fancy new logo, is as significant
as the PC was to the 80s. The web in the 90s, mobile in the 2000s, and cloud in the 2010s,
said Microsoft CEO and totally unbiased person, Satya Nadella. He has zero biases. He's like
the gray people from Futurama. And while we know that Copilot is available now to Windows insiders,
we don't know when OpenAI's newly announced Dolly 3, which will be integrated into a number
of Microsoft products, will be available. But it sounds exciting. OpenAI claims the updated
image generator has gotten better at listening more carefully to every word in your prompt,
not just the least boring ones. Illustrated in this example image of Little Red Riding Hood
bartering with steampunk Wilford Brimley. And Dolly 3 will be able to generate text,
as illustrated by this depressed avocado talking to its natural predator, a spoon.
Dolly 3 will be coming to Bing, so you can contextually update your prompts to create
amazing, completely novel images, like brown-haired people putting on helmets.
Microsoft also announced updates to their line of surface products. There's a sequel to the
Surface Laptop Studio, a revolutionary device that dared to ask the question,
what if a MacBook Pro was also an iPad? For those looking for a more affordable device,
the Surface Laptop Go 3 keeps costs down by stopping at, what if a MacBook?
I'm kidding, of course. The laptop Go 3 has a touchscreen.
For anyone doing business, and no one else. The Surface Go 4 for business features a new
processor inside the same body as the Go 3, and there's also a new Surface Hub 3
that features new hardware upgrades and can be purchased as an entire unit,
or a modular little cute little pack that can be inserted into existing Hub 2S models.
It's for business. Yes, we pre-installed Candy Crush, you're not supposed to open it.
And that's it, which is apparently why former Surface Lead, Penos Panay, left. Microsoft
started cutting staff and pulling back on more experimental devices like the Surface Headphones
and the Surface Pro X, which I'm sure some people wanted more of.
Panay is now allegedly being hired by Amazon to replace their retiring hardware chief,
Dave Limp. If you're wondering why he's retiring, his original name was Dave Normalwalk.
Unity Technologies has revealed the updating pricing scheme they were forced to create
after their first updated pricing scheme got similar critical reception to Jared Leto's
seminal art piece, Morbius. It's unite in time. And just like that one, this one got a re-release.
For those unfamiliar, Unity announced they'd be introducing a runtime fee that would be charged
to developers whenever their Unity-based game was downloaded, after a certain threshold for
revenue and install count was reached. Under the updated scheme, Unity personal subscribers
will not be charged to any fees, and the revenue cap on games made with that plan will be increased
from $100,000 to $200,000, which is the amount of money you make when you make $100,000 twice.
Any Unity-made game that makes less than $1 million in a year will also not be charged the fee.
Developers also now have the choice of being subject to the fee or paying 2.5% of their gross
revenue instead. And Unity found the sense to not make the fee retroactive. It won't apply to games
created using current versions of Unity unless they update to the new version when it launches
alongside the runtime fee policy in January. Rami Ismail, one of the policy's largest critics,
has given careful approval of the changes, so it sounds like Unity is doing right by the
indie dev community. Uh, fingers crossed, I mean, we'll see. Frankly, it's honestly just refreshing
for a company's executive to actually say in the blog post, I am sorry. Like that just,
it doesn't happen, so well done. I'd like to ask for a moment of silence for these quick bits.
No, nothing bad happened. I just want a break from talking.
YouTube announced a few AI-powered features at its made-on YouTube event, including Dream Screen,
an art-generating green screen effect to compete with TikTok, which has had a similar feature
for months because literally everyone somehow ships AI-powered features faster than Google,
the AI company. Generative AI tools in YouTube Studio will soon help creators spark video ideas
and draft outlines personalized for their specific channels, generate translated audio
dubs of their videos, and they can find backing songs simply using a description of the video,
which in our case would probably bring up a ton of songs about clicking affiliate links.
What do you want down there?
They didn't pay us for that. Microsoft may finally succeed in buying Activision Blizzard King,
according to reports. After the UK blocked the deal from going through, the country's
competition regulator now says the new deal has addressed their previous concerns by agreeing
to sell Activision's cloud gaming rights to Ubisoft, who will be free to port cloud versions
of Activision Blizzard games to any platform. The deal hopes to close by October,
so Phil Spencer should have time to give his mom the ultimate Christmas gift.
Criticisms have been levied against the build quality of the newly launched iPhone 15,
and not even Tim Cook pretending to be a normal guy in an Apple store stopped them.
Hi everyone, it's me, Normal Guy. Some users have claimed the 15s aren't as durable as the previous generation,
and others have said the phones have uneven coloring.
And when you're buying them to basically be jewelry, that's an issue. Apple has indicated that fingerprints might temporarily alter the color of the iPhone 15's
titanium frame, but they didn't mention a fingernail can permanently scratch Apple's new
durable, fine-woven cases. Well, there's a simple fix for that.
Buy your mama nail trimmer. Restricted military documents have wound up on the War Thunder Forum,
yet again, they cannot stop. This time, the documented question is the flight manual
for the Lockheed F117 Nighthawk, including information like sensor locations, firing
angles, and engine specifications. Moderators quickly deleted the thread,
but this is at least the 10th time that an overheated War Thunder player has tried to prove
a point by leaking sensitive military information. What does this keep happening?
National security, winning this argument with Buttmuncher 69. Stop it. Just stop.
Luckily, the document isn't technically classified, merely export restricted,
so fingers crossed no one's getting court-martialed over this one.
And a new study from the University of Colorado, Boulder, has broken new ground
in using coffee grounds for 3D printing. Soon, we may be able to reframe our crippling bean
addictions into a virtuous environmental push to reduce plastic waste by mixing the dry, refined
coffee grounds with xanthan gum and cellulose powders, and then using the research team's
open-source printer adapter to create all kinds of biodegradable doodads. Even coffee cups.
That sounds dangerous. Soon, all will be coffee, and coffee will be all.
I don't want that. Don't hail the bean. Who summons the bean, Lord?
But all we can do is ask you to come back on Monday for another episode of TechLinked,
made entirely from coffee grounds. We're gonna try it. We're gonna see how it goes.