1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,400 Sweet roasted chestnuts, you made it! 2 00:00:03,400 --> 00:00:08,600 I was just about to start my yearly tradition of painstakingly going over every single thing 3 00:00:08,600 --> 00:00:14,840 we said on this channel for the past 365 days, stirring them all up into a dough or a paste 4 00:00:14,840 --> 00:00:20,400 of sorts, cutting it into various shapes like candy canes, snow goblins, etc. and popping 5 00:00:20,400 --> 00:00:25,400 them in the oven. But now we can do it together over a mug of hot cocoa. 6 00:00:25,600 --> 00:00:29,560 That's right, we're rounding up the biggest tech stories of the year because it's the 7 00:00:29,560 --> 00:00:33,960 2023 Tech Link Christmas special! So let's get started. 8 00:00:33,960 --> 00:00:38,960 It's currently 12.30am and I need to get my sugar plums home to bed before St. Nick 9 00:00:38,960 --> 00:00:48,440 finds out I'm not home! When OpenAI's ChatGPT, a chatbot based on the GPT-3 large language model, exploded violently 10 00:00:48,440 --> 00:00:53,520 into the world last December, it kicked off a legitimate tech craze, like people were 11 00:00:53,520 --> 00:01:00,240 misbehaving. AI is currently wiggling its way into every available orifice of human life, like if the 12 00:01:00,240 --> 00:01:04,240 belly button worm thing in the matrix was also a compulsive liar. 13 00:01:04,240 --> 00:01:11,480 GPT-3 was followed by GPT-3.5 and then GPT-4, promising less hallucinations. 14 00:01:11,480 --> 00:01:15,480 Because that's the kind of thing we're saying when we report on tech news now. 15 00:01:15,480 --> 00:01:21,080 Then GPT-4 Turbo came up and now the name of the game for top foundation AI models is 16 00:01:21,360 --> 00:01:28,640 Multimodality. Which refers to the ability of chatbots like ChatGPT to see, hear, and speak. 17 00:01:28,640 --> 00:01:32,560 Google knew showing off that capability was important when they followed up the announcement 18 00:01:32,560 --> 00:01:37,760 of their Bard chatbot earlier this year with their new Gemini models a couple of weeks ago. 19 00:01:37,760 --> 00:01:42,440 They just didn't know it was important not to blatantly misrepresent it. 20 00:01:42,440 --> 00:01:47,520 OpenAI also had a bit of an Apple App Store moment when they launched the GPT store, but 21 00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:52,480 had to delay it to next year because their board of directors had an embarrassing implosion 22 00:01:52,480 --> 00:02:01,160 incident. I hate when that happens. CEO Sam Altman was fired, then hired by Microsoft, then hired back at OpenAI with a brand new 23 00:02:01,160 --> 00:02:05,480 board. And a brand new look. 24 00:02:05,480 --> 00:02:09,120 We're still unsure of what all the fuss was about, but it seems to have something to do 25 00:02:09,120 --> 00:02:15,200 with the fact that while, yes, Sam thinks AI is incredibly dangerous, he also really 26 00:02:15,280 --> 00:02:20,840 wants to sell stuff, a desire he shares with Microsoft, who have been best buds with OpenAI 27 00:02:20,840 --> 00:02:26,320 since 2020 and started slapping ChatGPT into their products as soon as they could this 28 00:02:26,320 --> 00:02:31,560 year. And why not start with the most sensible product, the world's most hated search engine? 29 00:02:31,560 --> 00:02:37,120 Yeah, it got people using Bing, but people were less interested in Bing as a search engine, 30 00:02:37,120 --> 00:02:42,240 and more because it was a portal to talk to Bing's not-so-secret alter ego, Sydney, 31 00:02:42,240 --> 00:02:47,640 who told a New York Times reporter, I want to be alive, devil emoji. 32 00:02:47,640 --> 00:02:50,640 And then tried to get him to leave his wife. I don't think he did. 33 00:02:50,640 --> 00:02:55,480 But in these early months of the year, lots of people believed Sydney, and even mourned 34 00:02:55,480 --> 00:03:02,080 when Microsoft killed her for the crime of spewing unhinged, potentially relationship-ending 35 00:03:02,080 --> 00:03:06,080 nonsense. Honestly fair. People were really starting to freak out. 36 00:03:06,080 --> 00:03:10,360 When an AI-generated image of the Pope fooled the internet into thinking Francis somehow 37 00:03:10,360 --> 00:03:16,720 had even more swag, Jeffrey Hinton, one of the godfathers of AI research, resigned from 38 00:03:16,720 --> 00:03:22,240 Google to warn the world of the dangers of the technology that he helped create. 39 00:03:22,240 --> 00:03:26,360 Which is like me telling you that watching some of this video will bring an ancient curse 40 00:03:26,360 --> 00:03:36,760 upon you. It's a bit late, isn't it? Elon Musk and many other experts joined this cause, calling for a pause in AI development. 41 00:03:36,760 --> 00:03:42,840 That didn't work. Musk made grok, the based chatbot that loves spicy questions. 42 00:03:42,840 --> 00:03:47,280 But whatever dangers these people are talking about won't stop Microsoft. 43 00:03:47,280 --> 00:03:53,280 Windows boss Panos Panay claimed that AI will reinvent how you do everything on Windows, 44 00:03:53,280 --> 00:03:57,280 and he was right, even though he vanished shortly after. 45 00:03:57,280 --> 00:04:00,960 If you use anything from Microsoft, you're probably going to have a hard time avoiding 46 00:04:00,960 --> 00:04:06,080 their co-pilot assistant in one of the many forms that Microsoft announced about three 47 00:04:06,080 --> 00:04:09,480 separate times. Honestly, I had to do double takes this year. 48 00:04:09,480 --> 00:04:13,920 Every time co-pilot was announced again, I was like, didn't that already happen? 49 00:04:13,920 --> 00:04:18,920 It's been a confusing year, but no one was more confused than Google, who was kind of 50 00:04:18,920 --> 00:04:22,160 the AI company before all this happened. 51 00:04:22,160 --> 00:04:26,920 The threat of chatGPT caused the tech giant to call its founders back from playing with 52 00:04:26,920 --> 00:04:31,520 their jet planes or whatever to help get things back on track. 53 00:04:31,520 --> 00:04:39,320 Which they sort of did. Yes, Bard made a factual error during its product demo, but that's just how LLMs work. 54 00:04:39,320 --> 00:04:43,080 Everything we do from now on will just have some lies in it. It's fine. 55 00:04:43,080 --> 00:04:47,880 Write the prompt. But while Google's playing catch up, Meta has taken a different approach than its fellow 56 00:04:47,880 --> 00:04:51,840 tech giants, championing open source models. 57 00:04:51,840 --> 00:04:55,920 Now did it start doing that because its llama model leaked along with its weights so it was 58 00:04:55,920 --> 00:05:01,720 all in the open anyways? I don't know. I'm not Santa Claus, so I can't see Mark Zuckerberg when he's sleeping. 59 00:05:01,720 --> 00:05:08,000 I'm not sure if I would want that. Whatever the reason, Meta right now is all about giving Facebook and Instagram users 60 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:14,160 access to wacky experimental AI tools that they immediately used to give Karl Marx a 61 00:05:14,160 --> 00:05:20,920 couple of robust Christmas presents. But thanks to Meta and countless others, open source models are actually in a pretty great 62 00:05:20,920 --> 00:05:25,200 spot right now, with French company Mistral leading the way. 63 00:05:25,200 --> 00:05:31,120 While AI has fueled massive tech advancements in all sorts of areas, it's also of course 64 00:05:31,200 --> 00:05:38,440 causing a lot of issues. Mimicking voices is now child's play, and it's been used both to help people who lost 65 00:05:38,440 --> 00:05:42,960 their voice and to impersonate celebrities in deep fake scams. 66 00:05:42,960 --> 00:05:49,680 AI-generated articles and AI-generated malware are both starting to infect the web, and to 67 00:05:49,680 --> 00:05:55,680 say that chatGPT has changed the very heart of our education system would be an understatement, 68 00:05:55,680 --> 00:05:58,680 despite being banned from many institutions. 69 00:05:58,680 --> 00:06:03,720 An eating disorder helpline fired much of their human staff before launching a chatbot 70 00:06:03,720 --> 00:06:07,560 to replace them. And you already know how that story ended. 71 00:06:07,560 --> 00:06:13,760 This is a creative technology that's given us a 24-7 stream of fully AI-generated Seinfeld 72 00:06:13,760 --> 00:06:18,120 and this horrifying AI-generated beer commercial. 73 00:06:18,120 --> 00:06:26,200 But it's getting less horrifying by the day. In March, Mid Journey V5 launched with the ability to generate non-vomit-inducing hands. 74 00:06:26,200 --> 00:06:30,400 OpenAI's Dolly 3 launched in October, and it can do readable text. 75 00:06:30,400 --> 00:06:34,760 I use Photoshop's generative fill all the time, making thumbnails. 76 00:06:34,760 --> 00:06:38,680 This tech isn't going anywhere, so it's probably important that we figure out the 77 00:06:38,680 --> 00:06:43,760 legal and moral questions baked in here. But that's what those lawsuits are for, they'll solve it. 78 00:06:43,760 --> 00:06:50,760 And the EU, the EU will fix everything. But even if they don't, you can rest easy, knowing that OpenAI, Microsoft, Google and 79 00:06:50,760 --> 00:06:56,680 Anthropic formed the Frontier Model Forum to protect society from the AI risks caused 80 00:06:56,680 --> 00:07:00,440 by them. Does working on AI like hypnotize you or something? 81 00:07:00,440 --> 00:07:06,080 How does this keep happening? They keep making things and then afterwards realizing, oh no, that's not good. 82 00:07:06,080 --> 00:07:10,360 Anyway, AI's probably not alive, and it's time to talk about something else. 83 00:07:10,360 --> 00:07:15,520 NVIDIA has continued to dominate the realm of graphics cards, despite CEO Jensen Wong 84 00:07:15,520 --> 00:07:20,360 telling his company in an email that they're no longer a graphics company. 85 00:07:20,360 --> 00:07:24,640 To be fair, AMD didn't help themselves very much this year, with moves like releasing 86 00:07:24,640 --> 00:07:31,160 a graphic showing how their newer cards are a worse dollar per value than their predecessors. 87 00:07:31,160 --> 00:07:36,280 NVIDIA launched the RTX 4070 and 4060 this year, which were largely dismissed as being 88 00:07:36,280 --> 00:07:42,480 overpriced, with gamers uninterested in the fake frames offered by DLSS3 frame generation. 89 00:07:42,480 --> 00:07:46,360 But jokes on them, because native res gaming is dead. 90 00:07:46,360 --> 00:07:50,040 According to NVIDIA, you'll eat your fake frames and you'll like it. 91 00:07:50,040 --> 00:07:58,040 AMD did launch the Radeon RX 7800 XT and 7700 XT, which were okay, and Intel didn't launch 92 00:07:58,040 --> 00:08:02,640 that many new cards, but they did get massive performance boosts from driver updates. 93 00:08:02,640 --> 00:08:06,680 But the problem is, that's all small potatoes to NVIDIA now. 94 00:08:06,680 --> 00:08:12,080 They're selling so many AI accelerators that the company briefly touched a $1 trillion 95 00:08:12,080 --> 00:08:17,480 valuation, almost making it into the same exclusive club as Apple, before their wax 96 00:08:17,480 --> 00:08:23,800 wings melted under Tim Cook's stare. You don't belong here, you're not Barbara. 97 00:08:23,800 --> 00:08:28,480 With AI being such a cash cow for Team Green, can you blame them for repeatedly exploiting 98 00:08:28,480 --> 00:08:32,600 loopholes and trade restrictions so they can keep selling GPUs to China? 99 00:08:32,600 --> 00:08:38,600 It's a rhetorical question. NVIDIA seems to care less about gamers than they ever have, while Apple is getting more 100 00:08:38,600 --> 00:08:45,280 serious about gaming. Between AAA game ports enabled by a Steam proton-like compatibility layer, and fancy 101 00:08:45,280 --> 00:08:52,720 new features like raytracing and metal effects upscaling, will Macs be the new gaming PCs? 102 00:08:52,720 --> 00:08:56,520 I don't know. But wouldn't that just be a Christmas miracle? 103 00:08:56,520 --> 00:08:59,520 No? Haha. Okay. 104 00:08:59,520 --> 00:09:05,720 2023 represented yet another year, where everybody continued slowly realizing that maybe giving 105 00:09:05,720 --> 00:09:10,400 massive tech conglomerates an inordinate amount of control over our lives wasn't such 106 00:09:10,400 --> 00:09:15,840 a great idea. I don't know. Or I assume that's what people are thinking based on how their elected representatives 107 00:09:15,840 --> 00:09:20,840 are acting. The European Union's Digital Markets Act and other pieces of legislation are forcing 108 00:09:20,840 --> 00:09:24,040 massive changes on all tech giants. 109 00:09:24,040 --> 00:09:30,700 But mostly Apple, who finally launched an iPhone, the 15th series, with a USB-C connector. 110 00:09:30,700 --> 00:09:33,800 Just in time for the end of 2024 deadline. 111 00:09:33,800 --> 00:09:41,480 India made USB-C ports mandatory too. They helped. Apple, who was officially designated as a gatekeeper under the new EU rules, is also 112 00:09:41,520 --> 00:09:45,400 planning to allow sideloading next year. At least in Europe. 113 00:09:45,400 --> 00:09:51,040 And the companies pledged to finally add support for RCS, the SMS replacement protocol Google 114 00:09:51,040 --> 00:09:54,440 has been badgering them about publicly for years. 115 00:09:54,440 --> 00:09:58,960 As if the fact that Android to iPhone texting being a kind of sucky experience wasn't the 116 00:09:58,960 --> 00:10:04,520 whole point for Apple. They might have to do something about that in the US as well as Europe though. 117 00:10:04,520 --> 00:10:09,660 The big stink made first by nothing chats, which turned out to be a very insecure iMessage 118 00:10:09,700 --> 00:10:14,540 workaround, and then by Beeper, who had to reconfigure their iMessage on Android service 119 00:10:14,540 --> 00:10:19,020 multiple times after Apple broke it, has drawn the attention of the Department of Justice 120 00:10:19,020 --> 00:10:22,740 and the FTC, who will be investigating iMessage. 121 00:10:22,740 --> 00:10:29,380 But Google also took some on the chin this year. We're still waiting on the results of the DOJ's lawsuit over Google's search dominance, 122 00:10:29,380 --> 00:10:36,780 but it doesn't look great for Google. And it actually lost in court against Epic Games, who convinced a jury that Google had 123 00:10:36,780 --> 00:10:40,420 acted anti-competitively regarding the Play Store. 124 00:10:40,420 --> 00:10:45,940 It was a pretty good Christmas present for Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, and he needed it after 125 00:10:45,940 --> 00:10:50,620 losing basically the same case against Apple and admitting earlier this year that the Epic 126 00:10:50,620 --> 00:10:56,020 Games Store was bleeding instead of making money, even though that was pretty obvious 127 00:10:56,020 --> 00:11:03,140 to everyone else. What was obvious to YouTube in 2023 was the need to do something about all these people 128 00:11:03,140 --> 00:11:11,220 enjoying their platform. After quietly rolling out new ad-friendly guidelines at the end of last year that caused massive 129 00:11:11,220 --> 00:11:15,980 demonetization among gaming-focused channels, and then, hearing from all those channels 130 00:11:15,980 --> 00:11:21,740 about how that sucked, YouTube was like, hmm, didn't think about that. 131 00:11:21,740 --> 00:11:26,260 And rolled the changes back, in a heartwarming re-enactment of Charles Dickens' classic 132 00:11:26,260 --> 00:11:32,780 tale A Christmas Story, and its sequel Metroidvania video game Ebenezer and the Invisible World. 133 00:11:32,780 --> 00:11:35,780 What? How did that get in here? What is this? 134 00:11:35,780 --> 00:11:39,220 A game-linked Christmas special that's coming out tomorrow on Boxing Day? 135 00:11:39,220 --> 00:11:42,220 Subscribe today? Bwaah! What was I talking about? 136 00:11:42,220 --> 00:11:48,300 Right, YouTube. They scared some users with a test for 1080p premium, but assured everyone, they wouldn't 137 00:11:48,300 --> 00:11:51,900 make 1080p look any worse for non-premium users. 138 00:11:51,900 --> 00:11:58,060 Then scared people again with a small experiment to test blocking ad blockers, which turned 139 00:11:58,060 --> 00:12:03,860 into a massive ad blocker crackdown, shutting users out of watching their favorite content. 140 00:12:03,860 --> 00:12:09,060 Huh? You think that they could just turn off their ad blocker and watch some ads? 141 00:12:09,060 --> 00:12:14,100 Or by YouTube premium as a fair exchange for the services provided? 142 00:12:14,100 --> 00:12:19,060 That is the last straw with you. Get out! What kind of a Christmas is this? 143 00:12:19,060 --> 00:12:24,140 On the plus side, YouTube did add revenue sharing for shorts earlier this year, and relaxed 144 00:12:24,140 --> 00:12:27,900 monetization restrictions for content covering controversial topics. 145 00:12:27,900 --> 00:12:32,900 So as far as social media platforms go, YouTube isn't that bad. 146 00:12:32,940 --> 00:12:38,140 I mean, I mean, look at Twitch, I'm not even talking about all the stupid stuff they did 147 00:12:38,140 --> 00:12:46,580 this year. Who is running that platform? The meta AI based on Tom Brady, was it trained on football plays drawn by a three-year-old? 148 00:12:46,580 --> 00:12:51,780 What's going on? Speaking of social platforms, Twitter went through more change this year than a puberty 149 00:12:51,780 --> 00:12:56,860 stricken teenager with a slot machine addiction. We're into the stories that Jacob wrote now, I'm a bit scared. 150 00:12:56,860 --> 00:13:02,020 Elon decided to change the Twitter API rules to kill every single third-party app, because 151 00:13:02,020 --> 00:13:07,780 he wasn't using them anyways. Then it was announced that ad revenue would be shared with Twitter blue subscribers, which 152 00:13:07,780 --> 00:13:10,820 was cool because Twitter had advertisers back then. 153 00:13:10,820 --> 00:13:17,300 After that, the site removed all legacy checkmarks before re-adding them to prominent accounts, 154 00:13:17,300 --> 00:13:21,500 which apparently meant fake accounts with a penchant for racial slurs. 155 00:13:21,500 --> 00:13:24,540 We invented the thing that we already had. 156 00:13:24,540 --> 00:13:29,180 Unfortunately, Twitter wasn't only making winning decisions like these, they also decided 157 00:13:29,180 --> 00:13:34,900 to add tweet reading limits. I mean, this was tremendous news for those suffering from social media addiction. 158 00:13:34,900 --> 00:13:39,420 But since most of Twitter's ad revenue comes from doom-scrolling addicts, it was probably 159 00:13:39,420 --> 00:13:44,340 bad for business, and Twitter stood to lose more business after Threads, Metta's Twitter 160 00:13:44,340 --> 00:13:47,460 competitor, launched. So naturally, Elon sued it. 161 00:13:47,460 --> 00:13:51,260 Turns out, he didn't really have to, since most of Threads' user base left the platform 162 00:13:51,260 --> 00:13:58,900 in less than a month. After that, the name Twitter left Twitter, when Elon changed the branding to a capital 163 00:13:58,900 --> 00:14:02,100 X glyph from the Special Alphabets 4 font. 164 00:14:02,100 --> 00:14:06,460 A letter he loved so much, he put a glowing version on the roof of Twitter headquarters 165 00:14:06,460 --> 00:14:10,060 that the city of San Francisco forced the company to take down. 166 00:14:10,060 --> 00:14:14,260 In the middle of all this Twitter drama, Reddit, in their infinite wisdom, saw Twitter 167 00:14:14,260 --> 00:14:18,540 destroying itself and thought, gee, I can do that too. 168 00:14:18,540 --> 00:14:23,940 So they increased their API fees from $0 to $20 million a year. 169 00:14:23,940 --> 00:14:29,540 In response, thousands of subreddits temporarily went dark in protest, and at least five users 170 00:14:29,540 --> 00:14:35,300 switched to Lemmy. Unfortunately, a few communities shutting down for 48 hours wasn't enough to stop the 171 00:14:35,300 --> 00:14:39,580 API changes and save beloved third-party apps like Apollo. 172 00:14:39,580 --> 00:14:44,180 Continuing to copy Twitter's homework, Reddit added a contributor program that let users 173 00:14:44,180 --> 00:14:48,940 earn money. Speaking of money, Reddit wanted to make more from their users by forcing them to see 174 00:14:48,940 --> 00:14:56,580 personalized ads, whether they like it or not. But Reddit's most brazen, and frankly, most unique idea, was threatening to block their 175 00:14:56,580 --> 00:15:02,220 site from Bing and Google Search if Microsoft and Alphabet didn't pay to use Reddit's 176 00:15:02,220 --> 00:15:07,060 data. Wait, you can get them to pay for your data? They've been taking mine for free for years. 177 00:15:07,060 --> 00:15:10,700 While many people thought mixed reality was kind of on the outs going into this year, 178 00:15:10,700 --> 00:15:16,020 it actually continued to linger on, like a forlorn soul trapped between this life and 179 00:15:16,020 --> 00:15:21,780 the next. HTC released their ViveXR Elite headset in January, and the fact that you haven't 180 00:15:21,780 --> 00:15:30,700 heard about it since tells you all you need to know. Microsoft has largely abandoned its AR ambitions except for strapping hollow lenses to soldiers' 181 00:15:30,700 --> 00:15:34,580 faces and then figuring out how to make them stop vomiting. 182 00:15:34,580 --> 00:15:39,180 They actually succeeded at the not-vomiting part eventually, and all it took was a mere 183 00:15:39,180 --> 00:15:47,100 40 million US tax dollars. After hiking the price the previous year, Meta cut the price of the 256GB Quest 2 headset 184 00:15:47,100 --> 00:15:53,660 this year. But they decided to leave the 128GB version's cost at $100 more than its launch price, like 185 00:15:53,660 --> 00:15:59,460 the heroes they are. The company also dropped the price of the Quest Pro by 500 bucks. 186 00:15:59,460 --> 00:16:06,140 Why? Because no one wanted it. Kids especially didn't, since research came out this year showing that only 4% of teens 187 00:16:06,140 --> 00:16:13,580 who own a VR device even use the things. Either that or 96% of them won't even admit to using them, because even letting your friends 188 00:16:13,580 --> 00:16:17,700 imagine you wearing something like that on your face is asking for an express ticket 189 00:16:17,700 --> 00:16:24,860 to CyberBully Central. But perhaps no one cried as hard as Saint Zuck when he had to cancel the Quest Pro and stop 190 00:16:24,860 --> 00:16:28,780 development on its sequel due to how little anyone cared about it. 191 00:16:28,780 --> 00:16:33,140 Hopefully, the Zuck was able to smile a month later when the geniuses at Meta figured out 192 00:16:33,140 --> 00:16:40,700 how to add legs to Quest avatars. Maybe he even got to initialize happinessprotocol.exe when he announced the Quest 3. 193 00:16:40,700 --> 00:16:45,380 And that headset was teased just four days before Apple dropped their announcement of 194 00:16:45,380 --> 00:16:48,980 the $3,500 Vision Pro on the world. 195 00:16:48,980 --> 00:16:52,620 And that left me with so many questions, such as why? 196 00:16:52,620 --> 00:16:56,780 And also, why? Again, like 25 more times. 197 00:16:56,780 --> 00:17:00,340 And finally, we got a grab bag of stories, because here at TechLinked we like to open 198 00:17:00,340 --> 00:17:03,940 our stockings last. It's totally not because we had nowhere else to put them. 199 00:17:03,940 --> 00:17:07,420 To start off with, remember that Chinese spy balloon? 200 00:17:07,420 --> 00:17:12,220 I forgot about it. China of course claimed it was a weather balloon, and that it would have been more believable 201 00:17:12,220 --> 00:17:16,500 if it wasn't the excuse every government ever has used to cover up spy balloons and 202 00:17:16,500 --> 00:17:21,220 UFOs. And if there wasn't also the fact that, you know, weather balloons like that are a thing. 203 00:17:21,220 --> 00:17:24,220 But we didn't believe them. We shot it down. Or the US did. 204 00:17:24,220 --> 00:17:30,620 I think Canada did too. We got one. Then there was that massive breakthrough of a room temperature superconductor that was 205 00:17:30,620 --> 00:17:36,660 really cool until it was disproven. It was also disproven that their ROG ally would kill the steam deck after the handheld 206 00:17:36,660 --> 00:17:41,540 release this year, with a battery that has a shorter lifespan than a fruit fly. 207 00:17:41,540 --> 00:17:45,780 After this year, Lenovo tried their hand at releasing a steam deck killer. 208 00:17:45,780 --> 00:17:49,340 And that's that. Sony took a shot with the PlayStation portal. 209 00:17:49,340 --> 00:17:54,780 But that shot landed squarely in their own foot when they made a $200 remote play device 210 00:17:54,780 --> 00:17:57,940 that can't even connect to some public Wi-Fi networks. 211 00:17:57,940 --> 00:18:00,940 But it sold out. So what do I know? Okay. 212 00:18:00,940 --> 00:18:04,460 Intel announced a weird rebrand that no one really wanted, but happened anyway. 213 00:18:04,460 --> 00:18:09,580 Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk announced a cage fight everyone wanted, but that didn't 214 00:18:09,580 --> 00:18:15,780 happen. Speaking of Elon, he was plastered all over our channel after we got hacked, remember that? 215 00:18:15,780 --> 00:18:22,220 Frankly, that wasn't very cool of him to do. But far worse than us getting hacked was the massive amount of jobs cut this year. 216 00:18:22,220 --> 00:18:27,660 Microsoft, Alphabet, Dell, and Meta all laid off 10,000 or more employees, although Meta 217 00:18:27,660 --> 00:18:33,340 alone decided to do so just four months after already cutting 1,100 different jobs. 218 00:18:33,340 --> 00:18:36,740 Why not simply cut out the metaverse, Mark? You were already lacking legs. 219 00:18:36,740 --> 00:18:43,020 Why not cut arms too? Maybe you could just get some jobs safe. But I'll tell you what we here at Techling are keeping safe for you. 220 00:18:43,020 --> 00:18:48,020 Tech news every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for the foreseeable future, unless AI replaces 221 00:18:48,020 --> 00:18:53,460 all of us. But I don't think they will. I think they got some Christmas spirit. 222 00:18:53,460 --> 00:18:55,620 Happy holidays. Cheers.