Gah, I'm sorry guys. There's no tech news today. Everyone in tech is just kind of chilling. It's not doing much.
OH! Psyche! OH!
D-D-Dir-Your face was really good. Oh-You should've seen your face.
Anyone still using Windows 7, 8, or 8.1 will be losing the ability to run Steam at the end of this year.
Part of the rationale for the Sunset is that some of the newest Steam features rely on an embedded version of Google Chrome,
which has only limited functionality in older versions of the OS, okay?
The change will affect an estimated 1.9% of Steam users,
which is surprising for multiple reasons. First, that 1.4% of active account holders
are using Windows 7, a 13 year old OS
that was discontinued in 2015. But, hey, I'm not judging.
Some of us are judging. Second, that number still surpasses Steam accounts
using any version of Linux. I mean, how are PC gamers gonna continue complaining
about Windows when we won't even switch? You first though.
Microsoft ended all extended security updates for these older OSes in January of this year.
So if users do wait until Valve's January 1st, 2024 deadline,
they will have slightly bigger problems than no longer being able to download Stardew Valley.
They will be using a dangerously vulnerable machine that hasn't been patched in nearly a year.
And no, you don't get an achievement for that. It's kind of the opposite.
You failed to achieve an upgrade. So...
Twitter is back in the news again, because that's what happens when the world's richest man
buys the world's angriest group chat. Elon Musk has announced that the only realistic way
to address AI bot swarms taking over,
actual quote, that's where Skynet started, is to allow only tweets,
quotan by Twitter blue subscribers, to appear in the for you, for you, for you.
It's for you. For you? In the for you tab.
This change turned out to be so wildly unpopular that Musk added a second tweet,
claiming that users you follow directly will still appear on the for you tab.
He just forgot. Slip my mind. So it won't only be crypto bros with three followers
who mostly tweet about Martha Stewart secretly being an alien lizard.
Phew. Musk also stated that voting in polls
will require verification for same reason, and definitely not because of that time
he made a poll asking if he should step down as head of Twitter, and 57.5% of respondents said yes.
Not. Sparks knock your life.
On top of all that, legacy verification will be sunsetting April 1st,
which is not an April Fool's joke, unless the joke is that brands, celebrities,
and government officials will be forced to pay for verification or face rampant impersonation,
which admittedly was extremely funny last time. Even funnier Musk claimed in a memo to employees
that Twitter is now worth $20 billion,
less than half of what he paid for it. So Twitter can be thought of as an inverse startup,
which I guess is like the corporate equivalent of Benjamin Button.
It's a shutdown. It starts as a company with money
and then just goes the opposite way.
But don't worry, Musk sees a clear but difficult path
to a future valuation of more than 250 billion,
once enough bought farms by Twitter Blue. And Amazon has released a developer kit for third parties
to create devices for Amazon's nationwide
sidewalk mesh network, which feels like a good moment to ask,
wait, when did Amazon get a nationwide mesh network?
You see, for the last two years, Amazon has been using ring cameras and echo speakers
to send out low bandwidth signals, too weak for high bandwidth devices like phones,
but enough to connect other IoT smart devices that need to ping Amazon servers to function,
like TVs and blenders. This was originally so that ring cameras
could still ping when motion activated, even when offline,
through using another nearby device as a bridge, even if that device was on a different
Wi-Fi network owned by a stranger. And sure, they wouldn't be strangers
if you just introduced yourself to your neighbors like a normal person, but that's beside the point.
Amazon technically has permission to add these devices to its wide area network as part of their default settings,
which require users to opt out
if they don't want to be a part of it. According to data. Look, it said works.
You bought the- You didn't say no, so that's a yes. You went to amazon.com.
According to data released by Amazon, the sidewalk network currently covers an area
that includes around 90% of the US population.
That last 10%, they're coming for you. Next up are the quick bits,
not to be confused with fast pieces, the cheap knockoff against which we are pursuing legal action.
The Australian government has proposed applying an 18 plus rating to video games
with any form of simulated gambling. That includes games based on real life gambling,
like poker and slot machines, but also potentially any game with paid loot boxes.
Apparently the Australian government thinks being constantly exposed to gambling from an early age
is bad for kids or something. But I remember back in my day,
I had to walk to school through three casinos
up here both ways. Is it a view glass?
We just fought each other in the yard. Well, teachers threw money.
Whoever had the knife won. The dolphin emulator for Gamecube and Wii
will be coming to steam this summer.
It will not however be providing the ROMs to run on it, as usual.
Instead, there is a disclaimer on Steam that says that users must own an original copy
of any game they wanna use with Dolphin. This is an important legal distinction,
though I'm not sure how much that's gonna matter to the players, or more importantly, Nintendo.
Nintendo V Valve? Google will be removing several features
from Fitbit accessories, specifically anything that could be considered fun,
like challenges and adventure races, which encouraged users to compete against friends
and family as motivation for a workout. These social elements have been removed
as part of an effort to streamline the Fitbit, focusing on its intended purpose as a cold tool
for measuring the health outcomes of friendless losers. After delaying the PC port of the Last of Us part one,
three weeks to ensure its quality due to the popularity of the HBO adaptation, no doubt,
the game finally came out. Yet in the place of a cordyceps fungus,
players found a game infected with shiitake mushrooms.
It cost numerous issues, okay. Like making Joel look like an amnesiac
tried to draw the gigachat from memory.
Developer Naughty Dog apologized on Twitter for being a bad boy and not the fun kind.
What is the fun kind of bad boy? Is that a sexy thing?
I'll tell you when you're older. Okay, and over a thousand tech experts,
including engineers, researchers, and high profile figures like Steve Wozniak
have signed an open letter urging a delay in AI development
until we are sure that we can manage the potential risks.
Setting aside the fact that a complete pause is absolutely,
definitely not going to happen. There are a lot of serious risks to AI,
mass job loss, criminal exploitation, and misinformation.
Just last week, an image created using mid-journey fooled the world into thinking the Pope
had a nice winter coat. Nobody even noticed that his hand
was half phased through the lid of a cup or that the image of Jesus on his crucifix
looked like a silver hot dog. But it could have been a miracle, you know?
We absolutely cannot think that the Pope has more drip than he has already.
And that's all the tech news for the day. Come back on Friday if you want more.
You could come back on Thursday, but it's not gonna, you're gonna,
then you're gonna just have to wait till Friday again. So you see what I mean when I say, okay.