I was a little worried, but on my drive into work, Harry Nilsson's 1971 hit
Coconut came on and I knew that today was going to be okay. Put the tech in
the news and drink them both together. Later, Sisqo's Thong Song came on.
Sony PlayStation and AMD wanted to give a glimpse at the next-gen tech that will
power the PlayStation 6. So, who better to awkwardly read a script about that
off a teleprompter, hey, than AMD exec Jack Houen and Dana Carvey from SNL
playing PS5 lead architect Mark Cerny. The update on the two companies' Project
Amethyst collaboration detailed three apparently important technologies
shaping its next-gen RDNA GPUs with top-tier techno babble names like neural
arrays, radiance cores, and universal
compression. These technologies will provide scalability as workloads grow
and unified light transport, which are
cool, but unfortunately, the extremely hyped symbiotic frame reintegration
was not mentioned. Why did I even come to this TED Talk? And besides, when is
the PS6 even coming out? Well, according to one of our favorite leakers, Kepler,
Sony is planning to launch the PS6 in 2027. So, for now, you're going to have
to just let all those cool buzzwords rattle around in your head until you can
envision just how totally gnarly this beast is going to be.
I think Intel has unveiled their next-gen Panther Lake processors. The
company says Panther Lake is going to launch by the end of this year, on paper
at least, and it's going to fix everything.
After this, smooth sailing. While Intel's previous laptop chips were
divided into Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake families, this laptop generation will be
Panther Lake all the way down and will apparently leverage the best parts of
its predecessors, Lunar Lake's power efficiency and Arrow Lake's
compatibility with Skyrim memes. Think that was the best thing going for it.
Intel didn't reveal model numbers, but did specify three distinct package
configurations, an eight-core and a 16-core, each with four new XE3 GPU
cores, and another 16-core with 12 GPU
cores. Wait, wait, XE3? XE2 used Intel's Battlemage GPU
architecture, so that means XE3
is still Battlemage. Of course, of course it is. Intel's Tom
Petersen confirmed to PCWorld that the Battlemage follow-up, Celestial, won't
arrive until we get next next-gen XE3P
cores, which Tom is already starting to hype up. >> XE3P coming up. Ooh, chills. That got me
going. But to compensate for the disappointment, Intel also announced
their new upscaling tech, XESS3, which
will support multi-frame generation, beating AMD to the punch already thrown
by NVIDIA. But unlike Team Green, Intel will let all Arc GPUs use their new fake
frames tech, even older A-series gaming cards, like Intel's the cool older
brother who will let his younger sibling play with his action figures. NVIDIA's
like, "No, you'll break it. No, you'll decrease the resale value." Discord is
calling out the hackers who breached the chat platform's third-party service
provider, not for the actual hack, they already did that, but for lying to
What's next? Parking in the handicap spot on the internet?
The hackers claim they've swiped the data of five and a half million unique
users, including nearly 2.2 million photos of government IDs. Well, in an
updated press release, Discord says, "Actually, they've only identified
70,000 users whose government ID photos
have been swiped, which is barely any." And told The Verge that the hackers are
circulating incorrect information as a way to extort payment from Discord. Now,
we actually edited our story on this data breach in Monday's episode and
pinned a comment with a correction because we initially implied the breach
was connected to this year's wave of age verification rollouts across platforms.
But it appears the IDs in question were collected before Discord's new age
verification measures, which apparently don't store photos of IDs, were ever put
in place. Now, Discord updated their press release again to underline this
fact by naming the customer service provider that was breached. It's called
5CA. Because people keep being weird and saying this is a Discord breach, except
it literally has nothing to do with Discord other than all the Discord user
data that was breached. Just drop it, okay? And then check out our sponsor,
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description. The quick bits are actually ageless. They used to party with Harry
Nilsson. The quick bits remember the lost weekend
with Harry and John Lennon, but they don't talk about it.
Apple is making some tweaks to how their accounts work in Texas. Starting in
January, Texas's new age verification law will require app stores and
developers to check users' ages before letting them download apps. Apple says
that if you're in Texas and create an Apple account, you will have to verify
you're over 18. Otherwise, you'll need to join a family sharing group and a
guardian will have to approve all your downloads and purchases, so make good
choices. Developers will also need to adjust their apps to follow the rules,
but Apple's releasing tools to help them with age checks and getting parental
consent. Google also announced they're doing something similar, letting apps
access info like users' age range, verification status, and whether an
account is supervised. Both companies are also laying out plans for what to do
when the age verification government IDs inevitably get hacked. Step one, wasn't
me. California's been on a consumer rights
kick. Governor Gavin Newsom just signed a law that will force browsers to
provide a simple portal that will allow users to opt out of third-party data
collection across all websites. Whether the browser companies actually at it is
remains to be seen, but California also tightened rules on streaming platforms
by banning jarringly loud ad spots from
playing during streaming. It's almost like the state that houses many of the
world's biggest tech companies has a better understanding of how obnoxious
online data collection and advertising efforts have become.
Maybe that's their home advantage. California knows the call is coming from
inside the house. And now we just need to follow their lead to get away from
THESE MONSTERS. A LOUD AD. Battlefield 6 just launched,
but not all its new players are actually getting to
uh, you know, play the game. According to the Battlefield Comms Twitter
account, some players are having issues with accessing the game at all, while
others are just getting stuck in old-fashioned queues. I mean, it's kind
of nostalgic. Based on what I've learned about war from TV, getting into the
military isn't always that easy and soldiers do end up sitting around a lot
between episodes of horrifying
uh, conflict. So, maybe Battlefield 6 is just striving to be more realistic.
Good job. South Korea's online government services
are reeling after a giant fire at a state data center. The blaze caused the
suspension of 70 online government services and destroyed 858
terabytes of data, which was thoughtfully reported to be equivalent
to 449 and a half billion sheets of
A4-sized paper. Very helpful. Thank you so much. Worst of all, apparently, the G
Drive system, no relation to Google, is government drive, uh, it was completely
destroyed in the fire and they couldn't have backed it up, according to an
unnamed official, because it was so big. Too big to back up. Sorry. While the
incident is being reported as a battery fire, inspired by K-pop demon hunters, I
did some quick research about Korean fire demons and I'm almost certain these
fires were caused by the dastardly Dokkaebi
and likely not the fire goddess Joangshin,
unless a housewife did something bad to a fireplace's hearth. Wow. That's
something to Google. And Figure claims that its new Figure 3 robot can wash
dishes, clean floors, and handle other chores.
Great. Good enough. I'm a tired dad. I've seen The Jetsons. Bring on the snarky robot
maids. In a video released by Figure, we
get to see the Figure 3 doing all sorts of jobs and it all looks pretty cool and
and potentially even useful. However, at around the last minute of the video, the
music takes on a more sinister tone and we see the robots doing
uh, people's jobs. Hmm, probably nothing. Figure CEO Brett
Adcock posted on LinkedIn that nothing in the film was teleoperated, which made
me say, "Film? What are you from Europe?" But no, he's from Illinois.
Anyway, if you thought I was being glib about these robots stealing your jobs,
Figure has already had robots working on a BMW production line for five months.
All right, all this automation better bring about that universal basic income
everyone's been talking about, or otherwise, why did Bernie Sanders just
posted 10-minute video talking about how dangerous the robots are? What are we
going to do about these robots? Hey, you know what? Let's all just relax, okay? I
hope you enjoyed today's show. We won't be back until next Wednesday. Monday is
a holiday, but please do come back. I found a wiki page for something called a
novelty song, which includes mentions of Weird Al, Randy Newman, and Frank Zappa.
So, obviously, I have a long weekend of research ahead of me.