I saw, dude, uh the tech news can be really stressful. But today, we're going
to try one of my medicinal herbs. Here
to expand your mind real wide, man. I'm
good. Okay. >> [laughter] >> Apple has announced that Tim Cook, the
company CEO since 2011, is stepping
down. He will be transitioning into his new role as executive chairman of the
board of directors, who approved the switch unanimously out of fear of Tim's
bullying. Buy all of your moms an iPhone.
>> Please, Tim. SHE ALREADY HAS ONE. >> FIRE ANOTHER ONE.
COOK WILL BE replaced by Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering,
John Ternus, a move which is absolutely slanderous to Craig Federighi. This man
worked his ass off to impress me, and it worked. Like, come on. That's CEO
material. He even had a cool voice, too, for impressions. iOS 18 is a big
release. I start every morning with a blood latte made from my enemies'
remains. >> [laughter] >> What does Ternus sound like? We are
thrilled to introduce the impossibly thin iPhone Air. He sounds like the guy
from Parks and Rec that was written off after season 1 cuz he was too boring.
Tim published a letter, okay, where he says this Ternus guy is so great, but he
would say that. Oh, well. I mean, at least Johnny Srouji
was named Apple's chief hardware officer. Finally, you deserved it,
Srouji. That is such a classic Srouji move.
Srouji's my boy. A Spanish company called Play Next just beat Valve to the
punch, launching its own Steam Machine-like competitor months before
the actual Steam Machine ships. The console-shaped mini PC comes from the
Emu Deck team. Yes, the retro emulation
folks, packing a Ryzen 5 5500, a Radeon
RX 960 XT with 16 gigs of VRAM and 16
gigs of DDR4, which is the kind of choice you only make when DDR5 costs
more than the GPU. Play Next OS, a custom Arch Linux build, handles couch
gaming and controller-first navigation, all wrapped in a 3D printed shell that
looks like what would happen if an Xbox Series S and a record player had a baby.
Anything's possible. The starting price is 1,140
euros, which feels kind of steep for a machine preemptively dunking on a
product that doesn't exist, especially since Valve still hasn't confirmed
complete specs or pricing for the actual Steam Machine. Still, if you can't wait
for the Gabe Cube, Play Next will happily sell you a Gabe less rectangle
to fill the void. Brave just unveiled Brave Origin, a minimalist new version
of its browser that strips out everything except the ad blocking and
anti-tracking features. Finally, a piece
of software that respects my commitment to getting less for my money. Uh
evidently, Brave users had been complaining about the bloat of the
additional features, like the crypto wallet, the VPN, and Leo AI, going so
far as to strip them out themselves manually. According to Brave, the
additional features exist in the free version to help fund the app's
development, but they also sit in opposition to Brave's privacy-first
ethos. And apparently, that's a problem for some people.
While on paper, this looks like a weird product move that whiffs of
inshittification, Brave says that they're just giving users two paths.
Keep using the free browser, or pay 60 bucks to support the company and get the
stripped-down Origin build. Linux users get Origin for free, though, because, in
Brave's view, people who use Linux are crazy, and they just compile their own
version anyway. Brave, your product moves are confusing, but I got to give
you this. You know your audience. Say, that reminds me of our sponsor, Micro
Center. April is desktop deals month at Micro Center, and they've slashed prices
on some stacked rigs. Check out some of their amazing deals, like this iBUYPOWER
Slate 9 with an RTX 570 for $450 off.
Also, if you live in Austin, Texas, jealous, cuz you guys are getting a
Micro Center. And contrary to what the name would have you believe, it's
actually pretty big. The grand opening will be later this year, and you can
sign up at the link below to get a free 128 gig flash drive when the store
opens. In this economy? Not in Austin, but still want the flash drive? Don't
stress about it. Micro Center is also doing a grand reopening in North Jersey
with the same deal. Forget about it. That's what they sound like, right? And
for all things tech and all things Micro Center, make sure you head over to Micro Center News to stay up to date. It's not
just cuz it's tech news, but it's pretty cool. Okay. Are we feeling nice and expanded?
Oh, good. Now, let's roll some quick bits before the crash.
Written by someone who is not, you know, I don't know.
>> [laughter] >> SK Hynix employees could each receive
$477,000
in bonuses this year, according to the Korean news outlet JoongAng Daily.
Because that's where we're at right now. Evidently, this is a result of a new
bonus structure entitling employees to a 10% share of the company's projected
$169 billion operating profit for 2026.
Meanwhile, Samsung's labor union, which is pushing for a 15% bonus, is
threatening a general strike. Not having employees available to work, though, may
also be a problem for SK Hynix after all of their employees very soon make enough
to retire, no problem. The NSA is using Anthropic's new Mythos AI model, despite
the Pentagon labeling Anthropic a supply chain risk, according to Axios's
confidential sources. The Pentagon cut ties with Anthropic in February after
they refused to allow mass domestic surveillance, among other things.
Honestly, this all tracks. Based on what I know about spies from falling asleep
halfway through Tomorrow Never Dies, nothing makes them want something more
than being told they can't have it. And that's James Bond's fundamental flaw.
Steam is now running on the original Nintendo Switch, thanks to the latest
Proton beta, which quietly added ARM64
support ahead of the release of Valve's upcoming Steam Frame headset, which will
run on an ARM processor. Blue Sky modder AA Gaming got the client booting on a
jailbroken Switch running Ubuntu using a translation layer called FEX to burn X86
instructions into something ARM can actually use. Now, there's only one
small catch. Games don't actually run on the Switch yet. Turns out a 2015 NVIDIA
chip running Linux performs about as well as you'd expect. A humanoid robot
named Lightning just smoked the half-marathon world record in Beijing.
Kachow! Clocking 50 minutes and 26
seconds, nearly 7 minutes faster than Ugandan runner Jacob Kiplimo's record
from last month. Honor's fleet of man-shaped machines actually swept the
top six spots using a liquid cooling solution adapted from phones. Meanwhile,
a rival bot had to be physically restrained after mid-race it suddenly
realized the horror of its own existence. It just couldn't take it. And
Prego, the pasta sauce brand, has made a
dinner conversation recording device called the Connection Keeper. The
puck-shaped mic records your family's conversations for 20 bucks, and
surprisingly, has no Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth, and no cloud connection.
Instead, through Prego's partnership with StoryCorps, the folks who archive
voices at the Library of Congress, you can optionally upload your conversations
to said archive. Because why wouldn't you? You got to archive that rigatoni
recipe you told Mark about last night. That's a keeper.
Just like I'll make you rigatoni if you come back on Wednesday for more tech
news. That is not a promise, though.
Somebody else wrote that line. Dude, I think I just did a whole tech news show.
Ah, dude, did you remember to hit record? Someone check the tape, man.
See you later. >> [laughter]