Tech news.
Oh, almost hit that.
Close one. That would have been bad.
Intel CEO Lip Buan had some harsh truths
to deliver to employees during a companywide address this week. As
reported by the Oregonian, Tan stated, "We are not in the top 10 semiconductor
companies." Intel, we're talking Intel. This is like a Michael Jordan switches
to baseball moment. Tan also indicated it's not even worth trying to compete
with NVIDIA in the market for advanced GPUs used for AI training, saying, "On
training, I think it is too late for us." Ah, I've never wanted to play a
Jojo song so badly on this show. No, not
Siwa. The good one. Now, some like
Gizmodo are pointing to Intel's weakness as a reason that Apple not feeling any
kind of pressure is deciding to launch its next MacBook Pro with an M5 chip
next year instead of this fall. At least
they are, according to the star of hit young adult TV drama Germing Up Germ,
Mark Gerbin of Bloomberg. It was either that or Boys and Germs. I I should save
that. But the last MacBook Pro came out in October 2024. So early 2026 wouldn't
even be the longest gap Apple has had between Pros. So the reason for the
supposed delay is unclear. But you know what is clear? Intel XC CEO Pat
Gellzinger could have turned this whole thing around. If not economically, then
spiritually. He had vibes for days. And now his new company, Glue, has just
launched the flourishing AI benchmark, which measures AI's capacity to help
humans develop in the seven areas that contribute to human flourishing, which
are of course good character, relationships, happiness, meaning
spiritual growth, physical health, and
finances. Very cool. Except which one does knowing how many Rs are in
strawberry belong to? Someone will have to run that benchmark on Grock because
Elon Musk's XAI did in fact release
their updated Grock 4 chatbot on Wednesday night. The live stream was an
hour late, but the team had some not so
small bugs to deal with. Uh, check out our previous episode for the DL on that.
Elon claimed that Gro 4 is so intelligent that he expects it to
literally discover new technologies that are actually useful no later than next
year. and maybe end of this year and it might discover new physics next year and
within two years almost certainly. So just let that sink in. Oh, it has sunk.
Coming from the guy that promised full self-driving next year for like a
decade, this is almost like a promise that neither of those things will
happen. Now, to be fair, by all accounts, Gro 4's performance is topof
the line on a number of AI benchmarks, including humanity's last exam and Arc
AGI. And it does something else no other chatbot does, too. It checks Elon's
stance before giving its opinion on controversial topics. A behavior first
spotted by Micah Airfan but quickly replicated by others which seems less
maximally truth seeeking and more maximally dad glazing.
Now Gro Ford does this specifically when asked about its own stance on a
controversial topic. It seems to ignore Elon's opinion when asked about issues
using a more passive voice. So what is
going on here? Although Grock 3 previously said it was built by XAI to
incorporate Elon's voice and public perspectives, it doesn't seem like Elon
or XAI specifically coded this behavior in as it's not in the system prompt.
What is there is an instruction to search for sources that represent all
parties/stakeholders, which yeah, Elon's a pretty big one of
those. And as it notes during its thinking process, if the user is asking
for an opinionated response, not a neutral one, I mean, who better to get
opinions from than your meat daddy. Wow, why did I do this? Crafton, the
publisher of highly anticipated survival game Subnotica 2, is embroiled in a
messy fight with the two co-founders and the CEO of the game's developer, Unknown
Worlds. The three execs were fired earlier this month, but have now
announced they're suing Craftton. So,
it's mutiny then. If that's what you call throwing the captain overboard and
then he climbs back on the ship and sues you. See, this week Bloomberg reported
that Cfton was supposed to pay the Unknown Worlds devs a bonus totaling
$250 million if they hit pre-specified
revenue targets by the end of 2025, which they might have hit if they were
allowed to launch the game in early access later this year as planned. But 2
days ago, Craftton delayed the launch to 2026, citing feedback from early tests,
leading many to suspect they were just trying to avoid paying the devs. But
according to a popup now appearing on the Craftton homepage, this is not the
case and the state of the game really was that bad. And also the ousted studio
leads were behaving badly. Obviously,
the community is siding with the devs here, showering the latest Subnotica 2
gameplay trailer with comments about the game, predicting that an evil
corporation would steal money and resources from an unknown world. Oh, cuz
that's that's the plot of the game.
I haven't had time to play it. I've been making this show. Also, I can show you
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NLO. So find out what those stand for at
the link in the description. Quick bits. They're like the other bits,
but shorter. Belcon announced they're shutting down all smart home devices
under the Wimo brand on January 31st, 2026, saying that some customers with
Weimo devices that are under warranty may be eligible for a partial refund.
It's the latest example of smart home companies bricking their own devices. I
mean, what are they supposed to continually put resources into
maintaining support for gadgets that most people purchased with the
expectation that the company would do that? Yes, Google is currently rolling
out its second software update this year that will nerf the battery of a Pixel
phone to the point of it being unusable. Like the Pixel 4a, Google says that the
batteries in some Pixel 6As have defects
that could make them explode or something, whatever. But Google has a
support page you can use to check if yours is an impacted device and register
to get a battery replacement or if that's not available in your country,
cash or a gift card, which won't stop your phone from exploding. So, just be
aware. At least they're being upfront about what's happening this time with
the Pixel 4a. The whole vibe was a lot more like, "Listen, your phone don't
work no more. Why don't you be a good little schmuck and hand it over to
Vinnie here and then shut your fish mouth?" The FBI has taken down NSW2U,
which is surprisingly not a website promoting tourism in the Australian site
of New South Wales, but rather one of the most popular websites used to
distribute pirated Switch games. Great to see that America's esteemed law
enforcement agencies have their priorities all in order. This is
probably the best thing they could focus their efforts on. and security
researchers Ian Carroll and Sam Curry were able to access a database with the
personal information of 64 million McDonald's job applicants by logging
into the web portal for the company's MCHire chatbot using the username and
password 1 2 3 4 5 6. After disclosing
the issue to McDonald's, the company behind the chatbot, Paradox AI, promptly
investigated the issue and resolved it within a few hours of being notified. Is
this a joke? How many vibe coders does it take to change a password? Uh, it's a
good thing they fixed it because having the applicant's personal information
leak would have been the cherry on top after the infuriatingly dense chatbot
gave them all a free Mick Anneurism. That is my name. Hey, you know what
would put a cherry on top of this whole episode? You promising me that you'll
come back on Monday for more tech news. It would just it would just really make
my day. So, say it. Okay. Say you'll
come back.
Say it.