Nothing Makes Sense Anymore

0:00 It's Star Wars day, so May the fourth be with that baby Yoda movie

0:06 or whatever that's coming out soon because

0:09 CO Bibble knows they're going to need it.

0:12 GameStop has just put forward a $56 billion offer to buy eBay.

0:19 The e-commerce giant was evidently caught off guard by the bid and responded

0:24 with the energy of every girl I asked out in middle school,

0:27 saying it received no communication from GameStop

0:30 prior to the entirely unsolicited offer.

0:33 Sounds like what happens on Snapchat these days.

0:35 To give you a sense of scale,

0:37 eBay has a market cap over four times the size of GameStop itself,

0:42 making this a wild swing for the retailer.

0:46 Again, much like my middle school attempts at romance.

0:48 It's funny because I really kept to myself.

0:51 The funds for the proposal are evidently

0:53 split 50/50 between cash and GameStop stock.

0:56 Though it's unclear from the wording if they're referring to shares

0:59 or $28 billion worth of scratched up trade-in crash bandicoot CDs.

1:05 A middle schooler's fortune.

1:06 According to CEO Ryan Cohen,

1:08 it's part of a larger strategy to pivot into ecommerce,

1:12 leveraging GameStop's retail locations as a fulfillment network.

1:16 However, Cohen likely has a more personal

1:18 motive as his incentive structure guarantees him $35 billion in stock if he can

1:24 boost GameStop's market value to a hundred billion.

1:27 God, that's that's a lot of Funko Pops.

1:30 The FCC has unanimously voted to advance a proposal banning

1:35 all Chinese testing labs from certifying US-bound electronics with FCC

1:40 chair and former witch king of Angmar Brendan Carr

1:44 citing national security concerns before he screamed LIKE A BANSHEE.

1:51 IT'S PART OF A wider crackdown that has already seen

1:54 the agency ban the import of new Chinese-made consumer routers and drones.

1:59 This move is expected to have a significant impact on consumer electronics

2:03 since roughly 75% of US-bound devices are currently tested in Chinese labs,

2:10 forcing manufacturers to reroute certification through

2:13 labs in the US, Europe, or Taiwan.

2:15 According to the new rule, existing devices can still be sold for up

2:19 to 2 years after their certification date,

2:22 but the expectation is that older devices that have

2:25 to be retested will probably just be pulled instead.

2:28 It's unclear how manufacturers will deal

2:30 with the drop in available testing facilities,

2:33 but if the router ban is any indication,

2:36 at least one random company will probably get a lastminute exemption,

2:40 which is totally above board and unrelated to any kind of favors.

2:46 Please don't sue us, Netgear.

2:49 Uh, Toyota's woven city, the fully surveiled corporate utopia they use to test

2:55 robotic stuff at the base of Mount Fuji.

2:58 This is real.

2:59 That's sick.

3:00 Wow.

3:00 Sounds like a from a spy novel or something.

3:02 Anyway, they just got a new AI overlord called the Woven City AI vision engine,

3:07 which sounds totally believable and not weird.

3:11 All hail AI overlord.

3:14 You seek to enter the woven city.

3:17 Anyway, this model ingests feeds from cameras, vehicles, traffic signals,

3:22 and user inputs across the city to predict what residents are about to do,

3:27 which is fine because the residents are all

3:30 Toyota employees and their families who presumably sign something.

3:34 About a 100 people currently live there in a city built for about 2,000.

3:39 So, the cameras to civilian ratio is generous to say the least.

3:43 Toyota also confirmed that chairman Akio Toyota has

3:47 been uploaded to the cloud as Akia Toyota AI,

3:52 a chatbot trained on a decade of his speeches and writings so

3:56 he can keep dispensing leadership and wisdom long after his meat form retires.

4:02 Honestly, getting trapped in a panopticon run

4:04 by a sentient AI CEO sounds stressful.

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5:32 We'll have that linked down below.

5:34 Now, I know it would be probably really good to do the quick bits here,

5:39 but what if instead we just had Darth Maul show up again?

5:42 You guys like him, right?

5:44 Darth Maul.

5:45 Subscribe.

5:46 Microsoft's April Windows 11 update keeps finding new ways to ruin your day.

5:51 After triggering boot loops, besides, and boring Bit Locker,

5:55 it's now breaking third-party backup apps like Macrium and Acronis.

6:00 This time on purpose, though.

6:02 We're happy about this.

6:03 Microsoft blacklisted the kernel driver that these apps use over

6:07 a security flaw and is telling users not to uninstall the patch.

6:11 So, your options are keep your backups or keep your PC from getting owned.

6:16 Pick one, loser.

6:17 Oh, you want to back up your PC?

6:19 Get a grip.

6:20 Maryland just became the first state

6:22 to ban AIdriven surveillance pricing in grocery stores.

6:26 Yay.

6:26 Unfortunately, critics say the bill is riddled with carveouts and exemptions.

6:31 Boohoo.

6:31 What a wa what a roller coaster.

6:33 Consumer advocate and the internet's cool

6:35 older brother who's looking out for you,

6:37 Cory Doctoro, called the law all loophole.

6:41 Anyway, Cory warned that lobbyists have drafted it to gut consumer protections.

6:47 The criticism is welltimed as several

6:49 other states are currently drafting similar bills.

6:52 So, here's hoping this will let us take

6:54 a bite out of grocery store surveillance pricing.

6:57 A court in Hongghu, China, ruled that companies can't legally fire workers just

7:03 because AI is cheaper after a tech firm tried

7:06 to demote a quality assurance employee from 25,000 yuan

7:10 a month to 15,000 and canned him when he refused.

7:14 The court said adopting AI is a business choice,

7:18 not an unforeseeable disaster that voids your employment contract.

7:22 A take so worker friendly, it probably won't survive the boat ride west.

7:26 BlackBerry stock jumped over 10% today after a Wall Street Journal

7:31 profile reminded everyone that the company didn't die, it just pivoted.

7:36 QNX, their software division, makes the operating system running Lane Keep,

7:41 adaptive cruise, and crash detection in 275 million cars.

7:47 And it's now expanding into Nvidia robotics and German submarines, of course,

7:52 which means the company that couldn't survive the iPhone

7:54 is now keeping you alive at crush depth.

7:57 Sleep tight, sailors.

7:59 And a Cleveland startup called Sonic Fire Tech is selling a fire

8:03 suppression system that uses inaudible infrasound

8:07 waves instead of water or chemicals.

8:10 and they just demoed putting out a kitchen grease fire with sound alone,

8:14 which everyone tries at first, but it doesn't do anything.

8:19 A backpack version for wildland firefighters is also in testing,

8:24 which I'm sure will go great until they find all the dead woodland creatures.

8:28 Chipmunks are just not a thing anymore.

8:30 Ah, the fire's out.

8:33 Oh god, mama.

8:35 and I'll be setting you on fire in a video

8:38 game if you don't come back Wednesday for more tech news.

8:41 Now, if you'll excuse me,

8:42 I have to go back to pretending Star Wars doesn't exist until the next Jedi

8:46 Survivor sequel or they make something else

8:48 as good as Andor because otherwise, what's the point?

8:51 Okay, see you.