The FTC appeals with only days left to stop Microsoft from acquiring Activision Blizzard, Google launches Bard in the EU and GitHub now supports passkeys.
The Video Game History Foundation and Software Preservation Network claim that 87% of classic video games (that means games released before 2010) in the US are “critically endangered”. What’s being done to preserve these games? Meta announced that open beta for Roblox on the Quest 2 and Quest Pro headsets will launch in the “coming weeks.” Reuters reports that industry sources say Huawei has designed its own 5G chips and is working with China’s SMIC to produce them. SMIC’s N+1 process can make chips with the equivalent performance of 7 nanometer processes.
Starring Tom Merritt, Scott Johnson, Roger Chang, Joe
Government Microsoft Outlook accounts get hacked, Democratic Senators urge DOJ, FTC, and IRS to investigate online tax filing companies, and, global PC shipments decline for 6th quarter in a row.
Thinking about upgrading your PC but not sure where to start? Will Smith is here to give us pointers on your PC upgrade path. A judge has ruled *against* a preliminary injunction to stop Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard from completing their merger. Did Microsoft win? And a Pew Research Center study indicates 59% of US adults surveyed see TikTok as either a major or minor threat to national security.
Starring Tom Merritt, Sarah Lane, Will Smith, Roger Chang, Joe
A map threatens to overshadow Barbie’s impending release–here’s why. Plus, Hulu gets Fox-y and The Witcher season 3 deflates. All that and more on Cordkillers!
This week on It’s Spoilerin’ Time: The Righteous Gemstones (305), Secret Invasion (103), Miami Vice (409, “Rising Sun of Death”) Next week: The Righteous Gemstones (306), Secret Invasion (104), Miami Vice (412, “The Cows of October”) Email the show at Cordkillers@gmail.com Subscribe, get expanded show notes, and past episodes at Cordkillers.com
The Wall Street Journal’s sources say Google is testing a language model called Med-PaLM 2 with some health care companies, including the Mayo Clinic. Is the start of AI integration into healthcare? We discussed Engadget’s article about NYU Media Lab’s AI & Local News Initiative. And Instagram head Adam Mosseri confirmed that Meta’s Threads app surpassed 100 million accounts since launching on July 5th. Is this the start of a new social media platform comparable to Twitter?
Starring Tom Merritt, Rich Stroffolino, Justin Robert Young, Roger Chang, Joe