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Anthropic Pulls Latest AI Models, Microsoft’s Plans For Xbox, UK Social Media Ban + more!
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So good, so good, so good.
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Westminster Tech News show, where today's stories will be judged on form, pedigree and their ability to not piss all over the entire global economy. We're honestly off to a bad start. Anthropic has been forced by the White House to shut down access to its too dangerous to release Mythos model along with the safe for public consumption lobotomized version of it called Fable. Evidently, Fable wasn't lobotomized enough to satisfy the notoriously safety conscious US Administration, so the White House placed export controls on the models. There's a bunch of he said, she said over what went down. But basically on Friday, the administration developed doubts about Fable safety guardrails, prompting them to demand action from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Amodei pulled the classic nerd move of trying to reason with a bunch of jocks only to make them mad, prompting Treasury Secretary Scott Besant to say Amodei was making a bad decision and giving anthropic 90 minutes to pull the models. After pulling the models, Anthropic did that angry nerd thing of making a rage baiting blog post telling its users that they don't get to play with their newest toy because of the White House, leading to a group of cybersecurity experts to publish an open letter on free fable.org demanding the removal of the restrictions. Anthropic has now sent senior staff to D.C. to try to resolve the situation. And given how high school the whole thing has become, I'm sure Pete Hegseth will show up and try to pass him in front of the Joint Chiefs or something.
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I'm one of the richest men in the world.
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Swirly Microsoft reportedly considered spinning its Xbox gaming unit off into a standalone company, underscoring how seriously executives have been debating Xbox's future. The move could make Xbox similar to other Microsoft acquired subsidiaries like GitHub and LinkedIn, which operate semi independently. This would likely allow Xbox to focus on its cost and strategy without being tied to the wider company and ghost down in the corner Xbox no eye contact. The proposal has not moved forward, but According to the information.com, the option is not off the table either. This news comes as Xbox undergoes a dramatic reset under new CEO Asha Sharma, with reports of layoffs, studio uncertainty and a broader overhaul raising questions about Xbox's long term direction. Signs of the shakeup are already showing, with Xbox Game Studios boss Craig Duncan and Chief of Staff Louise o' Connor departing amid Sharma's restructuring. Louise no, the uncertainty even extends to the future of studios like Compulsion Games and Double Fine, which are both reportedly at risk of being shut down, while Ninja Theory is certainly being shut down. Not part of Xbox anymore, but they're hoping to find a buyer. Microsoft Team up with Sega and make the Micro Sega Dreambox. The people want it. They don't know they want it yet,
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but they nobody knows what it is.
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It's provocative. They yearn for it. British Prime Minister and wet sack of saturated pancakes Keir Starmer announced today that the UK will be implementing a ban on social media for children under 16 years old, making the UK the most recent addition to the wave of countries implementing similar bans, which was kicked off by Australia last December. The announcement has widespread support from the British public, with 90% of parents and two thirds of young people saying they're in support of the ban. Young people know it won't work. Despite the popularity of the legislation, however, the implementation has yet to be worked out. Privacy advocates have pointed out that current age verification techniques, which often rely on facial and ID scans to act as age assurance, are security and privacy nightmares. And as Australia has reported, a significant number of teens have learned to circumvent the restrictions anyway. The UK government has tasked regulatory authority OFCOM with conducting a study to determine the best approach to make sure UK teenagers cannot circumvent the ban as easily as their Australian counterparts did. Personally, I'm just relieved at the prospect of fewer teens online. They're so mean sometimes, the way they look at you. Unlike our sponsor Saily.
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The Quick Bits were rejected from admission into the Westminster Dog show because they technically weren't dogs and also were under investigation for racketeering. Luckily, the Tech News has no qualms about their priors. Get them in here. Open Borders for Bit In a hilarious turn of bad luck for Sam Altman, a coalition of 42 state attorneys general opened a massive probe into OpenAI just days after the company's IPO filing. This army will focus their investigation on user safety, specifically when it comes to ads, data handling and model sycophancy, which has been a major issue as ChatGPT. Sycophancy has been tied to multiple instances of users harming themselves and others. The collective noun for 42 attorneys general is an indictment. Google and UC San Diego are turning 2000 old Pixel phones into an experimental data center by clustering the stripped down devices into small server nodes. The idea is to reuse still powerful smartphone chips, cut E waste and reduce the carbon cost of building building new data center hardware. Nice. Considering AI data centers are hoarding everything, this might mean the rest of us finally get a shot at affordable components. Finally, recycling is doing something for me for once.
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It's doing something period.
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Hey, intel is reportedly planning a DDR4 based Raptor Lake Next refresh in 2027, keeping its LGA 1700 platform alive to help builders dodge rising RAM costs. Meanwhile, AMD is also leaning on older silicon reviving Zen and Zen era designs. Their new Ryzen 3 3100U and Ryzen 5 3501U laptop chips target low cost systems by reusing older architectures. You'll buy our old components and you'll be grateful we even thought of you instead of our AI overlords.
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We like them way better, they're so cool, they give us cookies, etc.
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AMD and Microsoft are rolling out advanced shader Delivery for Radeon GPUs from the RX5000 series onward, a system that preloads shader data to cut down on in game work and apparently reduces shader load times by up to 95% in games like Forza Horizon 6. The new shader delivery can apparently slash boot times from around 90 seconds to just a few seconds, dramatically speeding up loading and startup time is money. So I wasn't gonna play it, but now I can't afford not to. And a meta quest 3 reportedly burst into flame while charging inside a home. In main starting a small fire, sending the homeowners dogs running and scattering debris. And they said dogs were loyal. Fire crews are investigating the cause, but the incident has raised concerns about VR charging safety and battery risks. I'll tell you what's risky. Leaving your VR headset out on your nightstand with all that Kleenex and oil based lubricant up there, That's a fire hazard waiting to happen. That stuff spontaneously combusts sometimes. You know, it'll also be hazardous to my feelings if you don't come back on Wednesday for more tech news where I'll explain this shirt. Just joking. We're not acknowledging it. Forget I just said that. Oh, no.