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Tech news can help you understand and adapt to important technological, economic and socio cultural shifts that affect all of us. But why keep up with it at all? It's a good question. Hell if I know. Nintendo has updated their user agreements to let gamers know they might brick your switch if you screw around with it. Because as much as they love to sue people, it's like their favorite thing. Other than releasing the same game a million times, it's just faster to remotely disable people's consoles and along with it, their ability to legally play Nintendo's games. Hold on. As first spotted by Steven Totillo at gamephile, the old Nintendo account agreement for US Accounts forbade a long list of jailbreaky actions like copying, modifying and decompiling Nintendo services. But the new agreement goes into more detail and notes that failing to comply with these restrictions may cause Nintendo to render your account and or Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part. I don't know what that last part is like. They might break. Only your Joy Con sticks make them worse than they already are. The UK version of the agreement is a bit softer, saying non compliance may result in the console being becoming unusable. Might happen, might not stop. Nintendo also updated their privacy policy in the US and UK to say they might monitor and record your video and audio interactions with other users. So just make sure you get all the swearing out of your system before you sit down to play online, okay? Nvidia is reportedly once again refusing to give tech reviewers official drivers for the RTX 5060 until the card launches on May 19th. Igor's lab first made this claim, but it was corroborated by Hardware Unboxed and Andreas Schilling of Hardware Luxe, who pointed out Nvidia's plan sucks extra hard because May 19th is the first day of Computex and everybody's gonna be in Taiwan possibly enjoying delicious soup, dumplings and bubble tea. Which is not important right now. What's important is we're looking at another launch day filled with potentially with videos of short, sandaled people complaining about not being able to publish a review. Thanks, Nvidia. Honestly, the Radeon RX9060XT listings of which leaked recently, revealing both 8 gig and 16 gig variants can't come soon enough. Please let Linus review something, anything. Apple has filed a motion to stay that ruling from last week, forcing the tech giant to allow external payment options on iOS, even though Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers explicitly said she would not grant a stay and that she is generally sick of Apple shenanigans. That's my paraphrasing. But you see, Apple had no choice but to try something, because if they don't collect all the commissions they can, even on purchases made outside of the App Store, they could lose hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars, which I believe was the whole idea. But I could be wrong. Obviously, Epic Games thinks Apple's motion is BS. The company just submitted the Fortnite iOS app to Apple for review once again. And again, I feel like it won't be approved, but, you know, I appreciate Tim Sweeney's spirit. Meanwhile, Apple SVP Eddy Q made a spirited argument in the Google Search Antitrust Remedies trial, asserting that Google should still be allowed to pay Apple 20 billion a year to be Safari's default search engine, because search won't even be relevant soon anyway. I mean, people are using it less because they're using AI to search for stuff instead. Now, Google didn't love the sound of that, so they posted a short statement to say, ah, well, hey, just hold on now. You know, we're still seeing overall query growth in search, so I mean, you know, Google's still a big deal. And then Apple's like, no, it's not. And then Google's like, yes, it is. Anyway, Eddie even went so far as to say you may not even need an iPhone by 2030, because AI is changing how people use the web so much. In fact, the changes are so big, according to cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, they're killing the Internet's entire business model. I mean, the tides are changing. You know, winds are shifting. Your Honor. There are probably a lot of things we should be worrying about instead of Google paying Apple $20 billion. So probably just keep letting them do that. Okay. I mean, why not? You know? And hey, why not check out our sponsor, Proton, the email provider that helps you break free from big tech who are kind of addicted to collecting your user data. It's a nasty habit. Messaging apps often support encryption these days, so don't settle for less with your email. ProtonMail uses end to end and zero access encryption so only you can read your emails. I know, what a concept. But ProtonMail does you one better with advanced phishing protection to tracker blocking, dark web monitoring, and more. Now, I didn't read your emails, but I can tell you're worried about switching. Well, actually their migration tool makes it super easy to transfer emails, calendars and contacts from Google and other providers. Why not go to the link in the description, create an account for free, try ProtonMail for a few months and see how it feels to stick it to Big tech. Just an idea. I know why tech news is useful. You know. No idea what the quick bits are for An AI generated video of a man killed in a road rage incident in Arizona was played during the killer's trial and accepted by the judge as a victim impact statement. The video was produced by the victim's sister and features the man saying he believes in forgiveness despite his family asking the judge to deliver the maximum sentence. After hearing the testimony, the judge said he didn't hear the victim asking for the maximum sentence, probably because that wasn't actually the victim. It was a fake person. Does everyone realize that? And then the judge handed out the max sentence anyway. Okay, so not sure what we learned from any of this. Huawei showed off its first laptops running a desktop version of its HarmonyOS operating system. The Chinese tech giant first started developing Harmony OS as an Android based alternative to reduce their reliance on Google. And now they're trying to reduce dependence on Microsoft too, because of the, you know, the US China trade war. And also probably because they're sick of the constant nagging to Upgrade to Windows 11. Relatable in case you missed it, there's a new Pope in town. And yeah, he's a gamer. Kind of. Robert Prevost, AKA Pope Leo xiv, is the first American Pope and the first one confirmed to play video games, specifically wordle and Words with Friends. According to his biological gamer bros. He's also the first Pope that can be properly stalked on social media. Evidence has already been discovered of him arguing with his relatives on Facebook. He's just like us. And a viral TikTok trend called the Chromebook Challenge, in which kids stick objects into the USB ports of their school issued Chromebooks to elicit a bit of magic smoke, has unsurprisingly, led to fires and and evacuations at schools in multiple states. As one TikTok video points out, blowing up your Chromebook may lead to a situation where it ain't even a Chromebook anymore. Important lessons learned Searching chromebook challenge on TikTok now leads to a TikTok page warning against participating in such challenges, which they needed to do because the fire challenge was already a thing, and that involved kids pouring flammable liquid on themselves and and then lighting that liquid on fire. What is the challenge there to survive? Thankfully, kids have already pivoted to finding new and creative ways to screw with their Chromebook settings, making the laptop hard to use the old fashioned way. You know, maybe the kids are alright, maybe the kids are all right. But I won't be alright unless you come back on Monday for more tech news. I'll just be sitting here worried sick that you're doing something less useful, like touching grass or other things that are outside your hands might get dirty.