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Think you have what it takes? Valve has confirmed the Steam machine's red overheating warning is going off way too early. So if your Gabe cube's light bar is glowing ominously, your hardware probably isn't cooking. A BIOS bug is just making it panic at temperatures that the hardware considers a normal Tuesday. Also, it might be haunted. I'm Riley Murdoch. This is TechLinked, and this anxious little box's LED is supposed to go red at 95 degrees Celsius on the CPU or 90 degrees on the GPU, but one Redditor received the full alarm while they were gaming at 81 degrees and 75 degrees. Now the fix is a BIOS update coming soon quote that raises the threshold to 100 degrees for both chips, which is where this laptop grade silicon starts throttling anyway. The hardware's real limits aren't changing, just the light. And no, this is unrelated to the red line of Death from Launch. Valve's manual said that light meant a dead gpu, but Valve recently admitted that the LED bar in the console is oriented the opposite way from what they thought it was when they programmed it. Whoops. So these machines weren't dead, they were just doing routine memory training. And the GameCube doesn't yet know what's left and what's right. It's a baby. It just got here. The Epic Google vs Epic Games Legal saga that's felt like it's dragged on for 100 years has finally been laid to rest this week. Fingers crossed. Meaning Google will start allowing third party app stores on Android starting on July 22nd. Now, for anyone unaware of the history here, back in 2020, epic nerd Tim Sweeney sued Google over its monopolistic control of Android's app store. A few years later, a jury sided with Epic that Google had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. Appeals followed, but the verdict was upheld. After the ruling, the two companies tried to pitch the judge on some something else a mutually beneficial settlement. Epic would get a surprise $800 million from Google for something, and Google would still be able to force users to sideload rival app stores instead of hosting them directly in the Play Store, which is admittedly a little strange. To force Google to host Google's competitors on Google's platform. I dunno. The judge, however, called out that this was stupid because it didn't fix the monopoly issue that the whole lawsuit was originally about. So get ready for me to release my own custom app store where everything is exactly the same as the regular Play store, but all of the apps have the word fart in their name. Fartbook, instafart, Fart GPT. You get it? Thank you Tim Sweeney for this freedom. Meta is being sued by its employees for violating US Employment law because the AI systems that it was apparently using to decide who got laid off allegedly discriminated against workers on medical leave. They didn't tell the robot to do that. It just hates all of us meatbags. The 26 employees behind the suit are asserting that Meta's key logging tools were tracking metrics like keystrokes and token usage, but didn't account for people who were sick or away on protected leave. So the system read their lack of activity as underperformance and ranked them for termination. They should have been working on vacation. It's also worth noting that when this keystroke tracking software was first rolled out by Meta back in April, they said it was only being used for AI training, not performance evaluation. Meta's defense is that it only used AI to flag unproductive workers, and in a statement to Reuters, the company said humans ultimately made the call on who to fire. Oh, I'm so sorry. It wasn't your AI that broke the law, it was just your employees listening to the AI. Ah, I guess we'll drop the lawsuit then. Oh wait, no. It's apparently still illegal for humans to break the law. Dang it. Luckily, it isn't illegal for you to check out our sponsor ManageEngine and their opmanager Nexus. If your network infrastructure, applications, user experience, and everything else are the Infinity Stones, then manageengine opmanager Nexus is the Infinity Gauntlet. It's an observability platform that lets IT teams monitor everything in one place, bringing all of those critical systems into a single unified view instead of assembling a whole team of separate tools like those dang avengers. It works with what you already have, uses smarter insights to cut through alert noise, and helps you troubleshoot before a small issue turns into an end game level crisis. Whether you deploy it in the cloud or on prem, opmanager Nexus makes managing your IT environment almost as easy as snapping your fingers. Ah, stop guessing and Start knowing with OpManager Nexus link in the description Quick bits are like gogurt. Nobody knows if it's a drink or a food, but you feel finished five of them before the doubt kicks in. Apple is suing OpenAI over stolen trade secrets that OpenAI is allegedly using to build its flagship hardware product, a jony I've designed AI smart speaker Apple says OpenAI's hardware chief Tang Tan, who is a former Apple VP, tried to poach more Apple employees to come join him, going so far as to coach departing employees on how to evade Apple security. Now this is true. It's a wild risk for OpenAI to take in designing what amounts to a hallucinating homepod, especially given that OpenAI is apparently releasing even dumber hardware products, most recently the codex micro, a $230 macro pad with a built in microphone designed to allow you to talk to ChatGPT without the exhausting activity of using your normal keyboard. Use this other smaller keyboard instead. Much better so New York has become the first state to ban new hyperscale data centers. Those are the ones drawing 50 megawatts or more, buying the state a year to write regulations for this industry. Now a 50 megawatt data center uses 50,000 homes worth of electricity, but already approved projects will still go ahead. Meanwhile, the companies that build these things say they'll just build them somewhere else. New York swears it just needs a year and that it will absolutely text the industry when it's ready, please. Sony's Disc Free future has a math problem 121 countries, 62% of the world's nations can't access the PlayStation Store at all. There's no PSN in Georgia, Estonia, Kenya, Vietnam or Jamaica, meaning once disc production ends in 2028, gamers there will have no official way to buy a PlayStation game. Sony has not announced any expansion plans, meaning the PS6 will be something gamers have argued about for decades. A true console exclusive exclusive to 38% of Earth StepFun, a Chinese AI startup, claims that it has built the world's first Agentix smartphone, a phone where you simply state a task and AI agents do the actual stuff. The Step X Neos agent books, rides, orders, food and plans trips across its port partner platforms like Alipay and Didi, though there's no price, specs or release date yet. This is interesting because it's kind of like the same Agents, not Apps vision that Microsoft pitched as Project Solara back in June, which is fitting since Step Fund was founded by ex Microsoft employees. The race to start using agents and stop using apps is on Microsoft versus people who quit Microsoft and Hinge, founder Justin McCloud has raised $18 million for Overtone, an AI matchmaking service with no profiles and no swiping. The AI gets to know you by voice, then only introduces you to someone when it decides that you're compatible, which fans will recognize as the literal plot of Black Mirror's Hang the dj. Now, the wackiest part of all this is that Match Group, the owner of Hinge and Tinder, is is helping to fund it. The swiping empire is officially paying to hear that swiping was the whole problem. Personally, I can't wait for phase two of these AI powered apps where you cut off the middleman and just date the app itself. And if you find yourself living in a real life episode of Black Mirror, don't panic. Do what I do whenever I feel existential dread creeping in. Grab a Go Gurt and come back on Friday for more tech news. It works every time.
Episode: Steam Machine Red Light Fix, Epic Wins Android App Stores, Meta AI Layoff Lawsuit + more!
Date: July 16, 2026
Hosts: Riley Murdoch, Arch Manning, Madison Skinner, Eva Jovic, Decoria Moore
Format: Fast-paced tech & gaming news with sharp, irreverent commentary
This episode delivers a rapid-fire rundown of the biggest stories in tech and gaming culture: Valve’s Steam Machine false overheating alert, Epic’s win over Google and what it means for Android app stores, Meta’s AI-powered layoffs lawsuit, a slew of wild “quick bits,” and provocative musings on the accelerating AI economy. While keeping the tone light and sardonic, the hosts explain the broader significance of these developments for gamers, consumers, and tech companies.
[00:13 - 02:25]
[02:25 - 04:15]
[04:15 - 05:48]
[07:07 - 12:20]
| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:30 | Riley Murdoch | “The GameCube doesn’t yet know what’s left and what’s right. It’s a baby. It just got here.” | | 03:45 | Riley Murdoch | “The judge... called out that this was stupid because it didn’t fix the monopoly issue.” | | 04:45 | Riley Murdoch | “They should have been working on vacation.” | | 05:30 | Riley Murdoch | “It wasn’t your AI that broke the law, it was just your employees listening to the AI. ...Oh wait, no.” | | 09:00 | Riley Murdoch | “A true console exclusive exclusive to 38% of Earth.” | | 11:50 | Riley Murdoch | “Phase two of these AI powered apps where you cut off the middleman and just date the app itself.” |
Summary:
This episode combines sharp news explanations with entertainment, digging into the stories behind emerging tech battles and the bizarre world of AI-powered consumer experiences. If you want rapid tech news that’s as funny as it is informative, this is a perfect listen.