Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jovan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heeart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you. It's time for the
Speaker 1: tech news for Tuesday, sept twenty two, and first we
Speaker 1: have a quick Twitter acquisition update. Today, Twitter shareholders will
Speaker 1: vote on whether or not to approve the Elon Musk
Speaker 1: Twitter acquisition deal, you know, the deal that Musk is
Speaker 1: currently trying to back out of. And you might be
Speaker 1: surprised to learn that this vote has not yet happened,
Speaker 1: and that technically shareholders could reject the deal on the
Speaker 1: face of it and then this whole thing just goes away.
Speaker 1: But that is not likely to happen because Musk's agreed
Speaker 1: upon deal means he would pay fifty four dollars twenty
Speaker 1: cents a share, and that's pretty darn good for shareholders
Speaker 1: right now. The closing price for Twitter from yesterday was
Speaker 1: forty one cents, so twenty is a step up there, right.
Speaker 1: You would get more than ten dollars per share over
Speaker 1: the current going price for shares. That's a pretty nice
Speaker 1: way to cash out of an investment. Anyway, Early indicators
Speaker 1: suggest that investors are likely to approve the deal by
Speaker 1: a comfortable wide margin, so this matter would then continue
Speaker 1: unabated towards being decided in court. As must argues that
Speaker 1: the deal has been altered, while Twitter says prey, I
Speaker 1: do not alter it. Further attention mac os and iOS
Speaker 1: device owners, at least for you know, relatively current devices.
Speaker 1: H Apple has pushed out a security update to patch
Speaker 1: a zero day vulnerability. This is the eighth time this
Speaker 1: year that Apple has UH patched such a vulnerability, a
Speaker 1: different one in each case, not like it was the
Speaker 1: same one, but it's happened eight times this year. More.
Speaker 1: Apple says this particular vulnerability might have already been actively
Speaker 1: exploited in various places, and that the vulnerability allows apps
Speaker 1: that to contain specific malicious code that will allow hackers
Speaker 1: to quote execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges end quote.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty severe security vulnerability, so it's a good
Speaker 1: idea to update your devices. The company has not elaborated
Speaker 1: on the scope or severity of these UH supposed attacks,
Speaker 1: but kernel level access is serious business, and like I said,
Speaker 1: it's the eighth time this year that Apple has had
Speaker 1: to address a vulnerability like this. That just goes to
Speaker 1: show how different the world is from when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, because back when I was a kid, Apple
Speaker 1: computers were thought to be essentially malware proof, that the
Speaker 1: design of Apple was just superior to DOSS and later
Speaker 1: to Windows based PCs. Though some would argue that Apple
Speaker 1: was mostly enjoying security through obscurity, which just means that
Speaker 1: because Apple had a smaller slice of market share, the
Speaker 1: people who are making malware would focus instead on DOS
Speaker 1: and Windows machines because that's where most of the targets were.
Speaker 1: You don't spend a ton of time to attack a
Speaker 1: very small population if you can make a lot more
Speaker 1: impact with a bigger one. Anyway, it's actually a good
Speaker 1: reminder that no system out there is bulletproof and that
Speaker 1: keeping up to date with security patches is a good idea.
Speaker 1: So update those devices. Yesterday morning, Blue Origin, the private
Speaker 1: space company that Amazon's Jeff Bezos co founded, had a
Speaker 1: bit of a whoopsie, And by that I mean there
Speaker 1: was a booster failure in the Blue Origin launch vehicle,
Speaker 1: which was carrying an unmanned crew capsule up in a
Speaker 1: flight out in order to deliver some payloads to outer space,
Speaker 1: and this failure prompt did the launch vehicle to engage
Speaker 1: the capsule escape system. As that name says. This system
Speaker 1: separates the capsule from the launch vehicle in the event
Speaker 1: of a failure, so that these two spacecraft can get
Speaker 1: as much distance as possible between them to best protect
Speaker 1: the capsule and potentially the folks who might be inside
Speaker 1: such a capsule. This one, again didn't have any one
Speaker 1: in it. The capsule performed just as it was supposed to.
Speaker 1: It parachuted safely to the ground, so that whole system
Speaker 1: worked as intended. That's actually great news, Like you want
Speaker 1: that to happen if you have this kind of mishap.
Speaker 1: So yeah, these capsule escape systems are the kind of
Speaker 1: things you never want to need to use, but you
Speaker 1: sure as heck wanted to be there and to be
Speaker 1: reliable if that need should arise. The launch vehicle crashed
Speaker 1: back down to Earth, but reportedly caused no property damage
Speaker 1: or injuries. It crashed within the designated hazard aarry. Uh,
Speaker 1: so that too happened as it was supposed to in
Speaker 1: the event of a mishap. You know that the mishap
Speaker 1: was not something that they were hoping for, obviously, but
Speaker 1: everything happened the way it's supposed to end those events. However,
Speaker 1: now the US Federal Aviation Administration or f a A
Speaker 1: must do a compulsory investigation into the incident to determine what,
Speaker 1: if any effect there was on public safety. And this
Speaker 1: is standard operating procedure in the wake of an incident
Speaker 1: like this, So this isn't like the f a A
Speaker 1: coming down hard on Blue Origin. Now, assuming the f
Speaker 1: a A finds no negative impacts to public safety, Blue
Speaker 1: Origin will then be cleared to pursue future flights. Until then,
Speaker 1: things are on hold. There were some losses that we
Speaker 1: should mention, however. The spacecraft was carrying multiple payloads for
Speaker 1: various scientific research projects, including several from elementary and high
Speaker 1: school students and a couple from NASA. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: where all these payloads were located. Did Some of them
Speaker 1: may have been in the capsule and they could be
Speaker 1: safe and perhaps even reused for a future launch. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but at least two of them were attached
Speaker 1: to the exterior of the booster, and presumably those are
Speaker 1: shot at this point. This is a good reminder that
Speaker 1: space is hard y'all. I mean, there's a reason we
Speaker 1: refer to stuff as it ain't rocket science when we're
Speaker 1: talking about degrees of difficulty, because rocket science is right
Speaker 1: up there with brain surgery. The Wall Street Journal reports
Speaker 1: that research documents from inside Meta indicate that the company's
Speaker 1: push to mimic TikTok have not met with much success.
Speaker 1: So while back Meta introduced reels on Instagram, and these
Speaker 1: are short form videos and are a pretty obvious attempt
Speaker 1: to imitate TikTok's format. And it's no secret that Meta
Speaker 1: viewsed TikTok as the competition, particularly when it comes to
Speaker 1: attracting younger users. Now, when faced with resistance, Meta typically
Speaker 1: does one of two things. It will either buy up
Speaker 1: whatever company was competing with it for user attention. This
Speaker 1: is actually what happened with Instagram back in the day.
Speaker 1: Meta back then just Facebook purchased Instagram, partly because Instagram
Speaker 1: was succeeding in gaining user eyeballs, which meant that fewer
Speaker 1: people were looking at Facebook. So then Facebook bought Instagram.
Speaker 1: The other thing it will try to do if it
Speaker 1: can't buy its competition is it will try to make
Speaker 1: its own version of whatever is pulling people's eyeballs away
Speaker 1: from meta platforms like Facebook or the aforementioned Instagram, and
Speaker 1: I think pretty much everyone sees right through these efforts.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone is fooled by this, but it
Speaker 1: looks like, despite Meta's push of the reels project, the
Speaker 1: short video format is not taking off on meta platforms.
Speaker 1: The documents indicate that a lot of these reels videos
Speaker 1: lack any significant engagement, and that people were spending one
Speaker 1: tenth the amount of time looking at and engaging with
Speaker 1: reels as the typical TikTok user spends on TikTok one
Speaker 1: tenth the time, and also that influencers haven't really embraced
Speaker 1: reels to the extent that Meta was hoping and you know,
Speaker 1: needing for it to make an impact. Plus, Meta has
Speaker 1: been integrating reels into both Instagram and Facebook more intrusively
Speaker 1: in an effort to kind of force the format to
Speaker 1: take hold, and users have not reacted positively. A lot
Speaker 1: of people have complained that reels are taking up too
Speaker 1: much of their feeds, both on Instagram and on Facebook.
Speaker 1: And finally, a ton of the stuff posted on reels
Speaker 1: obviously was created for other platforms first then ported over
Speaker 1: to Reels, which is prompting some users to just go
Speaker 1: to the source of the original video, most frequently TikTok. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Meta is clearly aware of all this, as the documents show.
Speaker 1: Representatives claimed that the information that the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: reported on is out of date and that reels is
Speaker 1: doing quite well, thank you very much. In any way,
Speaker 1: even if it's not doing well, it's it's doing better
Speaker 1: and it's getting better all the time. So thank you
Speaker 1: for your interest. But we're fine here, We're all fine.
Speaker 1: I might be paraphrasing and editorializing more than just a
Speaker 1: little with my interpretation of the response to this report,
Speaker 1: but it will be interesting to see how that adjusts
Speaker 1: its strategy at all going forward regarding Reels and the
Speaker 1: threat of TikTok. Meta has also spun off its pie
Speaker 1: Torch project into a new organization called the pie Torch Foundation,
Speaker 1: which will operate independently of Meta itself and as part
Speaker 1: of the nonprofit Lennox Foundation. So you might wonder what
Speaker 1: the heck is pie Torch. Well, the name comes from
Speaker 1: the programming language Python and languages Torch library. That library
Speaker 1: is mostly focused on machine learning processes and to get
Speaker 1: into all of this would get really technical and just
Speaker 1: full disclosure, I would need to read up on a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff just to have a decent grasp about
Speaker 1: it so that I could communicate it properly. So I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna go super high level in this news item
Speaker 1: in an effort not to present misinformation. But high Torch
Speaker 1: serves as a kind of scaffolding for machine learning projects,
Speaker 1: and it frees up engineers and computer scientists to focus
Speaker 1: on specific implementations rather than having to reinvent the basic
Speaker 1: tools of machine learning for every application. I think of
Speaker 1: it kind of as similar to creating a game engine
Speaker 1: that can serve as sort of the core uh engine
Speaker 1: of lots of different video games, each of which have
Speaker 1: very different styles of play and stories and all that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And there's some pretty famous product still
Speaker 1: there that make use of the PyTorch frameworks, such as
Speaker 1: Testla's autopilot system, But really it's a framework that's applicable
Speaker 1: to all sorts of machine learning implementations. And the new
Speaker 1: governing board for PyTorch will still include reps from Meta,
Speaker 1: but it's also going to include reps from companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon,
Speaker 1: and in Video, among others. So the whole idea here
Speaker 1: is to create more separation between Pyetorch and Meta in
Speaker 1: order to avoid any conflicts of interest that could otherwise
Speaker 1: arise if Meta were still sort of the steward of
Speaker 1: this project. And that all makes sense to me. I'll
Speaker 1: try to research PyTorch some more in order to do
Speaker 1: a full episode about it in the future, but that
Speaker 1: might take a while because this is seriously technical stuff,
Speaker 1: particularly for someone who does not have a background in programming.
Speaker 1: All right, we've got more stories to come, but first
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. We're act. Fast Company reports
Speaker 1: that a survey created by a team and mass Challenge
Speaker 1: reached out to more than five tech leaders across the space,
Speaker 1: you know, from startups to established companies, in order to
Speaker 1: get a grip on where industry leadership is headed as
Speaker 1: a whole. And it's not all great news, tech folks.
Speaker 1: It looks like a lot of those tech leaders really
Speaker 1: want to follow the examples made by companies like Apple
Speaker 1: and push for a return to the office. Now, that's
Speaker 1: a pretty tough sell to employees who have proven that
Speaker 1: they can be productive while working remotely and who show
Speaker 1: a distinct reluctance being pushed back into office environments, pointing
Speaker 1: out lots of issues with that, including the fact that
Speaker 1: without that requirement, they can work from wherever they live
Speaker 1: and they don't have to live and say more expensive
Speaker 1: parts of the country where a company's HQ might be located,
Speaker 1: they don't have to deal with, you know, commuting back
Speaker 1: and forth. They don't and have to deal with added
Speaker 1: budgets for meals in expensive places. Uh, And that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of benefits to it, and that the
Speaker 1: company's benefit as well. But a lot of leaders are
Speaker 1: still pushing for returning to the office. Ah. Now I
Speaker 1: should add not all the tech leaders indicated that this
Speaker 1: was their plan. It's not like eight percent we're saying
Speaker 1: they wanted to do that. But according to the survey,
Speaker 1: the more established companies were more likely to say that
Speaker 1: they wanted to return to the office only. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's more than half, but it's not all of them obviously,
Speaker 1: But yeah, those were the companies that were more likely
Speaker 1: to say they want to go back to the office.
Speaker 1: If you take into account all the companies across all
Speaker 1: categories like including brand new startups, the percentage drops to
Speaker 1: of tech leaders saying they want to push to return
Speaker 1: to the office, so it seems like the younger startups
Speaker 1: are more inclined to allow for remote work. Further, the
Speaker 1: survey indicates that a lot of leaders see the economic
Speaker 1: whatever this is we're in, but it's definitely maybe not
Speaker 1: a recession, probably is likely going to help them out
Speaker 1: in this effort because with that kind of threat looming
Speaker 1: over employees heads. This, this threat of economic recession, folks
Speaker 1: might be less likely to put up a fuss about
Speaker 1: coming back into the office. So, in other words, it's
Speaker 1: easier to coerce employees when they're scared that they could
Speaker 1: be put out of a job in a tough job market. However,
Speaker 1: the survey also found that it's not actually that tough
Speaker 1: of a job market for tech employees. Yes, the larger
Speaker 1: companies like Apple, Meta, Google, and more are cutting way
Speaker 1: back on expenses, which includes cutting back on hiring and
Speaker 1: in some cases even holding layoffs, but across the industry
Speaker 1: as a whole, that's not necessarily the case. Many companies
Speaker 1: are actively hiring because they have experienced massive talent loss
Speaker 1: in the wake of the Great Resignation, which is still
Speaker 1: an ongoing thing. So it may be that high profile
Speaker 1: companies are scaling back, but lots of other tech companies
Speaker 1: are not, and so it may turn out that leaders
Speaker 1: who are hoping to kind of lean on the economic
Speaker 1: hard times as a way to you know, influence employees
Speaker 1: might see that plan backfire on them. Also, you because
Speaker 1: discussing power dynamics in the workplace, particularly when it's contextualized
Speaker 1: as how bosses can exert more control on their underlings,
Speaker 1: is just playing gross. Anyway, the survey had some interesting
Speaker 1: things to say, and I recommend seeking it out to
Speaker 1: get an idea of what tech leaders are thinking. Currently.
Speaker 1: Google has shelved its pixel Book product line. The company
Speaker 1: had a team working on the next generation of the
Speaker 1: pixel Book, which is a Chrome Os powered laptop, but
Speaker 1: now Google has dissolved that team and reassigned everyone too
Speaker 1: different projects. Google, it appears, is getting out of the
Speaker 1: laptop business now. I am not surprised by this. Hardware
Speaker 1: is a pretty competitive field, and besides, always felt like
Speaker 1: Google was really only into hardware because it was a
Speaker 1: way to convince other hardware manufacturers to produce products that
Speaker 1: work with Google and offer laptops and other devices that
Speaker 1: run on Google's operating systems like Android and Chromos, like
Speaker 1: you know, Google was pulling out all the stops to
Speaker 1: offer sleek hardware in order to convince these companies to
Speaker 1: join the club. And at that point, Google could then
Speaker 1: extricate itself from the hardware business and really just focus
Speaker 1: on providing the operating systems and software back end stuff.
Speaker 1: So this move does not come as a huge surprise
Speaker 1: to me, particularly in an era where Google is one
Speaker 1: of those big companies looking to cut expenses and move
Speaker 1: away from parts of the business that aren't as profitable
Speaker 1: as others. Now, that's a shame that the next pixel
Speaker 1: Book will likely never see the light of day. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure it must have been pretty close to being
Speaker 1: ready for the market because they were supposed to debut
Speaker 1: next year. But I'm glad to hear that the folks
Speaker 1: working on pixel Book weren't like booted from Google and
Speaker 1: instead of going to work on other projects. A related
Speaker 1: Google story, or at least related to Google, is Loon.
Speaker 1: That's the project that had its start in Google's top
Speaker 1: secret X division, which the company uses to pursue moonshot
Speaker 1: R and D efforts, and Loon spun off from Google. Really,
Speaker 1: you know, from Google's parents, Shell company Alphabet to become
Speaker 1: its own company, and the goal of Loon was to
Speaker 1: provide Internet connectivity via high flying balloons outfited with a
Speaker 1: sort of mesh network, and to beam that connectivity back
Speaker 1: to the ground so that really remote locations such as
Speaker 1: isolated communities in Africa, for example, would still have Internet connectivity.
Speaker 1: These are places that are in such locations that it
Speaker 1: would be very difficult to lay out physical wire like
Speaker 1: physical cable to reach, so this was seen as a
Speaker 1: potential alternative to that. However, it ultimately didn't work out
Speaker 1: as a viable business and Loon ultimately shut down and
Speaker 1: Alphabet has then moved the assets of Loon to a
Speaker 1: startup called Aleria. So does that mean that loons balloons
Speaker 1: are going to return. Well, According to the Verge, no,
Speaker 1: Allria is looking to solve Internet connectivity issues, but instead
Speaker 1: of using high altitude balloons, Allria is using laser beams
Speaker 1: shot through the air for real, y'all. So the concept
Speaker 1: is to have base stations and endpoints and the laser
Speaker 1: beams will carry information back and forth. So you've got
Speaker 1: your freaking laser beams carrying info. Now you might wonder
Speaker 1: what the heck does a company that's going to be
Speaker 1: using laser beams need with loons old assets. One of
Speaker 1: the tools that the Loon project used is called space time,
Speaker 1: and not the community space time, it's a different space time.
Speaker 1: But this tool would predict where loon balloons would shift
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere in order to balance you know, loads,
Speaker 1: network loads, so that connectivity wouldn't be compromised. So this
Speaker 1: was a very complicated predictive software model, and Aliria is
Speaker 1: looking to use that same model to help predict things
Speaker 1: like when a base station would need to hand off
Speaker 1: connectivity too, something that's in a dynamic situation, like a
Speaker 1: plane that's flying overhead and you know how to predict
Speaker 1: where that plane is going to go, or a boat
Speaker 1: traveling through the water, that kind of stuff. That's the
Speaker 1: sort of application that this tool might be put toward
Speaker 1: in order to maintain connectivity. It's pretty nifty. Okay, We've
Speaker 1: got a few more stories to go before we get
Speaker 1: to those. Let's take another quick break. We're back now.
Speaker 1: You may have seen some recent news about China installing
Speaker 1: a test stretch of conductor rail technology along one amounts
Speaker 1: to a little less than five miles of highway seven
Speaker 1: point eight kilometers to be more precise, and then testing
Speaker 1: mag lev cars on this lane of traffic. And you
Speaker 1: might wonder what the heck all of this is about,
Speaker 1: And a lot of it is about China taking sometimes
Speaker 1: drastically impractical approaches towards solving traffic issues. Well, anyway, let's
Speaker 1: let's get to this specific implementation. So maglev stands for
Speaker 1: magnetic levitation in case you're not familiar, and this tech
Speaker 1: is well understood, it's not like this is breakthrough technology.
Speaker 1: They didn't build a hover car that could work on
Speaker 1: any platform. This is a specific use case where you know,
Speaker 1: we've got mag lev train systems in operation today in
Speaker 1: various parts of the world. It's not like this is,
Speaker 1: you know, brand new. But the basic idea is that
Speaker 1: you use the physical fact that if you have two
Speaker 1: magnets and you bring the north poles of each of
Speaker 1: those magnets closer together, you'll feel them repel each other
Speaker 1: to the point where if you take your hand off one,
Speaker 1: it will get pushed away by these magnetic fields like
Speaker 1: repels like in other words, So if you have an
Speaker 1: array of magnets, whether they're permanent or electro magnet and
Speaker 1: in a track and a different array of magnets in
Speaker 1: a vehicle, and you've arranged it so that the same
Speaker 1: poles of the magnets face one another, so the north
Speaker 1: poles face each other, for example. Then what you'll get
Speaker 1: as a vehicle that will float over the surface of
Speaker 1: the track itself because the magnetic fields are repelling one another.
Speaker 1: Then using something like a linear motor, you can create
Speaker 1: propulsion and send this vehicle flying down the track, like
Speaker 1: literally flying in this case, or at least levitating, and
Speaker 1: that means you have reduced resistance, like you have reduced friction,
Speaker 1: so you can have a much faster moving vehicle. And um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's perfectly promulent technology. Now, normally we are talking
Speaker 1: about like a railroad track kind of thing where there's
Speaker 1: a guided track, but in this case, we're talking about
Speaker 1: lane on a highway that's acting kind of like a track,
Speaker 1: and a car that has been retrofitted with magnets. So
Speaker 1: this wasn't a car specifically built for this purpose, but
Speaker 1: rather had been retrofitted with magnets so that it could
Speaker 1: levitate over this this lane of of highway. And there
Speaker 1: are videos of cars driving onto this stretch of road
Speaker 1: and then kind of lifting off a few inches. The
Speaker 1: liftoff isn't a very smooth motion in the videos, which
Speaker 1: is kind of scary, and they float. It looks kind
Speaker 1: of like an unsteady live in my view. I mean,
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, but the video I saw it
Speaker 1: did not look super smooth. But then they could come
Speaker 1: back down on their wheels and continue this way. And
Speaker 1: why would you do this? Well, for one thing, with
Speaker 1: a computer controlled highway system, you could propel vehicles well
Speaker 1: beyond their normal top speeds, drastically reducing travel times. Now,
Speaker 1: you'd have to be really careful with that system so
Speaker 1: as not to accelerate a vehicle too quickly and then
Speaker 1: hurt people who are insite it. And also the stopping
Speaker 1: is really important. You can't stop them too fast because
Speaker 1: all that momentum will transfer to the passengers inside the car.
Speaker 1: And if you're going at a top speed of like
Speaker 1: a hundred forty miles per hour and you come to
Speaker 1: a sudden stop, the people in that car will still
Speaker 1: be moving forward at a hundred forty miles per hour,
Speaker 1: and even if they're you know, safety strapped in, that's
Speaker 1: gonna hurt. Like it could be kept strophic, so all
Speaker 1: this has to be handled very carefully and in a
Speaker 1: controlled environment. You also, like, wouldn't want a car to
Speaker 1: be traveling a hundred forty miles per hour down this
Speaker 1: maglev track and then come to the end of the
Speaker 1: track and touch down on its wheels and go from
Speaker 1: a hundred forty miles per hour to rapidly decelerating while
Speaker 1: it's on its wheels. You can easily lose control in
Speaker 1: that situation, so there are a lot of safety concerns here. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't think this is a very viable way to
Speaker 1: transport people quickly. Um. I think you would have to
Speaker 1: have an intelligent highway system in there, and as I
Speaker 1: talked about in a recent tech Stuff episode, those are
Speaker 1: complicated and not necessarily practical. I think it makes way
Speaker 1: more sense to build out more trains rather than try
Speaker 1: to outfit highways with like floating lanes. But we'll see.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll be proven wrong, But UM yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't see this as being a very effective way
Speaker 1: to move of people more quickly from point to point.
Speaker 1: It's flashy, but I mean it's no back to the
Speaker 1: future too, And uh yeah, I think it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll be proven wrong. I would like to be
Speaker 1: proven wrong. So here's hoping that any future developments are
Speaker 1: safe and effective. Over in the video game world, the
Speaker 1: few fans of the game Babylon's Fall have received some
Speaker 1: bad news. This title launched about half a year ago,
Speaker 1: and it's an online RPG dungeon crawling type of title,
Speaker 1: so as a persistent online factor in it, and the
Speaker 1: game got terrible reviews when it first came out. The
Speaker 1: player population dropped pretty drastically after launch. Not very many
Speaker 1: people are actively playing it at any given time, and
Speaker 1: because it is an online game and that requires ongoing
Speaker 1: support from Square Knicks and Platinum Games, the powers that
Speaker 1: be determined that it makes very little sense to pour
Speaker 1: resources into supporting a game that has so few players
Speaker 1: in it. So in another six months, so a year
Speaker 1: after the game launched, the game's gonna get shut down.
Speaker 1: And Babylon's Fall was another attempt at creating a games
Speaker 1: as a service title in which you make money, not
Speaker 1: just from the initial sale of the title, though I
Speaker 1: will add Babylon's Fall was a full price game. It
Speaker 1: was like sixty dollars at launch, but then also through
Speaker 1: generating revenue through ongoing in game purchases, and we've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of games attempt to do this with varying
Speaker 1: degrees of success. Some titles, like Grand Theft Auto Online,
Speaker 1: have proven to be incredibly profitable, Others, like Babylon's Fall,
Speaker 1: The game comes out feeling like it's an incomplete game
Speaker 1: and that maybe you need to pay more money in
Speaker 1: order to access the fun bits of the game. That
Speaker 1: is not a great strategy. People object to that right
Speaker 1: the idea of oh, I bought this game, but it's
Speaker 1: only fun if I even more money. That not a
Speaker 1: good not a good look anyway. While it seems most
Speaker 1: players either bounced off Babylon's Fall ages ago or they
Speaker 1: never picked up the title to start, the remaining players
Speaker 1: on the game are gonna have to resign themselves too soon,
Speaker 1: having an inert title in their library that they cannot
Speaker 1: play once support ends. That's one of the big downsides
Speaker 1: of having games that rely in part or in the
Speaker 1: hole on ongoing online connectivity with a publisher or a developer,
Speaker 1: because you might not be done playing the game, but
Speaker 1: if they're done supporting it it won't matter. Then you
Speaker 1: won't really have any options. Finally, Nintendo held one of
Speaker 1: its Nintendo Direct Events this morning, and I have a
Speaker 1: few tidbits I can share because putting this episode took
Speaker 1: longer than I anticipated, and the actual Nintendo Direct event
Speaker 1: happened while I was still writing the episode, so I
Speaker 1: can talk about some of the stuff they announced. They
Speaker 1: revealed that the next game in the Legend of Zelda series,
Speaker 1: the follow up to Breath of the Wild, finally has
Speaker 1: a title. It is going to be called The Legend
Speaker 1: of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, and it debuts on
Speaker 1: the Switch in May of twenty three. There's a new
Speaker 1: Pickman game coming to the Switch, Pickman four. We're getting
Speaker 1: a sequel to the game Octopath Traveler, which is a
Speaker 1: two D RPG that gamers really liked that will come
Speaker 1: out on February. Uh. The original Octopath Traveler was set
Speaker 1: in kind of a fantasy medieval setting. This one looks
Speaker 1: like they've advanced the timeline a bit and it has
Speaker 1: a steam punk spin on the aesthetic, so it'll be
Speaker 1: interesting to see like how much time has supposedly passed
Speaker 1: between the two games. Phoenix Labs is bringing us a
Speaker 1: game called Faith Farm that's f a e and that
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of Star Do Valley. The gameplay elements,
Speaker 1: the actual aesthetic, and the the three D world isn't
Speaker 1: a different presentation than Star Do Valley, but the activities
Speaker 1: of the game, like you you get to do stuff
Speaker 1: like farm crops and go fishing and collect resources. It
Speaker 1: looks very Star Do Valley to me. It also has
Speaker 1: multiplayer coop as well. Looks pretty cute. I think it's
Speaker 1: the kind of game that I would like to zin
Speaker 1: out to. I still play Star New Valley to this day.
Speaker 1: It is like one of my go to games when
Speaker 1: I want to kind of relax and just do crazy
Speaker 1: maximized efficient setups for my farm like character has more
Speaker 1: than twenty million dollars at this point. I don't even
Speaker 1: know why I keep playing, other than I do find
Speaker 1: it relaxing anyway. Other announcements Nintendo made is that there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a new Fire Emblement game. They're gonna be
Speaker 1: some updates to Platoon three already, which is pretty exciting,
Speaker 1: including an in game event that's going to span from
Speaker 1: September through September, and that there is an upcoming port
Speaker 1: of the beloved James Bond themed in sixty four classic
Speaker 1: title Golden I double O seven. It will include online multiplayer. Uh,
Speaker 1: this title is one of those that I absolutely loved
Speaker 1: in the olden sixty four days, and it's coming both
Speaker 1: to the Switch and to the Xbox family of consoles
Speaker 1: through Game Pass. And now I just need a port
Speaker 1: of the classic wrestling games that were on the N
Speaker 1: sixty four because I maintain that the N sixty four
Speaker 1: wrestling titles were some of the best pro wrestling titles
Speaker 1: on any console ever. Gosh darn it. Yeah, the graphic
Speaker 1: fidelity can't even hold a candle to the stuff that
Speaker 1: came out the following generation, let alone what we can
Speaker 1: do today. But the game play and the depth of
Speaker 1: your your character creation system and all the different moves
Speaker 1: that you could use to to kit out your character,
Speaker 1: that has never been equaled, in my opinion, since the
Speaker 1: N sixty four days. But hey, if you know a
Speaker 1: truly amazing, entertaining video game wrestling title, shout it out
Speaker 1: to me, because I really like those games, and I've
Speaker 1: been kind of disappointed with a lot of the titles
Speaker 1: I've played in the last few years. But that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's beside the point. If you want to reach out
Speaker 1: to me for any reason, whether it's to give me
Speaker 1: suggestions for wrestling games or topics for future tech Stuff episodes.
Speaker 1: There are a couple of different ways to do it.
Speaker 1: One is to download the I Heart Radio app. It
Speaker 1: is free to download and use. Just navigate over to
Speaker 1: the tech Stuff part of the app and use the
Speaker 1: little microphone icon. You can record a voice message up
Speaker 1: to thirty seconds in linked for me, or you can
Speaker 1: reach out on Twitter. The handle for the show is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff HSW and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an i heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.