Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 02/21 – Microsoft Swears To Play Nice With Call Of Duty

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

Microsoft tries again to convince people it won’t hoard Call of Duty as an Xbox exclusive. Linux now plays nice with Apple Silicon. Chrome swears it will play nicer with your battery life. Verified everything is officially now a trend. And does Apple have a strangle hold on Gen Z? Links: Microsoft inks binding contract with Nintendo for ‘Call of Duty’ as it defends Activision deal (GeekWire) Linux 6.2: The first mainstream Linux kernel for Apple M1 chips arrives (ZDNet) Google Chrome rolls out long awaited battery saving features (AndroidPolice) Facebook and Instagram are testing selling you blue checks for $12 a month (The Verge) Official: Twitter will now charge for SMS two-factor authentication (The Verge) Almost-unbeatable AI comes to Gran Turismo 7 (ArsTechnica) How Apple captured Gen Z in the US — and changed their social circles (Financial Times) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme right home for Tuesday, February 21st, 20203. I'm Brian McCullough today. Microsoft tries again to convince people it won't hoard Call of Duty as an Xbox exclusive. Linux now plays nice with Apple Silicon. Chrome swears. It'll play nicer with your battery life. Verified everything is officially now a trend. And does Apple have a stranglehold on Gen Z? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Looks like they're still trying to push this one over the line. Microsoft President Brad Smith, says the company signed a binding 10-year contract to bring Call of Duty games to Nintendo consoles on the same day as Xbox. Quoting Geekwire.

Microsoft President Brad Smith tweeted late Monday that the agreement first announced in December is now binding, quote, this is just part of our commitment to bring Xbox games and Activision titles like Call of Duty to more players on more platforms. Smith said in his tweet, Call of Duty will be available to Nintendo players on the same day as Xbox games, quote, with full feature and content parity, according to Microsoft's statement. The deal is part of Microsoft's effort to help convince regulators to approve the acquisition of Activision. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is attempting to block the deal, and Microsoft

is facing similar headwinds in Europe. Reuters reported that Smith and other executives will speak to EU antitrust regulators at a closed hearing this week about the deal. Microsoft laid out its case against the FTC in December, describing itself as, quote, the third place manufacturer of gaming consoles, end quote, and its acquisition target as, quote, one of the many publishers of popular games, end quote. In opposition to the acquisition, PlayStation maker Sony has expressed concern that Microsoft might make future Call of Duty games and other big Activision titles exclusive to Microsoft Xbox. The deal was first announced more than a year ago. It would be the largest acquisition in the Redmond Company's history, eclipsing its $26 billion purchase of

LinkedIn in 2017, end quote. Linus Torvalds has released Linux. 6.2, the first mainstream Linux kernel to support Apple's M1 ships, which is expected to become Ubuntu's 23.04 default kernel, quoting ZDNet. Linux 6.2 was released yesterday, and Linus Torvalds described the latest Linux kernel release as, quote, maybe it's not a sexy LTS release like 6.1 ended up being, but all those regular pedestrian kernels want some Tesla of 2, end quote. For once, I disagree with Torvalds by adding upstream support for the Apple M1 M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra Chips. Newer Mac owners can look forward to running Linux on their M1 powered machines. And for techies, that's sexy. Getting Linux to run on the M1 family wasn't

easy when those high-powered arm chips first arrived. Torvalds told me in an exclusive interview that he'd like to run Linux on these next generation Macs. But while he'd been, quote, waiting for an arm laptop that can run Linux for a long time, he worried, saying, quote, the main problem with the M1 for me is the GPU and other devices around it because that's likely what would hold me off using it, because it wouldn't have any Linux support unless Apple opens up, end quote. Fortunately, Asahi Linux with brilliant software engineer Alyssa Rosenzweig was up to the challenge. By July 31st, 2022, Torvalds was pleased to announce that after, quote, waiting for a long time, Linux on Arm and the M1 in specific was finally reality thanks to the Asahi team.

We've had Arm 64 hardware around running Linux for a long time, but none of it has really been usable as a development platform until now, end quote. Today, this support is finally ready for mainline Linux users. Of course, it's all experimental at this point, but it won't be for much longer. Linux 6.2 is expected to become Ubuntu 23.04's default kernel, and to be included in Fedora 38, before the late 8. April release of Linux 6.3. In addition, the Linux 6.2 kernel includes numerous features with contributions from companies such as Intel, AMD, Google, and Red Hat. Notable additions

include stable support for Intel Arc graphics, enabled out-of-the-box, and initial support for Nvidia-GForce RTFRTX-30 series Ampere accelerated graphics with Nouveau open-source code. The Linux 6.2 kernel also includes updated drivers. This includes support for Sony Dual Shock 4 game pads, sensors and fans in the 1X player gaming handheld, Hibana Labs Gaudy 2 AI Accelerator, and ASIS motherboards. This new kernel also includes call depth tracking to help improve performance on older Intel Skylake era PCs, along with various file system driver enhancements and security improvements. In addition to new hardware support, the NTFS3 file kernel driver has also been improved and updated with new mount options, end quote.

Google has updated Chrome for Windows, MacOS, and ChromeOS with new memory saver and energy saver features that are on now by default, quoting Android police. If you miss the original announcement in December, Chrome's new memory saver feature optimizes resource utilization by prioritizing active tabs and other applications. Inactive tabs are snoozed and relinquished to the background but remain visible in the tab strip, and you can revisit an inactive tab to reload it and check the Omnibonibon. notification to see how much RAM memory saver has been freed for other tasks. Energy Saver is relatively similar, but works to reduce Chrome's battery consumption on notebooks and Chromebooks. You can configure Energy Saver to start as soon as your battery level drops below 20%. When active, you'll see a leaf icon beside the Omnibox and a lack of heavy visual effects. Google explains it achieves these battery savings by disabling smooth scrolling and website animations,

all while reducing video frame rates. Starting with the Chrome 110 stable channel release on Chromebooks, Windows, and Mac. The new Memory Saver and Energy Saver features are turned on by default. Of course, you can always turn off these features or limit their operation as easy as white listing websites from Memory Saver, so it does not snooze them. Chrome also allows auto-enabling Energy Saver as soon as the charger is unplugged to maximize efficiency. Settings for Memory Saver and Energy Saver are available in the Performance tab of Chrome settings. For obvious reasons, Energy Saver doesn't seem to be showing up on desktops. However, if you've updated to Chrome 110 but aren't seeing the new toggles, you may need to enable the following flags by typing them into the

Omnibox and setting them to enabled, end quote. Catching you up now on a couple of things we missed over the long weekend. First up being meta-announced, meta-verified, offering a blue badge. Also, impersonation protection and customer support for $12 per month on the web or $15 per month on iOS. Quoting the verge. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that a meta-verified account will grant users a verified badge, increased visibility on the platforms, prioritize customer support, and more.

The feature is rolling out to Australia and New Zealand this week and will arrive in more countries soon. This week, we're starting to roll out meta-verified, a subscription service that lets you verify your account with a government ID, get a blue badge, get extra impersonation protection against accounts claiming to be you, and get direct access to customer support, Zuckerberg writes. This new feature is about increasing authenticity and security across our services, end quote. In order to sign up to become meta-verified, you need to meet minimum activity requirements, be at least 18 years of age or older, and submit a government ID that matches the name and photo you have on Facebook or Instagram. The new offering sounds a lot like Elon Musk's $8 per month version of Twitter Blue, but meta-notes that it won't make any changes to accounts that have been verified using the company's previous requirements, including notability and authenticity. Additionally, users who sign up for the service will get exclusive stickers for stories and reels, and will also receive.

100 free stars per month, or the digital currency you can use to tip creators on Facebook. Meta notes that businesses can't yet apply for meta-verified badges and that you can't change your profile name, username, birthday, or profile photo without going through the verification process all over again. When the service launches in Australia and New Zealand this week, it'll cost 1999 Australian on the web and 2499 Australian on mobile or 2399 New Zealand on the web and 2999 New Zealand on mobile. The higher cost on iOS and Android is likely a way to offset the commission both Apple and Google take on in-app purchases, end quote. And yes, Twitter announced that only Twitter blue subscribers will be able to use SMS-based two-factor authentication after March 20th. All users can still use an authenticator app or a physical security key, quoting the verge.

Now it's official. You have to pay for the privilege of using Twitter's worst form of authentication. In fact, if you don't start paying for Twitter Blue at $8 a month on Android, $11 a month on iOS, or switch your account to use a far more reliable authenticator app or physical security key, Twitter will simply turn off your two-factor authentication after March 20th. Good riddance to SMS is my feeling, given how common sim swap hacks are these days. Heck, Twitter's own Jack Dorsey was successfully targeted by the technique four years ago. You don't want someone to get access to your account by proving they are you simply because they've stolen your phone number. That's how Twitter is trying to justify this change, too, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's a simpler reason. It costs money to send SMS messages, and Twitter does not have a lot of money right now. The company had been phasing out SMS even before Elon Musk took over, end quote. And indeed, subsequent tweets from Elon over the weekend about being held ransom to the telecos to the tune of $60 million a year probably bears out the suspicion that somebody saw the Twilio bill and was like not paying that. Though Twitter's own data shows only 2.6% of Twitter users had two-factor authentication turned on.

74% of those who had it turned on were using SMS as their authentication method. I too got the notification that I had to turn two-factor authentication off this weekend, but when I tried to tap through to turn it off, it spun and spun, and then the app crashed. So if I'm locked out of my Twitter account soon, you'll know why. I tried to do what you wanted, Elon, but I was unable. Back to the AI beat, Sony has rolled out its GT Sophie AI to Grand Tresmo 7, an experiment announced back in February 22, letting players race against Sophie in Grand Theft's Sophie Race, together mode, quoting Ars Technica.

Last year, Sony AI and Polyphony Digital, the developers of Graeme, Grand Tresmo developed a new AI agent that is able to race at a world-class level. At the time, the experiment was described in a paper in nature where the researchers showed that this AI was not only capable of driving very fast, something other AIs have done in the past, but also learned tactics, strategy, and even racing etiquette. At the time, G.T. Sophie, the name for the AI, wasn't quite ready for prime time. For example, it often passed opponents at the earliest opportunity on a straight, allowing itself to be overtaken in the next breaking zone. And, unless, like human players, G.T. Sophie would try to overtake players with impending time penalties. Humans would

just wait for that penalized car to slow and gain the place. But in the intervening year, Sony AI and Polyfoney Digital have been working on G.T. Sophie and tomorrow, G.T. Sophie rolls out to Grand Tresmo 7 as part of Update 1.29, at least for a limited time. Until the end of March, players can try their skills against Sophie in the G.T. Sophie Race Together mode in a series of races with increasing difficulty levels. There's also a one-versus-one match where you can race Sophie in identical cars so you can see how much slower you are than the AI. Unlike the conventional built-in AI, G.T. Sophie drives with continuity in a large variety of situations, which allows users to enjoy the excitement of a close battle as if they are playing against a professional racing driver.

This is an important evolution even from the standpoint of racing game history. We will continue to evolve G.T. Sophie to realize our concept of race together, where, we envision providing a fun opponent for players to race against and learn from. A Sony representative said, although this version of Sophie will be time limited in the game, it won't be the last we see of the AI. Sony says it will collect feedback on this initial feature and use that to improve the AI for future updates, end quote. And finally today, I always find data points like this interesting. The Financial Times has a look at Apple's smartphone dominance among Gen Z, who make up an estimated 34% of all U.S. iPhone owners as Samsung and Android struggle against iMessage lock-in.

Quote, Apple has captured Gen Z in the U.S. so thoroughly that younger consumers fear being socially ostracized for not having an iPhone, a trend that will allow the tech giant to gain market share across multiple product categories. Gen Z users, those born after 1996, make up 34% of all iPhone owners in the U.S. versus 10% for Samsung, according to new data from Attain, and ad tech data platform. The figure helps to explain how the iPhone grew its overall market share of actual phone usage from 35% in 2019 to 50% last year, according to Counterpoint, enabling Apple to grow its profits even as the broader market stagnates. The tech giants hold on younger consumers marks a significant change, as market research has shown that for older generations of Americans,

there is a relatively even split between owners of devices running Android, Google's software for mobiles and iOS. Shannon Cross, analysts at Credit Suisse, said the ramifications of these shifting tastes extended well beyond smartphones as iPhone users were more likely to purchase MacBooks, Apple watches, and AirPods. The strength of the Apple ecosystem creates a moat that is really fairly impenetrable by the competition, Cross said. It really makes it hard to change the trajectory. Apple is just going to continue to gain share over time, end quote. As Gen Z is the most online of any age group, spending up to six hours a day on their smartphones. The iPhone's dominance is shaping the social circles of young Americans, according to researchers who advise companies

on the preferences of Gen Z consumers. One oft-mentioned issue is that Android phones can't send text through Apple's iMessage system, meaning that a single Android user participating in a group chat of iPhone owners turns the outbound messages of all users green rather than blue. This is an indication that the chat has defaulted to the SMS standard rather than iMessage. It also means when iPhone users in the group send videos or photos, they are often smaller and more glitchy than would appear through iMessage. A green message. Anyone with an Android throws off the entire chat because now the whole thing has to be SMS, said Annalise Hillman, the 24-year-old chief executive of frontman, a men's grooming business. So the social pressure to get an iPhone is

pretty insane, she said. On TikTok, a trend called, he's a 10, but It went viral when random women were asked what a perfect guy's new rating would be once they found out he uses Android. Numerous respondents re-rate the guy at less than five or simply call it a deal breaker. Quote, if that bubble pops up green, I'm not responding, said one. The Gen Z preference for iPhone is more pronounced in the U.S. than elsewhere, but when Market Intelligence Group Canales did research in Western Europe, it found that 83% of Apple users under 25 years of age planned to keep using iPhone. The percentage of Android users of the same age who planned to stick with Android was less than half that.

Android has sought to address the issues created by Apple's refusal to open up its iMessage system. Last year, it ran a marketing campaign scolding Apple for not adopting rich communication services or RCS, a superior standard to SMS for rich media and attachments, end quote. I've been dodging construction happening outside my window all day. I had to rush to record when the crew outside was taking breaks. Hopefully I dodged the banging, but there might be a faint wine in the background, too. I apologize if you can hear that. Hey, quick hive mind question, too.

My wife got me an aura ring for my birthday, and I assumed it would give me more granular data than my Apple Watch does, but my experience thus far has been the opposite. The Apple Watch seems to be more accurate for both exercise and sleep tracking, and their presentation of the data in health just feels more useful. Ora fans, am I doing something wrong? Let me know before I send this thing back because I don't think it's worth paying the monthly subscription for the data if it's not useful to me. If I'm missing something, if I'm doing something wrong, let me know.

Talk to you tomorrow.