Hello, everybody. Welcome to Geek News Central episode
1,845.
We got a fun episode plan for you
guys today. We're gonna be talking about hashtag
scratch gate. We're talking about new AI updates
to Google
search. Let me talk about some gaming news
and some engineering news. Let's get right into
it. Starting off with hashtag
scratch gate. This is the latest scandal to
hit Apple. It's pretty similar to the hashtag
antenna gate prom that hit the iPhone four
in 2010
when Apple moved the antenna on that model.
Pretty much, it just has to do with
the,
iPhone 17 pro and iPhone 17 pro max
models.
Basically, the ones that are in a dark
shade, they were showing scratches while on display
inside Apple stores.
These demo units
should normally look pristine even after getting handled
by many potential iPhone buyers.
But Apple released a statement that was kinda
similar to antennagate's you're holding it wrong comment.
Apple said that what people were seeing on
the iPhone 17 pro and iPhone 17 Pro
Max units in the Apple Store were not
scratches.
They said your eyes are seeing it wrong.
The tech giant said that what looks suspiciously
like scratches were the result of material transferred
from the MagSafe risers used to display the
new handsets
inside Apple stores.
Obviously, Apple doesn't want potential iPhone buyers can
spooch by terrible looking blemishes that look like
scratches.
So changes are actually made to the,
iPhone units and how they're being displayed in
Apple stores.
So, yeah.
What are they doing?
Pretty much the charging stands used to hold
up demo iPhones in Apple stores will be
refitted in software protective material that won't scrape
the back of the phone every time the
device is taken off the stand
and returned to it. So the cone rings
will be added to prevent the aluminum used
to the iPhone 17 pro and iPhone 17
pro max from coming into contact with the
metal from the MagSafe stand.
Additionally,
Apple has updated the maintenance schedule for demo
iPhone models. The staff inside Apple stores have
been instructed to do a more thorough job
cleaning the demo iPhone models using a solution
that includes an ingredient with salt that helps
clean and clear with the dirt or residue
left by the MagSafe charging stands. With these
changes, the iPhone 17 Pro and the iPhone
17 Pro Max demos look great. And that's
exactly the way Apple wants them to look
in front of a store full of potential
customers.
Me personally, I don't get a new phone
every single year. I don't need it.
But, you know, I can see why this
would be a prom to new buyers or
people that are trying to upgrade or trade
in their iPhone 16 pro or iPhone 16
pro max.
Those are both made with titanium builds, and
I can see the appeal to buy one
of the new aluminum clad models.
For all you people that were interested in
iPhone 17 pro, let us know. Did that
worry you guys? Did you guys know about
the scandal? And if you guys did, did
it worry you? Were you guys, holding off
on buying the new, iPhone 17 because of
these these new scratches that were showing up
on the,
iPhone? Do you believe that it's from the
MagSafe chargers or do you believe it's not?
Let us know. In other phone news, this
one's pretty interesting. It's about Google's AI. So
Google's new live search,
pretty much in they changed they added new
features to use real time AI features.
So here's some things that you need to
know. Google's live search integrates real time AI
conversations
for enhanced user interaction.
Users can now share camera feeds to receive
instant answers and insights, and this is available
on Android and iOS since September 24. So
this is actually already available,
and this is gonna be bringing very
versatile assistance to all users.
Google announced that it's bringing project Azure's capabilities
to Google search, helping users get real time
answers with live search, within AI mode.
Pretty much think of it as an upgrade
to the current Google lens and Google's way
of pushing Gemini's
multimodal
capabilities onto more platforms.
And with live search, users can now have
a real time interactive conversation with Google search
in AI mode, much like speaking to an
AI chatbot or on Gemini life.
This feature allows user to share their iPhones
camera feed and they will have the ability
to respond to your questions in real time.
Since this feature is tied to AI mode,
it would also provide links for intensive research
as well. Google actually provided some example videos
and from what I got from it, it's
pretty much, you turn on your iPhone camera
or we go into Google AI camera,
and it's gonna show a live feed of
a camera. Anything in front of you,
like you hypothetically, right? You're trying to learn
how to cook something. You have all the
ingredients layout. You're gonna have your live camera
on. You're gonna like show all the ingredients
and you can only talk to the
the AI
and ask you questions, and it'll give you
real time answers and it'll literally talk about
you like how Siri does.
So it's pretty interesting. Maybe it's for all
you people that are learning how to cook
or need help with, car maintenance or anything
like that. It's really cool. I use Google
Lens a lot. It's very helpful. So I
could see how this will be a really
cool thing to use for all Google AI,
you know, users.
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Alright. Back to the show.
So in gaming news, we're gonna we're gonna
shift the topic a little bit because we
were talking about AI, so it will play
hand in hand. You guys are gonna kinda
understand what I'm talking about, but Xbox,
if you don't know yet, they are releasing
a handheld device called the Xbox Ally. I
was reading up on this,
pre order is now available
and something that was really interesting in this,
article about the Xbox ally is that they
have something called,
game copilot gaming copilot. It's a beta right
now, but it's pretty much a personal gaming
sidekick, and it's rolling out to our play
all players on PC
and mobile.
Long story short. Alright.
Gaming Copilot is essentially
an AI that's gonna help you with challenges,
boss fights, all that kind of stuff. Alright.
And I can honestly see this being kind
of a controversial topic
amongst the gaming community because it's kind of
a thing where,
you know, a lot of people take pride
in finding the achievements, beating bosses, and stuff
like that on their with their own hard
work and not the help of, you know,
others or now AI.
So I guess I can see this becoming
a a very interesting topic amongst
the in the gaming community and see how
the, seeing how this pans out. Me personally,
when I was younger, I played a lot
of video games.
And every time I had a hard time
and I really couldn't be the boss, I
went straight to YouTube and I got a
tutorial. I'm a be honest. K? Honestly, honesty
is the best policy.
I mean, straight up. When I had a
hard time, I just went straight to YouTube,
man. There was a bunch of campaigns and
tutorials on how to how to do what
I need to do. But it's it's really
cool that they have this gaming copilot thing
out now and,
can't wait to see how this works.
In terms of pricing, though, this gets interesting.
K? I wanna take a step back, to
the side at least and talk about the
Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch. Alright? Those both,
those are also handheld competitors
and they price range about about 400 to
$500
That's already a hefty number in itself.
Alright. That's crazy. And it's understandable.
Handheld gaming devices are very convenient, but it's
still a big number. Okay. When I had
my, when I bought my first Nintendo switch,
I spent, I think about $300 on it.
So to see how the price went up
is, is crazy. I think the first Nintendo
switch is now available at $200
So,
it's pretty much double for the new Nintendo
Switch two, and the Steam Deck is also
about $400. But honestly, I've heard nothing but
great things about the Steam Deck. And everyone
loves Nintendo Switch two. It's such a user
friendly they're both user friendly devices and,
it's for majority ages in my opinion.
Now with Xbox Ally, there are two versions,
Xbox Ally x and Xbox Ally. So Xbox
Ally is more for casual players.
Think of it as like, you know, kinda
like more on the Nintendo Switch side.
Alright?
It's starting at around $500, I believe.
It's crazy number to me, but that's not
even the crazy part. The Xbox Ally x,
that is starting at $999.
That is a hefty
number. Right? If you thought the 500 number
500 number was crazy, the $999
one is crazy. But this one apparently is
for more like,
you know,
for those true gamers.
Those true true gamers.
My main concern
is that when I play on the Nintendo
I know technology has advanced since then, the
first Nintendo Switch. But when I play on
Nintendo, when it came to high, like,
highly performance games, like, let's say, Hall of
Duty or
any game that, like,
that was really big on a regular console
and they try to put it to a
handheld, the quality would diminish big time. It
wouldn't be the same quality playing on actual
Xbox
or an actual PS four. It'd be really
different. So I'm really interested to see how
big games will perform on this new handheld
device that Xbox has made.
It could perform great and it could or
it could perform
very meh. Right? So something interesting to keep
an eye out for. One last really cool
thing about this is that they actually
have a cloud data system that is,
that you can save your games data to.
This is really cool to me. Fun story
time. I was visiting my dad one time
in Michigan. I was at Chicago Airport,
and I happened to take out my,
Nintendo Switch along the way to our next
gate because we I was trying to get
something from my bag. I ended up forgetting
to put my Nintendo Switch back into my
bag, and I lost an Nintendo Switch.
And I was devastated. K. It was Christmas
time the day before Christmas and pretty much
on the Nintendo switch. I play a lot
of you games at the time. Okay? So
don't come after me. I spent over, like,
a hundred hours on this one video game
called Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild.
I spent so much time. I beat all
the bosses. I got all the Easter eggs.
I got all the hidden costumes. It was
I I was set. Alright?
I lost that Nintendo Switch and I never
got that data back.
Alright? I got a new I got a
new Nintendo Switch that same Christmas. I used
my Christmas money I got from that Christmas,
and I bought a new Nintendo Switch. That's
how much I love my Nintendo Switch at
the time. But I was never able to
get my data back. I was able to
redown on the games because the system knew
I bought those games before because it's tied
to my account, but the data was gone.
So having this cloud thing would have been
perfect for me at the time because I
would have been able to save my data,
and I would have been able to continue
to play the game with happiness. But, you
know, I didn't wanna restart. I don't wanna
do all that again, so I just never
bothered.
But, yeah. If you ever wanna
transfer your play on a different device, it's
perfect.
It's gonna all your data is gonna be
stored in the cloud and yeah. Don't have
to worry about ever losing all your data
again.
Moving on to a little bit more gaming
news. It has to do with EA Sports.
If you know what EA Sports is, they
are the maker of video games like Madden
NFL,
Battlefield, The Sims, like FIFA, FIFA as well.
Yeah. Pretty much what happened was that
they may have made the largest ever private
equity,
buyout and it's valued at $55,000,000,000
Okay?
They're being acquired by an investor group including
Saudi Arabia Sovereign Wealth Fund in the largest
private equity funded buyout in history. I'm not
gonna go too crazy into the statistics,
but
the I think the one main thing that
a lot of people are wondering is that
could going private give EA more business advantages?
And yes, it is possible that this deal
could give EA more freedom in future development
and distribution of its games.
By going private,
EA will be able to retool operations without
worrying about shareholder interests or other market scrutiny.
And as a result, EA could get a
little bit more breathing room to do what
they wanna do.
And I think a big thing that I
noticed that in this article was that,
EA might be able to take their foot
off the gas from aggressive micro transaction strategies.
Okay? So when it comes to what I
what I what I take from that and
I'm hoping I'm right. When it comes to
EA, there's a lot of video with a
lot of video games, they have a lot
of pay to win content.
If that doesn't make, to to help you
understand what pay to win content is if
you don't understand what that is already,
EA has
a lot of games where
you can buy,
like, use real world money to buy in
game content to make yourself better than a
lot of players. K? And it's repriced at
a ridiculous amount.
Like, ridiculous. And getting this getting this in
game content is, like, game changing because, like,
you will exceed,
like, 10 times where you were before.
Like, you think you're doing good here?
Like, you if you think you're doing good
and you spent in game content, you're gonna
do 10 times better after that. It's it's
crazy.
So, yeah, it's it's pay to win con
they have a lot of pay to win
content. It's very controversial in the gaming community.
So, hopefully,
with this new,
EA going private, maybe they'll take their foot
off the gas and, you know, step back
a little bit. Maybe make sure make it
not so much,
not so pricey or not have so much
pay to win content
in their video games. Yeah.
Last piece of video game news. Alright. Bear
with me. I'm sorry. I know there's a
lot of video game news, but it's kinda
engineering. K? And it leads us into our
last topic. So it's an engineering
video game topic. It's it's it's a fun
topic for everybody to listen to listen into.
Alright. So pretty much there's this YouTuber. His
name is basically homeless. I I kinda watched
him growing up as a kid. He basically
makes, he engineers a bunch of machines and
he uses it to, like, play video games
or
make him,
be better at certain things. So pretty much
what he did
was that he made a robotic exoskeleton, and
it delivers six a 63% aim boost.
It's it's crazy.
It's crazy. Let me let let's talk about
it real quick. So this divine the device
combo combines AI vision, motors, and 30 printed
parts to guide his wrist and fingers
physically. Insane.
He wondered if robotic could push his performance
further, and the design included a motorized wrist
assist, a solenoid
finger clicky exoskeleton, and an AI vision system
for target detection. At first, the test didn't
go smoothly. Early run showed a 20% drop
in accuracy and as he struggled, he struggled
to let the system controls movements. But once
he adapted,
he recorded a small 3% gain over his
best score.
After he began optimizing the hardware, so an
NVIDIA Jetson board powered a custom YOLO computer
vision model.
His latency fell from fifty milliseconds to just
seventeen milliseconds, nearly instantaneous.
He boosted motor voltage, making the system stronger
and able to guide his arm even against
resistance.
Results quickly improved. K. So one run showed
a 12% boost boost. Then 28%,
43%,
and then finally,
a 63%
leap. K? And this is where it gets
even crazier.
This place
him in the second position on the Aim
Labs global leaderboard. Alright? So Aim Labs is
a basically like a kinda like a program
slash game that a lot of keyboard and
mouse video game players, like first person shooter
players go to practice their aim. Alright? Because
keyboard and mouse is like, it's tricky. Let
me tell you, it's hard. It's not the
same as playing on a controller. It's it
takes skill
and people go to this this thing called
Aim Lab. So there's there's millions of players
on Aim Labs every single day practicing their
aim.
And he got to second on the leaderboard
with this exoskeleton.
Right?
And you're wondering probably how this works.
So this device at just attaches to the
forearm with three d printed hinges,
Kevlar lines and gimbal motors control his wrist,
and while solenoids handle the finger clicks.
A high speed global shutter camera feeds data
to the AI system, and the computer identify
targets and instructs the motors to adjust the
hand in and wrist in real time.
The setup apps the setup acts like a
physical aim bot.
Unlike traditional cheats,
which are software based, this exoskeleton
alters real world arm movements. Alright? And competitive
tests show the system's precision. It allowed rapid
target acquisition and consistent aim assist.
The project for the lines between human skills
and machine
correction.
He did acknowledge that there is a learning
curve, but once he learned to relax his
wrist and let the motor take control, the
exoskeleton
performed as intended. And I believe this is
gonna be one of those big controversy things
because
different gamers have different opinions about aim assist
and in game hacks. And
most lean toward keeping competitive games as fair
as possible.
Alright? Because with most with most games nowadays,
they're able to pick up in game hacks
just like that. Right?
It takes one day to a week to
get someone banned on a game. But now,
since it's a physical thing and the software
couldn't really detect it, it's it's gonna change
the game a little bit with people that
really don't really wanna put in the work.
You know what I mean?
If that makes sense.
There's a lot of people that
struggle with video games, so I can see
how this become mean like, someone possibly
mass scaling this exoskeleton possibly in the future
and making it a thing. I don't know.
It it's something to definitely keep an eye
on, but at the end of the day,
it's really cool that this guy built an
exoskeleton
to improve his aim in a video game.
Alright?
Leading to our last piece of engineering news,
Australia, they made a new robot that 30
prints a home overnight.
And this could build lunar bases in one
day. Thought this was an interesting topic just
because my dad loves space, if you guys
know, in a set, if you guys go
back his old videos, there's like a little
rocket ship in the background. Really cool. My
dad would, like, go to space museums. He
would he would wake up at 3AM in
the morning just to watch us a rocket
a rocket lift off. My dad was my
dad would nerd out about space.
Alright. So he would definitely love this topic.
So pretty much, there's an advanced spider like
robot and it's set to tackle construction challenges
in Australia and potentially
assist in building on the moon in the
future. So it's named Charlotte. This robot was
developed by the Australian companies Crest Robotics and
Earthbuild Technology.
And its purpose is to deliver low cost,
low carbon, housing capabilities here on Earth.
Reportedly,
the large hexabod can
three d print a 200 square meter house
in twenty four hours. Crazy.
Crazy stuff. Crazy stuff. And they're hoping,
that this would,
you know, solve housing crisis housing crisis on
Earth because the current housing crisis is dependent
by conventional construction of inability to meet soaring
demand due to its high cost and slow
pace.
I have seen, like, some three d printed
houses before, but I never knew it could
be built in twenty four hours. So really
interesting to keep an eye on, super excited.
Really, really excited time to be alive. You
know what I mean? With all these technological
advances, especially with AI. Right? Every day it
improves more and
more. I like, two to three years ago,
we wouldn't be thinking about some of the
things people are doing with AI today. Right?
And just to think what's gonna happen in
the next two to three years with AI.
So super cool time to be in,
to be alive. But, yeah,
hope you guys like the articles we picked
out. If you guys missed my brother's episode,
my brother Ray actually did an episode on
Monday, September 29.
He did talk about, the future of smart
homes with Apple's new OS. So if you
missed that, go ahead and go check that
out.
But, yeah, me and me and my brother
Ray, we we are taking over the podcast.
If you guys don't know
yet, we're we we really wanna just continue
for our father.
And, you know, we
this is actually a really it was actually
really fun. I'm not gonna lie. It was
nice stepping into my dad's world and getting
an idea of how he found his articles
and, you know, setting up his camera and
his audio and, you know, delivering you guys
the news. So,
we're gonna keep doing this,
and if
our goal was to get into 2,000. K?
If you guys don't know, we wanna get
into 2,000 episodes. And if we still have
fun doing it, we're gonna continue. If we
don't have fun, we're gonna follow our dad's
philosophy because my dad always told you guys
that if you guys were not if he
wasn't having fun with it, he was gonna
quit. And he didn't quit. And it's like
he literally did podcasting till the day he
passed. Right? So,
we're gonna we're gonna continue it for him.
It was really fun. I'm really excited to
see see what's to come.
I'm back in I'm back in Hawaii on
the Island Of Oahu, and Ray is back
in Portland. We might do shows together. We
might do shows separately. It's gonna be a
fun time. You know, we're really excited for
this this next step in the journey. We
really hope you guys stick along and keep
listening to Geek News Central and supporting us.
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And, yeah, we really hope you guys have
a great rest of your week. Just leave
a comment or two, talk about dad, you
can talk about the episode, any any critiques,
constructive criticism, it goes a long way. We're
just starting up on podcasting, so we hope
to hear you guys advice or if anybody
has advice. But, yeah.
It's been a it's been a fun episode.
Hope you guys enjoyed the articles again, and
we will see you in the next one.
Have a great rest of your week, everyone.
Bye bye.