Hello.
I went through the desert on a horse with no name.
But stuff still happened.
So what's up?
Give me your notification.
Give him.
I exist solely off of the nutrients provided
by eating your notification, much like a government.
All right, let me step back many steps.
All right, so US Senator from Oregon, Ron Wyden,
has penned a letter to the US Attorney General saying,
hey, we received a tip last year that foreign governments are
asking Apple and Google to hand over users' notification data.
Apparently, his office received this tip
and have spent the past year investigating it.
They reached out to Apple and Google, who were like,
we can't talk about that.
Our hands are tied legally.
Basically, whenever an app wants to send you a notification
to your phone, they have to ask Apple or Google
to do it for them.
And that means that Apple and Google knows
what app is sending you what notification at what time
to what device, and sometimes, what
does that notification contain.
And so if a government can't access your personal records,
they can say, hey, just give us the notification data.
That's not user data.
And so in theory, Apple and Google
are not compelled to tell you about it
and can't disclose further information.
And so Wyden's letter was like, hey, can we
change that so that they can tell people?
Because what the hell?
I want to be clear that we don't technically have proof of this.
But when asked if they're giving user notification information
to foreign governments, Apple and Google,
who have some of the most well-paid PR teams in the world,
were both like, I feel like the winning answer
would be to say, no.
You can stop asking everyone now what they think
will win game of the year, because it's Baldur's Gate 3,
at least for the game awards, the big one.
Baldur's Gate 3 has already been winning a ton of awards,
and it just won game of the year.
There's been a lot of discussion about whether or not
it would be Tears of the Kingdom or Baldur's Gate 3 that's
going home with the title.
Tears of the Kingdom was an incredible game.
I don't think anyone's arguing that it's not a feat of wonder,
right?
But have you met somebody who plays Baldur's Gate 3?
It is a lifestyle.
I'm going to read you some stats.
I was browsing through my news feeds,
and I saw a couple of articles from Polygon and Rock Paper
Shotgun that compiled a few different stats
about Baldur's Gate.
1.3 million players have completed the main campaign.
Of them, 1.24 million players were turned into a wheel
of cheese at some point.
That's just good game design.
Shadowheart was by far the most picked love interest.
I'm still here for Carlac.
And players have played a collective 51,662 years
of Baldur's Gate 3.
According to historians, if you go that far back
in human history, you get like initial European settlement
and the first use of needle and thread.
I don't know what that stat means.
But hey, Larian, you should sponsor my new world building
podcast, the Atlas Loom, available now.
Twitch is pulling out of Korea.
You heard me.
Twitch, popular online streaming service,
is pulling out of Korea, South Korea.
South Korea telecoms have a policy
called sending party pays, which essentially
is like the digital equivalent of paying for last mile delivery
services.
Since companies like Twitch and YouTube and Netflix
send so much data over the wire, the telecom companies
are basically saying, look, you got
to pay us to transfer this just massive amount of data.
While this kind of makes sense, according to Twitch,
the fees in Korea are about 10 times higher
than other countries.
Or at least that's what their marketing department is saying.
But because of that, Twitch is now pulling out
of the country entirely.
They are ceasing operation.
What does that mean for popular Twitch streamers in Korea?
Get bent.
Oh, what?
You've spent years of your life building up
a community and an online presence creating
a career in a very volatile world?
Go somewhere else.
But hey, if you are a streamer in Korea
and you feel cast aside and you feel wronged by Twitch,
I just want you to know that it's OK.
And you're not supposed to feel bad anymore.
Because the executives at Twitch said this was a hard decision.
They're also saying that they're going
to help people transfer over to other streaming services.
Wild.
As someone who streams regularly now,
the empathy here is making me livid.
Anyway, hey, girl, what's your sign?
Is it Google?
I don't have a better intro than that.
Because Google has launched a new AI
that they are calling Gemini.
And they're like, hey, it's better than chat GPT.
It's very, very great.
Trust us.
Here's a cool demo.
Oops.
They faked the demo.
Double oops.
Initial reactions to the AI is that it's super mid.
Mitter than my jokes on a good day.
That's saying something.
Stop with self-deprecating humor.
Cut it out.
Stop it.
Anyway, yeah, Google showed off a pretty impressive demo
of the AI doing stuff like live video
and taking commands and whatnot with voice and blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
It was a lie.
They precrafted this demo.
They gave it specific inputs to make it do the thing they
wanted it to do and then made it seem like it was more fluid
than it actually was.
Now, tech companies do this literally all the time.
Doing live demos is super dangerous.
But this is a bit different than we've prerecorded a demo.
This was we've prerecorded a demo with complete lies.
And also, tech companies do include complete lies
in their demos all the time.
Remember the Google Glass demo video?
Or when Apple was like, hey, we made AirPower.
This is going to be a product.
Note, it was never a product.
Anyway, we shall see if it gets better.
I'm sure it's going to be a thing that exists for a while.
I question how long we're going to continue to care.
On this day in 1863, Pan Am Flight 214
was struck by lightning in the air.
And then it crashed.
Because of the lightning, upon being struck,
it destroyed a wing, the fuel caught fire.
It didn't go the way that you want a plane to go.
And that's the, it went down.
It crashed so hard that according to the first responder
who got there, the engines were buried 10 to 15 feet
into the ground from the force of the impact.
The details only get more gruesome.
And I'm going to avoid talking about that.
Because, oh boy, but suffice to say,
I don't think anybody suffered.
Lightning round.
Another person has died after drinking
Panera's charged lemonade.
He had three of them and collapsed
while he was walking home.
This is the second person that I've talked about,
even just on this show, who has died
from drinking a Panera drink.
Oxford University Press has listed Riz
as the word of the year.
And what's hilarious here is that there's an article
I saw that was like, what is Riz?
And should you be scared of him?
A woman who threw her burrito bowl
at a Chipotle employee and was charged with assault
has been sentenced to two months
of working in a fast food restaurant.
That lies somewhere between hilarity
and a horrifying commentary on the current state
of service workers in America.
Music streaming service Tidal is laying off 10%
of their employees, about 40 people.
It's part of a larger consolidation
from parent company Block.
I always forget about that.
I also forget about Tidal.
It was announced last night that Pala,
the cozy game MMO is coming to Nintendo Switch
on December 14th for free, which is rad.
I'm not sponsored, they should sponsor me.
But also I played a lot of my stream, come say hello.
And finally for today, it must be a day that ends in Y
because Google is shutting down a service.
They are shutting down Google podcasts
and moving it to YouTube music.
And as somebody who manages podcasts, I'm deeply confused.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode
of Stuff Keeps Happening.
Head to stuffkeepshappening.online for sources,
bonus content, and just the secret code to it all.
My name is Endeavor and it's a quick programming note.
I'm going to be testing out a new schedule,
doing Stuff Keeps Happening twice a week
on Mondays and Thursdays.
I'm expecting slightly longer episodes
and we'll see, hopefully pretty decent quality still.
But you know, it's just an experiment.
We'll see, we'll see.
Regardless, my name is Endeavor and I'll be back on Monday.
Take care and be well.