Hello. Well, the rain fell down without my help.
But stuff still happened. So what's up? It must
be my birthday. It's not my birthday. But it
might as well be. There's been a lot of tech
lawsuits over the past couple of weeks. Let's
talk about them. Lawsuits and general tech oligarchs
just kind of eating shit. It's been good. It
hasn't been good. Let me have this. First up,
we've got a couple of big lawsuits against Google
and Metta regarding Instagram and YouTube, and
really just the social networks that these companies
make in general. Now, there's been a lot of lawsuits
against social media companies trying to get
at them for the whole making the world a worse
place thing, both the whole like disinformation
and people... posting things they shouldn't be
posting, and using features of their websites
to undress children, stuff like that. But a lot
of these lawsuits that have come after social
media companies have gotten wrapped up in Section
230, which is essentially this concept that shields
social media companies from being responsible
for what their users post on their website. The
idea being that, like, oh, it was the user, not
the company. Like, the company didn't say horrible
racist things, a user posted that. and just because
the company hosted that horrible racism doesn't
mean that they're liable. There's a combination
of fear and uncertainty and terror and confusion
around Section 230, and largely tech companies
should start throwing that around the second
that they're targeted by a lawsuit because they're
like, oh, if Section 230 goes away, that's the
end of social media, which, I mean, on one hand...
good. On the other hand, not really. That's not
really what would happen. But on the other other
other hand, like I'm not saying we should just
get rid of Section 230. It would be great if
we could kind of rework it, but that's not what's
happening here. What's exciting about these lawsuits
is that they are not Section 230. They are instead
going after these companies for making bad products.
Not just like a product that doesn't work, like
a product that is actively harmful. So one lawsuit
found that apps like Instagram and YouTube are
intentionally designed to be addictive. They
keep you scrolling, they hack your brain, they
use neuroscience to get you, right? And that's
true. We've known that for a long time. The infinite
scrolling feed is specifically so that you don't
leave the app. You know, if it wasn't an infinitely
scrolling feed, then you would get to the bottom
of a page and you would have a button to click
to go to the next page. And every time that you're
given the option to go to the next page, you
are implicitly given the option to stop. But
if you just keep scrolling, and there's never
a break, you're not going to be prompted for
that. Now, infinite scrolling feeds themselves
are not the problem here. The problem here has
a whole lot more to do with designing algorithms
to pull people in and manipulate them so that
they'll spend more time on the platform so they
can sell more ads. And so a court found that,
yes, the design of these apps are intentionally
done with malice. Like, to fuck with people.
For money. The other lawsuit is also about meta,
but it has more to do with decision making within
meta. intentionally choosing to design their
products in a dangerous way. It came out in court
that there's a whole bunch of decision making
going on behind the scenes at Metta that basically
can summarize to... Don't put that protection
in place because we might not make as much money.
That second lawsuit was brought by the New Mexico
Department of Justice. Here is a quote from their
press release after they won the lawsuit. Evidence
from those witnesses and other industry experts
also demonstrated that Metta intentionally designs
its platforms to addict young people, and contrary
to Metta's public commitments, expose them to
dangerous content related to eating disorders
and self -harm. The reason I brought up Section
230 at the outset here is because these cases
don't have anything to do with them, and that
is a pivot from what we've seen so far. A lot
of these tech companies have just brushed off
these lawsuits, but now, We've learned that giants
can bleed. More lawsuits like this can easily
be lobbed at them. These were civil suits paying
out to individual plaintiffs. So we are about
to see a whole lot more of these, and possibly
a whole lot more lawsuits that are going after
these companies from other angles. Because after
years and years of these companies hosting disinformation,
and worse, having algorithms that cause disinformation
to get increased engagement artificially, it
feels like maybe we need to do something. and
it feels like maybe, if you are a social media
company, you should be somewhat responsible for
the impact that you are having on society. But
let's talk about Elon Musk, who also got a few
defeats recently. Quick background, Elon Musk
runs a porn site called Twitter, and Twitter
is an interesting porn site because it's uniquely
labeled as not a porn site in the app stores.
This is despite Elon Musk's porn website having
an AI on it that can undress people. Including
children. So there's been that whole thing I've
talked about that a few times and they've been
hit by a lot of lawsuits for it because obviously
But now Amsterdam is coming out swinging as Dutch
officials have hit Musk with an order saying
Stop that they're basically saying you can't
keep having this thing Be a thing while operating
here and so for every day that you continue hosting
a robot that can undress children We're gonna
fine you This comes just as Musk also had one
of his lawsuits from 2024 thrown out of court.
Back in 2024, after he took over Twitter, a bunch
of advertisers pulled out of advertising because,
again, obviously, he did that whole thing where
he just changed what check marks are and then
it was chaos for these companies. So they were
like, we're not going to do this anymore. To
which Musk was like, you all are doing an organized
boycott against me. And that's illegal somehow.
So he filed a lawsuit against advertisers that
were not advertising on his platform anymore,
and it just got thrown out in court. Because,
say it with me. Obviously. What's nice is that
also the judge did not mince words. Quote, the
very nature of the alleged conspiracy does not
state an antitrust claim, and the court therefore
has no qualm dismissing with prejudice. I'll
end by saying that every single founder of Elon
Musk's AI company has left. Except for him. But
he calls it a restructuring. Thank you for being
here. I really like doing what I do, and I try
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So if you like what I do and you want to keep
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If you want to support me, but you can't do so
financially, that's no problem. Just commenting,
liking, subscribing, sharing my work, telling
people about my stuff. It really, really does
help. So thank you so much, let's move on. I'm
gonna do my best antimatter impersonation. I
went across the room. Much like antimatter went
across a parking lot. Backing up, scientists
at CERN have managed to contain antimatter and
put it on a truck and drive it across a parking
lot. Not unlike a terrified father taking his
son to the school parking lot to learn how to
parallel park. Sorry, Dad. But instead of screaming,
hit the brake, hit the brake, these scientists
were putting antimatter onto a truck for shipping.
Certain boys have been playing around with antimatter
for a little while now, and antimatter is essentially
the opposite of matter. So you know matter, like
the stuff, like all of it. When the Big Bang
happened, there was a lot of matter, but there
was also... supposedly an equal amount of antimatter.
Think of it like the positive and negative ends
of a magnet, sort of like they cancel each other
out. That's not how magnets work. Point being,
it's a mysterious thing that we don't fully understand,
but it's essentially matter reverse. Like the
electrical charges are inverted. So where there's
protons, there are also antiprotons. And scientists
at CERN have managed to capture antiprotons and
put them on a truck. Why are they putting them
on a truck? Because antiprotons also want to
live that trucker life. The reality is that if
you want to capture an antiproton, you don't
just kind of like take a butterfly net and swing
it around. You need equipment. Like capital E
equipment, but like 40 capital E's. It's big
equipment and it causes this like magnetic fluctuation
that makes it so it's pretty difficult to then
inspect the actual antiprotons because it's like...
pretty small, and they need to use really precise
instruments to do any kind of measurements on
these antiprotons, and they can't really use
those instruments in the same place that they
capture the antiprotons. But if they could put
them on a truck, wave goodbye, as it goes off
to another location, they could potentially do
deeper research. I volunteer my bathroom. I don't
mind having antiprotons there, and there's not
a whole lot of magnetic fluctuations. Anyway,
scientists put a thing in a truck and drove it
across a parking lot, but in a cool way is what
I'm getting at. Let's talk about Cash App, which
is the app that you use to hack the director
of the FBI. A hacktivist group called Handala
recently hacked Cash Patel, the head of the FBI
in the United States. They broke into his personal
email, like a Gmail account, and so they got
access to the things you would get access to
from a Gmail account, which is a lot. They've
released some of the stuff, some of his personal
photos, documents. They released his resume with
his phone number and address on it. I will say
I have seen posts about how they outed his porn
account. I have not been able to verify that.
That seems more like a viral... fake thing than
reality, but I'm sure there's plenty of embarrassing
shit. Actually, there is plenty of embarrassing
shit. He's the director of the FBI and got hacked
because he wasn't using two -factor authentication
on his Google account. Now, Handala is not some
random group of hackers that are in their basement
just doing this for funsies. They are a state
-aligned group. They're sort of like a sub -hacker
group that works with a larger group called Void
Manticore. that's associated with Iranian military
intelligence. This is pretty directly the Iranian
military hacking the head of the FBI, which is
deeply embarrassing. So yeah, head of the FBI
had his personal email hacked. In a normal world,
that would be the end of the entire administration.
But in this world, we call that Friday. Let's
talk about gaming and why it's expensive. Nintendo
and Sony just both made pretty big price adjustment
announcements, and people aren't really happy
about either. Actually, people are fucking mad.
About both. We'll start with Sony, who announced
a price hike for the entirety of the PlayStation
5 family. There's four sort of - PS5 products,
the PS5 with and without the disk drive, then
the PS5 Pro, and then the PlayStation Portal,
which is like a sort of handheld streaming device.
In a press release, Sony announced that they
are making a few strategic adjustments, and here
are the new prices. The base PS5 is going up
$100 and will now cost $650 USD. The PlayStation
5 without the disk drive is also going up $100
and will now be $600. The PS5 Pro is going up
$150 and will now cost $900 dues, and the PS
Portal is going up $50 to $250, which is actually
less than I thought it cost originally. So I
hope you didn't want a PlayStation, or if you
did, you need to get one like now, or if you
have money, who cares. But yeah, just straight
up hiking up damn prices, and they did this again
last year as well, so it's not like this was
the first price hike since this generation came
out. But it does appear to be the biggest, at
least for one given console. Nintendo, on the
other hand, they actually reduce prices a bit.
Shouldn't people be happy? They're not happy.
I'm not particularly happy either, but my goodness,
people are not happy. When the Nintendo Switch
2 was announced, the price was shocking for a
lot of people, like 450 bucks for the base console,
and then games could be as much as 90 dollars.
What's more, they announced that the digital
and physical versions of games would cost the
same, so even if you weren't getting the physical
version, which has the cartridge and the box
and the art and everything, and you could sell
it back to a store, give it to your friend or
whatever, it's the same price as the digital
download, which is just... goes on your console.
So people are like, okay, what's going on here?
Like, why is this happening? And why is everything
so expensive? And why can't I even get a little
bit of a discount if I get the digital, more
restrictive version of the games? Rejoice, you
can now. With a huge asterisk, Nintendo has announced
in very Nintendo fashion that they will quote,
have an MSRP that is different from physical
versions. for digital versions. That Nintendo
and trying to say anything normally. It's just
not happening. Ultimately, it looks like for
Nintendo first -party games that Nintendo is
publishing, the digital version might be about
ten bucks less. Usually. Like I said, asterisks.
While this is all happening, the backdrop is
that the AI data center boom is sucking up all
the chips in the room. Even the sour cream and
onion. Tech companies are buying up like every
chip in existence, and they're looking for memory
and storage, like RAM and SSDs. And that is driving
the price of computers way up. And guess what's
a computer? Video game consoles. And computers.
We're seeing the same thing with Valve's Steam
Machine, which was a thing they announced that
was going to be a sort of mass -market, entry
-level PC gaming console kind of thing. Sort
of like a console version of a Steam Deck. supposed
to be affordable with capable parts, and now
it is delayed and the price is unknown again,
because these parts are just through the roof.
So it's likely that Sony's changes are because
of that, and Nintendo's change of driving the
digital price down a little bit is probably because
the Switch cartridges are that kind of chip that's
currently expensive. So if they're reducing the
digital price a bit, they're probably trying
to steer people towards the digital version of
games. They don't have to spend as much money
to make the manufactured... physical version.
But people aren't particularly thrilled either
way. I'm still paying like 80 bucks lightning
round. In Iran, it sure looks like the US is
about to send in ground troops as 3 ,500 US military
service members have arrived in the region. The
other indicator of imminent boots on the ground
is that the Trump administration has kept saying
that they're not going to do that. Over the weekend
there was another No Kings protest, and at time
of recording I don't have an actual estimation,
but it looks as though the participation was
in the millions. OpenAI's generated AI video
-only social network Sora has been shut down,
along with most of their access to video generation
stuff. Turns out no one gave a shit. Speaking
of shutting down obviously bad ideas, Meta has
shut down the Metaverse. They shut down Horizon
Worlds, which was their premier Metaverse world.
You know, the thing that they changed their entire
company's name about? Massive shock! Recently,
Trump made a post that caused the oil market
to fluctuate, and right before that post, there
was a ton of trading in the oil market. Probably
nothing. And finally for today, a Secret Service
member who is assigned to detail Jill Biden,
seems to have accidentally shot himself in the
leg. As far as I can tell, there was not a security
threat. Just kind of bored, I guess. I can think
of better uses of my time than shooting myself
in the leg, though. But whatever! Thank you so
much for listening to today's episode of Stuff
Keeps Happening. Head to SKH .News for sources,
bonus content, and my rendition of The Metaverse,
which is a free newsletter with paid subscription
options, if you would like to support me. My
name is Endeavorance. We'll talk again soon.
Take care and be well.