Microsoft Mischief and Fake Hype (or Bribed Commentators)
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Ruben Schade ☛ But chatbots are better than $FOO!
I really am done thinking about the tragicomedy of generative AI, and am already wondering what comes after this latest bubble. Here comes the proverbial posterior prognostication: but…, there’s one final perspective on all this tech I want to call out.
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Mirror UK ☛ The Xbox Game Pass dream is dead – if it was barely even alive in the first place
There are three certainties in life: death, taxes, and Xbox immediately ruining any goodwill it’s recently built up by making yet another asinine business decision. Making thousands of layoffs in January, after its Activision Blizzard acquisition, and then shuttering Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin months later seemingly wasn’t enough. This time the bad news relates to Xbox Game Pass, which Microsoft revealed on its support page earlier this week will soon be further segmented into more tiers. Whereas previously you had Xbox Game Pass, Xbox Game Pass Core, and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (with a PC equivalent thrown in), further changes to come on September 12, 2024, make it so the value proposition for the so-called ‘ best deal in gaming’ is about to grow much more complex.
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Tom's Hardware ☛ Goldman Sachs says AI is too expensive and unreliable — firm asks if 'overhyped' AI processing will ever pay off massive investments | Tom's Hardware
Goldman Sachs interviewed several experts to offer contrarian views on the future of AI, plus they looked at the challenges the technology faces if it wants to grow indefinitely in the future.
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Tedium ☛ Comedic Consultant
Trevor Noah has been on the Abusive Monopolist Microsoft payroll for years, and nobody apparently noticed until now. Is that a problem? (Hint: Yes.)
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The problem is, he maintained this consultant role while actually covering Microsoft as a part of his Daily Show work, even going so far as to name-drop Microsoft products in magazine interviews.
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For example, this conversation with Microsoft President Brad Smith occurred during the consultancy period. The Post pinpoints the beginning of the relationship with a critical segment about Microsoft’s AI in 2016. Soon after, he took part in a Backstage session with the company that included the question: “What would I do if I worked at Microsoft?”
“I appreciate the creation of this thing and seeing it work, and seeing the components come together, so if I could work at Microsoft, I would probably be involved in some way in the world of R&D,” Noah stated.
Noah got his wish. If you go to Google Patents, you will find three patent applications on which his name is included, two of which are active. Based on the patent filings, he helped work on elements of what became the Surface Duo foldable tablet.