The guy who sued Amazon for infringing on his Lord of the Rings fanfic takes a massive L, now owes $134,000 to the Tolkien Estate

One of the last things I did in 2023 was round-up the year's crypto fails, during which I checked-in on an old favourite. In late 2021 mega-influencer Logan Paul, now probably best-known for the PRIME energy drink range and his burgeoning WWE career, began promoting a blockchain project called CryptoZoo, a videogame where players would buy NFT eggs, hatch them into animals, breed them, trade them, and so on.

@BearsEatBeets @LN78 Have no idea, as I've not seen the film in god know how long and don't remember that scene.

In yet another blow to China as it attempts to maintain a path towards self-reliance, Dutch-based lithography systems manufacturer ASML has revoked shipments of some of its DUV machines thanks to a request brought forward by the Biden administration. The export ban for such equipment was supposed to come into effect after a few weeks, which would have given China a little breathing room to procure sufficient machinery to continue mass producing chips for various applications, but the U.S. had other plans.

American Truck Simulator is heading to Missouri for its next expansion. It'll be the first appearance of the Mississippi river in the beloved simulation game.

At about 1 a.m. California time in 2013, a scientist emailed Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook with an irresistible pitch. “I strongly believe that we can develop the new wave of technology that will make Apple the No. 1 brand in the medical, fitness and wellness market,” he wrote in the email, which was later included in legal documents. Some 10 hours after the message was sent, an Apple recruiter was in touch. And just weeks after that, the engineer was working at the tech company on a smartwatch with health sensors.

AMD's Radeon RX 7600 XT GPU is reportedly going to launch in late January and will target the budget segment in the $300 US segment.

Amid rising concerns and multiple legal battles of authors, publishers, and media houses over large language models (LLMs) using their copyrighted work to train AI systems, the New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. The publisher has alleged that the two AI firms have been using the former's copyrighted published work unauthorized to train their respective AI models. This lawsuit has now heightened the conflict between publishers and AI companies, as regulatory institutions still try to figure out the right way to control and monitor the data AI models are trained on. 

On November 10, Humane, a 2018-founded startup known for working with AI technology, unveiled its first product called Ai Pin, a clothing-based wearable gadget. The OpenAI CEO Sam Altman-backed company presented the device as a new technology that does not require a user to spend time interacting with it and instead gets the information needed quickly so they can focus on the moment. With a displayless design, which goes against the ethos of most consumer tech products, the company focuses on voice and laser ink technology to show and tell the information through an AI chatbot. The company has now revealed that the product will be shipped to consumers starting in March 2024.

The Finals developer Embark Studios has shut down a frequent request from its community to introduce region locking to combat cheating in the hot new FPS. 

Activision Blizzard has agreed to pay more than $54 million (and an additional $47 million for affected employees) to settle a lawsuit filed by California’s Civil Rights Department in 2021. The lawsuit was filed over accusations of sexual and gender harassment, along with discrimination, including pay disparities.

Keywords Studios has acquired The Multiplayer Group from cloud technology firm Improbable for £76.5 million.

First reported by the New York Times, a major chapter in Activision Blizzard's reckoning over an alleged internal culture of misogyny and harassment has ended. The California Civil Rights Department (formerly the Department of Fair Employment and Housing) has settled with Activision Blizzard for $54 million, dropping its sexual harassment suit.