On Thursday, the company that owned the vessel confirmed our worst fears – that the vessel had imploded and everybody on board had died.

As it so happens, popular YouTuber MrBeast was one decision away from boarding the submarine. On Sunday, he tweeted that he was invited to join the expedition but declined for reasons best known to him.

I was invited earlier this month to ride the titanic submarine, I said no. Kind of scary that I could have been on it pic.twitter.com/bQUnaRiczA

— MrBeast (@MrBeast) June 25, 2023

In his words, "I was invited earlier this month to ride the titanic submarine, I said no. Kind of scary that I could have been on it." Alongside the tweet, he shared a screenshot of the invitation, which read, "Also, I'm going to the Titanic in a submarine late this month. The team would be stoked to have you along."

MrBeast did not reveal who sent the message. He also did not clarify whether the person made the trip or they opted out.

Some Twitter users expressed disbelief at his statement, though. MrBeast is popular for using viral waves to his advantage.

An excellent example happened in 2021 after Netflix's Squid Game stunned the world and became a global phenomenon. The YouTube star co-opted the show's game idea and put together a life version but without the gore and death that was in the series. The stunt, which cost him $446,000 in prize money alone, made him even more popular than he already was.

As the most subscribed individual YouTuber of all time, MrBeast certainly has no reason to lie about whether or not he was invited to go on the trip.

But, if he did humor the invitation, the world would've been singing a different tune as it mourned an individual that very well touched the lives of many, both on the internet and in real life.

In a recent report from The Verge, it was revealed that Reddit had initiated a crackdown on moderator teams that had designated their communities as Not Safe For Work (NSFW). This was the universal tactic during the 'blackout' to make their respective communities private.

This decision to enable the explicit content filter comes with certain consequences, such as imposing age restrictions for desktop users and limiting access on the mobile app exclusively to logged-in users. However, the most significant impact is blocking Reddit's ability to run ads, which hampers monetization.

One of the biggest subreddits that switched on this filter was r/mildlyinteresting, which boasts 22.2 million subscribers. Shortly after, the mod team of the popular subreddit was suspended, and when questioned about this development, Reddit spokesperson Tim Rathschmidt shared the following response:

Moderators incorrectly marking a community as NSFW is a violation of both our Content Policy and Moderator Code of Conduct.

But here's the twist: the entire mod team of r/mildlyinteresting was eventually reinstated, but not by the same Reddit admin who initially removed them. When Rathschmidt was approached for a comment on the reinstatement, here's what he had to say:

I’m not going to set a precedent of confirming with The Verge every action we do or don’t take to ensure users can access their communities.

While the mod teams of r/mildlyinteresting have been reinstated, it's unfortunate that subreddits like r/interestingasfuck, r/TIHI, and r/ShittyLifeProTip are still without their mod teams. It seems that Reddit is employing various tactics to intimidate subreddit mods and force them into submission.

In fact, just last week, moderators received threatening messages from Reddit, coercing them to reopen their subreddits.

If there are mods here who are willing to work towards reopening this community, we are willing to work with you to process a Top Mod Removal request or reorder the mod team to achieve this goal if mods higher up the list are hindering reopening. We would handle this request and any retaliation attempts here in this modmail chain immediately.

Our goal is to work with the existing mod team to find a path forward and make sure your subreddit is made available for the community which makes its home here. If you are not able or willing to reopen and maintain the community, please let us know.

Even in the face of widespread criticism from Redditors and moderators, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman has remained unwavering in his support for the new pricing model, which will result in the closure of popular third-party apps like Apollo and Reddit is Fun before the month's end.

If you did a double-take after reading that, we definitely understand; it happened to us, too. All the same, it is true. It all began when Musk responded to a Mario Nawfal tweet about Meta’s work on a Twitter rival.

Musk seemingly took offense at the report and tweeted, "I’m sure Earth can’t wait to be exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options. At least it will be ‘sane’. Was worried there for a moment and things kind of escalated from there."

I’m sure Earth can’t wait to be exclusively under Zuck’s thumb with no other options.

At least it will be “sane”. Was worried there for a moment .

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023

In what you would consider a tongue-in-cheek response, a Twitter user told Musk to be careful with his words since the Meta CEO is quite adept at jiu-jitsu. Not one to back down, Musk responded with the words, "I’m up for a cage match if he is lol"

We were all ready to move on from the challenge and dismiss it as just another meme-worthy moment from the very same techpreneur who literally smoked a join on a Joe Rogan podcast. However, Zuckerberg wasn’t ready to do the same.

The Meta CEO and co-founder took to his Instagram page and responded with the words "Send Me Location." And Musk, ever the brave one retorted that, "If this is for real, I will do it."

I have this great move that I call “The Walrus”, where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 22, 2023

When a reporter working with TheVerge revealed that Zuckerberg is serious about the challenge, Musk tweeted his ideal location for the fight, which he revealed to be Vegas Octagon.

The idea of both men throwing fists at each other is certainly laughable, although very entertaining.

For one, Musk is 51 years old and, as far as we know, not in the best physical shape. Two things he does have over Zuck are size and height as he weighs 85kg to Zuckerberg’s 70kg and stands 6ft 1in tall to Zuckerberg’s 5ft 7in.

Zuckerberg, on the other hand, has age and training. At 39 years old, he's more than a decade younger compared to Musk. And like the Twitter user was kind enough to point out, he is adept at Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Perhaps we wouldn’t think much of Zuckerberg’s skills if it was a passing fancy, but it's not. Just last month, the metaverse visionary won two of the competitive jiu-jitsu bouts he joined.

Musk seems to have a plan to stop him, though. After his tweet about the location of their fight, he added "I have this great move that I call ‘The Walrus’, where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing," which suggests that he plans to use his bigger size to his advantage and pin Zuckerberg down.

If this fight happens, it will certainly rank as one of the most viewed matches this century.

Although two men throwing punches over a disagreement is something that shouldn’t be happening in the 21st century, we are willing to make an exception for the two billionaires. After all, it is not every day that we see two of the richest men in the world throwing fists at each other.

It's safe to say that Jake Paul vs Conor McGregor and Logan Paul vs Mike Tyson have nothing on this potential match of the billionaires.

Back in 2016, Reddit made its debut in the mobile world by launching its very first official app for mobile devices. Prior to this, Reddit users relied on third-party apps like Boost and Bacon Reader to browse and post comments. This is made possible by APIs (Application Programming Interface), which access the site’s information and display it within the app.

Apps such as Apollo and Reddit is Fun have become popular among users because of their user-friendly features and customizable options, which the official Reddit app lacks. However, a recent shift in Reddit's policy has now begun driving away third-party apps. To put it simply, Reddit has introduced a pricing structure for their previously free API, requiring third-party app developers to pay $12,000 for 50 million API requests.

To provide some perspective, Apollo generated around 7 billion API requests in May alone. Under the new pricing structure, Apollo would be required to pay approximately $1.7 million per month, or approximately $20 million per year. According to Apollo's analysis, even if the platform were to limit its users to subscription-only use, the average Apollo user generates 344 requests per day.

This would result in a cost of $2.50 per month per user, which is more than double the current subscription price. Because of this, the developer would incur a loss every month.

Reddit issued a one-month notice to all third-party developers, stating that starting July 1, they must comply with the new pricing structure. As a result, the moderators of thousands of subreddits have chosen to protest against the proposed API pricing. They have taken action by switching their subreddit pages to private mode for 48 hours, starting today. This effectively renders the pages inaccessible to everyone except for members approved by the moderators.

Numerous subreddit pages have gone dark as part of the protest, including popular ones like r/gaming, r/videos, r/music, r/funny, and many others that boast thousands of subscribers. As of writing, a Twitch stream dedicated to tracking the exact number of subreddits that have gone dark shows an astonishing figure of 6,647 subreddits and counting.

Despite facing widespread criticism for the exorbitant pricing of API requests, Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, reaffirmed the controversial decision, doubling down on the company's stance.

Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidize commercial entities that require large-scale data use. Some apps such as Apollo, Reddit is Fun, and Sync have decided this pricing doesn’t work for their businesses and will close before pricing goes into effect.

In April, Huffman made an announcement regarding Reddit's plan to implement charges for accessing its API, stating:

The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable. But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.

At the time, it was widely believed that this policy primarily targeted the corporations looking to build language model AI systems, like OpenAI's ChatGPT, rather than being a blanket policy aimed at all developers.

These companies have faced strong opposition from website owners for scraping enormous datasets from their sites to train generative AI systems. Internet publishers have expressed concerns, alleging violations of personal data and copyright laws, and have urged regulators to take action.

Reddit's decision now follows in the footsteps of Twitter, which made a similar announcement in February. Twitter declared that it would no longer support free access to its API, with the company now charging a ludicrous fee of $42,000 for 50 million tweets.

Nvidia recently unveiled a new AI technology that promises to revolutionize the way character models are made. During Nvidia’s keynote at Computex 2023, CEO Jensen Huang announced "Omniverse Avatar Cloud Engine" or ACE, which can create real-time interactive AI NPC that feature voice dialogues and facial animations.

ACE is a new "suite of real-time solutions" from Nvidia that can be used by game developers to create characters that have the ability to respond to a player’s actions. These NPCs will have voices, facial expressions, and lip-sync to match.

In the demo, a player speaks to the NPC using his own voice. The NPC does its best to respond to what the player is saying and points him to a new side quest that he can complete.

Nvidia partnered with Convai (Conversational AI for Virtual Worlds) in this new tech demo "to help optimize and integrate ACE for Games modules into an immersive and dynamic interaction with a non-playable character named Jin. The demo is also enhanced with ray tracing and performance multiplying NVIDIA DLSS 3."

Nvidia ACE can be run both locally or from the cloud. The ACE suite includes Nvidia’s NeMo tools for deploying large language models (LLMs), Riva speech-to-text and text-to-speech, and other Generative AI technologies.

The demo was built using Unreal Engine 5 and highlights Nvidia’s ray-tracing technologies. The futuristic ramen shop is visually stunning and fully immersive especially when viewed in 4K.

While the visuals of the demo look stunning, the conversation between the player and the NPC leaves much to be desired. There's more work to be done on the facial expressions and tone of the AI character. Honestly, even the player’s voice seems a bit robotic and unnatural.

However, the technology does have some interesting potential. The Verge reports that during the Computex pre-briefing, Nvidia’s VP of GeForce Platform Jason Paul confirmed that the technology can be used for multiple characters. In theory, ACE can allow AI NPCs to talk to each other.

Paul is the first to admit that he hasn't seen this in practice yet.

As the technology grows and advances, we will hopefully see widespread use of Nvidia ACE. It's easy to imagine Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City or GTA 5’s Los Santos filled with NPCs that players can talk to and interact with. The technology will open up a lot of possibilities in terms of immersive gaming and world-building. It would also make for some pretty interesting stories and unique experiences.  

Hopefully, Ubisoft and Blizzard Entertainment can take advantage of this technology as well.

The Japanese multinational conglomerate is looking to spin off and relist shares for its financial unit to pump new investment into its image-sensing and entertainment businesses. The Sony Financial unit operates the online-only Sony Bank, life and non-life insurance, nursing care, and venture capital.

Sony shared the plan during a recent strategy briefing with investors. According to the plan, the company will retain under 20 percent of its Financial Services arm. The proceeds of the sell-off will be used to fund various investments, most notably in the image sensor division.

Investors welcomed the new direction that Sony is taking. The company’s shares jumped 7.3 percent when the new strategy was announced. This is the biggest intraday surge that Sony has had this year.

"Sony’s image sensor and entertainment businesses will need much bigger investment in the future. Meanwhile, you need a strong base for financial services," Chief Operating Officer Hiroki Totoki said of the restructuring plans. "That’s why we decided to consider using a virtual spinoff — which allows us to keep Sony’s name on the financial service arm while it gains the ability to raise cash independently."

Sony spent $3.7 billion to gain full control of its financial unit in 2020. Many questioned the takeover as the subsidiary did not synergize with Sony’s other existing businesses. There has been pressure on the company to break up its financial services arm and focus on growing its imaging and entertainment business.

Sony has been making huge acquisitions in the entertainment industry. The company purchased EMI Publishing for $2.3 billion and acquired anime streaming service Crunchyroll for $1.2 billion.

Sony has also been very dominant in its image sensing and imaging divisions. Sony sensors are widely used in digital cameras, smartphones, drones, and even self-driving vehicles. The company is also enjoying huge market shares in its photography and videography segment with its mirrorless cameras.

The company is also heavily invested in turning its video game IPs into successful movies and TV shows. HBO’s The Last of Us TV series and the movie Uncharted were released last year and have been commercially successful. The company is working on several other live-action adaptations including Gran Turismo, Twisted Metal, and Ghost of Tsushima. Aside from video game adaptations, Sony is also focusing its efforts on building the Sony Spider-verse with movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. 

Sony’s new strategy bodes well for the future of its entertainment and tech businesses. For consumers, it means better movies, music, and electronic devices. We hope this new direction also includes the gaming segment.

Ubisoft is one of the companies looking to utilize AI for game development. Developers in the company’s internal studios are reportedly taking advantage of the Generative AI landscape. Ubisoft is reportedly experimenting with AI technology on all levels of game development, saying:

As the world adopts Generative AI at a record pace, GDC 2023 demonstrated its immense potential to profoundly transform creative industries.

Ubisoft is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation, with a strong game technology expertise, over 20 years of proprietary data and assets, and a rich portfolio. Internally, early adoption is fast, with creators and developers of all levels experimenting with the technology and taking advantage of the booming Generative AI landscape. With them, Ubisoft is shaping a responsible framework with talent management and fair use at heart."

The financial report adds, "In parallel, teams are leveraging years-long R&D efforts in AI and Machine Learning applications, especially through La Forge, to identify the best use cases and harness the power of this technology to have a positive impact on creativity, workflows, and players’ experience."

It is interesting to see one of the biggest companies in the gaming industry exploring AI technology in the development of video games. Ubisoft has a good number of subsidiary studios and a lot of manpower working on its upcoming titles and supporting its current lineup of games.

The company may also be looking at a faster turnaround time for the development of its games. With the help of AI, game studios can rapidly design, develop, and test games, making for a shorter development window. It would certainly help Ubisoft financially as more games mean more profit.

AI technologies can also help in improving the quality of games. Technologies such as Midjourney have proven that AI can generate quality images in a short amount of time. AI systems can also be used to improve world-building by making games more reactive to a player’s actions.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has said that he expects the use of large language models (LLM), a type of AI algorithm, to continue growing on the creative side of game development. According to Guillemot, LLMS can improve the company’s workflow for game development. He also thinks that it will be easier for gamers "to actually be a part of the creation of events and contents" in the games they play.

"There's a lot coming there, and we also have a lot of data in the company from all our brands that we will be able to take advantage of to create lots of content," Guillemot said. "We've been working a lot on that in the last few years, so it will be good growth coming from that."

We will surely be seeing an increase in the use of AI technologies in the gaming sphere moving forward. While many fear that technologies would replace humans soon, we currently see it as a tool to help in doing the more mundane and repetitive tasks. This frees up developers to work on bigger and better things that will improve games in the future.

Nvidia is one of the biggest names in the gaming and tech industry. Unfortunately, the last year's sales figures didn't quite live up to expectations. Because of this, Huang has decided to demonstrate his commitment to regain the investors' trust in the company. But, don't expect Huang to make significant adjustments to his lifestyle.

While $2.5 million is a significant amount of money for most people, Huang's finances aren't expected to take a large hit as he owns a considerable amount of company stock. 

As per The Register, Huang's take-home pay will be $21.35 million will still be around $21.35 million or nearly half a million a week, which most of us would take in a heartbeat.

Still, Huang's pay cut sends a strong message to the public and the stakeholders about his dedication to the company's performance.

NVIDIA is a dominant force in the gaming industry as their GPUs have consistently ranked among the top choices for both casual and professional gamers. Despite this, the company isn't immune to the issues that plagued others over the past few years, including supply chain issues, global chip shortages, and, perhaps more importantly, increasing competition from AMD and, most recently, Intel.

Onlookers shouldn't feel too bad for Nvidia and Jensen. The company is in a good place to take advantage of an expected increase in demand for its products as the world pivots towards AI products, smart automation, and accelerated computing. As this area continues to expand, the future is looking strong for Nvidia.

Also, lest we forget, the Nvidia share price is up to $288, as of the time of writing, which is a 73% increase compared to its price of $166 a year ago.

In the meantime, Nvidia can focus on improving its supply chain and production capabilities to help meet the demand for graphics cards. This can help Nvidia recapture its lost market share and make up for the recent sales slump.

Speaking of Nvidia, the company recently voiced its support for the Activision Blizzard purchase of Microsoft. Finally, the authorities recently "fished out" an Nvidia GPU smuggling attempt.

Musk revealed he has hired a new person for the role and she will start in approximately six weeks. He then went on to state that his role will transition to executive chairman as well as Chief Technology Officer in which capacity he will oversee "product, software and sysops."

Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter. She will be starting in ~6 weeks!

My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2023

While Musk didn’t reveal the mystery hire in his original tweet, he has since confirmed it is Linda Yaccarino, the current head of advertising at the American media and entertainment behemoth NBCUniversal. He tweeted, "I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!"

He went on to clarify that Yaccarino will focus primarily on business operations, while he will focus on product design & new technology. Finally, he wrote "Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app."

I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter!@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology.

Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app. https://t.co/TiSJtTWuky

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2023

Musk’s revelation comes several months after he announced he would step down as Twitter CEO last December. The CEO and founder of SpaceX had earlier run a Twitter poll asking users to vote on whether he should remain as the CEO or if he should step down. With 57% of voters in support of his resignation, he had promised to vacate the role as soon as he finds someone "foolish enough to take the job."

Since Musk finalized his acquisition of the social media platform last October, it has lost numerous advertisers amid many decisions that have increasingly alienated advertisers. Some of these decisions include a mass layoff and discontinuation of its ree, legacy verification process in favor of a paid one that many have argued will make the platform less uncertain and trustworthy.

Given Yaccarino’s extensive background in advertising – she oversees over $13 billion in annual ad revenue in her role at NBCUniversal – Musk will be hoping she can lure some of the advertisers Twitter has lost since his acquisition.

However, Yaccarino’s appointment has raised some eyebrows on the platform with some users pointing to her role within the World Economic Forum as proof of her ineligibility to head it. Others pointed to an interview she did with Musk at the Possible marketing event in Miami last month as further proof she doesn’t align with Musk’s vision for the platform.

According to them, she's the antithesis of Musk’s plan to make the platform a safe space for free speech.

Musk acknowledged these concerns but asked users not to judge too early. The techpreneur then affirmed his commitment to defending free speech "even if it means losing money."

I hear your concerns, but don’t judge too early. I am adamant about defending free speech, even if it means losing money.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 12, 2023

Given Musk’s desire to ensure Twitter is free of moderation, it remains to be seen how Yaccarino will achieve her purpose. Nevertheless, one thing is certain: she has numerous challenges ahead of her. It remains to be seen how she will handle these.

Ads have emerged as a primary source of revenue for the platform, but over time, the duration and frequency of ads have increased, compelling users to seek ways to circumvent them through ad blockers. However, the platform is currently in the process of testing a novel feature that will prevent users with ad blockers from accessing video content on the site.

As per reports from users who have come across this feature, whenever the platform detects an active ad blocker, it will display a message that reads:

Ad blockers are not allowed on YouTube.

It looks like you may be using an ad blocker.
Ads allow YouTube to stay free for billions of users worldwide.
You can go ad-free with YouTube Premium and creators can still get paid from your subscription.

A YouTube employee has reportedly acknowledged the existence of this feature and clarified that it is currently in the experimental phase, with limited availability among users. In response to this, YouTube users have taken to social media to express their strong opposition to this feature. Here's what they had to say:

"Those are fighting words Youtube, especially when you were the one who MADE me use adblock with your insistance of tossing unskippable decades long double whammy ads everywhere."

"good luck with that i got blocks build into my router i refuse to watch ads and i refuse to pay youtube any money."

"My adblocks still work just fine. The minute I start to see forced ads or my adblocks no longer work, I will cease using Youtube and start using the alternative sites."

Should it be implemented, this new feature will join the growing roster of YouTube features that have garnered public backlash, including the removal of the dislike counter, which was introduced in 2021.

As alternative content creation platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels continue to gain momentum, YouTube will have to adapt to the evolving market if it hopes to avoid a fate similar to that of Vine.