This video provides a weekly roundup of tech, gaming, and AI news. It covers a WordPress plugin hack, Microsoft's investment in Japan's AI infrastructure, advancements in AI standards like MCP, a new USGS drought prediction tool, exciting Game Pass additions for April, the Starfield PS5 release, Diablo 4's new expansion, and the surprising popularity and stock issues of the Apple MacBook Neo.
Do it's the tech news. You're not here for that. You're here for the tech news. Welcome back to another tech, gaming, and AI news nerd cap of the week. Your weekly dose of tech, gaming, and AI news. We've got a big one today. A major WordPress plugin just got hacked and a supply chain attack. Microsoft is dropping 10 billion on Japan and Game Pass in April is absolutely stacked. Let's get into it. Hackers hijacked the update system for Smart Slider 3 Pro, a WordPress plugin with 800K plus active installs, and pushed a backdoor version on April the 7th. The malware gives full server control, arbitrary code execution, admin accounts, and the ability to hide itself from legit admins. Nasty stuff. Only the Pro version was hit. So, if you updated between April the 7th and the 8th, upgrade to 3.5.1.36 immediately or roll back to 3.5.1.34. This is exactly why supply chain attacks are terrifying and you trust the update and the update betrays you. I actually experienced something like this at work last week. It was pure insanity. They actually came in through a different method but very, very similar. So, definitely be safe out there, guys. Microsoft just committed $10 billion to Japan over four years. This is the biggest western AI infrastructure bet in Asia. Data centers in Tokyo, Ahsoka, and Yokohama. I think that's how you say it. I don't know. It's fine. Whatever. They're all partnering with SoftBank and Secura Internet for GPU and compute resources, plus training 1 million plus engineers by 2030. This is three times larger than their 2024 Japan investment. Microsoft is not playing around here. They're building the foundation for AI dominance in Asia. Anthropic's model context protocol or MCP crossed 97 million installs in March. The fastest adoption curve for any AI infrastructure standard ever, faster than Kurbanites, OpenAI, Google, Coher, and Mistl all integrated MCP. Over 5,800 enterprise servers are actually running it. The protocol war is basically over. It's now under the Linux Foundation. And MCP went from an experiment to industry standard in about 16 months, which is absolutely insane. Have you guys actually installed an MCP yet? I have a few on my cloud instance and they're absolutely amazing and it's just expanding everything everywhere. It's going so fast it's hard to keep up with, but let me know in the comments below. Have you used an MCP yet? What's your favorite one? The USGS launched River Drocast, an ML tool that predicts drought up to 90 days out using 100 plus years of stream gauge data. It actually covers 3,000 plus locations nationwide. First predictions are right about 75% of the time. Real AI doing real things, which is incredible. Farmers, water managers, and recreation operators can now plan ahead. This is the kind of AI application that actually matters. Just freaking sweet to see. Xbox Game Pass in April is absolutely stacked. Hades 2 drops on April the 14th. Oblivion Remastered hits all tiers on April the 16th, plus Call of Duty Modern Warfare, and 17 plus titles in total are hitting Game Pass in April. Hades 2 on console is a day one Game Pass launch. If you haven't played it yet, you're out of excuses now. Microsoft is definitely flexing hard this month. Arguably the best single month of Game Pass in a while. Let me know in the comments below. Oh, are you going to be playing any of these games? Starfield hit PS5 on April the 7th with every postlaunch update, the free lanes content drop, and the Terran Armada paid expansion. PS5 owners get 4K at 30 frames per second or 60 frames per second in performance mode. The PS5 Pro will get even better fidelity. It actually requires 135 GB to install, though, so you're definitely going to need to clear some space for it. It's definitely a much better game now than it was at launch. So, if you skipped it before, this is the version to try. I actually played this game all the way through, spent a ton of time on it, and I actually liked it a lot. I didn't go through and play the additional stories or the additional endings or anything like that after the game ends, but let me know in the comments below what was your favorite ending. Blizzard's second Diablo I expansion drops on April the 28th with two new classes, Paladin and Warlock, a new region, Scavos. The Hodratic Cube is back. They're also reworking skill trees for all eight classes, adding a loot filter and overhauling the endgame. This is definitely a big swing and a big update. Pre-purchasing this expansion unlocks the Paladin early in the base game right now. If you're still playing D4, this looks like the reset that it needed. Let me know in the comments below. Is this something that you're going to be downloading? And for those Apple nerds out there that have watched my previous videos about the Apple Neo laptop, the laptop is actually phenomenal. one of the best things that Apple has come out with in years and it's actually selling so well that Apple didn't plan for it. They didn't expect it to be this popular. It's out of stock in most places. The base model at least the one that you can get Touch ID in the upgraded storage you could still find. However, if you are looking for one, Amazon seems to be the place to be that has stock of pretty much all models or at least you'll be able to find a model on there every once in a while. Whereas if you go to Apple or Best Buy or any other location, you're looking at about a 3 to 4 week delay. Absolutely insane that they came out with a product and didn't produce enough of it. I could have told you that. Hi, I'm Joe Mo and I saw this coming from a million miles away. But if you have not gotten one yet, you have not looked into it. Go watch one of my previous videos. I have two previous videos about the MacBook Neo. It's absolutely amazing. If you are in the market for a new laptop, Chromebook, or anything like that, it is definitely the one to get, especially for your kids, parents, a student, pretty much anybody and everybody could actually use this computer. It's the the value is absolutely insane. That's all I have for this week, guys. Thanks for watching. Thanks for hanging out with me. And until next time, remember to stay nerdy. Peace out, y'all.
