Pokémon Champions hits iOS and Android on June 17

**Imran Shaikh** (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by Rise Robotics. Rise Robotics is one company you're gonna want to keep an eye on, and not just because they're making cool new technology, but because they're giving anyone and everyone a chance to invest in their company. And yeah, that includes you listening to this podcast right now. Know a little thing called hydraulics? You know, the thing keeping heavy machines functioning? Well, Rise Robotics has made an electric alternative, belt hydraulics. It'll replace current hydraulic systems, which often break and leak, with one that runs cleaner, faster, and with less maintenance. Here's some things you might also find interesting about them. This is patented technology well out of the idea phase. I'm talking 20 plus patents and deals with the Pentagon over here. Oh, and Rise Robotics has already acquired over $9.3 million in revenue. Most importantly, Rise Robotics is giving anyone interested the opportunity to invest and become a part owner right now. If that's something you might be into, check them out at invest.riserobotics.com. You can read about the technology, see what they've built, and decide if becoming a part owner of this company makes sense for you. Again, that's invest.riserobotics.com.
Researchers are showing how AI-powered worms could wreak havoc on the Internet. More on that coming up. But first, more than three years after it began rolling out AI overviews, and a year after the debut of AI mode, Google is giving webmasters the option to exclude their domains from its AI-generated research results. In a blog post published early Wednesday morning, the company said it would begin testing a new toggle inside of its search console designed to allow website owners to decide if their webpages appear in and help ground the company's latest AI search features, including AI overviews and AI mode. The company plans to first test the toggle with a small subset of domain owners in the UK before rolling it out globally. The opt-out option may have come about due to pressure from UK regulators. The Competition and Markets Authority announced yesterday that it had imposed the new rule on Google due to its lopsided market power as a strategic market status company.
Some news for the gamers out there. If you've been waiting to play Pokémon Champions on an iOS or Android device, you can do that pretty soon. The latest Pokémon Battle Game is coming to mobile on June 17th. It debuted on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 back in April. If you've already been playing Pokémon Champions on a Nintendo console, you can continue where you left off on iOS and Android. After you link the mobile version of the game to the same Nintendo account, your saved data will carry over. There's full support for cross-platform play as well. This is a Pokémon Battle Game in the vein of Pokémon Stadium. You can use Pokémon Home to transfer in Pokémon you've captured in previous games and Pokémon Go. There's the option to recruit Pokémon and Pokémon Champions as well. Along with ranked battles, there's a casual mode as well as private lobbies and online competitions. You'll earn victory points that you can use to, among other things, boost the stats of your Pokémon, switch up their movesets, and unlock cosmetic items. Remember, you can find the latest Gadget News, reviews, price drops, and more right now at engadget.com.
This is not the future we were promised.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:16)
How about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world.

**Imran Shaikh** (3:26)
This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:30)
It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life.

**Imran Shaikh** (3:36)
And all the bizarre ways people are using the Internet.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:40)
Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

**Imran Shaikh** (3:48)
We've seen how AI can be used to find flaws in apps and websites, but researchers have now demonstrated how it could be weaponized to exploit those vulnerabilities. A team from the University of Toronto used publicly accessible AI models to power a prototype worm capable of exploiting any known computer flaw. Such worms could then spread through networks and cause chaos across the Internet. A typical worm is usually designed by skilled programmers to exploit specific network flaws and can be stopped by patching those flaws. However, the U of T scientists working in a secure, closed environment and taking extensive precautions, used open weight, open source, AI models to create a far more sophisticated prototype worm that spread through the team's test network with no human intervention. This new type of worm tailors its attack to different types of flaws across multiple platforms, including Linux, Windows and IoT devices. It gathers data as it moves through the network, siphoning passwords and uncovering more vulnerabilities that will help it take over other machines. If an infection is discovered and patched on a computer, the worm can exploit other flaws to attack the same machine.