Ask Paul: October 23 ⭐

Happy Friday! This week, the AI angst is building to an existential crescendo because everything we understand is changing. So you have questions, and I have questions, and things are moving so fast, the answers will be different next week and next month. We'll see. For now, let's dive in and see what this incredible industry has done for us--and to us--this week.
"MacBook Neo Helps Apple Outpace Rivals as Market Declines"

And by "outpace," we mean that sales fell a bit less than some but not all PC makers
👂 Audiobooks
Alan1 asks:

Hi Paul, curious if you still listen to audiobooks and if so, any recommendations?

I write an article about this at the end of each year, so I don't want to preempt that too badly. But yes, I listen to audiobooks regularly, almost always through Audible.

Some of the better ones I've recently listened to include:

Bram Stoker's Dracula (which I already had in my library, but this was one of the titles that got the recently announced new interactive features)
Welcome to Your Life: Love, Death & Tears For Fears by Roland Orzabal (of the band Tears for Fears, who also narrates it)
The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars (Motley Crue)
Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen (which has a blockbuster revelation in the final chapter)
The Killer Across the Table by John Douglas, which was a relisten; it's narrated by Jonathan Groff, who basically played Douglas in the excellent Netflix series Manhunter.

I'll leave it at that for now, since I'll be putting together the 2026 version of my book/audiobook recap in a month and a half.
"MIT researchers strand AI agents on virtual desert island"

Right, it's called a sandbox
🎮 Paul of Duty
helix2301 asks:

With the Call of Duty launch today, are you a fan of Black Ops or Modern Warfare? I don’t like the gulag part but everything else is fun. Both franchises are great, and now that the Switch 2 brings even more people to the franchise. I am wondering if Black Ops will come to the Switch next.

I like both series, and I always liked the World War II games as well. And of the games that never turned into a series, I still fondly recall Call of Duty: Ghosts. But Call of Duty games (and series) are complicated because there are single player campaigns, multiplayer of all kinds, Warzone, Zombies, and other game modes (like DMZ in the latest title), and these are different experiences.

When Call of Duty first came out as an unofficial successor to the Medal of Honor series (because it was made by the same basic team), it was more oriented to single player, and of course those World War II storylines are always pretty compelling. I played the Medal of Honor games and the first Call of Duty on the PC, but Call of Duty II was an Xbox 360 launch title and that marked my transition to playing almost exclusively on Xbox with a...