Gaming Roundtable
The crew kicks things off with the Gaming Roundtable. Matt discusses his time with Esoteric Ebb, Pillars of Eternity, and Dave the Diver. Brandon shares his adventures in Timberborn, Pokopia, and Runescape.
Starfield Comes to PS5
We cover Starfield's shocking pivot to PlayStation:
- Originally released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox Series X/S on September 6, 2023, a PlayStation 5 version is now scheduled to release on April 7, 2026.
- This contradicts a 2021 statement from Xbox President Sarah Bond, who called it a groundbreaking exclusive.
- It's a massive reversal from Microsoft's original plan to use it as a flagship title for Xbox Series X|S and PC.
- We discuss how Microsoft spent $7.5 billion acquiring ZeniMax largely because Phil Spencer was concerned Sony would make Starfield a PlayStation exclusive.
- However, with Starfield currently holding a 55% "Mixed" review score on Steam and only 4,445 active users, recouping money "left on the table" arguably won out internally.
- The PS5 launch includes a $49.99 standard edition and a $69.99 Premium edition (which includes both DLCs) alongside a price drop on all platforms.
The Axios Supply Chain Hijack
We break down the terrifying Axios supply chain hijack:
- A hacker pushed malicious versions of the massively popular Axios JavaScript library, which has over 100 million weekly downloads.
- Google attributed the attack to a financially motivated North Korean threat group tracked as UNC1069.
- The hackers built a fake company, complete with a Slack workspace and LinkedIn profiles, to trick the lead maintainer into installing malware, rendering 2FA irrelevant.
- The compromised code was live for about 3 hours, dropping a remote access trojan that impacted roughly 3% of the Axios userbase.
- Organizations that install npm packages in CI/CD pipelines may have automatically pulled the malicious versions during this window, leading security experts to warn that anyone who downloaded the code "should assume their system is compromised".
The Claude Code Leak
We look at the disastrous leak of Anthropic's Claude Code:
- For the second time in just over a year, the AI coding tool's full architecture and internal model performance data leaked publicly.
- A debugging file was accidentally bundled into a routine update pushed to a public registry, exposing around 500,000 lines of code across roughly 1,900 files.
- The leak revealed unreleased features like a "persistent assistant" and an autonomous daemon mode called "KAIROS".
- To make matters worse, Anthropic accidentally nuked thousands of legitimate GitHub repositories while trying to scrub the leak, and threat actors are now seeding trojanized versions of the leaked code.
Watch & Listen
VOD: https://youtu.be/OkqjDJH2eWk
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/TheDigitalAscent
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@TheDigitalAscent
Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/digitalascent/
Hosts & Credits
- Hosts: Brent, Matt, Brandon, Shaun, Jordyn
- Technical Design / Production: Brent
Sources
- GamesRadar+ — Starfield PS5 release date confirmed as the price of the base game falls by $20 on all platforms
- SecurityWeek — Axios npm package breached in North Korean supply chain attack
- Tenable — FAQ about the Axios npm supply chain attack by North Korea-nexus threat actor UNC1069
- VentureBeat — Claude Code's source code appears to have leaked: here's what we know
- TechSpot — Anthropic accidentally exposed Claude Code source, raising security concerns