Chinese Government Hackers Hit US Treasury Office; Meta-Plans to Flood Social Media with AI Generated Users and Content; Tesla Deliveries Drop-First in a Decade; Samsung A16 Launches in US for $199

Over the holiday, we found out that Chinese government hackers targeted the very sensitive sanctions office for the US Treasury. Techcrunch.com reports that the hackers were able to access employee workstations and unclassified documents. The situation, which happened in December, was called ‘a major cybersecurity incident’ by the Treasury. A third party software provider called Beyond Trust, that provides identity management tools, tipped off Treasury about the attacks. The US Treasury Department has had no further comment so far. 

From the ‘whoever thought this was a good idea’ department…Meta plans to flood Facebook and other social media platforms with AI powered user profiles. According to Siliconangle.com, Connor Hayes, VP of product of Generative AI said in an interview with Financial Times “We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do. They’ll have bios and profile pictures and they’ll be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform. That’s where we see all of this going.” Hey, they want to see some return on the billions they are pumping into AI…so brace yourself.

Tesla had its first drop in yearly deliveries in a decade. Yahoo.com says that the EV maker got 495,570 vehicles to customers in the last quarter, missing estimates of 503,269 which meant a 1.1% drop year over year. This all according to 15 analysts polled by LSEG. The stock is down over 100 from a high of 486 December 17th to 379.70 as of this report on January 2nd. 

One thing Samsung does well that Apple can’t or won’t master is maintaining a line of cheap Android phones in addition to their more state-of-the art and therefore pricy phones. 9to5google.com reports that Samsung has started 2025 with the US launch of its budget Galaxy A16 phone…for $199! The phone is no dog…it has a 6.7 inch screen and runs an Exynos 1330 system. The A16 also rocks a big 5,000 mAh battery. Where it does lack is in memory…only 4 gigs. It does have a 50MP rear cam and a 5 MP ultra wide, as well as a 2 MP macro cam. The Selfie cam is 13 MP, so you aren’t going to get top notch photos with this…but hey, $199! It comes with 6 major Android updates too. You can get it in black or blue starting January 9th from Samsung.com and many retailers and carriers.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.