The Trump tariffs…they’re up, they’re down, they’re off, they’re postponed, they’re on again. Trump’s hangup with tariffs is making a mess of international commerce. Now, mashable.com reports that price hikes based on what the tariffs have been…or may be…have crept into places like Walmart and Target…and employees have started leaking some online. Examples can be found on Reddit’s r/Walmart subreddit. One example has an 8 ounce jar of cocoa powder that was $3.44 and has now been re-priced up to $6.18..and 80% price jump. A Jurassic World T-Rex toy has been bumped from $39.95 to $55, a 38% hike due to the tariffs, and a fishing reel that was formerly $57.37 is now $83.26. As Walmart CFO John Rainey told CNBC last month, “We’re wired for everyday low prices, but the magnitude of these increases is more than any retailer can absorb. It’s more than any supplier can absorb.” A 2023 Reuters report said that 60% of Walmart’s goods were sourced from China between January and April of that year. Since then, Walmart has started shifting part of its supply chain to India, as is true with a number of electronics makers like Foxconn, that supplies Apple’s iPhones.
TikTok has stopped showing search results for the hashtag #SkinnyTok. According to engadget.com, critics have complained that videos with this label promoting disordered eating and other unhealthy or risky diet behaviors. France’s Ministry of State for Digital Affairs was a leading critic of this, and it has also been on the radar of the EU regulators since April. It is likely that determined users will come up with a work around, but this will stop the most blatant abuse. in 2020, TikTok had put restrictions on ads that might “promote a negative or harmful body image,” such as fasting apps and weight loss supplements. TikTok began a partnership with the National Eating Disorder Association in 2021 to offer more resources for users with eating disorders. Later that year, it also introduced a new approach to the For You page in an effort to reduce the impact of watching too many repeated clips on a negative topic.
Google has had to hold off on the rollout of its ‘Ask Photos’ AI search feature for a couple of weeks. TechCrunch.com says that they have had issues with latency, quality and user experience. Some users already have the feature, but an updated version will be sent out correcting the problems in the next two weeks. The feature uses Google’s Gemini AI to let users search their Google Photos libraries using natural language prompts.
Meta and Russia-based Yandex have figured out how to abuse legit internet protocols to de-anonymize website visitors and secretly send unique identifiers to native apps stored on Android devices. Arstechnica.com reports that the tracking, via the Meta Pixel and Yandex Metrica trackers, let them bypass core privacy and security protections that are in the Android OS and browsers that run on it. Yandex has used this bypass to track people since 2017, and Meta picked up on it last September. It allows them to pass cookies or other identifiers from Firefox and Chromium based browsers to native Android apps for Facebook, Instagram, and various Yandex apps. Then…presto…they can tie the browsing history to the account holder….YOU…that is logged into the app! So far, the tracking hasn’t shown up on Apple’s iOS. It may be technically possible, but iOS has tighter controls on local host communications and background executions of mobile apps. Although Orwell wrote that Big Brother is watching you…which is more true than ever now, he never imagined a Big Tech that was watching you even more, and using your data to make more money for themselves.
A leaked prototype of the Google Pixel 10 has produced several reveals. 9to5google.com reports that the handset appears to have a thicker oval-shaped camera bar which is also wider…it comes very close to the edges of the phone. In addition, there are some smaller visual changes….the cutouts at the bottom on either side of the USB-C port are identical in size. It is expected that one is the speaker and the other is for the microphone. Google has moved the SIM card tray to the top left edge. The prototype has 16 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage.
Salesforce has somewhat stealthily snapped up a startup that is making AI tools to vet and hire talent. According to techcrunch.com, the company is Moonhub, and the entire crew, based in Menlo Park, will join Salesforce. Moonhub was just started in 2022 by an ex-Meta engineer. They make a number of tools designed to help companies recruit, evaluate, and hire job candidates. Moonhub’s AI can automatically identify candidates for roles, reaching out and assisting with tasks such as onboarding and payroll management.
As it does whatever it can to attract people to Bing, Microsoft has rolled out Bing Video Creator. Geekwire.com says Creator is a new generative AI tool for creating videos from text prompts. It is based on Sora, the video model that came out in December from OpenAI. Microsoft is a rather heavily invested partner in OpenAI. You can use text prompts to make 10 videos up to 5 seconds long each with Bing Video Creator. After that, you will need Microsoft Rewards points for additional creations. Expect to see more AI-generated silly stuff on social media soon.
Meta dropped the iPad version of WhatsApp last week. If it seems like it’s been a while for this, it has…2 years. Now, bgr.com reports that Meta employees are testing out Instagram for iPad, and we may see it out later this year. For those that don’t use apps like these, let me get on my soapbox. What you get is an iPhone-sized app sitting in your screen with nothing in the space around…in other words, it is just like using an iPhone app, and wastes the larger screen and abilities of the iPad. Meta’s Threads has the same format,,,I hope they will get an iPad version of that out soon, too. Meta says they have been concerned with how the square pictures in Instagram would look on the iPad. They may have that worked out, and with in increase in time on Reels from 90 seconds to 3 minutes, those videos will look nice in landscape if they have that figured out. It is not just Meta, by the way. I use Bluesky, and they have the same deal….a little iPhone screen in the middle of a vast area of wasted screen on iPads. Come on, people!
Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference is imminent, and a bit more has trickled out. We already reported that the operating systems will assume years as part of their naming system, as in macOS26. Now, macrumors.com reports that macOS26 will be named Tahoe. Apple burned through a number of names of big cats for its OS names for years, then switched to California names….like Yosemite, Monterey, and Sonoma. Along with the name, Apple will bow a more glass-like design with more translucent windows, buttons and icons…thus the connection to Lake Tahoe…famous for its clarity and being able to see deep down into the water. WWDC kicks off a week from today, on Monday June 9th, at 10am Pacific.
Samsung is moving forward on an investment in AI startup Perplexity, which would lead to the smartphone maker integrating the AI company’s tech into their devices. According to techcrunch.com, Samsung would use Perplexity’s AI brawn to power some of Samsung’s Bixby assistant features. A partnership deal with Perplexity may be sealed yet this year. Interestingly, Apple has also thought about adding Perplexity as a search engine to its Safari browser. Motorola already has a partnership with the AI firm.
Meta is planning to move assessment of its products’ potential harms from human reviewers to AI, aiming to speed up the process. Engadget.com notes that Meta is wanting to have up to 90% of risk assessments taken care of by AI…even considering it in areas like youth risk and ‘integrity,’ which includes violent content, misinformation and more. Meta employees who spoke with NPR warned AI may overlook serious risks that a human team would have been able to identify. It appears the old slogan of ‘move fast and break things’ is still well entrenched at Meta.
The folks at ComScore have done the analytics, and says that 30% of US people are actively using AI at least monthly. Top AI tools on the desktop are OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and the Canva designer. ComScore notes that 67 million people in the US are using AI on their mobile devices. Top categories on the desktop…besides AI assistants…are Audio with 23.8 million users, image generation with 23 million, and designs also with 23 million. Video generation shows up with 22.4 million. For mobile, ChatGPT has the highest number of visitors. In #2 is marketing platform Octane AI, followed by Canvas, Gemini, and social marketing tool Beacons.
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