Meta Releases Spark for Their AI App; VW Tests Self-Driving Microbuses in LA; Russian Military Hacks Thousands of Routers; Amazon is Dropping Support for Really Old Kindles

Meta has released Spark, the first in a new family of AI systems dubbed Muse and coming from its Superintellegence team. Engadget.com reports that Spark is a so-called lightweight model, aimed at consumer use. Spark will offer both ‘instant’ and ‘thinking’ modes. In thinking mode, it will take a few extra moments to reason through your prompt. This is similar to what other companies’ consumer-facing AI systems are already doing. Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.7 had this feature set at the beginning of last year. Meta does say that they will offer an even more powerful ‘contemplating’ mode down the road. Meta Muse Spark is available today in the Meta AI app and meta.ai website. The new features are being released in the US first, with other countries to follow. In the comping weeks, they will also open up access to Spark via Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. 

Volkswagen has started testing out self-driving ID Buzz electric minivans in Los Angeles. This is for an upcoming launch with Uber of a robotaxi service using the minivans in late 2026. According to techcrunch.com, the plan is to expand to a number of US cities in the next 10 years after the L.A. rollout. For staters, VW will just be testing around 10 of the self-driving ID Buzz vans. They can carry 4 people. Eventually, they plan on 100 vehicles. At first, all will have a live safety driver aboard. 

The US government recently warned about buying foreign made routers…which is essentially all routers, and warned that they can be hacked. Now, arstechnica.com notes that thousands of consumer routers actually have been hacked by the Russian military. They have been able to harvest passwords and credential tokens they can use in espionage campaigns. An estimated 18,000 to 40,000 consumer routers, mostly those made by MikroTik and TP-Link, located in 120 countries are affected. The easiest way for people to know if their router has been compromised in the operation is to review the current DNS settings. If they list unrecognized servers. Users should also check event logs for any unrecognized changes to DNS server settings. People should also strongly consider replacing end-of-life routers with ones that receive regular security updates. People should never click through browser alerts warning of untrusted TLS certificates. Yeah…I know you probably won’t do all that…and so do the Russians. 

Amazon is dropping support for some really old Kindles starting on May 20th. Bgr.com reports that Kindle and Kindle Fire hardware released in 2012 and earlier won’t be able to buy, borrow, or download new content from the Kindle Store. Basically any Kindle before 2013 will still be usable, but you won’t be able to do the above. Honestly, if you have a 2012 Kindle and the battery will still charge, I’m amazed. Also…it’s a 14 year or 15 year old device…buy a new one, ya cheapskate!

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