Four Top Google AI Minds Leave for Startup; Foldable Smartphone Sales to Grow 20% with Apple iPhone Ultra in Mix; SpaceX Earnings Report Spooks Investors; Desktop Linux Exceeds 10% Market Share

Posted: August 5, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Talk about brain drain…four of Google’s top AI whizzes are jumping ship to launch their own AI startup. Wired.com reports that one is Jeff Dean, who co-founded Google Brain and has been chief scientist of Google DeepMind and Google Research. Colleague Sanjay Ghemawat and two others will join him in the fledgling AI company. It is worth noting that Google will have a stake in the new company….but it is still a blow to have so much AI brainpower off on its own. The new firm is called Discovery Loop. The other big brains founding the new AI startup are Quac Le and Oriol Vinyals. Discovery Loop is aiming for making superhuman advances in a variety of fields, including chip design, biology, drug discovery, and material design.

With Apple about to enter the fray with the upcoming iPhone Ultra folder, worldwide folding smartphone sales are expected to be 20% higher than last year. According to macrumors.com, this is despite the tight supply of logic chips and price increases on memory chips due to all the AI data centers gobbling that silicon up. Folders have been around for about 8 years now, with Samsung really driving the category almost single handedly for a good share of that. Apple plans to ship some 10 million folding phones this year…not a big number compared to the total number of iPhones, but a big boost to the folding phone sector.

SpaceX’s first earnings report as a publicly traded company were out yesterday, and the company beat expectations with revenue of $7.8 billion, while analysts looked for $6.82 billion. Arstechnica.com notes that SpaceX had a net loss of about $541 billion, better than the $2.12 billion expected. Even so, shares took a 10% dump after the firm reported capital expenditures of about $16 billion on AI, double last quarter and far more than Wall Street’s expectations…AND SpaceX indicated that spending level would continue for at least 2 more quarters. SpaceX shares have lost about half their initial value from the initial public offering. Worrisome to investors…the majority of their AI revenue has come from leasing excess data center capacity to rival AI firms like Anthropic and Google. 

It may not have crossed your mind, but Linux…an operating system favored by gamers and hobbyests…has now passed 10% market share on the desktop. Zdnet.com reports that StatCounter gives the OS 10.65% of the North American market now. Almost all the growth can be blamed on the intrusive Windows 11 from Microsoft. In 2025, Linux only had about 5% of the market. ChromeOS has a bit over 2% of the desktop…and it is a so-called Linux distro. If you add that in, Linux as 12.72%. Windows is at about 60.8% in North America, while the MacOs has about 12%…roughly the same as Linux. (It should be noted that the MacOS is built on a base of Unix, as is Linux.) Linux is free and easy to install. It resembles Android in a way….infinitely customizable, and a plus is no one is pushing their AI on you if you use it. 

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

Amazon Passes $3 Trillion Market Cap; OpenAI vs Apple in Court of Public Opinion; Hotel Wi-Fi Hacks Microsoft 365; AI Supervised Remote Exam Ends Badly

Posted: August 4, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Amazon has joined an ultra-exclusive club now…topping the $3 trillion market capitalization mark. Cnbc.com reports that this comes on the heels of a better than expected earnings report last week. The jump comes after the company reported a surge in cloud growth during the second quarter on the back of strong artificial intelligence demand. It reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.97 versus estimates of $1.82 per share. Revenue came in at $200.61 billion, beating the $196.47 billion analysts estimated. The push for AI data centers helped Amazon’s rivals, too.  Microsoft Azure cloud revenue rising 43% during the fiscal fourth quarter and Google Cloud reporting 82% growth during their own earnings last week.

Apple filed a suit last month, as we reported here, involving former Apple employees and OpenAI…accusing the latter of stealing its trade secrets. According to theverge.com, OpenAI has shot back-in public, not a court filing- that Apple’s suit is  “careless, aggressive, and oddly personal,” sharing iMessage and email exchanges to challenge allegations central to the case. OpenAI seems to be trying to win in the court of public opinion well before the case goes to trial or gets settled. Apple has asked a court for a preliminary injunction to prevent the two individuals,  Chang Liu and Tang Tan, and OpenAI from accessing, acquiring, or using or disclosing alleged confidential information while the lawsuit moves ahead. Expect more drama to emerge in the public arena… at least from OpenAI’s side…as this moves forward at the usual snail’s pace in the courts. It’s unlikely that famously secretive Apple will reply to any degree in public. 

An apparently world wide scam targeting hotel wi-fi networks has been traced back to Russian threat actor Midnight Blizzard…also known as APT29. Bleepingcomputer.com says The attackers manipulate DNS and HTTP traffic on networks served by captive portal equipment, allowing them to intercept user connections to hotel and conference center Wi-Fi networks. After modifying DNS settings, the attacker can redirect victims to phishing pages that impersonate Microsoft 365 login portals, or to device code phishing pages that abuse Microsoft Entra ID authentication flows. Microsoft observed this activity since July. Microsoft recommends treating hotel and conference Wi-Fi as untrusted, using private cellular or managed connections whenever possible, and avoiding software updates or tools offered through captive portals. I recommend using your phone as a hot spot connected to your computer, and to never use hotel wi-fi at all. The same goes for airports, or any other public place. You might as well be on a Zoom with the bad guys wearing a giant ‘hack me’ sign.

About 160,000 applicants took the entrance exam earlier this summer for UNAM, Mexico’s largest university. Arstechnica.com reports that the exam was administered remotely for the first time…using a’lockdown’ browser and AI-powered webcam proctoring software. Well, things didn’t exactly go according to plan. The top results varied dramatically from past results. Between 2021 and 2025, 3.5 percent of test takers scored 100 or more on the 120-question UNAM test. This year, 16.3 percent did so. At the very tip-top, Between 2021 and 2025, 0.9 percent of test takers scored 110 or more; this year, 5.5 percent did so. A commission has looked things over and decided that the 58,000 applicants  who did well enough to be admitted will have to retake the exam….in person! Enterprising prospective college kids and college students have always found ways to get a leg up on exams. At the fraternity house where I lived in part of my college days, they had two file cabinets in the basement with past exams of professors…all with the correct answers for members to pore over in order to get a higher score. Welcome to the 21st century version of that…with AI assistants.

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

Minn. ‘Nudification’ Ban in Effect; Ford CEO-Chinese EVs in US Next 5 Years; Apple Smart Glasses Aim at Health; Samsung Bans Smart TV Apps That Share Your Internet Connection with Strangers

Posted: August 3, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Despite Elon Musk’s xAI going to court to stop it, a judge has allowed Minnesota’s ‘nudificaiton’ ban to go into effect. xAI had filed an emergency motion, claiming urgent harm. The harm is actually to the people who are the victims of so-called ‘nudification,’ really. The term refers to using software to create nude images of people…something that has become more rampant and realistic with AI. You can take a photo of a person, and tell the software to create a nude photo of the person based on the clothed one and it does it. Mashable.com reports that Minnesota’s law also bans advertising or promoting services or software that can nudify images of people.There is a hefty civil penalty of $500,000 per unlawful access, download, or use…enforceable by the attorney general. A private right of action is allowed so people can sue the perpetrators. 

Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, told employees this week that Chinese electric vehicles could be showing up for sale in the US in the next 5 to 10 years. According to thenextweb.com, there are several layers of protection right now shielding the US market from the Chinese made EVs. Stiff cumulative tariffs for 125 percent, and a connected vehicle rule banning sharing of data back to China are two of the protections. The market will have to open soon…Canada has made a deal to allow up to 49,000 Chinese vehicles a year at a reduced tariff, and Mexico has permitted in Chinese EVs…which now make up about a quarter of Mexican EVs. Ford has its Universal EV Platform coming out in 2027, with a midsized pickup aimed at a $30,000 price tag…which would compete nicely with the Chinese EVs.

We’ve reported that Apple plans to show its smart glasses at WWDC next June, with them going on sale later in 2027. Now, 9to5mac.com says that Apple has some plans down the road for the glasses that move away from identifying things, and other typical smart glasses functions. Apple is aiming to have the smart glasses ultimately be more of a health platform. Fitness will be a major offering…perhaps a version of Workout Buddy will run on them. Cameras and sensors on the glasses could help guide you to better form, and alert you when you are doing something wrong. This might be a cool thing so long as the glasses are a Workout Buddy and not a Workout Nag!

It’s been some time since we reported on this, but as noted in the past, smart TVs can be porous with your information. Some makers even had to take action to make sure cameras and mics that could monitor what you were doing were…or could be shut off. Now, TechCrunch.com notes that Samsung is banning some smart TV apps that share your internet connection with strangers. The bad apps are kind of a shell with just a small amount of code….but contain software that funnels outsiders’ web traffic through ordinary home and office internet connections, known as residential proxy networks (or “resproxies”), which are increasingly being linked to cybercrime. When opened, apps with resproxy code can turn the smart TV into an always-on tunnel for outsiders to funnel their web traffic through, known as an exit node — even when the app is no longer open. Samsung says besides the ban, they are working to remove all apps that are available at their app store that have these nefarious components. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified,’ definitely not ‘nudified’ for now. 

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