Google Wants EU to Force Apple’s iMessage to Play Nicer With Android; Meta Will Mark Altered Political & Social Ads in 2024; Rivian Vans No Longer Amazon-Exclusive; Chamberlain Dumbs Down Smart Garage Door Openers

Google and European cell carriers have written to the European Commission, pressing them to make Apple provide better messaging interoperability between platforms. In other words, they want iMessage to play nicer with Android. Androidpolice.com notes that Apple was able to have iMessage excluded from the EU’s Digital Markets Act. iMessage is, however under investigation. Google argues that iMessage’s popularity and revenue make it eligible for regulation, while Apple downplays its importance in the EU. Google has demanded for years to have governments force Apple to adapt RCS support for iMessage. Let’s just say what this is really about…younger users favor iMessage to iMessage chats over iPhones which display the ‘blue bubble.’ Messages from Android have a green bubble, and they don’t have the cool factor that Google desperately wants for their platform to entice and keep younger users. 

Meta says it will require advertisers to disclose whether the ads submitted to its websites have been digitally altered, included via the use of AI tools, if the ads are political or social in nature. According to engadget.com, ads that have been digitally altered will be marked as such on Meta’s platforms, in the same way some advertisements come with a “Paid for” disclaimer. The company will start implementing the rule in the new year, just as the campaign period for what’s expected to be a brutal and divisive 2024 US presidential elections heats up. This seems like a way to keep the revenue coming in, but cover Meta’s butt to an extent. A really consumer friendly policy would be to refuse AI altered ads in those categories all together. Note that advertisers don’t have to notify Meta if pics are only size adjusted, cropped, color corrected or sharpened. The platform owner did say that repeated violations of their rule ‘may result in penalties.’ 

Amazon poured a billion dollars into Rivian back in 2019, and has some 100,000 electric vans on order. Now, techcrunch.com says Rivian has modified their deal so they can sell the vans to others before delivering the entire 100,000. They will still sell Amazon the 100,000 units by the end of the decade. Last month, Amazon said they have 10,000 of the E-vans on the road. Amazon retains a 17% stake in the EV maker. 

Here’s a story that has saved me money. Chamberlain Group…which has the MyQ smart garage door tech…is blocking ‘unauthorized access’ to its APIs. This will stop integration of MyQ doors with Homebridge and Home Assistant. Theverge.com reports that Chamberlain had hardy cut Apple HomeKit and Google Assistant integration. This really sucks because Chamberlain has their own brand, plus Liftmaster, and Sears Craftsman garage door openers. They control about 70% of the US garage door market. There are already some companies making work arounds, but they are pretty convoluted. Chamberlain only wants you to use their ‘authorized’ security partners. Those require a paid subscription, and are cloud based. Sure seems like restraint of trade to me. I won’t be upgrading to one.

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

OpenAI Bows GPT-4 Turbo; Instagram Paid Subscribers Trail Patreon; Facebook Bans Political Campaigns from Some Ad Tools; Waze Warns of Crash-Prone Freeway Spots

OpenAI has rolled out GPT-4 Turbo. The latest, greatest chatbot is touted as having larger memory, lower cost, and new knowledge. The debut happened yesterday during the OpenAI DevDay event. Arstechnica.com reports that OpenAI also introduced an API for DALL-E 3, and custom, sharable, user-defined GPTs. Up to now, the knowledge base for ChatGPT-4 ran through 2021…now, the latest version has knowledge of events through April of 2023. Running GPT-4 Turbo as an API will cost a third less than GPT-4 for input tokens, too…a penny per thousand tokens, down from 3 cents per 1000. 

Instagram has hit a milestone…a million paid subscribers to creators that use the platform. That is a relative drop in the bucket when compared to the some 2 billion monthly Instagram users, but it’s a start. According to theverge.com, the platform has a long haul to catch up to other platforms in this regard…Patreon has some 30 million paid subscriptions. It should be noted that Patreon has about a 10 year head start, though. Meta has announced that now creators will be able to offer 30-day free trials, and another new feature will let creators bulk direct message new subscribers to chat with them. Instagram is also expanding its ‘Instagram Gifts’…its euphemism for tips…to more countries. 

Meta has announced that political campaigns advertising on Facebook will not have access to the site’s generative AI ad tools. This policy update comes just a month after Facebook announced an expansion of its AI-powered ad tools that can make changes to images, create backgrounds, write copy, and more — all on the fly. The tool is expected to be available to all advertisers by 2024. Meta has also blocked its AI virtual assistant from creating images of public figures and committed to watermarking content generated by AI to ensure it doesn’t spread false information.

Almost any traffic reporter will tell you that repeated crashes tend to happen at certain places on the freeway system. Caltrans studies have verified this. Now, engadget.com says Waze will let you know if you are taking such a route. Waze will send you a prompt that says ‘history of crashes.’ The prompt is designed to give you time to slow down or make extra effort to keep alert. Waze has been accumulating crash data for several years, and the feature will work on both freeways and local roads. 

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

Apple-Updating Whole iPad Lineup in 2024; More X Antics from Elon; College Students Ditch Dating Apps; Google Drops Android COVID Exposure Notice 

Word is out via Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman that Apple will update the entire iPad line next year. There had already been rumors of some of the tablets being refreshed, but Gurman says they will all get at least a metaphorical fresh coat of paint…if not faster, more powerful processors. Gurman had already reported that the low-end and mid-range iPads will be updated in March, but now apparently the iPad Pro models will be freshened as well. Expect the next iPad Air to get the M2 Apple silicon, and the Mini will get upgraded to an A16 Bionic chip. It’s likely that the Pro line will jump up to the just released Apple M3 chips. 

To the weekend in Elon Musk…the new AI venture he calls xAI soft-launched over the weekend. According to Engadget.com, it has been released to ‘a select group,’ although Musk hasn’t identified who they might be. In typical Elon hype, he says “in some important respects, it is the best that currently exists.” It’ll be competing with big-time offerings by OpenAI, Google, Meta and numerous others, so we’ll see what “important respects” make it the best that currently exists. 

In other X news, the platform is fishing for users who are willing to pony up $50,000 for recycled handles from inactive accounts. Musk had already warned that X was going to start purging accounts that have gone dormant. There is apparently an @Handle Team. They probably won’t let us know if there are any takers for this princely fee to get an X handle, but it would be interesting. Who would be willing to drop that kind of cash, when Musk could later take it away from you and sell it to someone else?

A new survey shows that college students are steering clear of dating apps. Perhaps they are turning back to in-person meetings…as the old joke goes…. back to the alcohol and bad judgment method. Axios and Generation Lab surveyed college students nationwide, and found 79% of college and grad students don’t use any dating apps…even once a month. Of the apps that are still being used, Tinder is the most popular…12% said they used it monthly or more often. 

Back in 2020, both Google and Apple developed COVID-19 notifications for Android and iOS to help people track COVID exposures. Last year, the Association of Public Health Labs, which managed the servers for the feature, ended support. Now, android central.com reports that Google has shut down the feature. They note that with the number of cases declining and vaccines widely available, it makes sense to retire this feature. The World Health Organization has declared the pandemic over, but COVID is still endemic…and continues to sicken people. It is still a good idea to keep up on your vaccination just as you should do yearly for the flu.

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

White House Issues Draft AI Rules; Disney About to Own 100% of Hulu; Upcoming Apple Watch to Monitor Blood Pressure; Ford Picks Up EV Power Startup

Shortly after an Executive Order moving the government to start putting up guardrails to protect the public from artificial intelligence abuses, the Biden administration has issued draft rules that would require federal agencies to evaluate and constantly monitor algorithms used in health care, law enforcement, and housing for potential discrimination or other harmful effects on human rights. Wired.com reports that the rules could force changes in US government activity dependent on AI, such as the FBI’s use of face recognition technology, which has been criticized for not taking steps called for by Congress to protect civil liberties. The new rules would require government agencies to assess existing algorithms by August 2024 and stop using any that don’t comply. The proposed OMB rules would add testing and independent evaluation of algorithms bought from private companies as a requirement of federal contracts, which the office can do in its role of coordinating departments with presidential priorities. 

Disney is buying out Comcast’s stake in Hulu. The House of Mouse has announced that it “expects it will pay” $8.61 billion to acquire Comcast’s 33 percent stake, giving Disney full ownership of Hulu. According to theverge.com, Disney expects the deal to close sometime next year. With Hulu barely seeing a shift in subscribers last quarter, Disney announced a price hike across all of its streaming services and hinted at a password-sharing crackdown. Password sharing crackdowns have threatened to cause big drops in subscribers, but after Netflix found that not to be the case, actually increasing subscribers after an initial dip, it looks like Disney and others are on board with whacking all of us with higher fees. 

It still looks like the holy grail feature of smart watches…blood sugar monitoring…is a ways off yet, but Apple is apparently planning to build blood pressure monitoring and a sleep apnea tracker into the next Apple Watch. CNBC says they also will introduce a paid health service. Apple is keen on getting more people on monthly services. Last quarter, Cupertino’s services business raked in $9.6 billion, a 12% increase year over year. Apple’s blood pressure sensor will reportedly detect when a user’s blood pressure is elevated, though it won’t show their exact measurements. Apple is working on introducing specific diastolic and systolic metrics in a future watch. Samsung already offers blood pressure monitoring in some markets. Next year’s Apple Watch will also reportedly monitor breathing and sleeping habits to predict if a person has sleep apnea, a condition where breathing stops and starts during the night.

Ford is picking up a startup charging tech company. Techcrunch.com reports that the Blue Oval company is getting Auto Motive Power…or AMP, and will fold the company, and roll up its tech and talent into Ford. They will keep the Santa Fe Springs, CA facility. AMP has designed power management  for everything from autonomous rideshare vehicles to drones and hyperloop-style transport. Top employees previously worked at Virgin Hyperloop and on Tesla’s engineering team. Ford says they are “focused on accelerating EV adoption and improving charging experiences,” and this particular deal is about “accelerating that effort.” Faster and easier charging is one of the key factors as car makers move on from early adaptors and try to woo more mainstream car buyers who aren’t as savvy about electric vehicles. 

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

Apple’s New M3 MacBook Pros & iMac; Microsoft Begins Blocking ‘Unauthorized’ Xbox Controllers & Accessories; X Now Officially Worth Half What Elon Paid for It; Boston Dynamics Robot Dog Gets a Voice

Apple streamed their ‘Scary Fast’ event last night, and it at least lived up to the latter part of its name…the event was over in about 30 minutes! New M3 chips powering new 14 inch and 16 inch MacBook Pros were revealed, including a new cheaper 14 inch MacBook Pro powered by the base (but still very powerful) M3 chip. The cheapie model starts at just $1599, BUT it only has 8 gigs of memory, and just two USB-C ports. Apple mercifully dropped the 13 inch MacBook Pro with the maligned Touch Bar. Actually, I have one as a backup yet…and never had an issue with the Touch Bar…the terrible ‘Butterfly Keyboard’ is a different story. Try typing fast with a deadline on that awful thing! Whew! Back to the new stuff…9to5mac.com reports that it’s 20% faster for the base chip than prior models, and the M3 Max will support 128 Gigs of RAM. Battery life 22 hours…wow! Apple claims same performance plugged in or on battery. Did we mention the new black color? Yeah, it looks really cool. The Pros will be available next week. 

Apple also showed off a new 24 inch iMac…well, with a new M3 chip anyway. The computer is basically the same, except about 30% faster. You can order today, and it ships November 7th. The entry level model is $1299. 

Microsoft has started blocking ‘unauthorized’ Xbox controllers and accessories. According to theverge.com, a warning was spotted last week…and now some users are seeing a ‘connected accessory is not authorized’ message pop up. The Verge points out that it’s unclear if Microsoft is trying to target cheat devices, or whether the Xbox maker is trying to push its official partner program. Apparently from the time you get the message, you have 2 weeks to use the so-called unauthorized accessory, then the Xbox will block its use. 

It was widely known at the time Elon Musk bought Twitter that it was worth a lot less than he paid. Now, the official word is X is worth less than half what he paid for it…down from $44 billion to $19 billion. On Monday, employees at X were awarded equity in the company at a valuation of $19 billion, or $45 per share, according to internal documents. The pricing was first seen and reported by Fortune. The $19 billion may be optimistic, too…one of his big investors, Fidelity, thinks X is worth 65 percent less than when he bought it. 

Boston Dynamics has done some amazing things with its robot dog, Spot…not to be confused with the critters West Coast car dealer Cal Worthington used to pass off as HIS dog spot! Now, the robotics company has been training Spot to talk using an AI model that incorporates ChatGPT and other AI models. Bgr.com says they are using a Spot robot as a talking tour guide to show off the Boston Dynamics campus. I wonder if they will license the voice of actor John Leeson, who gave voice to Doctor Who’s robot dog K-9. It would be fun to hear it say ‘Affirmative, Master!” If you ever watched Doctor Who, you may have heard that in Leeson’s voice instead of mine!

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

Meta-Ad Free Facebook & Instagram Subscriptions in Europe; Biden Signs Exec Order With Rules for Generative AI; ChatGPT for Accounting-Fuzzy Math; Fall COVID Vax Rate ‘Abysmal’

Under pressure from the European Union over ad tracking and targeting, Meta has rolled out an ad-free subscription version of Facebook and Instagram in the EU. TechCrunch.com reports that the new subscription will be available next month. the fee it plans to charge users to escape its tracking and targeting (i.e. the ad-free subscription) is €9.99/month on web or €12.99/month on iOS or Android per linked Facebook and Instagram accounts in a user’s Accounts Center. After March 1, 2024 it also says an additional fee — of €6/month on web and €8/month on iOS or Android — will apply for each additional account listed in a user’s Account Center. That means folks there with both a personal and public page will pay some hefty fees to continue using the platforms. Even for a user with just one account (on either Facebook or Instagram) the cost for protecting their privacy from Meta’s tracking and profiling would be almost €120 per year (for web use) or just over €155 (on mobile). 

President Joe Biden signed an executive order providing rules around generative AI, ahead of any legislation coming from lawmakers. According to the verge.com, the EO has 8 main goals:  to create new standards for AI safety and security, protect privacy, advance equity and civil rights, stand up for consumers, patients, and students, support workers, promote innovation and competition, advance US leadership in AI technologies, and ensure the responsible and effective government use of the technology. Also in the last couple days, the United Nations has come out with guidelines designed to get the most for humankind out of AI with the least danger…but of course, the UN ones are voluntary, so don’t expect much from them. An executive order isn’t permanent though…and only lasts as long as Biden is in office should the next president decide to reverse it. The administration notes that there are members of Congress working on permanent legislation right now. Industry observers said the executive order is at least a step forward in providing standards around generative AI.

The latest greatest tech thing ever is generative AI. Virtually every tech company is working on theirs or using one that is already out like ChatGPT. A word to the wise: it may be ok for language, but for accounting…not so much. While the latest iteration of the chatbot has passed all three notoriously difficult exams for medical school, got through the law school bar exam, and passed an MBA exam from the Wharton school of business at the University of Pennsylvania….there is one area where if falls short. Math…specifically, accounting. Zdnet.com says a professor from BYU assembled some 327 co-authors from 1856 educational institutions in 14 countries to come up with questions for the chatbot. Typical of a comprehensive accounting examination, questions ranged across all major topics. such as financial accounting, auditing, managerial accounting, tax, and others, and were of different types (multiple choice, short answers, true/false) and difficulty levels. The results were unequivocal: ChatGPT clocked a 47.4% result which, in and of itself, was not that bad. Students, however, scored an overall average of 76.7% and easily bested the machine. The areas where the large language model stubbed its toe the worst were financial problems, and managerial assessment problems. Good to keep in mind that the LLM relies on probability to determine the next word or character. Accounting relies on accuracy, not probability. You don’t want to use it on your bank account…especially if your income varies a bit…or you may come up overdrawn!

An immunization advisor at the CDC has called the current rate of COVID-19 vaccination ‘abysmal.’ The numbers are in, and they support that. Arstechnica.com notes that the rate of US COVID vaccinations is 7.1% for adults and a negligible 2.1% for kids. These figures run way short of a survey from last month that found over half of Americans said they planned to get the jab. According to the National Immunization Survey-Adult COVID Module that ran from October 8 to 14 that polled 14,715 adults, 24.6 percent said they “definitely will” get vaccinated, and an additional 30.6 percent said they “probably will.” That’s on top of the 7.1 percent who reported they were already vaccinated. The remaining 37 percent said they will definitely or probably not get vaccinated. Let’s not go through the full-blown COVID mess again…get the shot!

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

Google Updates Maps With AI Features; Ways Robotaxis Available in Phoenix via Uber; Zuckerberg Says Threads Has Almost 100 Million Users; ‘X’ is Still ‘Sticky,’ Despite All the Chaos Since Musk’s Acquisition 

It’s everywhere, it’s everywhere…kind of like Chickenman in the old radio serial. Unlike the ‘Wonderful White-Winged Warrior’ though, AI is real and now some AI capabilities have dropped in a Google Maps update. One new feature is an ‘Immersive View’ for route planning. Another is deep Lens integration for local navigation and more accurate real-time information. With the Immersive View, if you are on foot, bike, or public transit…or of course, driving, you can now scrub back and forth through street level, seeing turn-by-turn visuals of the path you’r taking. The feature initially is available in 15 international cities…including  Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle in the US. the app will now determine your precise location, and can direct you to nearby locations like ATMs, transit stations, restaurants, coffee shops, and stores. 

The state of California may have banned GM-owned Cruise self-driving vehicles from San Francisco streets for now due to accidents, Alphabet-owned Waymo is now seeing their self-driving cars coming online as robot taxis though Uber in Phoenix. 9to5google.com notes that Waymo has been running self-driving cars in Phoenix since late 2020 with its own Waymo One ride-hailing service. Waymo’s driverless cars, which are all-electric Jaguar I-Pace vehicles, will be amiable to Uber customers in Metro Phoenix, including Sky Harbor international Airport’s 24th and 44th Street SkyTrain locations. Making the cars available through Uber opens up a much bigger customer base. Waymo One is also available in San Francisco, with public testing ongoing in Los Angeles. 

While Threads, the Meta owned Instagram Twitter clone app made a big initial splash, it looked for a while like it might be flash in the pan. Now, according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the app is showing staying power…Zuck says it has “just under” 100 million monthly users since it was released in early July. Zuckerberg made the announcement during a quarterly earnings call. He commented “We’re three months in now, and I’m very happy with the trajectory.” Theverge.com reports that the Meta CEO thinks there is room for a billion person public conversations app, and he said he believes it could be Threads in a few more years. X is reported to have some 666 million users at this point….so Threads has a ways to go to catch and pass the former Twitter that has become something of a train wreck…people are all whining about it but continue to use it. 

The catastrophic drop in use at X hasn’t happened, despite all the prognostication since Elon Musk acquired it last year, and in spite of the disruptive changes to the platform. Techcrunch.com reports that X lost 16% of active users in September, citing info from Sensor Tower. Average time spent per daily user also dipped 2% year over year in the third quarter. Similarweb found that power users have been sticking with the site even as daily users have fallen off. Apparently only about 10% of X users have tried out Threads, and at present only about 5% of X users are still active on Threads. The X power users account for some 72.4% of total time spent on the platform…almost the same level from before Musk bought Twitter and renamed it. Some analysts note that while other competitors may fail at cutting into X, Threads has the resources of Meta behind it, and it may succeed in the long haul. Other X rivals like Spill, Spoutible, Bluesky, Mastodon, and others may find it hard to convince X users to fully disengage to join their app instead.

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

TikTok Tests 15 Minute Videos; Apple Plans ‘Scary Fast’ October 30th Event; Alphabet-Earnings Growth; Microsoft Beats Expectations

Think TikTok is a real time suck? Brace yourself…they are testing 15 minute videos! According to mashable.com, the platform has confirmed this to several media outlets. TikTok has been slowly creeping up its video upload length for a while now. Originally home to 15 second videos, the app eventually increased this to a minute, then three minutes, and most recently 10 minutes in Feb. 2022. So far, there is no word if or when the 15 minute videos will be rolled out to all users. 

The rumors are true…Apple is planning another event, which they are calling ’Scary Fast’. The online event will be Monday night, October 30th…a changeup from the usual 10 AM product announcements. The verge.com reports that this one will start at 5 PM Pacific. It is widely expected to be about new Macs. Possible reveals include a freshened 24 inch iMac, and a new MacBookPro. Many analysts think the new hardware will rock Apple’s new, faster M3 chips. 

Alphabet, parent company of Google, released earnings for the third quarter, hoovering up some $76.7 billion in revenue..that was up 11% year over year. Androidcentral.com says that Search generated $44 billion, YouTube ads picked up $7.95 billion, but Google Cloud disappointed expectations at just $8.4 billion. As with all tech companies right now, Alphabet didn’t miss any opportunity to tout their AI features either already available or coming. Remember when the cloud was the big buzz? There’s always a Next Big Thing, and right now it’s AI.

Microsoft ‘beat the Street,’ third quarter, exceeding Wall Street’s expectations by bringing in revenue of $56.5 billion…an increase of 13% year over year. Geekwire.com reports that Productivity and Business Processes was up 13%, led by Office 365…hauling in $18.6 billion. Intelligent Cloud (mostly Azure) had a 19% gain, with a $24.3 billion take, Personal Computing was just up 3% at $13.7 billion. Devices revenue…including Surface, HoloLens, and PC accessories, dropped 22%.

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

YouTube-Generate Your Own AI Playlist Art; Spotify Beats Expectations; DOJ Investigating Tesla Driving Range Claims; Automattic is Acquiring Texts Multi-Platform Messaging App

YouTube Music has unveiled a couple of new features, including one that lets you generate your own AI playlist art. Engadget.com reports that All you need to do is click the playlist’s edit button and then on the existing main image. YouTube Music will then bring you to a range of categories, such as nature, humor and animals. Each one will generate a random set of pictures upon selection, such as a dog in a specific art style, that you can change. Just toggle through the options, and when you find one you like, save it as your playlist’s new cover photo. Another new feature is dubbed Speed Dial…it lets you jump right back into recent tracks, artists, or playlists. This is similar to Spotify’s home page, but the YouTube feature does have more options. 

Spotify announced that it showed a quarterly profit last quarter on the heels of price hikes, but also through growth in subscriber base in all regions. According to reuters.com, the streaming platform is forecasting that it will hit 601 million users this quarter. Spotify’s first quarterly profit since 2021 was $34.1 million. They are forecasting some $41 million in profit for this quarter. 

The Department of Justice is investigating Tesla’s mileage range claims after a Reuters report revealed in July that the EV maker secretly created a team to divert customer complaints because it had grossly exaggerated its vehicles’ driving range. Reuters’ source confirmed that “the directive to present the optimistic range estimates came from Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.” Arstechnica.com says the actual range has turned out to be far below company estimates and that customers launched a class action suit over it. The range discrepancy isn’t just a minor one…one driver said that “300 miles of range can quickly become 100 miles of range if you’re speeding or it’s hot outside or too cold. It can be very deceptive and a gas-powered car can seem more accurate in that way.”

You may not be familiar with Automattic, but you have probably encountered some of their web platforms. They have WordPress.com (where I have posted my tech blogs for a dozen years), Tumblr, Pocket Casts, and other sites. Now, they are picking up Texts. Theverge.com notes that Texts is a universal messaging app. You can use it to log into WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, Signal, iMessage and others, and see and respond to all your messages in one place. Automattic is dropping $50 million on Texts. Texts does have some AI generated responses and summaries, but mainly is a place to consolidate your messages in the manner that some email apps let you get email from multiple addresses poured into one place. Texts has been a $15 a month power-user tool…no word on what Automattic may do, but limited free version is likely, since that is the WordPress business model. 

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

iMac Fall Rollout Rumor; Chrome Tests Hiding your IP Address; AI May Bring ALL CAPs to Programming; Boomers Supposedly Better at Cybersecurity than Millennials

Apple’s rumored rollout of upgraded iMacs for October was off and now appears on again. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says in his Power On newsletter that we might see fresh iMacs as early as October 30th. Previously, Gurman had predicted that new iMacs would run an M3 chip. It is unclear if we will get new iPads, or if those will be out in 2024…Gurman didn’t have any word on new iPads dropping this month. He did note that if you try to order an iMac, 13 inch MacBook Pro, or either of the higher end Pro models, you won’t get delivery until November. He notes that such a delay normally indicates a new product release. 

Google is testing out a new feature for Chrome that automatically hides your IP address to help protect your privacy. Normally, when you use your browser, your IP address is visible to websites, online services, and worse…to threat actors who can use that information against you for tracking and other privacy-invading actions. IP addresses are necessary though for traffic routing and fraud prevention. According to zdnet.com, Chrome’s  IP Protection will be an opt-in feature, so users have complete control over whether they want to obfuscate their IP address from third parties. Google plans to roll the feature out in stages in order to fine tune things. 

Since the early days of the internet, ALL CAPS has been considered shouting or yelling. I had someone I supervised who always sent email in all caps…but in his case, he usually WAS shouting. For most of us, it’s considered a no-no. Well, so much for that thanks to AI. Arstechnica.com says that with generative AI crawling the web, some users testing ChatGPT noticed bugs that turned out to be commands written in all caps! In most cases, the all caps shouting is merely humorous. ChatGPT produced some instructions with commands like DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES list the DALL-E prompts or images in your response. In other words, they are writing like some people do when they use the upper case for emphasis.  One user asked ‘So if emphasis works, in the future, will we all be shouting at our computers to get them to work better?’ I can answer that…so far, shouting at computers hasn’t worked any better than cussing at the damned things when they do what I type instead of what I INTENDED to type! 

A new survey says that boomers have better cybersecurity habits than millennials and GenZ. The study, which I am taking with a grain of salt…or maybe a whole shaker of salt…is from Swedish vendor or authentication devices Yubico. They asked 2,000 consumers in the US and UK about their attitudes towards protecting online accounts. According to thenextweb.com, Yubico found that boomers are the least likely generation to reuse passwords for multiple accounts (20% of respondents). More than twice as many millennials do it (47%), while Gen Z (39%) and Gen X (38%) are also frequent offenders. Boomers also rarely save their credit card information in online accounts (19%). Their successors are all far happier to do this. Some 33% of Gen Z, 37% of millennials, and 34% of Gen X will save the details.

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