Google Loses Big Antitrust Trial; Nvidia Scraped YouTube & Netflix Videos Sans Permission; New Nest Launches; EU-Minds Aren’t ‘Currency for Social Media’-TikTok Drops Lite Rewards
Posted: August 6, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentGoogle has lost a biggie…the antitrust trial over its massive search business. Arstechnica.com reports that US District Judge Amit Mehta issued his ruling, and he sided with the Department of Justice. “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” Mehta wrote in his opinion. “It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act.” This won’t just affect Google….Apple has been paying billions …$26 billion in 2021 alone…to Google for it to be the default search engine on Apple devices. Deals like with Apple shut out Bing and DuckDuckGo, since with the Apple deal, Google search was the default on both Android and Apple. In a consolation victory to Google, the judge did rule that Google didn’t have monopoly power in search advertising.
Nvidia’s AI team allegedly scraped YouTube and Netflix videos without permission as it trained its AI. According to engadget.com, the company asked workers to download YouTube and Netflix videos and other datasets to develop their commercial AI systems like its Omnivores 3D world generator, self-driving car systems and a ‘digital human’. Nvidia claims they are within the law, but YouTube doesn’t agree, calling the action a ‘clear violation’ of its terms. To evade detection from YouTube, Nvidia downloaded content using virtual machines with rotating IP addresses to avoid bans.
Nest has unveiled its totally redesigned Learning Thermostat…this one is the 4th generation. Even the design is a bit different. Probably more importantly, theverge.com notes that it works with the smart home standard Matter. That means you aren’t tied to Google or their app, but can use Apple Home if you happen to be an Apple user. Besides the coat of paint and some new features, the new, more pricy Nest comes with more hardware…it has the Nest Temperature sensor 2nd Gen included…so if, like me, you have 2 levels, you can let the thermostat keep both at the temperature you prefer, without having to kind of fool it to get it to a happy medium. The new Nest is available for preorder now at $279.99 from the Google Store. It ships August 20th.
TikTok is dropping its controversial Lite Rewards program in the EU to comply with the Digital Services Act. Thenextweb.com reports that TikTok Lite is the data-light versions of the app to be used on slow internet connections and on gadgets with small memory availability. The Rewards program allows users to earn points by liking content, watching videos, following creators, and inviting friends to TikTok. The points can be exchanged for rewards like Amazon vouchers. Basically, they are rewarding longer screen time with financial incentives. The European Union has now closed this case under the DSA, but there is another ongoing case against TikTok in Europe.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
OpenAI Hasn’t Watermarked ChatGPT-Could Hurt Bottom Line; iPhone 16 Will Launch in September; Made by Google 2024 Date; Trillion Dollar Wipeout In Biggest Tech Firms As Market Corrects
Posted: August 5, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentWith lots of hand-wringing about how AI can be producing things that aren’t true, or how it can copy voices and images of people, it’s irritating to hear that OpenAI has had a watermarking system for Chat-GPT created text and a tool to detect it for about a year now. According to theverge.com, the company hasn’t released it because it feared it would hurt their bottom line! The company found in testing that the system was 99.9% effective for making AI text detectable when there is enough it. Meanwhile, in a survey commissioned by OpenAI, “people worldwide supported the idea of an AI detection tool by a margin of four to one.” On the downside as far as the company was concerned, nearly 30% of those surveyed said they would use the software less if watermarking was implemented.
Despite quite a bit of information pointing to Apple delaying Apple Intelligence until October, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that the new iPhone 16 models will still launch in mid September. Although Apple has put off rollouts before due to software not being quite baked, this time around they will stick with the usual timing for hardware release. A good guesstimate of the date is September 10th. Keep in mind that even with the Apple Intelligence features coming in September, Apple has already said it won’t have the Apple Intelligence powered Siri until next spring.
Made by Google is nearly upon us…it’s happening August 13th. Engadget.com says we an expect to see the new Pixel 9 phones, including a folder that’s been dubbed the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. In addition to phones, Google should show off more tidbits about Android 15, and certainly they will tout their Gemini AI. The Google show will be at 1PM Eastern.
With all the markets dropping today by a bundle due to recession worries, the so-called ‘mega-cap’ tech stocks took it on the chin. Cnbc.com reports that the top tech companies collectively lost about a trillion dollars in market cap! Nvidia dropped over $300 million at the opening bell, but then recovered about half that. Apple got a $224 million dollar haircut, and Amazon fell by $109 million. Throw in Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Tesla, and the 7 top tech companies got whacked by some $995 million in early trading. Thankfully, they all recovered some as the trading day dragged on. Besides earnings misses and job creation being lower than expected, the big techs were hammered by over-hyping AI. A Goldman Sachs note from June had warned that huge dollars were going into AI with little to show for it.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Twitter Vanishes from Mac App Store; Samsung Markets Galaxy Z Flips as Cop Body Cams; Feds Propose Deepfake Law; Android Malware-Steals Cash Then Wipes Your Device
Posted: August 1, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Android, News, Samsung, Tech, technology Leave a commentIt’s a good bet there will be some angry Tweets from Elon Musk…and yes, I’m still calling them Tweets. X can no longer be accessed in the Mac App Store, and that may mean it has been officially delisted. Techcrunch.com reports that searches for both ‘Twitter’ and ‘X’ on Apple’s platform no longer surface the app. The URL no longer works either…you get a pop up saying it is unavailable. X has not confirmed that the app was delisted.
Here’s an interesting idea you might not have thought of, but Samsung has. Apparently, Samsung is marketing its Z Flip phones as a body cam to police agencies. According to engadget.com, Samsung started doing this a couple years ago as a pilot program with some police in Missouri. The program was the first time a foldable device was used by police as a body cam. After the end of the pilot program, two more police departments signed on to use the Flip devices as body cams. The solutions from those pilot tests are also being extended to 25 metro police departments in five states.
The US government has formed an Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium, and now there is a bipartisan law proposed that would outlaw the use of deepfakes. 9to5mac.com notes that one of the biggest concerns about AI is the ease with which deepfakes can be created. These are convincing-looking photos, audio, and video recordings of real people made to look like they are doing or saying completely fake things. The law was introduced yesterday in the Senate. Called the No Fakes Act, it would hold individuals and companies liable for damages for producing, hosting, or sharing a digital replica of an individual performing in an audiovisual work, image, or sound recording that the individual never actually appeared in or otherwise approved. The Actor and Broadcast union SAG-AFTRA backs the bill, and so do I…I approve this message. I don’t want some voice clone doing mortuary or male enhancement commercials, to name just a couple categories I would nix.
A very nasty piece of malware for Android has been uncovered. Researchers at Cleafy Labs are calling it BingoMod. Bgr.com reports that the victim is tricked into installing the bad boy app posing as legit antivirus software. Right after that, the app asks for access to Accessibility Services. As soon as you do that it unpacks and executes its malicious payload. It goes after credentials using key logging and SMS interception. Once that’s done, hackers take over your device and start money transfers. But wait…there’s more. When you are cleaned out, they can wipe your device by remote command! Stick with main brand antivirus software and get it from the actual maker…don’t take a chance.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Google-New Tack on Reigning In Explicit Deepfakes; Feds Rule Amazon Responsible for Defective 3rd Party Products on Platform; Meta Blames ‘Hallucinations’-It’s AI Claimed Trump Shooting Fake; Tesla Recall-1.8 Million Vehicles
Posted: July 31, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Artificial Intelligence, deepfake, deepfakes, technology Leave a commentGoogle is updating its ranking systems, in an effort to limit deepfakes. Explicit deepfakes have been a particularly vexing problem for female celebrities. Mashable.com reports that the Google change will do this: When someone uses terms to seek out nonconsensual deepfakes of specific individuals, the ranking system will attempt to instead provide “high-quality, non-explicit content,” such as news articles, when it’s available. Google product manager Emma Higham wrote in a blog post that “With these changes, people can read about the impact deepfakes are having on society, rather than see pages with actual nonconsensual fake images.” The ranking update has already decreased exposure to explicit image results on deepfake searches by 70%. Additionally, Google is updating systems that handle requests for removing nonconsensual deepfakes from Search. The changes should make the request process easier.
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has ruled..unanimously…that Amazon is a distributor, and that it bears responsibility for faulty products it has sold on its marketplace. According to geekwire.com, this puts Amazon on the hook for recalled products sold by third-party sellers…that amounts to over half the company’s e-commerce sales. Amazon has always claimed that they shouldn’t be held liable for defective product sold by third party merchants on amazon.com…saying that the liability falls to the seller, not the marketplace ‘facilitating’ the sale. Amazon, as you might presume, plans to appeal.
We just wrote about several professors publishing a paper about AI lying last week…or ‘bullshitting,’ as they termed it. Now Meta is blaming its AI assistant’s so-called ‘hallucinations’ for saying incorrectly that the assassination attempt on former President Trump didn’t happen. Theverge.com says that the company termed the screw up ‘unfortunate’ in a company blog post. Meta claims that Meta AI was first programmed to not respond to questions about the attempted assassination but the company removed that restriction after people started noticing. It’s not just Meta that is caught up here: Google on Tuesday also had to refute claims that its Search autocomplete feature was censoring results about the assassination attempt. Since ChatGPT burst on the scene, the tech industry has been grappling with how to limit generative AI’s propensity for falsehoods. It’s apparently still hard to overcome what large language models are inherently designed to do: make stuff up.
Tesla has recalled over 1.8 million US cars, due to a risk of software not notifying individuals of a detached hood. Engadget.com notes that if a hood isn’t latched properly, it can blow up and block the driver’s field of view. Tesla is sending out an over the air software update that is supposed to fix the issue. The recall is for 2021 to 2024 Models 3, S, and X. It also includes Model Y vehicles from 2020 to 2024.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Grok Chatbot Trains on X User Data; Apple Intelligence Delayed Until October in iOS 18.1; DOJ says TikTok Collected User Data on Controversial Issues; Microsoft Will Make Windows Security more Mac-Like
Posted: July 29, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Apple, Microsoft, security, technology Leave a commentThe Grok chatbot Elon Musk has is apparently training on data from any and all X users. According to thenextweb.com, this could get Musk into trouble with the European Union. The data use may be in violation of EU rules. You can make sure you are not included in this. Go to settings in X, and look for a box that is checked by default…it says “Allow your posts as well as your interactions, inputs, and results with Grok to be used for training and fine-tuning.” This may violate the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. That law restricts companies from expanding data collection without telling users, and providing users a clear opt-out.
Apparently Apple Intelligence won’t graduate in time to make it for the rollout of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. If you were all pumped about that shiny new iPhone 16 using Apple Intelligence, macrumors.com reports that you will have to wait until the operating systems’ first updates in October. Apple Intelligence should be released in the upcoming beta versions of the software, probably next week, but Apple must feel it isn’t quite ready for prime time yet. The upgraded Siri with AI was already scheduled to bow next spring.
The Department of Justice went to court late Friday to ask the bench to reject the TikTok bid to have the law to ban it overturned. Engadget.com says the feds name national security concerns that include its alleged use of internal search tools to collect information on users’ views around sensitive topics. The government wrote in its filing that ByteDance has been using a search tool within their Lark suite of tools that “allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees in the United States and China to collect bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion.” The DOJ also argues in the filings that TikTok could be using the data to subject US users to content manipulation, and that their sensitive information could end up stored on servers in China. TikTok has denied the allegations.
After the CrowdStrike mess, Microsoft has indicated it will make Windows security more Mac-like. What does that mean? 9t5mac.com reports that Redmond will limit kernel access. Microsoft wrote about it on their IT blog. The company won’t be stripping away kernel privileges in a forthcoming Windows update. A shift like this will take significant time. But Microsoft’s direction for the future appears clear. Apple’s strict Mac security protocols don’t allow the same kind of kernel access to third parties as Windows does. This is why Macs weren’t impacted by the CrowdStrike outage. Let’s hope that another CloudStrike-type event doesn’t occur before Microsoft gets restricting kernel access in place.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Apple-May Finally Use Own Modem Chip; Google Gemini AI Gets Speed Boost; Data Breach Exposes US Spyware Maker; CrowdStrike Offed $10 Uber Eats Voucher-Some Didn’t Work
Posted: July 25, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Apple, Google, Internet, technology Leave a commentApple has been toiling away on its own in-house 5G modem for iPhones for the last 6 years at least. Now, it looks like they finally may be getting near using it in the handsets. Macrumors.com reports that iPhone 17 may get the modem chip in 2025. Apple has been using Qualcomm modems for cellular for quite a while, and they have a deal with Qualcomm that runs through 2026. Apple had scooped up most of Intel’s smartphone modem business back in 2019 for the purpose of making their own 5G modem chips.
Google has upgraded Gemini AI to 1.5 Flash. According to theverge.com, you should see “across-the-board improvements in quality and latency, with especially noticeable improvements in reasoning and image understanding.” The upgrade is available in the free version starting today on both Gemini web and mobile. Google is also going to start rolling out Gemini ‘gradually’ in google Messages in Europe and the UK, and Gemini for teens will be available in over 40 languages ‘in the coming week.’
You have to laugh when a hack exposes a spyware maker! An under the radar Minnesota company called Spytech, which snooped on thousands of devices around the world remotely, was the victim of the hack. Techcrunch.com says the breach of Spytech’s servers contained detailed device activity logs from the phones, tablets, and computers that Spytech monitors, with some of the files dated as recently as early June. The company makes products called Realtime-Spy and SpyAgent, and some others. They have apparently been used to compromise over 10,000 devices since 2013…including Androids, Chromebooks, Macs, and PCs all over the world. The company has advertised the products as keeping tabs on your kids’ devices or ‘on your spouse’s suspicious behavior.’ Sometimes the programs have been called stalker ware. They almost always have to be loaded in by someone with physical access to the device and knowledge of the password. Once installed, they are difficult to detect and remove. The company wouldn’t say that they would notify customers, the people whose devices were monitored, or the US government…as required by law.
In an almost silly move, CrowdStrike offered a $10 voucher for UberEats…some small consolation after more than 8 million had their PCs screwed up by their buggy software update. As Ron Popiel of the Pocket Fisherman and Hollywood Grill used to say…’But wait, there’s more!’ Mashable.com reports that some the vouchers didn’t actually work. Some journalists at TechCrunch.com discovered the secondary fail that came with CrowdStrike’s ‘heartfelt thanks.’ CrowdStrike blames Uber. They say apparently Uber flagged the gifts as fraud because of high usage rates.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Samsung-Big Increase in Galaxy Ring Production; Alphabet Pours $5 Billion More into Waymo; Meta Drops Biggest & Allegedly Best Open Source AI; Ocean Battery Rocks Make Oxygen
Posted: July 24, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, Artificial Intelligence, News, technology, Waymo Leave a commentSamsung’s Galaxy Ring appears to be a big hit, just as it has become available for general sale, following the preorder period. 9to5google..com reports that Samsung has increased production of the Ring by 150%, adding 600,000 more units this year. Samsung will crank out over a million Rings by the end of the year. That may not seem like a lot with it comes to consumer electronics, but for comparison, the number is equal to the number of Oura Rings sold in the last six years! the Ring starts at $399, and is available at several retailers in addition to Samsung’s website.
The push for self-driving vehicles rolls on. Alphabet is getting set to pump another $5 billion into its Waymo self-driving subsidiary the next several years. According to techcrunch.com, the multi year investment was announced but Ruth Porat, the company’s Chief Financial Officer. Alphabet expects with the added cash, that Waymo will continue as the world’s leading autonomous driving tech company. Waymo is presently delivering over 50,000 paid rides a week, with their fully driverless ride-hail service in San Francisco and Phoenix…and they have now added Los Angeles and Austin. Waymo just started with paid rides in LA the first of July, and will add paid trips in Austin later this year.
Meta has just released their open sourced AI model, Llama 3.1, the largest open source model ever. Meta claims that it outperforms OpenAI’s Chat GPT-4o and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet as measured by several benchmarks. Theverge.com notes that those large language models are private models…not open source. Meta has dropped millions into the project, and Mark Zuckerberg says that they see open source underpinning most AI moving forward, much like how Linux has become the open source operating system that powers most phones, servers, and gadgets today. Meta is working with Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Nvidia, and Databricks to help them deploy their own versions. They think their open source AI will surpass Chat GPT as the most widely used model by the end of the year.
As mining firms and nations around the world go big on deep sea mining, an interesting discovery has indicated that we should hit the brakes a bit. Thenextweb.com reports that the huge cache of potato-sized rocks on the ocean floor hold a treasure trove of manganese, nickel, and cobalt…all crucial ingredients of lithium-ion batteries. Now, scientists from the Scottish Association of Marine Science has discovered that the rocks contain a very high electric charge….like natural rock batteries. They naturally cause seawater to split into hydrogen and oxygen in a process called seawater electrolysis. It only takes 1.5 volts to split seawater…same juice as a AA battery. Considering that the rocks produce what is called ‘dark oxygen,’ that is oxygen produced without light, the scientists say we should back off a bit on the major mining of them.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Apple Working On Foldable iPhone; EU May Fine Meta for Pay or Consent; BS on AI ‘Hallucinations’; Google Won’t Depreciate 3rd Party Cookies in Chrome After All
Posted: July 23, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: bullshit, life, politics, Trump, writing Leave a commentWe have just gotten a whiff of rumors now, but macrumors.com reports that in an exclusive out today from The Information, Apple is allegedly working on a foldable iPhone similar to the Galaxy Z Flip. Apple has been on the prowl now for months, looking for suppliers in Asia, and now is moving forward with the project. The Apple foldable is being code named V68. Up to now, Apple has had interest in a folding iPhone, but hasn’t been happy with the crease where the screen folds. We’ll see if they are able to overcome this, or if we will see a folding iPhone by 2026.
The European Union is threatening Meta for saying Facebook is free in the EU. According to theverge.com, the EU has told Meta that their ‘pay or consent’ model for Facebook and Instagram may violate consumer protection laws. They have given Meta until September 1st to propose changes to its model which they call ‘misleading’ and ‘confusing’ for users. If Meta doesn’t hit the deadline, it gets hit with big fines. Meta has responded with a statement saying “Subscriptions as an alternative to advertising are a well-established business model across many industries. Subscription for no ads follows the direction of the highest court in Europe and we are confident it complies with European regulation.”
Three lecturers at University of Glasgow in Scotland have published a paper in the journal of Ethics and Information Technology, and have also covered it in a Scientific American article. The paper is titled ‘ChatGPT is Bullshit.’ After laughing and agreeing, I read further. The professors say there are actually bullshit distinctions…there’s general bullshit, hard bullshit, and soft bullshit. Cnet.com says the scholars argue that calling AI lies hallucinations is not accurate, saying ”Because these programs cannot themselves be concerned with truth, and because they are designed to produce text that looks truth-apt without any actual concern for truth, it seems appropriate to call their outputs bullshit. We think this is worth paying attention to.” They go on to write “Among philosophers, ‘bullshit’ has a specialist meaning, one popularized by the late American philosopher Harry Frankfurt. When someone bullshits, they’re not telling the truth, but they’re also not really lying. What characterizes the bullshitter, Frankfurt said, is that they just don’t care whether what they say is true. ChatGPT and its peers cannot care, and they are instead, in a technical sense, bullshit machines.”
Google has now given up on plans to depreciate third party cookies on Chrome. According to androidauthority.com, the little trackers that make targeted ads possible will be sticking around. Google had said back in 2020 they would revise Chrome’s user privacy, but after several delays, they have apparently killed the whole idea. Money talks.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
Samsung All In With Google Messages; CrowdStrike Mess-Delta Cancels 1,000 More Flights; Astronomers Find New Way to Spot AI Deepfakes; EVs-New Battery Tech is 50% Lighter
Posted: July 22, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: AI, News, Samsung, Tech, technology Leave a commentSamsung will stop pre-installing Samsung Messages on Galaxy phones, and just go with Google Messages. 9to5google.com reports that…starting with the Z Fold 6 and Z Flip 6, you will just get Googles Messages. RCS will be enabled by default on the phones in the Google Messages app. The Samsung app will still be available for download at the Galaxy Store, but with a note that ’some features will be excluded.’
Although it’s been since Thursday, some users are still dealing with the aftermath of the corrupt CrowdStrike download that screwed up what Microsoft claims was a little over 8 million computers. Microsoft says that is about 1% of the installed base. That noted, according to engadget.com, Delta has had to cancel over 1,000 more flights…it’s a total of about 5,000 flights cancelled now, and around 1,700 delayed. That amounts to around a third of Delta’s scheduled flights. Delta was the worst hit US airline, with United a distant second…at 266 flights cancelled on Sunday. At first, United and Delta told stranded travelers that they wouldn’t cover bills since the CrowdStrike crash was out of their control. However, US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg later stepped in and said that he considered the situation self-inflicted, so carriers would need to cover food, transportation and lodging costs for any delays longer than three hours as required by law. Secretary Pete also said don’t let them talk you into a credit…you can get the cash back…that’s the law!
In an interesting application of one tech to another, astronomers and researchers at the University of Hull have shown a novel way to detect AI Deepfakes. Arstechnica.com says it involves analyzing the reflections in human eyes. The technique was shown at the Royal Astronomical Society meeting last week. It utilizes tools used by astronomers. A pair of eyes being illuminated by the same set of light sources will normally have similarly shaped light reflections in each eyeball. Most AI deepfakes so far don’t account for eyeball reflections, so they show up inconsistently between the eyes. Some differences can be detected with the naked eye…like when one eye has white lights and the other red, but the astronomical tools can detect automatically and much faster…and with detail that a person can’t match. One down side…the technique requires a clear, up-close view of the eyeballs to work. It isn’t 100% yet…there are a few false negatives and false positives…but it’s a new tool in the battle against deepfakes.
A Swedish firm, using research from Chalmers University of Technology, has developed carbon fiber-based structural batteries that not only store energy but also become an integral part of a product’s structure. Their possible span of energy density is said to be around 25-50% of a conventional lithium-ion battery at current technology level. Bgr.com notes that by integrating the batteries into the actual structure of the car (or aircraft), these batteries could lighten the weight of the vehicle by up to 50%! This tech is the first that has given good mechanical strength plus good electrical properties. Previous tries have had one or the other, but not both.
I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.
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