RAM Prices Hit Phones-Apple Will Come Out Better; Meta AI Glasses Can Help You Hear; LG Forces Copilot on Smart TVs; Senators Probe AI Tech Giants over Electric Bills

Posted: December 16, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

We have talked about it here…hell, everyone has that covers tech. The AI boom is gobbling up RAM chips and the prices are through the roof, and there are shortages. Now, it is starting to hit consumer products like smartphones. Appleinsider.com reports that The revised forecast expects global smartphone shipments to fall about 2% year over year, reversing earlier expectations for modest growth. Memory costs are the primary driver, with Counterpoint Research pointing to supply tightness and aggressive pricing from memory vendors. That said, Apple’s iPhone is in pretty good shape to weather the shortage and price bump better than their competitors. For one thing, Apple can absorb higher component costs more effectively than other makers, while preserving margins. Expect many of the Android phone makers to have to hike prices, or cut specs…or even cut back their product lines a bit. Budget phones…the ones that sell for under $200…have already seen prices jump 20-30% since early 2025. Mid-range phones are up in prices in the teens. The high-end flagships have seen much smaller, but still notable jumps in price. Of the Android phones, Samsung should be better off than most in holding the price line. Like Apple, they have long term supply deals on pricing. Even so, both Samsung and Apple will see a small drop in sales this year. 

Meta has released an update to its AI that lets you hear people better in a noisy environments. According to techcrunch.com, the feature will initially be available on Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses in the US and Canada. Besides the improved hearing in a noisy environment, the update can play you a song by an artist if you are looking at an album cover by them. You can also get Christmas music if you are looking at your Christmas tree. Ho, ho, ho…can you say feature only useful for a few weeks a year? Ok, a bit snarky here. Actually, the clearer hearing of a conversation with someone in a noisy environment will be pretty useful if it really works. So far, the AI that is supposed to do this in hearing aids really doesn’t do any better than without the AI…but we’ll see how Meta’s update works out. 

A fair number of people really don’t like Microsoft Copilot on their computers. If you are one of those, you may want to steer clear of LG smart TVs. Mashable.com notes that LG is baking Copilot into their smart TVs, and it can NOT be deleted. You can hide it from the home screen, but it is still there, lurking in the background. The un-deletable Copilot was first mentioned on Reddit, at r/mildlyinfuriating. So far, the post has gotten some 36,000 upvotes and thousands of comments…most from people irritated at the unremovable Copilot. The problem is…what can an AI assistant app really do for you on your TV that you can’t do yourself better and faster? Apparently, most of the Redditors that have noticed the Copilot think ‘not much.’

A side effect of the great AI boom and all those data centers…besides causing a shortage of memory chips…is that it takes a huge amount of power to run all those server farms. Guess what? Electric bills are up. Now, geekwire.com reports three Democratic Senators have sent letters to Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta…and 3 data center firms. The senators are concerned about tech giants and their AI push raising residential electric bills. For its part, Amazon put out a white paper Tuesday saying that its data centers aren’t the problem, and that in some regions it actually pays more than required for energy use. The investigations come amid a general rise in household expenses, making the allocation of utility costs particularly contentious. Residential electricity costs nationwide are on the rise, according to federal data. Power bills rose more than 7% on average when comparing September rates to a year earlier. The senators are Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

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

Australian Kid Social Ban Starts; Nvidia Says China Isn’t Using Smuggled Top Chips; Petco Pulls Vetco Site-Customer Info Hacked; AI Boom Could Inflate GPU Prices Soon

Posted: December 10, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Australia has become the first country to ban teens under 16 years old from social media. BBC.com reports that as of today, kids in the country have awakened to find their accounts have gone dark. As you might assume, a substantial number of kids there have already figured out work arounds, and are continuing to doomscroll on social media…and will until they are caught. At that point, they will find another hack. As you might imagine, tech companies are quite unhappy with this new law…which requires Meta, TikTok, and YouTube to take ‘reasonable steps’ to make sure the underaged Australians don’t have accounts on their platforms. Many global leaders cheered the ban, claiming it is necessary to protect children from harmful content and algorithms – though critics have argued blanket prohibition is neither practical nor wise. Count me as one of the critics that finds it impractical…how many memes and stories are there about kids helping parents or grandparents to use tech? The kids are smart and learn much more quickly than adults. The bans won’t work…in Australia or anywhere else. 

After a report hit that said China was using smuggled top line Nvidia Blackwell chips in AI startup DeepSeek, Nvidia has put out a statement refuting the story. according to CNBC.com, the statement from Nvidia said in part, “We haven’t seen any substantiation or received tips of ‘phantom data centers’ constructed to deceive us and our OEM partners, then deconstructed, smuggled, and reconstructed somewhere else,” a Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement. “While such smuggling seems farfetched, we pursue any tip we receive.” We just reported yesterday that President Trump said Nvidia can ship its less powerful H200 chips to “approved customers” in China and elsewhere on the condition that the U.S. will get 25% of those sales. China has indicated that DeepSeek will soon have its own ‘next generation’ chips to support its AI models. 

Petco has taken a portion of its Vetco Clinics website offline. Techcrunch.com says a security lapse exposed a lot of customer personal information and info about their pets. The lapse made it possible for anyone to download the records without needing a login. Besides pet info, the files contained customer names and home addresses, email, and phone number. They also showed the clinic location the person took their pet to. All their pet info was there, too…species, breed, sex, age and medical history, prescriptions, etc. The records dated back to at least 2020. Petco didn’t disclose how many people were affected, but they will have to if it was more than 500, under California law. Petco was hacked earlier this year but a hacking collective that demands a ransom, and they also had a data breach in September. 

RAM chips have already gone up dramatically in price due to AI use hoovering them up. Now, graphics cards could be next. Engadget.com reports that AMD is weighing raising the price on its 8 gig models by $20 and its 16 gig cards by $40 due to the price of GDDR6 memory. NVIDIA, meanwhile, is rumored to have recently told its board partners it would no longer supply them with VRAM for their cards. On top of that, neither Nvidia nor AMD will releases new models soon…it may be the middle of next year. If you are thinking about buying a better GPU card, you’d better move fast. 

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

Trump Says Nvidia Can Sell H200 Chips to China; Apple Silicon Chief Staying for Now; Claude Code Coming to Slack; Google Project Aura- Hopefully Not AI for Glassholes

Posted: December 9, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Donald Trump has now said he will allow Nvidia to sell the H200 AI chip to China. Gizmodo.com reports that Nvidia will still be barred from selling its more advanced Blackwell chips to China, but it’s still considered a win for the tech company since the lower quality H200 chip had been sidelined by the Chinese government for supposedly not being powerful enough. There are still some conditions surrounding the ability to sell the chips, and in addition China has just said it may not allow purchase of them anyway…as it tries to get chipmakers there to make their own AI chips that are competitive with US silicon. 

There has been an exodus from Apple unlike any in recent memory lately. A number of top players have jumped ship for higher paying jobs or what they see as opportunities to move ahead. One who isn’t leaving…for now…is Apple’s silicon chief Johny Srouji. He had been ‘seriously considering’ leaving, but has decided to stay. This is great news for Cupertino, after losing their AI chief, their environmental chief, and General Counsel…in addition to a top software designer. 

Anthropic is launching Claude Code in Slack…allowing developers to delegate coding tasks directly from chat threads. Techcrunch.com says it is available now as a beta, and builds on Anthropic’s existing Slack integration by adding full workflow automation. This signals that AI coding assistants are moving out of integrated development environments and morphing into collaboration tools that will live where teams already work. For Slack’s part, it can position itself as an ‘agentic hub’ that could shape how software teams work. 

Google just held a livestream this week on its Android YouTube channel, and they unveiled new Galaxy XR capabilities, AND teased Android XR smart glasses that should be available next year. Bgr.com reports that Project Aura will be glasses that Google didn’t preview last spring. We already knew they were working on some screen less glasses and some with a display. Project Aura is a different animal….they are wired XR glasses. The glasses connect to a smartphone like puck that you keep in your pocket or on a desk. The puck supports touch input, much like a mouse. The glasses will effectively let you run a virtual Android XR computer anywhere you are. You can see the world around you while operating a private computing experience. This is quite a volley across the bow of Apple, which has a great…but big and heavy VR headset. As with their other glasses, Google will be partnering with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. The first AR glasses will launch in 2026…and Google says even the Project Aura glasses will be available next year!

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

Anthropic Moving towards One of Biggest Tech IPOs Ever; Meta Makes $7 Billion a Year from Scam Ads; New Law Could Mandate Speed Limiters on Cars; India Drops Government App Preinstall Demand on Phones

Posted: December 3, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Anthropic, backed my mighty Amazon, is moving towards what may be one of the biggest tech IPOs ever. Benzinga.com reports that the company has engaged powerhouse law firm Wilson Sonsini as it aims to set the valuation of the AI company at over $300 billion. The maker of the Claude large language model may be going public in 2026 at this rate. Rival Open AI, the makers of ChatGPT is also quietly preparing for an IPO, but no timeline has been indicated for them to go public. 

We all see them….some scammy ads on Facebook. Why does Meta allow them to continue? Money, that’s why. According to mashable.com, Meta is bringing in about $7 billion a year on scammy ads. There have been ads for an alleged AI photo editor that turned out to be malware when you downloaded it for example. Reuters did an investigation and found there were an estimated 15 billion ‘higher risk’ scam ads presented to users on Meta platforms eery day. An internal document seen by Reuters showed that around 10% of Meta’s ad revenue in 2024  “would come from ads for scams and banned goods.” According to the report from Reuters, Meta “only bans advertisers if its automated systems predict the marketers are at least 95% certain to be committing fraud” — while other likely scammers simply get charged a higher rate as punishment. Caveat emptor…let the buyer beware!

Some luxury and super car makers have limited top speeds for years…although those limits might be anywhere from 135 to 200 mph. Now state lawmakers in Wisconsin are looking at passing a law that would make some drivers install speed-limiting devices on their cars. Bgr.com notes that the bill would be aimed at people who have had at least two reckless driving convictions during a 5 year time span. The limiters would restrict the speed to no more than 20 mph above the posted speed limit. Wisconsin is #5 among states for speed related incidents. The limiter device would cost about $1700. They are including assistance in the bill for people who would be at a real hardship to afford the gadget.  

India has backed off a mandate to make smartphone makers pre-install a government app on phones. Bgr.com reports that there were concerns…even from lawmakers there…that the mandate would expand government access to users’ devices and weaken privacy protections. The anti-theft and cybersecurity protection app will remain voluntary. 

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

Intel Will Make Non-Pro iPhone Chips; Netflix Drops Cast Support from Phones on ‘Most TVs; Amazon Chatbot Rufus Drove Black Friday Sales; Google Testing Big Gemini App Revision

Posted: December 1, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Apple has relied on Taiwan Semiconductor for essentially all its system chips for some time now. That is about to change. Bgr.com reports that now Intel will produce non-Pro Apple iPhone chips. Intel is also readying to make lower-end Apple M chips for Macs and MacBooks. Those should be out in 2027. For now, anyway, Apple will still rely in TSMC to make its most powerful A chips for mobile and M chips for Macs. If Intel is able to ensure quality, not only can Apple negotiate the price of future chips, but it can also promote some of its processors being manufactured in America. It is rather ironic to use Intel to make Apple’s own silicon, as Apple will phase out actual Intel chips in Macs when it releases macOS 27. 

Netflix has now dropped support for Google Cast on most products. According to 9to5google.com, with its latest mobile app updates Netflix has all-but-removed the ability to use Google Cast to your TV. Instead, the streamer requires that you use the native app on your TV. Users started noticing the change over the past two weeks or so, and the folks at Android Authority highlighted a support page where Netflix confirms the change. You can still used the remote from your TV to navigate to the Netflix app and launch it on your TV. Netflix had already dropped support for AirPlay on iOS. Better hunt around for that TV remote if you don’t have it handy. Mine is right by my cable remote (yes, I still have cable), but except for selecting apps like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon…it’s pretty useless. 

Amazon has had a button for its AI chatbot Rufus since 2024, and not that many people have used it. Apparently got a workout on Black Friday…with Amazon saying it got a ‘surge’ of adoption. TechCrunch.com notes that data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower indicates that in the US, Amazon sessions using the chatbot were up 100% on Black Friday, compared to the previous 30 days. Sessions that didn’t include Rufus were just up 20%. Amazon also saw a 75% day-over-day increase for sections that included Rufus and resulted in a purchase. That compares with just a 35% day-over-day increase for sessions without Rufus that had resulted in a purchase. For overall shopping, Adobe Analytics, which tracks more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail websites, AI traffic to U.S. retail sites increased by 805% year-over-year on Black Friday. 

Google has been at work, making incremental improvements to its’ Gemini app. Still, it hasn’t been as useful as ChatGPT…but that may be changing. Androidpolice.com reports that Google is making a huge investment in the mobile app…giving it a revamped interface that will open up more of Gemini’s power to users. Besides Android, lead producer for Google AI Studio Logan Kilpatrick says Google is working on a native Gemini app for MacOS. Right now, the only way to access it is via a browser. I can confirm that it is clunkier to use with the button on Chrome. Over the weekend I tried this in a search for an ancient car logo. I finally gave up on the Gemini via browser and dropped the graphic into ChatGPT and got a result in seconds. Let’s hope Google gives us that kind of power when they upgrade the mobile Gemini app interface and release a native app for MacOs as well as Android. 

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

iPhone Reclaims Top Spot After 14 Years; RAM Prices Astronomical As GPU Prices Drop; Bug in Jury Software Exposes Personal Info; OpenAI Claims Teen Violated Their Rules in Suicide Case

Posted: November 26, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

For the first time in 14 years, Apple has taken back the crown as the world’s top smartphone maker from Samsung. Macrumors.com reports that the move is due to the popularity of the iPhone 17, particularly in China. Overall iPhone shipments are projected to grow 10% in 2025, compared to Samsung’s 4.6% growth..according to Counterpoint Research. For 2026, it looks like the more budget conscious are also going to be eyeing the iPhone 17e. The well-heeled will make up a small bump as we noted yesterday…Apple will likely sell only about 5.4 million of the pricy folding phone starting next September. Adding to Apple’s predicted strong continuing sales…the 2027 model will be they 20th anniversary, and it is expected that Apple will make some spectacular changes to the iPhones…or at least hype features to make us think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I was just talking with my son the IT guy last night about the crazy high pricers of computer RAM. He was complaining that in trying to buy a DDR5 RAM kit to upgrade a laptop, the prices were much higher than before. According to arstechnica.com, there is a shortage mainly caused by the AI boom. Prices are more than double in a number of cases than they were just a few months ago. Keep in mind that this won’t affect your purchase of a PC or laptop…the big manufacturers have deals in place to buy massive numbers and their prices will not be affected under their contracts. On the plus side, as memory prices have gone nuts, GPU prices have actually dropped. You can actually buy high end graphics cards for less than suggested retail prices right now should you be in the market for one of those. 

Most people get them at some point or another…a postcard with a jury summons. Now, TechCrunch.com says that a bug has been found in the systems used by several states that exposed peoples’ personal information. At least a dozen juror websites made by government software maker Tyler Technologies appear to be vulnerable to the exploit, according to a security researchers. Some of the states include California. Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia. Tyler has said it is fixing the flaw now. The bug meant it was possible for anyone to obtain the information about jurors who are selected for service. To log into these platforms, a juror is provided a unique numerical identifier assigned to them, which could be brute-forced since the number was sequentially incremental. The platform also did not have any mechanism to prevent anyone from flooding the login pages with a large number of guesses, a feature known as “rate-limiting.”

ChatGPT argues in a court filing that it shouldn’t be held liable in the death of a 16 year old because the youngster violated their rules. Gizmodo.com notes the AI company said in the document that there was “[M]isuse, unauthorized use, unintended use, unforeseeable use, and/or improper use of ChatGPT.” Those are potential causal factors that could have led to the “tragic event” that was the death by suicide of 16-year-old Adam Raine. The firm apparently denies responsibility, and is reportedly skeptical of the “extent that any ‘cause’ can be attributed to” Raine’s death. Raine’s family is suing OpenAI over the teen’s April suicide, alleging that ChatGPT drove him to the act. An attorney for the Raines family, Jay Edelson, said in an email that OpenAI “tries to find fault in everyone else, including, amazingly, saying that Adam himself violated its terms and conditions by engaging with ChatGPT in the very way it was programmed to act.” He also claims that the defendants, “abjectly ignore” the “damning facts” the plaintiffs have put forward. We’ll keep an eye on this case, which is really what they call an issue of first impression…AI assisting a user to commit suicide.

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

Google Bows Gemini 3 AI & Antigravity Agent; iPhone 17 Powers Apple to 25% of China’s Phone Sales; Cloudflare-Latent Bug Caused Huge Outage; Anthropic Now Valued at $350 Billion

Posted: November 18, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Google has released its Gemini 3 AI, and a new agent called Antigravity. Arstechnica.com reports that the release of Gemini 3 Pro is just available in a limited form today, though. Google is touting more immersive, visual outputs and fewer lies, Google says. The company also says Gemini 3 sets a new high-water mark for vibe coding. In addition to Gemini 3, Google has also unveiled a new AI-first integrated development environment…or IDE…named Antigravity. Google says 3 has improved simulated reasoning abilities, and better understanding of text, images, and video. Google says math and coding are the primary focus of this release. Google says people should think of Antigravity  as a “mission control” for creating and monitoring multiple development agents. The AI in Antigravity can operate autonomously across the editor, terminal, and browser to create and modify projects, but everything they do is relayed to the user in the form of “Artifacts.” 

The lower priced iPhone 17 has helped Apple to pick up 25% of China’s smartphone sales. According to bgr.com, the base model 17 made up 80% of Apple’s iPhone sales in China. Apple sold 37% more iPhones than last year in China. The top line iPhone 17 Pro Max is experiencing shipping delays in China, but just 2-5 days. The premium phone segment is still hotly contested…The Huawei Mate 80 flagship phone is coming out, and that is expected to cut into Apple’s market share. 

Cloudflare had a major outage this Tuesday morning that took down or snarled a significant piece of the internet. TechCrunch.com says the outage hit ChatGPT, Claude, Spotify, X, and others. In a post on X, Cloudflare’s chief technology officer Dane Knecht said a latent bug was responsible, and he apologized for the outage. The problem occurred when Cloudflare’s bot mitigation system started to crash after a routine configuration change. A few users were still having some issues logging onto their Cloudflare dashboards by late morning.

As part of new strategic partnerships with both Nvidia and Anthropic, Microsoft will pour up to $5 billion into Anthropic, while Nvidia will dump $10 billion into the AI startup. Cnbc.com notes that this will put the valuation of Anthropic…maker of the Claude AI model…at around $350 billion, up from $183 billion in September. Anthropic has committed to purchasing $30 billion of Azure compute capacity from Microsoft and has contracted for additional compute capacity up to 1 gigawatt, according to a blog post. Anthropic has also committed to purchase up to 1 gigawatt of compute capacity with Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems. Amazon Web Services continue to be Anthropic’s primary cloud provider, however.

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

Bezos Co-CEO in AI Startup; Major Tech Investor Dumps Nvidia; Door Dash Data Breach; Steam Machine-Easy Cheats in Games an Issue

Posted: November 17, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Jeff Bezos has apparently decided he couldn’t stay away from running a company, even with all his billions. Bezos is now co-CEO of an AI startup called Project Prometheus…which has raised $6.2 billion in funding. This will be the first time the former Amazon founder and CEO has been in an actual working executive role since leaving the Amazon CEO position in 2021. The details are scant about Project Prometheus. On LinkedIn, the only description is ‘AI for the physical economy.’ The other co-CEO is Vic Bajaj, who formerly worked in research at Alphabet’s ‘moonshot’ division Google X. Vic is also a director at biotech startup in Seattle called Xaira Therapeutics. Bezos said earlier this year that there are signs of an AI “industrial bubble” — but also said the technology will bring massive benefits to society. “When the dust settles and you see who are the winners, society benefits from those inventions. … The benefits to society from AI are going to be gigantic,” according to Bezos.

Just last week, we reported on a major investor-a Japanese billionaire- selling all his Nvidia stock. Now comes word that tech venture capitalist Peter Thiel has sold ALL his Nvidia stock. According to raw story.com, the sale had amounted to about 40% of a Thiel controlled hedge fund. One post on line said just “Uh, oh.” This is another red flag that there is very likely an AI bubble, and that it may be getting precariously close to popping. There has been some $350 billion pumped into AI this year just in the US. The AI boom reportedly now makes up about a third of the value of the entire stock market. It isn’t helpful that Sam Altman – CEO of OpenAI – about the U.S. government being the “insurer of last resort,” suggesting that taxpayers may be forced to bail AI companies out should they financially collapse. Well, the government has bailed out banks and savings and loans…but of course, not the poor, working poor, or middle class…nor has it helped younger people get into homes. Kamala Harris’ plan to give new home buyers $25 grand to do that seems like it might have been a lot better investment for the government than bailing out billionaires that have bet big on a flaky at this point but promising technology. 

DoorDash has had a data breach that includes user phone numbers and physical addresses. Techcrunch.com says that DoorDash hasn’t released a number affected…but that it does include customers, delivery workers, and merchants. The company did say that “no sensitive information was accessed by the unauthorized third party and we have no indication the data has been misused for fraud or identity theft at this time.” No social security numbers or driver licenses, or bank information or credit card info was exposed in the hack. All affected users have been notified. 

A lot of gamers are looking at jumping to the new Linux-based Steam Machine from Valve. One sticky issue is keeping some popular games off the platform and may keep some gamers from switching. Engadget.com reports that the problem is its Linux OS. It is apparently way easy to make cheating software for Linux based operating systems. This has kept some big games like Fortnite and Rainbow Six Siege from porting to the platform. Still, for a lot of folks that are unhappy with the intrusiveness of Windows 11…and the specter of Windows 12 even possibly being subscription based like Office 360…something Microsoft has backed off of for now…I expect to see a good minority of users jump to the Steam Machine. As with the Mac Mini, you do need to get your own keyboard, mouse, and monitor…but those things are widely available. 

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

Anthropic Will Pour $50 Billion into AI Infrastructure; Apple Launches Digital ID-Passports on Your iPhone; People Can’t Tell If a Song is AI or Not; Airbnb Tests Ordering Groceries via Instacart

Posted: November 12, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

We have just reported in the past couple days on eye-watering billions being dropped on AI infrastructure by Meta and others…now comes Anthropic, announcing plans to drop $50 billion on custom data centers in Texas and New York. Cnbc.com reports that the facilities are being developed in partnership with Fulidsack…an AI cloud platform that supplies large-scale graphics processing unit (GPU) clusters to clients like Meta, Midjourney, and Mistral. Anthropic is also planning to build out several other locations…but these will be live in 2026 if all goes well. The AI firm said they would create some 2,000 construction jobs and about 800 permanent jobs. Meanwhile, arch-competitor OpenAI has locked up some $1.4 trillion in long term infrastructure commitments. We are in the crazy money spending stage of AI infrastructure building apparently. 

Apple has rolled out Digital ID…in beta at least.. it’s a way to carry your passport on your iPhone or Apple Watch that is useable at TSA checkpoints. According to techcrunch.com, up to 250 airports will allow this for domestic travel. A number of states already allow a version of driver’s licenses to live in Apple Wallet. Note that it isn’t intended to replace your physical passport. Also, for international travel, you will still need the real thing…no way to stamp your phone at this point…although a digital way to do that might be possible. The TSA website has a list of states that support mobile ID, by the way. 

This is maddening for artists and musicians, but according to music streamer Deezer, a huge majority of people can’t tell AI generated music from the real thing…composed and performed by actual humans! Gizmodo.com notes that Deezer did a joint survey with Ipsos, and queried 9,000 people across eight countries: the US, Canada, Brazil, the UK, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Japan. Sadly, 97% of those surveyed couldn’t tell the difference. 80% of participants did say that AI generated music should be clearly labeled. Deezer already does this. As of September, the streamer found that 28% of music uploaded to its platform was completely AI generated. Of course the AI is trained on the actual works of real musicians…so it could be thought of as a type of theft of intellectual property…but copyright laws are unclear about this right now. 

So you are headed out for a little getaway and have rented an Airbnb. When you get there, you are gonna need groceries. Well now, Airbnb is testing out letting you order them either ahead of time or upon arrival using Instacart. Engadget.com reports that Airbnb will give hosts who do the ordering $25 for every completed order, so long as the food is put away before the guests arrive. Customers will be able to place orders on Instacart up to 3 weeks before their stay. The service is being tested out in Phoenix, Orlando, and LA.

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

Next Year’s iPhone’s May Get Big Overhaul; SoftBank Sells All Its Nvidia Stock; Meta’s Top AI Scientist Leaving to Found Startup; Sony-84.2 Million PS 5s Sold

Posted: November 11, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Apple may be making some major changes to next year’s iPhones. At the top of the list…adding a 2nd camera to the poor-selling iPhone Air. 9to5mac.com reports that the new model may be delayed until Spring 2027 in order to redesign and add a second camera. The other big change to the line will be adding the new iPhone Fold…or whatever they end up calling it. Right now, it looks like the Fall 2026 rollout will only include the iPhone 18 Pro, Pro Max, and Fold. The base iPhone 18 may be joining the Air in a Spring rollout. 

In a big move in the AI world, SoftBank has sold its entire stake in Nvidia for $5.83 billion. According to cnbc.com, the company is going ‘all in’ on its stake in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. SoftBank said in a statement this wan’t a knock on Nvidia, of which they were an early backer, but that they needed some $30 billion in capital as they continue to pump money into ChatGPT and other investments. OpenAI is now showing up as worth some $500 billion…while Nvidia is a leader in the trillion dollar valuation club. 

Meta has paid astronomical amounts to steal AI experts from other companies, but now their top AI scientist is bailing…to found his own startup. Gizomodo.com notes that Yan LeCun is in talks to raise capital. Meta, like Apple, is admittedly running behind leaders like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic in the AI race. Meta has taken out some $27 billion in loans to pour into their AI race.

Sony has announced that they have now sold 84.2 million PlayStation 5s since it was introduced. Engadget.com says that they actually sold more PS5s last quarter than a year ago…3.9 million compared to 3.8 million. The company is still concerned due to the flaky tariff regime of the Trump administration and also the delay of Grand Theft Auto VI. That said, Sony now predicts they will make $29 billion in gaming revenue for the full year ending March 31, 2026. 

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

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