Google Pixel 10A; FDA Reverses-Will Review Moderna mRNA Flu Vaccine; Google Announces Dates for I/O; Tesla Avoids Suspension in California Over Full Self Driving Claim

Posted: February 18, 2026 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Google has dropped the Pixel 10A, their latest budget…or at least mid-priced phone. At $499, the price is still right, but theverge.com reports that it is really only slightly better than the 9A it replaces. The handset still has the same Tensor G4 chip as last year’s model, and just 8 gigs or RAM…which means it won’t have the horsepower to run the latest AI features that are available on the Pixel 10 series. No Magic Cue or Pixel Screenshots. If you are skeptical or just don’t like AI, you really won’t care. One new feature you might well care about is that the phone has SOS satellite communications…so if you are somewhere out of cell range and get into trouble, you can hold that phone up and call for help using the satellite connection. An example was given in an article of being chased by a bear in the woods. Note: any bear can outrun you. If you don’t need all the AI whistles and bells, the 10A is worth a look at under $500.

The FDA has reversed its stunning refusal to review Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine. According to arstechnica.com, the reversal was made by political appointee Vinay Prasad, the Trump administration’s top vaccine regulator, who overruled a team of agency scientists and a top career official in rejecting Moderna’s application. Prasad’s ostensible reason for initially refusing to review the application was based not on Moderna’s vaccine, mRNA-1010, but on the established flu vaccine Moderna used for comparison in its Phase 3 trial. Moderna used licensed standard-dose influenza vaccines, including Fluarix, made by GlaxoSmithKline, in the trial, which involved nearly 41,000 adults aged 50 and older. In a letter to Moderna dated February 3, Prasad said this choice “does not reflect the best-available standard of care,” and therefore the trial was not “adequate and well-controlled.” Moderna acknowledged that FDA scientists had previously suggested that the company use a recommended high-dose flu vaccine in trial participants 65 and older. But the agency ultimately signed off on the trial design with the uniform standard dose, calling it “acceptable.” No guarantee that the FDA will approve the vaccine, but at least they are going to review it.

Google has announced the dates for I/O 2026. Theverge.com reports that that it will be May 19th and 20th. In a news release Google says it will share the “latest AI breakthroughs and updates in products across the company, from Gemini to Android and more” during the event, which will take place in-person in Mountain View, California’s Shoreline Amphitheatre, and online.

Tesla has agreed to change language describing their glorified cruise control, and stop using the word ‘Autopilot.’ Techcrunch.com notes that Tesla has stopped using ‘Full Self-Driving Capability.’ Now, they will say Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which is actually pretty accurate. The Autopilot term was contested by the state, and in December, an administrative law judge agreed with the DMV’s request to suspend Tesla’s sales and manufacturing licenses in California for 30 days. That got Tesla’s attention. The state DMV said Tesla now had 60 days to comply. The company agreed, and has dropped the ‘Autopilot’ term in marketing its cars in California. 

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

Amazon Testing New Fast Delivery Setup; Folding iPhone-May be $2400; Landlord Rent Setting Tool Gets Gutted; Amazon Web Services- $50 Billion to Build Government AI Infrastructure 

Posted: November 25, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Amazon is trialing a new rapid delivery idea in Seattle. Geekwire.com reports that Amazon is using a closed Amazon Fresh site as a mini warehouse for  most popular and fast moving items. It is something like a convenience store…open 24/7 but not to you. It functions as a pick up site for  Amazon Flex drivers. Amazon employees will fulfill online orders…picking and bagging items from a stock room, then putting them on shelves for Flex drivers to pick up and deliver to the nearby neighborhoods within hours of ordering. Flex drivers are independent contractors who deliver packages using their own vehicles, signing up for delivery blocks through the Amazon Flex app. The program has often been described as Uber for package delivery. 

We’ve heard price rumors ranging from the $1900 plus level up to $2500 for the upcoming folding iPhone. Now, according to mac rumors.com, analyst Arthur Liao is postulating it will be $2399. Noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo had previously said it would land at between $2000 and $2500, and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has predicted it will be somewhere around $2000. The foldable ‌iPhone‌ will be expensive because of the premium components that Apple plans to use. The display panel and hinge will push pricing toward the upper end of market expectations, Fubon Research suggests. One truly big deal is that the iPhone is expected to be the first folder with no crease at all in the middle of the screen. Fubon Research sees Apple selling about 5.4 million of the folders in 2026. That is a pretty modest number compared to 228 million total iPhones sold in 2024, the last full year we have figures for. 

A controversial tool used by landlords to set rental prices has had its ears pinned back after a settlement with the Department of Justice. The DOJ said in a press release that the proposed settlement “would help restore free market competition in rental markets for millions of American renters.” The antitrust settlement is with RealPage. For years since the pandemic started, rental prices outpaced inflation, and the DOJ suspected that RealPage was the dominant force driving a market that never favored renters. Under the settlement, RealPage admits no wrongdoing, and doesn’t pay a fine. Arstechnica.com notes that if the court approves the deal, however, RealPage has agreed to update its software so that rival landlords cannot access “competitively sensitive information to determine rental prices in runtime operation.” Additionally, RealPage will “remove or redesign features that limited price decreases or aligned pricing between competing users of the software.” And the company will “cooperate in the United States’ lawsuit against property management companies that have used its software.”

Amazon is spending an eye-watering $50 billion to build out AI infrastructure for the US government. Techcrunch.com reports that it will be a ‘high performance computing infrastructure’ built specially for the feds. It will expand government agency access to AWS AI services. Amazon will break ground on the data centers in 2026. Amazon has long supplied cloud infrastructure to the US government…starting back in 2011. 

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

Nvidia Breaks $5 Trillion Barrier; Samsung-Ads on Smart Fridges Coming; OpenAI Finally Moves from Nonprofit; Westinghouse-New Nuke Reactors Deal for More US Electricity

Posted: October 29, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

https://youtu.be/q7icACPfq50

No more than a day after I reported about Apple getting into the $4 trillion valuation club, and mentioned that Nvidia was the first member of that elite group…things have changed. Cnbc.com reports that Nvidia has just pierced the $5 trillion valuation mark. The stock was up 3% Wednesday, which gets them across the line. The latest move higher comes shortly after CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia expects $500 billion in AI chip orders and announced plans to build seven new supercomputers for the U.S. government. The stock price, which closed up 5% in the previous session, has climbed nearly 50% year-to-date.

I am pretty happy with my ‘dumb’ fridge, and have friends and neighbors that are as well. Meanwhile, appliance makers are forging ahead with more ‘smart’ refrigerators…and now comes the inevitable…Samsung has fridges with integrated displays. If you guessed that they are going to start serving ads on the displays, you aced the test! According to macrumors.com, Family Hub refrigerators in the US are getting a widget that shows ads. Samsung is calling it a ‘pilot program,’ and says the promotions and curated advertisements will be ‘offered’ to some fridge owners. Family Hub refrigerators start at $1899, but go up to $3499. They come with 21.5 and 32 inch screens….hey, that’s bigger than my monitor I use with the computer I do these videos on! The initial ads will just be for Samsung products. The ads are opt out…but you know a lot of people won’t be able to figure out how to do that, or won’t take time to try. Oh, boy. I’ll be keeping my old, dumb fridge for a while longer!

This is a big non-newsy story. It finally happened, but the battle over it has been going on for over a year. OpenAI has finally announced that it completed its recapitalization, and is becoming a for-profit corporation. Gizmodo notes that this is in spite of one of the company’s co-founders, Elon Musk. Of course, Musk has his Grok, integrated with the X platform that is AI and definitely not non-profit! Back to OpenAI…the new structure will have 2 separate entities….the OpenAI foundation, which will remain a nonprofit and which will have partial control over OpenAI Group, which is the new ‘public benefit’ corporation. Under the new structure, OpenAI Group will be able to do things that a for-profit entity can (and a non-profit can’t), like raise more money and acquire companies. It will also get its own board of directors, which the Foundation will appoint. OpenAI Foundation will own 26% of the now for-profit OpenAI Group, valued at around $130 billion, and will continue to be granted shares of the company as it grows. Microsoft will hold a 27% stake in the for-profit arm, which is currently valued at about $135 billion. Microsoft also announced that, as a part of this shift, it will continue to hold intellectual property rights to OpenAI models and future products through 2032. The remaining 47% of the company’s stock will be held by other investors and the employees of OpenAI Group.

In an announcement that was a bit light on details, Westinghouse announced it has a deal with the Trump administration to build $80 billion worth of new nuclear reactors for power generation. Arstechnica.com reports that the government has also indicated it has finalized plans with GE Vernova and Hitachi to build the reactors. During Trump’s Japan visit, it was announced that “Japan and various Japanese companies” would invest “up to” $332 billion for energy infrastructure. This specifically mentioned Westinghouse, GE Vernova, and Hitachi. Westinghouse claims the $80 million will be enough to build out 8 reactors, but it is only enough for 5 larger sized reactors. The deal mentions some smaller modular reactors, but right now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission hasn’t approved that type of reactor. 

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

GOP Wants to Tax EV Drivers $200 a Year; Meta’s Standalone ChatGPT Competitor; Wikipedia Will Use AI, but Not Replacing Humans; Waymo & Toyota Partner on Self-Driving Vehicles

Posted: April 30, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The present Republican party seems determined to hate on, and fight against electric vehicles at every turn. Now, arstechnica.com reports that they have tucked into their proposed tax bill a new $200 per year tax on battery EVs. Hybrids will be dinged for $100. How about gas guzzling pickups, SUVs, and performance cars? Oh, they will pay a measly $20 per year…and even then only after October 1, 2030! Before that, nothing. Commercial vehicles are exempt, too. An argument the GOP makes is that EV drivers don’t pay any gas tax, and hybrid owners pay less gas tax than internal combustion engine vehicle owners. Of course, the EVs aren’t belching smog into the atmosphere either…to the climate change deniers, this tax is a win-win if it passes. This is a big ripoff for EVs and hybrids, as 39 states already charge EV drivers a registration fee and 28 states charge hybrid drivers. DISCLOSURE: I drive a hybrid, and have for the past 7 years…so yes, I have already been paying the gas tax…this is just an added tax penalty from the party that allegedly hates taxes.

Meta has its standalone ChatGPT competitor, which is pretty much the same as what you get with actual ChatGPT…but with an added feature. According to theverge.com, you can type to or talk with the app, generate images, and get real-time web results. The new wrinkle is that it has a Discover feed…which gets you a feed of interactions with Meta AI that other people…including, of course, your friends on Facebook and Instagram…have chosen to share on a prompt-by-prompt basis. Naturally since it is a meta product, you can like, comment, share, or remix the shared AI posts on your own feed. OpenAI is planning a social feed to ChatGPT, and Musk’s X is pretty intertwined with his Grok. Worth noting…Meta actually is using much of the View companion app for the Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses to underpin the freestanding Meta AI app.

Wikipedia is jumping into the AI game, but it stresses that artificial intelligence won’t be used to replace the community of editors and volunteers. Techcrunch.com says Wikipedia will use AI to build new features that “remove technical barriers,” allowing editors, moderators, and patrollers tools that allow them to accomplish what they need to do, without worrying about how to “technically achieve it.” Amid concerns that AI could eventually impact jobs held by people today, especially in terms of content creation, Wikipedia indicates that it intends to use AI as a tool that makes people’s jobs easier, not replace them.

The Waymo division of Alphabet and Toyota have announced a preliminary partnership to explore bringing robotaxi tech to personally-owned vehicles. “The companies will explore how to leverage Waymo’s autonomous technology and Toyota’s vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles,” the two companies announced. The companies said they aim to use the partnership to more quickly develop driver assistance and autonomous vehicle technologies for personal vehicles. Toyota is the world’s largest automaker by sales. Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said the strategic partnership could also result in the Google-owned company incorporating Toyota’s “vehicles into our ride-hailing fleet.”

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

Meta Will Resume AI Training on Public Content; Meta Antitrust Trial; Nvidia To Start Chipmaking in Arizona and Texas; Tariffs-On Again, Off Again-Apple Increases Non-China Production

Posted: April 14, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

Meta announced today that they will start using publicly available content from European users to train its AI models…something it paused last year after an outcry about data privacy. The training will be on public posts and content shared by adult users in the European Union. Meta says it will not use private messages, but noted to the EU regulators that it will be doing nothing different from Google and OpenAI. The social giant said it will begin notifying users in the EU about the training…and will include a link to a form where they can object at any time. Meta says “We’ll honor all objection forms.”

In other Meta news, the big antitrust case the FTC has brought against Meta is under the gavel in Washington, D.C. According to NPR, it comes after a 6 year investigation over whether the social media giant broke competition laws when it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp. It would put quite a dent in the $1.4 trillion dollar ad business, if the government prevails and makes Meta spin off those series into separate companies. It is being compared as a corporate breakup to the one that the government forced on AT&T some 40 years ago. The trial before Judge Boasberg is expected to last up to 8 weeks. Meta is expected to present a vigorous defense. 

Nvidia has announced it has commissioned over a million square feet of space to build and test AI chips in Arizona and Texas. Techcrunch.com says production of its Blackwell chips has already started at TSMC’s plants in Phoenix, and Nvidia is building ‘supercomputer’ manufacturing plants in Texas…partnered with Foxconn in Houston and Wistron in Dallas. Mass production should ramp up in the next 12-15 months, and within 4 years, Nvidia is aiming to make as much as a half trillion dollars worth of AI infrastructure in the US. The plants in Arizona were started by the Chips Act under the Biden Administration. 

Another roller coaster on tariffs over the weekend. First, a cave, exempting smartphones, and computers, and processors from the 145% tariff on Chinese imports. After that, it was just a temporary pause on SundayThen, yesterday, 9to5google.com, among many others, reports that Trump flip-flopped again, and said no exemptions. This is playing havoc with tech companies. Apple, for one, began ramping up production in India, and now makes 20% of iPhones there. They also increased production in Vietnam and Thailand. Look for other electronics makers other than do likewise to avoid the ridiculous tariffs Trump is trying to impose on China. For its part, China is not caving, and is putting on matching tariffs on imports from the US.

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