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.

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. 

Snap-Light Consumer AR Glasses in ’26; Threads is Getting DMs; EVs with 3,000 Mile Range on the Horizon; Apple White Paper- Power of New Generation AI Wildly Oversold

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

Snap is preparing to sell lightweight, consumer AR glasses in 2026. That’s the word from techcrunch.com. They will be called Specs. Snap’s Specs will feature many of the same augmented reality and artificial intelligence capabilities that are available on the company’s developer-facing smart glasses, the Spectacles 5. However, the company says the Specs will be smaller and lighter — ideally making them more innocuous to wear in public than their extremely large predecessors. So far, no word from Snap on pricing, or on how they plan to sell the glasses. If they are lightweight, work well, and don’t look goofy…Snap will have really pulled off something great in the smart glasses race. 

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Threads will start testing its own direct messaging this week…which you will be able to use without leaving the platform. According to theverge.com, the testing will start in Hong Kong, Thailand, and Argentina, then expand to other nations. Users will see a separate inbox for Threads DMs, without having to connect to their linked Instagram account. At this point you will still have to have an Instagram account to use Threads. Maybe one day, they will split the baby, so to speak.

In a huge leap forward, a couple of researchers in South Korea have come up with a way to reduce silicon swelling in traditional EV battery designs. Bgr.com says that the better tech may take us from the 200-300 miles per charge to somewhere in the area of 3,000 mile range! That’s not all…using graphene in the batteries, they have shown that you can fully charge in something like 75 seconds…with no degradation in capacity for over 1,000 recharges. If this tech scales up, we may see truly revolutionary range in electric vehicles…and smartphones you won’t ever stress about running down the battery and being out of contact. 

Apple has put out a research paper that some are nodding in the affirmative over…like myself, while others are stunned. Theguardian.com notes that the paper  all but eviscerating the popular notion that large language models (LLMs, and their newest variant, LRMs, large reasoning models) are able to reason reliably. well-known venture capitalist Josh Wolfe went so far as to post on X that “Apple [had] just GaryMarcus’d LLM reasoning ability” – coining a new verb (and a compliment to me), referring to “the act of critically exposing or debunking the overhyped capabilities of artificial intelligence … by highlighting their limitations in reasoning, understanding, or general intelligence.” What Apple did was show that the leading models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Deepseek may “look smart – but when complexity rises, they collapse”. In short, these models are very good at a kind of pattern recognition, but often fail when they encounter novelty that forces them beyond the limits of their training, despite being, as the paper notes, “explicitly designed for reasoning tasks.” The Cliff’s Notes takeaway for you…relax…Artificial Intelligence and robots won’t be taking over…at least not yet. 

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

Open AI Snaps Up Jony Ive Startup; Google XR Glasses-Interesting ‘Glasshole’ Wrinkle; Amazon Further AI-Enhances Shopping; Meta Boosts Startups Use of Their Llama AI

Posted: May 21, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

In a very interesting pickup, OpenAI has just bought Jony Ive’s AI startup..called io. Appleinsider.com reports that they are dropping $6.5 billion in stock on the startup by the former Apple head of design, who was responsible for the look and feel. some of Apple’s most iconic products. OpenAI will add 55 new employees, including hardware engineers, software, developers, and manufacturing experts. Both OpenAI Sam Altman and Ive referred to something they are calling ‘the device,’ some hardware they plan to release sometime next year. It could just be a better box with an AI voice assistant, but coming from Ive, who was the futurist right hand of Steve Jobs, it might be something quite amazing. It’s worth noting that before this purchase, Job’s widow…Laurene Powell Jobs had invested in io through her Emerson Collective. 

In the slew of announcements yesterday during Google I/O, many of which had to do with AI, Google did show off a prototype pair of its XR smart glasses…and even let some of the media test out pairs briefly. According to engadget.com, the glasses…which have a heavy black frame reminiscent of something Clark Kent would have worn in the 50’s as the not terribly secret identity of Superman, actually are lighter than Meta’s Orion prototype or Snap’s Spectacles. One thing that struck me is that the display is only on one side…the right lens. It has a narrow field of view, but you can see notifications and the like overlayed in that lens. They are more just something for a glance, not really immersive. To me, as someone who was around San Francisco at the time, there is a funny connection to Google Glass and the ‘glassholes.’ Those had a little prism that was on the right side. Could Google have just added code to the old Google Glass code and some AI? Ok, probably not, but it made me laugh. 

Amazon continues to add more AI to their shopping app, to lure more of us to spend even more money! Geekwire.com notes that the generative AI powered feature is called “AI shopping experts.” Amazon says it analyzes product details, customer reviews and information from across the web to allow customers to simply hear key information. “It’s like having helpful friends discuss potential purchases to make your shopping easier, even if you’re multitasking or on the go,” wrote Rajiv Mehta, vice president of Search and Conversational Shopping at Amazon, in a blog post about the release on Wednesday. Right now it is only available on a select group of products to what they are calling a subset of US customers…but of course, they plan to expand to all in the next few months. 

Meta is rolling out a new program of incentives to encourage startups to use its Llama AI models. Techcrunch.com reports that the program will provide companies ‘direct support from the Llama team, and will even include funding in some cases. Companies that are accepted into the program can get up to $6000 a month for up to 6 months to help offset costs of building and enhancing their generative AI solutions. Meta says that the Llama models have been downloaded over a billion times now. 

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

Newest Member-Apple Family Tomorrow; AI Can Replicate Itself-With Help; Phone By Google Call History Filters; Meta Announces 1st Generative AI Developers Conference 

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

Apple plans to introduce its ‘newest member of the family’ tomorrow. That’s the tease from CEO Tim Cook. Engadget.com reports that we don’t really know if this is just the rollout of the iPhone SE…which was delayed, or new AirTags, or possibly the rumored new home device. Whatever it is, we’ll have a recap about it all tomorrow right here. 

In an absolutely nerve-fraying study from China, they have been able to reach a so-called ‘red line’ with artificial intelligence. According to bgr.com, some Chinese scientists were able to get AI to replicate itself. The researchers ran 10 trials, at the end of which two AI models were able to create separate and functioning replicas in 50% and 90% of cases. Bear in mind that the researchers gave the AI what they call an ‘Agent scaffolding, comprising tools, system prompts, and a thinking model that enabled the LLM to interact with the operating system.’ Without all the assistance, they note that the AI models would not have been able to replicate. At least for now, you can’t just instruct AI to reproduce itself. An international statement about AI safety was signed by many countries last week…but the US, UK, and China refused to sign. 

Google has added some call history filters to the beta of Android. 9to5google.com notes that these should be pretty handy. You can now select from all, missed, contacts, non-spam, spam. What do you bet when it is fully released, most people will leave the filter in non-spam all the time! 

Meta has announced LlamaCon, its first generative AI dev conference. Techcrunch.com reports that the event is scheduled for April 29th. The LlamaCon moniker comes from Meta’s Llama family of generative AI models. Meta said that it plans to share “the latest on [its] open source AI developments to help developers […] build amazing apps and products.” Meta several years ago embraced an “open” approach to developing AI technologies in a bid to grow an ecosystem of apps and platforms. They were caught off guard when the Chinese released their open AI model that reportedly could outperform the next version of Llama…expected to be released soon. Meta is budgeting up to $80 billion on projects revolving around AI this year. 

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

Open AI Bows 03 Mini; Apple Reports Record Q1; Smart Glasses Help Macular Degeneration Patients; Tire Recycling Startup Gets $ From Costco Co-Founder

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

After the big shake up in AI with the introduction of DeepSeek out of China, OpenAI has responded with the release of the o3-mini reasoning model. Arstechnica.com reports that the faster, more accurate STEM-focused model will be free to all users. OpenAI crows that o3-mini ‘advances the boundaries of what small models can achieve. The model has been optimized for STEM functions and shows “particular strength in science, math, and coding” despite lower operating costs and latency than its predecessor o1-mini, OpenAI says.OpenAI says testers reported a 39 percent reduction in “major errors” when using o3-mini, compared to o1-mini, and preferred the o3-mini responses 56 percent of the time. Subscribers to OpenAI’s Plus, Team, or Pro tiers will see o3-mini replace o1-mini in the model options starting today.

Apple continues to bring in big bags of cash. According to 9to5mac.com, the Cupertino giant released first quarter earnings (Apple’s quarters don’t follow the calendar’s quarters) with $124.30 billion in revenue. That compares with $119.58 billion for the same quarter a year ago, up 4%. As usual for the last many years, iPhone brought in the bulk of it with $69.14 billion. Services revenue…subscriptions and the like hauled in $26.34 billion. Wearables, Home, and Accessories amounted to $11.75 billion, while Macs generated $8.99 billion and iPads $8.08 billion. 

Having had a couple of family members who had it, I can tell you that macular degeneration sucks. It hits millions of people worldwide, generally folks over 60. The drop outs and vision loss…a lot of it in straight ahead vision….really make things tough. Now, a firm called Soliddd Corp has shown some smart glasses that may be a big help. Bgr.com notes that injections can slow one type of macular degeneration, but there isn’t a cure. Soliddd’s smart glasses fill a gap, though. They use tiny cameras on each temple that capture images of the environment and send them to displays inside the lenses. The displays have 64 micro-lenses, each projecting a miniature image on the healthy peripheral part of the retina. They basically remove the blind spots the disease causes. The glasses were shown at CES, and are expected to be on the market by the end of the year. No pricing has been released as yet. Since they are glasses, and not a medication or an implant, no FDA approval is needed.

A recycling startup called Prism Worldwide which was started by Bob Abramwitz, who did bottled water for Costco, just scored $40 million from Costco’s co-founder Jim Sinegal. Geekwire.com reports that Prism uses patented tech that can turn the used tires into a polymer that can be used in a variety of applications. Right now, only a fraction of the over 300 million used tires in the US are recycled…mainly ground up and used in components of sports fields, asphalt, or back into new tires. They are also burned in power plants…but the dirty secret is that most end up on landfills. Prism’s recycled polymers are being used in rubber car mats, plastic tote containers, racks for shipping goods and other applications. They hope to expand to even more reuse for their polymers from the recycled tires.

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