So today's intro was going to involve a whole intricate Rube Goldberg machine,
but unfortunately it didn't work. So I
threw a bit of a tantrum and then I tripped and fell on it and smashed it.
Anyway, here's the tech news, I guess. Samsung officially launched the Galaxy
XR, its much anticipated mixed reality headset, at an event yesterday. It's the
first headset powered by Android XR, the
OS for headsets announced by Google last December. And Samsung says it's designed
as the first step in their vision of an open scalable XR ecosystem. The price
for entry, a nice cool $1,800,
which is worth approximately half an Apple Vision Pro, unless you're on eBay,
where the corpses of a dead dream litter the landscape. Under the hood, it packs
the new Snapdragon XR2 Plus Gen 2 chip,
a stunning micro OLED display, full hand and eye tracking, and a UI that looks
hauntingly similar to the Vision Pro,
and of course, Google's Gemini will let you do amazing things you couldn't do
before, like organize your Windows. Do
people still want an AR headset after the Vision Pro bombed? Well, just in
case they don't, Samsung confirmed they're also working on smart glasses,
which could compete with Meta's Ray-B band through a partnership with the
brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster. So whether you want to enter the
metaverse or just forget what sunlight looks like, Samsung's got you covered.
Literally, OpenAI has fulfilled the prophecy and introduced Atlas, a web
browser with ChatGpt built in. Atlas is
meant to become more helpful over time by using its memory of your chats and
searches to better comprehend what you're doing and complete tasks for you.
If an AI learning to understand and imitate your browsing behaviors scares
you, too, don't worry. The feature is completely optional, so you can make it
so your browser won't even know that you're gaslighting it. Plus, OpenAI says
Atlas will pause to ensure you're watching it when it accesses sensitive
sites like your bank or when it just learned how to stand on one leg and just
wants you to be proud of it. Look at me. Look at me. But what about incognito
mode? I hear all the freaks saying, "Hey, don't worry. Atlas has that." And
it will temporarily log you out of chatbt, so it will remember nothing of
your secret trrist. But that also means it won't remember the specific kind of
cat photos you like. Moving on, Atlas's announcement video shows it's shopping
and filling carts based on simple prompts, which is a worrying level of
power given that security research from Brave Software found that hidden text in
an image can manipulate AI browsers like
Perplexity's Comet. They showed that this text can trick a browser into,
among other things, visiting a hackerc controlled website. Great. We're putting
our web browsing in the hands of a hallucinating, gullible Greek Titan.
Atlas was a Titan. The effects of Monday's major Amazon Web Services
outage are still being felt with some Slack users reportedly being completely
unable to leave work conference calls,
which sounds like something out of a late night snack induced stress dream.
Speaking of sleeping, during the outage, thousands of eight sleep bed owners
found they couldn't adjust the smart bed's position or temperature. resulting
in some folks roasting in their blankets like proverbial pigs. I'm not calling
these poor people pigs. I'm just being clear about that. Eight Sleep then
introduced a new outage mode to control the bed even during an AWS service
disruption. Can Can we just use that one use that mode all the time? No. All
right. Still, the outage might be a good distraction for Amazon because the New
York Times is reporting on leaked documents that suggest Amazon plans to
replace 600,000 human employees with robots by 2033. The report says Amazon's
robotics team aims to automate 75% of the company's operations and they're
expecting to cut around 160,000 US jobs
by 2027. However, an Amazon spokesperson
attempted to downplay this news, telling The Verge that this holiday season
they're planning on hiring 250,000 humans who may or may not go on
permanent holiday shortly afterwards. Seems like Amazon could use some
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business. Fun fact, the Quickbits enjoy watching those marble races more than go
Rube Goldberg machines. They're faster and it's all about speed with the
Quickbits. You know that more than anyone.
TSMC has produced the first NVIDIA Blackwell GPU wafer on American soil,
marking a big win for domestic chipm
sort of. Before these wafers actually become usable GPUs, each wafer still has
to fly back to Taiwan for packaging. Now, that's where TSMC handles their
chip onwafer substrate and high bandwidth memory stacking, critical
steps that bond multiple chips and stack memory inside the processor. and they
have said, "We're only doing it there." So, until those advanced processes exist
in Arizona, these made in America chips will keep earning frequent flyer miles
on their way to Taiwan and back. Maybe they'll take a holiday sometime. YouTube
is rolling out AI likeness detection, a tool designed to catch deep fakes before
they go viral, because they will go viral.
You've got to stop them. Creators can opt in by doing a quick selfie scan,
letting Google's AI compare faces and voices in uploads to detect
impersonations. It's just occurring to me now that this also gives them more
accurate data about what your face looks like specifically and how to reproduce
it. >> Yeah, >> which is the same thing you have to do when you log into the Sora app. Okay. If
someone tries to use your likeness, YouTube can flag, label, or block the
video automatically. Because if Google is serious about one thing, it's about
giving creators the tools they need to fight content created with other tools
Google created to fight creators in the marketplace of content.
Speaking of AI, a new study by the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC
found that nearly 45% of AI assistant
responses about current major events contained major issues. For example,
Google Gemini claimed the NHS in the UK
does not recommend vaping to help quit smoking. Well, not only does the NHS
actually recommend it, it's objectively the coolest way to quit. With a younger
generation increasingly using AI for news, I think everyone can see how that
could start getting a bit capital Hairy.
I don't know why there's a capital H. A tiny bionic eye implant, first developed
by a company called Pixium Vision back in 2022, is finally delivering on its
promise, helping blind patients read again. The system, now refined by the
aptly named Science Corporation, suddenly more suspicious of this whole
thing, uses a rice-sized microchip implanted under the retina and a pair of
smart glasses that record the world in front of you. The system uses both of
these components to create infrared light signals, something that can be
converted to actual visual information by the eye inserted chip. In recent
trials, more than 80% of patients with severe macular degeneration regained
enough vision to recognize letters and small words. At this rate, we'll need
implants just to unsee half the stuff on the internet. When are those coming? And
researchers in Japan have made a breakthrough in the field of entural
ventilation via anus aka EVA aka butt
breathing. Let me explain. In 2024,
researchers snagged an IG Nobel Prize in physiology for showing that mice, rats,
and pigs can actually absorb oxygen
through their rear ends. if scientists put some oxygenated liquid in there,
which is a key key detail. Now, the same
group is studying whether using this method can be used to bypass blocked
airways or clogged lungs in humans. And
the first step asking 27 healthy male
volunteers to hold some regular non oxygenated liquid inside of there and
clench. And we swear we're not just doing this cuz we think it's funny. And
these guys, they turned out all right with the only adverse effects so far
being some bloating and discomfort. Obviously, I feel like they could have
gotten the same findings from taking those 27 guys to Taco Bell. But I think
that study already won an Ignobel prize.
I You know what? I think we should all take a butt breath. We'll be back on
Friday with more tech news. I've got to go pick up the pieces of my Rube
Goldberg machine. Maybe I can salvage something. Hey, let me know in the
comments what your favorite Rube Goldberg machine is. Do they have names?