Hey, techl Riley here. How often does
tech news ooze out of the ground so it can be harvested and processed for
transport? Three times a week. I do not have a full
beard. Apple has sued leaker and YouTuber John Proer, who shared details
and unofficial renders of iOS 26, which
was presumed at the time to be called iOS 19. understandable on his Genius Bar
podcast and his Front Page Tech YouTube channel. The leaks got enough attention
that they were called not representative of the real thing by the prime leaker,
the Germ Smacker, Mark of the Germs. But
people leak Apple stuff all the time. So why is Apple suddenly choosing John for
prosecution? I'm sorry. Well, in their lawsuit, Apple says they got an
anonymous email naming Proser, his associate, Michael Ramachiotti, and
Ramachiott's friend, ex-Apple employee Ethan Lipnik. The suit also cites an
audio message sent to Lipnik from Ramachiotti claiming that Proer wanted
him to somehow get access to Lipnik's
development iPhone and the tasty trade secrets contained therein. Now, who
knows what the truth is? Because while Proser obviously did receive trade
secrets somehow, he denies these specific allegations, tweeting that he
didn't plot to access anyone's phone,
and he says he's got receipts. He then posted a screenshot where he asks
someone, presumably Rama Lama Shotti, "How the hell did you get this?" LOL.
which fair enough is usually not something you say to someone with whom
you schemed and planned ways to get the this in question. US President Donald
Trump has signed the Genius Act, the
first federal law to put rules in place for stable coins, which is
cryptocurrency that ties its value to, say, the US dollar or gold or something
else that is less likely to be worth absolutely nothing after a Paul brother
tweets out the digital equivalent of a wet fart. Trump has been pushing hard
for regulation that would legitimize cryptocurrencies in the eyes of more
investors only because he thinks crypto is really good and not because it would
be beneficial to the crypto ventures he's launched in the past year. No. But
regardless of the president's motivations, the Genius Act represents
the beginning of the end of the Wild West era of crypto and it'll hopefully
do something to prevent more people from dumping their life savings into meme
coins that are immediately rugpulled. It was literally called scamcoin. Richard,
two other crypto bills are still working their way through Congress, but Trump
doesn't need those to reap the benefits of the USD1 stable coin launched by his
I'm sorry, his son's crypto business, World Liberty Financial. Uh, this is all
normal. Lots of AI news to talk about. OpenAI has launched ChatGpt Agent, a new
tool that lets ChatGpt use its very own
computer. Because chat GPT, you've been so good lately. You only make up random
when you're really upset. Agent is even more capable than the operator
tool which launched in January and let ChatGBT control a web browser and that,
you know, went okay. So, they're letting ChatGpt go deeper into the machine and
probably just going to keep doing that until something breaks. Meanwhile,
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarando said in the
company's latest earnings call that one of their originals, the Argentinian
sci-fi film, The Eaternaut, used special
effects generated by AI. Sarando said
that sequence showing a building collapsing is the very first Gen AI
final footage to appear on screen in a Netflix original. Well, except for the
pretty obvious AI images almost certainly used in last year's Netflix
documentary, What Jennifer Did. Uh, but the creators still deny that. So, at
least they're telling us now. Meta, meanwhile, is telling the EU it won't be
signing the European Commission's code of practice for general purpose AI,
which would have meant committing to things like providing documentation
about Meta's AI tools and not training
AI on pirated content. It's simply untenable. Well, today the commission
published guidelines to help AI companies prepare for the roll out of
its AI act regulation on August 2nd, which it previously indicated was going
to happen whether Meta's on board or not. So, I don't know if your thing is
getting steamrolled. I'm sure Grock can generate a steamy
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The clock's ticking. Okay, now can we do the quickbits, Mark?
>> Come on. Quickbits time. This week, the
news nonprofit ProPublica published a deep dive on a Microsoft US government
contract that involved using software engineers based in China to maintain
defense department systems. Now, that's
a bit sketchy. So the solution was apparently to pair the engineers with
digital escorts, which were not Grock's
not safe for work 3D avatars, but rather US citizens with the proper security
clearances, but not very much technical
expertise. Current and former escorts told ProPublica stuff like, "We're
trusting that what they're doing isn't malicious, but we really can't tell."
After Senator Tom Cotton sent this report to Defense Secretary Pete
Hegseath, he miraculously managed to engage all four of his brain cells to
tweet that this shouldn't happen anymore. Then today, Microsoft Chief
Communications Officer Frank Shaw said, "Okay, they'll stop." Hopefully, China
also didn't notice this was happening until now. Delta Airlines says it's been
testing an AI powered system for individualized pricing that analyzes a
customer's profile and charges the max amount it thinks you and only you are
willing to pay. Delta was only testing this system on 3% of its total fairs,
but it wants to bring that up to 20% by the end of the year. Unless it can be
proven that Delta is offering people different rates based on certain
characteristics like sex or ethnicity, this system isn't technically illegal.
But it doesn't need to be to fundamentally undermine the idea of a
fair market, which is technically Microsoft, uh, one more time,
has closed down its movies and TV storefronts on Xbox consoles and
Windows. Users will no longer be able to purchase content through the app, but
the company says they will still be able to watch anything they've already paid
for. For how long? Intel Microsoft feels
like not making that the case. There was
never a buy and a rent option. They're both rent. It's rent all the way down.
And thousands of very cheap VV bikes sold at Walmart and Amazon have been
recalled after multiple reports of the bike batteries overheating and catching
fire. I can only hope those batteries are different than the ones shown in
this video by Chinese company UOB, in which its Walker S2 humanoid robot is
shown replacing its own battery. Those batteries catching on fire would make
this an even more appropriate entry in my favorite video series, Existential
Anxiety Inducers. You want to reduce my
anxiety? Come back on Monday for more tech news. I won't know if you're going
to come back until you do, though. So, I'll just have to keep it together
somehow over the weekend. But, how will I feel on Monday? My fate is in your
hands. Bye-bye.