Octopuses may have three hearts, nine brains, and the ability to open up jars
from the inside, but consider this. None of them watch tech news. So, could they
really be that smart? Would they even know that China is apparently telling
its top tech companies to refuse US investments unless they get explicit
government approval? Insiders reportedly told Bloomberg that this move is part of
a broader response to Meta's purchase of
Chinese AI agent focused startup Manis with regulators citing national security
as they move to block US stakes in sensitive sectors. But I mean, I guess
it's not that bad. I mean, China doesn't really need US money anyway to keep
making EVs that feel more like flashy nextgen tech products than cars, which I
guess is probably why BYYD outsold Tesla globally last year. Then this week, tech
giant Alibaba announced its Quen AI models are going to be integrated into a
number of vehicles made by Chinese automakers like BYD, but then also SIC
Volkswagen, the Chinese German joint venture. So, wait, I guess they're not
against Western money in general. They just prefer their own tech oligarchs to
run things rather than bringing in the Zuck to help them throw billions of dollars down the drain. Speaking of the
Zuck, Meta and Microsoft have both announced new massive reductions in
staff, although in very different ways.
Meta is laying off 8,000 people, which amounts to 10% of its workforce. Meta
CPO Janelle Gale told staff that the cuts will offset the other investments
we're making. Well, that's comforting.
Some of you may die. >> And makes sense, I guess, given that
Meta just committed up to $135 billion
on data centers this year alone. Microsoft's plan, meanwhile, is a little
more gentle. They're offering voluntary buyouts to about $8,700 US employees in
the company's first ever voluntary retirement program. Anyone at the senior
director level or below whose age and years worked at Microsoft add up to 70
can apply. So, if you're a 52-year-old with 18 years at Microsoft, you're good
to go. And by go, I mean get out of here.
>> You got to hand it to Microsoft's legal team, though. Voluntary retirement does
kind of dodge the age discrimination lawsuits that regular layoffs can invite
while still keeping that we're all living in a dystopia vibe going. And
they say there's no innovation in tech anymore.
Apple, meanwhile, patched a vulnerability this week that let the FBI
obtain deleted signal messages from a suspect's iPhone, even after the app was
uninstalled and the messages were set to autodelete. The fix comes after an April
9th report from 404 media. The outlet revealed that the bureau was using a
forensic tool to dig into a defendant's push notification database where copies
of incoming signal previews were quietly hanging around for long after they were
supposed to be gone. It turns out that iOS was treating Signal's delete request
as more of a suggestion. >> Yeah, we'll get to it. Signal CEO
Meredith Whitaker flagged the issue on Blue Sky, noting that deleted
notifications shouldn't linger in any OS database and asked Apple to fix it. And
to Apple's credit, they did listen. Apple rolled out iOS 26.4.2 on Wednesday
with a patch highlighting improved data reduction, leading Signal to publicly
thank them for the quick turnaround. A rare moment of tech giants listening to
each other and helping protect people from government surveillance. All it
took was the FBI rifling through someone's notification history. You know
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me up, Riley. >> Global shipping costs are out of
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Perfect for writing down all those DIY projects that you are definitely going
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for an even better offer. We'll have that linked down below. If you think
about it, octopuses can squeeze through any opening larger than their beak. Kind
of like how I'm going to squeeze all of these rapid morsels into the next couple
of minutes. Microsoft is finally letting IT admins uninstall Copilot from
enterprise devices via a new patch Tuesday policy, which is good, but it
does have some interesting conditions. Microsoft 365 CPI has to be installed. I
mean, that one makes sense, >> aka Office. >> The user can't have installed Copilot
themselves. Okay, sure. They can't
delete something the user installed. Okay, I can I can jive with that one.
And Copilot can't have been launched in the last 28 days. Now come on, we all
accidentally press the button sometimes. What may not have been an accident is a
conspiracy to profit from poly market
gambling. The French weather agency has asked police to investigate some
suspected tampering with a weather sensor at Charles de Gaulle airport near
Paris after a couple of suspiciously timed temperature spikes that were
cashed in on to the tune of around $35,000
in profit. You know, I thought the whole point of a blockchain prediction market
is that it's supposed to be trustless. But I guess that works great until
someone demonstrates that the entire system is plugged into an airport
thermometer that anyone can walk up to with a hairdryer and go, "Oh yeah, I
think the hive today is going to be 52."
>> It's democratizing insider trading. A former ransomware negotiator at cyber
security firm Digital Mint has pleaded guilty to playing both sides of the
table with the hacker group that he was paid to fight. Prosecutors say that
Angelo Martino gave the cyber gang known as Black Cat his clients insurance
limits and internal strategies across five different negotiations, helping to
steal $75 million in ransom money for a
cut of the profits. Feds have already seized $10 million in assets from
Martino, including a luxury fishing boat and inexplicably a food truck because
you should never pretend to negotiate on an empty stomach. The UK National Cyber
Security Center has unveiled a plug-and-play dongle called Silent Glass
that can stop malware from being transmitted over HDMI or DisplayPort.
If you're confused about why this device would be necessary, it turns out that
analysts are too. Protocol level exploits and compromised monitors are
both legit attack vectors, but they're basically non-existent outside of
conference demos. But hey, I guess it makes about as much sense as anything
else you'll find in the UK. Oh, come on. That's not nice. >> UK's catching strays today.
>> And Sony's AI division has built a pingpong robot that just became the
first machine to beat a professional table tennis player under official
tournament rules. Ace, the pingpong bot,
tracks the ball using nine cameras and measures spin 700 times per second,
which according to a Nature paper published this week, is how it took down
elite university players and pros alike.
That's right, unbeatable bots are coming to athletic games now, too. And if chess
is anything to go by, this is inevitably going to lead to somebody cheating with
a butt plug. But robots can't replace
your innate value as a conscious human being. So, we want you to come back here
on Monday for more tech news. That's it for today. I'm going to go taste
something with my arms. Dang. Octopus got nothing on me. My arms all stuff.
>> They're not going to beat you like Yeah, that's good. Just like that, you're
tasting the air.
Listen.