Apple, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA,
Snapchat. It's all tech news. Apple began rolling
out iOS 18 today, which of course means that your iPhone can now vote. Or maybe
it could have if the much discussed Apple Intelligence came along with the
update. Unfortunately for Cupertino, California's most prominent rectangle
peddlers, this has also affected sales of the newly revealed iPhone 16. Somehow
outlets like The Verge claim that iOS 18 is still pretty cool without all that AI
no one asked for. For example, RCS support has arrived with read receipts
and some reactions. Great news for Android users who can now endure
slightly less bullying from their iPhone owning friends. Just don't mention that
Android has basically had iOS 18's new home screen customization features for
like years now and you should be fine. In typical Apple fashion, iOS wasn't the
only operating system to get some love. macOS 15, aka Sequoia, adds the ability
to mirror and control your iPhone on your Mac. Even better, improvements have
been made to the way that Windows snap into position on macOS. And I won't make
the same joke about that already kind of being a thing on other platforms. iPadOS
18 is also here, bringing the cool new calculator app with math notes that auto
solves equations you write down. That was actually mind-blowing to me. Kudos
to Apple. I don't just hate them. iPadOS is also getting a game mode to improve
gaming performance, which I'm sure a lot more people care about than the fact
that Vision OS 2 is rolling out for Vision Pro. Moving on. AMD has
apparently decided it wants to be like NVIDIA in all the worst ways. Following
in Team Green's footsteps, CEO Lisa Su has stated publicly that we really are a
data center first company, which is not only unfortunate for us lowly gamers and
enthusiasts, it's also apparently bad news for AMD's laptop partners. Chip
consultancy firm AC Analysis claims that AMD's shift in focus has created a rift
between it and its OEM partners. Many partners complain about
miscommunication, unfilled promises, and generally poor treatment. Weirdly, I
think I got the exact same feedback the last time I was dumped. According to the
OEMs themselves, this is not the first time they've had issues with AMD. Team
Red is apparently notorious for its inability to deliver chips either
quickly or in sufficient quantities. Some manufacturers told German outlet
ComputerBase that AMD has left billions of US dollars on the table by not being
able to guarantee order fulfillment. AMD has been saying they can change for
years, and that is such a team red flag.
Haha. We were this close to having an Intel-powered PlayStation 6, according
to an exclusive report from Reuters. The deal would have netted Team Blue an
estimated 30 billion dollars, but it's not like the company desperately needed
the work, right? Right? While multiple chip companies
submitted bids for designing and manufacturing the PS6's processor, it
all came down to AMD and Intel. Unfortunately, Intel lost for a couple
reasons. Two sources told Reuters that Intel got into a dispute over profit
margins that prevented the company from settling on a price with Sony. Another
reason that Intel lost out to AMD is that AMD made the chip that powers the
PS5. Choosing Intel for the successor console allegedly would have put Sony's
usual backwards compatibility at risk.
Or at the very least made it more expensive for the company to sort the
feature out. Regardless, Intel lost the chance to make some big money.
Naturally, they took the next logical step, working for the military. Team
Blue is set to earn up to three and a half billion dollars thanks to a
contract with the Pentagon, which is of course the second scariest shape. The
scariest shape is an octagon. Shapes shouldn't have that many obtuse angles.
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and free shipping. Quick bits, the only news stories guaranteed to be faster
than other news stories. Or or your money back. An appeals court in
Washington, D.C. is hearing ByteDance's lawsuit objecting to the upcoming TikTok
ban as of today, and it can be conveniently streamed in horizontal
format on YouTube. At the heart of the case is the government's contention that
TikTok circulates massive amounts of information both true and not, and
collects data that could potentially be useful to a foreign adversary, cough
cough, it's China. However, as pointed out by TikTok's lawyers, any supposedly
secret intelligence the government possesses that proves that the company
is actually collaborating with the rival government is just that, a secret.
America is acting a bit like a girlfriend who's furious with you, but
won't tell you why because you should just know. This morning, Microsoft
continued their favorite pastime of putting Co-pilot in things. Office apps
like Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook will get more AI features with Co-pilot in
Excel now being able to run Python code to make graphs. Couldn't Excel already
make graphs? I am not an Excel guy. But Microsoft also announced Co-pilot Pages,
a new document workspace where you and your coworkers can boss Co-pilot around
together. And that's what's been missing from the whole AI equation.
Group bullying. Apple has decided to increase the out-of-warranty battery
replacement fee for iPhone 16 Pro models by 20% compared to the predecessors. And
that's not the only change coming to iPhone repairs. Apple is extending
activation lock to individual parts. This means that if a battery from an
iPhone with activation lock enabled ends up in your device, you'll have to enter
the Apple ID associated with the phone that part is from. Sounds annoying, but
apparently in Apple's mind, most iPhones are stolen and sold for parts. So this
is Apple's way of fighting back in a way that doesn't involve making repair
cheaper or easier. Hackers have been using a heinous new technique in the
battle to steal your passwords, being really annoying. Researchers at OA Labs
discovered a type of attack being actively exploited which traps a user's
Chrome browser in kiosk mode, forcing it to run in full screen without the
standard user interface. Presented with a Google login page and seemingly no
other way to use the computer, users are tempted to just enter their credentials
and end their suffering. But no, steady
on, friends. You're better than this. First, try keyboard shortcuts like
control alt delete, control shift escape, and alt F4. No, that last one is
not how you check the score in Call of Duty. Those guys were lying to you. I'm
sorry you had to hear it this way. And the future AI surveillance state is
going to be awesome, according to Oracle founder and current third richest man in
the world, Larry Ellison. Lending further evidence to the theory that
exposure to too much money causes lasting brain damage. Ellison recently
publicly expressed that being surrounded by cameras and AI agents looking at what
we're doing will keep us on our best behavior. And that future is coming
fast. South Korean researchers have apparently developed AI software called
Deja View that predicts if and when a crime will occur with over 80% accuracy.
Sadly, it does this by integrating CCTV footage, crime statistics, positioning
data, and other data, rather than a kitty pool full of psychics. It's a
reference to the movie. Have you seen the movie? You best be on your best
behavior and come back on Wednesday for more tech news. If you don't, then the
AI will know, and it will encode into its training data that you aren't up to
date with the latest tech news, and that will send an emergency alert straight to
Larry Ellison. We don't want that. We don't know what he'll do.