Oh my gosh. What?
Oh my gosh. Wow. The tech news today. It made me do that.
When have you ever seen me do that? So, >> [sighs and gasps]
>> that's how you know. Microsoft Windows 11 February update has led to reports of
failed installations, broken network connections, and cryptic errors. Proving
that as a public holiday, Patch Tuesday is less Easter and more Lent. You're
supposed to refrain from eating while you atone for your computer sins.
Microsoft, bless their hearts, says everything's fixed and points to their
known issues page. But Reddit and the Microsoft Answers forums tell a
different story. We're talking Wi-Fi connecting with no actual internet,
Bluetooth controllers straight up disappearing mid-session, and at least
one sysadmin on Reddit saying there was a three out of five chance his taskbar
would just disappear. Can you find a way to get it back? It's like a game. Sure,
some of these problems could be lingering issues left over from last
month's File Explorer breaking update, but that doesn't exactly make Microsoft
look better here. But I don't know. Maybe the devs are just busy with
actually important things like deleting official blog posts that recommended
people train AI models on pirated Harry Potter books. Blimey, Copilot, didn't
you wonder where your parents learned it all? Learned what? You're a chatbot,
Copilot. I'M A WHAT? A CHATBOT. And a
company and I wager Oh. Meta CEO and
former Innsmouth resident Mark Zuckerberg took the stand on Wednesday
in a landmark social media addiction trial, where a 20-year-old plaintiff is
alleging that Instagram's design worsened her depression and thoughts of
self-harm. Zuck, seen here exiting the courtroom wearing his dad's suit, told
the jury, "I care about the well-being of teens and kids who are for our
services." Pointing to an email he sent Tim Apple in 2018 to chat about child
safety. Remember that, Tim? Yeah, fish
boy. What a great guy. Thank you, Tim.
Zuckerberg also admitted that Meta may have once set goals around increasing
time spent by users, but that's no longer how they operate. Probably
because they already tuned the hell out of the dopamine machine that is
Instagram. That thing's cranking, it's working well. The trial's been generally
rocky for the puppet turned billionaire with the prosecution showing the jury an
internal Facebook email from 2017 stating, "Mark has decided the top
priority for the company is teens." That's crazy.
>> [laughter] >> CRAZY. ON TOP of that, the judge scolded
him and his entourage for wearing camera-equipped Ray-Ban Meta glasses
into the courtroom, threatening to hold them in contempt as, you may be aware of
this, recording courtroom proceedings is often illegal, which to be fair, is not
something big tech bros are often concerned about. Former Meta VP Brian
Boland, though, seems like maybe one of the good ones. He took the stand after
spending 11 years helping build Meta's ad machine.
So, okay, maybe I don't know. Jury's out on him. He told the jury that
Zuckerberg fostered a culture that prioritized growth over user safety, and
that when concerns about harm came up, the primary response was to manage the
press cycle rather than actually investigate the problem. Boland left the
company in 2020, walking away from over $10 million in unvested stock. Imagine
how unlikable Zuckerberg must be for someone to walk away from $10 million.
I feel like that wins the court case right there. We've seen enough. You may
have seen a bunch of headlines in circulation about how headphones are
poisonous now or something, but don't worry, we looked [music] into it. So, an
EU-funded coalition of Central European consumer groups tested 81 pairs of
headphones and found harmful chemicals in every single one. They tested
products from well-known brands like Bose, Samsung, and Sennheiser, but also
stuff like off-brand children's headphones from Temu, which was
apparently one of the worst offenders. So, that's nice. BPA, the bad chemical
that every water bottle now has to assure you it does not contain, showed
up in 98% of samples along with other bad boys like phthalates, chlorinated
paraffins, and flame retardants, some of which can migrate through your skin,
especially when you sweat. Now, while that does sound concerning, some have
pointed out a couple methodologically weird things with the study, and just
because headphones contain a chemical doesn't mean that it's going to get into
your body and poison you. Nevertheless, certain media outlets have been
sensationalizing the issue. PC Gamer went with "All headphones are toxic."
Tom's Guide said you should ditch your headphones for speakers, and The Guardian summarized the study's concerns
as being partially about the risk of the feminization of males, Oh, no.
>> [laughter] >> which predictably sent Reddit into a spiral. Now, if you take the time to
read it, the report is pretty reasonable. They're pointing out that
companies are cramming in as much of these regulated chemicals as they can
without getting in trouble, and then shifting to equally bad but unregulated
substitutes when they get caught. Tox Free wants greater regulation to close
loopholes like this, and we feel that it's important to point out that while
some outlets may be overblowing the danger to society, the study itself
brings some important issues to light, and maybe should be taken seriously,
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WOW. >> [sighs] >> I I just saw what the quick bits are
today, and
they're still pretty crazy. WE'RE GOING WOW. Intel has announced that it's
moving certain customer support functions to an AI chatbot. And while AI
customer assistants are relatively common now, Intel's assistant seems to
be taking a little too much initiative with troubleshooting hardware issues.
When a PC World writer tested the behavior of the bot with a crashing CPU,
it helpfully told them to try updating their graphics driver before kind of
just going through up some boilerplate troubleshooting steps. Hopefully, the
graphics thing works out, though. This is a little embarrassing for Intel, as
they've helped fast-food chains experiment with putting AI chatbots in
drive-throughs for years, including KFC. But a CPU malfunction is a little more
complicated than, you know, a bucket of chicken, no matter how many herbs and
spices there are. And whether they're secret or not. How
many are there? 11.
Okay. Amazon's Ring is not only sticking
with its enabled-by-default search party feature that lets Ring camera owners
search each other's footage for lost dogs, despite backlash over its eerily
dystopian Super Bowl ad, they are doubling down. Leaked internal emails
showed CEO Jamie Siminoff suggesting that he's pretty excited to see the
[music] results of our public agencies using this tool and the impact it will
have on our communities. Woof. And that eventually Ring cameras
could help zero out crime in neighborhoods, at least
a certain kind of crime. Dog crime.
>> [laughter] >> I don't think a dragnet of Ring cameras
is going to be able to zero out investment fraud. And I don't think
that's really their goal anyway. Shiny Hunters, the internet's favorite hacking
group, is back at it again this week after launching cyberattacks against
both Win Resorts and CarGurus. The
craziest part, they're apparently using the same vishing methods seen in
previous breaches. That's fishing, but like voice version of it. Stay Keep up.
The stolen data includes 800,000 employee records from Win Resorts and
around 1.7 million corporate files from CarGurus.
>> [snorts] >> Gurus. Gurus. A spokesperson for the
Hunters told The Register that stolen data includes full names, emails, phone
numbers, positions, salaries, start dates, and even birthdays. Honestly,
what's Shiny Hunters' deal and what are these shinies they're hunting? If we
give them a few Charizards, Gardevoirs, and a Mew, will they leave us alone? The
FBI has issued new guidance to store owners after hackers jackpotted more
than 700 ATMs in 2025, stealing roughly
$20 million dollars. Using malware called Ploutus criminals infect a
machine's internals and force cash
withdrawals without using a card, tricking the machine itself instead of
using a fake bank account. I'm actually surprised they explained how it works.
You would think they'd want to keep this information from the crazy people who
are currently using forklifts to rip ATMs out of the ground.
We can't let them know there's an easier option. And Substack just announced an
expansion of their existing partnership with gambling platform Polymarket,
allowing Substack authors to embed prediction market betting data directly
into newsletters and articles. Polymarket celebrated the new
partnership by tweeting that journalism is better when it's backed by live
markets. Sure.
And I'm sure this isn't an elaborate narrative to avoid being regulated as a
gambling platform. In unrelated news, I'm launching a statistics course where
you try and guess where a ball will land in a spinning wheel using statistics
because learning is always better when backed by the ability to lose your life
savings. But you won't lose anything if you come back on Monday for more tech news
except maybe time. And we all have an
unlimited amount of that, so it doesn't matter. Woo!
I'M NEVER GOING TO DIE.