Google has revealed what is going to be the successor to Chromebooks. Google
Books. Mhm. They're going to come out this fall
running Google's Androidbased aluminium OS. But don't worry, that's just the
code name. They're going to have a different name for it by the time it launches. They got the same crack
branding team on it as the one that came up with Google Book. Google Book. I'm
Riley Murdoch. This is TechLink. And the Google book announcement comes ahead of
Google IO, the company's annual dev conference. This year's theme, even more
AI. I mean, Google VP John Mletus says
the Google book will run native Android apps with no emulation cuz it'll be
running an OS built on the Android stack. Something that many of us were
very excited about because I guess we assumed that Google wouldn't stuff it
full of AI bloat. I don't know why we thought that. Google was showing this
kind of stock Google book imagery in a lot of the presentation, but they didn't
actually give any details on hardware.
Apparently, it's going to be a very similar situation to the one with Chromebooks. Mletus says Google is
working closely with major OEMs from Acer to Lenovo to ensure premium
quality. and Intel, Qualcomm, and MediaTek are all on board on the
processor side, meaning that both x86 and ARM support is baked in to Aluminium
OS right out of the gate. Google similarly did not go into a ton of
detail about aluminium OS, but they did talk a lot about magic pointer, which
summons Gemini whenever you wiggle your cursor. So you can wiggle it over a
table of data to turn it into a chart or wiggle it over an image of a Japanese
storefront to get a translation. According to Google, the magic pointer
is so important because pointing is really at the core of a lot of the
interactions we have. I thought it was human connection, but no, actually I
just this is this is the core of a lot. I just kind of go around,
but it's where the Facebook poke came from. After months of waiting, the Trump
phone is finally here. Asterisk asterisk
on basically everything in that sentence. People who put down a $100
pre-order deposit for the Trump phone have been freaking out this past week
after Trump mobile updated its terms and conditions on April 6th. This led to
people posting a lot of demonstrably false information on social media. posts
went viral claiming that the terms and conditions said that the phone would not
arrive, that people would not get their deposits back or refunded, that 600,000
pre-orders of the phone were confirmed. According to The Verge, however, that
claim of 600,000 pre-orders is just I that came out of nowhere. Someone made
that up. And the terms and conditions do have a lot of weird language in there
about how Trump might not release a phone. Uh just because you've gave us
$100 doesn't mean we're going to release a phone. I don't know. However, they do
very explicitly promise refunds if the phone never ships. Who knows if they're
going to honor that, but it's in there. The general vibe on the internet for the
past week and a half has been that the Trump phone is dead, which is a totally
fair thing to think. I thought it was dead a long time ago. But even more
reporting from The Verge has surfaced evidence that the Trump phone is more
real than it's ever been. It got FCC approval back in January and PTCB
approval in March, which is reportedly one of the final steps before a phone
actually launches. And sure enough, Trump Mobile stated this morning that
the phone is going to ship this week. Now, that said, the affforementioned
terms and conditions also say delivery will come in no specific time frame,
which could put it anywhere between now and the eventual heat death of the
universe. But the important thing is that we should all keep doing our best
to figure out what is going to happen with this phone. I mean, stability of
the stock market, you know, inflation, wars happening, that's all that's fine.
We got to figure out what is up with this yellow colored phone. Meta
employees across the US have begun to organize protests in response to the
company's new mouse and keyboard tracking software. The push back comes
after last month's announcement that the tool would be logging employee activity
in order to train the AI agents that met a plan to use to replace those same
employees. The company then announced that 10% of staff would be laid off on
May 20th to help fund $135 billion in AI spending.
So the fallout has triggered unprecedented worker organizing at Meta
with a movement now spreading to the UK through a tech workers union. So, I
guess congratulations to Zuckerborg for finally achieving Meta's goal of
bringing people together. This news comes during a rough stretch for the
cursed puppet that is the Zuckerorn as Meta stock dropped nearly 9% after Q1
earnings showed a loss of 20 million active users across their platforms and
an impending $3.7 billion penalty as
part of the ongoing New Mexico lawsuit. Honestly, in moments like this, I kind
of feel sorry for Zuck. But then I remember that he's actually a lizard 95%
of the way through a transformation into a man. And I actually feel totally fine
again. Like you're going to feel about our sponsor, MicroEnter. They say that
April showers bring May flowers. And thanks Microenter, it also brings big
savings on Apple products. What? Check out some of their amazing deals like
this M5 MacBook Pro. That's $600 off. I bet you can get a screen play or two out
of that baby. Exterior Austin, Texas.
Dawn, our handsome protagonist, stands at the precipice of savings in a
MicroEnter parking lot. That's right, Austin, you are getting a MicroEnter.
And if you come to the grand opening later this year, you can sign up for a
free 128 gig flash drive when the store opens. And if you don't live in Texas,
but you still want to get your grubby little hands 128 gigs of sweet, sweet
flash storage, you'll get your chance at MicroEn's Columbus grand reopening. They
just keep opening them. Sign up for that one at the link below. And while you're over there, make sure to sign up for
MicroEnter News to keep up to date with the everchanging world of tech. Now,
back to my screenplay. You think it's weird if I call the protagonist James
Quick Bits. I hardly know her. Spotify
suffered a global outage Tuesday afternoon with more than 15,000 users
reporting problems. The rest of them didn't even notice. Coincidentally, on
the same day the company rolled out a flashy new feature celebrating and
recapping your entire listening history, not just this past year, some users
reported that their music had cut out, but the ads kept playing. Different user
decided to go analog, listening to records to pass the time. Luckily,
Spotify fixed the issue and it's working again now. Almost got a bit
introspective there, listening to an artistic work in its entirety. Don't
want that. The EU has announced that it is working on expanded child safety
legislation intended to crack down on social platforms for addictive features.
The commission said the move is necessary because these platforms have
failed to protect children from harm. Enforcement is however where the EU will
struggle as their age verification app was called a fundamentally illconceived
disaster by security experts which incidentally is what my local paper
called my high school jazz band's decision to incorporate Roman candles
into our pep rally performance. It looked really cool though. Amazon
announced Tuesday it's rolling out 30inut deliveries to dozens of US cities
starting with bits of Seattle and Philadelphia. Its most aggressive push
yet into quick commerce. The company is using smaller dark facilities tucked
into neighborhoods close to where customers live. Knowing Amazon, I think
those dark facilities might be where they keep employees trying to unionize
or just take more than a 5-minute break. Apple released iOS 26.5 this week
alongside a warning to update immediately since it patches over 60
security flaws and many of them are serious. As usual, Apple's keeping the
specifics vague in order to give users a head start before attackers reverse
engineer the patches, I guess. So, you should probably go get the update,
unless you've always dreamed of being a silent partner in a Bellarussian crypto
mining operation. And Chinese robotics company Unitry debuted the GD01, a 9 ft,
500 kg manned Mecca that could be yours
for only $650,000. The demo showcases a pilot controlling
the bot as it stomps happily along before proceeding to knock down a brick
wall. Why are all of their demos so
violent? They just accept it. They're just like, "Well, if we make robots,
they're going to kill us." So, it was just like that's what But that's not
all. It also transforms and crawls backwards on all fours like the girl
from the ring. They one upped it for this one. The cockpit doesn't rotate
though. So, in that form, the pilot would stare helplessly at the clouds. A
great design for anyone who values a nice sunset over surviving a giant robot
fight. I certainly hope you survive long enough to come back on Friday for more
tech news. I'm sure we'll have some more quantifiably questionable and
refreshingly quenchable quality stories.