Is it just me or did it just get a lot more tech newsy
in here? Yeah. I like it. Sam Altman will be returning
as CEO of OpenAI only 5 days after he
was fired. To everyone who took a week-long digital detox retreat or got
hit in the head with a rock on Friday afternoon, well, you've missed a lot.
Luckily for you, we're mostly back where we started, albeit with an entirely new
board with the exception of Adam D'Angelo who will remain to represent
the views of the former board and to maintain OpenAI leadership's
all-important skinny twink quota. looking for new info about why Altman
was fired in the first place, don't ask Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella who said
even he still doesn't know. The prevailing hypothesis so far is that the
difference in values between the cautious, safety-minded board and
Altman's relatively gung-ho attitude towards AI development caught
relatively. Doesn't know. The prevailing hypothesis so far is that the difference
in values between the cautious, safety-minded board and Altman's
relatively more gung-ho attitude towards AI development caused a schism. Altman's
jet-setting search for investment in other AI-adjacent projects also led to
concerns he may prioritize his own interests ahead of the goals of the
organization, which wouldn't be that surprising given that Altman was asked
to step down from his leadership position at Y Combinator in 2019 due to
similar concerns. And of course, Altman will be returning as CEO just in time to
deal with yet another copyright lawsuit. This time by nonfiction book authors
against both OpenAI and Microsoft. In
other words, if you were hit with a rock on Friday and then again at the
beginning of this video, you haven't really missed anything. So,
as you were. Google will resume rollout of its
controversial Manifest V3 extension format for Chrome, which will block ad
blockers even harder. You think they're blocked now?
On June 2024, Google will turn off Manifest V2, the current format for
Chrome extensions, Chrome Chrome extensions. That's what I use.
Meaning they'll be unavailable to install from the Chrome Web Store and
will be automatically disabled in users' browsers. Google has argued that
Manifest V3, by limiting extensions,
will better protect user privacy and allow the browser to be lighter on
resources. That's potentially a boon to users like this episode's main writer,
Jessica, whose workstation craps its pants every time she opens more than
four tabs in Chrome, seemingly out of spite. JUST CHROME, EVERY TIME.
I DON'T THINK it likes you. However, civil liberties groups have criticized
Google's pitch with the Electronic Frontier Foundation calling it deceitful
and threatening. While Google is limiting potential harm done by
malicious extension developers, it's also limiting users' ability to protect
themselves, especially from Google, by knee-capping web filtering, which
includes but is not limited to ad blockers. Manifest V3, as originally
proposed, limited web filters to 5,000 filtering rules, which it has gracefully
loosened. Thank you so much. To a limit of 30,000 rules. That sounds like a lot
until you realize that a tool like uBlock Origin has over 300,000 filtering
rules available to users. And much like a bicycle or hair, you can't just remove
90% of something and expect it to be the same. A lesson I learned the hard way. I
mean, unicycles only have one wheel. Warning to all tech news citizens, your
Plex account just emailed your mom an itemized list of all your favorite adult
films. It was inevitable. You could have better taste, sweetie.
On November 1st, media hosting/sharing/streaming
service Plex publicly launched Discover Together with several social
network-esque features like user profiles, user ratings, and personalized
recommendations. Plex also altered its week in review email that summarizes
their weekly activity, a feature users already hated, so that it also sends
users a summary of their friends' weekly activity, including media that they
uploaded to their own personal server. It's a feature that might appeal to some
people, people with innocent minds and squeaky-clean hard drives, but Plex made
it opt out rather than opt in, meaning
that over the past 3 weeks many users have been unknowingly broadcasting their
obsession with Desperate Housewives and Big Booty Babes Deluxe Edition to their
sweet old Nana. Oh, I I do like those
big old booty babes. You might be doing her a favor, you don't know. So,
changing your privacy settings now might be prudent, especially for Plex users
with certain specific tastes. Now, it's time for
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can save up to 30% on purchases by using the link in our description. Ah, quick
bits. One moment they're here, the next they're gone.
I'll catch them one day. The UK's National Health Service has signed a 330
million-pound contract with Palantir, the US-based data management giant
founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, to build a central federated data platform
or FDP. It's not expensive, it's just really heavy.
This has triggered concerns over handing what is reportedly the world's largest
single repository of health info to a data-hungry company best known for its
shotty human rights record and collaboration with spy agencies. Should
be fine. While Palantir telling the CIA about your ER visit involving a
misplaced jar of marmalade might be embarrassing, would you rather have one
of the other 11 tech companies tastelessly named after Lord of the
Rings? I thought it was named after Planters Wards. I mean, it's just rude
to Tolkien, really. Like have some respect. I'm actually a little upset
about it, about the naming. Reports indicate a disturbing pattern of
accidents and injuries at Tesla's giant factory in Austin. According to OSHA
data, at least one out of every 21 workers at the factory was injured in
2022. And we're not just talking minor boo-boos here. Reports describe
exploding casting machines, falling overhead beams, and at least one
engineer who got mauled by a robot. But hey, in lighter Tesla news, some
supercharger stations will begin charging users $1 for every minute they
charge above 90% battery as a way of reducing congestion. They could reduce
congestion even further by attacking patrons who charge over 95% with
murderous robots. Just an idea. Sony has completed a field
trial in collaboration with the Associated Press for its in-camera
authenticity technology, which, like similar tech announced by Leica last
month, adds a digital signature to photos at the moment of capture. Because
how do you know when your photo is really authentic?
When a computer says it is. Maybe she's born with it. Maybe she was
built in a factory. Maybe it's AI. Seriously though, digital
authentication like this is becoming increasingly necessary as it gets easier
and easier to create photorealistic images with AI. Because I'd like to have
a legitimate way to answer the question, Pope or no Pope?
Just want to know where the Pope is. Am I looking at the Pope or not? Amazon has
confirmed that it will be laying off several hundred workers in its Alexa
division as part of a shift towards generative AI, despite the fact that
many of their recent efforts involved integrating AI into Alexa. Amazon stated
that laid-off workers only represent a relatively small percentage of the total
number of people in the devices business, which is a fun way of saying
your company can casually fire half the population of a large village and not
even notice. These workers join the over 27,000
employees Amazon has laid off over the course of the past year, who
collectively are a big enough community to deserve their own mayor and post
office. And NASA is testing ground-to-space optical communication
technology by using lasers to transmit information. The hope is this technology
will help send higher data rate communications to distant places like
Mars as the space agency prepares for more study of the red planet. Red also
being a common color of lasers.
I ad-libbed that, don't blame Jessica. Their experiment could even expand the
use case for optical data transmission. Right now, the only message a laser can
accurately convey is you are in danger from either bullets or a cat.
I liked it. And to make sure the only thing you're in danger of is more tech
news, make sure to come back on Friday because
if you don't, we can't make any promises.