Welcome to the tech news, where every story makes me feel a little bit like
Elmo, a small red creature screaming
into the void while the man's hand controls everything I do. It's like,
what are you doing? Google is now using AI to replace news headlines in its
search results. The Verge found multiple instances where headlines they wrote
were swapped for AI generated versions, sometimes changing the meaning entirely.
When contacted for comment, Google claimed that this is part of a small and
narrow experiment to explore the effects of serving headlines that better match
the user's profile. With the personalized titles being based on the
user's query, location, and search history, critics have been quick to call
out that these tailor made headlines go so far as to be clickbaity, something
that the internet has never had to deal with before. While not great for
journalistic integrity, it does explain why my search results have all been
clickbait articles for the big shrimp conspiracy that my uncle keeps googling
when he comes over. Dave, big shrimp isn't real. You were on a banana boat
>> and you had heat stroke. >> It's worth noting that Google said that
the insertion of AI headlines into the discover feed back in July was also an
experiment, but a month later they made it a permanent feature. Since then,
publishers have seen organic traffic drops of 30 to 60%. As Google is
actively filling search with slop, over on the YouTube side, they're stopping to
ask, "Hey, how sloppy do you like it?" Users have reported seeing polls
inquiring whether the videos they're watching feel like AI slop, which while
annoying that it's necessary, is at least an indication of some level of
self-awareness. Many were quick to call this out, however, as YouTube just
crowdsourcing free training data for Google's next slot model, which sounds
like a horrifying reality show. >> Still featuring Tyro Banks though.
They come out onto the runway like, "HI,
SUPER Micro co-founder Wall-E Leah has
been arrested by the FBI for smuggling$2
and a half billion dollars worth of servers fitted with NVIDIA GPUs to
China. This is before America was trying
to get the China to buy them. Lea together with his Taiwan-based sales
manager Steven Chang used a front company in Southeast Asia to order the
servers which were delivered to the front company, repackaged into unmarked
boxes, and forwarded to China. To fool inspectors, they stocked the front
company's warehouse with thousands of dummy servers so that when Super Micro's
compliance team or US export officials came to verify the equipment, it looked
like the already smuggled hardware that was already on the ocean was still
sitting right there. Surveillance footage from the warehouse even caught
workers using a haird dryer to peel serial numbers off the real server and
press them onto the fakes. These arrests are part of a broader US government
effort to track how restricted AI chips
keep reaching China. >> They keep slipping over there.
>> They're too slippery. In a statement to the press, FBI assistant director and
Spongebob Squarepants character James C. Barnacle Jr. That's amazing.
Says the FBI will hold accountable anyone who uses American companies to
provide export control technology to adversaries. Super Micro itself is not
named as a defendant and says it's cooperating fully with the
investigation. Despite this, Super Micro's stock dropped 25%. As of now,
Lea and a Taiwanese middleman have been arrested, but Chang is on the run.
He's probably repacking himself into an unmarked box labeled not NVIDIA GPUs as
we speak. Happy trails, partner. We hope you live. Google is adding a mandatory
24-hour waiting period to sideloadad apps from unverified developers on
Android because apparently your phone needs to sleep on it. It's it's a big
decision. Starting in August, the new advanced flow will require users to
enable developer mode, confirm they're not being coerced by a scammer, restart
their phone, which conveniently kills any active calls from said scammer, and
then just wait a day. Give it a day. see how you feel. After that, you
authenticate with biometrics or a pin and you can allow unverified installs
for 7 days or indefinitely. Oh, okay.
So, it's not 24 hours per app. It's 24 hours one time and then it's normal
sideloading. Okay. Google says sideloaded apps carry malware at 50
times the rate of Play Store apps and scammers rely on manufactured urgency to
pressure victims into installing sketchy APKs. So developers can skip the drama
by verifying their identity and paying a $25 fee. And Google's also offering free
limited distribution accounts for students and hobbyists to share apps
with up to 20 devices. Then in September, mandatory verification kicks
in for Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand with global enforcement
targeting 2027. Open source advocates like FDroid are calling the whole
program an existential threat. But hey,
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code techlink at checkout for an exclusive 15% off. Time for quick bits.
Elmo loves quick bits. Elmo also loves
referring to himself in the third person, which is a trait shared by
exactly two groups. Sesame Street characters and Tuxios under federal
investigation.
Meta has reversed its decision to shut down VR support for its VR ccentric
social platform, Horizon Worlds. Just two days after confirming the shutdown,
CTO Andrew Bosworth said on an Instagram Q&A they decided to keep it running
after a fan reached out saying they were heartbroken that it would be shut down,
which might be the single most powerful customer complaint in history. Who is
this person? Horizon Worlds will stay on Quest for all existing games, but any
new development will be mobile only. Okay, interesting. They're like
grandfathering it. Bosworth previously said the team was having to build
everything twice for phones and VR.
Apparently, that includes the decision to kill it, too.
It's so nice they decided it twice. The
world's largest coalition of botnets, Isuru, Kim Wolf, Jack Skid, and MSAD.
>> I think it's unrelated. >> Different MSAD. It's a different song
>> has been taken down in a joint operation between American, German, and Canadian
federal police. Hey, we were there, too.
>> That was a was it that was a eh, not a
like a y. All right. The four botnets compromised
over 3 million IoT devices like routers and webcams, launching DOS attacks that
peaked at a record-breaking 31.4 terabs
per second, enough to knock basically anything offline. Authorities seized
domains, servers, and crypto worth tens of thousands of dollars. But while two
suspected admins were identified, no arrests have been made. The police are
like, "We got tired from carrying all the servers and stuff, okay? We're just
going to come back tomorrow, okay? Don't go anywhere. We just We're going on a
donut break. Just stop. >> We're trusting you."
A North Carolina musician just pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire
fraud for stealing over $10 million in streaming royalties. Michael Smith,
first indicted in 2024, colluded with an unnamed AI music company. Uhhuh. Uh to
generate hundreds of thousands of AI tracks. Smith then used a botnet to
stream the massive catalog billions of times, spreading plays across thousands
of fake artists to dodge detection. Smith faces up to 5 years in prison and
has agreed to forfeit over $8 million.
>> That's nice of him. >> Some of it.
>> Yeah. What? What? In their press release on the case, the DOJ says they're
dedicated to prosecuting AI powered theft from real artists. Except if
you're training an AI model, then it's Yeah, that's fine. We don't really care
what copyright is anymore. NVIDIA has seemingly confirmed that DLSS5 is
basically just a very fast fancy AI
image to image model. NVIDIA rep Jacob Freeman told YouTuber Daniel Owen that
the tech takes a single 2D frame plus
motion vectors, which is just like saying where things are going to move in
the frame as input. The model does not have direct awareness of the 3D geometry
in the scene. no depth data and no PBR
materials, just what it can see. It was
also revealed that if the AI yosifies a game character a bit too much, devs only
have the option to either turn it down, uh, mask out items in the scene
entirely, or tweak color information
just a little bit, which is a far cry from Jensen's claim that DLSS 5 critics
were completely wrong. It sounds like
they were mostly right. billions of dollars in R&D. And we got a really
expensive Instagram filter. Some people want it. They shouldn't, but And
scientists at Singapore's NTEU have built cyborg cockroaches that pull
miniature camera rigs through pipelines to detect leaks. Yeah.
Like each roach gets a tiny electronic
backpack that steers it via electrical pulses. And a new process can assemble
its little payload in just over a minute. Project lead Hiro Takasato
already deployed 10 of these bad boys to Myanmar after last year's earthquake to
aid with search and rescue. And apparently a German startup is working
on their own cyborg cockroaches for military recon and espionage.
Sam Fischer wishes he was this good at crawling through tight spaces
undetected. Just like I wish I'll see you on Monday for more tech news. Or El
or Elmo will find you. And not in a
tickle me way, in a Elmo has your IP
address and Elmo doesn't forget way. See
you next time.