Tech news is an important part of a balanced breakfast.
Sadly, it only gets delivered in the late evening.
Pacific time. Nothing will bring iMessage to Android,
which is so cool it almost makes me less upset at being forced to write puns
every time we report on this fricking company. Why did you do this?
That's right, nothing. The company founded by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pay
has announced Nothing Chats, an app that will make a message from an Android phone
show up as the coveted blue bubble on iPhones.
Because nothing believes in Windows, not walls.
I mean, sure, Nothing Chats is exclusive to their own phone
and that's kind of a wall, but what are they supposed to do? Live in a gazebo?
The app is a collaboration with Sunbird, one of a few different companies providing iMessage
to Android bridging services in beta. Marques Brownlee asked Nothing how it works
and they confirmed that they're literally routing Android messages through a Mac on a server farm somewhere,
which is wild, but at least it seems less pathetic
than Google taking out ads to complain that Apple won't be nice to them.
You should let me have the blue bubbles. Guys, they're hogging all the blue bubbles.
Features like group chats, typing indicators, voice notes
and sending photos that don't look like they were spat on by Tim Cook during transit are working now
while read receipts and message reactions are coming soon.
The only question now is what will Apple do?
Tim won't take this lying down. Insolent worm, you have trespassed and incurred my wrath,
agony and despair shall be your inheritance.
Is that for you, Barbara? We're leaving, Barbara, come on.
Microsoft held its annual Ignite event today and announced yet another generative AI thing
called Copilot, but at least the company is owning it now.
Corporate Vice President Jared Spatero joked about Microsoft's questionable history
of choosing marketing names for new products while discussing Microsoft's decision as of today
to stop trying to make fetch happen and rebrand Bing Chat to Copilot in Bing.
Did they ask Bing whether they could put a Copilot in it?
We don't know. It's definitely better branding, or it would be if Microsoft hadn't called
a dozen other products Copilot already, like George Foreman naming his five sons
George Foreman two through six. And his daughter, George Chat.
There will also be a Copilot assistant in Microsoft Loop,
the Notion-like Productivity web app, and who knows how many other places
thanks to the new Copilot Studio, which will allow users to build their own
custom AI Copilots, just like OpenAI's recently announced GPTs.
Believe it or not, there's some non-Copilot news too.
Microsoft hopes to reduce its reliance on NVIDIA with their new custom ARM-based Azure Myo 100
and Cobalt 100 server processors. I'm doing quotes when I say custom
because they're no Apple Silicon, but they do appear to be a bit more custom
than the company's SQ1 and SQ2 Surface chips
that were basically Snapdragon 8CXs with a hat and sunglasses on.
Finally, Microsoft Mesh, its mixed reality platform,
will be integrated into Teams, allowing for virtual meetings in AI-generated 3D spaces
eventually with personalized avatars, none of which appear to have legs.
That kind of advanced tech is apparently still well beyond us.
Have they rolled out on the meta platform yet? I don't think they have.
I'm sorry, we cannot rebuild you. We do not have the technology.
The FBI is struggling to address a small decentralized cyber crime gang
known as Scattered Spider that's been hitting corporations
throughout the United States for the last two years, according to cybersecurity experts
who are probably all former team hackers themselves. I mean, come on guys, hack the planet, remember?
That was you. Scattered Spider most notoriously hacked casino operators,
MGM International and Caesars Entertainment back in September,
but they also hit telecoms, healthcare firms,
financial service companies and rival gang disoriented dragonfly.
I'm scared of rankling the non-existent gang that we just made up.
The FBI has apparently known the identities of at least a dozen members of this group
for over half a year, but none have been arrested despite living in the US and causing millions in damages.
Some have blamed this lack of action on an equal lack of manpower.
The FBI having lost many of its best agents to the private sector,
victims have likewise typically been hesitant to inform law enforcement when they've been compromised.
No doubt partly from embarrassment over being hacked by a gaggle of teenagers
taking advantage of long known and neglectfully unpatched vulnerabilities
and software relied on by corporations around the world. Another favorite target of these groups
is critical infrastructure and information dense targets like hospitals.
Just this week, McLaren, a healthcare nonprofit in Michigan,
notified 2.2 million clients of a data breach
that exposed names, birth dates, social security numbers
and extensive amounts of sensitive medical information.
Just the kind of ruthless behavior we should expect from hardened cyber criminals
with underdeveloped amygdalas in a diet of pizza and energy drinks.
Mom, where are my chicken strips? I'm destroying the government.
You do not wanna cross these guys. A warning to our more sensitive viewers.
The following bits are exceptionally quick. You're gonna wanna strap the f*** in for these.
In a recent blog post, Meta's global head of safety,
Antigone Davis, argued that app stores should be charged with enacting age verification
and parental consent controls for social media.
This would make implementation of guardrails to protect children more intuitive and consistent
across legal jurisdictions, but it also has the advantage of making it no longer Meta's responsibility.
Meta, alongside several other social media companies, is facing a mountain of lawsuits for damages to minors
and they think it would be just awesome if maybe somebody else had to deal with all this.
But even if Meta's reasons are obviously self-serving,
that doesn't necessarily make it a bad idea. The worst person you know just made a great point.
It doesn't feel good. The Department of Justice has joined an investigation
of an ongoing controversy in the aviation industry
where thousands of uncertified used engine parts
were refurbished and sold using forged documents
that hid the actual age and history of the parts.
The issue was first publicly revealed by a Bloomberg report in late August
after maintenance workers in Europe started flagging inconsistencies with repair parts.
Airlines conducted a panicked audit of their planes to find which had falsified parts
and remove them from service. And now, AOG Technics, a London-based parts distributor,
is under investigation for alleged forgery and fraud.
My advice to AOG, say you picked up the bad parts
after they fell off the back of a truck. It just works every time. It's so terrifying.
They're just trying to recycle. We are the world.
Google has launched a lawsuit against 22 people, it says, weaponized the DMCA by creating
at least 65 Google accounts so they could submit
thousands of fraudulent notices of copyright infringement against more than 117,000 third-party website URLs.
20 of the defendants are not identified, but the two that are identified in the suit
appear to be involved in selling printed T-shirts online
and were allegedly motivated by a desire to get their competitors removed from Google search results,
resulting in millions of dollars in lost revenue for both the target companies and Google.
The notices were filed under a variety of fake names, including Amazon, NBC News, Elon Musk,
and LaVar Burton of Star Trek and Reading Rainbow fame.
Things in red bubble are hitting rough. Those are all real names.
People were more likely to perceive AI-generated human faces as real than actual photos of human faces,
especially when the subject of the photo was white. According to a peer-reviewed study published
in Psychological Science, which calls attention once again to the problem
of AI's being trained on image data sets with disproportionately more white faces.
The study's authors call this phenomenon of thinking the fake thing looks more real, hyper-realism,
but I don't know if we should put much stock in it. I mean, like, I know I look like an AI-generated image
of a generic white guy, but you guys know I'm real, right?
An EV company, Rivian, sent out an over-the-air update
that soft-bricked infotainment systems of any Rivian vehicles that installed it.
Turns out the company sent out the wrong update build and the wrong security certificates.
In a public statement, Rivian blamed the error on a fat finger, which I absolutely love,
presumably because instead of pushing the convenient fix cars button,
Ronald Rivian, chief of cars work good, accidentally pressed the big and red
break all cars button. Anyone could've made that mistake.
Right next to each other, what? It's the literal meme.
First of all, I think we should stop fat-shaming fingers.
Just like how you'd be making a mistake by not coming back on Friday for more tech news.
That sounds like a threat, but it's really not. You're gonna be fine either way, but you better come back.