Hello, I'm working on a Shonda Rhimes style graze anatomy ass drama about tech journalism
where the central love triangle will be between me and a pair of polar opposite quirky AI chatbots.
Will we all hook up or not? I'm accepting donations.
OpenAI's Sora app has hit number one on Apple U.S.'s app store after launching on iOS on Wednesday,
featuring exclusive access to Sora 2. OpenAI's latest video generation model.
And we clearly weren't the only ones taking notice of the app.
Despite being launched only in the U.S. and Canada and being invite only,
Sora saw 56,000 downloads on its first day.
And now it sits ahead of Google's Gemini and OpenAI's chat GPT on Apple's app store.
The app's hype makes a lot of sense once you get a load of the wild content
its users are generating. Sora has already been used to deep fake videos
of OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, stealing GPUs from Target
and as an Ulu Kitty man. While OpenAI says Sora has settings
that will allow you to stop others from making unwanted deep fakes of yourself,
Sam has clearly opened the floodgates. He's into this.
Now, some journalists are already calling this new app a fever dream
and wondering if we should stop the slop. Well, I don't see that happening,
considering Bloomberg just reported that OpenAI has received a $500 billion valuation,
which puts it ahead of SpaceX as the world's most valuable private company.
So, let there be slop. Let the slop consume you be one with the slop.
Get sloppy. Google has put out a blog post claiming
that sideloading on Android isn't going anywhere. Guys, for real, please calm down.
About a month ago, it came out that Google would be requiring developer verification
for apps outside the Google Play Store, which has Android users concerned
about the ability to sideload apps that's installing them from a third party
or non-official source. Well, in their blog post, Mr. Google says
that the developer verification is meant to protect users, heard that before, not limit choice.
There will be a free developer account for teachers, students, and hobbyists, but these accounts will likely have greater limits
on how many devices can download their apps. Of course, this means that Google will be able
to control how broad a third party's apps reach is,
and they will also get to collect the data of those creating developer accounts.
Ultimately, like Google says, sideloading isn't going away, but it's sort of transforming into something different,
something maybe worse, probably worse.
We can still be mad. I think we can still be mad. Apple has removed IceBlock,
an immigration enforcement tracking app from the app store.
US Attorney General Pam Bondy told Fox News
that pressure was applied on Apple to take down the app, which allows users to monitor the movement
of immigration enforcement officers. Apple told Business Insider that the app was taken down
because it presented safety risks. Following suit, Google removed a similar ice tracking app,
Red Dot, from their play store. Google told 404 Media that these ice spotting apps
have a high risk of abuse and describe ice as a vulnerable group,
which is why they elected to remove the app from their store. However, this whole story seems far from done,
as IceBlock's owner, Joshua Allen, says he's determined to fight Apple's decision,
going as far as to compare his app to speed trap trackers,
which are implemented in many map applications, even Google's own.
I think we gotta get a speed tracker for that guy on his e-bike that evaded ice in Chicago the other day.
That guy was flying! In the mid-season finale of my tech news TV drama,
I call it off with both the AI chatbots, actually, because it's the quick bits that'll always have my heart.
Tesla is being sued for the wrongful death of a pair of college students,
whose deaths their families claim were caused by faulty Cybertruck door designs.
The students were passengers in the rear seat of a Cybertruck that crashed into a tree
before it's battery lit on fire. The lawsuit claims that the rear passengers' injuries
were minor, but they died because of burns and smoke inhalation when they couldn't find the Cybertruck's manual door releases.
To manually open a Cybertruck's back door, is you need to lift a rubber mat
on the bottom of the door storage pocket. Oh, God.
You need to lift a rubber mat on the bottom of the door's storage pocket
and pull a cord underneath.
That does sound needlessly complicated, especially in emergency situations, but I'm sure Elon isn't too worried.
He just became the first person worth half a trillion dollars.
Deadly trucks and earning tons of bucks. Elon's got his priorities straight.
Another trillionaire news, NVIDIA's issues with 16-pin GPU power connector meltdowns
might have finally been solved by someone other than them.
Someone else did it, of course. Agua Computer has introduced Ampenal,
a tool that connects to the NVIDIA connector and proactively balances the power load
by evenly spreading it across the cables of various little wires.
Sadly, this isn't a free solution to what really is a concerning issue
and the tool costs $95. Oh, one Reddit commenter astutely observed,
I feel like things like this should be kept in a museum chronicling the downfall of mankind.
In this exhibit, we have a $95 gadget that you need to keep your $3,000 gadget from self-immulating.
Sick burn. Harvard and MIT physicists just built a quantum computer
that ran continuously for over two hours.
I've never even done that. You might be saying to yourself, what's the big deal? My computer runs for more than two hours every day.
But this is a huge deal when you consider that previous record-breaking quantum computer run times
were just a little over 10 seconds. Holy shit.
Thought I was gonna say minutes. Quantum computers rely on subatomic particles,
cutely named qubits, it's kinda like quick bits, to store and process data.
But these computers lose their qubits in something called atom loss,
which the physicists seem to have overcome by using an optical conveyor belt and tweezers
to replace qubits. Is this serious? With this new process, some of the researchers
believe quantum computers that can run forever might be just three years away.
This is such optimistic news. I love it, but have you seen the other tech news?
Do we have three years? Maybe the slop will distract us long enough
to not destroy ourselves. Slop. Japan is running out of Asahi Super Dry Beer
as the company deals with a fallout from a cyber attack. What a weird sentence.
The devastating attack caused a system outage and forced Asahi Group to suspend operations
shutting down most of its 30 factories. Now, after several days,
they've just begun to take manual orders, visiting customers in person and taking handwritten orders.
Reuters points out that this is one in a string of recent cyber attacks hitting global companies,
including Jaguar Land Rover and Marks & Spencer.
Honestly though, I don't think this is too bad. It gives Japanese salarymen an opportunity
to go home to their families instead of feeling obligated to go out drinking with their bosses and coworkers
and paid entertainment. Nomakai can wait. Go hug your children.
If you have children, you're in Japan.
University of California researchers have made a way to use computer mice to capture vibrations
and convert them into audio data. In a Tom's Hardware article,
that's as interesting as it is scary, the researchers work is summarized
as using high performance optical mice, signal processing and machine learning
to pick up what people are saying through their desks,
that kind of audio. Damn it. Mice with a DPI of 20,000 or above
are vulnerable to this attack and it doesn't have to be a complex virus that exploits them.
It can be as simple as a creative app or a video game that asks for frequent mouse data,
which can then be collected and processed. Come on, man.
None of this is as chill as I thought it would be. It's Friday.
It's certainly not as cute as real life trained mouse with a microphone.
You know what would be that cute though? If you guys just came back on Monday
and watched more tech news, I'm gonna keep working on my TV drama.
Those devastating season finale twists aren't gonna write themselves. Spoiler alert, one of the chatbots gets amnesia
after a big software update.
I thought you were gonna say gets pregnant. It threw off my tone.
But it's a crazy world.