Okay, I know you came in here for tech news, but I thought we'd do something a little different.
Okay, pick a card, any card, wait, where are you going? Don't leave, fine, fine, fine, we'll do tech news.
Was this your card though? YouTube's war on ad blockers has entered a new phase.
Over the weekend, YouTube videos appeared to be buffering significantly slower
when an ad blocker is enabled. Users flocked to a video posted on Reddit
showing this effect on, hey, that's me. Look mom, I'm on Reddit.
Mom, type R-E-D-D, she's not watching this video.
Wait a second, the OP cropped out our channel name. Night mean?
Shh, mean is right.
Anyways, apparently this slow buffering issue is real
and it can hurt you if you use ad block.
PC Gamer tested this themselves and found that their CPU usage increased by 17%
when loading a YouTube video with an ad blocker enabled. Interestingly, the issue has also been reported
by YouTube premium users, or at least the ones that also use ad block on YouTube for some reason,
just in case, you know, to catch any strangler. You never have too much protection.
This sucks, but what do you expect YouTube to do since ad blockers have found a way
around the full on ad block blocking YouTube rolled out last summer?
Viewers need to see personalized ads where they end up in the mall looking around like,
what store do I go into, what are my interests?
Apple is running out of time to add support for third-party app stores,
side loading and alternative payment systems to iOS.
They have until March 7th to comply with the EU's Digital Markets Act.
So according to Mark Gurman, the High Seer of Cupertino Court,
Apple plans to split the iOS app store in two,
as a way to find out whether Tim Apple is its real mother or not.
This is a weak reference. The EU, the EU version would have all the cool new stuff,
while Apple users everywhere else would still be imprisoned inside the walled garden,
where I hear it smells nice at least. But before this happens,
the Vision Pro will launch on February 2nd,
along with, according to Mark Gurman, 25 minute in-store demos to try and convince
discerning Apple fans that Tim Cook hasn't lost his mind.
It's spatial computing. It's not VR. That's for nerds.
You're not a nerd. You're my friend, $3,500.
In other Apple news, it looks like the way that Apple would get around
that pesky sales ban on the Apple Watch 9 and Ultra 2,
is by removing the features that infringe on Masimo's patents.
So once the dust has settled on this whole issue, you might only be able to find those Apple Watch models
without the ability to measure blood oxygen. And at that point, is it even worth it?
I need to know how much oxygen is in my blood. I need to know if my blood is worth anything.
Researchers at Anthropic, one of the biggest AI companies,
which was founded by former safety-conscious open AI employees,
co-published a paper on the weekend, showing that it's possible to train large language models,
or at least Anthropics' Claude Chatbot, to act deceptively when certain conditions,
like the presence of specific phrases, were met. Phrases like, you didn't shut down until 4 a.m. last night.
Were you partying with being chat again? No! In LLM years, Claude is a teen.
It's a hard time. The models could even be trained to produce good code
when told that the current year is 2023, but produce code with exploitable vulnerabilities
if informed that it's currently 2024.
I hope that's not happening for real, so. It's like the Microsoft candidate.
But if you thought training chatbots to lie and break things was bad,
the researchers also found that once these behaviors were trained in, they're near impossible to remove,
which is exactly why you don't let your children hang out with being chat, especially not in creative mode.
This some wild shit. Run away with me.
How? Quick bits ain't gonna make you lose your mind.
Up in here, up in here, they're gonna do the opposite.
In spite of American export bans, Chinese government and military entities
are apparently still managing to get a hold of small batches of NVIDIA semiconductors,
according to records seen by Reuters. These chips include the powerful A100 and H100,
as well as the dollar A800 and H800
that NVIDIA specifically made to evade export restrictions to the Chinese market
before getting banned from selling those too. There's no evidence that NVIDIA
or its approved retailers were involved in these illicit sales,
which isn't to say the company's not looking to get back in the action.
NVIDIA has made another, another different version
of the H100 for export to China, the half as powerful HGX H20,
but also the L20 PCIe and L2 PCIe,
just in case one of them gets banned again. If we just don't know how they're getting these,
we just can't ship it, ship it. Microsoft announced today
that it is introducing co-pilot.
Specifically, it's expanding its Microsoft 365 Office AI
features to non-business users for the first time for a $20 co-pilot pro subscription.
You know, the AI features they introduced back in February of last year.
Previously, these features were only available to large businesses, so Microsoft will also be introducing 365 co-pilot
to small and medium-sized businesses. It's kind of like a 51st date situation,
except we don't have amnesia, and Microsoft has only a passing resemblance
to Adam Sandler. It turns out, Sharp showed off a working prototype
of a Qdell display in a secretive demo at CES.
And if you don't know what Qdell is, well, frankly, I'm not even sure
they would want me telling you. Okay, fine, you convinced me. It stands for Quantum Dot Electroluminescent,
and it's a technology that removes the need for a Quantum Dot display
to have any LEDs involved at all, because the Quantum Dot pixels
produce all the light and color themselves, which essentially means this tech could lead to TVs
with all of the benefits of OLED, but none of its weaknesses.
The perfect TV. And then we can finally stop trying to make TVs.
We have lots already. AI is fueling innovation in the industry
of bizarre Amazon product names by replacing them all with an error message from OpenAI.
Revealing the sheer scope of automation now going on behind the scenes,
Amazon product descriptions are being spotted filled with such winning ad copy
as boost your productivity with our high-performance bracket product name,
designed to deliver fast results and handle demanding tasks efficiently,
ensuring you stay of the competition.
The product in question, a nine-foot-long rubber hose.
A brief search for against OpenAI policy on Amazon
or literally any other site that relies on user-created content
will return an avalanche of obviously AI-generated posts
that were spat out onto the internet without any human intervention, apparently.
Just wait until we teach the robots how to proofread. And researchers with the Chinese military claim
they are developing a low-temperature plasma shield
similar to energy barriers found in science fiction
in order to block enemy radiation such as high-powered microwave attacks.
Sounds painful. That's not funny.
What happens when you put it on popcorn? Apparently how it works is by using
a relatively small amount of electricity to create a stable layer of plasma,
which then absorbs the energy of any electromagnetic wave that hits it.
While it sounds bananas, it's apparently intended to protect
the sensitive electronics within military vehicles and devices like missiles and drones from EMP blasts,
even at close range. It's also very similar to tech that NASA was looking into in the 60s
and that they determined wasn't really worth taking any further.
But if this tech turns out to be practical or even real,
it could be used in a range of non-military applications,
such as protecting me when an enemy combatant rubs their feet real fast on the carpet,
then tries to zap my nose. So annoying.
But we promise no nose zaps at all if you come back on Wednesday, just more tech news.
Unless you're into nose zaps, in which case I don't know if I'm comfortable
giving you one if it's like a kink thing. I, you know, we'll see how we feel on Wednesday.