1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000
Welcome to the tech news, where every story makes me feel a little bit like Elmo.

2
00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:11,000
A small red creature screaming into the void while the man's hand controls everything I do.

3
00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:17,000
It's like, what are you doing? Google is now using AI to replace news headlines in its search results.

4
00:00:17,000 --> 00:00:23,000
The Verge found multiple instances where headlines they wrote were swapped for AI-generated versions,

5
00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:30,000
sometimes changing the meaning entirely. When contacted for comment, Google claimed that this is part of a small and narrow experiment

6
00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:35,000
to explore the effects of serving headlines that better match the user's profile,

7
00:00:35,000 --> 00:00:41,000
with the personalized titles being based on the user's query, location, and search history.

8
00:00:41,000 --> 00:00:48,000
Critics have been quick to call out that these tailor-made headlines go so far as to be clickbaity,

9
00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:56,000
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

10
00:00:56,000 --> 00:01:00,000
for the Big Shrimp conspiracy that my uncle keeps googling when he comes over.

11
00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:05,000
Dave! Big Shrimp isn't real! You were on a banana boat!

12
00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:14,000
And you hit stroke. It's worth noting that Google said that the insertion of AI headlines into the Discover feed back in July

13
00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:19,000
was also an experiment, but a month later, they made it a permanent feature.

14
00:01:19,000 --> 00:01:25,000
Since then, publishers have seen organic traffic drops of 30 to 60%.

15
00:01:25,000 --> 00:01:30,000
As Google is actively filling search with slop, over on the YouTube side, they're stopping to ask,

16
00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:38,000
hey, how sloppy do you like it? Users have reported seeing polls inquiring whether the videos they're watching feel like AI slop,

17
00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:44,000
which, while annoying that it's necessary, is at least an indication of some level of self-awareness.

18
00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:51,000
Many were quick to call this out, however, as YouTube just crowdsourcing free training data for Google's next slop model,

19
00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:54,000
which sounds like a horrifying reality show.

20
00:01:54,000 --> 00:02:01,000
Still featuring Tyra Banks, though. They come out onto the runway like, hi!

21
00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:06,000
Super Micro co-founder Wally Liao has been arrested by the FBI

22
00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:12,000
for smuggling $2.5 billion worth of servers fitted with NVIDIA GPUs to China.

23
00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:16,000
This is before America was trying to get China to buy them.

24
00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:20,000
Liao, together with his Taiwan-based sales manager Steven Chang,

25
00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:25,000
used a front company in Southeast Asia to order the servers, which were delivered to the front company,

26
00:02:25,000 --> 00:02:29,000
repackaged into unmarked boxes, and forwarded to China.

27
00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:35,000
To fool inspectors, they stocked the front company's warehouse with thousands of dummy servers,

28
00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:40,000
so that when Super Micro's compliance team, or US export officials, came to verify the equipment,

29
00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:46,000
it looked like the already smuggled hardware that was already on the ocean was still sitting right there.

30
00:02:46,000 --> 00:02:52,000
Surveillance footage from the warehouse even caught workers using a hairdryer to peel serial numbers off the real server

31
00:02:52,000 --> 00:03:02,000
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.

32
00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:06,000
They keep slipping over there. They're too slippery.

33
00:03:06,000 --> 00:03:13,000
In a statement to the press, FBI Assistant Director and SpongeBob SquarePads character James C. Barnacle Jr.

34
00:03:13,000 --> 00:03:22,000
That's amazing. Says the FBI will hold accountable anyone who uses American companies to provide export-controlled technology to adversaries.

35
00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:28,000
Super Micro itself is not named as a defendant and says it's cooperating fully with the investigation.

36
00:03:28,000 --> 00:03:32,000
Despite this, Super Micro's stock dropped 25%.

37
00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:38,000
Now, Lia and a Taiwanese middleman have been arrested, but Chang is on the run.

38
00:03:38,000 --> 00:03:45,000
He's probably repacking himself into an unmarked box labeled not NVIDIA GPUs as we speak.

39
00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:55,000
Happy trails, partner. We hope you live. Google is adding a mandatory 24-hour waiting period to sideload apps from unverified developers on Android

40
00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:58,000
because apparently your phone needs to sleep on it.

41
00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:08,000
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,

42
00:04:08,000 --> 00:04:15,000
restart their phone, which conveniently kills any active calls from said scammer, and then just wait a day.

43
00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:25,000
Give it a day. See, I feel. After that, you authenticate with biometrics or a PIN and you can allow unverified installs for seven days or indefinitely.

44
00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:32,000
Okay, so it's not 24 hours per app. It's 24 hours one time and then it's normal sideloading, okay?

45
00:04:32,000 --> 00:04:37,000
Google says sideloaded apps carry malware at 50 times the rate of Play Store apps

46
00:04:37,000 --> 00:04:43,000
and scammers rely on manufactured urgency to pressure victims into installing sketchy APKs.

47
00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:49,000
So developers can skip the drama by verifying their identity and paying a $25 fee

48
00:04:49,000 --> 00:04:57,000
and Google's also offering free limited distribution accounts for students and hobbyists who share apps with up to 20 devices.

49
00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:06,000
Then in September, mandatory verification kicks in for Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand with global enforcement targeting 2027.

50
00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:11,000
Open source advocates like Eftroyd are calling the whole program an existential threat.

51
00:05:11,000 --> 00:05:15,000
But hey, at least you won't have to wait 24 hours for our sponsor.

52
00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:19,000
Time for Quick Bits. Elmo loves Quick Bits.

53
00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:25,000
Elmo also loves Ref referring to himself in the third person, which is a trait shared by exactly two groups,

54
00:05:25,000 --> 00:05:31,000
since we three characters, and tech CEOs under federal investigation.

55
00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:39,000
Meta has reversed its decision to shut down VR support for its VR-centric social platform Horizon Worlds

56
00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:42,000
just two days after confirming the shutdown.

57
00:05:42,000 --> 00:05:47,000
CTO Andrew Bosworth said on an Instagram Q&A they decided to keep it running

58
00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:52,000
after a fan reached out saying they were heartbroken that it would be shut down,

59
00:05:52,000 --> 00:05:56,000
which might be the single most powerful customer complaint in history.

60
00:05:56,000 --> 00:06:01,000
Who is this person? Horizon Worlds will stay on quest for all existing games,

61
00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:06,000
but any new development will be mobile only. Okay, interesting. They're like grandfathering it.

62
00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:12,000
Bosworth previously said the team was having to build everything twice for phones and VR.

63
00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:15,000
Apparently, that includes the decision to kill it too.

64
00:06:15,000 --> 00:06:19,000
It's so nice they decided it twice.

65
00:06:19,000 --> 00:06:26,000
The world's largest coalition of botnets, Aisuru, Kim Wolf, Jack Skid, and Massad?

66
00:06:26,000 --> 00:06:30,000
I think it's unrelated. Different Massad.

67
00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:37,000
Different Massad. Has been taken down in a joint operation between American, German, and Canadian federal police.

68
00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:45,000
Hey, we were there too. That was A-E-H, not A-Y.

69
00:06:45,000 --> 00:06:51,000
Alright. The four botnets compromised over 3 million IoT devices like routers and webcams,

70
00:06:51,000 --> 00:06:56,000
launching DDoS attacks that peaked at a record-breaking 31.4 terabits per second,

71
00:06:56,000 --> 00:06:59,000
enough to knock basically anything offline.

72
00:06:59,000 --> 00:07:04,000
Authorities seized domains, servers, and crypto worth tens of thousands of dollars,

73
00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:08,000
but while two suspected admins were identified, no arrests have been made.

74
00:07:08,000 --> 00:07:11,000
The police are like, we got tired from carrying all the servers and stuff.

75
00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:14,000
We're just going to come back tomorrow. Don't go anywhere.

76
00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:18,000
We're going on a doughnut break. Just stop.

77
00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:25,000
We're trusting you. A North Carolina musician just pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud

78
00:07:25,000 --> 00:07:29,000
for stealing over $10 million in streaming royalties.

79
00:07:29,000 --> 00:07:35,000
Michael Smith, first indicted in 2024, colluded with an unnamed A.I. music company

80
00:07:35,000 --> 00:07:39,000
to generate hundreds of thousands of A.I. tracks.

81
00:07:39,000 --> 00:07:44,000
Smith then used a botnet to stream the massive catalog billions of times,

82
00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:48,000
spreading plays across thousands of fake artists to dodge detection.

83
00:07:48,000 --> 00:07:54,000
Smith faces up to five years in prison and has agreed to forfeit over $8 million.

84
00:07:54,000 --> 00:07:58,000
That's nice of him. We have to keep some of it.

85
00:07:58,000 --> 00:08:03,000
What? In their press release on the case, the DOJ says they're dedicated to prosecuting

86
00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:08,000
A.I. powered theft from real artists, except if you're training an A.I. model.

87
00:08:08,000 --> 00:08:12,000
Then it's, yeah, that's fine. We don't really care what copyright is anymore.

88
00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:21,000
NVIDIA has seemingly confirmed that DLSS5 is basically just a very fast, fancy A.I. image-to-image model.

89
00:08:21,000 --> 00:08:27,000
NVIDIA rep Jacob Freeman told YouTuber Daniel Owen that the tech takes a single 2D frame

90
00:08:27,000 --> 00:08:32,000
plus motion vectors, which is just like saying where things are going to move in the frame,

91
00:08:32,000 --> 00:08:39,000
as input. The model does not have direct awareness of the 3D geometry in the scene,

92
00:08:39,000 --> 00:08:44,000
no depth data, no PBR materials, just what it can see.

93
00:08:44,000 --> 00:08:49,000
It was also revealed that if the A.I. ossifies a game character a bit too much,

94
00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:55,000
devs only have the option to either turn it down, mask out items in the scene entirely,

95
00:08:55,000 --> 00:08:59,000
or tweak color information just a little bit,

96
00:08:59,000 --> 00:09:05,000
which is a far cry from Jensen's claim that DLSS5 critics were completely wrong.

97
00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:12,000
It sounds like they were mostly right. Billions of dollars in R&D, and we got a really expensive Instagram filter.

98
00:09:12,000 --> 00:09:15,000
Some people want it. They shouldn't.

99
00:09:15,000 --> 00:09:20,000
And scientists at Singapore's NTU have built cyborg cockroaches

100
00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:25,000
that pull miniature camera rigs through pipelines to detect leaks.

101
00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:28,000
YAH! Pshh! Like what?

102
00:09:28,000 --> 00:09:34,000
Each roach gets a tiny electronic backpack that steers it via electrical pulses,

103
00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:38,000
and a new process can assemble its little payload in just over a minute.

104
00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:43,000
Project lead Hirotaka Sato already deployed 10 of these bad boys to Myanmar

105
00:09:43,000 --> 00:09:46,000
after last year's earthquake to aid with search and rescue.

106
00:09:46,000 --> 00:09:51,000
And apparently a German startup is working on their own cyborg cockroaches

107
00:09:51,000 --> 00:09:54,000
for military recon and espionage.

108
00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:59,000
Pshh! Sam Fisher wishes he was this good at crawling through tight spaces undetected.

109
00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:03,000
Just like I wish I'll see you on Monday for more tech news.

110
00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:09,000
Or Elmo will find you and not in a tickle me way.

111
00:10:09,000 --> 00:10:14,000
And Elmo has your IP address and Elmo doesn't forget way.

112
00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:16,000
See you next time.