I can't get enough of that tech news.
We can never get enough. They can't sue us for that, can they?
YouTube appears to be testing TikTok style video swiping
on long form videos on their mobile app in what can only rationally be described
as their dumbest experiment yet, for reasons I shall explain.
This test causes the swipe up action to scroll another video into view
as confirmed by an official forum post and was demonstrated in a screen recording
posted by Tusharmeta on Twitter, a platform which recently started auto scrolling
to a new video when the one you're watching in full screen ends, which has really educated me
about the rich ecosystem of mobile game ads
that can give you cancer by looking at them. Now the reason this experiment is very dumb
is because it would replace the actually useful gestures
of swiping up to make the video bigger and enter full screen and swiping down
to exit full screen and minimize the video. Gestures I've used all the time
since they were introduced in 2020, but maintaining useful features reinforces the mistaken idea
that YouTube is designed for you, the users.
And well, I mean, it is, but just the part
of your optic nerve that connects to your reptile brain.
To underline this, YouTube has begun hiking these somewhat reasonable prices still being paid
by early premium subscribers. It makes you hope for an alternative video platform.
Who's this? Spotify's new partner program will pay podcast creators
based on video performance and they're adding a bunch of quality of life features
for video and TechLink has a video version that gets published on Spotify.
You're watching this on Spotify? Stop repeating everything you're saying, sorry.
NVIDIA's GeForce experience is dunzo
as Team Green has officially released the NVIDIA app
after releasing several beta versions this year. In case you didn't get all the memos,
the NVIDIA app is designed to combine the features of
and replace both GeForce experience updating GPU drivers,
screen recording, performance monitoring and the NVIDIA control panel, fine-tuning driver settings,
configuring G-Sync displays, et cetera. While the one app to rule them both
is officially replacing GeForce experience as of now,
it doesn't quite have all the control panel switches
and dials installed yet. So NVIDIA control panel will continue to haunt you
from the hidden area of the system tray. The new NVIDIA app should have some more graphics cards
to optimize soon enough as NVIDIA has reportedly stopped
production of most of the RTX 40 series cards,
which some analysts think points to the RTX 5090, 5080
and perhaps even the 5070 and 5060 launching
in the first few months of 2025.
Oh man, those bad boys are gonna be so expensive.
Speaking of tariffs, the once and future president
of the Kingdom of America, Donald Trump, has reiterated plans to save TikTok
from the government's current plans to ban the app if by dance doesn't sell it by January 19th.
I'm gonna save TikTok. Trump tried to ban TikTok himself during his first term,
but in March of this year, he said banning it would help Facebook, a platform he's also not a fan of.
Looks like Trump's employing the age old tactic known as keep all of the mother f***ing snakes on the plane
so they eat each other. That can't be a popular move with Elon Musk,
owner of one such mother f***ing snake, Twitter.
But his focus is gonna be elsewhere. Trump appointed Musk to co-lead something called
the Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE,
the crypto coin most efficient at having its price manipulated by Elon's tweets.
The goal will be to advise the government on how to cut spending, but despite being a department,
Trump describes DOGE as outside of government,
which means it's either just a fancy name for a cushy consulting gig,
or an institutional endorsement of oligarchy, fun.
Either way, for Twitter users worried the platform will become too dull without a constant stream
of late night Elon posts, rival platform Blue Sky
is looking a bit healthier with a million users joining
since the election ended to help it cross the 15 million user mark.
I don't know, I'm still struggling to make the switch though. When the primary selling point for the platform
is simply that it's not the other one, which is an all too familiar dilemma in this context.
Silly Riley, quick bits are for kids. Despite adults being the only ones
who can afford the good ones. Xbox head Phil Spencer told Bloomberg
that the rumored Xbox handheld is a few years out.
Or at least that's what we're taking from what he actually said,
which is the expectation is that we would do something
in that category. Did this guy take classes to learn how to speak
in the vaguest manner possible? He should run for office.
The big Phil also mentioned that more studio acquisitions are on the table
and there are no red lines for which Xbox games
could eventually come to PlayStation or Nintendo consoles.
Again, I don't know what these red lines are.
Is he talking about wires? Multiple reports, including one from the information
is citing insiders who say that open AI, Google and the other big AI players
are hitting a wall in further large language model
advancements due to a lack of quality training data.
It's not that there is no training data, it's just that the GPTs have already engorged themselves
on the entire internet and then some. And that's why we need another internet.
We also need AI welfare researchers, like the one Anthropic hired earlier this year
to make sure that the engorged chatbots aren't secretly sentient and suffering
from being forced to imbibe heinous amounts of police body cam videos with absolutely zero context.
What's happening here? We don't know. Amazon is taking on Sheehan and Timu,
rival online retailers who specialize in cheap garbage
with their own similar service inside the Amazon app,
Amazon Hall. The beta for Hall, which launches today features fashion,
home, lifestyle, electronics and other products
all under 20 bucks, with most under 10 bucks.
While I'm sure there are some diamonds in the rough here, the news will be especially exciting
for anyone who can't afford the more expensive stuff as well as shoppers who simply love opening packages
to find an already disintegrating bag of plastic trinkets
as a hobby. And Mark Zuckerberg has dropped a hot new track
with T-Pain, with whom he has apparently formed the musical act known as Z-Pain.
And there's even more pain to come, particularly when you hear Zuckerberg's
auto-tuned rendition of Little John's Get Low,
a song Mark and his wife apparently enjoy every year on their dating anniversary.
Well now they have a much better version to listen to,
as long as Instagram doesn't break the Spotify link, that is.
Apparently it's broken on desktop, but works fine on iOS, which is, phew, that's good.
For a second there, I thought Instagram's AI moderation had taste.
But I know for sure that you have taste, which is how I know you'll come back on Friday
for more tech news. How else are you gonna hear my auto-tuned cover
of Soulja Boy? It's got Superman in it.
It's my favorite superhero.