Used to be a king, you know, but I abdicated the throne for one very simple reason.
I wanted to focus on bringing you the tech news. Still gonna tax you, though.
Mozilla has ignited controversy among Firefox users this week by, primarily, being bad at marketing.
See, the company's been trying to build a new framework for online advertising that depends
less on collecting people's personal information. They acquired Anonym, a company working on just
that in June, before announcing Privacy Preserving Attribution in August.
PPA supposedly encrypts and aggregates data about how many users engage with an ad without
collecting any info about those users, preserving privacy while still letting websites generate
revenue. And I think it sounds good when you say it like that. Unfortunately,
yesterday Mozilla's relatively new CEO started off her blog post about PPA by saying the company
is going to be more active in digital advertising, while an official forum post talked about making
ads and privacy coexist, causing concern among the particularly ad averse that Mozilla was going
through that phase when you think Don Draper is a good guy in Mad Men.
While some Firefox users simply want no ads on the internet, period, others are trying to explain
how PPA could balance privacy and sustainability. The problem is, this isn't even Mozilla's first
marketing blunder for PPA. Adblock users were already mad about PPA being enabled by default
in July's Firefox 128.0 release, which led EU privacy organization Noib, which stands for
none of your business. The spit is silent. To file a complaint over Firefox's new feature, which
tracked users. Side note, Noib is no joke. Another of their complaints just led to a top
EU court imposing limits on Meta's data collection. Do not rub Noib the wrong way.
They call it noibing. Turns out that early PPA rollout was a limited developer test and did not
collect any user data, but Mozilla did admit last week they could have been more open about what
they were doing, only to fumble the ball again this week. The same week they flagged the uBlock
Origin Lite Firefox add-on as collecting user data and using machine-generated code, causing
developer Raymond Hill to pull it from the add-on store after getting fed up with Mozilla support.
Listen, I want Firefox to be better at marketing, so more people use it. But right now they're at
like 7% market share, so proportionally I spent way too much time talking about this.
YouTube has announced a bunch of changes to how shorts work, starting with how they're not
gonna be so short. Starting October 15th, shorts can be up to three minutes long,
meaning any video with a square aspect ratio or taller, that's less than three minutes,
will be seen as a short by YouTube. The change will only apply to videos uploaded after that date,
though, so don't worry, vertical doom scrollers won't suddenly be hit with your experimental
artsy student film. The square is a box. This represents society. In an ode to TikTok's
cap cut templates, YouTube's also adding a remix ability with the use template button,
which will let you participate in that most storied of human traditions.
Doing it for the meme. There's also a new trends page for shorts, and later, the shorts feed itself
will show previews of comments before you even click through to the video.
Which comments? Oh, the worst ones, obviously. YouTube's obviously hoping the new features
will help it compete with TikTok, and it's already beating it in at least one way,
the new YouTube feature that lets you temporarily hide shorts from your YouTube home feed altogether.
I wish I could do that on TikTok. I also wish I wouldn't be spied on by the Chinese government.
Meta has revealed Meta Movie Gen, its own photorealistic video generator capable of creating
16-second videos with a twist, or else I wouldn't be telling you about it.
Though it's not available to the public, Meta's demos showcase the ability to edit
existing videos using only text, as well as impressively realistic simulations of bad Halloween
costumes. But here's the twist. With a single photo, Movie Gen can make a video deepfake of
anyone DJing an impromptu set next to a cheetah. Only that scenario.
But is the cheetah dancing? No. Is it chest or cheetah? Maybe. I'm out.
I hate that guy. And even more impressively, to me, it can generate music and audio
synced up to the action in the video. Meta says Movie Gen could usher in a new AI-enabled era for content creators.
As an example, they ask you to imagine sending your friends some fresh baked AI slop for their
birthday. That'll be kind of funny, the first time I made this for you. No, you didn't.
Not many people know this, but Quickbits is actually a nickname. It's short for
Quichard Bits Gerald. Now, you know, a man I killed in 1973.
Microsoft has finally killed WordPad, the rich text editing word processor that debuted on Windows
95. Microsoft has added it to its list of removed features and functionality. It'll be gone from
all editions of Windows, starting with Windows 11 version 24H2, which started rolling out this week.
We are witnessing the death of a legend, so pour one out, but not just any drink,
something classy. Something fit to celebrate the life of a program born in the 90s.
An aged can of surge. A few days ago, Amazon's Ring sent an email out to Protect Plus subscribers,
reminding them that they would be migrated to the Protect Pro Plan next year,
doubling their subscription fee. That reminder comes with heavy air quotes because the Verge
tracked down when Ring sent its original notification, which turned out to be a tiny fine print
footnote in a September 2021 email with the subject line, important, your plan name has changed.
The email said, quote, don't worry, everything else is staying the same. Ring sent a similar email
to Canadian Ring Home standard subscribers this week with a heading, new name, new features,
same great price. The email then informs users that their subscription will no longer include
alarm professional monitoring and SOS emergency response, because now calling the cops costs
extra. Do you think calls to the police grow on trees? Someone's gotta pay him. The government,
who? Google is testing the use of blue checkmarks as a way to protect users from fraudulent links
in search results. Hovering over the checkmark explains that Google is pretty sure the business
is who they say they are. An example of this, also from the Verge, depicts a notice that says
Google can't guarantee the reliability of this business or its products. But to be fair,
the business in question was Apple. Fruits! What's the symbol? I needed the symbol.
Oh, that's a new rim shot. Badoom fruits! Speaking of unreliable products, Google
Search's AI overview feature will now be getting ads that are relevant to your question. Finally,
Gem and I won't just tell you to eat rocks, but also recommend the tastiest ones.
Samsung issued a faulty software update two days ago that bricked many older Galaxy smartphones
globally. Even worse, the issue seemed to have been caused by an update to Samsung's
SmartThings Framework app, an automatically installed app for controlling compatible smart devices.
I feel like users still rocking Galaxy phones from 2019 aren't splurging on a smart fridge.
We're not sure whether this was necessary. They're buying sensible things, like basically
anything else you can buy. Cabbage. Would you put in a dump? But the smart fridge enthusiasts
watching this video may be excited to know that Apple fixed the update that was bricking M4 iPads.
What a transition. I'm not saying only smart fridge owners own M4 iPads,
but I'm pretty sure they could afford one. I want a fridge I could watch TikTok on.
And a court has dismissed a shareholders lawsuit against Tesla over Elon Musk's exaggerated
claims about its full self-driving feature. Of course, the case wasn't dismissed because
those claims were true, but rather because, according to Tesla's own lawyers, the statements
were nothing more than corporate puffery, aka bulls***, that no reasonable investor would have
taken seriously. I mean, come on guys, we're all just just locker room talk. But Elon had less
success in Australia, where a court upheld a $418,000 fine against Twitter, which the corporation
formerly known as Twitter fought on the grounds that, following its merger with X-Core, Twitter
no longer exists. Twitter? Who's that? Twitter, I never even met her. Twitter, I never even met her.
Look, Elon, just because somebody gets married and changes their name, doesn't mean they no
longer exist. And it definitely doesn't mean they don't owe me money. Like how you owe it to
yourself to come back on Monday for more tech news. You also owe it to me. Like a little bit. I mean,
I gave up a crown for you. I was bossing people around. It was great.
A few assassination attempts. I was executing pizzas.