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Welcome to TechLink, where we're going to patch your knowledge of the world

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with some hot, fresh tech news. Microsoft has sheepishly admitted

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that the Windows 10 security updates that released between March and August

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were in fact a serious downgrade that undid several old security patches,

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like a bad case of scurvy, reopening decades old wounds.

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Luckily, I've never been on a pirate ship. And also, luckily, it seems that only a small number

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of systems were directly affected. Enterprise users still using

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the original 1507 version of Windows 10 released in July, 2015.

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According to Senior Director of Threat Research at Immersion Labs and also auto-generated character

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in Skyrim, Kev Breen, Microsoft's statement

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points to an integer overflow vulnerability where the build version numbers verified

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by the Windows update service fell into a range that caused a code error.

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This then led to certain optional components to be reverted back to their original unpatched versions,

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i.e. exactly how they were when they were first manufactured.

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Security experts have given this particular bug a score of 9.8 out of 10,

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which would be great if this was an Olympic dive or a dressage performance.

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Microsoft, though, has now released a new patch to patch the old patch that unpatched

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this particular patch of PCs. The US Department of Justice's antitrust trial

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against Google started this week. Oh, not that one.

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This is a new one. As you may know, Google was recently found liable

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for illegally abusing the dominant market power of its search division

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and is now awaiting the court's suggested remedies to prevent it from continuing to do so in the future.

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Oh, the courts. Now, however, the company is again in court

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facing similar accusations regarding its ad division.

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As with most antitrust disputes, a major point of contention in the case

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is how to define the market that Google is supposedly dominating.

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The DOJ says that Google is acting as an illegal monopoly

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by intertwining its various ad tools, specifically its publishing software ad manager

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and its ad exchange network, AdX, and its advertiser network market AdSense,

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leading to website publishers to feel trapped.

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Google, however, says that it's part of a much bigger ad market

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where it competes with fellow tech giants like Amazon and Meta and Microsoft and Roku

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and TikTok and Yahoo! That one, not just the feeling.

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Of course, most of those supposed rivals really only publish ads within their own walled gardens,

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whereas Google, much like Jesus and the smell of microwaved salmon, is everywhere.

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In other Google-ish news, Nevada's Department of Employment Training

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and Rehabilitation has apparently paid Google over $1.3 million for access to AI-powered cloud software

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that will recommend whether or not unemployed citizens should receive government benefits.

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In the past, organizations have typically relied on AI and other less sophisticated algorithms,

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primarily to handle relatively low stakes decisions that don't require much human oversight.

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However, this system is apparently going to be used

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to analyze evidentiary documents and transcripts

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for unemployment appeals hearings, which are likely to be relatively complex cases.

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I mean, just look at those words. They're big words. According to Nevada officials,

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this system will help them eliminate the backlog of cases that has existed since the pandemic

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by reducing the time it takes to write a determination from several hours to just five minutes in some cases.

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While the state promises each case will receive human review,

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five minutes of human review isn't particularly reassuring.

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If I were to deliver it and it arrives five minutes later, I ain't eating it.

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This is yet another example of how automation is being used as a way to place more and more responsibility

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into the hands of unaccountable machines. Similarly, an experiment by More Perfect Union

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found that several Uber and Lyft drivers standing directly next to one another

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were offered the exact same jobs for different amounts of money.

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This was particularly drastic in Lyft's case where the pay for a trip could vary as much as $3,

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potentially adding up to hundreds over the course of a normal month.

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And that money could wind up being really important after the robot down at the unemployment office

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denies you your benefit claim. Go fuck yourself, stay poor, asshole.

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Each of the following quick bits is fully OSHA compliant and has never resulted in the loss of a limb.

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But make sure to wear your special quick bits helmet, just in case.

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There could be eye pokies. Following a series of delays due to weather

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and technical issues, SpaceX successfully launched its Polaris Dawn mission,

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carrying pilot slash billionaire Jared Isaacman, as well as three other people who have far less money.

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The mission will last five days and attempt the world's first private spacewalk.

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Presumably they mean private in the sense of privately financed

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and not in the sense that somebody is getting naked.

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Other SpaceX projects, however, have been delayed,

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as the Federal Aviation Administration has been slow to issue launch licenses.

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SpaceX by itself apparently accounts for 80% of the overtime logged by FAA workers,

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charged with safety and environmental reviews for space travel. Similar to how Elon Musk accounts for 80%

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of TOS violations at Twitter, I'm above the law.

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Huawei has launched a folding phone with not one, but two hinges and the world will not shut up about it.

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The Mate XT features a 6.4 inch OLED display

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when fully collapsed, but fully unfolded. It becomes a 10.2 inch tablet

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that's nearly the size of a standard iPad. There's also a 7.9 inch in between,

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single fold configuration. If you just want a little bit more screen,

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you're not showboatin'. Oh, and its price starts at about $20,000

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or $2,800 US dollars. It's the perfect phone for people who miss unfolding maps

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when they get lost, but still wanna be able to fold them back up when they're done.

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Keep it in your glovebox. People keep wanting to toss data centers in the ocean

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off the California coast without a permit and regulators, they're sick of it.

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The most recent offenders are the founders of Y Combinator backed startup, Network Ocean,

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who wanna dunk servers in the San Francisco Bay as a way to save energy and slow ocean temperature rise,

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which I can already see a problem with. Sure, hot servers might not raise

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the whole ocean's temperature, but experts say localized hotspots

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could trigger toxic algae blooms. Microsoft actually tested submerged servers

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in California and Scotland before recently abandoning the project.

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You know what they awoke in the darkness of the bikini bottom.

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Meta has admitted to using public photos and posts on its social media platforms

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from far back as 2007, when I joined,

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to train its AI models in a confession that's only really newsworthy

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because it was made in an Australian Senate inquiry by Meta's global privacy director.

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Immediately after she denied Meta had done that exact thing,

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users in the UK and EU have the legally mandated ability

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to opt out, but users from anywhere else do not. And while the Meta exec made it clear

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that the only scraped accounts over the age of 18,

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if an adult posts pictures of kids on their account, those are fair game too.

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I'm sorry, you're not ready for the future where everybody owns everything.

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That's a you problem, by everybody I mean us.

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Legal loophole, parents. And a robot will begin removing melted radioactive fuel

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from the Fukushima nuclear plant, and it'll certainly take its sweet time.

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This test removal will grab merely three grams of the approximately 880 tons of waste,

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which will then be studied to both learn more about what happened and to determine

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how to best remove the rest. Grabbing this sample alone will take two weeks

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because the robot must be maneuvered very carefully

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by rotating teams that are averse to the idea

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of spending more than 50 minutes at a time in a highly radioactive environment.

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What, you don't wanna grow a third ARM or suffer a painful death?

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And I'll suffer painfully if you don't come back on Friday for more tech news.

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Not nearly as painfully as someone with radiation sickness,

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but it still hurts a little.