The tech news is a microscopic life form that resides in all technological objects.
They continually speak to us, telling us the wheel of computers.
I know it was Qui-Gon, but you can't do a Qui-Gon in print.
Ah, I'm Liam Neeson. It doesn't work. Google is walking back their plan to lock down sideloading on Android.
In August, the company announced that starting next year, Android users would only be able to install apps made by verified developers,
even for apps not listed on the Play Store, which critics said would seriously hinder indie devs, emulator projects,
and that one guy on GitHub who ports doom to everything.
What about that guy? Who's gonna verify him?
Now, Google says that experienced users will still be able to install apps from wherever they want,
even from unverified developers, although it'll take a few extra steps,
a handful of warnings, and swearing you're not gonna blame Google
when your phone mysteriously starts speaking in tongues.
I don't think anyone's gonna understand that at all.
This is like an alternate universe where the Holy Spirit is malware.
According to Google's blog post, the idea is to curb malware without completely shutting
the door on Android's openness, which has always been one of its defining features.
The change is a response to heavy pushback from developers, industry groups,
and everyday users who didn't love Google deciding for them what trusted means.
So yeah, sideloading is back, baby, just with training wheels.
And when those come off, I guess that's when we really learn what malware feels like,
like a concrete skin burn, skin burn?
What do you call it? Road rash. That's how I learned not to longboard down hills with no protective equipment.
Vine the 67, 67 video app.
Oh man, we have to leave that in. Vine, the six second video app shut down by Twitter in 2017,
is back at it again at Krispy Kreme in the form of a new app called Divine,
complete with a sizable chunk of the original video library.
The app was created by former Twitter employee Evan Henshaw Plath, aka Rabble,
while working for Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's Not for Profit and Other Stuff.
He didn't work for Jack Dorsey's Not for Profit and also for Other Stuff,
the Not for Profit's called and Other Stuff. Okay, using data previously stored by archive team, which is again a separate entity,
not the same as the archive.org team. Okay, Rabble was able to restore 150 to 200,000 original vines from 60,000 creators,
who can contact him if they want to take control of their reconstructed accounts.
Wow. And it seems like he's hoping that they will.
Divine breaks from its short form video brethren, like TikTok,
by banning AI generated content. It'll use tech from the human rights non-profit, The Guardian Project,
to confirm that a clip was truly captured on a smartphone.
If Divine spots AI slop, it'll yell,
is that a weed? And call the police, not on a microwave.
So with Divine, when you say, look at all those chickens, be assured that while you might not actually be pointing at chickens,
you certainly won't be pointing at AI chickens.
And that's all we want at the end of the day. Anthropic is in the spotlight after alleging that Chinese state-linked hackers used their
Claude Chatbot to try and hack into 30 of what Anthropic calls critical organizations.
And some of those intrusions actually succeeded, supposedly.
According to Anthropic, attackers fed Claude detailed prompts,
giving it tasks like finding vulnerabilities on selected targets,
exploiting them, and even harvesting data. Claude was apparently able to oblige them,
but it also hallucinated portions of its results,
meaning that the world's first AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign
included completely fictional cybersecurity threats. It's like staging a heist with that one overconfident guy who points at every wall and says,
there's a safe behind that, and there isn't.
Anthropic claimed the attack was up to 90% autonomous,
a figure that a ton of other researchers immediately questioned,
arguing that white hat hackers haven't been able to coax Claude into doing anything close
to what's described here, so it's unlikely the spy ring actually reached near full autonomy.
Still, the fact that an LLM could meaningfully assist at all is probably raising the blood
pressure of IT admins across the world, especially given how friendly these chatbots seem to be
when you talk to them, but at least for now, this is less like Claude the black hat,
and more like Claude the dunce cap.
Man, that was a burn that's almost as sick as our sponsor.
Now, if the long bits, we just did, are the original trilogy,
then the quick bits are the prequels. There's a lot more stuff jammed in there, and they're harder to understand.
Firefox is building what it calls an AI window, which is like an AI browser mode
that is kept separate from your normal tabs, kind of like a private slash incognito window.
In it, you'll be able to chat with an AI assistant and get help while you browse,
but only if you want, because you can totally ignore this feature and not use it if you're
prejudiced against clankers. Mozilla is asking their community to help shape this feature by signing up to test it
and then give feedback. Seems like Mozilla is trying to keep up with all the trending AI browsers
while still protecting their users' privacy, like me in the shallow end at a pool party.
I'm present, I'm there, but I don't want to drown.
I'm sorry, there's a lot of kids over there, and they can all grab your face at any one time.
Microsoft has fixed an issue where some Windows 10 users couldn't enroll for extended security
updates to get an extra year of free updates.
But wait, don't you have to be enrolled in that program
to get more updates in the first place? Is Microsoft trapping users in liminal space where they're both getting updates
and blocked from getting updates at the same time?
No, thankfully this isn't a catch-22 situation,
and every Windows 10 user can get this new fix,
which will allow them to use the ESU enrollment wizard
and collapse the quantum uncertainty, and we're back in our home dimension.
Very good. Good job Microsoft, so kind of you to allow people to do the thing you said they could do.
Tesla is recalling over 10,000 of its Powerwall 2 home battery units in the US
because a third-party battery cell defect can lead to overheating, smoke, or even fires.
The company says it has remotely discharged nearly all affected units to make them safe
and will replace them free of charge, with certified installers reaching out to customers.
Oh, hello, certified installer. Is it getting hot in here, or is that just me?
What? My house's battery's on fire.
ChatGPT is rolling out group chats in select countries,
letting users invite contacts to join their ChatGPT session,
so you can use ChatGPT to actually chat with another human now,
as long as an AI is there to supervise. This is great news, especially if you want someone to mediate
your dysfunctional family arguments about what to get for dinner tonight.
Yeah, this is the what to do. Meanwhile, WhatsApp is launching third-party chat integration across Europe,
allowing fully encrypted conversations with people on other messaging platforms
as part of the new requirements laid out by the Digital Markets Act.
It doesn't look like ChatGPT is one of those now interoperable chat apps,
so at least it won't butt in and offer to write some erotica or something,
which is always, it always does this, so annoying.
Open ChatGPT, good morning, want some erotica?
Stop, stop asking. And a heal.
A heal, a new smart bandage, uses an AI-powered camera to take pictures of a wound every couple of hours,
figure out how it's healing, and then either zap it with tiny pulses of electricity,
or release drugs to help speed the healing up, which seems better, more useful to me.
How's that healing? Oh, that's all right. Trust me, I'm a doctor.
In tests on pigs, the bandage doubled the growth of new skin and cut inflammation.
However, the effects are still modest, and there's more work to do before it's ready for people.
Animal testing can be a touchy subject, but that pig looks comfortable enough and cool in their little healing vest,
so totally worth it. So any animal testing is actually fine,
as long as they look cool while they're doing it. They look cute and cool. Yeah, yeah.
Protect... That's actually how we found out cigarettes are fine,
because the animals look like f***ing bad asses.
Those are the coolest monkeys I've ever seen. And I bet whoever's hosting on Monday will look cool too.
How could they not? So make sure to come back. I'm gonna take the weekend to look into the tech news sequels.
I haven't seen them yet, but I bet they have to be meticulously plotted.
What else would you do with a giant, important franchise?
No way they'll leave me disappointed in questioning my lifelong love for tech news.
This'll be fine.