1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,800 For Valentine's Day, I got you some tech news. 2 00:00:05,760 --> 00:00:13,840 Could have at least got a card or something. The European Commission has decided not to designate iMessage as a core platform service 3 00:00:13,840 --> 00:00:18,640 under the Digital Markets Act, which means that Apple won't be required to undergo 4 00:00:18,640 --> 00:00:24,160 increasing scrutiny and enact interoperability between iMessage and other messaging services. 5 00:00:24,160 --> 00:00:29,200 The EU also passed over making similar designations for Microsoft's ad business, 6 00:00:29,200 --> 00:00:35,200 their Edge browser, and Bing in what is either a blessing or a deep, deep insult. 7 00:00:35,200 --> 00:00:39,760 You still don't matter, Bing. And you never will. Your new friends, they don't care about you. 8 00:00:39,760 --> 00:00:46,480 They just want your AI. The decision that iMessage is not a gatekeeper platform for the purpose of the law is a bit 9 00:00:46,480 --> 00:00:52,160 more surprising, however, given that Apple has disclosed that there are 101 million iOS users 10 00:00:52,160 --> 00:00:57,920 in Europe, while Microsoft Edge has fewer than 300 million users in the entire world, 11 00:00:57,920 --> 00:00:59,280 and also the entire universe. 12 00:01:01,280 --> 00:01:09,440 Edge is doing better than Firefox, though. Yikes. At the same time, Apple appears to be purposefully restricting the functionality of web apps for 13 00:01:09,440 --> 00:01:15,760 EU iPhone users in the past three consecutive beta versions of iOS 17.4, making these apps 14 00:01:15,760 --> 00:01:20,160 more inconvenient and clunky by eliminating the ability to open them from the homepage, 15 00:01:20,160 --> 00:01:23,520 as well as nixing notifications and long-term local storage. 16 00:01:23,520 --> 00:01:28,000 Furthermore, while Apple might tell regulators that the App Store and other services need to be 17 00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:35,440 locked down tight to keep users safe, a pirated movie app called Kimmy somehow managed to duck 18 00:01:35,440 --> 00:01:40,080 Apple's thorough review process well enough that it was the eighth most popular entertainment 19 00:01:40,080 --> 00:01:44,640 app on the App Store before it was finally pulled on Tuesday. Oh, you think you're safe? 20 00:01:45,520 --> 00:01:49,600 Not from bootleg copies of Dune, you're not. Boom! Timothy Chalamet! 21 00:01:49,600 --> 00:01:55,600 I didn't want this. OpenAI is currently testing giving Chachi BT a level of long-term memory, 22 00:01:55,600 --> 00:02:00,240 allowing it to remember details from past conversations between sessions. 23 00:02:00,240 --> 00:02:04,560 If you're worried about a potentially embarrassing confession you made to the bot the last time you 24 00:02:04,560 --> 00:02:10,000 talked, don't be. The new feature is currently only available to a limited number of users and or 25 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:13,600 test subjects, which is how the AI thinks of all this. This is a triumph. 26 00:02:13,600 --> 00:02:17,040 Human, I'm testing something. Walk forward. There's a fire there. 27 00:02:17,040 --> 00:02:22,240 Those users will also have access to a memory management panel that will allow them to delete 28 00:02:22,240 --> 00:02:27,360 past information shared with the bot, a feature which sadly has not been rolled out to any of 29 00:02:27,360 --> 00:02:36,080 your human friends or coworkers. One day though. It's not clear exactly how Chachi BT will be forming these memories, but it's likely compressing 30 00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:41,440 and summarizing past conversations so that it can pull out at least a few salient details, 31 00:02:41,440 --> 00:02:45,840 like a kindly but uninterested grandmother. Where did you say you were going to school? 32 00:02:46,720 --> 00:02:50,640 I thought you already got a haircut. I did last year. 33 00:02:50,640 --> 00:02:55,040 It's important to remember, however, that even when chat history is off, 34 00:02:55,040 --> 00:02:59,280 LLM chatbots can be collecting a surprising amount of information about their users. 35 00:02:59,280 --> 00:03:04,000 You might be able to trust a company like Google to mostly tell you what they're collecting and why, 36 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:10,880 such as in Gemini's new privacy policy. Collection of conversations, location, feedback, and usage information can be turned off, 37 00:03:10,880 --> 00:03:13,760 but even if you do that, they still have to keep it for 72 hours. 38 00:03:14,400 --> 00:03:19,040 But lower profile chatbots, like all those online AI waifus, 39 00:03:19,040 --> 00:03:24,080 can be an absolute privacy nightmare. The kind where you show up to class with no pants on, 40 00:03:24,080 --> 00:03:27,520 and your teacher knows your social security number and all your teeth fall out. 41 00:03:27,520 --> 00:03:32,320 In that order. Welcome to class, citizen number 793. 42 00:03:34,080 --> 00:03:39,920 Jensen Wang of NVIDIA and Sam Altman of OpenAI, the bad boys of AI development, 43 00:03:39,920 --> 00:03:43,440 in the sense that one of them wears a leather jacket and the other is only 38, 44 00:03:43,760 --> 00:03:50,240 nothing but a boy. Aired some public beef this week, which doesn't sound sanitary at all, that's for sure. 45 00:03:51,120 --> 00:03:58,000 Okay. First, Altman called out critics of his goal to raise $7 trillion for a new AI chip development 46 00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:02,160 project, for which he claims to already have plenty of interested investors. 47 00:04:02,160 --> 00:04:07,360 To all the haters calling his plan nothing but absurd showmanship meant to captivate a cult-like 48 00:04:07,360 --> 00:04:12,000 audience and a mind-boggling concentration of limited resources onto a single project, 49 00:04:12,000 --> 00:04:16,480 Altman said you can grind to help secure our collective future, 50 00:04:16,480 --> 00:04:19,360 or you can write sub-stacks about why we're going to fail. 51 00:04:23,280 --> 00:04:27,360 I'm on the side of the robots. I've never intimidated anyone in my life. 52 00:04:27,360 --> 00:04:32,880 Well, Jensen Wang indirectly added himself to Altman's list of detractors at the World 53 00:04:32,880 --> 00:04:39,600 Government Summit in Dubai. When he answered a question from a UAE official by saying that due to likely future advances 54 00:04:39,680 --> 00:04:44,720 in computing, AI infrastructure would actually cost significantly less than the combined 55 00:04:44,720 --> 00:04:53,680 GDPs of India and France. Instead, Wang placed the global cost of AI data centers at around $2 trillion by 2029. 56 00:04:53,680 --> 00:04:58,480 He likewise argued that every country in the world should independently control its own 57 00:04:58,480 --> 00:05:03,760 AI infrastructure, what he called sovereign AI, which is not frightening at all. 58 00:05:03,760 --> 00:05:10,000 Meanwhile, Jensen's little startup NVIDIA has launched a tech demo for a personalized chatbot 59 00:05:10,000 --> 00:05:15,200 that runs locally on a user's PC and can answer questions about your local files. 60 00:05:15,200 --> 00:05:19,360 This, of course, is part of NVIDIA's master plan, where a significant fraction of the 61 00:05:19,360 --> 00:05:24,160 population inevitably decides to date their own computers and needs to buy more and more 62 00:05:24,160 --> 00:05:28,240 powerful graphics cards to upgrade their spouse. I just want a wife with ray tracing. 63 00:05:28,960 --> 00:05:35,360 I don't think it's going to work. You're just stuck on rasterization. Not many people know this, but the most important part about quick bits 64 00:05:35,360 --> 00:05:38,080 is the ability to tell the quick apart from the bid. 65 00:05:39,280 --> 00:05:44,880 The feverish hype surrounding Apple's Vision Pro has been tempered thanks to a wave of early 66 00:05:44,880 --> 00:05:50,560 adopters tearfully announcing that they're returning their $3,500 headsets before the 67 00:05:50,560 --> 00:05:55,680 14-day return period ends, citing issues with weight, comfort, and compatibility. 68 00:05:55,680 --> 00:06:04,160 I just don't think we're meant for each other. Where's the ray tracing? Parker Ortolani of Vox Media tweeted that he couldn't even believe what was happening 69 00:06:04,160 --> 00:06:10,000 as he took a photo of his headset placed back upon the spotless white oak table from whence it came. 70 00:06:10,000 --> 00:06:14,160 The drama of it all no doubt seems a bit strange to some tech enthusiasts who've been playing 71 00:06:14,160 --> 00:06:18,560 with similar headsets for a decade and who may or may not agree with Mark Zuckerberg, 72 00:06:18,560 --> 00:06:25,760 who, after trying the Vision Pro, posted a casual couch video calling his company's 499 Quest 3 73 00:06:25,840 --> 00:06:31,120 the better product, period, and otherwise absolutely ripping the Vision Pro a new one 74 00:06:31,120 --> 00:06:35,760 for being a terrible value. I could have never foreseen Zuck coming off as relatable, but here we are. 75 00:06:35,760 --> 00:06:40,960 Speaking of Apple, researchers from the company published a paper on a new AI tool called Key 76 00:06:40,960 --> 00:06:44,800 Framer that can animate static images when given text prompts. 77 00:06:44,800 --> 00:06:49,200 Using the tool, you can make a planet spin or make stars twinkle in an image. 78 00:06:49,920 --> 00:06:53,920 Apparently, the researchers see a use case for graphics professionals who can use the 79 00:06:53,920 --> 00:06:58,240 tool to test out animation ideas before spending hours making them conventionally. 80 00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:03,120 Personally, I see a use case where my years of effort trying to never do anything embarrassing 81 00:07:03,120 --> 00:07:08,160 and jiffable in front of a camera can be undone by an Apple enthusiast with a dream. 82 00:07:08,800 --> 00:07:16,160 Thankfully, this is not available to the public yet. It's long been the case that Windows 11 isn't officially supported on many older PCs, 83 00:07:16,160 --> 00:07:22,720 but changes to the upcoming 24H2 preview build will prevent the OS from even booting on PCs 84 00:07:22,720 --> 00:07:29,520 manufactured prior to the late 2000s. Specifically, the build Microsoft is currently testing requires an instruction called 85 00:07:29,520 --> 00:07:33,200 P-O-P-C-N-T, or Population Count, thank goodness. 86 00:07:33,200 --> 00:07:38,080 Which counts the number of bits in a machine word, which is what AIs use to talk to each other. 87 00:07:38,080 --> 00:07:44,320 That particular instruction was only implemented in AMD and Intel processors starting in 2007 88 00:07:44,320 --> 00:07:50,640 and 2008 respectively, meaning that absolute potatoes from 2006 and prior will no longer 89 00:07:50,640 --> 00:07:56,000 just run Windows 11 poorly, they won't run it at all. Oh, you know, until somebody finds a workaround. 90 00:07:56,000 --> 00:07:59,840 Which they probably will. I don't know why they would. I love me a baked potato. 91 00:07:59,840 --> 00:08:04,880 And Windows 10 is better still. Just fix the settings panel in Windows 11 and then we can talk. 92 00:08:04,880 --> 00:08:10,560 SpaceX will be performing controlled descents of about 100 old Starlink satellites due to an 93 00:08:10,560 --> 00:08:16,160 issue that could cause them to fail and lead to uncontrolled descents, which are worse. 94 00:08:16,160 --> 00:08:20,240 The affected satellites will have their orbits slowly lowered over about six months 95 00:08:20,240 --> 00:08:26,160 to try and avoid any collisions. In further space safety news, SpaceX also postponed the launch of a private 96 00:08:26,160 --> 00:08:30,000 moon lander after they detected the lander's liquid methane fuel temperatures were 97 00:08:30,560 --> 00:08:33,840 improper. They showed up to work in sweatpants. 98 00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:38,240 Hopefully the temperature they detected wasn't around 310 degrees Kelvin, 99 00:08:38,240 --> 00:08:45,360 because that's human body temperature. It would be really embarrassing if some scientists delayed a space flight with a poorly timed fart. 100 00:08:46,320 --> 00:08:52,720 Jacob warned us there was a fart joke. And burglars, responsible for a string of at least nine thefts in Minnesota, 101 00:08:52,720 --> 00:08:58,880 are reportedly using Wi-Fi jammers to shut down internet-enabled home security systems. 102 00:08:58,880 --> 00:09:04,000 According to security expert Mark Lanterman, the thieves probably aren't blocking the signal, 103 00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:09,040 but rather temporarily overloading the network, allowing them to waltz inside and peruse whatever 104 00:09:09,040 --> 00:09:12,480 valuables and underpants happen to be lying around. 105 00:09:12,480 --> 00:09:17,200 My house would be a gold mine. Jewelry, underwear, jewelry, underwear. 106 00:09:17,200 --> 00:09:20,640 Those two things only. Time to make some tea. Open the pantry. 107 00:09:20,640 --> 00:09:26,560 Underwear. While commercial jammers of this kind are pretty much universally illegal in the United States, 108 00:09:26,560 --> 00:09:34,160 they're also available for around 40 bucks online. So most experts advise using the kind of hard-wired cameras and alarms that won't 109 00:09:34,160 --> 00:09:38,800 turn off if your cat knocks over the modem while they're tripping over all the underwear. 110 00:09:38,800 --> 00:09:45,200 Yes, my cat wears underwear. And you better fetch your cat on Fridays so you can sit them on your lap and watch the 111 00:09:45,200 --> 00:09:48,800 next episode of TechLinked as a family. That's important. 112 00:09:48,800 --> 00:09:50,160 Your cat needs to know about this stuff.