WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.400 We hope you enjoy this episode of tech news, but if you don't, we'll send you a voucher 00:00:04.400 --> 00:00:08.640 for a half penny of laundry detergent in the currency of your choosing. 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:11.360 So it's a win-win. What do you get to lose? 00:00:12.080 --> 00:00:17.440 CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that famously crowd-struck millions of computers 00:00:17.440 --> 00:00:22.000 with a faulty update late last week, is reportedly offering affected clients 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:28.000 a $10 Uber Eats voucher for their next cup of coffee or late-night snack. 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:32.000 While they're still at the office losing their minds trying to fix stuff. 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:37.760 It's not clear from publicly available information whether this voucher was offered to some or all 00:00:37.760 --> 00:00:43.280 employees at the affected companies, though presumably all of Delta Airlines isn't splitting 00:00:43.280 --> 00:00:48.160 that $10 between themselves. Furthermore, at least some people who got the voucher reported 00:00:48.160 --> 00:00:52.720 that they got an error message saying it had been canceled when they went to redeem it, 00:00:52.720 --> 00:00:57.600 possibly because the attached QR code was otherwise infinitely reusable. 00:00:57.600 --> 00:01:04.880 Insurance companies estimate that last Friday's outage cost US Fortune 500 companies $5.4 billion, 00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:09.840 slightly more than the price of a grande macchiato plus delivery fees. 00:01:10.880 --> 00:01:15.600 Just a little bit. Notably, that's an estimate that doesn't yet include Microsoft. 00:01:15.600 --> 00:01:21.280 CrowdStrike has released a detailed post-incident review that points to a bug in its test software, 00:01:21.280 --> 00:01:25.600 which failed to appropriately validate the content update before it caused the global 00:01:25.600 --> 00:01:32.560 economy to microdose the Y2K crash. Unsurprisingly, Congress has issued a summons to CrowdStrike CEO 00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:38.960 George Kurtz to give public testimony and explain himself this very instant young man. 00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:44.000 Google has abruptly announced that it will be scrapping its plan to eliminate third-party 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:49.440 cookies in Chrome, despite competing browsers like Firefox and Safari having blocked third-party 00:01:49.440 --> 00:01:55.120 trackers by default for years. Google originally announced the phase-out back in 2020, saying 00:01:55.120 --> 00:02:00.640 that it needed time to work out a mutually agreeable solution with advertisers. The solution 00:02:00.640 --> 00:02:06.080 was supposed to be Google's Privacy Sandbox, which replaces third-party tracking with first-party 00:02:06.080 --> 00:02:11.280 tracking within Chrome. It's much, much easier just to have Google have all the data instead. 00:02:11.280 --> 00:02:16.880 While arguably more secure, this would give Google an unprecedented, some might say monopolistic, 00:02:16.880 --> 00:02:21.680 level of control over this data, raising concerns among competitors and regulators. 00:02:21.760 --> 00:02:25.920 Likewise, some privacy researchers found that, despite Google's safeguards, 00:02:25.920 --> 00:02:31.360 the output of the Privacy Sandbox could still be reverse engineered to identify and track specific 00:02:31.360 --> 00:02:37.440 users. That's the whole point. Google now says that they instead plan to introduce a new feature 00:02:37.440 --> 00:02:42.080 that will allow users to make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, 00:02:42.080 --> 00:02:47.120 though what that could possibly mean is currently unclear. Some have speculated that Google might 00:02:47.120 --> 00:02:52.960 offer users a choice between cookies and the sandbox, like a dystopian surveillance state 00:02:52.960 --> 00:02:58.240 grandma. If you pick the cookies, you can't go in the sandbox. They don't mix. You'll wear down your 00:02:58.240 --> 00:03:04.640 teeth. Meta has launched a new version of their flagship AI model, and the people are excited. 00:03:04.640 --> 00:03:13.840 Llama 3.1 405B is the first GPT-4 class LLM that everyday users can freely download and run locally 00:03:13.840 --> 00:03:18.960 on their own computers. That is, of course, if they've got a cutting-edge AI server running 00:03:18.960 --> 00:03:25.040 out of their bedroom closet, because the B in 405B stands for billion parameters. 00:03:25.040 --> 00:03:32.000 According to AB evaluation against current models from OpenAI and Anthropic, Llama 3.1 405B 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:38.720 seems to hold its own. But while this new version of Llama is impressive and it is openly available, 00:03:38.720 --> 00:03:44.240 what it is not is open source. No matter how many times Mark Zuckerberg says that it is, 00:03:44.240 --> 00:03:49.360 you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. That's a reference. 00:03:49.360 --> 00:03:54.160 Inconceivable. Inconceivable. I put the poison in your drink. It's open source. 00:03:54.800 --> 00:04:00.480 It's open source. Llama's weights are available for anyone to run and refine, but users will have 00:04:00.480 --> 00:04:05.440 to agree to a license and acceptable use policy, making projects built using Llama 00:04:05.440 --> 00:04:11.760 potentially subject to Meta's whims. As part of his 2000-word essay on the value of 00:04:11.760 --> 00:04:17.200 open source AI, Zuckerberg likewise addressed the concern that these open weights might be 00:04:17.200 --> 00:04:23.280 misused by China, but argued that the benefits of fostering innovation outweigh the risks, 00:04:24.160 --> 00:04:32.240 mostly because China is just going to steal them anyway. Old Zuck's just using his usual reptilian charm to say something arguably true in the 00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:37.520 least comforting way possible. Although he comforts me somewhat now, he looks like a surfer bro. 00:04:37.520 --> 00:04:43.040 Those are my people. Wavy locks. Don't worry about it bro. It's open source. This is totally chill. 00:04:43.040 --> 00:04:48.000 Come on my boat. I'm not going to lay eggs in your chest cavity. It's totally fine. Come on my 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:52.080 dorky boat. If comfort's what you're looking for, then you're going to want to check out our 00:04:52.080 --> 00:04:57.680 sponsor. Remember, the quick bits aren't spying on you and any resemblance to your previous 00:04:57.760 --> 00:05:05.760 conversations is purely coincidental. The FTC has launched a probe into what it calls 00:05:05.760 --> 00:05:10.240 surveillance pricing, which is kind of like if surge pricing followed you home and watched 00:05:10.240 --> 00:05:14.640 you eat dinner with your family. Just like I do every night. We've talked about this. 00:05:14.640 --> 00:05:19.840 Services like Uber increase prices during peaks in activity, but surveillance pricing 00:05:19.840 --> 00:05:25.760 is personalized, using algorithms to rapidly change prices for individual customers based on 00:05:26.160 --> 00:05:30.880 data collected about them. The FTC has served eight companies, including Mastercard and JP 00:05:30.880 --> 00:05:36.480 Morgan Chase, with mandatory requests to see if that's what they're doing. And I really hope 00:05:36.480 --> 00:05:40.720 they don't find anything. I really thought Mastercard was one of the good ones. 00:05:40.720 --> 00:05:45.600 Companies who have integrated Microsoft's co-pilot AI assistant into their workflows 00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:51.600 have told Bloomberg that they're still struggling to figure out how to use the darn thing. For one 00:05:51.600 --> 00:05:56.560 thing, they've got to feed it a lot of data so it performs well without having that data accessed 00:05:56.560 --> 00:06:01.680 by hackers or Toby the intern who was only hired because he's the boss's nephew and he is not 00:06:01.680 --> 00:06:06.880 going to last long. Got him photocopying his butt again. He won't stop. Damn it, Toby. We're out of 00:06:06.880 --> 00:06:12.320 paper. Co-pilot also struggles to understand context and execute commands involving multiple 00:06:12.320 --> 00:06:18.320 apps. This all sounds like AI tools are overhyped and under-delivering, but that can't be right. 00:06:18.320 --> 00:06:23.920 Hey, Microsoft, try announcing co-pilot again. It's a new service. Never heard of before. 00:06:23.920 --> 00:06:29.600 NVIDIA's GPU board partners are skimping on thermal paste, causing RTX 40 series graphics 00:06:29.600 --> 00:06:35.680 cards to lose performance over time, according to an investigation by Igor's Lab. Not only are 00:06:35.680 --> 00:06:42.000 RTX 40 series graphics card makers like ASUS, PNY, and Pilot using low-quality paste whose 00:06:42.000 --> 00:06:46.960 thermal conductivity significantly worsens after a few months, they didn't even bother to squeeze 00:06:46.960 --> 00:06:53.600 enough of it on the GPU and squish it on there correctly, causing hotspots and thermal throttling. 00:06:53.600 --> 00:06:59.520 When Igor squeegee the stock paste and squooched better paste on himself, that doesn't sound 00:06:59.520 --> 00:07:05.520 right. Hotspot temperatures lowered by nearly 30 degrees Celsius, proving high clocks are nothing 00:07:05.520 --> 00:07:10.320 if you're not properly mashing that good ooze on there. That gooze, if you will. The gooze. 00:07:10.560 --> 00:07:18.880 Gooze it. Search engines that are not Google are currently unable to get recent results from Reddit, 00:07:18.880 --> 00:07:24.960 as spotted by 404Media, thanks to the exclusive deal Reddit made with Google earlier this year. 00:07:24.960 --> 00:07:31.040 That means Bing, DuckDuckGo, uh-oh, there's not enough non-Google-related search engines 00:07:31.040 --> 00:07:40.240 that are popular enough to be recognizable, Quant, and Kagi? They can only surface Reddit posts from 00:07:40.240 --> 00:07:46.240 before the last few weeks. This sucks, but honestly, at this point I'm glad Reddit didn't make a deal 00:07:46.240 --> 00:07:54.880 with Mojeek. And during a recent interview, venture capitalist Mark Andresen of Andresen 00:07:54.880 --> 00:08:03.040 Horowitz expressed that comedy has basically died, but maybe, just maybe, AI could save the day. 00:08:03.040 --> 00:08:08.000 Soon, you'll be able to write and render an episode of animation the same quality as South 00:08:08.400 --> 00:08:14.640 Park 20 years ago, quote, in basically half an hour. Man, remember South Park and Beavis and 00:08:14.640 --> 00:08:21.440 Butthead and Futurama? What, they're still on the air? All of them? I'm going to make worse versions. 00:08:21.440 --> 00:08:28.000 To be fair, AI can be pretty funny, though usually accidentally, like Deep AI's comedian chatbot, 00:08:28.000 --> 00:08:33.920 which follows every single joke with an open bracket pause for laughter closed bracket. 00:08:33.920 --> 00:08:40.000 And I can tell it's a man because it ends every set with open bracket, wink, closed bracket. 00:08:40.880 --> 00:08:47.760 Wait, was that a joke? Oh, but that's why you should come back on Friday for more human-generated 00:08:47.760 --> 00:08:53.520 tech news, open bracket, mustachioed, smolder, closed bracket.