WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.680 It's time for tech news, where we bring you all the news and none of the old's from the world of technology. 00:00:05.680 --> 00:00:09.280 Oh, is that a VCR? Get it out of here! 00:00:09.280 --> 00:00:16.320 Blehh, it makes me nauseous! Amazon Web Services just announced its own chatbot, two new server chips, 00:00:16.320 --> 00:00:22.320 as well as an expansion of its partnership with NVIDIA to use their chips. Just in case. 00:00:22.320 --> 00:00:25.440 The new chips include the ARM-based Graviton 4, 00:00:25.440 --> 00:00:30.240 with 96 cores and up to 45% faster performance than its predecessor, 00:00:30.240 --> 00:00:36.880 and the Tranium 2, an AI accelerator with four times the performance and twice the energy efficiency. 00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:42.480 Announcing these chips while acting as if they're not going to drop NVIDIA as soon as they physically can 00:00:43.200 --> 00:00:48.640 actually isn't that weird. Being able to offer customers access to hardware from either company 00:00:48.640 --> 00:00:54.400 helps Amazon. What is weird is the name they gave their new enterprise-focused chatbot. 00:00:55.120 --> 00:01:00.480 Q. Now, if that sounds familiar, it may be because of last week's story about Open AI's 00:01:00.480 --> 00:01:06.320 secret algorithm called Q-Star, said to be a massive breakthrough in the development of AGI, 00:01:06.320 --> 00:01:11.840 which supposedly led to all that Sam Altman drama, although it's largely being dismissed as rumors 00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:15.760 now. AI researchers are notorious for their love of hot goss. 00:01:15.760 --> 00:01:20.960 They call it hallucinating! You will never guess what my chatbot said. Wow. 00:01:20.960 --> 00:01:26.720 Now, it's unlikely that Amazon's Q has anything to do with that, because it's not built on Open 00:01:26.720 --> 00:01:33.040 AI's tech, but rather on multiple LLMs from Anthropic and Meta, as well as Amazon's own 00:01:33.040 --> 00:01:41.120 Titan family of models. The Q name is apparently a reference to the character Q from James Bond, 00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:46.240 the franchise that Amazon owns through its subsidiary MGM. Because asking a chatbot to 00:01:46.240 --> 00:01:51.440 produce a questionably accurate summary of your Q4 sales is just like getting a cool laser watch. 00:01:52.160 --> 00:01:55.280 It's not. And I'm upset about it. I want the watch. 00:01:55.760 --> 00:02:01.040 Nearly 4,000 auto dealers throughout the U.S. have published an open letter asking the federal 00:02:01.040 --> 00:02:07.280 government to slow down its plans for mass EV adoption, because even with a significant tax 00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:14.240 credit subsidy, unsold EVs are clogging their lots, like oil clogged dinosaur arteries millions 00:02:14.240 --> 00:02:21.440 of years ago. That's how they died. Strangely, U.S. EV sales are on course to hit a record 00:02:21.440 --> 00:02:28.160 high this year, at 9% of all vehicles sold. Yet those are still rookie numbers, compared to EVs 00:02:28.160 --> 00:02:36.080 making up 33% of vehicle sales in China, 35% in Germany, and 90% in Norway. Those guys love 00:02:36.080 --> 00:02:43.360 electricity. They shock themselves for fun. Oh, Sven, stop! The White House wants half of new 00:02:43.360 --> 00:02:50.080 cars sold in the U.S. to be EVs by 2032, and nine states have plans to ban the sale of new 00:02:50.080 --> 00:02:56.320 gasoline vehicles by 2035, not including plug-in hybrids. Now, this wouldn't eliminate gas vehicles, 00:02:56.320 --> 00:03:01.360 because the average car stays on the road for around 12 years, which may come as a shock if you, 00:03:01.360 --> 00:03:05.920 like the writer of this episode, Jessica, own a car that's old enough to legally marry. 00:03:05.920 --> 00:03:13.120 But still young enough to date Leonardo DiCaprio? I hope you get to drive it down the aisle one day. 00:03:13.120 --> 00:03:18.320 The federal government has earmarked $5 billion to invest in a national network of charging 00:03:18.320 --> 00:03:23.600 stations, but most people are buying new cars for where they can go now, not where they think 00:03:23.600 --> 00:03:28.400 they might be able to go a few years from now. Hybrids, meanwhile, are apparently flying off 00:03:28.400 --> 00:03:33.920 the shelves even faster than traditional gas vehicles, validating the more cautious approach of 00:03:33.920 --> 00:03:39.360 Akio Toyoda, chairman of Toyota, who isn't saying, I told you so, 00:03:39.360 --> 00:03:41.200 but that's probably because he's speaking Japanese. 00:03:45.360 --> 00:03:51.920 Online developer conference DevTernity has been cancelled following the revelation that an organizer, 00:03:51.920 --> 00:03:58.160 Eduard Cizovs, apparently just made up several female speakers at the conference, 00:03:58.160 --> 00:04:02.160 fabricating their biographies and credentials entirely from whole cloth. 00:04:02.160 --> 00:04:05.280 If he had used cloth, that might have been a bit better. It was just nothing. 00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:13.760 These fake speakers first came to broad attention after Gerge Oroch, 00:04:13.760 --> 00:04:19.200 writer of tech newsletter Pragmatic Engineering, pointed out on Twitter that two out of three 00:04:19.200 --> 00:04:25.360 of the event's female speakers didn't appear to exist. Not only that, but many female speakers 00:04:25.360 --> 00:04:31.200 at other events, run by the same organizer, didn't exist either, except as a fake bio and 00:04:31.200 --> 00:04:37.120 an AI-generated image of a pretty young woman. At least one of the fake women, Julia Cursina, 00:04:37.120 --> 00:04:42.640 had a social media account that often posted the exact same content as that of the organizer, 00:04:42.640 --> 00:04:47.600 word for word, but with the addition of a flirty wink or kiss emoji. 00:04:48.560 --> 00:04:50.960 Are you a woman and haven't been using those? You're doing it wrong. 00:04:52.320 --> 00:04:58.560 Cizovs claimed that one of the fake women was a demo persona from their test website 00:04:58.560 --> 00:05:04.000 that was mistakenly included in the speaker list. Yeah, he totally wasn't trying to catfish 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:08.400 prominent male tech speakers with inclusivity requirements into participating in his conference 00:05:08.400 --> 00:05:13.600 by pretending that a bunch of hot chicks were going to be there. Who would do that? 00:05:13.600 --> 00:05:19.040 He's doing totally cool guys. It's an online only conference. 00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:25.280 What now? What is it boy? The quick bits fell down a well? It's the sixth time this week. 00:05:26.240 --> 00:05:32.000 Apple has reportedly sent a proposal to Goldman Sachs to end their banking partnership within 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:36.240 the next 12 to 15 months, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to the Wall 00:05:36.240 --> 00:05:41.040 Street Journal. That doesn't necessarily mean that Apple's savings accounts and credit cards 00:05:41.040 --> 00:05:45.840 are coming to an end, just that Apple would need to find another issuing partner sometime over 00:05:45.840 --> 00:05:50.480 the coming year. It would be a major surprise, however, because the program was extended to 00:05:50.560 --> 00:05:56.480 2029 only last year as part of Goldman's Pivot to Main Street, where they would offer services 00:05:56.480 --> 00:06:02.800 to retail customers, aka people without yachts. However, shortly after that effort led to 00:06:02.800 --> 00:06:08.480 significant losses, leading Goldman to really reconsider this whole working with the pores 00:06:08.480 --> 00:06:13.200 thing. It's just not reliable. Was it the whales? Did the whales get your yacht too? 00:06:14.240 --> 00:06:20.400 Some U.S. Postal Service offices are apparently unable to deliver mail on time because of a service 00:06:20.400 --> 00:06:26.080 agreement to cheaply deliver packages for Amazon in rural areas. In November, this deal was 00:06:26.080 --> 00:06:32.240 implemented in Bemidji, Minnesota, where carriers are now being told to prioritize Amazon packages 00:06:32.240 --> 00:06:37.120 and being forced to work overtime with scheduled sick days banned for the rest of the year. 00:06:37.120 --> 00:06:41.760 Delivery companies in San Juan County, Washington are accusing Amazon of diverting 00:06:41.760 --> 00:06:47.760 more packages to USPS since November as the county's post offices face similar issues. 00:06:47.760 --> 00:06:52.880 But don't worry, any overworked mail carriers with prime memberships can get same-day delivery 00:06:52.880 --> 00:06:59.040 on a new piss jug. Sony has announced a new firmware license that will allow photography 00:06:59.040 --> 00:07:06.560 enthusiasts to add four custom original grid lines to their Alpha 7.4 camera's viewfinder, 00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:14.640 all for the low low price of $150 for a JPEG, sorry, PNG. 00:07:14.640 --> 00:07:20.800 A7-4 users have been asking for more significant firmware updates, but this is probably not what 00:07:20.800 --> 00:07:26.400 they had in mind. According to Sony, these fancy new lines will help shutterbugs take more consistent 00:07:26.400 --> 00:07:31.280 photos. In their announcement, Sony then listed a random assortment of places you could take those 00:07:31.280 --> 00:07:38.800 photos, like schools, photo studios, theme parks, cruise ships, and malls, followed by a bunch of 00:07:38.800 --> 00:07:43.280 large block quotes in a manner that says, be student desperately trying to fill a word count. 00:07:45.200 --> 00:07:52.960 Think of all the things you could take pictures of. I mean, rocks. Maybe it is worth 150 bucks. 00:07:52.960 --> 00:08:00.240 Benchmarks for the first Ryzen Z1 mini PC, the Phoenix Edge, are out. Unfortunately, 00:08:00.240 --> 00:08:06.160 even though the unit is rated for 54 watts, testing by YouTuber ETA Prime indicates it 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:12.080 maxes out at 40 watts before throttling. The Ryzen Z1 is best known for powering the 00:08:12.160 --> 00:08:18.480 non-extreme version of the ROG Ally. The manufacturer has plans for an Z1 extreme mini PC, 00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:22.480 likely meaning that this particular product is going straight into the bargain bin if it ever 00:08:22.480 --> 00:08:30.720 manages to hit shelves. Dried. So we're going to miss. And a web browser for Android TV keeps 00:08:30.720 --> 00:08:38.560 getting banned for being a web browser. First, Israeli TV companies DMCA the app called Downloader 00:08:38.560 --> 00:08:45.120 for allowing users to view a pirating website. Just looking at it. You can't do that with other 00:08:45.120 --> 00:08:51.680 browsers. And this week, an anti-piracy group called MarkScan issued a DMCA because Downloader 00:08:51.680 --> 00:08:56.800 was infringing on the copyrighted work of properties of Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. 00:08:56.800 --> 00:09:02.720 and an authorized example of the work could be seen at WarnerBros.com. You can't actually 00:09:02.720 --> 00:09:09.680 watch anything on Warner Bros. website. So I guess they're accusing Downloader of accessing a website. 00:09:10.240 --> 00:09:18.000 Man, wait until they find out about Google Chrome. It can access all the websites. Google.com, 00:09:18.720 --> 00:09:24.960 Rocks. And you'll have to wait until Friday to find out more tech news. I mean, unless you go 00:09:24.960 --> 00:09:33.680 somewhere else for your news, but you wouldn't do that, right? It would be kind of cringe.