Hey, TechLinked, Riley here. How often does tech news ooze out of the ground
so it can be harvested and processed for transport?
Three times a week. I do not have a full beard.
Apple has sued leaker and YouTuber John Prosser,
who shared details and unofficial renders of iOS 26,
which was presumed at the time to be called iOS 19, understandable, on his Genius Bar podcast
and his front-page tech YouTube channel. The leaks got enough attention
that they were called not representative of the real thing
by the prime leaker, the GERM smacker, Mark of the GERMs.
But people leak Apple stuff all the time. So why is Apple suddenly choosing John for prosecution?
I'm sorry. Well, in their lawsuit, Apple says they got
an anonymous email naming Prosser, his associate Michael Ramachiotti
and Ramachiotti's friend ex-Apple employee, Ethan Lipnick.
The suit also cites an audio message sent to Lipnick from Ramachiotti claiming that Prosser wanted him
to somehow get access to Lipnick's development iPhone
and the tasty trade secrets contained therein.
Now, who knows what the truth is because while Prosser obviously did receive trade secrets
somehow, he denies these specific allegations,
tweeting that he didn't plot to access anyone's phone
and he says he's got receipts. He then posted a screenshot where he asked someone,
presumably Ramallamachiotti, how the hell did you get this LOL?
Which, fair enough, is usually not something you say
to someone with whom you schemed and planned ways to get the this in question.
US President Donald Trump has signed the Genius Act,
the first federal law to put rules in place for stable coins, which is cryptocurrency
that ties its value to, say, the US dollar or gold
or something else that is less likely to be worth absolutely nothing after a Paul brother tweets out
the digital equivalent of a wet fart. Trump has been pushing hard for regulation
that would legitimize cryptocurrencies in the eyes of more investors,
only because he thinks crypto is really good and not because it would be beneficial
to the crypto ventures he's launched in the past year, no. But regardless of the president's motivations,
the Genius Act represents the beginning of the end of the Wild West era of crypto
and it'll hopefully do something to prevent more people
from dumping their life savings into meme coins that are immediately rug pulled.
It was literally called scam coin, Richard.
Two other crypto bills are still working their way through Congress, but Trump doesn't need those
to reap the benefits of the USD-1 stable coin
launched by his, I'm sorry, his son's crypto business,
World Liberty Financial, this is all normal. Lots of AI news to talk about.
OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Agent,
a new tool that lets ChatGPT use its very own computer
because ChatGPT, you've been so good lately.
You only make up random bulls*** when you're really upset.
Agent is even more capable than the operator tool,
which launched in January and let ChatGPT control a web browser and that went okay.
So they're letting ChatGPT go deeper into the machine
and probably just gonna keep doing that until something breaks.
Meanwhile, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarando said
in the company's latest earnings call that one of their originals,
the Argentinian sci-fi film, The Eternot,
used special effects generated by AI.
Sarando said that sequence, showing a building collapsing,
is the very first gen AI final footage
to appear on screen in a Netflix original.
Well, except for the pretty obvious AI images
almost certainly used in last year's Netflix documentary,
What Jennifer Did, but the creators still deny that.
So, at least they're telling us now.
Meta, meanwhile, is telling the EU it won't be signing the European Commission's
code of practice for general purpose AI,
which would have meant committing to things like providing documentation about Meta's AI tools
and not training AI on pirated content.
It's simply untenable. Well, today, the Commission published guidelines
to help AI companies prepare for the rollout of its AI Act regulation on August 2nd,
which it previously indicated was gonna happen
whether Meta's on board or not. So, I don't know if your thing is getting steamrolled.
I'm sure Grock can generate a steamy fanfic for ya.
Now, can we do the QuickBits Mark?
Come on, QuickBits time! This week, the news non-profit ProPublica
published a deep dive on a Microsoft US government contract
that involved using software engineers based in China
to maintain defense department systems.
Now, that's a bit sketchy, so the solution was apparently to pair the engineers
with digital escorts, which were not
Grock's not-safe-for-work 3D avatars, but rather US citizens with the proper security clearances,
but not very much technical expertise.
Current and former escorts told ProPublica stuff like,
we're trusting that what they're doing isn't malicious, but we really can't tell.
After Senator Tom Cotton sent this report to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth,
he miraculously managed to engage all four of his brain cells to tweet
that this shouldn't happen anymore. Then today, Microsoft Chief Communications Officer Frank Shaw
said, okay, they'll stop. Hopefully, China also didn't notice
this was happening until now. Delta Airlines says it's been testing an AI-powered system
for individualized pricing that analyzes a customer's profile
and charges the maximum amount it thinks you and only you are willing to pay.
Delta was only testing this system on 3% of its total fares,
but it wants to bring that up to 20% by the end of the year.
Unless it can be proven that Delta is offering people different rates based on certain characteristics,
like sex or ethnicity, this system isn't technically illegal,
but it doesn't need to be to fundamentally undermine the idea of a fair market,
which is technically bullshit. Microsoft, one more time,
has closed down its movies and TV storefronts
on Xbox consoles and Windows. Users will no longer be able to purchase content
through the app, but the company says they will still be able to watch
anything they've already paid for. For how long?
Intel Microsoft feels like not making that the case.
There was never a buy and a rent option. They're both rent.
It's rent all the way down, and thousands of very cheap VV bikes sold at Walmart
and Amazon have been recalled after multiple reports
of the bike batteries overheating and catching fire.
I can only hope those batteries are different than the ones shown in this video by Chinese company Ubtech,
in which its Walker S2 Humanoid robot is shown replacing its own battery.
Those batteries catching on fire would make this an even more appropriate entry
in my favorite video series, existential anxiety inducers.
You wanna reduce my anxiety? Come back on Monday for more tech news.
I won't know if you're going to come back until you do though,
so I'll just have to keep it together somehow over the weekend.
But how will I feel on Monday? My fate is in your hands. Bye bye.