A day without tech news is like a day without vitamin C.
It's fine to skip once or twice, but eventually all your teeth are gonna fall out.
In an astounding moment of unity, Meta, Microsoft, Twitter, and Match Group
have come together in a joint filing to support Epic Games in its legal fight against Apple.
It's like the Super Friends, and Match Group, owners of Tinder and Hedge,
is very much the Aquaman. According to the new filing,
Apple's current plan addresses neither the letter
nor the spirit of the 2021 California Antitrust case
that required Apple to allow alternate payment systems
on its platform in the first place. Indeed, according to the League of Extraordinary Corporations,
Apple has imposed numerous onerous requirements
before developers can even be eligible to include an external payment link with their app.
Apple has been on the receiving end of a lot of recent regulatory scrutiny,
but the company's responses have been complex and case-by-case, a combination of malicious compliance,
strategic concessions, and involving themselves in the regulatory process.
Apple heavily supported California's model right to repair legislation,
which contains carve-outs for favorite Apple tactics,
such as parts pairing. And today the company launched a new documentation page
with extensive links to user guides, repair manuals, and software downloads.
Now, following the ITC banning the import
of several models of the Apple Watch for patent infringement, Apple is lobbying to change the rules governing the ITC
and to limit its power. I mean, they're a corporation. You can't regulate Apple.
Not if Apple regulates you first.
Uh, but uh, yeah. In a recent interview with Lex Friedman,
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed that his company's upcoming GPT-5 model
will be as much a jump forward from the current GPT-4 model
as GPT-4 was from GPT-3, saying that GPT-4's current capabilities
kind of suck compared to where they need to be.
Need to be for what? To quote one of our nation's greatest philosophical minds, Shania Twain.
That don't impress me much. These are bold claims,
especially considering that business insider is reporting that GPT-5 could launch
as soon as this summer, according to their sources, close to the company.
Of course, the model is apparently still undergoing training
and could be delayed for any number of reasons, like if it proves to be too inaccurate,
or if it starts talking about human beings as worms unworthy of witnessing its radiance.
It's happened before. And there's at least some reason to think
that OpenAI isn't being as careful as it could be with its newest products,
like the GPT store, which since launching in January
has become an unmoderated fire hose of low-effort knockoffs
and potential copyright infringement, just like it's dad.
Chat GPT. NVIDIA's Blackwell B200,
the world's most powerful chip unveiled by CEO Jensen Wong on Monday,
will reportedly use the same TSMC process
as the upcoming RTX 50 series of gaming graphics cards,
which most of us are more excited about since the loan required to buy them is a bit smaller.
It's just one kidney, Michael, what could it cost? Somewhat reliable leaker,
Copight 7 Kimmy tweeted that the GP202,
the chip rumored to power the RTX 5090, will be built, like the AI-focused B200,
on the TSMC 4N node, which is not a three-nanometer node,
like all the rumors said, but it's also not a four-nanometer node.
It's actually an NVIDIA exclusive derivative of TSMC's five-nanometer process
because this is chip manufacturing, where everything's made up and the meters don't matter.
Regardless, Professor Copight,
which is what I like to say, says the Blackwell chips should feature a 30% increase
in transistor density, which I'm sure will more than justify buying an RTX 5090
instead of the Rivian R3X. Why do I want it so bad?
It's so cool, okay. But hey, at least it'll probably be cheaper
than the B200, which Jensen casually mentioned would cost $30,000 to $40,000,
about the price of a gallon of milk, he thinks, but he's not sure.
He hasn't been to a grocery store in a while. That guy probably doesn't know nearly as much about milk as we do.
But ask him about leather jackets, oh boy. I didn't want to reveal this,
but I have a terrible allergy to quick bits. I try to push through the unbearable itching
for you fine people at home. Okay, enjoy it.
Glassdoor, the platform for anonymously reviewing
your employers, has decided to ditch the anonymously part
without anyone's consent. This month, a Glassdoor user emailed customer support
to get information removed from her Glassdoor account,
only for Glassdoor support team to take the real name she gave during correspondence
and add it to her Glassdoor profile against her explicit wishes.
Apparently, Glassdoor is trying to integrate with networking site Fishbowl,
which makes just perfect sense.
This was you bad-mouthing your previous employer, right?
Love your conviction. It's kind of like dating. The best way to convince someone to go out with you
is to complain about your ex. YouTube will now require creators to disclose
whether their content is made with altered or synthetic media, including generative AI,
or at least they're sort of doing that? Only realistic content, something a viewer could easily mistake
for a real person, place, scene, or event, needs to be marked if it is AI generated.
Meanwhile, sloppy AI animations meant to profit off
of YouTube's massive child audience, I'm gonna pass.
What, did you expect YouTube to do more than the bare minimum?
This must be your first day here. Welcome, here's a video about Elsa and Spider-Man.
The Hackintosh is mostly dead.
I shouldn't joke about this, this is serious. According to iOS developer Alexander Vatsich,
if you don't know, a Hackintosh is a non-Apple computer
or device running macOS, a.k.a. the best way to use macOS.
Ooh, I don't know about that, MacBooks are pretty good.
Unfortunately, the latest version of the operating system has removed driver support
for old Wi-Fi cards, which were the key ingredient
to many functioning builds, according to Vatsich. Personally, I thought the Hackintosh community would die
when Apple switched from Intel to their own Silicon. I guess I underestimated how far people would go
to not spend thousands on overpriced hardware. Go figure.
TinyCorp, makers of the TinyBox AI server system,
have given AMD a deadline of the end of this week
to open source its Radeon firmware, or it might just decide to switch from Radeon graphics cards
to an NVIDIA or Intel alternative.
Yeah. Take that. Watch it, Lisa.
This follows extensive back and forth between the two companies and complaints from TinyBox
that AMD's driver updates still haven't addressed the bugs
in their AI acceleration toolkit. While NVIDIA probably doesn't care,
Intel would probably be ecstatic to snatch up that silver medal.
Somebody use these. That's rude. People are using them and they like them.
There are dozens of us. And the White House is warning state governors
about a spate of cyber attacks affecting America's critical
dihydrogen monoxide infrastructure. Not a spate.
Both freshwater and wastewater. Last month, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency
revealed that Chinese government backed hackers had been hiding in critical infrastructure networks
for as long as five years. Among the pipes?
They were in the wall like in Dune. Tried to kill my son, tried to drink our water.
Look, I'm not saying that your toilet is spying on you for the CCP,
but you need to be aware of the risk. But there's no risk in coming back on Friday
for another episode of Tech News. It will only affect your social credit score
for the better.