Oh my gosh, wow, oh my gosh, wow, the tech news today.
It made me do that. When have you ever seen me do that?
So that's how you know.
Microsoft's Windows 11 February update has led to reports of failed installations,
broken network connections and cryptic errors, proving that as a public holiday,
Patch Tuesday is less Easter and more lent.
You're supposed to refrain from eating while you atone for your computer's sins.
Microsoft, bless their hearts, says everything's fixed
and points to their known issues page. But Reddit and the Microsoft Answers forums
tell a different story. We're talking Wi-Fi connecting with no actual internet,
Bluetooth controllers straight up disappearing mid session
and at least one sysadmin on Reddit saying there was a three out of five chance
his task bar would just disappear. Can you find a way to get it back?
It's like a game. Sure, some of these problems could be lingering issues left over
from last month's file explorer breaking update,
but that doesn't exactly make Microsoft look better here.
But I don't know, maybe the devs are just busy with actually important things,
like deleting official blog posts that recommended people train AI models
on pirated Harry Potter books. Blimey co-pilot, didn't you wonder
where your parents learned it all? Learned what?
You're a chatbot co-pilot. I'm a what?
A chatbot! And a thumpin' s**t when I'd wager?
Oh. Met a CEO and former Inzmouth resident,
Mark Zuckerberg, took the stand on Wednesday in a landmark social media addiction trial
where a 20 year old plaintiff is alleging that Instagram's design worsened her depression
and thoughts of self-harm. Zuck, seen here exiting the courtroom
wearing his dad's suit, told the jury I care about the well-being of teens and kids
who are using our services, pointing to an email he sent Tim Apple in 2018
to chat about child safety. Remember that, Tim?
Yeah, fish boy, what a great guy.
Thank you, Tim. Zuckerberg also admitted that Metta may have once set goals
around increasing time spent by users,
but that's no longer how they operate. Probably because they already tuned the hell
out of the dopamine machine that is Instagram. That's things crank, it's working well.
The trial's been generally rocky for the puppet-turned-billionaire
with the prosecution showing the jury an internal Facebook email from 2017 stating,
Mark has decided the top priority for the company is teens.
Bad phrasing. Phrasing! On top of that, the judge scolded him and his entourage
for wearing camera-equipped Ray-Ban Metta glasses
into the courtroom, threatening to hold them in contempt
as you may be aware of this, recording courtroom proceedings
is often illegal, which, to be fair, is not something big tech bros are often concerned about.
Former Metta VP Brian Boland, though, seems like maybe one of the good ones,
he took the stand after spending 11 years
helping build Metta's ad machine.
So, okay, maybe, I don't know, jury's out on him.
He told the jury that Zuckerberg fostered a culture
that prioritized growth over user safety
and that when concerns about harm came up, the primary response was to manage the press cycle
rather than actually investigate the problem. Boland left the company in 2020 walking away
from over $10 million in unvested stock.
Imagine how unlikable Zuckerberg must be
for someone to walk away from $10 million.
I feel like that wins the court case right there. We've seen enough.
You may have seen a bunch of headlines and circulation about how headphones are poisonous now or something,
but don't worry, we looked into it. So an EU-funded coalition of Central European consumer groups
tested 81 pairs of headphones and found harmful chemicals in every single one.
They tested products from well-known brands like Bose, Samsung, and Sennheiser,
but also stuff like off-brand children's headphones from Timu, which was apparently one of the worst offenders.
So that's nice. BPA, the bad chemical that every water bottle now
has to assure you it does not contain, showed up in 98% of samples,
along with other bad boys like phthalates, chlorinated paraffins, and flame retardants,
some of which can migrate through your skin,
especially when you sweat. Now, while that does sound concerning,
some have pointed out a couple methodologically weird things
with the study and just because headphones contain a chemical doesn't mean that it's going to get into your body
and poison you. Nevertheless, certain media outlets
have been sensationalizing the issue. PC Gamer went with, all headphones are toxic.
Tom's guide said you should ditch your headphones for speakers and the Guardian summarized
the study's concerns as being partially about the risk of the feminization of males.
Oh no! Which predictably sent Reddit into a spiral.
Now, if you take the time to read it, the report is pretty reasonable.
They're pointing out the companies are cramming in as much of these regulated chemicals as they can
without getting in trouble and then shifting to equally bad but unregulated substitutes
when they get caught. Talks Free wants greater regulation
to close loopholes like this. And we feel that it's important to point out
that while some outlets may be overblowing the danger to society,
the study itself brings some important issues to light and maybe should be taken seriously,
perhaps even more seriously than our sponsor.
Wow. I just saw what the quick bits are today and...
I'm still pretty crazy. We're going, ah!
Intel has announced that it's moving certain customer support functions to an AI chatbot.
And while AI customer assistants are relatively common now,
Intel's assistant seems to be taking a little too much initiative with troubleshooting hardware issues.
When a PC world writer tested the behavior of the bot with a crashing CPU,
it helpfully told them to try updating their graphics driver
before kind of just going through up some boilerplate troubleshooting steps.
Hopefully the graphics thing works out though. This is a little embarrassing for Intel
as they've helped fast food chains experiment with putting AI chatbots in drive-thrus for years,
including KFC. But a CPU malfunction is a little more complicated
than, you know, a bucket of chicken. No matter how many herbs and spices there are,
and whether they're secret or not, how many are there?
I got a lot of them. Okay.
Amazon's Ring is not only sticking with it's enabled by default search party feature
that lets ring camera owners search each other's footage
for lost dogs, despite backlash over its eerily dystopian Super Bowl ad,
they are doubling down. Leaked internal emails showed CEO, Jamie Siminoff,
suggesting that he's pretty excited to see the results of our public agencies using this tool
and the impact it will have on our communities.
Woof. And that eventually ring cameras could help
zero out crime in neighborhoods, at least a certain kind of crime.
Dog crime. I don't think a drag net of ring cameras
is going to be able to zero out investment fraud.
And I don't think that's really their goal anyway. Shiny Hunters, the internet's favorite hacking group
is back at it again this week after launching cyber attacks
against both win resorts and car gurus.
The craziest part, they're apparently using the same vishing methods seen in previous breaches.
That's fishing, but like voice version of it. Stay, keep up.
The stolen data includes 800,000 employee records
from win resorts and around 1.7 million corporate files
from car gurus. Gurus. Gurus.
A spokesperson for the Hunters told the register that stolen data includes full names,
emails, phone numbers, positions, salaries, start dates, and even birthdays.
Honestly, what's Shiny Hunters deal? And what are these shinies?
They're hunting. If we give them a few Charizard's Gardevoirs and a Mew,
will they leave us alone? The FBI has issued new guidance to store owners
after hackers jackpot it more than 700 ATMs in 2025,
stealing roughly $20 million.
Using malware called Plotus? Criminals infect a machine's internals
and force cash withdrawals without using a card,
tricking the machine itself instead of using a fake bank account.
I'm actually surprised they explained how it works. You would think they'd wanna keep this information
from the crazy people who are currently using forklifts
to rip ATMs out of the ground. We can't let them know there's an easier option.
And Substack just announced an expansion of their existing partnership
with gambling platform Polymarket, allowing Substack authors to embed prediction market
betting data directly into newsletters and articles.
Polymarket celebrated the new partnership by tweeting that journalism is better
when it's backed by live markets.
Sure. And I'm sure this isn't an elaborate narrative
to avoid being regulated as a gambling platform. In unrelated news, I'm launching a statistics course
where you try and guess where a ball will land in a spinning wheel using statistics
because learning is always better when backed by the ability to lose your life savings.
But you won't lose anything if you come back on Monday for more tech news, except maybe time.
And we all have an unlimited amount of that. So it doesn't matter.
Woo, I'm never gonna die.