Well, tech news, it's just one of those things, you know?
What, what on what things?
Couldn't tell ya. YouTube has been serving some TV viewers with 90-second non-skippable ads,
according to multiple reports on Reddit and on Twitter,
where YouTube pushed back saying that they don't serve an ad format like that.
This tweet was quickly community noted with evidence that many people were, nonetheless, seeing these non-existent ads.
YouTube has since called it an interface bug,
where inaccurate timers are being shown for shorter ads and says that a fix is rolling out.
But, buggy ads aren't the only bad news out of YouTube this week,
because YouTube Premium is getting a US price hike of up to $4 per month at the highest tier,
the first increase since 2023.
That's not that long ago! YouTube says the hike is going to help them continue delivering a high-quality experience.
But, as Gizmodo points out, the last time YouTube raised premium prices was just kind of during an inflationary spike,
which seems to be what's happening right now, not that the service is materially changing.
CPUID, the French company behind tech enthusiast staples like CPUZ and Hardware Monitor,
had its website hacked this week and they were serving malware in place of their actual software.
Oh no. For about six hours between April 9th and 10th,
clicking the download button on CPUID.com would hand you a trojanized installer file instead of the real thing.
But how can hackers be so talented and yet so incompetent?
It wasn't even named the right thing. It was called hwinfo-monitor-setup.exe.
But that's not what I clicked on. It's the software equivalent of a Pepsi vending machine giving me a Coke can that turns out to be full of anthrax.
Victims who ignored Windows Defenders screaming at them and clicked through the suddenly Russian installer
got hit with a multi-stage, mostly in-memory attack that went straight for their saved Chrome passwords.
The same group hit FileZilla back in March and researchers at VX Underground who said they'd need a good bit of time
trying to bunk it with a stick to reverse engineer it, ultimately gave the sample an official grade of B-
proving that even in crime, you can still get graded on a curve.
France, meanwhile, is ditching Microsoft Windows in favor of Linux across its government computers
in an effort to reduce reliance on U.S. technology.
To which I have to say, welcome to the Linux challenge, France.
This will be your Waterloo.
Well, I guess Waterloo was your Waterloo.
But this could be kind of hard too. French Minister David Amiel said the goal is for France to regain control of its digital destiny
and that the country can no longer depend on foreign infrastructure that it doesn't control.
France's digital agency, Denum, is leading the switchover as part of a larger initiative
which saw France recently move 80,000 national health insurance employees off of Teams, Zoom, and Dropbox
and onto open-source French alternatives.
France even went so far as to nationalize supercomputer company Bull,
spending 404 million euros to prevent it from being bought up by a foreign company.
I hope that doesn't end up being an error.
What's not an error is the way I'm transitioning to our sponsor.
Now, the accelerated particles, that's a whole other can.
Uh, worms? No, it's like you're not even listening.
Keychron has uploaded the source files for 83 of their keyboards and mice to GitHub
handing the modding community full editable CAD designs
for cases, plates, and stabilizers across basically every major line they make.
It is source-available rather than truly open-source,
so it's not like tinkers are going to be able to sell their mods,
but at least now the mechanical keyboard community can stop reverse engineering dimensions with calipers
as though they're appraising a stolen Rolex and just maintain their own stuff.
This is a super cool move. Meanwhile, in the wake of Anthropic's too dangerous to release publicly AI model mythos grabbing headlines this week,
Axios is reporting that OpenAI is reportedly also finalizing their own AI product that's allegedly so dangerous
it can only be released to a small hand-picked group of partners.
Turns out that OpenAI's version is an expansion of a cyber-partner program that it launched back in February
and Axios had to correct its own headline to clarify that this isn't even the company's next flagship model.
Nothing says we're also scary, quite like an honestly calling a reporter about it
and talking about a thing that you were already doing.
Good job. An Ohio man has become the first person convicted under the 2025 Take It Down Act,
the federal law criminalizing non-consensual deepfakes.
James Strahler pleaded guilty to producing AI-generated sexual images of at least 10 victims, including minors.
Yuck. On his phone, authorities found over 2,400 explicit photos and videos, two dozen AI apps, and over 100 models.
According to the New York Times, it's not immediately clear how severe of a sentence he will face,
but the Take It Down Act carries up to three years in federal prison for deepfakes involving minors.
Well, many are no doubt concerned about the Take It Down Act being misused.
I think we can all agree on this human toilet brush going away for a while.
On the subject of things that have been gone away for a while, Blackberry's ghost is back and suing Brother.
Irish patent assertion firm Maliki Innovations scooped up Blackberry's old patent pile in 2023
and filed a suit in the eastern district of Texas alleging that brother printers infringe four Wi-Fi patents that were originally developed for Blackberry phones.
Maliki has also filed lawsuits against Nintendo, ASUS, and Canon, the last of which Maliki quietly withdrew three weeks ago.
But the case has sparked concerns that other printer manufacturers may also be liable for taking perhaps too large of a bite from the original fruit-based phone.
Are berries technically fruit? They are, aren't they?
And finally, Honor has announced the Mouse Buds Pro in Europe, a travel mouse with a sliding rear compartment that pops open to reveal a pair of semi-open ANC earbuds that are stashed inside.
But wait, there's more! If that wasn't enough to sell you on this mouse slash earbuds combo, it's also got a skin-like coating so you can feel like you are holding hands with your computer.
Oh wow. The earbuds work independently over Bluetooth, which I guess is good for anyone who would otherwise have to go jogging with a computer mouse in their pocket that they're holding hands with.
It's time for me, after learning that, to go jogging away from learning about that.
I'll see you back here on Monday for more tech news, which is...it's not just a thing. It happens sometimes.