Tech news? I dabble, you know, I just put my fingers in this,
you know, I just like put my little things in it. I just bathe my entire body in it every day,
you know, just whatever. Can you believe like Linus just pays?
Like, Apple's Vision Pro reviews are out right now
from those Apple deemed worthy. The consensus on the device seems to be that
while the future may not be here, it's definitely somewhere nearby.
They can smell it. The Vision Pro's displays are reportedly
crisp as a granny smith, and its pass-through mode has minimal latency,
which will hopefully minimize injury when you decide to live in this thing full-time
to get your money's worth, 3,500. At 1.3 pounds, or roughly the weight
of a pre-hybernation hedgehog, it's a relatively heavy headset.
Have you ever held a hedgehog? Have you ever strap one to your face? Not more than once.
The heavy headset, and that's not including the wearable battery.
The hand-eye control interface is really impressive,
but perhaps unsurprisingly, its floating intangible keyboard is next to useless.
Despite how it looked in early demos, iSight, the Vision Pro's digital representation
of the user's eyes on the external display,
is deep in the uncanny valley, and attempting to hold a conversation
or host a dinner party with the headset on will earn nothing but your spouse's contempt.
Reviewers are also pointing out that the Vision Pro still lacks any real killer apps
at a time when Apple is not exactly making friends
with third-party developers through their iOS and app rule changes in the EU.
Though as much as Apple's walled garden approach might alienate potential devs,
that's gotta be part of the appeal for some consumers.
A polished AR headset that will easily slot in to your existing network of accounts and devices,
just like marrying your high school sweetheart. We are meant to be together, Barbara.
Forever, Barbara, Barbara. Diablo streamer Elon Musk announced on Twitter this week
that Neuralink has placed its first brain-computer interface in a human subject.
It's happened. According to Musk, initial results
show promising neuron spike detection, and the patient is recovering well.
And that's great to hear, especially considering who the patients are
in these early human trials. Individuals who are quadriplegic
due to spinal cord injuries or ALS. It would usually be nearly impossible for a company
to convince regulators to allow them to perform experimental, non-essential brain surgery
on an otherwise healthy patient. However, Neuralink's first planned implant,
apparently called telepathy, is intended to allow recipients
to communicate directly with a computer, which can then decode that message
and interpret how the user intends to move, which has obvious potential to improve the lives of people
with significant physical limitations. Similar implants from other firms
have already been used to bypass damaged neurons
and allow paralyzed patients to regain some control
over their existing limbs. On the more sci-fi end of things,
Musk likewise said that the implant might also one day allow users to control
almost any device just by thinking. Sounds cool, but I personally dread the day
when I can accidentally butt-dial my mom by way of a particularly vivid nightmare,
or even worse, a sexy nightmare. General Motors is jumping on the plug-in hybrid train.
The exact same train they jumped off of back in 2019
when they killed the highly efficient PHEV Chevy Volt.
Turns out the Volt wasn't a bad idea, just an idea before its time,
because nobody knew what a FEV was back in 2018
when we were all listening to Drake and dinosaurs roamed the earth.
However, it turns out there are a significant number of North American drivers who really would like
to spend less on gas but can't justify the jump to pure battery electric due to its limited range.
This has left dealerships with a surplus of EVs and carbon reduction quotas they can't hope to meet right now.
Those dealers in turn have put pressure on GM to bring back plug-in hybrids.
GM has likewise backtracked on its decision early last year
to kill the Chevy Bolt with a B, the light and efficient battery electric car
that made up over 80% of GM's EV sales in 2023.
This is a trend that extends far beyond GM. BMW is expanding both its EV and PHEV lineups
and Mazda will also be debuting its first plug-in hybrid
this year with the CX-90. Lamborghini is in planning on a fully electric vehicle
until 2028, but they launched their first plug-in hybrid
in 2023, which they'll be following with a PHEV version of their Urus SUV this year, Urus.
And you know gas prices are bad when the Lamborghini owners jump ship.
I wonder the impression you buy a Lamborghini specifically to burn gas.
We film these after lunch, so I just get a quick bite.
A quick bite, you get it. Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a major hearing
on the issue of child safety and exploitation online
where they questioned the CEOs of Discord, Snap, Meta, TikTok, and the website formerly known as Twitter.
You know, the bad boys of tech. Leading up to the hearing, companies tried to get ahead
of any accusations. Snap came out in support of the Kids Online Safety Act
and swore not to enact end-to-end encryption
in order to continue scanning messages for child abuse imagery,
which is how that kid got caught for the plain joke.
Meta reiterated its support for app-level age verification.
TikTok pledged to spend $2 billion in 2024
on protecting US users and Twitter, promised to hire back around 6%
of those 1,500 content moderators they fired. He really cares about this issue.
Raising the bar after lowering it into the ground.
A listing for NVIDIA's rumored six-Gigabyte edition of the RTX 3050 recently surfaced on a site
for Australian retailer E-Tech that can only be described as disappointing if true.
The listing, which has since been removed, shows a concerning drop in CUDA cores of 20%
compared to the base model, which already had an advantage of two additional gigabytes of RAM.
Earlier rumors indicated that the new card would either maintain core count
or see a drop of just 10%. But maybe NVIDIA is just trying to let us down gently.
So by the actual launch, we won't be disappointed to find it's just a single fan
duct-taped to a box of Lunchables. At least it's pizza.
It's not the worst rumor out there today, though. That goes to Intel,
who are reportedly planning a refresh of their Raptor Lake refresh.
Raptor Lake, the refreshing, even refresher.
New York's attorney general has filed a lawsuit against Citibank,
claiming it has failed to protect customers from hacks and scams
and refused to reimburse millions of dollars in lost funds.
By law, US banks must reimburse customers
any funds stolen via unauthorized electronic transactions,
but Citibank claims they are exempt because there was no indication
their clients were being deceived. However, one woman informed the bank
after simply clicking on a suspicious link in a text.
Citibank told her not to worry about it, and three days later, scammers transferred $40,000 out of her account.
If only she had indicated she had been deceived
rather than overtly stating it. It's supposed to, you're supposed to kind of walk,
like go around it, you know. It's like flirting. I've been deceived, I don't believe you.
PayPal, also known as Elon Musk's first stepchild,
announced it's cutting 2,500 jobs, affecting both existing workers and job listings.
He's not even involved with any more, but we have to make a job.
We were too nice to him during the Neuralink story. Fellow FinTech company, Block,
who owns Square, Cash App, and Afterpay, announced it's laying off around 1,000 people
because cutting jobs is the newest strat in the tech corp meta.
As an extremely thin silver lining, you can know that these layoffs aren't coming cheap.
Google expects to spend $700 million on severance
this quarter, but it only costs me 10 bucks to watch the whole first season on Apple TV+.
Why is Google so bad with money? It's a classic Jacob pun.
Best show I've seen in a while though, by the way. I endorse it. And car rental company, Europe Car,
said a massive leak of 50 million customer records
posted on a hacker forum were actually generated
by chat GPT, showing that at least AI doles out
misinformation to upstanding citizens and criminals alike. However, Europe Car may be in the misinformation business too.
Troy Hunt, the security researcher behind HaveIBeenPwned.com, responded to this story
with a strong claim that this kind of data fabrication
doesn't need generative AI at all. It's just on everyone's brains all the time right now,
thanks to stories like this one about yet another lawyer getting caught citing a non-existent court case
thanks to chat GPT, or this one about an alarm clock
on Kickstarter that displays AI-generated poems to tell you the time in the least efficient way possible,
especially because it gets both the time and basic English words wrong,
so you have to check an actual clock anyway. It's gonna change everything.
Meanwhile, all you have to do is check back here on Friday for more tech news.
We're the most efficient way to get your tech news, as long as you like it sandwiched between
whatever you wanna call the type of thing that I'm doing right now. You know, you don't have to watch.