It's tech news time right now, but after we film this,
I'm gonna go listen to Skaw on my Zoom and plan the release of my NFT collection.
It calms me. Google has found a way to force Apple's AirDrop feature
to work with Android's similar Quick Share feature.
What? It only works on the Pixel 10 lineup for now,
but complaining about that would be a bit like complaining about the distance
of pig flu. To trigger this dark magic,
iPhone users can set AirDrop to allow files
from everyone for 10 minutes, and boom, they'll be able to receive files from the enemy.
Even better, this ritual goes both ways. So you can drop stuff from iOS onto your Android too.
What's even crazier though, is that Google went rogue and did this on its own,
essentially forcing Apple to communicate like an introvert being pulled out of the laundry room
at a party by their friend who's annoyingly social, but also maybe they have a crush on
so they go with them. I've seen that movie. And don't worry, Google wants you to know
this new feature is secure too, releasing a security blog post all about it,
stating that they built the feature in the Rust programming language
to avoid common security bugs and promising they'll support contacts only mode on iOS
at some future point. For now though, if iPhone users wanna get a drop from their Android buddy,
they're gonna have to risk also getting the local aspiring rapper's mixtape.
I'm like a young M&M. It's like following you around.
They're gonna open up an airdrop anytime now. Qualcomm's acquisition of Arduino
has the entire maker community on alert after updates to their terms, conditions,
and privacy policy signaled a potential shift away
from the company's open source roots. These new changes include restricting
the reverse engineering of their platform,
expanding data collection rights under Qualcomm ownership
and introducing vague language about the ownership of user generated content.
Now many fear this could let Qualcomm claim broader control on existing or future projects
with sections of the agreement potentially giving Qualcomm blanket authority
over the patentability of anything built using Arduino tools.
Even if the AGPL licensed dev environment
and firmware technically remain open source, the wording is open-ended enough
that people worry Qualcomm is laying the groundwork for future lockdowns.
Open source hardware company, Adafruit, publicly criticized the move,
pointing out that imposing enterprise style software as a service rules on a community run platform
is a surefire way to destroy trust. Before buying Arduino,
did Qualcomm actually know what open source means?
Tell you what, I'll open source my feelings right now.
Boo, bad.
Dell and HP have discovered a new way to make some of their business laptops worse.
And no, it's not another round of questionable product names, small victories.
Apparently these companies decided to start disabling HEVC hardware decoding
on several laptops, even though the feature is supported by their CPUs
at a hardware level. These cuts are leaving affected users wondering
why they were suddenly faced with web video showing continuous loading loops
and random errors. Well, as indicated in spec documents for models
like the HP Probook 460G11, hardware HEVC support is turned off by design.
And as for Dell, there's a clue buried on a support page
that only shows devices with optional upgrades like a 4K screen or a discrete GPU,
having access to the decoder. Those ones are special. Neither company has offered up a real explanation,
but what we do know is that HEVC license fees
are going up from 20 cents to 24 cents per laptop.
So to be fair, it probably ends up being a good chunk of change,
but I have a hard time believing it's making either HP or Dell gasp for air.
Careful there, partner. Don't want you having to pay a whole dollar to Microsoft
to turn the feature back on. And that wasn't a joke. That's the official recommendation.
How does Microsoft end up getting a free dollar out of this nonsense?
We gotta at least do a sponsor segue for our dollars. Some people have called the Quickbits a flop and a fad,
but they're still talking about the Quickbits, aren't they?
So Microsoft is rolling out a preview of its Xbox full screen experience
to any Windows 11 PC, not just handhelds,
although you'll have to download the Windows Insider build to get it.
And this gives desktop, laptop and tablet users the ability to boot into the same controller friendly,
console like interface as the ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X,
skipping loading the desktop, potentially boosting performance
and totally redeeming the Xbox marketing team.
I guess everything really is an Xbox.
Except me, unless my parents lied to me. Who told him?
He can't discover he's an Xbox. We're a PlayStation family, damn it.
A new Android Trojan called Sternus is reportedly stealing WhatsApp, Telegram
and Signal messages by abusing Android's accessibility service
to read messages after they're decrypted on screen,
meaning it completely sidesteps the task of having to break encryption first.
It can also generate fake banking logins, enable full remote control of a device
and log every tap to harvest credentials.
It can do it all. The worst part, Sternus is only an early testing among hackers.
So once it fully rolls out, it's gonna cause even more consternation.
Meta is saying Dios Mio after a Spanish court said hola
and ordered them to pay 479 million euros
to 87 Spanish news outlets. Por favor. The court ruled that Meta broke EU data protection
and antitrust laws by unfairly using the personal data
of its users to make targeted ads, giving it a serious edge over local media.
Meta has slightly improved its rules around data collection consent,
but the judge estimated Meta made over 5 billion euros
from ads during the five years before the change. Of course, Meta is saying no manches
and planning to appeal the ruling, but similar claims being investigated in France
might soon have them shouting, Sacre bleu.
Silicon Valley investors are reportedly funding a human embryo gene editing startup
led by UC Berkeley biochemist, Lucas Harrington,
raising about 30 million USD from backers, including software engineer and husband of Sam Altman,
Oliver Mulherrin and Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong.
The company says it's focused strictly on lab research
and definitely 100% will not test their findings if safety is found wanting,
because fun fact, gene editing human embryos is illegal in most countries.
Don't they remember what happened to the guy in China who gene edited three embryos
and then seemingly got edited out of existence himself?
Those kids were actually born. They don't have a father anymore.
Anymore? I don't think they were his kids.
Nevermind. And XAI's Grock Chatbot has been sickle-fantingly
pumping his daddy Elon's tires. In a bunch of now-deleted interactions,
the Chatbot said Musk is more fit than LeBron James
and disrupts comedy more than Jerry Seinfeld, but doesn't go quite as far as to say
that Musk would rise from the grave faster than Jesus Christ.
That would be a bridge too far. Grock appears to really respect
baseball player Shohei Otani, though, who it admits Musk could not strike out.
Now, if you thought all of this was just Musk ego tripping, the soon-to-be trillionaire tweeted
that this latest Grock crash out was once again,
caused by someone else manipulating the Chatbot.
Absolutely proving it wasn't him this time by disparaging himself with what Linus
would call the hard R word. I dropped my fair share of hard Rs back then
because we didn't even, the term hard... And it'll be rude if you don't come back on Monday
for more tech news. Hey, did you know that Microsoft's Zune wireless sharing feature
was widely known as squirting?
Is that real, though? Google it, Google it.
Well, those NFTs aren't gonna sell themselves. See you later.