Hey, hey, it's me, you know, this guy, you know, you know, me.
I'm Riley, ha ha! Samsung is being accused of faking moon photos
taken on Galaxy phones. Galactic consequences.
The Space Zoom feature, which was introduced with the Galaxy S20 Ultra, allows users to zoom 100 times
and take pretty impressive photos of the moon.
But Reddit, the site specializing in proving that we cannot have nice things,
had something to say about that. User iBreakPhotos took a high res moon image from the web,
downsized it to 170 by 170 pixels,
and blurred the hell out of it. Then, they displayed the image on their monitor,
turned out all their lights, and took a picture with their S23 Ultra
from across the room. The results are pretty shocking.
No moon, then bam! That's a moon.
Like being pantsed at summer camp. Some, such as a few LTT forum enthusiasts,
initially dismissed this as just post-processing, but changed their minds when iBreakPhotos
updated their original post with another test. They added another half of a moon to the full moon image,
and only the full moon's detail was increased.
Either Samsung is adding extra detail from a database of high res moon images,
or, and hear me out here, okay, it's aliens.
It's not a natural satellite. I have another question. Why do we care whether our phones can take,
like if you take a picture of the moon, it's like, congrats. There's, there's so many pictures of the moon.
Why do you need a picture on your phone? That's mine.
Because the man comes around, he gives you a little medal. Pins to your chest.
He's the moon man. Hey, that's a pretty good picture. Here you go.
Thanks, moon man. Many people's dead relatives have been found
on a facial recognition website.
Would you say? Pim eyes, a site that allows users
to search for images of themselves, has apparently been scraping photos
from ancestry and obituary websites without the consent of the deceased,
since scientists haven't had much luck on that app for seances yet.
They also didn't ask relatives. We've totally forgot about that.
Now, this is extra sketchy because photos of dead people
could be used to identify their living relatives,
who may or may not want to be found by their second cousin, who's still angry about losing the tug of war
with the family reunion. That is very specific. This isn't the company's only controversy either.
Last year, former Apple employee, Cher Scarlet pointed out that though PimEye's claims
to scrape porn sites in the name of helping users take down revenge porn,
anyone could upload the face of a victim of revenge porn
and find that porn. And at that time, the service was also charging users $80 a month
for the privilege of opting out of appearing in its search results.
Fortunately, it is now totally free to opt out of this face search service
you've never heard of by going to its website, which you have probably also never heard of.
Anyway, back to dead people. It turns out that PimEye's has now been scraping images
of the deceased from sites like Ancestry.com and a cemetery directory owned by Ancestry
called Find a Grave. Though, since Ancestry's terms and conditions
expressly forbid scraping data from the site, including photos, PimEye's may need to find a lawyer.
That was my name. Before they get put in a grave.
That's vigilante justice is a crime rally. Not by me, I just look at these arms.
And an online mental health care company has been sharing private patient data with advertisers.
Now, to be clear, this story is about the telehealth company Cerebral, Not BetterHelp,
which is an online mental health care company that has been sharing private patient data with advertisers.
Now, I can see why some of you may be confused. Both companies offer online appointments
with therapists by phone or video and both leaked email addresses, IP addresses,
and the health status and histories of millions of users to add platforms like Meta.
So that should clarify things. The key difference between the two companies
is that Cerebral actually admitted to it.
Two months after they found out. Unfortunately, Cerebral claims that they disabled,
reconfigured, and or removed any tracking technologies
on their platform to prevent future data sharing.
Though hopefully they were quicker at that than admitting they shared incredibly sensitive
personal and or medical information with companies like Meta and Google.
Especially since this sort of breach is exactly the type of fear someone
actively being treated for anxiety might have. That's more like much worse help.
They should change the name. We're not helping much.
Cerebral to severe anxiety. Better than nothing.
Not even. All right, here's what's gonna happen.
There's a short intro. Then you're gonna get five shorter stories.
We call quick bits.
Sound good? HP updated the firmware of their printers
to block the use of third-party inks. Now, it's worth noting that HP stands for Hewlett Packard
and not, as some of us here in the office assumed, ha!
Pay!
Thousands of customers have been affected by this update, though apparently devices made before December 2016
won't be affected, which I'm sure is great solace to anyone that received a terrible Christmas gift
six years ago. A printer? Really, Kevin?
I married your daughter. You're not even a real part of this family.
A printer? It's 2023, Kevin. In what now seems to be a cherished tradition,
details on the newest Google phone have leaked months before launch.
What? We always do that.
So we're a family. A Vietnamese tech enthusiast got hands-on
with a Pixel 7a and made the decision every Google phone leaker before has made.
Tell everyone. It looks like the 7a will have eight gigs of RAM
and 128 gigs of storage, as well as a 6.1-inch 90-hertz 1080p display.
Okay, but let's all make a pact, all right, to not act surprised when the phone is launched,
so Senator Pichai doesn't feel bad, okay?
Oh, that's what the phone looks like. Oh, that's okay.
Didn't expect it to look just like this Pixel 7. Meta has stated they will end news access in Canada
if the online news act becomes law. The act, also known as Bill C18,
would require digital giants like Meta and Google to negotiate payment deals with Canadian media companies.
Google has been blocking news links for some Canadians for weeks in a test
which will apparently end this week. Oh, thanks.
Meta is threatening more drastic action because the bill's wording could mean
any link posted by Facebook or Instagram users
could cost Meta money. Wow, sounds like a great thing to bring up
during the inevitable negotiation that will end in paying Canadian news publishers for content.
You know, like pretty much exactly what happened in Australia and France.
Or, you know, you just wanna threaten to ban news?
Yeah, that's cool, okay, yeah. You do, you Meta, you just ban that news.
I'm sure that'll work. A claim has been made that a hardware designer
has been chosen for the PS6. What's more, a possible timeline may have been leaked
from documents filed as part of the UK's investigation
of the Microsoft Activision merger. Sony writes in a document that they will lose access
to Activision games by the time the PS6 launches,
while simultaneously stating in another sentence
that Activision games would only be available to PlayStation until 2027.
So that seems like the year, maybe. I'm not good at math, but man,
a $69 billion merger has gotta be the most expensive way to hypoconsul launch.
There's Sony isn't even paying. Thanks, Microsoft.
And Pokemon fans are panicking at what else is new?
Well, it's a different color. Those aren't donuts, it's on a kitty.
They're panicking because the Pokemon company posted a job listing on LinkedIn.
And it's not because someone is using LinkedIn. The offending listing for a corporate development principle
is looking for applicants with deep knowledge of web three
and specifically mentioning the N word, NFT.
Fortunately, they didn't drop any hard Rs. You know, redesign.
A rocket-propelled grenade. Hey, did you go on the Linus Tech Tips subreddit
this weekend? Or on YouTube, people made videos about this.
That's our boss. And you'll be fortunate to stick around for the credits
because there might be a surprise. Just don't be surprised when there's more TechLinked
on Wednesday. Wait, what's the surprise in the credits?
This is my son. What's happening right now?
I'm so confused.