Sam Altman will be returning as CEO of OpenAI only five days after he was fired, to everyone
who took a week-long digital detox retreat or got hit in the head with a rock on Friday
afternoon. Well, you've missed a lot. Luckily for you, we're mostly back where we started, albeit with an entirely new
board, with the exception of Adam DeAngelo, who will remain to represent the views of
the former board and to maintain OpenAI leadership's all-important skinny twink quota.
If you're looking for new info about why Altman was fired in the first place, don't
ask Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who said even he still doesn't know.
The prevailing hypothesis so far is that the difference in values between the cautious,
safety-minded board and Altman's relatively gung-ho attitude towards AI development caught
relatively. Doesn't know. The prevailing hypothesis so far is that the difference in values between the cautious,
safety-minded board and Altman's relatively more gung-ho attitude towards AI development
caused eschism. Altman's jet-setting search for investment in other AI-adjacent projects also led to
concerns he may prioritize his own interests ahead of the goals of the organization.
Which wouldn't be that surprising, given that Altman was asked to step down from his
leadership position at Y Combinator in 2019 due to similar concerns.
And of course, Altman will be returning as CEO just in time to deal with yet another
copyright lawsuit, this time by nonfiction book authors against both OpenAI and Microsoft.
In other words, if you were hit with a rock on Friday and then again at the beginning
of this video, you haven't really missed anything.
As you were, Google will resume rollout of its controversial Manifest V3 extension format
for Chrome, which will block ad blockers even harder.
You think they're blocked now? On June 2024, Google will turn off Manifest V2, the current format for Chrome extensions
â Grom? Grom extensions? Meaning they'll be unavailable to install from the Chrome web store and will be automatically
disabled in users' browsers. Google has argued that Manifest V3, by limiting extensions, will better protect user privacy
and allow the browser to be lighter on resources. That's potentially a boon to users like this episode's main writer, Jessica, whose workstation
craps its pants every time she opens more than four tabs in Chrome, seemingly out of
spite. I don't think it likes you.
However, civil liberties groups have criticized Google's pitch with the Electronic Frontier
Foundation calling it deceitful and threatening.
While Google is limiting potential harm done by malicious extension developers, it's also
limiting users' ability to protect themselves, especially from Google, by kneecapping web
filtering, which includes but is not limited to ad blockers.
Manifest V3 has originally proposed limited web filters to 5,000 filtering rules, which
it has gracefully loosened â thank you so much â to a limit of 30,000 rules.
That sounds like a lot, until you realize that a tool like UBlock Origin has over 300,000
filtering rules available to users. And much like a bicycle, or hair, you can't just remove 90% of something and expect it
to be the same. Unless and I learned the hard way. I mean, unicycles only have one wheel.
Warning to all tech news citizens, your Plex account just emailed your mom an itemized
list of all your favorite adult films. It was inevitable.
On November 1st, media hosting slash sharing slash streaming service Plex publicly launched
Discover Together, with several social network-esque features like user profiles, user ratings,
and personalized recommendations. Plex also altered its Week in Review email that summarizes their weekly activity â feature
users already hated â so that it also sends users a summary of their friend's weekly activity,
including media that they uploaded to their own personal server.
That's a feature that might appeal to some people, people with innocent minds and squeaky
clean hard drives. But Plex made it opt-out rather than opt-in, meaning that over the past three weeks, many
users have been unknowingly broadcasting their obsession with Desperate Housewives and Big
Booty Babes Deluxe Edition to their sweet old Nana.
You might be doing her a favor, you don't know. So changing your privacy settings now might be prudent, especially for Plex users with
certain specific tastes. Ah, quick bits.
One moment they're here, the next they're gone. I'll catch them one day.
The UK's National Health Service has signed a 330 million pound contract with Pellantier,
the US-based data management giant founded by billionaire Peter Thiel to build a Central
Federated Data Platform, or FDP. It's not expensive, it's just really heavy.
This has triggered concerns overhanding what is reportedly the world's largest single
repository of health info to a data-hungry company best known for its shoddy human rights
record and collaboration with spy agencies. Should be fine.
While Pellantier telling the CIA about your ER visit involving a misplaced jar of marmalade
might be embarrassing, would you rather have one of the other 11 tech companies tastelessly
named after Lord of the Rings? I thought it was named after Planter's warts.
I mean, it's just rude to talk it really, like, have some respect.
I'm actually a little upset about it, about the naming. Reports indicate a disturbing pattern of accidents and injuries at Tesla's giant factory in
Austin. According to OSHA data, at least one out of every 21 workers at the factory was injured
in 2022. And we're not just talking minor boo-boos here.
Reports describe exploding casting machines, falling overhead beams, and at least one engineer
who got mauled by a robot. But hey, in lighter Tesla news, some supercharger stations will begin charging users $1 for
every minute they charge above 90% battery as a way of reducing congestion.
They could reduce congestion even further by attacking patrons who charge over 95% with
murderous robots. Just an idea. Sony has completed a field trial in collaboration with the Associated Press for its in-camera
authenticity technology, which, like similar tech announced by Leica last month, adds a
digital signature to photos at the moment of capture.
Seriously though, digital authentication like this is becoming increasingly necessary as
it gets easier and easier to create photorealistic images with AI.
Amazon has confirmed that it will be laying off several hundred workers in its Alexa division
as part of a shift towards generative AI, despite the fact that many of their recent
efforts involved integrating AI into Alexa.
Amazon stated that laid off workers only represent a relatively small percentage of the total
number of people in the device's business, which is a fun way of saying your company
can casually fire the population of a large village and not even notice.
These workers joined the over 27,000 employees Amazon has laid off over the course of the
past year, who, collectively, are a big enough community to deserve their own mayor and post
office. And NASA is testing ground to space optical communication technology by using lasers to
transmit information. The hope is this technology will help send higher data rate communications to distant
places like Mars, as the space agency prepares for more study of the red planet, red also
being a common color of lasers. So, I ad-lib that, don't blame Jessica.
Their experiment could even expand the use case for optical data transmission.
Right now, the only message a laser can accurately convey is, you are in danger from either
bullets or a cat.
I liked it, and to make sure the only thing you're in danger of is more tech news, make
sure to come back on Friday.