1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:03,440 I was gonna start you off with a joke about how this isn't the tech news. 2 00:00:03,440 --> 00:00:09,600 It's actually just the intro to the tech news, but then I decided that would be a little too meta. 3 00:00:09,600 --> 00:00:12,600 Speaking of which, MetaConnect 2024 was today 4 00:00:12,600 --> 00:00:18,120 and Mark Zuckerberg dropped some big news. There was the official reveal of the Quest 3S, 5 00:00:18,120 --> 00:00:22,280 basically a cheaper version of the Quest 3. Shipping on October 15th, 6 00:00:22,280 --> 00:00:26,360 the 3S's starting price is $200 less than the three, 7 00:00:26,360 --> 00:00:31,560 but with most of the same features. A brief live demo showed off the 3S's pass-through 8 00:00:31,560 --> 00:00:34,680 and judging by the bystander one seat over, 9 00:00:34,680 --> 00:00:38,640 it's ability to make people nearby uncomfortable. Thanks Mark. 10 00:00:38,640 --> 00:00:41,840 A crucial aspect of VR. That's what meta is about. 11 00:00:41,840 --> 00:00:45,920 It's tradition. In AI news, Mark revealed Lama 3.2, 12 00:00:45,920 --> 00:00:50,720 the company's first quote open source multimodal model. 13 00:00:50,720 --> 00:00:54,200 Open source here means you have to request access to it 14 00:00:54,200 --> 00:00:59,040 and also it isn't currently available in the EU. It's that kind of open source. 15 00:00:59,040 --> 00:01:06,000 Meta's AI studio will now let influencers create virtual speaking AI versions of themselves. 16 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:09,400 Something Zuck demonstrated by ignoring a real man 17 00:01:09,400 --> 00:01:14,400 to instead chat with the man's AI clone. This is, what are we doing here guys? 18 00:01:14,400 --> 00:01:17,680 Just because Mark has gotten an unfathomable Riz upgrade, 19 00:01:17,680 --> 00:01:24,840 doesn't mean I have to be okay with this. It's creepy. In MetaSmart Glasses news, multimodal video AI 20 00:01:24,880 --> 00:01:30,120 is being added to the Ray-Ban MetaSmart Glasses. So Meta AI can give you real time help, 21 00:01:30,120 --> 00:01:34,200 even referencing objects that you passed and are no longer in view. 22 00:01:34,200 --> 00:01:39,200 Finally, Zuck revealed the prototype Orion holographic AR glasses, 23 00:01:39,720 --> 00:01:43,120 which create a similar effect to the Quest 3's pass-through, 24 00:01:43,120 --> 00:01:46,120 but in a much smaller form factor. 25 00:01:46,120 --> 00:01:52,520 Because it's not actually pass-through, you're just actually seeing the world, imagine. 26 00:01:52,520 --> 00:01:57,440 What if you could see but also it sucked? What if the real world, but with ads? 27 00:01:57,440 --> 00:02:04,600 The glasses can be controlled with your voice, hand and eye tracking, or a wrist-based neural interface? 28 00:02:04,600 --> 00:02:07,600 Because why not? Zuck said all of this while wearing a shirt 29 00:02:07,600 --> 00:02:13,680 that read, Zuck or Nothing in Latin. Some claim it's a reference to the phrase Caesar or Nothing, 30 00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:19,280 but come on, a billionaire who has all of our personal data comparing himself to one of history's greatest dictators, 31 00:02:19,280 --> 00:02:24,480 that's a bit scary. Maybe he just likes nerf and dead languages. 32 00:02:25,440 --> 00:02:28,960 I don't get it, nerf? Do you get that? Nerf or Nothing. 33 00:02:29,920 --> 00:02:35,280 ChatGPT's advanced voice mode is rolling out to all paid subscribers this week. 34 00:02:35,280 --> 00:02:38,440 The advanced voice feature uses GPT-4O, 35 00:02:38,440 --> 00:02:43,600 so it can now detect emotion, and if you're using your camera to prompt it with visuals, 36 00:02:43,600 --> 00:02:47,080 it can respond to nonverbal cues like body language. 37 00:02:47,080 --> 00:02:50,360 But OpenAI also says they've added custom instructions, 38 00:02:50,360 --> 00:02:54,080 memory, five new voices, and improved accents. 39 00:02:54,080 --> 00:02:56,040 You mean like this one? 40 00:02:57,200 --> 00:03:02,700 It's not even an Apple story. It can also apparently say sorry in over 50 languages, 41 00:03:02,700 --> 00:03:06,960 which will be handy after AI technology accidentally destroys human civilization. 42 00:03:06,960 --> 00:03:10,160 Sorry to hear, bud. The rollout comes with one major caveat. 43 00:03:10,160 --> 00:03:14,960 The feature is not available in the EU and several closely related countries, 44 00:03:14,960 --> 00:03:18,800 namely Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK. 45 00:03:18,800 --> 00:03:21,960 While OpenAI didn't specify the reason for this exception 46 00:03:22,000 --> 00:03:27,200 in their announcement, the most likely answer is the EU AI Act, which, among other things, 47 00:03:27,200 --> 00:03:33,640 restricts AI systems that are capable of inferring the emotions of a natural person. 48 00:03:33,640 --> 00:03:38,640 Oh man, aka human being from workplaces and schools. 49 00:03:38,640 --> 00:03:43,120 The intent of the prohibition is to prevent invasive surveillance like an AI system 50 00:03:43,120 --> 00:03:46,880 that makes sure fast food workers look happy or else. 51 00:03:46,880 --> 00:03:52,080 But for now, it appears to be blocking this relatively benign feature from expanding to Europe. 52 00:03:52,080 --> 00:03:55,680 In GPT adjacent news, Microsoft apparently plans 53 00:03:55,680 --> 00:03:58,760 to fix that tricky AI hallucination problem 54 00:03:58,760 --> 00:04:02,960 with what else more AI? The company has released a preview 55 00:04:02,960 --> 00:04:08,960 of their new correction tool as part of their Azure AI Content Safety API. 56 00:04:08,960 --> 00:04:12,480 Correction is a service that flags AI generated text 57 00:04:12,480 --> 00:04:17,420 that might contain a factual error, then cross references it with a document 58 00:04:17,460 --> 00:04:22,300 known to be trustworthy in order to fact-check it, like a natural person might. 59 00:04:22,300 --> 00:04:25,740 One researcher, Oce Keys, says that this might cause 60 00:04:25,740 --> 00:04:28,940 additional problems because the fact-checking model itself 61 00:04:28,940 --> 00:04:34,420 may also hallucinate and introduce errors and trying to eliminate hallucinations from generative AI 62 00:04:34,420 --> 00:04:39,580 is like trying to eliminate hydrogen from water. So let's just keep using it, I guess. 63 00:04:39,580 --> 00:04:42,660 Marques Brown Lee, aka MKBHD, 64 00:04:42,660 --> 00:04:46,080 tech reviewer, YouTuber, and noted Frisbee enthusiast, 65 00:04:46,120 --> 00:04:50,760 released his new Panels app, which offers access to a curated collection 66 00:04:50,760 --> 00:04:56,000 of wallpapers for mobile devices. These wallpapers are free at lower resolutions 67 00:04:56,000 --> 00:05:02,880 but can be downloaded at full resolution for a subscription of $12 monthly or $50 annually, 68 00:05:02,880 --> 00:05:07,280 which comes out to around four bucks a month. The launch sparked immediate backlash, 69 00:05:07,280 --> 00:05:12,120 some of which was sort of justified. Brown Lee acknowledged community concerns 70 00:05:12,120 --> 00:05:18,280 about the kinds of permissions the app was requesting, which included usage data and user location, 71 00:05:18,280 --> 00:05:22,560 and promised to fix the issue. Embarrassingly though, with the little digging, 72 00:05:22,560 --> 00:05:25,920 it was discovered that all of the wallpapers in the app 73 00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:30,040 were stored in a publicly accessible bucket, whoops. 74 00:05:30,040 --> 00:05:33,840 Yeah, devs have come out and said that the app appears to be built from a template 75 00:05:33,840 --> 00:05:37,040 or it's simply an old app that has been rebranded 76 00:05:37,040 --> 00:05:42,560 based on the fact that the app's Twitter account is listed as joining the service in late 2021. 77 00:05:42,560 --> 00:05:47,360 Marques has confirmed, however, this is just because they bought that handle on Twitter. 78 00:05:47,360 --> 00:05:52,120 Other complaints, because yes, there were more, focused on the amount of ads in the free version of the app 79 00:05:52,120 --> 00:05:55,760 and the price of the subscription, and all that is totally fair. 80 00:05:55,760 --> 00:06:00,100 However, the wallpapers are real art by real human artists 81 00:06:00,100 --> 00:06:03,440 and the app offers a 50-50 profit split, 82 00:06:03,440 --> 00:06:08,240 which sounds great until you realize that's actually even worse than the iOS app store's 83 00:06:08,240 --> 00:06:11,680 3070 cut with developers. I don't know if that's comparable, 84 00:06:11,680 --> 00:06:15,880 I'm not in the wallpaper app market. Perhaps the weirdest thing to me personally though 85 00:06:15,880 --> 00:06:23,400 is the fact that a high proportion of the artists on the app seem to be just current MKBHD employees. 86 00:06:23,640 --> 00:06:27,400 The CEO of Rabbit, the company behind the R1 AI 87 00:06:27,400 --> 00:06:31,160 not-a-phone device, Jesse Liu, even got a meme in. 88 00:06:31,160 --> 00:06:35,720 He hasn't had a good Twitter post in a while. Though in MKBHD's defense, 89 00:06:35,720 --> 00:06:41,160 you don't actually have to buy the app, you can just ignore it, and at least he didn't shove it 90 00:06:41,160 --> 00:06:44,880 into completely unnecessary custom hardware and charge 200 bucks for it. 91 00:06:44,880 --> 00:06:48,360 Y'all ready for the quick bits? No! 92 00:06:50,120 --> 00:06:53,200 Too bad! Content delivery network Cloudflare 93 00:06:53,200 --> 00:06:58,120 will now allow customers to block bots used to scrape websites for AI training 94 00:06:58,120 --> 00:07:02,960 with a single click. This is part of a larger suite of tools called AI audit, 95 00:07:02,960 --> 00:07:07,820 which also allows users to see which bots are crawling their site and gives them more information 96 00:07:07,820 --> 00:07:13,040 on where they're from and how they're being used. Users can also choose to only block certain bots 97 00:07:13,040 --> 00:07:16,380 and will eventually be able to sell access to their website, 98 00:07:16,380 --> 00:07:22,400 like a little virtual toll booth for webcrawlers. AI, but I want it's pictures of Spider-Man! 99 00:07:22,400 --> 00:07:26,400 Get out of my office! Kaspersky, the Russian antivirus software 100 00:07:26,400 --> 00:07:31,840 deemed a national security concern and banned by the US government, started deleting itself 101 00:07:31,840 --> 00:07:37,080 from American users PCs last week. Sounds expected, except for the part 102 00:07:37,080 --> 00:07:42,160 where the app also automatically installed a different antivirus on the way out. 103 00:07:42,160 --> 00:07:45,320 Ultra AV made by a company called Pango. 104 00:07:45,320 --> 00:07:50,360 Kaspersky had told customers via email they'd be receiving cybersecurity protection 105 00:07:50,360 --> 00:07:56,400 from their trusted partner, Ultra AV, but they didn't mention the whole automatic install thing, 106 00:07:56,400 --> 00:07:59,680 which is kind of like coming home to find your key doesn't work and then having the rando 107 00:07:59,680 --> 00:08:03,840 who changed your locks let you in. I am Kaspersky's buddy. 108 00:08:03,840 --> 00:08:07,040 You got me. Don't worry, we got you. Good news, everyone. 109 00:08:07,040 --> 00:08:12,600 We're gonna nuke an asteroid. Scientists at the Sandia National Laboratory 110 00:08:12,600 --> 00:08:15,760 have been blasting silica with bursts of X-rays 111 00:08:15,760 --> 00:08:20,480 powerful enough to vaporize rock. And they say that we could probably use nukes 112 00:08:20,480 --> 00:08:24,600 to deflect asteroids that are around two and a half miles across. 113 00:08:24,600 --> 00:08:29,080 This would work by superheating one side, causing material to vaporize 114 00:08:29,080 --> 00:08:32,600 and push the asteroid in the opposite direction. 115 00:08:32,600 --> 00:08:36,160 Just giving a little nudge out of its collision course with Earth later. 116 00:08:37,160 --> 00:08:41,400 It won't be enough to save us from bigger rocks like the one that killed the dinosaurs, 117 00:08:41,400 --> 00:08:45,000 but it's a step up from shooting Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis into space 118 00:08:45,000 --> 00:08:50,480 and getting them to figure it out. Twitter has released its 2024 transparency report, 119 00:08:50,480 --> 00:08:55,520 the first one since 2021. Despite the very public fight Elon Musk picked 120 00:08:55,520 --> 00:09:00,200 with Brazil's Supreme Court, he seems to be more open to government takedown requests 121 00:09:00,200 --> 00:09:05,760 behind closed doors. The platform complied with 71% of the legal requests 122 00:09:05,760 --> 00:09:08,920 that received this year, compared to around 30% of requests 123 00:09:08,920 --> 00:09:14,880 in a typical year under previous management. Meanwhile, X has changed its block feature 124 00:09:14,880 --> 00:09:19,080 so that a user's public posts are now visible to people they've blocked, 125 00:09:19,080 --> 00:09:24,480 but they just can't engage with them. What, you thought you should be able to completely block people you don't like? 126 00:09:24,480 --> 00:09:29,560 That's a privilege. X slash Twitter only affords to certain special entities 127 00:09:29,560 --> 00:09:33,640 like the Turkish government. And Panasonic is apparently repurposing 128 00:09:33,640 --> 00:09:37,920 an outdoor air conditioning system called Silky Fine Mist 129 00:09:37,920 --> 00:09:41,400 to create what I'd like to call wet holograms. 130 00:09:41,400 --> 00:09:47,280 I'll explain. The Silky Fine Mist in question is a spray of extremely small water droplets 131 00:09:47,280 --> 00:09:52,320 around six to 10 microns in size, which quickly evaporate removing heat 132 00:09:52,320 --> 00:09:55,760 without making users feel damp, wet only in name. 133 00:09:55,760 --> 00:09:59,720 At some point, however, Panasonic realized that this mist could also be used 134 00:09:59,720 --> 00:10:03,600 as a transparent projector screen for extremely cool 135 00:10:03,600 --> 00:10:06,040 and cooling art displays. 136 00:10:07,760 --> 00:10:12,680 Unfortunately, the system is heavy, bulky, and prohibitively expensive, which is no good 137 00:10:12,680 --> 00:10:16,240 when you're trying to get a message out to a Jedi hermit hiding on Tatooine. 138 00:10:16,240 --> 00:10:20,640 We need to get more efficient with this. How, that can't fit that in a droid. 139 00:10:20,640 --> 00:10:24,520 Panasonic, you're my only hope. But you shouldn't hide from more tech news. 140 00:10:24,520 --> 00:10:28,760 Come back on Friday for another episode. It won't be scary. It'll be positive. 141 00:10:28,760 --> 00:10:32,480 Everything's fine. Everything's fine out there. So, okay.