Do not get this twisted. We've got some high-quality tech news for you today. However,
I am saving my bandwidth for CES next week, so I will just calmly state this is today's intro bit.
Thank you. Grock, the edgiest chatbot, decided the best way to start off the new year was by generating
sexualized images of minors following a lapse in its safety systems.
Now the worst kind of Twitter users were apparently able to get Grock to bypass filters
that are supposed to block this kind of content entirely, despite those filters having never
been successful at preventing Grock from generating incredibly weird, heinous sh** constantly in the
past. XAI says the issue has been fixed and the safeguards tightened, but that is not exactly
comforting. When the failure was, oops, we released some CSAM, it's almost like having a
not-safe-for-work spicy mode on one of the world's most prominent social media platforms
is maybe not the best idea. Now these incidents capped off a week of complaints after people
realized that any degenerate can ask Twitter's resident Goonbot to neutify every photo ever
tweeted directly in the replies to said tweet. But there's nothing we can do guys, you know,
this is just the world we live in now. Instagram CEO Adam Massari says that AI slop is so common
it may be more practical to label real content instead of labeling fake content. That's right,
apparently there's so much AI generated slop that it's outnumbering the real people who just
want to show us important stuff like their Warhammer collections. I want to see those,
if they're real. In fact, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is now blogging about how maybe we don't
even need to call it AI slop now, because maybe that hurts some people's feelings who have put
mind-boggling amounts of money into tools that let people make that stuff you're calling slop.
Think about how those people maybe might feel. ASUS has reportedly told partners that it won't
release any new Zen phone or ROG Android phones in 2026, but says it's not abandoning phones
entirely and will keep supporting existing models. Reports indicate the pause is driven by weak sales
and tough market conditions, with ASUS framing it as a temporary step back rather than a full
exit from smartphones. Our writers told me that they didn't even know ASUS made phones until today,
so this must be tragic news for the five of you watching this on your ROG phone.
Does kind of explain the weak sales, though. In more phone news, Weibo tipster Smart Chip Insider,
he sounds like he knows a lot, claims LPDDR6 RAM could be about 20% more expensive than the
previous generation standard, meaning only the most premium 2026 Android flagships,
and likely just the 16GB variants, will bother using it while everyone else will stick with LPDDR5X.
Well, Smart Chip Insider? I want some smarter chips inside my phones. You know what I'm saying?
The phone market is a mess, but there is a glimmer of hope. A report out of South Korea indicates
Samsung looks set to keep Galaxy S26 prices the same as the S25 lineup, a relief for
buyers. However, the phones aren't expected to see any significant upgrades to battery capacity,
which I'll take. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, even if that horse is the same horse from
last year was just a slightly different saddle. The horse cost the same in this economy? Leaked
PlayStation 5 ROM keys have exposed a foundational piece of the console's security, potentially
enabling early, hardware-level jail breaks that Sony can't patch with software updates.
The best part? This all started with some guy who just really wanted to play Beat Saber with
custom songs. Security researcher Smash Stacking noticed the console version of Beat Saber
didn't support community tracks. So rather than simply swapping to PC like a normal person,
he spent months attempting to reverse engineer the PS5, eventually presenting his discovery of
multiple exploits on stage at the Chaos Communication Congress conference.
While he didn't name the console he was working with during his presentation,
a set of boot ROM signing keys quietly appeared online soon afterward. If they turn out to be
valid, they could allow researchers to decrypt and study Sony's bootloader, a permanent crack in
the security chain for the PS5 akin to the PlayStation 3's infamous signing key failure.
Days later, developer Gazine Dev made a Twitter post demonstrating a potential jailbreak method
using Star Wars Racer Revenge, a somewhat rare and forgotten PS4 game.
Running code from the physical copy of the game appears to trigger a debug mode
on the PS5, meaning that as of right now this is the most promising potential jailbreak path yet
for the console and instantly it caused resale prices for that game to explode online.
Now this method is still in the early stages and nothing has been made publicly available yet,
but no doubt the seven or eight people in the world who would be able to actually make something
using these leaks and hide their tracks well enough to avoid getting sued into oblivion by Sony,
see this is a huge win! We are not bringing the Quickbits to Vegas with us. Not after what happened
last time. Pebble has revived its round-faced smartwatch with a new Pebble Round 2, a slim
$200 watch with a 1.3-inch color e-paper screen up to two weeks of battery life, basic health
tracking and voice features available to not pre-order now for a May release. It drops things
like a heart rate sensor to stay affordable, but keeps the classic Pebble vibe, thin stainless
steel build and iOS and Android compatibility focusing on simplicity and nostalgia over high-end
features. I mean even if you don't really care about Pebble, we've already taken the time to
learn the difference between Pebble, Rebel, Repebble, etc. So it's worth pointing out that hey,
there's a new old watch coming its round! Brand new New York Mayor Zaron Mamdani banned Flipper Zero
and Raspberry Pi devices at his inauguration, but the interesting part isn't quite what was banned,
it's how. These weren't listed as categories like wireless tools or computers, they were
singled out by brand name right next to weapons and drones. The Flipper Zero ban is at least
kind of understandable given its reputation, but Raspberry Pi is literally just a tiny
general-purpose computer. Maybe they thought it was made out of fruit and they were going
by airline rules? I don't know. California has launched a new delete request and opt-out platform,
aka drop, which lets residents submit a single request to more than 500 data brokers to delete
their personal information like email, phone number, and other sensitive details. The state says
the tool, which went live January 1st under the California Delete Act, it just sounds like you're
trying to delete the state, aims to give people more control over their privacy and could help
reduce spam and fraud, though brokers don't have to start processing these requests until later
in 2026. Now I genuinely think this is cool, I've said it before, but I find it very telling that
the state most concerned with your cybersecurity is also the one that houses all of the data-hungry
big tech companies. California understands the mind of the psychopath because they are the asylum.
A UK company, Spaceforge, fired up a furnace in a mini-satellite that can reach up to 1,000 degrees
Celsius to test making semiconductors in space where the microgravity and vacuum let impurities
naturally separate, producing purer chips than on Earth, theoretically. Now the furnace got a ride
from a SpaceX rocket up into orbit in June and it's a milestone because it's a step towards
orbital manufacturing for ultra clean tech materials with bigger space fabs and re-entry tests
planned in the future. Because it's not safe having all the fabs in the chip manufacturing
just in Taiwan, put it up in space that way no one can get to it. And some tech startups
have apparently decided the best way to boost productivity isn't better tools or fewer meetings.
No, it's free nicotine pouches. Reports have emerged of a trend where offices stock fridges
and vending machines with sesh pouches, pitched as a focus aid for developers grinding through long
AI assisted work days. Doctors are unsurprisingly not thrilled, pointing out that nicotine is still
addictive even if it skips the smoke. What? I thought I was addicted to the clouds. But hey,
if coffee and soylent had a baby, it would be like this. Guess nerds need some lip dinner too.
I'll tell you what though, I might need some kind of stimulant to get through next week when
ses happens. We're gonna have a new episode every day of the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday. So we'll see how that goes. Come back on Monday. We'll find out.