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People keep saying they want a new LTT Christmas album, but what about a tech-linked album?

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It's just a 35 minute long, tech news-themed cover of We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.

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Care to invest? YouTube is real jazzed about a new ad format they've been piloting for about a year on TVs.

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It's called PAWS ads, and involves an ad popping up as soon as viewers pause the video they're

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because tech executives cannot bear the thought of anyone's eyeballs going literally one second

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without fresh content. They'll dry out, they need to be lubricated.

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Well great news! In their Q1 earnings call, Google said the PAWS ads pilot

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drove strong brand lift results, and while they didn't say whether they planned to roll this

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out to more users, it would be kind of weird for them to decide they've made enough money from

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this kind of ad, and now it's time to stop. It also seems to align with similar PAWS screen ads,

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recently rolled out by Roku and the UK streaming service Channel 4, the latter of which apparently

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puts the ad right in front of the paused video so you can't even get a closer look at a big bloke

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on Gogglebox. He looks funny. At least YouTube's version shrinks the video a bit and throws the

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ad up on the side. Admittedly, that doesn't sound too bad. If the top comments on a Reddit post

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about the format or anything to go by, it looks like part of the reason YouTube has kept the

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trial going for so long is because, as far as ad placements go, this is one of the less invasive

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options. The ad still robs you of the crumb of attention you were about to use to have an original

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thought, but let's be honest, it wasn't that good. Qualcomm's big claims about its ARM-based

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laptop chips continue. The company now says their recently announced Snapdragon X Plus may be a

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tier lower than its upcoming X Elite lineup, but it can still outperform Apple's M3 by about 10%,

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at least in multi-threaded performance. That's a bit hard to believe, given that a new leaked

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benchmark of what is presumably Microsoft's upcoming Surface Laptop 6, powered by a Snapdragon

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X Elite, couldn't beat a MacBook equipped with an M3 Pro, but it does get mighty close.

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That is, if all of these early benchmarks are to be believed, which they are not, according to a

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piece published yesterday by Semi-Accurate, a tech news site seemingly admitting that they may be

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talking out of their ass. We give you the truth, kind of multiple sources told Semi-Accurate that

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Qualcomm is cheating on their X Elite benchmarks and public demos. The company denied those claims

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in a statement published yesterday. As usual, the proper advice here is to wait until actual

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reviewers get their hands on the product, but it's just hard to ignore the possibility that

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Windows on ARM could be something other than hot garbage. Although, given a recent analysis

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predicting that the coming wave of AI PCs will be accompanied by a 10-15% price hike,

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Qualcomm intensely pushing Snapdragon X hype could very well just be the world's most hilarious

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prank. TikTok parent company ByteDance has until January 19th to sell the app or get deported,

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thanks to a recently passed law, but it ain't giving up that easy.

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It's a green card marriage. The Chinese tech giant says it's preparing to sue the U.S. government

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to block the legislation, and sources told Reuters that if the company's legal options fail,

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it will burn TikTok to the ground.

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But other sources told the information that despite the public bravado, ByteDance is considering an

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option to sell TikTok without its proprietary recommendation algorithm, the source of all its

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power. However, ByteDance explicitly denied this report in a post on the social media site owned

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by the company, Totsau. While reporting about this law has focused on TikTok, any number of other

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social apps with over 1 million American users and owned by a foreign adversary defined as North

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Korea, China, Russia, and Iran, like, for example, WeChat, are also affected. The clock is now ticking,

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and American TikTok users seem to be having a tough time imagining what they would do if the app was

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banned. Well, India banned TikTok in 2020, and everyone just moved to YouTube shorts and reels.

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As of anything, I feel like TikTok deserves to be banned for giving us shorts and reels.

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We didn't want that either. What is a quick bit?

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No. No, really, I'm asking because I don't know anymore. Is that a little segue before the ad

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break, or is it all the little stories after? Nobody knows. The FCC has voted in a split

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three-two decision to restore Obama-era net neutrality rules that prevent internet providers

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from favoring certain websites over others. And to be fair, you'd probably be pretty annoyed to

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find out that the reason why Naruto Shippuden on Hulu won't stop buffering is because Comcast is deep

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in the pocket of big, crunchy roll. That being said, it's not clear that this kind of foul play

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is actually happening. And further, judicial review might find that this newest change to the

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net neutrality rules is a violation of the major questions doctrine, which basically means that

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elected officials should be making big policy decisions, not random appointed bureaucrats.

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After all, we don't vote for the FCC chair. That's what the Illuminati's for.

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Apple has open sourced a family of AI models called OpenELM that are designed to run on device

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rather than through cloud servers. And because of this, the largest OpenELM model has three

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billion parameters, about 500 times fewer parameters than OpenAI's GPT-4. Naturally,

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they all kind of suck. On the MMLU benchmark, Apple's smallest OpenELM model scored 25.72

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out of 100. For reference, GPT-4 scored 86.4. Speaking of open sourcing disappointments,

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though, Microsoft has released the source for the infamously buggy and unpopular MS-DOS 4.00

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After finding out the news, Redditors joined together in asking Microsoft

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to please open-source something else. It's okay to open-source things

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if they suck. It's literally giving your younger brother the crappy thing you're done with.

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Nintendo's highly anticipated Switch 2 console will apparently have joy cons.

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And they'll attach to the console magnetically, according to Spanish site Vandal, who also

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correctly reported on the Switch OLEDs features before that console was released,

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so I guess we can trust them a little bit. Vandal's reporting is based on information

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from Switch 2 accessory makers. And while Vandal doesn't know if current joy cons will also be

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supported by the upcoming console, they claim your Switch Pro controllers will be compatible,

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at least until the joysticks start drifting more than the entire city of Tokyo.

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A high school principal in Baltimore was temporarily suspended after a recording

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of a racist rant in his voice was uploaded to social media. Except that it turns out it wasn't

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a recording of him at all. It was an AI deepfake created by the school's athletics director,

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who the principal had investigated for possible corruption. This is scandalous.

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The athletics director has since been arrested, but it seems he was only caught because he used

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school computers as well as his school-issued email address to sign up for the voice duplication

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service and to distribute the fake recording. This would seem to indicate that, disturbingly,

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dumb people can make deepfakes now. And according to a recently published research paper,

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biotech startup ProFluent has created an AI model trained on CRISPR gene editors pulled from nature,

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which can create artificial gene editors previously unknown to God or man. ProFluent has apparently

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already used this technology to edit human DNA, which honestly feels a little fast.

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It seems now we're not just making AIs that can make new and improved AIs,

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we're making AIs that can make new and improved human beings. Uh, but have we considered what

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will happen if the AI starts hallucinating while making our new generation of Gattaca children?

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Wow, good reference. I mean, you could just be giving birth and boom, elephant baby.

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But the best thing about our future elephant offspring is that they won't forget

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to come back on Monday for more tech news. I think, isn't that a myth? They must forget.