Tech news Tech news Tech
news Tech news Google has agreed to pay
$700 million in Damages to us consumers
as part of a settlement with every state attorney's General everyone over the
search Giants alleged anti-competitive Play Store rules I say alleged because
Google has admitted to no wrongdoing as part of the settlement of course classic
700 million is less than what the Play Store makes in a month and of course
Google Play users make up a not insignificant percentage of the US
population thus the settlement only guarantees a minimum payout of $2 per
user with more going to higher spending users but hey that's just enough money
to buy Super Meat Boy forever twice
didn't think about that two forever Google has also agreed to simplify side
loading for at least the next 5 years and allow Android phone oems to
pre-install more apps on new phones for at least 7 years yay more Facebook apps
you can't uninstall that's raised some concerns that phone manufacturers might
pack devices with bloatware even more than they currently do in addition
Google's user Choice Billing System which was in the pilot phase will be
expanding so more developers can avoid paying the Play Store's default 30% cut
they'll now have the option to pay a much cheaper Google service fee of only
26% it's not so much better as it is
slightly less worse not a very good discount but it would be a rich
milk it seems that messaging service beeper is struggling to find a permanent
fix for its Android-based iMessage app beeper mini after a few weeks of Apple
whacka Ming the loopholes it was using before beeper's new apparently temporary
solution requires users to have access to a Max unique registration data the
update allows users to share that data with others but there's still a finite
number of Macs and a finite number of people willing to share that data just
so you can send fancy blue bubbles from your Nokia the cool kids will definitely
stop sworting you now one advantage of beeper's new method is that the Mac
associated with the registration data has no access to the user's account or
messages another Advantage is that the server Farm method used by other
bridging services and by Bieber themselves before Bieber mini
potentially creates an anomalous number of users all supposedly using one single
computer which is exactly the kind of thing that draws the eye of Sauron and
by SA r i mean Tim Cook you cannot hide
I see you there is no life in the void
only death AI is undoubtedly coming for
everyone's jobs but deoe one of the world's largest consulting firms wants
to use AI to reduce the need for layoffs
deoe hired 130,000 additional staff this
year but found at the same time that thousands of their employees were at
risk of redundancy due to reduced demand for certain Services rather than go
through through large swings of hirings and layoffs the entire tech industry the
past year and a half or two years something deoe is using AI to assess
existing employees skills then creating a plan to shift them into higher demand
roles and strangely that's not the only
positive AI news today weo has announced that a statistical analysis of over 7.1
million miles driven by its driverless cars has found an 85% reduction in
crashes resulting in injuries and a 57 %
reduction in crashes reported by police compared to human benchmarks that's cuz
AIS don't N I feel like they'll n even more
stitches get stitches is that
AI though anyone interpreting that data needs to account for the fact that wayo
only operates within a Geo fenced area in three US cities and that Robo taxis
are far more likely to report minor accidents than humans many of whom just
silently prey that nobody saw them back into that dumpster but just in case you
thought your job was safe again an AI has also used its Little Robot fingers
to beat humans at a rotating wooden Maze Game an unusual case of an AI surpassing
people at a task that is both intellectual and physical so if that's
your job doing the little maze game yeah I'm the wooden maze man you're in
trouble let's close out this story with one of the funnier Reflections on our
changing relationship to technology YouTuber J schlatt posted recent video
about the growing subgenre of AI covers inexplicably featuring his voice and
distinctive New York accent to which he responded by releasing his own actually
kind of amazing cover of Frank Sinatra My Way I Did It
My Way quote you for trying to replace me
heartwarming I'm going to replace
myself the only person is going to replace me is me now it's time for quick
bits brought to you by Samsung this holiday season season you can save big
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appliances we can forgive scientists for mistakenly thinking that the atom was
the smallest possible unit of matter for decades when actually it's the quick bit
but you know so it's okay Telecom giant
Comcast says that thanks to the widely exploited Network Hardware vulnerability
known as Citrix bleed 36 million of
their exfinity customers have had personal data like names contact info
answers to security questions and the last four digits of social security
numbers stolen by hackers you know hey
it's a tough world out there you know nothing Comcast could do except maybe
apply the patch that Citrix provided for them on October 10th instead of waiting
a week to get get started what they were busy the internet pipes don't clean
themselves Comcast CEO is in there going to wiping them manually there's a lot of
Gunk Intel thinks it's still on track to
launch its next gen battl Mage gpus in
2024 according to a road map shared by the company's Japanese Branch if that
launch goes the way that the first Arc GPU launch went this means that just
before Christmas 2024 you'll be able to go to the store and pick up your phone
to read a press releasee about it it's not because it's not it's not going to
be there Intel's Arc gaming cards have gotten way better thanks to driver
updates and by the time battle mage comes out team blue may have a dlss
frame generation competitor of its own if Intel sponsored research from the
University of California is any indication so get excited for Intel's
new gpus or at least nice pictures of them to launch next year or at some
other time mercedesbenz wants to use turquoise tail lights to communicate
when a car is driving itself only Nevada
and California have approved testing of the light color but that's mainly
because they're the only two states where the automaker's conditionally
autonomous self-driving technology is legal frankly I'm in favor of the choice
I I can't think of a more soothing color to see before your legs are taken out by
a Rog AI oh that's so beautiful you can
always get a job in the metaverse cuz they got no
legs the virtual reality ship keeps
sinking even though Zuck keeps plugging the holes with billions of dollars it's
not watertight industry research firm cirana says sales of VR and AR devices
declined by 40% this year even though Mark Zuckerberg specifically asked Santa
for the metaverse this Christmas he even added tongue tracking to the quest Pro
to better appeal to his fellow reptiles but it turns out most bearded dragons
can't afford a $1,000 headset someone needs to do something and the EU is
adding three adult sites PornHub strip
chat and x videos I haven't even heard of the F the middle one strip chat is
just about chicken strips just a bunch of boys getting together disgu the best
tendies the EU is adding them to their list of very large online platforms or
vlops these sites are now in the strictest regulatory classification
under its Digital Services act alongside Heavy Hitters like Amazon meta Tik Tok
Twitter and Wikipedia this decision will likely lead to user age verification
Gates on all three sites but it also provokes an interesting semantic
discussion is Pornhub in some sense a social media site can you be a PornHub
influencer you can add other users as friends on there you also probably
shouldn't unless it's the guy who does calculus yeah he's having a great time
but you should come back on Friday for more Tech news I
promise it won't get weird it's not not like it it'll be fine you please