Well, tech news, it's just one of those things, you know?
It's uh uh What What What um what things?
Couldn't tell you. YouTube has been serving some TV viewers
with 90-second non-skippable ads, according to multiple
reports on Reddit and on Twitter, where YouTube pushed back saying that they
don't serve an ad format like that. This tweet was quickly community-noted with
evidence that many people were nonetheless seeing these non-existent
ads. YouTube has since called it an interface bug, where inaccurate timers
are being shown for shorter ads, and says that a fix is rolling out. But,
buggy ads aren't the only bad news out of YouTube this week, because YouTube
Premium is getting a US price hike of up
to $4 per month at the highest tier, the
first increase since 2023.
That's not that long ago. YouTube says the hike is going to help them continue
delivering a high-quality experience, but as Gizmodo points out, the last time
YouTube raised Premium prices was just kind of during an inflationary spike,
which seems to be what's happening right now, not that the service is materially
changing. CPUID, the French company behind tech enthusiast staples like
CPU-Z and Hardware Monitor, had its website hacked this week, and they were
serving malware in place of their actual software. Oh, no. For about 6 hours
between April 9th and 10th, clicking the download button on cpuid.com
would hand you a Trojanized installer file instead of the real thing. But,
how can hackers be so talented and yet
so incompetent? It wasn't even named the right thing. It was called
hwinfo_monitor_setup.exe.
But, that's not what I clicked on. It's the software equivalent of a Pepsi
vending machine giving me a Coke can that turns out to be full of anthrax.
Victims who ignored Windows Defender screaming at them and clicked through
the suddenly Russian installer got hit with a multi-stage, mostly in-memory
attack that went straight for their saved Chrome passwords.
The same group hit FileZilla back in March, and researchers at VX
Underground, who said they'd need a good bit of time trying to bonk it with a
stick to reverse engineer it, ultimately gave the sample an official grade of B-
proving that even in crime, you can still get graded on a curve. France,
meanwhile, is ditching Microsoft Windows in favor of Linux across its government
computers in an effort to reduce reliance on US technology, to which I
have to say, "Welcome to the Linux challenge, France.
This will be your Waterloo."
Well, I guess Waterloo was your Waterloo, but but this could be kind of
hard, too. French Minister David Amiel said the goal is for France to regain
control of its digital destiny, and that the country can no longer depend on
foreign infrastructure that it doesn't control. France's digital agency, DINUM,
is leading the switchover as part of a larger initiative, which saw France
recently move 80,000 national health insurance employees off of Teams, Zoom,
and Dropbox and onto open-source French alternatives. France even went so far as
to nationalize supercomputer company Bull, spending 404 million euros to
prevent it from being bought up by a foreign company. I hope that doesn't end
up being an error.
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Now, the accelerated particles, that's a whole other can.
Uh uh of worms? No, it's like you're not even listening.
Keychron has uploaded the source files for 83 of their keyboards and mice to
GitHub, handing the modern community full editable CAD designs for cases,
plates, and stabilizers across basically every major line they make. It is source
available rather than truly open-source, so it's not like tinkerers are going to
be able to sell their mods, but at least now the mechanical keyboard community
can stop reverse-engineering dimensions with calipers as though they're
appraising a stolen Rolex, and just maintain their own stuff. This is a
super cool move. Meanwhile, in the wake of Anthropic's "too dangerous to release
publicly" AI model Mythos grabbing headlines this week, Axios is reporting
that OpenAI is reportedly also finalizing their own AI product that's
allegedly so dangerous it can only be released to a small, hand-picked group
of partners. Turns out that OpenAI's version is an expansion of a cyber
partner program that it launched back in February, and Axios had to correct its
own headline to clarify that this isn't even the company's next flagship model.
Nothing says "we're all so scary" quite like anonymously calling a reporter
about it and talking about a thing that you were already doing.
Good job. An Ohio man has become the first person convicted under the 2025
Take It Down Act, the federal law criminalizing non-consensual deepfakes.
James Strawler pleaded guilty to producing AI-generated sexual images of
at least 10 victims, including minors.
Yuck. On his phone, authorities found over
2,400 explicit photos and videos, two
dozen AI apps, and over 100 models.
According to the New York Times, it's not immediately clear how severe of a
sentence he will face, but the Take It Down Act carries up to 3 years in
federal prison for deepfakes involving minors. While many are no doubt
concerned about the Take It Down Act being misused, I think we can all agree
on this human toilet brush going away for a while. On the subject of things
that have been gone away for a while, BlackBerry's ghost is back and suing
Brother. Irish patent assertion firm
Malachi Innovations scooped up BlackBerry's old patent pile in 2023 and
filed a suit in the Eastern District of Texas, alleging that Brother printers
infringe four Wi-Fi patents that were originally developed for BlackBerry
phones. Malachi has also filed lawsuits against
Nintendo, Asus, and Canon, the last of which Malachi quietly withdrew 3 weeks
ago. But, the case has sparked concerns that other printer manufacturers may
also be liable for taking perhaps too large of a bite from the original
fruit-based phone. Are berries technically fruit? They are, aren't
they? And finally, Honor has announced the
Mouse Buds Pro in Europe, a travel mouse with a sliding rear compartment that
pops open to reveal a pair of semi-open ANC earbuds that are stashed inside.
But, wait, there's more. If that wasn't enough to sell you on this mouse/earbuds
combo, it's also got a skin-like coating, so you can feel like you are
holding hands with your computer. Oh, wow. It's my AI girlfriend. The
earbuds work independently over Bluetooth, which I guess is good for
anyone who would otherwise have to go jogging with a computer mouse in their
pocket that >> So annoying. >> that they're holding hands with. It's
time for me, after learning that, to go jogging away from learning about that.
Um I'll see you back here on Monday for more tech news, which is
I It's just a thing. It happens sometimes.