Yes, you did come here for tech news,
but you'll leave with something even more precious.
This image in your mind. Ha ha please, no applause.
It's my pleasure. Google's plans to control the web are running into a
couple snags from haters who are just mad they didn't start their own tech
giant. The company has responded to merciless criticism of its proposed web
environment integrity API for Chrome, deemed a DRM for websites, and is
shelving it in favor of the much different Android web view media
integrity API, which will apparently be much narrower in scope. Of course, the
reason it doesn't need to be broader is because Android already has an
environmental attestation and uses its play integrity API to scan users' phones
for root privileges. So, what's a few more scans among friends?
The new API could be used to block malicious apps and malware, but it could
also prevent the rise of more apps like the now dead Vance, which gave regular
YouTube users premium features like ad-free videos and a good time. But
Google's crusade against ad blockers might cause legal trouble in the EU.
Privacy experts like Alexander Hanff claim that YouTube's anti-ad blocker
measures violate Article 5.3 of EU's
e-privacy directive, meaning that after forcing Apple to change their whole
closed ecosystem Europe might set its sights on Google
next. As if the tech giant hasn't had enough controversy, they're also
integrating generative AI into their advertiser tools because spam art is
what ads need more of, and testing U Chat, a YouTube chatbot that users can
ask about the video they're watching because who has time to actually watch
videos when there's all these AI toys to play with. I mean, I always read the
comments. Basically the same thing. YouTube is also considering an AI
feature that summarizes large comment sections, a handy feature for creators
to figure out what their subscribers are talking about at a glance. Though,
judging by our comment section, the overall effect will be like a supportive
mom who's been possessed by a demon. You're doing great, sweetie. I hate your
beard. Take a shower. Anyway, love you.
A judge recently unsealed an amended FTC privacy complaint against Kochava, the
world's largest mobile data broker, revealing disturbing allegations that
the company has collected and sells a staggering amount of sensitive
information that is linked or easily linkable to specific individuals. The
original FTC lawsuit was blocked back in May because the complaint didn't provide
enough evidence, but now, apparently, they're back with the goods, and woo
boy, it is spicy. Muy picante. No me
gusta. According to the FTC, Kochava sells data including personal
information like names, addresses, phone numbers, and precise geolocation within
a few meters, but also demographic information like race, gender, annual
income, political affiliation, religion, and
pregnancy status. I didn't have another finger. Kochava customers, who are
hopefully just advertisers, could easily trace an individual's movements from
their home to their work, to a hospital, to a church, or even to an emergency
shelter. Jeez. Allegedly, Kochava doesn't just
collect information about what apps an individual uses, but also what they do
while inside them and how much money they spend. You know, an easy rule of
thumb of whether a product is dangerously invasive is asking yourself,
"Could a domestic abuser use this to find their estranged spouse simply by
typing pregnant female Caucasian Houston Candy Crush Green Party into a search
bar?" Maybe. MyQ, best known for their smart
garage door openers, has apparently spent the last several months repeatedly
blocking unauthorized third-party smart home apps from access to their devices.
That might make sense, but MyQ currently has very few authorized software
partners because they require partners to pay them for the right to interact
with their devices. Home Assistant recently announced that they will be
deactivating their MyQ integration since it isn't working anymore and because as
an open source project paying MyQ's fee simply isn't sustainable. You know, like
when you don't have money and everyone wants to go to McDonald's?
This has left MyQ customers in a situation where the apps they use to
manage all their other smart devices simply can't interact with their garage
doors. You might wonder why a garage door opener company would be trying to
interfere with its customers ability to open their garages. But MyQ is probably
trying to force customers to use its official app, probably called Reddit,
which since October has been serving obnoxious ads that interfere with the
functioning of the app. Oh, it is Reddit. Sometimes even pushing the open
garage button off the screen. While the iOS version of the app is still at 4.8
stars, its Android counterpart recently dropped to 3.9 due to all those selfish
customers who think they shouldn't get ads on an app for a product they already
paid for. Like, what's your problem? What do you think that when you go to
the restaurant you should just get food when you pay for it? Like, bringing it back to McDonald's. Now it's time for
quick bits brought to you by Grammarly. Here at Linus Media Group, we strive to
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if you check out the link below. QuickBits move at near relativistic
speeds and thus experience significant time distortion. With every QuickBit, I
grow a fraction of a second further out of sync with the universe as you perceive it. Did y'all know Kim and
KANYE GOT DIVORCED?
TO THE SURPRISE OF SEVERAL Apple users, when they received their brand new 14-in
M3 MacBook Pros, the devices came installed not with a standard up-to-date
operating system with an unreleased build of macOS Ventura 13.5 from back in
July that couldn't be updated. Apple has already released an update addressing
the issue, but this would seem to indicate that Apple's been stockpiling
devices with M3 chips the last 4 months.
Apple usually creates these separate incompatible versions of its OS in order
to keep potential leaks out of public betas, but it's not clear how it wound
up getting sent to consumers. My theory? Snake, YOU'VE CREATED A TIME
PARADOX. Who's Pete Davidson? You mean Skeet Davidson? I heard he's dating Kim.
According to reliable leaker and my best friend, kopite7kimmi, please don't say
that's not true, expensive GPU lovers should expect NVIDIA to launch the RTX
40 Super series during the 2024 Consumer
Electronics Show in January. That would make sense considering that NVIDIA
reportedly won't be releasing the RTX 50 series until at least 2025, and they
tend to pair their gaming launches alongside big industry events. Fellow
leaker Megasize GPU has also revealed images of NVIDIA's retail branding
inserts for the series, and apparently NVIDIA has changed the stylized typeface
of the old Super logo with the same boring sans-serif font it uses for
literally everything else.
Why can't at least the word super be super? Only the prices, I guess. The
driving app Waze has launched a new safety feature called crash history
alerts. Basically, using AI and reports from the app's community, Waze will
alert drivers if the road they're about to turn onto is prone to accidents.
However, the notifications are light on details so as not to distract drivers.
They won't tell you if the crashes are major versus minor or if they involved
cars, pedestrians, and or cyclists. Hypothetically, you won't know if
there's been a daily crash at an intersection for the last year or if a
single car knocked over an entire bike race. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, okay? I can
still hear the squeals of all those men's Lycra rubbing together.
A team of researchers from the universities of California and Sydney
have developed an artificial brain from a network of randomly arranged silver
nanowires. Dr. Frankenstein and all. It's alive and strangely antibacterial.
Its structure pattern changes predictably with electrical stimulus and
can maintain that pattern when the stimulus is removed, meaning the network
can learn dynamically and more efficiently than traditional AI training
all in real time. In the near future,
these silver networks could become more popular than GPUs and maybe even grills.
What? You've got silver on your teeth? I've got it in my brain, bro. And a
software engineer used an AI-powered service to apply for 5,000 jobs leading
your mother to ask, "What's your excuse?" I hate you!
She's still possessed. As Wired explains, the software engineer in
question used a service called Job GPT
from the accurately named Lazy Apply and landed around 20 interviews out of the
5,000 applications compared to the other 20 interviews he got after manually
applying to 200 to 300 jobs.
40 interviews and still unemployed. I'm not sure the amount of applications is
the problem. Some recruiters quoted in the article
are okay with the applicants using AI tools, but others likened it to asking
out every woman in the bar regardless of who they are, which is apparently a bad
thing. Oh, well. Sorry for being too nice,
my lady.
And it'd be nice if all you came back on Friday for more tech news, no matter who
you are. Unless you're Jeffrey Gardner from middle school.
You, Jeff.