I'm going to be completely honest. We're shooting this video really late and there's a lot of tech news, so we got to
move fast. Let's go. The White House claimed this week that at least some
imports from China are now subject to a
245% tariff, leaving some analysts wondering whether this was a typo. But
it appears that 245% includes previous
tariffs levied against China during the preceding Trump and Biden
administrations. And the current administration is now including them on
the executive orders because hey you got to put up big numbers to make the
investors happy. You guys you you guys
like this or but despite the US government trying to cut China off, US
consumers are flocking to the Chinese shopping apps DHGate and Taoba which
were the top downloaded free shopping apps on the iOS app store at the time of
writing. This follows also Chinese shopping app Tim Teimu and Shien, which
is now based in Singapore, announcing price hikes in the wake of the Trump
administration's tariffs. Some reports indicate users are turning to Taoba and
DHGate to buy luxury items direct from China, which usually sell for way more
after they've gone to some brand HQ in Europe for final packaging and a little
kiss of approval from an eccentric old Italian guy.
send it away. But there is some good tariff related news. Nintendo announced
US and Canada pre-orders for the Switch 2 will go live on April 24th. And the
company confirmed they are not hiking the price of the console or its games.
Just its accessories. Joy-Cons are like a hundred bucks and a dock is 120. Hey,
I mean what? What? You're not a real fan? The little strap is $14. Okay.
Google is getting kind of aggressive with their Gemini feature rollouts. Free
users can now use Gemini Live's screen sharing feature, which was previously
only available to paid users or owners of a Pixel 9 or Galaxy S25 device. The
feature lets you talk to Gemini while showing it your camera feed like you're
on a video call. And it's basically the same interface used by the prototype
smart glasses Google recently demoed at a TED conference, if that's even real.
I'm so tired. Look, don't think about it, especially if you're a college
student in the US, because Google's giving all of you free access to Gemini
Advanced until June 30th, so you can get all that help from AI to write your
papers for you while you play with the also just rolled out V2 video generation
into the Wii hours of the night, morning, something. This really smells
like the give every kid a Chromebook and now they're used to it and will buy
another Chromebook program. That's what it's called. That's what it says on the
web page. But I don't know, the internet is finding out some cool stuff about
ChatCBT's newest biggest reasoning model 03. Turns out it's really good at
geogesser, even correctly identifying a specific library based on a picture of
books on the shelf. I mean, it answers
just as confidently when it gets it wrong, but you got to admit it's got
some. Okay. It's also doing a kind of a creepy thing now where it's referring to
users by name in its internal chain of thought, which seems to be related to
the recent chat GPT update, causing it to reference all of your previous chats
when answering a prompt. And this feels even weirder than addressing you
directly by name because it's like asking someone a question and then
they're like, "Sure, Riley just asked me a question,
so I should probably do a web search to find the answer." Oh, he's looking at me
right now with his stupid face. This guy, his name's Riley, really needs a
haircut. I can hear you. Another fun fact is that 03 and reasoning models in
general hallucinate more than previous models, according to both OpenAI and AI
research lab Transloose because they make more claims, both accurate and
inaccurate. Now, those answers take up a lot of resources. And according to Sam
Alman, millions of dollars are spent to power chat GPT's responses to users just
saying, "Thank you, ChatGpt." But Sam says if that's the cost of being polite
to AI, it's money well spent because you
never know. What? Well, you know, AI might
remember your kindness in, you know, a few
years. Wait, what does that mean, Sam? Does it mean you should check out our
sponsor MicroEnter and their newest store in Santa Clara, California? Sign
up at the link below and receive a free 128 gig flash drive in store when it
opens this year. And hey, if you bought your old GPU at MicroEnter, bring it
with you for their GPU tradein program. You receive an offer the same day. And
hey, bring your other old tech, too, and let MicroEnter recycle it or help donate
it to someone who needs it. And hey, bring your curiosity for tech news
because MicroEnter has great articles and tutorials on the latest tech trends.
You don't have to come in for that. That's on the website and they're also
running an Apple sales event all throughout April online. Anyway, check
out the sale and learn more about the Santa Clara store at the link in the
description. Rain or shine, tariffs or
no tariffs, the shiptorm sale event will help you get a great deal at
ltstore.com. We are offering free worldwide shipping on any order over
$150. So, it's a great time to pick up some apparel or a commuter backpack or a
screwdriver. And we are offering a neverbeforeseen price on our magnetic
cable management essentials bundle. Don't miss it by heading to ltstore.com
at the link in the video description. Back to you,
Riley. Okay, quick bits. Yeah, Synology
is getting flak for requiring the use of Synology branded hard drives in their
plus line of NAS systems in order for users to access features like drive
health reports, automatic firmware updates, and volumewide dduplication.
What makes this move even more silly is that Synology doesn't even make their
own hard drives. They basically rebrand Toshiba and Seagate drives, which
involves giving it a little kiss from an eccentric old ital. It's the same guy.
Discord has been sued by the state of New Jersey for violating child safety
laws and doing little to protect underage users from harassment, abuse,
and sexual exploitation. Now, Discord is testing a new age verification system
that involves scanning ID cards and faces with the platform blurring
sensitive media if it detects a young, but only in Australia and the UK, where
recently passed legislation requires the use of such systems. Now, this comes
along with privacy concerns as well, but other regions are considering similar
legislation. So, AI is going to need to get real good at spotting two kids in a
trench coat. And that's no easy task. Okay, we've all been fooled. After
losing its search antirust lawsuit last year, Google has been ruled a monopoly
again in the adtech industry, this time following a lawsuit from the US
Department of Justice. And things are looking similarly not great for Meta,
who's trying to argue against the FTC's assertion that they have a monopoly on
social media. Zuck has testified saying Tik Tok counts as a competitor. But the
FTC is arguing Tik Tok's more like a content delivery service. If we're
talking truly social media, only Snapchat and a platform nobody's ever
heard of, Miwee, qualify because they focus on sharing between family and
friends, an activity that has gone way, way down on Meta's apps. Meta's Cheryl
Sandberg actually argue that ads can be
as high quality or even better than organic content, and users want to see
them. So, look, I don't even know if the Monopoly argument holds here, but I
think we all know Meta deserves to get cooked here anyway. And hey, how about a
nice tech story? A NASA mission called Polarimeter to unify the corona and
heliosphere, or punch, which is just
great on its own. Uh, whose entire purpose is to fly to the sun and take
sick photos, as Gizmodo puts it, has begun sending said photos back. And
yeah, to the untrained eye, they mostly look like a fridge painting by a toddler
who just discovered the color orange. But this photo's been to space. And so
has Katy Perry now, so I guess that's kind of whatever. Uh, hey, you know what
is not whatever, though? You coming back here on Monday for a talk linked with me
and Luke talking about AI. Yeah, you didn't know I was going to say
that. I'll explain everything on Monday. Okay, bye.