0:00
Google has revealed what is going to be the successor to Chromebooks. Google
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Books. Mhm. They're going to come out this fall
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running Google's Androidbased aluminium OS. But don't worry, that's just the
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code name. They're going to have a different name for it by the time it launches. They got the same crack
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branding team on it as the one that came up with Google Book. Google Book. I'm
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Riley Murdoch. This is TechLink. And the Google book announcement comes ahead of
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Google IO, the company's annual dev conference. This year's theme, even more
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AI. I mean, Google VP John Mletus says
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the Google book will run native Android apps with no emulation cuz it'll be
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running an OS built on the Android stack. Something that many of us were
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very excited about because I guess we assumed that Google wouldn't stuff it
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full of AI bloat. I don't know why we thought that. Google was showing this
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kind of stock Google book imagery in a lot of the presentation, but they didn't
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actually give any details on hardware.
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Apparently, it's going to be a very similar situation to the one with Chromebooks. Mletus says Google is
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working closely with major OEMs from Acer to Lenovo to ensure premium
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quality. and Intel, Qualcomm, and MediaTek are all on board on the
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processor side, meaning that both x86 and ARM support is baked in to Aluminium
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OS right out of the gate. Google similarly did not go into a ton of
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detail about aluminium OS, but they did talk a lot about magic pointer, which
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summons Gemini whenever you wiggle your cursor. So you can wiggle it over a
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table of data to turn it into a chart or wiggle it over an image of a Japanese
1:39
storefront to get a translation. According to Google, the magic pointer
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is so important because pointing is really at the core of a lot of the
1:47
interactions we have. I thought it was human connection, but no, actually I
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just this is this is the core of a lot. I just kind of go around,
1:56
but it's where the Facebook poke came from. After months of waiting, the Trump
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phone is finally here. Asterisk asterisk
2:03
on basically everything in that sentence. People who put down a $100
2:07
pre-order deposit for the Trump phone have been freaking out this past week
2:11
after Trump mobile updated its terms and conditions on April 6th. This led to
2:17
people posting a lot of demonstrably false information on social media. posts
2:22
went viral claiming that the terms and conditions said that the phone would not
2:25
arrive, that people would not get their deposits back or refunded, that 600,000
2:32
pre-orders of the phone were confirmed. According to The Verge, however, that
2:35
claim of 600,000 pre-orders is just I that came out of nowhere. Someone made
2:40
that up. And the terms and conditions do have a lot of weird language in there
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about how Trump might not release a phone. Uh just because you've gave us
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$100 doesn't mean we're going to release a phone. I don't know. However, they do
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very explicitly promise refunds if the phone never ships. Who knows if they're
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going to honor that, but it's in there. The general vibe on the internet for the
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past week and a half has been that the Trump phone is dead, which is a totally
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fair thing to think. I thought it was dead a long time ago. But even more
3:13
reporting from The Verge has surfaced evidence that the Trump phone is more
3:18
real than it's ever been. It got FCC approval back in January and PTCB
3:24
approval in March, which is reportedly one of the final steps before a phone
3:28
actually launches. And sure enough, Trump Mobile stated this morning that
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the phone is going to ship this week. Now, that said, the affforementioned
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terms and conditions also say delivery will come in no specific time frame,
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which could put it anywhere between now and the eventual heat death of the
3:46
universe. But the important thing is that we should all keep doing our best
3:50
to figure out what is going to happen with this phone. I mean, stability of
3:55
the stock market, you know, inflation, wars happening, that's all that's fine.
4:00
We got to figure out what is up with this yellow colored phone. Meta
4:04
employees across the US have begun to organize protests in response to the
4:08
company's new mouse and keyboard tracking software. The push back comes
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after last month's announcement that the tool would be logging employee activity
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in order to train the AI agents that met a plan to use to replace those same
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employees. The company then announced that 10% of staff would be laid off on
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May 20th to help fund $135 billion in AI spending.
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So the fallout has triggered unprecedented worker organizing at Meta
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with a movement now spreading to the UK through a tech workers union. So, I
4:38
guess congratulations to Zuckerborg for finally achieving Meta's goal of
4:43
bringing people together. This news comes during a rough stretch for the
4:46
cursed puppet that is the Zuckerorn as Meta stock dropped nearly 9% after Q1
4:52
earnings showed a loss of 20 million active users across their platforms and
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an impending $3.7 billion penalty as
5:00
part of the ongoing New Mexico lawsuit. Honestly, in moments like this, I kind
5:04
of feel sorry for Zuck. But then I remember that he's actually a lizard 95%
5:09
of the way through a transformation into a man. And I actually feel totally fine
5:14
again. Like you're going to feel about our sponsor, MicroEnter. They say that
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savings on Apple products. What? Check out some of their amazing deals like
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MicroEnter parking lot. That's right, Austin, you are getting a MicroEnter.
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MicroEnter News to keep up to date with the everchanging world of tech. Now,
6:06
back to my screenplay. You think it's weird if I call the protagonist James
6:09
Quick Bits. I hardly know her. Spotify
6:14
suffered a global outage Tuesday afternoon with more than 15,000 users
6:19
reporting problems. The rest of them didn't even notice. Coincidentally, on
6:23
the same day the company rolled out a flashy new feature celebrating and
6:27
recapping your entire listening history, not just this past year, some users
6:31
reported that their music had cut out, but the ads kept playing. Different user
6:36
decided to go analog, listening to records to pass the time. Luckily,
6:41
Spotify fixed the issue and it's working again now. Almost got a bit
6:45
introspective there, listening to an artistic work in its entirety. Don't
6:48
want that. The EU has announced that it is working on expanded child safety
6:53
legislation intended to crack down on social platforms for addictive features.
6:58
The commission said the move is necessary because these platforms have
7:01
failed to protect children from harm. Enforcement is however where the EU will
7:05
struggle as their age verification app was called a fundamentally illconceived
7:09
disaster by security experts which incidentally is what my local paper
7:14
called my high school jazz band's decision to incorporate Roman candles
7:17
into our pep rally performance. It looked really cool though. Amazon
7:22
announced Tuesday it's rolling out 30inut deliveries to dozens of US cities
7:26
starting with bits of Seattle and Philadelphia. Its most aggressive push
7:30
yet into quick commerce. The company is using smaller dark facilities tucked
7:35
into neighborhoods close to where customers live. Knowing Amazon, I think
7:39
those dark facilities might be where they keep employees trying to unionize
7:44
or just take more than a 5-minute break. Apple released iOS 26.5 this week
7:50
alongside a warning to update immediately since it patches over 60
7:54
security flaws and many of them are serious. As usual, Apple's keeping the
7:59
specifics vague in order to give users a head start before attackers reverse
8:03
engineer the patches, I guess. So, you should probably go get the update,
8:07
unless you've always dreamed of being a silent partner in a Bellarussian crypto
8:11
mining operation. And Chinese robotics company Unitry debuted the GD01, a 9 ft,
8:18
500 kg manned Mecca that could be yours
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for only $650,000. The demo showcases a pilot controlling
8:27
the bot as it stomps happily along before proceeding to knock down a brick
8:32
wall. Why are all of their demos so
8:35
violent? They just accept it. They're just like, "Well, if we make robots,
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they're going to kill us." So, it was just like that's what But that's not
8:43
all. It also transforms and crawls backwards on all fours like the girl
8:47
from the ring. They one upped it for this one. The cockpit doesn't rotate
8:53
though. So, in that form, the pilot would stare helplessly at the clouds. A
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great design for anyone who values a nice sunset over surviving a giant robot
9:02
fight. I certainly hope you survive long enough to come back on Friday for more
9:06
tech news. I'm sure we'll have some more quantifiably questionable and
9:10
refreshingly quenchable quality stories.