2023-11-09 Europe Will Save Us [rE8CgcDS-gc].txt

Yes, you did come here for tech news,
but you'll leave with something even more precious.
This image in your mind.
Ah ha ha 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 WebView 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 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 Vanced,
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 Hanf 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, shtick,
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 YouChat,
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, ooh boy, it is spicy.
Muy picante.
According to the FTC,
Cochava 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.
Geez.
Allegedly, Cochava 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 of 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.
Quick Bits move at near relativistic speeds and thus experience significant time distortion.
With every Quick Bit,
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-inch M3 MacBook Pros,
the devices came installed not with a standard up-to-date operating system,
but 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 for the last four 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,
Copite7Kimmy, 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, MegasizeGPU, 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 detail
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 said 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 et al.
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 JobGPT
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.
F*** you, Jeff.