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but I abdicated the throne
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for one very simple reason.
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I wanted to focus on bringing you the tech news.
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Still gonna tax you, though.
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Mozilla has ignited controversy among Firefox users this week by,
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primarily,
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being bad at marketing.
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See, the company's been trying to build a new framework for online advertising
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that depends less on collecting people's personal information.
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They acquired Anonym, a company working on just that, in June,
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before announcing Privacy Preserving Attribution in August.
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PPA supposedly encrypts and aggregates data
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about how many users engage with an ad
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without collecting any info about those users,
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preserving privacy while still letting websites generate revenue.
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And I think it sounds good
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when you say it like that.
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Unfortunately, yesterday,
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Mozilla's relatively new CEO
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started off her blog post about PPA by saying the company is
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going to be more active in digital advertising,
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while an official forum post talked about making ads and privacy coexist,
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causing concern among the particularly ad-averse
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that Mozilla was going through that phase
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when you think Don Draper is a good guy in Mad Men.
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You don't like the first five seconds of the first episode?
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While some Firefox users simply want no ads on the internet, period,
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others are trying to explain how PPA could balance privacy and sustainability.
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The problem is, this isn't even Mozilla's first marketing blunder for PPA.
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Adblock users were already mad about PPA being enabled by default in July's Firefox 128.0 release,
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which led EU privacy organization, NOIB,
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which stands for NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS,
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the spit is silent,
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to file a complaint over Firefox's new feature which tracked users.
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Side note,
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NOIB is no joke.
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Another of their complaints just led to a top EU court imposing limits on Meta's data collection.
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Do not rub NOIB the wrong way.
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But they do appreciate it if you rub them the right way.
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They call it NOIBing.
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Turns out that early PPA rollout was a limited developer test
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and did not collect any user data,
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but Mozilla did admit last week
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they could have been more open about what they were doing,
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only to fumble the ball again this week,
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the same week they flagged the uBlock Origin Lite Firefox add-on
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as collecting user data and using machine generated code,
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causing developer Raymond Hill to pull it from the add-on store
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after getting fed up with Mozilla support.
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Listen, I want Firefox to be better at marketing
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so more people use it,
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but right now they're at like 7% market share.
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So proportionally, I spent way too much time talking about this.
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YouTube has announced a bunch of changes to how shorts work,
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starting with how they're not gonna be so short.
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You still have to put them on one leg at a time.
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Starting October 15th, shorts can be up to three minutes.
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Meaning any video with a square aspect ratio or taller
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that's less than three minutes
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will be seen as a short by YouTube.
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The change will only apply to videos uploaded after that date though, so don't worry,
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vertical doom scrollers won't suddenly be hit with your experimental artsy student film.
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The square is a box that represents society.
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And the black and white represents my soul.
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In an ode to TikTok's CapCut templates,
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YouTube's also adding a remix ability
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with the use template button,
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which will let you participate in that most storied of human traditions.
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Doing it for the meme.
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There's also a new trends page for shorts,
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and later the shorts feed itself will show previews
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of comments before you even click through to the video.
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Which comments?
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Oh, the worst ones, obviously.
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YouTube's obviously hoping the new features will help it compete with TikTok,
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and it's already beating it in at least one way,
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the new YouTube feature that lets you
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temporarily hide shorts from your YouTube home feed altogether.
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I wish I could do that on TikTok.
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I also wish I wouldn't be spied on by the Chinese government.
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Meta has revealed Meta MovieGen,
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its own photorealistic video generator
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capable of creating 16 second videos with a twist, or else I wouldn't be telling you about it.
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Though it's not available to the public,
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Meta's demos showcase the ability
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to edit existing videos using only text,
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as well as impressively realistic simulations of bad, Halloween costumes.
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But here's the twist.
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With a single photo,
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MovieGen can make a video deep fake of anyone DJing an impromptu set next to a cheetah.
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Only that scenario.
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But is the cheetah dancing?
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No.
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Is it Chester Cheetah?
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Maybe.
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I'm out.
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I hate that guy.
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And even more impressively to me,
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it can generate music and audio synced up to the action in the video.
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Meta says MovieGen could usher in a new AI-enabled era of content creators.
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