Lead story for Geek New Central, the Biden
administration's
AI
diffusion rule
restricts export of GPUs
crucial for AI
primarily to curb China's
AI
advancement.
The rule establishes 3 licensing tiers with China
and other adversarial nations
effectively barred from accessing top tier GPUs.
Critics include the semi can Semiconductor
Industry Association and, of course, NVIDIA.
They argue the policy risk harming US competitiveness
and fostering
alliance
with China.
A 120
day comment period
leaves its fate
uncertain.
Welcome to episode 1,791
coming to this Monday,
January 13th. I'm your host, Todd Cochran, ready
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How is everyone doing? Welcome to the show.
Got a great one lined up for you.
Lots of stuff in the tech space happening.
It's not as busy as one would expect.
Of course, everyone's coming off CES. Matter of
fact, a lot of that Kirk just got
back from CES. He talked about me privately
how had a great time and what was
going on and then,
someone I'm doing some work with and a
partnership that we're, doing at Blueberry just got
from CES.
So my devs have been working for that
and just
ongoing
things that we're doing.
And,
it's exciting. It's,
exciting times.
And,
I tell you, I worked the majority of
the weekend.
I had some things to catch up. I
had to write the,
the,
speech, well, presentation I'm gonna be giving it
at Podfest.
Tomorrow afternoon, though, I get to late afternoon,
I go to Detroit.
I have a very, very early flight
on Wednesday morning.
Get into Orlando
around noon, I guess.
But one thing has been interesting. My cat
who,
I guess, semi adopted me I adopted him.
I don't know. His name is Sylvester.
And I hate to say it, but Sylvester
is not really too smart.
But he's a loyal cat,
if such a thing can even exist.
And,
he has been driving me
absolutely
crazy. Now
I know some of you don't mind if
your cats lick you or your dogs lick
you.
To me, it's just gross.
It really, really is.
You you wanna lick my hand or something?
Fine. I'll go I'll go wash my hand
after the, you know, whatever. You've licked the
salt off my hand or whatever the case
may be. I I don't understand it.
But this cat has this thing. About 4
o'clock in the morning,
I'll be dead asleep,
and then I'll hear him. Brr,
purr,
purr.
And I
swear to God, this cat wants to lick
the back of my head.
Just wrong.
So wrong in so many levels,
and,
he normally gets a swift boot
off the bed,
having woke me up and irritated me to
begin with. But what what is it?
What is it with a cat that wants
to lick the back of your head?
It's gross. It really is.
You know, I I know. I understand. I
understand. Some of you love your cats and
dogs, but
this this
this insistent
licking, bleh,
it's just it's just wrong on so many
levels.
I guess that's the difference between dogs. Dogs
dogs don't necessarily
lick you. You know? It just oh, gosh.
I don't know. It just it's just weird
to me. I I'm sorry.
Hey. One thing,
obviously,
if you're in California, if you're in the
Los Angeles area,
you know, this devastation has happened.
You know, hearts go out to all those
folks. Of course, there's been lots of
natural disasters this year, and
it just it just hasn't ended. Right?
And, well, from 2024 into 2025.
And one thing I saw,
I saw a
a Facebook not Facebook. I saw,
a YouTube about a guy,
older gentleman, about 80 years old,
and he
basically saved his house and his neighbor's house
in the Palisades.
And
how did he do it? I think it
was the Palisades.
It's one of those areas where everything was
burning around him.
He had his water hose,
I know about a 150 foot of garden
hose, and he just went around and sprayed
anytime
an ember landed on a bush or on
the grass
or in a in a in a tree,
and he had water pressure even though the
fire hydrant and he just
sprayed and got that those little fires out
and saved everything. Now he's he ran around
for, like, 6 hours
doing this,
but him, his neighbors, both of the neighbors
on each side's houses
survived.
And then I saw
people's houses that survived that they had basically
had a generator,
a high pressure
pump,
hooked to a system within their house that
ran the sprinklers on top of the roof
and around
their property
and just sprayed things down.
And
they they saved their houses.
And then
there were some that had private fire brigades,
and
the news has kind of misled some of
this. But what it was was,
well, there was 2 kinds.
1, they hired someone to come in, paid
some sort of insurance that they would come
in and, basically, this fire brigade took care
of this entire block
and doing the same thing, running around, spraying
out the little fires that would get started
from embers
and saved a bunch of houses.
And then there was the other one was
just 4, 5 citizens that formed their own
fire brigade
and saved their houses as well.
I live in rural America and the closest
fire house from my house is 7 and
a half about 7 and a half, 8
miles.
And it's a volunteer fire department. In other
words, when I go 911,
I need a fire truck.
They send out an alert.
2 or 3 people are responsible getting to
the fire trucks, getting the fire trucks moving.
The rest of the volunteer firemen, they either
get to the truck in time or they
drive to where the fire is.
And, usually, it's they will often beat the
fire truck to the location,
but you know there's probably gonna be about
20 minutes where you're going to be without
any assistance, and that's the case in where
I live 20, at least 20 minutes minimum.
So you know, you know, we've always had
we've had a couple of fires here. We
lost a garage one time.
We were not home when the garage burned.
We came home to it fully engulfed.
That was when I was a kid. And
then some little things here and there. And,
basically,
nothing is more effective in the early
early minutes of a fire. Number 1,
a fire extinguisher. Number 1. Number 2, I
have fire blankets here
in the house. And I don't know if
you know what those are. They're they're, if
you are in the kitchen and you get
a kitchen fire
and it's gotten out of hand to a
point where you can't put a lid on
a pot or whatever it may be, say,
you get a grease fire going, this fire
blanket, I have 2 of them in a
position that's away from the
from the
from the stove, and they rip them out
of their package, and you put it over
top of the fire to smooth to smuff
the fire out.
I have 2 of those.
And
we have,
hydrants,
in the hydrants that, basically, will not freeze
in the winter. So, basically,
we have hoses available
that can be hooked up to those in
a in a in an instant,
turned on, and have water
to try to
slow down whatever may be the issue.
We understand
this living here, we have to be self
reliant for a period of time. Now I
understand in California, they told these people, get
out.
And if they hadn't made a plan
I I I saw many YouTube videos where
if the homeowner had just been
home, their house would have burned down.
Their house would still be standing today.
Now I know there's risk depending on where
you're at in the fire line and, you
know, there's but this one guy, Chronological, said
that house went at 6:30, that one went
at 7, that one at 7:30, that one
at 8 o'clock, that one went at 8:30,
that went went at 9, and then mine
did not go, my neighbor's house, my house.
And then
2 down, they they went later.
So
I understand
there's issues in California. Don't get me wrong.
I'm I'm not saying lightly of this, and
we shouldn't have to resort to this. But
I've learned so many times over so many
years,
you the government isn't there
to to help us. We have to protect
ourselves
at all costs. We have to be ready
for tornadoes, earthquakes.
We have to be ready for fires.
We have to be ready for natural disasters.
We have to protect what we love and
own on our own.
And, sadly, it's gotten to the point, at
least in many places, where this is what
we have to do now. And I heard
a lot of people that are doing nothing
but self insuring.
And, again, what's this have to do with
tech? Not a lot, but it's just been
kinda on my
mind here over the past couple of days
with all this tragedy
that has happened,
and I know people that have lost their
homes. I personally know some people in California
that have lost their, properties.
If you got didn't get a chance,
Adam Corolla, the Adam Corolla podcast,
2 episodes
then he did an episode last night, which
would have been Sunday night, and he did
one a couple of days before that. Watch
that podcast. It's on YouTube. Watch it. So
him and his hotel room go to about
there there is a reckoning,
and I think Adam is right in in
many of those regards.
So, anyway,
thanks for being here. Thanks for letting me
rant a little bit. If you've had loved
ones or someone in California that's lost their
house,
or know someone, I'd I'd love to hear
your thoughts. Am I wrong?
Am I wrong in saying protect
protect
what we own?
Am I wrong in saying that? And, again,
I know everyone's situation's not the same,
but,
by golly.
We've all worked hard for what we have,
and,
fires are are horrific.
It's bad enough when it's a fire from
something that you've done, like an electrical cord
or,
you know, something's happened in the kitchen or
in a garage or something.
It's it's another thing when you have no
control and there's this wall of flame
coming at you.
Absolutely insane insanity for sure.
So, anyway, let me know what you think.
Geeknews@gmail.com.
Yeah. Let's get into tech content. The Biden
administration has unveiled its AI diffusion rules, which
aim to restrict the export of GPUs
that are the most coveted for AI applications.
So the rule proposes 3 licensing tiers. The
first tier is unrestricted, includes all domestic markets
as well as 18 strategic allies.
The majority countries fall into the 2nd tier,
which will have caps on how much compute
power they can import.
The 3rd tier, including China, Russia, Iran, North
Korea effectively bans
US company for selling their most powerful GPUs
theirs, which I think is I personally think
it's a good idea.
I don't think we should be sharing this
information,
with
those countries at this time,
especially with some of the stuff I'm gonna
talk about here in a few minutes.
I I just don't think so. Nvidia is
getting rich as as as anyone could even
imagine,
and so what that they can't export to
China, Iran, and Russia.
I don't think these, I think we have
to be careful out there with with everything
that, that's going on. If you're joining us
live today, make sure you say hello in
the comments.
I will be I'm trying to watch the,
the chitchat here, so make sure you say
make sure you say hello. We definitely appreciate
it when when you chime in.
That's the
most important thing, So we thank you for,
for chiming in.
Also, the
scammers have a new phishing trick
for iPhone users, and here's how to avoid
falling victim.
Apple has built several scam protection tools
into iOS, one of which disables links and
s s SMS messages.
And if the text comes from an unknown
number, however, it looks like scammers have found
a way to bypass these defenses
and send you a dangerous link despite Apple's
best effort. As noted by bleepingcomputer,
links are re enabled if you reply to
a message from an unknown source as Apple
assumes the replying means you trust the sender
enough to also trust the URLs they've included.
So all you have to do
is reply to a message.
Scammers have latched on to this instructions,
instructing their victims to reply to their message,
then click
the re enabled
links.
For instance, one scam message seen by Blueping
computer contained a phishing link, which had been
disabled,
with the following text underneath it. Please reply
yes, then exit
the text message, reopen the text message activation
link, or copy the links as far as
your browser open. Well, I my my
my spider,
my spider
sense would be going off on this.
So how to stay safe? And I get
a lot of texts that are unsolicited. They
don't know they don't normally come with a
a link though,
which is a, hey. Hi. Do I knew?
Hey. How are you doing?
Oh, you're not Susie. You're not Tom. You're
not John. Oh, great. What are you up
to? It's yeah. We've all gotten those. Right?
If you receive an unexpected message from an
unknown source and see that this text contains
links, do not reply to it. Doing so
will make the links live.
By simply ignoring your text and reporting as
spam will ensure you can't fall victim to
it. Very, very simple.
That's why it's important that you keep your
contacts up to date. Every once in a
while, I'll get an email, a text from
someone saying, who are you? They'll say, hey,
Todd. And I'll say, who's this?
Well, this is John. Okay. John from where?
And so, you know, for me, it's always,
I I I don't always enter those
those contact links. It's my mistake for for
not doing so. So,
make sure you do that. With a TikTok
band looming, users are free to Chinese app
Rednote. Can you I I just can't believe
this.
They're they are running
to the Chinese
based
app.
Oh my god.
Some say they've joined
Zhengzhou,
which translates to to little red book,
despite the US government after banning TikTok becomes
more likely.
Really?
And this thing is all in Chinese.
Now as TikTok awaits a Supreme Court decision
that could determine whether it will be banned
in the United States, users are preemptively flying
the
app and migrating to another Chinese social media
platform. That's this is just crazy,
which
as of Monday,
Jiangsu was the number one most downloaded app
in the US App Store despite the fact
that it doesn't even have an official English
name. The second app on the list is
Lemon 8, another social media app owned by
TikTok.
It's also experienced a traffic surge.
Over the weekend, thousands of people begin swarming
to Jiangsu,
which is known as
in China as a platform for travel and
lifestyle content, which normally resides behind the Great
Wall of China.
It's the Chinese version of Instagram,
and they call themselves TikTok refugees.
And they're relying on translation tools to navigate
the app.
Some say they're hoping to rebuild communities they
had on TikTok.
I I I I just can't believe it.
I can't comprehend that people would even use
this.
I would rather stare at a language I
can't understand than to ever use a social
media platform that Mark Zuckerberg owns, said one
user in a video.
There are countless number of similar clips in
which TikTok refugees enter themselves and explain why
they decided
to come to Xin Zhao.
Many are breaking up thousands of like and
comments. A spokesperson from Jingzhou could not immediately
reach for comment. Well, maybe they're gonna block
that one too.
I I'm I'm just
such an opportunity here for someone
to come up with another app
really, really is.
The New York Times,
excuse me,
the New York law requiring Internet providers to
offer cheap plans to people with low incomes
will take effect on Wednesday,
following a multiyear court battle in which the
state defeated broadband industry lobby groups.
So now
as of
Wednesday,
tomorrow,
the state law requires Internet providers offer 15
or $20 per month services to people with
low incomes. As we've written, the battle between
New York
ISPs,
was an important test case for how states
can regulate broadband providers.
So
New York based ISPs can comply by offering
$15 broadband plans with download speeds of at
least 25 megs or $20 per month service
with
200 meg speeds. Wow.
The price must include any recurring taxes and
fees such as recurring rental for service provider
equipment.
So what is the
what is the
how much money
can you make
or don't make in order to get this
this deal?
ISPs can receive 1 month exemptions by piling
paperwork by Wednesday confirming they meet the subscriber
threshold.
To secure longer terms, ISPs must submit detailed
financial information by February 15th.
So
wow.
Wow.
I'd be real interested to know what the
earnings level cutoff is
for $15.20
Internet.
I'm paying here a grand total
to do what I do $220
a month
is my
broadband bill right now.
120 to
Starlink,
$100
to my point to point system.
Wow.
A pastor,
you know,
a religious
pastor,
he,
he got his church to,
invest in
crypto,
but the pastor of Washington State Church
stole 5,100,000
$5,900,000
from his parishioners,
and he could serve 20 years if convicted.
Oh my god. The DOJ's the DOJ has
charged, Francier
Obando Pinillo,
o b a n d o p I
n
I l l o,
the former pastor of a church in Pasco,
Washington State with 26 counts of fraud.
According to assistant attorney attorney, he sold his
SolanoFi
cryptocurrencies
to his parishioners,
both in person and on social media from
21 to 23,
promising them a woohoo!
34.9
percent return.
Now, if they'd have bought Bitcoin in 2021,
they'd had more than a 34.9%
return,
but
he claimed the idea for the cryptocurrency had
come to him in a dream.
But he funneled the investments into his own
accounts and though of his coconspirators
while showing his victims fake balances and returns
via mobile investment app.
The victims were told to share the investment
scheme with others, and when suspicious of foul
play were
raised, he offered to repair the technical systems
with
more money or buy out their positions by
replacing them with another investor.
So
he defrauded
his parishioners in his church
and elsewhere, $5,900,000.
So when your preacher says,
I got a crypto deal for you,
probably a good time to leave that church.
My god.
Well, the Chinese intrusions into US Treasury has
got extended.
It's it's worse than what everyone thinks it
was.
The attack was declared a major incident.
The Committee of Foreign Investment suffered a data
breach as part of the campaign,
and there was carefully chosen
targets.
So, again, it gets deeper.
More alleged Chinese intrusion.
Its foreign investment office was hit.
So,
they're not good. The government of China is
not good, not in the least.
And, Anna, do we talk about this already
about NASA considering
this 1997
science fiction film the most realistic ever made?
Somehow, I think we talked about this.
What if your DNA dictated your future? Gattaca
isn't just a film. It's a thought provoking
glimpse into the genetics ethics of genetic and
engineering
that remain shockingly relevant today.
So this is what NASA consider this the
most realistic ever made. We talk about this
already? Feels like we have.
I don't know. What say you?
Hey. If you got comments on today's show,
it's real simple. Geeknews@gmail.com.
Geeknews@gmail.com.
Apple users are facing a new security risk
after a critical USB component was hacked.
So
what's happening here is
I need to turn off my ringer.
Sorry about that.
What's happening here is
the
Apple has decided it's so complex. They're not
gonna fix it.
So
researchers uncovered a method to hack the ACE
3 USB C controller.
Apple deemed attack 2 complex to present a
threat.
The vulnerability stems from insufficient safeguards in the
firmware of the controller, which will allow a
threat actor to gain low level access,
then be used to emulate trusted accessories.
He notified Apple of the issue, but the
company said the bug was too complex to
exploit. He seems to agree with assessment.
He said Apple solved attack complexity and said
that they don't see it as a threat.
I agree with that sentiment but wanted to
at least have reported it.
This is essentially a foundational
research, the first steps that are needed to
find other attacks on the chip.
It says it doesn't mean that security issues
should completely ignore, forget about the findings that
could have major implications.
All of a sudden do you guys ever
have this happen?
All of a sudden, the bottom of my
foot is just, like, itching like crazy,
and I want I just wanna scratch it.
A little more Apple news. How thin will
iPhone 17 Air be?
Again, iPhone 17 Air.
A new report may have the answer.
The Apple Air iPhone 17 Air could be
as slim as 5.5
millimeters
according to a new report from Ming Chu
Kuo.
So
that would be pretty thin, 5.5
millimeters.
If you think about that,
what is that? A quarter of an inch?
What is the conversion from millimeters to inches?
5.5
millimeters. Yeah. That's probably about a quarter of
an inch, I think, if I remember correctly
on the on the scale.
The 2025
iPad
Air may get a 2 generation performance boost.
So,
if you got an air if you if
you
if you bought an iPad Air 2024
or waiting for the newer version,
we have some exciting news at least for
the later group,
could be launched with an M4 Chip as
early as this spring.
So that would be a a big jump
from the M2.
So,
that's rumor control on the iPad Air.
A false malware alert is leaving Docker Desktop
to be blocked on Apple
Macs.
So time to upgrade your Docker Desktop,
and, Docker's confirmed some versions of this Docker
Desktop software are failing to start.
I can't remember. What is Docker used for?
Describe as a one click install application for
your Mac, Linux, or Windows environments that lets
you build, share, and run containerized applications and
microservices.
Okay. Docker Desktop
will need updating to fix the problem.
So version 4.37.2
promised to address the issue. So if you're
a Docker user, just be aware,
aware of that.
Hey. I do wanna thank our our insiders,
those of you that continue to support the
show with your 2, 5, 10, 15, 20,
or $25 donations.
It's greatly appreciated.
We had no no no new donations come
in from the last show,
but, again, we recognized a bunch of our
insiders on the last podcast. We haven't had
a number of you that have been streaming
the show
live, though, so I do appreciate all of
you that have been,
that have been doing that.
PESMerck,
thank you so much for your 20 stats
per minute,
streaming as well as Darren Schwartz for his
ongoing streaming the show
and providing
value back to the show. So this is
a value for value show. If you get
value for the podcast, feel free
to contribute your time, talent, or treasure in
return.
And, of course, you can you can play
and join
the podcasting
2.0
evolution
by switching out to a new modern podcast
app at podcastapps.com.
So definitely
give that a try.
Tech giants are joining forces to better support
Chromium based browsers,
A new collaboration effort under auspices of the
Linux Foundation looks to ensure the developers access
to
necessary
resources,
and,
they've called supporters of Chromium based browsers designed
to ensure that the open source project with
connections to Chromium get the necessary
resources to be successful. I don't fully understand
this. I guess Linux users,
some members of the group include Google, Microsoft,
Opera, the companies behind the Chromium based browsers
such as Chrome, Edge, and Opera.
Currently, there's 30 different browsers based on Chromium,
which are of which the most well known
are Brave, DuckDuckGo, and Vivaldi.
So this is a group, I guess, is
joining forces to better support the
the back end of the browser. Very, very
cool.
VLC. How many know about VLC?
VLC celebrates 6,000,000,000
downloads
with new AI subtitles features. The world's most
renowned video player app will be use open
source AM models that can run locally on
the device.
So again, it's CES 2025, the nonprofit organization
announced that their open source media player, VLC
Media Player, crossed
over 6,000,000,000
downloads.
6,000,000,000.
So
that's that's a number, ladies and gentlemen.
That is a number.
Sonos CEO is out following disastrous app revamp
that enraged customers made me abandon their products
too.
Users are still fuming after his last year's
botched Sonos app update.
So, he he's had to, he's had to
resign.
He's been asked to, to no longer work
there.
2024
could not have been any worse for Sonos.
Faced with a mob of enraged users, Sonos
repeatedly apologized and laid elaborate plans for how
it would do better.
But sometimes sorry isn't enough, and now Sonos
CEO Patrick Spence is taking the last option
open to him,
resignation,
and he stepped down
immediately.
So we'll see we'll see what happens
here, but, I've lost faith in, Sano's products
and services.
There's an article over at bigthink.com,
and this is kind of one of for
those of you that are out there that
are the super science geeks. What's hotter than
the hottest star in the universe?
Here in our universe, stars shine brightly providing
light and heat to planets moves and more,
but some objects get even hotter.
So this kind of goes into
the universe
and looking out there at,
everything that's going on and what really gets
hot
and talking about,
essentially,
you know, our sun is
not as hot as some of these other
ones are out there. But example,
there are
something that's like a G2 SCAR that's at
58 100 Kelvin,
Red Dwarf at 36 100 Kelvin.
Some of these are really
out there and and cap out at 50,000
Kelvin.
So,
link will be up in the show notes.
You can get a,
an idea, but, yes, plenty
plenty warm.
Meanwhile, a giant kidney bean is then spotted
in Mars satellite image could point to signs
of water and life.
And NASA satellite has spotted frozen kidney beans
on Mars,
sand dunes trapped in place until the springtime.
Photographing them can help us determine if there
was ever enough water on Mars to sustain
life.
So,
this is the
the,
by looking
at the ground,
they can kinda determine
if they're actually frozen
or what may be the case that's going
on here. So, but that photo has been
around since 2022. I just think got used
to just got through looking for it. Do
you have a Samsung phone? Samsung Samsung will
buy your old phone, no strings attached.
So,
you know, I I've never sold sold a
phone back,
but they want to buy your old smartphones.
But unlike its usual trade in program, this
newly launched Galaxy Easier program doesn't require you
to buy a new phone.
Samsung is taking on the various phone recycling
used device centers that to purchase your old
phone saving the efforts selling it privately.
Galaxy Easy Re goes on in Korea on
January 14th.
They're gonna be starting out with the Galaxy
S20.
Samsung will also buy back the 21, 22,
and 23, along with the Galaxy Z Fold
3, Z Fold 4, and Galaxy Z Fold
5.
So
okay. Is is that
here in the United States as well?
How much the phone is worth depends on
the condition. It appears the Galaxy Easy Rewards
system will initially provide an estimate, and it'll
finalize the price once the device has been
returned.
I thought they said they didn't. Oh, you
don't have to buy another phone but you
do have to return it.
So the Apple iPhone is also known for
retaining its value we know that
so the s24
could fetch up to $613
Wow that's
impressive.
So if you're thinking about upgrading
and you want to sell back your phone,
I think you'll be able to do so
starting on 14th,
maybe.
It's not completely clear if it's for the,
just for Korea United States only.
On a site that we've I've never been
on before, dumblittleman.com,
Netflix earning insights key driver in forecast. So
this has been out this article has been
out for a little bit,
but, apparently,
Netflix stock surged by over 26% since the
start of the year, continuing its upward trend.
Subscriber
increase a 12%
increase in subscribers in just 1 quarter reaching
$260,800,000
and also,
they gained subscribers because of the password sharing
crackdown.
Netflix was asking me about every 3 or
4 days when I was in the Philippines.
Hey.
Are you sure you are you?
Report warns thousands of Wall Street jobs could
soon be replaced by AI. 200,000
banking roles could be at banking roles could
be at risk.
CIOs and CTOs predict losing 3% of their
workers in the next 3 to 5 years.
Some say they may see job losses equating
to 5 to 10%,
and, of course, banking profits would skyrocket
from the reduced number of people working and
supposedly
increase
in productivity.
We will see. Time will tell.
One thing I'm gonna try this year as
an experiment
is I am going to
get all my tax data
ready,
my whole numbers,
and,
then I'm gonna see if I can use
AI to do any sorting and helping me
get everything organized. I'm gonna try it.
I have to be very, very careful,
because we don't wanna get the numbers wrong,
so I'll have my masters on set on
one side, and and I'll probably have to
go back and double check the math.
But,
it would be nice to be able to
have the AI do some of the work.
I don't know if it's possible.
I will see.
But, again, I you know, be honest with
you. I'm kind of
my my accountant loves me,
for one reason
only. I I they have to do a
lot of work on my on my taxes
because
I don't use QuickBooks or anything like that.
I I work in spreadsheets,
and,
call me dumb, but it's just the way
I am. I don't have
I'm sure I could probably save time, but
it's better for me to sit down for
about 6 hours,
crank through all the data,
pull all the PayPal reports, pull the stuff
from my bank, pull the stuff from my
credit cards, go through and look at each
charge on the credit cards and, you know,
I don't have that many and go through
and, you know,
categorize them, separate it all out so that
and I know, okay, what this is. Is
this gonna be a 5 year deduction, or
is this gonna be a take it all
in 1 year? Get all that together
and send it off to them.
And then they
email me about 10 times asking questions,
and,
it's done.
But I'm gonna try this year to see
if I can organize a little bit better.
I don't know.
It might be, a fool's game. It might
be a fool's game.
The smartphone
smartphone market recovers in 2024 after 2 years
decline.
Global smartphone
sell through 4% year on year in 2024
following the weakest year in 2023.
Top two brands Samsung and Apple were largely
flat,
but Xiaomi grew faster than the among the
top 5 and ranked number 3. Oppo
lost volume. Oppo is a brand that I
see, in the Philippines,
very, very big brand, 0ppp0.
I don't think they're available here in the
United States.
But,
anyway, they they have a link
of the companies that had advances,
in this article. I have it linked up
in the show notes for you.
Blue Origin gave up on its New Glenn
liftoff 2 hours into launch window.
Video subsystems concerns blame for the scrub.
So,
if you're up at 60600
UTC,
you didn't get to see a launch.
Meanwhile, SpaceX is kinda push push push. We're
expecting the 7th, Starship flight to happen today,
but they're pushed to Wednesday.
So, of course, I'm flying to Orlando
Wednesday. Now I should get in early enough
and get to my hotel and be in
a position to watch the launch if it
goes down.
It's gonna it's gonna take off at 4
PM
CST which is 5
PM EST.
So,
definitely gonna have my ice peeled on, when
that happens.
Tesla has recalled 239,000
vehicles over rear view camera problems.
So
so from the Model 3 and s ranges
and the 23
to 25 Model X and y ranges. So,
again, be aware there's a recall definitely if
you have a Tesla, check that out.
This is a big win for Coinbase. A
US judge is demanding the SEC
explain itself for rebuffing request
for crypto rules.
In an hour, 11th hour court loss for
Cherry Gary Gensler's tenure,
judges in a Coinbase case call all call
the SEC crypto position arbitrary
and caprias. Whoo. That's that's
that's a heavy, heavy word.
So US Securities and Exchange Commission is now
under a federal court order to offer a
full explanation
for why the agency refused to offer clear
rules for crypto securities while at the same
time punishing
people.
The circuit court demand comes in the final
week of chair Gary Gensler's tenure likely leaving
the response to his Republican successor was already
expected to change the regulator's stance on digital
assets,
but they must explain themselves. A 3 judge
panel from the US Court of Appeals in
the 3rd Circuit and a legal rebuke of
the securities regulator partially started with Coinbase efforts
to get the agency offer legal clarity
by writing crypto regulations.
Rather than force agents to make a rule,
we ordered to explain its decision not to.
He added a caution to the SEC. It
should not give yet another poor explanation in
an already long line of them.
So this is the second
legal blow for the agency
and the 2nd setback in a Coinbase related
case in less than a week.
So,
this is good.
The SEC does not like crypto, ladies and
gentlemen. Why?
They like fiat.
They like fiat money. They like stuff they
can track
in a big, big way.
US Supreme Court rebuffs made his bid to
avoid advertising lawsuit.
Well,
that's good. And no matter what
the Facebook leader is saying,
the US Supreme Court declined on money to
hear a bid by Meta Platforms to avoid
a multi multi $1,000,000,000
case
action lawsuit by advertisers
that accused the Facebook and Instagram parent company
of or charging them by inflating the numbers
of people their ads might reach.
So,
you know
but a lot of people have been praising
Zuckerberg here recently for, oh, we're not gonna
have moderation.
I don't trust him.
It's like we did bad,
but now we're gonna be good.
Mhmm.
Mastodon
matter of fact, you can find me on
Mastodon at geek news at geek news dot
chat.
Mastodon's CEO and creator is handing control to
a new nonprofit organization.
Decentralized social network, Mastodon, has announced the plans
to transfer its ownership to a new nonprofit
entity. Ownership of Mastodon will move away from
the control of CEO Eugene Rocco in contrast
to the power exerted by other social media
CEOs like Meta.
Simply, we're gonna transfer ownership of key Macedon
ecosystems and platform components to a new nonprofit.
So,
we will see
where this goes.
And, finally,
a judge is end one man's 11 year
quest to recover $765,000,000
in Bitcoin by digging up a landfill.
This guy in the UK is not gonna
be able to do that.
He cannot dig up the landfill.
So in about a 100 years,
there's going to be people that are gonna
be out exploring,
trying to find that hard drive
to try to recover that Bitcoin.
The modern day
the modern day
treasure hunt.
Don't think a hard drive will last that
long, do you? I don't think so either.
Alright, ladies and gentlemen.
It's gonna bring me to the end of
the show today. I apologize to the YouTube
folks.
I I hit start a little late, so
I'm gonna have to reupload the finished video
today. You guys missed the first 10 minutes
of the show on YouTube because I forgot
to hit auto start. My my,
my apologies,
but, everyone else, thanks for being here. And
I see mom and some other folks commented
on
Facebook. Thank you so much,
but, I'll be back with you. Not well,
there'll be no shows
this week. Rest this week. No show on
Thursday, but I'll be back with you next
week, Monday, for a regular edition of the
podcast.
No plans to go anywhere. That should we
should be right on schedule here, and we'll
get the March to 1800
underway,
the moment I get back from Florida
and,
going down for Podfest and talking with podcasters
over the next
2 or 3 days. Actually, starting Thursday, Friday,
and Saturday,
I've already made arrangements.
My daughter's coming in,
to Orlando. I get to see my grandkids,
knock on wood, Saturday night.
But back here to Michigan on Sunday, weather
permitting,
but, man, it's been snowing. I have barely
left the house since I've gotten back. I
think I've
I went and got my
snow tires on,
did run into town for one thing. I
think I've left the house, like, three times
since,
last Wednesday,
but,
that's okay.
Completely chill here. Anyway, I hope you're all
doing well.
Again, thank you to the, insiders
and, we'll get back here 8 episodes away
from 1800.
So, sometime in mid February, we will
we will we'll push over,
the threshold to get 1800 episodes in.
But, again, thanks, Ariel. We'll see you next
time here on the Heaton Central Podcast. Everyone
take care and be safe.
Bye bye.