Lead story for Monday, April
28.
Doctor Jeffrey Hinton, pioneer of neural network AI,
has escalated fears about AI's rapid development in
a CBS News interview.
Hinton outlined growing risk, including a 10 to
20 percent chance
AI could take over,
enhance cyberattacks,
authoritarian
misuse,
and tongue tech company prioritization
profits over safety.
He compares AI to a dangerous hybrid cub.
He warns humanity
may be facing an unpredictable
and perilous
future. Welcome to episode 1,817.
I'm your host,
Todd Cochran, and our lead story today.
Again,
AI is in the news
in a way that says,
oh, it's gonna kill you.
And I think,
you know, when these people speak,
we have to listen just a little bit.
But just like everything else in technology,
AI has moved at just incredibly
lightning speeds.
And I know,
just like everyone else that we're getting great
utilization
out of it. He he he said, I
didn't think we'd get here in only forty
years.
So, you know, this is someone that's been
thinking about this for
a long, long, long
time. And, of course, this gentleman deserves deserve
credit
for building the foundation
of virtually all neural networks
and generative AI that we use today,
and you can credit him in recent years
with consistency. He still thinks the rapid expansion
of AI development
and use will lead some fairly dire outcomes.
I think we're already seeing
some of
that already.
In this fresh sit down, the Nobel,
prize winner
is ratcheting up concerns
admitting
that when we figured out how to make
a computer brain work more like a human
brain, he didn't think we'd get here this
quickly.
And, yes, now we're here.
And he basically had four takeaways. There's a
ten to 20% risk
that AI will take over.
The number two, that AI is a cute
cub
that could grow up someday and bite the
hand that feeds it. And we already know
that hackers will be more effective. Banks and
such can be at risk.
And we definitely know that authoritarians
can misuse
AI just like the Chinese and others do.
Now
I will
contend
to an extent
that AI companies aren't focusing on safety.
But
I guess I just don't fully understand
the safety risk at this point, to be
to be honest with you.
Time will
tell
on where all this
falls out,
and
it may
just be a matter of time
for us to, you know, see how this
all plays out.
And I'm sure we'll have a few
scares
along the way.
We will see. That is for sure.
I wanna welcome you to episode 1,817,
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For some reason today,
my
my, RodeCaster
just continues
to connect, disconnect,
and it's just driving me
crazy. I hear it going ding in the
background.
And for those of you that are live,
the audio drops out. For those of you
listening later, it doesn't matter.
What?
Why? Why are you doing this?
It's something to do with OBS.
Alright. Let's talk about the sponsor here a
little bit, of course.
See if we can get through this without,
without failure.
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Yeah. I don't know what's going on. You
know? It's just, everything works. But as soon
as I turn OBS on,
it it it's OBS is what it is.
But I hate to say it. OBS in
my situation right now
is the best solution.
It really, really is. If everything would just
stay
up and running.
I don't get it. I really don't. Hey.
Well, thank the Insiders on Thursday.
Everything's going well here.
Obviously,
just a little under twelve or thirteen days
to go before
I head back to The United States.
And, and then I'll be complaining about something
in the studio in Michigan, of course. Something,
something won't work.
Story of my life right now. But, hope
you're doing well. Let's go and get into
the stack of content.
Obviously, this major major power outage
that happened in Spain and Portugal, leaving millions
in the dark. Lots of,
lots of rumors
on what's going on,
but it appears it's some sort of frequency
mismatch.
When the grid gets up and running
in a specific
region,
even here in The United States, things have
to sync.
And,
there was some sort of spike
that happened
and,
either power
plants coming online or whatever it may be,
the Spanish grid operator claims the outage is
due to grid oscillation,
a phenomenon that occurs when the system is
unable
to suppress oscillations normally happen as,
source and loads enter and leave the system.
You know that the cyberattack has been ruled
out.
Some are saying sun activity,
earth magnetism,
you name it.
But they've been really brought into chaos here.
And,
as of this reporting, all the power still
was not on and things in Madrid were,
were pretty crazy.
So, I'm scheduled to go to Madrid in
October now and speak at a podcast conference.
So,
first time going there, I believe. I don't
think I've been in Madrid.
Least to my recollection, I'm
not. So should be interesting.
Hey. SpaceX has launched its 250 Starlink satellite.
This happened,
this past Sunday,
and,
it carried 23 of the company's Starlink Broadbeam
satellites,
including three with direct to cell
capability, but, pretty amazing accomplishment.
250
launches
by the SpaceX team. For those of you
that are Android users, Google Wallet is finally
getting one of Apple's Wallet's best features.
And, that
involves you being able to basically just add
a card
very, very simply
by
holding the card up to the phone, scanning
it,
and putting in just a couple of details.
This is something that,
you've been able to do with the iPhone
for some time so you don't have to
manually
enter,
enter those numbers.
Being warned at three actually, neurotech companies are
selling your brain data.
And neurotech companies have access to some of
users' most sensitive data and few regulations what
they can do with it.
Some senators are sounding alarm.
And,
in a letter to the FTC,
they basically said, hey.
How are these companies handling this information?
What are they doing with it? Let's,
let's have a conversation.
The one thing I'll I'll mention today is
The Verge
has become
to almost inaccessible
for me.
They they'd continue to ask for money
even though we're running ads.
It just is almost a website that,
politically as well has become so nasty.
I removed a few articles today,
just because it was just so
over the top.
It had been night you know, it's it's
like
in tech.
Why do why does why do these,
sites have to be,
political? I just I just don't get it.
T mo has doubled prices because of tariffs.
And,
so basically,
up to this point, there was a rule
that allowed items to be imported to The
US
with a declared value of an hundred of
$800.
And,
that
has
come to an end.
And,
and on May 2,
no longer
will you be able to order stuff that
is under
under $800
and not pay
a tariffs on it. You'll have to. So
the end is near in this regard. So
T Mo's added the tax
45%.
So potentially a $10 t shirt becomes $24.50.
We we will see if they adjust prices
downwards.
I'm expecting that's gonna happen to a,
to a certain extent. That's for sure.
Or, you know and I I think what
it is is, there's gonna be some pain
here for a bit.
I hope not long over deals made,
but
at some point,
something has to give. But,
yeah, if you're ordering from T Mobile,
the party is over in that regard.
WhatsApp is working on video and voice calls
for the web app. I don't know if
many of you even knew that WhatsApp has
a
web app. They do. Of course, you can
make voice and video calls via your mobile
device already,
so this may be coming to the web.
And, with Skype and other,
applications going out, it kinda makes sense.
Eco eco ecoFLOW
has launched a new portable air conditioner and
cooler just in time for the summer. So
if you have one room that seems to
run a little hot or you need air
conditioning for a cabin or something like that,
this is gonna become available for you to
to be able to purchase.
It packs 1,800 watts of cooling power, 2,000
watts of heating power, and its built in
battery mean it's ideal for off grid usage.
There's a 24
watt hour LFP battery inside.
How long is it good for?
It'll charge in seventy five minutes,
and you'll get up to forty three hours
of cooling on a single charge.
So, that's pretty significant.
They've also have,
obviously, some portable refrigerators as well.
So,
be aware of that. They got a Glacier
series.
So Ecoflow and Glacier series,
for all your off grid
needs.
Yeah, you can take this big Ecoflow with
you and put it in your,
in your if you're glamping,
have a have a really fancy,
camp.
Kickstarter is adding a tariff manager to let
creators add surcharges to previously funded products.
Backers will have the option decline and get
a full refund as well.
So if you've backed something recently and it
hasn't shipped yet, yep, you're going to have
to pay an additional tariff on that.
AI helps unveil the cause of Alzheimer disease,
identifies
a therapeutic
candidate.
A new study found the gene recognized as
a biomarker for Alzheimer's,
which they say is actually a cause of
it, was announced by the University of California,
San Diego
due its to its previous unknown secondary function.
Researchers use AI to help unravel the mystery
of Alzheimer's and discover a potential
treatment that obstructs the genes
is you know, basically, the genes of fact.
So a team led,
by one of the professors at the university's
bioengineering
department
had previously discovered a potential blood biomarker for
early detection of Alzheimer's
called p g eight d h.
But now they discovered the correlation, the more
protein
and RNA
that it produces,
again, back to RNA,
the more advanced the disease and after more
research, they end up with a therapeutic candidate,
which demonstrated,
efficiency
that has a potential of being,
something that could be tested in clinical trials.
So, if this is the case
and AI helped out with this,
this is big news.
This is very, very, very, very big news.
And,
we'll see how this, how this develops,
from a treatment standpoint and as if more,
more diseases
are are detected.
If you are an Android user, Google is
giving Android its own showcase a week before,
Google IO.
And this is the first time Google has
held such a showcase
event before I o. The company says that
people have been asking,
for more for more ways to learn about
how the Android experience is changing and giving
the ecosystem its own spotlight
ahead of the main event
as one way to do that.
So the Android show, IO edition,
will air on May 13 at 1PM eastern.
Of course, Google IO takes place a week
later starting on May 20.
So, we'll have more details as this
is is announced.
A scientist is claiming that the Big Bang
theory is wrong and has sharing a new
theory about how the universe was made.
And,
there's plenty of conspiracy
theories, of course. And, of course, I always
wanna know is what is the universe
expanding into it.
Richard Lou of the University of Alabama in
Huntsville
reckons it was a whole series
rather than one individual
mega explosion.
He publishes alternative theory that cosmos came about
through a number
of rapid fire
burst, and he's built a model
that may explain the
missing
dark matter and dark energy.
So, link will be up in the show
notes for those of you that are interested
to read through,
the full piece.
As always,
criminals
are pretending the Microsoft,
Google, and Apple in phishing attacks.
Again, they're diverse, impersonating
popular tech firms.
This is just something that's continuing to happen.
And, just remember,
Microsoft,
Apple, and Google will not call you. You
need to make sure that you're telling your
family members this,
but,
Mastercard is seeing a rise in fraud, and
it just continues
again,
selling fake services,
be aware, or getting a refund
for a service that was never done and
a charge that was never
made.
PCWorld is reporting on Brave's browser newest tool,
which swats away those annoying cookie pop ups.
Cookie Crumbler, I like that word. Cookie Crumbler
combines AI with manual human review to build
a database of cookie pop ups and methods
to get rid of them.
This method for detecting and blocking
these ubiquitous cookie consent notices across the web
with a variety of approaches.
Blocking these pop up was already built into
Brave, but blocking the pop up wasn't the
biggest problem.
According to the announcement,
it's doing so without breaking the page afterward.
It requires approaches almost tailored to each individual
site as these notices are similar but not
identical across the web.
So CookieCumber
aggregates
all the addiction with a large language model
combined with human reviewers who can iron out
the wrinkles where LLMs
make
mistake. The bad news,
Brave is publishing Cookie Crumbler as an open
source tool, so it could be implemented
and iterated by other teams. So if you
prefer an alternate browser, I don't think that's
bad
news. I think that's good news, to be
honest with you.
Next, Netflix Tundum, t u d u m,
twenty twenty event will stream live next month.
So
Stranger Things, Squid Games, One Piece, and Frankenstein
are all going to be there.
So they dropped a a trailer teasing someone's
going to be at this year's Tudum,
which will be streamed live from Kia forms
in Los Angeles on May 31.
So, if you're interested in this, that's the
first I've heard of the event. I'm not
super familiar with it.
Feel free to check it out.
The FBI finally has placed a bounty on
salt typhoons ten million dollars for info on
the infamous
Chinese
hacking group. It says relevant information can result
in a bounty of up to $10,000,000.
Of course,
we know last week the FBI posted a
new announcement, asked me for a buck for
the public help,
and,
doesn't
it doesn't
always a good idea to throw a little
bit of a reward on there. So,
that's beautiful.
FBI is issuing this announcement
to ask a public to report information
about PRC
affiliate activity.
Investigation of these actors' activities have revealed a
broad and significant cyber campaign to leverage access
to networks and target victims.
So,
$10,000,000
if you have the,
the right information.
That's for sure.
4,000,000 have been affected by Verisource data breach.
Verisource says the personal information for a million
people was compromised in February
in a cyber attack.
Also,
there was one other one.
I guess I don't have it next. It'd
been nice if I had that as the
next article. Right?
So imagine an asteroid
so valuable
that it was worth $10.00
$0.00
$0.00 $0.00
$0.00
$0.00 $0.00
$0.00 $00.
Yes.
An an asteroid that was so much full
of gold and rare earth minerals
that it would make everyone earth a billionaire.
Well,
let's just realize that if they were actually
able to
capture this 43,000,000
miles excuse me, 40
40
43
mile asteroid
and get it back to Earth,
instantly gold and everything would be worth
nothing.
Now
this value is is
is is meaningless
meaningless
in every way.
There's absolutely no way to bring this this
asteroid
back to Earth.
But,
they are going to go out and and
scientists are gonna be looking at it.
And,
we're gonna figure it out.
But, again,
there's goals and then there hills,
and the money will be made by those
people providing the tools to go get that
their goal. That is for sure.
Interesting announcement by LG. They've introduced what they're
calling the first QNED
TV capable of transmitting
audio
and video wirelessly.
Why do I need a TV
that will transmit
video
wirelessly? This, I do not understand.
I understand audio
wirelessly.
Go into a sound bar or something to
that effect. But why do I need
video
transmitted wirelessly? Someone explained that one to me.
A link will be up in the show
notes.
If you try to get into Coinbase, they
had a two f a factor
two f
a factor error,
and,
some people thought that their
accounts were hacked.
And,
logs are showing failed log attempts as failed
two FA codes
and,
no announcement from Coinbase. But whatever it was,
they fixed it. So go check your
Coinbase account.
IOS and Android
juice jacking defenses have been trivial to bypass
for years.
You know what that is. Right? When you
have a public
charging system that
you probably shouldn't trust, but you plug into
otherwise.
And if that
charging source is connected
to a data source,
that data source then could get access to
your phone.
We know that decade ago, Apple and Google
started updating iOS to Android
that make them less susceptible to juice jacking.
Now researchers are revealing that for years, the
mitigations have suffered from a fundamental defect
that has made them trivial to bypass.
An attacker
has really been able to get in for
a while,
so
they say there needs to be some additional
security here. It's quite
a, good write up of what is happening.
Carry your own power banks, please.
Do not,
plug in to public power unless you absolutely
need it. And then when you do, I
recommend turning off your phone.
Here is an article from The Verge, and
this is the the shit I'm talking about
with,
with, with The Verge.
Elon Musk, Doge ties could get his company
out of 2,000,000,000 in potential liability.
Of course,
this comes from report assembled by the Democratic
staff for Assembly and Security
and says that he
could, if he really worked hard,
get out of 2.37
and potential legal liability
due to his influence.
I think politicians
need to be investigated.
That's who we need to be looking at
in a big, big way. How do these
politicians
get rich
on their salaries? That's
that's what we need to ask.
It's being reported that Apple could be planning
an affordable vision pro and smart glasses
to launch by 2026.
Apple's continuing to expand its effort to extend
virtual reality
or the XR market and plans to launch
more affordable version of its Vision Pro headsets
in 2025,
late '20 '20 '5, or early twenty twenty
six.
So and
potentially Apple Glasses.
Time will tell
on whether or not this happens or not.
Oh, here it is. An Oregon agency won't
say if hackers stole data in a cyber
attack.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality on Friday
declined to confirm or deny reports that ransomware
group Resideo
was behind the cyberattacks
and stole department data, including sensitive employee information.
The department said a news release on Friday
that the claims referenced in recent media coverage
were part of its investigation.
The department said it had not engaged in
ransomware
discussions, but not that one had been requested.
So,
most of the servers
were back online after a bit. So did
they pay the ransom,
or was there not an attack?
Google is going cold on Europe, stops making
smart thermostats for continental conditions,
and just about bricks some of its older
models everywhere.
The
they slipped its euro plans into a post
that announced first and second gen Nest smart
thermostats will no longer receive updates
as of October
2025.
'3 models of exit support are the two
thousand eleven first gen learnings
thermostat, 2,012
gen learning thermostat, and 2,014
European version of the latter.
Google's change means apps, its Nest and home
apps won't be able
to remotely control the thermostats after that. So,
they're also saying that they will no longer
launch new Nest thermostats
in Europe.
Being that heating systems in Europe are unique
and have a variety of hardware and software
requirements that will make it challenging.
So,
that's it for Europe with Nest.
UK regulators wanna ban apps that can make
deep fake nude images of children, and I
think this is an absolutely
fantastic,
way to, try to regulate this.
And, again, they're calling for a fan on
AI deepfakes to create
images of children in ways that should not
ever
be
created.
I did get an email
from, one of our listeners. Let me go
ahead and get this loaded for you. It
came in from,
from Michael.
I think it came from oh, it came
in from Beau.
He said and I was talking about the
EU tax. Now
when I say EU tax,
I'm saying this in a tongue in cheek
way, Bo.
He says it's not an EU tax. The
competition of laws is different in the EU
and The US. I'm not an expert on
that, but that is the problem. Meta and
Apple have to adjust to the laws in
the EU and operate in the EU. Well,
the EU
basically
has made it so hard to do business
and do anything and have so many regulations
that because they made it so difficult to
operate,
that these fines,
which are fines
and penalties
for not following the EU's,
you know, rules,
they use it as a method to fill
their tax coffers.
That's what I mean by tax. They're very,
very handy
about every so often.
Yeah. Here's an some more billions of dollars
we need from you because you've done something
we didn't like.
So I I call it a EU
government.
Let's call it then just,
just
a raid on on US companies. Let's just
do that.
Let's just call it a raid
on on EU companies.
Got an email from Michael. He said, hey,
Todd. Would it be possible to include article
links in the newsletter like you used to?
It would save me having to go to
the website first to get them. Michael, I
do put a link to the episode
in,
the show notes.
I will try but can't promise to put
the links in,
the email going forward.
I'd love it when you support,
going to the website, loading the web page.
It, always is,
advantageous for me. It drives a signal to
Google,
etcetera.
But if I can, I I will?
It just adds a few extra steps takes
me a little bit longer. I have to
run the
the links through a decoder
in,
in AI to get it in a format
that's readable,
because we have it, pre produced in the
system in HTML, which is not pastable
into email unless someone knows how to exactly
do that.
Let me know,
to make it so that it looks like
it's on the website. I'll see if I
can figure that out. But, again,
thank you for your feedback.
I do apologize for complaining about my gear.
I I made the choice here to do
the things the way I've done. It's just
USB devices,
are driving me batshit crazy.
And,
like, for the rest of the show here,
everything's been fine.
The audio disc anywhere the audio recording's going
good, The people that got hurt are people
on the live stream.
So on YouTube now, I have to go
and replace the video because there's, you know,
about sixty seconds of dead air
where the,
where the road caster just
basically flipped me the bird,
then sometimes the and it's just because I
I don't know if there's not enough power
on the u,
USB bus
or or where the interruption
is.
Resetting the RODEcaster just does not seem
to have any effect.
And believe me, I've tried to isolate stuff
as to the best of my ability, but
I'm
it it is what it is at this
point. I guess, you know, as long as
we get a good audio recording,
we're good.
But, I wanna thank you all for being
here. Thanks for me being part of the
family. Thanks for
tuning into the show.
Again, thank you for your comments and a
big thank you to the insiders out there.
We'll recognize your cash donation shortly.
We are confirmed that we're getting Satoshis
in again,
so feel free to boost away.
I wanna thank everyone for being here. Everyone
take care. We'll see you on the next
edition of the Gitmeid Central podcast on Thursday.
Everyone take care. Bye bye.