Lead story from Monday, July 24.
Fifty years ago, Bill Gates and Paul Allen's
agreement with MITS
or a basic interpreter for the Altair 8,800
microcomputer
launched Microsoft's
influence personal computing
profoundly.
This collaboration transformed technology paving
paving the way
for PCs,
Microsoft's
global dominance, and the eventual rise of Linux
and modern computing
ecosystems.
I wanna welcome you to episode 1,835.
I'm your host, Todd Cochran. Yes. Fifty years
ago this week,
they made this deal.
And, of course, they made this deal with
MITS,
and the deal with the as yet unnamed
partnership between Gates and Allen was to provide
a basic interpreter
for MITS
Altair 8800.
There are many
contenders for the first my computer or first
and personal computer
in which any one of those
each of us old guys
favor depends on how they find some of
the terms.
But the MIT South Terre ticked a lot
of boxes.
Mitts, I think is how they pronounce it,
and set the pattern for a lot of
the future
in the computer industry.
And again, it used a eighty eighty microprocessor,
not a bunch of discrete parts. It was
modular.
Again, it was built from cards that slot
into a bus to form
of which was later standardized
as the s 100 bus.
But rather than an expensive workstation like an
IBM 5,100
aimed at scientists and so sought after the
people
that will travel back in time to find
one, the Altair was aimed at hobbyists knitting
one of the
knitting out one enough well enough to run
a CPM would have cost $4,000
or more. And with a one kilobit of
RAM,
you could toggle the eighty eighty instructions into
the 8,800
using the front panel switches. But if you
spend another
$264
for four kilobits of memory,
it could do something much more interesting. It
could run basic.
Again, the famous Microsoft
four k
basic.
Microsoft's first product which the register was reporting
on half that time ago, again, it was
co written by Bill Gates and the late
Paul Allen
and Monte Davidoff who gave,
an interview to the register
some time ago that you can go back
and and listen to.
But,
you know, you look at Bill Gates in,
in 1975,
and he definitely, you know, he's just a
teenager.
A very, very, very smart teenager,
which if you compare the picture compared to
Bill Allen,
you know, Bill Allen at that time looked
quite his
quite his senior.
So, you know, I think my first
experience
with a,
what would really could be considered a basic
computer was
the trash 80, the t r s 80
in
probably
'80,
7980.
I made my first ex
first,
exposure
to a,
to an Apple machine at the time may
have been
'82,
somewhere around there.
Boy, they were they were amazing.
And I think even when I was in
my TRS 80 that I had,
you save the code to a tape
and it works sometimes.
It didn't always work saving the code. So
when you loaded code,
which was basic,
you really had to,
to to make sure
that, everything transced over and and nothing was
garbled. But
fifty years ago and boy oh boy how
far
we have come.
And I think one of the first things
I
wrote on
or didn't write, I didn't really probably didn't
write anything.
I definitely
you loaded some of the, you know, some
of the programs that were available.
I think it was Hangman.
Hangman was the
the game that,
that I loaded was one of the first
ones.
Might even been
long. I can't remember. Maybe
there wasn't enough memory for it. I don't
know. But,
a lot of fun in in those very,
very, very early days. But,
yeah, we passed the fifty fifty
fifty year mark,
today and,
not today. Couple days ago, this week.
So,
hard to believe how far,
we have come. Hey. I wanna welcome you
to episode 1,835.
Again, I'm your host, a shout out to
our incredible sponsor at GoDaddy. Scores, excuse me,
deals and discounts at geeknewscentrals.geeknewscentral.com/godaddy.
And to all of our listeners, you are
the heartbeat of the show. If you wanna
support GNC, head to geeknewcentral.com/insider
and become a GNC
insider. We are live and lit. Don't just
listen, experience the show live by grabbing a
modern podcast app at podcastapps.com.
You can listen in in real time and,
of course, check out the field geek full.
Geek News Central universe at geeknewscentral.com.
Again, where you'll find all of our partner
shows and tons of new content.
Stay in the loop. Follow or subscribe to
the podcast via your favorite app. Don't forget
to sign up for the newsletter at geeknewscentral.com.
A little bit down on the sidebar
for even more
insider scoops. And, of course, you can join
the conversation
at geek news dot chat or you can
email me directly geeknews@gmail.com.
You can hit me up on x
at geek news and you can even
catch me, of course, over on on Facebook.
Of course, as a listener of this show,
we want you to save money
and we've got some fantastic deals from GoDaddy.
Let's start with a website
or a podcast.
GNC codes make it easy and affordable to
grab GoDaddy's
economy hosting for just $6.99
a month. That's a full year of hosting
with a free domain name.
Of course, you get professional email and an
SSL certificate to make sure website is secure.
Interested in WordPress, which, of course, is the
one, I've been using for many, many years.
WordPress managed hosting is just $12.99 a month,
which includes a free domain name, again, professional
email, and,
again that all important SSL certificate.
If you need a domain name, you can
get one for $11.99.
But if you're looking
to get started and you're not technically inclined
at all and get that GoDaddy website builder,
You get a free thirty day trial of
personal business and business plus plans. Of course,
I use all of the GoDaddy
products and service and your support keeps this
podcast alive.
Use our codes. Click and save. You're backing
an independent team of creators.
Share my codes or website with friends and
family because every time one of my codes
is used, it supports Geekness Central thinking for
keeping us line and
going strong.
One thing I have run into and there's
nothing I can do about it
is
my Umbrel
which,
has a one terabyte SSD attached to it
has a very very very very very very
full hard drive
and the Bitcoin
node has grown so big I need to
upgrade hard drives when I get home, but
I've attempted to do something called pruning
which scares the living crap out of me
to get some hard drive space back in
the interim.
So if you're boosting the show, be advised
might be a little bit of challenge.
But definitely,
got to get that hard drive space increased.
And I have a four terabyte SSD waiting
for me,
when I, when I arrived back back in
The States.
It just climbed unexpectedly.
It was it surprised the crap out of
me. We were doing good on storage and
all of a sudden,
boom.
It, it jumped.
And,
yeah. I'm not necessarily
not necessarily good in any way whatsoever.
So the Bitcoin node keeps failing because of
the
the lack of
of hard drive space. So,
yeah,
it kind of sucks and there's really nothing
I can do about it except
hope that the pruning action
is going to,
is gonna help things,
to get started here.
So what am I trying to do?
Alright.
Yes. I want you to restart
because, yeah, the Bitcoin node
failed again. So hopefully, the reboot and the
pruning mechanism
will will help.
Alright. Let's go ahead and get into our
stack.
OpenAI could drop GPT five in August, report
says.
And,
the folks at Mashable and this is just
a note for Kirk if you're listening. The
Verge is almost become
impossible to cover because they're always
asking for money. So,
maybe we should pick alternate articles for these,
for the prep just because of The Verge
being,
you know, not letting you read stuff. So
what there's plenty of other websites
creating
content. But again, OpenAI could open,
drop g t five in in August that
and,
you know, that would kind of
follow along maybe some previous history.
Been some interesting comments being made by Sam
Altman. I'll be covering some of that
a little bit later
in the show here.
But,
you know, he he has basically said he's
been doing some testing
and he's got questions and he got emailed
a question that he didn't quite understand, which
I would be surprised
that Sam Altman wouldn't understand a question he
was asked.
And he used GPT five to to respond
to the email. I'm just you know, at
this point, I'm still
not using chat GPT to respond,
to emails. But there's some there's some stories
out about people that are
becoming a little bit too reliant upon it
and
we will we'll talk about that as as
the show progresses today.
There's a proposed bill. Bipartisan
pair of US senators have introduced a bill
this week that would protect copyrighted content
from being used by AI training without the
owner's submission. Content creators from large media companies
to individual bloggers
could effectively
block Google meta, open AI, and so forth
from
others appropriating their work. And you know, this
is a damned if you do damned if
you don't situation.
If passed into law, this AI accountability and
personal data protection act
would add new federal tort allowing individuals to
sue companies that use copyrighted works of personal
and dental information and train AI
without the owner's express prior consent.
As a independent content creator and the way
search is changing,
the only way I feel
that I am going to survive as a
site that has 15,000
plus
written articles
is that the content has to be indexed
by ChatGPT
so that my site is recommended in results
or cited and
but again we've already seen huge drop offs
in web traffic because people are using
chat g p t and other services for
search
and Google is, you know, got to be
worried about this.
But it it's very, very scary for a
person who's trying to have a global,
global reach if you don't have a breadth
of data.
This,
this party can be over real quick for
the for the natural web,
And that's very, very scary,
that you could be made irrelevant just by
a large language model putting an output out,
an answer or a research to a question
without getting,
you know, an appropriate reference and
and the traffic for
that work. So again, it's a do if
you you know,
it's not a great situation. You you're gonna
end up
one way or the other.
Again, do if you're damned and do if
you don't. So,
again, I haven't heard a lot from you
folks on this particular topic and I would
I'd love to hear back from you on
what you think
in this regard and, you know, don't be
afraid to drop me an email here at
geeknews@atgmail.com
on your thoughts on this exact topic, especially
if you work for business
that, you know, relies on a lot of
web traffic.
Starlink satellite Internet is back online after a
massive
a massive outage.
Starlink reported that they couldn't Starlink
users reported that they couldn't connect to SpaceX
for a few hours today
and widespread Starlink
usage
outages were reported. My
my UI
device
that for Unifi was basically I could see
the outages happening even at my own
home. So a little less than an hour
of an outage
and, actually three hours, two and a half
hours.
And,
so they had something go on in their
major major
major control center.
All ISPs have outages.
You don't like to see them and it
affects companies
and individuals right in the middle of the
business working day,
but this is what happens sometimes. So I
just wondered how many people fell back to
their iPhone,
connections.
On a pretty serious note, if you have
a printer,
there's over 700
models are actively being attacked by hackers.
Printers by Brother, Toshiba,
Fujifilm,
Konica Minolta,
and Ricoh
are super susceptible to attacks thanks to
security flaws.
So
you need to be updating your printer on
a regular basis.
And also if you've never changed the default
password
on your printer, you need to change that
default password.
It's probably admin admin or admin password. You
need to change
that password to something else.
And,
you know, I have a password
that I use for devices
in my home that's
very complicated.
Very random sudo
just because I don't want my routers, I
don't want my printers, I don't want anything
touched as a gateway
to get into
my network.
It's same thing applies to my
my
network attached storage devices. I have again
very sophisticated
passwords being used
to access those devices not something simple.
This is what we have
password
assistance for these days like 1Password.
You know, use those. Do those random pseudo
generated
passwords and get and get them set. Now
it might be a pain to type that
into your printer. I understand.
But maybe use abbreviated
one, six, seven, eight characters
at a minimum.
But for goodness sakes, don't use one, two,
34.
Not not a not a smart move at
this point.
Alphabet sees results soar boosted once again by
soaring AI and cloud demand.
Google revenue is up 14%
driven by 32% growth in Google Cloud revenue.
The cloud division's annual revenue rate runs now
at 50,000,000,000
and the Gemini app has approximately 450
monthly active users as they've essentially moved everyone
from Gmail and using Google Apps into getting
a Gemini.
But,
Google revenue rose
by 32% in the quarter to 13,600,000,000.0.
If you use Uber or Lyft,
Lyft is starting to do something unique with
its app. It's made a major update.
They've given you the ability
to give a much better
review,
And you have the ability to favorite
a driver
and you have the ability to block,
a driver. I have never,
well,
there was a driver in
Miami that I had that I
I could have blocked, I would have blocked
that I reported.
Because it just drove life as an absolute
madman even though I
asked the gentleman to slow down.
But I like now how they
automatically, at least in this image, show that
you should do a 25%
tip
to your driver. And that's another whole topic
in itself
is the, is the tip economy
that's,
that's out there.
Hey. We did get some boost,
thousand sats from RW Nash. He said, Todd,
hope you get your fiber wired.
Appreciate that. Also, I had a streaming sats
that came in,
from folks as well. Thank you for that
support.
Of course, we had some, PayPal donations come
in. Curtis Parish, $5. Daniel Lamux,
$10. Mike Dells World, $2. Christian
Pitreay, $3.
Gary Ebo's, $10.
S g
SJG
Media LLC,
$10. James Fletcher,
$2.
Silas, we wanna thank you for your streaming
stats. Darren Schwartz for your streaming stats. Greatly
appreciated,
for your ongoing
support of the podcast
for sure.
And,
of course, we have,
the ability for you to to support the
show.
And you can do that very simply by,
going to geeknesscentral.com
forward
slash,
insider.
And looks like the Umbrel has rebooted.
Now the question is,
will the,
will the Bitcoin
node
smash the
the the database a little bit so we,
can save some space?
Time
will tell.
1,000,000,000 of Nvidia
AI chips reportedly sold in China despite The
US ban.
You know, this is not surprising to me
at all.
You know, they're gonna find a way to
buy
these chips because what they can't do on
their own, they're going to steal, cheat, lie,
rob. They don't care. They have no absolutely
no ethics
whatsoever.
It should be expected at this point
and the black market for these chips,
are going to
suspectedly
other countries.
And I'll be honest with you, if a
country is
or a group
has been detected
doing this,
there should be heavy, heavy prosecution
and heavy sanctions. We should not allow
these chips to get into China.
Even though Nvidia said, well, you know,
even if a billion chips get in there,
there's not a lot they can do.
Well, is that true?
Have you got it to the point where,
the chips have to be authorized and there
has to be authentication and there has to
be proof of ownership
and IP logging and all the other stuff
that should be from a security standpoint to
ensure
these machines are not being run
in, you know, in China.
I know there's only so much they can
do,
but, come on. Let's,
let's make sure that the right people are
using these chips.
T Mobile's
Starlink satellite service officially launches and
if you have a phone
that includes iPhones from the iPhone 13 onward
and the Samsung Galaxy s 21
and older
and Google Pixel
phones going back to as early as a
Pixel nine,
they're supported. There's about
how many total devices 60
that are supported.
Now here's the kicker.
If you're on T Mobile's go five gs
next or experience beyond plans, you get t
satellite
included for free.
Other T Mobile customers can access to it
for today
for $10 per
line. Now
no data.
This is
only
sending and receiving text messages.
It doesn't offer any data or any other
services that
as comparably Apple supports.
So
be aware of that when you get ready
to pay your $10. It doesn't mean you're
gonna be out in the middle of the
desert
and have the ability to,
to surf Gate New Central. You'll have
to have a different solution for that.
Clorox. Clorox the
bleach company, I guess they sell more stuff
than that, has sued Cognizant for 380,000,000
over the 2023
hack.
Clark's is blaming them for the cyber attack
claiming the IT provided
handed over passwords to the hackers. So we'll
see where this goes.
830,000,000
380,000,000
from a Cognit and includes $49,000,000
in remedial
cost.
So we'll see how this lawsuit,
proceeds.
The rumored DGI
vacuum gets a launch date and official teaser,
and it looks like the r o m
o, the Romo,
is
arriving soother sooner than expected.
The video teaser was shared by regular DJI
leaker Jasper Ellens and is apparently taken from
the official Chinese DJI Romo account.
It shows two versions of the Romo side
by side with a date and time of
August
6,
on 8PM.
Look and see. Does it
say how much the device is gonna cost?
No. But I would expect probably upwards of
close to a thousand
dollars.
I think this is great, to be honest
with you,
and I can't wait for the reviews
on this. I my loft is very very
complicated
for a
robot to vacuum. There's
there's throw rugs. There are
with some with
that are plush and some that are flat
and then there's
a flat services
with tile
and
it it basically
and a lot of obstacles. And if this
thing is good at obstacle avoidance,
I will be
very inclined and maybe pick one of these
up
at some point,
in the future.
But it we'll we'll see. We'll see what
happens with this.
Apple has introduced
the AppleCare
one plan streaming coverage into a single plan
with incredible value. Now, you know, this really
won't from won't will not work for me
because of the number of devices.
But if you if you
have a tablet,
if you have a
iPhone
and a computer,
you get three devices.
For $19.99
per month, customers can protect up to three
devices in one plan
with the option to add more at any
time for five ninety nine per month.
So I guess one will have to do
the math here
to see what the delta is between buying
Apple so I don't buy AppleCare
for my iPhones.
And here's the reason why.
I
essentially
pay outright cash
or my company does for the iPhone. So
if I break it drop it,
it's gonna be on me
to get it repaired.
I've been using
Apple TVs
and other devices
long enough to know they just don't break.
They don't.
I typically will put AppleCare on tablets and
on
laptops
and,
and I don't even put AppleCare on my
Apple Watch.
The reason I do on tablets and on
the,
on the computers is because you break a
screen,
it's paid for itself
instantly. Now I've never broke a straight a
screen, knock on wood,
but, you know, do you do the same?
Do you only put AppleCare
on your tablets and
on your,
your computers?
Or do you do your phones
as well?
And I know some folks if depending on
how you're getting your iPhone,
you may be required to have insurance
and sometimes insurance through third parties like your
mobile provider might
be cheaper,
but I'm not
big into these. If I can pay once
and be done
or pay for a three year contract
and be done, I'm good.
By the time the computer's three years old,
you know, if I break it, then I'm,
you know, probably won't feel bad in in
buying another,
another machine.
But, you know, I've got Macs that are
now that are,
you know, more than Mac Pros that are
more than ten years old that are that
are running strong.
And, you know, keyboard might have a little
bit of an issue or something like that.
And I use
them in the studio in Hawaii to,
basically be heads up systems for me
in watching chat and different stuff that like
that that I'm doing.
New York is seeking public opinion on water
system cyber regulations. And I think if you
work
live in New York,
especially,
and if you pay for water there,
which I know some people are on on
wells,
they're really they release a proposed cyber regulation
cover water where corporations, cable television companies, and
other public utilities.
But these are very minimum standards
for improving
water infrastructure
and resilience against sophisticated
cyber attacks on IoT devices
and other, you know, other infrastructure
IP.
I think this is a situation where the
consumers have an opportunity here to say, hey.
We want not just minimum standards. We want
things to be,
you know, want our infrastructure
to be secure.
We really, really do.
And it's your chance to put input on
that. So,
consider doing so. SpaceX has launched a pair
of NASA satellites to probe the origins of
space weather.
The twin spacecraft are part of the NASA
funded tracers mission,
which will spend at least a year measuring
plasma conditions in their regions of the Earth's
magnetic field
known as polar cusp.
As the name suggests, these regions located over
the poles.
So,
for example,
an extreme geometric stream storm last year degraded
GPS navigation signals resulting
in more than $500,000,000
in economic loss. And I wonder how they
figured that, to be honest.
In in the agriculture agriculture sectors, farms temporary
suspend suspended,
spring planting in 2022.
And,
so they wanna understand this. Now it's not
going to stop it.
When there is a solar flare
and this happens, you you know,
there's only so much you can do. You
just gotta wait
until it dissipates.
You know, it's this is they can study
it all they want,
but it doesn't change
the simple fact that,
you're gonna have,
it's just gonna be an issue.
There's a instant article over at Digital Trends.
They're saying why home Internet beats five g
hotspots for speed savings and reliability. Well, I
think we all know this.
But some people don't have a choice.
Some people are on their five g networks
in their homes because like me,
there is no Internet.
And you if if you have a mobile
device, it has good connectivity. It's it's a
great option for you.
And,
and it may not be perfect.
The the advice is get a STARLINK or,
you know,
like me, wait until hell froze over, which
just recently did. It looks like I'm getting
fiber. You know? Again, I'm still shocked
that I'm gonna get fiber. I'm I'm just
blown away,
and I look forward to,
being able to order fiber.
I really am.
So
it's, you know, exciting time for me.
But, we'll see,
what happens here. Now one thing that I
remembered,
I did
submit
to Frontier
to be put on a list
years ago
that I would want fiber if they brought
it to my area.
So I wonder if I had some neighbors
that did the same. Again, how they routed
it in my neighborhood is pretty remarkable.
I could have been again a whole mile
from the fiber connection.
So,
maybe that, you know, maybe that influenced it.
Who knows?
Sam Altman did another
had another comment
about
collectively deciding we're going to live our lives
the way AI tells us
feels really, really bad even to me. And
he says it's bad and change and bad
and dangerous.
He was speaking at the Federal Reserve Banking
event. He says people rely on Chatt GPT
too much.
There's young people saying say things like I
can't make any decision in my life without
telling Chatt
GPT everything that's going on. It knows me.
It knows my friends. It's I'm gonna do
whatever it says. That feels
and, again,
are we doing this, ladies and gentlemen?
This comes after new data found that chat
chat g b t received over 2,500,000,000
prompts a day for more than 500,000,000
listeners.
And
last month, following a major chat and GPT
outage,
the folks at Tech
Radar wrote how AI is generally helping millions
people get through life.
And while that seems to be the case,
there's also a worrying number use the tech
so much they can't cope with life without
it, which is
scary.
The writer tech writers tech writer said during
the ten hour outage, I received emails from
chat GPT users who hadn't written emails in
months
without the help of AI.
They use a technology to help them on
with online dating and work and so forth.
I still
write all my own emails.
Most emails don't require such a long response
that I need chat g p t for.
And it just feels so impersonal.
And the number of emails I get on
a daily basis is probably down that I
have to respond to.
It's probably under 50 a day.
So
I don't know. Again,
where are you on this?
Are are you
are you addicted
to using ChatGPT
for everything?
Is it leaving you feel anxious?
I I did a
we we use
a,
a ticketing system.
I think it's called,
Zendesk.
I'm not I can't think off the top
of my head.
Yeah. Maybe Zendesk.
And we had a hell of a time
getting the
data exported out of matter of fact, my
son who's doing the internship with
the Blueberry right now,
wrote the AI interface and pulled the data
down and,
we got it in a
CSV file. Matter of fact, they defaulted to
JSON, which is kind of crazy. So,
but we got things into it as,
into a spreadsheet.
And,
there's literally thousands of customer tickets in there,
but it also tracks things like missed calls
and outbound calls. So, you know, you had
to do a bit of pruning.
And we're using now,
ChatGPT
to do data analysis
on our tickets.
You know, what's trending up? What's trending down?
Where do we need improvement in response? In
other words, tickets that took two, three, four
responses to get a result. How you know,
every time a ticket has to be respond
to, that's more time
that my,
support team could be doing other things.
So
we're we're building a data set
that's going to allow us to address
specific nuanced issues.
And again, if let's say I got
over a year,
25 tickets on a specific topic.
Well then I can build
a dedicated auto response
to that specific topic.
Do that once.
Have it ready to go to cut and
paste and put in the system. At the
same time,
you can build
fixes in the system. If there's something that
is repeated, the customer's having issue with,
whatever the topic may be, you can say,
okay. Let's spend a little dev time here
and and make improvements.
I probably
in this initial run of data research, which
I didn't spend a lot of time on,
it was kind of like a maybe a
fifteen to twenty minute quick look,
which I'm gonna spend more time next week
doing a deep deep deep dive.
You know, I got some some stuff that's
maybe
a That's worth you know, we're gonna need
to take a look at that.
So I think it can be used in
reasonable ways to help you
make a good decisions in your business environment,
but I don't know about shit
again, writing emails.
I'm seeing a lot of emails come into
my inbox, so they're definitely written by
a bot, especially,
folks that are looking to do my business.
People that are doing business development, trying to
get you leads, all those emails are nearly
identical.
Microsoft SharePoint attack now sees victim count rising
to 400
organizations
including a US nuclear agency.
So again,
this is bad.
The hackers named Linen Typhoon, Violet Typhoon, and
Storm twenty six zero three are primarily coming
out of,
of China.
So again up to 400 organizations have been
affected already.
Now IRobot
has a new
Roomba as well.
The Roomba Max seven zero five combo will
automatically deploy a mop cover to prevent your
carpet from getting wet.
So if it transitions from a hard floor
to a carpet,
I really don't need a mop
per se.
But,
you know, it's one thing about these devices
and, you know, I kind of talked about
a little bit earlier here. It's best if
you have all carpet or no carpet, but
I know most people don't live in that
type of environment.
A Swiss startup says its AI weather forecaster
beats Microsoft and Google,
and
Swiss startup,
Jua, j u a,
Jua has launched a weather model,
claims it's faster and more accurate than most
Microsoft Aurora and Google DeepMind GraphCast
in separate peer to peer reviewed studies.
So they back up this bold claim within
a report published today that puts the EP
two head to head with top tier models.
According to paper, delivering the most accurate forecast
around the world, it beat Aurora on key
variables like 10
meter wind speed and two meter air temperature
over a ten day period,
Grand forecast 25
faster and posted lower air scores of all
models tested.
I guess we're not gonna need,
meteorologist
soon.
That probably is not
a,
unless you're gonna go into a sub
career.
A, I don't know. This
seems like a
a
heavily affected
job
with with AI.
Apparently, Google Assistant has been having a rough
few weeks and Google actually responded and said,
yep. We see some see some issues. We're
addressing them.
So if Google has been Google Assistant has
been a little bit weird, this is they
they know.
You know, I I don't use
hey a l e x a and hey
g o o
l e
very often anymore.
Especially when I'm on travel, I don't even
I guess my
Fire Stick could respond, but I I don't
don't use it that way.
Dior has told customers the data was swiped
in a cyber snafu.
LVMH
owned Dior, the French,
purveyor of overpriced
garments and fragrances confirmed in breach notification letter
filed with California's attorney general
that US customers' data had been accessed during
a recent attack.
So they didn't say exactly which data but
accept that it was. So if
if you have a significant other or you
are the significant other, the Shobsit Dior,
yeah, they looks like they maybe have your
info.
Tesla bets on bought smoke screen as political
and market reality bites.
Yeah.
Speaking to Tesla investors last night, CEO Elon
Musk was optimistic about the future.
But,
quick witted observers need to first point out
that when he started talking about Optimus,
that definitely had nothing to do with Tesla.
So,
they know that
their profits
had slid 23%,
and we know that Tesla shares fell almost
7%.
I'm still
gonna bet on Tesla. And, you know, I
don't own any of the stock. I can't
afford to or own any of the stock.
But if if I,
if I could,
I would probably buy some of their stock.
Maybe a good time to buy when it's
down. I just you know, know, one thing
is gonna happen. This is gonna happen to
every car manufacturer with all of the incentives
and rebates and all that stuff that is
being afforded them going away.
You know, time will tell how this is
gonna ultimately affect them.
Intel has beat a shareholder lawsuit over $32,000,000,000
stock plunge,
and,
a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit accusing Intel
of defrauding shareholders by concealing problems in business
where it manufactured chips
for outside con companies in their foundries.
And, we know that their stock sunk 26%
in
last August
and,
again of last year, not this year.
And with 15,000
layoffs and they suspended dividends in
hoping to send 10,000,000,000 in 2025.
So
the lawsuit is not going to continue.
Google's tool for virtually trying on close is
now available in United States. It arrives with
better price tracking.
So Google previewed a new a powered feature
that the company said was simplified online shopping.
The tool allows you to upload a single
full body photo of yourself. Now what do
you what do you wear when you do
that?
What what do you take a picture of
if you wanna see if something is going
to look good on you?
Do you wear a t shirt and shorts?
What is the
what is the what is the clothes they
want you to wear when you upload the
picture?
That is the,
the question here. One thing's for sure.
I've,
now at the 20 pound in weight loss
mark and I'm kinda stuck.
I haven't really moved in the last three
or four or five days.
So it's one of those times it kinda
happens when you're losing weight. You kinda
kinda hit
a you know, and and then it'll it'll
go again.
That sure is frustrating when you're stepping on
the scale every morning and logging your weight.
The,
I'm gonna have to order some some new
pants or dig I maybe have some pants
and I probably have some pants in my
closet that
will fit that when I got down to
a thirty eight before,
because I'm definitely
waist sizes.
The the pants that I'm wearing here that,
you know,
are are definitely
requiring a few more belt notches and
scrunching of the pants. Fellas, you kinda know
how that goes. At least it isn't at
least the belt line isn't tightening.
But, yeah. I guess you upload yourself
in shorts and
a t shirt, and
they show you what you look like
in a specific
close
that you may be looking to buy.
So
a little more on Intel, and I'm sorry
I didn't have this group, but Intel abandoned
European manufacturing sites as part of the turnaround
planned.
So this chipmaker
reported better than expected revenue,
but still suffered $2,000,000,000
in loss in the second quarter,
and which it attributed to one onetime cost
as part of the turnaround
plan. At the same time, Apple has released
the first iOS 26
public betas
and mixed reviews.
Some people are in love with the glass
effect.
Some people not so much.
And,
you know, it's coming whether we like it
or not.
And I've seen some stuff from folks that
are really, really,
I guess for a better word,
troubled
in that they
they're going to have to
rework
some of the stuff in their in their
apps.
So there's lots of examples here that you
can see
in the two articles that I'll have linked
up in the show notes.
But
time will tell
on whether or not this is going to
grow on us and whether people are going
to
like it or not.
Google has a new web guide
that
it's a search experiment that organizes results with
AI.
So this AI powered featured web guide
is a Search Labs experiment that I wonder
if they're talking about
comparison to 11 Labs here.
There maybe that's who they're trying to compete
with.
Searchlight, the experience, or wave go over test
out new ideas by letting users opt into
those they find interesting. The experiments can be
turned on or off at any time,
including things like Google AI mode, notebook l
m, filmmaking flow flow, and other niche ideas.
The web guide experience that varies on the
fan out techniques for displaying search results that
Google is already using with its AI mode.
And, Google suggest the feature works well for
open ended search queries like how to solo
travel in Japan
or me even more complex multi sentence queries.
For instance, you could ask, my family is
spread across multiple diet time zones. What are
the best tools for staying connected?
Again, we know that,
other folks
are doing this already.
But,
again, this new web guide
is a new search experiment.
I I think they're worried.
I really am. I think they're worried about
their search revenue
going down,
down,
down.
Now the president in a very interesting
comment said that AI companies can't be expected
pay for all copyrighted content used in their
training
models. Says it's not doable.
Well, I think lawsuits in progress are going
to figure out if that's the case or
not.
Speaking at the AI summit, he says you
can't be expected to have a successful
AI program where every single article book or
whatever you've studied you're expected to pay for.
We appreciate that but you can't just do
that because it's not doable.
And if you're going to try and do
that you're not going to have a successful
program referring to
an AI
program.
Says we can't afford to fall behind the
Chinese because the Chinese are indexing everything
and stealing IP and they're definitely not going
to pay
for
a single thing.
I agree.
It that in that regard that the Chinese
are not going to pay for a single
thing.
You already heard my commentary at the beginning
of the show today talking about my thoughts
on,
you know, again, I've given
all of the AI models permission in this
show to take this content,
take my website's content, to analyze it,
to to be able to reference it back,
hopefully, to my site with
citations
and links,
because I know that this this transition
is is going to continue. And I just
look at the queries that I've been running
in operator
on OpenAI
and
things are gonna change dramatically, folks, if it
hasn't already for all of you.
I was in a meeting today and
the team members were talking about how they
were doing certain things within These are very
very very very very smart people
doing a specific thing within Google
and they said yep. I can do about
25%
of my job helping me be more efficient
but
not everything is understood. The nuances are understood
and
that's where someone with a
with good knowledge
is gonna understand where the nuances are and
where something was missed.
So
the challenge will
be is
because you're gonna have super creative people creating
super creative,
basically queries and getting responses
and super
awesome interfaces,
who's if that person's not a quality assurance
person and not the subject matter expert, how
are you guaranteed to get the best output?
But then again, how do you grow people
to become subject matter experts if all they're
using is ChatGPT
to get the answers,
and they may not know that they missed
something in a nuance because
they've not taken the time to study
and to learn
what they need to know
to properly support
a client.
AI training is, at this point, not gonna
get it completely done. But in ten years,
maybe it'll understand the nuances better.
You know, it's gonna gonna be too long
where
you're literally
gonna be talking to your computer.
You you know, many of you probably already
are. You're gonna say,
computer.
It's gonna be too totally Star Trek.
It really, really is.
It's just like this query I wrote the
other day for operator.
I could have verbally said
that,
let it go off and done the operation,
and then it could have reported back to
me, would you like to hear the results
or read the results?
It feels
like we're going to
get to the point
where the levels of this knowledge and the
level of agentic AI and these next things
that are coming.
Again, if if you are
close to retirement, you're probably okay.
But if you are in the middle of
your career
and you are not
embracing and leaning into this and not using
these tools,
you're gonna wake up without a job.
You really are.
And, that's that's just a pure fact.
That's that's what's gonna happen.
Hey. If you like today's show, don't forget
to support our sponsor. And more importantly, maybe
consider becoming an insider for the $2.05 $10.15
20 or $25 donation or a one time
donation to the show at geekoncentral.com/insider.
Of course,
again, thank you for support for GoDaddy. We
should be getting the monthly report here soon
on how the performance was. But as always,
if you have comments on today's show geek
news at g mail dot com at geek
news on x, I'm still finding lots of
great commentary and conversations over there.
So don't forget them. We also have a,
a mastodon,
chat server at geeknews.chat
that you can join. Just say that you're
a fan of the show for the reason
of joining, and I will,
approve
your entry into the Mastodon chat server. Everyone,
thank you so much for being here. I'll
be back with you on
on Monday
for another edition of the Geekness Central podcast.
Stay froggy. Stay safe, and take care out
there. Have a great weekend. Bye bye.