Lead story for Monday, July
21.
Google DeepMind advances Gemini deep
Google's DeepMind
advanced Gemini Deep AI
has reached a milestone
by solving five out of six problems at
the twenty twenty five International
Mathematical
Olympiad,
achieving gold model
gold medal status.
Unlike previous models, Gemini operate entirely in natural
language and within official time limits,
highlighting substantial progress in AI mathematical reasoning
and
proof of generation capabilities.
That was a mouthful. I want to welcome
you to episode 1,834.
I'm your host, Todd Cochran.
So, yeah, this is pretty big. This advanced
version of Gemini with Deep
Think achieving this gold medal and,
the International Math Medical Olympiad
is the world's most prestigious competition for young
math mathematicians
and has been held annually since 1959.
Now each country
taking part is represented by six elite pre
university mathematicians
who compete
to solve six exceptionally difficult problems in algebracom
combines with geometry
and number theory
and medals are awarded to the top half
of the contestants with approximately 8%
receiving this prestigious gold medal.
So
with this breakthrough in performance
that Google's DeepMind has reached
to a desired milestone earning 35
out of a possible 42 points during the
competition,
which was a gold medal score.
Their solutions were astonishing in many aspects. IMO
graders found them to be clear, precise
and most of them easy to follow.
So
again, this is a significant advancement over last
year,
but
the future of AI and mathematics is very,
very clear.
With this type of an impact,
with this type of a level of
performance,
it's only gonna get better over time.
And
it's it's
yes. To me, it's not surprising
because
this is beyond a language model
and putting words together. This is a reasoning
model.
This is where
the
where the actual model has to do
back and forth computational
thinking.
And I think that's the big big difference
here in,
the results
and
what they did the previous year
in the competition
because
they
they definitely used
what they're calling,
they trained the version of Gemini on novel
reinforcement
learning techniques
that help leverage
more multi step reasoning,
problem solving,
and theorem probing data.
They also provided Gemini with access to a
curated
corpus of high quality solutions
to mathematics
problems
and added some general hints and tips and
how to approach
the problems to its instructions.
So
we will see
this is not something that's publicly available.
This is a model that they're only gonna
release to a select few people
at this point.
So
time will tell where all this leads, but
one thing is definitely for sure,
that an additional story I'm gonna talk about
here in a few minutes.
The models are just getting incredibly better. But,
again, I wanna welcome you at episode 1,834.
I'm your host, Todd Cochran, and a shout
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going
strong.
And speaking about going strong, it has been
raining
raining here
continuously,
for about the past five days.
And
I think that there's been a typhoon, low
pressure system,
tropical storm, just one after the other. We
are definitely in the rainy season.
Do not leave the house without
a umbrella.
But I got a full week. Lots of
stuff going on with the office. We're getting
ready to launch our new service.
Guessmatch.pro.
So very very very close on that. Probably
gonna launch it probably next
Tuesday. I think we'll have everything kind of
dialed in,
which is nice and the team can actually
move on some some other
types of of topics or other types of
work workflows.
And,
but otherwise, I'm doing well.
Got about
eighteen days left here before I hand head
back to The United States.
So with the show will continue as normally
scheduled.
No planned,
off times
whatsoever.
Again, if you have any questions or comments
about the show today, geeknews@gmail.com
is your best
place to go. Now on top of this
AI
gold medal that Gemini got,
a human
did beat
a coding contest, but the AI finished a
close second.
Humanity has prevailed
for now, so said Polish programmer, and I
can't even pronounce this guy's first name, mister
Dibiak, after merging victorious in coding contest
whose competitors included an advanced AI
model created by OpenAI.
So again, here we go. We've got mathematics.
We've got coding.
The ten hour session
left the Polish competitor who competed under the
name of sigh Saizo,
not psycho,
feeling completely
exhausted and barely alive. But as for the
AI model, it probably felt
fine and could have carried on without complaint.
It believes
this is believed to be the first coding
contest to allow the partition
participation of an AI model.
Now the OpenAI models participate is put as
part of a special human versus AI exhibition
match,
indicated within the heuristic division
of the contest
called OpenAI
AHC.
The AI model took on 12 top ranking
human programmers
on a ten hour optimization
challenge. So I guess it was a code
optimization
challenge.
So I'd like to know more about it.
There's not a lot of details beyond what's
in the article for digital trends. It doesn't
talk about exactly what was done and those
of you that are coders will understand
heuristic better than I will.
I definitely don't fully,
follow what
the actual competition if it was sounds to
me like it was code review
and code improvement. And maybe someone can help
me out here and let me know
what that actually
refers to.
At the same time,
little bit of a movement
in The UK. UK wants to weasel out
of the demand for Apple encryption backdoor.
The US government's opposition has The UK's back
against the wall,
and the UK government's reportedly set to back
down from its battle with Apple attempt to
obtain a
backdoor
to secure user data protected by the company's
iCloud encryption.
Now victory hasn't come through the courts or
government figures change their minds on privacy matters,
but thanks to ongoing pressure
from The United States during two countries trade
talks,
unnamed UK officials
note that the UK government is working
is working on a way out.
The home office is basically going to have
to back down, One said adding that the
president, vice president J. D. Vance was especially
opposed
to UK's demand, which may violate the cloud
act treaty between the two countries.
So we'll see where this leads and if
they actually do
step away.
For many of you, you probably use,
I don't know if you use WhatsApp.
Like, I'm
not completely focused today.
Like, the camera list doing a little shifting.
That's odd.
WhatsApp is dropping its native Windows app in
favor of an uglier
web version.
Now
I've used
a WhatsApp
version on Mac before,
but it's going to drop it on Windows.
And they're gonna use a Windows,
a favor of a web wrapper.
This is just months after introducing
native iPad app. The latest beta version of
WhatsApp on Windows includes the major changes.
Behind the scenes, it's a big change to
WhatsApp on Windows moving it from an even
Windows and WinUI
app to a WhatsApp web version
and they say it's much uglier. So
a time will tell what happens with this.
But if you use WhatsApp on Windows,
let me know what you see in the
changes.
DuckDuckGo
is thinking many of us are sick and
tired of seeing
AI images.
So they've they're gonna let you filter out
what they're calling the slop
from your search results. So you will not
see AI generated
images
in image search, which
we'll see how good that is.
And how are they gonna be able to
tell? How are they gonna be able to
flag this? That's probably the question of the
day, really.
So,
anyway, DuckDuckGo is gonna offer that filter if
you are a DuckDuckGo
user.
Jen, one of our writers also covered this
directly on Geek News Central, but France is
launching
a criminal probe on x's
alleged a logarithm
manipulation accusing them of
interference in the election
and acts as global government affairs account issued
a scathing breakdown of what it calls as
France's
politically motivated criminal investigation
and its refusal
to cooperate.
They're basically saying, hey we're not giving you
what you want.
Because the the government has
wants its recommendation a logarithm and real time
data about all users post on the platform.
And of course not surprisingly
X is not happy about this and
specifically said the two people that are that
has
been assigned to probe this it's basically going
to be a slam dunk. If
x is going to be held
to some
legal
situation because
these folks have preordained
decisions on what what has happened here. So
I'm not too familiar with
this issue,
but seems to think that the algorithm
could have,
according to France, affected their election
outcome. I'll leave it to geeks.
Radio geeks revealed how access to crucial hurricane
data
after US Department of Defense cut it off.
Hams for the win here.
While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
set to shut down a key satellite data
stream
used in US hurricane forecasting a group of
amateur radio enthusiasts stepped
in with a decoder
that they say could fill the gap.
Basically, this data coming down when it's over
The United States is unencrypted.
So they're they're in they're basically
intercepting this unencrypted signal
and
decoding it.
So they don't get all of the data.
They get some of it. But here's what
I would suspect is gonna happen. If they
really cut it off,
and if it's a DOD decides to, they
could encrypt
the data while it's over The United States.
So we'll see. We'll see what develops here.
If they really really want to cut this
information off. And I don't remember I think
we talked about this some time ago. I
don't remember the government's reasoning
for wanting to do this.
There's a article on Cyberscoop and it's entitled
why it's time for The US to go
on the offense.
Why it's time for The US to go
on offense
in cyberspace.
So
with the Trump administration 2,000,000,000
cyber initiative in the
big bill,
there's growing congressional momentum under the 2026
National Defense Association
authorization
to strengthen cyber deterrence.
And they're starting to see a shift in
posture
that many in the security community have long
anticipated, although often debated. In other words, going
on offense here.
Obviously,
the cyber threat environment is fundamentally different from
what it was even five years ago. Operations
like Volt typhoon from China
and Russia's relentless campaign against Ukraine's infrastructure,
adversaries
are no longer limiting themselves to IP theft.
They're actively preparing for conflict.
And Volt typhoon, in particular, marks a strategic
evolution as Chinese stag actors are actually pre
positioning in US critical infrastructure,
not just for surveillance, but for disruption.
So we know salt salt typhoon
was targeting civilian infrastructure with apparent tolerance for
detection suggesting illusing
a
China's,
is lowering their risk calculus.
So
we'll see.
And there's some saying that adversaries respond to
force,
not diplomacy.
So if we go on offense,
start going after
critical infrastructure and stuff within China,
things could get very, very interesting
indeed.
And I would absolutely be shocked if it
isn't
happening
already.
Tesla has responded to a sales decline. The
automaker is trying to juice third quarter sales
with a bunch of deals and discounts, including
free supercharging
and 0%
APR financing. And now with the current financing
cost of a new vehicle,
I'm gonna be honest with you. That 0%
financing,
oh,
that's a pretty
compelling
offer
with 5.66%
on a car loan, maybe 7%.
0%
is is a very big
incentive.
Now, of course, every Tesla vehicle is still
eligible for the $7,500
federal EV tax credit
until September 30. Now that's when the incentive
sunsets.
So if you're going to be buying a
brand new electric vehicle,
this is probably the time to do it.
Now if you're military,
a teacher or first responder, you also get
a thousand dollar discount as well on top
of the 0%
interest.
Now
if you have a Ring camera,
apparently back on May 28, there was a
bunch of notifications
that were
made within the command center of
the ring
app
talking about a whole bunch of devices just
connected
to the
the ring
and peers according to and it's there's been
some viral stuff on TikTok about this saying
that ring was hacked
According
to ring, it is not.
These alerts were from old devices.
Not not devices.
There were some new devices that you own,
but mostly old phones browsers and other clients
that you've had
from from the past.
So don't weigh in too much on this.
If you've seen some of this TikTok stuff
or got concerned that your ring may have
been hacked. Now I'm not a big fan
of ring to begin with.
So
there's other devices out there. I'm a big
fan of Wyze, of course.
So you know that might be a consideration.
South Korea wants to build a moon base
by 2045
and the nation wants to to do this.
The Korean Times reported setting a long term
exploration roadmap that Korea
Korea's Aerospace
Administration laid out during a hearing at the
National Research Foundation of Korea in Daejeon.
So,
five core missions,
low earth orbit,
microgravity
exploration,
lunar exploration,
and solar and space science mission.
So nice to see that they have this
as a road map.
Twenty years to get back to get to
get to the moon.
For Korea, it seems like a completely
doable
doable option.
Google
has sued the operator of a 10,000,000
device Android set hot box botnet. Now that's
a mouthful.
Again,
this lawsuit is filed in New York has
been
partly unsealed revealing the details of what's believed
to be the largest botnet of its type,
consisting of a 10,000,000
compromised Android devices,
mostly cheap Chinese
set top boxes popular with users of free
and pirate streaming services.
The Badbox
two point o botnet turns user devices into
nodes
and a massive residential
proxy network.
Google says the botnet is used for ad
fraud, malware distribution,
and other digital
crime.
So I don't know how they're going to
get this shut down.
Who are they actually filing the lawsuit against?
Does it say
a list of devices model numbers made available
since the reveal
reveals that cheap set top boxes manufactured in
China appeared account for the majority of the
infected devices.
Our laptop and desktop computer, smartphone, tablets, in
car in payment systems,
digital projectors have all been compromised as well.
So
they're going after
a bunch of John
John Does.
There's bad actors in China
who they believe would not comply with a
judgment for
money damages. Of course,
Google was awarded preliminary injunction to mitigate the
ongoing spread of where malware
of new devices and other criminal schemes.
So whatever action this is,
whether it's a blocking traffic
to or from the IP address in certain
domains.
So
be aware here if you're using a cheap
Chinese knockoff Android device, which I know a
lot of people bought these,
it could be infected and I don't know
if there's a solution to remove it.
A New Glenn rocket is all set for
a grand mission and and it's honestly it's
on its second launch.
Blue Origin has officially announced this next generation
New Glenn rocket will launch NASA's escapade Mars
mission
in a flight targeted from earlier than mid
August.
So
they're gonna launch on The Cape
and
again this is a second mission on this
new
a new rocket. So,
hopefully everything goes
as planned on that launch and we'll we'll
keep an eye for that announcement.
Not surprisingly, another seven hundred and fifty thousand
people have been impacted by data breach. This
time at the alcohol and drug test at
at the alcohol and drug testing service.
So is this a
government group?
Oh, t a d t s is a
is based in Texas.
As when until recently known as a Texas
Alcohol oh, Texas Alcohol and Drug Testing Service.
So this was detected on July 9.
Does the data breach includes dates, names, birth,
Social Security numbers, driver's license, passport numbers, other
ID numbers, financial credit card information,
health insurance details, biometric,
lovely,
information, login credentials, emails, and passwords. Why is
this not all
encrypted?
Why?
Why? Why is this
you know, situations like this,
where that much data is
obtained,
there needs to be a penalty for that.
There really does.
Nvidia is powering The UK's fastest supercomputer
yet.
Here's what it can do.
So Nvidia's GH 200 chips are the core
of Britain's is
is Zombard
AI supercomputer.
It's eleventh fastest in the world
and
they're looking to
look at
deliver a better public service, greater public prosperity.
Okay. What kind of discoveries are we want
to really do?
Drug discovery and climate modeling.
And it's gonna be trained on,
for those of you in UK, your your
NHS
data
to do earlier diagnosis
and provide personalized
care.
So,
interesting.
We will see where this goes with them
feeding that data
into
the AI model.
The iOS 26 public beta could arrive this
week bringing liquid glass and more to your
phone.
So keep an eye out that for those
of you that like running the iOS beta
that is just around the corner.
Also, Android is looking to set to improve
the fast pair experience
for wireless earbuds. I'm not familiar with this
fast pair. I I've got an Android device,
but I don't even I've never been familiar
with that term.
So if you paired a
Android phone
with wireless earbuds, you get a you're gonna
get a helpful
software update
recording code spotted. It's said but it's weird
but they how they said this. If you
paired one of the best Android phones
with one of the best pairs of wireless
earbuds
okay. So
Google hasn't said nothing about this. It's just
something they saw.
So,
is it a problem?
I've never had a problem doing Bluetooth with
an Android device.
If you flew Alaska Airlines yesterday, you you
weren't for some pain. They've now resumed operations
after an IT outage grounded flights,
and, its full fleet was grounded. They had
11 flights in the sky at the time,
and this is not the first outage.
But they're trying to get things back online,
And Hawaiian Airlines was also affected to some
circumstances
as well.
So when the computers don't roll, the flights
don't fly. That is for sure.
Microsoft is promising to crack one of the
biggest problems with Windows 11,
specifically the slow performance
and their people have their fingers crossed for
a suitably
honed file explorer
experience
and they're basically cleaning up a lot of
bugs
relating to performance hitches.
So hopefully, this will help Windows 11
speed up a little bit,
and
they're trying to fee figure out the speed
related issues. I can hear it raining right
now.
Now
I'm on the inner ring of a Third
Floor with a hollow center,
and generally we never hear
the rain here but it is just
humming right now.
Absolutely
humming.
And when it rains here like this,
it is
freaking unbelievable.
It it just dumps and buckets
inches per hour.
Fitbit may have fixed its major outage, but
some users are still reporting problems. So, again,
we ported that reported down this,
the last show, but it continues to be
an issue for some folks.
So some mitigation issues are
our mitigation,
remedies are in the article. I'll have link
in the show notes.
It's surprising here that
licensed attorneys
are still
producing
documents being created by AI, and those documents
are full of hallucinations.
Experts are warning that judges are overlooking AI
hallucinations
and court filings could easily become commonplace.
And so far, two states have moved to
force judges to sharpen their tech competencies and
adapt so they can spot AI
red flags and theoretically stop destruction
disruptions to the justice system.
And this again was a
a petition and a,
in a divorce
and they cited
case law that was in case
two fictitious cases
that were
false. The errant order relied on two fictitious
cases to denies
all the wife's petition
which suggests
there were from hallucinations
in AI.
So
why lawyers are not queuing their
their documents
as well before they submit them? The the
lawyer was sanctioned
very small amount of money, $3,000
or something like this.
$2,500
for and of course this wife's
petition
may have went her way. So this is
gonna go back
to the lower court.
T Mobile is bringing low latency
low latency
tech to five g for the first time.
Latency hitches that can air video calls or
slow down browsing could reduce with l four
s And T Mobile was the first wireless
company using it in The US.
Users won't need a special phone or plan
to take advantage of the benefits. It's a
network driven
protocol.
And, T Mobile's five g advanced network, It
it's been deployed in many of those cities,
so, something to help with playback
and and speed.
Amazon Prime customers are warned scammers are after
login info.
200,000,000
users possibly at risk.
So
this year, around 200,000,000 Prime customers receive warnings
from the company about ongoing attacks
with some handy pointers.
Scammers sending fake emails claiming Amazon Prime subscription
will automatically renew and at an unexpected
price, you're clicking on it and you're
getting your account taken over. I've seen a
whole bunch of people trying to get into
my Facebook account
as well with password reset notices coming to
me on a regular basis
recently.
Earth is gonna spin faster on July 22
to create the second shortest day in history.
It's going to spin
one point three four milliseconds.
Scientists don't understand this, but they may have
to take a second off the atomic clock,
within the next year if these
continue. And I guess it varies from day
to day.
Also,
Google
has solved its Pixel 10 leaks by just
showing the phone. They've showed it off. Few
weeks of the pixel 10 launch, Google showing
off exactly what it looks
and they've actually got a video of it
so you can actually see what the pixel
10
looks like so you will not have to
rely on leaks
that have happened.
Loose lips sink ships and that's definitely continues,
over at Google and Apple and and everywhere
else.
As always, if you have comments on today's
show, geeknews@gmail.com.
I'm on x at geek news.
Don't forget to support our sponsor GoDaddy. Geeknewscentral.com/godaddy.
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It's been my pleasure to bring you the
show today. I hope this finds everyone well,
and I hope you're enjoying the content.
We'll be back with you on Thursday for
another edition of the Geeked Essential podcast.
Everyone, thanks for being here. Take care, and
we'll see you on Thursday. Bye bye.