Lead story for Thursday, August
28.
New research reveals ChatGPT's
frequently used words often dubbed AI
buzzwords
are increasingly appearing in everyday human conversation.
By analyzing
over 20,000,000
words from unscripted
podcasts, researchers found a noble rise in terms
like
intricate
and delve,
suggesting AI is subtly
influencing how people
speak. While the study doesn't confirm a permanent
language shift, it raises concerns about AI driven
vocabulary trends potentially seeping
into effect
in in the long term impact of chat
GPT biases on human communications.
I wanna welcome you to episode 1,841,
and this is truly
fascinating.
If you look at the words that they've
analyzed, and I'll scroll down in the article
here,
is words like surpassed,
boast,
meticulous,
strategically,
garner, notable,
intricate, delve, align, advancement,
significant, showcase,
comprehend, pivotal,
potential,
emphasize
potential.
They said that twice.
Realm, crucial,
groundbreaking,
show a change
in word utilization of a 140
must surpass itself.
So pre 2022,
post 2022
is a basic margin error,
but essentially a 140%
increase in the use of the word,
surpassed.
140%
increase in the word boast.
125%
increase in word of meticulous.
87%
increase in the word strategically.
So it does raise some questions
on whether or not
this is really having
an effect, or is it
a natural shift in language?
Now what's
let's think about this for a second. Has
there been studies done
that actually
look at this
in the past, how
word utilization
changed.
This
MIT paper
stirred some widespread debate on how AI tools,
again, are affecting our cognitive and critical thinking.
And those findings, I think, were not entirely
unsurprising
in that people say
or they're seeing that there's less critical thinking
going on.
But what they found is even if you
don't use AI generated responses,
they influence how you think.
He said, citing examples of smart reply templates
in emails and message apps,
Two years later, it seems like the signature
language patterns of large language models such as
ChatTP are becoming a part of natural human
con conversation at all. Now there's one thing
that was interesting that I, did
today.
I was,
I I was asked for a quote
from, a partner of ours because they're gonna
have a a campaign starting next week, and
then my company's gonna be
quoted on the front page. So
I was really, I mean, crazy busy at
the time the request come in, but I
had to turn it around. So I kinda,
you know, typed something up,
and, you know, looked over it three or
four times. And, you know, it looked pretty
good.
And then I so I dropped it in
a chat GPD, and can you improve it?
And it it did. It improved
the
the quote. It actually made it too long.
I had to shorten it back down.
But,
I took that
quote
that I had edited, and I wrote the
it wasn't the quote that it edited yet,
but I dropped it into my email response
and started editing. And all of a sudden,
I don't know if I bumped something,
But in Gmail, it automatically said, hey. You
know, let me it it just basically made
a modification. And I'm like,
I inadvertently
let the email client do something I didn't
want it to do.
And it irritated me a little bit. I
still, to this point, don't understand how it
fully happened.
But in the end, I end up having
the first email that I've ever sent out
that really had, you know, a large portion
of it that was,
AI generated. And it didn't really make me
very happy because I I take pride in
responding to,
emails,
personally. And and, again, all I wanted was
an improvement in the quote.
So
it'll be curious. I wanna have to go
back
and maybe look at some of these words
because I don't think I use the word
surpass,
boast, meticulous,
strategically, garner, noble. I don't think these are
words that I generally use,
but it would be interesting to see over
the long run,
have I started to
utilize any of this messaging?
But it is curious to thinking that there
might be
an impact here on specific,
buzzwords,
and it shows which words are being
underutilized
and some that are being overutilized.
And words like groundbreaking, critical,
potential
potentially,
emphasize. These are words that are being underutilized,
while at the same time, there's the other
spectrum stuff being overutilized.
So very, very interesting, and,
we'll get into more, obviously,
on the AI topic as we move forward,
throughout the show. Couple more things popping up
here. But, again, I wanna welcome you to
episode eighteen forty one. I'm your host, Todd
Cochran. Of course, a shout out to an
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It's putting in some long hours. I posted
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at my doctor's office and stuff like that.
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And thank you for keeping us online and
going
strong. I've got,
14
or 15. We're not exactly sure of the
numbers of folks that I served with when
I was in navy that are gonna be
descending upon,
the compound here, tomorrow starting about noon.
And, long extended weekend, we're gonna be barbecuing.
We're gonna be grilling. We're gonna be flat
iron, grilling.
You name it. We're, we're gonna be cooking,
everything from burgers to ribs to steaks to,
you name it with all the fixings and,
and probably a little bit too much alcohol
consumed.
So looking forward to, having a very, a
wild weekend. Now being Monday is a holiday,
I kinda realized this today. No show on
Monday.
But I'll be back with you on,
Thursday for another edition of the Geek and
Essential podcast. And all of you that are
supporting in the show
financially as the insider, thank you so much,
for supporting the show. This next article is
absolutely
incredible.
When I read the headline this, I just
shook my head.
How how how
is this even
possible?
Chinese nationals. Yes. Chinese citizens
will no longer be allowed to manage the
Pentagon's
cloud service.
How how is this
even
possible?
US secretary
of defense Pete Hegseth has called for investigation
into Microsoft's digital escort system. This is all
Chinese nationals
coding
for DOD software vendors.
And this is
not only risky,
this is just
outright
insanity.
How could there be Chinese
citizens
in China
managing cloud services for the Pentagon?
How stupid,
how absolute
stupid.
It just blows me away. For nearly a
decade, Microsoft has used Chinese coders remotely supervised
by US contractors, yes, supervised,
to support sensitive department of best cloud systems.
And if you're thinking
America first and common sense, this doesn't pass
either of those tests, he says.
How
how did this happen?
Quote unquote, these workers were supervised by digital
escorts
who found to be mainly low skilled and
low paid workers with very little coding experience.
Well, what they were is on the payroll
to steal as much as they could for
the Chinese.
The use of Chinese nationals, service, department events,
cloud environment, it's over.
We're requiring a third party audit of Microsoft
digital escort program, including the code and the
submission by Chinese nationals.
Not only that,
Pete Higgs has said, will we also require
the department of defense to carry a separate
investigation of the digital escort program and the
Chinese Microsoft employees involved.
It's unacceptable.
Going forward, all software vendors for the DOD
will also have to identify and terminate any
Chinese involvement in DOD systems.
He goes on to say, it blows my
mind that I'm even saying these things, that
we allowed it to happen. I I I
I would
I'm I'm stunned.
I'm absolutely
unequivocally
to the core
stunned. And wait. Oh, there's gonna be more.
There is going to be more. There's gonna
be spyware in the code.
There's gonna be you guarantee.
I they've been doing in industrial espionage. This'll
be a DOD espionage.
It I'm
I'm blown away.
When I was active duty, there was no
cloud storage.
There was none.
You had to keep well,
yeah. I guess if you were
you know?
Yeah. Not much.
There was, like, shared drives,
not cloud. You had to have stuff in
a shared drive and, you know, a map
drive. You could get to it from another
machine. But there was no
no cloud
per se. I couldn't go
across the country and connect to my drive.
I could connect in the local network.
If I wanted to take data with me,
it had to be put on probably a
CD,
had to be made sure it was unclassified,
and, you know, strict controls,
carrying the data. No USB sticks allowed.
Hard drives at times that had a bit
a bit byte or some sort of encryption
system on them. Yeah. No cloud whatsoever.
I just I just don't know how this
happens. I I I really don't.
You guys remember Typepad?
Blogging service Typepad is shutting down and taking
all blog content with it. Well, that's what
happens when you do not
control
the content on yourown.com.
So all this stuff is gonna go. Now,
you can export your data,
but they've also not allowed anyone
to publish for a few years on the
site. So it's not like they didn't give
people enough time,
to get their data off. So TypePath, there's
a there's a service I haven't
even thought about in probably ten or fifteen
years and probably the one of the reasons
why it's going away.
Nevada has been crippled by a cyberattack that
began on Tuesday.
No. On the twenty fourth. Wow. So it's
been going on a while. Taking down state
websites, intermittently disabling phone lines, enforcing office like
the DMV to close. The office's governor announced
the attack via social media on Monday saying
the network security has took hold in the
early hours of August 24. Officials say
that state websites remain unavailable,
and his office warned that phone lines went
intermittently down, although emergency service lines were in
operational.
State officers were closed until further notice, including
the DMV.
State said any missed appointments will be honored
in a walk in basis.
Wow.
The state's new cybersecurity office says currently no
evidence suggests any Nevadians' personal information was compromised
during the attack. Yeah. Right. You'd have no
clue.
Nary a clue.
So cyberattack means you're you've been owned already
and your stuff is off the network.
You know, come on.
It's it's just it's just a given.
In a bizarre
proposal, a Japanese town is proposing a two
hour daily limit on smart
phones. The proposal, believed to be the first
of its kind in Japan, is currently being
debated by lawmakers after being submitted by
a
municipal government in Aichi
earlier this week, the mayor said that pros
will the proposal,
which only applies outside of work and study,
would not be strictly enforced, but rather was
meant to encourage residents to better manage the
screen time.
There's no way they're gonna be able to
track it. There the there's this does not
mean the city
will limit its residents or impose duties and
no fines, but they want people to understand
they should only be on their phone,
two hours a day. Well well, good good
luck with that.
How many of you still reading?
I read quite a bit when I'm on
travel.
When I'm away from here, I I read
quite a bit. It seems like I'm always
too busy to read while I'm home, but
I read quite a bit when I'm
on the road, on airplanes.
So, you know, think about the last time
you settled down with a good book.
A new survey shows reading as a pastime
is becoming dramatically less popular in US, which
correlates with an increased consumption of other digital
media like social media and streaming services. The
serve survey is carried out by a researcher
of the University of Florida
and the University of London charts a 40%
d decrease
in daily reading for pleasure
between 2003 and 2023.
That is not a small dip. It's sustained.
Now if you think about how digital has
changed from 02/2003,
about the time we started the show till
now,
you know, we weren't reading on devices. There
was some of those early Kindle
devices,
that allowed us to read, but now I
read all my books on my iPad.
I buy some books from time to time.
It's ones that I really, really want.
Those never get cracked because I I read
the digital version of them. But,
it's probably true, but there's a lot of
great books out there. I mean, more than
you would ever be able to consume in
a lifetime.
Apple warns UK against introducing tougher tech regulations.
It says the EU laws
just sought to make it easier for small
firms to compete with big tech have resulted
in some Apple features in and enhancements being
delayed for European users.
It argues UK risk similar holdups if the
competition and market authority pushes ahead with plans
designed
to,
open up markets.
The regulators say is,
too,
what are they saying? Too dominated
by,
Apple and and Google.
A major health care service breach, again,
exposes data to 600,000
people.
Names, Social Security numbers more stolen in the
health care service group data breach.
So here you are, ladies and gentlemen, another,
another another whack on data.
Call me surprised, not.
But, again, how come these information wasn't hashed?
That's the question.
Scientists are trying to ask the question, how
old is Jupiter?
They're they're talking about
meteorite
raindrops
are helping science pin down the gas giant's
age.
Mysterious
spherical
droplets in meteorites aren't just cosmic additives or
evidence of planetary formation.
Researchers from Japan's Nagoya University and Italian National
Institute for Astrophysics
have determined
how mysterious
molten
raindrops and meteorites formed and used that information
to date Jupiter's formation.
The raindrops are called chondrules,
c h o n d r u l
e s. They're strange spherical droplets of molten
rock
just a couple millimeters wide or not no.
A dec
a couple of, like, dot point one millimeter
and are found in specific types of meteorite.
And,
they think this is all
from,
from that planet. And that's how they're being
able to,
figure out how old,
Jupiter really is. So they give an age.
Does it say
4,600,000,000
years ago? So, that's their guesstimation. I don't
know what it used to be,
before.
So Tesla's got a big announcement coming tomorrow.
Tesla teased a major launch, and it looks
like it could be the new model y
performance.
So,
American fans set you reminders for Friday. And
by the way, how about that SpaceX
launch
distribution of fake
satellites,
relight,
ripping the whole platform apart,
stress testing it, and then still landing
in the ocean. It was pretty impressive,
to say,
to say the say the least.
So it looks like,
SpaceX has found a little bit of their
mojo back.
So now we'll see where they go from
here.
A hacker used AI to create ransomware that
evades antivirus
detection.
Security search spotted this ransomware that used a
local LLM to create variable output,
making it harder to detect.
So according to this blog post interviewing
researchers
Anton Shrepavanov,
They've decked a piece of malware created by
OpenAI's
GTP OSS 20 b model.
And it's a fairly standard ransomware package, includes
embedded prompts sent to local,
locally stored LLMs.
And because of the nature of the outputs,
I got a phone ringing here.
So
it can evade detection from standard antivirus setup,
which is designed to search for specific flags.
So,
again, you've got someone that's
basically changing the packages up
and, not these these companies are not able
to get a fingerprint on it so that
we're gonna see more
and more and more of this.
Meanwhile, Discord hackers claim to have leaked billions
of messages as
millions of users targeted.
So hackers are advertising a database of 1,800,000,000
Discord messages.
It's possible they scraped the data's public Discord
is expected to shut down
wow. To shut down the service? Someone is
selling.
And, security research CyberNews has solved an ad
on underground hacking. The data most likely scrapped
the platform includes 1,800,000,000
Discord messages, 35,000,000 users, 207,000,000
voice sessions, and 6,000 Discord servers and can
be attained for a fee.
So, yeah, what is it? There's lots of
crazy stuff out there on Discord.
A lot.
Some naughty stuff too. So,
be interesting to see for sure.
Now I don't know. You were all kinda
nerds here. At least I hope we are.
But, obviously, the Taylor Swift, Trey with Kelsey
engagement announcement
was big,
but apparently, it broke all kinds of Instagram,
records. The post reached a milestone in just
six hours
and,
a million a million repost.
The people are they really that crazy about
Taylor Swift
and a football player
announcing they're getting married
or the engagement?
So 1,000,000
repost,
and it got 14,000,000
likes in just an hour. 20 it must
be
20% of the populations went absolutely nuts here.
You know, I always look at these high
profile marriages as ones that are probably
mostly doomed from the beginning.
You know, it's just like, oh, you're there
in love today. And then in about two
years, then they hate each other and, you
know, I just hope they both have good
prenups for sure.
Republicans are investigating Wikipedia over allegations of organized
bias.
Well, you know, Wikipedia.
I I I've had a real heartburn for
Wikipedia for many years
because there's a whole bunch of, activists over
there. And I don't know if they're left
or right, but it doesn't matter.
They just there's a bunch of, editor activists
over there that think they're gods, and
they, they allow their,
you know, their, striking capability.
It's insane. It really, really is.
So, you know, I have not been on
Wikipedia
myself in,
oh, man, a long, long, long time,
just because of their
their biases
and bad actors that are, you know, power
trip hogs over there. So,
we'll see. We'll see what this comes of
this. But,
you know, Wikipedia has made it with clean
up the the situation with their their moderators
for many, many years anyway, so it's it's
a lost cause.
AI PCs are the surge
claiming over half of the market by 2026.
So personal computers with AI embedded in the
hardware and software stack are set at 77,800,000
units in 2025,
making up 31%
of the global PC market, and then it
will exceed 50%
by 2026.
So I have not enabled any internal
AI on any of my machines except for
using,
you know, chat GPT and so forth. I'm
not doing no AI in my computer,
or on my phones. I just I don't
have any of that enabled.
At the same time, Samsung's next big phone
and tablet are coming on September 4, so
that's next week. So a little bit of
information on that. That's been making headlines a
little bit here over the past couple of
weeks anyway.
But this is a curious one. A German
bank has halted €10,000,000,000
in PayPal payments on fraud concerns.
German banks blocked PayPal payments totaling more than
€10,000,000,000
over fraud concerns. The
sudden tush Zettoog
newspaper reported on Wednesday
without specifying its sources. The payments were halted
on Monday
after lenders flagged millions of suspicious direct debits
from PayPal that appeared last week. The newspaper
said asked to comment and report a PayPal
spokesperson said a temporary service interruption
had affected certain transactions from our banking partners
and potentially their customers,
but the issue had now been resolved. So
I thought, that's some money.
€10,000,000,000,
11,700,000,000.0
US,
that's that's some cash to be halted being
transacted.
I'd love to know more about that story.
I really, really would. I'd I'd I'd love
to more to know more details here. Now
if you're a Sling user,
you may not like Disney.
Disney is trying to kill the best streaming
idea in years. Disney is suing Sling TV
over day passes.
Well, you know, they don't like it because
guess what? They want people paying all month.
They don't want you paying for a day
pass where they don't earn very much money
or you can binge watch.
So, again, Disney's swinging and Sling TV over
day passes,
including Disney owned ESPN and more than 30
other channels.
And, yeah. Of course, people are gonna watch
sports on the weekend.
So
day passes that Sling is offering is really
solving a problem here.
If you I'm not interested in any sport,
so I don't care. But what if you're
interested in a single
a single game a week,
and you must pay for an entire month
of service? Doesn't seem
fair. Right?
But,
Disney is not happy about this because that
means lower revenue,
for Disney on ESPN and so forth.
It's an interesting article on TechRater talk talking
about how websites still matter but can't survive
on their own.
And it's talking about how to drive revenue
through Instagram
DMs at scale.
I'm barely on Instagram at all.
I don't even know how it would sell
on Instagram.
So
are are you guys selling on Instagram? Are
you selling products on Instagram?
What kind of products are you selling on
Instagram? I'd I'd I'd like to know.
Google Pixel Care Plus is replacing
preferred care and includes free screen and battery
pairs. I think we had a little bit
of a story on this before.
But,
Pixel Care Plus is named a new program
which Google says,
is replacing preferred care.
So just be aware that's coming.
I don't have the pricing details in front
of me here, but,
Google Pixel care plus.
Now, if you're a gamer, in case you
were worried, NVIDIA hasn't forgot about gaming.
The chip designer's gaming division,
it's, what was really its golden goose before
generating images celebrities seeing spaghetti,
via AI,
scored 4,200,000,000.0
in revenue in the second quarter of, up
49%
year over year. The key the figure came
in significantly higher than 3,740,000,000.00
that analysts pulled,
were expecting.
That's nearly 15%
increase.
So, for gamers and gamers,
it's all about, the best cards and stuff.
So, you're still buying,
gaming cards out there. So,
that's that's good.
But, again, numbers are down
overall,
but,
not surprising.
OpenAI is giving its voice agent superpowers developers.
Lots of new models are now being opened
up in the OpenAI's
real time API.
You can try to select a speech to
speech model
in real time, and the upgrade improves OpenAI's
voice offerings for developers.
So expect to hear more voice
type of, tools and services
and a larger
context pro a context protocol and so forth,
new model and so forth. So, for devs
out there, this may
be of interest to you. A surprising move
here, the US Department of Commerce have put,
data now on the blockchain.
US Department of Commerce have worked together to
bring US government macroeconomic
data
to the block chain
from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. These new
data feeds securely deliver critical information on key
US economic data
on the block chain,
and they're working with four or five companies
on this.
So what you're gonna have available and, again,
this is real GDP level. These are raw
numbers.
Real GDP is measured by the value of
domestic price goods. Then you're gonna have real
GDP percent change, PCE price index,
PCE
price index percentage change, and the real final
sales to private domestic purchasers,
and real final sales to private domestic purchase.
Again, all this data, I guess, is to
be protected so it cannot be manipulated.
It's gonna be published on
the blockchain.
So,
again, I don't fully understand the ramifications
of this,
but,
that's what they're doing.
Some surprising information has come out from Intel.
So
the Trump administration, we know, is investing in
Intel.
The US government last week agreed to take
a 10% stake in Intel. The agreement also
contains a five year warrant
that allows the government to take an initial
5%
of Intel
at $20 a share, which is lower than
the stock value
if it ceases if Intel ceases to own
51%
of its foundry business.
So they wanna protect the foundry business. This
is what's going on here. They but Intel
says, I don't think there's a high likelihood
that we'd take our state below the 50.
So, ultimately, I would expect the warrant to
expire, CFO David Zinsser told a Deutsche Bank
conference on Thursday.
I think the government's perspective, they were aligned
with that they didn't wanna want to see
us take the business and spin it off
or sell it to someone else.
So that means a hemorrhaging
the hemorrhaging
foundering business cannot be sold, which some investors
wanted them to do.
So much to their chagrin, I am
sure. And, of course, Microsoft today,
late in the afternoon
unveiled their own powerful new homegrown
AI models.
They announced two models
that say perform at the level of the
world's top offerings.
After years of backing others made by OpenAI,
the move officially pits Microsoft
AI division
against OpenAI and the rest of the industry
and helps it control its destiny.
They say we are the largest companies in
the world.
We have to be able to have in
house expertise to create the strongest models in
the world.
So Microsoft unveiled the MAI
dash voice dash one, a speech model that
the company says is one of the most
efficient industry running on a single GPU
and capable of producing a minute of audio
in under a second.
It also announced a text based model called
MAI
dash one dash preview
that it said could help power future versions
of Copilot, the company's AI systems woven into
Windows and Office products.
Both models are geared towards cost effectiveness.
M a I dash one preview was trained
on roughly 15,000
niviti h 100 GPUs compared to models like
Brock, which is trained on more than 100,000
such
chips. So, we will see how these models
stack up,
over time. But, yeah, the big, big news
here.
Kirk, if you're listening, we have to be
careful. There's a bunch of websites now that
are just absolutely not willing to play ball
and are blocking us unless we pay.
So as you're loading
articles,
definitely take a look at the websites and
make sure we can
read them because I'm having to choose alternates,
for some of these because I get them
loaded and they say, hey. Give me $15
a month, then we're linking to them. I'm
not gonna pay for them.
So that's gonna bring us to the end
of the show.
Again,
no show on Monday because of the holiday.
Kinda forgot about that.
But as always, geeknews@gmail.comatgeeknewsonx.
And, of course, don't forget about our sponsor
GoDaddy, geeknewscentral.com/godaddy.
And if you're not an insider yet, consider
becoming an insider at geatoncentral.com/insider.
And as we're heading into the weekend, kind
of expected the news to be a little
light.
Last kind of last hurrah weekend
until,
the holidays.
So,
enjoy your Labor Day weekend, everyone, and, we'll
be back with you next week. Everyone, take
care. We'll see you next time. Stay safe.
Bye bye.