July 17, 2025 • 47 mins
OpenAI has introduced ChatGPT Agent, an advanced AI assistant that performs complex, multi-step tasks by directly controlling a virtual computer. Built with a new model combining capabilities from prior tools, Operator and Deep Research, the agent can automate workflows such as scheduling meetings, preparing presentations, or even submitting weekly office parking requests. The tool, which … Continue reading OpenAI Unveils Game-Changing ChatGPT Agent #1833
The post OpenAI Unveils Game-Changing ChatGPT Agent #1833 appeared first on Geek News Central.
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(00:00):
Lead story for Thursday, July
17.
Open I OpenAI's
introduced ChatGPD agent and advanced AI assistant that
performs complex, multi step task
by deck directly controlling a virtual computer
Built within a new model combining capabilities from
prior tools, operator and deep research,
(00:22):
the agent can automate workflows such as scheduling
meetings, preparing presentations, or even submitting weekly
office parking
requests.
The tool which requires user permissions before irreversible
actions is being rolled out to pre excuse
me, to pro plus
and team users with plans for broader availability
(00:44):
later.
OpenAI emphasizes its focus on
solving hard tasks over speed
and has implemented strict safety and financial use
restrictions.
I wanna welcome you to episode 1,833.
I'm your host, Todd Cochran.
This announcement today by OpenAI,
really led me to spend about an hour
(01:06):
down the rabbit hole playing
with this feature,
today
and
I set up how to do a simple
task. I
said,
you know, plan a flight plan,
leaving on this date
and then departing with a range of seven
days on the other end.
(01:29):
My preferred airlines
is x y z,
but also look at
a star alliance partners,
where I can claim mileage and give me
the price deltas between those
and also, two additional airlines outside of
the Star Alliance.
(01:49):
And
this thing is not
fast.
It is, for a better word,
set it and go away for five minutes
or ten minutes.
But the output
that it gave me,
was quite incredible.
It,
and I'll show you exactly for those of
(02:11):
you watching, I'll show you exactly what it
come up with.
It says, here was what I found
on Google Flights. Search from eighteen July, prices
in US dollars, one adult economy, Chicago, Manila,
fifteen October,
with a return between March.
Fares can change quickly, so treat this as
a snapshot.
And it gives me the dates,
the airlines,
(02:32):
the cost,
and he says here's key takeaways. Absolute Lewis
fares a thousand 14 on ANA with a
return on September. One stop via Tokyo both
ways.
Lewis United Fare within the requested window is
1,487
with a return on June.
Two stops
in via Honolulu in Guam. And if you're
preferring a single stop, you you you
(02:54):
United Routing the July
option via SFO is 1,552.
United's
third March
return is considerably higher at 2,225.
Let me know if you'd like to drill
into any itinerary checkability on another site or
start booking process. I'll stop I'll stop right
before any purchase,
(03:16):
if any purchase for your confirmation.
You know how much time
I would have spent
doing that research on my own and looking
for flights?
What that really did is just save me
at least an hour.
(03:36):
At least an hour.
Now it gave me offer,
options for Cathay Pacific,
show me the time,
and it gave me one,
American flight,
that routed me all over the place, which
was crazy price.
(03:57):
Talk to them how many stops. Talk which
was the cheapest option.
Just this one task that I had to
do
was
amazing.
And
so the news on this and the impact
on this is we all know
(04:18):
that
here,
we've been waiting for these agents
to show up. Right? We've been waiting for
this kind of availability.
The the article on The Verge, I don't
even need to go into it because
just that single demonstration that I just shared
with you
(04:39):
is
enough to make you understand the value of
this.
And here's the beauty of this. I'm assuming
again, I don't know
if that data that it's looking up is
anonymized. Now I'll tell you why
here a little bit later in the show.
(04:59):
But, again,
quite the incredible,
function here just on my very first test
and giving it a set of parameters that,
was my criteria that I would have had
to manually search for and and messed around
and wasted time and
often get aggravated with those kinds of searches
(05:22):
and it's easy to see, you know, 10
different cost comparisons and be able to do
make make a call and say, okay.
And I'll be interested to see what happens
when I decide to use this to actually
truly do book a ticket
and not use
something
(05:42):
experimental like this. So
big big big big big deal here.
So again, I want to,
welcome you to episode 1,833.
And, of course, a shout out to our
credit sponsor at GoDaddy.
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And we've got something up here even today.
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crown jewels, AKA
their employees.
So a little bit of an article,
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It's,
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make sure you check-in and say hi. We
definitely appreciate it when,
you do so.
That's always nice to see you in in
the chat room.
So there's a bunch of articles on this.
(08:58):
Everyone
everyone is talking about the
about this
this agent but here's the thing that most
are forgetting here.
I did this in a window
in Chrome
and then they did the searching in a
virtual window.
(09:19):
There was no
my browser was not involved.
It's yet to be told
if they're doing the IP. So it'd be
interesting to see how all that is happening
or if that's actually hope all happening
on OpenAI's
website.
But
this is this is monumental.
(09:41):
This is game changer. This is
everything that I have been talking about
up to this point in
potential change to
search for businesses
or everything.
I'm gonna be definitely doing a bunch more
experiments with this to kind of see what
it means for my company.
You should do so as well at a
(10:02):
very
minimum. You may not agree with this,
but, you know, if you run a business,
maybe you should do a search. Hey,
send a query. Help me find
the top five plumbers, the top five printing
shops, the top five,
whatever you may do, financial analysts, help me
(10:23):
find x, y, and z. And if you
have a local business, see how this impacts
you. It may not it may be better
than search,
or it may be your death sentence for
your company.
I cannot
emphasize
enough
how
monumental of a time
(10:44):
shift or not time shift. Just
a shift is going to be happening because
of this.
And we have to be fully prepared
to meet these new I have people now
calling me,
sending me emails on a daily basis saying,
hey, Todd, we wanna help you with your,
AI,
SEO.
And I'm like, okay, which doctor?
(11:06):
Tell me something that no one else knows
which because no one knows.
The only way people are going to know
how you're affected. And I had I'm in
a group discussion now with a bunch of
people that said,
over 100 companies
in this group discussion said they blocked chat
b ChatGPT.
And I said,
are are you insane?
(11:27):
Are you insane from blocking ChatGPT?
Do you not understand that you run a
service company and you're blocking?
Have you have you lost your ever loving
mind?
This this tide cannot be turned back.
It can't.
So just be aware.
(11:49):
You know, things things are going to move
at an exponential
rate right now.
And,
you know, I'm sure many people that have
assistance
probably have assistants do all their booking for
them and you do all these things. But
at what point does an agent one or
two years from now, because this is very
rudimentary and slow,
(12:09):
one or two years from now, what is
that going to mean
for everyone,
in getting time back? I, you know, I
look at that and I said, just that's
an hour. That's an hour of monkeying around,
frustrating, and trying to write piece write prices
down on a piece of paper.
(12:31):
You know, I'm sure I could take this
thing. I could probably say take me to
the United website, and I will book this
particular flight.
I'm probably not gonna ever allow it to
book. I'll do it myself,
but,
we'll see we'll see where this leads.
How many of you have heard about an
app called Beeper?
Multi service messaging app, Beeper,
(12:54):
allows people to connect all of their chat
apps from one interface, and it and it's
relaunching its app on Wednesday to offer more
secure version.
So
I have not heard of this app.
But as I scroll down and I looked
at its interface, it said connect chat accounts,
WhatsApp
(13:14):
WhatsApp for business, Telegram,
Google Chat, Messenger, Signal, LinkedIn,
x, Discord, Slack. I said, oh my
goodness.
One chat one chat app to rule them
all?
Sign me up.
Sign me up indeed.
(13:35):
Instead of switching between apps.
I think this could be a winner here.
We'll have to look and see how the
interface looks.
And hopefully, it's, you know, it's fully on
the mobile phone, but
even if I can have chats on my
desktop as well,
Yahoo.
This this is a big one. So if
(13:55):
any of you have used beeper in the
past, definitely let me know.
Ukrainian hackers have claimed to have destroyed a
major Russian drone maker's entire network. They deeply
penetrate Gaskar
to the very tonsils of demilitarization.
So they took out the IT infrastructure at
Russia's Gasgar integration plant, one of the largest
suppliers of drones for its army.
(14:17):
And,
this is big.
The team known as Blackowl
announced the breach on his Telegram channel and
claimed to have carried out the operation alongside
fellow hackers, the Ukrainian cyber alliance.
And one very well known organization to mention
which makes the,
(14:39):
it's called Vanya's bottle receivers explode. So, anyway,
if they were able to take this out
and send them back, they
destroyed 47 terabytes of technical information.
They claim to have destroyed all the information
on their servers,
including 10 terabytes of backup files. Wow.
(15:02):
And, apparently, China is providing assistance in the
production training of these folks at Gaskar,
at this at this drone factory in in
Russia.
So, they stole all the code as well
before destroying everything.
Cyber warfare is gonna play a bigger war
in the next great war.
That is for sure. Hey. I mentioned earlier
(15:25):
that
I was wondering if the data was anonymized
and having chat GBT do this. And if
it is, then this destroys Delta's move. And
this pisses me off to be to be
frank.
Delta is moving toward eliminating set prices in
favor of AI that determines how much you
personally will pay for a ticket.
(15:46):
And this is a strategy to boost its
profitability by moving away from set fares and
toward end of the lodge pricing.
If they do I will never
never fly Delta
if they
if they move forward with this. So if
they know that you can pay more and
they put in a
(16:09):
a system that make you pay more for
your ticket.
It has to still be competitive,
but I think this is this is beyond
bold.
So guess what? So maybe a chat and
GPT will have to
look at the Delta for Delta pricing.
This
this is a pretty bold move
by Delta to do custom pricing for
(16:33):
for each individual. By the end of the
year, Delta plans for 20% of its ticket
prices to be individually
determined.
Currently, about 3% of the airline's flight prices
are AI determined triple from the portion nine
months ago. I would like to know what
the profit of this on this. How much
more
they're challenged?
And
(16:54):
Delta Compass is pricing through a partnership with
Fetch, a six year old Israeli company that
also counts Azul, WestJet, Virgin Atlantic, and Veeva
Airbus
as clients and has its sights to set
beyond flying.
So in other words, they're gonna know everything
about us.
Hotels, car rentals, cruises,
what can you afford to pay? That's what
(17:14):
we're going to charge you.
This is definitely
predatory,
and congress needs to step in.
There needs to be fair pricing for all.
There can't be
(17:36):
fair there can't be pricing based upon
a geo or
other
standards. In one price for everyone,
set it, compete.
I this is something Congress is going to
have to get involved in. There is a
mention of a couple of senators say that
they're not going to allow them to do
this.
(17:56):
Senator Ruben Gallego,
Democrat of Arizona said, I'm not gonna let
them get away with this. I agree with
this.
This is this is this is horrible
for consumers.
Even it's $20,
$50.
If you again and again and again and
again, the next thing you know, you paid
(18:16):
an extra thousand dollars for stuff that other
people didn't pay
for. In a move that should not become
surprising
with the way things are going in the
world right now, the FCC plans to ban
Chinese technology and underseas
cables.
The commission believes the move will secure critical
infrastructure.
So, basically, the FCC
(18:38):
the proposed rule will apply to any company
at FCC's existing list of entities opposed to
accept or risk national security United States.
So,
big, big, big decision there. Hey. By the
way,
if you're not following my Facebook,
I posted a picture on my Facebook page
(18:59):
showing
orange lines being painted in front of where
I live in Michigan.
I don't know if you remember me talking
about it, but I saw fiber,
being dug in,
about five miles away from my house about
a month, month and a half ago. I
had stopped and asked the
folks what they were doing and found out
(19:21):
it was Frontier that is putting in fiber.
And lo and behold, they're gonna put fiber
down the road I live on. Hell has
frozen over, ladies and gentlemen.
I mean, this this is,
I never I never thought it would happen.
I'll be honest with you. If if if
you'd if I had to bet $10,000
(19:41):
that fiber would not have come down my
road,
I would have won that bet all day
long, but I've I lost it the other
day because they're gonna bring fiber
down my road. So what it is is
if you imagine a North South Road
as a main traverse road, that's where I
saw the fiber going.
And then
you get to
a a road that turns east.
(20:02):
That road has a high density of homes
on it.
And then, again, turn south
and that goes by my house and go
up to the next road and again,
go west again
and go back and meet the main intersection.
So they've purposely
included my area in the
(20:25):
in the dig path.
And,
so
I I just
I'm holding my breath.
I'll believe it when I see it and
when I get some notification that I can
order this,
they sign me up yesterday.
I mean, my goodness.
(20:46):
I love Starlink, but can I imagine having
one gig up, one gig down with fiber
out in the boondocks?
It's it's really,
I'm astonished.
And I guess I'll have to give credit
where credit's due. Frontier really makes this happen
and it works.
Hallelujah.
For sure.
(21:08):
The new Samsung trifold has leaked and may
have revealed its launch window and official name.
Three months away from the Samsung trifold launch,
the name Galaxy
z trifold has been trademarked by Samsung,
and they've been teasing the phone since,
January.
So one that flips over and one that
folds
(21:29):
double.
So
is this the same phone
Or yes. Gotta be. No.
Two different models.
So,
look forward to that,
coming coming your way.
There's lots of lots of, oh my god.
The the Earth is falling about NASA.
(21:53):
Even it Trump's defunding of NASA would be
catastrophic. This comes from an engagit who absolutely
hates Trump.
They're saying this is probably the most uncertain
future NASA's face and maybe since the end
of Apollo, Casey Dreyer tells me over the
phone. Dreyer's the chief of space policy at
the Planetary Society, a nonprofit,
(22:13):
advocates for the exploration study of space.
On July 10, the Senate Appropriations Committee discussed
the proposed federal
commerce, justice, and science budget for 2026,
and
they're talking about dropping it by 24%.
So that's that's a pretty big
(22:33):
pretty big whack.
But how much of that would be,
you know, their big,
their big program that hasn't had much success?
I'm sure that would be a big part
of it. You show success, you get
you get money.
Show being slow
and and NASA is slow as molasses when
it comes to Artemis and everything else
(22:55):
and of course with their spacecraft
that
that they're putting on it. So
I I think that,
you know, you gotta do good things to
get
to get money. And the question is, are
they doing good things?
Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta bigwigs have agreed
to a settlement in a $8,000,000,000
(23:16):
lawsuit.
So they just settled agree it to end
a trial that sought 8,000,000,000 in damages.
And Zuckerberg and others were actually paying out
to made a shareholders
as a recompense
for damnly alleged caused by allowing repeated violations
of Facebook user
privacy.
So
(23:38):
again a big settlement here for abusing
users privacy
if you've got an older MacBook Google soon
dropping Chrome for
Macs that are only up to
well the company's quietly dropped new news in
a post
Chrome one thirty eight the current version of
Chrome will be the last to support Mac
(24:00):
OS 11
also known as Big Sur.
Once Google launches one thirty nine it will
only be able running on Mac OS 12
or newer.
So if you were still running a Mac
OS 11, you've got your last update
of Chrome.
So be aware.
An Armenian man has been stranded to The
(24:21):
United States over the
the r y u k Rook ransomware attacks.
So basically, this individual was arrested in Kiev
in April and was extradited to The United
States on June 18.
And the 33 year old suspect is involved
in the ransomware attacks and been arrested and
extradited.
And his public was just made
(24:42):
his his identity was made public
recently. He's facing three years of sup
five years in prison,
three years of super
release, and a fine of 250,000
on each
count.
So, two other individuals have been named, but
they are still at large.
And,
(25:02):
he was part of a gang that
invoked over a $100,000,000
in ransomware
demands.
If you have a Fitbit, it's no longer
offline.
But if you are still having issues, there's
an article here on how to get your
fit back online and get your status updated.
So,
again, it was offline for a few hours.
(25:25):
You know, this is an issue,
in where
even me
and or even I and what I do
at my company, we have a plug in
for WordPress. If Blueberry
vanishes
and I pull the plug and all service,
the plug in keeps on working. People aren't
left high in drive. They don't have extinction
events.
(25:45):
So all these devices that
just die
because of
a server going down, there should be some
fallback.
It really really should.
So over 1,000,000 records, another hack from US
adoption organizations been left exposed online.
And again, another unprotected
database, 1,100,000
(26:07):
records,
which is just ridiculous.
The records include names of children, birth parents,
adopted parents, employers, and leads.
Besides the names, there are also phone numbers,
post addresses, information about birth fathers, and data
on whether people were approved or denied to
become an adoptive parent. Isn't that just lovely?
(26:27):
Don't say data can and will be used
against you because it will.
ExpressVPN
now offers servers in all 50 United States,
and,
so that's better coverage for you. If you're
an ExpressVPN
member, if you live in Michigan, you can
connect to the server in Detroit.
If you live in
California, you've got three server choices. So again,
(26:49):
all kinds of options for you for your
VPN with ExpressVPN.
Of course, there's been a little bit of
a tic tac going on between
Elon's been posting things about their
quote unquote penis joke for Austin. I don't
know if you guys are aware of it,
but he drew the map where their
(27:11):
where their service was available and then Waymo
came back and behind said, well,
our our coverage areas is much bigger.
So it's just
so
so childish
and definitely got headlines, right? Very rare talking
about it.
You know, so I guess it was effective.
(27:31):
Reddit is also back online after a brief
outage. The company told the
that an update caused the issue.
So
they're back online. They were off for about
an hour.
So if you're a Reddit user, be aware
of that.
GBoard
may soon offer smarter voice typing and editing
(27:54):
with AI integration. I don't even know what
GBoard is.
Says Google is developing a new AI powered
voice typing and editing feature for g board.
It's a virtual keyboard, which could significantly enhance
how user interact with text
without needing to touch the phones. This upcoming
feature would appear part of Google's broader push
to integrate AI and context aware tools into
(28:15):
its app. So I guess it's a
typing application.
So anyone use Gboard? I'm absolutely not familiar
with it.
I don't know why this is important but
the new
the new
100,000
pages tax law
keeps Bill Gates nuclear data center dreams alive.
(28:37):
I didn't know Bill Gates had nuclear
data center dreams at all.
But, apparently, this budget bill slashed many mature
clean energy nest initiatives, but Bill Gates is
less worried since new nuclear incentives, including those
his TerraPower venture will leverage have survived.
So,
(28:58):
you know, but maybe it's smart. We need
we need
nuclear power.
We're we're
we're crazy. We're not building
a nuclear powers as a nuclear power plants
as fast as we can. We really are.
That's my personal opinion. We we have
a major major
shortage on electricity,
(29:19):
and, you know, this AI and everything else
in data centers is is not helping.
Intel is swinging the ax again. It's
basically putting 5,000 people out of work,
and they're letting back office staff are being
let go.
And, apparently, that mood is very pessimistic,
about
(29:40):
this chop,
but they've just gotta cut cost,
and they gotta get lean. And, they gotta
stay stay in business.
So,
you know, they spent billions on share buyback
to support the stock price and fat dividends,
(30:00):
but,
they didn't invest in new technology. Now they're
buying.
And The US chips legislation was supposed to
pump billions in the semi in the country
and to bring manufacturing back is now in
doubt.
So,
yeah, maybe maybe time to sell Intel stock.
Uber's latest robotaxi plan involves 20,000
Lucid EVs
(30:22):
and,
so they're investing 100 millions in Nuro and
Lucid.
The latest step of the company's plans to
build an extensive robotaxi program. In other words,
getting rid of all of you that are
Uber driving.
They don't want you they're gonna take your
money away. They don't want
people making money on Uber.
They just want the cars to drive themselves.
(30:45):
US authors that are suing Anthropic can band
together in a copyright class action a judge
has ruled. So this is a major major
major,
a deal for these folks
and being able to
put this in a class.
US District Judge William Alsop said the authors
can bring a class action
on behalf of all US writers who works
(31:07):
Anthropic allegedly downloaded from pirate libraries,
Libgen,
and p I l I m I to
create a repository of millions of book.
So,
they say they may have downloaded his 7,000,000
books, probably more.
SpaceX launches is just about going seems like
every day here, every two or three days,
(31:27):
they've already done a 100 launches or more
this year.
So they just had another launch that and
they're doing a lot of
SpaceX.
Starlink came out with a statement.
I talk about their network speeds and how
they're increasing
and also
discussing on how,
they're putting in more polar orbits for those
(31:49):
of you that are
in Alaska to be able to get better
coverage.
This next auto continues to blow my mind
in in quite a big way that
the 2025
crypto crime midyear update
get this
with over $2,170,000,000
stoned stolen. $2,170,000,000
(32:12):
stolen for cryptocurrency
so far in 2025.
This year is more devastating than entirety of
2024.
2,170,000,000.00.
Whose money is that?
You know, you don't hear stories of people
that have been devastated through crypto wallet losses
or anything.
(32:33):
Who's losing all this cash?
That's that's an amazing number.
Personal wallet compromises now resent represent a growing
share of total ecosystem
theft.
With attackers increasingly targeting individuals,
(32:54):
excuse me, making up 23.35
of all stolen funds.
Physical violence or cohesion attacks are also
growing.
So if you've got crypto,
don't advertise that you have crypto.
You need to keep that on the down
low.
(33:15):
Another big company has given up on hydrogen,
Stellantis.
They've thrown in the towel,
just before the production was about to start.
And again,
Stellantis, the automotive giant behind Chrysler, Citroen, Fiat,
Jeep, and,
Bugo.
I probably pronounced that wrong, is pulling out
of hydrogen.
(33:36):
Said in face of limited availability of hydrogen
refueling infrastructure.
Duh.
How about electric recharging infrastructure,
High capital requirements and need for stronger consumer
purchasing incentive. To put it another way, let's
realize hydrogen facing the same set challenge it's
not been able to overcome in the last
two or three decades.
I think in my lifetime,
(33:58):
I saw most of my hydrogen
fill stations on military bases.
I've seen one or two in the wild
in all of my travels.
For those of you that watch the where
the Google Pixel watch, the which the the
Pixel watch four is rumored to be supporting
a bigger battery,
(34:19):
but many are hoping it's not just a
brighter screen in on device AI. So we'll
see.
Bigger battery, longer use. It's always well. I
noticed that my Apple Watch now,
I don't know what gen it is. I've
had it for
maybe four or five years.
It's starting to
not hold its charge as well as it
(34:41):
it used to. I I probably should look
around. Still in beautiful shape. There's no no
chips or anything on it. No damages. So
maybe
there's a service out there where I can
get the battery replaced. That would be kind
of cool.
Maybe Apple does it. I don't know. I've
never investigated that. Have any of you done
that? If you have, I'd love to hear
from you. Geeknews@gmail.com.
(35:04):
How many of you have kids playing Roblox?
Roblox is now gonna require a facial scan
or government ID to have unfiltered chats. Teens
will have to prove they're older than 13
and make crusted connections they can chat more
freely with. That's good.
They're gonna have a new age estimation tool
to verify they're over 13.
(35:24):
You know,
how are you gonna tell that with kids?
Facial scans?
I know a lot of I know a
lot of,
kids now that look a lot older than
they are.
Maybe not.
We'll see. We'll see you have how this,
how this works out. But most 13 year
(35:46):
olds also don't have an ID.
So that's another one too.
There's a article here on SFGate talking about
and it's interesting. It's interesting title. It says
someone
someone's always watching.
Gen z is spying on each other.
Teens 20 and something are embracing location sharing
to see where their friends are instantly. Is
(36:08):
that a bad thing?
That just sends
a little
tingle down my spine saying no.
Do you want
(36:31):
your friends to always know where you're at?
And what happens when your friends lose their
phone and they know where you're at?
You know,
I don't always want
I don't want it's just as an adult,
(36:52):
you know okay. So here's my mom.
She loves to know where my sister is,
when my brother in law's on the way
home to estimate, you know,
when they're gonna eat, you know, a whole
bunch of other things.
One of my nieces shares her location,
and my mom has always asked me to
(37:12):
share my location with her. And I'm like,
mom, I give you the address. I tell
you where I'm at. You've got my you
know, it's,
you know, probably when I'm here in The
Philippines, it maybe is
more advisable.
But when I'm home, I'm just like,
I'm an adult.
And I knew I know she means well,
(37:33):
and she doesn't care where I go or
who I see or any of that stuff.
It's not like that. But,
again, I I just find it a little
creepy, but,
I don't know if I'd want my kids
sharing their location with their other friends.
But, you know, unless you're really, really savvy,
are you gonna be able to stop that?
(37:55):
I don't know.
Over in The Hollywood Reporter, they are really,
really, really worried. Of course, I'm kinda funny
here. You think they're advertising for certain,
soda brand?
It's wrapped all around the article. I guess
that's one way to,
to promote
a certain,
drink. I want and there's no they show
(38:16):
a burger on the screen too. So I
wonder if,
they're they're promoting a certain,
and I guess it's grilling when on your
own. But they're talking about the rise of
machines inside Hollywood's
AI civil war and how people are desperately
trying to claw back
and not have AI take over.
(38:36):
And talks about a startup that's doing cool
things with AI and hand generating
with these very very powerful tools,
scenes that look semi realistic.
But this is a really telling article of
where things are heading and probably is part
of the reason why YouTube is starting to
(38:56):
say, hey, you do AI generated content. You're
not going to get monetized.
We're going to pull down
repetitive content.
They're basically trying to stop the onslaught
of
slag.
I got another word for it.
Slag is what comes out of your
your,
(39:16):
your sewage pit.
You know, the slag that's on
YouTube these days is is gotten I think
probably one out of five videos I'm presented
in
to say you want to see this is
is slag.
I don't watch it. I downvote
it on purpose,
and I'm glad they're trying to get rid
(39:37):
of it. I hope YouTube makes the option
to be able to report AI generated content
so that you can report this slag and
and and creators are protected.
Maybe this is part of the same thing
on the Hollywood side
is we're going to have to choose and
pick what we go watch and see if
it ends up being AI slag.
So time will tell.
(39:59):
Twitter co founder
Jack Dorsey,
pumps $10,000,000
into a nonprofit focus on open source social
media course. Jack got his payout when Elon
bought it,
but he is,
owning new apps like bit chat and Sunday.
So he's put a lot of money into
little apps. We're probably trying to hit a
(40:20):
winner here, but, TechCrunch is
jacking his efforts.
Samsung's chairman is cleared a fraud by South
Korea's top court that this is removes legal
uncertainty in surrounding
j y Lee, one of the richest people
in
in South Korea.
So,
(40:41):
you know, he,
you know, still on how these countries, you
know, how
interesting how rich people don't often go to
jail. Once in a while they get one
but
but not very often do they?
People are saying it's time if you are
a T Mobile customer to check your privacy
settings.
T Mobile recently asked an update to its
(41:02):
privacy policy and settings that make it so
data can be collected to provide fraud and
identity theft protection,
as well as sharing information with financial companies
for joint marketing and affiliates for marketing purposes.
So
what you need to do is you need
to go to,
T Mobile's privacy center for your account using
the t life app.
(41:23):
There's instructions here on how to exactly
disable this.
So I would encourage all of you that
are t mobile customers, which I am one,
to do that so that you can you
can save some money.
Netflix posted an earning earnings beat as revenue
grows 16%.
So they posted second quarter revenue of 16%.
(41:45):
The race is full year revenue guidance signing
healthy member growth,
and they did 11,080,000,000.00
for the second quarter higher than Wall Street
estimate of 11,070,000,000.00.
So I'm sure Wall Street will reward them,
for that reporting.
And also something that we'll keep an eye
on the
the house
(42:05):
has sent the stable coin stable coin bill
to the president's desk capping a string of
crypto week
victories. At the same time, we know that
NPR
and in other
public radio, public television
is definitely facing
a monumental
(42:27):
a monumental
budget cut.
And, you know, I don't care if you're
if you're a fan of NPR
or to be honest with you,
Those
organizations
were set up to serve the public interest
(42:48):
and
supposed to be balanced.
And it's very obvious that they have not
been that way for many, many years. So,
you know, they reap what they're sowing here
with the current administration.
You know, you're not going to be fair
and balanced. You're
definitely going to face
the budget acts
(43:08):
to quit being a political arm.
So,
the money machine for some of this,
some of the stuff is is drying up
and maybe the people need to start having
a realization that there's there's two sides to
every story. And, you know, none of it
is good.
Get into politics, right, left, it's all disgusting.
(43:29):
So,
you know, just equal equal reported disgusting is
important. I think, you know, that's that's the
key here. So, we'll see what happens.
I'd love to hear your feedback on that.
Geeknews@gmail.com.
Of course, don't forget to support our sponsor
GoDaddy at geek news central dot com forward
slash godaddy
and become an insider at geeknewscentral.com/insider.
(43:53):
Besides my, you know, few technical glitches I've
had here on occasion, the studio has been
dialed in.
I think the show production is is going
just as good as it is when I'm
in the studio in Michigan.
The streams have been fantastic.
The outputs of the content quality has been
good,
and, I cannot
(44:13):
say enough
about this Mac Studio. If you're a Mac
mini user and need just a little more
power,
yeah, it's a step up to spend the
2 k for a baseline
Mac Studio,
but
damn, what a machine.
Really an incredible machine. I mean, for desktop,
(44:34):
I will not buy another iMac. There's no
way. I'll
go with another Mac Studio when I'm ready
to replace my
main computer at
at home that sits on my desk where
I work.
It's just
it's it's amazing. It really, really is. And
with the number of four ks screens that
(44:55):
have come out now supporting
as high quality as the the Mac releases,
which are much more expensive.
There's no excuse for you now not to
have two or three beautiful four k monitors
at your
at your workstation
and,
you know, with a whole not needing a
whole bunch of extra stuff. I've got about
(45:16):
every possible device you can imagine
a man plugged into this thing. I've got
the RODECaster.
I have my teleprompter.
I have two cameras, not just one, two
cameras,
an external hard drive.
What else? We've got
a wired keyboard. I've got a wireless mouse
(45:37):
with a Bluetooth.
I'm able to stick in a,
an SD card and I have ports to
spare.
This to me is probably,
in my opinion, my most
impressive setup,
for a desktop
slash studio workstation that I've ever done. Now
(45:59):
it's not portable,
but the green screen behind me, $40.
I have some lights here,
that I've had probably spent about $200
on.
So,
yeah, I'm getting the quality for the show
that I want,
here
with the studio the way it is. The
(46:19):
investment in that new camera,
really did make an but I'm gonna take
that back and forth. So that's gonna be
dual headed. It's not gonna stay here along
with the Mac Studio. It goes home with
me then I'll bring it back when I
come back next time.
So I can till the budget allows me
to
be able to
have fully outfit both places. But again, I
(46:40):
don't need $2,600
worth of stuff sitting here for two months
while I'm not here as well. So that's
part of it as well. Alright, everyone. Thanks
for being here.
Thank you for coming to the show today.
I got up a little early because we
had a board meeting and determining pay raises
for the Blueberry employees.
So,
that's all we've got. And, everyone, thanks. We'll
(47:02):
see you next time here on the King
Central podcast. Take care. Bye bye.
Lead story for Thursday, July
17.
Open I OpenAI's
introduced ChatGPD agent and advanced AI assistant that
performs complex, multi step task
by deck directly controlling a virtual computer
Built within a new model combining capabilities from
prior tools, operator and deep research,
(00:22):
the agent can automate workflows such as scheduling
meetings, preparing presentations, or even submitting weekly
office parking
requests.
The tool which requires user permissions before irreversible
actions is being rolled out to pre excuse
me, to pro plus
and team users with plans for broader availability
(00:44):
later.
OpenAI emphasizes its focus on
solving hard tasks over speed
and has implemented strict safety and financial use
restrictions.
I wanna welcome you to episode 1,833.
I'm your host, Todd Cochran.
This announcement today by OpenAI,
really led me to spend about an hour
(01:06):
down the rabbit hole playing
with this feature,
today
and
I set up how to do a simple
task. I
said,
you know, plan a flight plan,
leaving on this date
and then departing with a range of seven
days on the other end.
(01:29):
My preferred airlines
is x y z,
but also look at
a star alliance partners,
where I can claim mileage and give me
the price deltas between those
and also, two additional airlines outside of
the Star Alliance.
(01:49):
And
this thing is not
fast.
It is, for a better word,
set it and go away for five minutes
or ten minutes.
But the output
that it gave me,
was quite incredible.
It,
and I'll show you exactly for those of
(02:11):
you watching, I'll show you exactly what it
come up with.
It says, here was what I found
on Google Flights. Search from eighteen July, prices
in US dollars, one adult economy, Chicago, Manila,
fifteen October,
with a return between March.
Fares can change quickly, so treat this as
a snapshot.
And it gives me the dates,
the airlines,
(02:32):
the cost,
and he says here's key takeaways. Absolute Lewis
fares a thousand 14 on ANA with a
return on September. One stop via Tokyo both
ways.
Lewis United Fare within the requested window is
1,487
with a return on June.
Two stops
in via Honolulu in Guam. And if you're
preferring a single stop, you you you
(02:54):
United Routing the July
option via SFO is 1,552.
United's
third March
return is considerably higher at 2,225.
Let me know if you'd like to drill
into any itinerary checkability on another site or
start booking process. I'll stop I'll stop right
before any purchase,
(03:16):
if any purchase for your confirmation.
You know how much time
I would have spent
doing that research on my own and looking
for flights?
What that really did is just save me
at least an hour.
(03:36):
At least an hour.
Now it gave me offer,
options for Cathay Pacific,
show me the time,
and it gave me one,
American flight,
that routed me all over the place, which
was crazy price.
(03:57):
Talk to them how many stops. Talk which
was the cheapest option.
Just this one task that I had to
do
was
amazing.
And
so the news on this and the impact
on this is we all know
(04:18):
that
here,
we've been waiting for these agents
to show up. Right? We've been waiting for
this kind of availability.
The the article on The Verge, I don't
even need to go into it because
just that single demonstration that I just shared
with you
(04:39):
is
enough to make you understand the value of
this.
And here's the beauty of this. I'm assuming
again, I don't know
if that data that it's looking up is
anonymized. Now I'll tell you why
here a little bit later in the show.
(04:59):
But, again,
quite the incredible,
function here just on my very first test
and giving it a set of parameters that,
was my criteria that I would have had
to manually search for and and messed around
and wasted time and
often get aggravated with those kinds of searches
(05:22):
and it's easy to see, you know, 10
different cost comparisons and be able to do
make make a call and say, okay.
And I'll be interested to see what happens
when I decide to use this to actually
truly do book a ticket
and not use
something
(05:42):
experimental like this. So
big big big big big deal here.
So again, I want to,
welcome you to episode 1,833.
And, of course, a shout out to our
credit sponsor at GoDaddy.
Score exclusive deals and discounts at geekincentral.com/godaddy.
(06:05):
Of course, to all of our listeners, you
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And if you wanna support the Geek News
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tons of new content.
(06:26):
And we've got something up here even today.
Zuckerberg isn't done stealing OpenAI's
crown jewels, AKA
their employees.
So a little bit of an article,
on that.
Of course, we are lit and we are
live.
So don't just listen experience the show live
by grabbing a modern podcast app at podcastapps.com.
(06:50):
And you can check out, again, the full
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(07:12):
news dot chat or email me directly at
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(08:36):
Geek and Essential online and and going strong.
It's,
my pleasure to be here with you today
and hope everyone's doing well. If you're watching
the show on any of the live venues,
make sure you check-in and say hi. We
definitely appreciate it when,
you do so.
That's always nice to see you in in
the chat room.
So there's a bunch of articles on this.
(08:58):
Everyone
everyone is talking about the
about this
this agent but here's the thing that most
are forgetting here.
I did this in a window
in Chrome
and then they did the searching in a
virtual window.
(09:19):
There was no
my browser was not involved.
It's yet to be told
if they're doing the IP. So it'd be
interesting to see how all that is happening
or if that's actually hope all happening
on OpenAI's
website.
But
this is this is monumental.
(09:41):
This is game changer. This is
everything that I have been talking about
up to this point in
potential change to
search for businesses
or everything.
I'm gonna be definitely doing a bunch more
experiments with this to kind of see what
it means for my company.
You should do so as well at a
(10:02):
very
minimum. You may not agree with this,
but, you know, if you run a business,
maybe you should do a search. Hey,
send a query. Help me find
the top five plumbers, the top five printing
shops, the top five,
whatever you may do, financial analysts, help me
(10:23):
find x, y, and z. And if you
have a local business, see how this impacts
you. It may not it may be better
than search,
or it may be your death sentence for
your company.
I cannot
emphasize
enough
how
monumental of a time
(10:44):
shift or not time shift. Just
a shift is going to be happening because
of this.
And we have to be fully prepared
to meet these new I have people now
calling me,
sending me emails on a daily basis saying,
hey, Todd, we wanna help you with your,
AI,
SEO.
And I'm like, okay, which doctor?
(11:06):
Tell me something that no one else knows
which because no one knows.
The only way people are going to know
how you're affected. And I had I'm in
a group discussion now with a bunch of
people that said,
over 100 companies
in this group discussion said they blocked chat
b ChatGPT.
And I said,
are are you insane?
(11:27):
Are you insane from blocking ChatGPT?
Do you not understand that you run a
service company and you're blocking?
Have you have you lost your ever loving
mind?
This this tide cannot be turned back.
It can't.
So just be aware.
(11:49):
You know, things things are going to move
at an exponential
rate right now.
And,
you know, I'm sure many people that have
assistance
probably have assistants do all their booking for
them and you do all these things. But
at what point does an agent one or
two years from now, because this is very
rudimentary and slow,
(12:09):
one or two years from now, what is
that going to mean
for everyone,
in getting time back? I, you know, I
look at that and I said, just that's
an hour. That's an hour of monkeying around,
frustrating, and trying to write piece write prices
down on a piece of paper.
(12:31):
You know, I'm sure I could take this
thing. I could probably say take me to
the United website, and I will book this
particular flight.
I'm probably not gonna ever allow it to
book. I'll do it myself,
but,
we'll see we'll see where this leads.
How many of you have heard about an
app called Beeper?
Multi service messaging app, Beeper,
(12:54):
allows people to connect all of their chat
apps from one interface, and it and it's
relaunching its app on Wednesday to offer more
secure version.
So
I have not heard of this app.
But as I scroll down and I looked
at its interface, it said connect chat accounts,
(13:14):
WhatsApp for business, Telegram,
Google Chat, Messenger, Signal, LinkedIn,
x, Discord, Slack. I said, oh my
goodness.
One chat one chat app to rule them
all?
Sign me up.
Sign me up indeed.
(13:35):
Instead of switching between apps.
I think this could be a winner here.
We'll have to look and see how the
interface looks.
And hopefully, it's, you know, it's fully on
the mobile phone, but
even if I can have chats on my
desktop as well,
Yahoo.
This this is a big one. So if
(13:55):
any of you have used beeper in the
past, definitely let me know.
Ukrainian hackers have claimed to have destroyed a
major Russian drone maker's entire network. They deeply
penetrate Gaskar
to the very tonsils of demilitarization.
So they took out the IT infrastructure at
Russia's Gasgar integration plant, one of the largest
suppliers of drones for its army.
(14:17):
And,
this is big.
The team known as Blackowl
announced the breach on his Telegram channel and
claimed to have carried out the operation alongside
fellow hackers, the Ukrainian cyber alliance.
And one very well known organization to mention
which makes the,
(14:39):
it's called Vanya's bottle receivers explode. So, anyway,
if they were able to take this out
and send them back, they
destroyed 47 terabytes of technical information.
They claim to have destroyed all the information
on their servers,
including 10 terabytes of backup files. Wow.
(15:02):
And, apparently, China is providing assistance in the
production training of these folks at Gaskar,
at this at this drone factory in in
Russia.
So, they stole all the code as well
before destroying everything.
Cyber warfare is gonna play a bigger war
in the next great war.
That is for sure. Hey. I mentioned earlier
(15:25):
that
I was wondering if the data was anonymized
and having chat GBT do this. And if
it is, then this destroys Delta's move. And
this pisses me off to be to be
frank.
Delta is moving toward eliminating set prices in
favor of AI that determines how much you
personally will pay for a ticket.
(15:46):
And this is a strategy to boost its
profitability by moving away from set fares and
toward end of the lodge pricing.
If they do I will never
never fly Delta
if they
if they move forward with this. So if
they know that you can pay more and
they put in a
(16:09):
a system that make you pay more for
your ticket.
It has to still be competitive,
but I think this is this is beyond
bold.
So guess what? So maybe a chat and
GPT will have to
look at the Delta for Delta pricing.
This
this is a pretty bold move
by Delta to do custom pricing for
(16:33):
for each individual. By the end of the
year, Delta plans for 20% of its ticket
prices to be individually
determined.
Currently, about 3% of the airline's flight prices
are AI determined triple from the portion nine
months ago. I would like to know what
the profit of this on this. How much
more
they're challenged?
And
(16:54):
Delta Compass is pricing through a partnership with
Fetch, a six year old Israeli company that
also counts Azul, WestJet, Virgin Atlantic, and Veeva
Airbus
as clients and has its sights to set
beyond flying.
So in other words, they're gonna know everything
about us.
Hotels, car rentals, cruises,
what can you afford to pay? That's what
(17:14):
we're going to charge you.
This is definitely
predatory,
and congress needs to step in.
There needs to be fair pricing for all.
There can't be
(17:36):
fair there can't be pricing based upon
a geo or
other
standards. In one price for everyone,
set it, compete.
I this is something Congress is going to
have to get involved in. There is a
mention of a couple of senators say that
they're not going to allow them to do
this.
(17:56):
Senator Ruben Gallego,
Democrat of Arizona said, I'm not gonna let
them get away with this. I agree with
this.
This is this is this is horrible
for consumers.
Even it's $20,
$50.
If you again and again and again and
again, the next thing you know, you paid
(18:16):
an extra thousand dollars for stuff that other
people didn't pay
for. In a move that should not become
surprising
with the way things are going in the
world right now, the FCC plans to ban
Chinese technology and underseas
cables.
The commission believes the move will secure critical
infrastructure.
So, basically, the FCC
(18:38):
the proposed rule will apply to any company
at FCC's existing list of entities opposed to
accept or risk national security United States.
So,
big, big, big decision there. Hey. By the
way,
if you're not following my Facebook,
I posted a picture on my Facebook page
(18:59):
showing
orange lines being painted in front of where
I live in Michigan.
I don't know if you remember me talking
about it, but I saw fiber,
being dug in,
about five miles away from my house about
a month, month and a half ago. I
had stopped and asked the
folks what they were doing and found out
(19:21):
it was Frontier that is putting in fiber.
And lo and behold, they're gonna put fiber
down the road I live on. Hell has
frozen over, ladies and gentlemen.
I mean, this this is,
I never I never thought it would happen.
I'll be honest with you. If if if
you'd if I had to bet $10,000
(19:41):
that fiber would not have come down my
road,
I would have won that bet all day
long, but I've I lost it the other
day because they're gonna bring fiber
down my road. So what it is is
if you imagine a North South Road
as a main traverse road, that's where I
saw the fiber going.
And then
you get to
a a road that turns east.
(20:02):
That road has a high density of homes
on it.
And then, again, turn south
and that goes by my house and go
up to the next road and again,
go west again
and go back and meet the main intersection.
So they've purposely
included my area in the
(20:25):
in the dig path.
And,
so
I I just
I'm holding my breath.
I'll believe it when I see it and
when I get some notification that I can
order this,
they sign me up yesterday.
I mean, my goodness.
(20:46):
I love Starlink, but can I imagine having
one gig up, one gig down with fiber
out in the boondocks?
It's it's really,
I'm astonished.
And I guess I'll have to give credit
where credit's due. Frontier really makes this happen
and it works.
Hallelujah.
For sure.
(21:08):
The new Samsung trifold has leaked and may
have revealed its launch window and official name.
Three months away from the Samsung trifold launch,
the name Galaxy
z trifold has been trademarked by Samsung,
and they've been teasing the phone since,
January.
So one that flips over and one that
folds
(21:29):
double.
So
is this the same phone
Or yes. Gotta be. No.
Two different models.
So,
look forward to that,
coming coming your way.
There's lots of lots of, oh my god.
The the Earth is falling about NASA.
(21:53):
Even it Trump's defunding of NASA would be
catastrophic. This comes from an engagit who absolutely
hates Trump.
They're saying this is probably the most uncertain
future NASA's face and maybe since the end
of Apollo, Casey Dreyer tells me over the
phone. Dreyer's the chief of space policy at
the Planetary Society, a nonprofit,
(22:13):
advocates for the exploration study of space.
On July 10, the Senate Appropriations Committee discussed
the proposed federal
commerce, justice, and science budget for 2026,
and
they're talking about dropping it by 24%.
So that's that's a pretty big
(22:33):
pretty big whack.
But how much of that would be,
you know, their big,
their big program that hasn't had much success?
I'm sure that would be a big part
of it. You show success, you get
you get money.
Show being slow
and and NASA is slow as molasses when
it comes to Artemis and everything else
(22:55):
and of course with their spacecraft
that
that they're putting on it. So
I I think that,
you know, you gotta do good things to
get
to get money. And the question is, are
they doing good things?
Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta bigwigs have agreed
to a settlement in a $8,000,000,000
(23:16):
lawsuit.
So they just settled agree it to end
a trial that sought 8,000,000,000 in damages.
And Zuckerberg and others were actually paying out
to made a shareholders
as a recompense
for damnly alleged caused by allowing repeated violations
of Facebook user
privacy.
So
(23:38):
again a big settlement here for abusing
users privacy
if you've got an older MacBook Google soon
dropping Chrome for
Macs that are only up to
well the company's quietly dropped new news in
a post
Chrome one thirty eight the current version of
Chrome will be the last to support Mac
(24:00):
OS 11
also known as Big Sur.
Once Google launches one thirty nine it will
only be able running on Mac OS 12
or newer.
So if you were still running a Mac
OS 11, you've got your last update
of Chrome.
So be aware.
An Armenian man has been stranded to The
(24:21):
United States over the
the r y u k Rook ransomware attacks.
So basically, this individual was arrested in Kiev
in April and was extradited to The United
States on June 18.
And the 33 year old suspect is involved
in the ransomware attacks and been arrested and
extradited.
And his public was just made
(24:42):
his his identity was made public
recently. He's facing three years of sup
five years in prison,
three years of super
release, and a fine of 250,000
on each
count.
So, two other individuals have been named, but
they are still at large.
And,
(25:02):
he was part of a gang that
invoked over a $100,000,000
in ransomware
demands.
If you have a Fitbit, it's no longer
offline.
But if you are still having issues, there's
an article here on how to get your
fit back online and get your status updated.
So,
again, it was offline for a few hours.
(25:25):
You know, this is an issue,
in where
even me
and or even I and what I do
at my company, we have a plug in
for WordPress. If Blueberry
vanishes
and I pull the plug and all service,
the plug in keeps on working. People aren't
left high in drive. They don't have extinction
events.
(25:45):
So all these devices that
just die
because of
a server going down, there should be some
fallback.
It really really should.
So over 1,000,000 records, another hack from US
adoption organizations been left exposed online.
And again, another unprotected
database, 1,100,000
(26:07):
records,
which is just ridiculous.
The records include names of children, birth parents,
adopted parents, employers, and leads.
Besides the names, there are also phone numbers,
post addresses, information about birth fathers, and data
on whether people were approved or denied to
become an adoptive parent. Isn't that just lovely?
(26:27):
Don't say data can and will be used
against you because it will.
ExpressVPN
now offers servers in all 50 United States,
and,
so that's better coverage for you. If you're
an ExpressVPN
member, if you live in Michigan, you can
connect to the server in Detroit.
If you live in
California, you've got three server choices. So again,
(26:49):
all kinds of options for you for your
VPN with ExpressVPN.
Of course, there's been a little bit of
a tic tac going on between
Elon's been posting things about their
quote unquote penis joke for Austin. I don't
know if you guys are aware of it,
but he drew the map where their
(27:11):
where their service was available and then Waymo
came back and behind said, well,
our our coverage areas is much bigger.
So it's just
so
so childish
and definitely got headlines, right? Very rare talking
about it.
You know, so I guess it was effective.
(27:31):
Reddit is also back online after a brief
outage. The company told the
that an update caused the issue.
So
they're back online. They were off for about
an hour.
So if you're a Reddit user, be aware
of that.
GBoard
may soon offer smarter voice typing and editing
(27:54):
with AI integration. I don't even know what
GBoard is.
Says Google is developing a new AI powered
voice typing and editing feature for g board.
It's a virtual keyboard, which could significantly enhance
how user interact with text
without needing to touch the phones. This upcoming
feature would appear part of Google's broader push
to integrate AI and context aware tools into
(28:15):
its app. So I guess it's a
typing application.
So anyone use Gboard? I'm absolutely not familiar
with it.
I don't know why this is important but
the new
the new
100,000
pages tax law
keeps Bill Gates nuclear data center dreams alive.
(28:37):
I didn't know Bill Gates had nuclear
data center dreams at all.
But, apparently, this budget bill slashed many mature
clean energy nest initiatives, but Bill Gates is
less worried since new nuclear incentives, including those
his TerraPower venture will leverage have survived.
So,
(28:58):
you know, but maybe it's smart. We need
we need
nuclear power.
We're we're
we're crazy. We're not building
a nuclear powers as a nuclear power plants
as fast as we can. We really are.
That's my personal opinion. We we have
a major major
shortage on electricity,
(29:19):
and, you know, this AI and everything else
in data centers is is not helping.
Intel is swinging the ax again. It's
basically putting 5,000 people out of work,
and they're letting back office staff are being
let go.
And, apparently, that mood is very pessimistic,
about
(29:40):
this chop,
but they've just gotta cut cost,
and they gotta get lean. And, they gotta
stay stay in business.
So,
you know, they spent billions on share buyback
to support the stock price and fat dividends,
(30:00):
but,
they didn't invest in new technology. Now they're
buying.
And The US chips legislation was supposed to
pump billions in the semi in the country
and to bring manufacturing back is now in
doubt.
So,
yeah, maybe maybe time to sell Intel stock.
Uber's latest robotaxi plan involves 20,000
Lucid EVs
(30:22):
and,
so they're investing 100 millions in Nuro and
Lucid.
The latest step of the company's plans to
build an extensive robotaxi program. In other words,
getting rid of all of you that are
Uber driving.
They don't want you they're gonna take your
money away. They don't want
people making money on Uber.
They just want the cars to drive themselves.
(30:45):
US authors that are suing Anthropic can band
together in a copyright class action a judge
has ruled. So this is a major major
major,
a deal for these folks
and being able to
put this in a class.
US District Judge William Alsop said the authors
can bring a class action
on behalf of all US writers who works
(31:07):
Anthropic allegedly downloaded from pirate libraries,
Libgen,
and p I l I m I to
create a repository of millions of book.
So,
they say they may have downloaded his 7,000,000
books, probably more.
SpaceX launches is just about going seems like
every day here, every two or three days,
(31:27):
they've already done a 100 launches or more
this year.
So they just had another launch that and
they're doing a lot of
SpaceX.
Starlink came out with a statement.
I talk about their network speeds and how
they're increasing
and also
discussing on how,
they're putting in more polar orbits for those
(31:49):
of you that are
in Alaska to be able to get better
coverage.
This next auto continues to blow my mind
in in quite a big way that
the 2025
crypto crime midyear update
get this
with over $2,170,000,000
stoned stolen. $2,170,000,000
(32:12):
stolen for cryptocurrency
so far in 2025.
This year is more devastating than entirety of
2024.
2,170,000,000.00.
Whose money is that?
You know, you don't hear stories of people
that have been devastated through crypto wallet losses
or anything.
(32:33):
Who's losing all this cash?
That's that's an amazing number.
Personal wallet compromises now resent represent a growing
share of total ecosystem
theft.
With attackers increasingly targeting individuals,
(32:54):
excuse me, making up 23.35
of all stolen funds.
Physical violence or cohesion attacks are also
growing.
So if you've got crypto,
don't advertise that you have crypto.
You need to keep that on the down
low.
(33:15):
Another big company has given up on hydrogen,
Stellantis.
They've thrown in the towel,
just before the production was about to start.
And again,
Stellantis, the automotive giant behind Chrysler, Citroen, Fiat,
Jeep, and,
Bugo.
I probably pronounced that wrong, is pulling out
of hydrogen.
(33:36):
Said in face of limited availability of hydrogen
refueling infrastructure.
Duh.
How about electric recharging infrastructure,
High capital requirements and need for stronger consumer
purchasing incentive. To put it another way, let's
realize hydrogen facing the same set challenge it's
not been able to overcome in the last
two or three decades.
I think in my lifetime,
(33:58):
I saw most of my hydrogen
fill stations on military bases.
I've seen one or two in the wild
in all of my travels.
For those of you that watch the where
the Google Pixel watch, the which the the
Pixel watch four is rumored to be supporting
a bigger battery,
(34:19):
but many are hoping it's not just a
brighter screen in on device AI. So we'll
see.
Bigger battery, longer use. It's always well. I
noticed that my Apple Watch now,
I don't know what gen it is. I've
had it for
maybe four or five years.
It's starting to
not hold its charge as well as it
(34:41):
it used to. I I probably should look
around. Still in beautiful shape. There's no no
chips or anything on it. No damages. So
maybe
there's a service out there where I can
get the battery replaced. That would be kind
of cool.
Maybe Apple does it. I don't know. I've
never investigated that. Have any of you done
that? If you have, I'd love to hear
from you. Geeknews@gmail.com.
(35:04):
How many of you have kids playing Roblox?
Roblox is now gonna require a facial scan
or government ID to have unfiltered chats. Teens
will have to prove they're older than 13
and make crusted connections they can chat more
freely with. That's good.
They're gonna have a new age estimation tool
to verify they're over 13.
(35:24):
You know,
how are you gonna tell that with kids?
Facial scans?
I know a lot of I know a
lot of,
kids now that look a lot older than
they are.
Maybe not.
We'll see. We'll see you have how this,
how this works out. But most 13 year
(35:46):
olds also don't have an ID.
So that's another one too.
There's a article here on SFGate talking about
and it's interesting. It's interesting title. It says
someone
someone's always watching.
Gen z is spying on each other.
Teens 20 and something are embracing location sharing
to see where their friends are instantly. Is
(36:08):
that a bad thing?
That just sends
a little
tingle down my spine saying no.
Do you want
(36:31):
your friends to always know where you're at?
And what happens when your friends lose their
phone and they know where you're at?
You know,
I don't always want
I don't want it's just as an adult,
(36:52):
you know okay. So here's my mom.
She loves to know where my sister is,
when my brother in law's on the way
home to estimate, you know,
when they're gonna eat, you know, a whole
bunch of other things.
One of my nieces shares her location,
and my mom has always asked me to
(37:12):
share my location with her. And I'm like,
mom, I give you the address. I tell
you where I'm at. You've got my you
know, it's,
you know, probably when I'm here in The
Philippines, it maybe is
more advisable.
But when I'm home, I'm just like,
I'm an adult.
And I knew I know she means well,
(37:33):
and she doesn't care where I go or
who I see or any of that stuff.
It's not like that. But,
again, I I just find it a little
creepy, but,
I don't know if I'd want my kids
sharing their location with their other friends.
But, you know, unless you're really, really savvy,
are you gonna be able to stop that?
(37:55):
I don't know.
Over in The Hollywood Reporter, they are really,
really, really worried. Of course, I'm kinda funny
here. You think they're advertising for certain,
soda brand?
It's wrapped all around the article. I guess
that's one way to,
to promote
a certain,
drink. I want and there's no they show
(38:16):
a burger on the screen too. So I
wonder if,
they're they're promoting a certain,
and I guess it's grilling when on your
own. But they're talking about the rise of
machines inside Hollywood's
AI civil war and how people are desperately
trying to claw back
and not have AI take over.
(38:36):
And talks about a startup that's doing cool
things with AI and hand generating
with these very very powerful tools,
scenes that look semi realistic.
But this is a really telling article of
where things are heading and probably is part
of the reason why YouTube is starting to
(38:56):
say, hey, you do AI generated content. You're
not going to get monetized.
We're going to pull down
repetitive content.
They're basically trying to stop the onslaught
of
slag.
I got another word for it.
Slag is what comes out of your
your,
(39:16):
your sewage pit.
You know, the slag that's on
YouTube these days is is gotten I think
probably one out of five videos I'm presented
in
to say you want to see this is
is slag.
I don't watch it. I downvote
it on purpose,
and I'm glad they're trying to get rid
(39:37):
of it. I hope YouTube makes the option
to be able to report AI generated content
so that you can report this slag and
and and creators are protected.
Maybe this is part of the same thing
on the Hollywood side
is we're going to have to choose and
pick what we go watch and see if
it ends up being AI slag.
So time will tell.
(39:59):
Twitter co founder
Jack Dorsey,
pumps $10,000,000
into a nonprofit focus on open source social
media course. Jack got his payout when Elon
bought it,
but he is,
owning new apps like bit chat and Sunday.
So he's put a lot of money into
little apps. We're probably trying to hit a
(40:20):
winner here, but, TechCrunch is
jacking his efforts.
Samsung's chairman is cleared a fraud by South
Korea's top court that this is removes legal
uncertainty in surrounding
j y Lee, one of the richest people
in
in South Korea.
So,
(40:41):
you know, he,
you know, still on how these countries, you
know, how
interesting how rich people don't often go to
jail. Once in a while they get one
but
but not very often do they?
People are saying it's time if you are
a T Mobile customer to check your privacy
settings.
T Mobile recently asked an update to its
(41:02):
privacy policy and settings that make it so
data can be collected to provide fraud and
identity theft protection,
as well as sharing information with financial companies
for joint marketing and affiliates for marketing purposes.
So
what you need to do is you need
to go to,
T Mobile's privacy center for your account using
the t life app.
(41:23):
There's instructions here on how to exactly
disable this.
So I would encourage all of you that
are t mobile customers, which I am one,
to do that so that you can you
can save some money.
Netflix posted an earning earnings beat as revenue
grows 16%.
So they posted second quarter revenue of 16%.
(41:45):
The race is full year revenue guidance signing
healthy member growth,
and they did 11,080,000,000.00
for the second quarter higher than Wall Street
estimate of 11,070,000,000.00.
So I'm sure Wall Street will reward them,
for that reporting.
And also something that we'll keep an eye
on the
the house
(42:05):
has sent the stable coin stable coin bill
to the president's desk capping a string of
crypto week
victories. At the same time, we know that
NPR
and in other
public radio, public television
is definitely facing
a monumental
(42:27):
a monumental
budget cut.
And, you know, I don't care if you're
if you're a fan of NPR
or to be honest with you,
Those
organizations
were set up to serve the public interest
(42:48):
and
supposed to be balanced.
And it's very obvious that they have not
been that way for many, many years. So,
you know, they reap what they're sowing here
with the current administration.
You know, you're not going to be fair
and balanced. You're
definitely going to face
the budget acts
(43:08):
to quit being a political arm.
So,
the money machine for some of this,
some of the stuff is is drying up
and maybe the people need to start having
a realization that there's there's two sides to
every story. And, you know, none of it
is good.
Get into politics, right, left, it's all disgusting.
(43:29):
So,
you know, just equal equal reported disgusting is
important. I think, you know, that's that's the
key here. So, we'll see what happens.
I'd love to hear your feedback on that.
Geeknews@gmail.com.
Of course, don't forget to support our sponsor
GoDaddy at geek news central dot com forward
slash godaddy
and become an insider at geeknewscentral.com/insider.
(43:53):
Besides my, you know, few technical glitches I've
had here on occasion, the studio has been
dialed in.
I think the show production is is going
just as good as it is when I'm
in the studio in Michigan.
The streams have been fantastic.
The outputs of the content quality has been
good,
and, I cannot
(44:13):
say enough
about this Mac Studio. If you're a Mac
mini user and need just a little more
power,
yeah, it's a step up to spend the
2 k for a baseline
Mac Studio,
but
damn, what a machine.
Really an incredible machine. I mean, for desktop,
(44:34):
I will not buy another iMac. There's no
way. I'll
go with another Mac Studio when I'm ready
to replace my
main computer at
at home that sits on my desk where
I work.
It's just
it's it's amazing. It really, really is. And
with the number of four ks screens that
(44:55):
have come out now supporting
as high quality as the the Mac releases,
which are much more expensive.
There's no excuse for you now not to
have two or three beautiful four k monitors
at your
at your workstation
and,
you know, with a whole not needing a
whole bunch of extra stuff. I've got about
(45:16):
every possible device you can imagine
a man plugged into this thing. I've got
the RODECaster.
I have my teleprompter.
I have two cameras, not just one, two
cameras,
an external hard drive.
What else? We've got
a wired keyboard. I've got a wireless mouse
(45:37):
with a Bluetooth.
I'm able to stick in a,
an SD card and I have ports to
spare.
This to me is probably,
in my opinion, my most
impressive setup,
for a desktop
slash studio workstation that I've ever done. Now
(45:59):
it's not portable,
but the green screen behind me, $40.
I have some lights here,
that I've had probably spent about $200
on.
So,
yeah, I'm getting the quality for the show
that I want,
here
with the studio the way it is. The
(46:19):
investment in that new camera,
really did make an but I'm gonna take
that back and forth. So that's gonna be
dual headed. It's not gonna stay here along
with the Mac Studio. It goes home with
me then I'll bring it back when I
come back next time.
So I can till the budget allows me
to
be able to
have fully outfit both places. But again, I
(46:40):
don't need $2,600
worth of stuff sitting here for two months
while I'm not here as well. So that's
part of it as well. Alright, everyone. Thanks
for being here.
Thank you for coming to the show today.
I got up a little early because we
had a board meeting and determining pay raises
for the Blueberry employees.
So,
that's all we've got. And, everyone, thanks. We'll
(47:02):
see you next time here on the King
Central podcast. Take care. Bye bye.
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