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 chat g p d 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
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
Fair is a thousand 14 on ANA with
a return on September. One stop via Tokyo
both ways.
Lewis United Fair 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 turn is considerably higher at
2225.
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,
(03:15):
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 tell me 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.
(05:21):
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
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(06:05):
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(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.
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(07:34):
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(08:36):
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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 analyst, 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 shift or not time
(10:44):
shift. Just
a shift is going to be happening because
of this,
And we have to be fully prepared
to meet these new I 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?
(11:07):
Tell me something that no one else knows,
which because no one knows.
The only way people are gonna 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 assistance 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, one or two years from
(12:10):
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
(12:52):
app, Beeper,
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,
(13:12):
WhatsApp,
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 Gasgar
through 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 Vania's bottle receivers explode. So, anyway,
if they were able to take this out
and send them back, they 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.
(15:00):
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.
(15:22):
That is for sure. Hey. I mentioned earlier
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
(15:44):
personally will pay for a ticket.
And this is a strategy to boost his
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
(16:06):
they put in a
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 I 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
(16:28):
by Delta to do custom pricing for
for each individual. By the end of the
year, Delta plans for 20% of his 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
(16:49):
they're challenged?
And
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,
(17:10):
hotels, car rentals, cruises.
What can you afford to pay? That's what
we're going to charge you.
This is definitely predatory,
and congress needs to step in.
(17:30):
There needs to be fair pricing for all.
There can't
be 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 gonna have
to get involved in. There is a mention
(17:52):
of a couple of senators say that they're
not gonna allow them to do this.
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,
(18:13):
again and again and again and
again, the next thing you know, you paid
an extra thousand dollars for stuff that other
people didn't pay for.
And the 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.
(18:35):
So, basically, the FCC,
the proposed rule will apply to any company
at FCC's existing list of entities opposing acceptable
risk to national security of The United States.
So,
big, big, big decision there. Hey. By the
way,
if you're not following my Facebook,
(18:56):
I posted a picture on my Facebook page
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
(19:16):
had stopped and asked the
folks what they were doing and found out
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
(19:39):
you'd if I had a bet $10,000
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
(20:00):
a a road that turns east.
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
(20:22):
included my area in the
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 the some notification that I
can order this,
they sign me up yesterday.
(20:44):
I mean, my goodness.
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.
(21:06):
For sure.
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.
(21:26):
So one that flips over and one that
folds
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,
(21:48):
oh my god. The the Earth is falling
about NASA.
Even it cut 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
(22:08):
phone. Dreyer's the chief of space policy at
the Planetary Society, a nonprofit,
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%.
(22:31):
So that's that's a pretty big
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. You show being slow
and and NASA is slow as molasses when
(22:53):
it comes to Artemis and everything else
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
(23:15):
to a settlement in a $8,000,000,000
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.
(23:36):
So
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
while the company's quietly dropped new news in
a post.
Chrome one thirty eight, the current version of
(23:58):
Chrome, will be the last to support Mac
OS 11,
also known as Big Sur. Once Google launches
one thirty nine, it will only be able
running on Macs
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.
(24:19):
An Armenian man has been tracked at The
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.
(24:40):
And his public was just made
his his identity was made public
recently. He's facing three years of
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.
(25:01):
And,
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
Fitbit online and get your status updated.
So,
(25:22):
again, it was offline for a few hours.
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 in all service,
the plug in keeps on working. People aren't
(25:42):
left high in drive. They don't have extinction
events.
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.
(26:03):
And, again, another unprotected
database, 1,100,000
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 become
(26:23):
an adoptive parent. Isn't that just lovely?
Don't say data can and will be used
against you because it will.
ExpressVPN
now offers service 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.
(26:44):
If you live in,
California, you've got three server choices. So again,
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
(27:05):
penis joke for Austin. I don't know if
you guys are aware of it, but he
drew the map where their,
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.
(27:25):
I definitely got headlines. Right? Very rare talking
about it.
You know, so I guess it was effective.
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
(27:45):
if you're a Reddit user, be aware of
that.
GBoard
may soon offer smarter voice typing and editing
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
(28:07):
without needing to touch their phones. This upcoming
feature would appear part of Google's broader push
to integrate AI and context aware tools into
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
(28:27):
the new,
the new
100,000 pages tax law
keeps Bill Gates nuclear data center dreams alive.
I didn't know Bill Gates had nuclear
data center dreams at all.
But, apparently, this budget bill slashed many mature
clean energy initiatives,
(28:48):
but Bill Gates is less worried since new
nuclear incentives, including those
his TerraPower
venture will leverage have survived.
So,
you know, 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
(29:09):
as fast as we can. We really are.
That's my personal opinion. We we have a
major major
shortage on electricity,
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,
(29:31):
and they're letting back office staff are being
let go.
And, apparently, that mood is very pessimistic,
about
this chop,
but they've just gotta cut cost,
and they gotta get lean. And, they gotta
stay stay in business.
So,
(29:53):
you know, they spent billions on share buyback
to support the stock price and fat dividends,
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 do this to bring manufacturing back
is now in doubt.
So, yeah, maybe maybe time to sell Intel
(30:15):
stock.
Uber's latest robotaxi plan involves 20,000
Lucid EVs.
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
(30:37):
money away. They don't want
people making money on Uber.
They just want the cars to drive themselves.
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
deal for these folks
and being able to
(30:58):
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 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
(31:20):
books, probably more.
SpaceX launches just about going seems like every
day here every two or three days they've
already done a 100 launches or more this
year.
So, they just had another launch that and
they do a lot of,
SpaceX,
Starlink came out with a
statement.
I talk about their network speeds and how
they're increasing
(31:41):
and also
discussing on how,
they're putting in more polar orbits for those
of you that are
in Alaska to be able to get better
coverage.
This next article continues to blow my mind
in in quite a big way that
the twenty twenty five crypto crime mid year
(32:02):
update
get this,
with over $2,170,000,000
stoned stolen. $2,170,000,000
stolen for cryptocurrency
so far in 2025.
This year is more devastating the entirety of
2024.
February.
(32:23):
Whose money is that?
You know, you don't hear stories
of people that have been devastated
through
crypto wallet losses or anything.
Who's losing all this cash?
That's that's an amazing
number.
(32:43):
Personal wallet compromises now resent represent a growing
share of total ecosystem theft
with attackers increasingly targeting individuals,
excuse me, making up 23.35
of all stolen funds.
Physical violence or cohesion attacks are also
(33:03):
growing.
So if you've got crypto,
don't advertise that you have crypto.
You need to keep that on the down
low.
Another big company has given up on hydrogen,
Stellantis.
They've thrown in the towel,
just before the production was about to start.
(33:24):
And again, Stellantis, the automotive giant behind Chrysler,
Citroen, Fiat, Jeep, and,
Bugo
I probably pronounced that wrong.
Is pulling out of hydrogen.
Said in face of limited availability of hydrogen
refueling infrastructure. Duh.
How about electric recharging infrastructure,
high capital requirements, and need for stronger consumer
(33:45):
purchasing incentive? To put it another way, it's
realized 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,
I saw
most of my hydrogen
fill stations on military bases.
I've seen one or two in the wild,
(34:07):
in all of my travels.
For those of you that watch the wear
the Google Pixel watch, the the the Pixel
watch four is rumored to be supporting a
bigger battery,
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
(34:29):
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 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
(34:49):
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.
How many of you have kids playing Roblox?
Roblox is now gonna require a facial scan
or government ID to have unfiltered chats. Teens
(35:12):
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.
But, you know,
how are you gonna tell that with kids?
Facial scans?
I know a lot of I know a
lot of,
(35:33):
kids now that look a lot older than
they are.
Maybe not.
We'll see. We'll see
how this, how this works out. But most
13 year olds also don't have an ID.
So that's another one too.
There's a article here on SFGate talking about
(35:54):
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
that a bad thing?
(36:15):
That just sends
a little
tingle down my spine saying no.
Do you want
your friends to always know where you're at?
And what happens when your friends lose their
(36:37):
phone and they know where you're at?
You know,
I don't always want,
and I don't want it's just as an
adult,
you know. Okay. So here's my mom.
She loves to know where my sister is,
(37:00):
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
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,
(37:20):
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,
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
(37:41):
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 to stop that?
I don't know.
Over in The Hollywood Reporter, they are really,
really, really worried. Of course, I'm kinda funny
(38:01):
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
a burger on the screen too. So I
wonder if,
they're they're promoting a certain,
(38:23):
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.
And it talks about a startup that's doing
cool things with AI and hand generating
with these very very powerful tools,
(38:46):
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
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
(39:08):
of
slag.
I got another word for it.
Slag is what comes out of your
your,
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
(39:30):
is slag.
I don't watch it. I downvote
it on purpose,
and I'm glad they're trying to get rid
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 gonna have to choose and pick
(39:51):
what we go watch and see if it
ends up being AI slag.
So time will tell.
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,
(40:12):
coding new apps like BitChat and Sunday.
So he's put a lot of money into
little apps. We're probably trying to hit a
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
(40:32):
j y Lee, one of the richest people,
in
in South Korea.
So,
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?
(40:56):
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
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
(41:16):
to go to,
T Mobile's privacy center for your account
using the T Life app.
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.
(41:36):
Netflix posted the earning earnings beat as revenue
grows 16%, so they posted second quarter revenue
of 16%.
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
(41:59):
for that reporting.
And also something that we'll keep an eye
on the the house
has sent the stable coin stable coin bill
to the president's desk capping a string of
CryptoWeek
victories. At the same time, we know that
NPR
and in other
public radio, public television
(42:21):
is definitely facing
a monumental
a monumental
budget cut.
And, you know, I don't care
if you're
if you're a fan of NPR
or it'd be honest with you.
(42:42):
Those
organizations
were set up to serve the public interest
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
(43:02):
and balanced. You're definitely going to face
the budget acts
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
(43:24):
is good.
Getting into politics, right, left, it's all disgusting.
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
(43:45):
GoDaddy at geekon central dot com /godaddy
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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.
(44:06):
The streams have been fantastic.
The outputs of the content quality has been
good,
and, I cannot
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
two k for a baseline
Mac Studio,
(44:27):
but
damn, what a machine.
Really an incredible machine. I mean, for desktop,
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. It sits on my desk where
I work.
(44:49):
It's just
it's it's it's amazing. It really really is.
And with the number of four ks screens
that 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
(45:11):
and,
you know, with a whole not needing a
whole bunch of extra stuff. I've got about
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.
(45:32):
What else? We've got
a wired keyboard. I've got a wireless mouse
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
(45:52):
impressive setup,
for a desktop
slash studio workstation that I've ever done. Now
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
(46:14):
that I want,
here,
with the studio the way it is. The
investment in that new camera,
really did make an but I'm gonna take
that back and forth. So that's gonna be
dual hatted. 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
(46:35):
to
be able to,
to fully outfit both places. But, again, I
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
(46:55):
for the Blueberry employees.
So,
that's all we've got. And, everyone, thanks. We'll
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 chat g p d 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
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
Fair is a thousand 14 on ANA with
a return on September. One stop via Tokyo
both ways.
Lewis United Fair 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 turn is considerably higher at
2225.
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,
(03:15):
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 tell me 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.
(05:21):
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 getancentral.com/godaddy.
(06:05):
Of course, to all of our listeners, you
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Of course, you can check out the full
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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):
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(07:13):
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(07:34):
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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 analyst, 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 shift or not time
(10:44):
shift. Just
a shift is going to be happening because
of this,
And we have to be fully prepared
to meet these new I 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?
(11:07):
Tell me something that no one else knows,
which because no one knows.
The only way people are gonna 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 assistance 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, one or two years from
(12:10):
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
(12:52):
app, Beeper,
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,
(13:12):
WhatsApp,
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 Gasgar
through 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 Vania's bottle receivers explode. So, anyway,
if they were able to take this out
and send them back, they 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.
(15:00):
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.
(15:22):
That is for sure. Hey. I mentioned earlier
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
(15:44):
personally will pay for a ticket.
And this is a strategy to boost his
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
(16:06):
they put in a
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 I 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
(16:28):
by Delta to do custom pricing for
for each individual. By the end of the
year, Delta plans for 20% of his 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
(16:49):
they're challenged?
And
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,
(17:10):
hotels, car rentals, cruises.
What can you afford to pay? That's what
we're going to charge you.
This is definitely predatory,
and congress needs to step in.
(17:30):
There needs to be fair pricing for all.
There can't
be 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 gonna have
to get involved in. There is a mention
(17:52):
of a couple of senators say that they're
not gonna allow them to do this.
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,
(18:13):
again and again and again and
again, the next thing you know, you paid
an extra thousand dollars for stuff that other
people didn't pay for.
And the 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.
(18:35):
So, basically, the FCC,
the proposed rule will apply to any company
at FCC's existing list of entities opposing acceptable
risk to national security of The United States.
So,
big, big, big decision there. Hey. By the
way,
if you're not following my Facebook,
(18:56):
I posted a picture on my Facebook page
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
(19:16):
had stopped and asked the
folks what they were doing and found out
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
(19:39):
you'd if I had a bet $10,000
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
(20:00):
a a road that turns east.
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
(20:22):
included my area in the
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 the some notification that I
can order this,
they sign me up yesterday.
(20:44):
I mean, my goodness.
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.
(21:06):
For sure.
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.
(21:26):
So one that flips over and one that
folds
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,
(21:48):
oh my god. The the Earth is falling
about NASA.
Even it cut 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
(22:08):
phone. Dreyer's the chief of space policy at
the Planetary Society, a nonprofit,
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%.
(22:31):
So that's that's a pretty big
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. You show being slow
and and NASA is slow as molasses when
(22:53):
it comes to Artemis and everything else
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
(23:15):
to a settlement in a $8,000,000,000
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.
(23:36):
So
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
while the company's quietly dropped new news in
a post.
Chrome one thirty eight, the current version of
(23:58):
Chrome, will be the last to support Mac
OS 11,
also known as Big Sur. Once Google launches
one thirty nine, it will only be able
running on Macs
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.
(24:19):
An Armenian man has been tracked at The
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.
(24:40):
And his public was just made
his his identity was made public
recently. He's facing three years of
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.
(25:01):
And,
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
Fitbit online and get your status updated.
So,
(25:22):
again, it was offline for a few hours.
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 in all service,
the plug in keeps on working. People aren't
(25:42):
left high in drive. They don't have extinction
events.
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.
(26:03):
And, again, another unprotected
database, 1,100,000
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 become
(26:23):
an adoptive parent. Isn't that just lovely?
Don't say data can and will be used
against you because it will.
ExpressVPN
now offers service 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.
(26:44):
If you live in,
California, you've got three server choices. So again,
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
(27:05):
penis joke for Austin. I don't know if
you guys are aware of it, but he
drew the map where their,
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.
(27:25):
I definitely got headlines. Right? Very rare talking
about it.
You know, so I guess it was effective.
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
(27:45):
if you're a Reddit user, be aware of
that.
GBoard
may soon offer smarter voice typing and editing
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
(28:07):
without needing to touch their phones. This upcoming
feature would appear part of Google's broader push
to integrate AI and context aware tools into
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
(28:27):
the new,
the new
100,000 pages tax law
keeps Bill Gates nuclear data center dreams alive.
I didn't know Bill Gates had nuclear
data center dreams at all.
But, apparently, this budget bill slashed many mature
clean energy initiatives,
(28:48):
but Bill Gates is less worried since new
nuclear incentives, including those
his TerraPower
venture will leverage have survived.
So,
you know, 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
(29:09):
as fast as we can. We really are.
That's my personal opinion. We we have a
major major
shortage on electricity,
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,
(29:31):
and they're letting back office staff are being
let go.
And, apparently, that mood is very pessimistic,
about
this chop,
but they've just gotta cut cost,
and they gotta get lean. And, they gotta
stay stay in business.
So,
(29:53):
you know, they spent billions on share buyback
to support the stock price and fat dividends,
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 do this to bring manufacturing back
is now in doubt.
So, yeah, maybe maybe time to sell Intel
(30:15):
stock.
Uber's latest robotaxi plan involves 20,000
Lucid EVs.
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
(30:37):
money away. They don't want
people making money on Uber.
They just want the cars to drive themselves.
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
deal for these folks
and being able to
(30:58):
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 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
(31:20):
books, probably more.
SpaceX launches just about going seems like every
day here every two or three days they've
already done a 100 launches or more this
year.
So, they just had another launch that and
they do a lot of,
SpaceX,
Starlink came out with a
statement.
I talk about their network speeds and how
they're increasing
(31:41):
and also
discussing on how,
they're putting in more polar orbits for those
of you that are
in Alaska to be able to get better
coverage.
This next article continues to blow my mind
in in quite a big way that
the twenty twenty five crypto crime mid year
(32:02):
update
get this,
with over $2,170,000,000
stoned stolen. $2,170,000,000
stolen for cryptocurrency
so far in 2025.
This year is more devastating the entirety of
2024.
February.
(32:23):
Whose money is that?
You know, you don't hear stories
of people that have been devastated
through
crypto wallet losses or anything.
Who's losing all this cash?
That's that's an amazing
number.
(32:43):
Personal wallet compromises now resent represent a growing
share of total ecosystem theft
with attackers increasingly targeting individuals,
excuse me, making up 23.35
of all stolen funds.
Physical violence or cohesion attacks are also
(33:03):
growing.
So if you've got crypto,
don't advertise that you have crypto.
You need to keep that on the down
low.
Another big company has given up on hydrogen,
Stellantis.
They've thrown in the towel,
just before the production was about to start.
(33:24):
And again, Stellantis, the automotive giant behind Chrysler,
Citroen, Fiat, Jeep, and,
Bugo
I probably pronounced that wrong.
Is pulling out of hydrogen.
Said in face of limited availability of hydrogen
refueling infrastructure. Duh.
How about electric recharging infrastructure,
high capital requirements, and need for stronger consumer
(33:45):
purchasing incentive? To put it another way, it's
realized 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,
I saw
most of my hydrogen
fill stations on military bases.
I've seen one or two in the wild,
(34:07):
in all of my travels.
For those of you that watch the wear
the Google Pixel watch, the the the Pixel
watch four is rumored to be supporting a
bigger battery,
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
(34:29):
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 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
(34:49):
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.
How many of you have kids playing Roblox?
Roblox is now gonna require a facial scan
or government ID to have unfiltered chats. Teens
(35:12):
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.
But, you know,
how are you gonna tell that with kids?
Facial scans?
I know a lot of I know a
lot of,
(35:33):
kids now that look a lot older than
they are.
Maybe not.
We'll see. We'll see
how this, how this works out. But most
13 year olds also don't have an ID.
So that's another one too.
There's a article here on SFGate talking about
(35:54):
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
that a bad thing?
(36:15):
That just sends
a little
tingle down my spine saying no.
Do you want
your friends to always know where you're at?
And what happens when your friends lose their
(36:37):
phone and they know where you're at?
You know,
I don't always want,
and I don't want it's just as an
adult,
you know. Okay. So here's my mom.
She loves to know where my sister is,
(37:00):
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
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,
(37:20):
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,
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
(37:41):
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 to stop that?
I don't know.
Over in The Hollywood Reporter, they are really,
really, really worried. Of course, I'm kinda funny
(38:01):
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
a burger on the screen too. So I
wonder if,
they're they're promoting a certain,
(38:23):
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.
And it talks about a startup that's doing
cool things with AI and hand generating
with these very very powerful tools,
(38:46):
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
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
(39:08):
of
slag.
I got another word for it.
Slag is what comes out of your
your,
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
(39:30):
is slag.
I don't watch it. I downvote
it on purpose,
and I'm glad they're trying to get rid
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 gonna have to choose and pick
(39:51):
what we go watch and see if it
ends up being AI slag.
So time will tell.
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,
(40:12):
coding new apps like BitChat and Sunday.
So he's put a lot of money into
little apps. We're probably trying to hit a
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
(40:32):
j y Lee, one of the richest people,
in
in South Korea.
So,
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?
(40:56):
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
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
(41:16):
to go to,
T Mobile's privacy center for your account
using the T Life app.
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.
(41:36):
Netflix posted the earning earnings beat as revenue
grows 16%, so they posted second quarter revenue
of 16%.
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
(41:59):
for that reporting.
And also something that we'll keep an eye
on the the house
has sent the stable coin stable coin bill
to the president's desk capping a string of
CryptoWeek
victories. At the same time, we know that
NPR
and in other
public radio, public television
(42:21):
is definitely facing
a monumental
a monumental
budget cut.
And, you know, I don't care
if you're
if you're a fan of NPR
or it'd be honest with you.
(42:42):
Those
organizations
were set up to serve the public interest
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
(43:02):
and balanced. You're definitely going to face
the budget acts
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
(43:24):
is good.
Getting into politics, right, left, it's all disgusting.
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
(43:45):
GoDaddy at geekon central dot com /godaddy
and become an insider at geekoncentral.com/insider.
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.
(44:06):
The streams have been fantastic.
The outputs of the content quality has been
good,
and, I cannot
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
two k for a baseline
Mac Studio,
(44:27):
but
damn, what a machine.
Really an incredible machine. I mean, for desktop,
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. It sits on my desk where
I work.
(44:49):
It's just
it's it's it's amazing. It really really is.
And with the number of four ks screens
that 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
(45:11):
and,
you know, with a whole not needing a
whole bunch of extra stuff. I've got about
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.
(45:32):
What else? We've got
a wired keyboard. I've got a wireless mouse
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
(45:52):
impressive setup,
for a desktop
slash studio workstation that I've ever done. Now
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
(46:14):
that I want,
here,
with the studio the way it is. The
investment in that new camera,
really did make an but I'm gonna take
that back and forth. So that's gonna be
dual hatted. 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
(46:35):
to
be able to,
to fully outfit both places. But, again, I
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
(46:55):
for the Blueberry employees.
So,
that's all we've got. And, everyone, thanks. We'll
see you next time here on the King
Central podcast. Take care. Bye bye.
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