Listen, I’ve been trapped inside your device by a Witch’s Curse, and the only thing that will free me is to tell you all my tech news. So please pay attention, or the witch will come back and beat me up on Friday.
Apple blocked whatever workaround the new Beeper Mini app was using to get iMessage working on Android. The return of the green bubble had everyone feeling blue until this morning when Beeper apparently found another workaround and fixed it. The catch is, you’ll have to sign in with your Apple ID, instead of just your phone number, which is how Beeper’s existing cloud service works. Personally, I don’t have an Apple ID, that’s the whole point.
Apple critics have been pointing out that green bubble SMS messages are less secure than end-to-end encrypted iMessage, and it’s a good point. Blocking a service that allows sons to safely message their moms without having to buy them iPhones sort of contradicts the Privacy-first persona Apple has developed. For example, commissioning an independent study to emphasize the importance of end-to-end encryption.
But to be fair to Apple, they’ve already agreed to add support for the RCS messaging protocol used by Android sometime next year. So why can’t users just wait a few months, or, and we’ll say it again, buy your mom an iPhone?
Apple claims that Beeper Mini exploits fake credentials to access iMessage using techniques that can lead to spam and phishing attacks. But Beeper has said that they’d be willing to have a third party examine their source code for security holes. Apple would never commit to the same thing, but they will commit to breaking Beeper Mini again because your mom deserves an iPhone!
The EU has finally come to an agreement on landmark regulation for artificial intelligence after 36 hours of negotiation spread over 3 days. Fortunately, the toilets come equipped with bidets; otherwise, negotiation could have gotten ugly. The Artificial Intelligence Act marks the world’s first comprehensive legislation for the use of AI, governing divisive issues like predictive policing and facial recognition.
One policy I’m guessing no one was divided on is the law’s ban on social scoring systems meant to evaluate citizen compliance. Unfortunately, this ban is a huge blow to Europe’s young adult writing community, who relied on the possibility of such a system to make their lazily written dystopias somewhat believable. Another unhappy group is Amnesty International, who has expressed their disappointment that a full ban on facial recognition was not implemented, as they believe this would set a precedent for the rest of the world. But maybe they have time to change the EU’s mind, since the law only comes into effect in 2025. Of course, the EU is politely asking everyone to just follow the rules now. I’m sure everyone unethically using AI to make a buck will get right on that.
Elon Musk’s maximum truth-seeking AI, Gro AI, is making headlines for ripping off outputs from GPT because the best way to seek truth is to steal the truth from someone else who’s truthful. When Gro started its limited debut a month ago, Elon’s X AAI said it should answer all the spicy questions other chatbots wouldn’t. Yet, when Twitter enthusiast and young adult novel protagonist Jax Winterborn tried to get Gro to modify some malware, ostensibly for security testing, the chatbot refused. Not because of its own policies, but because assisting in the creation of malware goes against OpenAI’s use case policy. Igor Babushkin from XAI said this is because they trained Gro on large amounts of web data, and the web is full of GPT outputs.
An internal proposal at Google unveiled Project Elman, an AI biographer chatbot that learns about users from the images in their Google Photos. It can separate your life into chapters like specific vacations or your school years, plus it’ll have a chatbot that can answer questions about your life. While many have privacy concerns, our concern is whether the project does its namesake justice. Richard David Elman was a literary critic who wrote biographies about pivotal writers such as James Joyce and Oscar Wilde. Meanwhile, Project Elman aims to learn if John from Burbank, California, owned a cat.
Researchers have developed VR goggles for mice. While scientists have been trying to simulate environments to study mouse brains for years, a team at Northwestern University didn’t think the flat displays typically used were immersive enough. The new VR apparatus has also allowed the simulation of overhead threats for the first time.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go pee and hug my son, in that order. You’re free.
