2024-10-04 mozilla_starts_a_fire_reviewed.txt

Used to be a king, you know,
but I abdicated the throne
for one very simple reason.
I wanted to focus on bringing you the tech news.
Still gonna tax you, though.
Mozilla has ignited controversy among Firefox users this week by,
primarily,
being bad at marketing.
See, the company's been trying to build a new framework for online advertising
that depends less on collecting people's personal information.
They acquired Anonym, a company working on just that, in June,
before announcing Privacy Preserving Attribution in August.
PPA supposedly encrypts and aggregates data
about how many users engage with an ad
without collecting any info about those users,
preserving privacy while still letting websites generate revenue.
And I think it sounds good
when you say it like that.
Unfortunately, yesterday,
Mozilla's relatively new CEO
started off her blog post about PPA by saying the company is
going to be more active in digital advertising,
while an official forum post talked about making ads and privacy coexist,
causing concern among the particularly ad-averse
that Mozilla was going through that phase
when you think Don Draper is a good guy in Mad Men.
You don't like the first five seconds of the first episode?
While some Firefox users simply want no ads on the internet, period,
others are trying to explain how PPA could balance privacy and sustainability.
The problem is, this isn't even Mozilla's first marketing blunder for PPA.
Adblock users were already mad about PPA being enabled by default in July's Firefox 128.0 release,
which led EU privacy organization, NOIB,
which stands for NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS,
the spit is silent,
to file a complaint over Firefox's new feature which tracked users.
Side note,
NOIB is no joke.
Another of their complaints just led to a top EU court imposing limits on Meta's data collection.
Do not rub NOIB the wrong way.
But they do appreciate it if you rub them the right way.
They call it NOIBing.
Turns out that early PPA rollout was a limited developer test
and did not collect any user data,
but Mozilla did admit last week
they could have been more open about what they were doing,
only to fumble the ball again this week,
the same week they flagged the uBlock Origin Lite Firefox add-on
as collecting user data and using machine generated code,
causing developer Raymond Hill to pull it from the add-on store
after getting fed up with Mozilla support.
Listen, I want Firefox to be better at marketing
so more people use it,
but right now they're at like 7% market share.
So proportionally, I spent way too much time talking about this.
YouTube has announced a bunch of changes to how shorts work,
starting with how they're not gonna be so short.
You still have to put them on one leg at a time.
Starting October 15th, shorts can be up to three minutes.
Meaning any video with a square aspect ratio or taller
that's less than three minutes
will be seen as a short by YouTube.
The change will only apply to videos uploaded after that date though, so don't worry,
vertical doom scrollers won't suddenly be hit with your experimental artsy student film.
The square is a box that represents society.
And the black and white represents my soul.
In an ode to TikTok's CapCut templates,
YouTube's also adding a remix ability
with the use template button,
which will let you participate in that most storied of human traditions.
Doing it for the meme.
There's also a new trends page for shorts,
and later the shorts feed itself will show previews
of comments before you even click through to the video.
Which comments?
Oh, the worst ones, obviously.
YouTube's obviously hoping the new features will help it compete with TikTok,
and it's already beating it in at least one way,
the new YouTube feature that lets you
temporarily hide shorts from your YouTube home feed altogether.
I wish I could do that on TikTok.
I also wish I wouldn't be spied on by the Chinese government.
Meta has revealed Meta MovieGen,
its own photorealistic video generator
capable of creating 16 second videos with a twist, or else I wouldn't be telling you about it.
Though it's not available to the public,
Meta's demos showcase the ability
to edit existing videos using only text,
as well as impressively realistic simulations of bad, Halloween costumes.
But here's the twist.
With a single photo,
MovieGen can make a video deep fake of anyone DJing an impromptu set next to a cheetah.
Only that scenario.
But is the cheetah dancing?
No.
Is it Chester Cheetah?
Maybe.
I'm out.
I hate that guy.
And even more impressively to me,
it can generate music and audio synced up to the action in the video.
Meta says MovieGen could usher in a new AI-enabled era of content creators.
As an example,
they ask you to imagine sending your friends some fresh-baked AI slop for their birthday.
That'll be kind of funny.
The first time I made this for you.
No, you didn't.
You bitch.
What about using AI to help you edit a nice heartfelt note instead?
Using our sponsor,
Not many people know this,
but QuickBits is actually a nickname.
It's short for Quitchard Bits Gerald.
Now, you know,
A man I killed in 1973.
Microsoft has finally killed WordPad,
the rich text editing word processor
that debuted on Windows 95.
Microsoft has added it to its list of removed features and functionality.
It'll be gone from all editions of Windows,
starting with Windows 11 version 24H2,
which started rolling out this week.
We are witnessing the death of a legend, so pour one out,
but not just any drink,
something classy.
Something fit to celebrate the life of a program born in the 90s,
an aged can of Surge.
A few days ago,
Amazon's Ring sent an email out to Protect Plus subscribers,
reminding them that they would be migrated to the Protect Pro plan next year,
doubling their subscription fee.
That reminder comes with heavy air quotes
because The Verge tracked down when Ring sent its original notification,
which turned out to be a tiny fine print footnote
in a September 2021 email with the subject line,
important, your plan name has changed.
The email said, quote,
don't worry, everything else is staying the same.
Ring sent a similar email to Canadian Ring Home Standard subscribers this week
with the heading, new name, new features, same great price.
The email then informs users that their subscription
will no longer include alarm professional monitoring and SOS emergency response,
because now calling the cops costs extra.
Do you think calls to the police grow on trees?
Mm.
Someone's got to pay him.
The government, who?
Google is testing the use of blue check marks
as a way to protect users
from fraudulent links in search results.
Hovering over the check mark explains
that Google is pretty sure the business is who they say they are.
An example of this, also from The Verge,
depicts a notice that says,
Google can't guarantee the reliability of this business or its products.
But to be fair, the business in question was Apple.
Ba-doom.
Fruits!
Oh, the symbol, I needed the symbol.
Ba-doom.
That's a new rim shot.
Ba-doom, fruits!
Speaking of unreliable products,
Google searches AI overview feature
will now be getting ads that are relevant to your question.
Finally,
Gemini won't just tell you to eat rocks,
but also recommend the tastiest ones.
I like igneous rocks the best.
Samsung issued a faulty software update two days ago
that bricked many older Galaxy smartphones globally.
Even worse, the issue seemed to have been caused by an update to Samsung's SmartThings Framework app,
an automatically installed app
for controlling compatible smart devices.
I feel like users still rocking Galaxy phones from 2019
aren't splurging on a smart fridge.
We're not sure whether this was necessary.
They're buying sensible things,
like basically anything else you can buy.
Cabbage.
which you put in a dump fridge
But the smart fridge enthusiasts watching this video may be excited to know
that Apple fixed the update that was bricking M4 iPads.
What a transition.
I'm not saying only smart fridge owners own M4 iPads,
but I'm pretty sure they could afford one.
I want a fridge I can watch TikTok on.
And a court has dismissed a shareholders lawsuit
against Tesla over Elon Musk's exaggerated claims about its full self-driving feature.
Of course, the case wasn't dismissed
because those claims were true,
but rather because, according to Tesla's own lawyers,
the statements were nothing more than corporate puffery,
AKA bullshit that no reasonable investor would have taken seriously.
I mean, come on guys,
we're all just, this is just locker room talk, like.
But Elon had less success in Australia,
where a court upheld a $418,000 fine against Twitter,
which the corporation formerly known as Twitter
fought on the grounds that,
following its merger with X Corp,
Twitter no longer exists.
Twitter, who's that?
Twitter, I never even met her.
Twitter, I never even met her.
Look, Elon,
just because somebody gets married
and changes their name,
doesn't mean they no longer exist.
And it definitely doesn't mean they don't owe me money.
Like how you owe it to yourself
to come back on Monday for more tech news.
You also owe it to me, like a little bit.
I mean, I gave up a crown for you.
I was bossing people around, it was great.
Few assassination attempts.
I was executing peasants.