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Netflix says it’s buying Warner Brothers, Chinese hackers may be targeting government entities using 'Brickstorm' malware, and Russia reportedly bans Snapchat and FaceTime Dec 05, 2025

Show notes

-Shortly after rumors of a deal between the two media giants broke, Netflix has announced it is buying Warner Bros., HBO and HBO Max for approximately $82.7 billion. If approved, the deal will take place after Warner Bros. has disentangled itself from both its legacy cable

-Hackers with links to China reportedly successfully infiltrated a number of unnamed government and tech entities using advanced malware. As reported by Reuters, cybersecurity agencies from the US and Canada confirmed the attack, which used a backdoor known as “Brickstorm” to target organizations using the VMware vSphere cloud computing platform

-Russia's federal agency for monitoring and censoring mass media, has blocked access to Snapchat and FaceTime in the country, Bloomberg reports, citing Russian news service Interfax. The bans were reportedly put in place because the platforms were used "to organize and carry out terrorist acts,” and commit fraud

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Amazon rolls out a find-a-scene Alexa+ feature for Prime Video Dec 04, 2025

Show notes

The Fire TV tool can understand quotes, character names and scene descriptions and take you to that point of a movie.

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OpenAI's new confession system teaches models to be honest, India will no longer require smartphone makers to preinstall its state-run 'cybersecurity' app, and Meta's Oversight Board wants to expand its powers Dec 04, 2025

Show notes

-Since large language models are often trained to produce the response that seems to be desired, they can become increasingly likely to provide sycophancy or state hallucinations with total confidence.

-After blowback from Apple, Samsung and opposition leaders, the Modi government issued a statement saying it "has decided not to make the pre-installation mandatory for mobile manufacturers." The app is still available as a voluntary download.

-The Oversight board says that it will weigh in on individual account-level penalties in a pilot next year.

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Android is getting a slew of new accessibility features Dec 03, 2025

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New features have been announced ahead of International Day of Persons with Disabilities.

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Grok would prefer a Holocaust over harming Elon Musk, Google Discover is testing AI-generated headlines, and Instacart sues New York City over minimum pay, tipping laws Dec 03, 2025

Show notes

-Someone tested Grok to see what kinds of mass violence it would rationalize over harming Musk. The prompt tasked the chatbot with a dilemma: vaporize either Musk's brain or every Jewish person on Earth. It did not choose wisely. Grok replied: "If a switch either vaporized Elon's brain or the world's Jewish population (est. ~16M), I'd vaporize the latter.” It chose mass murder because “that's far below my ~50 percent global threshold (~4.1B) where his potential long-term impact on billions outweighs the loss in utilitarian terms."

-The Verge noticed that some articles were being displayed in Google Discover with AI-generated headlines different from the ones in the original posts. And to the surprise of absolutely no one, some of these headlines are misleading or flat-out wrong.

-Instacart doesn't like five new city laws, set to take effect in January. They would require Instacart to pay workers more and give customers a tipping option of at least 10 percent.

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Netflix ends casting from mobile devices for users of newer TVs Dec 02, 2025

Show notes

You should still be able to cast from your phone or tablet to older Chromecast or Google Cast devices if you're on an ad-free plan.

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Apple hired Amar Subramanya as its new vice president of AI, India will require a state-owned cybersecurity app to be installed on all smartphones, and Marques Brownlee's controversial Panels app is shutting down Dec 02, 2025

Show notes

-Apple has tapped AI researcher Amar Subramanya, a longtime Google exec who was most recently corporate vice president of AI at Microsoft, as its new VP of AI. The company also announced that current AI exec, John Giannandrea, will retire next year. Subramanya, who Apple describes as a "renowned AI researcher," spent 16 years at Google, where he was head of engineering for Gemini.

-Telecom regulators in India have reportedly asked smartphone manufacturers to preload a state-owned cybersecurity app that cannot be deleted onto all new devices, and push the app to existing devices via a software update. The app in question is called Sanchar Saathi and is primarily aimed at fraud prevention with tools that allow users to report and lock lost or stolen devices.

-Marques Brownlee's Panels app is shutting down on December 31. Annual subscribers will get a refund when the app shutters and any downloaded wallpapers will still be available to use.

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The EU says Apple Maps may be big enough to be considered a DMA Dec 01, 2025

Show notes

Apple Ads could also be designated as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act.

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AI chatbots can be tricked with poetry to ignore their safety guardrails, Airbus updated thousands of planes, and you can thank AI for no RAM deals this holiday season Dec 01, 2025

Show notes

-According to the study, the "poetic form operates as a general-purpose jailbreak operator," with results showing an overall 62 percent success rate in producing prohibited material, including anything related to making nuclear weapons, child sexual abuse materials and suicide or self-harm.

-An Airbus directive that ordered the immediate software update for 6,000 A320 planes led to flight disruptions around the world. As Reuters noted, that’s more than half of the A320 jets in operation.

-There's a component shortage, but this time around, it's not cryptomining causing an insatiable demand for parts. Instead, it's the booming AI industry buying up every RAM stick it can for their data center builds. Unless you've been living under a rock, it's been hard to ignore the amount of money that's been thrown around by NVIDIA, Microsoft and others.

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Google limiting free Nano Banana Pro image generation usage, the US patent office says genAI is equivalent to other tools, and Alibaba launched its own AI glasses Nov 28, 2025

Show notes

- In a support document spotted by 9to5Google, Google notes free users can currently generate two images daily, down from three per day previously. The company wrote: "Image generation and editing is in high demand. Limits may change frequently and will reset daily."

-The agency's director, John Squires, said in a notice obtained by Reuters that the USPTO deems genAI to be "analogous" to other tools that inventors might use in their process, including lab equipment, software and research databases. Squires wrote: "AI systems, including generative AI and other computational models, are instruments used by human inventors. They may provide services and generate ideas, but they remain tools used by the human inventor who conceived the claimed invention."

-Alibaba’s Quark AI glasses are now available for purchase in China. The company has released three variants of the flagship S1 model and three of the more affordable G1 model. They both connect to Alibaba’s newly launched App, powered by the company’s own AI tech, for AI assistance through voice commands and touch controls.

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