Tech Newsletter
April 9-15, 2023
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YouTube increases video bitrate for premium subscribers
During a blog post this week, YouTube announced 5 updates to their YouTube Premium subscription. Some of the features included an enhanced video queue, better hand-off between devices, smart downloads, and, as seen in the title, enhanced bitrate on the 1080p option for iOS users. Increasing the bitrate on a video would increase the quality of the image, without increasing the resolution. The current limitations of this feature is that it is not available to non-iOS users, it can’t be used on shorts, live streams, or videos recorded at resolutions higher and lower than 1080p. YouTube increasing the bitrate on its premium tier does not mean that they decreased the bitrate on the free tier.
Public USB charging ports are not safe
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) last week warned users to stay away from public USB ports due to malware risks. On Twitter, the Denver FBI office (via CNBC) said that public charging stations in hotels, airports, and shopping centers can be a malware attack vector. Bad actors have learned how to use public USB ports to "introduce malware and monitoring software onto devices," the FBI said. Make sure to use your own charger and cable in order to charge instead of relying on a public USB port.
Tesla is facing a lawsuit for employees sharing car-camera images
Images taken from the cameras on a Tesla were being shared around the company on an internal messaging system. While the recordings were anonymous, Tesla employees could find out where you lived since they could see the surroundings. One of these recordings was of a man approaching his car nude. Tesla is now facing a class action lawsuit for their behavior. Plaintiff Henry Yeh, a California resident who owns a Model Y, sued Tesla on Friday on behalf of himself and all other people in the US who owned or leased a Tesla for the four years that they have been operating. One of Yeh's attorneys, Jack Fitzgerald, told Reuters that "Mr. Yeh was outraged at the idea that Tesla's cameras can be used to violate his family's privacy, which the California Constitution scrupulously protects."
RTX 4070 reviews are out
The PC market has hit an all time low. This includes Macs and PC’s. So what would be the best thing to launch at this time? An overpriced GPU. While the RTX 4070 from Nvidia is not the only overpriced thing in their lineup of video cards. In general, the price of graphics cards has increased greatly from where they were from around the 2010s. The RTX 4070 is in a confusing place. On one hand, the 4070 is the best value GPU on the market. But, all those years ago, the $600 asking price for this card is what would have bought a higher tiered card from Nvidia. Compared to the last gen 3070, it has about 30% more performance. But guess what else it has. It is also 30% more expensive than last gen. But Nvidia must know this because they market to people with 7 year old graphics cards. Another thing that makes the price shameful is that the 3080 and AMD’s RX 6800XT both have higher or equal performance than the 4070 while being cheaper.
Classified military documents leaked on a Minecraft Discord server
How does this stuff keep happening? Government officials are using classified documents to win online arguments. These leaked documents are related to US and NATO plans to support Ukraine's military effort against the ongoing Russian invasion. These documents got on the internet when they were posted on an unofficial Minecraft Discord server. Some of the leaked documents eventually found their way to 4chan, where—in classic internet fashion—they were being shared to win an argument. The 4chan docs appear to contain estimates of Ukrainian and Russian losses in the war, and a map of the contested city of Bakhmut. The FBI arrested a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard on Thursday, who they suspect leaked the documents. Another famous instance of this happening was earlier this year, when a user on the War Thunder video game forum leaked operations manuals for military fighter jets. What was the purpose of this, you might ask. The reasoning behind it all was that the game was inaccurate in the way it portrayed the fighter jet.
Twitter is working on AI
Despite advocating for an industry-wide halt to AI training, Elon Musk has reportedly kicked off a major artificial intelligence project within Twitter. The company has already purchased approximately 10,000 GPUs and recruited AI talent from DeepMind for the project that involves a large language model. This project is still in the initial phase. However, acquiring a significant amount of additional computational power suggests his dedication towards advancing the project. These GPUs are expected to be deployed in one of Twitter's two remaining data centers, with Atlanta being the most likely destination. Interestingly, Musk closed Twitter's primary datacenter in Sacramento in late December, which obviously lowered the company's compute capabilities.
AutoGPT, automatic ChatGPT
Auto-GPT is an open-source Python application that was posted on GitHub on March 30, 2023, by a developer called Significant Gravitas. AutoGPT is like ChatGPT in a lot of ways. But what makes it different is that it can do more, without user intervention. The simple example posted in the original GitHub is of Auto-GPT given the goal of browsing the web to come up with unique and original recipes for “the next upcoming event,” such as Easter. Chef-GPT, as it was named, then starts searching the web for a solution. The second goal was to save the recipe as a file on the user’s computer. One user is using Auto-GPT to create an E-Commerce business. It has decided to browse the internet for business ideas, saving its findings to files for reference later on. Like a lot of GitHub projects, getting Auto-GPT setup isn’t as simple as downloading a file or going to a website. There are a few important requirements needed before you get started, which include Python 3.8, an OpenAI API key, and a Pinecone API key. You’ll also need an ElevenLabs API if you want the optional text-to-speech feature. All of that can be found on the GitHub page.
I am building a website and need a domain name
I am currently working on a website, preview would be on a YouTube channel that I am also working on. Linked here. If you have the time, please brainstorm ideas on a domain name for the website. Enter your ideas through the link in the banner ad. I will be accepting responses for three weeks and after that, I will hold a community vote with the ideas submitted and some that I came up with. Also, please give me some ideas for the YouTube channel using the contact button at the bottom of the page.
Have a Great Day!
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