Tech Time by Tim #23

This past week we learned that Bing’s evil alter ego was already a known factor to Microsoft in November 2022. There was also corporate espionage at ASML. I took a shot at predicting Sony’s generative VR strategy and examined the consumer-side effects of PC hardware manufacturers trying to ‘swim upstream.’ Last but not least, I looked at whether AI is fair in love and war, as well as covering the fascinating overlap between two Section 230 hearings, a TikTok charm offensive, and an exposed group of disinformation agents for hire.

At A Glance

A quick overview of this week’s content.

·??????The Week that Was: Psycho Sydney Is So 2022, Corporate Espionage

·??????Walled Gardening: Predicting Sony’s Generative VR Strategy, PC accessibility

·??????Rules of Engagement: Is AI Fair In Love And War, Disrupting Disinformation

The Week that Was:

A look back at the tech world of the past week.

Psycho Sydney Is So 2022:

You’ve likely read and heard about Sydney right? Venom perhaps? Maybe even Riley. Or, who knows, this could be the first you’re learning of the crazy ‘alternate personalities’ AI Bing has been displaying. This is really interesting when viewed in the context of a seemingly unrelated Xbox press release: “We want to build on the potential we see in India ”.

Have a look at this thread on Microsoft’s support forum, paying careful attention to the date. It’s November 23rd, 2022, for those that are wondering. The official press release about AI Bing for us in the west was February 7th, 2023 . It indeed does appear like Microsoft, beyond just Xbox, has been building on the potential it saw in India.

There is no conspiracy going on here, that’s why it’s so interesting. The reality is probably that ChatGPT costs so much money that Microsoft itself couldn’t afford to wait and risk losing momentum. As for ‘other’ costs, those are paid for by the ghosts in the machine, the invisible people doing the early tests and background refinements of AI. LINK

Corporate Espionage:

Dutch hardware manufacturer ASML alleged this past week that a Chinese ex-employee stole confidential information . The investigation will probably take a while to actually finish but it contrasts other cybersecurity news about hackers putting data centre logins up for general sale.

Certainly an interesting week for a status update on the Tor Project’s infrastructure migration efforts. The Tor anonymity network is most well-known for its role in (ideally) providing safe and anonymous internet access for threatened individuals living under repressive regimes. Concerns were raised about how an internet surveillance company was a major long-time contributor of Tor’s infrastructure.

The main reason for putting these three events together is to caution against jumping to conclusions or presuming that any one particular insider is automatically a threat. Security incidents can occur for countless reasons, via just as many different vectors. Be proactive with your cybersecurity but avoid succumbing to paranoia. LINK

Walled Gardening:

Observing walled gardens and (potential) monopolies in the tech world.

Predicting Sony’s Generative VR Strategy:

I’ve not forgotten about you Sony, I see you. I’d like to take a stab at predicting what I’ll call Sony’s Generative VR Strategy. Sony recently unveiled its PSVR2 headset . Back in November, it announced a restructured sports division based on Hawk-Eye, Pulselive, and Beyond Sports. At the time, Beyond Sports had just been acquired.

To make a long story short, the particular resources and expertise of these companies made the ‘Mocopi ’ tech Sony revealed later that same month stand out to me. Beyond that, this trio of companies also excels in VR telemetry , a potential new revenue model.

That takes us to generative AI in gaming. Roblox is doing very well for itself right now. It is a gaming platform that allows users to build, share, and monetize games within its overarching infrastructure. Roblox is not without controversy, particularly owing to its popularity among young children .

Roblox is experimenting with generative AI integration into its user-side development tools. That’s the play I predict Sony to make. It is in an extremely strong position to leverage existing technology and expertise to eat Roblox, one way or another. It’d make a lot of sense given how similar Roblox is to former Sony exclusive series ‘LittleBigPlanet’. LINK

PC Accessibility – Owning Hardware, Choosing Software:

I read an opinion piece this past week that ultra-enthusiast hardware is strangling PC gaming. I’ve written a lot about attempts by companies such as Nvidia to change into infrastructure companies. What I think is happening here is that the so called ‘ultra-enthusiast’ niche is becoming the focus group of consumer facing hardware efforts.

As consumer hardware is priced out of the mainstream, the mainstream / low-end demographics will be funnelled into cloud services and potential hardware subscriptions. These financial funnels are a centralising force that gives more control to a smaller pool of stakeholders.

I notice parallels here with how cryptocurrencies failed small investors, by pricing them out of participation in a space they helped build up. LINK

Rules of Engagement:

Ethics and legal matters regarding tech engagement.

Is AI Fair In Love And War?

So I was listening to Pat Batar’s ‘Love is a Battlefield’ the other day, whilst reading through my newsfeeds. Seems lady coincidence, not to be confused with lady luck, has a pretty dark sense of humour. In relatively close proximity to one another, I came across two noteworthy articles. The first about an Ex Google-executive’s quest to put AI in warm machines . The second about how some people were upset that their Erotic Roleplay AI’s had stopped being kinky with them after an update.

All is fair in love and war, huh? Would it be too on the nose to say that the US government was probably trying to… cover its bases… with a recent declaration ? Not to be a cynic, but it does feel kind of odd that the United States Air Force is testing out AI in fighter jets . And yet, the first summit on the responsible use of AI in the military was in… the Netherlands? LINK

Disrupting Disinformation – Election Meddlers Exposed:

A lot happened on the disinformation front this past week. Two high profile court cases about section 230 are set to start, a team of high-profile disinformation agents was exposed, and TikTok’s CEO is on a PR offensive to avert a total ban of the app in the US.

Section 230 is a part of the American Communications Decency Act. It protects platforms from being held responsible for user activity. The two major court cases I’m referring to are Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v Taamneh. The former are parents of a student murdered in the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, the latter is about a 2017 ISIS attack in Istanbul. Twitter is accused of having allowed ISIS to actively promote itself on the platform.

That brings us to ‘Team Jorge’ a squad of highly active and secretive disinformation agents. They bragged about having manipulated at least 33 elections to undercover reporters. The Section 230 trials are ongoing, the TikTok narrative is highly charged and constantly shifting. Team Jorge though, is a clear case of all those nebulous accusations and hypotheticals in one neat little package. It makes it so much easier to grasp what is at stake. LINK

A Nice Cup of Serendipity:

Cool bits and bobs from around the web.

Sushi Cam LINK

Small Self Effect LINK

Cybernetic Hearts LINK

Snake Hearing LINK

Floating Cities LINK

Silly Exercise LINK

Painful Secrets LINK

Kia, where’s my update? LINK

Firefox AI LINK

Nvidia x Intel LINK

MarioGPT LINK

Stonk Struggles LINK

Pentagon Security LINK

The Deep End:

A weekly batch of longform content recommendations.

Everything You Need To Know About Heat Pumps:

A bunch of my colleagues and bosses at work are quite taken with heat pumps, I myself didn’t know a lot about them. On a whim, I decided to look into heat pumps one day, and now you can too, with much less searching! LINK

Music That Gives You The Chills:

For this particular article, be sure to also look at the embedded videos and follow the links near the bottom. They are part of a themed collection. The collection dives into the complex, fascinating way music affects our brains and emotions. I have a bunch of music lovers around me so they can consider this a gift from me to them. LINK

ChatGPT Under The Hood:

Want an extremely detailed dissection of ChatGPT’s underlying processes, including all the nitty gritty mathematical bits and bobs? So do I buddy, so do I. This is probably the next best thing on that front though. LINK

The Story Of John McAfee:

If you think non-fiction stories can’t be nearly as wild as fictional ones, you should read the story of John McAfee, the disgraced early cyber security pioneer. LINK

The Freight Train That Is Android:

You thought I was done hammering home the point about infrastructure control? Hahaha, you thought wrong! This is an old essay from all the way back in 2011. It holds up pretty well today, 12 years later. LINK

Sydney Abridged – For Those That Missed It:

For those that missed the whole Sydney thing, here’s a two-hour transcript that covers all the bases. To summarise, Sydney is the ‘secret’ name for Bing, and Bing went Shodan levels of crazy this past week. LINK

One More Thing…

I got an error message about Reddit’s ‘servers being busy’ several times today whilst trying to check some links. Real bad look ahead of the planned IPO, though I must admit that I didn’t look into it further.

I had so many other interesting sources to use that it wasn’t worth the effort to check whether it was a Reddit issue or a Tim’s connection issue. It might have just been a coincidence. Given last week’s newsletter covered the big hacks and source code theft, I had my concerns when I got these errors.

The past two newsletters were pretty long, so I wanted to tighten the belt a little this week. It was pretty funny actually. I split my paragraphs up more to improve readability. Because the paragraphs were shorter and more readable I lost track of the overall length of my items.

I also ended up falling down a pretty deep rabbit hole because it turned out one of my bosses makes some really interesting art. I ended up writing a multi-page document to try and explain to myself why I liked his workflow and motivations as much as I did.

I somehow finished the writing part of my newsletter earlier this week despite that unexpected but welcome distraction. It’s like the damn Hogwarts stairs, you think you’re going down yet end up on a higher floor instead. I’ll take it though, let it never be said that Tim is ungrateful about saving time.