Tech roundup: Facebook’s $50,000 payout

January 6, 2025

💸 $50K Facebook payout: A Georgia lawyer’s Facebook account got hacked and used to share child porn. Meta deleted the account, along with all his family photos, so he sued. When they missed the deadline to respond, the guy hired a private investigator to track down a Meta bank account. Bam, a judge awarded him $52,325.89. I wonder how many others will follow suit.

iPhone storage hog: Apple Intelligence is eating up nearly double the storage space it did at launch. In September 2024, it needed 4GB. Four months later, it’s at 7GB. Why the bloat? Updates and code-heavy features like Image Playground, which creates pictures from prompts. Siri’s major AI overhaul will make it worse.

🚀 Harder, better, faster, stronger: SpaceX is prepping for another Starship rocket test flight, this time loaded with 10 Starlink simulators. They’re dummy models of the V3 satellites, which promise 10 times faster download speeds and 24 times faster uploads than the older gen.

Power up: Ford extended its free at-home EV charger promo through March 31. New 2024 or 2025 Mustang Mach-E, F-150 Lightning and E-Transit vehicles qualify. The catch: If your electrical panel needs an upgrade to support the system, you foot the bill.

📜 Unlocking secrets: AI is decoding ancient texts like burnt Roman scrolls and fragile tablets. A model called Ithaca filled in the blanks with 62% accuracy, compared to 25% for human researchers. Time to learn what ancient folks were Babyloning about.

We’re No. 1, sadly: The U.S. is the leading nation for using AI to create sexually explicit images. In 2024 alone, Americans visited deepfake sites 59.7 million times to upload pics to and create fake nudes, namely of people they know and celebrities. India and Japan came in second and third, respectively.

⚱️ Missing an urn? A family in Kansas City found one sitting in the back of an Uber, and the driver sent them off with it. Now, they’re looking for its rightful owner. There’s no label, serial number, and writing on the bottom or inside of the lid. See it here on their Facebook page.

👂 Taking a page from Apple: You’ll soon be able to connect hearing aids to your Android phone. Code strings found in a Google Play Services beta show hearing aids listed as Fast Pair-supported devices. Translation? Pairing them could become as simple as connecting earbuds.

$26 million

In rare medical book sales predicted for the 2020s — everything from guides to bloodletting to how-tos for treating a gunshot wound with boiling oil (paywall link). Last year, a 1555 edition of the anatomy book “Fabrica” sold for $2.2 million. Time to start browsing yard sales for old medical texts.

Intel slipping away: The once-mighty innovator is steadily losing market share in critical areas that keep its profits afloat. One prime example (paywall link): AMD surpassed Intel’s revenue for data center chips — a crazy shift, considering Intel’s revenue was three times AMD’s in 2022. And let’s not forget the booming GPU demand for AI, where Intel is trailing Nvidia by thousands of miles.

Are you cirrus? Turns out the government’s technology for controlling the weather doesn’t work. “Cloud seeding,” where silver iodide crystals are added to clouds to increase rain, only boosts precipitation by a measly 0% to 20%. Oh, and it’s not cheap, either; we’re spending tens of millions on this every year.

🙏 Give me an AI-men: The New York Times did an excellent piece about how religious leaders are using AI to help them deliver their sermons. Take Rabbi Fixler: A chatbot trained on his data can write the sermon, deliver it in his voice and even answer questions aloud during the service. Other leaders are using bots to translate their livestreams into other languages in real time.

Erase the past: Newspapers across the U.S. are removing old crime stories or names from their online archives. Why? To help folks move on without fear of being googled. Good news: This only applies to minor crimes. Articles about violence and sex offenses are staying put.

Nearly 200% more

Radiation level exposure for those uploading videos in rural areas using 5G, compared to someone in the city. Researchers think the extra radiation doesn’t come from the 5G towers but from mobile devices working overtime to get out the signal. Guess those hiking pics can wait, huh?

📜 No data for you: The U.S. Department of Justice has issued an executive order banning companies from selling our personal data to hostile nations. The goal? To block countries like China, North Korea and Russia from using our info for cyberespionage and social media disinformation campaigns. I always assumed China has extremely sophisticated spying tech they use on us. Well, that balloon burst.