YouTube is going to push news from so-called ‘authoritative sources’, taking the opposite tack from Meta…which refuses to promote hard news or politics on its new Threads app…to say nothing of X’s dismissive stance towards ‘legacy media.’ YouTube also plans to spend $1.6 million to promote the creation of news content for its shortform Shorts service. The new YouTube watch page will appear when you open a video that has a newspaper icon and will highlight relevant longform videos, livestreams, podcasts, and Shorts videos beneath your currently playing content. “We believe this updated news experience will help viewers access a range of credible and diverse voices when they want to dive into a news topic,” Google’s blog post reads.

It won’t be here in the next year, but Apple is planning a higher end iMac with a 32 inch mini-LED display…something of an iMac Pro to ultimately pick up for the iMac Pro the company dropped a couple years ago. According to macrumors.com, the Mac Studio and its 27 inch display have pretty well taken up the niche the iMac Pro left when it was dropped. Noted Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says the 32 inch iMac Pro would be the same size as the 6K Apple Pro Display XDR, which they sell for a whopping $5,000! No word on how much it would cost  but it should be out in 2025.

It seems to be an example of creeping fees to me, but now X…previously Twitter…has started charging $1 a year to new users in order to post on the platform. Engadget.com says that X claims it will help them combat bots and spammers, “while balancing platform accessibility with the small fee amount.” It isn’t exactly a secret that Elon Musk has always wanted to charge for use of the platform, and has also imagined it as an ‘everything app’. Musk has long had ambitions to gain access to users’ credit card and billing information, which would further his plan to bring banking and other financial services to X. According to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, Musk’s push to sign-up subscribers was very much intertwined with his quest to build an “everything app,” and Musk grew angry when he learned Apple doesn’t share credit card details of those who sign up with their iPhones.

The so-called Five Eyes Intelligence Services…made up of the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand…have released an almost unheard of joint statement warning of China’s intellectual property theft. Reuters reports that the spy chiefs say China is using artificial intelligence for hacking and spying. From quantum technology and robotics to biotechnology and artificial intelligence, China is stealing secrets in various sectors, the officials said. “We worry about AI as an amplifier for all sorts of misconduct,” US FBI Director Christopher Wray said, accusing China of stealing more personal and corporate data than any other nation by orders of magnitude. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.