As the Meta antitrust trial brought by the Federal Trade Commission continues, gizmodo.com reports that CEO Mark Zuckerberg thought President Trump would help keep the suit from happening. Apparently, Zuck offered to settle the case for some $450 million. The FTC for its part wanted $30 billion initially…then dropped that to $18 billion and a consent decree. Zuck’s confidence was apparently a reference to the fact that the Meta CEO’s company had donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and settled a lawsuit with the president for $25 million in a move that was largely seen as a gift to Trump. Zuck was on the stand for some 7 hours Tuesday, his second day of testimony. The CEO reiterated that even now, Instagram doesn’t come very close at all to competing with TikTok. The government wants Meta to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp. 

One unique feature of Bluesky is that you can make your own custom feeds. That’s all cool, but doing so can be complicated for non-developers. Now, according to TechCrunch.com, a startup called Graze has raised cash including from a division of Salesforce called Ventures to build software tools to customize, publish, and manage Bluesky feeds. With Bluesky, you aren’t limited to their algorithm for the feed. You can create or just follow custom feeds, and even pin one to be your default feed…I haven’t created a feed myself, but do use the default sometimes, as well as ‘Popular With Friends’, ‘Mutuals,’ and my pinned feed ‘Following.’ Graze users have already build around 4,500 custom feeds. If you are into politics, that’s cool, but you can follow a range of topics like gaming, art, sports, fitness, hobbies, and more. By the way, Graze also allows feed operators to choose if they want to let the platform serve ads or now. You may not want to, but if you do, you can make some money. Right now 200 feeds built with Graze are running ads at $1 per 1,000 impressions. Graze takes a 30% cut. 

We have been hearing about Apple working on a cheaper headset…now we have a rumor that it will also be lighter, and may be called something like the ‘Vision Air.’ Macrumors.com says that the thinner, lighter design could come in a ‘Midnight Blue’ finish, too. The rumor comes from a leaker called Kosutami. This leaker has a mixed record, but did nail the Fine Woven Apple Watch bands and also called the Thunderbolt 4 cable. Back to the headset, though. It will still be mainly aluminum, but internals will be more titanium to reduce weight. It will also have a new style 12-pin Lightening connector. The 2nd gen Vision pro is expected either this fall or next spring, but not date range yet on the cheaper…and now apparently lighter Vision Air. 

If you have been on any Social media lately…especially Facebook and LinkedIn, you haven’t been able to avoid all the ‘action figures’ people have been making of themselves. Well, the cute trend has a big downside, according to thenextweb.com. Apparently, the GPU demand it is creating is unsustainable. Using AI to generate text takes some 20-30 times more energy than a traditional search…but AI generated images from written prompts uses at least double THAT amount! Energy use at data centers is expected to double over the next 5 years to 3% of total globe energy use…almost half that power is expected to come from burning fossil fuels. Then there is Microsoft, which wants to reactivate a nuclear plant on the East Coast just to power AI data centers…with enough power to light hundreds of thousands of homes. Yeah, your action figure is cute…now, take a screenshot of it and don’t do it again!

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