The next Samsung Galaxy Unpacked is coming up January 22nd, in San Jose, and we’ll see the new S25 series of smartphones at that time. Although there is lots revealed already, we are now hearing that the S25 Ultra may get the rest of the series’ rounded corner design. If you are super-stoked, and know you are ready to upgrade, androidpolice.com reports that Samsung is once again offering reservations in advance for the S25 phones. You can get $50 in Samsung credits once again for reserving and then going through with your preorder. Of course, we’ll cover the details of the freshened line on the 22nd. 

A startup called Swave, which has been spun off from Belgium’s Imec…one of the world’s foremost research facilities on nanoelectornics, is aiming to release the world’s first true 3D glasses. While there are AR and VR headsets like the Microsoft HoloLens and Apple Vision Pro, you really are only getting a 3D effect on a transparent screen. According to thenextweb.com, the Swave smark glasses have a special display that uses phase-change materials to steer light and ‘sculpt’ 3D images that you can see from all angles. The glasses are claimed to have the world’s smallest pixels, to create high-quality images without straining the eyes. That by itself would be quite a lap forward. The founders’ ultimate goal is to create applications that can pass the visual Turing test, where virtual reality is indistinguishable from real-world images. Swave is also working on Heads Up Displays for vehicles that would create holograms without the need for glasses at all. No timeline has been given as yet. 

In a move unlikely to bolster confidence in what you see on the platform, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced that content moderation and other restrictions on speech would be lifted across Facebook, Instagram and other platforms as Donald Trump returns to the White House. Stand by for more ‘alternative facts’ on Facebook. Rawstory.com notes that Zuck said in a video “More specifically, we’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with Community Notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.” Meta claims there has been too much political bias in the third party fact-checker system. 

The UK is moving to criminalize the creation of sexually explicit deepfake images and videos. TechCrunch.com reports that sharing such deepfakes is already illegal under the Online Safety Act that went live last year. Now, the Brits move on to creation of the sleazy things. Prime Minister Starmer was actually the subject of a deepfake video smear, but that one involved a shady investment scheme. Here in the US, California is going after deepfakes with a new law…although Elon musk’s X is suing to try to keep the law from going into effect. In the UK, Parliamentary Under-Secretary Alex Davies-Jones said in a statement. “This demeaning and disgusting form of chauvinism must not become normalized, and as part of our Plan for Change we are bearing down on violence against women – whatever form it takes.”

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

Google is updating its ranking systems, in an effort to limit deepfakes. Explicit deepfakes have been a particularly vexing problem for female celebrities. Mashable.com reports that the Google change will do this: When someone uses terms to seek out nonconsensual deepfakes of specific individuals, the ranking system will attempt to instead provide “high-quality, non-explicit content,” such as news articles, when it’s available. Google product manager Emma Higham wrote in a blog post that “With these changes, people can read about the impact deepfakes are having on society, rather than see pages with actual nonconsensual fake images.” The ranking update has already decreased exposure to explicit image results on deepfake searches by 70%. Additionally, Google is updating systems that handle requests for removing nonconsensual deepfakes from Search. The changes should make the request process easier.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has ruled..unanimously…that Amazon is a distributor, and that it bears responsibility for faulty products it has sold on its marketplace. According to geekwire.com, this puts Amazon on the hook for recalled products sold by third-party sellers…that amounts to over half the company’s e-commerce sales. Amazon has always claimed that they shouldn’t be held liable for defective product sold by third party merchants on amazon.com…saying that the liability falls to the seller, not the marketplace ‘facilitating’ the sale. Amazon, as you might presume, plans to appeal. 

We just wrote about several professors publishing a paper about AI lying last week…or ‘bullshitting,’ as they termed it. Now Meta is blaming its AI assistant’s so-called ‘hallucinations’ for saying incorrectly that the assassination attempt on former President Trump didn’t happen. Theverge.com says that the company termed the screw up ‘unfortunate’ in a company blog post. Meta claims that Meta AI was first programmed to not respond to questions about the attempted assassination but the company removed that restriction after people started noticing. It’s not just Meta that is caught up here: Google on Tuesday also had to refute claims that its Search autocomplete feature was censoring results about the assassination attempt. Since ChatGPT burst on the scene, the tech industry has been grappling with how to limit generative AI’s propensity for falsehoods. It’s apparently still hard to overcome what large language models are inherently designed to do: make stuff up.

Tesla has recalled over 1.8 million US cars, due to a risk of software not notifying individuals of a detached hood. Engadget.com notes that if a hood isn’t latched properly, it can blow up and block the driver’s field of view. Tesla is sending out an over the air software update that is supposed to fix the issue. The recall is for 2021 to 2024 Models 3, S, and X. It also includes Model Y vehicles from 2020 to 2024. 

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