After reporting on Nintendo’s tease of a new Switch a couple weeks ago or so, now they have announced a date. Bgr.com reports that there will be a Nintendo Direct event on April 2nd at 9am Eastern time. The company promises a close look at the new Switch 2. They didn’t share if there would be a reveal of new games for the updated platform, including the widely expected Mario Kart 9. We should learn more deets on the Switch 2 at the event…including if it will have an LCD instead of OLED screen, and maybe that all-important info about pricing and when you can actually have it in your hands.

With the new Trump administration tariffs in effect on China, the Chinese have come back with the threat of investigating Apple’s App Store practices. Of course, tariffs  imposed on China will be paid by US businesses and consumers, not China or any other foreign country. But they mean higher prices for Americans, which will mean a decrease in sales, so China has been announcing retaliatory measures. According to appleinsider.com, China is talking about reviewing Apple’s App Store fees and practices…with particular interest in the 30% commission on in-app purchases. China had previously ruled that the fee was in line with other companies’ fees. They are also looking at Cupertino’s restrictions on third-party payment services and app stores. Apple shares dropped 3% on this report. 

Reddit has put a 72 hour ban on the subreddit r/WhitePeopleTwitter after complaints from Elon Musk. Engadget.com says Reddit is applying the ban due  to “a prevalence of violent content.” Apparently what set off Musk was that users on the subreddit were discussing the identities of the individuals with ties to Musk who have reportedly played a key role in the takeover of technical systems within the federal government. In another action, Reddit also permanently banned a subreddit called r/IsElonDeadYet for breaking its rules around violent content, according to a notice posted to the community. Many Reddit users have grown increasingly frustrated with Musk, who was once a popular figure on the site. Last month, dozens of subreddits announced that they were banning links to X following Musk’s speech at President Donald Trump’s inauguration in which he made an apparent Nazi salute.

Austin, Texas Uber users will see something new when they open the app….an invitation to show their interest in a Waymo robotaxi. TechCrunch.com notes that right now, that doesn’t mean a Waymo could be picking them up…but that such a service is coming. The ‘interest list,’ is part of a partnership between Uber and Waymo to run a robotaxi service in Austin and Atlanta. The service is expected to start soon in Austin…but no firm date has been announced yet. The service will be available on a 37 square mile zone of Austin…including downtown, Hyde Park, and Montopolis. The cars are Waymo’s Jaguar I-Pace vehicles. Uber claimed that riders who take a Waymo will pay the same rate as human driven vehicles via UberX or Uber Comfort. 

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

TikTok is supposed to completely shut down in the US on Sunday, unless Bytedance sells the US portion to a US company. Now, it appears that Congress may backpedal, and throw the platform a bone. 9to5mac.com reports that Congress may quickly pass a new law giving TikTok another 270 days before the ban goes into effect. In related news, Chinese officials have joined ByteDance in denying a Bloomberg report that ByteDance was thinking of selling its US operations to X owner Elon Musk. Although the law actually only requires new downloads of the app to be blocked by app stores, TikTok has said it will shut down US operations completely by Sunday if it can’t sell or isn’t granted the extension by Congress. 

With some info shared by France law enforcement, the FBI has removed Chinese malware from some 4258 Us based computers and networks. According to arstechnica.com, they actually didn’t remove the malware…the commands they got from the French caused the malware to activate its ‘self-delete’ function. The Chinese government apparently paid the Mustang Panda group to develop a version of PlugX malware that was used to infect and steal info from PCs. It has been around since 2014. A French security company called Sekoia.io found and reported the delete commands.

LinkedIn says in today’s job market, too many people are applying for jobs they aren’t actually qualified for…and that this makes it more difficult for good candidates to stand out. Now, engadget.com says they are rolling out a new, AI powered ‘Job Match’ feature that uses the artificial intelligence to provide detailed summaries next to job listings that let users know how qualified they are for a particular role. According to LinkedIn, this goes well beyond just keyword matching that job hunters have been using. Although the feature is open to all users, Premium members will get more granular info about their job match level. LinkedIn claims that the AI will also help steer unqualified applicants away from jobs and towards other ones that it determines you are a better fit for. 

As of yesterday, Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth, said it has ‘substantially’ completed notifying affected victims of a huge data breach. TechCrunch.com reports that the breach included over 100 million users’ sensitive health data. The breach happened in a ransomware attack in February of 2024, and Change paid a ransom to the hackers. The thing is, if you do a search for the breach notice, you probably won’t find it. Change dropped in a ‘noindex’ code on its data breach notice at least as far back as November 20, 2024. The firm was unable to give a specific number of people it had actually notified. They were sued by the state of Nebraska this past December for security failings that left Nebraskans “more vulnerable to exploitation of the sensitive personal financial, health, and identifying information.”

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

As if there isn’t enough of a problem with artificial intelligence ‘hallucinations…or in plain language…lying…now we find that Google has been making Gemini contractors to rate AI responses outside their areas of expertise. Techcrunch.com reports that these people behind the proverbial curtain…sometimes called ‘prompt engineers’ and analysts, have been pushed to evaluate AI responses outside their area. Google has been using some contractors from GlobalLogic, an outsourcing firm owned by Hitachi. Until recently, they were able to ’skip’ certain prompts, and opt out of evaluating various AI-written responses to those prompts, if the prompt was way outside their domain expertise. For example, a contractor could skip a prompt that was asking a niche question about cardiology because the contractor had no scientific background. Well, as of last week, they won’t be allowed to skip prompts, even if they have no clue about the area being queried about. Contractors can now only skip prompts in two cases: if they’re “completely missing information” like the full prompt or response, or if they contain harmful content that requires special consent forms to evaluate, the new guidelines show. So far, Google hasn’t commented about this. 

It’s not a total reprieve, but now TikTok will get its day in court…in the Supreme Court…to argue why it should not be banned in the US. According to gizmodo.com, the Supremes will hear arguments on January 10th, only 9 days before the ban on TikTok is set to go into place. Most court watchers expect the Supreme Court to make a decision before the January 19th ban date. ByteDance already lost in the DC Court Of Appeals, where the Court said that the First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States, and the ban represents the government acting “solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”

Apple has dropped plans to offer a hardware subscription service for iPhones. Macrumors.com says that Cupertino had considered a service that would let users ‘subscribe’ to get a new iPhone every year…something that had been in the works since 2022. It appears that Apple has decided that such a plan is not feasible due to regulatory concerns, software bugs, and other issues. You can still buy an iPhone from them with a 12 or 24 month payment plan at zero interest, which really isn’t much different from the subscription idea.

Although there have been sightings/issues elsewhere, New Jersey has seemed to be the hub of late for freakouts over drone activity. Now, the Federal Aviation Administration has stepped in. Bloomberg.com reports that the FAA has prohibited drone flights over parts of the Garden State as public hysteria over sightings has continued. The FAA just published 22 temporary flight restrictions over critical infrastructure in the state. The agency said  it was instituting the ban “at the request of federal security partners.”

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

In his latest Power On Newsletter, Bloomburg’s Mark Gurman says that the AI feature in Apple’s iOS 18 will be ‘entirely on-device.’ Apple will tout this as giving users more privacy and speed than with AI running from powerful server farms…although the AI Model..code named Ajax…won’t really be as powerful as the ones backed by monster servers. Apple feels that with their tight software and hardware integration that this is the best way for their users…at least for now. Cupertino is doing what all the other big tech firms are…dumping billions into AI, so we may see them open up more to server based large language models before long. We’ll know more after WWDC, which starts June 10th. 

With the passage over the weekend of a bill over the weekend in the House of Representatives that…in addition to foreign aid, demanded that TikTok must be sold to owners not affiliated with the Chinese government or army, a TikTok spokesman has said  the move “would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate seven million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the US economy annually”. BBC.com reports that the company went on to say that its owner ByteDance “is not an agent of China or any other country”. ByteDance points to the many global investment firms that own 60% of it. If signed into law, the bill would give ByteDance a year to sell TikTok to non-Chines owners…or else be blocked in the US. 

As business has slowed, in part due to prospective customers tiring of Elon Musk’s antics, as well as the tepid reception then recall of Cybertrucks…Tesla has chopped two grand off the base prices of their Models S, X, and Y. Engadget.com says the price reductions were posted on X Friday night. Tesla is also cutting its referral program in all markets as of April 30th. This all follows on the heels of the company laying off over 10% of employees worldwide. It should be noted that Tesla had just grown their workforce by 10% over the last couple of years. 

It’s kind of sad to report that Post.News is calling it quits. The Twitter wannabe site was started by the former CEO of Waze, and theverge.com notes that it just never got enough traction to be viable. I was on Post from the start, and it was a real seat of the pants operation…very little staff, and really only had about a half million users….compared to the over 100 million that Meta’s Threads got right away. 

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