18:01
Google has announced that their grand project to transform search from a search engine into something more like a clown car stuffed with bots is proceeding a pace. I'll assign one of the bots to pour one out for the open web. I'm Riley Murdoch. This is TechLink and this is the new search box announced at Google IO yesterday, which will let you summon a swarm of AI agents to scour the web on your behalf just by asking a question. They're going to leave little trails of residue everywhere. Everyone's going to love it. They can continuously scan for new info you're interested in and update you later, so you never have to sully your eyes by looking at a website ever again. That's for the
common folk. You won't even have to sully your fingertips by touching a computer when Google's new smart glasses launch this fall. There will be the previously announced Project Aura glasses with a display and newly unveiled Warby Parker and Gentle Monster designed frames without a display. You'll be able to get directions, covertly snap photos of people hands-free without them knowing. And ask Gemini what you're seeing, so you will finally know what you're seeing. I've been helpless up until this point. Like for instance, I know you're there, but I can't see you. If you see a deal, you can drop it into Google's new universal cart, which can collect products from multiple websites as you visit them and let you check out all of it at once. But
would you even want that if it didn't also have Gemini builtin to track deals, flag price drops, and warn you when the GPU and the motherboard in your cart are incompatible? I don't know. That actually sounds pretty cool. But this is already a lot. Well, good thing there's even more. Google also announced a bunch of new AI models. Gemini 3.5 Flash is now powering AI mode in search. And according to Google, it's both faster and cheaper than its competitors. Then there's Omni, Google's new AI video generator. Oh, sorry. It's actually an anything generator cuz it can create anything from any input.
Starting with video though, they do have some impressive examples of Omni adding things to pre-existing videos. So, it's great that Omni is now being baked straight into YouTube shorts, which I guess is YouTube's interpretation of the commitment they made back in January to fight loweffort AI slop. Omni isn't loweffort. It's artisal Google branded slop. So, it's it's the good kind. They also announced Gemini Spark, Google's version of the notoriously insecure AI personal assistant, OpenClaw. Like similarly recently announced agentic systems from OpenAI and Anthropic, Spark will read your emails, write in your voice, shop with your money, and best of all, run in the background 24/7, constantly pretending to be you when
communicating with your friends and loved ones. A jury has dismissed Elon Musk's 2024 lawsuit against OpenAI, which argued the nonprofit betrayed its original mission by transitioning to a for-profit structure. Jurors found that Musk waited too long to file the suit and his claims were barred by the statute of limitations. However, there was certainly no limit on the amount of dirty laundry Musk could error. Testimony and documents highlighted messy departures, intense infighting, and shocking accusations from former board members that the guy the internet nicknamed Scam Altman may have been a bit dishonest. He wants to scan your
eyeballs for good reason, though. The trial even delved into the diary of OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman in which he questioned if it was morally bankrupt to transform a nonprofit whose stated mission was ensuring AI benefits all humanity into a for-profit business. Ooh, that's a toughy. Though Musk's suit has been tossed, the trials flood of testimony could do lasting reputational damage to OpenAI as it eyes a big IPO. Meanwhile, Musk says he's going to appeal the court's decision. So, this embarrassing billionaire battle will continue potentially indefinitely. Or at least until I tell you ABOUT OUR SPONSOR, WOLF BOX. In the early days of the world, before the oceans and the tides, before the mountains and the sky,
THERE WAS ONLY DUST. And so, the world was for eons until the great wolf WAS SUMMONED TO BLOW BACK THE DUST. It is said that the breath of that wolf was transformed into a legendary weapon like no other. A lightweight electric duster known as the wolf box. Legend tells of the Wolf Box BEING FORGED BY THE GIANTS of the old world with the ability to push back the dust at 87 m/s with 270 G OF PRESSURE. WHAT FORCE? WITH three adjustable levels and four interchangeable nozzles, dust cowers at the versatility of this mythic weapon. Both wireless and portable, it can go wherever the winds of fate blow you. And the removable spare battery doth doubleeth the stamina score of THINE
HOLY WOLF WARRIOR. To top it all off, a flame retardant handle in case you encounter a balro. Check out the Wolfbox MF200 at the link below and use code WB Best Gear at checkout to get an extra $10 off your purchase. Beware the dust. Okay, kids. Quick bits are ready. Get them while they're hot. Yeah. Plex is hiking the price of its lifetime membership from 250 to $750. A huge jump the company says reflects the value of its software and helps them with long-term development. The change won't affect current lifetime plan holders. So, if you want the old price, you've got until July 1st to grab it.
The announcement has not been received positively. Some critics argued that Plex is forcing users toward another subscription tier, eroding community goodwill, and charging prices that are borderline offensive. Another thing that's borderline offensive is this message from me to Plex. Hey, Plex. Nah. Intel is making a bunch of moves that have me hoping that the Reddit Intel grandma guy kept those stocks. In China, Intel's new Wildcat Lake Core Series 3 chips are showing up in value focused laptops from Asus, HP, and others, which start around $450 to $600 as a challenge to Apple's MacBook Neo. Intel's Project Firefly hopes to standardize designs, parts, and manufacturing so their partners can turn out cheaper laptops faster and at scale.
Apple has them running scared. This is good. Plus, Bloomberg reports that Apple is shopping around for US chip makers and they're in talks with Intel, which has Intel's stock seeing gains. Intel CEO Lip Boutan is probably going full John Wick. Yeah, I'm thinking I'm back. I don't know. To me, that's Ke Reeves. He's moving his head around. He's a bobblehead guy. All right. Microsoft is forcing Windows users towards pass keys, authenticator apps, and backup emails because they're moving away from SMS-based two-factor authentication. Microsoft implies that has become a scammer's playground. And I'm not taking my kid to that playground. It's got those freaking wood chips. The upside of this change is stronger security and
potentially faster signins, but it nudges people deeper into Microsoft's ecosystem and also nudges them into giving Microsoft your biometrics. Altman already took my eyeballs. You want them too? Perhaps emboldened by their fresh win over Elon Musk, OpenAI is threatening legal action against Apple, claiming that the hardware giant intentionally buried ChachiPT integration in their software so that no one would actually use it. That's why no one's using it. According to OpenAI, this is in opposition to Apple's initial promises of helping ChatGBT gain users, which is pretty rich coming from Altman, who famously lied about the number of
users his first startup, Looped, had to trick investors into buying it. Like the Bible says though, let he who is without sin cast the first subpoena. And Ros Cosmos, Russia's space agency, is experimenting with selling commercial ad space on their rockets. Sorry, Tim Curry from Red Alert 3. If space wasn't already corrupted by capitalism, it is now. So spacecraft are now carrying logos for banks, coffee chains, and other types of companies. This is part for the course, though, because we strap ads to all kinds of things we can't get a good look at. Think about F1. However, with this plan, when the aliens do eventually invade, they're going to know exactly which coffee shops and banks are their
favorites. Brand loyalty beyond the stars, and it's going to help them. And we hope you come back to see your favorites, us uh on Friday for more tech news. In the meantime, I think I'm going to go play some Command and Conquer Red Alert 3. What's your favorite Tim Curry performance? Clue. Yeah, he was the butler in the Clue movie. I grew up in the Middle East. It was the only English movie that they had. Cuz you weren't allowed to watch Rocky Horror Picture Show. Uh, no. Famously, uh, the Muslim country I grew up in didn't have Rocky Horror Picture Show on TV.
Okay. Something. There's something. There's something there. Okay. Hi.
