Biden’s “AI Diffusion Rule” Targets Export Limits on AI GPUs #1791

Lead story for Geek New Central, the Biden administration's AI diffusion rule restricts export of GPUs crucial for AI primarily to curb China's AI advancement. The rule establishes 3 licensing tiers with China and other adversarial nations effectively barred from accessing top tier GPUs. Critics include the semi can Semiconductor Industry Association and, of course, NVIDIA. They argue the policy risk harming US competitiveness and fostering alliance with China.

A 120 day comment period leaves its fate uncertain.

Welcome to episode 1,791 coming to this Monday, January 13th. I'm your host, Todd Cochran, ready to deliver your tech news and information fix. A quick shout out to our incredible sponsor GoDaddy. Score exclusive deals and discounts at geatoncentral.comforward/godaddy. To all you fantastic listeners, you are the heartbeat of the show. If you wanna support the GNC mission, head to heatoncentral.comforward/insider and become a GNC insider.

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How is everyone doing? Welcome to the show. Got a great one lined up for you. Lots of stuff in the tech space happening. It's not as busy as one would expect. Of course, everyone's coming off CES. Matter of fact, a lot of that Kirk just got back from CES. He talked about me privately how had a great time and what was going on and then, someone I'm doing some work with and a partnership that we're, doing at Blueberry just got from CES.

So my devs have been working for that and just ongoing things that we're doing. And, it's exciting. It's, exciting times. And, I tell you, I worked the majority of the weekend. I had some things to catch up. I had to write the, the, speech, well, presentation I'm gonna be giving it at Podfest. Tomorrow afternoon, though, I get to late afternoon, I go to Detroit. I have a very, very early flight on Wednesday morning. Get into Orlando around noon, I guess.

But one thing has been interesting. My cat who, I guess, semi adopted me I adopted him. I don't know. His name is Sylvester. And I hate to say it, but Sylvester is not really too smart. But he's a loyal cat, if such a thing can even exist. And, he has been driving me absolutely crazy. Now I know some of you don't mind if your cats lick you or your dogs lick you. To me, it's just gross. It really, really is. You you wanna lick my hand or something? Fine. I'll go I'll go wash my hand

after the, you know, whatever. You've licked the salt off my hand or whatever the case may be. I I don't understand it. But this cat has this thing. About 4 o'clock in the morning, I'll be dead asleep, and then I'll hear him. Brr, purr, purr. And I swear to God, this cat wants to lick the back of my head. Just wrong. So wrong in so many levels,

and, he normally gets a swift boot off the bed, having woke me up and irritated me to begin with. But what what is it? What is it with a cat that wants to lick the back of your head? It's gross. It really is. You know, I I know. I understand. I understand. Some of you love your cats and dogs, but this this this insistent licking, bleh, it's just it's just wrong on so many levels. I guess that's the difference between dogs. Dogs dogs don't necessarily lick you. You know? It just oh, gosh.

I don't know. It just it's just weird to me. I I'm sorry. Hey. One thing, obviously, if you're in California, if you're in the Los Angeles area,

you know, this devastation has happened. You know, hearts go out to all those folks. Of course, there's been lots of natural disasters this year, and it just it just hasn't ended. Right? And, well, from 2024 into 2025. And one thing I saw, I saw a a Facebook not Facebook. I saw, a YouTube about a guy, older gentleman, about 80 years old, and he basically saved his house and his neighbor's house in the Palisades. And how did he do it? I think it was the Palisades.

It's one of those areas where everything was burning around him. He had his water hose, I know about a 150 foot of garden hose, and he just went around and sprayed anytime an ember landed on a bush or on the grass or in a in a in a tree, and he had water pressure even though the fire hydrant and he just sprayed and got that those little fires out

and saved everything. Now he's he ran around for, like, 6 hours doing this, but him, his neighbors, both of the neighbors on each side's houses survived. And then I saw people's houses that survived that they had basically had a generator, a high pressure pump, hooked to a system within their house that ran the sprinklers on top of the roof and around their property and just sprayed things down. And they they saved their houses.

And then there were some that had private fire brigades, and the news has kind of misled some of this. But what it was was, well, there was 2 kinds. 1, they hired someone to come in, paid some sort of insurance that they would come in and, basically, this fire brigade took care of this entire block and doing the same thing, running around, spraying out the little fires that would get started from embers and saved a bunch of houses.

And then there was the other one was just 4, 5 citizens that formed their own fire brigade and saved their houses as well. I live in rural America and the closest fire house from my house is 7 and a half about 7 and a half, 8 miles. And it's a volunteer fire department. In other words, when I go 911, I need a fire truck. They send out an alert. 2 or 3 people are responsible getting to the fire trucks, getting the fire trucks moving.

The rest of the volunteer firemen, they either get to the truck in time or they drive to where the fire is. And, usually, it's they will often beat the fire truck to the location, but you know there's probably gonna be about 20 minutes where you're going to be without any assistance, and that's the case in where I live 20, at least 20 minutes minimum. So you know, you know, we've always had we've had a couple of fires here. We lost a garage one time. We were not home when the garage burned.

We came home to it fully engulfed. That was when I was a kid. And then some little things here and there. And, basically, nothing is more effective in the early early minutes of a fire. Number 1, a fire extinguisher. Number 1. Number 2, I have fire blankets here in the house. And I don't know if

you know what those are. They're they're, if you are in the kitchen and you get a kitchen fire and it's gotten out of hand to a point where you can't put a lid on a pot or whatever it may be, say, you get a grease fire going, this fire blanket, I have 2 of them in a position that's away from the from the from the stove, and they rip them out of their package, and you put it over top of the fire to smooth to smuff the fire out. I have 2 of those.

And we have, hydrants, in the hydrants that, basically, will not freeze in the winter. So, basically, we have hoses available that can be hooked up to those in a in a in an instant, turned on, and have water to try to slow down whatever may be the issue. We understand this living here, we have to be self reliant for a period of time. Now I understand in California, they told these people, get out.

And if they hadn't made a plan I I I saw many YouTube videos where if the homeowner had just been home, their house would have burned down. Their house would still be standing today. Now I know there's risk depending on where you're at in the fire line and, you know, there's but this one guy, Chronological, said that house went at 6:30, that one went at 7, that one at 7:30, that one at 8 o'clock, that one went at 8:30, that went went at 9, and then mine did not go, my neighbor's house, my house.

And then 2 down, they they went later. So I understand there's issues in California. Don't get me wrong. I'm I'm not saying lightly of this, and we shouldn't have to resort to this. But I've learned so many times over so many years, you the government isn't there to to help us. We have to protect ourselves at all costs. We have to be ready for tornadoes, earthquakes. We have to be ready for fires. We have to be ready for natural disasters. We have to protect what we love and own on our own.

And, sadly, it's gotten to the point, at least in many places, where this is what we have to do now. And I heard a lot of people that are doing nothing but self insuring. And, again, what's this have to do with tech? Not a lot, but it's just been kinda on my mind here over the past couple of days with all this tragedy that has happened, and I know people that have lost their homes. I personally know some people in California that have lost their, properties.

If you got didn't get a chance, Adam Corolla, the Adam Corolla podcast, 2 episodes then he did an episode last night, which would have been Sunday night, and he did one a couple of days before that. Watch that podcast. It's on YouTube. Watch it. So him and his hotel room go to about there there is a reckoning, and I think Adam is right in in many of those regards. So, anyway, thanks for being here. Thanks for letting me

rant a little bit. If you've had loved ones or someone in California that's lost their house, or know someone, I'd I'd love to hear your thoughts. Am I wrong? Am I wrong in saying protect protect what we own? Am I wrong in saying that? And, again, I know everyone's situation's not the same, but, by golly. We've all worked hard for what we have, and, fires are are horrific.

It's bad enough when it's a fire from something that you've done, like an electrical cord or, you know, something's happened in the kitchen or in a garage or something. It's it's another thing when you have no control and there's this wall of flame coming at you. Absolutely insane insanity for sure. So, anyway, let me know what you think. [email protected]. Yeah. Let's get into tech content. The Biden administration has unveiled its AI diffusion rules, which aim to restrict the export of GPUs

that are the most coveted for AI applications. So the rule proposes 3 licensing tiers. The first tier is unrestricted, includes all domestic markets as well as 18 strategic allies. The majority countries fall into the 2nd tier, which will have caps on how much compute power they can import. The 3rd tier, including China, Russia, Iran, North Korea effectively bans US company for selling their most powerful GPUs theirs, which I think is I personally think it's a good idea.

I don't think we should be sharing this information, with those countries at this time, especially with some of the stuff I'm gonna talk about here in a few minutes. I I just don't think so. Nvidia is getting rich as as as anyone could even imagine, and so what that they can't export to China, Iran, and Russia. I don't think these, I think we have to be careful out there with with everything that, that's going on. If you're joining us live today, make sure you say hello in the comments.

I will be I'm trying to watch the, the chitchat here, so make sure you say make sure you say hello. We definitely appreciate it when when you chime in. That's the most important thing, So we thank you for, for chiming in. Also, the scammers have a new phishing trick

for iPhone users, and here's how to avoid falling victim. Apple has built several scam protection tools into iOS, one of which disables links and s s SMS messages. And if the text comes from an unknown number, however, it looks like scammers have found a way to bypass these defenses and send you a dangerous link despite Apple's

best effort. As noted by bleepingcomputer, links are re enabled if you reply to a message from an unknown source as Apple assumes the replying means you trust the sender enough to also trust the URLs they've included. So all you have to do is reply to a message. Scammers have latched on to this instructions, instructing their victims to reply to their message, then click the re enabled links.

For instance, one scam message seen by Blueping computer contained a phishing link, which had been disabled, with the following text underneath it. Please reply yes, then exit the text message, reopen the text message activation link, or copy the links as far as your browser open. Well, I my my my spider, my spider sense would be going off on this. So how to stay safe? And I get a lot of texts that are unsolicited. They don't know they don't normally come with a a link though,

which is a, hey. Hi. Do I knew? Hey. How are you doing? Oh, you're not Susie. You're not Tom. You're not John. Oh, great. What are you up to? It's yeah. We've all gotten those. Right? If you receive an unexpected message from an unknown source and see that this text contains links, do not reply to it. Doing so will make the links live. By simply ignoring your text and reporting as spam will ensure you can't fall victim to it. Very, very simple. That's why it's important that you keep your

contacts up to date. Every once in a while, I'll get an email, a text from someone saying, who are you? They'll say, hey, Todd. And I'll say, who's this? Well, this is John. Okay. John from where? And so, you know, for me, it's always, I I I don't always enter those those contact links. It's my mistake for for not doing so. So, make sure you do that. With a TikTok band looming, users are free to Chinese app Rednote. Can you I I just can't believe this.

They're they are running to the Chinese based app. Oh my god. Some say they've joined Zhengzhou, which translates to to little red book, despite the US government after banning TikTok becomes more likely. Really? And this thing is all in Chinese. Now as TikTok awaits a Supreme Court decision that could determine whether it will be banned in the United States, users are preemptively flying the app and migrating to another Chinese social media

platform. That's this is just crazy, which as of Monday, Jiangsu was the number one most downloaded app in the US App Store despite the fact that it doesn't even have an official English name. The second app on the list is Lemon 8, another social media app owned by TikTok. It's also experienced a traffic surge.

Over the weekend, thousands of people begin swarming to Jiangsu, which is known as in China as a platform for travel and lifestyle content, which normally resides behind the Great Wall of China. It's the Chinese version of Instagram, and they call themselves TikTok refugees. And they're relying on translation tools to navigate the app. Some say they're hoping to rebuild communities they had on TikTok. I I I I just can't believe it. I can't comprehend that people would even use this.

I would rather stare at a language I can't understand than to ever use a social media platform that Mark Zuckerberg owns, said one user in a video. There are countless number of similar clips in which TikTok refugees enter themselves and explain why they decided to come to Xin Zhao. Many are breaking up thousands of like and

comments. A spokesperson from Jingzhou could not immediately reach for comment. Well, maybe they're gonna block that one too. I I'm I'm just such an opportunity here for someone to come up with another app really, really is. The New York Times, excuse me, the New York law requiring Internet providers to offer cheap plans to people with low incomes will take effect on Wednesday, following a multiyear court battle in which the state defeated broadband industry lobby groups.

So now as of Wednesday, tomorrow, the state law requires Internet providers offer 15 or $20 per month services to people with low incomes. As we've written, the battle between New York ISPs, was an important test case for how states can regulate broadband providers. So New York based ISPs can comply by offering $15 broadband plans with download speeds of at least 25 megs or $20 per month service with

200 meg speeds. Wow. The price must include any recurring taxes and fees such as recurring rental for service provider equipment. So what is the what is the how much money can you make or don't make in order to get this this deal? ISPs can receive 1 month exemptions by piling paperwork by Wednesday confirming they meet the subscriber threshold. To secure longer terms, ISPs must submit detailed financial information by February 15th. So wow.

Wow. I'd be real interested to know what the earnings level cutoff is for $15.20 Internet. I'm paying here a grand total to do what I do $220 a month is my broadband bill right now. 120 to Starlink, $100 to my point to point system. Wow. A pastor, you know, a religious pastor, he, he got his church to, invest in crypto, but the pastor of Washington State Church stole 5,100,000 $5,900,000 from his parishioners, and he could serve 20 years if convicted.

Oh my god. The DOJ's the DOJ has charged, Francier Obando Pinillo, o b a n d o p I n I l l o, the former pastor of a church in Pasco, Washington State with 26 counts of fraud. According to assistant attorney attorney, he sold his SolanoFi cryptocurrencies to his parishioners, both in person and on social media from 21 to 23, promising them a woohoo! 34.9 percent return.

Now, if they'd have bought Bitcoin in 2021, they'd had more than a 34.9% return, but he claimed the idea for the cryptocurrency had come to him in a dream. But he funneled the investments into his own accounts and though of his coconspirators while showing his victims fake balances and returns via mobile investment app.

The victims were told to share the investment scheme with others, and when suspicious of foul play were raised, he offered to repair the technical systems with more money or buy out their positions by replacing them with another investor. So he defrauded

his parishioners in his church and elsewhere, $5,900,000. So when your preacher says, I got a crypto deal for you, probably a good time to leave that church. My god. Well, the Chinese intrusions into US Treasury has got extended. It's it's worse than what everyone thinks it was. The attack was declared a major incident. The Committee of Foreign Investment suffered a data breach as part of the campaign, and there was carefully chosen targets. So, again, it gets deeper.

More alleged Chinese intrusion. Its foreign investment office was hit. So, they're not good. The government of China is not good, not in the least. And, Anna, do we talk about this already about NASA considering this 1997 science fiction film the most realistic ever made? Somehow, I think we talked about this. What if your DNA dictated your future? Gattaca

isn't just a film. It's a thought provoking glimpse into the genetics ethics of genetic and engineering that remain shockingly relevant today. So this is what NASA consider this the most realistic ever made. We talk about this already? Feels like we have. I don't know. What say you? Hey. If you got comments on today's show, it's real simple. [email protected]. [email protected]. Apple users are facing a new security risk after a critical USB component was hacked.

So what's happening here is I need to turn off my ringer. Sorry about that. What's happening here is the Apple has decided it's so complex. They're not gonna fix it. So researchers uncovered a method to hack the ACE 3 USB C controller. Apple deemed attack 2 complex to present a threat. The vulnerability stems from insufficient safeguards in the firmware of the controller, which will allow a threat actor to gain low level access, then be used to emulate trusted accessories.

He notified Apple of the issue, but the company said the bug was too complex to exploit. He seems to agree with assessment. He said Apple solved attack complexity and said that they don't see it as a threat. I agree with that sentiment but wanted to at least have reported it. This is essentially a foundational research, the first steps that are needed to find other attacks on the chip.

It says it doesn't mean that security issues should completely ignore, forget about the findings that could have major implications. All of a sudden do you guys ever have this happen? All of a sudden, the bottom of my foot is just, like, itching like crazy,

and I want I just wanna scratch it. A little more Apple news. How thin will iPhone 17 Air be? Again, iPhone 17 Air. A new report may have the answer. The Apple Air iPhone 17 Air could be as slim as 5.5 millimeters according to a new report from Ming Chu Kuo. So that would be pretty thin, 5.5 millimeters. If you think about that, what is that? A quarter of an inch? What is the conversion from millimeters to inches? 5.5

millimeters. Yeah. That's probably about a quarter of an inch, I think, if I remember correctly on the on the scale. The 2025 iPad Air may get a 2 generation performance boost. So, if you got an air if you if you if you bought an iPad Air 2024 or waiting for the newer version, we have some exciting news at least for the later group, could be launched with an M4 Chip as early as this spring. So that would be a a big jump from the M2. So, that's rumor control on the iPad Air.

A false malware alert is leaving Docker Desktop to be blocked on Apple Macs. So time to upgrade your Docker Desktop, and, Docker's confirmed some versions of this Docker Desktop software are failing to start. I can't remember. What is Docker used for? Describe as a one click install application for your Mac, Linux, or Windows environments that lets you build, share, and run containerized applications and microservices. Okay. Docker Desktop will need updating to fix the problem. So version 4.37.2

promised to address the issue. So if you're a Docker user, just be aware, aware of that. Hey. I do wanna thank our our insiders, those of you that continue to support the show with your 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, or $25 donations. It's greatly appreciated. We had no no no new donations come in from the last show, but, again, we recognized a bunch of our

insiders on the last podcast. We haven't had a number of you that have been streaming the show live, though, so I do appreciate all of you that have been, that have been doing that. PESMerck,

thank you so much for your 20 stats per minute, streaming as well as Darren Schwartz for his ongoing streaming the show and providing value back to the show. So this is a value for value show. If you get value for the podcast, feel free to contribute your time, talent, or treasure in return. And, of course, you can you can play and join the podcasting 2.0 evolution by switching out to a new modern podcast app at podcastapps.com. So definitely give that a try.

Tech giants are joining forces to better support Chromium based browsers, A new collaboration effort under auspices of the Linux Foundation looks to ensure the developers access to necessary resources, and, they've called supporters of Chromium based browsers designed to ensure that the open source project with connections to Chromium get the necessary resources to be successful. I don't fully understand

this. I guess Linux users, some members of the group include Google, Microsoft, Opera, the companies behind the Chromium based browsers such as Chrome, Edge, and Opera. Currently, there's 30 different browsers based on Chromium, which are of which the most well known are Brave, DuckDuckGo, and Vivaldi. So this is a group, I guess, is joining forces to better support the the back end of the browser. Very, very cool.

VLC. How many know about VLC? VLC celebrates 6,000,000,000 downloads with new AI subtitles features. The world's most renowned video player app will be use open source AM models that can run locally on the device. So again, it's CES 2025, the nonprofit organization announced that their open source media player, VLC Media Player, crossed over 6,000,000,000 downloads. 6,000,000,000. So that's that's a number, ladies and gentlemen. That is a number.

Sonos CEO is out following disastrous app revamp that enraged customers made me abandon their products too. Users are still fuming after his last year's botched Sonos app update. So, he he's had to, he's had to resign. He's been asked to, to no longer work

there. 2024 could not have been any worse for Sonos. Faced with a mob of enraged users, Sonos repeatedly apologized and laid elaborate plans for how it would do better. But sometimes sorry isn't enough, and now Sonos CEO Patrick Spence is taking the last option open to him, resignation, and he stepped down immediately. So we'll see we'll see what happens here, but, I've lost faith in, Sano's products and services.

There's an article over at bigthink.com, and this is kind of one of for those of you that are out there that are the super science geeks. What's hotter than the hottest star in the universe? Here in our universe, stars shine brightly providing light and heat to planets moves and more, but some objects get even hotter.

So this kind of goes into the universe and looking out there at, everything that's going on and what really gets hot and talking about, essentially, you know, our sun is not as hot as some of these other ones are out there. But example, there are something that's like a G2 SCAR that's at 58 100 Kelvin, Red Dwarf at 36 100 Kelvin. Some of these are really out there and and cap out at 50,000 Kelvin. So, link will be up in the show notes. You can get a, an idea, but, yes, plenty plenty warm.

Meanwhile, a giant kidney bean is then spotted in Mars satellite image could point to signs of water and life. And NASA satellite has spotted frozen kidney beans on Mars, sand dunes trapped in place until the springtime. Photographing them can help us determine if there was ever enough water on Mars to sustain life. So, this is the the, by looking at the ground, they can kinda determine if they're actually frozen or what may be the case that's going on here. So, but that photo has been

around since 2022. I just think got used to just got through looking for it. Do you have a Samsung phone? Samsung Samsung will buy your old phone, no strings attached. So, you know, I I've never sold sold a phone back, but they want to buy your old smartphones. But unlike its usual trade in program, this newly launched Galaxy Easier program doesn't require you to buy a new phone.

Samsung is taking on the various phone recycling used device centers that to purchase your old phone saving the efforts selling it privately. Galaxy Easy Re goes on in Korea on January 14th. They're gonna be starting out with the Galaxy S20. Samsung will also buy back the 21, 22, and 23, along with the Galaxy Z Fold 3, Z Fold 4, and Galaxy Z Fold 5. So okay. Is is that here in the United States as well? How much the phone is worth depends on

the condition. It appears the Galaxy Easy Rewards system will initially provide an estimate, and it'll finalize the price once the device has been returned. I thought they said they didn't. Oh, you don't have to buy another phone but you do have to return it. So the Apple iPhone is also known for retaining its value we know that so the s24 could fetch up to $613 Wow that's impressive.

So if you're thinking about upgrading and you want to sell back your phone, I think you'll be able to do so starting on 14th, maybe. It's not completely clear if it's for the, just for Korea United States only.

On a site that we've I've never been on before, dumblittleman.com, Netflix earning insights key driver in forecast. So this has been out this article has been out for a little bit, but, apparently, Netflix stock surged by over 26% since the start of the year, continuing its upward trend. Subscriber increase a 12% increase in subscribers in just 1 quarter reaching $260,800,000 and also, they gained subscribers because of the password sharing crackdown.

Netflix was asking me about every 3 or 4 days when I was in the Philippines. Hey. Are you sure you are you?

Report warns thousands of Wall Street jobs could soon be replaced by AI. 200,000 banking roles could be at banking roles could be at risk. CIOs and CTOs predict losing 3% of their workers in the next 3 to 5 years. Some say they may see job losses equating to 5 to 10%, and, of course, banking profits would skyrocket from the reduced number of people working and supposedly increase in productivity. We will see. Time will tell.

One thing I'm gonna try this year as an experiment is I am going to get all my tax data ready, my whole numbers, and, then I'm gonna see if I can use AI to do any sorting and helping me get everything organized. I'm gonna try it. I have to be very, very careful, because we don't wanna get the numbers wrong, so I'll have my masters on set on one side, and and I'll probably have to go back and double check the math. But, it would be nice to be able to have the AI do some of the work.

I don't know if it's possible. I will see. But, again, I you know, be honest with you. I'm kind of my my accountant loves me, for one reason only. I I they have to do a lot of work on my on my taxes because I don't use QuickBooks or anything like that. I I work in spreadsheets, and, call me dumb, but it's just the way

I am. I don't have I'm sure I could probably save time, but it's better for me to sit down for about 6 hours, crank through all the data, pull all the PayPal reports, pull the stuff from my bank, pull the stuff from my credit cards, go through and look at each charge on the credit cards and, you know, I don't have that many and go through and, you know, categorize them, separate it all out so that

and I know, okay, what this is. Is this gonna be a 5 year deduction, or is this gonna be a take it all in 1 year? Get all that together and send it off to them. And then they email me about 10 times asking questions, and, it's done. But I'm gonna try this year to see if I can organize a little bit better. I don't know. It might be, a fool's game. It might be a fool's game.

The smartphone smartphone market recovers in 2024 after 2 years decline. Global smartphone sell through 4% year on year in 2024 following the weakest year in 2023. Top two brands Samsung and Apple were largely flat, but Xiaomi grew faster than the among the top 5 and ranked number 3. Oppo lost volume. Oppo is a brand that I see, in the Philippines, very, very big brand, 0ppp0. I don't think they're available here in the United States.

But, anyway, they they have a link of the companies that had advances, in this article. I have it linked up in the show notes for you. Blue Origin gave up on its New Glenn liftoff 2 hours into launch window. Video subsystems concerns blame for the scrub. So, if you're up at 60600 UTC, you didn't get to see a launch. Meanwhile, SpaceX is kinda push push push. We're expecting the 7th, Starship flight to happen today, but they're pushed to Wednesday. So, of course, I'm flying to Orlando

Wednesday. Now I should get in early enough and get to my hotel and be in a position to watch the launch if it goes down. It's gonna it's gonna take off at 4 PM CST which is 5 PM EST. So, definitely gonna have my ice peeled on, when that happens. Tesla has recalled 239,000 vehicles over rear view camera problems. So so from the Model 3 and s ranges and the 23 to 25 Model X and y ranges. So, again, be aware there's a recall definitely if you have a Tesla, check that out.

This is a big win for Coinbase. A US judge is demanding the SEC explain itself for rebuffing request for crypto rules. In an hour, 11th hour court loss for Cherry Gary Gensler's tenure, judges in a Coinbase case call all call the SEC crypto position arbitrary and caprias. Whoo. That's that's that's a heavy, heavy word.

So US Securities and Exchange Commission is now under a federal court order to offer a full explanation for why the agency refused to offer clear rules for crypto securities while at the same time punishing people. The circuit court demand comes in the final week of chair Gary Gensler's tenure likely leaving the response to his Republican successor was already expected to change the regulator's stance on digital assets,

but they must explain themselves. A 3 judge panel from the US Court of Appeals in the 3rd Circuit and a legal rebuke of the securities regulator partially started with Coinbase efforts to get the agency offer legal clarity by writing crypto regulations. Rather than force agents to make a rule, we ordered to explain its decision not to. He added a caution to the SEC. It should not give yet another poor explanation in an already long line of them.

So this is the second legal blow for the agency and the 2nd setback in a Coinbase related case in less than a week. So, this is good. The SEC does not like crypto, ladies and gentlemen. Why? They like fiat. They like fiat money. They like stuff they can track in a big, big way. US Supreme Court rebuffs made his bid to avoid advertising lawsuit. Well,

that's good. And no matter what the Facebook leader is saying, the US Supreme Court declined on money to hear a bid by Meta Platforms to avoid a multi multi $1,000,000,000 case action lawsuit by advertisers that accused the Facebook and Instagram parent company of or charging them by inflating the numbers of people their ads might reach. So, you know but a lot of people have been praising Zuckerberg here recently for, oh, we're not gonna have moderation. I don't trust him.

It's like we did bad, but now we're gonna be good. Mhmm. Mastodon matter of fact, you can find me on Mastodon at geek news at geek news dot chat. Mastodon's CEO and creator is handing control to a new nonprofit organization. Decentralized social network, Mastodon, has announced the plans to transfer its ownership to a new nonprofit entity. Ownership of Mastodon will move away from the control of CEO Eugene Rocco in contrast to the power exerted by other social media CEOs like Meta.

Simply, we're gonna transfer ownership of key Macedon ecosystems and platform components to a new nonprofit. So, we will see where this goes. And, finally, a judge is end one man's 11 year quest to recover $765,000,000 in Bitcoin by digging up a landfill. This guy in the UK is not gonna be able to do that. He cannot dig up the landfill. So in about a 100 years, there's going to be people that are gonna be out exploring, trying to find that hard drive to try to recover that Bitcoin.

The modern day the modern day treasure hunt. Don't think a hard drive will last that long, do you? I don't think so either. Alright, ladies and gentlemen. It's gonna bring me to the end of the show today. I apologize to the YouTube folks. I I hit start a little late, so I'm gonna have to reupload the finished video today. You guys missed the first 10 minutes of the show on YouTube because I forgot to hit auto start. My my, my apologies,

but, everyone else, thanks for being here. And I see mom and some other folks commented on Facebook. Thank you so much, but, I'll be back with you. Not well, there'll be no shows this week. Rest this week. No show on Thursday, but I'll be back with you next week, Monday, for a regular edition of the podcast.

No plans to go anywhere. That should we should be right on schedule here, and we'll get the March to 1800 underway, the moment I get back from Florida and, going down for Podfest and talking with podcasters over the next 2 or 3 days. Actually, starting Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I've already made arrangements. My daughter's coming in, to Orlando. I get to see my grandkids, knock on wood, Saturday night. But back here to Michigan on Sunday, weather permitting,

but, man, it's been snowing. I have barely left the house since I've gotten back. I think I've I went and got my snow tires on, did run into town for one thing. I think I've left the house, like, three times since, last Wednesday, but, that's okay. Completely chill here. Anyway, I hope you're all doing well. Again, thank you to the, insiders and, we'll get back here 8 episodes away from 1800. So, sometime in mid February, we will we will we'll push over, the threshold to get 1800 episodes in.

But, again, thanks, Ariel. We'll see you next time here on the Heaton Central Podcast. Everyone take care and be safe. Bye bye.