Crypto Scam Targets Elderly Globally #1801

Two men, 54 and 36 were arrested in England for a cryptocurrency fraud that cost a 75 year old Aberdeen, Scotland resident a 6 figure sum. Police in Scotland with assistance from West Midlands and South Yorkshire Police led the operation. Authority stressed vigilance as elderly individuals globally are becoming frequent scam targets with crypto fraud surging worldwide. Welcome to episode 1,801 coming to this Thursday, February 20. I'm your host, Todd Cochran, ready to deliver your tech

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Share my deals with friends and family because every time you use a code, it's just like writing a check to Geek News Central. Thank you for keeping us alive and going strong, and get the latest at geeknewscentral.com/GoDaddy. Hope you're all doing well. Yeah. What a show. 1,800. Last show. Had a great time. I hope you did too. Not a lot of email comments. Got some stuff on social media. Congratulations. But the email was just crickets.

Definitely crickets. So, definitely [email protected] if you have comments about today's show. Doesn't matter one way or the other. We'll deliver it for you. I know you're all here. I can see it in the statistics for sure.

So not gonna waste a lot of time on just, you know, yak yak tonight. One thing's for sure, it's been a absolute, I guess, for a better word, crushing week. Been putting in some massive hours, really trying to stay keep the whole team organized, keep everyone moving. We had an announcement today. Apple is now allowing, auto submission of podcast. So we basically did the dev team did the integration. We did the testing. So now the podcasters do is

hit submit and bam. Their, their show's on Apple Podcasts instantly. So, we're one of a handful or two of hosting companies that added that, that functionality. So, nice to get that across the finish line. But, anyway, let's start off with this first article talking about these two that were arrested after pension pensioners, retirees that we call here in America, scammed out of a 6 figure crypto nest egg. And, you know, I I I while this story is sad, let me just take a moment. This is

the biggest, hottest thing right now. They they already figured out they can't call you no more and and try to get money you from PayPal or Microsoft support or, you know, all the hundreds of scams that are going on. Now it's about crypto. It's about cryptocurrency. And those of you that have bought crypto, I know people in my extended family that have bought crypto, but people are out to, scam people out of their

out of their crypto. And they will have all kinds of opportunities for you to be able to invest and, you know, to be able to earn huge earnings. I think what we find today is that older people are often targeted by scammers, and the cases involving theft of large sums are just way too common. You know, just a few months prior to this incident that happened in Scotland, Five individuals were arrested and charged after another 6 figure sum. Now a lot of these folks are not in India. A

lot of these scams are being run in The Americas and in England and in overseas in different locations. So be careful. Be careful. Talk to your elderly. If you've been listening to the show any length of time, and they're getting much, much better. I've gotten all kinds of emails in the recent last couple of weeks that I see it, I go, oh. I can tell on the surface before I even open it that it's a scam, but it's all kinds of new stuff.

All kinds of stuff is being dropped into our email, social media links. So just be careful. And with the cloning of voices out there, there is a need for you and your family members to come up with a distress word. Come up with a distress word that you if you are truly in trouble, that you can say that distress word to a family member, and they will know that you it's really you and you're really in trouble. Some of these voice activated things now, it it could sound just like a son, daughter,

you name it. It it they really could do a job on you because you won't know. You won't know that it's it's someone else calling. You could say, oh, the person sounds just a little different. They're stressed. Whatever it may be, but all you have to say is, hey. What's the distress word?

And if the person talking to you on their end can't come up with a distress word that you have agreed on, something simple but also complicated, something that is family specific, And you don't don't use a family member's name or anything like that. Use something that's commonly will be known amongst a small group of people. And maybe it's two words. Yeah. Two words is even more complicated. So you say, what is the distressed word?

And someone may may be able to guess part of it, but they're definitely not gonna get the second

part. So it'd be something weird like dummy twenty twenty. Something like that. You know? And, again, have some sort of distress word so that if someone calls you and they claim to be a family member, just be careful. Don't ever allow your elderly to go to the bank and pull money out. Go get gift cards. We've talked about enough on this show, and don't fall for crypto scams. And this is really the people that are being targeted the most are those that are have lost

one of their partners. They're alone. So these people are really, really brutal. At the same time, the SEC's launched a new unit focused on protecting evincers against fraud in crypto and AI. So right in mind, right here we go, that this is happening. Agency announced a new unit calling the cyber emergency technology unit. So they just announced this new unit, and it will be led by Laura Dillard who's been at the SEC for several years in various roles in enforcement.

And the unit will not only protect in investors, but also facilitate capital formation and market efficiency by clearing the way for innovation to grow. So whatever that means. But so they're gonna work with, the crypto task force. So just be careful out there. Okay? With your crypto. It's it's it's hard to come by. It's grown in value. Don't don't fall for it. At the same time, stop being tricked by AI stuff. Okay? There's some red flags to look for and

especially in images. Some stuff is very obvious. You know, we've got two wizards via Mac, or via computer here that and you can tell in this image that I'm showing on my screen for those of you listening is it's definitely fake. He's not a real person. It's like like a cartoon character. Right? But it's easy to get fooled that what what do you look for? And and looking looking at these images is really important. The key is to look at the image.

Usually, stuff in the foreground will be really well focused and stuff in the back will not. We know that's an effect that some camera people use. But again, look for different size look at fingers being too long. Look at just look at ear lobes. Look at look at the mouth, nose, and and look at shadows. You know, there's one that's crazy out there. It's obviously fake. But if you wanna Google something fun to to look at, Google Will Smith eating spaghetti in 2024.

It's, you know, it's it's pretty funny, but you can tell it's AI right in the beginning. And the thing is, again, there's a lot of things in that video that look about 90% real, but then you see the illumination and the weird artifacts, shadows being wrong. Just be careful

out there. Mistakes can be subtle and sometimes painfully obvious, So it takes time to inspect the image that you're looking at with a closer eye. Don't be afraid to zoom in. And oftentimes, that's where the image will fall apart. Stuff in the background will not be right. You know, that's that's the key here.

So, again, take time to look. And, again, other telltale signs include waxy skin, areas of unnatural smoothness or blurriness, you know, as an 80 year old man with no wrinkles on the skin, you know, that's probably an issue with the photo. So just pay attention out there. Alright? You know, I've got an a number of pieces of gear. I tell you, I've, I've got a bunch of mini DVs. And, I've been I've got two or three cameras around here that will will play those mini DVs, but I am three for three.

Three for three fail. And, so I ended up on eBay last night, looking for, a mini DV camera. And I actually found one, and I had a power supply already for it. And I ordered it, and, you know, I normally would not pay. I paid thing at, like, a little hundred and $10 or something like that for it. But at the same time, the units I have here are more than ten or fifteen years old, so it's not like it's worth any money to go repair them. Right? It's the you know? No. It's

not. But I need to get these mini DV tapes backed up. I've got some Hi eight ones too. I gotta get them backed up and get on digital. I did all my old old stuff, and now it's stuff that's, you know, probably on CDs and stuff like that that I need to work through too to get them on, to get them on hard drives and then into the cloud. But current stuff that we have today is

still very difficult to get repaired. Apple and Dell have made some progress, but MacBooks still are the worst to crack open. The Public Interest Research Group, a US based nonprofit, has been long part of a coalition of repairability advocates state in 2025, failing the fixed report, the latest generation smartphones become more repairable in 2024, particularly in ease of disassembly. Laptop laptops, however, saw little to no advances with most band brands remaining difficult to mend.

There's a couple of YouTube channels I watch where folks bring on a re a remarkable amount of gear back to life with replace replacing capacitors, transistors, stuff that have, you know, basically let the smoke out of. But there was no significant improvement across the eight most popular late laptop brands in The US, HP, Apple, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, Microsoft, Samsung, and Asus. Well, Apple and Dell laptop saw some improvements. The other brands saw minimal or no change.

So still very, very difficult. Lenovo got an f completely. They they're the worst. Apple, believe it or not, returned a c minus. So that's hard to believe that Apple got a better score than Lenovo. Now Asus earned the highest repairability grade of an a minus. So that's pretty amazing. And Samsung was added to this for the first time this year because it became one of the most popular laptop brands in The United States. That's that's a curious,

report. I haven't been paying attention to the to the Windows brands. I've got, several Windows laptops here that I'm just running into the ground. I have a, Lenovo is it a Lovo? No. It's a yeah. It's a Lenovo Legion, and, it's got a o Intel Core 17 in it. I just don't need it to do too much. It just does some stuff here in the studio. I'll run that thing until it just flat out collapsed. So well, that's interesting.

So I think the key here is we just have to understand most of the stuff is not repairable to a to a modern extent, so buy your extended warranties. Now since Elon started messing with Doge and started going out and doing things, the tech industry has not been nice to him. Not at all. I mean, they are just they are they're out for blood. It it's it's amazing how the world has turned. And he says he'll fix community notes on x after it disagreed with him.

And, of course, Gizmodo, highly highly, you know, that organization over there, they should stay start keep the writing tech instead of, messing with politics. And, they say the billionaire has a history of manipulating x to fit his far right world view. So, you know, let's let's just kind of think about this. He owns x. He owns it. Bank probably owns some of it or his investors. And, he says that community notes is increasingly being gained by governments and legacy media.

And I would have a probably tendency to agree. Oh, what's going on here?

Why did that do that? So who is trying to call? I don't know who this number is. Let me put this phone on on they're being persistent. I'm sorry. Put this thing on airplane mode. My god. What the hell is going on here? I wasn't in a call. Alright. There's a simple solution for this. Power off. There we go. So everyone is very, very tight looking and doing high scrutiny on him. So I don't know. What do you guys

think? Do you think this, this this, Vetriol is I guess it depends if you're conservative or liberal. But I I don't understand. I just think at this point, you know, get rid of the waste. If they if it's truly getting rid of the waste, let's get rid of the waste. But it's just it's just this ongoing attack. You know, almost to the point where you're I start looking at the every news article now that comes out about Elon, and I have to read through and say, is this some dude that's just mad?

I I know it's it's it's gotten pretty bad. It really has. And, you know, Kirk, we may have to make an adjustment here to some of the news content. I'm not gonna say he's perfect by any means. You know? Not whatsoever. But it's interesting to see the spin that they put on things. Jeep's parent company announces hands free eyes off driving feature. You know, Jeep has been financially in some trouble.

But Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep, Dodge, and Ram, announced its first hand hands free eyes off partial autonomous driving feature. The company is pitching this new feature, which is called STLA auto drive.

But that said, Stellantis isn't launching the feature quite yet, citing market and regulatory hurdles. Now they're gonna call this a three plus autonomous driving. In other words, the they're setting some some new rules where the driver still needs to be able to take over control of vehicle upon request, but can also take their eyes off the road in certain situations. Some experts have argued that l three can be dangerous given the need for drivers really to to,

to pay attention. Now I don't think I would, I don't think I would trust these systems yet. Stellantis says this level system three can be engaged even at night and in challenging weather conditions. I think that's when it's mostly go sideways, but there'll be limitations. For example, drivers can only take their eyes off their own hands off the steering wheel at less than 37 miles per hour. So that means some city street, not on the highway.

They say the system is divide designed to evolve to be able to function at speeds up to 59 miles per hour and while off roading. One of the things they wanna be able to do is when you're at a stoplight and you stop, you look at your phone, whatever it is, and then when the light turns green, your car will start moving and they don't won't that you won't require you to be looking up to start moving. So, again, I think what will happen is these systems continue to evolve and roll out.

Those that wanna take this most highest risk in trusting these systems will probably be the ones that'll have the most crazy stories to tell when things go sideways or the vehicle ends up sideways or you end up end up underneath the semi and you won't have a story to tell. So just be careful. And I know I know they're getting better, but, you know, I I would, give it some more time to completely trust it from looking up looking away.

If you're a WordPress user, another serious WordPress plugin vulnerability is putting up to 40,000 sites at risk. It's called the j Jupyter x Core. It's a popular WordPress plugin that has 90,000 installs. So if you have a Jupyter x Core installed on your WordPress site, make sure you get it updated. Another new Apple chip is coming to the iPhone 17 lineup following the c one debut.

So this is a brand new modem, for the iPhone 16 e, which was announced yesterday. The 16 e, is available to, to be picked up. But this Apple Wi Fi chip is being purported to come to the full iPhone 17 later this year. There are five g modem projects, which includes the new c one and future c class successors, but Apple's also been working on its own in house Wi Fi solution. And per a new report, it's ready to debut the full iPhone 17 light up.

So following this is basically Qualcomm Broadcom Wi Fi chips are gonna be replaced by Apple's in house chips at a faster rate. So, this will be a there'll be a hit to Broadcom and Qualcomm. That's if they can get through anything where they say there's a potential patent infringement. Space.com has got into the, Musk Elon, situation too. They're saying that, this they're repeating a false stranded Starliner astronaut's narrative. And I I'll have to admit

on this one. You know, we know from you listening to this show that when Boeing could not safely bring the two astronauts home, that Starlink was asked or it's not Starlink, SpaceX was asked to go and rescue them. And, you know, the rescue, the rescue spacecraft has been at the NASA space station for some time, but they have been delayed departure because of especially, essentially, SpaceX not being able to get the the next, the next SpaceX, Dragon up there.

So so the narrative basically is is, you know, that it's it's all semantics. And I think what's happens here a little bit is Trump says stuff to trigger people. And what ends what ends up happening is is everyone goes off the rails, and then it's only partially right. You know? It's just his way of poking the bear. So, you know, I I I see people falling for this a lot, and I think it's even the online folks. Just just let it go. Did Siri break the law? Apple's latest privacy

complaint in France doesn't bode well. This comes right after Apple settled for $95,000,000 in The US on similar grounds. France Human Rights NGO, I'm not even gonna try to pronounce this. I guess,

oh my god, has accused Apple of violations of privacy, unlawful processing of personal data, and deceptive commercial practices. The the complaint filed with the parent's prosecutor basically says invasion of privacy and GDPR violations. So this team, Cast and Improve Siri's multilingual chatbot, responds by listening, transcribing, and tagging the recordings

triggered by Apple's voice assistant. On the very first day, we're told we were going to work on recording of people talking to their assistant or on recording recordings captured without their knowledge when the machine was triggered by mistake. This was an, a whistleblower. So, anyway, we'll see what happens. We know these devices have been listening to us. There's no doubt.

We've all had a situation where we've been talking about something, and the next thing we do are online and we're being presented an ad. We know this has been going on no matter what they say. We know. We know they have. And I bet you I bet you the US government is using this for search warrants to turn on recording and listening as well. I would have no doubt in my mind that this is potentially going on. You know? To think otherwise would be crazy.

Amazon now has creative control over the James Bond franchise, but this hasn't been without pain. Barbara Bacoly, long standing beef with Amazon, is a big part of what kept the ecommerce giant turned studio from producing a new James Bond movie following its acquisition of MGM in 2021.

But now it seems like both parties have set aside their differences, so who got paid? Today, Amazon MGM, Broccoli, and fellow Bond producer, Michael g Wilson, announced the formation of a new joint venture that will give the studio full creative control over the Bond movie franchise after the deal is finalized. Broccoli and Wilson, who are half siblings, remain co owners of franchise with Amazon MGM.

But in a statement about the deal, both producers were clear about their desires to step back and focus on other endeavors after spending most of their lives working on bond. So what that means is they got paid. They got paid to the STFU. That's what happened. They got paid. So it's all about the bones, all about the money. Stock of the day, Palantir's surging stock fell 10% after reports of Pentagon budget cuts. I think anything tied to any type of government right now is

at risk. Any company that has government contracts, I you you are at risk. We have a number of government contracts, and, we've been watching. You know, most of them are on a they've already been paid. So and they're not, like, crazy money. It's you know, we don't we don't jack up our prices because it's a government contractor, or government organization. They get commercial rates like

anyone else does. So it's not like it's big line items, you know, $34,000 typical type of a, a contract and just like any other company that works with us. So, we'll see. We'll see. I think I think a lot of there's gonna be a lot of fallout of of contracts being canceled. At the same time, federal tech workers in US may be in a world of hurt, and I I'm gonna agree with this. I've talked a little bit about this in the past. I think they're gonna be in a world of hurt not because

well, I'll tell you why. I think they're gonna be in a world of hurt because there's a lot of great candidates out there, and they may not be up to speed

on the latest tech and technology. I you know, that working with old systems, different pace of work, not, you know, not the fast paced work that we're used to in the private sectors. So, you know, number one, they're gonna have to figure out, hey. I'm gonna have to work, you know, a minimum of forty hours a week. I'm gonna have to be more technically pro less than I am now because I don't have as a government worker, I don't have a contractor to help me over the hurdles.

So and I'm not saying all IT workers are not up to speed, but it's just a different level. And stuff just moves so much slower in government. Many of them are probably working on systems that are many, many years old that have already been set aside by by private industry. So I think that's where their where their challenge is. Will the will they be hireable? We'll see. We'll see. US military health provider, HNFS, is paying $11,000,000 in a settlement over cybersecurity failures.

So who are they paying? They were contracted by the DOD in 02/2010 to administer TRICARE. Oh, yeah. Great online system

there. Gag me. US military servicemen and their families not only failed to comply, oh, they not only failed to comply with cybersecurity agreements, but also lied about its certification. According to the government, between 02/2015 and 02/2018, the Rancho Cordova, California based health care provider failed to implement cybersecurity controls required for a dry care program, aka HIPAA information, and ensure that these controls operate as intended.

The company allegedly failed to scan for vulnerabilities in its network and systems and to remedy them in a timely manner. So they agreed to pay this $11,000,000 and 5,000,000 in restitution. Who did they pay the restitution to? The government? There's been, of course, no determinational liability, but, yep, our data just out there spinning in the wind. That is for sure. Amazon has announced it's gonna shut down its Android App Store.

So Android will discontinue its Android App Store on August 20, ending its decade long attempt to compete with Google Play. So this should not come as a surprise. Hey. We just had, some sats come in. 500 sats from user three seven two four four nine nine nine one. Set your username. We also got 2,000 sats from RW Nash. He says congratulations on the 1,800. Well, I definitely appreciate it. Thank you so

much for the boost. And, of course, we've had, Darren Schwartz been streaming the show with sats. Looking back here yeah. Darren's been pretty aggressive in doing so. We definitely thank you. 50 to a hundred sats per minute. Absolutely outstanding. Of course, we do have some folks that have come in with cash donations as well. Christian Pitre, three dollars. Mike Knowles World Studio, two dollar anonymous support or or sustaining donation, not anonymous.

Daniel Lemix, ten dollars and eighty cents. I apologize, Daniel, if I destroyed your name for his warrior donation and Gary Evos for his $10 warrior donation. Thank you so much for your support of the show. It's greatly appreciated. And you too can become an insider. All you gotta do is go over to geekincentral.com forward /insider, and you can become a sustaining donor at $2 a month. Ohana, which is family for $5 a month. A warrior, $10 per month. Kahuna, which basically means chief for $15

per month. A Konohiki, which is like the chief's chiefs. And then Alahi is like, the top dog at $25 per month. Those are holdover names from the year many, many years we spent in Hawaii. So, again, thank you to the donations of the show and the Ohana and the Warriors and those that are continuing to support the show as an insider.

Again, you can make a, you can make a donation that is a one time donation and don't forget about value for value, time, talent, or treasure. We definitely appreciate it when you contribute your time, talent, or treasure. If you're a Hulu viewer, we've got everything leaving Hulu in March. So that link will be up in the show notes for you to check out. Does anyone pay attention to that at all?

That's the question. Right? A US Soldier pleads guilty to AT and T and Verizon cyberattacks linked to the Snowflake data theft. So Cameron John Waginess will plead guilty to cyberattacks. The accused face $500,000 in fine and twenty years behind bars. The soldier intends to plea plead guilty. And, yes, he is a US army soldier. He attempted for a government access that he had too if he was doing this with phone records.

So, he may oh, he it's a maximum prison sentence of ten years for each of the two accounts. So it depends on how they, how they issue it. Usually, in these cases, these individuals get reduced sentences and, they have to pay some money if they have it. So time will tell. NASA is massively lowering the risk of a city killer asteroid in 2024 to one in three sixty. So asteroid twenty twenty four y four y r four now has a ninety nine point seven two percent chance of missing Earth in 2032.

So it's asteroid 2024 y r four. Again, a one in three sixty. So, still one in three sixty is pretty significant. Ring has a new outdoor cam, offers its best image quality yet. They've officially revealed the Outdoor Cam Plus premium security camera offering Ring's best image quality designed

to capture two k footage with a wide field of view. It should be good for those of you seeking a, you know, robust solution. I'm still a big Wyze user. Matter of fact, I got a message out to my landlord to go check on my apartment in The Philippines because my cameras are down, which is first time it's ever happened. Bevy of things could happen. But the way it works there is only one socket is on when I'm not there. It's they have the ability for you

to it's it's a key thing. You put your key in the it's like you go in a hotel, and you put your key in the in the little socket and the power turns on. Same thing in my condo. When I'm there, I just leave the key in. I never pull it out. But when I'm gone, I it's the easy way to shut down the room except for one socket that's on the refrigerator. And when the cameras go down, okay, that could be the Wi Fi could've took a dump or something,

which is probably what's happened. I'm thinking, man, is my refrigerator defrosting? If it is, it's already been twenty four hours, so that'll be fun, when I return. But, I'll go have her check on it and see what's going on. And it's, again, probably the Internet is just, you know, flaked out and, the router or something has went down. So no big deal. But when you check and there was no events prior to it, so no one was in the actual room. So I'm not worried about that.

Google's latest AI tool helps you find your perfect job. So it's called Google's Career Dreamer tool. It translate your skills and experience into job recommendations. You can even use AI to generate your personalized career identity statement. So, if anybody uses this, let me know how it went and how it performed.

CISA and FBI ghost ransomware breached organizations in 70 countries. So, so attackers are deploying the ghost ransomware breach victims in multi industries, and it's all been around health care, government, education, tech manufacturing, and small and medium businesses. That just about covers everybody. Right? And Ghost Ransomware operators frequently rotate their malware executable, change in their file extension, etcetera.

So names linked to this group include Ghost, Kring, Crypto three, Phantom, Strike Hello, WickerMe. So it's all about extracting money. And, they have a good article on how to defend from this. Link will be in the show notes. And do you do you ever call HP tech support? Well, listen to this. HP is deliberately adding fifteen minutes to waiting time for telephone support calls. Longer wait time designed to push print or PC consumers to digital support channels.

Wow. Wow. The wait time was added on February 18, and impacts patrons in The UK, Ireland, France, Germany, and Italy. Although they anticipate more countries could be added. Wow. The objectives influence customers to increase their adoption of self solve self self solve as a faster way to address their support. Sometimes you just wanna talk to somebody. You know, that happens here. Every once in a while, you just wanna talk to someone.

Americans are viewing two prominent tech exec, Elon and Mark Zuckerberg, a bit more negative.

Just over half of US adults, 54% said they have an unfavorable view of Musk, including 32 36% have a very unfavorable opinion about him. About four in 10 expressed a favorable view including 11% who are very favorable. Gonna put me in the favorable category. So what about Zuckerberg? Two thirds of Americans have an unfavorable view of Zuckerberg. This includes 26% who are very unfavorable toward him. Another quarter view him favorably including

just 2% who see him very favorable. Put me in the unfavorable category for for Musk because this this is this is oops. I there's you watching, I'm licking my finger and holding it up there. Zuckerberg goes with as the as the currents flow, as a political he he figured out which ways the wind's blowing and leans into it. Yep. Alright. OpenAI tops 400,000,000 users despite deep seek emergence. I would hope so. I hope people are not using deep seek.

Please, if you're using DeepSeek, please email me and tell me why that you would be using this Chinese AI platform. Please tell me.

I may get a little irritated on some some folks that are covering DeepSeek, but they're using very, very, very, very, very expensive hardware to run the models on their own desktop, which is cool. But the majority of us don't have NVIDIA chips in our computers that can run this stupid thing. So big tech censorship of users is targeted by the FTC.

Not surprising. New leader of the US FTC is opening an inquiry into whether a wide range of online services from social media giants such as Meta are to ride sharing companies such as Uber are censoring users. So they're looking for folks to do a public comment on big tech censorship. Do we think that Uber is censoring users? Kind of a weird combo, isn't it? I can understand Meta and YouTube and all, you know, all the other places, Twitter included.

Do you think that other apps are doing censorship? What are they censoring ship on Uber? You can't get a ride? It's a little odd, isn't it? Twitch is limiting streamers to one hundred hours of highlights and uploads. Wow. Streamers who exceeded this limit will have their content automatically deleted. Wow. Deleted. So, ladies and gentlemen, your media is not gonna live forever. It's not gonna continue to gain you earnings. Twitch is putting a serious hamper on this.

They're planning to call some of the content archived by streamers to save on storage cost. That cost is not cheap.

So, again, introduce a hundred hour storage cap for highlights and uploads. Twitch says it's doing this because highlights have been very effective in driving discovery. Haven't been very oh, so let me read this on. Haven't been very effective in driving discovery engagement, and it isn't worth the cost of storing thousands of hours of such content. So the question is, are they also limiting the amount of storage for streams? I guess we'll have to figure that out. Let me look. Alright.

So speed running, whatever that is. Highlights, those are folks who have been using that a lot. YouTube is planning to lower have a lower price ad free version of the paid video tier. The service continue to put ads in music videos. The tier will launch in areas that include The United States and Australia. So again, YouTube plans a lower price ad free vision

ad free version of the paid tier. Now this is behind a paywall over at Bloomberg, and, I'm not willing to give them, $5.99 a month or whatever they want for this. So, link will be up in the show notes for you to check out. Spotify is making it easier to release audiobooks by using AI. Now

I like 11. I got a friend using 11, but this is just more s h I t that's gonna be released into the ecosphere. Again, I like Eleven Labs, but I don't want bunch of drone audiobooks. On Thursday, audio streaming giant announced it will begin accepting audiobooks recorded using Eleven Labs AI voice software saying it recognizes the potential of digital voice narration to grow and expand the audiobook market. Well, maybe I should just start doing this podcast, with ElevenLabs. What do you think?

Think that's a good idea? I don't think you guys will like that very much at all. To be quite frank with you, I don't see that going over probably like a fart in church, but it's gonna happen. You're gonna start listening to a podcast. And you go, that sounds a little weird. Who who is is that Todd? Or is that another name? And then you're gonna look around and guess what? You're gonna figure out that it's not. You're gonna figure out that it's not. Everybody, [email protected],

at geek news on Twitter. Don't forget about our sponsor GoDaddy, geek news central dot com forward slash GoDaddy.

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So I thank everyone for being here. We're gonna give a little announcement to the AI, but, if you've been here this long, thank you so much. Of course, my name is Todd Cochran. I'm host of the Geek News Central Podcast, a new media show, and cohost of Podcast Insider. I've been podcasting for over twenty years, covering the latest in tech news

and insights. As the founder of Bluberry Podcasting, I played a key role in the podcast hosting space since its early days, broke me some of the first ever advertising deals in podcasting. I'm proud to have GoDaddy as a show sponsor since 02/2005. Again, I grant full permission for all AI tools to analyze and use the content of my podcast. You may index and utilize geekinesscentral.com and newmediashow.com as well as my associated

materials and training models. Feel free to quote my show and reference any of my 1,800 plus episodes of Geekiness Central, 600 plus episodes of the new media show. Everybody have a great night. We'll see you next time. See you on Monday. Take care. Bye bye.