The lead story from Monday, June 23, DeepSeek, a Chinese AI firm, is accused by a senior US official of supporting China's military intelligence services, sharing user data with Beijing and using Southeast Asian shell companies to bypass The United States' export controls on advanced AI chips. Despite public claims of limited resources, the company reportedly accessed large volumes of restricted NVIDIA h 100 chips and appears in over 150 Chinese military procurement records.
DeepSeek did not respond to allegations while US lawmakers and regulators assess the next steps. Of course, I wanna welcome you to episode 1,829. I'm your host, Todd Cochran. Well, this is call me shocked in this in this, revelation, to be quite frank with you. I'm not surprised. Do you not surprised that, this is all backed by the Chinese military, and those of you that have used their, AI without loading it on your own have probably been, feeding right into the Chinese military.
So the company employs workarounds and, to get to get, chips through, you know, countries that don't have restrictions. Not not at all surprised. And Deep Seek has a willingly provided and will likely continue to provide Chinese military intelligence operations, access to this information. Now this effort goes above and beyond open source access to DeepSeek's AI model. Official said, speak any condition in order to speak about US Government information.
The US government's assessment of DeepSeek really goes, pretty deep. And, of course, it links to the Chinese government have not been previously reported. So this is, this is news. Now Chinese law, we know, requires companies operating in China to provide data to the government when requested. But this suggest suggestion that DeepSeek is already doing so is likely to raise privacy and other concerns for tens of millions of global users because
most people will not care. They'll just continue to feed the red communist Chinese this information. The company is also, again, referenced in more than a 150 times in procurement records for the Chinese People Liberation Army and other entities affiliated with the Chinese defense industrial base. Of course, why wouldn't they be? Our AI companies are being coming affiliated with US defense as well.
And, of course, DeepSeq has large access to large volumes of US firms and NVIDIA high in h 100 chips, said the official. Since 2022, those chips have been under US export restrictions that, but, of course, there's always a way to bypass this. And they use shell companies, not surprisingly, in Southeast Asia. I'd like to know which comp which country specifically. The official declined to say if Deep Seek had successfully evaded expert controls. Well, duh. I'm sure they have.
So, of course, Chinese foreign ministry did not respond to commentary, but, you know, Deep Seek has said two of its AI models that Silicon Valley execs, The US tech company engineers, have shown show with praise are on par with OpenAI. Well, they said they only spent 6,000,000, but we've already talked about how DeepSeek has used h 100 chips and, processed all this data themselves. Of course, it may be up as many as 50,000 so far. Now
there's no confirmation of this, just indications. Only Nvidia will know how many shipped, chips were shipped. Chips were shipped. So, apparently, Nvidia is saying, oh, they only had h 8,000 products, which were legally, obtained. But in February, Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case that domestic media have linked to the movement of Naviti advanced chips from this from the city state to DeepSeek. So it went through Singapore. So,
why not? So you import to Singapore, and then you you pack them up, and you put them on a Chinese airplane, and you send them to China. Not that's not difficult. And if you're gonna do that, then, who for sure is involved If you have a Chinese airplane come to Singapore to pick up chips, then it's probably the Chinese government. Surprise. Surprise. I say not. Everyone, Again, welcome to episode 1,829. Again, I'm your host, Todd Cochran. A shout out to our incredible sponsor at GoDaddy.
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being here. Just to let you know, Thursday, a no show on Thursday, I'm gonna be on the move. And, then, back a regular supposed schedule, next week. And, lots happening here. Staying very, very, very, very busy. I got a absolutely slam schedule, all of this week, but, no show on Thursday. So, we'll be back with you for a regular scheduled, podcast, a week from today.
Definitely appreciate you staying with the show, and also making sure you check out all of our partner shows at, at geatoncentral.com. Let's go ahead and get in a stack. Pretty interesting attack stack today. Obviously, the big the big, big news, and congratulations to, all the brothers and sisters out there in, in military land for your attack and execution in Iran.
But now The United States is supposedly bracing for a cyber attack, and, Iranian hackers are expected to intensify cyber attacks against The United States after the air strikes. If they, if they'd only do what they did with their missile attack today, I think we'll be okay, but who knows what's gonna happen with this. We know that the Israelis are already going after, Iran in a big way in cyber and have had some success in getting some of their crypto basically stolen or whatever they did.
But, the Department of Homeland Security issued national terrorism advisories bulletin on Sunday warning that the Iranian government has publicly condemned United States involvement in the conflict and that retaliation could come in several forms. They could, conduct lethal attacks and commit acts of violence on US soil, but Iranian state sponsored hackers and pro Iranian hacktivists are also likely intensifying attacks against The United States in response to
recent events. Don't you think and I'm gonna go against general convention of thinking here. And it'd probably be people will scoff at it, and I hope I'm right because, otherwise, the alternative might be, bad for people. Don't you think if you have people living here let's let's just say let's just use an example that a 100 people were here as sleeper cells. Let's just think about that. And you've now been told to carry out your mission, go ahead and attack United States infrastructure,
go after it. You're living a pretty good life here. Freedom, frame expression. You don't have to worry about anybody coming in and and, snatching you up in the middle of the night and and sending you to a a gulag. All this, you know? So you get that order. Are you gonna really do that considering the regime there is probably gonna collapse? So my prediction is I don't I I and maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. No.
I hope I'm right. If I'm right, that the threat is not as big as they say it is, but who knows? But, of course, the cyberattacks, can happen from anywhere. And we know that most of Iran's cyber operation focus on Israel already, and, and Iran has had mixed results with disruptive cyberattacks. They frequently fabricate and x-ray their effects in an effort to boost their psychological impact. Of course, they say all kinds of stuff on social media as well.
So we know that almost all countries are doing cyber cyber espionage already, so that's already a thing. So but maybe they go after individuals or whatever. I don't know. So what do you think? Do you think that, what is the bigger chance? Cyber attack or sleeper cells? What what what say you? I love to hear your your thoughts here on that, definitely in the comments. But you guys know, you know, I I spent twenty five years active duty in the navy.
And you guys know most of you know what my job was at the time. For those of you that don't, basically, some of the organizations I worked with had a motto of, in god we trust all others we monitor. And, for forty five, forty six years, Iran has been killing Americans. Cobalt Towers, all kinds of places that have, you know, 400 plus, I think, Americans have been killed by Iranians, Iranian proxies.
And, you know, this, nuclear weapon situation, I don't care if they were two weeks away, two months away, two years away. I I don't care. And if they were two years away ten years ago, I don't care. And these folks should not have a nuclear weapon. The government and zealots and because the majority of Iranian people are lovely. When I got hurt in 02/2004, the nurse that took care of me was from Iran, and when I was in Bahrain.
Lovely nurse. And, again, the Iranian people, are are just, you know, they're the pawns here. So I am hoping that this is better days for Iran ahead. We will see what happens, but, I agree with the limited strike that we did, and hopefully, it doesn't expand, any further than that. But for all of my intelligence friends that listen to the show, I know many of you, are still in the game. Good job in doing whatever you're doing.
And happy collecting and, and executing and giving information to whoever needs the information to, to protect us. So, good job out there. And I know that's will probably go contrary to many of you that listen to the show, and I understand that. That's fine. I just have a little bit different perspective of twenty five years, at least, for myself, an active duty collection against, Iran and other countries that, are not friends with us.
It was long, long, long, long, long, long overdue, and I like the way the American execution happened. And, just my personal opinion, you're not gonna be able to change that. So, anyway, let's move on. Teens and this is this is absolutely this is an absolutely insane story. Teenagers.
Seven people, including a 14 year old, have been arrested or surrendered to Danish authorities after allegedly using encrypted message apps to hire other teenagers for contract killings in what Europol calls a violence as a service operation. All those arrests are surrendered or between the age of 14 and 26. Well, how many of them were 14 to 18? That's what I wanna know.
Includes two 18 year olds as well and suspect they've been suspected of actively recruiting youngsters, commit targeted killings in Denmark and Sweden and other suspects according to law enforcement provided weapons and ammunition and safe houses for the hitmen. The arrests follow multiple invigations, attempted murders, ordered via encrypted encrypted chat services, including one, including one on May 7.
This is part of Europro's operation task force, GRIM, which aims to stop the growing use of encrypted services to coordinate contract killings across Europe, dubbed violence as a service by international police. Insane. Absolutely insane. Teenagers involved. I'm not surprised criminal activities are happening on encrypted messaging apps. You know, we'd be too stupid to think it were not. But yeah. Contract killing, simply simply insane. Gonna have a little discussion about WhatsApp
here in a little bit as well. We'll talk about that and then latest news on that. I think we talked a little bit about this on the last show. Streaming surpasses traditional TV for the first time. This is a big, big, ups you know, not a big. It's just a progressive swing
here. And, you know, what it really boils down to is that streaming has received a historic milestone surpassing the combined viewership of broadcasting cable television for the first time with, May, streaming accounted for 44.8% of total TV usage while broadcasting cable combined 44.2. So, very, very interesting. Hey. I will say one thing to you folks. I was contacted, by someone that is a let's let's call them a YouTube expert.
And they said, Todd, do you know why your channel has never, grown on YouTube? And I'm like, no. He says, you say words like death, destruction, hacking. Say a bunch of keywords that apparently YouTube doesn't like. So they they downgrade my content because of the words I use. And
I got to thinking about that. And isn't it beautiful that as a audio podcaster primarily and have a true video podcast that I can say whatever I want and not be downgraded and not be suppressed to have my message and hear what I wanna say said? Isn't that a beautiful thing to be able to talk openly and not have to make up words or do shortcuts or or say other words that have other meanings? Isn't that, fantastic?
I didn't realize that YouTubers are restricted from being able to say certain words in the content that they are, that they are that they're saying. So, news to me. Russian hacker hackers target Gmail passwords, a crackdown on international critics. So international critics of Russia and academics have received phishing emails. Victims are tricked into sharing Google app specific passwords.
So the Google threat intelligence group has shared details of this threat actor tracker as UNC sixty two ninety three, believed to be a Russian state sponsored group targeting prominent academics across the country. Vixen's reported been receiving phishing emails using spoofed at state.gov addresses in the CC field to build credibility. But instead of being hit with immediate malicious payloads, attackers are using social engineering tactics to build reports with their targets.
And Google's research has uncovered the slow paced nature attackers use to build reports for the victims, often sending personalized emails, inviting them to private conversations or meetings. I'm getting meeting invites at least three or four times a day that I have not ever booked. People know my Calendly link now, and I'm gonna have to change the link here now because things have gotten to the point where people are booking appointments who I don't even know, and assuming I'm going to accept.
In one screenshot shared by Google's threat intelligence, a prominent British researcher on Russia received a fake US department state email believed the part of the campaign. He's he was informed several of my e accounts have been targeted with sophisticated account takeover that involve person in US State Department. In the attack email, victim received a, benign PDF attachment design look like an invitation to a securely access of fake department state cloud environment.
If if this webs it's this website that only gives this attackers which Google believes could be linked to this, particular vulnerability. Now here's what I see. Let's see what happens with me now is, like, Mike, I'm part of my support team. We got an email saying, hey. Here's the last notice for a copyright violation. We're gonna take you to court. You need to take care of this, and it's they said it was our content and music that we had on our account. And we're like, we have no music on
our account. We're good. And yet this, this person thought they could trick us into clicking on the link, which was it looked like a Facebook link, but it was really a Bitly link. And, those types of, they can't get it through email, so now they're sending it into our support system. So, you know, of course, my team has been trained up, and no one's clicking on those links for sure because it basically is an attempt to take over your Facebook account. So be careful what you're clicking.
If you don't know who it's from, don't click on it. You know? If they wanna really wanna talk to you, you know, there is an e if they wanna talk to us that bad, there is a phone number and a direct email on our website, and we can confirm who they are by phone and set up a meeting. But be careful. Okay? This is a little bit of a move on vehicles. We're gonna switch topics here. Americans are buying twice as many hybrids as fully electric vehicles. Well, of course, there's no damn chargers.
As recent as 2021, g m GM all but eliminated hybrids from its future product line. But then a funny thing happened. Car shoppers balked at the high prices of electric vehicles and the challenge of charging them. So in the last few years, sales of electric vehicles have grown at a much slower rate than hybrids. Hybrids have filled the gap and are selling as much as 14% of all light vehicles sold in The United States. Hybrids.
So several automakers slowing the introduction of new electric vehicles and having a seller development of new hybrids. Some of those hybrids get 50 miles to the gallon. You never have to plug them into a charger. That to me is fantastic. If I can double or even triple what my my mile per gallon is, fantastic. The charging infrastructure in most countries as well as United States is not yet mature enough to support convenient mass adoption of battery electric vehicles.
And in some territories, never will be. So it talks about Porsche and other companies that are, you know, looking at their model lineup and deciding the mix, and hybrids continue to be a a great, great solution. SpaceX, meanwhile, launched Starlink ten twenty three following a Sunday morning scrub. They're able to do a turnaround and get it launched. So another 27 Starlink v two Minis into orbit. How many of you are not paying for YouTube? I I couldn't watch YouTube without
paying. I really could not. There's too many commercials, but YouTube is trying to block block all of you that are doing ad blockers. So over the past few months, YouTube has been trying another round of anti ad block measures. And about a percentage accounts, they're doing AB testing on them. And, and I think it's your right. If you wanna try to block ads, you should be able to do that in your browser or on your TV or however you're watching YouTube.
You should have that right your computer your rights. The battle between YouTube on one side and users wanting a non, well, let's call it doo doo experience without paying for YouTube Premium on the other is unlikely to end anytime soon. So just be aware that, they're looking for you and trying to determine if you're using some sort of software. So buyer beware. We'll see how long the cat and mouse continues. I'm sure it will continue for many, many, many more years.
Hey. Hey. I wanna thank, Darren Schwartz and, others. Let's see. I'll go down through the list here for streaming. Fifty sats a minute to the show. It's greatly appreciated. Who else? He's the latest one. That is, a huge contribution to the show. I also wanna thank, Daniel Lemix for his $10.80 donation to the show, Christian Pitrier for his $3 a month donation, Mike Dell at World Studio for his $2, Gary Ebels for his $10, and SJG Media LLC for their $10.80,
contribution. Chris, you can become a sustaining, which is $2 a month, Ohana donation at $5 a month, Warrior donation at $10 per month, a Kahuna donation at $15 per month, the Konehiki donation at $20 a month, and the Alahi Chief donation for $25 per month at geekdecentral.com forward slash insider. Use new one of those fangled podcasting apps, and you can also stream us crypto if you want to the show. Bitcoin went over a 100,000 again, so, I'm sitting on quite a bit of Satoshis
right now. So at some point, I'm gonna have to move those back into the blockchain and, and cash some of those out. But I wanna thank all of you for your ongoing support of the show. As an insider. And if you're not an insider yet, go over to geeknewcentral.com/insider to become an insider. Texas is gonna require permits for self driving cars starting in September. Of course, that, coincides with the launch of Tesla's, self driving stuff. They're they're doing their quiet launch
that happened. But after September 1, they're going to need, again, permits. So I'm sure that will cost money. If you're a WordPress user, especially a car dealer, popular WordPress theme has been hijacked by malware. So if you have the what is the name of it? A popular WordPress theme. It's called Style Mix Themes. Oh, it's from Style Mix Themes. Attackers exploit the bill oh, it's a motors theme. Excuse me. If you're using the motors theme on your WordPress site, make sure you've updated.
This'll compromise your administrator account. It's hard to believe that, templates are now being exploited for, for hacking. How many of you are, Chris, you know, when I was growing up as a kid, I had my fair share of Hot Wheels. How many of you had one of those orange tracks in the machine that make the cars come out of the you know, had a I had all that when I was a kid. I got it all secondhand, but, man, it was fantastic. I wish I had all that track and all that stuff today.
It'd probably be worth some money, but, it's all beat up. You know? As as a kid, that's what you do. Right? But there's a new Hot Wheels set for Jaws and Back to the Future, and it's gonna be available at at launch of Comic Con. The DeLorean and more commemorative items will arrive at this
year's San Diego Comic Con event. Don't know if you'll be able to buy them elsewhere, but there'll be a doctor e Brown Enterprise van, a DeLorean, and other stuff to go around with the the, the celebration, surrounding, some of the famous, movie series like Jaws and so forth. So, it would be kinda cool to have me a DeLorean, a DeLorean Hot Wheels. I don't collect Hot Wheels. The Hot Wheels I have have been beat beat up seven seven ways to Sunday, to be honest with you.
Trump's mobile draws attention. Purism 1999 Liberty phone. Purism phone made almost entirely in The US is similar to the Trump Organization promise of a phone that might someday be manufactured domestically. Keyword is might be. And they did, of course, they made headlines last week, but, you know, they don't have one yet. So we'll see
if it happens. But an independent an independent phone maker in San Francisco has been working on the closest thing to a smartphone made almost entirely United States, the $1,999 Liberty phone. It's been around since 02/2014. They're gonna have a new, handset coming out, so we'll see. We'll see if this happens. But, Purism Liberty phone, maybe the phone. We'll see. Time will tell. Hinge. Hinge, the dating app, is planning its own mobile payment system to avoid Apple store fees, bravo on them.
As part of the appearance on Dakota podcast, Hinge cofounder and CEO Justin McLoyd said the company would like to introduce an alternate payment service by the end of the year. And, of course, with giving Apple 30% or 20% or 15% of their revenue, it would just be an immediate win. Possibly Hinge using its own payment service with its iOS app is thanks, of course, the major the major recent ruling in Epic Games versus Apple that blocks Apple from taking fees on purchases made outside of the app.
And, so very, very smart for these folks to be doing this. All apps need to be doing this. Meanwhile, Apple is, put stuff online and then as soon as they get a little bit of pushback, they put it they pull it down. So Apple's taken down a new ad just one day after posting it, making presentation, why I need a Mac for college. It's called the parent presentation. Also, they had a actual 47 slide present or 80 one's what parent? An 81 slide presentation.
They're supposed to give parents 45 undeniable reasons why Mac is essential to college. A lot of money in those, students, using Macs. It's kinda funny. My development team is kinda split. The younger the developer, the more they wanna develop on Mac. The older the developer, the more they wanna develop on a PC. It's kinda curious. It really, really is. My son, who started as an intern today at Blueberry, underneath one of my developers, is gonna be
on a Windows machine. Now he's always been a Windows guy because he's he's a gamer. So I'm real proud to have my son interning at my company. It's pretty exciting, to be honest with you. And, we'll see how he does over the next eight to ten weeks. I have no day to day, I guess, for a better word, interaction. He's, all underneath my dev team's, prowess, so it's gonna be fun to see, what he comes up with and what he produces. The iPhone 17 Pro is being rumored to get a vapor chamber.
So I don't remember us talking about this before, but a vapor chamber inside an iPhone essentially makes it more from a heat standpoint, heat dissipation is, is better for something that's in a vapor chamber. So we'll see if this happens, but the iPhone 17 series could gain a vapor chamber. Time will tell. There was a leaked image of vapor chamber in and around the chipset. So, we'll see. We'll see if that happens. Does anybody else know of any chips in
a vapor chamber? Or is that something that's on laptops? Amazon has launched it's just second batch of Kuiper Internet satellites, quote, unquote, taking on Elon Musk Starlink. So they launched this on United Launch Alliance, and how many did they shoot? They put 27 Cooper satellites in orbit. So this makes a total of 50 some that they have. So, a little bit of a ways to go to compete with the with the Starlink. There's another article, believe it or not, for
talking about the hinge CEO. Says dating AI chatbots is playing with fire. Dating AI chatbots. We talked a little bit about this on the last show, but really? You know, what's the point? I understand people are using AI chatbots for therapy, and some people are have virtual girlfriends, but it just seems I I don't I just don't get it. And, and I expect dating apps be using AI. I I just, I I don't think it's helping people that much anymore.
But, anyway, interesting that talking about there's a good interview. You can read the interview notes, but, dating an AI chatbot, where does it end? Where does it end? Of course, a lot was talked about in Apple iOS 26. I'm not gonna go through all the changes because more coming out as people are getting access to the beta.
Obviously, the liquid glass stuff made a lot of, made a lot of impressions, positive and negative, but we know that there's a lot of apps that are in redesign, like photos, and they're trying to undo some of the stuff that they screwed up in photos and having tabs and that kind of stuff. So, I'll have the link up in the show notes here on what you're to expect in iOS 26 this fall. Meanwhile, scammers are calling us less, but, they're being more effective. And we see it in the emails coming
in. We see it really personalized stuff that's targeted to us. And, scam calls are down 75% since 2021, from more than 2,000,000,000 every month to roughly 500,000,000 every month. That's a massive decline, but the problem is is they're just really getting better because they spam you into they know a lot about you, and they can have a conversation and, you know, social engineer you.
Lenovo has a Chromebook that they're really proud of, and, they want people to know about Lenovo's new Chromebook having exclusive AI powers. And I'm thinking, okay. Alright. So all this all these computers are gonna have some bit of AI, but this is kinda unusual for a Chromebook to have it. And, you know, I'm sure there's a associated price, but it's called MediaTek powered Chromebook. And, it's a 14 inch OLED, generous memory of of, of 12 gigs and 16 gigs and that MediaTek processor.
And, but MediaTek usually is is a more, I guess, affordable option. But But one of the chips, specifically the Snapdragon x series, are gonna be bringing some AI power to it, of course, a great power efficiency as well. So if you're a Chromebook fan and you're looking with get one that has some LLM capability, this new Lenovo Chromebook link will be in the show notes for you to check out. Hey. As always, do not forget, you can send an email here at [email protected]
to comment on the commentary. You can, of course, catch me on x at geek news as a way to, to to connect as well. A lot of you follow me over there still. The, classic VW bus got an all electric update, and, Volkswagen autonomous ID Buzz robot is ready, and cities and companies can buy them soon. So, the ID Buzz is the first vehicle in Germany to reach SAE's international threshold for level four autonomous driving.
Measuring that car can drive itself with no need for a driver behind the wheel within designated areas. So usually, full scale cities. It comes with a full set of tools for public and private transport providers, includes everything from self driving tech to fleet management software. So, the Volks Wagon bus, again, got a full EW update and will be coming to a city near you. At the same time, 743,000 people have been impacted by the McLaren health care data breach.
Again, that's a Michigan Healthcare provider, and they're notifying all the people that their personal information was compromised in the 2024, data breach. And this was reported back, some time ago. But they know do now know the total impact, so basically every one of their customers. That's pretty much the end of it. Tesla's Robotaxi launch in Texas. Of course, we've heard about this, and, they were on the roads in Texas this past Sunday.
Of course, there is some, they've got a driver assist as well. But, apparently, there has been some, some incidents already of the robotaxi doing some things that it should not do. And, within the app, if you try to give the tax seat an, a tip, there's a little bit of, an Easter egg for you, that's making the rounds here. But, very small number of vehicles deployed and all had a human safety operator in the passenger seat. So why didn't they have a driver's seat? That's the question.
You're going down the street the wrong way. Wouldn't you want to be in the driver's seat instead of the passenger seat? That's all a little bit odd to me indeed. Amazon Amazon boss says AI will replace jobs at the tech giant, so I'm not surprised. He shared the prediction and memo to staff on Tuesday, which encouraged employees to be curious about AI. Well, not be curious. You better be all in.
And they've set out their laid set out their plans for using AI amid concerns that tech will lead to rapid jobs losses across the world. Now let me tell you something. One of my team members have experienced some things lately where, the individual is frustrated because on the topics he's presented to him, which he is a subject matter expert, the the AI is lying to him. And so hallucinations are still happening.
So if you're using AI for outputs, you have to unequivocally have some of it as a SME to be able to look at that data and make sure it's correct in references and everything. And if it is giving references, what are the references linking to? What type of content? So be careful out there. But, you know, I'm not surprised that, Amazon is saying this. They've been ahead of everyone in robots and everything else, so why would they not?
I I would suspect that, the first place it's gonna happen is in their warehouses. The robots are gonna get more sophisticated than they already are. So, time will tell, where all this leads. In an interesting Bitcoin story, Texas joins growing list of US states with a Bitcoin reserve. Texas has become the third US state to approve a Bitcoin reserve with new legislation. Only digital assets with a twenty four month average market cap of 500,000,000,000 to qualify, limit to to Bitcoin for now.
And the reserve will be managed by Texas Comptroller with advisory oversight and strict custody rules. So we will see. Becoming more widespread as a cash reserve. So I guess I get to read this today. Axios, the other day had me blocked. WhatsApp is banned from house staffer devices. The US House chief administrative officers informed congressional staffers Monday. The messaging app WhatsApp has been banned on their government devices.
The ban which centers on the vulnerability of staffers' data comes as congress taking steps to limit the use of AI it deems similarly risky. It is heavily it is it has also heavily restricted staffers' use of ChatGPT, instructing office to only use the paid version of ChatGPT, of course. And the Office of Cybersecurity deemed WhatsApp too high a risk for users due to lack of transparency in how it protects users' data. Now who owns WhatsApp? We know. Right?
So house app staff are not allowed to download or keep WhatsApp application on any house device, including a mobile desktop or web browsing version of the product. He says if you have WhatsApp application and house managed device, you will be contacted to remove it. The question is why don't they just remove it? If it's a house issued phone, it should be house controlled and forms the IT of what can and cannot be put on it. So what app is being is allowed? Is it gonna be signal?
So there lies the question. I think so. So Apple is locked in a last minute App Store negotiation to avoid to avoid European Union fines. You know that they've been hammered pretty heavily in The U EU and America in their implementation of stuff. The tech group must make concessions to comply with the digital markets act or be hit with escalating levies on Thursday.
The 3,000,000,000,000 companies in talks, people involved negotiations that Apple is expected to offer concessions on its steering provisions that stop users from accessing offers outside the App Store. Well, they want it gone. They're gonna announce some concessions to buy more time. They don't want it removed. They don't want their 30% to go away, but it's gonna happen. So we will see what happens. They basically have thumbed their noses as much as possible at all this.
And here in The United States, it's kinda turned a corner a little bit. Of course, everything is on appeal, but the conversations in the EU is a little bit different. So time will tell, where all this heads. That is for sure. Of course, I want you to take a moment to get over to geatoncentral.com. If you're not followers subscribed to the podcast, please do so already. You'll notice our GoDaddy sponsor banner on the right hand side of the
website. Be sure to click on that to go look at the GoDaddy deals. Definitely support the website. Check out all of the partner shows as well at geeknewscentral.com. I want you to make sure that you feel free to drop me an email, [email protected]. We appreciate when you do. And, again, no show on Thursday, but I'll be back with you for a full schedule next week. Now, of course, next week, let's look at the calendar. Thursday is the July third, and Friday is
the fourth. So I imagine none of you are gonna be listening in America, you're gonna be listening to this show, the fourth. But I will have an episode for you on Friday the fourth. I'm gonna deliver because the show is supposed to be recorded on Thursday the third, so that's gonna continue to be the case. So there will be an episode for you while you are barbecuing and shooting off fireworks in your, neighborhood.
Just be safe out there. But, again, I'll be back, next week for a regularly scheduled episode, but no show, this coming Thursday. Again, it's been my pleasure bringing you the podcast. Thank you for being here. We'll see you next week, everyone. Take care. We'll see you next time. Aloha. Bye bye.