1. Podcasts
  2. Daily Tech News Show
  3. Do You Want the Right to Mod Your TV? - DTNS 5273
Daily Tech News Show

20 May 2026 · 34m · 13 chapters

Episode artwork

Do You Want the Right to Mod Your TV? - DTNS 5273

In short

DTNS episode focuses on a legal fight over whether owners can legally modify Linux-based TV operating systems, especially Vizio. The Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) has sued Vizio for not fully releasing required GPL/LGPL source code in executable form; trial is set for Aug 10 in California.

Key claims

GPLv2/LGPLv2 require complete source code (including build/install scripts) for executable works, but Vizio argues liability and refused full buildable releases. The judge already ruled Vizio needn’t guarantee modified TVs will work, and SFC says DRM keys aren’t required.

Notable examples

potential mods include adding accessibility tools, limiting ads, and disabling automatic content recognition. Broader implication: if SFC wins, precedent could affect other Linux TV OSes (LG WebOS, Samsung Tizen, Roku OS).

Guests

no named guests; hosts are Tom Merritt and Sarah Lane.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes.

Chapters

2:36

The Case for Modding TVs

Explore the eight-year legal battle for Vizio to release its TV source code and the implications for users.

“Let's start with what you need to know with the big story.”
6:42

Impacts on Other Brands and Open Source

Discuss the potential consequences for other brands and the future of TV operating systems if Vizio loses the case.

“That's not part of the open source stuff.”
11:15

Future of TV Modding Rights

Consider the broader implications of modding rights and user control over digital devices.

“you need to make that source code available as well.”
14:00

Introduction to Young People's Challenges

Explore the challenges faced by today's youth balancing work and education.

“They're working, parenting, leading, sometimes all at once.”
16:38

Stability AI's Music Generation Models

Discuss the implications of Stability AI's new audio generation capabilities.

“Stability AI, which makes stable diffusion, has released Stability Audio 3.0, a new family of models that can generate music that runs for six minutes and even longer.”
19:34

Impact of AI on Music Creation

Examine the ethical and economic changes AI brings to music industry.

“So you're going to have less legal pushback, at least from corporations themselves.”
22:24

Google's G Suite Account Controversy

Explore the controversy surrounding Google's legacy G Suite accounts.

“Google's legacy free domain name accounts are stirring up controversy once again.”
25:55

Discord's End-to-End Encryption Update

Learn about Discord's new encryption for voice and video messages.

“And I've transferred that over to Google as well from my old domain registrar.”
28:00

Discord's Encryption Decision

Learn about Discord's proactive stance on end-to-end encryption.

“People might say, all right, isn't that great?”
29:28

GitHub Malicious Extension Incident

Understand the implications of a GitHub employee installing a malicious extension.

“This one's not a great story, but maybe not as bad as it seems at first.”
Show all 13 chapters
32:12

Tech Quick Headlines

Get the latest on Samsung and Microsoft's upcoming changes in tech.

“This episode is brought to you by Capital One.”
34:26

New Developments in AI and Space Tech

Learn about Google's new features and Varda Space Industries' achievements.

“I, I took that option when they first offered it live on DTNS live.”
36:56

Audience Feedback and Insights

Explore audience perspectives on AI's role in radio stations.

“Well, we like to end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives.”
A man walking through an airport, asking his phone a question

Ask about this episode

Get the gist, explore an idea or ask about something said.

Claude

On Daily Tech News Show, what are the key points of this episode?

Searching your listening

Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade-in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One.

0:33If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash ACAST. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash ACAST. Rules and restrictions may apply. 48 million people in the United States are adolescents between the ages of 14 and 24.

1:16They're working, parenting, leading, sometimes all at once. I'm balancing work and being a mom at the same time. And I'm still on track to graduate with my bachelor's next year. So what do today's young people need to truly thrive? Tune in to good things from Lemonada Media to hear the six-part Thrive series.

1:54TheSameMonday.com that your team will actually love using. TheSameMonday.com with an easy and intuitive setup. Go to Monday.com and try it for free. Yes, TheSameMonday.com.

2:18This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, May 20th, 2026. We tell you what you need to know, give you some important context, and help each other understand. Today, if you want to legally mod your TV, an eight-year-old battle to open up that TVOS finally gets, well, it gets a court date. Yeah, they got a date. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Sarah Lane. Let's start with what you need to know with the big story. The Software Freedom Conservancy, or as I will refer to it from now on, the SFC, has spent eight years trying to get Vizio to release its source code for televisions because the operating system Vizio uses is based on Linux, which is an open source operating system.

3:02They filed the suit back in 2021. It's now headed to trial August 10th in the Orange County Superior Court of the state of California to be decided by a jury of our peers. A lot of TV operating systems, LG's WebOS, Samsung's Tizen, Roku OS are based on Linux. So the outcome of this trial could have a wide ranging effect if the FSC gets its way and gets the court to make Vizio release source code in an executable form to any owner who wants it. If that happens, that would let you modify the code. You could add an accessibility tool if you wanted. You know, Vizio provides some, but maybe there's one you want that they don't provide.

3:46You could limit the ads in there, something Vizio would not like you to do. You could deactivate automatic content recognition so you could keep it connected to the internet, but not feel like you're being spied on. Arstechnica has an interview up today with the FSFC about the case. They asked Walmart, the parent company of Vizio, for an interview as well, but they didn't get an answer after multiple requests, probably because they don't want to talk about the active court case. And Walmart has not been the parent company for all eight years. No, no. Because it was sold to Walmart during this time.

4:15That's right. Walmart is the parent company now, which is why they contacted them. But you're right. It's not as if they were going after Walmart. The case has been going on so long, yeah, that they changed owners. Vizio's OS is based on Ubuntu, which uses the GNU general public license. That requires users of its operating system to make the source code available, with some exceptions for proprietary apps. GPLv2, and I will now quote, gives permission to freely use, modify, and redistribute the covered intellectual property, but only if the original license remains intact, both for the original product and for any modifications to the original project anyone might make.

4:58Basically, that means Vizio can distribute their operating system using the Linux stuff, but only if they also let other people get the source code. They have to keep that license intact and honor it. And specifically, that license says it has to make an executable version of the operating system available. Here's this also from the terms of the GPL. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all the modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. In addition to Ubuntu for the user interface, Vizio also uses a custom Linux distribution for the chip level operating system, kind of the equivalent of a BIOS for the TV.

5:51And that is covered by the LGPLv2, which has the same terms that I just mentioned. Vizio has shared some source code. They haven't been entirely obstinate. They gave some source code out, but the SFC contends it did not include all the files and scripts that would permit the code to be compiled into an executable form. And the judge has ruled that Vizio does not need to provide guarantees that the operating system will work if you modify it. That's something Vizio has said, well, we can't give you an executable form because then we're liable if it doesn't work. And the judge said, no, you're not.

6:26You just have to give the code. If they mess with it and it doesn't work. They can screw it up if they want to. Exactly. You can screw it up to your heart's content. Now, the FSC has also made clear it does not want nor expect Vizio to include DRM management keys in the source code. That's another objection. Vizio said, well, then we'll have to give the keys. And the FSC said, no, you don't. That's not part of the open source stuff. That's an exemption. This should not be a threat to digital rights management agreements with content providers. So why do I think this is a big story? because I don't think many people, even people in the audience here, realize that their TVs are open source.

7:01And a lot of people don't realize that their TV is so cheap because it's assumed that it can be used to sell them ads. And I think this court case, even though it's not till August 10th, is going to be pretty significant, especially if SFC gets their way, which the judge has leaned towards. The judge almost issued a preliminary ruling on it, but then kind of stopped short saying, yeah, you should have the right to the source code for your television. So you mentioned that Vizio is not alone here using Linux. We've got LG's WebOS, Samsung's Tizen, Roku OS, all based on Linux. Is this Ubuntu specifically?

7:39Why go after Vizio? I think the reason the SFC picked Vizio was because they could show that enough people were complaining about it, that it was an issue that the court should look at. another defense Vizio tried to make is like, the SFC isn't hurt by this. They don't have standing to bring this lawsuit. They're not the people at fault. The SFC has purchased many Vizio TVs. So that's one of the reasons they say they're the right person, the right entity to bring this case. But they're also able to point to all the other people who've complained about the Vizio operating system and wanting to be able to modify it.

8:17So I'm guessing that's why they picked Vizio is they thought they could make the best case out of that one. Well, and if the SFC gets its way with Vizio, and we're not going to know that tomorrow, but hopefully sooner than later, because it's been going on for a while, what does this mean for all the other Linux-based TV systems? And how many people care? I don't think that many people care, which is another objection Vizio has had. Vizio has said, well, if we make all of the open source available, it will degrade our business. We won't be able to make as much money because people will be able to turn off the ads.

8:50And the SFC was like, not that many people are going to do it. We just want the right to do it. And we want that to, you want the right to repair your TV. You want the right to be able to modify the operating system if Vizio goes out of business. Walmart sells them, drops it, stops supporting the operating system. Having the source code means you can keep your TV going, even if Vizio isn't supporting it anymore. They're like, we want the rights to do that. We don't think that many people are going to do it. Enough people are going to do it to make it something that is legally worth pursuing, but not so much that it's going to degrade Vizio's way of doing things.

9:24I feel like this is similar to those modified TV sticks. They're usually like modified Amazon fire sticks where there's a lot of people who use them to get questionably provided television, but most people don't. It hasn't undermined Amazon's ability to make money off the fire stick. Yeah, I run WebOS on my LG TV. And I also have an Amazon Fire Stick HD. It's the new one. And both of those situations, I'm like, you know, I'm not bombarded with ads, but it all depends on what app you're using. Yeah. You know, I, I, the, the, the software itself is very secondary to me. I don't think about it that often unless it crashes or something, which isn't really, doesn't really happen too often, thankfully.

10:16But, uh, but yeah, for, for those who say, you know what, I want to tinker. You got to let me tinker. I get it. Um, and I, and I think they should be allowed to do that. I think they should be allowed to do that. Not, not only beyond Vizio. I mean, if the, if this case with Vizio ends up in SFC's favor, then I think then, okay, let's open up all the Linux systems, you know, and let people tinker. That's just, that just feels fair. And the thing about the tinkerers, like, even if you're not the DIY person, you might be enough of a tinkerer to take someone else's patch and install it on your TV.

10:48I think that widens out the base a little more. Like maybe I won't get in there and code something that changes the operating system. But I personally am sufficient enough that I might take somebody else's trusted code from a trusted source and go, ooh, that's going to let me do something fun with my TV. Let me try that. Let me put that on there. And I think a lot of people in our audience feel the same way. And yeah, if SFC were to win this case, then that would mean that there would be precedent to say, okay, webOS, you need to make that source code available as well. Roku OS, you need to do the same.

11:19Tizen. I think Tizen actually is mostly available out there. Just the modifications Samsung has made to it aren't. So that's something a little bit, it's similar, but it's a slightly different case. But there are modifications Samsung has made that I think people would like to be able to change. In fact, if I bought a Samsung TV, I specifically would like to mod some things about the way it tries to guess what I want to do. And I think that would be cool to be able to do more easily. So, yeah, this is very much about the principle of the thing. And for those who are like, no, I want to be able to have an Internet connected TV without feeling like I'm being spied upon.

11:59This could make that possible. I mean, some things, you know, now that I think about it, because I am not I would I would call myself a moderate tinkerer. But but like you mentioned something about your Samsung TV where you're like, I just don't like the way it does this. Maybe if you're searching for something, it's based on the last five things you watched instead of your last five searches. Something that small could just be like, this works better. This works better for me. And instead of forcing the company to try to give you this feature, you could do it yourself. Now, the danger here, some people have pointed out, is if SFC wins the case, does that make Vizio switch to a closed system?

12:40do they get off of Ubuntu? And then we lose all transparency into the television. SFC doesn't think so. They're like, there's too many other advantages to using an open source operating system. We don't think this reasonably will force them to do that, but it's a risk, you know, they could. And certainly others could as well. So that's something to think about as well. Well, I guess we'll know more in August. All right, yeah. Starting August 10th, we'll get a better idea, yeah. Yeah. Well, DTNS is made possible by all of you. Some of you are tinkers, some of you aren't, but you're all listening and watching.

13:15And we thank you. Thanks to Paul Thiessen, Ali Sanjabi, AB Puppy, and Scott Way. This is the way.

13:38car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade-in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. 48 million people in the United States are adolescents between the ages of 14 and 24. They're working, parenting, leading, sometimes all at once. I'm balancing work and being a mom at the same time. And I'm still on track to graduate with my bachelor's next year. So what do today's young people need to truly thrive?

14:20Tune in to good things from Lemonada Media to hear the six-part Thrive series. Parles-tu français? Hablas espanol? Parli italiano? If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash acast. spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash ACAST.

15:02Rules and restrictions may apply. I'm Jake Stouck, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English and it's built. No drag and drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters.

15:39With Serval, IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run IT. We guarantee you'll automate 50 % of all tickets and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot. Go to serval.com slash ACAST. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash ACAST.

16:22one. And I can keep track from my phone while I get the job done. No bills in sight. What a life. Do right by yourself and your business and search Xero for your free trial. Conditions apply.

16:38There's more we need to know today. Let's get into the briefs. Let's do it. Stability AI, which makes stable diffusion, has released Stability Audio 3.0, a new family of models that can generate music that runs for six minutes and even longer. There are four models in this family, ranging from 459 million parameters to 2.7 billion. The two smallest models can do on-device generation for up to two minutes. The two larger models can do that up to six minutes and 20 seconds while maintaining structure and tone, which is double what 2.0 could do. The largest model is only available through Stability's API.

17:15The other three can be downloaded with open weights. Stability has deals with Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group to develop these tools. So, you know, handshake agreements here. The new models are trained on licensed data. Ethan Kaplan, former chief digital officer over at Universal Audio and Fender, is now joining Stability to lead the company's professional music offering. Six minutes at a go is, you know, anybody who's played around with Suno or Udio or any of those knows, like, you usually have to do it in chunks. you can you know 50 seconds at a time or something so six minutes at one shot is a pretty big leap for stability here and also there's all the fears of like are you going to replace musicians which is i think why they and others like them are trying to hire people from the music industry to help figure out how to use these to help the creation of music rather than replace the creation of music.

18:13And I think it's, we're not totally at the end because Suno and Udia are both still being sued by some folks, but having the licenses with Warner and Universal means they had enough data that they didn't have to cheat. They could just use the licensed data from these music groups to be able to create the products. I mean, obvious, obvious way to use this is, you know, content creation, right? Roger Chang and I are going to be doing an update on the Amazon Astro later today, which you will all get in a couple of weeks. But while doing that, I looked up your, your Tom, your first sort of unboxing of the Astro when you initially had it at your house.

18:57You had some music going on in the background, you know, for the video. And I thought, see, this is perfect for something like this. You know, you can make music and it can be a little less repetitive. It can feel like something that's unique and original. Now I know as an artist that makes people very bristly and I get it because it's like, yeah, unique and original. That's why we're doing this, not to be replaced by something that can do this to pretend to be a human. I don't know who's right or wrong here. I do think stability is going the right way with getting deals with two really big industry giants.

19:34So you're going to have less legal pushback, at least from corporations themselves. But otherwise, I can see why this is going to be helpful for a lot of folks who need music and they aren't musicians themselves. Yeah, it definitely helps with the ethics of this as well. And it changes the economics. I think that's the biggest thing going on with these tools as we're watching in slow motion as they get better and better. In the past, the kind of music bed that you're talking about that goes in a video would be a work for hire situation. I pay you to create a song. You get paid once. That's the end.

20:17That goes in a library of royalty-free music. And then I, as a company, sell access to my library of royalty-free music. And then Tom goes and gets it out of the library and puts it in his video. Um, so these kinds of tools mean that yes, the work for higher person doesn't get paid, but there isn't an ongoing royalty that gets taken away. I, and it provides more diversity so that I'm not pulling a video or a piece of music that you're going to be like, wait, Tom used the same music bed that they use in this commercial. I heard on the radio, which, you know, there, there was a time where it was like, okay, guys, we were all using the same four songs.

20:57I think the screensavers theme song back in the day on ZDTV, I heard on a radio station in San Francisco on a commercial because it was just a royalty free music bed. I paid a very, very talented musician for a original kind of just intro for a podcast I was doing. And I really liked what they did and, you know, got a couple versions of it, you know, one time payment, all good. And then I heard the song on a reality show. and I wasn't mad at him because I'm like, okay, I get it. Yeah, sure. You're kind of using the original bed and making it your own. And I was like, that's the same song. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

21:40So, I mean, it does change. I'm not saying this makes anything wrong or right, but it does change how that business works, and it's shifting things around. And I think we are starting to get into that messy transition period where the shorter that transition period is, the better for everyone. But the longer it goes on, the more disruptive it's going to be. And so at least with music here, we're just seeing like, okay, six minutes, that's a real song. Not a song you're going to hear on the radio, not a top of the billboard chart song because people won't do that with AI. They'll want to see a human behind it, a human they know, personalities matter in that.

22:18But it can replace music beds and things like that. Thanks to Got Nate, who called attention to this next story in our Discord. Google's legacy free domain name accounts are stirring up controversy once again. These are the free for life G Suite users, if you know them under that name. Back before 2012, Google offered the ability to use your own domain name with its email, drive and calendar apps for life for nothing. They stopped offering it in 2012. Well, it's been 14 years since you could get that deal, but a lot of people have still got the deal. Back in 2022, Google tried to discontinue these accounts.

23:00They ended up allowing non-commercial use of them. So as long as you weren't a business, you could keep using your free-for-life G Suite domain name account. You still had to pay for the domain name, although some people got free domain names out of Google for this too. So there's that part of it as well. But you could keep using that domain name for your Gmail. So instead of having gmail.com at the end, you could have tommerritt.com at the end. Now, Google doesn't provide support for these services. It has changed the storage rules on them. So you get less and less storage all the time. But the accounts are back in the news this time because Google has been sending an uncertain number, but enough for multiple posts on subreddits about them, of emails that warn the user that it has been identified as being used for commercial purposes, and therefore they have to sign up for a paid Google Workspace account or win an appeal of that commercial designation within 45 days.

23:58If they don't do either of those, then their account would get suspended. The appeal system, of course, is quite opaque. You click appeal and then you wait. There's no actual contact involved in it. You don't get to make your case, at least not personally. One user was denied an appeal, filed a GDPR request requiring Google to show the evidence that his account was commercial, and then the appeal was overturned. And his designation as commercial was overturned the next day. I don't know how many of these are happening. I don't know if it's one of those things where there's just a random change in how Google does this, and that's causing a bunch of people to go to subreddit, and it's not actually an increase.

24:42Google says they've been doing this the whole time. And if they think you're commercial, they're going to notify you and give you that 45-day notice. I do think Google is trying to save on storage because compute capacity is at a premium these days. And they want to put all the compute they can into Gemini. So it would make sense that maybe they tweaked some things that are causing more of these to show up as commercial. I'm sure some of them are people who are trying to skirt the rules who have now got caught. But a lot of them do seem to be somebody who's like, yeah, I used this as a commercial account 20 years ago, but I don't anymore.

25:20And I haven't for a long time since they changed the terms. And now they're trying to claim that I'm in violation. So I'm actually one of these people who's a G Suite user and have been since before 2012. and I remember in 2022, this whole hubbub about like, oh no, it's going away now. And you know, a lot of people were up in arms and then Google said, all right, all right. As long as you're not commercial, we'll leave you alone. Now my, what I, you know, sarahlane.com, like you said, tommerritt.com, that's what I use through G Suite. I don't pay for it. I pay for my domain. And I've transferred that over to Google as well from my old domain registrar.

25:59And it works fine. I have not gotten one of these emails. If I were to, I would appeal immediately. Because even though, I don't know, I mean, I get like some PayPal stuff through that domain. I pay for variety of like office supplies using that domain here and there. But I don't think anybody could claim that it was being used commercially at all. So yeah, I welcome you, Google. Send me that email. I'm ready to appeal. Careful what you wish for. Because, I mean, that would be the kind of case that you could see Google trying to make is like, well, when I go to SarahLane.com, I see an advertisement for your business services as a producer.

26:44This is a business. And you have the right to defend yourself and say, no, no, no, this is just me. This is me saying what I do. That's not a business. It's not SarahLane LLC. It's just my domain name. And so everything I do is related to that. And that's why the appeals process, I think, is very unsatisfactory because you don't get to hear what their reasoning is and go try to clear it up. Right. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's funny because I'm actually redoing my website right now because it woefully needs it. But yeah, maybe I'll be like, I'm not for hire, but get in touch. You should say I'm for hire, but I'm not a business.

27:31i'm a person people can be hired yeah yeah well yeah if any of you out there um are in the throes of figuring out uh whether or not your g suite is a business account or or have even gotten that email and you're thinking about appealing or not let us know all right rw nash noted this one in our subreddit discord has turned on end-to-end encryption for all voice and also video messages for all users on the platform. People might say, all right, isn't that great? That means it's harder for anybody to snoop on your conversation and impossible for Discord to know the content or hand it over to anybody else who might want to see it.

28:11You know, Discord gets a lot of focus, I'll say, put on it for its decisions because it is so popular with such an intense group of tech savvy users out there. And so I think it's good to look at this one and go, hey, they did exactly the right thing. At a time when Instagram is turning off end-end encryption, which means, hey, don't use your Instagram messages for anything sensitive at all. It's good to see Discord just turning it on and saying, you don't have to do anything. You don't have to go in and ask for it to be turned on. You don't have to turn it on per conversation or anything. It's just on, it's there.

28:51Now everybody's protected. Uh, and now if somebody came, you know, some foreign government came and demanded, you know, hand over all of Tom's, uh, malicious, uh, treasonous, uh, messages. And I'm like, no, that's a, that's a false accusation. Discord can be like, I don't know. Uh, we don't have access. It's end to end encrypted. So this is between y 'all. Yeah. I don't, I don't know what the downside would be here. I, I, I struggle to think of. I mean, the downside would be mad about this besides the government entity who wants to snoop on Tom's conversation. Right. If governments who would like a backdoor to encryption don't like this, that's pretty much the only ones.

29:29Yeah. Yeah. This one's not a great story, but maybe not as bad as it seems at first. GitHub confirmed that an employee accidentally installed a malicious VS code extension. That's a programmer thing, if you don't know what it is, exposing, because it was malicious, around 3 ,800 internal repositories to unauthorized access. These were GitHub's own code. No customer data was affected. Now, there is an attacker out there claiming they accessed about the same number of repositories. So this jives and they are going to sell what they found, which isn't great for GitHub. Bleeping Computer notes that trojanized VS Code extensions have appeared on the official store multiple times over the last several years.

30:14So the GitHub employee may not have been phished so much as just went to the official store, added an extension, and turned out to be one that was malicious. To me, that tells me that Microsoft needs to do a better job of keeping malicious extensions out of the store. No customer data being affected, supposedly, is very good news here. Although, So because I cover a lot of cybersecurity these days over at cybersecurity headlines, sometimes these stories tend to evolve into something where it's like, actually, customer data was exposed. I'm not saying that's what happened here, but definitely one to look out for because it's a large number of internal repositories.

30:59It is. there certainly are examples where a company said, we found no evidence of personal data, and then they kept investigating and they found it. Sometimes that could be the company trying to cover its tracks. Most of the time, it's just that the company kept looking, you know, and they found it. GitHub seems pretty certain. Like they're not doing no evidence. They're saying no personal, no customer data. I think they're like, there was no customer data on that machine that this had access to. So fingers crossed that I'm right about that. Well, I mentioned that in an upcoming Live With It episode, we're going to be rediscovering the Amazon Astro and what it might mean for your home.

31:41But on this week's Live With It, we are turning things over to you. We've never done this before. It's a special mailbag episode where we're highlighting questions, comments. We're also following up on some previous Live LiveWithIt reviews because, as we all know, tastes can change over time. So be sure to watch us and join us at our new YouTube channel to find us easier than ever. That's youtube.com slash at LiveWithIt show.

32:12This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge, and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade-in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. 48 million people in the United States are adolescents between the ages of 14 and 24. They're working, parenting, leading, sometimes all at once.

32:53I'm balancing work and being a mom at the same time. And I'm still on track to graduate with my bachelor's next year. So what do today's young people need to truly thrive? Tune in to good things from Lemonada Media to hear the six-part Thrive series.

33:12All right, let's get to the quick headlines that make you look smart. Let's do it. Samsung released and reached a tentative deal with its labor union, avoiding a strike planned to begin on May 21st. The union membership will vote on the deal from May 23rd through May 28th. That is a bullet dodged for the entire chip industry, frankly. Yeah, no kidding. We didn't need that on top of this. So the union will recommend that they vote for it. The union members will probably vote for it. So hopefully nothing else goes awry there. Microsoft says it is beginning to phase out SMS authentication as a factor when you log in.

33:53It's encouraging users to move to passkey. Users will no longer be directed to set up text messaging or SMS as a multi-factor, though Microsoft did not give a date when the method would end. So if you're relying on it now, you can still use it. But at some point, Microsoft is going to sunset that. Yeah, I wonder what that day is. Uh, I I'm, I'm very pasky positive. Yeah, me too. You know, uh, it just, it just works more easily anyway. Um, and it's more secure. So there you go. But, um, at what point Microsoft says, Hey, SMS authenticators can't do this anymore. Got to roll over to something else.

34:31Yeah. I don't have a Microsoft password. I, I took that option when they first offered it live on DTNS live. I deleted my password. So. Yeah. I don't know. Well, anyway, during a talk on Android over at Google I.O., Google revealed Continue On as part of Android 17. It's kind of like Apple's handoff. Continue On will let a user move from using an app on one Android device and then pick up where they left off on another device in the Android ecosystem. Meta began laying off thousands of employees on Wednesday while also transferring thousands into new roles in Meta.ai. On Tuesday, May 19th, that was the deadline for companies in the U.S.

35:16to comply with the Take It Down Act that lets anybody notify a company of non-consensual imagery on their platform. And if the request is valid, gives the company 48 hours to remove it. So get ready for the studies of whether there was abuse of that procedure. another study by an independent think tank called forum ai uh found that chat gpt gemini claude and grok include factual errors at least 36 of the time if not more in response to questions about elections uh and all four bots frequently relied on foreign state-owned media as sources for their response to these queries like what's going on with the u.s election well chinese state television says dot dot dot.

36:04Vietnam introduced Decree 142, requiring companies that operate large language models to classify systems by risk level and comply with strict transparency, safety, and reporting requirements. And I love this one. U.S. company Varda Space Industries, that's V-A-R-D-A, has successfully brought its W-6 capsule, launched back in March, using an autonomous navigation system back to Earth. The capsule landed successfully in the Kuniba test range in South Australia. This proves the first step. We don't know what the inside looked like, but it successfully landed. Everything on the outside looked good.

36:46Varda wants to create space factories that will manufacture things like pharmaceuticals that are either only possible or at least much more easily made in low gravity. So this is the first step on making that a reality. Well, we like to end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. And today, Andrew has some thoughts on that failed AI DJ story on Monday. Yeah, Andrew from Colorado writes, I appreciated Jason's note on the AI radio station story when he mentioned that giving a small prompt to the model as a starting point was likely a problem. And one of the reasons they hilariously failed.

37:22While the hallucinations from the LLMs are perhaps a bit wider than what a human might do, the end result of it deviated from expected sounds similar to what would happen if you told a random single person to run an entire station on their own. At the very least, the initial prompt should have included something about developing a detailed plan for how to run the station before it started. I also can't tell from the Andon Labs write-up if the agents are allowed to spin up other agents. That sometimes requires explicit instructions, but they talk about front and back office tasks later on, which would be a perfect use case for multiple agents.

37:56All that is to say, this is an interesting experiment in pushing an individual LLM to the limit, but it doesn't really match a real world scenario to me. If you wanted the stations to be profitable, there'd be a lot more prep and a lot more guardrails.

38:16Well, yeah, I have not tried my own AI radio station. Well, if you do, Andrew's got some good tips for you. He definitely does. No, it's not that I don't have thoughts on this. I'm just kind of like, yeah. I think Andrew makes a lot of good points is if you have somewhat of a thin first prompt, that sometimes leads people to be like, this isn't any good at all. But iteration, iteration, tweak, tweak, tweak. That's what I've learned from fooling around with a variety of these platforms is you kind You start somewhere and then instead of being like, well, this sucks. That's not what I wanted at all.

38:57You have to at least be a lot more robust off the cuff or you say, all right, good first pass. Here are the seven other things I need you to do. Yeah, they probably should have asked the LLM to write a prompt to run a radio station and then use that prompt to run the radio station. And definitely, you know, spinning up multiple agents to handle different tests. Like he says, you wouldn't expect one single person to run all the aspects of a radio station. Well, there are certainly some radio stations out there that have been run by a single person in remote areas. But those are a lot easier to do than the scenario they were handling here.

39:32Yeah. Well, if you're thinking about anything, AI radio or otherwise, you have insight to any tech story that we've talked about today. Share it with us. Feedback at DailyTechNewsShow.com. Big thanks to Andrew for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along and supporting Daily Tech News Show. You're the folks who keep us in business. You can become a patron. Do it right now. Patreon.com slash DTNS. I'll wait.

40:01The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

40:14This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Capital One's tech team isn't just talking about multi-agentic AI. They already deployed one. It's called Chat Concierge and it's simplifying car shopping. Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade-in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. Parles-tu français? Hablas espanol? Parli italiano? If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation-based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world.

40:58With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55 % off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com slash acast. Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash acast. Rules and restrictions may apply. Thank you.

From the publisher

An 8-year-battle to open up Linux-based TV operating systems finally gets a court date. Plus, Stability can now generate 6 minutes of pro music at a go. 


Starring Tom Merritt and Sarah Lane.


Links to stories discussed in this episode can be found here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

More from Daily Tech News Show

All episodes