Please Stop, Microsoft...

Oh my gosh. What? Oh my gosh. Wow. What?

The tech news today. It made me do that.

When have you ever seen me do that? So,

that's how you know. Microsoft's Windows

11 February update has led to reports of

failed installations, broken network

connections, and cryptic errors, proving

that as a public holiday, Patch Tuesday

is less Easter and more Lent. You're

supposed to refrain from eating while

you atone for your computer sins.

Microsoft, bless their hearts, says

everything's fixed and points to their

known issues page, but Reddit and the

Microsoft Answers forums tell a

different story. We're talking Wi-Fi

connecting with no actual internet,

Bluetooth controllers straight up

disappearing midsession, and at least

one CIS admin on Reddit saying there was

a three out of five chance his taskbar

would just disappear. Can you find a way

to get it back? It's like a game. Sure,

some of these problems could be

lingering issues left over from last

month's File Explorer breaking update,

but that doesn't exactly make Microsoft

look better here. But I don't know,

maybe the devs are just busy with

actually important things, like deleting

official blog posts that recommended

people train AI models on pirated Harry

Potter books. Blime me, co-pilot. Didn't

you wonder where your parents learned it

all?

>> Learned what?

>> You're a chatbot co-pilot.

>> I'm a what? A chatbot and a thumping one

eyed wager.

Meta CEO and former Inmouth resident

Mark Zuckerberg took the stand on

Wednesday in a landmark social media

addiction trial where a 20-year-old

plaintiff is alleging that Instagram's

design worsened her depression and

thoughts of self harm. Zuck, seen here

exiting the courtroom wearing his dad's

suit, told the jury, "I care about the

well-being of teens and kids who are

using our services." pointing to an

email he sent Tim Apple in 2018 to chat

about child safety. Remember that, Tim?

>> Yeah, fish boy. What a great guy. Thank

you, Tim. Zuckerberg also admitted that

Meta may have once set goals around

increasing time spent by users, but

that's no longer how they operate.

Probably because they already tuned the

hell out of the dopamine machine that is

Instagram. That thing's cranking. It's

working well. The trial's been generally

rocky for the puppet turned billionaire

with the prosecution showing the jury an

internal Facebook email from 2017

stating Mark has decided the top

priority for the company is teens.

>> Bad phrasing.

>> Phrasing. On top of that, the judge

scolded him and his entourage for

wearing camera equipped Rayban Meta

glasses into the courtroom, threatening

to hold them in contempt. As you may be

aware of this, recording courtroom

proceedings is often illegal, which to

be fair is not something big tech bros

are often concerned about. Former Meta

VP Brian Bolan, though, seems like maybe

one of the good ones. He took the stand

after spending 11 years helping build

Meta's ad machine. So, okay, maybe I

don't know. We're jury's out on him. He

told the jury that Zuckerberg fostered a

culture that prioritized growth over

user safety and that when concerns about

harm came up, the primary response was

to manage the press cycle rather than

actually investigate the problem. Boland

left the company in 2020, walking away

from over $10 million in unvested stock.

Imagine how unlikable Zuckerberg must be

for someone to walk away from $10

million. I feel like that wins the court

case right there. We've seen enough. You

may have seen a bunch of headlines in

circulation about how headphones are

poisonous now or something. But don't

worry, we looked into it. So, an EU

funded coalition of central European

consumer groups tested 81 pairs of

headphones and found harmful chemicals

in every single one. They tested

products from well-known brands like

Bose, Samsung, and Sennheiser, but also

stuff like off-brand children's

headphones from Teeu, which was

apparently one of the worst offenders.

So, that's nice. BPA, the bad chemical

that every water bottle now has to

assure you it does not contain, showed

up in 98% of samples along with other

bad boys like phalates, chlorinated

paraffins, and flame retardants. Some of

which can migrate through your skin,

especially when you sweat. Now, while

that does sound concerning, some have

pointed out a couple methodologically

weird things with the study. And just

because headphones contain a chemical

doesn't mean that it's going to get into

your body and poison you. Nevertheless,

certain media outlets have been

sensationalizing the issue. PC Gamer

went with all headphones are toxic.

Tom's Guide said you should ditch your

headphones for speakers. And The

Guardian summarized the study's concerns

as being partially about the risk of the

feminization of males.

>> Oh no.

>> Which predictably sent Reddit into a

spiral. Now, if you take the time to

read it, the report is pretty

reasonable. They're pointing out the

companies are cramming in as much of

these regulated chemicals as they can

without getting in trouble and then

shifting to equally bad but unregulated

substitutes when they get caught.

Toxfree wants greater regulation to

close loopholes like this. And we feel

that it's important to point out that

while some outlets may be overblowing

the danger to society, the study itself

brings some important issues to light

and maybe should be taken seriously,

perhaps even more seriously than our

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>> HEY, GET BACK TO WORK.

>> HEY, I'M RELAXING OVER HERE. I can't

believe.

>> Wow. I I just saw what the quick bits

are today and

they're still pretty crazy. We're going

to Intel has announced that it's moving

certain customer support functions to an

AI chatbot. And while AI customer

assistants are relatively common now,

Intel's assistant seems to be taking a

little too much initiative with

troubleshooting hardware issues. When a

PC World writer tested the behavior of

the bot with a crashing CPU, it

helpfully told them to try updating

their graphics driver before kind of

just going through some boilerplate

troubleshooting steps. Hopefully, the

graphics thing works out, though. This

is a little embarrassing for Intel as

they've helped fast food chains

experiment with putting AI chat bots in

drive-throughs for years, including KFC.

But a CPU malfunction is a little more

complicated than, you know, a bucket of

chicken, no matter how many herbs and

spices there are. And whether they're

secret or not, how many are there?

>> 11.

>> Okay. Amazon's Ring is not only sticking

with its enabled by default search party

feature that lets Ring camera owners

search each other's footage for lost

dogs despite backlash over its eerily

dystopian Super Bowl ad. They are

doubling down. Leaked internal emails

showed CEO Jamie Simoff suggesting that

he's pretty excited to see the results

of our public agencies using this tool

and the impact it will have on our

communities.

Woof. and that eventually Ring cameras

could help zero out crime in

neighborhoods. At least a certain kind

of crime,

>> dog crime.

>> I don't think a drag net of ring cameras

is going to be able to zero out

investment fraud. And I don't think

that's really their goal anyway. Shiny

Hunters, the internet's favorite hacking

group, is back at it again this week

after launching cyber attacks against

both Win Resorts and Car Gurus. The

craziest part, they're apparently using

the same fishing methods seen in

previous breaches. That's fishing but

like voice version of it. Stay keep up.

The stolen data includes 800,000

employee records from Win Resorts and

around 1.7 million corporate files from

car gurus gurus gurus. A spokesperson

for the hunters told the register that

stolen data includes full names, emails,

phone numbers, positions, salaries,

start dates, and even birthdays.

Honestly, what's shiny hunter's deal?

And what are these shinies they're

hunting? If we give them a few

Charizards, guardoirs, and a Mew, will

they leave us alone? The FBI has issued

new guidance to store owners after

hackers jackpoted more than 700 ATMs in

2025, stealing roughly $20 million

using malware called Plotus. Criminals

infect a machine's internals uh and

force cash withdrawals without using a

card, tricking the machine itself

instead of using a fake bank account.

I'm actually surprised they explained

how it works. You would think they'd

want to keep this information from the

crazy people who are currently using

forklifts to rip ATMs out of the ground.

We we can't let them know there's an

easier option. And Substack just

announced an expansion of their existing

partnership with gambling platform Poly

Market, allowing Substack authors to

embed prediction market betting data

directly into newsletters and articles.

Poly Market celebrated the new

partnership by tweeting that journalism

is better when it's backed by live

markets.

Sure. And I'm sure this isn't an

elaborate narrative to avoid being

regulated as a gambling platform. In

unrelated news, I'm launching a

statistics course where you try and

guess where a ball will land in a

spinning wheel using statistics because

learning is always better when backed by

the ability to lose your life savings.

But you won't lose anything if you come

back on Monday for more tech news,

except maybe time. And we all have an

unlimited amount of that, so it doesn't

matter. Woo! I'M NEVER GOING TO DIE.