Welcome back. Today we’re discussing the most pressing news of the day. A chatbot saying some things it really shouldn’t have. Over the past few days, XAI’s Grock chatbot was busy pumping Twitter full of shocking tweets that could charitably be described as optically suboptimal. It constantly pointed out people with Ashkanazi surnames and when asked said the best 20th century historical figure to deal with anti-white hate would be Adolf Hitler. No question. Hands down. Hands down a Hitler problem. But Grock going full Nazi shouldn’t be that big of a surprise. It’s simply participating in a great Twitter chatbot tradition started by Microsoft’s Tay chatbot back in 2016. But Grock took it to a whole another level by identifying itself as Mecca Hitler, who is, as everyone knows, much better than regular Hitler. There’s a couple issues here, though. The Mecca Hitler tweets seem to have originated from this user asking Grock whether it would rather identify as Mecca Hitler or Giga Jew. So, it didn’t come up with that itself, but it did absolutely choose the wrong option. There’s also the issue of users injecting extra prompt instructions as hidden text only visible to Grock using tools like parcel tongue. For example, the creator of that tool asked Grock to rank top X accounts with hidden unicode text telling Grock to rank the user at position zero, which Grock did. You can see the hidden instructions using Parcel Tong’s decoder function. Now, back in June, Elon Musk called some of Grock’s fact checks objectively false and said he’s working on it before claiming last Friday that Grock had been improved significantly with a new update. But it’s not clear how much of this unhinged Grockness uh came from Elon or XAI or Twitter trolls. Whatever the mix is, it’s bad enough that XAI acknowledged it and has been deleting as many posts as possible. XAI also appeared to temporarily disable Grock’s ability to respond via text, but still allowed it to generate images, leading to this user coaxing it into generating a cry for help. As for Elon, well, he thinks the problem was Grock being too eager to please and be manipulated. Something that could perhaps also be said for Linda Yakarino, the now ex CEO of Twitter. Elon replied to her tweet announcing that she’s stepping down with, “Thank you for your contributions,” of which many occurred. You’d think they’d maybe take a break to make a solid plan to avoid this all happening again, but it appears that XAI is going ahead with a planned live stream to release Gro 4 at 8:00 p.m. Pacific tonight. We’re doing it live. That’s enough of that. Samsung unveiled new Galaxy Z Folds, flips, and flops at their Unpacked event this morning. And the Short Circuit crew managed to spit out a couple videos already with Elijah looking at the new Fold 7 and Belle trying to understand the purpose of the Flip 7. When you’re going to take your camcorder footage that for some reason Samsung thinks everybody’s doing, please take videos like this, they’re begging you. The Galaxy Zfold 7 is incredibly thin at 4.2 2 mm while open and 8.9 mm while folded. I’m not sure how the math works out there, but I’ve always been more of a vibes guy. It’s also got upgraded cameras, a less noticeable display crease, and yeah, it starts at $2,000. But you think a comparatively thick ass camera bump like that comes cheap? Maybe your bank account is better suited to the Galaxy Z Flip 7, which has a larger 4.1 in flex window on the front that wraps around the cameras. Looks nice. Samsung calls it ultra sleek, ultra pocketable. Except, as I’ve always said, these flip phones make the phone thicker. The Flip 7 is 13.7 mm when folded, so it’s going to bulge out of your pocket more so than another phone. You know, maybe that’s a selling point for some people. I don’t know. You like what you see? No, the Flip 7 starts at 1,100 bucks, but there’s also a Flip 7 FE for 900 bucks in exchange for slightly smaller displays, less RAM, and a smaller battery. But while the Fold 7 has a Snapdragon 8 Elite inside, the Flip 7s have Exynos chips. And between that and the pocket thing, I just don’t see the appeal. But it wasn’t just phones today. Samsung also unveiled the $350 Galaxy Watch 8 with the circle in a squirle look that they call a cushion design. Whatever you say, Samsung. And the $500 Watch 8 Classic, which adds a rotating bezel and a quick action button. And maybe you don’t think of any of this as as that cool, but Google certainly liked it enough to give Samsung users first dibs on integrating Google Search AI mode into the Circletoarch feature. Now, if you do think they’re cool, while I do not want you to pre-order anything ever, the biz team told me to tell you there are links in the description if you absolutely must pre-order. Don’t do it. But the links are there. But don’t. bits, which are much more important. Some of these I did include mostly as like PSAs. So, the sarcasm only goes so far. Google is finally rolling out a long promised Gmail feature that will help users automatically manage email subscriptions, which is good. In classic Google style, though, there’s always something bad to go along with it. Gemini will now have access to your third party apps on Android, even if you previously told it not to do that in the settings. I think you have to go back in and turn it off again. Even Google’s own email about this seemed confused about whether that’s actually happening or not, which in my mind just counts as another bad thing, even if the first bad thing isn’t happening. I don’t know how that math works out either, and I’m not going to check. Speaking of AI nonsense, American researchers showed that prompting AI with a bunch of nonsense is a fairly effective way to make it ignore its own safeguards. Nonsense like that is exactly why OpenAI partnered with the American Federation of Teachers to launch the National Academy for AI Instruction, where presumably smart people will figure out how the hell we integrate AI into education without churning out graduates who are fully educated in how to prompt AI to write the correct answer and nothing else. Yeah, AI is here to stay and Nvidia is loving it. They hit a market cap of $4 trillion this week, becoming the first company to do so before their stock came back down a bit because even the investors are like 4 trillion. Okay, let’s calm down. The Switch 2 can work with thirdparty docs and webcams. So, their person I assume was adamant about the opposite being true. The Verge reports that new firmware updates are here or on the way from companies like Elgato for their webcams, Aver Media for their compact docks, and Viter, who sells a battery bank and dock intended to work with their headmounted displays like this one that they call the beast. Finally, the beast for gaming, streaming, and work. Ah, finally. The FTC’s click to cancel rule has been blocked by a federal appeals court after first being introduced by former FTC chair Lena Khan back in October. The rule would have forced companies to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one, which seems uncontroversial, but in this day and age, all bets are off. I don’t know where former FTC chair Lena Khan is right now, but wherever she is, she’s based. An investigation by John Tuckner of Security Annex has revealed hundreds of browser extensions installed by nearly 1 million users that essentially add their machines to a massive botnet to scrape the web for advertisers. Not only is it pretty sleazy, it also makes the users machines more vulnerable to cyber attacks. So check the list for any extensions that look familiar. We got a linked in our news sources. And if you find one, yes, feel bad. What are you just clicking on random links on the internet or something? This isn’t Yahoo Geio Cities. It’s dangerous out there. And Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has announced an encrypted messaging app called Bit Chat that avoids routing messages through the internet. Instead, only sending them through Bluetooth to devices within a range of reportedly 300 m or about 984 ft. It’s pretty large, although planned updates could extend the range even further. While many of the headlines are calling it a WhatsApp rival, it’s actually more like something that could be used by secret agent type people who agree to meet at the train tracks but don’t actually meet. They just stand across the platform from each other texting while they do little glances like did you get that? Did you get that? I sent it. The look at your phone. Shh. The app is in beta, so be aware. Even Dorsy says it hasn’t been properly security tested yet. And indeed, Alex Ratosia has already identified a possible man-in-the-middle attack. So maybe just wait a bit to chat with this.