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Brian McCullough
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Brian McCullough
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Brian McCullough
Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride home for Wednesday, April 29, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today the EU escalated its DSA probe against Meta over child safety failures on Instagram and Facebook. OpenAI has effectively abandoned its Stargate GV, China suspended new Robotaxi licenses after a Baidu outage and the Musk vs Altman trial kicked off with opening arguments. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech
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Brian McCullough
the European Commission has issued a preliminary DSA finding against Meta, saying Instagram and Facebook failed To prevent under 13 users from accessing the services. Quoting Bloomberg, the European Commission on Wednesday issued preliminary findings against the company, saying Meta owned Facebook and Instagram fell short of their own minimum age restrictions. The apps have, quote, no effective controls in place to check the correctness of the self declared date of birth, the commission said in a statement on Wednesday. Adding Meta's tool to flag under 13s for removal is difficult to use and not effective. Meta disagrees with the preliminary findings, a spokesperson said, adding that the company has measures in place to detect accounts from underage users. Understanding age is an industry wide challenge which requires an industry wide solution and we will continue to engage constructively with the European Commission on this important issue, the spokesperson said. Meta and other tech platforms are under pressure globally to do more to stop children from accessing their services as parents and lawmakers worry about overuse of social media platforms and issues such as online bullying. While some countries are opting for blanket social media bans, the EU has mostly focused on enforcing its existing content moderation rulebook, the Digital Services Act. The commission's preliminary findings escalate a probe into Meta that has been ongoing since May 2024. Meta will now be able to defend itself from the allegations and potentially propose remedies to address the commission's concerns. The DSA mandates that platforms must crack down on illegal or harmful content or face fines that can reach as much as 6% a company's annual global sales. The commission has also been wielding the DSA to force adult websites and technology companies to age gate their services. Under growing pressure from member states to enact something like a social media ban, the EU recently unveiled its blueprint for an age verification app. I noticed this this morning when I tried to get ESPN for my dad who is visiting and wanted to watch ESPN on the T. YouTube has rolled out full multi view customization to YouTube TV, letting users pin up to four live streams in a window after debuting a limited version of this in 2023. So basically you want to watch four games at once. You want to watch four channels at once. It's easy to do now and kind of the default I noticed quoting Thurot. YouTube TV is starting to roll out full multi view customization to all subscribers in the U.S. the new multi View builder allows users to mix and match any live stream, including content across different packages such as the N Sunday Ticket Add on multiview on YouTube TV originally launched back in 2023, but it was initially restricted to pre selected channels in the Top Picks for you section. Google started rolling out the feature ahead of the beginning of the fall 2023 NFL football season, but many users have been waiting for the ability to watch up to four live programs of their choice at once. The new Multi View builder still shows recommended categories at the top, including sports news shows and movies. There's also a recommended option that shows live channels based on users viewing habits. The YouTube team said that full multiview customization will become available to all YouTube TV subscribers in the coming weeks, though some limitations remain. At the moment, Multi View customization doesn't support VOD and DVR content as well as select family friendly content. Moreover, a subset of older devices, less than 5% won't have access to the new feature. If you are on one of these devices, you will still have access to a Multi View builder, but it will be focused on major tentpole events like the NFL or World cup, the team said. End quote. The FT has sources saying that that whole Stargate thing might be quietly getting put out to pasture. QUOTE OpenAI's $500 billion Stargate plan to secure computing power is being reworked and in places abandoned. In recent weeks, the group has halted planned data centers in the UK and Norway, declined to expand its flagship site in Abilene, Texas, and seen several senior figures tied to Stargate leave for rival Meta. Originally announced in early 2025 by Donald Trump as a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle Abu Dhabi Fund, MGX and Japan's SoftBank, Stargate was designed to finance and build dedicated data centers for OpenAI's use the idea was to pull capital to tackle the cost and complexity of AI infrastructure. That concept has rapidly given way to a more flexible approach, with OpenAI increasingly relying on third party providers leasing capacity rather than building and owning its own facilities. I don't know what Stargate means at this point, said a person who was involved in the data center build out at the outset. I think it is a completely antiquated line right now. The shape shifting scheme embodies OpenAI's broader efforts. From core technology to partnerships, the company places overlapping bets and abandons all but the most expedient. The approach owes much to Chief Executive Sam Altman's venture mindset, said one person close to the company. People familiar with the changes at Stargate said that in practice, OpenAI has abandoned the joint venture in favor of a series of large bilateral deals. But OpenAI executives said the guiding principle remains the same to build more compute Oracle has played the most prominent role, agreeing last year to supply OpenAI with 4.5 gigawatts of computing capacity under a five year, $300 billion agreement. The company has also struck partnerships with AMD, Broadcom, Nvidia, CoreWeave and Cerebras in deals that at one point totaled more than $1 trillion in commitments, some of which have since been scaled back. Questions remain over whether it can afford its huge infrastructure spending. On Tuesday, a report that OpenAI had missed internal targets for revenue and user growth led to share price falls at companies linked to the startup, including SoftBank, Oracle and CoreWeave. OpenAI said in response that its business is firing on all cylinders. OpenAI has cut costs by sidelining or revising Stargate plans, but the willingness to renegotiate or walk away from projects has unsettled partners and raised questions about OpenAI's reliability. As a counterparty, it initially aimed to develop its own data centers under the Stargate banner as it faced two challenges, a complex supply chain and wariness from lenders about funding a loss making startup with no credit rating. The joint venture, pulling cash from blue chip partners and gaining the imprimatur of the US President aimed to tackle both issues. Since then, a surge in demand for AI tools has spurred chip, cloud and infrastructure groups into action and eased investor skepticism. We created enough demand in the market and others came along so we sideline first party data centers, said the person involved in Stargate. End quote. Watch codecs for goblins, I guess quoting Wired OpenAI has a goblin problem instructions designed to guide the behavior of the company's latest model. As it writes code have been revealed to include a line repeated several times that specifically forbids it from randomly mentioning an assortment of mythical and real creatures. Quote Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user's query. Read instructions in Codex CLI, a command line tool for using AI to generate code. It is unclear whether OpenAI felt compelled to spell this out for Codex, or why, or indeed why its models might want to discuss goblins or pigeons in the first place. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment in response to a post on X that highlighted the lines. However, some users claim that OpenAI's models occasionally become obsessed with goblins and other creatures when used to power OpenClaw, a tool that lets AI take control of a computer and apps running on it in order to do useful things for users. I was wondering why my claw suddenly became a goblin with codex 5.5, one user wrote on X. Been using it a lot lately and it it can't stop speaking of bugs as gremlins and goblins. It's hilarious. Posted another End Quote. Sources say that China has suspended issuing level 4 autonomous vehicle licenses after more than 100 of Baidu's Apollo Go robotic taxis stalled and disrupted traffic in Wuhan in March, quoting Bloomberg. The incident alarmed authorities, and three agencies, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, convened a meeting earlier this month with officials from cities that have robo taxis or autonomous driving pilots, the people said. Regulators called for local governments to conduct a full self review and enhance safety monitoring to prevent similar incidents, said the people, who declined to be identified. The suspension of new licenses prevents self driving companies from adding new robotaxis to their fleets, starting a new test project or expanding to a new city, the people said. This marks at least the second time that regulators have paused new permits due to a Baidu related incident. In the Wuhan incident, more than 100 Apollo GO robotaxis stalled on city streets on March 31, according to Chinese media reports. Local police said the outage was likely caused by a systems fault, although Baidu has yet to comment on the cause. Apollo Go is the largest robotaxi provider in China, with hundreds of vehicles in more than a dozen cities. Baidu's Wuhan robotaxi operations have also been suspended while local authorities investigate the incident, the people said. Pony AI said its services in Beijing, Shanghai, China, Gongju and Shenzhen are currently operating normally and preparations for Changsha and Hangzhou is progressing as planned a spokesperson said. We Ride said it supported authorities efforts to ensure the highest safety standards across the industry and that their services in China are still operating as normal. Beijing is trying to balance safety concerns and negative public sentiment over AI related job losses with the desire to groom homegrown technology in the autonomous driving race against the US End Quote.
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Brian McCullough
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Brian McCullough
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Brian McCullough
finally today, our first check in from the Musk vs Altman trial. Quoting Bloomberg Elon Musk testified Tuesday he's suing OpenAI and two of its co founders, Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, because the startup's pivot from a charity to a for profit business is wrong and sets a concerning precedent for other philanthropic efforts. It is not okay to steal a charity, that's my view, musk told jurors at the outset of a trial in federal court in Oakland, California. Musk said the consequences of the legal fight go far beyond the people involved and that if Altman and Brockman's conduct isn't deemed improper quote, this case will become case law and become precedent to looting every charity in America. An attorney for OpenAI, William Savitt, objected to Musk's explanation, asking U.S. district Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers to strike the testimony because Musk isn't a lawyer who can provide legal analysis. Gonzalez Rogers defends denied that request. In his own statement to the jury, Savit argued that Musk's lawsuit is primarily an attempt to undermine a top competitor to his own AI company, Xai. Savit also contended that Musk himself was a proponent of restructuring OpenAI as a for profit entity in its early years. The outcome of the three week trial could shape OpenAI's future as it eyes a much anticipated public offering that is poised to be one of the largest in history as the company approaches a trillion dollar valuation. Among the changes Musk seeks is a court order the for profit restructuring of OpenAI that was completed in October. Musk spent much of his early testimony telling the jury about his business ventures, including Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX, Neuralink and Tesla. He said he had long been interested in artificial intelligence, but always had concerns about the technology becoming smarter and more powerful than human intelligence. Musk, wearing a black suit and tie as he has in other courtroom appearances, looked comfortable and enthusiastic on the witness stand, at times making short quips. The business mogul has testified before for a number of juries in legal disputes around the country, winning most of his cases. Musk told jurors there was a risk that AI could be a double edged sword, a tool that made significant contributions and advancements to society, but that something could also go wrong. It could make everyone prosperous, but it could also kill us all, Musk said. Around 2015, Musk said he was talking to anyone and everyone he could about the capabilities of AI, along with his concerns about how the technology might be developed that included Google co founder Larry Page. Musk said he felt the tech executive was not being sufficiently caring about the safety of AI and was dismissive of questions. Musk asked about a hypothetical future where AI wipes out humans. Quote he said that would be fine as long as artificial intelligence survives, musk said. Then he called me a speciest for caring about humans more than AI. Musk said he thought this was nuts and he became convinced there needed to be a counterpoint to Google's technology because the company was an early leader in developing AI. AI at the time, Musk said, they had, quote, all the money, all the computers and all the talent for AI. I thought what would be the opposite of Google Musk said. An open source nonprofit, end quote. Musk's lawyer Stephen Mullo told the jury the trial will show that Altman and Brockman took advantage of Musk's money, reputation and guidance to get OpenAI off the ground and then decided to abandon its public focus principles and capitalize on the project for their own benefit. Molo alleged that Microsoft was a knowing accomplice to that betrayal when the software giant pumped $13 billion into OpenAI starting in 2019, a year after Musk left the startup's board. Microsoft stood by Altman and Brockman as they made an absolute mockery of OpenAI's charitable mission, Mola told the nine person jury. In his own statement to the jury, Sabat said that in OpenAI's first year as a nonprofit research lab, Musk said in an email, probably better to have a standard C Corp with a parallel nonprofit the next year. Musk said in another email that it have been a mistake for OpenAI to be set up as a nonprofit given progress DeepMind was making, Sabbat said, referring to an AI project at Google. In 2017, Musk and others at OpenAI recognized the company would need to spend far more on computing resources to support its technology than they had previously expected. The founders had dozens of meetings and aligned on an idea to create a for profit arm, quote during these intense discussions in 2017, Mr. Musk never expressed the view that OpenAI should remain purely nonprofit, Sevit said. The exact opposite was the Musk, Savit said wanted to turn OpenAI into a full on for profit company and take absolute control of it. But the other founders refused to turn the keys of artificial intelligence over to one person. Musk said during his testimony that he was always open to the idea of creating a for profit subsidiary of OpenAI so long as profits were capped and any money it did make would go to the nonprofit. One proposal being discussed at the time would have given the four key leaders at OpenAI an equal equity split in the for profit enemy. That group would include Musk, Altman, Brockman and Ilya suskever, who was OpenAI's chief scientist. Musk said he felt that would be, quote, unfair and inappropriate given that he was providing all of the funding. Up to that point, he had hoped to hold the majority interest in an OpenAI for profit, a position he expected to weaken quickly as more investors came forward. Today, OpenAI's nonprofit foundation remains in control of the organization as part of its for profit conversion. Last year, the company said OpenAI would continue to be overseen by the nonprofit entity now dubbed the OpenAI Foundation. The non profit also received a 26% equity stake in the company. Microsoft got a 27% stake, end quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big Wireless way too much.
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Brian McCullough
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Brian McCullough
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