Brian McCullough (0:04)

Welcome to the Tech Me Write Home for Thursday, November 14, 2024. I'm Brian McCullough. Today buckle up because it's going to be a regulation heavy day. Meta is served up its first big EU fine the FBI is investigating polymarket. The CFPB might require regular inspections of Google, a new AI agent from OpenAI in about a month. And forget the streaming wars. Are we entering the age of the puzzle wars? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. The eu has fined Meta 797.72 million euro for tying Facebook Marketplace to Facebook and imposing unfair trading conditions on rival websites, the first such fine for Meta. Quoting the ft, Meta said it would appeal against the fine levied by regulators. We built Marketplace in response to consumer demand. This decision ignores the market realities and will only serve to protect incumbent marketplaces from from competition, it added. The European Commission's decision provides no evidence of competitive harm to rivals or any harm to consumers. The EU's long running antitrust probe into Meta was launched in 2019 following accusations from rivals that the tech giant was abusing its dominant position by offering free services while profiting from data it collects on the platform. In December 2022, the European Commission issued initial charges against Facebook for allegedly using the data it gathered for free, mostly from businesses, to then sell ads to users. The EU Commission on Thursday said Meta is dominant in the market for personal social networks as well as in the national markets for online display advertising on social media. Facebook Marketplace, launched in 2016, is a popular platform to buy and sell secondhand goods, especially household items such as furniture. Meta has argued that it operates in a highly competitive environment. In a post published on Thursday, the tech giant said marketplaces in Europe continue to grow and dominate in the EU, pointing to platforms such as eBay, Lebanon Coin in France and marked Platz in the Netherlands as quote, formidable competitors. End quote. Polymarket says the FBI has seized CEO Shane Copland's phone and his electronics. A source says the DOJ is investigating Polymarket for allegedly accepting bets from US Users. Quoting Bloomberg, the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant on Shane Koplan, Polymarket's chief executive officer, and seized his phone and electronics, according to a person who asked for anonymity to discuss non public matters. Under an agreement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reached in 2022. Polymarket is to prevent US based traders from making transactions on the platform. Polymarket surged in popularity in the lead up to the November 5 US presidential elections, touting itself as a more accurate predictor of political outcomes than traditional polling, the platform's users able to wager an unlimited amount of money on their favored candidates, whereas competing platforms have betting limits. Massive trades in the final days before November 5th by a French whale in Trump's favor brought additional scrutiny of the platform. Opponents of political prediction markets accused the wagerers of potentially manipulating the underlying market by skewing public perception. In Trump's favor. Polymarket said in a statement that the company would stand up for ourselves and our community and allege that the FBI search was politically motivated. Quote polymarket is a fool fully transparent prediction market that helps everyday people better understand the events that matter most to them, including elections, the company said. Koplan posted on the social media platform X on Wednesday saying, quote new phone, who dis the company, led by Koplan settled an enforcement action with the CFTC two years ago and paid a $1.4 million penalty. In addition to agreeing to block US users. The company has said in recent weeks that it's taken additional measures to verify and block users it suspects may be US Citizens or based in the US The Washington Post is reporting that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving to place Google under formal federal supervision, an extraordinary move that may lead to regular inspections. Quote Google has fiercely resisted the idea over months of highly secretive talks, according to two people familiar with the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them, setting up what may ultimately be a major legal clash with vast implications for the CFPB's powers in the digital age. The exact scope of the CFPB's concerns is not clear, and its order does not appear to be final. The political fate of the bureau's work under Director Rohit Chopra is also in doubt, as the watchdog agency braces for potentially significant changes to its leadership and agenda with the return of President Elect Donald Trump to the White House. Formed in the Aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB has broad powers to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive or predatory financial practices. That includes the ability to place certain firms under supervision, a status that can afford regulators direct access to the company's internal records to ensure their activities are sound and seek fixes if they are not. The CFPB already conducts these inspections at large banks and credit unions, which have been subject to supervision by other state and federal regulators for many years. But Chopra has expressed recent alarm that the government does not always apply the same oversight to technology companies, even at a time when the financial tools they provide are similar to the bank accounts and payment systems long under close watch. Google, for example, offers financial services including Google Wallet, which stores credit cards digitally and allows users to pay at registers with their mobile phones. It previously offered another app called Google Pay, which allowed US users until this June to send each other cash. Hundreds of customers have complained about Google's services in comments to the CFPB in recent years, alleging that they experienced trouble with unauthorized charges on their accounts. To supervise Google, the agency must identify the company's activities as a risk to consumers. Simultaneously, the CFPB has also worked to finalize a broader set of rules that could allow it to impose supervision across the tech industry, covering not only the search giant but other large firms including Amazon, Apple and PayPal owned Venmo. The companies have fiercely lobbied against the proposal, arguing the oversight is unnecessary, exceeds the CFPB's legal authorities and threatens to harm small and med sized firms which pose no threat to consumers. Many in Silicon Valley have expressed particular concern that CFPB inspections could permit the government to scrutinize entire businesses, not just their financial offerings. Digital payment apps and non bank entities differ from banking institutions in their function, characteristics and capabilities, the Computers and Communication Industry Association, a lobbying group for companies including Amazon, Apple and Google, told the CFPB in January. Hence, they should not be subject to the same supervisory authority as banks and credit unions. The scrutiny of Google underscores the CFPB's broader focus on the power and reach of the tech industry, particularly as some companies already in possession of vast troves of consumers data have looked to harness more information about users spending habits. End quote Bloomberg says OpenAI plans to launch a new AI agent, codenamed Operator, which can use a computer to take actions on a person's behalf soon. In a staff meeting on Wednesday, OpenAI's leadership announced plans to release the tool in January as a research preview and through the company's application programming interface for developers, said one of the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. The planned release is part of a broader industry push toward agents or AI software that can complete multi step tasks for users with minimal supervision. Anthropic unveiled a similar agent that can process what's happening on the user user's computer in real time and take actions on their behalf. OpenAI backer Microsoft also recently launched a set of agent tools designed to send emails and manage records for workers, and Alphabet's Google is said to be preparing to release an AI agent, according to the information. OpenAI has been working on several agent related research projects, according to three people. The one nearest completion will be a general purpose tool that executes tasks in a web browser, one of the people said. OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman hinted at the shift to agents in response to a question last month during an Ask Me Anything session on Reddit. We will have better and better models, altman wrote. But I think the thing that will feel like the next giant breakthrough will be agents. End quote Google says real time protections against scam calls and malicious apps are rolling out on Pixel 6 or newer devices and coming soon to more Android phones. Quoting 9to5Google scam detection listens for conversation patterns commonly associated with scams. Once recognized in audio and haptic alerts will prompt you to look at your phone for a likely scam visual warning Suspicious activity detected for this call is accompanied by an end call button or the ability to mark, not a scam. For example, if a caller claims to be from your bank and asks you to urgently transfer funds due to an alleged account breach, Scam Detection will process the call to determine whether the call is likely spam on the Pixel 9 series, scam detection is powered by Gemini Nano. This safety feature is also available on the Pixel 6 8a, thanks to other robust Google on device machine learning models. Google says no conversation, audio or transcription is stored on the device, sent to Google servers or anywhere else, or retrievable after the call. Scam detection is off by default and has to be enabled by the user. It can be disabled from Phone app settings with the option to turn it off during a particular call. Scam detection is rolling out now to English speaking Phone by Google Public Beta. Users in the US with a Pixel 6 or newer device enable it from Google Phone App settings then Scam detection End quote the reason I found Notion so useful when I was scratching together my AI resume project was frankly, because of the AI baked into Notion. You already know that Notion combines your notes, docs and projects into one space. That's simple and beautifully designed. And the new Notion AI has the capabilities of multiple AI tools built in, which means you can search, generate, analyze and chat all inside Notion. No more switching back and forth between different AI tools. Notion AI is connected to multiple knowledge sources. It uses AI knowledge from GPT4 and Claude to chat with you about any topic. It can search across thousands of Notion docs in seconds to quickly answer any question. And with AI connectors now in beta, Notion AI can search across Slack discussions, Google Docs, sheets and slides and more. Tools like GitHub and Jira are coming soon and Notion AI is designed to protect your privacy. Notion AI's partners are contractually prohibited from using your data to train their AI models. Try Notion for free when you go to notion.comride that's all lowercase letters notion.comride to try the powerful, easy to use Notion AI today. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show notion.com ride a secret weapon is a great asset to have in your back pocket. It helps you get ahead in life. That's how Mack Weldon thinks about clothing as a secret weapon. Timeless classic style that's infused with performance fabrics and hidden details. Mack Weldon is my go to for workwear that is comfortable but professional enough I don't have to worry about the image I'm projecting. Some guys just want to look good without calling attention to themselves. Mack Weldon Apparel gives you understated good looks for understated confidence. I love their Henleys and Polos, their vests and jackets. They look like regular clothes but feel like the latest in modern comfort. Perfect for this season. They also have breathable underwear that keeps you cool, dry and comfy all day. The Air Knit line Talk about a secret clothing weapon. Get timeless looks with modern comfort from Mack weldon. Go to mackweldon.com and get 25% off your first order of $125 or more with promo code Brian that's M A C K W E l d o n.com promo code B R I A N Apple has released updates to Final Cut Pro, adding AI generated closed captions and Visual Pro Spatial video editing, as well as Logic Pro for macOS and iPadOS. Quoting Mac stories. Final Cut Pro 11 for the Mac has added magnetic masks, extending the magnetic metaphor used for clips placed on your timeline. Apple says the new feature will allow you to quickly mask people and objects in a shot to color, grade them, or add effects separately from the rest of a scene. The app can automatically generate generate closed captions now, too. The feature, which was briefly shown off in a video published alongside the announcement of the new Mac Mini, uses artificial intelligence to convert dialogue into text. Final cut Pro11 is also now capable of editing spatial video for the Apple Vision Pro. In its press release, Apple says final cut Pro11 now supports spatial video editing, allowing editors to import their footage and add effects, make color corrections, and enhance their projects with titles. The depth, position of titles and captured footage can also be adjusted during the editing process. Spatial video clips can be captured, captured directly with Vision Pro or on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, and Canon's new RF S 7.8mm F4STM dual lens paired with Canon R7. Final Cut Pro for the iPad has been updated to version 2.1 with several new features. I've been using Final Cut Pro more regularly since we started The Mac Stories YouTube channel, and one of the limitations I noticed immediately is that the color correction tools in the iPad version weren't nearly as good as on the Mac. The iPad's color tools still aren't as sophisticated as what's available on the Max, but this update does add new color grading presets as well as a new enhanced light and color feature that intelligently applies color contrast, brightness and color balance to a video and works with sdr, hdr, RAW and log encoded media. Live drawing on a video has been expanded with new brushes too. There are new watercolor crayon, fountain pen and monoline pen brushes letting users create a greater variety of looks for their videos. Other new effects include a Picture in Picture effects effect callouts and a set of built in soundtracks. I'm eager to try Picture in Picture, which should be a good way to create tutorials and other types of videos and callouts. It's an effect available for multiple third party effects vendors on the Mac, but new to the iPad, end quote Sources say Instagram's ad unit plans to launch ads on threads in early 2025. Meta's public statements imply that any Threads ad rollout will be slow. However, quoting the information, a team inside Instagram's advertising division is leading the effort, which is still in the early stages, the people said. Threads is planning to kick off the effort by letting a small number of advertisers create and publish ads on the app starting in January, one of those people said. Meta's leaders have said in the past that they plan to eventually introduce ads to Threads without giving a specific timeline. Executives have stressed that their short term focus was adding new features to get more people using the app and to make it more engaging. At the end of October, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that threads had nearly 275 million monthly active users and that a million people were signing up per day. That means Threads is closing in on Elon Musk's X, formerly known as Twitter, which had an estimated 332 million monthly active users on its mobile apps in the third quarter, according to data from research firm Sensor Tower. Meta's public statements imply any ad rollout for Threads next year will be slow. In an earnings call in October, Meta Chief Financial Officer Susan Lee stated that we don't expect Threads to be a meaningful driver of 2025 revenue. Finally today, the Puzzle Wars Words with Friends is going directly after wordle with a new daily puzzle game. Quoting the Verge, Wordle's success has caused an explosion in newspaper style puzzle games and now Words with Friends is getting in on the action. The long running word game is adding four solo modes that can be played daily and they'll sound familiar to those who use the New York Times gaming app. The new games include crossword puzzle, a word search word wheel which is about connecting letters to create words, and a word guessing game called guessword. Zynga, which owns Words with Friends, says that each of the games will have new puzzles daily and can be played either solo or in multiplayer. Our players asked if they could do even more, so we've added a whole new layer of personally fulfilling solo minigames where you can disconnect from the world and play word games with or without friends, zynga's Chief Executive Vice President of mobile games, said in a statement. The news comes as plenty of different outlets are trying to replic or build on wordle's breakout success. The New York Times continues to test new games including a sports themed take on Connections and a puzzler called Zorse, while the Hearst owned Puzzmo is steadily building out an impressive library of games including recent releases like a weather based version of Sudoku. Meanwhile, Netflix is about to launch its own daily word game and even LinkedIn has launched its own collection of puzzles. End quote. The very bottom link in the show notes today is to a YouTube video. As you'll see, it is my words from a segment from the show from earlier in the week, but you'll notice that the person speaking isn't me. Yes, I found a solution to the hive mind ask that I asked for earlier in the week. It's called hey Gen. As you can see, I uploaded the MP3 version of the segment from earlier in the week, picked an avatar and it mostly did a great job of lip syncing with my voice from the audio. Now I can also use heygen to train an avatar on my own face so I don't have to use this random dude speaking for me all the time. Sounds good right? Most of the way to what I asked for. Except no. I generated that first video, the one you see on YouTube, and then I quickly signed up for a subscription. It's not cheap, it's $80 a month. And then every subsequent time I tried to do the same thing for another segment. Guess what I got Flagged for content violations every single time. I guess what it's saying is they have no way of knowing if I am the owner of the copyright to the audio that I'm trying to use. Which fair enough but guess what, there's no way to get in contact with them and ask them to make an exception for me. No email address on the website, no get in touch with us contact center. I tried disputing the content warning flags and again they shut them down. I assume that's automated. I've tried tweeting at Heygen and even the Heygen founder. Nothing annoying that this only happened after I started paying. Anyone know anyone at Heygen? Cause seriously I'd do a ton more experiments with this if I could if it would let me tweet heygenofficial on my behalf and tell them get in touch with me. Ryanmcc I'm so close to what I was looking for but so far are talk to you tomorrow.