Brian McCullough (0:04)

Welcome to the TechMe Write Home for Wednesday, January 15th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough. Today the SEC is suing Elon Musk. Big AI insertions in Microsoft, Copilot, Google Workspace, and even LinkedIn. How TikTok plans to handle the immediate aftermath of a shutdown. Another new Instagram alternative and have your AirPods been misbehaving? Here's what Apple did without telling anyone. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech foreign the securities and Exchange Commission has sued Elon Musk, claiming he failed to disclose a major purchase of Twitter shares in a timely manner ahead of his takeover of the social media platform in 2022. Quoting Bloomberg the agency's complaint, which was immediately disputed by a lawyer for Musk, accuses the billionaire of failing to promptly report that he had amassed more than 5% of the social media platform stock in early 2022, a revelation that would have sent the stock' up. Because Musk failed to timely disclose his beneficial ownership, he was able to make these purchases from the unsuspecting public at artificially low prices, the regulator said in its civil suit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. investors who sold Twitter common stock during this period did so at artificially low prices and thus suffered substantial economic harm. End quote. Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Musk, said the action is an admission that the SEC cannot bring an actual case because Musk has done nothing wrong and everyone sees this sham for what it is. The regulator has been probing Musk's investment in Twitter since 2022, pressing him to explain why he hadn't disclosed his stake within the correct timeline. SEC attorneys in December asked Musk to pay more than $200 million to settle the allegations that he failed to properly disclose his Twitter investment, according to a letter by his lawyers sent to the agency last month and reviewed by Bloomberg News. In the letter, Spiro said the SEC is seeking the relief but isn't accusing Musk of acting willfully or with the intent to Mislead investors. By March 2022, Musk had acquired beneficial ownership of more than 9% of Twitter's outstanding common stock. This triggered reporting requirements due within 10 days of the purchase. Musk filed the report 11 days later, making the company's stock price surge by 27% from the day before, according to the lawsuit. The complaint alleges that Musk repeatedly ignored advice to disclose his stake after he passed the 5% threshold. The SEC asked the court to direct Musk to pay a civil penalty and return profits, which the agency claims he reaped unjustly from from his stock purchases. Musk also faces investor litigation accusing him of hiding his acquisition of Twitter shares. End quote the big tech platforms want you to be using AI in all the places you already work. Microsoft is relaunching its free Copilot for businesses as Microsoft 365 copilot chat, offering pay as you go AI agents and using GPT4O to answer queries. Quoting the Verge Microsoft 365 copilot chat is essentially a rebranding of what was once Bing Chat Enterprise before Microsoft rebranded it to just Copilot. It crucially now includes access to Copilot AI agents right within the chat interface, which was previously only available in the full Microsoft 365 copilot experience, requiring a $30 per user per month subscription. These agents are designed to work like virtual colleagues and can do things like monitor email inboxes or automate a series of tasks. You'll be able to and use agents using Copilot Studio, use agents that rely on web data, and even use agents grounded on work data through the Microsoft Graph. The usage of agents with Copilot Chat will be priced through the Copilot Studio Meter in Azure or through a pay as you go option. End quote Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Google has made all of its AI features for its Workspace app free, where they previously charged more than $20 per user per month. But there's a big catch. Google is also increasing the price of all Workspace plans across board. Quoting 9to5Google Google is making this change because it sees AI as a foundational shift in how work gets done and that future productivity advancements will be born out of it. As such, it doesn't make sense to silo off AI into a different tier. Meanwhile, Google is undercutting competition that has this per user per month model. Workspace Business Standard and Plus and Enterprise users will get Gemini in Gmail, Drive, Docs, sheets, slides, meet and Chat. You also get access to Google vids and NotebookLM plus with team sharing. Meanwhile, users are bumped up to Gemini advanced with 1.5 Pro and access to creating custom gems. The entry Workspace Business starter, which offers 30 gigabytes instead of 2 terabytes of storage, will get access to the Gemini side panel in Gmail Non Advanced Gemini and non + NotebookLM. In terms of security and privacy, Google won't use your data prompts or generated responses to train Gemini models outside of your domain without permission. With the addition of Gemini, all Google Workspace tiers are getting a price increase. In general, Google tells us that plans will increase by a couple of dollars per month. The pricing example Google provided at launch is as follows. For example, a customer using the Workspace Business Standard plan with a Gemini Business add on previously paid $32 per user per month. Now, that same customer will pay just $14 per user per month, only $2 more than they were paying for Workspace. Without Gemini, we have to see what other plans will look like. But the $2 increase in the scenario above seems compelling for what you're getting. But hey, why not LinkedIn as well? Quoting TechCrunch LinkedIn has built an AI product to throw job seekers a lifeline. A new jobs match tool will give its 1 billion users who are currently applying for jobs on its platform at a rate of 9,000 applications per minute immediate advice on whether a particular job opening is worth their time to apply to. Alongside this, it's launching a recruitment, a agent aimed at smaller businesses, a synthetic version of the recruitment managers and teams that larger businesses typically use to devise job applications, tap qualified candidates and triage applications. Both are free to use, that is, you don't have to be one of LinkedIn's paying users to use it. Notably, both products were built by LinkedIn on top of its own AI technology and its own first party LinkedIn data, though over time it might incorporate other data sources, rohan Rajeev, a director of product management, said in an interview with TechCrunch. This is in contrast to a number of launches in the last couple of years that have seen LinkedIn building by leaning hard on technology from OpenAI, the AI startup backed to the hilt by Microsoft, which also owns LinkedIn. End quote. Forgive the pun, but TikTok? Mr. Anderson, the days are ticking down here. The TikTok ban goes into effect January 19th. What is going to happen? Well, in a tangible, immediate sense, likely this is going to happen. The information says TikTok plans to switch off the app. That's it. Switch it off and wait. Quote under the plan, people attempting to open the TikTok app will instead see a pop up message directing them to a website with information about the ban. One of the people said TikTok plans to give users the option to download all their data so they can take a record of their personal information with them, the person said. The law doesn't require TikTok to turn off the app. Instead, the law requires App Store operators like Apple and Google to stop making TikTok available for downloads. It also requires requires Oracle, TikTok's cloud provider to stop hosting the app's US User data. The app had been expected to continue operating past the ban date for people who already had downloaded it, until software updates by Apple or Google start to cause problems. In that scenario, the immediate impact of the ban would be limited to preventing new users from downloading the app Proactively Turning off the app, in contrast, ensures that all of TikTok's users will be affected immediately. In an email to TikTok employees Tuesday that was reported by the Verge, the company said it was planning for various scenarios and for employees in the US Quote, your employment pay and benefits are secure and our offices will remain open even if this situation hasn't been resolved before the January 19 deadline. Meanwhile, as we said, users aren't waiting Remember how I told you about RedNote? That Xiaohongshu app rocketing to the top of App Store charts? Seemingly users are jumping over there specifically because it's a Chinese app. To make a political point, here's a thread from bluesky user Erica Wilkinson. I offer this without any commentary. About 48 hours ago, American Tiktokers, incensed by the upcoming ban and the gloating of Zuck Musk about people returning to their platforms, decided that they were Americans and no one was going to tell them what to effing do. So they downloaded RedNote, a Chinese social media app. The American TikTok community decided they'd rather sit naked on a hot grill than ever watch a single IG reel. And they don't buy Congress's excuse of data security for the ban. So by the millions, they've been signing up to RedNote and volunteering their data directly directly to China. Please be aware, RedNote is in Mandarin. All servers are in China. It's a female dominated social media platform, sort of a cross between Pinterest and TikTok that's mostly used by Chinese folks to get restaurant recs and beauty tips. Americans started flooding in and the Chinese RedNote users immediately went into action. They are welcoming the TikTok refugees giving Mandarin language lessons, asking for help with their English homework. And they've got jokes. They're so hilarious. The jokes are what I first saw the Americans so happy about. Riffs on I'm your Chinese sponge. Bye. I'm so happy to see you. To AI Memes of a Chinese terracotta warrior and Lady Liberty in romantic poses to demands for cat photos. Our meme culture and theirs are a match and all the Americans are so touched by how kind, welcoming and generous the RedNote users have been with their time and hospitality and so Americans started diving into actual RedNote content, grocery hauls, recipes, day in the life, et cetera. And their confused because the US government has spent 30 years telling us how horrible China is. But their groceries are cheap, high quality and plentiful. They're eating lobster and crab on a Monday at lunch, not an anniversary dinner. Their jobs provide incredible, varied, healthy lunches and an hour to eat them. Their street style and fashion is impeccable. Their health care is provided. Their public transport is cheap, clean and widely available. One big thing on RedNote is getting recommendations on where to eat breakfast, which can be had for a dollar. Americans are like OMG we're the poor ones. I'm watching 30 years of propaganda melt away at first contact with actual Chinese folks. Every comment section on RedNote are the Chinese users welcoming the Americans? I'm so glad you're here. We can be friends now. We are not the enemy. End quote. The US government really screwed the pooch on this one. I can't think of a more effective way to make a bunch of Gen Z Communists. You're going to have a hard time manufacturing consent for aggressive action against China when 170 million American TikTok refugees are mutuals with half of the Red Note netizens. This is absolutely going to have diplomatic ramifications. I want to stress again that Americans hate and distrust Elon and Zuck so much that they're voluntarily giving their data to China and begun learning Mandarin to do it. And they're having fun. Whew. It's going to be a wild ride. End quote. It's funny how many times I personally have started a new business in a new year. So it's a new year now. 2025. And maybe you're thinking, how am I going to make this year different? How am I going to build something for myself? I'm dying to be my own boss or see if I can turn this business idea I've been kicking around into a reality. But I don't know how to make it happen. Well, Shopify is how you're going to make it happen. And let me tell you how. 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Its Android the top social app on Google Play in some markets, including the US quoting TechCrunch, the service today runs on the same Activity Pub protocol that powers Open Source X Alternative, Mastodon, YouTube competitor PeerTube and other decentralized social apps now including Meta's, Threads and Flipboard, plus its new app Surf that are part of a growing push toward a more open social web known as the Fediverse. Pixel Fed was originally developed in 2018 by Daniel SuperNote, who also recently created the federated TikTok rival loops. Similar to Instagram, Pixelfed allows users to share and explore photos and videos and send direct messages to others. However, very unlike Instagram, pixelfed is ad free, open source, decentralized and defaults to chronological feeds, which are its selling points to users at a time when people would rather join another Chinese app than return to meta. If TikTok's ban is upheld by the US Supreme Court, Pixel Fed's apps stand a better chance at success as users try to distance themselves from Meta's no longer fact checks social media apparently to get started with Pixel Fed, all you have to do is that thing where you join one of the servers or community, so it's full on the federated thing. Pixel Fed swears the apps will be free to use forever and will not collect any user data. I feel like today has been a day of news you can use new apps and the like. Well, well to continue that have you noticed your AirPods misbehaving recently? I know I have. That is apparently because Apple has been pushing users into transparency or noise cancellation modes without an easy way to opt out. This is quoting Spencer Daly who first wrote up his observations quote A couple of weeks ago I noticed my pair of AirPods Pro 2 aggressively switching me into transparency mode. It seemed like a bug again and again I would have to manually switch back out of transparency mode. Annoying. Then a few days later Apple removed the ability for me to switch out of transparency mode altogether. There are ways to reverse each of these changes, the force switching and the off removal, but the whole process was a major pain as a user to figure out. It wasn't simple to reverse even once I knew how to, and there wasn't any heads up that I remember getting from Apple explaining the changes. This led to me and a lot of people being confused. There are entire Reddit threads about this. In frustration I eventually googled myself down a rabbit hole where I learned all of this is likely tied to a relatively new feature called Loud Sound reduction that only works if AirPods are in an active noise control mode. So Apple perhaps recently decided that everyone needed this feature enabled and that's why they made all those annoying changes to noise control. I can only speculate anyway, so surely loud sound reduction can be disabled so my AirPods would hopefully stop switching to transparency mode right? After more googling, I eventually found that to disable loud sounds reduction you must go To Settings Accessibility AirPods Name of your AirPods Disable loud sounds Reduction. Wow, that's a lot of time taps and user frustration to merely get something back to how it originally was. But you know what? TVOS still did not show an off mode for my AirPods 2. I ended up needing to hard reset my AirPods, change all the settings mentioned above on iOS for a second time, and then let TVOS rediscover them before off would appear there. Phew. Finally I was able to get things back to how they were before. What a journey. So again, to sum up, in the last weeks of 2024 Apple changed its newer AirPods to remove the off noise control and separately push users into transparency mode all the time. This seems to be because of their force rollout of Reduce Loud Sounds feature if these changes aren't reflected in other devices like Apple TV, I found that I needed to hard reset my AirPods Pro 2, perform these settings changes in the video, and then have my Apple TV rediscover them. End quote. So I'm going to guess this is related to the problem that I've been having where I'll just be walking down the street or sitting in a chair and the volume of whatever I'm listening to suddenly goes down and I have to manually jack it back up again. I was wondering if it's because of winter and I've been wearing hats and scarves that might be triggering the volume on the buds, but no. I bet this is this Apple is forcing reduce loud sounds on me and not cool. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.