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The world moves fast, your workday even faster. Pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI assistant for work built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 apps you use, helping you quickly write, analyze, create and summarize so you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work. Learn more@Microsoft.com M365 copilot oh my gosh.

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Oh my gosh. Wow. 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's 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 wifi connecting with no actual Internet, Bluetooth controllers straight up disappearing mid session, and at least one sysadmin on Reddit saying there was a 3 out of 5 chance his taskbar would just disappear. Can you find a way to get it back? Ha ha. 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. Blimey, Copilot. Didn't you wonder where your parents learned it all? Learned what? You're a chatbot copilot. I'm a what? A chatbot. And a thumping, I'd wager. Aw. Meta CEO and former Innsmouth 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 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's things 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 Ray Ban 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 Boland, 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. Jury's out on him. He told the jury that Zuckerberg fostered a culture that prioritized growth of 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 Temu, 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 phthalates, 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 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 that 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 sponsor rovlab. Look, I spent all day on the streets of New York City building skyscrapers and crawling around in the sewers with my brothers Tony, Frankie, Manny, Tony, Tony and Tony. 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Sit back, relax, enjoy M1. Hey. Get back to work. Hey, I'm relaxing over here. Wow. I I just saw what the quick bits are today and I'm still pretty crazy. We're gonna Ah woo hoo. Intel has announced that it's moving certain customer support functions to an AI chatbot. And while AI customer assistance 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 chatbots in drive thru 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? Eleven. 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 admissions, they are doubling down. Leaked internal emails showed CEO Jamie Siminoff 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 dragnet 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 Wynn Resorts and Cargurus. The craziest part? They're apparently using the same vishing methods seen in previous breaches. That's phishing, but like voice version of it. Stay keep up. The stolen data includes 800,000 employee records from Wynn Resorts and around 1.7 million corporate files from car gurus Gurush 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, gardevoirs and a mew, will they leave us alone? The FBI has issued new guidance to store owners after hackers jackpotted more than 700 ATMs in 2025, stealing roughly $20 million using malware called Plotus. Criminals infect a machine's internals 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 can't let them know there's an easier option. And Substack just announced an expansion of their existing partnership with gambling platform Polymarket, allowing substack authors to embed prediction market betting data directly into newsletters and articles. Polymarkets 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 gonna die.