Apple Can’t Fix This…

[00:00:00]Some of Apple's older iPhones have an unpatchable exploit called USB literate, a name that bears an eerie resemblance to a mid-2000s Xbox gamer tag. I'm Linus Sebastian, this is TechLinked, and these are the affected devices. So, basically, anything with an A12 or A13 chip. That's the iPhone 10R all the way through the 11 lineup, along with a stack of iPads, and somehow the studio display. Plus, the S4 and S5 powered Apple Watches and HomePod Minis are vulnerable as well. It was discovered by a group called Paradigm Shift, and the hack leverages a hardware bug in the USB controller that hijacks your phone's startup before iOS even loads. Thankfully, in order for anyone to take advantage of it, they would need physical access and a cable.

[00:00:46]So, nobody's going to be hitting you over Wi-Fi, but the real risk is if your iPhone gets stolen. If that happens, [music] someone could tamper with it to gain deep access. Though, your passcode and your encrypted data should stay locked in the secure enclave. Since the flaw is baked into the silicon, though, no patch is ever coming short of buying new hardware. It's not all bad news, though. I mean, the last bug like this became the backbone of iPhone jailbreaking. So, maybe modders will end up happier than the actual criminals.

[00:01:16]Speaking of criminals, Meta has been lobbying Congress for immunity from lawsuits brought against its platforms for harming children. According to a report from Reuters, Meta's goal here is to make it illegal for states to sue the platform on grounds of child safety, reserving that power only for the federal government, which I'm sure will go great in the US, given they've historically never had strong feelings on states' rights. Uh this is Meta's response to a couple of precedent-setting cases in California and New Mexico, where juries found Meta liable for building addictive platforms and for exposing children to predators, and ultimately finding the company millions. With thousands of similar lawsuits now being filed all over the US, Meta is now at risk of losing a serious amount of cash. So, they're pushing this lobbying effort in hopes that moving legal action to the federal level will shield them from these lawsuits, or at least limit them. I guess that's one way to deal with this, other than maybe not harming children in the first place. Waymo has recalled nearly 4,000 of its robo-taxis operating in cities across the US after multiple instances of the vehicles failing to recognize road signs that indicated construction zones. The vehicles were reportedly blowing past road closure signs and weaving between hazard cones to get access to these restricted areas.

[00:02:35]13 such incidents were reported in the last 2 months alone, leading Waymo to finally recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This is Waymo's fourth safety recall since February of 2024, including one just last month where Waymos were recalled for driving into standing water, which resulted in one of their vehicles getting swept into a creek in San Antonio during a flood. This is not to mention all of the incidents where Waymos have been recorded just driving into active crime scenes. I feel like at this point getting into a Waymo feels less like ordering a ride and more like volunteering to be a witness. Now, it's time for you to witness our sponsor, Jawa. You know, we're kind of in the middle of the RAMpocalypse right now, wandering aimlessly through a wasteland of atrocious prices, parched for quality deals. Well, thankfully, Jawa is your online marketplace oasis, a place to buy and sell new and used gaming gear and custom PCs at a reasonable price. Ah, [gasps] ooh, [sighs] peace at last. Jawa is a great place to find Intel 12th gen or AMD AM4 CPUs. You can buy confidently from verified sellers, and then you can actually afford some DDR4 RAM and save even more. Every listing is manually reviewed, transactions are protected, and you can even sell your old GPU or CPU directly to Jawa, and they'll take care of the rest. So, if you're tired of roaming this PC parts deal desert and you're ready to find sanctuary, check out Jawa. Visit the link below to get started. Here in their natural habitat, we find five really fast small things.

[00:04:05]They can rarely be observed for longer than 30 seconds at a time, so be careful before the algorithm spots them. Valve's new Steam Controller is so popular that they simply gosh darn can't make enough of them. So, anyone reserving one now is not going to see it until 2027.

[00:04:22]I don't know what's more mind-blowing, that or the fact that 2027 is only next year. Anyway, considering the last one ended up in the clearance bin for like five bucks, I think it's fair to call the Steam Controller 2 a triumph.

[00:04:34]Chinese hardware shop owner Brother Sang paid $222 for a broken RTX 4090. Then he cracked it open and found that the GPU die was just a chunk of plastic with no real silicon. Although, it did have fake Nvidia markings that were dated 2030 and scrap memory chips that were added just for looks. A real 4090 runs for about $1,500 on the used market. So, I guess the thing to learn here is if you think you're scoring a $1,500 card for $222, that deal was too good to be true and I'm sorry, dude. Apple is now letting Brazilians download apps from rival stores and pay for them outside of the App Store. A change that the country's antitrust regulator forced them to make.

[00:05:19]New stores still need Apple's permission before actually getting onto their devices, but this makes Brazil the fourth place TO PRY THE WALLS OPEN ON APPLE'S walled garden after the EU, Japan, and South Korea. So, if you want to choose your own App Store, you got a couple of options. You could write your local representative or you could move to one of those four places. US Commerce Secretary and perpetually wet man Howard Lutnick told AS His hair does always look wet, doesn't it? Howard Lutnick told ASML's leaders that there might be evidence that one of its lithography machines may have been shipped to China, which, if true, would put ASML in breach of export controls.

[00:06:00]ASML, meanwhile, flatly denies this and has asked the US team to provide its evidence. Lutnick's team, scamps that they are, have refused to provide the evidence that it claims to maybe have.

[00:06:11]And Midjourney, the AI image company, says that its new full-body ultrasound scanner could eventually prevent 30% of all deaths, halve healthcare costs, and run 1 billion scans a month, all while you're relaxing with the company calls a spa. Snap back to reality. Oh, there goes gra- You know what? It doesn't matter. The point is the prototype apparently takes about 20 minutes instead of the claimed 60 seconds, has no FDA clearance, and, for the time being anyway, uses no AI at all. Though, maybe that's actually a good thing, coming from the company that's famous for drawing hands with nine fingers. And you might end up with nine fingers if you don't come back here on Monday for more tech news.

[00:06:52]As for me, I'll be slipping into the underbrush and I'll be waiting, motionless, for another herd of tech stories.

[00:06:58]>> Caca!

[00:06:59]>> [screaming]