OpenAI’s Broken Promises & USB-C Victory

Welcome to another week of tech news! Let’s dive into the biggest stories making waves:

📢 OpenAI promised a data opt-out tool for creators all the way back in May 2024... and where is it? Nowhere to be found! Despite pledging to let creators keep their work out of AI training, no tool has emerged. Critics argue that opting out shouldn't even be the creator's job—data collection should require explicit consent upfront. And while the online ad industry says, "That would destroy us!" many are saying, "Good." Meanwhile, sketchy companies like RHEI.ai are already trying to pay creators for their content. Suspicious much? LINK: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/01/openai-failed-to-deliver-the-opt-out-tool-it-promised-by-2025

🔌 The EU's Common Charger Directive is here! USB-C is now the standard for most wired gadgets sold in the EU—no more digging through piles of mismatched chargers. While laptops have until 2026, most other devices need to comply immediately. Even Apple has bowed to the USB-C mandate. This is a win for anyone tired of juggling countless proprietary cables! Time to responsibly recycle that drawer of tangled cords. LINK: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/usb-c-is-now-a-legal-requirement-for-most-rechargeable-gadgets-in-europe/

⭐ GitHub’s star system is in trouble! Stars are supposed to highlight popular open-source projects, but millions of fake stars from bot accounts have skewed the system. A recent study found that out of 610 million stars, 4.5 million were fake! There are even websites where you can *buy* stars. If fake reviews can plague Amazon, is it really a surprise that open-source projects are getting hit, too? LINK: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/over-31-million-fake-stars-on-github-projects-used-to-boost-rankings/

💻 Windows 10 isn’t going anywhere! Despite Microsoft’s push for Windows 11, over 62% of users are still sticking with Windows 10—and that number keeps growing. With stricter hardware requirements and user resistance to change, many can’t (or won’t) upgrade. Support for Windows 10 is set to end in October 2025... but will Microsoft extend the deadline, or will they finally give us Windows 12? The clock is ticking. LINK: https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/02/windows_10_grows/

Thanks for joining us—see you next time! 🎙️

Transcript

[00:00:00.00]
Announcer: Welcome to Tech News of the Week with your host, Margerine, the Devil's Mucus.

[00:00:09.05]
Ned: Welcome to Tech News of the Week. This is our weekly Tech News podcast where Chris and I talk about four interesting stories that we found in the news. Chris, why don't you kick us off?

[00:00:20.23]
Chris: Correction. We missed an OpenAI release from our last Tech News of the Week episode. Oh, dear. Shame, shame, shame. But it's okay, though, because OpenAI missed it, too. All the way back in May of 2024, OpenAI, a company famous for stealing work without credit, attribution or remuneration from as many people as possible, promised that they would release a specific tool that creators could use to opt out of their data being included in OpenAI's regular forays into data mining the world. Kind of like a robots. Text file for AI, the thinking went, except it would actually work.

[00:01:02.22]
Ned: All right.

[00:01:03.25]
Chris: This tool would have been great.

[00:01:07.17]
Ned: Yes.

[00:01:08.08]
Chris: If it were real.

[00:01:09.20]
Ned: Oh.

[00:01:10.21]
Chris: Spoiler alert. It appears that it is not. Openai said it would be released in the calendar year, and here we are in a whole new one of those, and no tool. Well, except for Sam Altman. Boom. There is a lot of discussion about this online, particularly around the idea that this responsibility of opting out should not be on creators in the first place. All the data scraping, selling, using, etc. You should have to be opted in by you. By you? Yeah, that's a sentence. From the jump. To which I say, Absolutely. To which they say, But then the online advertising industry would fall apart completely, too. Nobody would agree to that. To which I say, Exactly? Then I wait a minute and I say, Oh, yeah, but they probably would agree to that. Then I would sigh.

[00:02:21.14]
Ned: Like that. I sigh for you. I got an email today from some sketchy company called RHEI. Ai, offering me money for the content I've already created on YouTube for use with AI training. I don't know if it's a scam, but all of AI is basically a scam, so the answer is no. Usb-c is the charger of the EU. Yay. No, really, yay. As someone who used to work desktop support and help desk, I can tell you that stocking chargers of all varieties and types is an absolute nightmare. Every cradle, laptop, cell phone, and other electronic gizmo would have its own charger and specialized port on the back. Our traveling salespeople managed to lose them with alarming frequency. Whole shelves and storage bins were dedicated to troves of wall warts, and finding the right one was akin to truffle hunting, only far less rewarding and with far less adorable pigs. Which is why I'm possibly over-excited by the EU standard forcing all electronic devices categorized as radio equipment with a wire charger and rechargeable battery to use the USB-C receptacle. The Common Charger Directive took effect on December 28th, 2024, and while laptops have until April 2026 to comply, most other gizmos need to be compliant now.

[00:04:00.27]
Ned: Manufacturers have been aware of this new directive since its ratification in October of 2022, so most of them have already adopted the USB-C port on their devices. Even the stalwart Apple, king of proprietary nonsense, caved in 2022 and is leaving the lightning port far behind. Devices can still have their own proprietary charging ports if they want, like the MagSafe connector or Microsoft surface port, but they also need to support charging via the USB-C port as well. The standard also enforces power negotiation for devices that support faster charging to help the charging brick and device agree on a safe wattage to push through. While this doesn't technically enforce the restriction outside of the EU, it essentially does, as manufacturers are unlikely to produce two versions of the same device. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a whole filing box of chargers to throw away. I mean, recycle responsibly.

[00:05:07.01]
Chris: Does that mean bonfire?

[00:05:09.21]
Ned: No.

[00:05:13.20]
Chris: Social media is a poison that is now somehow affecting even GitHub? So the whole point of an open source software project is that you, as the end user, are It's supposed to be able to vet it. Take a look at the code, see what it does, see if it's safe, and if you like it, you use it. This idea falls down a little bit if there are, say, I don't know, 207,220,398 projects to choose from, like there are on GitHub at the time of this recording, with about 4 million added to that number every month. Number one, holy shit. I don't have a follow-up.

[00:06:09.08]
Ned: It's a lot.

[00:06:10.29]
Chris: Github saw this problem, and it had a solution. Stars. Users could star a project so other people could see that it was good. More stars would show up, meaning that it was popular. And people would download it without thinking or doing any of that other looking at the code stuff I said before. What could possibly go wrong? Wait, wait, wait, did you say rampant fake accounts giving stars to malware to trick users into downloading it? Because if you did, you're right. A research study conducted by a number of organizations found that something like 4.5 million stars given out on GitHub were They're fake. Fake stars from fake users. Oh, and did you know that there are websites you can go to and literally buy stars to be applied to your projects? I sure didn't, but I sure should have. That's the only reason most of the morons on Twitter are popular, after all. Admittedly, this study, it looked at something like 610 million stars. So finding only 4.5 million being fake, that percentage is pretty low. For now. I, for one, am more alarmed that the percentage is anything above zero. Also, I'm a little bit unsure of how we go about fixing the issue.

[00:07:51.08]
Chris: After all, Amazon has known for a long time that half of their reviews are garbage and they've done nothing. Happy New Year. We're all doomed.

[00:08:03.01]
Ned: The title of your memoir. Windows 10 is the last Windows, at least if users have anything to say in the matter. Microsoft has a very hit or miss history when it comes to versions of Windows. For many of our listeners, you probably stayed on Windows XP SP3 for about as long as you possibly could to avoid the disaster that was Windows Vista. Despite including major security and structural improvements, the launch of Windows Vista was an unmitigated disaster, and it wasn't until the palate cleanser of Windows 7 that people finally moved off XP. The problem was so bad that Microsoft extended support of XP several times. Windows 7 had a similar impact, with users refusing to upgrade to Windows 8 and its strange and ugly start menu that no one asked for and no one wanted. It wasn't until Windows Windows 10 that users finally felt ready to migrate from Windows 7, and that upgrade had to be offered for free. There does seem to be a pattern, and Windows 11 fits right in. With its more stringent hardware requirements, its need for a TPM 2.0 chip, some people simply can't upgrade from Windows 10. But even if they can, plenty of organizations see no reason to do so and have decided to stick with Windows 10, even on new devices.

[00:09:31.15]
Ned: According to December 2024 numbers from StatCounter, Windows 10 has the market share of 62.7% compared to 34% for Windows 11. Worse yet, the Windows 10 share has been growing since 2023. This despite the fact that official support for Windows 10 Pro and Home runs out in October of 2025. Will Microsoft extend the support deadline given the massive number of Windows 10 boxes, or will it release Windows 12 this year and give people a viable alternative? Time will tell. And so far, it has told us the latter. Hey, that should have gone in our Predictions episode, which is this week. It's still nice. Stay tuned for that. Also, if you're curious about the results of our survey, that will be in the Predictions episode as well. So you can listen to that and enjoy the feedback that we got. That was universally good because we're amazing. All right, that's it. We're done now. Go away.

[00:10:40.19]
Ned: Bye.