Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 01/09 – The Wildfire App Everyone In LA Has Been Using

Starting point is 00:00:00 On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme right home for Thursday, January 9th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. Big new Zero Day to tell you about. Apple says Siri is safe, honest. Google rolls out an AI Daily Listen audio feature, looking at the next wave of wearable AI, and let me tell you about Watch Duty, the app that everyone in L.A. was using overnight. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Yvante is warning that threat actors exploited a critical rated zero day in its widely used connect secure VPN tool to compromise its corporate customers networks, quoting TechCrunch.

Starting point is 00:01:15 Avanti said on Wednesday that the critical rated vulnerability tracked as CVE 2025-0282 can be exploited without any authentication to remotely plant malicious code on Avanti's Connect Secure, Policy Secure, and ZTA Gateway's products. Avanti says its Connect Secure Remote Access VPN solution is, quote, the most widely used, adopted SSL VPN by organizations of every size across every major industry. This is the latest exploited security vulnerability to target Avanti's products in recent years. Last year, the technology maker pledged to overhaul its security processes after hackers targeted vulnerabilities and several of its products to launch mass hacks against its customers. The company said it became aware of the latest vulnerability after its Avanti Integrity Checker tool, flagged malicious activity on some, customer appliances. In an advisory post published on Wednesday, Avanti confirmed threat actors were

Starting point is 00:02:04 actively exploiting a, quote, zero day, which means the company had no time to fix the vulnerability before it was discovered and exploited, and that it was aware of a limited number of customers whose Avanti Connect Secure appliances were hacked. Avanti said a patch is currently available for Connect Secure, but that patches for policy secure and ZTA gateways, neither of which have confirmed exploitability, won't be released until January 21st. The company said it also discovered a second vulnerability which has not yet been exploited. Avanti has not said how many of its customers are affected by the hacks or who is behind the intrusions.

Starting point is 00:02:36 Spokespeople for Avanti did not respond to TechCrunch's questions by press time, end quote. Apple wants you to know it, quote, has never used Siri data to build marketing profiles and never sold it for advertising or other purposes. This comes, of course, after they had to pay up $95 million to settle a lawsuit around activities that sounded like they were doing that very thing. Quoting The Verge. Apple is refuting rumors that it ever led advertisers target users based on Siri recordings and a statement published Wednesday evening describing how Siri works and what it does with data.

Starting point is 00:03:10 The section specifically responding to the rumors reads Apple has never used Siri to build marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose. We are constantly developing technologies to make Siri even more private and will continue to do so. The conspiracy theory the company is responding to resurface last week after Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit over users whose conversations were captured by its Siri voice assistant and potentially overheard by human employees. Apple's statement tonight says it, quote, does not retain audio recordings of Siri interactions unless users explicitly opt in to help improve Siri, and even then, the recordings are used solely for that purpose. Users can easily opt out at any time. Facebook responded to

Starting point is 00:03:50 similar theories in 2014 and 2016 before Mark Zuckerberg addressed it directly saying no to the question while being grilled by Congress over the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018, end quote. Google is rolling out Daily Listen, which uses AI to generate five-minute personalized audio overviews of stories and topics that a user follows to its mobile app. Quoting 9 to 5-5 Google. Through Discover and search, Google is aware of what you are interested in. Daily Listen takes all of that into account to create a five-minute or so episode that provides an overview of stories and topics that you follow.

Starting point is 00:04:27 This personalized AI-powered audio experiment will appear in the space carousel underneath the search bar at the top of the Google app on Android and iOS, tapping the Daily Listen card, which is dated and labeled Made for You, launches a full-screen player. Badged with the Gemini Sparkle, Daily Listen shows a text transcript where cover art usually appears, noting how generative AI is experimental, you can give it thumbs-up, thumbs-down feedback. Then there's a scrubber with sections denoted, while controls include play, pause, 10-second rewind, next story, playback speed, and mute if you want to read the transcript. At the bottom, you can scroll through related stories corresponding to each section with the ability to search for more, and thumbs up,

Starting point is 00:05:08 thumbs down the interest. A docked player appears at the top of the screen as you browse. Android and iOS users in the U.S. can enable Daily Listen in Search Labs from the top left corner of the Google app. The experiment is rolling out starting today. It will then take a day for the first episode to appear, end quote. Sources say SoftBank and its majority-owned Arm are weighing acquiring Oracle-backed Ampeer, which designs arm-based server CPUs. Ampeer is reportedly exploring its options, quoting Bloomberg. Ampeer, which designed semiconductors that use arms technology, was valued at $8 billion in a proposed minority investment by Japan's softbank in 2021. Bloomberg News reported at the time.

Starting point is 00:05:53 It couldn't be learned what valuation soft bank, Arm, and Ampeer are discussing currently. Representatives for Arm and Ampeer declined to comment. Spokespeople for SoftBank and Oracle didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Ampeer has been working with a financial advisor to help fuel. takeover interest. Bloomberg News reported in September. The Santa Clara, California-based companies' interest in a deal with a larger player in the industry suggests that it didn't see an easy path to an initial public offering. A deal for Ampeer, whose early backers include Carlisle Group, would add to a wave of chip companies looking to capitalize on an AI spending boom. Oracle said

Starting point is 00:06:26 last year that it owns 29% of the startup and can exercise future investment options that would give it control of the chipmaker. Though Ampeer stands to benefit from the continuing AI frenzy, The market has grown more competitive with several large tech companies rushing to develop the same kinds of chips that Ampeer makes. While there's a huge interest in control of key components as the Data Center industry retools for the AI-age Ampere, like larger rivals Intel and advanced micro-devices, is having to respond to a shift in spending away from central processing units or CPUs toward Nvidia's accelerator chips. Ampeer makes processors for data center machinery using Arms technology. Arm is increasingly moving from being a licenser of fundamental standards and basic blueprints. to more of a complete chipmaker.

Starting point is 00:07:08 The addition of Amper's engineers, many of who worked for Intel's former industry-leading server chip unit might add expertise and impetus to chief executive officer Renee Haas's push into that market. Ampeer founder and CEO Renee James, a former Intel executive, had eyed taking Ampeer public. The company said in April 2022 that it had filed confidentially for a US IPO at a time when demand for chips was surging, end quote. There actually wasn't the deluge of AI wearables that I expect.

Starting point is 00:07:41 at CES this year, but there have been some, notably BAI and AMI that have embedded always on microphones to record conversations around the user. From Wired, a quick glimpse of what these gadgets do, quote, the BAI is simple. It has two microphones for noise isolation, and Souton says that you can hear the person you're speaking with in a busy environment. The wearables should be able to hear both parties as well. It can be worn as a band on the wrist or clip to your shirt. There's an action button on the center, pressing it once, mutes the mics, and pressing it again, enables them again. You can press and hold the button, and this action is user configurable, so that can trigger things like processing the current conversation or awakening the Buzz AI assistant

Starting point is 00:08:24 to ask it a question. There's no speaker on the wearable, so answers will be spoken through your phone. When the mic is muted, there is a red LED. When it's recording, you'd think the green LED would be lit up, but there's nothing to indicate that this wearable is picking up everything around you. The conversations are not processed locally on the phone. Souten says the gap is closing for edge processing, but battery life still poses a fundamental problem, so for now your data is processed in the cloud. Which large language models are deployed by BAI depends on the task you want to do. There's a mix of commercial and open source models, including Open AIs chat GPT and Google's Gemini, plus some the company hosts itself. Souten says BAI's target demographic is people, quote,

Starting point is 00:09:05 who talk a lot for a living. If you're sitting at a desk all day, not saying anything to anyone, there's not much for B's AI wearable to process unless you start asking it questions. But since it's recording all the time, it can recall things from conversations you have throughout the day. The accuracy of this is a bit hit or miss because B doesn't necessarily know who the people around you are, but it can discern different speaking voices and arrange the transcripts of the conversations to show different speakers. You can set a name for who the other speakers are. It can also save facts about you. In the same vein, you can ask it to forget things it may have picked up if you don't want them on the record. In the app,

Starting point is 00:09:41 you can see a summary of the conversations you've had throughout the day, and at the day's end, it generates a snippet of what the day was like and has the locations of where you had these chats on a map. But the most interesting feature is the middle tab, which is your to-dos. These are automatically generated based on your conversations. I was speaking with my editor, and we talked about taking a picture of a product, and lo and behold, BAI created a to do-do for me to remember to take a picture for Mike. I must have said his name during the conversation. You can check these off if you complete them. Zolo says BAI has a freemium service model, so with just the hardware, you get basic memory recall and summarization features. You'll have to

Starting point is 00:10:18 pay $12 per month to access many of the other features, including the integrations with third-party apps, which the company wants to expand. Ami, on the other hand, was trained to recognize the specific brainwaves when you focus on speaking to the wearable. So instead of having to say a hot word, you just think. That interaction is only something you use when you use when you, You want to engage with the device, though, at every other moment. Ami is essentially a wearable microphone capturing the conversations you have throughout the day, just like BAI. With that capability, it can do many of the same things like transcribe conversations, summarize them in, add events to your calendar and translate. Everything is processed on the paired phone and in the cloud, so this is once again not a standalone piece of hardware like the humane AI pin.

Starting point is 00:10:59 Shivchenko says that Ami is open source but is currently trained on chat GPT. One area where Ami differs from BAI is with its marketplace for third-party ideas. There are apps built by the community, but think of these more like mods or skills that enhance Ami's integration with everyday apps. For example, there's a Google Drive app. You can enable to have every conversation summary stored in a drive folder at the end of the day. These apps can be published to Ami's store, and developers can choose to make it free or paid. There are already dozens of apps because Sevchenko shipped 5,000 units of an early version of Ami last year to developers.

Starting point is 00:11:33 quote. Finally today, I swear to you that this actually happened on Monday. I saw a story about a wildfire monitoring app, and I thought, cool, I'll save it for the long reads. Well, you can guess what happened next. So, watch duty is a wildfire monitoring app active in 22 U.S. states that has gotten heavily used over the last 48 hours with the wildfires in Los Angeles, quoting the Los Angeles Times. Watch duty launched in 2021 combines publicly available maps of fire incidents and evacuation order and warning zones, similar to what can be found on the Cal Fire website, with shelter locations, national weather service alerts, and real-time text, photo, and video updates with the option to receive or turn off notifications about specific incidents.

Starting point is 00:12:23 Watch duty, which counted 7.2 million yearly active users at the end of 2024, has already added 600,000 new users in the last 24 hours, according to CEO John Min. Mills. What's happening right now in L.A. is the worst that I've seen in the five years I've been doing this. This is catastrophic, Mills told the times. It's really hard to watch, but I'd rather be doing this than not doing anything. It feels like we could at least do something to help, because otherwise we're just sitting here watching the world burn, end quote. The app provides real-time updates on fires in 22 states, including California. Watch duty has 15 employees and works with roughly 200 volunteers, including active and retired firefighters and dispatchers. The Watch Duty team gets automated

Starting point is 00:13:05 alerts that are sent to its Slack platform when a 911 dispatch call is made regarding a fire. The team monitors information about the fire, listening to radio scanners, looking at wildfire cameras and satellites, and following official announcements from law enforcement and fire services and other public sources, according to Watch Duty's website. Watch Duty said it will notify affected members of the public through its app, quote, if we perceive a third. threat to life or property. As of Wednesday morning, for instance, users tracking the Palisades Fire could find dispatches from watch duty staff reporter Kowukin on the eastern extent of the fire and see a current picture looking from Topanga Peak West, end quote. Quoting the verge,

Starting point is 00:13:45 Californians on social media are encouraging each other to download the app in light of the ongoing LA fires raging across thousands of acres of land, fueled by high winds and extremely dry conditions. As of Thursday morning, the LA Times reports that the fires have killed five people and destroyed more than 2,000 buildings, including the homes of celebrities like Paris Hilton, Billy Crystal, Adam Brody, and James Woods. Seconding the Watchduty app so hard, said one Californian on a threads post encouraging users to download the app, I live in Butte County, California, where the campfire was in 2018, and Watch Duty has been immeasurably helpful during fires like the Park Fire last summer, end quote. And quoting from the original piece in The Guardian that turned me on to the app in the first place,

Starting point is 00:14:29 The app is not just about alerts. It is about a state of mind, Watchduty's CEO John Mills said. The Silicon Valley alum founded the organization after moving from San Francisco to a sprawling ranch in Sonoma County where fire dangers are high. After starting in just four California counties, Watch Duty covered the entire state in its first year before rapidly expanding across the American West and into Hawaii. In the past years, it's not just residents who have come to rely on the app, an array of responders from firefighters to city officials to journal. are also logging on, ensuring key actors are on the same page. People always thank me for watch duty, and I'm like, you're welcome, and I'm sorry that you need it, Mills said. But it's clear that the need is real. In each new area where they have offered the service, word of mouth has driven usage. We spent no money on marketing at all, Mills said. We just let the genie out of the

Starting point is 00:15:19 bottle so the world would know things could never go back to the way things were. The network is fueled by hundreds of people who donate their time and a small staff of just 15 reporters and engineers. Together, they have alerted the public to more than 9,000 wildfires this year. Meanwhile, support has been pouring in. This year, Watchduty received $5.6 million in funding from grants, individual donors, and a new professional subscription model that offers paying users' insights into things like where electric and gas transmission lines intersect the fire footprint, lands managed by utilities, private owners, and agency responsibility areas, plus a search function for historical and inactive fires. But this is just the beginning, according to Mills,

Starting point is 00:15:57 I didn't call this fire duty on purpose, he said. A nod toward the plan to begin reporting on other risks in the near future, including flooding and extreme weather events, end quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 01/09 – The Wildfire App Everyone In LA Has Been Using

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