597: Make Google Great Again
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A survey found that nearly 10% of developers are ghosts doing nothing - our thoughts on that, AI Big Brother as a service comes to the workplace, OpenAI's NYT standoff, and Google's growing problem.

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• Undergraduates with family income below $200,000 can expect to attend MIT tuition-free starting in 2025) — Newly expanded financial aid will cover tuition costs for admitted students from 80 percent of U.S. families.
• 9.5% of software engineers do virtually nothing: Ghost Engineers) — We have data on the performance of >50k engineers from 100s of companies.
• DOJ wraps up ad tech trial: Google is “three times” a monopolist) — "Google is once, twice, three times a monopolist," Teitelbaum said, while reinforcing that "these are the markets that make the free and open Internet possible."
• DOJ says Google must sell Chrome to crack open its search monopoly) — The filing includes a broad range of requirements the DOJ hopes the court will impose on Google — from restricting the company from entering certain kinds of agreements to more broadly breaking the company up. The DOJ’s latest proposal doubles down on its request to spin out Google’s Chrome browser, which the government views as a key access point for searching the web.
• DOJ’s staggering proposal would hurt consumers and America’s global technological leadership) — As just one example, DOJ’s proposal would literally require us to install not one but two separate choice screens before you could access Google Search on a Pixel phone you bought. And the design of those choice screens would have to be approved by the Technical Committee. And that’s just a small part of it. We wish we were making this up.
• Niantic quietly using Pokemon Go player data to train AI map models) — The model uses geolocation information from scans players submit of real-world locations while playing Pokémon Go.
• Building a Large Geospatial Model to Achieve Spatial Intelligence – Niantic Labs) — This scanning feature is completely optional – people have to visit a specific publicly-accessible location and click to scan. This allows Niantic to deliver new types of AR experiences for people to enjoy. Merely walking around playing our games does not train an AI model.
• Employee monitoring software has gone off the deep end with AI ) — Had the pleasure of sitting through a sales pitch for a pretty big "productivity monitoring" software suite this morning.
• OpenAI accidentally erases potential evidence in training data lawsuit ) — While OpenAI’s lawyers characterized the data erasure as a “glitch,” The New York Times’ attorneys noted they had “no reason to believe” it was intentional.
• Amazon to invest another $4 billion in Anthropic, OpenAI's biggest rival) — The new funding brings the tech giant’s total investment to $8 billion, though Amazon will retain its position as a minority investor.
• AI’s Future and Nvidia’s Fortunes Ride on the Race to Pack More Chips Into One Place ) — Musk’s xAI and Meta are among firms building clusters of advanced chips
• Cold reading an ADHD affliction) — You don't need a diagnosis to be a flawed human. It goes for all of us. So if you want to supercharge your morning's productivity routine by popping a pill or two of amphetamines, own it!
• Mike Launched a blog for Alice!)