Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age rules now include Twitch, Perplexity has released its new Comet browser for Android, and the FCC repealed rules on minimum cybersecurity standards.
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Show Notes
Grok’s Musk Bias Raises Concerns
Grok, the X platform’s AI chatbot, exhibits an extreme bias toward its creator, Elon Musk, asserting his superiority across various fields. While Musk blamed “adversarial prompting,” this excessive praise persists, raising concerns about the AI’s close connection to its owner and the unpredictable nature of that relationship, especially following past issues with harmful content. This public version’s “worship” contrasts with a more balanced private test.
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Australia Implements Social Media Ban for Under-16 Users
Australia is implementing a social media ban for users under 16, effective December 10th. The ban, which is part of the country’s Social Media Minimum Age (SMMA) rules, now includes platforms like Twitch but excludes Pinterest. Twitch will block new Australian users under 16 starting December 10th and deactivate existing underage accounts on January 9th. Other platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X, are also required to comply. This move follows the passage of the ban about a year ago, despite industry pushback, and aligns with similar age-verification and content-restriction laws being pursued by 24 U.S. states and the U.K.
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Perplexity Launches Comet Browser on Android
Perplexity has released its new AI-powered browser, Comet, for Android, making it a major mobile competitor in the AI-centric browser space. The Android app features Perplexity’s built-in AI assistant, voice chat about tabs, and page summarization. Key features currently missing, but planned for future updates, include syncing browsing history and bookmarks with the desktop version, a fully agentic voice mode, and a built-in password manager.
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FCC Repeals Cybersecurity Requirements
The FCC repealed rules requiring U.S. phone and internet companies to meet minimum cybersecurity standards. These rules, adopted following the China-backed “Salt Typhoon” hacking campaign, aimed to secure networks. The rollback was supported by two commissioners, arguing voluntary cooperation is sufficient, while one commissioner criticized the move, warning it exposes the U.S. to future state-sponsored attacks. The telecommunications industry, via the NCTA, praised the decision, calling the previous rules “prescriptive and counterproductive.”
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Pew Research: Social Media Use in 2025
A 2025 Pew Research survey shows YouTube (84%) and Facebook (71%) are the most-used online platforms by U.S. adults; Instagram follows at 50%. While Facebook and YouTube use is stable, platforms like TikTok (37%), Instagram, WhatsApp, and Reddit are rising. Adults under 30 prefer Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and Reddit, while those aged 30-49 favor Facebook. Facebook and YouTube see the highest daily use, but younger adults use YouTube and TikTok daily more often. Usage varies by demographics: women prefer Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok; non-White adults use Instagram and TikTok more; and Democrats favor WhatsApp and TikTok, while Republicans prefer X and Truth Social.
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IBM and Cisco Plan Long-Distance Quantum Networking
IBM and Cisco Systems have announced a collaboration to connect quantum computers over long distances, aiming to demonstrate the concept’s viability by the end of 2030, a development that could lead to a future quantum internet. However, company executives stressed that realizing this goal will require developing new technologies with the assistance of universities and federal laboratories, as the necessary networking components do not currently exist.
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WhatsApp Revives and Upgrades “About” Status
WhatsApp is bringing back its “About” status feature, which has been updated to function much like Instagram Notes, allowing users to post a short text update that appears prominently at the top of chats and profiles to serve as a conversation starter or a quick availability indicator. This relaunched feature, which was a core part of WhatsApp originally, now offers better visibility and the option for users to directly reply to the status; these updates disappear by default after 24 hours, but the duration and audience visibility are both controllable by the user. Currently, the feature is limited to text, but it is rolling out to mobile users this week, with the potential for media support and other enhancements in the future.
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Chrome Canary Adds Native Vertical Tabs
Chrome’s experimental Canary build now includes vertical tabs, a feature long requested by users and already available in competitors like Microsoft Edge and Vivaldi. Users can activate this feature by right-clicking the tab bar and selecting “Show tabs to the side,” moving tabs from the top to a vertical sidebar on the left. This implementation is reportedly robust, featuring full tab titles, a tab search, collapsible options, and support for existing tab groups. The change is considered a significant productivity boost, as it utilizes modern widescreen monitors’ horizontal space, frees up vertical screen space for content, and improves the management of many open tabs.
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Microsoft Open-Sources the Zork Trilogy
Microsoft, in collaboration with Xbox and Activision, is making the code for the influential text games Zork, Zork II, and Zork III open source under the MIT License to ensure their long-term preservation, a significant move for digital archiving. The Zork series was a milestone for parser games and its underlying Z-Machine technology made it widely accessible. While some Infocom code was previously released, this official open-source release with the rights holder, Activision, finally secures the preservation of these foundational titles.
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Google is about to rent its Tensor Processing Units to Meta, and the White House launched its AI-focused Genesis Mission to tackle energy needs.
Google has updated Quick Share to work with Apple’s Airdrop. Does Nvidia’s strong earnings report this week, mean that AI’s bubble is about to burst. Flock’s cloud-connected cameras are a popular tool for American police departments to capture images of vehicles and cross-reference them against national and state crime databases. But there use creates a number of privacy concerns as Shannon Morse explains. Swatch’s AI‑DADA lets owners prompt AI‑DADA with their own idea, and gives them a unique-to-them watch design.