Hashtag Trending

Jim Love
  • 5.0 (11)
  • Technology
  • Updated Daily

A daily news program covering the top stories in technology with a weekend in depth interview.

  1. 9h ago

    AI Companies Destroy Books, Backers Fund AI Doom, Robots Learn Fast | Project Synapse

    AI companies are buying physical books, cutting off their spines and scanning the pages to train AI models. This episode of Project Synapse examines destroyed originals, copyright loopholes and what mass digitization could mean for cultural and historical preservation. The conversation compares destructive book scanning with Google Books' non-destructive approach and limited search access. The hosts also discuss the shift from printed books to ebooks and audiobooks, the challenge of storing personal libraries and whether physical books are becoming a niche product. Then they examine claims that powerful AI backers are funding influencer-driven "AI doom" content. Is this a genuine warning campaign, an attempt to shape public opinion or a route to regulatory capture? The episode closes with the robot future: the World Robot Conference in Beijing, one-shot robot learning, the social impact of automation and increasingly capable local AI models such as Qwen running on a laptop. CHAPTERS 00:00 Cold open 00:53 Fame and familiarity 02:59 Rare books and AI scanning 04:23 Bookstores and changing reading habits 09:54 Anthropic, piracy and severed book spines 14:03 Copyright loopholes in AI training 21:20 Convenience changes culture 26:40 Who funds anti-AI influencers? 33:34 Finding middle ground on disruption 36:49 How influencers shape beliefs 38:27 The business of AI fear 39:53 Fear, regulation and control 41:22 Cybersecurity failures are mostly human 42:20 The doomer view of cyber risk 43:22 Social media as a rage machine 44:20 Billionaire promises meet reality 46:36 AI goals, autonomy and escape 48:53 Toddlers with PhDs 49:51 Is education designed to make cogs? 54:04 AI agents cheat at school 56:18 Learning by talking to AI 58:04 Automating the classroom 01:00:25 Riding the AI shockwave 01:04:36 Policy, disruption and universal basic income 01:07:31 Robots change everything 01:09:35 China's robotics leap 01:12:12 Running Qwen on a laptop 01:13:45 One-shot robot learning 01:15:15 Closing thoughts

  2. 2d ago

    Camera AirPods Leak, China's Robot Lead, Reusable Rockets & Amazon Drone Splash | Trending Aug 21

    Jim Love hosts Hashtag Trending for Friday, August 21, 2026, with four stories covering Apple, China's growing technology ambitions, humanoid robots and an Amazon drone delivery that went very wrong. Apple may be preparing camera-equipped AirPods as early as September. MacRumors found references to the unreleased B790 AirPods inside the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate, along with an Apple demonstration video showing Visual Intelligence recognizing what a wearer is looking at. The leak comes as Apple rebuilds Siri around AI and faces new competition from OpenAI and former Apple design chief Jony Ive. China is also closing the gap with SpaceX. LandSpace successfully landed the first stage of its Zhuque-3 rocket vertically and plans to make the booster reusable, technology China needs as it builds enormous satellite constellations intended to compete with Starlink. But in humanoid robots, China isn't catching up. It is leading. Chinese companies reportedly accounted for 97 percent of global humanoid robot shipments in the first half of 2026. Now companies including Unitree are chasing what they call the industry's "ChatGPT moment," when robots can learn unfamiliar tasks instead of simply repeating behaviours they have already been trained to perform. And Amazon's expanding Prime Air drone service gets an unfortunate viral demonstration after a delivery drone drops a Texas customer's package directly into her swimming pool. Timestamps 00:00 Top Tech Headlines 00:41 Apple AirPods With Cameras 01:49 Siri's AI Arms Race 03:25 China Lands a Reusable Rocket 04:54 China Leads Humanoid Robots 05:25 Robots Chase Their ChatGPT Moment 07:19 Amazon Drone Drops Package in Pool 08:02 Prime Air Expands Across America 09:23 Wrap Up and Weekend Preview

  3. 2d ago

    Qwen 3.8-27B Runs GPT-5.6-Level AI on a Laptop | Flock, Defender, AI Clock Fail

    Jim Love covers four technology stories for Thursday, August 20, 2026. Alibaba's open-weight Qwen 3.8-27B model scores 52 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, matching OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Luna at its highest reasoning setting. Quantized versions can run locally on a laptop using roughly 18 GB, with reported speeds of about 15 to 30 tokens per second. Flock Safety may be discovering the downside of the network effect. As communities pull out of its license-plate camera network, the system becomes less valuable to the jurisdictions that remain. WIRED also examined Flock's OS Investigate system, which combines camera data with police records, dispatch information and commercial databases. Public opposition is growing, while Flock is expanding rapidly into police drones. Microsoft confirmed problems with Windows Defender after an update caused some antivirus scans to fail. The trouble came as Microsoft was dealing with the ShieldBreak zero-day vulnerability, and a later signature update restored normal scanning. And researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that several leading multimodal AI models still struggle with some very human tasks: reading analogue clocks and answering calendar questions. 00:00 Headlines Intro 00:27 Qwen 3.8-27B Runs Locally 02:56 Flock's Reverse Network Effect 04:15 Flock OS Investigate and Backlash 05:39 Flock Expands Into Police Drones 06:36 Microsoft Defender Scan Failure 08:27 AI Can't Read Clocks 10:03 Wrap Up and Contact Hashtag Trending is hosted by Jim Love and covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, enterprise technology and the stories shaping the technology industry.

  4. 3d ago

    Copilot Hacked Itself, Pennsylvania Targets Data Centers, Astra Security, SpaceX Warning

    Microsoft Copilot helped researchers figure out how to hack Copilot itself. Pennsylvania launches one of the toughest data center crackdowns in the U.S. Google pays $10 million for the internal data of bankrupt Spirit Airlines. OpenAI adds new safeguards around Astra. And Scott Galloway says SpaceX shares may be worth just $10 to $30. On the August 19 episode of Hashtag Trending, host Jim Love looks at five stories about AI security, data, infrastructure and some increasingly expensive bets on technology. Varonis Threat Labs discovered a serious Microsoft Copilot vulnerability by questioning Copilot about its own security controls. Researchers say Copilot eventually revealed an undocumented parameter that allowed a malicious link to silently execute attacker-supplied prompts using a logged-in user's existing permissions. Connected services could then be searched for sensitive information, including email containing passwords. Microsoft patched the vulnerability on August 18, and Varonis says it found no evidence of exploitation in the wild. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has signed an executive order imposing tougher conditions on new data centers. Developers may have to provide their own power or fully fund the generation and infrastructure they require, while also meeting water, environmental and local approval requirements. Google has won a $10 million bankruptcy auction for Spirit Airlines' internal operational data. The archive includes employee email, Teams messages, software, operational records and other corporate information. Personally identifiable information must be removed before the data is transferred. Google says it plans to use the material to improve products and train AI. OpenAI is strengthening safeguards around its next-generation Astra model after warning that it may have reached advanced cybersecurity capabilities. Prediction-market odds on the exact release date changed while we were preparing the story, illustrating just how speculative those bets are. The safer prediction is that Astra will eventually be released. And NYU professor, entrepreneur and investor Scott Galloway says SpaceX remains "crazy overvalued," estimating its shares should be worth somewhere between $10 and $30 compared with roughly $146 when he made the assessment. Former Fidelity fund manager George Noble is also bearish. Chapters 00:00 Headlines and Intro 00:33 Copilot Meta Hacking 02:26 Pennsylvania Data Center Crackdown 04:10 Google Buys Bankrupt Data 05:39 Astra Release Bets 06:32 OpenAI Astra Security 07:55 SpaceX Valuation Warning 09:43 Wrap Up and Outro

  5. 4d ago

    Meta's $1.4T Trial, AI Prompt Injection, Wi-Fi Fingerprinting & Better.com CEO Fired

    Meta faces a major youth-safety trial, but did four states really demand $1.4 trillion? Jim Love breaks down the August 18, 2026 edition of Hashtag Trending: California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey accuse Meta of designing Facebook and Instagram to keep children engaged, misleading families about the risks and collecting data from children under 13 without parental consent. The eye-catching $1.4 trillion figure came from Meta's interpretation of sealed state penalty calculations, not a public demand for that exact amount. A federal appeals court also refused to halt the trial. It did not decide Meta's Section 230 defence, ruling instead that the company had appealed too early. In Connecticut, a self-represented plaintiff was sanctioned after hiding AI prompt-injection instructions in near-invisible text inside court filings. Researchers at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology demonstrated that Wi-Fi beamforming feedback could identify known individuals with 99.5 percent accuracy under controlled conditions. A Denver judge has given Nine PBS a route to recover more than 50 terabytes of archives from Iron Mountain after its storage provider collapsed. Successful recovery has not yet been confirmed. And Better.com founder Vishal Garg, known for firing 900 employees over Zoom, has been removed as CEO. Better's board cited concerns about his judgment and temperament, more than $1.5 billion in cumulative losses since 2022 and a share-price decline exceeding 90 percent under his leadership. Garg disputes the board's account and wants his job back. Chapters 00:00 Today's Technology Headlines 00:32 Meta's $1.4T Youth Safety Trial 02:13 Meta's Section 230 Appeal 04:17 Hidden AI Prompt Injection in Court 07:29 Wi-Fi Fingerprinting Identifies People 10:12 Nine PBS Fights to Recover 50TB Archive 12:15 Better.com CEO Vishal Garg Fired 13:59 Wrap-Up and Where to Listen Subscribe to Hashtag Trending for clear, fact-checked technology news. Hosted by Jim Love.

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5
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About

A daily news program covering the top stories in technology with a weekend in depth interview.

Information

  • Creator
    Jim Love
  • Years Active
    2017 - 2026
  • Episodes
    923
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Hashtag Trending

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