- I've been doing tech news for seven years now.
And I swear if I see one more tech story,
I'm gonna tell you about it, gladly!
Dealing with popups from antivirus bloatware,
like McAfee on new laptops, is annoying.
But if you're involved in the US election,
it might actually be dangerous to something other
than your own mental health.
A new report from Google indicates
that a Chinese hacker group dubbed, APT31
has been impersonating McAfee employees
with the goal of infiltrating computers
used by campaign workers.
APT31 used phishing tactics to try and get staffers
to install McAfee products from GitHub,
instead of the official McAfee website,
which to be fair,
just as sketchy, if not more.
And these downloads also contain malware
which could be invisible to the end user.
Google says this is part of a larger trend
of government backed malware attacks,
which have increased as 2020 has gone on.
The upcoming presidential election in the US
is no doubt, a huge impetus for these attacks.
And here I was thinking attack ads
were the worst part of election season.
Ha! Not this year, this is the hell year.
Everything's worse.
- [Guy] It's only gonna get worse.
- Just you wait.
Although the big news recently
in the world of wireless charging has been out,
Apple is bringing back MagSafe,
all the wireless charging enthusiasts are talking about it.
Don't sleep on Xiaomi.
Today, they unveiled a wireless charger
that can deliver 80 Watts,
which is more than the power bricks
for a lot of mainstream laptops.
- [Guy] That's a lot of Watts - Wow!
That's a lot of Watts, Marty!
Xiaomi claims that its new product can wirelessly charge
a 4,000 milliamp hour battery in just 19 minutes,
as well as get from zero to 50 in less than nine minutes,
which would be quite impressive indeed.
Although there are faster charging solutions around,
this appears to be the fastest wireless one yet,
although we're not yet sure exactly
when it's going to hit the market.
In the meantime, remember to plug your phone in
before you pass out, just in case,
when it hits the mark when it hits the market
and then you're gonna pass out.
That's Guy, we love you Guy.
- [Guy] That's our Guy. - That's our Guy.
If you live in San Francisco, look out for driverless cars
tooling around with a bit more regularity.
Cruise, which is owned by General Motors,
has gotten a permit from the California DMV
to put up to five driverless cars on the road
for use as taxis.
In this case, their Chevy Bolts that have been modified
to run autonomously.
It's not the first driverless car pilot in the US,
but San Francisco streets are notoriously busy.
So it'll be interesting to see how the cars perform.
The test-- - [Guy] them go uphill.
- (laughs) They can actually do it.
The tests will be limited
to just one neighborhood for the time being.
Hopefully it's the one with the squiggly, that's insane.
- [Guy] The "Full House" one. - Yeah, exactly.
And the cars won't exceed 30 miles per hour
to reduce the risk of, you know,
a wayward car going careening into...
- [Guy] Step on it driver, I'm in a hurry.
- No word on if and when these trials
would expand to the rest of the city or beyond,
but it would be awesome
not to have to make small talk with an Uber driver.
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Quick bits,
smooth going down,
smooth going up.
It looks like we'll be getting
the next flagship Galaxy S smartphone
a little earlier than anticipated,
as leaks indicate it'll be coming in January.
Although we're expecting it to
again, have three cameras on the back,
it's not clear yet whether it will be called
the S21 or the S30,
but I'm sure I'll be calling it, the expensive.
I'm liking these fingers today.
- [Guy] Finger gun! - Finger Guy!
The iPhone 12 was criticized in some quarters
for not offering too many compelling new features.
But as the first 5G iPhone,
that hasn't stopped it from pulling in preorders
in more than twice the clip of last year's iPhone 11.
Estimates indicate that
up to 2 million preorders were placed,
though that's still only about
half of what we saw with the iPhone 6,
which we all remember fondly, I guess.
That phone famously gave the lineup a larger screen.
Maybe Apple just needs to sell an iPhone the size of a TV,
for preorders to really take off.
Think about it, Tim Apple,
you got the idea here first.
A new CPU lineup can often mean
needing to buy a new motherboard, if you wanna upgrade.
But MSI has come out and said that
all of its 400-Series chipset boards
will indeed support the new Ryzen 5000 CPUs,
with a BIOS update,
and they're joining ASUS in this as well
and a few other manufacturers.
However, the updated firmware
probably won't be ready until January.
So I hope you can get through Black Friday,
as well as Christmas,
without too much gadget envy.
Don't count on it.
- [Guy] Went with that gadget every New Year's.
- And oddly enough,
Tesla looks like it's giving freebies out
to a select number of car owners.
Some Model 3 owners are getting premium options,
like satellite maps, live traffic, and streaming music,
without paying for Tesla's premium connectivity package.
It's possible that this might only be available
to drivers in Canada,
yes, finally,
we get something that the US might be missing out on.
I don't wanna talk about this anymore.
That's our show.
So come back Wednesday for more tech news,
with that tangy tomato flavor you crave.
John made a, John made a joke about ketchup chips.
That's why this...
Hey, don't you throw your really cool stylist shoes at me.
- [Guy] They're not the sponsor.