Tech News Weekly 455

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy joins the show this week! AI-generated "news" sites. Are 'health age' scores helpful, or harmful? Google Home now supports the Model Context Protocol. And Apple unveils a new photo verification technology for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max.

• Mikah shares a story about Futurism's investigation into Brown Brothers Media reveals a network of AI-generated "news" sites - complete with fabricated writer personas and stolen bylines.
• Victoria Song of The Verge joins the show to explain why "health age" scores from wearables like Whoop, Oura, and now Apple Watch are wildly inconsistent proprietary metrics that can fuel unnecessary shame or false confidence about your health.
• Jennifer discusses Google Home's new MCP support and makes the case that what smart homes really need is a dedicated, on-device "smart home computer" rather than more cloud-dependent AI.
• And Mikah talks about Apple's Reference Image feature for the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, which aims to verify photo authenticity straight from the camera sensor, an approach the company says avoids the privacy and security pitfalls of industry standards like C2PA.

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• Transcripts: Tech News Weekly 455 Transcript

Links

• How Three Brothers Built an AI Slop Empire by Buying Legitimate News Sites and Turning Them Into Zombie Content Farms That They Say Get 50 Million Page Views per Month
• Your ‘health age’ is fake | The Verge
• Google Home gets MCP support for third-party AI agents | The Verge
• Why Apple’s next computer should be for the smart home | The Verge
• Apple Reference Image: A New Approach for Verified Photography - Apple Security Research
• Apple Reference Image is a big effort to combat AI-edited photos