Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And this is the
Speaker 1: news for Tuesday, February ninth one. On Monday, Facebook announced
Speaker 1: that the company would take a stronger stance against posts
Speaker 1: containing misinformation regarding vaccines. This is an escalation of earlier
Speaker 1: Facebook policies. In October twenty, Facebook said it would no
Speaker 1: longer sell ad space to parties that promoted misleading information
Speaker 1: about vaccines. Then in December, Facebook upped the anti by
Speaker 1: saying it would remove posts the elevated claims that had
Speaker 1: been debunked by the World Health Organization or w HO.
Speaker 1: But Monday's announcement broadens this approach behind vaccines for COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen and encompasses all vaccines period. While Facebook used to
Speaker 1: flag misleading posts and then just down rank them, you know,
Speaker 1: not remove them, but reduce their rank, that would just
Speaker 1: mean that they were less likely to show up in
Speaker 1: users feeds. Now the company will actually remove posts promoting
Speaker 1: false claims about vaccinations. Facebook worked with the World Health
Speaker 1: Organization and other governmental agencies to create something like a
Speaker 1: database of false or misleading claims. According to a Facebook
Speaker 1: post on the matter, the company's stance on vaccines falls
Speaker 1: under multiple user policies. For example, content that would promote
Speaker 1: events intended to spread COVID nineteen on purpose, presumably in
Speaker 1: the belief that catching it is better than being vaccinated
Speaker 1: against it, would fall under the coordinating Harm policy. Because
Speaker 1: it turns out Facebook is against coordinating harm, which frankly
Speaker 1: is news to me. So I suppose other things that
Speaker 1: would fall into this category would include, uh, Facebook pages
Speaker 1: dedicated for big public events in places that have a
Speaker 1: quarantine or lockdown in place, you know, That would presumably
Speaker 1: fall under the coordinating harm policy. Meanwhile, under the Regulated
Speaker 1: Goods policy, Facebook says it will prohibit posts that are
Speaker 1: attempting to sell quote medical and respiratory face masks and
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen test kits end quote. Apparently there are a
Speaker 1: lot of parties out there selling stuff that's like a
Speaker 1: counterfeit type of of medical mask or tests that haven't
Speaker 1: actually been cleared by any regulatory agency, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: And it's a real bear to wade through. The legit
Speaker 1: versus the illegitimate one, so Facebook saying, all right, we're
Speaker 1: just not going to run those ads. Under the hate
Speaker 1: speech policy, Facebook will remove content that suggests people who
Speaker 1: share a protected characteristic are in some way, you know,
Speaker 1: responsible for the virus, or they are spreading the virus
Speaker 1: and so on. But this doesn't include national origin as
Speaker 1: an outright band because Facebook states that it wants to
Speaker 1: allow for posts about health statistics that are not hate speech.
Speaker 1: Rather they are giving important information such as x percent
Speaker 1: of Americans have caught COVID nineteen since the beginning of
Speaker 1: the pandemic, something like that, And you wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: put a full ban on uh nation of origin because
Speaker 1: the information could be really useful. And there's a whole
Speaker 1: list of prohibited content that falls under Facebook's Community Standards barrier,
Speaker 1: and that includes a ton of stuff, including more broadly
Speaker 1: debunked claims about vaccines in general, such as the claim
Speaker 1: that they cause autism, despite the fact that you know
Speaker 1: that claim has been thoroughly rejected and the researchers who
Speaker 1: first proposed the link between vaccines and autism we're later
Speaker 1: found to have essentially fabricated the whole thing, but the
Speaker 1: idea has still stuck around and a lot of people
Speaker 1: latch onto it. Facebook will now remove those posts when
Speaker 1: they catch them, though I should add the language indicates
Speaker 1: that this general policy really is only in effect for
Speaker 1: as long as there is a COVID nineteen public health emergency,
Speaker 1: so there's no telling if the company is going to
Speaker 1: ease off on these restrictions later on down the road.
Speaker 1: According to Facebook, the reason behind these changes comes from
Speaker 1: the Facebook Oversight Board, which is the independent group that
Speaker 1: would recently formed to review Facebook's content moderation policies. And
Speaker 1: while we're talking about Facebook, Forbes published an article that
Speaker 1: put claims made by the company's chief operating officer under
Speaker 1: the microscope. The CEO of Facebook is Cheryl Sandberg, and
Speaker 1: the specific claims were regarding the siege on the US capital.
Speaker 1: On January six, Sandberg had said quote, I think these
Speaker 1: events were largely organized on platforms that don't have our
Speaker 1: abilities to stop hate, and don't have our standards and
Speaker 1: don't have our transparency end quote. Which yikes. Okay, as
Speaker 1: you guys probably have gathered, because I am not subtle
Speaker 1: about it, I'm pretty critical of Facebook and how it
Speaker 1: enforces or until recently, I guess it would be better
Speaker 1: to say, failed to enforce its policies. Forbes looked over
Speaker 1: documents from the U s Department of Justice regarding the
Speaker 1: charges against two hundred twenty three people connected to the
Speaker 1: riots now part of the nation that they looked at.
Speaker 1: Part of the information in those documents includes cases in
Speaker 1: which they identified posts on social media that account for
Speaker 1: some of the evidence against the respective individuals with regard
Speaker 1: to planning and you know, the various threats that were made.
Speaker 1: Seventy three of those documents name Facebook as one of
Speaker 1: the social platforms upon which an associated suspect posted material
Speaker 1: relating to the assembly in d C and the riot
Speaker 1: at the Capitol, which puts Facebook in the lead for
Speaker 1: platforms that were cited by the d o J as
Speaker 1: having hosted material related to the riots. In a distant
Speaker 1: second place is YouTube, which had twenty four appearances in
Speaker 1: these documents, and Instagram takes up spot number three, with
Speaker 1: twenty of the documents citing Instagram posts, and since Facebook
Speaker 1: owns Instagram, you could arguably add those twenty two Facebook's account,
Speaker 1: although to be fair, some of these documents probably referenced
Speaker 1: more than one social network, So while Facebook appeared seventy
Speaker 1: three times, and Instagram appeared twenty times. Some of those
Speaker 1: may have been in the same documents, there might be
Speaker 1: some overlap. There's what I'm saying as for Parlor or Parley,
Speaker 1: you know, the free speech social network that largely catered
Speaker 1: to extremists and the far right, that one the d
Speaker 1: o J only cited in eight documents. Now, that does
Speaker 1: not necessarily mean that everyone involved in the riots used
Speaker 1: Facebook primarily, and hardly anyone used Parlor, But it also
Speaker 1: seems to undercut Cheryl Sandberg's claims that Facebook was somehow
Speaker 1: in a better position compared to these other platforms. It's
Speaker 1: true that Facebook had been working to remove groups, you know,
Speaker 1: hate groups and and posts that violated its policies against
Speaker 1: militarized social movements. But it's also true that the platform
Speaker 1: was still hosting a lot of communication and organization related
Speaker 1: to the riots on January six. So I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that Facebook is more responsible than these other platforms, or
Speaker 1: that the vast majority of planning happened on Facebook. Rather,
Speaker 1: I'm saying that Sandberg's claims that somehow Facebook is elevated
Speaker 1: above these other platforms just doesn't hold water when we're
Speaker 1: looking at the evidence that the d o J has
Speaker 1: been bringing together. In other news, zd net reports that
Speaker 1: Microsoft is going to add a new type of threat
Speaker 1: alert for its Defender product for Office three sixty five,
Speaker 1: and the alert is for nation state cyber attacks. So
Speaker 1: if Microsoft detects that a nation state backed hacking group
Speaker 1: is targeting a particular companies, employees, or its systems, it
Speaker 1: can send up the alert through Defender for Office three
Speaker 1: sixty Microsoft has already been kind of doing this on
Speaker 1: a more granular approach, since if the company detected that
Speaker 1: a nation state backed attack was targeting one of Microsoft's customers,
Speaker 1: then Microsoft would send an email to that specific person,
Speaker 1: alerting them of the attack and providing advice on how
Speaker 1: they should secure their account. Now, according to Microsoft, it
Speaker 1: was sending out around ten thousand alerts per year since.
Speaker 1: But there is a problem with this approach, and that's
Speaker 1: the fact that not everyone stays up to date on
Speaker 1: their emails. You know, I'm kind of guilty of that.
Speaker 1: I get a lot of emails every single day, and
Speaker 1: I'm frequently busy researching or recording, so I'll miss a
Speaker 1: lot of messages or you know, read them in batches
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, and considering that a
Speaker 1: nation state backed hacking attack is what I would call
Speaker 1: a super high priority and urgent matter, people like me
Speaker 1: can be a real problem. And so this new feature
Speaker 1: will allow Microsoft to send out an alert through the
Speaker 1: Office three sixty five dashboard, which should pop up on
Speaker 1: the screens of various system administrators and I T personnel,
Speaker 1: who can then take steps to address problems, including proactively
Speaker 1: changing the settings on affected accounts and then contacting the
Speaker 1: affected employees. So then no time is wasted in responding
Speaker 1: to the threat. It would be better for an employee
Speaker 1: to get locked out of their account by their system
Speaker 1: administrator than to have it, you know, compromised by a
Speaker 1: nation state backed hacker. And I really wanted to include
Speaker 1: this news item today, not because I want to advertise
Speaker 1: for Microsoft, but rather point out how the rise of
Speaker 1: nation based hacker groups has really become a serious and
Speaker 1: persistent threat around the world. And just to be clear,
Speaker 1: tons of countries do these kind of cyber attacks. Here
Speaker 1: in the United States, we typically hear about groups that
Speaker 1: are backed by China and Russia in North Korea, but
Speaker 1: keep in mind that the United States has engaged in
Speaker 1: this kind of cyber warfare too. Cyber warfare is real,
Speaker 1: and it is quietly raging online all the time, and
Speaker 1: we typically only become aware of it when someone discovers,
Speaker 1: you know, a big flaw in security, such as the
Speaker 1: solar Winds hack. So it's a pretty scary world out
Speaker 1: there and wild to think that there needs to be
Speaker 1: an official alert built into an Office three product to
Speaker 1: let you know about a nation state based hacking attack
Speaker 1: on your company. That's I mean, it's this is like
Speaker 1: like spy movie type stuff. Bloomberg reported that Twitter is
Speaker 1: looking at some potential ways to generate revenue for the
Speaker 1: company in addition to its normal route. Right now, Twitter's
Speaker 1: main source of revenue is through advertisements, such as promoted posts.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever been on Twitter and you thought, huh,
Speaker 1: I don't remember following Taco Bell. Did I follow Taco Bell?
Speaker 1: Did I get loopy last night and follow Taco Bell,
Speaker 1: Well there's a chance you never followed Taco Bell, but
Speaker 1: rather Taco Bell had paid for a promoted post and
Speaker 1: Twitter then posted that to your feed. And while Twitter
Speaker 1: had a rocky road early in the pandemic, as companies
Speaker 1: began to kind of cut back on their advertising, budgets.
Speaker 1: It did bounce back. Recently, Twitter announced that second one
Speaker 1: billion dollar quarter. That's one billion dollars in revenue, I
Speaker 1: should add, not profit. And there are questions about whether
Speaker 1: that trend will continue, you know, because after all, most
Speaker 1: recently Twitter purged tons of accounts from its platform due
Speaker 1: to the aforementioned riots at the US Capital, among other things.
Speaker 1: So that means it's a good idea to diversify. If
Speaker 1: your growth isn't going on the up and up, like
Speaker 1: if you're not expanding the number of users to your service,
Speaker 1: then you have to figure out how you're going to
Speaker 1: generate revenue beyond just advertising, because advertisers are more interested
Speaker 1: in seeing those numbers go up. So in this case,
Speaker 1: Twitter is reportedly considering introducing some features that users can
Speaker 1: access if they cough up the dough. One possible change
Speaker 1: is that Twitter will start charging for tweet Deck, which
Speaker 1: is an alternative way to view tweets. Uh. It's it's
Speaker 1: its own little kind of dashboard. For one thing, you
Speaker 1: get all the tweets in reverse chronological order, so there's
Speaker 1: no confusing little segments of stuff like labeled. You might
Speaker 1: have missed this. That's nestled in the middle of more
Speaker 1: recent tweets. I know that whenever I use Twitter directly,
Speaker 1: I will run into tweets that were posted, like, you know,
Speaker 1: eighteen hours ago, and I'll think, wow, that's a big gap.
Speaker 1: That's because Twitter has kind of aggregated those, thinking, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe you want to see these. I prefer it in
Speaker 1: reverse chronological order. Tweet deck does that. If you manage
Speaker 1: multiple Twitter accounts, you can set up tweet deck to
Speaker 1: actually show all those various feeds side by side, including
Speaker 1: things like replies and direct messages. So I use tweet
Speaker 1: deck to manage Twitter accounts for myself, for tech stuff
Speaker 1: and for large nerdron collider. So one option Twitter is
Speaker 1: reportedly considering is making the service a subscription based service.
Speaker 1: Another feature that could be a paid option is an
Speaker 1: undo send button. I'm not sure how it's different from
Speaker 1: a delete tweet option unless it actively removes the tweet
Speaker 1: from displaying in various feeds in real time. Because sometimes
Speaker 1: if you send out a tweet and you delete it
Speaker 1: and somebody else has an older, unrefreshed Twitter feed up,
Speaker 1: they can see that undeleted tweet. Maybe this deals with that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, and another pitch would allow accounts to
Speaker 1: offer up exclusive content to people who tip the accounts,
Speaker 1: sort of like a tiered subscription that you would find
Speaker 1: on platforms like YouTube. Twitter responded to a request from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg to clarify the strategies, and the company essentially said
Speaker 1: that any plans right now are in the very early
Speaker 1: stages of discussion. Nothing is said in stone, and you
Speaker 1: shouldn't really expect to see anything implemented this year. Now.
Speaker 1: I say all that knowing that Twitter is going to
Speaker 1: hold its quarterly earnings called later the day. This goes
Speaker 1: out on Tuesday, the ninth of February, so it's possible
Speaker 1: that I'll have some updates for Thursday's episode. We'll see.
Speaker 1: And one big story that I've yet to touch on
Speaker 1: tech stuff is uh the ongoing political upheaval in Myanmar. Now,
Speaker 1: this country in Southeast Asia was formerly a British colony.
Speaker 1: For several decades, it existed under military rule. It transitioned
Speaker 1: to a civilian based government, used to be known as
Speaker 1: Burma in the United States. It frequently is referred to
Speaker 1: still as Burma, and until very recently, the leader of
Speaker 1: the country was on San su Ki, who won a
Speaker 1: re election campaign in a landslide. She she was originally
Speaker 1: elected in one reelection this past year, and the military's
Speaker 1: justification for taking over the government hinged on charges of
Speaker 1: nationwide voter fraud, and those are charges that have no
Speaker 1: evidence behind them, which sounds a bit familiar and indicative
Speaker 1: of a general trend in world politics that we've seen
Speaker 1: in many places not too long ago. And this isn't
Speaker 1: the first time that sue Ki has seen this kind
Speaker 1: of resistance. She had served around fifteen years in detention
Speaker 1: as punishment for efforts to organize a democratic government in
Speaker 1: the country. She also received the Nobel Peace Prize for
Speaker 1: her efforts in nineteen one. Now, the reason I bring
Speaker 1: up the story here is that the military has been
Speaker 1: steadily cracking down on Internet platforms within the country. One
Speaker 1: of the big changes between the last era of military
Speaker 1: regimes and this current one is the proliferation of the
Speaker 1: Internet and affordable technology that citizens can use to access
Speaker 1: the Internet. This ends up giving people a lot of
Speaker 1: options when it comes to doing stuff like organizing protests
Speaker 1: and sharing information, something the military has been keen to squash.
Speaker 1: As such, the military has moved to cut off citizens
Speaker 1: access to the Internet. The BBC reported over the weekend
Speaker 1: that nationwide connectivity fell to sixteen percent of what it
Speaker 1: normally would be. The military also moved to block citizen
Speaker 1: access to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Some citizens
Speaker 1: switched to using virtual private networks or VPNs in order
Speaker 1: to get around those blocks, and that prompted the military
Speaker 1: to go for the more brute force approach of essentially
Speaker 1: shutting down internet service entirely within the country. Essentially, the
Speaker 1: military are taking the philosophy of the founders of the
Speaker 1: Internet and trying to do the opposite in order to
Speaker 1: restrict speech and organization. Citizen in the country continue to
Speaker 1: speak out against the coup, organizing in the streets. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the three finger salute from Hunger Games has become a
Speaker 1: widely adopted symbol representing a rejection of authoritarianism. There's a
Speaker 1: growing international pressure against the military to reverse course and
Speaker 1: acknowledge the democratically elected leaders. And this story is ongoing,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure we'll have more updates in future episodes. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more news to cover, but before
Speaker 1: we get to that, let's take a quick break. We're back.
Speaker 1: The New York Times published a piece about the gig
Speaker 1: economy in general, and Uber, Lift and Airbnb in particular.
Speaker 1: Over the course of twenty twenty. Clearly, the pandemic has
Speaker 1: had a major effect on these companies and their employees
Speaker 1: or contract workers as the case may be, and their customers.
Speaker 1: Uber and Lift have never had a profitable year, though
Speaker 1: the typical response to that criticism has been that they're
Speaker 1: you know, both companies have invested more in growth year
Speaker 1: over year, which made costs outpaced revenue, but both have
Speaker 1: had I p o s or you know, initial public offerings.
Speaker 1: They're both publicly traded companies, which typically brings along with
Speaker 1: it a certain general expectation that the companies will become
Speaker 1: profitable and represent a return on investment for shareholders. And
Speaker 1: of course was a much different year than any of
Speaker 1: us had planned thanks to the pandemic. Usage of ride
Speaker 1: hailing services and Airbnb dropped significantly in the spring. It
Speaker 1: recovered a bit and then had a second dip in
Speaker 1: the fall, though not as drastic as it could have been,
Speaker 1: and the gig workers have had a lot of concerns
Speaker 1: during that whole time. There's a higher risk for them
Speaker 1: to get sick as they can encounter a lot of
Speaker 1: people on a single shift. And what's more so, gig
Speaker 1: workers intentionally sought out gigs around larger public events, you know,
Speaker 1: potential super spreader events. Because people needed transportation, a lot
Speaker 1: of gig workers stopped working those types of jobs completely.
Speaker 1: Others would swap over to stuff like driving deliveries rather
Speaker 1: than passengers, and you know, Uber really did a major
Speaker 1: shift towards delivery. In with that change came lower paychecks
Speaker 1: and lower risk of getting sick. According to Lift and
Speaker 1: its ten largest markets, the drivers who you know kept
Speaker 1: picking up passengers were working at a fairly steady pace
Speaker 1: through most of the year because there were a reduced
Speaker 1: number of drivers out there, which meant there was a
Speaker 1: smaller supply, so a smaller demand was okay, But in
Speaker 1: other places, drivers spent a lot of time just waiting
Speaker 1: idly in their cars for potential fares. And apparently tipping
Speaker 1: was down in as well. Oh and drivers often had
Speaker 1: to supplement masks and cleaning products that were supplied by
Speaker 1: their companies, and they had to add in stuff that
Speaker 1: they bought with their own money because it wasn't enough
Speaker 1: to cover their their work, which represented another cost for
Speaker 1: the driver. Both Uber and Left will be announcing their
Speaker 1: financial results for twenty twenty later this week, and we'll
Speaker 1: learn more about how these companies have been doing. Currently.
Speaker 1: Both Uber and Left have stocks priced in the fifty
Speaker 1: to sixty dollar range, which is a pretty drastic increase
Speaker 1: from the lows that their stocks hit in. And now
Speaker 1: for a couple of Tesla stories. First up as a
Speaker 1: story in the Wall Street Journal. Their reports. China has
Speaker 1: criticized Tesla for the build quality of the US built
Speaker 1: vehicles the Tesla has been trying to sell in China.
Speaker 1: China's State Administration for Market Regulation has rebuked Tesla for
Speaker 1: inconsistent build quality, which is something that the company has
Speaker 1: faced over here in the United States on occasion. Is
Speaker 1: inconsistent build quality. The company has issued a few recalls
Speaker 1: on US built models, like the Model S and the
Speaker 1: Model X. One of those recalls was about the touch
Speaker 1: screen that was incorporated into the dashboard of these vehicles,
Speaker 1: and another recall was for an issue with the suspension
Speaker 1: systems of the vehicles. Interestingly, the Tesla vehicles that are
Speaker 1: actually built in the company's Giga factory in Shanghai are
Speaker 1: clear of these problems or appear to be so. This
Speaker 1: seems to be an issue specifically with the American made
Speaker 1: Tesla vehicles. Tesla apparently greased a lot of wheels to
Speaker 1: open up operations in China. It received funding from Chinese banks,
Speaker 1: which are stayed owned and operated, and it also sidesteps
Speaker 1: some regulations that normally it would have to go through
Speaker 1: in order to get you know, approval in China, and
Speaker 1: it was all in an effort to get the production
Speaker 1: even faster. So it's kind of rough to get all
Speaker 1: these sorts of favors from a foreign country and then
Speaker 1: turn round and kind of mess up. It's too early
Speaker 1: to say if there will be further consequences, but they
Speaker 1: could escalate up to and including an import ban on
Speaker 1: US built Tesla vehicles. So it's not, as the kids say,
Speaker 1: a good look. And our second Tesla story is that
Speaker 1: the company is really into bitcoin, like really into it,
Speaker 1: as in making a one and a half billion dollar
Speaker 1: investment into the cryptocurrency kind of into it. And in
Speaker 1: its tin K report to the SEC, we learned that
Speaker 1: the company apparently plans to accept bitcoin as a form
Speaker 1: of payment in the future to some degree. Now, personally
Speaker 1: I find this whole thing ridiculous, but I find almost
Speaker 1: everything about bitcoin to be ridiculous. As I have pointed
Speaker 1: out on numerous occasions in my old grouchy Man voice,
Speaker 1: bitcoin's value fluctuates so much that it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to see it as a valid currency. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: people have used bitcoin to make transactions, particularly for stuff
Speaker 1: that they would rather not have on the books anywhere else.
Speaker 1: But on January twenty one, the value of a single
Speaker 1: bitcoin was thirty thousand, four hundred seventeen u s. Dollars.
Speaker 1: That's a lot, right, Well, this morning it was just
Speaker 1: above forty three thousand dollars, and as a record this
Speaker 1: episode in the night of February eight, the current value
Speaker 1: for a bitcoin is forty six thousand, four hundred twenty
Speaker 1: seven dollars and fifty cents. So in two weeks, the
Speaker 1: value of a single bitcoin increased by more than sixteen
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, and it increased by nearly three thousand dollars
Speaker 1: just over a few hours for one bitcoin. So let's
Speaker 1: say that you've got some bitcoins, maybe you invested in
Speaker 1: them and purchased them, maybe you mind them. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really matter or how likely are you to spend a
Speaker 1: bitcoin if you know that in two weeks, the bitcoin
Speaker 1: you spend might have increased in value by more than
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollars. I mean, you would have already spent
Speaker 1: the bitcoin, so none of that value would come back
Speaker 1: to you. You would have spent that money already. It
Speaker 1: would be out of your wallet and in someone else's
Speaker 1: and that person would see the money they received from
Speaker 1: you increase in value dramatically. Now that doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: it's a very viable currency to me. I would be
Speaker 1: terrified to spend money, thinking what if I held onto
Speaker 1: this for two weeks and it increased in value, you know,
Speaker 1: by sixteen thousand dollars, I would never spend it. So
Speaker 1: maybe you could think of it more as an investment,
Speaker 1: but you know, not really currency anyway. Tesla essentially acknowledged
Speaker 1: that the company is diversifying its investments with money that
Speaker 1: you know, they don't need for their regular operating expenses,
Speaker 1: and bitcoin represents one of those investments. Now, this next
Speaker 1: story isn't a Tesla story, but it does involve Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: who is currently the richest person in the world. He's
Speaker 1: putting money, a hundred million dollars of it, toward a
Speaker 1: prize pool for a special contest. No, he is not
Speaker 1: inviting five children to a Tesla factory to get gobbled
Speaker 1: up by various machinery until he takes one of them
Speaker 1: on a glass elevator ride, though I do continue to
Speaker 1: pitch that movie instead. The contest is for teams to
Speaker 1: propose carbon removal solutions to reduce the amount of carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide in the atmosphere and then to lock it up
Speaker 1: in some form to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases
Speaker 1: that are out there and help fight climate change. The
Speaker 1: prize pool totals one million dollars. But this isn't a
Speaker 1: winner takes all kind of game. There will be a
Speaker 1: fifty million dollar grand prize, and second and third place
Speaker 1: we'll get twenty million and ten million dollars respectively. The
Speaker 1: remaining twenty million bucks will be divvied up between small
Speaker 1: teams to help fund their solutions. It's incantive to get
Speaker 1: people thinking about ways to combat climate change and hopefully
Speaker 1: come up with some practical solutions that can be actually
Speaker 1: implemented and make a real world difference. It's part of
Speaker 1: the X Prize series of events. X Prize is itself
Speaker 1: a nonprofit organization and X Prize events have covered tons
Speaker 1: of different challenges, from space exploration to building more efficient
Speaker 1: automobiles to improving literacy among adults. Generally speaking, the contests
Speaker 1: tackle really big problems that require a lot of innovative solutions.
Speaker 1: And to learn more about x Prize, specifically the carbon
Speaker 1: removal one, but other ones as well, uh, you can
Speaker 1: go to x prize dot org. Just know that when
Speaker 1: we're talking carbon removal, we're talking big picture because the
Speaker 1: goal is to come up with solutions that can remove
Speaker 1: carbon on the gigaton scale that's a billion tons. And
Speaker 1: the last little bit for this new segment, Bloomberg reports
Speaker 1: that Dan Richio, who used to lead Apple's hardware division,
Speaker 1: has moved over to Apple's mostly secret department that oversees
Speaker 1: the company's work in augmented and virtual reality technologies. And
Speaker 1: just for a quick refresh. Virtual reality is when you're
Speaker 1: using technology to create a simulated reality, so the stuff
Speaker 1: that you can see and hear, and sometimes even touch
Speaker 1: and smell is all created by technology to create the
Speaker 1: sensation that you are in a different kind of environment.
Speaker 1: Augmented reality is when you use technology to create a
Speaker 1: digital enhancement to the real world around you, and you
Speaker 1: might access this using a headset where you can see
Speaker 1: the real world around you, but there's a year old
Speaker 1: display that is on top of your view of reality.
Speaker 1: You might just use a smartphone, so you hold up
Speaker 1: the smartphone and you're looking at the world through the
Speaker 1: smartphones camera with a digital overlay added. Or it might
Speaker 1: even be something like headphones where you get digital information
Speaker 1: through audio cues. But the whole idea is that the
Speaker 1: technology identifies your location and your orientation, so in other words,
Speaker 1: where you happen to be and what you happen to
Speaker 1: be facing, and then provides information on top of that
Speaker 1: environment around you. The information might be for entertainment, I
Speaker 1: mean you might just be looking at people and seeing
Speaker 1: bunny ears pop up on everyone's head. Or it might
Speaker 1: be informative, like giving you digital instructions overlaid on top
Speaker 1: of your view of say and otherwise incomprehensible pile of
Speaker 1: furniture pieces from Ikea. The rumors about Apple mostly suggests
Speaker 1: that the company would first build out a really premium
Speaker 1: and really expensive VR set up before moving into the
Speaker 1: augmented reality technology G for a consumer space. And I
Speaker 1: can kind of understand that VR is a small market
Speaker 1: but it's a market. It has actually had some success,
Speaker 1: though I would call it modest success are at least
Speaker 1: in a robust implementation has seen less success, with companies
Speaker 1: like Magic Leaps still struggling, and the Microsoft Hollow lens
Speaker 1: restricted more for developers and enterprise customers, and the whole
Speaker 1: mixed reality thing that Microsoft was behind kind of just
Speaker 1: faded away. So a R is gonna probably be in
Speaker 1: a holding pattern for a little while. But when we're
Speaker 1: talking VR and we're saying expensive, how much do we
Speaker 1: mean by that? Well, the website the Information estimates that
Speaker 1: a VR set from Apple might have a price tag
Speaker 1: somewhere in the neighborhood of three thousand dollars. Yikes. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could build a really good gaming rig for three grand,
Speaker 1: you know, not a like bleeding Edge it'll rip the
Speaker 1: skin off your face kind of gaming rig, but still
Speaker 1: a really good one for three thousand dollars. Now, maybe
Speaker 1: Apple is building out a better VR implementation than anyone
Speaker 1: else has ever managed. That is possible, but the company
Speaker 1: has had some missteps in the past as well, So
Speaker 1: nothing is certain except that you'll definitely be paying the
Speaker 1: Apple tax if you want to buy one, because nobody
Speaker 1: gets out of that. We have a few more stories
Speaker 1: to cover in this episode. Before I get to those,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. You know, if I weren't
Speaker 1: making podcasts, I would be pitching big budget blockbusters to
Speaker 1: Hollywood types. You heard me do one with Elon Musk's contest.
Speaker 1: If you listen to large nerd Dron Collider, you know
Speaker 1: I do it every week, and I would make really
Speaker 1: groundbreaking stuff. For example, here's one for you for free.
Speaker 1: I got this idea. There's a robot from the future
Speaker 1: and it comes back to present day because it has
Speaker 1: one mission to make a really good salad. That's my
Speaker 1: way of introducing this next story, which is that door
Speaker 1: Dash is set to acquire a company called chow Botics,
Speaker 1: which tech Crunch describes as quote a Bay Area based
Speaker 1: robotics company best known for its salad making robot end quote.
Speaker 1: That robot, by the way, is named Sally, so in
Speaker 1: my movie Pitch, Arnold Schwarzenegger would clearly be playing Sally,
Speaker 1: the salad making robot. Chow Botics first got its start
Speaker 1: in and according to tech Crunch, it has raised more
Speaker 1: than twenty million dollars so far. The salad making robot
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a vending machine and also kind
Speaker 1: of like one of those claw games that you see
Speaker 1: in arcades, except instead of being filled with garfield plush toys,
Speaker 1: it's filled with these columns of containers that are filled
Speaker 1: with leafy greens or other veggies and stuff like salad
Speaker 1: dressings and croutons and cheese. The earlier incarnation of the
Speaker 1: robot had a touch screen ordering interface, so you'd walk
Speaker 1: up to the device and you could pick from a
Speaker 1: selection of salads or you could, you know, customize your
Speaker 1: own and choose which elements would go into your mix,
Speaker 1: and you'd make your choices. Then the robot would spin
Speaker 1: a carousel of containers, each filled with stuff like spinach
Speaker 1: or kale or carrots or whatever, and it would dispense
Speaker 1: the stuff into a bowl and it would measure it
Speaker 1: by weight, so you get a consistent salad from serving
Speaker 1: to serving, and you just put the bowl into a
Speaker 1: little outlet for the robot and it would shoot the
Speaker 1: salad into your bowl. With the pandemic, robots like Sally
Speaker 1: clearly had an advantage over other options like salad bars
Speaker 1: or people prepping salads for you, and chalbotics also introduced
Speaker 1: an interface that would work with an app so that
Speaker 1: you could actually order your salad with your phone instead
Speaker 1: of having to touch the touch screen on the robot,
Speaker 1: which is pretty clever. Now, how that company is going
Speaker 1: to fit into door dashes strategy isn't totally clear yet,
Speaker 1: but I imagine it's going to be along the lines
Speaker 1: of door Dash offering up its own products to consumers
Speaker 1: in addition to those found in local restaurants. So when
Speaker 1: you open up door Dash, you might order a salad
Speaker 1: from door Dashes army of merciless killer salad robots for
Speaker 1: a slightly lower price than you would spend if you
Speaker 1: were to get it from kill Me maybe or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, some salad place. I got some more bad
Speaker 1: news for Google Stadia owners, which includes myself. I mean,
Speaker 1: for one thing, there's a general feeling that this service
Speaker 1: might not be around for much longer. Google already killed
Speaker 1: off it's internal Stadia development division, the people who were
Speaker 1: working on, uh, the exclusive games for Google Stadia. Now,
Speaker 1: as far as I know, no one actually working on
Speaker 1: the division has been you know, targeted for early retirement
Speaker 1: or anything. But now we hear that the developer for
Speaker 1: the indie game Terra Area has decided that his company
Speaker 1: is going to cancel all plans to port that game
Speaker 1: over to Google Stadia and wherefore should it be thus well.
Speaker 1: Ours Technica reports that this move was in response to
Speaker 1: YouTube banning Andrew Spinx's channel, and Spinx is the lead
Speaker 1: developer for Terrarium, and YouTube banned the Relogic Game Developer
Speaker 1: channel for a terms of service violation. But it gets worse.
Speaker 1: The Terra Area Twitter account elaborate that first their YouTube
Speaker 1: channel was banned despite the fact that no one had
Speaker 1: actually added anything to that channel for several months, so
Speaker 1: there was nothing new there to be objectionable, and the
Speaker 1: email message that they received said that there was some
Speaker 1: sort of undefined terms of service violation, and the email
Speaker 1: itself even said that it was probably an error on
Speaker 1: Google's part and that they should not get any strikes
Speaker 1: against the channel because of that. But then, just three
Speaker 1: days later quote the entire Google account, YouTube, Gmail, all
Speaker 1: Google apps, even every purchase made over fifteen years on
Speaker 1: the Google Play Store was disabled with no warning or recourse.
Speaker 1: This account links into many business functions and as such
Speaker 1: the impact to us is quite substantial. End Quote yikes
Speaker 1: Spins took Twitter to air his grievances and formally canceled
Speaker 1: the port of Terraria for Google Stadium, which, honestly, given
Speaker 1: the extent of the issues with having a total ban
Speaker 1: on all Google services, I wouldn't call that an extreme reaction.
Speaker 1: This is one of the downsides to Google's approach to
Speaker 1: having a single sign in account system for all Google services,
Speaker 1: because a single band can potentially affect everything else, which,
Speaker 1: as ours technic up points out, creates a disproportionate kind
Speaker 1: of punishment. And when you're being punished for something that
Speaker 1: is likely not your fault, it's just an accident, that's
Speaker 1: extra harsh. In happier news, at least for TikTok fans,
Speaker 1: the app has secured a music license for Universal Music
Speaker 1: Group's entire catalog of music from around the world and
Speaker 1: for those who have never used TikTok except maybe to
Speaker 1: sing along to see shanties, which is how I use it.
Speaker 1: A very popular use of the app is creating lip
Speaker 1: SYNCD videos to various clips of audio, which frequently includes music,
Speaker 1: and those licenses are important because it grants users permission
Speaker 1: to make videos of themselves, you know, dancing or lip
Speaker 1: syncing or singing along with copyrighted music without fear of
Speaker 1: having their videos flagged or their accounts banned for unauthorized
Speaker 1: use of copyrighted material, or at least that's how it's
Speaker 1: supposed to work. In the first six months of twenty
Speaker 1: TikTok received more than ten thousand, six hundred copyright takedown requests,
Speaker 1: and earlier in Universal was one of the music publishing
Speaker 1: companies threatening to sue TikTok for copyright infringement, arguing that
Speaker 1: the company lacked the proper licenses to allow its users
Speaker 1: to create the kinds of videos that they were making.
Speaker 1: The music companies argued that without the agreements in place,
Speaker 1: the artists who create the songs that fans love don't
Speaker 1: get paid for the use of their music, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a raw deal. But I do want to
Speaker 1: point out that when it comes to altruistic philosophies, music
Speaker 1: publishing companies rarely rank really high on my list of
Speaker 1: candidates for most thoughtful of the year. Anyway, it looks
Speaker 1: like Universal and TikTok negotiated to a common ground, which
Speaker 1: probably means TikTok is shelling out big oh buckos the
Speaker 1: Universal in order to make the music available to TikTok creators.
Speaker 1: TikTok has reached similar agreements with Sony Music and Warner
Speaker 1: Music Group, as well as lots of independent labels. Now
Speaker 1: does this mean you can upload a video to TikTok
Speaker 1: and use the music from TikTok's database without ever worrying
Speaker 1: about a takedown? Notice? Maybe it sometimes happens anyway, which
Speaker 1: has to be frustrating to creators. Meanwhile, old timers like
Speaker 1: yours truly say stuff like where reminds me are the
Speaker 1: old days of YouTube? Shutter down? Let me tell you
Speaker 1: about them? So no one ever settles down and everyone
Speaker 1: leaves me. Finally, entrepreneur Mark Cuban is co founding a
Speaker 1: new podcast platform called Fireside. Apparently, the idea behind this
Speaker 1: venture is to create a platform in which creators can
Speaker 1: record and or broadcast conversations, monetize them, and use analytics
Speaker 1: tools to see how different content performs on the platform.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be a curated platform as well, so
Speaker 1: it's not like an open mic night at the local
Speaker 1: CD comedy club. I think the sales pitch here is
Speaker 1: that it takes a lot of stuff for probe podcasters
Speaker 1: to do their jobs. And it takes all those duties
Speaker 1: and aggregates it into a cohesive service. So rather than
Speaker 1: a podcaster having to do marketing, analysis and sales all
Speaker 1: on their own, you know, landing sponsors for their shows
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing, this platform would handle that
Speaker 1: stuff for them, at least to some degree. Now I
Speaker 1: don't know how much control the creators on the platform
Speaker 1: are going to have, So for example, with my show,
Speaker 1: I typically get to have a say with regard to
Speaker 1: which sponsors are allowed to advertise on tech stuff, and
Speaker 1: I generally avoid sponsors that I don't feel are a
Speaker 1: good fit for the show are or maybe they're in
Speaker 1: the type of business that I'm not a fan of.
Speaker 1: So for example, if an ad for any alternative medicine
Speaker 1: company plays on my show, you can be pretty certain
Speaker 1: that I did not get the chance to shoot that
Speaker 1: one down, because I would never have something like that
Speaker 1: run during one of my episodes. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if people working on Fireside are going to be given
Speaker 1: that level of authority to make those kind of decisions.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, they're actually already is a
Speaker 1: company called Fireside that is in the podcast business. It's
Speaker 1: a company that hosts podcasts and provides analytics for those podcasts,
Speaker 1: which frankly surprises me that no one over on the
Speaker 1: New Fireside project thought to check out that you know,
Speaker 1: the name was available, because I mean, it's one thing
Speaker 1: to take a company name that's already in use. It's
Speaker 1: another thing to take a name that's already in use
Speaker 1: in the exact same industry that you are getting into.
Speaker 1: That's just bad form. According to the Verge, Fireside that is,
Speaker 1: the New One has already reached out to some established
Speaker 1: podcasters to talk about being part of the founding group
Speaker 1: of creators on the platform. I am not one of them.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I'm hurt, but I'm not not saying
Speaker 1: it either. And that wraps up this episode of tech
Speaker 1: Stuff News. I know I got a little loopie there,
Speaker 1: but it is ten fifteen PM as I record this,
Speaker 1: So my day has been a long one. Give me
Speaker 1: some slack, but don't put me on slack. I just
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't do another project management tool right now.
Speaker 1: I just can't. All right, guys, if you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a
Speaker 1: topic about a company, a technology, a person in tech,
Speaker 1: a trend in tech. Maybe you just want to know
Speaker 1: how something works let me know. The best way to
Speaker 1: reach out is over on Twitter. The handle I use
Speaker 1: for the show is text stuff H s W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon Y. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.