Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: He 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 how the tech are you. It's time for the
Speaker 1: tech news for Thursday, February second, twenty twenty three into February.
Speaker 1: Already on Tuesday, I mentioned that this week has a
Speaker 1: lot of tech companies holding earnings calls and sharing with
Speaker 1: their investors news about the company's performance. Tuesday's episode went
Speaker 1: out before Snap, the company behind Snapchat, held its call.
Speaker 1: But once that call did happen, things did not go
Speaker 1: so well. Also, things will start to sound a little
Speaker 1: bit topsy turvy as we talked through these first couple
Speaker 1: of stories. All right, so what did Snap have to report? Well, first,
Speaker 1: it's twenty two Q four results, because these earnings calls
Speaker 1: are for the end of last year. Showed that revenue
Speaker 1: was up slightly compared to Q four twenty one, So
Speaker 1: year over year earnings were slightly up or revenue was
Speaker 1: slightly up. That's good, right, But Snap has also phase
Speaker 1: challenges when generating revenue, largely due to the digital ad
Speaker 1: market decreasing as companies across all industries are watching costs.
Speaker 1: This is what happens during periods of economic uncertainty and recession.
Speaker 1: And while revenue grew year over year, it was at
Speaker 1: a rate of twelve percent, which was slower than what
Speaker 1: the company had estimated for two. So remember, it's not
Speaker 1: good enough for a company to generate one point three
Speaker 1: billion dollars in revenue. You also have to make sure
Speaker 1: you're generating more revenue than you did before, and that
Speaker 1: you're doing it at a significant rate if you want
Speaker 1: to keep your investors happy. Now just to drop the
Speaker 1: snark for a bit. If your revenue isn't growing quickly
Speaker 1: but your costs are, that does actually become a really
Speaker 1: big problem. And Snap reported that it had a net
Speaker 1: loss last quarter of two eight million dollars. So it
Speaker 1: generated one point three billion in revenue, but it operated
Speaker 1: at a loss of two eighty eight million. Now you
Speaker 1: compare that to the net gain Snap had of twenty
Speaker 1: two point five million dollars a year previous. So at
Speaker 1: the end of one they had a twenty two point
Speaker 1: five million dollar net profit. Then you know this past
Speaker 1: quarter it was a two million dollar net loss. That
Speaker 1: is bad. And what Snap had to say next really
Speaker 1: made investors unhappy that as of right now, Snap is
Speaker 1: seeing revenue for the first quarter of twenty three at
Speaker 1: a seven percent decline compared to last year. It's really
Speaker 1: bad news when the number doesn't go up enough, but
Speaker 1: even worse news when the number actually goes into negative territory.
Speaker 1: So Snap is hitting a real rough patch right now.
Speaker 1: Last year saw four straight quarters of losses, and you
Speaker 1: can't deny that Snap faces fierce competition in the social
Speaker 1: platform space, both from enormous, well established companies like Meta
Speaker 1: and relatively younger juggernauts like TikTok. We have more to
Speaker 1: say about both of those companies anyway. Snapstock dropped from
Speaker 1: around eleven dollars fifty cents per share on Tuesday two
Speaker 1: below ten dollars per share by Wednesday, although as I
Speaker 1: was writing this episode, there was a little bit of
Speaker 1: a recovery and it was trading at about ten dollars
Speaker 1: thirty six cents per share when I started to record
Speaker 1: this episode. Then on Wednesday yesterday, we got Meta's earnings call,
Speaker 1: and things went a little differently for Meta than they
Speaker 1: did for Snap. Now. On the news front, it was
Speaker 1: kind of a mixed bag. Meta post declining sales for
Speaker 1: the third quarter in a row and a twenty two
Speaker 1: Q four revenue of thirty two point two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: That's how much they brought in in revenue at last quarter. However,
Speaker 1: that was down four point five from but even though
Speaker 1: it was down from one, that thirty two point two
Speaker 1: billion dollars in revenue was still higher than what Wall
Speaker 1: Street investors had estimated it was going to be. So
Speaker 1: Meta didn't do as well as last year, but it
Speaker 1: did better than what investors had predicted, and I guess
Speaker 1: that makes all the difference. Now, the company did also
Speaker 1: post a profit of four point seven billion dollars for
Speaker 1: last quarter. That's a heck of a chunk of change.
Speaker 1: It is still below what some analysts expected were some
Speaker 1: who are thinking it was going to be as much
Speaker 1: as six billion, But the company also revealed it had
Speaker 1: drastically reduced spending and has cut its estimation for its
Speaker 1: three expenses. So originally Meta estimated that it was going
Speaker 1: to spend somewhere between ninety four billion and one billion
Speaker 1: dollars this year. Now the company says no, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be closer to eighty nine billion to nine five billion
Speaker 1: now I've got to admit I cannot wrap my head
Speaker 1: around even just one billion dollars, let alone these astronomical amounts,
Speaker 1: So it starts to just get conceptual to me. I
Speaker 1: can't I can't really apply any meaning to it. If
Speaker 1: you told me that I was going to lose eighty
Speaker 1: nine billion dollars versus ninety four billion dollars, I'd probably
Speaker 1: be like, that's more than I will ever see in
Speaker 1: my lifetime. So it really doesn't matter between the two.
Speaker 1: But for a company like Meta, obviously it does matter,
Speaker 1: and were over to the investors it does matter. Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: also mentioned that Meta is pushing AI innovation that will
Speaker 1: have a big impact on business in the future, and
Speaker 1: Meta saw growth in its user base. They passed the
Speaker 1: two billion daily active users in Q four. That is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: Remember for a while, well specific platforms have been seeing
Speaker 1: a decline, and I don't know if they broke it out,
Speaker 1: if this was just Facebook that saw two billion daily
Speaker 1: active users, or if this was across the company. I
Speaker 1: didn't see that in the little earnings report I was reading.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they did break it out in the call,
Speaker 1: but the article I read did not Zuckerberg also said
Speaker 1: that three will be a year in which Meta focuses
Speaker 1: on efficiency that can be code for cost cutting measures,
Speaker 1: including more layoffs. It's definitely going to include a change
Speaker 1: in their data center strategy because Meta has announced it's
Speaker 1: going to cancel a multiple data center projects. In that
Speaker 1: earnings call and after hours trading, the company stock price
Speaker 1: increased by twenty percent. So yeah, dramatic difference between Snap.
Speaker 1: Snap saw a drop in its stock price, met Us
Speaker 1: saw a big boost after its earnings call, even though
Speaker 1: both companies reported disappointing results for the last quarter. It
Speaker 1: just shows that people view this very, very differently. Today
Speaker 1: we're gonna get more earnings call reports from Amazon, Alphabet
Speaker 1: and Apple, so I'm sure I will mention a little
Speaker 1: bit of that next week. Now. I did mention TikTok earlier,
Speaker 1: and that has often been cited as one of the
Speaker 1: biggest players and biggest competitors in the social platform space,
Speaker 1: but it's also been facing increasing scrutiny and criticism from
Speaker 1: various US leaders, including Senator Michael Bennett from Colorado. Bennett's
Speaker 1: sent a letter to Apple and to Google as both
Speaker 1: companies to remove TikTok from their respective app stores. And
Speaker 1: you might wonder why, Well, Bennett wrote, quote TikTok's vast
Speaker 1: influence and aggressive data collection pose a specific threat to
Speaker 1: US national security because of its parent companies obligations under
Speaker 1: Chinese law end quote. So what Bennett is referring to
Speaker 1: is a law in China that places obligations on all
Speaker 1: Chinese companies and citizens to assist in matters of intelligence
Speaker 1: gathering espionage work. In other words, if you have a
Speaker 1: way of getting details on one of China's um adversaries,
Speaker 1: maybe rivals other nations, if you want to just be
Speaker 1: really generic, you're supposed to pass that on to the
Speaker 1: Chinese government. And so Bennett's argument is similar to other
Speaker 1: ones we have heard in the past that because TikTok's
Speaker 1: parent company, which is Byte Dance, is a Chinese company,
Speaker 1: and because you have this policy in China, then it
Speaker 1: stands to reason that Bye Dance could use TikTok to
Speaker 1: further Chinese intelligence operations, and that perhaps that has already
Speaker 1: been happening. Generally speaking, the government of one country it's
Speaker 1: never too keen to open the doors to another country's
Speaker 1: intelligence operations. That's considered bad if you just open up
Speaker 1: the door and let all the spies come in and
Speaker 1: steal all the info, or at least get a good
Speaker 1: look at it. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has been in
Speaker 1: negotiations with TikTok business leaders to try and craft away
Speaker 1: from the company to operate within the US while still
Speaker 1: assuring the US government that it's not funneling tons of
Speaker 1: information to Chinese intelligence and other U s leaders meanwhile
Speaker 1: are proposing or passing legislation that is banning TikTok, at
Speaker 1: least from government owned devices, and I've heard that there
Speaker 1: are a few schools that have done this as well.
Speaker 1: So we're not at a point where it's like a
Speaker 1: nationwide ban on TikTok full stop, but we're kind of
Speaker 1: dancing close to that. And if you end up, you know,
Speaker 1: compelling Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores,
Speaker 1: then it's it's not technically a ban on TikTok, but
Speaker 1: if you can't get it, then it amounts to very
Speaker 1: much the same sort of thing. All Right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break. When we come back, We've got
Speaker 1: some more news stories to talk about. We're back, and
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of Google related stories to cover.
Speaker 1: One is that a collection of workers whose job is
Speaker 1: to rate search results are protesting their pay. So Google
Speaker 1: does this where they pay really the contract with another
Speaker 1: company to have people review search results in order to
Speaker 1: improve Google's performance over time so that search results become
Speaker 1: more relevant and compelling. And Google guarantees its own employees
Speaker 1: and contract workers who are working thirty hours or more
Speaker 1: a minimum wage of fifteen dollars per hour. But the
Speaker 1: folks who are doing this search results rating are technically
Speaker 1: working for another company called Appen Limited, and it contracts
Speaker 1: with Google in order to provide this this work to
Speaker 1: the company, and these contract workers are getting less than
Speaker 1: fifteen dollars per hour. Plus they are frequently finding themselves
Speaker 1: scheduled for less than thirty hours, and that means they
Speaker 1: dip below the cut off where they would receive the
Speaker 1: same benefits of a Google temporary contract or vendor employee
Speaker 1: also known as TVC workers. TVC benefits include stuff like
Speaker 1: healthcare and tuition reimbursement. So not only are these contractors
Speaker 1: receiving less than the minimum wage of other Google contractors,
Speaker 1: they also find themselves ineligible for these Google benefits. Many
Speaker 1: of these workers have traveled to Google HQ in order
Speaker 1: to protest this situation. They've received some support from other
Speaker 1: contractors who work with Google, and I hope it all
Speaker 1: works out. But we're also in an economy where companies
Speaker 1: like Google are famously laying off thousands of employees right now,
Speaker 1: so it might be very much an upheld battle. Alphabet,
Speaker 1: Google's parent company, has some AI projects in the works
Speaker 1: that appear to be at least in part a response
Speaker 1: to the rise of chat GPT, So we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about chat GPT later in this episode as well. But
Speaker 1: there's this general concern that chat GPT can make web
Speaker 1: searches moot, you know, irrelevant, at least for a lot
Speaker 1: of different topics. So instead of searching for a web
Speaker 1: page that might be able to answer a question you have,
Speaker 1: you instead just ask something like chat GPT and you
Speaker 1: would get the answer directly. That would be cobbled together
Speaker 1: by all the different sources on the web that this
Speaker 1: particular tool uses, and that would have a massive impact
Speaker 1: on Google because Google depends upon ad revenue in its
Speaker 1: search results for a lot of the overall revenue for
Speaker 1: the company. Reportedly, Google is developing its own chat bot
Speaker 1: called apprentice Bard. It hasn't been released to the public,
Speaker 1: but according to c NBC, Google employees are testing out
Speaker 1: apprentice Bard internally. These AI projects don't actually sound like
Speaker 1: they're that new inside Google, but rather now Google is
Speaker 1: putting a new emphasis on specific projects, including apprentice Bard,
Speaker 1: potentially as a response to the rise of chat GPT
Speaker 1: that that chat GPT represents a potential existential threat for
Speaker 1: Google's business. Now, all of this is interesting, and it's
Speaker 1: also kind of concerning to me in many ways. It's
Speaker 1: a manifestation of the concept of the semantic web. So
Speaker 1: the semantic web I idea was this concept of a
Speaker 1: futuristic version of accessing the web where your experience is
Speaker 1: totally unique to you. It's not you going to the
Speaker 1: same web pages as everybody else. Instead, your web browser
Speaker 1: actually learns more about you the more you use it,
Speaker 1: and it learns how to gather information and present it
Speaker 1: in a way that grows increasingly more relevant and digestible
Speaker 1: to you as you use it. So ultimately, instead of
Speaker 1: using your browser to search topic and then visit specific
Speaker 1: web pages to get an answer, it curates and arranges
Speaker 1: information from across the entire Internet in order to present
Speaker 1: it to you in a way that works best for
Speaker 1: your needs. Now, this is a much less complex level
Speaker 1: of of answering questions with chat GPT, but it is
Speaker 1: a similar idea. It's just not nearly as sophisticated as
Speaker 1: the concept of semantic web is. But it's doing a
Speaker 1: similar thing. It's pulling information from across the web and
Speaker 1: then presenting it to you generatively. It is creating that
Speaker 1: answer as you ask questions, and presumably apprentice bar is
Speaker 1: doing a very similar thing. But this comes with some
Speaker 1: really big potential problems. Uh. One of them is that,
Speaker 1: as I said, Google relies on those digital ad spends
Speaker 1: in search result in order to get revenue. So if
Speaker 1: Google ends up supplying its own alternative to the traditional
Speaker 1: web search, then the company has to figure out a
Speaker 1: different way to generate income. Do you serve ads against responses?
Speaker 1: I guess you could do that. I mean, there's nothing
Speaker 1: saying that you couldn't, but I don't know if that
Speaker 1: would end up generating the same kind of revenue that
Speaker 1: the traditional ad search ad income does. But even bigger
Speaker 1: than that problem is a wider ranging issue of web
Speaker 1: page owners. So if no one is being listed in
Speaker 1: search results anymore, and there are no more users that
Speaker 1: are clicking on links in order to visit your web page,
Speaker 1: then you might see your own ad revenue drop incredibly low. Right,
Speaker 1: Because a lot of websites out there depend upon search
Speaker 1: engine traffic to bring visitors in. I mean, there's this
Speaker 1: whole area of marketing called search engine optimization that's all
Speaker 1: about getting that that sweet position in search results so
Speaker 1: that more people visit your site. Well, if search results
Speaker 1: just go away because people aren't using search anymore, they're
Speaker 1: asking questions directly to a tool like apprentice bard or
Speaker 1: chat gpt, then they're never going to any of these sites.
Speaker 1: They're not even seeing the links. They don't even know
Speaker 1: where the information they're getting came from, right because chat
Speaker 1: gpt at least doesn't cited sources, So you wouldn't even
Speaker 1: know to go to this specific web page to learn
Speaker 1: more about the thing you just asked. You would just
Speaker 1: keep asking the tool to get you more information and
Speaker 1: to clarify things, which then means that these web pages,
Speaker 1: if they get a huge drop in revenue, maybe the
Speaker 1: companies go out of business and then the web pages
Speaker 1: ceased to exist. And if that happens, then tools like chat, GPT,
Speaker 1: and apprentice bard will have fewer and fewer sources to
Speaker 1: pull information from, which means those tools will actually get
Speaker 1: worse over time if all this happens, so it becomes
Speaker 1: a really big domino effect. At least that's one potential possibility.
Speaker 1: That's how I see things possibly evolving if this continues. Now,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people who are way smarter
Speaker 1: than I am who are are presumably working on this,
Speaker 1: So it may very well be that all of my
Speaker 1: concerns are completely unfounded. It's just my first reaction. Two
Speaker 1: learning more about what's going on here, and then one
Speaker 1: more Google story. Actually this is for both Google and Apple.
Speaker 1: Both companies are facing renewed pressure from the US government
Speaker 1: to change how they handle their policies around their respective
Speaker 1: app stores. The Biden administration has recommended Congress order these
Speaker 1: companies to change. There's those app store policies, and they
Speaker 1: range from things like how Apple and Google typically required
Speaker 1: developers to use their respective in house payment systems. Like
Speaker 1: Apple requires that iOS apps if they have in app transactions,
Speaker 1: that they have to go through Apple's payment system in
Speaker 1: most cases, and then Apple gets a cut of every transaction.
Speaker 1: Similar thing for Google now. Apple in the past has
Speaker 1: sort of complied with this kind of request, and I
Speaker 1: say sort of because Apple's m O was to try
Speaker 1: and make it as inconvenient and as expensive as possible
Speaker 1: for a developer to use an alternative payment system rather
Speaker 1: than use the one that Apple relies upon. And while
Speaker 1: Google has allowed Android users to side load apps, meaning
Speaker 1: that you could go into your Android devices settings and
Speaker 1: you could change some options that would allow you to
Speaker 1: download Android apps that are offered outside of the official
Speaker 1: Google store, Apple has resisted doing that for a very
Speaker 1: long time. But even as Apple has shown moves to
Speaker 1: budge on that front. The argument is that these two
Speaker 1: companies are overwhelmingly dominating the app marketplace for mobile and
Speaker 1: the Biden administration argues that there needs to be some
Speaker 1: increased competition and that would be a very good thing.
Speaker 1: Like if other companies could have their own app stores
Speaker 1: where iOS or Android users could go to this alternative
Speaker 1: app store and get innovative apps that aren't covered or
Speaker 1: are carried by either Apple or Google. That would be
Speaker 1: a good thing. It's increased consumer choice. Apple and Google
Speaker 1: both argue that this introduces dangers with malware, which is
Speaker 1: true it does um although we've also seen malware creep
Speaker 1: its way into official Apple and Google um UH operations,
Speaker 1: so you know that's a thing. There's also the matter
Speaker 1: that Apple in particular has a rather mysterious process for
Speaker 1: evaluating and approving apps before allowing them in the App Store,
Speaker 1: and that there is a lack of transparency in how
Speaker 1: Apple does this, and both Google and Apple have faced
Speaker 1: criticism in the past that the companies have promoted their
Speaker 1: own in house apps over those from independent developers who
Speaker 1: have created apps that do something similar to an official
Speaker 1: Apple or Google app. Now, it is important to remember
Speaker 1: that Biden, while he is the President of the United States,
Speaker 1: is not allowed to make laws himself. He can't do that.
Speaker 1: That is Congress's job. That's why the Biden administration has
Speaker 1: sent this recommendation to Congress. And while we've seen some
Speaker 1: proposed legislation from folks like Senator Amy Klobuchar that addressed
Speaker 1: some of these concerns in the past, those proposals never
Speaker 1: actually progressed to the point where leaders put it up
Speaker 1: for a vote. Now that might change. With the President
Speaker 1: weighing in on this. We'll have to see. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take another quick break. When we come back, I've
Speaker 1: got a few more news items to cover. We're back,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna chat about chat GPT a little bit
Speaker 1: more so. Open Ai, which is the company behind chat gpt,
Speaker 1: has now launched chat gpt Plus. It's in a limited
Speaker 1: launch program right now, and this is a subscription service
Speaker 1: that charges twenty bucks a month. And seeing as how
Speaker 1: the basic version of chat gpt is free to play with,
Speaker 1: what does that twenty dollars a month actually get you. Well.
Speaker 1: According to open a I, subscribers will be able to
Speaker 1: access chat gpt anytime they like, even during times of
Speaker 1: peak demand. Whereas people who are using the free version
Speaker 1: may occasionally encounter a message that tells them the service
Speaker 1: is too busy to accommodate them and they need to
Speaker 1: try again later. Subscribers will not get that message. They
Speaker 1: will be given priority. Subscribers are also supposed to see
Speaker 1: better response time from the app with viewer delay, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of a a new and improved version of
Speaker 1: the service, and in the future, when open ai introduces
Speaker 1: new features, the subscribers are supposed to be the first
Speaker 1: to get a chance to use them. Now, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if these benefits are going to be worthwhile to
Speaker 1: the average chat GPT user. But the folks who are
Speaker 1: in the field of AI research, or they're in just
Speaker 1: R and D in general, or some developers out there,
Speaker 1: I could see this being a justifiable expense. PC World
Speaker 1: reports that despite the fact that PC sales have dropped
Speaker 1: drastically in recent months, a m D S CPU and
Speaker 1: GPU chips have not dropped in price, And you might
Speaker 1: wonder why is that. If DeMay and has dropped, why
Speaker 1: aren't these chips, why are they getting cheaper? Well. In
Speaker 1: an earnings call with investors earlier this week, a m
Speaker 1: D S CEO revealed that it's because the company is
Speaker 1: purposefully holding back on shipping more chips to the market.
Speaker 1: That they've manufactured lots more chips, but they're just holding
Speaker 1: them an inventory and they're really controlling the supply that
Speaker 1: gets out two retailers, so they are keeping the supply low.
Speaker 1: If a m D doesn't ship the stuff they make,
Speaker 1: then they can try to counteract the drop in demand
Speaker 1: by obviously limiting supply, and apparently the company plans to
Speaker 1: continue this strategy through the beginning of this year, though
Speaker 1: reportedly not quite as as strict as they had at
Speaker 1: the end of last year, and it makes good business sense,
Speaker 1: but it is likely to be frustrating to consumers, particularly gamers,
Speaker 1: who are hoping that the decline and cryptocurrency mining and
Speaker 1: the drop in peace SEE sales would mean that they
Speaker 1: would finally be able to get their hands on a
Speaker 1: great GPU for a great price. Instead, due to several factors,
Speaker 1: including in Vidio's most recent generation of GPUs, which underperformed
Speaker 1: in the market, last generation hardware is still pretty expensive.
Speaker 1: I should also add, it's not as ridiculously expensive as
Speaker 1: it was back when folks were still using GPUs to
Speaker 1: mine ethereum. Ethereum has since migrated to a proof of
Speaker 1: steak model instead of a proof of work model. Anyway,
Speaker 1: with all the various factors that play, it's very difficult
Speaker 1: to predict where prices are going to go. So I
Speaker 1: guess you'all out there who are looking to buy a
Speaker 1: new CPU or a new GPU really should just keep
Speaker 1: your eyes peeled because you never know when companies will
Speaker 1: release more inventory in order to drive more sales. Um
Speaker 1: It's hard to say, so just be patient, or if
Speaker 1: you can't wait, just know that, yeah, this was all
Speaker 1: done by design. Last year, Netflix revealed that one of
Speaker 1: its strategies to help deal with some corporate setbacks was
Speaker 1: to cut down on account sharing. Netflix has already introduced
Speaker 1: away for account holders to add kind of like a
Speaker 1: secondary account that they can then share with someone outside
Speaker 1: of their immediate household. They pay a slight increase in
Speaker 1: their own monthly subscription fee, but then they can share
Speaker 1: an additional account to someone. But how is Netflix actually
Speaker 1: going to detect and stop account sharing? Well, according to
Speaker 1: sky News, Netflix plans to associate Netflix accounts with things
Speaker 1: like IP addresses and device i d s, So as
Speaker 1: people connect to their account, Netflix wild monitor what the
Speaker 1: IP addresses and what the device i d s are
Speaker 1: for the devices used to connect to Netflix, and then
Speaker 1: use that to establish where the home base is for
Speaker 1: that specific account. Then, should someone attempt to access this
Speaker 1: account from an unrecognized device I D or IP address,
Speaker 1: Netflix will send a essentially a two factor authentication login
Speaker 1: prompt to the primary account holders phone or email. Now
Speaker 1: that means that they're going to receive a message with
Speaker 1: a code that has to be entered before you can
Speaker 1: access that Netflix account. So the thought is this will
Speaker 1: make it inconvenient for say that slacker college student to
Speaker 1: log into their parents account, because it also means that
Speaker 1: that college student has to call or text mommy or
Speaker 1: daddy to get that authentication code. And it also means
Speaker 1: mommy or Daddy is going to be getting these notifications
Speaker 1: whenever that slacker kid is trying to watch stranger things
Speaker 1: or whatever. Now, I think this is a decent approach
Speaker 1: to addressing the situation. For folks who have say more
Speaker 1: than one home, they can just make sure that they
Speaker 1: put in the authentication code when they get the prompt
Speaker 1: when they're I don't know, summering in the Hampton's or
Speaker 1: winnering in the keys or whatever it is. Rich people do.
Speaker 1: I want to know what rich people do. Please make
Speaker 1: me a rich person. And now for a dramatic story
Speaker 1: that unfolded in Australia. A mining company that contracted with
Speaker 1: a different company in order to ship some equipment across
Speaker 1: part of Australia UM found itself in a spot of trouble,
Speaker 1: which is putting it lightly so. The equipment included a
Speaker 1: density gauge and this thing was going to travel nearly
Speaker 1: one thousand miles from pick up to two uh storage.
Speaker 1: This particular device contained within it a pellet of caesium
Speaker 1: one thirty seven, or if you prefer kaisi um one seven,
Speaker 1: if we're going to pronounce caesar as kaiser as we should.
Speaker 1: But anyway, it's it's radioactive. Caesium one thirty seven is radioactive,
Speaker 1: and it's in fact it's radioactive enough to cause superficial
Speaker 1: damage if you have brief exposure to small amounts of it,
Speaker 1: and much more serious issues with prolonged exposure. So this
Speaker 1: is dangerous stuff. According to Andrew Robertson, the Chief Health
Speaker 1: Officer for Australia, being exposed to trace amounts of caesium
Speaker 1: one seven is like getting ten X rays in an hour.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Well here's the even crazier thing. Alright, So
Speaker 1: during transport, this device, this density gauge apparently broke, and
Speaker 1: it broke to the point where the pellet of caesium
Speaker 1: one seven tumbled out of not just the device but
Speaker 1: the transport vehicle and fell out of the vehicle. And
Speaker 1: remember this journey was nearly one thousand miles long. This
Speaker 1: pellet is the size of a p like is a tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny pellet of radioactive material. Then we got this big
Speaker 1: search effort where vehicles that were outfitted with radiation detection
Speaker 1: equipment traveled the route this one thousand mile nearly one
Speaker 1: is a mile route in order to try and track
Speaker 1: down this tiny piece of radioactive material. And surprisingly enough
Speaker 1: it worked. One of these vehicles actually picked up some
Speaker 1: readings and began to narrow in on the location and
Speaker 1: found that tiny little piece of radioactive material. Like this
Speaker 1: astounds me. It just really shows how sensitive that that
Speaker 1: radiation detection equipment is in order to start picking up
Speaker 1: on something while the vehicle that was traveling and searching
Speaker 1: was going up like almost like maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: more than forty miles per hour, So that's phenomenal. And yeah,
Speaker 1: they found it. So now it's being uh encased in
Speaker 1: safe material and then it'll be transported for long term storage.
Speaker 1: And there's a chance that the mining company and the
Speaker 1: transportation company could face some fines for uh improperly handling
Speaker 1: hazardous material. However, in Australia, such violations carry a maximum
Speaker 1: fine of seven hundred dollars per day in which it happened,
Speaker 1: and it may have happened over the course of a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, so it's really not that much money
Speaker 1: when you look at it in a big picture, I mean,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider the nature of what was misplaced.
Speaker 1: But I mean that's the law in Australia, which maybe
Speaker 1: will see change in the future as a result of
Speaker 1: this particular incident. At least it all turned out okay.
Speaker 1: And finally, an article in the a V Club alerted
Speaker 1: me to a ridiculous twitch stream that's been going on
Speaker 1: since December of last year, and it's called Nothing Forever.
Speaker 1: It is an AI generated, animated and endless Seinfeld episode.
Speaker 1: Uh so it's it's like a simulated Seinfeld episode. It's
Speaker 1: not taking actual Seinfeld episodes as these little computer generated
Speaker 1: characters who are stand ins for characters from the sitcom Seinfeld.
Speaker 1: And it's using GPT generated dialogue and also at a
Speaker 1: computer generated laugh track. So I checked it out, um,
Speaker 1: and the anime characters are very low polygon crudely kind
Speaker 1: of animated characters. You know who is supposed to be who.
Speaker 1: They also have different names from the official Seinfeld characters,
Speaker 1: So you have Larry instead of Jerry, You've got Fred
Speaker 1: instead of George, You've got Yvan instead of Elaine. I
Speaker 1: hear that Kramer is in there too. I don't know
Speaker 1: what his alternate name is because he did not show
Speaker 1: up when I was watching the stream. Um. They also
Speaker 1: include little bits of Larry's stand up routines, so it's
Speaker 1: like Jerry's stand up routines in early Seinfeld episodes. And
Speaker 1: most of the time what is being said makes very
Speaker 1: little sense, like the sentences are coherent, but the situations
Speaker 1: are simultaneously banal and absurd. And then you get that
Speaker 1: laugh track sound that pops up, usually right after something
Speaker 1: not at all funny has been said, which just makes
Speaker 1: it even more bizarre. The cynical of those out there
Speaker 1: may say that this is just like a modern sitcom.
Speaker 1: You get laugh tracks that spike after things that are
Speaker 1: not funny have been said. I think my favorite bit
Speaker 1: from when I was watching was a scene where Larry
Speaker 1: told Fred about how the pet store down the street
Speaker 1: had supposedly sold a unicorn, and they wondered if that
Speaker 1: was true, and then they wondered what kind of conversations
Speaker 1: they would have with each other if they had bought
Speaker 1: the unicorn, and then we got a laugh track. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if I love it or hate it,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's up on Twitch. It's called Nothing Forever
Speaker 1: and you can watch as much of it as you
Speaker 1: like um and maybe your tolerance will be greater than mine.
Speaker 1: I only sat for about maybe five or ten minutes,
Speaker 1: and then I was like, I got I've got work
Speaker 1: to do. I can't I can't just gawk in awe
Speaker 1: at this thing. All right, that's it for the tech
Speaker 1: News for Thursday, February second three. I hope you are
Speaker 1: all well. If you have suggestions for future topics on
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, reach out to me. You can do that
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