Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday,
Speaker 1: December twenty first, twenty twenty three. First up, I mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier this week that Apple planned to remove Apple Watch
Speaker 1: Series nine and Ultra two models from store shelves here
Speaker 1: in the United States starting at three pm two day.
Speaker 1: Apple appealed to the International Trade Commission or ITC about
Speaker 1: this matter about a ban on these products and asked
Speaker 1: the ITC to allow Apple to continue selling them until
Speaker 1: the appeal has been decided, and the ITC said no, Dice.
Speaker 1: This all has to do with a little blood oxygen
Speaker 1: sensor that's inside these particular models of Apple Watches, and
Speaker 1: how another company called Masimo claims that Apple has committed
Speaker 1: patent infringement. Other models of the Apple Watch do not
Speaker 1: include the sensor, so they will not be part of
Speaker 1: the band. They will continue to be on sale in
Speaker 1: Apple stores. And while Apple may still win its appeal
Speaker 1: in the future, it means that for the moment it
Speaker 1: cannot legally sell those models of Apple watches here in
Speaker 1: the United States. If you've been dragging your feet and
Speaker 1: you plan to pick one up this weekend, and you
Speaker 1: happen to live in the US of A, I got
Speaker 1: bad news for you. Actually, you've got the bad news
Speaker 1: because I just told you, Except there is one possible
Speaker 1: glint of light. Apple only has control over its stock
Speaker 1: in its own stores. If you go to a third
Speaker 1: party retailer like a Best Buy, those stores are not
Speaker 1: required to pull the models off of their shells, so
Speaker 1: they can continue selling them for as long as their
Speaker 1: supplies last. But once those supplies are gone, well, those
Speaker 1: stores are going to have to wait for the outcome
Speaker 1: of the appeal, just like Apple is. One of the
Speaker 1: really big stories lurking in the background of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: which I'll cover in greater detail in an upcoming episode,
Speaker 1: is the Microsoft acquisition of video game giant Activision Blizzard.
Speaker 1: It was a corporate move that stirred up an awful
Speaker 1: lot of resistance all around the world for various reasons,
Speaker 1: and part of that story was about the CEO of Activision,
Speaker 1: a guy named Bobby Kodik. He's, to put it lightly,
Speaker 1: a controversial figure Activision Blizzard had already been in the
Speaker 1: news before Microsoft even announced its plan to acquire the
Speaker 1: company because multiple former and current Activision employees at the
Speaker 1: time were stepping forward and alleging that the company had
Speaker 1: a toxic work culture and that executives turned a blind
Speaker 1: eye toward allegations of serious issues like sexual harassment. Those
Speaker 1: claims went all the way up to Codek. Kodik essentially
Speaker 1: said he wasn't aware that there were any problems anyway.
Speaker 1: There have been calls for Kodek's resignation for a couple
Speaker 1: of years up to this point. Before twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: is over, it's finally going to happen. Microsoft released a
Speaker 1: memo revealing that Kodek will be stepping down on December
Speaker 1: twenty ninth. A few other high ranking executives at Activision
Speaker 1: Blizzard will also be departing the company over the next
Speaker 1: few months after a transition period, but most of Activision's
Speaker 1: leadership structure is going to remain intact. There's also been
Speaker 1: a few changes over at Microsoft's Xbox division, with some
Speaker 1: leaders exiting the company and Microsoft largely focused on promoting
Speaker 1: from within to replace them, which is I think that's refreshing.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'll dive deeper into all of this really soon. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: over at Sony, that company's game division is looking toward
Speaker 1: the near future in a pretty grim light. So according
Speaker 1: to tech Spot, some internal documents at Sony show a
Speaker 1: pessimist view of the next few years. These documents are
Speaker 1: now made public due to a different news story that
Speaker 1: I didn't cover about some hackers stealing a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of data, something that Sony has actually had to face before. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the internal analysis came to the conclusion that Sony has
Speaker 1: not been as innovative and aggressive as it has been
Speaker 1: in years past. The company reached a point where it
Speaker 1: was outperforming Microsoft, especially in hardware sales. In fact, by
Speaker 1: some estimates, Sony was outperforming Microsoft at a rate of
Speaker 1: three to one. In the face of essentially a lack
Speaker 1: of competition, the company got a little complacent. Now, the
Speaker 1: papers say Microsoft is leaping ahead and it's leaving Sony
Speaker 1: scrambling to catch up. This is largely due to that
Speaker 1: acquisition of Activision Blizzard, that company makes some extremely popular
Speaker 1: video games. The papers also indicate that Sony's analysts believe
Speaker 1: the company could face a one and a half billion
Speaker 1: dollar shortfall by twenty twenty seven. That's billion with a B.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, there's no arguing that's bad, right,
Speaker 1: A billion and a half shortfall is not good. But
Speaker 1: then lighting a fire under the toukus of Sony to
Speaker 1: get competition up in the space ultimately ends up being
Speaker 1: a great thing for all gamers, whether they favor Sony
Speaker 1: or Microsoft. While it's tough for Sony, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: darn great thing in the long run for gamers in general. Now,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about this, you should
Speaker 1: check out the article by Cal Jeffrey in tech Spot.
Speaker 1: It is titled Activision Apocalypse. Sony forecasts one point five
Speaker 1: billion dollar loss by twenty twenty seven after Microsoft merger.
Speaker 1: Not long ago, I talked about a recall that Tesla
Speaker 1: is facing that affects nearly every Tesla vehicle on the
Speaker 1: road here in the United States, and how it's really
Speaker 1: a software recall, so it's not gonna require Tesla owners
Speaker 1: to drive to a dealership or anything. I can't say
Speaker 1: the same thing about Toyota, which is recalling around a
Speaker 1: million cars here in the United States across both Toyota
Speaker 1: and Lexus brands, and this is due to an issue
Speaker 1: with airbags that are in the front passenger side of vehicles. Namely,
Speaker 1: these air bags may not deploy in the event of
Speaker 1: a crash, which, as you can imagine, severely diminishes their
Speaker 1: effectiveness as an airbag. Apparently, the issue is in the
Speaker 1: sensors that detect if a passenger is in the passenger seat,
Speaker 1: so a defective design has resulted in some cases with
Speaker 1: a short circuit issue. This completed circuit indicates that there's
Speaker 1: no one in the passenger seat, so you could be
Speaker 1: sitting there, and because there's this short circuit in the sensors,
Speaker 1: it thinks that you're not there, so if you're in
Speaker 1: a crash, it does not deploy the passenger side airbag,
Speaker 1: and that can result in really serious injuries. Obviously, So
Speaker 1: the recall is for a selection of Toyota and Lexis
Speaker 1: vias that have model years between twenty twenty and twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. In at least one model's case, I recommend
Speaker 1: looking into it if you drive a Toyota, just to
Speaker 1: see if your vehicle is one of the ones that
Speaker 1: needs repair. Toyota is going to offer free repairs for
Speaker 1: this issue at no cost to the owner, and the
Speaker 1: company says it will be reaching out to customers early
Speaker 1: next year. In any case, just keep an eye out.
Speaker 1: If you drive a Toyota, you may want to make
Speaker 1: sure that you can go by and get this fixed.
Speaker 1: And hopefully you'll never need it, but it's good to
Speaker 1: have it fixed in case you do. A collection of
Speaker 1: journalists at Reuter's published an amazing piece titled Tesla blamed
Speaker 1: drivers for failures of parts at Long New were defective
Speaker 1: and it is well worth reading, so high recommendation that
Speaker 1: you go to Reuters dot com and find this article
Speaker 1: because it's fantastic. But the headline tells you the gist
Speaker 1: of what takes up most of the story. That Tesla
Speaker 1: customers have encountered all sorts of problems that when you
Speaker 1: look at them and aggregate, you think, oh, well, this
Speaker 1: is clearly a default in design or manufacturing, because the
Speaker 1: same problem is happening to multiple people in different vehicles.
Speaker 1: And some of these are minor issues, but some of
Speaker 1: them are potentially life threatening failures, particularly if you were
Speaker 1: operating the vehicle, say on the highway when it happened.
Speaker 1: But Tesla's response to a lot of these issues was
Speaker 1: to claim that the fault lie with the drivers, not
Speaker 1: with the vehicles, that somehow these drivers had done something
Speaker 1: that caused the damage to the vehicle, when in fact,
Speaker 1: internal documents show that Tesla engineers were aware of problems
Speaker 1: in car design and manufacturing that led to the manifestation
Speaker 1: of these issues. Now, according to the Reuter's investigation, this
Speaker 1: whole story stretches back at least seven years, so for
Speaker 1: the better part of a decade, the company, Tesla, has
Speaker 1: tried to pass the buck in these cases and to
Speaker 1: put blame on drivers. It's something that has affected thousands
Speaker 1: of Tesla owners, and not just here in the United States.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's a damning fact that Tesla ultimately issued
Speaker 1: some recalls in China hardware recalls after facing regulators who
Speaker 1: were not having any of Tesla's nonsense and forcing the
Speaker 1: company to recall certain vehicles in order to make fixes,
Speaker 1: sometimes multiple fixes because the initial fix didn't actually fix
Speaker 1: the problem. But here in the United States, Tesla has
Speaker 1: largely been able to avoid that and continue to make
Speaker 1: the argument that any failures and vehicles were due to
Speaker 1: user error. Essentially, it's pretty ugly stuff, and the report
Speaker 1: in Reuters is extensive. It is a very very long
Speaker 1: article that covers a lot more detail than what I've
Speaker 1: just said, but I highly recommend you read the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And again, that article is tip Tesla blamed drivers for
Speaker 1: failures of parts at long new word defective. Okay, got
Speaker 1: some more news items to get through, including one about
Speaker 1: some driverless car info, but first let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. We're back. So yesterday, that
Speaker 1: being Wednesday, the twentieth of December, way Mo, the Alphabet
Speaker 1: spinoff that develops and operates autonomous vehicles, released a report
Speaker 1: that said collectively its driverless cars had driven more than
Speaker 1: seven million miles. The company also claimed that in the
Speaker 1: course of driving those seven million miles, there had only
Speaker 1: been three accidents that involved a minor injury and nothing
Speaker 1: more serious than that. Now, statistically, this suggests that driverless
Speaker 1: cars are safer than those piloted by human beings. However,
Speaker 1: it gets super tricky to do this kind of comparison.
Speaker 1: You have to take a lot of variables into account.
Speaker 1: For instance, where does WEIMO drive? Because the accident rates
Speaker 1: for one city are different from other cities. So the
Speaker 1: answer to the question where does WEIMO drive? Is primarily Phoenix, Arizona,
Speaker 1: and San Francisco, California. Then you have to look at
Speaker 1: what are the average accident rates that involve injuries in
Speaker 1: those specific places, and can you compare per million of
Speaker 1: human miles driven versus million of autonomous vehicle miles driven. So,
Speaker 1: according to ours Technica, if you were to look at
Speaker 1: the number of accidents that involve an injury, should humans
Speaker 1: be driving those seven million miles, it would be closer
Speaker 1: to thirteen incidents as opposed to three. So there are
Speaker 1: ten more accidents per seven million miles driven if the
Speaker 1: drivers are human beings as oppose to autonomous But again,
Speaker 1: it's not really that simple to get into meaningful comparisons.
Speaker 1: You actually need way more miles driven by autonomous vehicles. However,
Speaker 1: according to WEIMO, Phoenix drivers get into accidents about three
Speaker 1: times more often than driverless vehicles driving in Phoenix, and
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, it's even more dramatic. Human drivers rack
Speaker 1: up accidents six times as often as the driverless vehicles did. Now, again,
Speaker 1: these comparisons are tricky to make. We don't have enough
Speaker 1: data to really definitively say anything, but common sense does
Speaker 1: tell us that an autonomous vehicle, if it is properly
Speaker 1: designed and it operates well, should be safer than human drivers.
Speaker 1: It should have far greater awareness of its surroundings. It
Speaker 1: should be able to react much more quickly. It makes
Speaker 1: sense that it should be safer, and that is actually
Speaker 1: one of the biggest selling points of autonomous drivers. Right.
Speaker 1: So in a way, this news is not surprising. It
Speaker 1: would be shocking if weimo said, well, we try, but
Speaker 1: turns out that travelist cars are ten times more dangerous
Speaker 1: than human driven vehicles. That would be shocking. We would
Speaker 1: start to think we were in maximum overdrive or something.
Speaker 1: And if you don't know what that is, I hesitate
Speaker 1: to tell you to look it up. Part of me
Speaker 1: wants you to look it up, because I mean, Emilio
Speaker 1: ESTEVEZKT y'all, and a green Goblin semitruck. I'm getting off track.
Speaker 1: We have had cases of autonomous vehicles that were involved
Speaker 1: in truly catastrophic accidents that led to tragedy. But we
Speaker 1: also have to remember human beings are responsible for tragic accidents.
Speaker 1: Essentially every single day, I mean, thousands of people in
Speaker 1: the US die from traffic accidents each year. It's just
Speaker 1: that it's really notable when it's an autonomous vehicle that's
Speaker 1: at fault. Right, There's something kind of scary and sinister
Speaker 1: about that, And we're just accepting of the fact that
Speaker 1: human beings are responsible for these kinds of accidents. But
Speaker 1: I do get it. I mean, like the thought of
Speaker 1: giving up control to some other entity and then being
Speaker 1: in an accident through no fault of your own, that's terrifying,
Speaker 1: I understand. But I do think that this report shows
Speaker 1: we are moving in the correct direction. Right. I still
Speaker 1: want a future with autonomous vehicles because I do believe
Speaker 1: that when that technology is sufficiently sophisticated and safe, it
Speaker 1: will mean tens of thousands of people will avoid being
Speaker 1: involved in a fatal accent. Now, ironically, they'll never know
Speaker 1: that because they'll just live. Right. You can't know that
Speaker 1: you avoided a deadly accident. You just did. And but
Speaker 1: I think that when you look back and you think
Speaker 1: about the thousands of people who have passed away because
Speaker 1: of traffic accidents and the impact that has on their
Speaker 1: immediate circle and then society as a whole, you just
Speaker 1: start to see where autonomous vehicles could be a huge benefit.
Speaker 1: But we want to make sure that we are implementing
Speaker 1: that when the technology is actually ready to take on
Speaker 1: that burden. So I think this is a step in
Speaker 1: that direction. I would be fibbing. However, if I said
Speaker 1: I was just as optimistic about it as I was
Speaker 1: a decade ago, a lot more cautious about it these days.
Speaker 1: On a related note, if you live in California or
Speaker 1: Nevada and you find yourself driving behind a Mercedes Benz
Speaker 1: and you notice that it has these weird turquoise tail lights,
Speaker 1: well that means you're actually behind a vehicle that's in
Speaker 1: an autonomous mode. They actually are piloting this in California Nevada.
Speaker 1: They got approval to do it where they are deploying
Speaker 1: a level three driver assist feature, but when it's in operation,
Speaker 1: these turquoise tail lights will come on. I think that's
Speaker 1: a neat idea. Now I've rambled on about autonomous cars
Speaker 1: a lot already, so I'm not going to go into
Speaker 1: more detail about this, but I highly recommend Jonathan M.
Speaker 1: Gittland's article in Ours Technica titled Turquoise tail lights tell
Speaker 1: you this Mercedes is driving autonomously. The headline is just
Speaker 1: the tip of the iceberg. As to the entire discussion
Speaker 1: about autonomous vehicles. It's cute, but Gitland did an amazing job.
Speaker 1: You should check out that article. And again, I have
Speaker 1: no connection with Ours Technica or Gitland or any of
Speaker 1: the articles or authors that I mentioned in this episode.
Speaker 1: These are just works that I think are really good
Speaker 1: and you should read them. Laura Pattison of CNN has
Speaker 1: a piece titled Scientists successfully replicate historic nuclear fusion breakthrough
Speaker 1: three times. This is worth celebrating, so as a reminder.
Speaker 1: Today's nuclear power plants, the ones that are generating electricity
Speaker 1: for the power grid, they work through the process of
Speaker 1: nuclear fission. That's when you take a heavy atom and
Speaker 1: you split that atom apart, which releases a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of energy as well as some subatomic particles that help
Speaker 1: keep the process going, and you harness that energy to
Speaker 1: generate electricity. Nuclear fusion is different. You take two very
Speaker 1: lightweight atoms, like two hydrogen atom, and you force them
Speaker 1: to be very very very close to each other. When
Speaker 1: you do this, they fuse together and as they do,
Speaker 1: they release a tremendous amount of energy that then you
Speaker 1: can also harness for electricity. Now, unlike fission, you don't
Speaker 1: end up generating radioactive byproducts. With fusion, there's no danger
Speaker 1: of a nuclear meltdown either. Fusion is how stars work.
Speaker 1: Our Sun emits energy through the process, and if we
Speaker 1: could nail it here on Earth, we would potentially have
Speaker 1: an energy source that can meet all of our needs
Speaker 1: for the foreseeable future. I won't say forever, because we
Speaker 1: humans are really good at taking more than what we need. Anyway.
Speaker 1: This story is about how scientists at the Livermore National
Speaker 1: Laboratory in California have achieved nuclear fusion multiple times over
Speaker 1: the last year, and that these reactions actually released more
Speaker 1: energy than was required for ignition. Now that last bit
Speaker 1: does need a little bit of an asterisk. The reactions
Speaker 1: released more in energy that was contained within the lasers
Speaker 1: that forced the two atoms to come together. The energy
Speaker 1: within the lasers was at one level, the release of
Speaker 1: energy was at a higher level. However, in order to
Speaker 1: energize the lasers, we had to tap into more energy
Speaker 1: than was emitted in the release. So it's still a
Speaker 1: net loss when you're looking at a big picture, and
Speaker 1: that's something that has to change right otherwise you're going
Speaker 1: to be pouring more energy into the process than you're
Speaker 1: getting out of it, and ultimately it's a losing proposition. However,
Speaker 1: this is still an amazing scientific achievement that could lead
Speaker 1: us to a future of plentiful and clean energy. For
Speaker 1: an article recommendation, check out Ariel Shapiro's piece in The
Speaker 1: Verge titled the four podcast stories that will Shape twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. I don't often comment on the podcast business.
Speaker 1: It feels a little bit too much like inside Baseball
Speaker 1: to me, and goodness knows, I deal with it all
Speaker 1: the time as an executive producer, so I get sick
Speaker 1: of it too. Plus when the news is rough, and
Speaker 1: this year got a little rough in podcasting, y'all, it
Speaker 1: gets a bit demoralizing to talk about it. But this
Speaker 1: piece in The Verge covers lots of things that I've
Speaker 1: been observing all year. It's worth looking into if you're
Speaker 1: curious about the business that is show subset podcasting. It's
Speaker 1: always good to educate yourself, especially if you're thinking about
Speaker 1: getting into the business, because knowing what the environment is
Speaker 1: and the trends that are going can really inform you
Speaker 1: so that you make good decisions, like whether or not
Speaker 1: you actually want to go through with it. All right,
Speaker 1: That's enough. With all that, though, I hope you are
Speaker 1: all well and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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