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 how the tech are you? It is time for
Speaker 1: the tech news for Tuesday, January twenty four. Man, we're
Speaker 1: almost out of January already, and we are going to
Speaker 1: begin with an update about open Ai. So, literally yesterday,
Speaker 1: moments after I sent the episode about open Ai, it
Speaker 1: was the story of open Ai, in case you weren't aware,
Speaker 1: I ended up seeing headlines confirming what had been rumored
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks that Microsoft is investing big
Speaker 1: time into open Ai. While details are a little scarce,
Speaker 1: a Microsoft blog post proclaims that the two companies are
Speaker 1: entering into the third phase of their partnership and that
Speaker 1: it would be a quote multi year, multibillion dollar investment
Speaker 1: end quote for Microsoft. The general consensus is that this
Speaker 1: is Microsoft's bid to be competitive against Google, which, through
Speaker 1: its own work and various acquisitions, is also heavily invested
Speaker 1: in the field of AI research and development. Also, I
Speaker 1: imagine that all the folks who were recently notified that
Speaker 1: they were being laid off at Microsoft. We're talking about
Speaker 1: like thousands of people at this point are likely a
Speaker 1: little upset about, you know, hearing the company is going
Speaker 1: to invest billions into efforts around AI. Yeah, there have
Speaker 1: been a lot of stories about Microsoft in particular, but
Speaker 1: companies in general putting out big expenditures right after laying
Speaker 1: off tons of workers. That's never a good look. Also
Speaker 1: related to yesterday's episode is another story that Professor Christian
Speaker 1: Tervish or ur Wish I'm not sure how to say
Speaker 1: his name over at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School
Speaker 1: of Business gave chat GPT, which is the open AI
Speaker 1: powered chat bought a final exam in the university's NBA
Speaker 1: program that's Masters of Business Administration. Now, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: if the fact that chat GPT passed that final exam,
Speaker 1: if that says something great about Chat GPT, or it
Speaker 1: confirms some sardonic opinions about m b a's and the
Speaker 1: difficulty of getting one. Apologies to any NBA's out there,
Speaker 1: but you know, y'all have a bad rep Now, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that you earned that reputation. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that reputation sure as heck exists and it mostly revolves
Speaker 1: around the perceived over reliance on jargon. Anyway, according to
Speaker 1: the professor, chat GPT scored somewhere in the low B
Speaker 1: range of the final meaning it didn't ace the test,
Speaker 1: but it did perform better than average. Now I'm doing
Speaker 1: my best to resist making a lot of jokes here.
Speaker 1: I am curious how chat GPT would do if you
Speaker 1: said to the task of creating, say a dissertation. My
Speaker 1: guess is that the gaps in its abilities would become
Speaker 1: far more apparent if that were the case. For one thing,
Speaker 1: it is absolutely terrible at citing its sources. I got
Speaker 1: a couple of Musk related topics to talk about this week.
Speaker 1: First up, Elon Musk is currently on trial for securities fraud.
Speaker 1: This is something that the SEC was onto him about
Speaker 1: a few years ago, and in fact it's over the
Speaker 1: same incident. Now the sec case that one was settled.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk agreed to pay forty million dollars to settle
Speaker 1: that matter without admitting fault, and later on he said
Speaker 1: he was browbeaten into that that course of action settling
Speaker 1: the case. Now he's been sued by a collection of
Speaker 1: Tesla investors who say that Musk's tweets back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen gave false information, namely that Musk had claimed
Speaker 1: he had secured the funding necessary to take Tesla private
Speaker 1: at four dollars per share that are not insignificant amount
Speaker 1: of time was actually spending court trying to get Musk
Speaker 1: to admit that his use of the number four twenty
Speaker 1: was a joke about marijuana. But Musk did not budge
Speaker 1: on that. He said it was merely a twenty percent
Speaker 1: over the value of the stock at the time, which
Speaker 1: was a standard thing if you wanted to take a
Speaker 1: company private. That's what he argues is that if you're
Speaker 1: planning to take a company private, you have to increase
Speaker 1: the cost per share by to convince shareholders too to
Speaker 1: to deal to sell their stock at a premium, and
Speaker 1: then the company can go private. That's what Musk is saying,
Speaker 1: and that's just a coincidence that happened to before twenty.
Speaker 1: But as to the actual claim of securing funding, there
Speaker 1: was a lot more back and forth in the court
Speaker 1: about that. Musk says that he received a ventially a
Speaker 1: verbal agreement from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund or p
Speaker 1: i F that they were going to provide funding for
Speaker 1: this uh this move of Tesla from publicly traded to
Speaker 1: private company. This is the same p i F that
Speaker 1: helped Musk by Twitter late last year. Also, the b
Speaker 1: i F represents the interests of the Saudi Prince, whom
Speaker 1: you might know as the guy who allegedly ordered journalist
Speaker 1: Jamal Kashogi to be assassinated. Anyway, Must never got any
Speaker 1: of this in writing. So the investors are claiming that
Speaker 1: Musk was misrepresenting himself in those tweets by saying that
Speaker 1: he had secured funding when in fact he had not
Speaker 1: secured funding, and that he was essentially engaging in securities
Speaker 1: fraud and market manipulation. Should he be found guilty, Must
Speaker 1: could be fined an enormous amount of money. I'll try
Speaker 1: to stay up to date with the story as it develops.
Speaker 1: Over the weekend. He on, Musk tweeted that Twitter has
Speaker 1: too many ads. Then this will soon be addressed. Also
Speaker 1: that Twitter will have a higher tier subscription level that
Speaker 1: will be completely ad free, so if you become one
Speaker 1: of the subscribers, you'll get an ad free experience on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Of course, a lot of brands have already abandoned Twitter,
Speaker 1: and ad revenues are reportedly way way down, so you
Speaker 1: might just want to, you know, wait around, because it
Speaker 1: sounds like Twitter could be ad free before long, whether
Speaker 1: you have a subscription or not. Sad Trombone, Alright, to
Speaker 1: be fair, I think the last report I said read
Speaker 1: that half of the Top one advertisers had abandoned Twitter.
Speaker 1: But this was early on in Musk's takeover, so this
Speaker 1: was like last November. It could very well be that
Speaker 1: that trend has reversed. It's hard to say because Twitter
Speaker 1: no longer has a PR department, so you don't really
Speaker 1: hear about what is going on from an ad revenue
Speaker 1: perspective very much. Reuter's reports that Apple is working with
Speaker 1: several big media partners in an effort to create content
Speaker 1: for the company's upcoming mixed reality headset. It's an x
Speaker 1: R headset, if you will. Disney is said to be
Speaker 1: one of the media companies that is dealing with Apple
Speaker 1: right now. And this is not a huge shock. Hardware,
Speaker 1: particularly mixed reality hardware, is really just a paperweight if
Speaker 1: you don't have any software to run on it. With
Speaker 1: the rumored price tag for Apple's headset being in the
Speaker 1: three thousand dollar range. I'm not sure anyone is going
Speaker 1: to be able to make a feature that is killer
Speaker 1: enough to turn this product into a best seller, Like,
Speaker 1: it has to be a really compelling use case to
Speaker 1: convince people to fork over three grand to get one
Speaker 1: of these. If you'll recall, Apple had previously planned to
Speaker 1: release augmented reality glasses, but now reportedly those plans have
Speaker 1: been put on the shelf indefinitely due to it being
Speaker 1: wicked hard to make something that fits in such a
Speaker 1: relatively small form factor and still you know, work. Instead,
Speaker 1: Apple is going the mixed reality headset route, so it's
Speaker 1: more of a combination of virtual reality and augmented reality.
Speaker 1: So you've got a display that you're looking at as
Speaker 1: opposed to transparent lenses, but the headset has outward facing
Speaker 1: cameras so you can get a pass through video feed,
Speaker 1: so you're looking at a live video feed of whatever
Speaker 1: is in front of you. Um, so it's kind of
Speaker 1: like you're looking at a live broadcast instead of at
Speaker 1: the actual world around you. While the first generation sounds
Speaker 1: like it's going to be prohibitively expensive for most of
Speaker 1: us anyway, the long term plan is to release a
Speaker 1: less expensive headset later on, perhaps, though my guess is
Speaker 1: that it would still be more than a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: based upon how expensive this first one is rumored to be.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I don't know if anyone's gonna make and
Speaker 1: experience so incredible that it's gonna convince more people to
Speaker 1: fork over three grand. I'm sure there will be some.
Speaker 1: There always are. Apple has some pretty die hard fans
Speaker 1: with a lot of discretionary income. Man, Okay, hey, remember
Speaker 1: Sam Bankman Freed a k A SBF, the co founder
Speaker 1: of former cryptocurrency exchange f t X, And you remember
Speaker 1: how f t X imploded last year and SPF was
Speaker 1: reduced to being almost penniless according to most reports. Well, personally,
Speaker 1: I would love to experience his version of being penniless,
Speaker 1: because I just read that federal prosecutors have managed to
Speaker 1: seize around seven hundred million dollars of assets belonging to
Speaker 1: SPF this month alone. And you know, I get it,
Speaker 1: SPF had millions of dollars. It's just that none of
Speaker 1: those millions of dollars were in pennies, so nically he
Speaker 1: was penniless. Now it all makes sense. Anyway, SPF is
Speaker 1: to go to trial over charges of securities fraud and
Speaker 1: similar charges this coming October. He has pled not guilty
Speaker 1: to these charges and he's currently under essentially house arrest
Speaker 1: at the moment, which, y'all, I've heard of folks who
Speaker 1: end up having to stay in jail after stealing less
Speaker 1: than a hundred bucks. This guy is accused of misappropriating
Speaker 1: billions of dollars and he gets to wait his pre
Speaker 1: trial time out at his parents house, which, believe me,
Speaker 1: is not a shack in the woods. What a world. Anyway,
Speaker 1: About half a billion dollars of the seized assets were
Speaker 1: in the form of shares for the company Robin Hood,
Speaker 1: and almost a hundred million of it happened to be
Speaker 1: in an account cash in an account with a bank
Speaker 1: that's called silver Gate. One wonders how many other places
Speaker 1: might be holding money or assets belonging to SPF. It's
Speaker 1: pretty incredible. Okay, we've got more news Rois to go,
Speaker 1: but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back, and we're back to crypto currency. So Reuter's
Speaker 1: reports that Finance the largest crypto exchange in the world,
Speaker 1: and one of the factors that you know, contributed to
Speaker 1: ft x is implosion last year, has processed nearly three
Speaker 1: forty six million dollars in bitcoin transactions for a different
Speaker 1: digital currency exchange called bits lato. And you might wonder, well,
Speaker 1: why does that matter, Well, that's because US authorities have
Speaker 1: called bits lata or latto a money laundering engine, and
Speaker 1: they have arrested that company's founder, who is a guy
Speaker 1: named Ana totally leg Kodomov. And again I'm sure I'm
Speaker 1: butchering name pronunciations. So the implication is that finance was
Speaker 1: complicit in processing illegal funds. Bits Lato had heavy dealings
Speaker 1: with a dark market called Hydra, best known for dealing
Speaker 1: in illegal goods like drugs, and representatives at Binance say
Speaker 1: that Reuters has it all wrong and that Binance is
Speaker 1: very very alert when it comes to attempts to do
Speaker 1: hanky and or panky with the exchange. They have claimed
Speaker 1: that the company has instituted systems that check for possible
Speaker 1: money laundering schemes and the like, but from the Reuter's report,
Speaker 1: it sounds like these claims are perhaps not entirely convincing. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Binance has been under scrutiny for a long time, even
Speaker 1: before the ft x collapse, and I suspect that scrutiny
Speaker 1: will intensify as a result of this new development. Here
Speaker 1: in the United States, the Department of Justice is expected
Speaker 1: to sue Google over antitrust concerns. Specifically, the d o
Speaker 1: j c's Google as holding a near monopoly on the
Speaker 1: digital advertise market and that it maintains its dominant position
Speaker 1: by practicing anti competitive strategies and you know, just suppressing
Speaker 1: competition in general. Google is likely to argue, as it
Speaker 1: has in the past, that there's still a great deal
Speaker 1: of competition in the digital advertising space, with massive companies
Speaker 1: like Meta, Slash, Facebook, A, T and T, and Comcast
Speaker 1: in the mix. And I'm not sure if this lawsuit
Speaker 1: will actually go anywhere, but it is yet another indication
Speaker 1: there is currently some momentum in the US when it
Speaker 1: comes to pushing back against big companies in general and
Speaker 1: big tech in particular. Yesterday, Spotify announced that it will
Speaker 1: be cutting six percent of its workforce, which is around
Speaker 1: six hundred jobs. The company seems to be saying the
Speaker 1: same thing that we've heard from other companies within the
Speaker 1: tech space, namely that the pandemic drove business up, and
Speaker 1: so the company invested in hiring and growth, and then
Speaker 1: as things started to return to normal and business began
Speaker 1: to weigh along with macro economic factors coming into play,
Speaker 1: it became clear that this growth was more than what
Speaker 1: the company could comfortably sustain while also returning value to shareholders.
Speaker 1: So now the company is cutting back, and y'all, it's
Speaker 1: getting real tough out there with all these companies cutting
Speaker 1: jobs in the tech sector in particular. If you or
Speaker 1: someone you know has been affected by layoffs, I just
Speaker 1: want to say, I've been there. It's stinks, but I
Speaker 1: do believe in you, so hanging there and good luck.
Speaker 1: I hope it all turns out well because it it's
Speaker 1: tough and it sucks and I've been there. Yuck. So
Speaker 1: when a hacker discovers the Transportation Safety Administration a k a.
Speaker 1: The t s A has a no fly list that
Speaker 1: is on an unsecured web server, who is really to
Speaker 1: blame when they? You know published fact. The reason I
Speaker 1: ask is because Tilly Kottman, who uses the hacker handle
Speaker 1: maya Arson crime you, was tooling around on this unsecured server.
Speaker 1: She says she was doing it because she was bored,
Speaker 1: and she discovered the no fly list on this server,
Speaker 1: and that includes around one and a half million names.
Speaker 1: These are names of people who are forbidden from flying
Speaker 1: here in the US due to being either a terrorist
Speaker 1: or suspected terrorist. Now, normally this kind of list would
Speaker 1: be hidden safely away under lock and key and protected,
Speaker 1: but Tilly says she was able to gain access to
Speaker 1: the list with no resistance, which does point to a
Speaker 1: pretty massive security problem. U S authorities would like a
Speaker 1: word or actually probably a lot of words with Tilly,
Speaker 1: who's also suspected of being behind other massive hacks, including
Speaker 1: one that happened a couple of years ago where a
Speaker 1: hacker accessed more than a hundred thousand surveillance cameras belonging
Speaker 1: to Vercada. But y'all, you know it's not breaking and entering.
Speaker 1: If the front door is wide open, that's just entering
Speaker 1: and maybe also trespassing. But you get my point. And finally,
Speaker 1: I would like to tell you about a new hero
Speaker 1: of mine. His name is Brian Birmingham and he's now
Speaker 1: a former lead engineer for Blizzard. So Brian is no
Speaker 1: longer employed at Blizzard because he objected to the company's
Speaker 1: stack ranking process for evaluating employee performance. Essentially, Brian was told,
Speaker 1: as all leaders in Blizzard were told, that he had
Speaker 1: to rank the employees under his leadership along a bell curve,
Speaker 1: and that this would include about five of those employees
Speaker 1: being placed at the bottom. Because that's how bell curves work.
Speaker 1: You have to have a top percentage and you have
Speaker 1: to have a bottom percentage. Even if everyone is kicking
Speaker 1: butt and taking names at their jobs, this kind of
Speaker 1: structure requires you to single out people and say these
Speaker 1: are the bottom performers. And presumably that would then affect
Speaker 1: those employees in the form of bonus payments, and it
Speaker 1: could also serve as sort of a black mark on
Speaker 1: their employment history. It could mean that later down the
Speaker 1: line they would be prevented from getting a promotion because
Speaker 1: it would be marked that at three they were they
Speaker 1: were evaluated as being a bottom performer. Brian essentially called
Speaker 1: bs on this practice. He said, it's counterproductive and it's
Speaker 1: bound to make employees try to avoid being in that
Speaker 1: bottom five per cent, not by being better at their jobs,
Speaker 1: but perhaps by engaging in stuff like sabotage, like trying
Speaker 1: to cause other employees to fall on that bottom five instead,
Speaker 1: or they might seek out a low performing group because
Speaker 1: they could stand out as a high performer if they
Speaker 1: just sought out mediocrity, and that this is all ultimately
Speaker 1: counterproductive to the ultimate company's goals, and a lot of
Speaker 1: other companies have used and subsequently abandoned this practice, finding
Speaker 1: in fact that it is counterproductive, but Blizzard is still
Speaker 1: doing it anyway. Brian said he would not participate in this,
Speaker 1: and he was subsequently fired. He didn't intend for the
Speaker 1: story to become public news, but someone else leaked it
Speaker 1: to the media and here we are. So my hat
Speaker 1: is off to you, Brian. You stood up for those
Speaker 1: in your department, You protested an inherently flawed management system,
Speaker 1: and you set an amazing example in a company would
Speaker 1: be lucky to have you as a lead engineer. And
Speaker 1: it's my hope that you will be able to actually
Speaker 1: return to Blizzard, where you clearly enjoy working, and that
Speaker 1: you will be able to lead in an environment that
Speaker 1: doesn't pit employees against one another like it's the thunder dome. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it for the news stories today to us day January.
Speaker 1: I hope you are all well. If you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for topics that should cover in tech stuff, remember to
Speaker 1: reach out to me. You can do so on Twitter
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