Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey therein
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech news for the
Speaker 1: week ending on Friday May seventeenth, twenty twenty four. And
Speaker 1: this was a pretty big week in tech news. There
Speaker 1: were a couple of large companies that made major announcements,
Speaker 1: and then there were tons of other things going on.
Speaker 1: So we're going to start off with open ai, the
Speaker 1: company that is behind the chat GPT chatbot, among many
Speaker 1: other things. I mentioned last week that the rumor mill
Speaker 1: said open ai was on the verge of announcing an
Speaker 1: AI powered search tool, which would pretty much be akin
Speaker 1: to putting Google dead in the center of open AI's crosshairs,
Speaker 1: because Google was just about to have it's Google Io
Speaker 1: Developers conference, which we'll talk about in a second. And
Speaker 1: open ai did release an announcement for a new AI
Speaker 1: model that's called GPT four O and I think that's
Speaker 1: the letter oh, not a zero. Anyway, this model is
Speaker 1: meant to allow for actual voice conversations between human and
Speaker 1: AI eventually, and open Ai says it'll also work across
Speaker 1: image and video related tasks. So this is what they
Speaker 1: call a multi modal approach to AI. It's not just
Speaker 1: text based, it's other stuff too, And the concept is
Speaker 1: kind of like you could have an image of something
Speaker 1: or a video of something. You could be looking at
Speaker 1: things through say your camera app on your phone, and
Speaker 1: then talk to the AI assistant and try to get
Speaker 1: information about what it is you're seeing. So we've seen
Speaker 1: stuff like this or related to this in the past,
Speaker 1: like holding your phone up to look at a sign
Speaker 1: that's written in another language and have real time translation
Speaker 1: to translate that into whatever your native language is. We've
Speaker 1: seen that in the past. This would be more advanced,
Speaker 1: much more advanced than that, you know. The example I
Speaker 1: would think of is I would imagine like, say you're
Speaker 1: starting up your car and the engines making a weird noise,
Speaker 1: and so you turn your car off, you pop the
Speaker 1: hood of your engine, and you're turning the car on
Speaker 1: and you're trying to take a look and see what
Speaker 1: it is that's possibly going wrong. Well, if you're like me,
Speaker 1: you may only have a passing familiarity with that particular engine.
Speaker 1: So an app that could hear and see the same
Speaker 1: things that you do, but have access to an entire
Speaker 1: world of information would be really useful. It could tell you, hey,
Speaker 1: this is something you don't need to worry about right now,
Speaker 1: or maybe it would tell you you need to get
Speaker 1: your vehicle checked right away, or maybe even give you
Speaker 1: a quick fix, if such a thing as even possible now.
Speaker 1: In some ways, you could argue open ai is doing
Speaker 1: kind of similar stuff to what we're seeing with other
Speaker 1: personal digital assistants like Google Assistant or Siri or Alexa,
Speaker 1: but just turbocharged. Open Ai did a real time demonstration
Speaker 1: of the model's capabilities, something that would loom over Google
Speaker 1: a little bit for their io event, but we'll get
Speaker 1: to them in a second. Anyway. Chat GPT four oh
Speaker 1: is rolling out now, but not all features are available
Speaker 1: rail of the gate, so for example, it is not
Speaker 1: able to talk to you just yet, or at least
Speaker 1: not to me. I actually check to see if I
Speaker 1: have access to Chat GPT four oh. I have a
Speaker 1: chat GPT account that I never use, and so I
Speaker 1: think I logged onto it for the first time in
Speaker 1: maybe a year and found out that sure enough, I've
Speaker 1: got access to it. But it doesn't talk to me yet.
Speaker 1: The rollout is also going to be happening in batches,
Speaker 1: So if you don't have access to it yet, even
Speaker 1: though you have a chat gpt account, it is coming.
Speaker 1: You can actually sign in now by going to chatgpt
Speaker 1: dot com. They created that URL, so that's where the
Speaker 1: service lives now. I think that kind of is a
Speaker 1: sly indicator that they are transitioning from something that is
Speaker 1: largely talked about as kind of a test product into
Speaker 1: something that's an actual product. Existing chat gpt account holders
Speaker 1: will receive access to four O capabilities over the next
Speaker 1: several days if they don't have it already. And I
Speaker 1: want to echo a warning that I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of other people make, because I think it's wise to
Speaker 1: remember be careful if in your interactions with chat gpt
Speaker 1: it suggests links to stuff, because apparently at least some
Speaker 1: malicious folks have found ways to get chat gpt to
Speaker 1: suggest links that ultimately lead to malicious website it's and
Speaker 1: malicious software. So don't trust everything Chad Gbt says, particularly
Speaker 1: when it comes to links. I think it's a really
Speaker 1: interesting interaction that you can have with this thing. I
Speaker 1: don't fully like it. I have concerns, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that in just a second. But beyond the
Speaker 1: announcement that open ai made, they also managed to close
Speaker 1: a deal with Reddit, which will give open ai permission
Speaker 1: to train AI models on Reddit and subreddit posts. That's
Speaker 1: something that folks had suspected open ai was already doing,
Speaker 1: just you know, without the part about having permission to
Speaker 1: do so. Reddit will in return get some access to
Speaker 1: AI powered tools that can then be incorporated into the
Speaker 1: platform in various ways. So Reddit is saying, hey, don't worry,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have enhanced ways to interact with Reddit. Though
Speaker 1: what those will actually be haven't, you know, been fully disclosed,
Speaker 1: if you recall. Open Ai similarly sign to deal with
Speaker 1: stack overflow not too long ago, which caused a bit
Speaker 1: of a tiff in that community because a lot of
Speaker 1: folks said they preferred their work not be used for
Speaker 1: training AI. But the terms of service for stack overflow
Speaker 1: are such that essentially, once you post something to the platform,
Speaker 1: it doesn't belong to you anymore. It's the platforms. So
Speaker 1: while you might object to your work being used to
Speaker 1: train AI, you don't have any authority to deny it
Speaker 1: from happening. Some people tried to deface or delete old posts,
Speaker 1: but that's exactly that's against the terms of service on
Speaker 1: stack overflow. So many of those people subsequently found themselves banned,
Speaker 1: at least temporarily from that site. It'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: see if there will be a similar backlash in the
Speaker 1: Reddit community. That community is already kind of predisposed to
Speaker 1: not liking the corporate leadership of Reddit. There's already pretty
Speaker 1: low opinion of the company's leaders, largely because of changes
Speaker 1: that Reddit made to its API like a year ago,
Speaker 1: and apparently that's not the case with investors. Investors on
Speaker 1: the flip side are pretty darn happy. Reuters reported that
Speaker 1: shares were trading fourteen percent higher today than they were
Speaker 1: yesterday in the wake of this news. Not all the
Speaker 1: news is good news for open ai. Between announcements and partnerships,
Speaker 1: two prominent individuals in the organization resigned from the company
Speaker 1: this week. That would be Ilia Sutzkiver, who is a
Speaker 1: co founder of open ai, one of the original members
Speaker 1: of the non profit version of open ai, and the
Speaker 1: other one is Jan Leika, an executive who gave a
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward announcement on x their announcement. Just read quote
Speaker 1: I resigned end quote. Now the alarming thing is both
Speaker 1: Laikah and Sutzkiver worked for a department within open ai
Speaker 1: called super Alignment, and essentially they were assigned a task
Speaker 1: that was the need to make sure AI evolves in
Speaker 1: a way that is helpful but not harmful. This was
Speaker 1: kind of the central premise, the reison deetre of open
Speaker 1: ai when it was first founded as a nonprofit organization.
Speaker 1: The founders wanted to make certain that AI would be
Speaker 1: developed in a responsible and accountable and transparent way in
Speaker 1: order to maximize its benefits to humanity and minimize or
Speaker 1: eliminate any risks. But it turns out AI is really expensive.
Speaker 1: Like it's expensive to develop, it's expensive to implement and
Speaker 1: to run and to maintain, and without a near constant
Speaker 1: cash injection, open ai just wouldn't be around for very long,
Speaker 1: which is why the organization ultimately spun off a for
Speaker 1: profit arm, which is the version of open ai most
Speaker 1: of us talk about today, like, it's not the nonprofit version,
Speaker 1: it's the very aggressive for profit version that makes the
Speaker 1: news and that created conflict within the organization. It led
Speaker 1: up to the brief period in which the board of
Speaker 1: directors removed Sam Altman as CEO of Open Ai, before
Speaker 1: being pressured to turn around and put him right back
Speaker 1: in charge again, and then subsequently the board of directors
Speaker 1: essentially dissolved and reformed with new people. Sutzkever was actually
Speaker 1: part of the effort to remove Altman, although he subsequently
Speaker 1: apologized for that, so I don't think it's really a
Speaker 1: big surprise that he has now left the company. But
Speaker 1: I think anyone who is concerned about ethical approaches to
Speaker 1: AI should really be aware that a lot of red
Speaker 1: flags are going up right now. Okay, with that fun note,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors. We're back,
Speaker 1: and now let us shift to Google, which, as I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, held its annual IO Developer conference this week, and,
Speaker 1: to the surprise of literally no one, much of the
Speaker 1: conference touched on artificial intelligence. Now there are do you
Speaker 1: have great headlines out there like Google aio or even
Speaker 1: Google aiaio, et cetera. So there's so many out there,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of sad that none are left for me.
Speaker 1: But enough about that. Google announced an update to its
Speaker 1: AI model Gemini. The company revealed that both the basic version,
Speaker 1: called Gemini one point five Flash and the pro version
Speaker 1: are available for public preview now. The primary function of
Speaker 1: these specific AI models is to help developers create stuff,
Speaker 1: so if a developer is working on an app, they
Speaker 1: can make use of these models to help boost those efforts,
Speaker 1: whether it's encoding or whatever. Google also revealed an updated
Speaker 1: version of its assistant called Project Astra. Google showed a
Speaker 1: pre recorded demonstration of the assistant's ability, and a Googler
Speaker 1: was taking her phone around an office and asking questions
Speaker 1: and having the camera app activated on her phone so
Speaker 1: she could point the camera at something and ask a
Speaker 1: question about the thing that's on screen, and the an
Speaker 1: Astra would answer. So one point, for example, she asks
Speaker 1: the assistant to point out anything that makes sound, and
Speaker 1: she scans a desk, and when she brings the camera
Speaker 1: in view of a speaker, the assistant says, that's a speaker,
Speaker 1: and then she actually uses a markup feature to circle
Speaker 1: the tweeter on the speaker, and she asks a follow
Speaker 1: up question saying what is this part of the speaker called,
Speaker 1: and the assistant says, that's the tweeter. Then it explains
Speaker 1: what the tweeter does, which is to playback you know,
Speaker 1: higher pitched sounds, higher frequency sounds, so it was a
Speaker 1: cool demonstration. She pointed out the window and asked, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially like what's this neighborhood? And the assistant answered, and
Speaker 1: she at one point even said that she had misplaced
Speaker 1: her glasses and asked the assistant if it knew where
Speaker 1: her glasses were, And because she had been walking through
Speaker 1: the office with the camera on, the app was able
Speaker 1: to reference that information and it was able to pick
Speaker 1: out a moment where the camera saw some glasses on
Speaker 1: a desk, and it directed her to those glasses, which,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, that's what got the biggest reaction
Speaker 1: from the crowd, which was kind of cool. I mean,
Speaker 1: goodness knows, I misplaced things all the time, so it'd
Speaker 1: be good to have, you know, an assistant that could
Speaker 1: tell me, yeah, no, that's in your hand. You'd do
Speaker 1: fas anyway. Later on, Googler Michael Chang somewhat cheekily shared
Speaker 1: on X now known as you know X it used
Speaker 1: to be known as Twitter that he had watched the
Speaker 1: Open AI announcement on Monday with Astra, which is kind
Speaker 1: of funny because you know, the whole thing was that
Speaker 1: Open AI was doing this sort of to undermine Google
Speaker 1: and that Michael Chang saying, yeah, I watched it along
Speaker 1: with Project Astra, and Project Astra made a real time
Speaker 1: transcript of that presentation, complete with attributions for each speaker,
Speaker 1: so identifying who was speaking in the transcript as it
Speaker 1: was going on. That's pretty impressive, and also giving some
Speaker 1: commentary about the presentation as it went on. The demonstration
Speaker 1: of the AI interpreting images and giving relevant responses was
Speaker 1: really interesting, but again, it was pre recorded. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like it was a live demo. Google also demonstrate an
Speaker 1: updated image generation AI model called imagen three. On top
Speaker 1: of images, Google showed off a music AI sandbox to
Speaker 1: let folks use AI to put musicians and composers out
Speaker 1: of a job. No, I'm sorry, that's not a messaging
Speaker 1: they wanted. I mean to help artists elevate their creativity
Speaker 1: through the use of AI. I looked at these I
Speaker 1: just got to see demos. I don't have access to
Speaker 1: the tools themselves because I'm not a notable musician. I'm
Speaker 1: not really a musician at all, so I don't have
Speaker 1: access to these things. But it's both fascinating and concerning.
Speaker 1: Because I have a lot of respect for actual musical artists,
Speaker 1: and I don't like the idea of people who are
Speaker 1: really talented and creative potentially getting pushed aside for something
Speaker 1: that is perhaps easier to access and maybe cheaper. That's
Speaker 1: not great. I think people's talent and time is worth money,
Speaker 1: like I think it's worth paying for and that you know,
Speaker 1: you can't just expect something for free, and anything that
Speaker 1: undercuts that really concerns me a lot. Google also announced
Speaker 1: video FX, which you guessed it uses generative AI to
Speaker 1: create video clips, which again raise lots of concerns, like
Speaker 1: the more you're seeing of AI generated content, the more
Speaker 1: you're worried about how reliable is the stuff you are seeing.
Speaker 1: Whether it's you know, a listing for a real estate property,
Speaker 1: like who's to say it wasn't a picture that was
Speaker 1: then enhanced by AI to make the house look way
Speaker 1: nicer than it really is, Or maybe it's something where
Speaker 1: it's a it's a video clip that seems to put
Speaker 1: a public figure in a bad light, and you start wondering, Okay,
Speaker 1: well is this real or is this something that was
Speaker 1: created by someone who just has an axe to grind
Speaker 1: for whatever reason these are things that are getting more
Speaker 1: and more relevant. Arguably they are incredibly relevant right now. Now.
Speaker 1: The thing that is probably going to have the largest impact,
Speaker 1: at least the earliest for most folks, is Google implementing
Speaker 1: more AI into its search tool, which is of course
Speaker 1: what Google is primarily known for, even though it's arguably
Speaker 1: really an advertising company, it's known for search. The company
Speaker 1: announced that AI overviews in search is going to be
Speaker 1: rolling out nationwide in the United States this week, so
Speaker 1: if you live in the United States, you probably have
Speaker 1: this incorporated in your search right now. Google also said
Speaker 1: that multi step reasoning capabilities are coming soon, which means
Speaker 1: that you'll be able to ask more complex questions in
Speaker 1: your search query and to get relevant answers. So, like,
Speaker 1: here's an example I just made up, how do I
Speaker 1: make a lasagna? And what cheese is a good substitute
Speaker 1: if I don't have ricotta? Right, Because that's a two
Speaker 1: part question. It's one asking what are the steps to
Speaker 1: make a lasagna? And I know I already know I
Speaker 1: don't have an ingredient that's in a lot of lasagna recipes,
Speaker 1: So what is a good substitute? That's the sort of
Speaker 1: thing that you can expect to be able to access
Speaker 1: in the not too distant future. The various keynotes and
Speaker 1: presentations stretched across multiple days, so there was so much
Speaker 1: more brought up during the IO event. But I think
Speaker 1: the real message for most of us, the people who
Speaker 1: aren't like actively developers, that we should take home is
Speaker 1: just that AI is going to be all up in
Speaker 1: your business and soon. Google hasn't just been talking to developers, however,
Speaker 1: the company has also been pushing out updates to its browser,
Speaker 1: Google Chrome, and this is not part of its all AI,
Speaker 1: all the time strategy. Instead, Google is addressing some zero
Speaker 1: day vulnerabilities that have come to light over the last
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, three of them in fact, recently. These
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities are severe. Potentially hackers would be able to quote
Speaker 1: perform an out of bounds memory right via a crafted
Speaker 1: HTML page end quote that's from Google. That's not good.
Speaker 1: It could mean that you could have a vulnerability activated
Speaker 1: and then you visit a malicious website and then either
Speaker 1: get malware downloaded to your computer or worse. So this
Speaker 1: is a gentle reminder to all of y'all that it's
Speaker 1: never a good idea to just push off installing updates
Speaker 1: on stuff like web browsers and operating systems, because doing
Speaker 1: that puts you at risk for malware or worse. I
Speaker 1: know it's a hassle to have to update, especially if
Speaker 1: you get to your machine and you've got like a
Speaker 1: specific thing you need to do, and then the first
Speaker 1: thing you see is a notification saying that you should
Speaker 1: run an update. I know that's a hassle. It happens
Speaker 1: to me too, and I hate it too, But it's
Speaker 1: a good idea to go ahead and do the update
Speaker 1: ninety nine times out of one hundred. One time out
Speaker 1: of one hundred, it ends up being the wrong thing
Speaker 1: to do, But when it's a ninety nine percent success, right,
Speaker 1: you should probably do it. Also, hey, fun concept AI
Speaker 1: can now help hackers discover and exploit vulnerabilities, So it's
Speaker 1: just gonna get worse. Brave New World and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Apple iOS beta testers say that iOS
Speaker 1: build seventeen point five has a disturbing habit of bringing
Speaker 1: the dead back to life. And so I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about reanimated goules here. I'm talking about deleted material, like
Speaker 1: deleted photos or deleted voicemails. According to a Reddit thread,
Speaker 1: some users have reported iOS digging up old and sometimes
Speaker 1: deleted photos and then showcasing them as if they are
Speaker 1: recent images. So you pull up your app and say, huh,
Speaker 1: according to this, this picture I took seven years ago
Speaker 1: is a new one. Apparently in some cases this has
Speaker 1: included images that people once took but long since deleted,
Speaker 1: including nudes. Nude photos. That should be a massive concern
Speaker 1: because Apple's stated practice is that once you delete a photo,
Speaker 1: then you have thirty days in which you can recover
Speaker 1: the deleted photo. But after thirty days, that photo is
Speaker 1: supposed to be deleted for good. So if, as some
Speaker 1: people have claimed, some of these photos have reappeared reportedly
Speaker 1: years after they were first deleted, that raises serious privacy questions.
Speaker 1: Right Like, if you took a nude photo seven years ago,
Speaker 1: then like six and a half years ago, you deleted it.
Speaker 1: You do not expect that seven year old photo to
Speaker 1: come bouncing back today. That would be really shocking, and
Speaker 1: it does again raise real questions about data retention and
Speaker 1: privacy and security. At least one Reddit user claimed that
Speaker 1: they had sold an old iPad to a friend of theirs,
Speaker 1: but they had gone through Apple's process to wipe their
Speaker 1: own personal data off of the iPad before selling it. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, just making sure that you're reverting back
Speaker 1: to like factory settings and deleting all personal information, but
Speaker 1: that some of their old not safe for work photographs
Speaker 1: have been popping back up on their friend's device. Now
Speaker 1: surprise friend that you didn't expect to see your buddy
Speaker 1: in their glory. This is not good news at all,
Speaker 1: if in fact it is true. So I have to
Speaker 1: keep on stressing if it is true, because I haven't
Speaker 1: seen confirmation from anyone other than people commenting on Reddit.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, but sometimes people
Speaker 1: on Reddit say things that are perhaps not one hundred
Speaker 1: percent true. A lot of subreddits are almost exclusively made
Speaker 1: up of fiction anyway. Wes Davis of The Verge extends
Speaker 1: some grace to Apple and points out that this might
Speaker 1: not be a case of Apple doing something insidious or
Speaker 1: being really negligent. That deleted data is never really gone
Speaker 1: until some other information gets overwritten on top of what
Speaker 1: once was there. And that's true if you delete something
Speaker 1: off your hard drive, but you don't overwrite information on
Speaker 1: top of where that drive was, you know, storing stuff
Speaker 1: it can be possible to recover the deleted information. So
Speaker 1: maybe that's what's happened at Apple, just you know, on
Speaker 1: a much much larger scale. Now, personally, I find that
Speaker 1: a little hard to swallow because the trend has been
Speaker 1: for more folks to use more Apple services over time.
Speaker 1: So you would think if more people are using those services,
Speaker 1: that stuff would be overwritten all the time, because otherwise
Speaker 1: Apple would just have to keep on adding additional servers
Speaker 1: to handle incoming images and voicemails and all the other stuff,
Speaker 1: because you know the otherwise. The implication is that, well,
Speaker 1: we haven't overwritten everything that you know has been freed
Speaker 1: up since people have deleted things. I can't even be
Speaker 1: sure that the claims that are being made are accurate.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that some of these quote unquote deleted
Speaker 1: files weren't really deleted at all. Maybe they were just
Speaker 1: forgotten about, because goodness knows that happens too. But the
Speaker 1: story about the wipe dipad in particular is trouble if
Speaker 1: it is true, So just something to be aware of. Again,
Speaker 1: that's for iOS seventeen point five, and it's in beta,
Speaker 1: so if you're not beta testing, then this isn't likely
Speaker 1: to affect you if you're an iOS user, but I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's something that Apple is looking into to figure
Speaker 1: out before iOS eighteen goes out. All right, we got
Speaker 1: more stories to cover, but before we can get to
Speaker 1: all of those, let's take another quick break. We're back,
Speaker 1: and here's a story that hit like deja vus this
Speaker 1: week at centers around the company game Stop, and it's
Speaker 1: stock price. So you might remember that back in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, a collection of folks decided to stick it
Speaker 1: to some hedge funds by investing in game Stop because
Speaker 1: word got out that some massive hedge funds were short
Speaker 1: selling game Stop. By driving the price of the stock up,
Speaker 1: the investors could do two things. One, they could see
Speaker 1: a return on their own investment, right because if the
Speaker 1: stock goes up, then you're making profit. And two, they
Speaker 1: could cause serious financial hardship for these massive hedge funds
Speaker 1: that typically hold a tremendous amount of power in the
Speaker 1: stock market. Now, if you're not familiar with how short
Speaker 1: selling goes, let me give you a very basic description,
Speaker 1: and I'm glossing over a lot of details here. Let's
Speaker 1: say that you believe a particular stock is going to
Speaker 1: decline in value. So you decide, hey, I'm going to
Speaker 1: make some money with stock going down. I'm going to
Speaker 1: sell stock that I don't actually own, and i'm going
Speaker 1: to sell it at what it is currently trading for.
Speaker 1: So let's say that it's currently trading for ten dollars
Speaker 1: per share. So you sell one hundred shares at ten
Speaker 1: dollars per share, but you don't own those shares, So
Speaker 1: you're literally selling stock you do not own, but you
Speaker 1: have the promise of delivering that money, or rather the stock,
Speaker 1: in a certain amount of time. Let's say it's one month. Now,
Speaker 1: a month has gone by, and it's time for you
Speaker 1: to deliver the stock that you've promised. At this point,
Speaker 1: the stock has gone down to one dollar per share.
Speaker 1: Now you previously sold it for ten dollars per share,
Speaker 1: so you get to buy up the amount of stock
Speaker 1: you agreed to handover in the transaction, and you get
Speaker 1: to pocket the difference between the ten dollars that you
Speaker 1: accepted for this sale and the one dollar that you
Speaker 1: actually purchased everything for. So you make money by stock
Speaker 1: going down. But if the stock price doesn't go down,
Speaker 1: if it goes up, that's bad. News for you, because
Speaker 1: now you're gonna have to pay out a pocket the
Speaker 1: difference of that. So let's say that the stock actually
Speaker 1: rose up to twenty dollars per share at the end
Speaker 1: of the month, Well, then you're gonna have to pay
Speaker 1: an extra ten dollars on every share of the stock
Speaker 1: that you sold, So you're gonna lose that money instead
Speaker 1: of gaining extra Well, these investors that ended up driving
Speaker 1: up the price of game Stop were led by a
Speaker 1: guy named Keith Gill, who's better known by his online handle,
Speaker 1: which is Roaring Kitty, and they did a massive screw
Speaker 1: you to major investment companies that are trying to short
Speaker 1: sell game Stop. This is what we call a short squeeze.
Speaker 1: This week, it happened again briefly because on Tuesday, game
Speaker 1: Stop shares rose to a high of sixty four dollars
Speaker 1: eighty three cents per share, and in fact, there were
Speaker 1: companies that were putting on a short sale of game
Speaker 1: Stop stock. However, in this case, the rally didn't last long.
Speaker 1: It has subsequently dropped to around twenty seven dollars per share.
Speaker 1: And this roller coaster followed some posts by the aforementioned
Speaker 1: Roaring Kitty who seemed to be getting back into the
Speaker 1: game after being quiet for a couple of years. But again,
Speaker 1: unlike the first go round when this happened in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, this particular boost appeared to just be a blip,
Speaker 1: so we're not seeing a full repeat of the phenomenon.
Speaker 1: So a lot of hedge funds have gotten wise to
Speaker 1: this and have measures in place to limit their liability
Speaker 1: so they're not caught out quite as badly as they
Speaker 1: were the last time. Because boyotty, that was a doozy. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Meta. They are ending the Workplace app
Speaker 1: for external customers. At the very least, some elements of
Speaker 1: Workplace may remain as internal Facebook systems. So Meta first
Speaker 1: launched Workplace in twenty sixteen. It's a business collaboration tool. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it lets companies make interconnecting page networks with their partners
Speaker 1: and helps with collaborative projects that span different departments or
Speaker 1: different companies entirely. They can have like dedicated message boards,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. It's a business to business product.
Speaker 1: Meta charged four dollars per user. That adds up pretty
Speaker 1: quickly if you're talking about a really big company. But
Speaker 1: now Meta is going to sunset the Workplace app and
Speaker 1: shift assets to two other massive projects, which are AI
Speaker 1: and of course the Metaverse. Because Meta is still determined
Speaker 1: to make that happen. I think it's going to be
Speaker 1: like Fetch. It's not gonna happen, but maybe it will.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe people will love it. I still am skeptical,
Speaker 1: but I'm also not a genius and I'm not an entrepreneur.
Speaker 1: I'm just a grouchy guy who talks into a microphone.
Speaker 1: The company says it will work with current Workplace customers
Speaker 1: to transition them over to work Vivo, which is a
Speaker 1: product from Zoom and the one partner they work with
Speaker 1: that makes something similar that they actually recommend. Okay, here's
Speaker 1: an interesting story about suppressing tech. Seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: miles to the east of Australia is New Caledonia. In
Speaker 1: the mid nineteenth century, France claimed New Caledonia and has
Speaker 1: remained the ruler of New Caledonia since it is a
Speaker 1: French territory. But recently the government of New Caledonia enacted
Speaker 1: changes to election laws that really sparked protests across the territory,
Speaker 1: mostly in indigenous populations that have been fighting for independence.
Speaker 1: For quite some time, these protests grew and became more chaotic.
Speaker 1: Four deaths have resulted as the protests have grown more violent,
Speaker 1: and since then the government has cracked down on the populace.
Speaker 1: The government has banned public protests and demonstrations and also
Speaker 1: blocked access to TikTok all in an effort to squash
Speaker 1: protests online and off. The government says that people were
Speaker 1: using TikTok in order to organize demonstrations, and since demonstrations
Speaker 1: are now banned, so is TikTok, so people can't use
Speaker 1: it to do that. That's really why I'm including the
Speaker 1: story here, because it's a social and political event that
Speaker 1: has spilled into suppressing access to online platforms. And as
Speaker 1: to the heart of the matter, like what this is
Speaker 1: all about again, it's largely about the question of independence
Speaker 1: for New Caledonia and the recent election laws that were
Speaker 1: changed now allow people who are more recent transplants to
Speaker 1: New Caledonia to vote. Previously, in order to be eligible
Speaker 1: to vote in matters of great import in New Caledonia,
Speaker 1: you had to have a long and deep connection to
Speaker 1: the territory. You couldn't just move there and then influence
Speaker 1: the vote so a lot of people who support independence
Speaker 1: say this is a blatant attempt to dilute their influence
Speaker 1: in public matters, because the people who are moving to
Speaker 1: New Caledonia are largely French citizens, who are of course
Speaker 1: not voting in favor of independence. So that's what's really
Speaker 1: the heart of the conflict. But yeah, like I said,
Speaker 1: it's spilled out now with a ban on TikTok. And
Speaker 1: while there is a twelve day state of emergency currently
Speaker 1: in effect for New Caledonia, it is not yet clear
Speaker 1: if the ban on TikTok will lift once that state
Speaker 1: of emergency expires. A lawsuit targeting Tesla alleging that the
Speaker 1: company made false claims regarding full self driving capability these
Speaker 1: in its car may move forward. Tesla had attempted to
Speaker 1: get the case thrown out. A California resident by the
Speaker 1: name of Thomas Lesavio alleges the company engaged in fraud
Speaker 1: by claiming that its vehicles would have full self driving
Speaker 1: capability and that's why Lasavio purchased a Tesla vehicle, only
Speaker 1: to subsequently find out that those claims were perhaps exaggerated
Speaker 1: or false. The judge overseeing the matter has decided that
Speaker 1: at least some of Lasavio's case has merit and can
Speaker 1: go to trial, but some other parts have been dismissed
Speaker 1: because of the way they were presented. Now, Lasavio originally
Speaker 1: was going to be part of a class action lawsuit,
Speaker 1: but the other plaintiffs of that lawsuit had to drop
Speaker 1: out because they had signed an agreement which would require
Speaker 1: them to go through arbitration with Tesla before they could
Speaker 1: bring a case to court. Losavio did not sign such
Speaker 1: an agreement, so was able to move forward with his
Speaker 1: own lawsuit, and he has opened it up to be
Speaker 1: a class action so other Tesla owners can join if
Speaker 1: they so wish. Now, Lasauvio is going to have until
Speaker 1: June fifth to amend his complaint in order to get
Speaker 1: parts that were dismissed reincorporated into it. Tesla has until
Speaker 1: June nineteenth to respond. So there's still no guarantee that
Speaker 1: this is actually going to go to trial, but it
Speaker 1: is a step closer. Reuters has a piece titled the
Speaker 1: inside story of Elon Musk's mass firings of Tesla's supercharger staff. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this relates to a story I talked about. A couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago in which the company laid off a
Speaker 1: five hundred person department responsible for the development and deployment
Speaker 1: of supercharger stations, which seemed more than a little weird
Speaker 1: because Tesla has made great strides in establishing its supercharger
Speaker 1: technology as a kind of de facto industry standard. You know,
Speaker 1: other car manufacturers have bought into that, and they've made
Speaker 1: their own vehicles compatible with it. The Reuter's piece tells
Speaker 1: a pretty disturbing tale in my opinion, because the former
Speaker 1: head of the supercharger department, a woman named Rebecca to Nucci,
Speaker 1: had already gone through a round layoffs like she had
Speaker 1: already held layoffs within her division at the direction of
Speaker 1: Elon Musk, and Musk wanted to do more. But she
Speaker 1: was meeting with Musk to present her vision that involved
Speaker 1: the company expanding the supercharger network. Instead, Musk demanded more layoffs.
Speaker 1: To Nucci reportedly said that if she were to lay
Speaker 1: off anyone else in her department, that would be counterproductive,
Speaker 1: it would hurt their business objectives. And that's when Musk
Speaker 1: just went nuclear. He pulled the trigger and he fired
Speaker 1: everyone or practically everyone in that department. And it's very
Speaker 1: hard for me not to get the feeling that this
Speaker 1: is a leader who, when he perceives a challenge to
Speaker 1: his absolute authority, just goes with that nuclear option. And
Speaker 1: now Tesla's having to deal with the consequences because people
Speaker 1: from other departments, notably the Solar and battery divisions, have
Speaker 1: been given the task to work with the various partners
Speaker 1: and contractors who had been engaged in building out supercharging stations.
Speaker 1: You know, these are folks who already had a lot
Speaker 1: of work on their plate, and now they're to take
Speaker 1: on the work of an entirely different department. It seems
Speaker 1: like the general strategy right now for Tesla is to
Speaker 1: stall for time, which isn't exactly welcome news if you
Speaker 1: happen to be a contractor who's expecting to get paid.
Speaker 1: Musk has said the plan is still to grow the
Speaker 1: supercharger network, but that things are gonna have to happen
Speaker 1: at a more methodical pace, which seems like that's a
Speaker 1: given considering how many people were fired. There have also
Speaker 1: been reports that Tesla has subsequently tried to hire back
Speaker 1: at least some of the staff that were previously laid off.
Speaker 1: I'm sure for some of those folks coming back is
Speaker 1: a pretty hard decision. I mean, you do need to
Speaker 1: make a living, so there is that element. But if
Speaker 1: you've already been unceremoniously laid off for arguably irrational reasons,
Speaker 1: it's not really great to think about coming back to
Speaker 1: that company. It's also not a great development for electric
Speaker 1: vehicles in general, because if Tesla fizzles out, then some
Speaker 1: other entity or multiple entities will have to step forward
Speaker 1: to provide the infrastructure necessary to support a migration from
Speaker 1: internal combustion engine vehicles to evs. So that's one of
Speaker 1: the big reasons why people say they're they're reluctant to
Speaker 1: adopt evs is that they fear being stranded someplace because
Speaker 1: they weren't able to find a charging station and recharge
Speaker 1: at a reasonable limit and cost. So, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: not great news for the EV industry as a whole. Now,
Speaker 1: when he's not gutting his EV company, Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: sparring with his old nemesis, the US Securities and Exchange Commission,
Speaker 1: or SEC. He's had a few run ins with the SEC,
Speaker 1: one stemming from his inability to not post stuff that
Speaker 1: could be seen as market manipulation. When he intimated that
Speaker 1: he was going to take Tesla private. Anyway, now the
Speaker 1: SEC wants to chat with Musk about his purchase of Twitter,
Speaker 1: of course, now known as X. The SEC did this
Speaker 1: once before. Musk initially told him to pound sand and
Speaker 1: that he wasn't going to listen to all their subpoenas
Speaker 1: because they were just trying to bully him. After that,
Speaker 1: some judges weighed in to say, no, no, no, that's
Speaker 1: not how the law works, and Musk tried again get
Speaker 1: the whole thing swept away because you know, it's such
Speaker 1: a hassle to have to answer for your actions. It
Speaker 1: turns out that's not a good enough reason for judges
Speaker 1: to throw things out, even for billionaires. So it looks
Speaker 1: like Musk is going to have to have a chat
Speaker 1: with the SEC, which says that it came into possession
Speaker 1: of new documents about the purchase of X and it
Speaker 1: raises questions about Musk's involvement with Twitter in the months
Speaker 1: leading up to his announced plans to acquire the company.
Speaker 1: So we'll have to see where that goes. Considering the
Speaker 1: decline of Twitter since Musk's announcement, this feels like it's
Speaker 1: largely a lot of fuss over a rotting corpse. Honestly,
Speaker 1: One story that I don't think I covered before is
Speaker 1: that the first human recipient of a Neurlink implant, which
Speaker 1: is the brain computer interface chip that's made by Neurlink,
Speaker 1: another company owned by Elon Musk It has experienced some
Speaker 1: issues as several of the very thin threads that connected
Speaker 1: to the device have lost contact with the neurons that
Speaker 1: they were previously attached to in this human subject, So
Speaker 1: this affected the chip's ability to serve as a conduit
Speaker 1: between the recipient's brain and the computer systems he was
Speaker 1: interacting with. Engineers addressed the problem by making tweaks to
Speaker 1: the algorithms that run along on the chip, and that
Speaker 1: helped compensate for this issue. But now some unnamed sources
Speaker 1: that are familiar with the testing say that this was
Speaker 1: a known thing that the Neurlink had been observed to
Speaker 1: have wires retracting in animal test subjects as well. Considering
Speaker 1: the fact that this implant requires invasive and potentially dangerous surgery,
Speaker 1: some are now questioning the ethical implications of moving forward
Speaker 1: with a human test subject. While this retraction thing has
Speaker 1: been a known issue, there's a concern that should more
Speaker 1: wires retract, the neurolink will hit a wall with however
Speaker 1: much adjustment you can do to the algorithms to deal
Speaker 1: with it, and that in turn, that'll mean the chip
Speaker 1: will gradually lose functionality and potentially become largely useless, which
Speaker 1: could lead to an eividuality in which it becomes necessary
Speaker 1: to remove the implant entirely. As for finding a way
Speaker 1: to fix this problem in future procedures, that's pretty challenging.
Speaker 1: You could create a system where you have more wires
Speaker 1: or they're more firmly anchored, but that would mean they
Speaker 1: would be harder to dislodge by definition, and if you
Speaker 1: wanted to do something like an upgrade, or if you
Speaker 1: needed to remove the implant, it could cause complications. So
Speaker 1: this is not an easy fix one way or the other.
Speaker 1: And in my mind, it's suggest to me that perhaps
Speaker 1: this was a bit too aggressive for neuralink, but we
Speaker 1: don't know that yet. Like it may turn out that
Speaker 1: some wires retracting is just a normal course of action
Speaker 1: and that the rest of it is fine. And there's
Speaker 1: no denying that the technology does provide an incredible quality
Speaker 1: of life boost to people who otherwise don't have use
Speaker 1: of their limbs. That is something that is really important.
Speaker 1: So if in fact we don't see further degradation of
Speaker 1: the implant, I think that this issue, while it does
Speaker 1: raise concerns and raises questions about why the FDA would
Speaker 1: allow things to move forward, those are questions that I
Speaker 1: think need to be answered. I think ultimately we could
Speaker 1: say it's for the best if the device actually does
Speaker 1: work and doesn't degrade to a point where it must
Speaker 1: be removed. I mean, it's in arguably an improvement to
Speaker 1: the life of the people who have it. Touching back
Speaker 1: on AI for a moment, Sony Music Group has joined
Speaker 1: countless artists, writers, and other creators and expressing concern over
Speaker 1: AI using existing human created works as training material, and
Speaker 1: Sony Music is saying, don't do that. We don't want
Speaker 1: you to do that. So the company has reportedly sent
Speaker 1: out several hundred letters to various AI startups and companies saying, hey,
Speaker 1: don't you dare use our catalog of music without our
Speaker 1: express permission, And at least for some of those recipients,
Speaker 1: the company went on to say, you know, we know
Speaker 1: that you're doing it now, so you've got to knock
Speaker 1: it off Buster, except, of course, they worded it differently.
Speaker 1: Sony specifically said, quote, due to the nature of your
Speaker 1: operations and published information about your AI systems, we have
Speaker 1: reason to believe that you and or your affiliates may
Speaker 1: have already made unauthorized uses, including TDM, of SMG content,
Speaker 1: in relation to the training, development, or commercialization of AI systems.
Speaker 1: End quote. For the record, the initialism TDM stands for
Speaker 1: Text and Data Mining. SMG is Sony Music Group. According
Speaker 1: to jem Oswad of Variety, a recent EU law called
Speaker 1: the AI Act prompted Sony to send these letters, as
Speaker 1: the Act compels AI companies to reveal what their training
Speaker 1: data was like where did they get their data to
Speaker 1: train their AI models? So Sony, at least in part,
Speaker 1: is saying, Hey, you used our information without our permission.
Speaker 1: Don't do that now. I usually hold off on reading
Speaker 1: recommendations to the very end of the episode, but I
Speaker 1: want to mention Ashley Bellinger's incredible piece for Ours Technica
Speaker 1: titled MIT Students stole twenty five million in second by
Speaker 1: exploiting etch blockchain bug. DOJ says, now, as that title implies,
Speaker 1: this is a heck of a story. It's about a
Speaker 1: pair of brothers who learned how blockchains work at MIT.
Speaker 1: They arguably learned a little too well how they work,
Speaker 1: and they took this incredible education that they received at
Speaker 1: MIT and they turned it into kind of an Ocean's
Speaker 1: eleven style heist. Except this heist took less than fifteen seconds,
Speaker 1: and it involved finding a way to access pending transactions
Speaker 1: on the blockchain. So these were transactions that have not
Speaker 1: yet actually been cemented in the Ethereum blockchain, and they
Speaker 1: were able to divert cryptocurrency meant for these transactions to
Speaker 1: go into their own accounts. So the way blockchains work
Speaker 1: is that once a transaction gets added to a block
Speaker 1: and the block is added onto the chain, it's secure
Speaker 1: because going into the history of transactions and making a
Speaker 1: change would cause a ripple effect for every block that follows,
Speaker 1: and so any tampering immediately becomes clear and is reversed
Speaker 1: because the entire network is able to see that someone
Speaker 1: is messing around. The brothers, however, figured out how to
Speaker 1: tap into transactions that had been initiated but not yet
Speaker 1: assimilated into the blockchain, and they would have gotten away
Speaker 1: with it too if it hadn't been for you know
Speaker 1: the fact that their victims made a really big fuss
Speaker 1: about this, and it prompted an investigation from the irs,
Speaker 1: which then they said was incredibly easy to conduct because
Speaker 1: the brothers were not particularly good at covering their tracks.
Speaker 1: They tried to cover their tracks, but they didn't try
Speaker 1: to cover their tracks in a smart way. Apparently the
Speaker 1: brothers spent a lot of time searching for stuff that
Speaker 1: was a little bit suss, like how to create shell companies,
Speaker 1: how to launder money, and you know who's a good
Speaker 1: crypto lawyer, which is all, I guess, arguably circumstantial, but
Speaker 1: it's not a good look. As the kids used to say,
Speaker 1: This is just a gentle reminder for all of y'all
Speaker 1: out there. If you're going to commit a crime, and
Speaker 1: I strongly urge you not to do so, maybe don't
Speaker 1: search stuff while you're logged into a browser on a
Speaker 1: personal device you know, or logged in at all to
Speaker 1: a browser. You want as many layers of obfuscation between
Speaker 1: what you're doing and you as you can manage, and
Speaker 1: your browser history shouldn't be a treasure map that leads
Speaker 1: authorities to your criminal behavior, because you just brought them there. Man. Now,
Speaker 1: I just did some episodes about live service games this week,
Speaker 1: and I mentioned the company rock Star in those shows.
Speaker 1: Rockstar is the video game company behind the Grand Theft
Speaker 1: Auto series. Jennifer Mos of Variety says that that Rockstar
Speaker 1: had a two point nine billion dollar loss last quarter.
Speaker 1: That is a heck of a princely sum to have
Speaker 1: as a loss, and it's a here bit more money
Speaker 1: than what was previously estimated because the original estimate shortfall
Speaker 1: was going to be one hundred and seventy million dollars, So,
Speaker 1: you know, just two point eight billion dollars off. Anyway,
Speaker 1: about two billion of that was a quote unquote goodwill chart.
Speaker 1: That seems like an oxymoron. It's kind of like the
Speaker 1: convenience fees you see on services like Ticketmaster, and you're like,
Speaker 1: who is this convenient for? But no goodwill charge just
Speaker 1: refers to cases in which a company spends more money
Speaker 1: acquiring some other entity than the value of that entity's
Speaker 1: assets and whatnot. So it's like saying, this money represents
Speaker 1: us paying more than what stuff was worth. But in
Speaker 1: good news, gamers now know they can expect the long
Speaker 1: awaited next game in the GTA franchise in the fall
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty five. Okay, I got a couple of
Speaker 1: recommended articles for y'all before I sign off. First up
Speaker 1: is Jacob Stern's piece in The Atlantic. It's titled The
Speaker 1: Dream of Streaming is Dead, and it goes into the
Speaker 1: recent trend of bundling various streaming services together and how
Speaker 1: this is essentially reverting to the older model of cable
Speaker 1: television packages rather than the dream of freeing people from
Speaker 1: that experience with the prospect of streaming. Next up is
Speaker 1: Alex Heath's article in The Verge titled Goo and Open
Speaker 1: AI are racing to rewire the Internet. It goes into
Speaker 1: more detail about how the implementation of AI into search
Speaker 1: can and will have a huge impact on the Web.
Speaker 1: In particular, a lot of content sites out there are
Speaker 1: wondering what the heck is going to happen because of
Speaker 1: all that, So check those out. I hope you are
Speaker 1: all well, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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