Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. He there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech news for May
Speaker 1: second two, thy twenty three and first up. You may
Speaker 1: have seen some headlines like Godfather of AI quits Google
Speaker 1: to warn us about artificial intelligence, or something along those lines.
Speaker 1: The godfather in question is not Don Corleone. It is
Speaker 1: doctor Jeffrey Hinton. He's been a researcher in AI in
Speaker 1: general and deep learning in particular for decades, and he
Speaker 1: says that he quit his job at Google so that
Speaker 1: he could speak out about his concerns centering around artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence without having those concerns impact Google directly. He says
Speaker 1: that generally speaking, Google has behaved in a responsible way
Speaker 1: with regard to AI research. Now, I'm going to do
Speaker 1: a full episode about doctor Hinton and his concerns next week,
Speaker 1: so be on the lookout for that episode. Rather than
Speaker 1: dive into all those details here, I'll say that when
Speaker 1: someone who is deeply entrenched in AI research comes forward
Speaker 1: to talk about the potential dangers of the technology, it's
Speaker 1: probably a good idea for the rest of us to listen. Personally,
Speaker 1: I've been concerned, but not quite at the point of
Speaker 1: being worried about AI for a while now. But I'm
Speaker 1: also worried about the fact that people tend to overgeneralize
Speaker 1: when they talk about AI, or they use one aspect
Speaker 1: of AI to represent the entire field. Maybe, however, it's
Speaker 1: time for me to crank the threat level up a
Speaker 1: notch or two in my own brain. We'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that next week, but we do have a few
Speaker 1: other AI stories today. We're going to get to those
Speaker 1: in a second, but spoiler alert, several of them fall
Speaker 1: into the bad news category. Before we jump into all that, however,
Speaker 1: I wanted to give an update on the legal crusade
Speaker 1: some film studios are on in order to defeat evil
Speaker 1: content pirates, who clearly are the most substantial threat to
Speaker 1: the entertainment industry's quest to make all the money in
Speaker 1: the world. Little editorial note, I might be a little
Speaker 1: bit facetious here. The film studios have sued an Internet
Speaker 1: service provider formerly called RCN, now known as Astound Broadband,
Speaker 1: saying that this ISP did nothing to stop its customers
Speaker 1: from downloading more than thirty different films illegally. As part
Speaker 1: of the studio's quest for justice, they have applied for
Speaker 1: subpoena against Reddit. Why well, because the studios had identified
Speaker 1: a few user handles that had posted in various piracy
Speaker 1: and intellectual property and ISP related subreddit and the studios
Speaker 1: wanted names. Gush darn it, They wanted to know who
Speaker 1: those users were, and they were ready to force Reddit
Speaker 1: to hand over any data it had about those users.
Speaker 1: Reddit told the studios to pound sand saying, these people
Speaker 1: you've identified, most of them aren't even talking about the
Speaker 1: topic that's relevant to your case, and by any standard,
Speaker 1: we will not hand over that information. And now a
Speaker 1: US District court judge has cited with Reddit, saying that
Speaker 1: the studios cannot force Reddit to violate the First Amendment
Speaker 1: rights of those users, that the barrier to doing that
Speaker 1: has not been met. And again the judge said, the
Speaker 1: identity of those folks really has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the studio's actual legal case. As for the case against
Speaker 1: the former RCN, well that's probably going to be a
Speaker 1: bit of a tricky path as well. As a platform
Speaker 1: RCN isn't actually responsible for what its users do, though
Speaker 1: those protections only extend so far. If a platform is
Speaker 1: told about illegal activity, then it's supposed to take reasonable
Speaker 1: action to stop that activity or else potentially lose legal
Speaker 1: protection in the process. But it's a tricky thing to
Speaker 1: argue in court, so there's no guarantee that the studios
Speaker 1: will get the justice they so want. Now, I decide
Speaker 1: to include the story to illustrate how these protections can
Speaker 1: be important. That they can shield platforms and users platforms
Speaker 1: like Reddit or internet service providers from becoming a big
Speaker 1: old target from a heavy hitting industry like the film industry.
Speaker 1: And while I love film and I think film commerce
Speaker 1: is a valid business that has real challenges facing it,
Speaker 1: I also recognize that media companies in general historically have
Speaker 1: used disproportionate response to perceive threats to their bottom line,
Speaker 1: even when the threat ends up being unquantifiable. Next up,
Speaker 1: the Writer's Guild of America or WGA, is now on strike.
Speaker 1: The WGA represents writers who work for film and television
Speaker 1: here in the US, and the strike means that members
Speaker 1: of the union cannot do any work relating to that.
Speaker 1: They can take no meetings, they can't pitch story ideas,
Speaker 1: they aren't allowed to communicate with collaborators about a project
Speaker 1: as long as the strike is going, all work relating
Speaker 1: to producing, writing for TV and the films in the US,
Speaker 1: they it has to stop. The WGA is in negotiations
Speaker 1: with Hey, those film studios that we were talking about
Speaker 1: a second ago, and at stake are several elements that
Speaker 1: relate to tech, which is why I'm covering this story
Speaker 1: in tech stuff. For one thing, streaming has really changed
Speaker 1: the economics of media. In the old days, before streaming
Speaker 1: platforms are really a thing, writers would receive compensation not
Speaker 1: only in the form of a fee for their work,
Speaker 1: but they would also receive something called residuals, which are
Speaker 1: kind of like royalties. So let's say you write an
Speaker 1: episode of a television show We're just going to make
Speaker 1: one up. We'll call it Cyborg John and his Amazing
Speaker 1: Tech stuff, and you get paid for your work. You
Speaker 1: write a teleplay, it's used, you're paid. Then about a
Speaker 1: year later, a television channel airs the episode a second time. Well,
Speaker 1: the station is making money by selling advertising against an
Speaker 1: episode you wrote, so the channel is profiting off of
Speaker 1: your work. Thus it stands to reason that you should
Speaker 1: get a share of that money, so you get some
Speaker 1: in the form of residuals. If Cyborg John the TV
Speaker 1: series hits that magic number of episodes that are needed
Speaker 1: to go into syndication and that number varies depending upon
Speaker 1: the nature of the show, well that's even better news
Speaker 1: because it means your episode could be showed again and again,
Speaker 1: and every time it is you get a little payout.
Speaker 1: This becomes part of your long term income. It kind
Speaker 1: of becomes passive income at that point. But streaming really
Speaker 1: changed things. Streaming doesn't always depend upon advertising for one thing,
Speaker 1: so residuals become a lot trickier to figure out. How
Speaker 1: do you determine the value of a view if there's
Speaker 1: not directly advertising served against that view. It really does
Speaker 1: become tricky. This means that writers are seeing a hit
Speaker 1: to their long term compensation as people turn more and
Speaker 1: more to streaming. Plus, a lot of shows have really
Speaker 1: slimmed down their pool of writers. They used to have writers'
Speaker 1: rooms filled with lots of writers, and now you have
Speaker 1: these sort of micro writer rooms where a couple of
Speaker 1: writers have to share the whole workload for a full
Speaker 1: season of shows. So workload is going up and compensation
Speaker 1: is not. On top of that, there's a fear that
Speaker 1: shows will start to lean on AI tools to take
Speaker 1: over part of the writing process, which will push more
Speaker 1: creatives out of the industry. So the strike is really
Speaker 1: about the WGA trying to force Hollywood to adjust to
Speaker 1: the current environment because the old economic model just doesn't
Speaker 1: work due to the changes in how the business itself works.
Speaker 1: How long this strike will go on will remain to
Speaker 1: be seen. Already, it's affecting stuff like late night talk shows,
Speaker 1: which can't go on without writers, and we're likely to
Speaker 1: see more effects the longer the strike goes, like possibly
Speaker 1: next year, some shows will have truncated seasons, they won't
Speaker 1: have as many episodes because the writers went on strike. Also,
Speaker 1: there are two other major unions in Hollywood, the Screen
Speaker 1: Actors Guild American Federation of Television and Radio Artists aka
Speaker 1: sag AFTRA, and then there's also the Director's Guild of
Speaker 1: America or DGA. Both of those unions have their own
Speaker 1: contracts with film studios expiring on June thirtieth. Probably also
Speaker 1: want to renegotiate, especially with things like streaming being part
Speaker 1: of the mix, and for Screen Actors Guild AI and
Speaker 1: Deep fakes are definitely something that I'm sure a lot
Speaker 1: of people are concerned about. So I feel like the
Speaker 1: Writer's Guild of America is kind of forging a path
Speaker 1: that these other two unions are likely to follow, at
Speaker 1: least in large part. And potentially this could mean we
Speaker 1: could see all three unions, you know, strike that's like
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario for consumers, because that would mean
Speaker 1: that pretty much all activity in Hollywood shuts down period
Speaker 1: TVs and movies, so it can be a real dry
Speaker 1: spell until things get hashed out. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: maybe the writers end up making some progress with the
Speaker 1: Hollywood studios that then the DGA and SAGAFTRA can build on.
Speaker 1: We'll just have to wait and see. Now, that bit
Speaker 1: about AI taking an important part in the creative industry
Speaker 1: might seem a little premature, but then you just need
Speaker 1: to look at Bloomberg News and it's interview with IBM's
Speaker 1: CEO r Vind Krishna, and that will change your mind.
Speaker 1: Toot sweet. So in that interview, Krishna revealed that IBM
Speaker 1: plans to put its hiring plan for nearly eight thousand
Speaker 1: jobs on hold to see if maybe possibly AI could
Speaker 1: do those jobs instead. I mean, why hire real human
Speaker 1: beings if the robots can do all the work. I mean,
Speaker 1: robots don't get sick, they don't go on maternity leave,
Speaker 1: they don't ask for a raise, robots don't organize into
Speaker 1: a union and threaten to stop working if their demands
Speaker 1: for stuff like health care and benefits aren't met. Krishna
Speaker 1: was talking about jobs that do not face customers, so
Speaker 1: these would be behind the scenes, in house roles, stuff
Speaker 1: like HR jobs. So maybe that HR robot will actually
Speaker 1: listen when someone brings up a concern, or maybe that
Speaker 1: robot will just be really really efficient at minimizing the
Speaker 1: potential impact to the business while trying to make the
Speaker 1: problem go away, not resolve, go away. I am salty
Speaker 1: today must be because yesterday was May Day. Anyway, Krishna's
Speaker 1: comments are not likely to make anyone feel better about
Speaker 1: the fear of AI replacing them, of taking our jobs,
Speaker 1: because that's exactly what IBM appears to be exploring. And y'all,
Speaker 1: I am not a doom sayer. I don't believe AI
Speaker 1: is going to replace us all. For one thing, it's
Speaker 1: just not practical. If AI did replace us, if AI
Speaker 1: got all the jobs, well, no one would be able
Speaker 1: to make a living. And if no one's making a living,
Speaker 1: then they can't afford to buy stuff. And if you
Speaker 1: can't afford to buy stuff, these companies can't make any money.
Speaker 1: They just go out of business because who are their customers.
Speaker 1: Even businesses that have other businesses as customers, those secondary businesses,
Speaker 1: they're going to go out of money right because there's
Speaker 1: no one buying anything. It literally becomes a self defeating
Speaker 1: strategy in the long run. So it ultimately does matter
Speaker 1: how much cost you eliminate from your operations if you're
Speaker 1: also eliminating the ability for people to buy your product
Speaker 1: or service. Hey, maybe I'm giving companies like IBM too
Speaker 1: much credit for thinking ahead and considering consequences. Okay, we
Speaker 1: got a lot more news stories to go today. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break. Okay, we're back, and we've
Speaker 1: got more AI stories. So Samsung is now telling employees
Speaker 1: to avoid using AI. Specifically, Samsung wants its employees to
Speaker 1: avoid generative AI tools stuff like chat GPT, which employees
Speaker 1: had been using to do stuff like you know, alter code,
Speaker 1: create new code, that kind of thing to help with
Speaker 1: basic steps along those lines. So why is Samsung saying, hey,
Speaker 1: don't do that. Well. Last month, Samsung had a couple
Speaker 1: of embarrassing incidents in which employees had shared company IP
Speaker 1: on chat GPT and that information subsequently leaked to the
Speaker 1: general public. So folks were working on stuff like Samsung's
Speaker 1: own proprietary code and also sharing stuff like meeting notes
Speaker 1: in an effort to use generative AI to create stuff
Speaker 1: like reports and presentations, but then that sensitive information got out,
Speaker 1: and that's not great for Samsung. If I were to
Speaker 1: create an analogy, I would say, as a Southern fella
Speaker 1: brought up in the state of Georgia, this would be
Speaker 1: like if someone from Coca Cola had shared Coke's formula
Speaker 1: with chat GPT in an effort to brainstorm new co
Speaker 1: Cola ideas, and then the formula would then leak to
Speaker 1: the public. That would be disaster. That's kind of what
Speaker 1: happened to Samsung. So now Samsung is saying that these
Speaker 1: AI tools aren't secure, and to be fair, they are not,
Speaker 1: and that employees shouldn't be using them to do work. Now,
Speaker 1: I think this makes a lot of sense because until
Speaker 1: companies have their own sequestered generative AI tools, not necessarily
Speaker 1: created by the company itself, but one that is is
Speaker 1: only being used by that company. It doesn't have connections
Speaker 1: to the outside world. It can't send information outside of
Speaker 1: the organization. Well until that day happens. You have to
Speaker 1: treat these AI tools as a security flaw. Really, generative
Speaker 1: AI is highlighting a lot of issues in the way
Speaker 1: that companies currently do business. We've seen the cloud computing
Speaker 1: industry grow and evolve and adopt tight security controls in
Speaker 1: the process as a necessity so that they can continue
Speaker 1: to do business. If your cloud computing company can't show
Speaker 1: that your operations are secure on their network, well they're
Speaker 1: not going to have any customers. So generative AI needs
Speaker 1: to follow that same pathway. Moving on to Twitter, because
Speaker 1: Heaven help us if we can get through a news
Speaker 1: episode without having to talk about it. The reports that
Speaker 1: brands are still pretty iffy about posting on Twitter or
Speaker 1: using it as an advertising platform because the transition of
Speaker 1: the blue check mark from being a verification mark into
Speaker 1: becoming a paid subscription feature has led to a rise
Speaker 1: of impostors posing as all sorts of things, including official brands,
Speaker 1: and with Twitter's moderation team absolutely decimated by rounds of layoffs,
Speaker 1: and we'll come back to that in a bit too.
Speaker 1: It is harder and harder for Twitter to respond to
Speaker 1: violations like that in a timely fashion. Plus, as a
Speaker 1: fun little bonus news item regarding Twitter blue check marks,
Speaker 1: some formerly verified Twitter users found out that by changing
Speaker 1: their bios they could get their check mark back, at
Speaker 1: least temporarily now. Originally the word was that if you
Speaker 1: put former blue check in your bio, you put the
Speaker 1: actual words former blue check part of your bio, your
Speaker 1: little check mark would return. And sure enough a lot
Speaker 1: of formally verified users tried this out and it seemed
Speaker 1: to work. But then later on some folks said this
Speaker 1: would happen if you just updated your bio in any way,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have to put those specific words in
Speaker 1: for it to happen. It would just happen if you
Speaker 1: made an edit to your bio, and also that this
Speaker 1: change was temporary. I did not try it out myself,
Speaker 1: but my buddy Tom Merritt tested the former blue check method,
Speaker 1: and sure enough he got his check mark back before
Speaker 1: he deleted the phrase from his bio and went back
Speaker 1: to being an unchecked shlub like the rest of us.
Speaker 1: It really shows that Twitter's systems are held together tenuously
Speaker 1: at this point, and that again is not a surprise,
Speaker 1: because there's hardly enough folks at the company to keep
Speaker 1: things running, let alone implement new features. Yesterday, Twitter appeared
Speaker 1: to have some technical issues, as many users reported that
Speaker 1: the service had logged them out of the desktop website
Speaker 1: and then wouldn't let them log in again. So. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of folks these days access everything via apps,
Speaker 1: but I'm an old person, so I still go to
Speaker 1: websites and stuff, including for the rare times when I
Speaker 1: pop on Twitter. I typically use the desktop Twitter website.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I use tweet Deck, but either way, I'm using
Speaker 1: a desktop version. I almost never am on my phone
Speaker 1: looking at this, but I am on I'm typically looking
Speaker 1: for the tech stuff feed. So for folks like me,
Speaker 1: getting logged out and then being prevented from logging back
Speaker 1: in is kind of akin to being exiled from Twitter, which,
Speaker 1: come to think of it, doesn't sound like that bad
Speaker 1: of a fate these days. The Verge reported on this
Speaker 1: issue and pointed out somewhat snarkily that there was no
Speaker 1: telling how long it would take for the problem to
Speaker 1: get fixed, because we really don't know how many folks
Speaker 1: are even working on those kinds of things at Twitter
Speaker 1: these days? And any inquiry to Twitter's defunct PR department
Speaker 1: comes back with the infamous oop emoji. The Verge did
Speaker 1: hypothesize that maybe this had something to do with Twitter
Speaker 1: trying to fix that problem of formerly verified people getting
Speaker 1: their check marks back, but who knows. I will say
Speaker 1: that today, when I was checking on Twitter, I had
Speaker 1: no issues, I was not logged out, I was fine.
Speaker 1: So whatever it was, I assume has been fixed, or
Speaker 1: at the very least hasn't affected me. Now. I mentioned
Speaker 1: that Twitter's moderation team has been nearly eliminated as part
Speaker 1: of the massive cuts Musk has made to the company's staff.
Speaker 1: That led to a real doozy of a problem. Over
Speaker 1: the weekend, some Twitter users were posting the Super Mario
Speaker 1: Brothers movie to Twitter, the new one, the animated film,
Speaker 1: not the Bob Hoskins film, although someone might have done
Speaker 1: that too, I don't know, but I'm specifically talking about
Speaker 1: the movie that's out in theaters. They posted the whole
Speaker 1: darn movie start to finish, and these tweets stayed up
Speaker 1: for hours. They gained millions of views. I think the
Speaker 1: primary one got more than nine million views before it
Speaker 1: got taken down, and then Twitter finally clamped down on
Speaker 1: them and even started to suspend accounts as a result
Speaker 1: of this. Of course, once it goes up somewhere, it
Speaker 1: can pop up somewhere else. Someone else can do the
Speaker 1: exact same thing. And I mean, it is understandable that
Speaker 1: Twitter has now suspended accounts that have been found to
Speaker 1: do this. But if Twitter failed to act, then those
Speaker 1: movie studios we've been talking about, they sure would not
Speaker 1: go easy on Twitter. If Twitter is shown to not
Speaker 1: respond to stuff like DMCA violations, it can be held
Speaker 1: responsible for hosting illegal material. Again, platforms enjoy a lot
Speaker 1: of legal protection, but only if they can show that
Speaker 1: they're making their own steps to curtail illegal activity. If
Speaker 1: they are aware of illegal activity and they're not doing
Speaker 1: anything to stop it, then sometimes those protections can go away.
Speaker 1: Us for how this happened in the first place, well,
Speaker 1: part of it is because Musk loosened the restrictions on
Speaker 1: how long a video that's posted to Twitter is allowed
Speaker 1: to be so a lot of it also has to
Speaker 1: do with the fact that the company has virtually no
Speaker 1: one to watch out for stuff like this. Anymore. So, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Twitter's idiosyncratic woes continue. Some environmental activist groups have filed
Speaker 1: lawsuits against the US Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA. This
Speaker 1: is with regards to SpaceX's test flight of its Starship vehicle.
Speaker 1: You might remember that Starship launched off the ground successfully
Speaker 1: last month, but subsequently malfunctioned when the first and second
Speaker 1: stages failed to separate. This prompted SpaceX to hit the
Speaker 1: self destruct button. But during the launch, the force from
Speaker 1: those massive engines, the thirty three engines of the first
Speaker 1: stage of the Starship that caused a lot of damage.
Speaker 1: It created craters in the launch pad, It hurled debris,
Speaker 1: including large heavy debris, all around the area, and that
Speaker 1: area happens to include some really sensitive wildlife habitats, something
Speaker 1: that SpaceX has had to contend with since setting up
Speaker 1: operations in Texas, and the environmental groups are accusing the
Speaker 1: FAA of failing to put SpaceX through proper environmental reviews
Speaker 1: before signing off on the test flights of the Starship.
Speaker 1: As part of this lawsuit, these environmental groups are seeking
Speaker 1: to force the FAA to revoke its license to SpaceX
Speaker 1: until a more thorough environmental review can happen in order
Speaker 1: to prevent further destruction to these habitats. That area is
Speaker 1: home to several endangered species, some of them critically endangered,
Speaker 1: and I do think a thorough review is a reasonable request,
Speaker 1: particularly in the wake of the damage the starship's engines
Speaker 1: did to the launch area. No one really anticipated it
Speaker 1: being that bad, not that it was, you know, widespread destruction,
Speaker 1: but it was enough to cause some concern, and I
Speaker 1: think a review is probably warranted. It may turn out
Speaker 1: that everything's fine and still within the parameters of the agreement,
Speaker 1: which is that's fine too. SpaceX should be able to
Speaker 1: continue then, but without a review, we just don't really know. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got a few more stories to cover before we
Speaker 1: get into any of that. Let's take one more quick break.
Speaker 1: We're back. An inquisitive bitcoin enthusiast has used their knowledge
Speaker 1: of blockchain to identify nearly one thousand digital wallets held
Speaker 1: by various Russian governmental agencies, including ones like the Foreign
Speaker 1: Military Intelligence Agency and the Foreign Intelligence Service. The anonymous
Speaker 1: detective accuses the owners of these digital wallets of using
Speaker 1: the accounts to finance stuff like hacker groups. So it's
Speaker 1: an open secret the worst kept secret in tech really
Speaker 1: that Russia relies on hackers to conduct espionage, sabotage, and
Speaker 1: infiltration campaigns on various targets. It's entirely possible that official
Speaker 1: government agencies are using these digital wallets to fund those efforts.
Speaker 1: A lot of hacker groups lean heavily on digital currency
Speaker 1: because there's less government regulation and oversight. It's easier to
Speaker 1: avoid imperial entanglements, as obi Wan would say. Further, this
Speaker 1: secret sleuth claims to have seized control of at least
Speaker 1: some of these wallets, which they have backed up by
Speaker 1: then burning through money like literally destroying digital currency. So
Speaker 1: that suggests this is not an empty boast because according
Speaker 1: to Reuters, they destroyed around three hundred thousand dollars worth
Speaker 1: of bitcoin while making their claims. And that's putting someone
Speaker 1: else's money where your mouth is, all right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like you mean business if you're just burning three
Speaker 1: hundred grand in order to get attention. According to Yahoo
Speaker 1: Finance and the firm ch Analysis, the vigilante has even
Speaker 1: taken Russian money held in these digital wallets and then
Speaker 1: funneled that money to Ukrainian aid groups. Ultimately, this does
Speaker 1: not speak well of Russia's security practices. If they've managed
Speaker 1: to lose control of all these digital assets. Speaking of Russia,
Speaker 1: by the end of June, it's going to be just
Speaker 1: a bit harder to find love in that country, or
Speaker 1: maybe not love, maybe you know, casual flings. You see,
Speaker 1: the Match Group has announced that it's going to be
Speaker 1: shutting down operations in Russia on June thirtieth. The Match
Speaker 1: Group owns, among other things, Tender, so Russians will soon
Speaker 1: find themselves unswipeable at least on Tender, and at least
Speaker 1: while they're in Russia. Why is the Match Group pulling
Speaker 1: out of Russia, Well, basically, it's because Putin's government does
Speaker 1: terrible things. So the Match Group said that the importance
Speaker 1: of human rights was the main reason for closing up
Speaker 1: shop in Russia. That contributing to an economy that supports
Speaker 1: the violation of human rights isn't something the brand really
Speaker 1: wants to be associated with. Bad optics. In other words,
Speaker 1: lots of other companies have similarly shut down in Russia
Speaker 1: and pulled out of operations. The country has actually converted
Speaker 1: at least some of the buildings that were left behind
Speaker 1: into copycat operations. Meant to fill in the void, so
Speaker 1: maybe they'll have their own Russian version of Tender. Gizmodo
Speaker 1: reports that a Microsoft Windows update has created frustrations for
Speaker 1: some users out there. When it comes to setting a
Speaker 1: default browser. It's the ideal. You should be able to
Speaker 1: choose any browser as your default and that's that. But
Speaker 1: after this update, apparently it has become harder to choose
Speaker 1: anything other than Microsoft's own browser Edge as the default,
Speaker 1: and switching to you know, Chrome has presented some users
Speaker 1: with annoying pop ups that essentially asked the same question
Speaker 1: over and over again, like are you sure you want
Speaker 1: this as your default browser? The only way to fix
Speaker 1: this problem was to roll back the system update. Gizmoto
Speaker 1: goes further, though, so Google had incorporated a button within
Speaker 1: the Windows version of Google Chrome. It was in the
Speaker 1: upper left hand corner of the browser window, and if
Speaker 1: you clicked on this button, it would let you automatically
Speaker 1: set Chrome as your default browser. And you wouldn't actually
Speaker 1: have to go into your computer's system settings in order
Speaker 1: to make this change. So they were just making it
Speaker 1: easier for you to select Google Chrome as your default
Speaker 1: if you wanted to. But that Microsoft Windows update broke
Speaker 1: this functionality within the browser. So professional users had one
Speaker 1: huge array of problems. But for your consumers, your average
Speaker 1: people who are using Google Chrome, the button really just
Speaker 1: stopped working because Moto found that by changing the name
Speaker 1: of the Chrome app, the problem went away. So suddenly
Speaker 1: the button worked again just by changing Google Chrome's name,
Speaker 1: and that was it. Like they didn't change the code
Speaker 1: or anything. They just changed the name of the app,
Speaker 1: and once they did, then this barrier went away. That
Speaker 1: suggests that Microsoft was perhaps purposefully targeting Chrome itself, because
Speaker 1: if just a name change fixed that issue, and if
Speaker 1: other browsers weren't having similar problems, it seems like Microsoft
Speaker 1: might have been targeting Google Chrome, the most popular browser
Speaker 1: out there. Google, for its part, ultimately turned off that
Speaker 1: default browser button, which solve these problems, because of course,
Speaker 1: Google was getting lots of complaints from people say, hey,
Speaker 1: I set your browsers my default, but I keep getting
Speaker 1: hassled by these pop ups. What's up? So they turned
Speaker 1: the button off. That ended those endless pop ups that
Speaker 1: were frustrating users. But again it suggests that Microsoft was
Speaker 1: perhaps trying to make it harder for folks to switch
Speaker 1: to some other browser. And y'all who were online in
Speaker 1: the late nineties might think the story sounds really familiar.
Speaker 1: That's because it's not that much different to the accusations
Speaker 1: that Netscape made against Microsoft in the early days of
Speaker 1: the web browser wars. The more things change, the more
Speaker 1: they stay the same. Finally, this past weekend, the World
Speaker 1: Wide Web celebrated its thirtieth anniversary of emerging from CERN's
Speaker 1: ownership to enter the public domain. CERN, which is the
Speaker 1: same organization that's behind the Large Head Collider, was where
Speaker 1: Tim Berner's lead developed the basics of what would become
Speaker 1: the World Wide Web and web browsers using stuff like
Speaker 1: hyperlinks to connect different documents together, even if those documents
Speaker 1: lived on different servers. And it was on April thirtieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three that CERN made this decision to release
Speaker 1: the code into the public domain, and they relinquished all
Speaker 1: intellectual property rights to the code. Now, it still took
Speaker 1: some time for this web idea to catch on. I
Speaker 1: was actually in college when this was happening, and I
Speaker 1: distinctly remember looking at early web browsers in the computer
Speaker 1: lab in my college library, and I was thinking, good grief,
Speaker 1: that's slow. Forget that it takes forever for these web
Speaker 1: pages to load up. I'm just going to stick with
Speaker 1: FTP and tel net. Why would you even use a
Speaker 1: web browser? Now? In my defense, there weren't that many
Speaker 1: web pages out there when I first was exposed to
Speaker 1: the web. They were incredibly primitive web pages and they
Speaker 1: didn't really change much. So you would go to one
Speaker 1: and if you went to the same web page a
Speaker 1: month later, it would be exactly the same. There was
Speaker 1: really little reason to go to the same web page twice,
Speaker 1: in other words, But obviously over time things changed, to
Speaker 1: put it lightly, and now thirty years later, we can't
Speaker 1: talk about things like commerce and communication and professional networking
Speaker 1: and creative efforts. We can't talk about any of that
Speaker 1: without also including the web as part of that conversation.
Speaker 1: So happy belated Emancipation Day, world Wide Web. And that's
Speaker 1: it for this episode, the tech News episode for May
Speaker 1: sewo twenty twenty three. I hope you are all well,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
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Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.