Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the week ending on May tenth, twenty twenty four, and
Speaker 1: first up is a potential retraction. So not long ago,
Speaker 1: I talked about how an Apple analyst named Ming chi
Speaker 1: Quo said that Apple had significantly scaled back its production
Speaker 1: plans for the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset. So
Speaker 1: if you'll recall this, analyst said that Apple initially planned
Speaker 1: to produce seven hundred and fifty thousand to eight hundred
Speaker 1: thousand units, but subsequently cut back to around four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand units in the wake of less demand
Speaker 1: than anticipated. But other analysts have argued that Apple's play
Speaker 1: and from the get go, was to ship around half
Speaker 1: a million units this year, so that four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand number isn't really that far off from that estimate.
Speaker 1: So I guess this is what I get for talking
Speaker 1: about analysts who make their living scrutinizing a company that's
Speaker 1: famously very quiet. It only communicates stuff when it darn
Speaker 1: well feels like it. So either the Vision Pro isn't
Speaker 1: selling as quickly as Apple once or it's on the
Speaker 1: right track. I don't know the right answer. And we
Speaker 1: have a couple of other Apple stories for this week,
Speaker 1: so we might as well stick with Apple. So Apple
Speaker 1: held an event at which it unveiled a new iPad
Speaker 1: pro model this week, which the company says is the
Speaker 1: thinnest one yet also fun side note, Apple also subsequently
Speaker 1: apologized for an ad that talks about it being the
Speaker 1: thinnest iPad pro because the ad showed an enormous hydraulic
Speaker 1: press crushing stuff like musical instruments and stereo equipment and
Speaker 1: paint containers and more, and that really upsets some artists
Speaker 1: who traditionally have been among the most enthusiastic customers of
Speaker 1: the iPad, and so Apple said, whoops, sorry about that. Anyway.
Speaker 1: The iPad pro comes in thirteen and eleven inch sizes.
Speaker 1: It's got an M four processor and an ultra retina
Speaker 1: XDR display. It's supposed to be real pretty. Apple says
Speaker 1: it is quote an outrageously powerful device for artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: end quote. So you know, buzzwords of the day it
Speaker 1: is available starting May fifteenth. You can pre order it now,
Speaker 1: and the base model for the eleven inch version that's
Speaker 1: Wi Fi only starts at nine hundred and ninety nine dollars,
Speaker 1: and obviously the price goes up from there depending upon
Speaker 1: the size and the features you want, how how much
Speaker 1: storage you want in it, et cetera. Also, if you
Speaker 1: want the new Apple Pencil Pro to go with it,
Speaker 1: that'll set you back an extra one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: nine bucks, So yay. Speaking of Apple and AI, the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has a new project
Speaker 1: code named ACDC, which is not a reference to the
Speaker 1: Australian rock band. Instead, ACDC stands for Apple Chips in
Speaker 1: Data Center and that part of this project involves Apple
Speaker 1: developing its own chips for data centers that are running
Speaker 1: AI applications. So, according to The Wall Street Journal, Apple's
Speaker 1: plan is to hone in on data centers that run
Speaker 1: actual AI implementations as opposed to data centers that are
Speaker 1: used to train AI models. So why is Apple not
Speaker 1: getting into the training area. That's largely because Nvidia has
Speaker 1: a huge head start as far as developing chips for
Speaker 1: AI training purposes, and Apple would rather aim for a
Speaker 1: different spot on the AI food chain. Whether Apple's ACDC
Speaker 1: plan will shake me all night long remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: Microsoft's top brass made some big and somewhat controversial decisions
Speaker 1: this week. One of those decisions affects executive compensation and
Speaker 1: it links it to cybersecurity. So essentially the new Secure
Speaker 1: Future Initiative or SFI, which is a kind of an
Speaker 1: umbrella plan at Microsoft, the new version is tying security
Speaker 1: milestones to part of executives pay. Now which part of
Speaker 1: executives pay, I don't know how much of executives pay
Speaker 1: will be tied to this, I don't know, but the
Speaker 1: message is pretty clear. Microsoft wants to reverse the trend
Speaker 1: of recent security intrusions, which is not a surprise for
Speaker 1: multiple reasons. I mean, among the things that Microsoft does
Speaker 1: is it hosts services that are used by other companies,
Speaker 1: and if Microsoft can't demonstrate that it is secure, then
Speaker 1: it loses all that business. You know, having bad security
Speaker 1: is a bad business plan. Plus, the US government, in
Speaker 1: the form of Homeland Security, has been very very much
Speaker 1: concerned about Microsoft's failure to detect and stop some high
Speaker 1: profile hacker attacks. So not a big surprise that Microsoft
Speaker 1: is telling executives, hey, we need to get on this
Speaker 1: or else you're not gonna get all your bonuses. But
Speaker 1: I said, Todd Brass made some big decisions, which is plural, right,
Speaker 1: not just tying executive pay to security. So among those
Speaker 1: big decisions were some pretty sad ones, like closing multiple
Speaker 1: video game developer studios. Microsoft is one of the few
Speaker 1: really big companies that have scooped up a bunch of
Speaker 1: smaller companies in the video game space in recent years,
Speaker 1: and now some notable studios are getting shut down. Among
Speaker 1: those are Austin Arcane, which recently produced the vampire shooter
Speaker 1: game Redfall. Notably, Redfall got a very lukewarm reception, but
Speaker 1: from one I understand, the team behind Redfall was put
Speaker 1: in a pretty impossible situation. It's sounded to me like
Speaker 1: there were a lot of shifting priorities during development that
Speaker 1: we're coming from leadership, and when that happens, it's pretty
Speaker 1: much impossible to deliver upon expectations because the expectations themselves
Speaker 1: keep changing. But in addition to Austin Arcane, Microsoft is
Speaker 1: also shutting down Tango Game Works, which recently produced the
Speaker 1: acclaimed game Hi Fi Rush Alpha Dog Games is also
Speaker 1: on the chopping block. That company makes mobile games, and
Speaker 1: Zenemax Online Studios is to absorb another company called Roundhouse Studios,
Speaker 1: which will be no more. The closures are going to
Speaker 1: affect previous promises that were you know about unreleased content
Speaker 1: for titles like Redfall. So if gamers actually shelled out
Speaker 1: money for stuff that was supposed to include DLC, that's
Speaker 1: you know, supposed to be coming down the pipeline. Well,
Speaker 1: now that DLC is gone, it's been scrapped. But Microsoft
Speaker 1: says it will make good on those various deals. No
Speaker 1: word yet on how many staff are going to be
Speaker 1: laid off. Some people are going to be show to
Speaker 1: new teams, but other people will be let go. And
Speaker 1: it's a really tough time in the video game industry
Speaker 1: in particular, but tech in general right now. And just
Speaker 1: as a matter of contrast, I feel I should also
Speaker 1: point out Microsoft currently has a market capitalization of more
Speaker 1: than three trillion dollars. It is a three trillion dollar company,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that's something that should be kept
Speaker 1: in mind as we hear about how many people are
Speaker 1: getting laid off from this three trillion dollar company. Also,
Speaker 1: the day after the announcement talk about tone death. The
Speaker 1: head of Xbox Game Studio said in a town hall
Speaker 1: call that quote, we need smaller games that give us
Speaker 1: prestige and awards end quote. But literally that was Hi
Speaker 1: Fi Rush. High Fi Rush was a smaller game. It
Speaker 1: was released in a surprise release. No one had even
Speaker 1: heard about the darn thing when it came out, and
Speaker 1: it actually won some awards, so it meets those criteria.
Speaker 1: And the day when this guy says we need games
Speaker 1: that are going to be small and prestigious was the
Speaker 1: day after they had shut down a studio that had
Speaker 1: made a game like that. So yeah, very much mixed
Speaker 1: messages and very upsetting. All right, up next, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about some more trouble in big tech. Google reportedly had
Speaker 1: a bit of a tense all hands meeting this week.
Speaker 1: The company recently posted an extremely positive earnings report for
Speaker 1: the company, like they did gangbusters business this past quarter.
Speaker 1: But this comes at a time when Google's also been
Speaker 1: making some pretty drastic cuts across its businesses, including significant layoffs.
Speaker 1: So employees had left comments wanting to know what the
Speaker 1: company was going to do to address issues with morale,
Speaker 1: which is a good question because it sucks to work
Speaker 1: for a company where you or your coworkers are worried
Speaker 1: about getting laid off every day while the company itself
Speaker 1: seems to be flourishing. That kind of disconnect is really upsetting.
Speaker 1: Staffers argued that Google has done very well, but in
Speaker 1: the meantime quote many Googlers have not received meaningful compensation
Speaker 1: increases into quote. That's according to one staff member who
Speaker 1: left a comment on this town hall Zoom meeting or
Speaker 1: call meeting. I guess I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: over Zoom probably wasn't with it being Google anyway. Others
Speaker 1: pointed out that Google was investing billions of dollars in
Speaker 1: AI and spent like tens of billions of dollars in
Speaker 1: stock buybacks, and instead maybe Google should have been spending
Speaker 1: that money on the people who work at the company.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it was a really uncomfortable meeting, and
Speaker 1: you know, to their credit, the executives actually had responses
Speaker 1: to these. They didn't just sit there silently waiting for
Speaker 1: the clock to run out so that they could leave
Speaker 1: the meeting. They actually did say, you know, and tried
Speaker 1: to express what the strategy was. But I think it
Speaker 1: was such a hard time at Google that those answers
Speaker 1: probably weren't met with a lot of satisfaction. But here's
Speaker 1: hoping that everything gets sorted out fairly. Okay, we've got
Speaker 1: a lot more news to talk about, but before we
Speaker 1: get to that, let's take a quick break. So we're back.
Speaker 1: So over at Tesla, we saw even more job cuts
Speaker 1: this week. That's been going on for a while now.
Speaker 1: According to the Register, this latest round of cutbacks impacted
Speaker 1: engineers and developers. This appears to be part of the
Speaker 1: larger move for Tesla to downsize by around fourteen thousand
Speaker 1: jobs total compared to where it started out the year.
Speaker 1: The company also appears to have put a hiring freeze
Speaker 1: in place, at least in North America. So according to Gizmoto,
Speaker 1: Tesla went from having three four hundred job listings across
Speaker 1: North America down to just three job postings across the
Speaker 1: entire continent, which is a big old wolf. And then
Speaker 1: Tesla's head of product a guy named rich Otto, which
Speaker 1: to me is hilarious. His name is rich Auto and
Speaker 1: he worked for Tesla anyway, He's left. He has resigned
Speaker 1: and said he is donezo with Tesla. He had worked
Speaker 1: there for nearly seven years. Actually came from Faraday Future,
Speaker 1: another electric vehicle startup. That one went belly up, but
Speaker 1: Auto did not mince words about his decision for leaving.
Speaker 1: He posted on LinkedIn that the moves that Tesla had
Speaker 1: absolutely disrupted employee morale and made it hard to create
Speaker 1: a long term vision for the company, and he couldn't
Speaker 1: really work there anymore, so said it was time for
Speaker 1: a change and he resigned. Video games are going to
Speaker 1: be popping up throughout this episode. We're back to it
Speaker 1: right now. We had talked previously about Microsoft shutting down
Speaker 1: some studios. This one's going to be a quick one.
Speaker 1: Nintendo has announced that it is pulling x slash Twitter
Speaker 1: integration from Switch platforms. So previously Switch owners could post
Speaker 1: images from gaming sessions to their connected x formerly known
Speaker 1: as Twitter accounts, but Nintendo is following the lead of
Speaker 1: Sony and Microsoft, which have already ended similar support for
Speaker 1: such integrations. Nintendo did not explain why it made this decision,
Speaker 1: but the educated guess is that it's tied to x
Speaker 1: slash Twitter hiking up the price of its API policies,
Speaker 1: which means that if you build an app that taps
Speaker 1: into x now you have to pay a pretty substantial
Speaker 1: amount of money depending on how frequently your app does that.
Speaker 1: So my guess is Nintendo said, we're not seeing benefit
Speaker 1: from this particular feature, let's just cut it because it's
Speaker 1: costing us money. Rumor has it that open ai will
Speaker 1: announce an AI powered search product next week. Reuter's reports
Speaker 1: that the plan is to unveil the search offering on Monday,
Speaker 1: although this is not set in stone. We've been hearing
Speaker 1: some scuttle butt that open ai has an AI backed
Speaker 1: search engine in the works for a while now, and
Speaker 1: it seems like this is pretty much a direct shot
Speaker 1: at Google's dominance in the space. This also explains why
Speaker 1: Google has invested billions in AI research and development, because
Speaker 1: the company is terrified that AI is going to drink
Speaker 1: its milkshake. If open ai does announce something on Monday,
Speaker 1: then really it is a big slap in the face
Speaker 1: of Google because Google is launching its annual Io Developer
Speaker 1: conference on Tuesday, and undoubtedly that conference is going to
Speaker 1: include a lot of talk about AI. So yeah, shots fired.
Speaker 1: Some users over at stack overflow, which serves as a
Speaker 1: question and answer site for software developers, are really getting
Speaker 1: ready to do some digital vandalism. In fact, some folks
Speaker 1: have been doing it already. Now the reason they're unhappy
Speaker 1: has to do with open Ai. Stack Overflow recently announced
Speaker 1: a partnership with open ai, and some users are really
Speaker 1: steamed about this. So, to begin with, stack overflow was
Speaker 1: upset at open ai because of the assumption that open
Speaker 1: ai was scraping stack overflow for information to train up
Speaker 1: AI models. But then this actual official partnership forms, and
Speaker 1: now some of the folks who have been providing answers
Speaker 1: in stack overflow are really upset because they don't want
Speaker 1: their knowledge to be used as training data for AI.
Speaker 1: And they were never consulted or asked about this, you know,
Speaker 1: in advance. It just happened. Now some of them have
Speaker 1: already started to go into their old answers and attempt
Speaker 1: to delete or deface them to foil AI training. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't really seem to have helped much because according
Speaker 1: to Ours Technica, stack overflow employees have been suspending users
Speaker 1: who are doing this. So if you have provided an
Speaker 1: answer and you've gone in and changed it, you could
Speaker 1: get suspended for a given amount of time, like a week,
Speaker 1: and they also revert your changes back to what they
Speaker 1: were before, so all that effort goes to nothing anyway.
Speaker 1: But it does sound like users are expressing themselves and
Speaker 1: making it known to stack overflow that they are not
Speaker 1: happy with this particular arrangement, and I'll be curious to
Speaker 1: see if stack overflow does anything to try and smooth
Speaker 1: this all out, or if they just try and take
Speaker 1: a weight and hope that it goes away approach. TikTok
Speaker 1: announced this week that it will be including a digital
Speaker 1: watermark on content posted to the platform that was generated
Speaker 1: by AI. The company also said it would remove realistic
Speaker 1: AI content that is not labeled as AI, and this
Speaker 1: is all in an effort to curtail attempts to use
Speaker 1: AI to spread misinformation. The digital watermark doesn't just magically
Speaker 1: detect AI though, It's not like it has some killer
Speaker 1: ability to know when something was AI generated. This is
Speaker 1: actually an industry standard that some but not all, generative
Speaker 1: AI tool makers will incorporate in their tools. So if
Speaker 1: you were to use their tool to create something, there'd
Speaker 1: be this digital watermark there, and that would be what
Speaker 1: TikTok would detect and then apply its AI generated watermark
Speaker 1: on top of whatever was being posted to TikTok. But
Speaker 1: if the tool may doesn't incorporate the standard, well then
Speaker 1: TikTok doesn't know magically that it was AI generated. So
Speaker 1: it's not a perfect cure. It just works with the
Speaker 1: companies that are all agreeing to play by this set
Speaker 1: of rules. Streaming services continue to try and reinvent cable TV.
Speaker 1: This week, Disney and Warner Brothers Discovery revealed that US
Speaker 1: customers will be able to purchase bundled services this summer
Speaker 1: that include Hulu, Disney Plus, and Max for an unannounced
Speaker 1: amount of money. Like they don't say how much the
Speaker 1: subscription is. Users will have a choice between ads supported
Speaker 1: and ad free tiers of service. Hulu already has options
Speaker 1: to add on access to Max as well as to
Speaker 1: Paramount Plus. So yeah, we're edging closer to having bundles
Speaker 1: of streaming services resemble what used to be cable television offerings,
Speaker 1: or actually what still is cable tv. It's just that
Speaker 1: cable tv is really starting to kind of die off.
Speaker 1: But then everyone has been struggling to find a way
Speaker 1: to make streaming a profitable business, so this isn't that surprising.
Speaker 1: And now for some more video game news, Roadblocks announced
Speaker 1: it was cutting back its annual bookings forecasts, so essentially,
Speaker 1: this is an estimate of how much revenue the company
Speaker 1: expects to earn in the upcoming quarters, and Roadblocks said
Speaker 1: it estimated a lower amount than was previously you know, estimated,
Speaker 1: And obviously that got investors in a tizzy because numbers
Speaker 1: supposed to go up. No, like when number not go up,
Speaker 1: grow grow grow. Sorry, the older I get, the grouchier
Speaker 1: I am about late stage capitalism anyway. In other video
Speaker 1: game financial news, EA confirmed that the company is looking
Speaker 1: at introducing ads in Triple A video games in the future.
Speaker 1: Advertisements in games is not a new thing. There's been
Speaker 1: everything from brand integrations to full on commercials to those
Speaker 1: annoying little ads that pop up in mobile games, and
Speaker 1: so they've been part of the industry for a while.
Speaker 1: But you don't typically see very many of those pop
Speaker 1: up in a seventy dollars triple A title because you know,
Speaker 1: customers get grouchy if they've spent seventy bucks on something
Speaker 1: and then they have to watch ads in it. EA
Speaker 1: CEO stressed that any ad integrations would be quote very
Speaker 1: thoughtful end quote, which is good to hear from a
Speaker 1: company that was voted as the worst in America two
Speaker 1: years in a row and happier video game news. Nintendo
Speaker 1: confirmed that the successor to the Switch is coming and
Speaker 1: that the company will announce it this fiscal year. However,
Speaker 1: Nintendo's fiscal year starts in April, so that means it
Speaker 1: may not be until the end of March next year
Speaker 1: that we hear anything. But it is coming. It just
Speaker 1: is not going to be part of Nintendo Direct in June.
Speaker 1: That is not going to be when the company announces it.
Speaker 1: They've already confirmed there will be no information about it
Speaker 1: at that event. However, you know, the Switch is seven
Speaker 1: years old, it's not really a surprise that the company
Speaker 1: is prepping a follow up. One last story for this week.
Speaker 1: It was supposed to be a test launch for the
Speaker 1: Boeing Starliner spacecraft with an actual crew abord it this week,
Speaker 1: but engineers detected a malfunction in a pressure regulation valve
Speaker 1: on a liquid oxygen tank aboard the Atlas five launch
Speaker 1: vehicle that ended up necessitating scrubbing the mission. It was
Speaker 1: another frustrating setback for Boeing, which is obviously dealing with
Speaker 1: some really serious problems unrelated to the star Liner at
Speaker 1: the moment, so the earliest date for another attempt is
Speaker 1: May seventeenth, at six sixteen pm if everything is ready
Speaker 1: to go by then. At that point, the star Liner
Speaker 1: will be lifted by rocket up into orbit and then
Speaker 1: head off to the International Space Station. So we'll have
Speaker 1: to see if that actually happens next week. All right,
Speaker 1: that's it for this week's tech News. I hope you're
Speaker 1: all well, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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