Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host job and 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 September twenty, twenty twenty four. The US
Speaker 1: Federal Trade Commission or FTC, issued a release this week
Speaker 1: titled well, actually it's a really long title. Essentially, this
Speaker 1: release says social media and streaming companies are essentially conducting
Speaker 1: surveillance on both their users and on non users while
Speaker 1: also maintaining inadequate data security and privacy controls, Which I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're someone who has even paid just a little
Speaker 1: attention to these companies over the last several years, you
Speaker 1: might respond to this news as oh, yeah, yeah yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: by the way, water is wet. At least that was
Speaker 1: my initial reaction, because to me, the revelation that these
Speaker 1: companies are one collecting massive amounts of data about people
Speaker 1: and two they're pretty crappy about keeping that stuff safe,
Speaker 1: that's not exactly news. But then the FTC was conducting
Speaker 1: an investigation to determine exactly the scope of data collection
Speaker 1: as well as to what extent, if any, these companies
Speaker 1: are taking to you know, protect private information. These are
Speaker 1: the sorts of things that you got to do if
Speaker 1: maybe further down the line, you decide to you know,
Speaker 1: pressure companies into making changes or pressuring the government into
Speaker 1: passing laws that will require companies to make changes. Now,
Speaker 1: perhaps by by finding the ever loven socks off these
Speaker 1: companies a guy I can dream anyway. The release detailed
Speaker 1: how these companies collect information not just about their own users,
Speaker 1: I mean that is evident, but also on people who
Speaker 1: aren't users at all. And let's just say, how, you know,
Speaker 1: how could that happen? How could someone who's not a
Speaker 1: user have their data collected by these companies. Well, let's
Speaker 1: give one simple example. Let's say you gut Uncle Joey,
Speaker 1: and Uncle Joey's not on Facebook, but you do post
Speaker 1: about Uncle Joey a lot on Facebook, and you know,
Speaker 1: Facebook now knows stuff about Uncle Joey. That's one way.
Speaker 1: Another is that companies might get access to people's information
Speaker 1: by dealing with data brokers. Data brokers are companies that
Speaker 1: buy and sell personal information across the Internet, and a
Speaker 1: data broker might have quite the dossier on you or
Speaker 1: on Uncle Joey, and that information has gathered from multiple
Speaker 1: sources and organized into handy dandy packets for any company
Speaker 1: that really wants to know you know, like what kind
Speaker 1: of breakfast cereal you like, or what kind of car
Speaker 1: you drive, or which political party you support, or whether
Speaker 1: or not you like sports that kind of thing. The
Speaker 1: FTC found most of these companies lack sufficient data security
Speaker 1: and retention policies, meaning that some of these companies retain
Speaker 1: personal information indefinitely. So back in the corporate world, there
Speaker 1: are often rules that mandate that companies destroy older documents
Speaker 1: as time passes. I worked for a consulting company once
Speaker 1: upon a time, and they had strict rules on how
Speaker 1: long we could retain files on our customers, for example,
Speaker 1: and once that time was up, we were obligated to
Speaker 1: delete electronic files and shred hard copies. This was for
Speaker 1: the protection both for the customer and for the consulting
Speaker 1: firm itself. But these social network companies and social streaming sites,
Speaker 1: they often don't have that kind of a policy, and
Speaker 1: so the information to have on people can stay locked
Speaker 1: away and grow over time. The report or just Congress
Speaker 1: to pass laws that will give citizens more data security,
Speaker 1: maybe even give citizens a little bit of agency when
Speaker 1: it comes to how their own personal data can be
Speaker 1: collected and used. Wouldn't that be nice? And further that
Speaker 1: Congress should prioritize protecting younger Internet users in particular, who
Speaker 1: often end up being exploited due to massive loopholes and systems.
Speaker 1: We talked about this recently about how companies like Google
Speaker 1: through YouTube were allegedly working with advertisers to target teenagers,
Speaker 1: even though that's expressly against the rules, because what they
Speaker 1: could do is say, well, let's just target unknown accounts
Speaker 1: where we don't have an age associated with the account holder,
Speaker 1: but the account has behaviors that are typically associated with, say, teenagers, right,
Speaker 1: So you're not targeting teenagers. You're targeting people who behave
Speaker 1: like teenagers and you don't know how old they are,
Speaker 1: So how could you be blamed for targeting teenagers? That's
Speaker 1: the allegation that's going around regarding YouTube. So loopholes like
Speaker 1: that provide huge op oportunities for these companies to exploit
Speaker 1: people that otherwise are meant to be protected from that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So the FTC actually voted with unanimous
Speaker 1: support to issue this report I think that's pretty refreshing
Speaker 1: for an agency to say, yeah, we're all aligned on this,
Speaker 1: we all think that this is important, and you don't
Speaker 1: get that division you typically get with these where out
Speaker 1: of just principle members will vote against a measure because
Speaker 1: unity is something to be avoided at all costs. Enough
Speaker 1: with that commentary. One huge story that unfolded over this
Speaker 1: past week involved pagers or what we used to call
Speaker 1: beepers when I was a kid, and I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: heard the disturbing and grizzly details. So this week pagers
Speaker 1: in Lebanon and Syria began to explode and they killed
Speaker 1: or at least a dozen people and injured thousands in
Speaker 1: the process. The following day, another series of explosions rocked
Speaker 1: the area, this time from walkie talkie hands sets blowing up.
Speaker 1: The operation is believed to be a semi targeted attack
Speaker 1: on Hesblon that was orchestrated by Israeli spies. Now I
Speaker 1: say semi targeted because it's pretty darn hard to guarantee
Speaker 1: a device like that it's going to be on the
Speaker 1: actual target that you have in mind, or it's really
Speaker 1: impossible to guarantee that that target isn't also near innocent
Speaker 1: civilians when the device actually does explode. In fact, reportedly
Speaker 1: some of the casualties have been children, which is obviously
Speaker 1: it's truly heartbreaking. It's a horrible thing. We do have
Speaker 1: some more details courtesy of the New York Times. The article,
Speaker 1: which is titled how Israel built a modern day trojan
Speaker 1: Horse exploding Pagers gives more details as to what actually happened.
Speaker 1: So the pagers contained a small amount of explosives, and
Speaker 1: that explosive would activate upon receiving a signal. That signal
Speaker 1: was a message that was sent out at three point
Speaker 1: thirty pm in local time. The New York Times article
Speaker 1: reports that Israel has been planning this operation for a
Speaker 1: long time. HESBLA, which obviously has been in a violent
Speaker 1: conflict with Israel for decades now, has more recently attempted
Speaker 1: to migrate members to lower tech communications solutions. That's in
Speaker 1: an effort to remain undetected by Israeli agents. The argument
Speaker 1: was that smartphones and things like that they were helping
Speaker 1: Israeli military and spies target people in HESBLA, So in
Speaker 1: order to avoid that, switch to lower tech stuff that
Speaker 1: doesn't have the same capacity for being tracked. That was
Speaker 1: the concept. Israel, however, knew about this and apparently took
Speaker 1: this opportunity to build such devices with explosives directly incorporated
Speaker 1: into them, and then essentially fed these products to Hesbela
Speaker 1: agents through third parties. So Israel just made sure that
Speaker 1: these other companies had these explosive devices, and then you know,
Speaker 1: when when Hesbela agents were looking for these low tech
Speaker 1: communications devices, the ones they got were the ones that
Speaker 1: were built by Israel. The attack sounded like something that
Speaker 1: would be in a far fetched action movie, you know,
Speaker 1: something you might see in like one of the Kingsman
Speaker 1: films or something. And I cannot imagine how horrifying and
Speaker 1: terrifying it must have been to have been present when
Speaker 1: those explosions began to happen. It's a ready sobering, i
Speaker 1: mean beyond sobering thing to think about, and kind of
Speaker 1: terrifying really, just that this was a coordinated effort that
Speaker 1: was extremely successful in hurting a lot of people. Now,
Speaker 1: whether those were the quote unquote right people, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm generally against people hurting each other at all, so
Speaker 1: I'm not big fan on Hesbela carrying out acts of
Speaker 1: violence against people in Israel. That's horrible. Not really keen
Speaker 1: on Israeli military and spies carrying out acts of violence
Speaker 1: on people in Lebanon in Syria. That's horrible. It's all terrible.
Speaker 1: That's really what I get down to it. Over in Europe,
Speaker 1: Reuter's reports that major tech companies are trying to convince
Speaker 1: EU leaders to not go so heavy handed with regard
Speaker 1: to upcoming laws and regulations relating to artificial intelligence. Now,
Speaker 1: you might recall that open aiy's Sam Altman started meeting
Speaker 1: with various political leaders like a couple of years ago. Now,
Speaker 1: those were in early discussions about proposed AI regulations, and
Speaker 1: Altman reportedly was calling four rules. He was saying, yes,
Speaker 1: we should have regulations for AI. However, critics accused him
Speaker 1: of trying to lay a foundation that would really benefit
Speaker 1: open ai while simultaneously suppressing potential competition from smaller companies,
Speaker 1: and all the while, the actual rules that were created
Speaker 1: would do very little to protect the citizens of the EU.
Speaker 1: Even if the tech companies failed to persuade legislators to
Speaker 1: use a lighter touch when it comes to creating AI policy,
Speaker 1: they don't have too much to be worried about, at
Speaker 1: least in the short term, because according to Reuter's the
Speaker 1: rules that are being discussed now, once they are adopted,
Speaker 1: they aren't actually legally binding. They would be, as Captain
Speaker 1: Barbosa might say, more like guidelines also a happy belated
Speaker 1: talk like a pirate day. I'm a day late on
Speaker 1: that one. Anyway, if a company is found to ignore
Speaker 1: or violate guidelines, particularly multiple times, then it could potentially
Speaker 1: face a more serious challenge from regulators in the future,
Speaker 1: which ultimately could end up with like fines and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. The issues at play here include everything
Speaker 1: from how companies will gather data to train their AI
Speaker 1: like data scraping. In other words, there are concerns about copyright,
Speaker 1: like can AI companies indiscriminately train models on information that
Speaker 1: otherwise has the protection from such use. Transparency is a
Speaker 1: really big part of it, because right now AI largely
Speaker 1: follows the black box model of transparency, meaning there is
Speaker 1: no transparency. Stuff goes in, other stuff comes out. We're
Speaker 1: not allowed to see what process happens in between those
Speaker 1: two things, that kind of thing. Reuters reveals that many
Speaker 1: major companies, including Google and Open Ai, are lobbying to
Speaker 1: be included in working groups that are meant to shape policies,
Speaker 1: which again gets back to that issue I talked about
Speaker 1: a moment ago. When the folks who are meant to
Speaker 1: be regulated are allowed to shape the regulations, what do
Speaker 1: you think is going to happen. Who do you think
Speaker 1: that's going to ultimately benefit? Here's a hint, it's not
Speaker 1: you or me. Okay, we've got more tech news to
Speaker 1: get through, but first let's take a quick break. The
Speaker 1: United Nations has issued a report that recommends the organization
Speaker 1: of a committee that would be in charge of governing
Speaker 1: and monitoring the development and ployment of artificial intelligence around
Speaker 1: the world. The report suggests that this committee would have
Speaker 1: a similar structure and status that the Intergovernmental Panel on
Speaker 1: Climate Change possesses. The recommendations aren't all about putting AI
Speaker 1: in the spotlight as a potentially dangerous, perhaps catastrophically dangerous technology.
Speaker 1: It's also to kind of decide how to leverage AI
Speaker 1: in ways that provide the most benefit while potentially creating
Speaker 1: the least potential for harm. How to ensure that poorer
Speaker 1: countries are able to realize the benefits from AI while
Speaker 1: also having a seat at the table when it comes
Speaker 1: to governance and thus not be left behind, not to
Speaker 1: create an AI gap. In other words, as we have seen,
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence is really complicated, right, It's not just good
Speaker 1: or bad. There's a lot of complex stuff going on here,
Speaker 1: and it's far too easy to fall into simplifying things
Speaker 1: beyond reas I've done that personally. I mean in just
Speaker 1: in an effort to try and communicate stuff, I have
Speaker 1: oversimplified the problem. I recommend Will Knight's article over on Wired.
Speaker 1: It's titled the United Nations wants to treat AI with
Speaker 1: the same urgency as climate change. Knight does a great
Speaker 1: job explaining not only the recent report that the United
Speaker 1: Nations issued, but also the existing regulations that are already
Speaker 1: in place that could potentially shape this intergovernmental body as
Speaker 1: it takes form. So check that out. Emily Bernbaum and
Speaker 1: Oma Sadek of Bloomberg have a piece that's titled Microsoft
Speaker 1: executive Warrens of Election Meddling in Final forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: So the referenced executive is Brad Smith, who told the
Speaker 1: Senate Intelligence Committee here in the United States that foreign
Speaker 1: backed campaigns aimed to interfere with US elections are likely
Speaker 1: going to peak two days before the election itself. Examples
Speaker 1: that have happened in other countries in which deep fakes
Speaker 1: of various candidates in those elections made the rounds just
Speaker 1: before their election day. We've already seen some examples of
Speaker 1: AI generated material relating to the election here in the
Speaker 1: United States, though for the most part it hasn't actually
Speaker 1: made a huge impact, although one example did prompt Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift to make a statement about voting and also the
Speaker 1: candidate she personally supports, partly because an AI generated image
Speaker 1: of her appearing to support Donald Trump got some buzz,
Speaker 1: especially after Trump himself boosted that signal, and Swift's response
Speaker 1: has inspired a few hundred thousand citizens here in the
Speaker 1: US to register to vote. So that's actually a really
Speaker 1: good thing, you know. It's participation in democracy is actually
Speaker 1: absolutely vital for democracy success. But yeah, we're likely to
Speaker 1: see a lot more of that leading up to election day,
Speaker 1: according to Smith, and that sounds like it tracks to me.
Speaker 1: We've already seen multiple stories about how countries like Iran
Speaker 1: and Russia have attempted to shape the election to varying
Speaker 1: degrees of success here, especially this past year, So for
Speaker 1: that to escalate seems like it's a pretty safe bet.
Speaker 1: Unsafe consequences, but a safe bet that it's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Simon Sharwood of The Register has an article titled LinkedIn
Speaker 1: started harvesting people's posts for training AI without asking for
Speaker 1: opt in. And again, I think that probably doesn't come
Speaker 1: as a surprise to most people. I mean, lots of
Speaker 1: platforms have done this, where they started to scrape their
Speaker 1: own platforms for user information to train their AI models
Speaker 1: without notifying users, let alone asking them for their consent
Speaker 1: for this to happen. But while it might not be surprising,
Speaker 1: it's still very upsetting to a lot of people who
Speaker 1: likely did not anticipate that their online resume and their
Speaker 1: various posts promoting their work or their companies would ultimately
Speaker 1: serve as training fodder for AI models. Ashley Bellinger of
Speaker 1: Ours Teneca has a related piece to this. It is
Speaker 1: titled how to stop LinkedIn from training AI on your
Speaker 1: data Now. Bellinger points out right away that there's no
Speaker 1: way to opt out of any training that has already happened.
Speaker 1: You cannot say, oh, you know what, remove all my
Speaker 1: stuff from your training model's brain. That's no go. It's
Speaker 1: that cat is out of the AI bag already, so
Speaker 1: there's no way to protect your data that has already
Speaker 1: been used to train LinkedIn AI models. However, there are
Speaker 1: some somewhat limited ways to opt out of future training.
Speaker 1: LinkedIn will issue an updated user agreement related to this,
Speaker 1: and at that point users will be able to opt
Speaker 1: out of future training sessions. To do that, you will
Speaker 1: need to go to your data privacy settings and look
Speaker 1: for a bit that's related to data collection for quote
Speaker 1: unquote generative AI improvement and make sure that that option
Speaker 1: is turned off. Now. If you are in Switzerland or
Speaker 1: if you in the EU, where the law by default
Speaker 1: requires LinkedIn to secure your consent before opting you into
Speaker 1: this data collection program in the first place, you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about this. You will be able to
Speaker 1: actually respond no, don't do that when you are prompted.
Speaker 1: The rest of the world we don't get that treatment.
Speaker 1: But hey, I think that's a great example to bring
Speaker 1: up when you're pushing US Congress to adapt stronger data
Speaker 1: privacy laws, don't you think. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom
Speaker 1: signed bills into law that are designed to protect actors
Speaker 1: from predatory practices that involve you guessed it AI. So essentially,
Speaker 1: these laws create rules that media companies are going to
Speaker 1: have to follow if they are to create a digital
Speaker 1: replica of an actor or a performer. One of the
Speaker 1: two laws says that companies must have quote contracts to
Speaker 1: specify the use of AI generated digital replicas of a
Speaker 1: performer's voice or likeness, and the performer must be professionally
Speaker 1: represent negotiating the contract end quote, So no just sneaking
Speaker 1: that in. It has to be more transparent than that. Now.
Speaker 1: The other law requires media companies to first acquire the
Speaker 1: express permission from the estates of deceased actors before media
Speaker 1: companies are allowed to create digital replicas of the dearly
Speaker 1: departed actor in question. So, in other words, you can't
Speaker 1: just go and create a digital replica of Clark Gable
Speaker 1: to be in your movie without first acquiring legal consent
Speaker 1: from Gable's estate. And this relates closely to issues that
Speaker 1: sag Aftra brought up while they were negotiating new contract
Speaker 1: agreements with the movie studios. That's what ultimately led to
Speaker 1: the union strikes. Not that long ago. Have you ever
Speaker 1: been on a social platform like x formally known as
Speaker 1: Twitter and you posted something that you thought was amazingly
Speaker 1: insightful or really funny, or just incredibly relevant to the
Speaker 1: world and what's going on or whatever. Only then you
Speaker 1: absolutely got no engagement whatsoever, you know, no likes or responses, nothing.
Speaker 1: That's a real bummer, right, I mean, here you are
Speaker 1: spitting gold out into the universe and you're getting nothing back.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be nice to receive lots of really positive responses.
Speaker 1: Maybe people are riffing on what you said and pointing
Speaker 1: out other things relating to what you were saying, and
Speaker 1: creating a real conversation around it. Well, maybe social ai
Speaker 1: is for you then, though I don't think so. You know,
Speaker 1: social ai is only for you if you do not
Speaker 1: mind that all the responses you get are generated by
Speaker 1: AI bots, because that's what social ai is. It's an
Speaker 1: app that I argue, mimics a social platform because everyone
Speaker 1: else on your instance of this app is a bot,
Speaker 1: Like you're the only human left on Earth and everything
Speaker 1: else is run by AI. You can select the types
Speaker 1: of followers that you'll get responding to your posts. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe you want people who are funny. Maybe you're looking
Speaker 1: for nerds to respond to your stuff. Maybe you're looking
Speaker 1: for insightful observations drawn from what you're posting. I don't
Speaker 1: know how much mileage you'll actually get out of any
Speaker 1: of those, because I've actually been I've been reading some
Speaker 1: of the responses that various reporters have used or have
Speaker 1: posted after they tried out social Ai. They created some
Speaker 1: posts and then they posted the responses they were getting,
Speaker 1: and all those responses strike me as hollow and lacking
Speaker 1: any substance whatsoever. Like to me, it reminds me of
Speaker 1: being in school and you're in English class and you're
Speaker 1: supposed to give a book report, and one by one,
Speaker 1: students are going up to give their book reports, and
Speaker 1: it's very clear who read the book versus someone who
Speaker 1: only read the back book cover, and they're just trying
Speaker 1: to stretch that out long enough to make it seem
Speaker 1: like they read the whole thing. The responses I read
Speaker 1: and social ai made me think of the students who
Speaker 1: just read the back book cover and didn't actually do
Speaker 1: the work. The developer behind social ai is a guy
Speaker 1: named Michael Samon, and I don't know why he made
Speaker 1: social ai. Honestly, I don't know if this was kind
Speaker 1: of his way to lampoon how meaningless a lot of
Speaker 1: online engagement ends up being. Like if you've ever opened
Speaker 1: up threads on Threads or on x or whatever, if
Speaker 1: you just read like the comments section under posts, often
Speaker 1: you come across a lot of stuff that surface level
Speaker 1: is being too kind, there's no depth whatsoever. I don't
Speaker 1: know if Saman was poking fun at Elon Musk for
Speaker 1: buying Twitter and finding out what it's like to have
Speaker 1: an entire platform filled with bots. You know, Musk had
Speaker 1: said before he bought Twitter that Twitter was infested with
Speaker 1: bots and he was going to clean it up. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people now argue that X
Speaker 1: has bore bots or a higher concentration of bots than
Speaker 1: Twitter ever had before Musk took over. Whether that's true
Speaker 1: or not, I don't know, but certainly the perception or
Speaker 1: I don't know if Saman was doing this in a
Speaker 1: sincere effort to provide comfort to lonely people who otherwise
Speaker 1: get very little interaction from others. Right Like, if it's
Speaker 1: someone who just feels like they're saying things and no
Speaker 1: one's hearing them, then that can lead to a pretty
Speaker 1: despondent day to day existence. So having something that makes
Speaker 1: you feel heard and seen and validated. That could have
Speaker 1: real value to some people. And maybe that's why Saman
Speaker 1: did this. It's hard to say, because he has given
Speaker 1: various statements that support each of those motivations, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe he's motivated by a mixture of things, or maybe
Speaker 1: the motivation has actually evolved over time, where maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it started either as a joke or as a sincere
Speaker 1: effort to help people and then slowly evolved into the other.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but whatever the motivation is, I can't
Speaker 1: say that I'm impressed with the quality of the engagement
Speaker 1: you get when you post stuff to social AI. It
Speaker 1: does actually make me think of Threads a lot, because
Speaker 1: whenever I do log into threads, I get the distinct
Speaker 1: feeling that a lot of the accounts that are being
Speaker 1: promoted to me are actually being driven by AI of bots.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe the account is held by a real person,
Speaker 1: but it's an AI bot that's actually posting the stuff,
Speaker 1: and it's all in an effort to drive engagement. That's
Speaker 1: the feeling I get because there are just too many
Speaker 1: accounts that are all asking essentially the same questions, right,
Speaker 1: and they tend to be questions that prompt a quick response,
Speaker 1: especially if you're linking it to a specific region, like Hi, Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: what are some great restaurants to look at? Like something
Speaker 1: like that, Right, that's going to get a lot of responses,
Speaker 1: at least in Austin and probably the surrounding areas, and
Speaker 1: it drives a lot of engagement, which, in turn, engagement
Speaker 1: is like currency for influencers. Right. So, I get the
Speaker 1: feeling that a lot of the posts on threads aren't
Speaker 1: being made by actual people. They're made by bots that
Speaker 1: are just trying to get as much engagement as possible,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that stuff ends up being, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty simple tricks, to the point where I very rarely
Speaker 1: respond to anything in Threads unless I actually know the
Speaker 1: person who's posting and I feel like, oh, that really
Speaker 1: came from that person, not this is something that some
Speaker 1: bots spat out in an effort to make number go up. However,
Speaker 1: it's possible I'm just getting paranoid. Maybe I'm just paranoid
Speaker 1: and I believe everybody's a bot and I'm just positioning
Speaker 1: myself to audition for the next version of the thing,
Speaker 1: except it'll be robots, not you. Know Aliens. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: the case. I'm going to take another quick break. When
Speaker 1: I come back, I've got a little bit more tech
Speaker 1: news to share with y'all. Okay, we're mostly done with
Speaker 1: AI at this point. That was an awful lot of
Speaker 1: news about artificial intelligence. But to be honest, that was
Speaker 1: what was really dominating a lot of the tech conversation
Speaker 1: this week. I mean that, and then obviously the Israeli
Speaker 1: attack against Tesbolah using pagers and walkie talkies as explosives.
Speaker 1: Those were like the two big things that were in discussion.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about X slash Twitter for just a
Speaker 1: couple of seconds. So this first one's an update. You
Speaker 1: might recall that a Brazilian Supreme Court judge ruled that
Speaker 1: the internet service providers in Brazil were to shut down
Speaker 1: access to x. This was after Musk refused to play
Speaker 1: ball regarding the removal or censorship of certain accounts on
Speaker 1: the platform in Brazil. If you're not familiar with the story,
Speaker 1: so the Supreme Court justice was telling Musk, hey, there's
Speaker 1: this group of accounts that are spouting off misinformation and
Speaker 1: hate speech in Brazil and those posts are causing harm
Speaker 1: either directly or indirectly and therefore we want you to
Speaker 1: shut down those accounts. And Musk's response is, no, we
Speaker 1: believe in free speech, which Musk believes in free speech
Speaker 1: when it suits him. If it's free speech that is
Speaker 1: critical of Musk, he's not as much in favor of that, honestly.
Speaker 1: But anyway, he said, we're not going to do that.
Speaker 1: We're not in the business of shutting down accounts just
Speaker 1: because they say things you don't like. And the judge said,
Speaker 1: all right, well, then what we're gonna do is we're
Speaker 1: gonna shut down access to X in Brazil, and they did.
Speaker 1: But this week on Wednesday, X briefly returned into service
Speaker 1: to Brazil, not because the Supreme Court in Brazil allowed
Speaker 1: it to, but rather they were able to circumvent the
Speaker 1: issues by using like third party cloud services to return
Speaker 1: service in the country. So the Supreme Court judge did
Speaker 1: not just let that go unnoticed. The justice is said,
Speaker 1: if X remains active in Brazil despite the ruling against it,
Speaker 1: then Brazil will levy a nine hundred thousand dollars a
Speaker 1: day fine for every day that X would remain accessible
Speaker 1: within the country. As you might imagine, X is now
Speaker 1: once again down in Brazil. So the battle between Brazilian
Speaker 1: judges and Elon Musk continues now again. Y'all, if you've
Speaker 1: been listening to the show for a while, you know
Speaker 1: I am not a big fan of Elon Musk. I
Speaker 1: do not care for him at all. However, I also
Speaker 1: don't think that censorship is a reasonable approach either. I
Speaker 1: think content moderation is important, and I think that's something
Speaker 1: that X has really, really really fallen short on. Twitter
Speaker 1: was never good about content moderation, but X has said
Speaker 1: they'll hold my beer and has taken that to the
Speaker 1: nth degree. So I do think that X requires better
Speaker 1: content moderation, which supposedly is something that's actually in the works.
Speaker 1: But I don't know that that censorship is the right
Speaker 1: answer from like a governmental source. So I think this
Speaker 1: is a story where I don't agree with any party
Speaker 1: that's involved in it. I mean, I don't value X
Speaker 1: as a service anymore. I personally do not like I
Speaker 1: don't use it anymore. I deactivated my account ages ago.
Speaker 1: But I at the same time recognize that for a
Speaker 1: lot of people it serves a really useful purpose and
Speaker 1: I don't want to see that just get tossed aside.
Speaker 1: So this is a complicated situation where I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone is really in the right and the people who
Speaker 1: are suffering are the ones who are being driven to
Speaker 1: stuff like blue Sky and Threads. Not that blue Sky
Speaker 1: is terrible, but Threads is pretty bad. I've been using
Speaker 1: Threads for a bit, and I'm like, why did I
Speaker 1: bother doing this? I think for about a month, I've
Speaker 1: been using Threads again, and I question each time, like
Speaker 1: am I going to come back and use it again today?
Speaker 1: Or is this it? Am I done? Anyway? Enough of that,
Speaker 1: let's move on. So here in the United States, X
Speaker 1: has also officially relocated its headquarters. It originally was headquartered
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, California. Now it has moved to best Drop,
Speaker 1: Texas Bastrop, Texas. I'm sure I've mispronounced that name, but
Speaker 1: that's because Texans decide to pronounce things in their own
Speaker 1: peculiar way. Like in Austin, there's a street that's spelled Guadalupe,
Speaker 1: but if you say Guadalupe, you'll be laughed out of
Speaker 1: the city because it's Guadaloup. I can't really criticize that.
Speaker 1: Here in Atlanta, we have a street that's called Ponce
Speaker 1: de Leon, but it's pronounced Ponce Delian, Like you got
Speaker 1: to say Ponce Delian or people won't know what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. So anyway, that's beside the point. The move
Speaker 1: from California to Texas had a lot of political motivation
Speaker 1: behind it, Namely, Elon Musk has clashed multiple times with
Speaker 1: California's political leadership on numerous occasions over lots of different topics,
Speaker 1: including recently here, the state of California passed laws that
Speaker 1: meant to protect transgender students from being outed to their
Speaker 1: parents without their consent, and Musk apparently can't abide that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. He just is like, no, that's not cool.
Speaker 1: I want people's lives to be put into danger. I
Speaker 1: suppose if you'd like to learn more about this relocation
Speaker 1: from California to Texas, I recommend Andrea Guzman's article in
Speaker 1: the online paper Krawn c Hron. That article is titled
Speaker 1: Elon Musk officially moves X headquarters from California to Texas.
Speaker 1: That'll be helpful. It also explains that the folks in
Speaker 1: California don't know yet if they're going to be required
Speaker 1: to relocate to Texas. Or if other offices in areas
Speaker 1: around San Francisco, such as like San Jose will remain open.
Speaker 1: They don't know yet. And a lot of Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: businesses are now headquartered in Texas, where he finds a
Speaker 1: lot more political parody with the folks in charge in
Speaker 1: that state. So how much power does AI need as
Speaker 1: in electricity? We're not totally done with AI after all,
Speaker 1: it seems well, apparently they need enough electricity to require
Speaker 1: a nuclear power plant that had been shut down to
Speaker 1: come back online, because Microsoft has signed a deal with
Speaker 1: Constellation Energy, and that deal will require the restart of
Speaker 1: Unit one of the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear power
Speaker 1: plant in Pennsylvania. Now, way back in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: here in the United States, Three Mile Island became the
Speaker 1: focus of national news when Unit two had a partial
Speaker 1: nuclear meltdown that also included the release of some radioactive
Speaker 1: gases and radioactive iodine into the surrounding area. That unit
Speaker 1: is not going to be reactivated for obvious reasons, So
Speaker 1: Unit two is not like going to go from partial
Speaker 1: meltdown to back in action. Unit one will be restarted now. Also,
Speaker 1: to be clear, Three Mile Island did not totally shut
Speaker 1: down after this partial meltdown, it did come back online
Speaker 1: in a reduced capacity and had remained in operation until
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen when it shut down. Now this deal is
Speaker 1: going to have it come back online by around twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight, and this is in order to supply Microsoft
Speaker 1: with that sweet, sweet lightning juice that's needed to power
Speaker 1: all of Microsoft's various robots where it's AI efforts. In
Speaker 1: other words, now this really reminds me of the fact
Speaker 1: that we're always going to need access to more energy,
Speaker 1: and we'll use all the available sources that we have.
Speaker 1: Because one of the big talking points about fusion is
Speaker 1: that if we can get fusion to work, then we
Speaker 1: would meet the world's energy needs pretty handily. In fact,
Speaker 1: we would meet them many times over, the idea being
Speaker 1: that we would have plentiful energy, prices would drop, and
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have to worry about deficits at all. But
Speaker 1: I think AI kind of proves that we always will
Speaker 1: come up with more ways to require more energy. The
Speaker 1: word enough just doesn't come into it. There will never
Speaker 1: be enough, because we'll just find new ways to require more,
Speaker 1: which is a sobering thought and one that we need
Speaker 1: to remind ourselves when we get carried away, like news
Speaker 1: that relate to things like fusion. For example, I get
Speaker 1: really excited when I read about advances in fusion because
Speaker 1: it's a super interesting technology. It has the capacity to
Speaker 1: provide a lot of energy with very little downsides to it,
Speaker 1: apart from the fact that it's really hard to get
Speaker 1: it to work right and we haven't done it yet.
Speaker 1: But like, if we do get to work right, it
Speaker 1: could be phenomenal. But then stories like this remind me
Speaker 1: of Yeah, but we are going to have stuff like
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency minors and AI language models and all this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff that just are incredibly hungry for electricity, So
Speaker 1: we will find ways to consume all that excess that
Speaker 1: we have produced fun World. Finally, Disney is taking out
Speaker 1: the Slack, and by that I mean Disney plans to
Speaker 1: transition off of the Slack collaboration tool after hackers manage
Speaker 1: to access more than a terabytes of corporate information from
Speaker 1: inside the Mousehouse and then they leaked that data, or
Speaker 1: at least some of it online. The leaked information included
Speaker 1: stuff about unreleased projects from Disney Entertainment and like included
Speaker 1: more than forty four million messages between Disney employees or
Speaker 1: staff or I don't know, cast members, whatever. I haven't
Speaker 1: seen details as to how precisely the hackers got access
Speaker 1: to Disney's Slack channels. I would gently remind leaders that
Speaker 1: it is really important that whatever platform you choose for
Speaker 1: project management or collaboration, whatever it might be, it is
Speaker 1: important that that program is secure. But even the most
Speaker 1: secure system is not going to protect you unless your
Speaker 1: employees learn and follow good security etiquette. Otherwise, you can
Speaker 1: swap out tools until the cows come home, and hackers
Speaker 1: will still find someone to exploit in order to get
Speaker 1: at the goods. So I'm not saying that Slack is perfect.
Speaker 1: I don't use Slack personally. I just think that throwing
Speaker 1: Slack under the bus is probably short sighted, unless, of course,
Speaker 1: the hackers did exploit an actual vulnerability in Slack, which
Speaker 1: is entirely possible. The information I came across was not
Speaker 1: clear about that one way or the other. If the
Speaker 1: hackers were able to exploit a vulnerability in Slack itself,
Speaker 1: that spells trouble for all of Slack's users at Disney
Speaker 1: or otherwise. So that's a much, much, much bigger issue if, however,
Speaker 1: this was a case where they were able to get
Speaker 1: access to Disney's Slack channels, not because Slack itself had
Speaker 1: a vulnerability, but because someone within Disney accidentally handed over
Speaker 1: the Keys to the Kingdom, which, by the way, Keys
Speaker 1: to the Kingdom is a great behind the scenes tour
Speaker 1: at Walt Disney World. That's not really what I was
Speaker 1: talking about, but yeah, if that's the case, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what platform you're on. I mean, people are still
Speaker 1: prone to getting tricked by things like social engineering. So
Speaker 1: just a reminder for everyone out there that getting the
Speaker 1: so called best tool doesn't always guarantee success. Okay, that's
Speaker 1: it for the news for this week. I hope all
Speaker 1: of you are well, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.