Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from My Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, Diamond executive producer with My Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: how the tech are you. We're going to cover the
Speaker 1: tech news today on Tuesday, November eight, two thousand twenty two.
Speaker 1: But before we get going, I do want to let
Speaker 1: y'all know that tomorrow we're going to share with you
Speaker 1: an episode of The Restless Ones here in the Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff feed. The Restless Ones is a show I host
Speaker 1: where I interview leaders in tech positions across different industries
Speaker 1: to talk about things like technical challenges and innovations and
Speaker 1: leadership strategies and things along those lines. I think you'll
Speaker 1: dig it all right, But onto the news, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna start with Twitter. Of course, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: Twitter news because a lot has been going on over there.
Speaker 1: So last week was kind of a dumpster fire over
Speaker 1: at Twitter, and this week has already proven to be
Speaker 1: chaotic and we're barely into it. Last week I talked
Speaker 1: about how the word was that Musk was going to
Speaker 1: lay off approximately half of Twitter's staff, and that did happen,
Speaker 1: and Musk tweeted out quote regarding Twitter's reduction in force. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there is no choice when the company is losing over
Speaker 1: four million dollars a day end quote. But the move
Speaker 1: to layoff staff was so rushed that well, there were
Speaker 1: there were regrets. Apparently at least some of the folks
Speaker 1: fired at Twitter, we're not supposed to be fired at all.
Speaker 1: They got lumped in by accident. Their accounts were discontinued,
Speaker 1: they were suspended, and they were effectively laid off without
Speaker 1: meaning to be laid off. That's pretty gush darn awful.
Speaker 1: That speaks to a certain level of incompetence on the
Speaker 1: part of management. But on the other hand, there really
Speaker 1: was a very short timeline to announce that kind of layoff.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was such an extensive move that and
Speaker 1: you had so little time. Mistakes were bound to happen.
Speaker 1: It's just when those mistakes are wrapped up in people's
Speaker 1: lives and their careers that's it's just really hard to
Speaker 1: get past. Right. Then, there were leaders who found out
Speaker 1: that some of the folks that they had laid off
Speaker 1: were whoopsie daisy, folks who are knowledgeable about specific projects
Speaker 1: and who are responsible for a lot of work and
Speaker 1: Without those folks, Twitter would be set way back on
Speaker 1: those projects. And since Musk has been setting aggressive, in
Speaker 1: fact unrealistically aggressive deadlines to get certain features built into
Speaker 1: Twitter or overhauled at Twitter, they still need some of
Speaker 1: those now former employees. And so, in a move that
Speaker 1: I think you can only describe as embarrassing, various Twitter
Speaker 1: folks began to reach out on some various platforms to
Speaker 1: try and entice recently laid off employee is to come back,
Speaker 1: asking could you please return to work? Now, keep in
Speaker 1: mind these employees had already been locked out of company systems,
Speaker 1: So if they had a company computer in their position,
Speaker 1: they got locked out of that. They were locked out
Speaker 1: of Twitter's slack channel, they were locked out of their
Speaker 1: employee email. So yeah, not a good look. Some affected
Speaker 1: former employees are worried that if they refused to come
Speaker 1: back after being laid off, then they will get fired.
Speaker 1: Now you might think, if you've been laid off, how
Speaker 1: could you be fired? Well, if you've been laid off
Speaker 1: and then the company says, wait, that we didn't mean
Speaker 1: to do that, come back to work, and you refuse
Speaker 1: to come back to work, then the company can say
Speaker 1: we never really laid you off. We're firing you now.
Speaker 1: And by being fired rather than laid off, the employees
Speaker 1: could potentially lose the sixty days of severance pay that
Speaker 1: otherwise they would have received if you know, the layoffs
Speaker 1: had stuck in the first place, which you might imagine
Speaker 1: creates really nasty ral issues, and you'd be right in fact,
Speaker 1: I honestly, I can't even begin to think of how
Speaker 1: I would feel if this were happening to me. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: for the folks who are still at Twitter who didn't
Speaker 1: get laid off, you have employees who are unsure of
Speaker 1: what team they fit in, or or who they report
Speaker 1: to because the company has been gutted, and reportedly some
Speaker 1: employees and a lot of employees are left wondering about
Speaker 1: health benefits because Twitter's open enrollment period was to begin
Speaker 1: this week, but management has been pretty quiet on that front,
Speaker 1: with no real word on what health benefits are going
Speaker 1: to be. Now that Twitter is a private company, it's
Speaker 1: no longer the same company that it was, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago. So that's really concerning too.
Speaker 1: I mean, in this country, healthcare is at a point
Speaker 1: where if you don't have insurance, you're really really in
Speaker 1: trouble and insurance changes all the time, So having open
Speaker 1: enrollment is important. And I don't know if that's been
Speaker 1: resolved yet. It might have been, but the news as
Speaker 1: I'm reporting it now did not have any indication of that.
Speaker 1: My hope is that Twitter sorted that out, because that's
Speaker 1: incredibly important to employees. Twitter also rolled out the eight
Speaker 1: dollar a month Twitter Blue subscription over the weekend. This
Speaker 1: is the version of the subscription that's going to come
Speaker 1: with it a new verified check mark, so you don't
Speaker 1: have to go through the old verification process. You can
Speaker 1: subscribe to Twitter Blue for eight bucks a month and
Speaker 1: get that checkmark on your your account. However, the company
Speaker 1: has subsequently decided to hold off on actually instituting the
Speaker 1: check mark changes until the midterm elections are over here
Speaker 1: in the United States. Those elections happened today, so we
Speaker 1: should see the rollout happened later this week. But there
Speaker 1: was concerned that people could rush to get verified accounts
Speaker 1: and then use that check mark to lend credibility to
Speaker 1: misinformation campaigns. Right if you're sending out lies about the election,
Speaker 1: but you have that little blue check mark next to
Speaker 1: your name, people might think oh, this person's legit. So
Speaker 1: for that reason, Twitter held back on actually implementing this
Speaker 1: change so far. On a similar note, we learned that
Speaker 1: free speech absolutist Elon Musk actually does have limits to
Speaker 1: free speech. For example, if you make an account and
Speaker 1: you claim to be Elon Musk and you're not clearly
Speaker 1: stating in your bio that it's a parody account, Ellen
Speaker 1: will ban you permanently one strike, and you're not just
Speaker 1: out of the game, you are out of the league,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. Musk said that now that the company
Speaker 1: is rolling out widespread verification, there will be no warning
Speaker 1: if someone chooses to impersonate someone else without clearly labeling
Speaker 1: the account as a parody account. Sarah Silverman and Kathy Griffin,
Speaker 1: both comedians, changed their verified names to Elon Musk, which
Speaker 1: illustrated how having a verification system that doesn't, you know,
Speaker 1: actually verify that someone is who they claim to be
Speaker 1: is just downright broken. Sort of like how full self
Speaker 1: driving on Tesla vehicles isn't really full self driving. I'm
Speaker 1: sensing a little theme along Elon Musk companies here. Another
Speaker 1: issue is that Musk has said Twitter Blue accounts will
Speaker 1: receive half the ad load of a regular Twitter user,
Speaker 1: and analysts say if that happens, Twitter will miss out
Speaker 1: on about six dollars of ad revenue per Twitter Blue
Speaker 1: subscriber in the United States, and once Google and Apple
Speaker 1: have taken a cut of the subscription transaction of eight
Speaker 1: dollars per month to be in Twitter Blue, it's actually
Speaker 1: possible that subscribing to Twitter Blue will cost Twitter money
Speaker 1: so as people pay Twitter to use it. If in fact,
Speaker 1: this all stays the way it is, then Twitter will
Speaker 1: lose money because it will not be showing as many
Speaker 1: ads to those people and won't be able to monetize
Speaker 1: their activity. So yeah, there's some questions about that long
Speaker 1: term strategy, as it does not appear to be helping
Speaker 1: the problem of losing more than four million dollars per day.
Speaker 1: The Verge reports that at least some verified users are
Speaker 1: now finding it impossible to change their names in Twitter,
Speaker 1: leading some to wonder if perhaps the company is trying
Speaker 1: to head off a mass musk ing, or just to
Speaker 1: avoid Twitter turning into that free for all hell escape
Speaker 1: the Musk was saying definitely would not happen. Elizabeth Lopato
Speaker 1: of The Verge reported that she and her verified coworkers
Speaker 1: all encountered an error message while they were trying to
Speaker 1: change their names, but that her unverified coworker was able
Speaker 1: to change his name on the platform without a problem,
Speaker 1: which does sound curious. Also, Musk warned that verified users
Speaker 1: who changed their names would quote cause temporary loss of
Speaker 1: verified check mark end quote. Elizabeth pointed out that if
Speaker 1: she changed her Twitter name to Liz, which is a
Speaker 1: name that some of her friends and colleagues use for her,
Speaker 1: that would technically mean she would be unverified, at least temporarily,
Speaker 1: even though she was just aaging one form of her
Speaker 1: name to a different form of her name, not changing
Speaker 1: her name to something else entirely, and still twittering over here.
Speaker 1: News outlet The State not to be confused with the
Speaker 1: old MTV comedy Sketch group with folks like Thomas Lennon
Speaker 1: and Joe Latrulia in it reports that quote Twitter's rules
Speaker 1: under new CEO Elon Musk, published Monday do not include
Speaker 1: policies about misinformation end quote. That's a big old yikes
Speaker 1: that is concerning now there are rules in place. They
Speaker 1: did publish rules for content moderation, So for example, it's
Speaker 1: against the rules to engage in targeted harassment. You cannot
Speaker 1: call for violence or glorify violence. You can't promote terrorism
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Also, they had rules against dox sing.
Speaker 1: You cannot reveal personal information about someone else on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's against the rules. So there are content rules in place,
Speaker 1: but when it comes of things like misinformation, none of
Speaker 1: that is included in the rules. The State reached out
Speaker 1: to Twitter asking if the company would allow clear misinformation
Speaker 1: campaigns to to proliferate across the platform without moderation, and
Speaker 1: seem to get the indication that Twitter will still look
Speaker 1: for that kind of stuff, but it's not codified in
Speaker 1: the rules. So who knows. Platformer, a tech newsletter written
Speaker 1: by journalist Casey Newton, whose work is really good. By
Speaker 1: the way, you're not familiar with Casey, you should check
Speaker 1: out his work, revealed that Musk is allegedly considering putting
Speaker 1: all of Twitter behind a paywall. Now, it sounds as
Speaker 1: though this plan is to allow for a certain amount
Speaker 1: of browsing on Twitter each month for free, but once
Speaker 1: you hit a limit, let's say, like it's like I
Speaker 1: don't know, five hours or something, then you would have
Speaker 1: to pay to continue using Twitter for the rest of
Speaker 1: that calendar month, or you'd have to wait for the
Speaker 1: next month before you could use Twitter again, which sounds
Speaker 1: a lot like some mobile games I've played, where the
Speaker 1: game is designed to hook you into activity and then
Speaker 1: has a cool down period, but you can skip the
Speaker 1: cool down if you pay cash. As of this recording,
Speaker 1: there is no word on how seriously Musk and his
Speaker 1: team are considering this option. I would be really interested
Speaker 1: to see if this got implemented. I mean, I'm already
Speaker 1: kind of off Twitter myself, but yeah, I could definitely
Speaker 1: see that brands would want to pay in order to
Speaker 1: continue using Twitter. But if your average user isn't, obviously,
Speaker 1: that would not be a very sustainable model. I guess
Speaker 1: they're they're really banking on people being addicted to using Twitter.
Speaker 1: Will be back with some more news, including stuff that
Speaker 1: doesn't involve Twitter at all. After these messages. One thing
Speaker 1: that some Twitter users have been doing is dumping Twitter
Speaker 1: entirely and migrating over to Mastodon. Uh. Then a bunch
Speaker 1: of people go to Mastodon and their left saying, what
Speaker 1: the heck is this? How does this work? So? Mastodon
Speaker 1: allows you to post messages, it allows you to engage
Speaker 1: with posted messages, so you can comment on someone else's message,
Speaker 1: you could repost other people's messages, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So it has a lot of features that are similar
Speaker 1: to what you can do on Twitter, but Mastodon is
Speaker 1: organized in a totally different way from Twitter. Twitter is
Speaker 1: a centralized service hosted on Twitter servers. Mastodon is decentralized.
Speaker 1: It is hosted on multiple servers that are owned and
Speaker 1: operated by different people and organizations all around the world.
Speaker 1: So when you start using Mastodon, the first thing you
Speaker 1: have to do is choose a server to join. Servers
Speaker 1: tend to have focus to them. That focus could be
Speaker 1: topic based, It could be regionally based, could be like
Speaker 1: this is a server for you know, Southeast UK, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. It can be demographically based. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of lgbt Q friendly servers, and the server
Speaker 1: you choose ends up becoming part of your handle slash address.
Speaker 1: Folks who are on the same server that you're on
Speaker 1: can just look you up by your handle, right, It's
Speaker 1: like you're both in the same room in a house.
Speaker 1: They can just look across the room and see you there.
Speaker 1: But they can do that just by using your handle.
Speaker 1: If they're on a different server. They have to know
Speaker 1: what server you belong to in order to look you up,
Speaker 1: so they use your handle plus whatever server you belong to,
Speaker 1: and then they can send you messages and things of
Speaker 1: that nature. All that being said, anyone on any server
Speaker 1: can technically communicate with anyone else on any other server,
Speaker 1: but discovery is pretty challenging. Uh, it's a little more
Speaker 1: umbersome that what you would find on Twitter. Also, if
Speaker 1: whatever entity or organization runs your server stops supporting it,
Speaker 1: you effectively lose your account. You would have to start
Speaker 1: over by establishing a new account on another server. So
Speaker 1: that is an issue with Mastodon. Uh. There are people
Speaker 1: who are working to create kind of a buffer so
Speaker 1: that if an organization plans to shut down a Mastodon server,
Speaker 1: people will have time to migrate their stuff over to
Speaker 1: a different server. But as I understand it right now,
Speaker 1: that's not the case. It's just kind of taking on
Speaker 1: faith that the server you've joined, we're will still be
Speaker 1: around tomorrow. Anyway, Mastodon has reported an influx of users
Speaker 1: that's really pushed Mastodon to the limit on some servers.
Speaker 1: You know, a certain servers got way more popular then
Speaker 1: that increase in traffic has really strained the server load,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, been a pretty quiet utility for
Speaker 1: the last several years, except within certain communities. If you
Speaker 1: are thinking about joining Mastodon and checking it out, I
Speaker 1: feel that I should add Mastodon tends to lean left politically,
Speaker 1: not exclusively, but it is a tendency. Now. I'm personally
Speaker 1: a left leaning kind of guy, which I'm sure everyone
Speaker 1: out there realizes based upon my my uh commentary in episodes,
Speaker 1: but I realized not everyone is, and likely a lot
Speaker 1: of listeners will disagree with me politically, so I thought
Speaker 1: it's only fair I mentioned that there is a somewhat
Speaker 1: liberal leaning environment at Mastodon. As for whether I will
Speaker 1: set up a tech stuff space over on Macedon, I'm
Speaker 1: still thinking about it, and I will let y'all know.
Speaker 1: Several news outlets are reporting that Meta maybe gearing up
Speaker 1: for its own round of layoffs. This week, The Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal reported we may hear about thousands of layoffs
Speaker 1: beginning tomorrow, which would be Wednesday, the ninth of November
Speaker 1: to thousand, twenty two for those of y'all listening to
Speaker 1: old news episodes in the future. If these layoffs happen,
Speaker 1: they will mark the first broad scale downsizing across Meta
Speaker 1: in the company's history. It's not exactly shocking because CEO
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg has indicated several times this year that he
Speaker 1: suspects Meta has more employees than there is work to do,
Speaker 1: and that some folks aren't necessarily putting in significant effort
Speaker 1: in their jobs, and that there are employees who may
Speaker 1: not need to be there. And this is all talk
Speaker 1: that indicates that there's a leader in place who feels
Speaker 1: it's time to clear out some office space. Plus, Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: continues to focus on his Metaverse project, which is costing
Speaker 1: Meta billions of dollars each year. If you're going to
Speaker 1: keep up with that kind of cash drain, you may
Speaker 1: eventually have to look at making cuts elsewhere, like with
Speaker 1: your head count on projects that are not directly connected
Speaker 1: to your Metaverse vision. We've already heard reports that there
Speaker 1: are folks in Meta who say they are on MMH projects,
Speaker 1: which stands for make Mark Happy. That one way to
Speaker 1: stay in good graces with management is to tackle whatever
Speaker 1: pet project Zuckerberg has in mind at the time. But
Speaker 1: that this gets tricky because Zuckerberg also is known to
Speaker 1: change his mind about stuff, often due to the public
Speaker 1: reception of his ideas, which then necessitates pivoting those projects
Speaker 1: and being able to respond to new criteria. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: no expert in any of this kind of stuff, but
Speaker 1: to me, it sounds like Meta isn't a bit of
Speaker 1: a vicious cycle right now. Investors are generally unhappy that
Speaker 1: the company isn't performing nearly as well as it used
Speaker 1: to who which is putting it lightly, And they're really
Speaker 1: not happy that Meta is spending billions of dollars on
Speaker 1: a project that will not see fruition for years if
Speaker 1: it succeeds at all. And there's still plenty of skeptics,
Speaker 1: myself included, who think that the vision of the metaverse,
Speaker 1: particularly as something that necessitates VR and a R headgear,
Speaker 1: is not likely to have broad acceptance. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: probably a narrow band of extremely enthusiastic fans of it,
Speaker 1: but I just don't see it extending beyond that without
Speaker 1: like a lot of growing pains. Now that being said,
Speaker 1: shares of Meta rose a bit after news broke that
Speaker 1: layoffs are coming, because that's cheerful, And as of this recording,
Speaker 1: shares of Meta are trading and around ninety six dollars
Speaker 1: per share. Now, this is up from its low of
Speaker 1: eighty eight dollars per share, which was what it was
Speaker 1: posting it just a few days ago. But ninety six
Speaker 1: dollars a share is way way down from the company's
Speaker 1: high this year of around three forty dollars a year
Speaker 1: back in January. So yeah, it was trading at three
Speaker 1: dollars at the beginning of the year. Now it's less
Speaker 1: than a hundred dollars per share. You know, towards the
Speaker 1: end of the year. Uh, it did have a little
Speaker 1: bit of a recovery compared to its low, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that is not in a great place. Whendows eleven users
Speaker 1: might notice some new ads popping up as they go
Speaker 1: to shut down their computers. Bleeping Computer reports that users
Speaker 1: have noticed flyout ads popping up as they go to
Speaker 1: shut down their machines. So they go into the start
Speaker 1: menu and they pull up the little menu that comes
Speaker 1: up when you hover over the power selection, and the
Speaker 1: ads are really simple. It's just an option that if
Speaker 1: you were to click on the option would take you
Speaker 1: to a product page. So for example, like when you
Speaker 1: would hover over that power button, you would get a
Speaker 1: little menu that give you options like change account settings,
Speaker 1: lock to lock your computer, or sign out. But now
Speaker 1: if you do it, you would also get a little
Speaker 1: advertise service at the top. It would just be listed
Speaker 1: as another option among these that are already there. So
Speaker 1: you might see an option that says back up your files,
Speaker 1: and if you click on it, it actually takes you
Speaker 1: to Microsoft's one drive product page, or you might see
Speaker 1: one that says sign up for Microsoft account. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, the first option in the menu is trying
Speaker 1: to sell you something specifically some sort of Microsoft service. Interesting.
Speaker 1: People are already upset about it, which I get like
Speaker 1: there they don't want to be confronted with sales messages
Speaker 1: when they're just trying to access basic functions of a
Speaker 1: computer like turning it off. So yeah, interesting little report there.
Speaker 1: And you know, we already talked earlier about how Microsoft
Speaker 1: is apparently considering going down a strategy where they offer
Speaker 1: PCs that are subsidized by advertising so that you could
Speaker 1: purchase it for very little money relatively speaking. And the
Speaker 1: tradeoff would be every time you're using your computer, you're
Speaker 1: getting ads served to you, and that offsets the purchase
Speaker 1: price of the computer. Uh, we've heard about that last week.
Speaker 1: Still no word on whether or not they're moving forward
Speaker 1: with that, but we are starting to see Microsoft incorporate
Speaker 1: Microsoft specific advertising in basic functions of Windows eleven, so
Speaker 1: maybe that is where they're going over on the Activision
Speaker 1: Blizzard side of things, which just as a reminder, Microsoft
Speaker 1: is still attempting to acquire Activision Blizzard, but the deal
Speaker 1: is facing some scrutiny in different parts of the world,
Speaker 1: So no guarantee that that's going to happen or what
Speaker 1: timeline it might happen on. But let's talk about Call
Speaker 1: of Duty Modern Warfare two and the upcoming free to
Speaker 1: play companion title Call of Duty war Zone two point oh.
Speaker 1: Engadget reports that Activision is launching some content moderation tools
Speaker 1: meant to deal with toxicity in communications within the games.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that if any of y'all have ever
Speaker 1: played any sort of competitive online game that features voice
Speaker 1: chat or text chat, you have run into situations where
Speaker 1: someone is being incredibly offensive and vulgar and are harassing
Speaker 1: other players that you can hear like some of the
Speaker 1: worst stuff imaginable in these games. And for folks who
Speaker 1: make say they're living streaming, people who live stream games,
Speaker 1: this can be a real problem because that kind of
Speaker 1: language can get the streamer and hot water with whatever
Speaker 1: platform they're using, like if it's YouTube or Twitch, even
Speaker 1: if the streamer is not necessarily engaging with the toxic player,
Speaker 1: like if there's proximity chat on and another player is
Speaker 1: in the same general space as the streamer and then
Speaker 1: just starts letting loose with ethnic slurs, that affects the
Speaker 1: streamer too, right, So not to mention just normal players
Speaker 1: who don't necessarily want to encounter that kind of abuse online. Well,
Speaker 1: Call of Duty is going to have active moderation teams who,
Speaker 1: once they verify that a player has engaged in toxic
Speaker 1: voice chat or text messages within the game, they will
Speaker 1: mute that player in all communication channels. That person will
Speaker 1: no longer be heard or be able to text. They'll
Speaker 1: still be able to play unless they have violated some
Speaker 1: other rules, in which case they could get you know,
Speaker 1: booted and banned, but they won't be heard by anybody,
Speaker 1: which I think is a blessing. Uh. In order for
Speaker 1: this to work, however, is being a reactive system. Players
Speaker 1: will still need to flag offensive gamers to alert the
Speaker 1: moderation team to look into them. So if you're playing,
Speaker 1: and you encounter someone who is just being the worst,
Speaker 1: you can flag them. Then, at least hypothetically, the content
Speaker 1: moderation team will take a closer look and listen in
Speaker 1: on chat and start looking at the text messages, and
Speaker 1: if they see that, in fact, there are instances of
Speaker 1: a use, they will then mute the player. Still, considering
Speaker 1: all the types of stuff that can get shouted about
Speaker 1: in these games, I think that's a good choice. It's
Speaker 1: not the best. There are more proactive approaches to this
Speaker 1: kind of thing, but at least it's a way of
Speaker 1: addressing it. And that's going to be important because war
Speaker 1: Zone being a free to play game is bound to
Speaker 1: attract a ton of players, and not everyone's going to
Speaker 1: be a hateful jerk, but some of them definitely will be.
Speaker 1: As for me, I'm not good at these kind of
Speaker 1: first person shooter multiplayer games. I can't play at a
Speaker 1: competitive level. I would just be a bullet sponge. So
Speaker 1: you won't find me playing these online. I just I can't.
Speaker 1: My reactions are not good, my aim is not good.
Speaker 1: Even with aim assist, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: compete at a decent level, So I just go through
Speaker 1: single player first person shooters and then I yell at
Speaker 1: computer controlled enemies because I know I can't hurt their feelings. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm glad to hear this news because I
Speaker 1: do watch some streamers and I never want them to
Speaker 1: have their their career impacted by things that are outside
Speaker 1: their control. The Verge reports that AMC theaters here in
Speaker 1: the US and Zoom are partnering to bring interactive meeting
Speaker 1: calls to some AMC theaters, allowing the theater to become
Speaker 1: kind of a giant meeting space, capable of holding more
Speaker 1: than a hundred people as they participate in like a
Speaker 1: remote meeting. And I can see that as being an
Speaker 1: attractive option for say a large company that has offices
Speaker 1: or stores that are all over the place, like if
Speaker 1: it's a nationwide company, for example, employees can get together
Speaker 1: in a physical space and watch an all hands meeting
Speaker 1: on a big old screen. The other thing that this
Speaker 1: does is that can reinforce that feeling that your boss
Speaker 1: literally towers over you and that the power dynamic is
Speaker 1: incredibly unbalanced, and that helps you visual is that enormous
Speaker 1: gap between your position and that of your boss. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm getting a bit too cynical about this, But honestly,
Speaker 1: that's the first thing that popped into my head is like, gosh,
Speaker 1: what would make me feel like I had really been
Speaker 1: put in my place? Oh? I know what if my
Speaker 1: boss were five stories tall and looking down at me
Speaker 1: while telling me about the company. AMC says it's planning
Speaker 1: on installing the service in seventeen major US markets next year,
Speaker 1: so it's not coming to every AMC everywhere, but it
Speaker 1: should be rolling out throughout If I'm being serious, I
Speaker 1: can see the value of this, Like I getting people
Speaker 1: together does have a certain value to it, and uh,
Speaker 1: for a distributed company, one that has locations across lots
Speaker 1: of different regions, it could be a practical solution as
Speaker 1: opposed to having every single person individually logging into a
Speaker 1: meeting from their own computer. But yeah, it's hard to
Speaker 1: get around that fact of you're looking at an enormous
Speaker 1: movie screen and by necessity everything has to be enlarged
Speaker 1: so that the folks sitting in the back can have
Speaker 1: a view of what's going on. To also the thought
Speaker 1: of my boss's voice coming over a surround sound system
Speaker 1: with like Dolby Base to it also terrifying. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about this too much. You know what, We're gonna
Speaker 1: take another quick break and I'm gonna calm down, and
Speaker 1: then we'll cover the rest of the tech news. Some
Speaker 1: engineers and researchers at m I T, the University of Minnesota,
Speaker 1: and Samsung have developed a new kind of Terra Hurts
Speaker 1: camera that can operate at room temperature and room pressure,
Speaker 1: which opens up the possibility for this tech to be
Speaker 1: used in many different areas, including stuff like airport security.
Speaker 1: So the cameras capable of generating and detecting waves and
Speaker 1: the terror Hurts range of the electromagnetic spectrum. This puts
Speaker 1: this kind of radiation between microwaves and visible light. It
Speaker 1: inhabits that space, and these waves can penetrate lots of
Speaker 1: different kinds of materials, non metallic materials, not all of them,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them, and that's one reason why
Speaker 1: it could be useful in security operations. They can also
Speaker 1: detect signatures of certain molecules, so in an industrial setting,
Speaker 1: you could use this kind of technology to analyze materials
Speaker 1: for certain types of molecules, but you can do it
Speaker 1: in a non invasive, nondestructive way that could be really
Speaker 1: valuable to the camera works by sending out light. It
Speaker 1: stimulates these little particles called quantum dots, which I've talked
Speaker 1: about in tech stuff episodes from a long time ago.
Speaker 1: I probably need to do a new one. But it
Speaker 1: stimulates quantum dots by using a terror hurts wave. So
Speaker 1: it generates a terror hurts wave, sends that to affect
Speaker 1: these quantum dots, which then emit light, and that light
Speaker 1: can then be recorded by a sensor similar to the
Speaker 1: kind we use in digital cameras. The team created a
Speaker 1: device that produces images that not just show what was imaged,
Speaker 1: but can show the polarization state of terror Hurts waves,
Speaker 1: which can give you ideas as to the nature of
Speaker 1: whatever was image. And I think of this tech as
Speaker 1: being similar to kind of like thermal imaging sensors. Thermal
Speaker 1: imaging goggles, for example, detect infrared radiation and they send
Speaker 1: that data to a system that converts the information into
Speaker 1: something we can see. So when you put on thermal
Speaker 1: goggles and you see like that heat signature, you know,
Speaker 1: like predator vision, that that's thanks to a system that
Speaker 1: is taking the thermal information and then matching that two
Speaker 1: colors that we can see in order to indicate levels
Speaker 1: of heat. Otherwise it would just be invisible to us,
Speaker 1: So it has to be converted into the visible range
Speaker 1: for us to be able to see it, right, That
Speaker 1: makes sense, Same sort of thing here. The researchers have
Speaker 1: made big strides towards solving some massive engineering challenges when
Speaker 1: using terror hurts cameras. You know, being able to operate
Speaker 1: a room to sure and at room pressure is huge,
Speaker 1: But there are other obstacles that we have to overcome
Speaker 1: before this tech could go into widespread use, namely, generating
Speaker 1: terror hurts waves in the first place is a complicated process,
Speaker 1: and the current tech that we have to rely upon
Speaker 1: uses really expensive large laser systems, so it's not something
Speaker 1: that would be practical right now. We would need to
Speaker 1: make greater strides in being able to create terror hurts
Speaker 1: waves without the reliance of things like laser systems, which
Speaker 1: people are working on, but we have ways to go. Recently,
Speaker 1: representatives at the Atacama Large Millimeter Array Observatory in Chile,
Speaker 1: which houses large important radio antenna that are used in
Speaker 1: astronomical observations, revealed that the facility had to shut down
Speaker 1: starting in late October due to a cyber attack. The
Speaker 1: rep said the attackers did not affect scientific data, so
Speaker 1: they weren't able to compromise information from recent observations. Nor
Speaker 1: were they able to get actual access to the antennas themselves,
Speaker 1: so they weren't able to damage the array of radio antennas.
Speaker 1: But other network systems were affected, you know, things like
Speaker 1: administrative systems, email systems, that kind of stuff, so they
Speaker 1: had to shut it down to contain it. The statement
Speaker 1: indicated that the attack has been contained, but an investigation
Speaker 1: is ongoing and as of now they are unsure when
Speaker 1: the observatory will be able to go back to normal operations.
Speaker 1: I've done episodes about AI powered machines competing against humans
Speaker 1: in various games, as well as the related topic of
Speaker 1: solvable versus unsolvable games. So a solvable game is one that,
Speaker 1: if you assume both players are playing perfectly, you can
Speaker 1: predict the outcome from any position even before a single
Speaker 1: move is made. You know, you have to have complete
Speaker 1: information about the game in order for this to work,
Speaker 1: but it is possible. So for example, in Connect four,
Speaker 1: assuming that both players are playing perfectly, player one will
Speaker 1: all days win just from the beginning Anyway, there are
Speaker 1: other games that have lots of different potential outcomes, and
Speaker 1: some of those are games that humans were for a
Speaker 1: very long time able to dominate. So you've likely heard
Speaker 1: about the various chess programs like Deep Blue that played
Speaker 1: at superhuman levels and were able to beat chess champions.
Speaker 1: But another board game that computers for a long time
Speaker 1: we're good at, but not not better than humans. But
Speaker 1: then eventually overtook us is Go. So back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and sixteen, Alpha Go and AI emerged as a
Speaker 1: formidable computer opponent, defeating the best human Go players, and
Speaker 1: so for the first time in history, a computer was
Speaker 1: able to play Go at a level better than expert humans.
Speaker 1: But recently, some researchers found that they could beat a
Speaker 1: go playing AI called Cateago, which is also capable of
Speaker 1: beating human champions. But they could beat Catego using a
Speaker 1: very quirky strategy. So the researchers took a much weaker
Speaker 1: go playing AI program. So they got like a computer
Speaker 1: program that can play Go, but it plays it at
Speaker 1: a level where even amateur players human players can defeat
Speaker 1: this AI without much trouble. And then they took this
Speaker 1: week Ai Go game playing system and put it up
Speaker 1: against Catego, which has beaten human champions, and they found
Speaker 1: that if they trained the weak AI to go after
Speaker 1: some blind spots and Catego strategy, they could actually have
Speaker 1: this inferior AI defeat a much stronger one, which sounds
Speaker 1: really weird, right. I mean, we humans can get pantsed
Speaker 1: by Cateago, but we can beat this weaker AI system. However,
Speaker 1: the weaker AI system can beat Catego. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like paper rock scissors in that way, and you might think, well,
Speaker 1: how is this even possible? Bowl Well, during the training
Speaker 1: process for Catego, Catego would refine its approach by playing
Speaker 1: millions of games against itself. But this refining process meant
Speaker 1: that over time, Catego would naturally concentrate on particular moves
Speaker 1: and sequences within the game and migrate away from more rare,
Speaker 1: outlying possibilities. And that meant that some legal moves were
Speaker 1: largely ignored because they were just not likely to occur.
Speaker 1: But this weaker AI, by focusing on those unlikely moves,
Speaker 1: was able to make moves that Catego wasn't able to anticipate.
Speaker 1: And that's interesting because it meant that this system that
Speaker 1: could potentially just beat the best go players could be
Speaker 1: defeated by something far inferior, and that should also raise
Speaker 1: red flags to us not not for go necessarily. This
Speaker 1: is an entertaining version of a larger issue that we
Speaker 1: should really pay attention to. When I hear a story
Speaker 1: like this, I think about other uses of AI, especially
Speaker 1: AI that has been trained through machine learning in processes
Speaker 1: similar to kindago and AI can sometimes, on the surface
Speaker 1: appear to be really capable, but knowing that it can
Speaker 1: be thrown for a loop if it encounters something that's
Speaker 1: outside its training parameters should make us wary. Take, for example,
Speaker 1: self driving cars. While we can train autonomous driving systems
Speaker 1: in countless scenarios, and we can take information from real
Speaker 1: world experiences and use that to continue to to augment
Speaker 1: as self driving systems capabilities, the fact is the real
Speaker 1: world could throw some really strange stuff at us occasionally.
Speaker 1: And while humans might be able to make a split
Speaker 1: second decision and avoid an accident even if they encounter
Speaker 1: something they have never seen before, and AI system can
Speaker 1: lack that capability and make a bad choice, which is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest challenges when we come to truly
Speaker 1: refining AI for specific use that we need to remember
Speaker 1: that with these these machine learning processes, we can create
Speaker 1: blind spots, and those blind spots. If it's a possibility
Speaker 1: that those blind spots could occur in the real world,
Speaker 1: they will occur, and when they do, it's going to
Speaker 1: throw these AI systems for a loop. Whether that AI
Speaker 1: system is used to detect things like you know, financial uh,
Speaker 1: misappropriation of funds, or it's designed to control a car
Speaker 1: as it goes down the highway or whatever. If there
Speaker 1: are blind spots that are possible, then they will happen
Speaker 1: at some point or another, and we need to be
Speaker 1: on the lookout for that kind of thing. It's fun
Speaker 1: with go not so much fun if you're in a
Speaker 1: car that's being controlled by a robot and there's no
Speaker 1: human controls available to you. That would be scary. Finally,
Speaker 1: talking about scary, Palmer Lucky, who's the guy who created
Speaker 1: the oculus and then subsequently went on to reveal that
Speaker 1: he can be a pretty awful person, has created a
Speaker 1: VR headset that can kill you. He posted about this
Speaker 1: on his blog over the weekend. Because November six, two
Speaker 1: twenty two is an important date in the fictional series
Speaker 1: Sword Art Online. So in that series, a deranged tech
Speaker 1: genius creates a really immersive game and a VR headset
Speaker 1: used to access that game, and it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: the most incredible experience ever. But what people don't know
Speaker 1: is that he also built into this headset, which is
Speaker 1: called the Nerve Gear, a system of powerful microwaves that
Speaker 1: are designed to kill the user if they die in
Speaker 1: the game. So if you die in the game, you
Speaker 1: die in real life. It's an old sci fi trope.
Speaker 1: Similar Literally, you cannot remove the nerve Gear without activating
Speaker 1: the kill switch, which makes me think of movies like
Speaker 1: Battle Royale where you've got characters wearing explosive collars. That
Speaker 1: the Hunger games is the same way the explosive colors,
Speaker 1: where they can activate the collar and kill someone if
Speaker 1: they are breaking the rules of the game or they're
Speaker 1: in the wrong region at the wrong time. Well, Palmer
Speaker 1: thought this was such a cool idea he built something similar.
Speaker 1: He didn't use microwaves because he can't really mantorize that
Speaker 1: technology to a point where you could fit it into
Speaker 1: a headset. So instead of using microwaves, he has used explosives.
Speaker 1: He has positioned three small explosive devices on the headset,
Speaker 1: and they are wired, so that should the headset indicate
Speaker 1: that the player has died in the game by flashing
Speaker 1: a red screen up at a certain frequency, the explosives
Speaker 1: will trigger and the player's head would get blowed up
Speaker 1: in real life. So you die in the game, this
Speaker 1: headset kill you. Palmer then goes on to say he
Speaker 1: has yet to build in a system that would make
Speaker 1: the headset explode if you tried to take it off,
Speaker 1: so it's not like it's tamper proof, so shucks, and
Speaker 1: that he also is not sure that the explosives couldn't
Speaker 1: be triggered by accident, So in other words, you might
Speaker 1: be playing the game not die, but the explosives get
Speaker 1: triggered and you get blown up. Anyway, he calls it
Speaker 1: more of an office art piece. So yeah, this is
Speaker 1: one of those cases where I feel that fandom has
Speaker 1: gone a little too far, because sometimes people take away
Speaker 1: the wrong lessons from fiction, Like I can just imagine
Speaker 1: that Palm are lucky reading or watching Hunger Games or
Speaker 1: Battle Royal for that matter, and thinking oh that's a
Speaker 1: good idea. That means you you learned the wrong lesson Palmer.
Speaker 1: That's not what that's not what they're trying to teach whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, I I don't assume that anyone's ever going
Speaker 1: to actually be putting these things on unless we truly
Speaker 1: enter a dystopian sure, in which case I'll be roving
Speaker 1: the deserts looking for gas. Because I've already decided the
Speaker 1: mad Max approach is my way. I kind of dig
Speaker 1: the punk aesthetic, so that's that's kind of my I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna be worried about the virtual reality stuff so much.
Speaker 1: It will be going after petrol. I guess that's it
Speaker 1: for this news episode of tech Stuff. We will be
Speaker 1: back on Thursday with another news episode. As a reminder, tomorrow,
Speaker 1: we are publishing an episode of The Restless Ones in
Speaker 1: the tech Stuff feed, and I encourage you to listen
Speaker 1: to it. It's a good show and you might discover
Speaker 1: that you want to dive into the entire series because
Speaker 1: I talked to a lot of interesting people this past year.
Speaker 1: Um and yeah, check it out. If you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for future topics I should cover in tech Stuff, please
Speaker 1: reach out to me. A couple different ways to do that.
Speaker 1: You can download the I Heart Radio app, which is
Speaker 1: free to downloads free to use. You can navigate over
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Speaker 1: me know what you would like to hear in future episodes,
Speaker 1: or if you prefer, you can get in touch with
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