Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you. It's time for the
Speaker 1: tech news for Thursday, January five, two thousand twin D three,
Speaker 1: and let's start off with some of the stuff that's
Speaker 1: been revealed at c S, the Consumer Electronics Show, which
Speaker 1: is currently underway in Las Vegas, Nevada. To cover everything
Speaker 1: would actually take hours of coverage, and trust me, if
Speaker 1: you're curious about it, you can actually find tons of
Speaker 1: outlets giving exhaustive reporting from the show. But we can
Speaker 1: chat about a few of the interesting announcements so far.
Speaker 1: And I do this knowing that a ton of stuff
Speaker 1: is going to be announced today as well, So really
Speaker 1: it'll be next week when we can take a look
Speaker 1: back and say, what were the most interesting things that
Speaker 1: actually might be a full episode of tech Stuff, because
Speaker 1: chances are there will be more than what we would
Speaker 1: want to put into just a news episode, So let's
Speaker 1: get to it. Last night, Sony held it's c e
Speaker 1: S press conference, and I've been to a couple of these,
Speaker 1: the Sony events sometimes they can be a little weird,
Speaker 1: like there was the time I was there and Seth
Speaker 1: Rogan came out to halfheartedly talk up the company as
Speaker 1: part of this promotional tour for green Hornet. It did
Speaker 1: not look like he wanted to be there, and by
Speaker 1: the end none of us wanted to be there either.
Speaker 1: That was awkward. But this one this year was a
Speaker 1: little more straightforward. The company for once did not promote
Speaker 1: its lineup of television's TVs just weren't part of this
Speaker 1: press event. Instead, there was a large focus on PlayStation
Speaker 1: VR gaming in general, and also a partnership with Honda.
Speaker 1: So here are a few different things that we learned
Speaker 1: in the course of this event. Sony executive Jim Ryan
Speaker 1: said that gamers should be able to get a PlayStation
Speaker 1: five without nearly as much of a hassle as they
Speaker 1: did since it launched in twenty indicating that the days
Speaker 1: of shortages are mostly at an end and that is
Speaker 1: really nice. If you have been trying to get a
Speaker 1: PS five, it sounds like either now or in the
Speaker 1: near future, that will be easy enough to do if
Speaker 1: you've got, you know, the cash for it. Of course,
Speaker 1: now we're in a period of economic uncertainty, and you
Speaker 1: might want to hold onto that cash in case you
Speaker 1: need it for something else, but that's another matter. Anyway.
Speaker 1: This should also inspire game developers to start making true
Speaker 1: next generation titles rather than games that span two different
Speaker 1: generations of consoles, because as it stands right now, a
Speaker 1: lot of the titles that have come out have been
Speaker 1: PS four slash PS five titles, and in order to
Speaker 1: do that, it means you're kind of pulling your punches right.
Speaker 1: You're not swinging as hard as you could for the
Speaker 1: PS five type stuff. You're not taking full advantage of
Speaker 1: the PS five skip abilities typically. Well, now that might
Speaker 1: start to change as the console has become more available
Speaker 1: and more people buy them and you have a larger
Speaker 1: user base. Considering that the PS five is a couple
Speaker 1: of years old now, it was a pretty slow start
Speaker 1: for the console. Not entirely Sony's fault. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of mitigating factors like semiconductor shortages and such, and
Speaker 1: a pandemic, so not I can't really blame the company,
Speaker 1: but it has been a frustrating couple of years. If
Speaker 1: you are a gamer and have consistently found shortages in
Speaker 1: the various you know vendors where you would buy a
Speaker 1: new console. Sony also announced Project Leonardo. This is a
Speaker 1: new controller for the PS five that the company designed
Speaker 1: with accessibility in mind. So it is a highly customizable
Speaker 1: controller so that players who might have limited mobility or
Speaker 1: dexterity can tune this controller so that they can participate
Speaker 1: more easily in gaming. They can do things like map
Speaker 1: buttons with each other and all sorts of stuff that
Speaker 1: really can streamline the use of the controller for people
Speaker 1: who have these these issues, and I think that's super cool.
Speaker 1: We've been seeing a rise in attention to accessibility over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years in gaming, and it's it's
Speaker 1: really great to see because the industry had largely paid
Speaker 1: very little attention to such things in the past, Like
Speaker 1: you might have a mode for people who have color blindness,
Speaker 1: but beyond that, there were a lot of games that
Speaker 1: just didn't have many, if any accessibility features, and we're
Speaker 1: starting to see that change. That's great and good job
Speaker 1: Sony for doing this. Also, the video that they showed
Speaker 1: off with various gamers talking about how accessibility is important
Speaker 1: to them personally as a gamer, is really sweet. It's
Speaker 1: worth watching. The other cool announcement that Sony had was
Speaker 1: the unveiling of the FILA, which is a new brand
Speaker 1: of electric cars. It's spelled A F E E l A.
Speaker 1: This is the partnership between Sony and Honda. So the
Speaker 1: company showed off a prototype and announced that the plan
Speaker 1: is to have production cars ready for the United States
Speaker 1: by twenty six. Sony said the three main themes for
Speaker 1: this vehicle brand our autonomy, augmentation, and affinity. So I
Speaker 1: guess it's a triple A vehicle, which you know, Sony
Speaker 1: triple A studio. There you go. It sounds like these
Speaker 1: vehicles while have features that are on you know, lockdown
Speaker 1: unless owners opt into subscription services. That's been a pretty
Speaker 1: contentious practice recently. It's a little frustrating to purchase a
Speaker 1: vehicle that's technically capable of doing certain things, but you
Speaker 1: aren't able to actually tap into those features unless you
Speaker 1: first pay a monthly fee on top of everything else.
Speaker 1: That has not gone over well recently, but it looks
Speaker 1: like more and more car companies are are at least
Speaker 1: experimenting with that that business model. It sounds like the
Speaker 1: car will be absolute at least stacked with various sensors
Speaker 1: and other tech meant for driver assist or autonomous driving features.
Speaker 1: And also it will have, as you would expect a
Speaker 1: lot of entertainment features coming from Sony. Considering how autonomous
Speaker 1: driving has started to hit the steep part of the
Speaker 1: evolution curve towards full realization, it will be interesting to
Speaker 1: see how advanced their autonomous features will be by the
Speaker 1: time it comes to market, and you know whether or
Speaker 1: not it will be builled as more of a driver
Speaker 1: assist feature or truly driverless vehicle technology, and you know,
Speaker 1: how are they going to market that to customers, because
Speaker 1: we've seen with Tesla that if you don't haven't truly
Speaker 1: nailed it down, you can run into some legal problems
Speaker 1: down the line. In other ce S news, alien Ware
Speaker 1: announced it has a new five hundred Hurts desktop gaming
Speaker 1: monitor coming out. This will make Dell Slash alien where
Speaker 1: the first company to offer such a thing for actual purchase. Now,
Speaker 1: there have been prototypes of five Hurts monitors from companies
Speaker 1: like a sous in the past, but they weren't ready
Speaker 1: for the consumer market. Now. In case you're not familiar
Speaker 1: with refresh rates, that refers to the number of times
Speaker 1: per second the display you're watching will refresh the image
Speaker 1: that's on the screen. Five hurts means that the screen
Speaker 1: is doing that five hundred times per second, which is
Speaker 1: a lot. Now, granted, this monitor is just one part
Speaker 1: of the equation needed to provide that experience. You also
Speaker 1: need a graphics processing unit or GPU that can deliver
Speaker 1: that signal to the monitor properly. You also need games
Speaker 1: that are compatible with it, so if you have any
Speaker 1: one component falling short on this, you don't get that
Speaker 1: super fast refresh rate. Really, when we start talking about
Speaker 1: specs at this level, I think the only people who
Speaker 1: really need to be focused on it are the elite
Speaker 1: of the elite, like gamers who are at the top
Speaker 1: of their industry. They would probably want something like this
Speaker 1: where every micro second of advantage matters. For other people
Speaker 1: like shlubs like myself, it would be a total waste
Speaker 1: of money for me to get this kind of monitor.
Speaker 1: I would not be able to take advantage of whatever
Speaker 1: the monitor was able to do for me, except maybe
Speaker 1: I would actually recognize that I was totally dead meat
Speaker 1: even earlier in a deathmatch. Anyway, Alien Wears monitor will
Speaker 1: show up a little later this quarter, and as of yet,
Speaker 1: Dell has not announced any price attached to it. Phillips
Speaker 1: Hugh is giving you lightbulb owners a chance to synchronize
Speaker 1: their lights with their entertainment, assuming that the lightbulb owners
Speaker 1: also own a Samsung television from twenty two or later.
Speaker 1: So to do so, the Hugh slash Samsung TV owner
Speaker 1: will have to purchase a Samsung TV app for the
Speaker 1: cool price the princely sum having used that phrase in
Speaker 1: a long time of one dollars. Then they will be
Speaker 1: able to sink their lights to their television and the
Speaker 1: next time they watch an explodee bang bang, shoot him
Speaker 1: up kind of movie, the lights can time with like
Speaker 1: muzzle flashes and explosions and mood lighting. Now, to me,
Speaker 1: this sounds interesting as a concept, but I have a
Speaker 1: feeling that if I actually used this kind of feature
Speaker 1: I would quickly get very tired of it in practice.
Speaker 1: But you have to keep in mind I am also
Speaker 1: old and I am grouchy. Plus it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to justify spending a hundred thirty bucks to make my
Speaker 1: lights flash with my television. But for certain home theater enthusiasts,
Speaker 1: I'm sure this will be a super cool compliment to
Speaker 1: their setup. It's not for me, but you know, other
Speaker 1: people might absolutely love this feature. At c E S A.
Speaker 1: M D held a keynote event and Panos pan A
Speaker 1: of Microsoft appeared as part of that event, and he
Speaker 1: declared that artificial intelligence will be a major component in
Speaker 1: future Windows builds and that it will quote reinvent everything
Speaker 1: on Windows quite literally end quote. What that actually means
Speaker 1: in practice is more of a mystery. He did indicate
Speaker 1: that AI might help with certain tasks to make them
Speaker 1: more energy efficient, so they would consume less battery power,
Speaker 1: like being able to keep a camera in focus effectively. Uh,
Speaker 1: might end up being more power efficient. And yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not super sexy or anything like that, but it is
Speaker 1: a very practical application of the technology, and I think
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. I realized that, you know, it's not like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is gonna help you get better at call of
Speaker 1: duty or something like that, or it's going to give
Speaker 1: you more of an augmented approach when you are composing
Speaker 1: emails or writing reports or anything like that. Oh, that
Speaker 1: would be neat too, But even this kind of stuff
Speaker 1: where it's just managing things in the background so that
Speaker 1: you get the most out of your battery power you're
Speaker 1: also consuming less energy overall. I think that's really a
Speaker 1: great idea. Fans of Night Rider might be interested in
Speaker 1: a prototype from BMW called the I Vision D. That's
Speaker 1: d e E, which according to BMW stands for Digital
Speaker 1: Emotional Experience. This concept car is an electric vehicle that
Speaker 1: has a voice activated digital assistant, So when you talk
Speaker 1: to your car, this one can talk back to you.
Speaker 1: So that way, if you say something like come on, baby,
Speaker 1: you can do it while you're trying to accelerate up
Speaker 1: to highway speed. As you see a semi truck getting
Speaker 1: very large in your rear view mirror, it can say, well, jeez,
Speaker 1: I'll help you, are right, Probably not in that voice. Apparently,
Speaker 1: the grill on the front of the car has lights
Speaker 1: that change in color and can even form different quote
Speaker 1: unquote expressions, which is I guess where the emotional stuff
Speaker 1: comes from from that emotional experience name. Anyway, this is
Speaker 1: a concept car that means we're likely only going to
Speaker 1: see elements of the design potentially make it into future
Speaker 1: production vehicles, but we won't see this actual car become,
Speaker 1: you know, like a street vehicle. And finally, in our
Speaker 1: c E S News, Luminar a company that makes lidar hardware,
Speaker 1: has purchased a lidar data company called Civil Maps. So
Speaker 1: this was announced at a ce S press event. So
Speaker 1: the long term plan is for Luminar to leverage the
Speaker 1: data from Civil Maps as the company works to advance
Speaker 1: autonomous vehicle technology. So lightar is kind of like radar,
Speaker 1: except obviously uses lasers instead of radio waves to send
Speaker 1: signals out and then it kind of listens for the echoes.
Speaker 1: Those echos can tell a lightar system the distance to
Speaker 1: an obstacle, as well as information like how quickly the
Speaker 1: object may be moving toward or away from you, how
Speaker 1: big it is, that kind of thing. So the idea
Speaker 1: is that Luminar is is getting access to a ton
Speaker 1: of information that can help the company build out products
Speaker 1: that further advance the goal of autonomous vehicle technology. Famously,
Speaker 1: Tesla had dismissed lidar as a technology and and moved
Speaker 1: more toward optical cameras instead of lighter But where it
Speaker 1: is that Tesla has been internally testing lighter systems even
Speaker 1: though publicly they had kind of poo pooed the whole technology.
Speaker 1: So interesting there. All right, we're gonna take a quick break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll have some other tech news.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back and we're moving away from c
Speaker 1: e S. We've got a few stories we need to
Speaker 1: talk about. First up, New York City's Education Department has
Speaker 1: issued a ban on chat GPT. That's the AI powered
Speaker 1: chat bot that I've been talking about a lot recently.
Speaker 1: Yesterday's episode was partly about chat GPT, and this chat
Speaker 1: bought generates responses to queries in real time, and it
Speaker 1: creates them, you know, at the time of the query.
Speaker 1: It's not like they have a whole bunch of responses
Speaker 1: to stuff and just serves it up. It actually makes
Speaker 1: the response in time of your question. And the responses
Speaker 1: are frequently very compelling and authoritative in style. So they're
Speaker 1: presented in such a way where it feels like you're
Speaker 1: getting a reliable source of information, right like if you
Speaker 1: were to open up an encyclopedia, you would get something similar.
Speaker 1: This has been causing some concern in the education field.
Speaker 1: Teachers have been worried about students using the tool to
Speaker 1: generate stuff like essays, which means that students would be
Speaker 1: plagiarizing chat GPT and cheating on their homework. Or their exams.
Speaker 1: To that end, the New York City Education Department will
Speaker 1: ban the use of chat GPT on Education Department networks
Speaker 1: and devices, so you won't be able to access it
Speaker 1: on school networks, and any school issue device will block it.
Speaker 1: Schools that want to access chat GPT for the purposes
Speaker 1: of teaching AI classes like saying, Hey, here's an example
Speaker 1: of an AI powered chat bot. We're gonna learn how
Speaker 1: it works. Um, what's limitations are that kind of thing?
Speaker 1: They will be able to do that if they first
Speaker 1: request special permission from the Education Department. Honestly, based on
Speaker 1: how chat GPT has limited ability to provide good answers. Uh,
Speaker 1: The answers it gives appear good like appears like authoritative
Speaker 1: on the surface, but frequently the answers themselves are somewhat lacking.
Speaker 1: The real worry is that students are just going to
Speaker 1: cheat themselves out of an education, and in the process
Speaker 1: they'll get bad grades because the stuff they hand in
Speaker 1: won't be very good. So it's kind of a lose
Speaker 1: lose situation for students who depend on chat GPT for help.
Speaker 1: But chat GPT is not the only tech boogeyman out there.
Speaker 1: There's also TikTok, which continues to be the target of criticism,
Speaker 1: particularly in the United States among authorities, and recently, Anton Deborah,
Speaker 1: a cybersecurity expert, gave an interview with Futurity about the app,
Speaker 1: and Deborah said that TikTok could amount to a threat
Speaker 1: on national security, which echoes things we've heard out of
Speaker 1: the f c C and out of other government agencies
Speaker 1: and and UH and representatives. So Deborah argues that TikTok
Speaker 1: has the capacity to gather information on individuals in the
Speaker 1: US on a grand scale. And you might think, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but if I have TikTok, I mean, what the heck
Speaker 1: does the Chinese government want with my personal information? Like
Speaker 1: who am I to them? There'll be no reason for
Speaker 1: them to do that. So really I'm not concerned about
Speaker 1: it because why would I be a target? Especially like
Speaker 1: you look at TikTok and you see things like like
Speaker 1: various trends, some of which are somewhat dangerous. You see
Speaker 1: you know, people say ng or lip syncing, you see
Speaker 1: people dancing, you see people doing live hacks or like
Speaker 1: recipes that kind of stuff. You think about, what's the
Speaker 1: harm here? What use is this? But the Borrow points
Speaker 1: out that the kind of data that TikTok could be
Speaker 1: gathering might be used as a first step. That the
Speaker 1: next step could be that TikTok starts to look for
Speaker 1: people who might say work in companies or offices of interest,
Speaker 1: Like what if someone happens to work as a defense contractor,
Speaker 1: or they work in a company that's important for US infrastructure,
Speaker 1: or they work in a government office that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: This could then be used as sort of a launching
Speaker 1: ground for a deeper dive into that person's information. So
Speaker 1: TikTok might not be the front door into a wealth
Speaker 1: of protected data that the Chinese government could then exploit,
Speaker 1: but it might be the first indication that this is
Speaker 1: a person we should look at more closely, because if
Speaker 1: we can compromise them, we get access to stuff we want.
Speaker 1: So it could serve as a very large net to
Speaker 1: catch tons of stuff. That stuff could then be put
Speaker 1: through a sieve to filter out and everything that's irrelevant
Speaker 1: and then just really allow the Chinese government to focus
Speaker 1: in almost like a spear fishing attack. And while you
Speaker 1: might not have any direct connection with something that the
Speaker 1: Chinese government is actively interested in, there's a chance someone
Speaker 1: in your life could and that you could then be
Speaker 1: the connective tissue that allows for this exploitation to begin.
Speaker 1: That's what Deborah is saying, and I can see his point.
Speaker 1: I it's hard to disagree with that from you know,
Speaker 1: the perspective. Is this possible, Yes, it is possible. We
Speaker 1: actually don't know for sure that by Dance is doing
Speaker 1: anything like this with TikTok data by Dance being a
Speaker 1: Chinese company, but it is possible. And we do know
Speaker 1: that the company has engaged in some spying on journalists
Speaker 1: and the like in the past in a report that
Speaker 1: definitely didn't do TikTok any favors. So whether this is
Speaker 1: like a clear and present danger kind of situation, I
Speaker 1: can't say, but it's definitely something we have to at
Speaker 1: least be wary of. Meta is also having a pretty
Speaker 1: rough twenty three already. Yesterday, regulators in the European Union
Speaker 1: issued a four hundred fourteen million dollar fine on Meta
Speaker 1: for forcing users to accept personalized targeted ads whether they
Speaker 1: wanted to opt in or not. That's a big old
Speaker 1: deal in the EU, where the g d p R
Speaker 1: laws protect citizen data. So generally speaking, the g d
Speaker 1: P R is meant to give EU citizens the power
Speaker 1: of when, where and how they shared their personal information
Speaker 1: with companies. That seems like a pretty darn reasonable thing
Speaker 1: to me. I mean, because this is information that belongs
Speaker 1: to and pertains to a person, So should that not
Speaker 1: be the default domain of that person and not some corporation?
Speaker 1: Like it's it's like this stuff belongs to you. Some
Speaker 1: corporation can't just come and take it. They have to
Speaker 1: be able to negotiate with you about whether or not
Speaker 1: you allow them to use the information. That's the g
Speaker 1: d p R kind of domain. Well, the regulators say
Speaker 1: that Meta was collecting and exploiting EU citizen data for
Speaker 1: the purposes of targeted advertising, and the users essentially had
Speaker 1: no option but to allow it or else they couldn't
Speaker 1: use meta platforms at all. That Meta's terms of service
Speaker 1: essentially said, hey, it's my way or the highway. If
Speaker 1: you want to use meta platforms, then that means you are,
Speaker 1: by default, uh, acknowledging and and allowing this kind of
Speaker 1: data collection and exploitation. The EU is saying that's not
Speaker 1: good enough. If you want to operate here, you have
Speaker 1: to change. There's essentially saying you've got to come up
Speaker 1: with an alternative where people can still use your platform
Speaker 1: but opt out of any sort of targeted advertising or
Speaker 1: else you are not going to be allowed to operate
Speaker 1: within the EU. And now Meta has three months to
Speaker 1: come up with a plan on how the company will
Speaker 1: comply with this EU ruling. This is a pretty big
Speaker 1: blow to Meta. You know, you gotta keep in mind
Speaker 1: Meta relies on advertising revenue for the bulk of the
Speaker 1: money that the company makes, and of course Meta has
Speaker 1: already seen some hits to its revenue due to Apple's
Speaker 1: policy changes that let iOS users opt out of certain
Speaker 1: types of tracking. Uh, it'll be interesting to see how
Speaker 1: this will affect Meta. Investor confidence in the company has
Speaker 1: had some really rough earnings calls where investors have been
Speaker 1: frustrated that the company's revenues are are in a shaky's ground. Essentially,
Speaker 1: they haven't exactly plummeted, but they have taken ahead. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the company has been, you know, famously spending billions of
Speaker 1: dollars trying to develop the metaverse, which is still something
Speaker 1: that a lot of skeptics, including myself, have questioned whether
Speaker 1: or not that's really ever going to be a major
Speaker 1: thing I certainly don't believe it's going to be the
Speaker 1: future of the Internet or of online connectivity. But again,
Speaker 1: I could just be very shortsighted. Uh. So well, I
Speaker 1: guess we'll have to wait and see. Anyway, bad start there. Okay,
Speaker 1: We've got a few more news stories that I want
Speaker 1: to cover before we wrap up. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take another quick break. Okay. Uh, these next couple
Speaker 1: of stories are pretty big bummers because it's about people
Speaker 1: losing their jobs. Last year, we saw a lot of
Speaker 1: tech companies make some pretty tough decisions to reduce headcount.
Speaker 1: Uh and that has continued into three So now Amazon
Speaker 1: corporate employees received some pretty bad news. The company now
Speaker 1: plays to lay off more than eighteen thousand corporate workers.
Speaker 1: So previously the reports were that Amazon was looking to
Speaker 1: cut around ten thousand jobs. Now it's eighteen thousand. That's
Speaker 1: a pretty big jump. Now that cut represents only five
Speaker 1: percent of Amazon's corporate workforce. That alone is pretty astonishing.
Speaker 1: You know, you sit there and think, oh wow, eighteen thousand,
Speaker 1: and that's just five When you look at company wide numbers,
Speaker 1: it really gets mind blowing, at least for me, because
Speaker 1: Amazon employe is around one and a half million people
Speaker 1: across all its divisions. Because you've got to keep in
Speaker 1: mind the corporate workforce doesn't include stuff like warehouse personnel,
Speaker 1: right or delivery drivers. Previously, Amazon had focused cutbacks in
Speaker 1: divisions that were not particularly profitable. That included some hardware
Speaker 1: divisions within Amazon itself. We heard that the and I
Speaker 1: apologize for using the name, actually I won't use the
Speaker 1: name Amazon's voice activated assistant product, you know, the name
Speaker 1: That division was massively cut back earlier, or at least
Speaker 1: that's what we heard, because the company had been struggling
Speaker 1: to find a way to make that division a revenue
Speaker 1: generator and it just wasn't getting there. So another big
Speaker 1: part of the problem, and this is common through a
Speaker 1: lot of companies, including the one we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about next, is that Amazon hired a ton of employees
Speaker 1: in the early days of the pandemic because online shopping
Speaker 1: went bananas. You know, no one could go anywhere, so
Speaker 1: everyone was jumping online for everything. We saw this time
Speaker 1: and time again in so many different areas within online connectivity,
Speaker 1: whether it was in gaming or shopping or other types
Speaker 1: of services, and as a result, companies like Amazon had
Speaker 1: to hire tons of people in order to meet the
Speaker 1: demand that customers were putting on the company. However, now
Speaker 1: a lot of people have backed off of online shopping
Speaker 1: that it's not nearly as big a thing now because
Speaker 1: you've seen a lot of restrictions lifted around the world,
Speaker 1: so people are going back into actual physical stores again
Speaker 1: as opposed to ordering everything online. So now the company
Speaker 1: has more people than it really needs in order to
Speaker 1: meet customer demand, and so they're going to start laying
Speaker 1: off thousands more employees. Reportedly. Employees who will be affected
Speaker 1: by this will receive information about the layoffs later the month.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously they're aware it's going to happen, but
Speaker 1: you know, they'll find out by the end of January
Speaker 1: whether or not they are one of the folks affected
Speaker 1: by the layoffs. So I just want to wish everyone
Speaker 1: good luck that one. If you're working for the corporate
Speaker 1: Amazon offices, I hope you're not affected by this, at
Speaker 1: least not directly. And if you are, I hope you
Speaker 1: are landing on your feet as quickly as is possible,
Speaker 1: because I've been in that situation and it stinks. So
Speaker 1: here's hoping. Meanwhile, sales force a software as a service company,
Speaker 1: you know, like this cloud based software company also plans
Speaker 1: to reduce its workforce. It's going to be reducing it
Speaker 1: by ten percent. It will also have to close some offices.
Speaker 1: So like Amazon, Salesforce went on a hiring spree in
Speaker 1: the early days of the pandemic because companies were scrambling
Speaker 1: to find various tools that will allow them to pivot
Speaker 1: to remote work strategies. Like if you remember March of
Speaker 1: you just had tons of companies that were really in
Speaker 1: a rush to figure out how to make it possible
Speaker 1: to continue business as usual when people could no longer
Speaker 1: come into an office, and companies like Salesforce that offer
Speaker 1: this software as a service product, well, they were doing
Speaker 1: business like gangbusters because everybody was in need of those
Speaker 1: sorts of solutions. However, now again that we've kind of
Speaker 1: passed through the lockdown phase of the pandemic, assuming we
Speaker 1: don't have another terrible outbreak, which is a dangerous assumption
Speaker 1: to make. But you know, now that we're through that,
Speaker 1: companies have adopted new strategies. Some have really adopted remote
Speaker 1: work and they've developed their own tools or they've adopted
Speaker 1: tools that allow for that and they're good or in
Speaker 1: some cases they're compelling employees to return to the office.
Speaker 1: Hello Twitter. So sales for Force has found itself overstaffed
Speaker 1: because they just don't have the business to support the
Speaker 1: number of people they have. Now on top of that,
Speaker 1: Salesforce has really seen a reduced demand and its services overall,
Speaker 1: and it's another example of the tough environment we're seeing
Speaker 1: in the wake of the pandemic, as well as the
Speaker 1: ongoing economic uncertainty that's also playing a huge part. Right
Speaker 1: You have companies that are very budget conscious right now
Speaker 1: because there are all these worries that the economic situation
Speaker 1: is going to affect consumer spending. That you have businesses
Speaker 1: that are tightening the belt in anticipation of that, and
Speaker 1: part of that tends to be, hey, what can we
Speaker 1: afford to get rid of? And software as a service
Speaker 1: can sometimes fall into that category. If it's not a
Speaker 1: critical component of a business, then they might just do
Speaker 1: without for at least the foreseeable future. So that is
Speaker 1: also affecting Salesforce. And finally, late last month, The Guardian,
Speaker 1: a UK based news organization, found itself the victim of
Speaker 1: a ransomware attack. The attack has essentially shut down the
Speaker 1: Guardians office in London. So the office's WiFi is inaccessible,
Speaker 1: it's been locked down and according to reports, you can't
Speaker 1: even get the cash registers to work in the building's
Speaker 1: cafeteria at this point. So The Guardian has subsequently shut
Speaker 1: down its offices to all but essential staff at least
Speaker 1: until January, and it attempts to regain access to its systems.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, the attack has severely impacted the
Speaker 1: ability of The Guardian to stay on top of publishing news.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it took a herculean effort on the
Speaker 1: part of staff to get the print version of the
Speaker 1: newspaper out to vendors on time in the days following
Speaker 1: the attack, Like they pretty much almost literally stopped the presses.
Speaker 1: But I don't even want to manag gen the kind
Speaker 1: of hoops people had to jump through in order to
Speaker 1: get that to work. It isn't a phenomenal display of dedication.
Speaker 1: The company has also had to scramble to find alternatives
Speaker 1: that will allow it to cover stuff like payroll. You know,
Speaker 1: these are the sort of things that you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: think about immediately when you hear about stuff like ransomware.
Speaker 1: You might think of proprietary information or really important files.
Speaker 1: But that can also include, you know, systems that are
Speaker 1: highly automated, stuff like payroll, and when that's affected and
Speaker 1: people aren't getting paid, that's a huge impact. Right anyway,
Speaker 1: Ransomware attacks can be absolutely brutal, and there is often
Speaker 1: a strong incentive to give into the demands and pay
Speaker 1: the ransom. But security experts say that's always a bad
Speaker 1: idea because when you pay a ransom, you prove that
Speaker 1: ransomware tactics are an effective way to make money, which
Speaker 1: means you're encouraging future attacks. It's only by denying those
Speaker 1: ransoms and finding a way through the problem or around
Speaker 1: the problem in order to continue on where the attackers
Speaker 1: have less and less incentive to go through the trouble
Speaker 1: of launching an attack, because if they're not getting anything
Speaker 1: out of it, they're wasting their time. So that's why
Speaker 1: paying the ransom is always a bad idea. All right,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's the news I have for you today.
Speaker 1: There's a lot more out there that I'm sure we'll cover,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it is developing news. So I
Speaker 1: didn't want to record something that would already be out
Speaker 1: of date by the time you listen to it. But
Speaker 1: next week I'm sure we will be catching up on
Speaker 1: some other stuff in the meantime. If you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for me, there are a couple of ways you can
Speaker 1: let me know. One is to download the I Heart
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Speaker 1: You can navigate over to tech Stuff using a little
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Speaker 1: stuff in there. It will take you there, and there
Speaker 1: you will find a little microphone icon. If you click
Speaker 1: on that, you can leave me a voice message up
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Speaker 1: to send any suggestions or requests or anything like that
Speaker 1: in writing, the best way to do that is over
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle we use for the show is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff is an I Heart
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