Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: Tech Are Yet it is time for the tech News
Speaker 1: for Thursday, December fourteenth, twenty twenty three. And first up,
Speaker 1: before I actually get into the news, I really have
Speaker 1: to give a huge shout out to Ours Technica. I
Speaker 1: referenced them all the time, but for today's episode, I mean,
Speaker 1: article after article was popping up that really was relevant,
Speaker 1: and the quality of the work over at Ours Technica
Speaker 1: is taught notch. Once again, I don't have any connection
Speaker 1: with Ours Technica. I as far as I know, I
Speaker 1: don't know anyone who works there. I just really admire
Speaker 1: the work that they create. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff today will be referencing that, as I will call
Speaker 1: out out in the story after story. Anyway, our first
Speaker 1: story actually is one of the ones that comes from
Speaker 1: Ours Technica. It was written by Ashley Bellinger and it's
Speaker 1: titled Elon Musk's x AD. Revenue reportedly fell one point
Speaker 1: five billion with a B this year amid boycotts, so
Speaker 1: the story elaborates on this, saying that initially analysts estimated
Speaker 1: that X, which was actually known as Twitter at the
Speaker 1: beginning of this year. That transformation actually happened this year.
Speaker 1: It seems like an eternity ago at this point, But anyway,
Speaker 1: that X would generate around three billion dollars in AD revenue.
Speaker 1: That was the initial estimate for twenty twenty three. Instead,
Speaker 1: that number is closer to two point five billion in
Speaker 1: AD revenue. Now, keep in mind ads are just one
Speaker 1: source of revenue for Twitter, but it's the main source. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Last year it was closer to four billion dollars in
Speaker 1: AD revenue. So yeah, the site has seen a massive drop,
Speaker 1: right four billion year to two point five billion this year.
Speaker 1: It's actually five billion the year before that. Now, this
Speaker 1: doesn't come as a huge surprise because there have been
Speaker 1: numerous brands, ranging from globally recognized names to smaller niche companies,
Speaker 1: that have ceased to advertise on the platform in the
Speaker 1: wake of various scandals. Those range from Elon Musk personally
Speaker 1: elevating anti Semitic conspiracy theories to Elon Musk deciding he
Speaker 1: would reinstate the account of Alex Jones while using the
Speaker 1: cover story of it was the will of the people
Speaker 1: in a poll that some might question the validity anyway.
Speaker 1: Musk has pretty much taken the you're killing my company
Speaker 1: stance against these advertisers, accusing them of running a semi
Speaker 1: organized campaign of destruction against X. He seems unwilling or
Speaker 1: maybe incapable of acknowledging that these are consequences that stem
Speaker 1: from his own actions, and instead thinks of it as
Speaker 1: some sort of conspiracy to destroy Twitter, just to argue
Speaker 1: that I don't see the logic in companies banding together
Speaker 1: to destroy Twitter. That makes no sense because prior to
Speaker 1: Musk's takeover of the company, Twitter was looked at as
Speaker 1: a viable advertising platform. I mean, it was far from perfect,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong. Twitter was a mess before Musk
Speaker 1: took it over. But I don't know many brands that
Speaker 1: are actually eager to decrease the number of options they
Speaker 1: have when it comes to advertising. They would rather be
Speaker 1: able to advertise everywhere, like including inside your brain, if
Speaker 1: they could. Anyway, please check out the article in Ours
Speaker 1: Technica if you want more in depth analysis on the issue.
Speaker 1: I've got a lot more Musk related stories to get
Speaker 1: through for this episode. My apologies for that, but that's
Speaker 1: just how this week played out. So our next story
Speaker 1: comes from CBC's Jonathan Montpetite, who reports that several Canadian
Speaker 1: companies have also chosen to halt advertising on X. So
Speaker 1: Montpetit says that CBC investigated several accounts on X that
Speaker 1: were linked to extremists, including accounts that belonged to white nationalists,
Speaker 1: and when they were looking at the posts on these accounts,
Speaker 1: they also saw ads for prominent companies appearing in that feed,
Speaker 1: side by side with the hateful content. This actually mirrors
Speaker 1: what several other organizations have claimed to have found in
Speaker 1: the past, including the Center for Countering Digital Hate. That
Speaker 1: was one of the organizations that X threatened to sue
Speaker 1: after that nonprofit pointed out there was a rise of
Speaker 1: hateful content in general on X. That's something that advertisers
Speaker 1: would likely object to. So X has been fighting against
Speaker 1: these these these accusations or allegations, however you want to
Speaker 1: frame it. It's been fighting against these claims for the
Speaker 1: better part of the year. But organizations have found similar things,
Speaker 1: like they've discovered commonalities. So either all of these organizations
Speaker 1: are lying or at the very least manipulating data to
Speaker 1: support the narrative they want to tell, or things that
Speaker 1: X are pretty bad anyway, This story shows that X's
Speaker 1: issues with advertising extends beyond US borders. Now, on top
Speaker 1: of those issues, X continues to have sporadic technical problems.
Speaker 1: In an article titled an X outage Broke All Outgoing
Speaker 1: Links Again by Richard Lawler of The Verge yesterday afternoon,
Speaker 1: users on X found that clicking on any outgoing link
Speaker 1: in a post would only bring up an error message.
Speaker 1: Lawler reports that X appeared to resolve the issue after
Speaker 1: about an hour after it had happened, though according to Lawler,
Speaker 1: there was never any official acknowledgment from the company that
Speaker 1: the problem had even happened at all. Now, obviously, technical
Speaker 1: issues like that are also a concern for advertisers, right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't do you any good to post an ad
Speaker 1: on X if when someone who's actually interested in the
Speaker 1: ad clicks on a link and then they get an
Speaker 1: error page instead. That's no good either. As for why
Speaker 1: this problem happened in the first place, I would wager
Speaker 1: that the massive layoffs that musk oversaw at Twitter slash
Speaker 1: X means that it's much more difficult for staff to anticipate,
Speaker 1: prevent or even fix issues. But that's just my opinion.
Speaker 1: It's not something that I can point to as hard evidence.
Speaker 1: It just seems to be logical to me that when
Speaker 1: you lay off a massive amount of your engineering staff
Speaker 1: when problems crop up, it is a lot harder to
Speaker 1: address those in a timely manner. Still, it did resolve
Speaker 1: the issue in a little around an hour, which isn't terrible,
Speaker 1: I guess, especially when you consider the constraints that the
Speaker 1: team is working under. Those folks should receive huge accolades
Speaker 1: for getting the problem fixed at least within an hour.
Speaker 1: But you could also argue, well, this shouldn't have happened
Speaker 1: at all, and maybe it wouldn't have if Musk Hatton
Speaker 1: had that massive culling of staff earlier in the year.
Speaker 1: The woes don't stop for Musk yet. I don't think
Speaker 1: he's going to be counting twenty twenty three as one
Speaker 1: of the best years of his life as it's going
Speaker 1: right now, at least not the end of it. It's
Speaker 1: been a pretty rocky ride anyway. Druv Merotra and Dell
Speaker 1: Cameron of Wired and my apologies for butchering the name there.
Speaker 1: They have a piece that's titled Elon Musk's New Monkey
Speaker 1: Death Claims spur Fresh Demands for an SEC investigation. That's
Speaker 1: a wild headline, Elon Musk's New Monkey Death Claims. Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's New Monkey Death Claims to me, sounds like the
Speaker 1: name of a heavy metal band. But anyway, this is
Speaker 1: actually very serious and very sad. Business has to do
Speaker 1: with another of Musk's companies, the startup Neurolink. That's the
Speaker 1: company Musk founded that is dedicated to developing brain computer interfaces.
Speaker 1: That is a way for you to be able to
Speaker 1: interact and control computer systems using thought, and that's all
Speaker 1: you have to use. So the piece covers how an
Speaker 1: organization called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine disputes Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's claims that the primates that have died as a
Speaker 1: result of Neurolink experimentation were already terminal cases. Musk said,
Speaker 1: you know, we've had to euthanize primates that we've experimented on,
Speaker 1: but these primates were already facing death. They were already
Speaker 1: in some form of terminal health. Perhaps they had cancer
Speaker 1: or some other condition that meant that they were dying,
Speaker 1: and that they specifically picked these animals because knowing that
Speaker 1: they were going to have to be euthanized afterward because
Speaker 1: they were already facing death. The advocacy group denies that
Speaker 1: they said that, you know, veterinary data points to the
Speaker 1: animals not having any sort of terminal cases before being
Speaker 1: put through the experimental procedures that then ultimately led to
Speaker 1: the animals being euthanized, and that instead what Musk was
Speaker 1: doing was just spouting off misinformation and lies in an
Speaker 1: effort to encourage investors to pour more money into the business.
Speaker 1: That he was misleading investors, and as such, they are
Speaker 1: calling upon the US Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC,
Speaker 1: to open an investigation into Neuralink. If you want to
Speaker 1: know more about this, you should definitely read the article
Speaker 1: over and wired, but I will warn you it is
Speaker 1: incredibly upsetting. If you are tenderhearted like I am, it
Speaker 1: may disturb you. I make no apologies for being a sap,
Speaker 1: by the way, That's just who I am, and I
Speaker 1: love animals. So it was a very hard read, but
Speaker 1: I think a very important one. We're not done with
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's companies just yet. We actually have a couple
Speaker 1: more stories, but before we get to that, for goodness sakes,
Speaker 1: let's just take a quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: All right. I mentioned that we still had a couple
Speaker 1: of stories about Elon Musk companies. In this case, the
Speaker 1: company we're talking about is Tesla. So it's been an
Speaker 1: eventful week for Elon Musk. Tesla had to issue or
Speaker 1: we'll have to issue a recall for practically all Tesla's
Speaker 1: on US roads today. It's a software update kind of recall.
Speaker 1: This mas Tesla owners won't have to take their car
Speaker 1: into a dealership to have modifications performed on the vehicle
Speaker 1: or even swap out their vehicle or anything like that.
Speaker 1: They won't have to do that. But it has to
Speaker 1: do with Tesla's advanced driver assist features, namely autopilot. So essentially,
Speaker 1: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, has ordered
Speaker 1: Tesla to increase the number of warnings sent to drivers
Speaker 1: to make sure that they keep their attention on the
Speaker 1: road even when they engage autopilot. The NHTSA determined that
Speaker 1: several Tesla owners were using autopilot features outside of their
Speaker 1: approved operating parameters, and this represents a danger to both
Speaker 1: the driver and to others on the road. Now, Tesla
Speaker 1: has always included language and its official documents that these
Speaker 1: features are meant for specific use cases like highway driving. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not meant for everything. And the drivers also are
Speaker 1: so posed to always remain focused on their surroundings. They're
Speaker 1: not supposed to just let the car take over. But
Speaker 1: then you also have folks like Elon Musk who complicate
Speaker 1: matters by hyping up the autonomous features of the technology,
Speaker 1: seemingly suggesting that they are more capable than what they
Speaker 1: really are. It's the same matter that's at the heart
Speaker 1: of an ongoing lawsuit between the State of California and Tesla. Anyway,
Speaker 1: once updated, Tesla's that are in autopilot mode will perform
Speaker 1: more frequent checks to ensure that the driver is still
Speaker 1: fully focused on what's going on and that their hands
Speaker 1: remain on the steering wheel. Otherwise, the vehicle may disengage
Speaker 1: autopilot and force the driver to take over. And according
Speaker 1: to Reuter's, Tesla faces more opposition in Sweden. This stems
Speaker 1: from the company's refusal to negotiate with collective bargaining groups
Speaker 1: that represent various workers like mechanics, for example. I mentioned
Speaker 1: this in an earlier Technic New episode. But in Sweden
Speaker 1: it is customary for these worker groups essentially unions, to
Speaker 1: negotiate their own salaries and benefits with each employer. There's
Speaker 1: no national minimum wage or anything like that, so all
Speaker 1: agreements are made between the worker organizations and the employers.
Speaker 1: But Tesla hasn't played ball, and so multiple worker groups
Speaker 1: have now refused to cooperate with Tesla to apply pressure
Speaker 1: to the company. The latest of these is the Transport
Speaker 1: Workers Union, which now says it will stop collecting waste
Speaker 1: from Tesla's workshops starting December twenty fourth unless Tesla meets
Speaker 1: with these groups. Honestly, the whole situation between Tesla and
Speaker 1: the various Swedish worker groups is starting to sound like
Speaker 1: an Always Sunny and Philadelphia episode to me. And I
Speaker 1: know that Elon Musk traditionally has been very anti workers' unions,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't surprise me that it has reached this
Speaker 1: particular level now. In non Elon News, You're Welcome, a
Speaker 1: lawsuit claims that insurance company Humana has been relying upon
Speaker 1: an AI model to make decisions about agreeing to or
Speaker 1: denying care to patients mostly the latter, and that this
Speaker 1: AI model has a failure rate of around ninety percent. Yikes,
Speaker 1: So the whole story is in ours tetnaca. Once again,
Speaker 1: big shout out to them. This one is by Beth
Speaker 1: Mole and it's titled Humana also using AI tool with
Speaker 1: ninety percent error rate to deny care, lawsuit claims. So
Speaker 1: the also in that headline refers to a similar accusation
Speaker 1: against insurance company United Health, which also makes use of
Speaker 1: this same AI model. That AI model is a product
Speaker 1: titled NH Predict. It is named after the company that
Speaker 1: makes it, nave Health. The ninety percent error rate references
Speaker 1: that allegedly, when people have appealed a denial of care
Speaker 1: decision that was guided by this AI model, ninety percent
Speaker 1: of the time those decisions are reversed. So essentially, the
Speaker 1: AI model takes into account various factors to determine when
Speaker 1: benefits should end for specific medical issues. The lawsuit argues
Speaker 1: that the model is far too restrictive and it's limited
Speaker 1: and it cannot take into consideration particulars that are unique
Speaker 1: to each individual patient, so as a result, patients find
Speaker 1: their benefits cut off prematurely or denied outright, and that
Speaker 1: insurance companies are making use of this AI tool not
Speaker 1: because it is accurate, but actually for the opposite reason
Speaker 1: that it is incredibly inaccurate, but it's inaccurate and airing
Speaker 1: on the side where insurance companies aren't having to pay
Speaker 1: out as much so they can hoard all that money
Speaker 1: for themselves. There's a lot I could say about the
Speaker 1: insurance industry, but I won't because that this isn't the
Speaker 1: Pott cast for it. But the lawsuit accuses Humana of
Speaker 1: breach of contract along with several other offenses, and we'll
Speaker 1: have to see where this goes from here. I just
Speaker 1: will remind you there are lots of legitimate beneficial uses
Speaker 1: for artificial intelligence. There really are. They're ones that could
Speaker 1: have incredible positive impact on our lives. But there are
Speaker 1: other applications of AI that are unbalanced in how they
Speaker 1: will benefit one party versus everybody else, in this case,
Speaker 1: the insurance industry versus anyone who's not an insurance company
Speaker 1: or an investor in an insurance company. So we do
Speaker 1: need to wrestle with that. Next up, well, guess what,
Speaker 1: I've got another piece from ours Tetnica once again by
Speaker 1: Ashley Bellinger. Seriously, Ashley, where do you find the time
Speaker 1: to do all this stuff? Your articles are great? I
Speaker 1: just can't imagine. Gosh, you got to work super hard anyway.
Speaker 1: The article is titled trains were designed to break down
Speaker 1: after a third party repairs hackers find and yeah, this
Speaker 1: is another piece that demonstrates how companies can jealously guard
Speaker 1: their ecosystems. Right. We have the whole right to repair
Speaker 1: movement here in the United States that aims to break
Speaker 1: down those walls that companies will put up, like the
Speaker 1: John Deere tractor company. There's all these cases where farmers
Speaker 1: were arguing they should have the right to be able
Speaker 1: to maintain and repair their own equipment and not have
Speaker 1: to go to a specific authorized John Deere repair shop
Speaker 1: in order to get this stuff done. This falls into
Speaker 1: that same sort of category, but in this case it's
Speaker 1: about trains in Poland. So a hacker group called Dragon
Speaker 1: Sector investigated trains made by a Polish company called Nuog.
Speaker 1: So Dragon Sector was actually hired to do this to
Speaker 1: look into it because there was a railway company that
Speaker 1: was using these trains for NWOG and they were seeing
Speaker 1: a lot of breakdowns and were wondering what was actually
Speaker 1: at the heart of it, because it didn't appear to
Speaker 1: be hardware related. It seemed to be software related, and
Speaker 1: they wondered if something hinky was going on, so they
Speaker 1: hired these hackers to look into it. The hackers say
Speaker 1: they found the reason that apparently the software running on
Speaker 1: these trains would detect if the trains were brought anywhere
Speaker 1: other than an official Nuog facility for repairs. So if
Speaker 1: a railway company dared to use some third party repair
Speaker 1: shop in order to perform maintenance or repair on ANWOG train,
Speaker 1: the software would detect that and then trigger failures, so
Speaker 1: essentially bricking the train, which is kind of like how
Speaker 1: some smartphones would brick themselves if the phones detected that
Speaker 1: users were trying to, you know, jail break them. Newog
Speaker 1: has denied the hackers claims and threatened a lawsuit against them,
Speaker 1: but the hackers maintained that their investigation has plenty of
Speaker 1: proof that Nwogg's was fixing the game in their favor.
Speaker 1: Newogg has also suggested that perhaps a competitor actually hacked
Speaker 1: into Nuogg's trains and altered the software to make it
Speaker 1: look like nwog was walling off its ecosystem, But in fact,
Speaker 1: this is all an elaborate attempt to discredit Nuog and
Speaker 1: to really heap dirt upon their name. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a hail Mary kind of play if you ask me.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it would be impossible, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like the most likely reason why this software
Speaker 1: would include these kinds of features, assuming that the hackers
Speaker 1: are telling the truth. They also said they uncovered essentially
Speaker 1: a code that you could enter into the system that
Speaker 1: would clear all the issues. So if that's true, then
Speaker 1: it's what they're saying is, yeah, nuogg sabotages their trains
Speaker 1: so that you're forced to use Nuog to fix them.
Speaker 1: Then they just put in this code and everything's fixed
Speaker 1: because they were the ones who put the problem there
Speaker 1: in the first place. That's the allegation. Very interesting case here,
Speaker 1: all right, I've got a couple more stories to go
Speaker 1: through before we can get to that. Let's take another
Speaker 1: quick break. We're back. CNBC's Chelsea Cox has a piece
Speaker 1: titled FCC votes to ban termination fees for cable and
Speaker 1: satellite services, and that's something that I think should make
Speaker 1: a lot of American customers happy because previously, if you
Speaker 1: were a customer of a cable or a satellite provider
Speaker 1: and you wanted out of your agreement and it was
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you had entered into a two year
Speaker 1: agreement and a year and a half in you wanted out,
Speaker 1: typically to get out you had to pay a fee,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it was a prohibitively hefty fee for the
Speaker 1: privilege of ending this agreement. Personally, in my opinion, I
Speaker 1: have always thought of these fees as a way of
Speaker 1: discouraging even the meager amount of competition we see in
Speaker 1: this space here in the United States. I've said it
Speaker 1: many times. Most Americans actually have very few options when
Speaker 1: it comes to stuff like cable providers. In my neighborhood,
Speaker 1: I have two options. That's only if I don't want
Speaker 1: internet service as part of that package, right, If I
Speaker 1: want internet service as part of my cable package, really
Speaker 1: I only have one choice. The other one is so
Speaker 1: far behind that it's not really a viable choice in
Speaker 1: the first place. But one way to discourage competition is
Speaker 1: to lock customers into a multi year agreement, and then
Speaker 1: in order to make sure they stay there, you tack
Speaker 1: on this hefty fee to prevent anyone from severing that
Speaker 1: agreement early. Unsurprisingly, the FCC passed this measure right down
Speaker 1: party lines. Two members of the FCC voted against it,
Speaker 1: which is pretty typical. Like, I don't think I can't
Speaker 1: remember the last time I saw a matter where the
Speaker 1: FCC unanimously voted on a measure. It almost always comes
Speaker 1: down to party lines. Now, before I get to some
Speaker 1: article recommendations, I do have one final story. This one
Speaker 1: comes from NASA. Miles Hatfield posted a blog entry and
Speaker 1: it's titled Engineers are working to resolve issues with Voyager
Speaker 1: one computer. So the Voyager one spacecraft has traveled further
Speaker 1: into space than any other spacecraft we've ever sent up there.
Speaker 1: It's in fact, it's no longer in our Solar System.
Speaker 1: It is traveling through interstellar space, and a computer glitch
Speaker 1: in Voyager one's Flight data System or FDS appears to
Speaker 1: be the cause of this problem. It can actually receive
Speaker 1: and execute commands that we send here from Earth, so
Speaker 1: that part is still good, but it's unable to send
Speaker 1: information back to us, so we can't get any scientific
Speaker 1: or engineering data back from Voyager one. We can just
Speaker 1: send stuff to it, which which greatly limits its utility
Speaker 1: as a scientific instrument. Obviously, now engineers are hoping that
Speaker 1: they can resolve this problem, but it's likely going to
Speaker 1: take weeks in order to come up with a solution
Speaker 1: to do it, so it may be a while before
Speaker 1: we can find out if we can get Voyager to
Speaker 1: send information back to us again. And in fact, just
Speaker 1: sending a message between Earth and the spacecraft takes nearly
Speaker 1: a full day. In fact, it takes twenty two and
Speaker 1: a half hours to go from Earth to the Voyager one,
Speaker 1: and that's because of how far away the spacecraft is
Speaker 1: from US. Here's hoping NASA can implement a fix, as
Speaker 1: the story of the Voyager spacecraft has been a truly
Speaker 1: remarkable one. I've got a couple of suggested reading recommendations
Speaker 1: for y'all. One of those, No Surprise, comes from Ours Technica.
Speaker 1: This one was written by John Brodkin and it is
Speaker 1: titled Ted Cruz wants to stop the FCC from updating
Speaker 1: data breach notification rules. So yeah, it's another tech meets
Speaker 1: political news item, and it highlights what seems like an
Speaker 1: odd position from my perspective, because I would think that
Speaker 1: requiring companies to be prompt about reporting data breaches was
Speaker 1: an important component of keeping businesses, customers, investors, pretty much
Speaker 1: everybody safer. But it gets more complicated than that. The
Speaker 1: other recommendation is actually a series of articles in The
Speaker 1: Verge and they're all posted under an umbrella topic titled
Speaker 1: the Year Twitter Died. So The Verge has done an
Speaker 1: amazing job of analyzing how Twitter slash x has navigated
Speaker 1: the year twenty twenty three and makes the case that
Speaker 1: Twitter is actually dead, if only because the service now
Speaker 1: has the name X if nothing else. I won't lie.
Speaker 1: It is a lot to read. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of articles in this, but it's all very well done
Speaker 1: and it gives a pretty thorough treatment of the various
Speaker 1: issues the company has faced this year. All right, that's
Speaker 1: it for the news today. I hope you are all well,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
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