Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to text Stuff and Happy New Year.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and how the tech are you? It
Speaker 1: is time for the Tech News and the first tech
Speaker 1: Stuff episode of at least the first new one, and
Speaker 1: the Tech News is for January three, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I expect it will take some time until the middle
Speaker 1: of February before I no longer have to actively think
Speaker 1: twenty three. Let's get started. C e S, formerly known
Speaker 1: as the Consumer Electronics Show, kicks off in Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: Nevada this week. That, of course, is the really big
Speaker 1: trade show, the biggest one in the United States for
Speaker 1: the consumer electronics industry and related industries. I'm sure I'll
Speaker 1: have a lot more to say about what's going on
Speaker 1: at c e S later in the week or maybe
Speaker 1: early next week as everything starts to break. But as
Speaker 1: it stands, tech outlets have been reporting in some of
Speaker 1: the pre show announcements, including how Samsung and l G
Speaker 1: are really facing off against one another in the oh
Speaker 1: LED television department, with Samsung using its q d O
Speaker 1: LED technology. The q D stands for quantum dots. It
Speaker 1: sounds like the main selling point this year is a
Speaker 1: focus no pun intended on increased brightness of these screens.
Speaker 1: That addresses one of the issues with oh LED television's,
Speaker 1: namely that while they can create a superior picture compared
Speaker 1: to l E ED t vs and superior color representation,
Speaker 1: they also tend to be more dim and that means
Speaker 1: to get the most out of them, you really need
Speaker 1: to watch them in a darker room that the screen
Speaker 1: doesn't show up well if the room is a bright one.
Speaker 1: So the press releases from l G and Samsung make
Speaker 1: it sound like the televisions that will be shown off
Speaker 1: this year at CEES have around double the brightness of
Speaker 1: older sets, so that's good. I've also seen several articles
Speaker 1: about displays like computer displays, including some about gargantuan displays
Speaker 1: like in the fifty seven inch range I think I
Speaker 1: saw for one of them. I can't even imagine having
Speaker 1: a computer screen that's that big. But like I said,
Speaker 1: this is just the very beginning of c E S.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we're going to have a lot more to
Speaker 1: talk about later in the week. Some of the stuff
Speaker 1: I talked about in our retrospective episodes about the big
Speaker 1: text stories of two are obviously going to continue into
Speaker 1: this year, which you know, I'm sure all of y'all
Speaker 1: knew already. One of those themes that we really heard
Speaker 1: about last year is this increased regulatory scrutiny that various
Speaker 1: governments around the world are directing at social net work
Speaker 1: and social media platforms. Here in the United States, we've
Speaker 1: seen a couple of proposed pieces of legislation that aimed
Speaker 1: to restrict big tech in general and social platforms in particular,
Speaker 1: but they mostly fell short. In recent years, at least
Speaker 1: the more extreme versions of those proposed pieces of legislation
Speaker 1: have fallen short. That could change this year. Politicians on
Speaker 1: both the conservative and liberal sides of the political spectrum
Speaker 1: have expressed concern about the influence of tech companies. It
Speaker 1: is interesting because the two sides tend to disagree on
Speaker 1: all the particulars, but they largely agree that the influence
Speaker 1: of these companies is concerning. Whether that concern is going
Speaker 1: to translate into legislation that has enough support to pass,
Speaker 1: remains to be seen, and then has enough authority behind
Speaker 1: it to be enforceable. That's another matter too. But as
Speaker 1: Senator Amy Klobachar has pointed out, the tech industry has
Speaker 1: influential lobbyists who can sway political opinion, which is a
Speaker 1: very polite way of saying Big Text's got a lot
Speaker 1: of money, and it uses that money to purchase political leverage.
Speaker 1: One platform that's bound to have a rough start to
Speaker 1: three here in the United States is TikTok. So late
Speaker 1: last year, the US House of Representatives issued a ban
Speaker 1: on TikTok on house managed mobile devices, which honestly just
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. Other federal and state agencies and
Speaker 1: government offices have issued similar bands, So there are a
Speaker 1: lot of places in the United States attached to local
Speaker 1: or federal government they have said you cannot put TikTok
Speaker 1: on a government owned device or a government issued device.
Speaker 1: The main concern here is that TikTok's parent company, Byte Dance,
Speaker 1: is a Chinese company, and that as such it technically
Speaker 1: has an obligation to support the Chinese Communist Party. Now,
Speaker 1: whether that means TikTok is playing the part of spy
Speaker 1: and is siphoning up tons of US data to send
Speaker 1: to Chinese analysts, that's a matter of debate. TikTok reps
Speaker 1: have repeatedly denied such allegations, but the concern is still there,
Speaker 1: and sometimes concern is all it takes in matters like these,
Speaker 1: a lack of hard evidence is rarely enough to stop
Speaker 1: bands and such. Brendan Carr, a commissioner of the Federal
Speaker 1: Communications Commission, or FCC here in the United States, has
Speaker 1: pointed to how India's government previously banned TikTok a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, and he says that's an example of
Speaker 1: how this could be achieved in a place like the
Speaker 1: United States. Car's main concerns have really been about the
Speaker 1: potential for espionage, but other folks in the US government
Speaker 1: have also issued their own concerns about how TikTok influences
Speaker 1: young users and how it's algorithm can promote harmful or
Speaker 1: misleading messages. So, in other words, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of reasons that different folks in authority here in the
Speaker 1: United States want to ban TikTok, and this might be
Speaker 1: the year when we see movement on that front. If
Speaker 1: that does happen, I imagine it's going to upset a
Speaker 1: whole lot of young folks in the United States. For
Speaker 1: one thing, how are we going to learn what the
Speaker 1: latest dances are? While we're talking about social platforms, let's
Speaker 1: spend a short time talking about Twitter. Now. There's been
Speaker 1: a lot going on over at Twitter over the last
Speaker 1: few weeks, and I haven't really been doing tech news
Speaker 1: episodes for the last couple of weeks, so I'm sure
Speaker 1: I'll be talking a lot more about the company, you know,
Speaker 1: as long as it remains a company, which at this point,
Speaker 1: who knows how long that will be. But anyway, one
Speaker 1: thing that I did mention late last year was that
Speaker 1: Twitter had apparently stopped paying its bills. That includes paying
Speaker 1: vendors such as a couple of charter flights that Elon
Speaker 1: Musk took in November that I've yet to be paid.
Speaker 1: But another overdue bill is the rent. According to court documents,
Speaker 1: the company Columbia Right, which owns the building where Twitter
Speaker 1: has its San Francisco headquarters, is more than a hundred
Speaker 1: thirty thousand dollars in unpaid rent from Twitter. Now, whether
Speaker 1: this is a sign that Twitter is in real trouble
Speaker 1: because it's stopped paying the bills, or maybe it's the
Speaker 1: people who would normally be in charge of tracking and
Speaker 1: taking care of these things are no longer with the company.
Speaker 1: I cannot say I will say this is not a
Speaker 1: good sign, but my guess is y'all are way ahead
Speaker 1: of me on that one. Switching gears pun intended to vehicles.
Speaker 1: Reuter's reports that last year electric vehicles accounted for nearly
Speaker 1: eighty percent of all new car sales in Norway. Now
Speaker 1: that country has set an aggressive deadline of when it
Speaker 1: will no longer allow new internal combustion engine vehicles to
Speaker 1: be sold within the country. Leaning the way in those
Speaker 1: cars sales was Tesla, one of the other Elon Musk companies.
Speaker 1: Norway has created tax incentives to encourage citizens to migrate
Speaker 1: to electric vehicles, but now there are some in government
Speaker 1: who want to strict some of those benefits. Namely, the
Speaker 1: concern is that people are taking advantage of tax breaks
Speaker 1: to buy luxury vehicles, which wasn't really the intent. The
Speaker 1: intent was to promote electric vehicles, not the purchase of
Speaker 1: luxury goods. So there's a concern that rich people are
Speaker 1: jumping on tax breaks in order to buy that sweet
Speaker 1: new ride when the tax incentives were intended for the
Speaker 1: average citizen. So there are some proposals to limit the
Speaker 1: tax breaks so that they don't apply to luxury cars
Speaker 1: but rather more like day to day electric vehicles that
Speaker 1: presumably are closer to being within the average citizens economic reach.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, the e V luxury car companies
Speaker 1: are not in favor of that move. Still, it's interesting
Speaker 1: to see such a huge push to electric vehicles, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of nations can learn lessons from
Speaker 1: Norway's experience, both what to do and what not to do,
Speaker 1: or at least how to do it a slightly different way.
Speaker 1: In South Korea, the gun immense antitrust regulatory body is
Speaker 1: finding Tesla two point eight billion one that's about two
Speaker 1: point two million dollars. So why are they doing this
Speaker 1: well for allegedly engaging in false advertising. But in this case,
Speaker 1: the matter is not related to autopilot or full self
Speaker 1: driving mode, both of which have come under fire from
Speaker 1: other regulatory agencies in places like the United States in
Speaker 1: the past. Instead, the claim is that Tesla gave false
Speaker 1: information about its cars driving range and how quickly they recharge,
Speaker 1: as well as how much money the average driver in
Speaker 1: South Korea could expect to save in fuel costs. Notably,
Speaker 1: Tesla changed the wording on its advertising in South Korea
Speaker 1: last February, after the regulatory agency had launched an investigation
Speaker 1: into the matter. So this fine comes at the end
Speaker 1: of almost a year long investigation. Tesla has been taking
Speaker 1: a bit of a beating in recent weeks, with its
Speaker 1: stock price dropping considerably. Yesterday I checked and it was
Speaker 1: that around a hundred twenty dollars per share. But as
Speaker 1: a cord this it is just under one dollars per year.
Speaker 1: That's an amazing drop from where it was at the
Speaker 1: beginning of two. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we've got some more tech stories.
Speaker 1: We're back, and we're back with Tesla because Tesla's also
Speaker 1: involved in a news story out of Germany. On December
Speaker 1: twenty nine, German police attempted to pull over a man
Speaker 1: behind the wheel of a Tesla as the tesla hurtled
Speaker 1: down the Autobahn. I guess hurdled as being dramatic. It
Speaker 1: was going down the Autobahn at around seventy miles per hour,
Speaker 1: but the driver did not pull over, and so the
Speaker 1: police engaged in a pursuit and they pulled up alongside
Speaker 1: the tesla, and that's when they saw that the driver
Speaker 1: was not a driver at all. The driver was a
Speaker 1: man behind the wheel, apparently asleep. His hands were not
Speaker 1: on the steering wheel at all, and the Tesla vehicle
Speaker 1: was an autopile it mode. So about fifteen minutes into
Speaker 1: this police chase, the man woke up. Then he pulled
Speaker 1: off the side of the autoban. Police found that he
Speaker 1: had attached a weight to his steering wheel in order
Speaker 1: to fool the Tesla into thinking that his hands were
Speaker 1: still on the wheel. So police suspected that he was
Speaker 1: under the influence of intoxicants, which ones I do not know.
Speaker 1: But this isn't really Tesla's fault. I cannot blame the
Speaker 1: company in this case. It instead shows how people can
Speaker 1: misuse technology or find workarounds for systems that are meant
Speaker 1: to prevent dangerous or irresponsible use. So in this case,
Speaker 1: the step of attaching a weight to the steering wheel
Speaker 1: to fool the card to thinking that the driver's hands
Speaker 1: were still on the wheel so that he could nod
Speaker 1: off behind it, that's not Tesla's fault. They didn't make
Speaker 1: this man do that. I can't even blame them for
Speaker 1: facilitating it. But it does show how uh feel we're
Speaker 1: in this dangerous time between a the the driver assist
Speaker 1: features being so sophisticated as to at least give us
Speaker 1: the false sense of security that we can take our
Speaker 1: hands off the wheel and the point where we get
Speaker 1: to a truly autonomous vehicle that can handle such things
Speaker 1: without it being a danger to the people in the
Speaker 1: vehicle or others. Now, to combine our stories that we've
Speaker 1: covered already in this episode around TikTok and our focus
Speaker 1: on cars, one potentially harmful thing that can proliferate on
Speaker 1: TikTok are dangerous trends. We've seen several of those over
Speaker 1: the recent past, and this one involves grand theft Auto,
Speaker 1: not the computer slash video game, but you know, like
Speaker 1: the actual crime of grand theft Auto. TikTok videos have
Speaker 1: started to show how certain Kia and Juande vehicles that
Speaker 1: were manufactured between te have a USB port hidden beneath
Speaker 1: their ignition covers, and that by moving the cover and
Speaker 1: then using a USB device with the proper programming on
Speaker 1: it would be thief can start up these kinds of
Speaker 1: vehicles and drive off with it with no keys needed. Apparently,
Speaker 1: this trend on TikTok has fueled a string of car
Speaker 1: thefts on Staten Island in New York, where nearly five
Speaker 1: cars were stolen recently using this method. According to the
Speaker 1: NYPD that's the New York Police Department, this marks an
Speaker 1: eighty six percent increase in car theft on Staten Island.
Speaker 1: That's a big old yikes. The NYPD has warned residents
Speaker 1: who own Hyundai or key Of vehicles that were made
Speaker 1: between one to lock their cars and maybe invest in
Speaker 1: a steering wheel locking mechanism to discourage would be thieves.
Speaker 1: As for vehicles made after, those actually include anti theft
Speaker 1: systems in the vehicles that will lock down a car
Speaker 1: if it's being tampered with. If you have an Apple
Speaker 1: dice like an iPhone or Mac and you feel like
Speaker 1: it needs new battery, then I sugge us you get
Speaker 1: that handled sooner rather than later. That's because nine to
Speaker 1: five Mac reports that in the small print of Apple's
Speaker 1: repair pages, the company has revealed that beginning on March one,
Speaker 1: the price of new batteries is going to go up. Now,
Speaker 1: how much it increases depends upon the specific device, So
Speaker 1: a new battery for a MacBook Air, for example, will
Speaker 1: be a hundred fifty nine dollars, which is a thirty
Speaker 1: dollar hike over the earlier on nine dollar price tag.
Speaker 1: Owners of MacBook pros and these standard MacBooks are looking
Speaker 1: at a fifty dollar price hike, which brings those batteries
Speaker 1: up to two nine dollars. For iPhones, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit more modest. It's a twenty dollar price hike for
Speaker 1: all models before the iPhone fourteen. And you might wonder
Speaker 1: if these price hikes are away for Apple to kind
Speaker 1: of twist the knife, because the company very reluctantly opened
Speaker 1: up a bit and began to allow customers to handle
Speaker 1: d I o Y repairs if they wanted to. But
Speaker 1: that is very much not the way Apple prefers to
Speaker 1: handle things. It prefers to have a closed garden approach
Speaker 1: where the company is the only source for products and service.
Speaker 1: They eventually bent on the service part. But it's possible
Speaker 1: the Apple might be finding ways to discourage people from
Speaker 1: doing d I Y repairs by making it more expensive
Speaker 1: to do than if you were to just go to
Speaker 1: the Apple store. I don't know if that's the case,
Speaker 1: but there are people speculating about this. But yes, if
Speaker 1: you do need to refresh your battery on any Apple
Speaker 1: device you happen to own. I gently suggest you do
Speaker 1: it before March one. The Associated Press reports that police
Speaker 1: and Louisiana relied on facial recognition technology that ultimately lead
Speaker 1: to the wrong man being arrested and detained here in Georgia.
Speaker 1: That man is randall right, He's a resident of Decab County.
Speaker 1: That's my stomping grounds, and local police here in Decab
Speaker 1: County arrested right on November twenty. He connected him with
Speaker 1: a string of robberies in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana of luxury goods.
Speaker 1: And this came as a surprise to Ride because he
Speaker 1: says he's never been to Louisiana and he didn't even
Speaker 1: know what a parish was. And it turns out that
Speaker 1: the facial recognition software got the wrong guy. Ride is
Speaker 1: a black man, and facial recognition tech is notoriously unreliable
Speaker 1: in accurately identifying people of color. This is not news.
Speaker 1: We have known that there were these problems for a
Speaker 1: while now, and yet we still have law enforcement regularly
Speaker 1: relying upon this technology while pursuing suspects, which can lead
Speaker 1: to innocent civilians being harassed and detained, and honestly, I
Speaker 1: don't think you can really come to any other conclusion
Speaker 1: but that the use of such technology is inherently racist,
Speaker 1: systemically racist practice. It disproportionately impacts innocent people of color.
Speaker 1: And while it may be that the company is making
Speaker 1: facial recognition tech aren't intending to put bias into their products,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what has happened, So whether they intend to
Speaker 1: or not is beside the point. It's happened. Anyway. Ride
Speaker 1: was in jail from November twenty to December one. Whether
Speaker 1: this is going to renew a discussion about restricting facial
Speaker 1: recognition technology in the area of law enforcement remains to
Speaker 1: be seen, but personally I think we need to ban
Speaker 1: it for that specific use case. Finally, China's government appears
Speaker 1: to be easing off on the restrictions that has long
Speaker 1: been in place for the video games industry within China.
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, we saw the government start
Speaker 1: to crack down on video games, claiming that games were
Speaker 1: harming children. It was a spiritual opiate that was addicting
Speaker 1: them to the act of playing games that would discourage
Speaker 1: them from doing other stuff like helping their family or
Speaker 1: contributing to the state or what have you. Part of
Speaker 1: those restrictions included what amounted to a ban on new
Speaker 1: video game licenses. So in China, a video game company
Speaker 1: first has to secure a license for every single title
Speaker 1: it wants to sell and market within China. So these
Speaker 1: are government issued and they can be denied. Well in
Speaker 1: you know, last year, there was effectively a ban on
Speaker 1: all new licenses, so it didn't matter what title you had,
Speaker 1: you could not get the authority to actually sell it
Speaker 1: in China. However, now the government is releasing more games licenses.
Speaker 1: So the question is have video games turned over a
Speaker 1: new leaf? Are they no longer the spiritual opium that
Speaker 1: government was so concerned about. Not really, It's more that
Speaker 1: the policy decisions really they hurt the video game industry
Speaker 1: quite a bit. And now it seems that the government
Speaker 1: is reviewing the video games industry and starting to look
Speaker 1: at that as a lucrative market and within the business
Speaker 1: world in China, and that they are hurting this market
Speaker 1: and that's the real problem. Now, the state owned press
Speaker 1: has claimed that the problem of youth becoming addicted to
Speaker 1: video games has been basically solved. I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: other than there being some restrictions on how long and
Speaker 1: how frequently young kids are allowed to play like online games.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think the wallet started hurting and China
Speaker 1: was like, oh, maybe we should back off. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: more important than our stance on whether or not this
Speaker 1: is discouraging people from being contributors to the state. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's it for the tech news that I have for
Speaker 1: you today, Tuesday, January three three. Later this week, we're
Speaker 1: sure we're going to get a lot of c e
Speaker 1: S updates and anything else in tech that Merit's real discussion.
Speaker 1: I hope you're all well, hope you had a great
Speaker 1: holiday season. I'm glad that we're back, and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Y tech Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
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