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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the

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Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for

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Speaker 1: the weekending Friday, August twenty third, twenty twenty four. And

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Speaker 1: first up, we have what I guess you could call

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Speaker 1: non news news. So recently online tech news outlets began

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Speaker 1: to report that Google was essentially killing off the Fitbit brand.

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Speaker 1: Google acquired Fitbit back in twenty nineteen, and over time,

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Speaker 1: the company has incorporated more of the same sort of

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Speaker 1: tech found and Fitbit activity trackers into the Google branded

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Speaker 1: smart watches. So the reporting seemed to suggest that Google

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Speaker 1: was going to sunset the Fitbit brand, or at least

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Speaker 1: reduce Fitbit to just a few models of its fitness trackers,

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Speaker 1: while the fit Bit branded smart watches like the Sense

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Speaker 1: and the Versa would essentially go away. However, Sharon Harding

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Speaker 1: of ours Tetnica followed up on this. She contacted Google

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Speaker 1: directly and asked if, in fact, the company was going

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Speaker 1: to reduce the fit Bit line to activity trackers like

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Speaker 1: the Inspire and the charge models. The rep from Google

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Speaker 1: said the earlier reporting was inaccurate, that Google, in fact

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Speaker 1: had just released a fit Bit branded smart watch for kids.

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Speaker 1: This is like a tongue twister, and I'm terrible at

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Speaker 1: those anyways. Harding points out the concerns about Google killing

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Speaker 1: off product lines. That's understandable because Google has a huge

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Speaker 1: body count when it comes to products and services that

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Speaker 1: it once launched that have long since pushed up the daisies.

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Speaker 1: But it seems like Fitbit is not going to be

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Speaker 1: one of those, at least according to company representatives. The

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Speaker 1: vergess Lauren Finer has an article titled Google sales reps

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Speaker 1: allegedly keep telling advertisers how to target teams. So this

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Speaker 1: relates to a story I talked about recently on Tech Stuff.

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Speaker 1: Google follows an industry practice that, in theory at least

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Speaker 1: means the company does not engage in targeted or personalized

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Speaker 1: advertising for any user under the age of eighteen. However,

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Speaker 1: according to multiple sources, now Google has made use of

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Speaker 1: a bit of a loophole. The company can target unknown users.

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Speaker 1: So these are users who do not have age information

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Speaker 1: built into their profiles, like they have not indicated what

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Speaker 1: their age is to Google, so there's no confirmation one

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Speaker 1: way or the other to say the user is above

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Speaker 1: or below the age of eighteen. So you could say

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Speaker 1: this is kind of a case of plausible deniability. But

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Speaker 1: as I'm sure you're well aware, it really does not

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Speaker 1: take much work to get a general feel for someone's

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Speaker 1: age based upon their web activity. So with even a

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Speaker 1: relatively simple data analysis, pass can start putting folks into

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Speaker 1: various buckets, including by age range. So while technically the

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Speaker 1: unknown users aren't registered as teens, you can effectively target

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Speaker 1: teens with advertising through this kind of roundabout approach. Finer

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Speaker 1: cites an article on Adweek and another in Financial Times

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Speaker 1: indicating that this is an issue that multiple outlets have

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Speaker 1: looked at recently. Google's response includes a statement from Josell Booth,

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Speaker 1: a spokesperson for the company, who categorically emphasized that Google's

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Speaker 1: policy is not to personalize advertising for anyone under the

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Speaker 1: age of eighteen, regardless of whether it's through direct data

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Speaker 1: or inferring age from supporting data, and that the company

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Speaker 1: would stress this to sales reps so that you know

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Speaker 1: they stop suggesting it to potential clients. That Google can

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Speaker 1: you know totally get advertisers linked up to impressionable teenagers

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Speaker 1: to knock that stuff off. Alex Heath, also of The Verge,

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Speaker 1: has a piece that lets us know reality is about

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Speaker 1: to get a bit more augmented. That is, both Snap

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Speaker 1: and Meta have plans to unveil AR glasses in the

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Speaker 1: upcoming weeks. In Snap's case, this would be the latest

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Speaker 1: version of the company's Spectacles product. This would be generation

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Speaker 1: number five for those of y'all keeping count. According to Heath,

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Speaker 1: Snap will be showing the soft terraing Snap's partner summit

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Speaker 1: on September seventeenth, Then just a week later, Mark Zuckerberg

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Speaker 1: plans to unveil Meta's own AR glasses, which are code

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Speaker 1: named Orion. However, Heath's sources tell him that in neither

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Speaker 1: case will these products ever hit the consumer market. These

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Speaker 1: are more like Microsoft's HoloLens in that regard. These pieces

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Speaker 1: of hardware are really meant to give developers a platform

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Speaker 1: to build upon. The issue here is that while the

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Speaker 1: potential for AR seems pretty darn limitless, the truth is

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Speaker 1: very few apps have been built that leverage AR in

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Speaker 1: a way that makes it the best tool for the job.

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Speaker 1: As we have seen with Apple's vision headset. Having great

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Speaker 1: hardware where isn't necessarily enough. You need the applications to

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Speaker 1: be there too. So while we should be seeing some

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Speaker 1: impressive demonstrations of this technology, assuming everything goes as planned,

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Speaker 1: we won't actually be using this stuff anytime soon. Heath

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Speaker 1: says that Snap will have around ten thousand units produced

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Speaker 1: and Meta will have even fewer than that, and I'm

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Speaker 1: sure that won't stop some tech enthusiasts from trying to

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Speaker 1: get their hands on these things, despite the fact that

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Speaker 1: there just isn't much you can do with them yet.

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Speaker 1: Some folks just have an almost pathological need to have

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Speaker 1: the latest technology. I should know. I used to be

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Speaker 1: one of them. Time to talk about AI for a

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Speaker 1: good long while, because I mean, it's twenty twenty four, y'all.

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Speaker 1: So first up, multiple news outlets have reported that Meta

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Speaker 1: has rolled out a couple of new web crawling bots

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Speaker 1: designed to gather data for the purposes of training AI models,

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Speaker 1: and further that these bots ignore attempts to block them,

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Speaker 1: so web page builders, in case you've never done this before,

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Speaker 1: they have the option to include a little line of

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Speaker 1: text that essentially tells bots to buzz off, so you

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Speaker 1: might want to do that if you do not want

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Speaker 1: your web page indexed for like search purposes, And you

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Speaker 1: might want to do that if you only wanted authorized

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Speaker 1: individuals to even know about the page in the first place.

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Speaker 1: But these bots reportedly ignore these kinds of lines of text,

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Speaker 1: and they will crawl a site even if the web

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Speaker 1: administrators said, please don't index the site. And I find

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Speaker 1: that really interesting because Meta very much takes the stance

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Speaker 1: that crawling sites like Facebook and the like is expressly

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Speaker 1: against their rules, that no one is supposed to treat

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Speaker 1: Meta that way, and yet here they are producing bots

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Speaker 1: that are apparently engaging in the very same behavior that

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Speaker 1: Meta prohibits on its owned and operated sites. How about

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Speaker 1: that anyway, This is really all part of the AI

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Speaker 1: arms race, where various AI companies are desperate to get

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Speaker 1: ever larger pools of data in order to train their

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Speaker 1: large language models and make the next AI tool guaranteed

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Speaker 1: to create massive ethical problems. Web administrators can end up

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Speaker 1: in a pickle when companies like Meta and Google engage

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Speaker 1: in this kind of activity, because often it means that

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Speaker 1: if you are successful in blocking the AI crawlers, it

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Speaker 1: means you're also having to block the index bots, which

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Speaker 1: means your site is not going to pop up in

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Speaker 1: like search results and such. So website operators they're pressured

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Speaker 1: to allow this AI crawling activity or else potentially miss

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Speaker 1: out on being discoverable on these massive platforms. And it

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Speaker 1: doesn't do you much good if you built something and

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Speaker 1: no one knows about it, right, So it becomes this

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Speaker 1: double edged sword. It could be like, well, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: want to be in search because I want people to

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Speaker 1: be able to find me, but I don't want it

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Speaker 1: to be crawled for the purposes of AI. Well, when

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Speaker 1: it's the same companies doing both, that becomes a problem,

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Speaker 1: and it's kind of like extortion if you think about it.

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Speaker 1: It's almost as if some of these big companies act

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Speaker 1: in ways that can be a bit anti competitive. Folks

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Speaker 1: over at the University of Texas have developed an earthquake

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Speaker 1: detection tool that uses AI to look for signals that

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Speaker 1: could indicate an upcoming earthquake, and the results have been promising.

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Speaker 1: According to SyTech Daily, the researchers achieved a seventy percent

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Speaker 1: accuracy rating in predicting earthquakes a week before the earthquakes

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Speaker 1: actually happened. The research was conducted in China. I think

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Speaker 1: this is pretty darn cool, but we do need to

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Speaker 1: remember this is by no means a perfect tool. It's

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Speaker 1: got a long way to go. But according to the researchers,

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Speaker 1: there were eight false positives, meaning the tool predicted an

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Speaker 1: earthquake but nothing actually happened. That's an issue. Also, the

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Speaker 1: predictions weren't exactly laser precise. According to the article, the

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Speaker 1: fourteen earthquake predictions that the researchers counted as successes were

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Speaker 1: within two hundred miles of an actual earthquake. That does

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Speaker 1: make one wonder if the tool was successful at predicting

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Speaker 1: the earthquake, or maybe it was just a matter of coincidence. However,

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Speaker 1: according to the article, the predicted strength of the earthquakes

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Speaker 1: was very close to what actually happened. That makes me

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Speaker 1: more inclined to think that this is not just coincidence.

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Speaker 1: It's one thing to say an earthquake is going to

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Speaker 1: happen on this day, generally around this time, and at

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Speaker 1: about this strength. If you were only getting like an

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Speaker 1: earthquake happening within two hundred miles of where you predicted,

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Speaker 1: but the strength wasn't anywhere close to what you predicted

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Speaker 1: that to me would feel like coincidence. Getting the strength

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Speaker 1: just about right. That seems to whittle that down a bit,

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Speaker 1: but it does mean there's a limitation as to how

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Speaker 1: precise this tool can be when it comes to locating

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Speaker 1: where an earthquake is going to happen. The research obviously

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Speaker 1: needs to continue. A lot more work needs to be

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Speaker 1: done in order to turn this into a really useful technology.

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Speaker 1: As it stands, sending out a warning a week ahead

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Speaker 1: of time that someone might be within a two hundred

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Speaker 1: mile radius of a future earthquake, that seems limited in

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Speaker 1: its usefulness unless we're talking about like a real whopper

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Speaker 1: of an earthquake, in which case it could potentially help

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Speaker 1: save countless lives, assuming that people actually heeded the warning. Okay,

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Speaker 1: we've got a lot more to talk about in today's news,

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Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors.

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Speaker 1: We're back and we're headed back to the Verge. Last

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Speaker 1: week it was all ours Technica. This week gets the Verge. Anyway.

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Speaker 1: There are a pair of articles covering the same general

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Speaker 1: topic over on the Verge. One is by Alison Johnson,

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Speaker 1: the others by Sarah Jong, but they're both about Google's

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Speaker 1: Reimagine function in the new Google Pixel nine smartphones. So

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Speaker 1: this feature allows you to make some pretty massive changes

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Speaker 1: to photos that you've already taken, and you can use

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Speaker 1: text based prompts to have AI alter those images in

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Speaker 1: various ways. So one example that the articles used was

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Speaker 1: they showed a photo of just a street, just a

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Speaker 1: normal street, and then a subsequent text edit added in

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Speaker 1: a massive pothole incorporated into that street, and sure enough,

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Speaker 1: it was an edited photo that looked very convincing, like

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Speaker 1: like the pothole was actually there. Both Johnson and to

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Speaker 1: a greater extent, Johng point out that the feature allows

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Speaker 1: for fakery and image manipulation on a grand scale. Once

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Speaker 1: upon a time, you needed at least to be proficient

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Speaker 1: with tools like Photoshop to manipulate images convincingly, and even

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Speaker 1: then there were like telltale signs that some altering had happened.

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Speaker 1: But now AI takes care of all of this for you,

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Speaker 1: and it can be pretty darn good at fooling folks. Now,

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Speaker 1: the AI is supposed to have guardrails that are meant

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Speaker 1: to prevent users from doing really awful stuff, like you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't want someone to have a photo and then use

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Speaker 1: AI to just litter the ground with like dead puppies

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Speaker 1: or something that would be horrifying. But the folks at

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Speaker 1: the Verge found they were able to insert a great

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Speaker 1: deal of troubling imagery into photographs just by adding some

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Speaker 1: creative thinking to get around the guardrails. While being direct

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Speaker 1: and blunt in your text directions might result in a

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Speaker 1: denial saying no, that's against the policy or whatever, if

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Speaker 1: you're a little more circumspect, you can often get the

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Speaker 1: same results. And so the Verge showed off images that

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Speaker 1: appear to portray such disturbing scenes as a collision that

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Speaker 1: happened between a car and a bicycle on a city street,

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Speaker 1: or images where there appears to be a body laying

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Speaker 1: underneath a bloody sheet on the ground. It's not exactly

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Speaker 1: the most positive showcase for an image manipulation tool using AI. Moreover,

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Speaker 1: even if we remove the obvious cases of like unintended consequences,

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Speaker 1: the end result is that this tool means seeing is

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Speaker 1: absolutely not believing. When image manipulation is so easy that

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Speaker 1: anyone with the right kind of smartphone can do it

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Speaker 1: with no training needed, what does that mean for information?

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Speaker 1: How do we know what to trust. How could such

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Speaker 1: a tool be used to deceive others, either just for

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Speaker 1: kicks or for personal gain or whatever. Are the benefits

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Speaker 1: of this technology such that they actually outweigh the risks.

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Speaker 1: Then there's also the element of the liar's dividend. This

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Speaker 1: is the defense that someone who is absolutely guilty of

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Speaker 1: something could use. They could say, Oh, sure it looks

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Speaker 1: like that was me robbing that convenience store, but that's

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Speaker 1: clearly an AI altered image. I'm innocent. That's the liar's dividend.

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Speaker 1: Making matters worse is that Reimagine, at least currently doesn't

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Speaker 1: apply a digital watermark to altered images like purely AI

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Speaker 1: generated images often have a water mark, but not these.

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Speaker 1: Johnson points out that the meta data for the image

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Speaker 1: includes a record that it was edited through Reimagine, But

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Speaker 1: she also points out that you can get around that

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Speaker 1: just by taking a screenshot of the photo in question.

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Speaker 1: That just strips out all the metadata, because now you

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Speaker 1: just have a picture of a picture and there's no

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Speaker 1: record there that Reimagine was used to alter it. Blah.

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Speaker 1: You might remember that way back when the twenty twenty

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Speaker 1: four Democratic primary were going on, which seems like it

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Speaker 1: happened in a different world at this point. But you

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Speaker 1: might remember there were reports of an AI generated voice

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Speaker 1: that was impersonating US President Joe Biden, and it was

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Speaker 1: going out to potential voters in New Hampshire, and the

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Speaker 1: voice was urging voters to just stay home and not

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Speaker 1: go and vote in the primaries. Well, now the Federal

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Speaker 1: Communications Commission, or FCC has ordered the telecom company Lingo

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Speaker 1: Telecom to pay a one million dollar civil penalty for

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Speaker 1: allowing those calls to go out over its network. Now,

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Speaker 1: to be clear, Lingo Telecom wasn't responsible for creating those calls.

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Speaker 1: That honor falls to a political consultant named Steve Kramer,

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Speaker 1: who in turn was working on behalf of a candidate

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Speaker 1: named Dean Phillips who was running an opposition to Joe Biden.

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Speaker 1: But Lingo Telecom allowed the calls to go over its network,

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Speaker 1: which the FCC deemed as a violation of the know

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Speaker 1: your Customer and Know your Provider sets of rules. Kramer

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Speaker 1: is also facing a fine could be up to around

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Speaker 1: six million dollars. These penalties are meant to send a

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Speaker 1: message to folks who are considering a similar scheme that

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Speaker 1: if you do this kind of thing, it's going to

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Speaker 1: cost you. As for Lingo, the company also agreed to

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Speaker 1: make some changes to how it operates to WITT, weeding

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Speaker 1: out spoofed phone numbers and only presenting a number when

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Speaker 1: Lingo can verify that it's exactly where a call is

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Speaker 1: really coming from. Presumably you would otherwise see something like

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Speaker 1: unknown caller or something like that on your caller ID.

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Speaker 1: Lingo must also verify the identities of customers and work

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Speaker 1: with upstream providers that have quote unquote robust robocall mitigation.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, this is really sitting a message of saying

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Speaker 1: this kind of thing will not be tolerated. In twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty three, GM's cruise business shut down effectively after one

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Speaker 1: of its autonomous robotaxis dragged the pedestrian for twenty feet

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Speaker 1: in San Francisco before it came to a stop. The

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Speaker 1: pedestrian had already been struck by another car that one

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Speaker 1: was operated by a human. Pretty awful, like a really

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Speaker 1: hard ruble sequence of events, and CRUZ faced a massive investigation.

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Speaker 1: The CEO of the division promptly jumped ship, as did

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Speaker 1: several other leaders, and GM laid off a significant number

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Speaker 1: of workers within the Cruz division. But now Cruz is

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Speaker 1: back in the news, having struck a partnership deal with Uber.

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Speaker 1: New CEO Mark Witten said, quote, we are excited to

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Speaker 1: partner with Uber to bring the benefits of safe, reliable

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Speaker 1: autonomous driving to even more people, unlocking a new era

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Speaker 1: of urban mobility end quote. Which is interesting to me.

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Speaker 1: Uber itself really was aggressively pursuing robotaxi strategies several years ago,

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Speaker 1: because I mean, cutting human drivers out of the equation

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Speaker 1: means more money for the home office. Am I right?

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Speaker 1: But snarky comments aside. Uber pretty much pulled the plug

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Speaker 1: on its own efforts after a tragic incident in twenty

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Speaker 1: eighteen involving another pedestrian accident. Uber then switched to partnering

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Speaker 1: with companies in the autonomous vehicle space rather than pursuing

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Speaker 1: their own program. So can these two companies, each with

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Speaker 1: blemishes on their respective records, team up to create something

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Speaker 1: that's safe and reliable. Cruz is currently conducting autonomous vehicle

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Speaker 1: testing with supervising safety drivers in cities like Houston and Phoenix.

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Speaker 1: No word yet on when those driver lest Uber rides

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Speaker 1: will become a reality, or specifically which markets that might

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Speaker 1: happen in I know what you're thinking, you know, Jonathan,

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Speaker 1: it's been a hot minute since I've learned about a

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Speaker 1: new streaming video service launching. Well, rumor has it that

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Speaker 1: we might be getting yet another one from a seemingly

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Speaker 1: unlikely source. That source is Chick fil A, the fast

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Speaker 1: food restaurant known for chicken, among other things. Deadlines Peter

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Speaker 1: White reports that Chick fil A is planning a service

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Speaker 1: centered primarily around reality television and unscripted content and game

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Speaker 1: show programming, all with like a family friendly focus. Presumably

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Speaker 1: the programming on this service would in some way advertise

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Speaker 1: or promote the company, perhaps through the production of branded content.

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Speaker 1: How many folks are out there itching to sign up

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Speaker 1: to yet another streaming service, let alone one spearheaded by

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Speaker 1: a restaurant company. I have no clue. I'm not going

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Speaker 1: to write it off just yet, as it could always

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Speaker 1: surprise me. But my first impression is this is going

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Speaker 1: to be a very tough sell, particularly during a time

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Speaker 1: when people are already taking a harder look at their

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Speaker 1: family budgets for stuff like entertainment. Jesse Kiff is in

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Speaker 1: hot water for hacking into a government registry in Hawaii

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Speaker 1: for what purpose? Faking his own death. Kiff hacked into

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Speaker 1: the Hawaii death registry system and marked himself down as

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Speaker 1: previously alive or no longer breathing, or debt as a doornail.

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Speaker 1: To be honest, I don't know what the checkboxes actually say,

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Speaker 1: but the point is Kiff was faking his own debt.

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Speaker 1: He was also using fake credentials in an effort to

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Speaker 1: secure a credit card or debit a card account. It's

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Speaker 1: awfully hard to navigate the modern world unless you've got

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Speaker 1: access to that cheddar. So why was Kiff doing all this? Well,

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Speaker 1: apparently it was in order to avoid having to make

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Speaker 1: child support payments. He's already been tried and found guilty.

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Speaker 1: He faces a prison term of sixty nine months. Nice

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Speaker 1: he'll have to serve eighty five percent of that sentence,

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Speaker 1: after which he will be released, but will remain under

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Speaker 1: supervision for three years. Now for some recommended reading, So

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Speaker 1: first a recommend checking out Eric Berger's piece for Ours

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Speaker 1: Tetnica titled Against All Odds and Asteroid Mining Company appears

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Speaker 1: to be making headway, which is a cool story. We've

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Speaker 1: been hearing about potentials for asteroid mining for several years now,

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Speaker 1: so it's neat getting an update. Next up, Patrick George

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Speaker 1: has a piece in the Atlantic titled The Hardest Sell

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Speaker 1: in American Car Culture, and it's about how the Ford

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Speaker 1: Car Company wants to encourage American car shoppers to think

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Speaker 1: about smaller vehicles rather than the trucks and SUVs the

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Speaker 1: industry has kind of migrated to in the US over

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Speaker 1: the previous years. And that's because smaller cars are lighter.

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Speaker 1: Lighter cars are easier to move, and that means the

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Speaker 1: battery requirements for EV's that are smaller are more manageable

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Speaker 1: than for those big old chonkers that are currently favored

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Speaker 1: by the US. So if the US is to move

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Speaker 1: to more evs, part of the picture may also mean

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Speaker 1: driving smaller vehicles. That's it for this week. I hope

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Speaker 1: you are all well and I'll talk to you again

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Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more

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Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or

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Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.