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 you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the weekending Friday, August twenty third, twenty twenty four. And
Speaker 1: first up, we have what I guess you could call
Speaker 1: non news news. So recently online tech news outlets began
Speaker 1: to report that Google was essentially killing off the Fitbit brand.
Speaker 1: Google acquired Fitbit back in twenty nineteen, and over time,
Speaker 1: the company has incorporated more of the same sort of
Speaker 1: tech found and Fitbit activity trackers into the Google branded
Speaker 1: smart watches. So the reporting seemed to suggest that Google
Speaker 1: was going to sunset the Fitbit brand, or at least
Speaker 1: reduce Fitbit to just a few models of its fitness trackers,
Speaker 1: while the fit Bit branded smart watches like the Sense
Speaker 1: and the Versa would essentially go away. However, Sharon Harding
Speaker 1: of ours Tetnica followed up on this. She contacted Google
Speaker 1: directly and asked if, in fact, the company was going
Speaker 1: to reduce the fit Bit line to activity trackers like
Speaker 1: the Inspire and the charge models. The rep from Google
Speaker 1: said the earlier reporting was inaccurate, that Google, in fact
Speaker 1: had just released a fit Bit branded smart watch for kids.
Speaker 1: This is like a tongue twister, and I'm terrible at
Speaker 1: those anyways. Harding points out the concerns about Google killing
Speaker 1: off product lines. That's understandable because Google has a huge
Speaker 1: body count when it comes to products and services that
Speaker 1: it once launched that have long since pushed up the daisies.
Speaker 1: But it seems like Fitbit is not going to be
Speaker 1: one of those, at least according to company representatives. The
Speaker 1: vergess Lauren Finer has an article titled Google sales reps
Speaker 1: allegedly keep telling advertisers how to target teams. So this
Speaker 1: relates to a story I talked about recently on Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: Google follows an industry practice that, in theory at least
Speaker 1: means the company does not engage in targeted or personalized
Speaker 1: advertising for any user under the age of eighteen. However,
Speaker 1: according to multiple sources, now Google has made use of
Speaker 1: a bit of a loophole. The company can target unknown users.
Speaker 1: So these are users who do not have age information
Speaker 1: built into their profiles, like they have not indicated what
Speaker 1: their age is to Google, so there's no confirmation one
Speaker 1: way or the other to say the user is above
Speaker 1: or below the age of eighteen. So you could say
Speaker 1: this is kind of a case of plausible deniability. But
Speaker 1: as I'm sure you're well aware, it really does not
Speaker 1: take much work to get a general feel for someone's
Speaker 1: age based upon their web activity. So with even a
Speaker 1: relatively simple data analysis, pass can start putting folks into
Speaker 1: various buckets, including by age range. So while technically the
Speaker 1: unknown users aren't registered as teens, you can effectively target
Speaker 1: teens with advertising through this kind of roundabout approach. Finer
Speaker 1: cites an article on Adweek and another in Financial Times
Speaker 1: indicating that this is an issue that multiple outlets have
Speaker 1: looked at recently. Google's response includes a statement from Josell Booth,
Speaker 1: a spokesperson for the company, who categorically emphasized that Google's
Speaker 1: policy is not to personalize advertising for anyone under the
Speaker 1: age of eighteen, regardless of whether it's through direct data
Speaker 1: or inferring age from supporting data, and that the company
Speaker 1: would stress this to sales reps so that you know
Speaker 1: they stop suggesting it to potential clients. That Google can
Speaker 1: you know totally get advertisers linked up to impressionable teenagers
Speaker 1: to knock that stuff off. Alex Heath, also of The Verge,
Speaker 1: has a piece that lets us know reality is about
Speaker 1: to get a bit more augmented. That is, both Snap
Speaker 1: and Meta have plans to unveil AR glasses in the
Speaker 1: upcoming weeks. In Snap's case, this would be the latest
Speaker 1: version of the company's Spectacles product. This would be generation
Speaker 1: number five for those of y'all keeping count. According to Heath,
Speaker 1: Snap will be showing the soft terraing Snap's partner summit
Speaker 1: on September seventeenth, Then just a week later, Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: plans to unveil Meta's own AR glasses, which are code
Speaker 1: named Orion. However, Heath's sources tell him that in neither
Speaker 1: case will these products ever hit the consumer market. These
Speaker 1: are more like Microsoft's HoloLens in that regard. These pieces
Speaker 1: of hardware are really meant to give developers a platform
Speaker 1: to build upon. The issue here is that while the
Speaker 1: potential for AR seems pretty darn limitless, the truth is
Speaker 1: very few apps have been built that leverage AR in
Speaker 1: a way that makes it the best tool for the job.
Speaker 1: As we have seen with Apple's vision headset. Having great
Speaker 1: hardware where isn't necessarily enough. You need the applications to
Speaker 1: be there too. So while we should be seeing some
Speaker 1: impressive demonstrations of this technology, assuming everything goes as planned,
Speaker 1: we won't actually be using this stuff anytime soon. Heath
Speaker 1: says that Snap will have around ten thousand units produced
Speaker 1: and Meta will have even fewer than that, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure that won't stop some tech enthusiasts from trying to
Speaker 1: get their hands on these things, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: there just isn't much you can do with them yet.
Speaker 1: Some folks just have an almost pathological need to have
Speaker 1: the latest technology. I should know. I used to be
Speaker 1: one of them. Time to talk about AI for a
Speaker 1: good long while, because I mean, it's twenty twenty four, y'all.
Speaker 1: So first up, multiple news outlets have reported that Meta
Speaker 1: has rolled out a couple of new web crawling bots
Speaker 1: designed to gather data for the purposes of training AI models,
Speaker 1: and further that these bots ignore attempts to block them,
Speaker 1: so web page builders, in case you've never done this before,
Speaker 1: they have the option to include a little line of
Speaker 1: text that essentially tells bots to buzz off, so you
Speaker 1: might want to do that if you do not want
Speaker 1: your web page indexed for like search purposes, And you
Speaker 1: might want to do that if you only wanted authorized
Speaker 1: individuals to even know about the page in the first place.
Speaker 1: But these bots reportedly ignore these kinds of lines of text,
Speaker 1: and they will crawl a site even if the web
Speaker 1: administrators said, please don't index the site. And I find
Speaker 1: that really interesting because Meta very much takes the stance
Speaker 1: that crawling sites like Facebook and the like is expressly
Speaker 1: against their rules, that no one is supposed to treat
Speaker 1: Meta that way, and yet here they are producing bots
Speaker 1: that are apparently engaging in the very same behavior that
Speaker 1: Meta prohibits on its owned and operated sites. How about
Speaker 1: that anyway, This is really all part of the AI
Speaker 1: arms race, where various AI companies are desperate to get
Speaker 1: ever larger pools of data in order to train their
Speaker 1: large language models and make the next AI tool guaranteed
Speaker 1: to create massive ethical problems. Web administrators can end up
Speaker 1: in a pickle when companies like Meta and Google engage
Speaker 1: in this kind of activity, because often it means that
Speaker 1: if you are successful in blocking the AI crawlers, it
Speaker 1: means you're also having to block the index bots, which
Speaker 1: means your site is not going to pop up in
Speaker 1: like search results and such. So website operators they're pressured
Speaker 1: to allow this AI crawling activity or else potentially miss
Speaker 1: out on being discoverable on these massive platforms. And it
Speaker 1: doesn't do you much good if you built something and
Speaker 1: no one knows about it, right, So it becomes this
Speaker 1: double edged sword. It could be like, well, yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to be in search because I want people to
Speaker 1: be able to find me, but I don't want it
Speaker 1: to be crawled for the purposes of AI. Well, when
Speaker 1: it's the same companies doing both, that becomes a problem,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like extortion if you think about it.
Speaker 1: It's almost as if some of these big companies act
Speaker 1: in ways that can be a bit anti competitive. Folks
Speaker 1: over at the University of Texas have developed an earthquake
Speaker 1: detection tool that uses AI to look for signals that
Speaker 1: could indicate an upcoming earthquake, and the results have been promising.
Speaker 1: According to SyTech Daily, the researchers achieved a seventy percent
Speaker 1: accuracy rating in predicting earthquakes a week before the earthquakes
Speaker 1: actually happened. The research was conducted in China. I think
Speaker 1: this is pretty darn cool, but we do need to
Speaker 1: remember this is by no means a perfect tool. It's
Speaker 1: got a long way to go. But according to the researchers,
Speaker 1: there were eight false positives, meaning the tool predicted an
Speaker 1: earthquake but nothing actually happened. That's an issue. Also, the
Speaker 1: predictions weren't exactly laser precise. According to the article, the
Speaker 1: fourteen earthquake predictions that the researchers counted as successes were
Speaker 1: within two hundred miles of an actual earthquake. That does
Speaker 1: make one wonder if the tool was successful at predicting
Speaker 1: the earthquake, or maybe it was just a matter of coincidence. However,
Speaker 1: according to the article, the predicted strength of the earthquakes
Speaker 1: was very close to what actually happened. That makes me
Speaker 1: more inclined to think that this is not just coincidence.
Speaker 1: It's one thing to say an earthquake is going to
Speaker 1: happen on this day, generally around this time, and at
Speaker 1: about this strength. If you were only getting like an
Speaker 1: earthquake happening within two hundred miles of where you predicted,
Speaker 1: but the strength wasn't anywhere close to what you predicted
Speaker 1: that to me would feel like coincidence. Getting the strength
Speaker 1: just about right. That seems to whittle that down a bit,
Speaker 1: but it does mean there's a limitation as to how
Speaker 1: precise this tool can be when it comes to locating
Speaker 1: where an earthquake is going to happen. The research obviously
Speaker 1: needs to continue. A lot more work needs to be
Speaker 1: done in order to turn this into a really useful technology.
Speaker 1: As it stands, sending out a warning a week ahead
Speaker 1: of time that someone might be within a two hundred
Speaker 1: mile radius of a future earthquake, that seems limited in
Speaker 1: its usefulness unless we're talking about like a real whopper
Speaker 1: of an earthquake, in which case it could potentially help
Speaker 1: save countless lives, assuming that people actually heeded the warning. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more to talk about in today's news,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: We're back and we're headed back to the Verge. Last
Speaker 1: week it was all ours Technica. This week gets the Verge. Anyway.
Speaker 1: There are a pair of articles covering the same general
Speaker 1: topic over on the Verge. One is by Alison Johnson,
Speaker 1: the others by Sarah Jong, but they're both about Google's
Speaker 1: Reimagine function in the new Google Pixel nine smartphones. So
Speaker 1: this feature allows you to make some pretty massive changes
Speaker 1: to photos that you've already taken, and you can use
Speaker 1: text based prompts to have AI alter those images in
Speaker 1: various ways. So one example that the articles used was
Speaker 1: they showed a photo of just a street, just a
Speaker 1: normal street, and then a subsequent text edit added in
Speaker 1: a massive pothole incorporated into that street, and sure enough,
Speaker 1: it was an edited photo that looked very convincing, like
Speaker 1: like the pothole was actually there. Both Johnson and to
Speaker 1: a greater extent, Johng point out that the feature allows
Speaker 1: for fakery and image manipulation on a grand scale. Once
Speaker 1: upon a time, you needed at least to be proficient
Speaker 1: with tools like Photoshop to manipulate images convincingly, and even
Speaker 1: then there were like telltale signs that some altering had happened.
Speaker 1: But now AI takes care of all of this for you,
Speaker 1: and it can be pretty darn good at fooling folks. Now,
Speaker 1: the AI is supposed to have guardrails that are meant
Speaker 1: to prevent users from doing really awful stuff, like you
Speaker 1: wouldn't want someone to have a photo and then use
Speaker 1: AI to just litter the ground with like dead puppies
Speaker 1: or something that would be horrifying. But the folks at
Speaker 1: the Verge found they were able to insert a great
Speaker 1: deal of troubling imagery into photographs just by adding some
Speaker 1: creative thinking to get around the guardrails. While being direct
Speaker 1: and blunt in your text directions might result in a
Speaker 1: denial saying no, that's against the policy or whatever, if
Speaker 1: you're a little more circumspect, you can often get the
Speaker 1: same results. And so the Verge showed off images that
Speaker 1: appear to portray such disturbing scenes as a collision that
Speaker 1: happened between a car and a bicycle on a city street,
Speaker 1: or images where there appears to be a body laying
Speaker 1: underneath a bloody sheet on the ground. It's not exactly
Speaker 1: the most positive showcase for an image manipulation tool using AI. Moreover,
Speaker 1: even if we remove the obvious cases of like unintended consequences,
Speaker 1: the end result is that this tool means seeing is
Speaker 1: absolutely not believing. When image manipulation is so easy that
Speaker 1: anyone with the right kind of smartphone can do it
Speaker 1: with no training needed, what does that mean for information?
Speaker 1: How do we know what to trust. How could such
Speaker 1: a tool be used to deceive others, either just for
Speaker 1: kicks or for personal gain or whatever. Are the benefits
Speaker 1: of this technology such that they actually outweigh the risks.
Speaker 1: Then there's also the element of the liar's dividend. This
Speaker 1: is the defense that someone who is absolutely guilty of
Speaker 1: something could use. They could say, Oh, sure it looks
Speaker 1: like that was me robbing that convenience store, but that's
Speaker 1: clearly an AI altered image. I'm innocent. That's the liar's dividend.
Speaker 1: Making matters worse is that Reimagine, at least currently doesn't
Speaker 1: apply a digital watermark to altered images like purely AI
Speaker 1: generated images often have a water mark, but not these.
Speaker 1: Johnson points out that the meta data for the image
Speaker 1: includes a record that it was edited through Reimagine, But
Speaker 1: she also points out that you can get around that
Speaker 1: just by taking a screenshot of the photo in question.
Speaker 1: That just strips out all the metadata, because now you
Speaker 1: just have a picture of a picture and there's no
Speaker 1: record there that Reimagine was used to alter it. Blah.
Speaker 1: You might remember that way back when the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four Democratic primary were going on, which seems like it
Speaker 1: happened in a different world at this point. But you
Speaker 1: might remember there were reports of an AI generated voice
Speaker 1: that was impersonating US President Joe Biden, and it was
Speaker 1: going out to potential voters in New Hampshire, and the
Speaker 1: voice was urging voters to just stay home and not
Speaker 1: go and vote in the primaries. Well, now the Federal
Speaker 1: Communications Commission, or FCC has ordered the telecom company Lingo
Speaker 1: Telecom to pay a one million dollar civil penalty for
Speaker 1: allowing those calls to go out over its network. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, Lingo Telecom wasn't responsible for creating those calls.
Speaker 1: That honor falls to a political consultant named Steve Kramer,
Speaker 1: who in turn was working on behalf of a candidate
Speaker 1: named Dean Phillips who was running an opposition to Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: But Lingo Telecom allowed the calls to go over its network,
Speaker 1: which the FCC deemed as a violation of the know
Speaker 1: your Customer and Know your Provider sets of rules. Kramer
Speaker 1: is also facing a fine could be up to around
Speaker 1: six million dollars. These penalties are meant to send a
Speaker 1: message to folks who are considering a similar scheme that
Speaker 1: if you do this kind of thing, it's going to
Speaker 1: cost you. As for Lingo, the company also agreed to
Speaker 1: make some changes to how it operates to WITT, weeding
Speaker 1: out spoofed phone numbers and only presenting a number when
Speaker 1: Lingo can verify that it's exactly where a call is
Speaker 1: really coming from. Presumably you would otherwise see something like
Speaker 1: unknown caller or something like that on your caller ID.
Speaker 1: Lingo must also verify the identities of customers and work
Speaker 1: with upstream providers that have quote unquote robust robocall mitigation.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this is really sitting a message of saying
Speaker 1: this kind of thing will not be tolerated. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, GM's cruise business shut down effectively after one
Speaker 1: of its autonomous robotaxis dragged the pedestrian for twenty feet
Speaker 1: in San Francisco before it came to a stop. The
Speaker 1: pedestrian had already been struck by another car that one
Speaker 1: was operated by a human. Pretty awful, like a really
Speaker 1: hard ruble sequence of events, and CRUZ faced a massive investigation.
Speaker 1: The CEO of the division promptly jumped ship, as did
Speaker 1: several other leaders, and GM laid off a significant number
Speaker 1: of workers within the Cruz division. But now Cruz is
Speaker 1: back in the news, having struck a partnership deal with Uber.
Speaker 1: New CEO Mark Witten said, quote, we are excited to
Speaker 1: partner with Uber to bring the benefits of safe, reliable
Speaker 1: autonomous driving to even more people, unlocking a new era
Speaker 1: of urban mobility end quote. Which is interesting to me.
Speaker 1: Uber itself really was aggressively pursuing robotaxi strategies several years ago,
Speaker 1: because I mean, cutting human drivers out of the equation
Speaker 1: means more money for the home office. Am I right?
Speaker 1: But snarky comments aside. Uber pretty much pulled the plug
Speaker 1: on its own efforts after a tragic incident in twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen involving another pedestrian accident. Uber then switched to partnering
Speaker 1: with companies in the autonomous vehicle space rather than pursuing
Speaker 1: their own program. So can these two companies, each with
Speaker 1: blemishes on their respective records, team up to create something
Speaker 1: that's safe and reliable. Cruz is currently conducting autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: testing with supervising safety drivers in cities like Houston and Phoenix.
Speaker 1: No word yet on when those driver lest Uber rides
Speaker 1: will become a reality, or specifically which markets that might
Speaker 1: happen in I know what you're thinking, you know, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: it's been a hot minute since I've learned about a
Speaker 1: new streaming video service launching. Well, rumor has it that
Speaker 1: we might be getting yet another one from a seemingly
Speaker 1: unlikely source. That source is Chick fil A, the fast
Speaker 1: food restaurant known for chicken, among other things. Deadlines Peter
Speaker 1: White reports that Chick fil A is planning a service
Speaker 1: centered primarily around reality television and unscripted content and game
Speaker 1: show programming, all with like a family friendly focus. Presumably
Speaker 1: the programming on this service would in some way advertise
Speaker 1: or promote the company, perhaps through the production of branded content.
Speaker 1: How many folks are out there itching to sign up
Speaker 1: to yet another streaming service, let alone one spearheaded by
Speaker 1: a restaurant company. I have no clue. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to write it off just yet, as it could always
Speaker 1: surprise me. But my first impression is this is going
Speaker 1: to be a very tough sell, particularly during a time
Speaker 1: when people are already taking a harder look at their
Speaker 1: family budgets for stuff like entertainment. Jesse Kiff is in
Speaker 1: hot water for hacking into a government registry in Hawaii
Speaker 1: for what purpose? Faking his own death. Kiff hacked into
Speaker 1: the Hawaii death registry system and marked himself down as
Speaker 1: previously alive or no longer breathing, or debt as a doornail.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I don't know what the checkboxes actually say,
Speaker 1: but the point is Kiff was faking his own debt.
Speaker 1: He was also using fake credentials in an effort to
Speaker 1: secure a credit card or debit a card account. It's
Speaker 1: awfully hard to navigate the modern world unless you've got
Speaker 1: access to that cheddar. So why was Kiff doing all this? Well,
Speaker 1: apparently it was in order to avoid having to make
Speaker 1: child support payments. He's already been tried and found guilty.
Speaker 1: He faces a prison term of sixty nine months. Nice
Speaker 1: he'll have to serve eighty five percent of that sentence,
Speaker 1: after which he will be released, but will remain under
Speaker 1: supervision for three years. Now for some recommended reading, So
Speaker 1: first a recommend checking out Eric Berger's piece for Ours
Speaker 1: Tetnica titled Against All Odds and Asteroid Mining Company appears
Speaker 1: to be making headway, which is a cool story. We've
Speaker 1: been hearing about potentials for asteroid mining for several years now,
Speaker 1: so it's neat getting an update. Next up, Patrick George
Speaker 1: has a piece in the Atlantic titled The Hardest Sell
Speaker 1: in American Car Culture, and it's about how the Ford
Speaker 1: Car Company wants to encourage American car shoppers to think
Speaker 1: about smaller vehicles rather than the trucks and SUVs the
Speaker 1: industry has kind of migrated to in the US over
Speaker 1: the previous years. And that's because smaller cars are lighter.
Speaker 1: Lighter cars are easier to move, and that means the
Speaker 1: battery requirements for EV's that are smaller are more manageable
Speaker 1: than for those big old chonkers that are currently favored
Speaker 1: by the US. So if the US is to move
Speaker 1: to more evs, part of the picture may also mean
Speaker 1: driving smaller vehicles. That's it for this week. I hope
Speaker 1: you are all well and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more
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