Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you. It's time for the
Speaker 1: tech news for February twenty second, twenty twenty two, otherwise
Speaker 1: known as the date where you just start hitting the
Speaker 1: number two until it's March. Let's get to it. So,
Speaker 1: back during the Trump administration here in the United States,
Speaker 1: we saw the US government pressure the social network platform
Speaker 1: TikTok to sever ties with its Chinese parent company byte Dance,
Speaker 1: citing a concern that TikTok could be siphoning personal data
Speaker 1: from US citizens and sending that information back to China.
Speaker 1: Claimed that TikTok refuted at the time, and there were
Speaker 1: a lot of other issues that were tied up with
Speaker 1: this as well. It was just that it was this
Speaker 1: larger trade war between the US and China. But it
Speaker 1: turns out that a pair of studies kind of justifies
Speaker 1: those data concerns. A group of cybersecurity experts conducted studies
Speaker 1: that we're looking into TikTok's data collection practices and concluded
Speaker 1: that TikTok has been allowing byte Dance to have full
Speaker 1: access to user data on the platform. The security experts
Speaker 1: sent their findings to the news website The Rap and
Speaker 1: The Wrap then did a very responsible thing from journalism standpoint,
Speaker 1: They sought out other experts to independently confirm the findings,
Speaker 1: which they did. TikTok, as of this recording, has not
Speaker 1: yet responded to those reports. Further, the research suggests that
Speaker 1: TikTok engineers have found a way to sidestep code audits
Speaker 1: by both Google and Apple, which could also mean that
Speaker 1: TikTok could potentially change the code without folks really knowing
Speaker 1: about it, which brings up all sorts of issue is
Speaker 1: and it suggests that TikTok has found some loopholes that's
Speaker 1: exploiting while other platforms like say Facebook, continued to be
Speaker 1: buffeted by recent changes to IOSS privacy and data tracking settings.
Speaker 1: You might remember that was a big part of why Meta,
Speaker 1: the parent company to Facebook, had such a rough year
Speaker 1: last year. They lost out on an estimated ten billion
Speaker 1: dollars in revenue because Apple changed it's it's data tracking
Speaker 1: privacy settings. Now, according to those security experts, the TikTok
Speaker 1: application can even query things on whatever devices installed on
Speaker 1: so kind of similar to the data tracking issue, where
Speaker 1: it's not just tracking your activity within the the app itself,
Speaker 1: but other stuff you're doing on your down that same device.
Speaker 1: So essentially TikTok has been able to do what Facebook
Speaker 1: used to do but no longer can do, at least
Speaker 1: if you opt out. My guess is that China isn't
Speaker 1: so much spying on individual US citizens to build out
Speaker 1: you know, dossiers on everyone, but they're rather you know,
Speaker 1: selling that data to third parties that could use the
Speaker 1: information for all sorts of stuff, you know, advertising being
Speaker 1: the obvious one, but not necessarily the only one. Anyway,
Speaker 1: It'll be interesting to see if Google and Apple respond
Speaker 1: to this or how or if TikTok will now. Let's
Speaker 1: flip over to Instagram, where the app has quietly made
Speaker 1: changes to a feature that allows users to set a
Speaker 1: daily time limit for their use of Instagram. So previously
Speaker 1: you could go into your settings and set it your
Speaker 1: your daily limit to as low as ten minutes a day,
Speaker 1: and that would make it easier to be aware of
Speaker 1: how much time you were actually spending on the platform
Speaker 1: and avoid getting sucked into hours of just scrolling. This
Speaker 1: is an opt in feature, so it's not like it's
Speaker 1: on by default, but it was there. But now that
Speaker 1: ten minute and fifteen minute time limit limit options, those
Speaker 1: are both gone. The minimum time limit that you can
Speaker 1: set now is thirty minutes. Now, I am not shocked
Speaker 1: to hear this. After all, Meta Again, Instagram's parent company
Speaker 1: had that earnings call that revealed some pretty rough news
Speaker 1: to investors. Besides that ten billion dollars in lost revenue
Speaker 1: or estimated lost revenue, it's really hard to, you know,
Speaker 1: guarantee revenue that you lost because you didn't make it.
Speaker 1: But anyway, the former iron grip that Facebook and Instagram
Speaker 1: had on the average person's online time is starting to slip.
Speaker 1: So perhaps one way the company is trying to address
Speaker 1: this is to loosen the restrictions a little bit for
Speaker 1: that daily time limit option, saying, hey, you know, thirty
Speaker 1: minutes isn't all that bad. That should probably be your
Speaker 1: upper limit um and have that set as the lowest option. Now,
Speaker 1: some folks who who have used the feature, we'll find
Speaker 1: that they will be spending more time on the platform
Speaker 1: before they bump up against their daily limit. Now, to
Speaker 1: be totally fair, this could just as easily be an example,
Speaker 1: but where Meta just saw that very few people were
Speaker 1: opting in for ten or fifteen minute time limits, because
Speaker 1: that is a very short amount of time. So it's
Speaker 1: possible that the company just said, nobody's using these settings
Speaker 1: like that, it's such a tiny thing, it doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense to support it, and they just dropped those options.
Speaker 1: Uh so you might as well, you know, ask those
Speaker 1: especially if you feel like you can't afford to discourage
Speaker 1: people from being on your platform anyway. I suspect this
Speaker 1: is just one of a billion different things that the
Speaker 1: company plans to do to try and reverse some concerning trends,
Speaker 1: namely that some platforms like Facebook have seen a decline
Speaker 1: in users or an engagement or both, and that the
Speaker 1: company has had a little bit of trouble attracting younger
Speaker 1: users to its platforms, which means that you know, the
Speaker 1: user base will shrink over time as it ages out.
Speaker 1: Pro Publica and The New York Times investigated hundreds of
Speaker 1: accounts on Twitter that appeared to be part of a
Speaker 1: Chinese propaganda campaign during the Olympics, which prompted Twitter to
Speaker 1: ban three thousand accounts, and the campaign was doing pretty
Speaker 1: much what you'd expect when you hear the word propaganda.
Speaker 1: It was trying to present an overly positive portrayal of
Speaker 1: China and the Olympic Games, while simultaneously ignoring or discounting
Speaker 1: stories related to human rights abuses in China, of which
Speaker 1: there are many. Twitter reps said that the platform banned
Speaker 1: those accounts because they were violating the company's policy against
Speaker 1: platform manipulation. So essentially the issue here was that these
Speaker 1: accounts were all trying to feed into massive conversations about
Speaker 1: the Olympics and China and to steer those conversations in
Speaker 1: a specific positive way. And you might be familiar with
Speaker 1: the term sock puppet account so way back in the
Speaker 1: early days of the Internet, I would spot these on occasion,
Speaker 1: either in chat rooms or on forums. But this is
Speaker 1: where a user creates a separate account, like they have
Speaker 1: an account with whatever it is, but they create a
Speaker 1: separate account in order to achieve some sort of goal.
Speaker 1: It's possible that they make the sock puppet, which is
Speaker 1: it's called that because it is under the control of
Speaker 1: another user who's also in the same space. Uh, the
Speaker 1: sock puppet might act like a hype man for the
Speaker 1: primary user like oh yeah, this guy is so great yea,
Speaker 1: Or sometimes the stock puppet stood in as an easily
Speaker 1: defeatable opponent, right, because if you're controlling both sides the argument,
Speaker 1: you can easily make the other side lose. So would
Speaker 1: be a straw man for the primary user to to
Speaker 1: tear down and look like a hero. The Twitter situation
Speaker 1: is similar, except instead of one fake account used to
Speaker 1: push a narrative, we're talking about thousands. They were all
Speaker 1: pushing to to shape this conversation online in a specific way,
Speaker 1: and Twitter said, yeah, you can't do that. That's manipulating
Speaker 1: the platform for your own purposes. That's against the rules,
Speaker 1: And so got to banning a remarkable with three thousand
Speaker 1: accounts there, I wonder how many more are out there.
Speaker 1: Over in the EU, a consumer advocacy group called the
Speaker 1: b e u C has called for the Digital Markets
Speaker 1: Act or d m A, which is slowly taking shape
Speaker 1: in the EU. It's set to become you know, law
Speaker 1: before too long. They wanted to include the ability for
Speaker 1: individual users to sue big tech companies for violations, so
Speaker 1: right now, as it is currently formed, the d m
Speaker 1: A would only allow business users to sue companies that
Speaker 1: violate the rules under d m A, but the b
Speaker 1: e u C once that extended to all EU citizens,
Speaker 1: whether collectively in class action suits or individually. Now, the
Speaker 1: d m A sets out the major rules that big
Speaker 1: tech companies have to follow within the EU, and specifically,
Speaker 1: it's aiming at gate keepers, and the legislation defines gatekeepers
Speaker 1: as large online platforms that quote have a strong economic position,
Speaker 1: significant impact on the internal market, and are active in
Speaker 1: multiple EU countries. They have a strong intermediation position meaning
Speaker 1: that they link a large user base to a large
Speaker 1: number of businesses, and have an entrenched and durable position
Speaker 1: in the market, meaning that it is stable over time
Speaker 1: end quote. So companies like Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and
Speaker 1: Microsoft would qualify. The regulations guarantee certain rights to third
Speaker 1: parties such as, uh, you know, if you are running
Speaker 1: your business on top of another company's platform, the other
Speaker 1: company whose platform it is, they can't uh promote their
Speaker 1: own products over yours. So the easiest example to point
Speaker 1: out is Amazon, right, because Amazon has its own brands
Speaker 1: and its own partners, and the company has stood accused
Speaker 1: many times of promoting its own products over those of
Speaker 1: competing vendors who are using the Amazon marketplace as a
Speaker 1: place to sell their stuff. And Amazon's landed in hot
Speaker 1: water all over the world for this about promoting its
Speaker 1: own products over those of the customers that are using
Speaker 1: the platform for their own online marketplace. And so the
Speaker 1: d m A and the EU would make this illegal,
Speaker 1: and it would mean that an individual would be able
Speaker 1: to sue, say Amazon, if they violated or they believed
Speaker 1: that Amazon violated the d m A. Anyway, there's no
Speaker 1: guarantee yet that we're going to see the d m
Speaker 1: A expand to allow individuals to pursue claims against big
Speaker 1: tech the way that businesses could if it's you know,
Speaker 1: when it's finally finalized. So we'll have to keep an
Speaker 1: eye out see what happens. All right, We've got some
Speaker 1: more stories to go into, but before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. You know, not too long ago,
Speaker 1: I did an update about the hyper loop, which was
Speaker 1: originally started off at least in the public consciousness, started
Speaker 1: off as a proposal that Elon Musk made two revolutionize
Speaker 1: short range travel, like travel that send the hundreds of
Speaker 1: miles but not the thousands of miles distances using enclosed
Speaker 1: trains typically the enclosed system would have a lot of
Speaker 1: the air pumped out to cut down an air resistance.
Speaker 1: You're usually talking about some sort of mag lev or
Speaker 1: other levitation style train. Uh Musk's version used air bearings.
Speaker 1: And I talked about how various companies had come up
Speaker 1: trying to make this a reality, including one that became
Speaker 1: known as First hyper Loop Technologies, than hyper Loop one,
Speaker 1: then Virgin hyper Loop one, and now just Virgin hyper Loop,
Speaker 1: and that the story was that recently Virgin hyper Loop
Speaker 1: had made the decision to pivot away from designing passenger
Speaker 1: style systems and focus more on cargo. And to that end,
Speaker 1: there's more news that now the company has laid off
Speaker 1: more than one hundred employees as part of this, that
Speaker 1: they are refocusing on cargo versus passengers, which is you know,
Speaker 1: particularly sad because it wasn't that long ago. It was
Speaker 1: just last summer that the company was showing off its
Speaker 1: passenger capabilities. But no, looks like that's not going to
Speaker 1: be at least in the near future for Hyperloop. It
Speaker 1: maybe that they'll eventually get back into that, but for
Speaker 1: now it is off the table. So just a quick
Speaker 1: update that those hundred or so folks. I think it's
Speaker 1: a hundred and eleven actually who lost their jobs. Hope
Speaker 1: they all land on their feet. Uh, but yeah, pretty
Speaker 1: disappointing if you were hoping for a revolutionary change in transportation.
Speaker 1: Then again, there are other hyper loop companies out there,
Speaker 1: you know. And I also mentioned in a different episode
Speaker 1: about how the I r S and the United States
Speaker 1: recently reversed its decision to require people to use video
Speaker 1: selfies and a facial recognition system run by a third
Speaker 1: party i D company in order to access certain I
Speaker 1: r S features online. So if you are a US
Speaker 1: citizen and you want to create an ir S account,
Speaker 1: well you can still do that video selfie and facial
Speaker 1: recognition route if you like. You are not required to,
Speaker 1: but you can use that. If you don't want to
Speaker 1: use that, then what you have to do is sit
Speaker 1: for a live virtual interview to verify your identity. Now,
Speaker 1: that sounds to me like a pretty labor intensive solution.
Speaker 1: I don't know if the I r S will be
Speaker 1: providing these interviews themselves, or you know, if they'll be
Speaker 1: working with another company, but yeah, it sounds like it's
Speaker 1: still gonna be pretty intense to to get that. I
Speaker 1: r S account established last week, a cargo ship carrying
Speaker 1: hundreds of luxury cars caught fire as it was heading
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic from Europe to North America. The cargo
Speaker 1: included cars from Porsche more than a thousand of them
Speaker 1: and Bentley more than a d nine of those, I believe,
Speaker 1: and the cause of the fire has not yet been
Speaker 1: determined or at least not yet announced as I'm recording this,
Speaker 1: but it appears that batteries in some of the electric
Speaker 1: vehicles in the cargo played a part in making the
Speaker 1: fire more difficult to extinguish. So we don't know if
Speaker 1: the batteries actually caused the fire, like if there was
Speaker 1: a short circuit, if one of the batteries was you know,
Speaker 1: damaged in transportation or something and that led to it,
Speaker 1: or if they just exacerbated a fire that got caused
Speaker 1: by some other source. But they it definitely made the
Speaker 1: fire worse. Unfortunately, all twenty two crew members of the ship,
Speaker 1: called the Felicity Ace were rescued, so there were there
Speaker 1: were no losses aboard, which is the most important thing.
Speaker 1: You know, we can replace stuff, we can't replace people.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's I'm sure for all the luxury car
Speaker 1: lovers out there. They're shedding a tear as they think
Speaker 1: of the various Porsche's and Bentley's and uch uh burning
Speaker 1: to a crisp very sad. The United States Copyright Office
Speaker 1: has answered a burning question in science fiction. Can a
Speaker 1: robot hold a copyright for a work that the robot produced? No,
Speaker 1: they can't. Actually, to be fair, that is too narrow
Speaker 1: a use case. Really, The Copyright Office has said, no
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence can secure a copyright for a work that
Speaker 1: the AI itself creates. So all those interesting projects and
Speaker 1: AI that revolve around computer systems or robots creating art
Speaker 1: cannot get a copyright for any art that they produce.
Speaker 1: This is still really too narrow a view because honestly,
Speaker 1: the Copyright Office essentially says for something to qualify for
Speaker 1: a copyright, it has to be the product of human authorship. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if it ain't made by a human,
Speaker 1: it don't get no copyright. If you had an infinite
Speaker 1: number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters and
Speaker 1: one of them created the best novel ever written, that
Speaker 1: novel would be in the public domain because the monkey
Speaker 1: ain't no human. The same is true for AI, it
Speaker 1: sounds like, and that does make an interesting note. The
Speaker 1: U S Copyright Office is one of the few entities
Speaker 1: I know of that has already determined that artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: cannot be considered equivalent to human intelligence. Now I'm being
Speaker 1: a little flippant here because this doesn't mean one that
Speaker 1: we're always going to see the Copyright Office take this interpretation.
Speaker 1: That could change over time, especially as AI gets more
Speaker 1: you know, sophisticated, and to AI as it stands is incredible,
Speaker 1: but still very much different from and arguably inferior to
Speaker 1: human intelligence when we take intelligence as a whole, not
Speaker 1: just the ability to solve problems, but when you take
Speaker 1: things like creativity, innovation, out of the box thinking, associative thinking,
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, things that humans are very
Speaker 1: good at. Most machine systems are not very good at it.
Speaker 1: So in those respects you could argue machines are still
Speaker 1: way behind us. Anyway, if you make a computer program
Speaker 1: that composes music or poetry or whatever, just know that
Speaker 1: the program will not be able to secure a copyright
Speaker 1: on the work it generates. Though I guess you know,
Speaker 1: depending upon how you word it, you might be able
Speaker 1: to get a copyright for the program itself. So that's
Speaker 1: something right. And if your robot gets depressed that the U. S.
Speaker 1: Copyright Office refuses to acknowledge its art, well it can
Speaker 1: always go apply for a job at Whitecastle. Yes, the
Speaker 1: company has announced it will be installing a robot from
Speaker 1: miso or Robotics called the Flippy two in one white
Speaker 1: Castle locations. Now, if you're not familiar with White Castle,
Speaker 1: that's a fast food chain here in the United States.
Speaker 1: Harold and Kumar like to go there. In fact, they
Speaker 1: should do another Harold and Kumar movie and make the
Speaker 1: Flippy robots look like the Terminator. That would be awesome,
Speaker 1: a great stoner science fiction comedy movie. You're welcome, Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I'll take my check. But anyway, the Flippy robot mostly
Speaker 1: looks like a robotic arm mounted to a frame that
Speaker 1: can move between fry stations. It does not look like
Speaker 1: the Terminator. So it would take some you know, poetic
Speaker 1: license to make the movie that I just pitched. But
Speaker 1: this will allow Whitecastle to automate some of the kitchen work.
Speaker 1: It is not the only fast food company that has
Speaker 1: been you know, investing in AI and robotics in order
Speaker 1: to do this. Um, I think if it means that,
Speaker 1: if it means these companies are employing fewer humans, but
Speaker 1: that they're paying the humans that they do employ more
Speaker 1: of a living wage, I'm all for it, although I
Speaker 1: of course worry that it will just mean that they'll say, hey, look,
Speaker 1: we got to cut all those salaries out of all
Speaker 1: those uh those uh, those franchises, and now we get
Speaker 1: to keep more money for ourselves. I worry that that's
Speaker 1: how it's going to go, but you know, hasn't been
Speaker 1: written yet. Maybe maybe I should hold out. Hope. That's
Speaker 1: it for today's tech news. Please let me know if
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: whether it's a technology, a company, a trend in tech,
Speaker 1: anything like that. Reach out to me on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tech Stuff h s W
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