Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Be there
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech News for September
Speaker 1: twenty sixth, twenty twenty three, and I am still in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, still recording from a hotel room. Interesting thing
Speaker 1: for a Thursday's episode, it'll be a different hotel, so
Speaker 1: a different hotel room. We'll see how how that sounds.
Speaker 1: But never mind that, let's get to the tech news.
Speaker 1: And first up here in the United States, we've got
Speaker 1: this agency called the Federal Communications Commission aka the FCC.
Speaker 1: The FCC consists of five commissioners when it's a full commission,
Speaker 1: So for more than two and a half years, the
Speaker 1: FCC has only had four commissioners, two who fall on
Speaker 1: the Democrat ideological side and to who fall on the
Speaker 1: Republican ideological side, which meant getting consensus on anything was
Speaker 1: we'll call it a challenge. But earlier this month, the
Speaker 1: US Senate approved candidate and A Gomez to the position
Speaker 1: of commissioner, which means she will hold that position for
Speaker 1: five years. Gomez also falls on the Democrat side of ideology.
Speaker 1: This week, the FCC will once again tackle the issue
Speaker 1: of net neutrality. Now, for those of y'all who are
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with that particular term, net neutrality means a few things,
Speaker 1: but essentially it gets down to the fact that Internet
Speaker 1: service providers or ISPs, should treat all traffic on the
Speaker 1: Internet equally, and further that it should mean that anyone
Speaker 1: could access all Internet content with any Internet capable device,
Speaker 1: no matter what ISP they connect to. Much of the
Speaker 1: concern about net neutrality is on how imps have a
Speaker 1: lot of power, and they could potentially allow some Internet
Speaker 1: traffic to travel on a so called fast lane while
Speaker 1: throttling traffic coming from other places. And since some ISPs
Speaker 1: like Comcast are actually part of a multi billion dollar
Speaker 1: conglomerate that also includes companies that actually, you know, make content,
Speaker 1: there's this concern that they could show favoritism. Right, So,
Speaker 1: a firm net neutrality policy would keep Comcast from, say,
Speaker 1: throttling content that came from competitors while giving its own
Speaker 1: content preferential treatment to its Internet customers. Now, there's a
Speaker 1: whole lot more to the issue other than what I've
Speaker 1: just covered, but that's kind of a high level look
Speaker 1: at it. Well, back when Barack Obama was US president,
Speaker 1: the FCC created a whole bunch of new rules to
Speaker 1: try and ensure net neutrality, But then under the administration
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump, the FCC essentially stripped away those rules
Speaker 1: and them aside. Ajitpi, who was then the head of
Speaker 1: the FCC, claimed that net neutrality was trying to fix
Speaker 1: a problem that didn't really exist, and that keeping net
Speaker 1: neutrality away would mean that ISPs would feel free to
Speaker 1: invest heavily in innovation. We also found out that when
Speaker 1: the FCC opened up its proposed policy for public comment,
Speaker 1: which is part of FCC's process, the ISPs spend a
Speaker 1: whole lot of money to have more than eight million
Speaker 1: fake comments come out against net neutrality to the FCC's website.
Speaker 1: So they were stuffing the ballot boxes effectively with fake comments,
Speaker 1: trying to protect their own self interest. Now, I will
Speaker 1: say two things here. One, a lot of the fears
Speaker 1: about what will happen if you don't ensure net neutrality
Speaker 1: have not yet come to pass. We do not see
Speaker 1: an Internet that has this vast difference in data speeds
Speaker 1: depending upon which ISP you're connected to and what content
Speaker 1: you're trying to act access. That hasn't really happened, So
Speaker 1: the fearful worst case scenario hasn't happened. However, we also
Speaker 1: have not seen ISPs spend a whole lot of money
Speaker 1: in innovation because they have no incentive to do so.
Speaker 1: In most places in the United States, you have very
Speaker 1: little competition, if any, for Internet service providers. Well, without competition,
Speaker 1: there's not really any need to invest in innovation. You
Speaker 1: could just use that money to return toward shareholder value.
Speaker 1: So why would you spend that money innovating if there's
Speaker 1: no alternative to your service? I mean, no one's going
Speaker 1: to go anywhere else. But yeah, as to the whole
Speaker 1: stuffing the ballot box thing, that was a serious problem.
Speaker 1: In fact, according to an investigation, around eighteen million out
Speaker 1: of the twenty two million comments that were posted to
Speaker 1: the FCC were fake. Yikes. So anyway, I guess you
Speaker 1: could say they were innovative in the way they gained
Speaker 1: the system. But now it looks like we're going back
Speaker 1: to establishing net neutrality rules again. The process is a
Speaker 1: methought one, and after seeing the previous round of changes
Speaker 1: that happened when one administration replaced another. I imagine a
Speaker 1: lot of folks are wondering just how permanent any changes
Speaker 1: would be, Like, are we just going to see this
Speaker 1: flip flop depending upon which party has majority in the
Speaker 1: FCC at any given time, because that just gets frustrating.
Speaker 1: It means that you never really meet a parody or
Speaker 1: an equilibrium. It's just constantly flopping to favor one side
Speaker 1: versus the other. So we'll have to see. Imagine a
Speaker 1: lot of folks are just kind of fed up with
Speaker 1: the whole thing. It is progressively harder to argue, at
Speaker 1: least with any authority, that the Internet is not a
Speaker 1: necessary component in telecommunications, at least in my opinion. I mean,
Speaker 1: the pandemic really brought that to light that if you
Speaker 1: did not have access to the Internet, you were at
Speaker 1: a incredible social disadvantage. In fact, in some ways, you
Speaker 1: could not participate at all in modern systems. There are
Speaker 1: schools that use Internet or related stuff in the curriculum,
Speaker 1: and without access to that, students cannot participate in the
Speaker 1: education system. So I think it is high time that
Speaker 1: we define Internet access as a necessity, whether that's by
Speaker 1: defining it as utility or not. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: we'll have to see. In an earlier tech News episode,
Speaker 1: I talked about how a bill in California would require
Speaker 1: trucking companies that wanted to use autonomous trucks to have
Speaker 1: a human operator behind the wheel at all times while
Speaker 1: driving in California. Now that bill had wide support in
Speaker 1: the state legislation, only a few of California state legislators
Speaker 1: actually voted against it. Almost all of them voted for it.
Speaker 1: So it then went to the governor's desk, and the
Speaker 1: Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, did what everyone expected him
Speaker 1: to do, and he vetoed the bill. He said that
Speaker 1: current regulations are already fine when it comes to providing
Speaker 1: oversight to heavy duty autonomous vehicles, that the DMV will
Speaker 1: make these determinations, so there's no new legislation that is necessary,
Speaker 1: and there's a ton of debate on this issue. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I feel like I would need to dive in much
Speaker 1: more deeply to get a handle on all of it.
Speaker 1: Only a little of the debate actually deals with the
Speaker 1: tech itself, and I think it is safe for us
Speaker 1: to say that autonomous vehicle technology still has a long
Speaker 1: way to go before it reaches a level of reliability
Speaker 1: and safety that we could say is dependable. But the
Speaker 1: actual debate rests on tons of other factors like politics
Speaker 1: and money and jobs, and those are what are really
Speaker 1: causing some figurative roadblocks. A ransomware hacker group says that
Speaker 1: it has infiltrated quote unquote all Sony systems. Now, from
Speaker 1: what I've seen, there's a lot of doubt out there
Speaker 1: as to how far into Sony's systems the hackers were
Speaker 1: actually able to get. Most of the reporting I've seen
Speaker 1: has suggested that it wasn't really that far. It certainly
Speaker 1: wasn't everything, at least from what we can tell so far,
Speaker 1: but there is a general agreement that hacker did infiltrate
Speaker 1: some Sony systems and gained some level of access. The
Speaker 1: group says it will sell the data that they stole
Speaker 1: from Sony on the dark web. They have indicated that
Speaker 1: Sony leadership refused to hand over a ransom to the group,
Speaker 1: so this is the second method for them to get
Speaker 1: money from their wicked deeds. That group, by the way,
Speaker 1: is called Ransomed dot VC. According to the cybersecurity company
Speaker 1: cyber Security Connect, the security company also said that the
Speaker 1: evidence presented suggests that the intrusion was somewhat limited, but
Speaker 1: it's possible that some of the files that were listed
Speaker 1: could contain really sensitive information, like it could have business
Speaker 1: info or customer data. It's hard to say. Ransom dot
Speaker 1: VC presents itself as some sort of gray hat hacker group.
Speaker 1: They claim to conduct penetration testing, and that's a real thing.
Speaker 1: The way penetration and testing usually works is that you
Speaker 1: have a company and you've got a computer system and
Speaker 1: you want to see, you know, if your computer system's
Speaker 1: security is robust or not, so you hire some hackers.
Speaker 1: Usually it's some sort of consulting group, and the hackers
Speaker 1: are meant to probe your systems and look for vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: Then they share their findings, you can improve your security
Speaker 1: wherever you need to, and the cycle goes on. That way,
Speaker 1: you'd do this over and over again. But what ransom
Speaker 1: dot VC does is it probes company systems without being
Speaker 1: invited to do it. Then if they gain access, they
Speaker 1: quote unquote seek compensation for our professional services, which really
Speaker 1: is just saying we broke into your house and now
Speaker 1: we demand you pay us for all the stuff we
Speaker 1: took because we taught you that your home security is
Speaker 1: not very good. It's not a very sincere or convincing argument,
Speaker 1: if you ask me. An Amazon executive who is leaving
Speaker 1: the company told Bloomberg that he expects the high costs
Speaker 1: of running AI operations mean that Amazon will one day
Speaker 1: charge customers to use the Alexa voice activated assystem now.
Speaker 1: He clarified that he thinks the tool as it exists
Speaker 1: right now will remain free, that there will be a
Speaker 1: basic free level of service, but that Amazon will one
Speaker 1: day release a more advanced version with better features and
Speaker 1: one that you would have to pay for. He also
Speaker 1: said this is likely not that far off, and that
Speaker 1: the payment would be framed, probably as a subscription service.
Speaker 1: I think that approach actually makes the most sense. If
Speaker 1: Amazon were to suddenly tell its customers that the tool
Speaker 1: they've been using for free for several years now is
Speaker 1: going to switch to becoming a subscription service, that would
Speaker 1: not go over super well. But introducing a new premiere
Speaker 1: version might not be such a hard sell, and there
Speaker 1: is no getting around it. Powering AI is expensive. It
Speaker 1: requires a lot of compute power or requires a lot
Speaker 1: of electricity, so there are some real costs to running
Speaker 1: AI services. So I get what he's saying. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's that shocking. I think the headline of Amazon
Speaker 1: exec says Amazon will one day charge for Alexa. I
Speaker 1: think that's just a big attention grabber. Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: some more news items to cover in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. We're back. So
Speaker 1: the US Securities Exchange Commission or SEC, is continuing its
Speaker 1: probe into personal communications among various employees and executives at
Speaker 1: major investment companies. So here's the deal. Here in the
Speaker 1: United States, we've got a lot of obfuscation when it
Speaker 1: comes to how money rolls around in the investment world.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many ways that investments can be
Speaker 1: hidden away, but even that has its limits. Like as
Speaker 1: dark as it can get, there are limitations, and there
Speaker 1: are rules that you're supposed to follow, and one of
Speaker 1: those is that business communications within and between investment companies
Speaker 1: are supposed to be documented. That is a rule. But
Speaker 1: over the last several years, some folks at these companies
Speaker 1: have taken to using certain personal communication tools like Signal
Speaker 1: and WhatsApp that are by design not transparent. Now, for
Speaker 1: the purposes of protected communication. That's actually great. You want
Speaker 1: these tools to be reliable. You do not want them
Speaker 1: to be transparent. You want people to be able to
Speaker 1: communicate privately with each other without worry about surveillance. All
Speaker 1: of that is cool, But when it comes to official
Speaker 1: business among these giant investment companies, it's a big no no.
Speaker 1: Several big companies have already had to fork over substantial
Speaker 1: cash in fines. Back in August, the sec find eleven
Speaker 1: companies collectively the princely sum of two hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: nine million dollars. Now that was divided up among the
Speaker 1: eleven wells. Fargo had to pay the most out of
Speaker 1: those eleven companies. Its share of that fear was one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five million dollars. Yikes. And actually that's
Speaker 1: an improvement over last year. SEC find ten companies about
Speaker 1: one point one billion dollars last year. So this is
Speaker 1: an ongoing issue, and again it just shows how tech
Speaker 1: can play a role in intrinsic systems that are not
Speaker 1: specifically tech related, but because of tech's involvement, it has
Speaker 1: a huge impact. The Ford Motor Company says it is
Speaker 1: pausing construction on a planned electric vehicle battery plant in Marshall, Michigan.
Speaker 1: Now this is happening the same time that there's a
Speaker 1: union auto workers strike going on, which critics say is
Speaker 1: not a coincidence. They argue that Ford is essentially threatening
Speaker 1: twenty five hundred jobs. That's the estimated number of positions
Speaker 1: that would be employed at this future battery plant, and
Speaker 1: they're doing it before they ever hire a single one
Speaker 1: of them. Now, there's a lot going on with this story,
Speaker 1: ranging from local resis csidents in Michigan opposing the plant
Speaker 1: for various reasons, including the fact that it would take
Speaker 1: up land that otherwise might be used for agriculture. There
Speaker 1: are also a lot of political debates. There's also a
Speaker 1: lot of just posturing, with various leaders coming out either
Speaker 1: in support of Ford's decision to delay the project or
Speaker 1: condemning the company for playing fast and loose while taxpayers
Speaker 1: are on the hook for paying these massive subsidies that
Speaker 1: made the deal possible in the first place. And then
Speaker 1: there's another political angle in the form of the battery components.
Speaker 1: A lot of those are coming out of China, so
Speaker 1: that's become a big thing about, oh, you're enabling the
Speaker 1: Communist Party in China by using these Chinese parts. The
Speaker 1: entire industry uses those parts. There isn't an American equivalent,
Speaker 1: or you know, an equivalent that's anywhere close to the
Speaker 1: same price range is what you get out of China.
Speaker 1: It'd be great if there were, and maybe there should
Speaker 1: be a lot more money and time spent building that up.
Speaker 1: That just doesn't exist right now. So a lot of
Speaker 1: this strikes me again more as posturing than anything else,
Speaker 1: which is infuriating, as so much hangs in the balance.
Speaker 1: I'll keep an eye out to see how temporary this
Speaker 1: pause actually ends up being. Reddit has announced a sort
Speaker 1: of contributor program to encourage a contributor economy on the platform.
Speaker 1: It's not that different from what we've seen implemented over
Speaker 1: at x formerly known as Twitter. So Reddit always had
Speaker 1: this sort of virtual currency, couple of them really, in
Speaker 1: the form of gold and karma. These weren't actually useful,
Speaker 1: but they did become something of a status symbol for
Speaker 1: some redditors. And now Reddit announced a program in which
Speaker 1: people can trade in their virtual currencies, their virtual points,
Speaker 1: for actual cash. At least here in the United States.
Speaker 1: They're rolling that out now. There are some parameters. First,
Speaker 1: anything post in not safe for work subreddits is off limits.
Speaker 1: So you can't just count on racking up tons of
Speaker 1: karma by posting photos of your booty and all the
Speaker 1: booty related subreddits. That's just not going to work. Karma
Speaker 1: will determine your status. Specifically, post karma will determine your status.
Speaker 1: Post karma is the karma you earn when people vote
Speaker 1: a new post to Reddit, but comment karma, where you're
Speaker 1: commenting on someone's post, that won't count. So if you
Speaker 1: leave a great comment on someone else's post and you
Speaker 1: get tons of up votes, that doesn't actually contribute to
Speaker 1: this particular program. It's only the things that you post
Speaker 1: to Reddit that's actually made people worry. That there's going
Speaker 1: to be a whole lot of reposting going on as
Speaker 1: a result of this. But that karma determines how much
Speaker 1: each of your Reddit gold will be worth in real money,
Speaker 1: and that gets paid out on a monthly basis. So
Speaker 1: if you have between one hundred and four nine and
Speaker 1: ninety nine karma, you get ninety cents for every gold
Speaker 1: that you've accumulated that month. If your karma is five
Speaker 1: thousand or higher, you get a whole dollar for each gold,
Speaker 1: So I suspect this is one of Reddit's strategies to
Speaker 1: try and get the Reddit community at large to kind
Speaker 1: of forget about how angry they've been about changes to
Speaker 1: reddits API. If you recall that effectively shut down several
Speaker 1: third party Reddit apps not too long ago. The question
Speaker 1: is will this work? Will it mollify Reddit users? I
Speaker 1: don't know. I do know that a lot of Reddit
Speaker 1: users already think what's going to do is make Reddit
Speaker 1: even worse, because they do worry that it's going to
Speaker 1: mean we're going to have a huge influx of repost
Speaker 1: bots that just take posts that were made in certain
Speaker 1: subredds and then post them in other subreddits. And so
Speaker 1: you just get this flood of the same material over
Speaker 1: and over again in an effort to game the system,
Speaker 1: and it won't do anything meaningfully good for the actual
Speaker 1: users on the platform. We'll have to see if that's
Speaker 1: how it rolls out. Apple is pushing out an update
Speaker 1: to an old phone in order to fix an issue
Speaker 1: in France. So this has to do with how much
Speaker 1: radio frequency radiation the iPhone twelve emits. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: there is no scientific evidence showing that radio frequency radiation
Speaker 1: is actually dangerous. It is different from nuclear radiation. Our
Speaker 1: f radiation isn't ionizing. It's not stripping electrons away from
Speaker 1: atoms or anything like that. It's not doing the damage
Speaker 1: that something like you know, nuclear radiation does. It can
Speaker 1: mean that your RF device, like your smartphone, can get
Speaker 1: a bit warmer if it does emit more RF radiation
Speaker 1: than say another device would, And that's about it anyway,
Speaker 1: just to be on the safe side. Lots of governments
Speaker 1: have rules as to how much RF radiation a consumer
Speaker 1: device can legally emit, and they're not supposed to go
Speaker 1: beyond that. Originally, the iPhone twelve fell within those parameters
Speaker 1: in France when it was an initially tested in France.
Speaker 1: But something has happened since the iPhone twelve came out
Speaker 1: three years ago. Now the RF emissions, according to French regulators,
Speaker 1: are above the restricted level. So Apple has scrambled to
Speaker 1: issue a software update that the company says, we'll fix
Speaker 1: this problem. So according to Apple, the devices have not
Speaker 1: mysteriously started to emit more RAF radiation. They're saying, actually,
Speaker 1: our phones haven't really changed, it's just the methodology that
Speaker 1: French regulators are using to measure it is at fault,
Speaker 1: but the software patch should fix things anyway. Apple certainly
Speaker 1: hopes that's the case at any rate, because the company
Speaker 1: otherwise would face a country wide recall situation for iPhone
Speaker 1: twelve owners and that would be expensive. Okay, I got
Speaker 1: a few more news items that I got to cover
Speaker 1: before we get to that. Let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: So before the break has talked about the iPhone, let's
Speaker 1: talk about Android. Ours Technica reports that the upcoming Pixel
Speaker 1: eight smartphone from Google will actually receive seven years of
Speaker 1: OS support as well as security support. So that means
Speaker 1: if you purchase a Pixel eight, Google is guaranteeing that
Speaker 1: your phone will remain relevant and up to date for
Speaker 1: seven years. They're not going to abandon the device, you know,
Speaker 1: four or five years down the track. It may not
Speaker 1: be able to do everything that a Pixel seven years
Speaker 1: from now can do, like a brand new one, but
Speaker 1: that won't be due to lack of support. Instead would
Speaker 1: be due to limitations on the hardware itself. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: maybe the Pixel fifteen has a special three D camera
Speaker 1: that the Pixel eight doesn't have. Well, obviously, the Pixel
Speaker 1: eight can't just magically sprout a new camera, but it
Speaker 1: would get other OS updates to make it still work
Speaker 1: with you know apps of the time. This would put
Speaker 1: Google ahead of Apple when it comes to supporting hardware
Speaker 1: with OS updates. Earlier, the Pixel enjoyed just three years
Speaker 1: of OS support and five years of security patch support.
Speaker 1: Apple in the past few generations of iPhones has supported
Speaker 1: five to six years of OS updates. They don't have
Speaker 1: a defined, or at least not a publicly communicated support policy,
Speaker 1: so yeah, seven years is pretty significant, although I'm still
Speaker 1: having to wait to find out if the Pixel eight
Speaker 1: is going to have features that I think are interesting
Speaker 1: enough to merit an upgrade for myself. I'm still sporting
Speaker 1: a Pixel five myself. The game company, Blizzard has been
Speaker 1: hard at work adding in quality of life improvements to
Speaker 1: the game. Overwatch two, the team based competitive shooter, has
Speaker 1: had a pretty rough go of it. Blizzard changed course
Speaker 1: before releasing the game, and I had a lot of
Speaker 1: players that were left feeling that the game they got
Speaker 1: was a long way away from what they had been promised.
Speaker 1: But Blizzard has kept adding improvements into the game to
Speaker 1: create a better user experience, at least better if you're
Speaker 1: not a troll or a cheater. For example, the company
Speaker 1: has incorporated AI which will analyze voice chat between players.
Speaker 1: So if someone starts using abusive language or otherwise is
Speaker 1: using voice chat to disrupt the game, and AI system
Speaker 1: verifies that the behavior is in fact disruptive and then
Speaker 1: will issue a warning to that player in question. Blizzard
Speaker 1: says that for the vast majority of players, this results
Speaker 1: in an immediate correction of the behavior, that when they
Speaker 1: realize someone in charge is listening, they knock that crap off.
Speaker 1: Oh and Blizzard also says it has banned about a
Speaker 1: quarter of a million players for cheating Yauza, and the
Speaker 1: company is also targeting accounts that appear to team with
Speaker 1: known cheaters, and a lot of those folks are getting
Speaker 1: banned too. So even if you don't cheat, but you
Speaker 1: tend to play with cheaters a lot by association, you
Speaker 1: can get banned. I'm not sure that these moves have
Speaker 1: actually turned the harshest critics around, but the chatter I
Speaker 1: see among reviewers is that the game itself is pretty good.
Speaker 1: It just suffers from the fact that the company had
Speaker 1: made some promises it later chose to walk back. One
Speaker 1: thing that happened over the weekend is that the Earth
Speaker 1: got a delivery from space. The deliver was not door
Speaker 1: Dash or anything like that. It was a spacecraft called
Speaker 1: Osiris Rex, which we originally launched into space back in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. The spacecraft traveled to an asteroid named Binu,
Speaker 1: which I swear sounds like it came from a Star
Speaker 1: Wars movie. Anyway, Osiris Rex reached Bannu in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Then it spent a couple of years flying around the
Speaker 1: asteroid just looking for the right spot to land and sample.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, the spacecraft landed on Banu scooped up
Speaker 1: a sample of material. It stored it inside a capsule
Speaker 1: that the spacecraft was carrying. It then launched off Banu
Speaker 1: in the spring of twenty twenty one and started its
Speaker 1: journey back home. It flew by Earth and released the
Speaker 1: capsule and then continued on its merry way to go
Speaker 1: to a different asteroid. So scientists retrieved the caps and
Speaker 1: they plan to study the material inside in an effort
Speaker 1: to learn more about the early Solar System and how
Speaker 1: it was formed and how it evolved, maybe even learning
Speaker 1: where the organic compounds that form the basis of life
Speaker 1: came from. Really cool stuff. I may need to do
Speaker 1: a full episode about this to talk about the extreme
Speaker 1: care NESSA has to take to avoid contaminating the sample
Speaker 1: before scientists can study it and search for those organic compounds.
Speaker 1: Now we're coming up on our last full story. It
Speaker 1: is a somewhat goofy story. There's this company called I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's supposed to be Dictator or Dictator Dictador.
Speaker 1: It's an alcohol company in Poland. It's known for producing
Speaker 1: and selling rum. And there's a new boss in town,
Speaker 1: a robot boss named Mica. So the robot is humanoid,
Speaker 1: as a mannequin like head. It's got a and eyeglasses.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why a robot would need eyeglasses, unless
Speaker 1: the thought is it just makes it look smart, which
Speaker 1: makes it a very shallow robot. Anyway, according to the stories,
Speaker 1: Mica has artificial intelligence and Mica will serve as the
Speaker 1: quote unquote CEO of the company. However, this will involve
Speaker 1: significantly less than what your typical CEO tends to handle.
Speaker 1: Mica will mostly oversee the decentralized autonomous organization aka the
Speaker 1: TAO of this company is called art House Spirits. This
Speaker 1: will involve stuff like releasing NFTs and at this point
Speaker 1: you might be like me and thinking, Wow, sounds like
Speaker 1: Mica has already really missed the boat on this one
Speaker 1: because NFTs in particular and crypto related topics in general
Speaker 1: are not held in particular favor right now. Mika is
Speaker 1: also supposed to help the company's spot potential clients and
Speaker 1: design rum bottles. Don't know how Mica does that, Like,
Speaker 1: does the robot just wander around Poland and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you look like you like rum, why don't you drink
Speaker 1: ours away? When it comes to actual business decisions, it'll
Speaker 1: be a group of human executives will be calling those shots.
Speaker 1: So really, this comes to me it comes across as
Speaker 1: kind of like a mix between the Terminator and the
Speaker 1: Hudsucker proxy. If you don't get those references, you need
Speaker 1: to go and watch the movies. Finally, I have an
Speaker 1: article suggestion for y'all. It's from vox dot COM's A
Speaker 1: w Olheiser and the title of the article is gen
Speaker 1: Z falls for online scams more than their boomer grandparents do.
Speaker 1: And as I'm sure you've gathered, the article makes the
Speaker 1: case the gen Z users, you know, people who were
Speaker 1: born and raised after the Internet and the Web had
Speaker 1: become a thing are not particularly good at avoiding Internet
Speaker 1: based pitfalls. So the article asks some interesting questions, such
Speaker 1: as why is a digital native a generation that were
Speaker 1: born during this era and presumably one that's much more
Speaker 1: aware of cybersecurity practices, why are they really bad at
Speaker 1: actually using those practices? Personally, I think it really comes
Speaker 1: down to how much tech the younger generation uses, like
Speaker 1: how many apps they use and how frequently they are
Speaker 1: on their phones or other devices and are using these
Speaker 1: apps because the more you're using, the more points of
Speaker 1: vulnerability you could be opening up, right, So I don't
Speaker 1: think it's necessarily true that they are worse at cybersecurity
Speaker 1: than old folks like myself. So gen xer is like me,
Speaker 1: we should not be smug about this at all. If
Speaker 1: we old fogies use the same amount of tech as
Speaker 1: the young'ins do, I think we would probably be in
Speaker 1: a similar spot. So I don't think it's as simple
Speaker 1: as saying one generation is just more inherently bad at
Speaker 1: protecting themselves than others are. But that's my opinion, So
Speaker 1: check out the article to read up on the various
Speaker 1: hypotheses about the matter. I'm curious what y'all think and
Speaker 1: That is it for the Tech News for Tuesday, September
Speaker 1: twenty six, twenty twenty three. I hope you are all
Speaker 1: well and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
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