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: joth In Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and I love all things tech. It is time
Speaker 1: for the tech news for Tuesday, November two, twenty one,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna start off with some old news because
Speaker 1: didn't do a news episode last Thursday. And as predicted Facebook,
Speaker 1: the company has changed its name to Meta, which is
Speaker 1: pretty much in line with what The Verge predicted a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago. Meta in this case is a
Speaker 1: reference to the concept of a metaverse, which in turn
Speaker 1: we typically envision as being an implementation of such things
Speaker 1: as virtual reality and augmented reality, and a persistent online
Speaker 1: virtual world where you can behave as if it were
Speaker 1: the real world. You can, you know, do things like shopping,
Speaker 1: you can have entertainment. Essentially, you have this online, persistent
Speaker 1: world that in some ways mirrors the real one, except
Speaker 1: of course you're not burdened by reality. Right, So in
Speaker 1: the metaverse, you might have an entire social structure that
Speaker 1: exists inside this virtual world, and you might have some
Speaker 1: elements of that environment spill out into the real world
Speaker 1: through stuff like augmented reality technology. So in a way,
Speaker 1: it's an extension of the concept of social networks, only
Speaker 1: they become even more immersive. Anyway, I'm sure you're all
Speaker 1: aware of the name change by now. There's very little
Speaker 1: chance that I'm telling you this for the first time.
Speaker 1: Of course, Meta is still going to face a lot
Speaker 1: of questions from political leaders around the world. A name
Speaker 1: change is not magically going to make all the critics
Speaker 1: who want to split the company up say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Facebook's gone now. I mean, Facebook the platform is still there,
Speaker 1: but Facebook the company's gone. We're not, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that's going to happen. And I suspect as leaders
Speaker 1: get their heads wrapped around what a metaverse actually is
Speaker 1: and how it would enable a company like you know,
Speaker 1: former Facebook now Meta to track even more information about people.
Speaker 1: There's going to be more questions, or at least I
Speaker 1: hope there will be. NBC News reports that an internal
Speaker 1: blog post at what was then Facebook and now as Meta.
Speaker 1: This is just going to be tiresome anyway, It revealed
Speaker 1: that the company was actively pursuing opportunities to market to kids,
Speaker 1: kids as young as six years old. In fact, the
Speaker 1: blog post identified five different age groups that the company
Speaker 1: was you know, kind of delineating as targets. They had
Speaker 1: the six to nine age group, ten to twelve, thirteen
Speaker 1: to fifteen, sixteen to seventeen, and then everybody else. And
Speaker 1: I should add that this blog post specifically mentioned stuff
Speaker 1: like making sure the company protected the security and privacy
Speaker 1: of users, So at least there's that like this was
Speaker 1: an internal blog post, it wasn't outward facing. The fact
Speaker 1: that they even mentioned that we need to do this
Speaker 1: in a responsible way is at least somewhat comforting, I guess,
Speaker 1: But I would say this is more grist for the
Speaker 1: mill when it comes to scrutinizing this enormous company and
Speaker 1: it's various strategies involving user experiences and more importantly, how
Speaker 1: the company generates revenue based on user behaviors and how
Speaker 1: much data they are collecting from users. Now, as I
Speaker 1: mentioned last week, the Facebook platform itself has seen a
Speaker 1: decline in use among younger folks, and so this is
Speaker 1: likely part of the company's overall strategy to find ways
Speaker 1: to attract new users, not necessarily to the Facebook platform,
Speaker 1: although I'm sure that's part of it. But you know
Speaker 1: to the company's services. Overall, Facebook reps defended the blog post.
Speaker 1: They argued that really, any business that interfaces with the
Speaker 1: public is always trying to attract new and younger people
Speaker 1: all the time. Like, if you get people, you know,
Speaker 1: to connect with your product at a young age, you
Speaker 1: might have a customer for life. So in that sense, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that really does make sense. And in fact, Facebook
Speaker 1: said the only thing that would be newsworthy is if
Speaker 1: the company wasn't doing this. However, I would add it
Speaker 1: is a little creepy when you think that as a
Speaker 1: kind of preventive measure, Facebook said, an age limit on
Speaker 1: who could have a Facebook or an Instagram profile, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to be thirteen or older. And that seems
Speaker 1: like it's a tacit acknowledgement that the services the company
Speaker 1: provides might not be a good fit for younger users.
Speaker 1: And when you take the blog post in concert with
Speaker 1: the thousands of other documents that have emerged thanks to
Speaker 1: whistleblower Francis Hogan, it all starts to look a little sinister.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I guess companies that are you know, in
Speaker 1: the business of dealing with you know, the average consumer
Speaker 1: are always looking to find a way of tapping into
Speaker 1: that at a young or age. But um, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's always good. I mean I could easily point
Speaker 1: to the case of say, cigarette companies using cartoonish mascots
Speaker 1: to market their cigarettes and how that is not really
Speaker 1: a good thing. But we'll leave it for here. Now
Speaker 1: let's talk about data tracking for a second. So Apple
Speaker 1: introduced the App Tracking Transparency Policy last year, and this
Speaker 1: policy sets firm rules that iOS apps must follow. That is,
Speaker 1: apps that appear on Apple's app stores have to follow
Speaker 1: these rules or else Apple won't carry them. So, if
Speaker 1: the app is tracking data in any way, it first
Speaker 1: has to request user permission to do so and to
Speaker 1: talk about which types of of data it intends to track.
Speaker 1: So if a user says no thanks, then the app
Speaker 1: is not allowed to track that data. To say that
Speaker 1: some companies were upset about this would be underplaying it.
Speaker 1: I mean. Facebook went so far as to take out
Speaker 1: a full page newspaper ad arguing against the policy, saying
Speaker 1: that you know it would interfere with the Facebook apps
Speaker 1: performance and give users the mistaken impression that you know,
Speaker 1: Facebook is collecting loads of private information or to monetize
Speaker 1: the info which was actually the correct implication because that
Speaker 1: is what the company does well. Now. The Financial Times
Speaker 1: reports that companies like you know, Meta Slash, Facebook and
Speaker 1: Snap and Twitter and YouTube lost nearly ten billion dollars
Speaker 1: last year due to this policy, and by lost, I
Speaker 1: mean they weren't able to capitalize on user data for
Speaker 1: those users who opted out of the data tracking. Snap
Speaker 1: was hit particularly hard, which is not a big surprise
Speaker 1: because Snap does not exist outside of the mobile experience.
Speaker 1: Right There's no desktop version for Snapchat, so that would
Speaker 1: explain how that company was hit particularly hard because there
Speaker 1: no other platform for it to depend upon. Uh. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: Apple itself has been found to engage in practices that
Speaker 1: break its own rules, so you know, I'm not giving
Speaker 1: Apple a full pass on this one. I think that
Speaker 1: the policy is a good one, but only if everybody
Speaker 1: be behaves and everyone follows it, you know, Apple included.
Speaker 1: But it does also show a couple of things. And one,
Speaker 1: it shows that your data is valuable, so you should
Speaker 1: think about treating it as such, that it has value,
Speaker 1: and so think about that, you know, take value in it.
Speaker 1: There are people who have proposed systems that would require
Speaker 1: companies to pay folks directly in order to be able
Speaker 1: to use their data. That's how valuable. It is. Not
Speaker 1: that those policies have actually, you know, seen any real traction,
Speaker 1: because companies obviously have a strong incentive to resist that,
Speaker 1: but it shows how how valuable the data is too.
Speaker 1: This shows these apps are tracking you in tons of
Speaker 1: different ways, and those ways might relate back to the
Speaker 1: way the app functions, So there could be some legit
Speaker 1: arguments that the data tracking is necessary in order for
Speaker 1: you to have full functionality of the app. But this
Speaker 1: also reminds us that our phones are constantly data gathering machines.
Speaker 1: Sin since we pretty much take them everywhere we go,
Speaker 1: it means we're always being tracked, and the stuff we
Speaker 1: do is being tracked. The stuff we look up on
Speaker 1: our phones is being tracked. Just good to remember, you know.
Speaker 1: Fun times Up in Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest in
Speaker 1: the United States, there's a bit of a brew haha
Speaker 1: going on regarding Google and its use of water near
Speaker 1: the city of the Dowells. That's two words, It's the
Speaker 1: and dows d A L L. E. S. Actually had
Speaker 1: to look up how to say that so I wouldn't
Speaker 1: get the pronunciation wrong. Google has data centers in the
Speaker 1: Dowells on a site of an old aluminum smelting facility
Speaker 1: that closed down years ago, like in the eighties, uh,
Speaker 1: and they built data centers there, and the company plans
Speaker 1: to build a couple more of those massive data centers. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, buildings that are filled with computers that are
Speaker 1: running all the time get pretty hot and you have
Speaker 1: to keep computers from overheating or else stuff breaks down.
Speaker 1: So as part of this plan, Google negotiated with the
Speaker 1: city council of the Dolls and they got a new
Speaker 1: deal when it comes to water rights. You know, Google
Speaker 1: uses water to pull heat away from these computers and
Speaker 1: then through a heat exchanger, cools the heated water back
Speaker 1: down and can recirculate it through the system in order
Speaker 1: to keep things at a good operating temperature. Although it
Speaker 1: does mean that they have to occasionally bring in more water,
Speaker 1: so it's like a water cooled BC, only on an
Speaker 1: epic scale. Anyway, this would mean Google would have to
Speaker 1: collect more water from the area, and it's an area
Speaker 1: that's also been hit with droughts in the recent past,
Speaker 1: so this has led some residents to become a bit
Speaker 1: concerned over the matter, and making it worse is that
Speaker 1: the amount of water that Google wants is a secret.
Speaker 1: According to the City of the Dolls, Google's request constitutes
Speaker 1: a trade secret, and so the city is not allowed
Speaker 1: to share the information with residents. So the city council knows,
Speaker 1: but they can't tell. According to other entities in Oregon,
Speaker 1: the use of water is a matter of public interest
Speaker 1: and that supersedes any trade secret. Moreover, those people who
Speaker 1: are concerned have pointed out that Google doesn't provide information
Speaker 1: about how much water it needs because the city has
Speaker 1: an information. They know how much water Google needs, and
Speaker 1: that means that the city is refusing to share information
Speaker 1: with the citizens of the city. The newspaper the Oregonians
Speaker 1: sued to get access to that information, and a judge
Speaker 1: sided with the newspaper, But now the city has countersued
Speaker 1: the newspaper in order to keep the information secret. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: there's a vote coming up on the matter, and a
Speaker 1: vote that's really only open to the city council members,
Speaker 1: not the public, and there's no chance that this particular
Speaker 1: legal matter will be resolved before the vote happens. So things,
Speaker 1: as you might imagine, are a little bit tense up
Speaker 1: in the dolls. The city council says that Google's plan
Speaker 1: will actually mean the more water will be provided to
Speaker 1: the city, because Google will be contributing nearly thirty million
Speaker 1: dollars to expand water services for the area. But the
Speaker 1: secrecy around how much water the company needs seems to
Speaker 1: be feeding into a general distrust of Google and the
Speaker 1: city council, at least according to a piece I read
Speaker 1: on Oregon Live dot com. We've got some more stories
Speaker 1: to cover, but before we get to that, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Before the break, I was talking about
Speaker 1: Google and Oregon. I've got another Google story here, which
Speaker 1: involves a worker petition that's aimed at convincing both Google
Speaker 1: and Amazon to back out of a deal that the
Speaker 1: companies have made with is Real. The deal is called
Speaker 1: Project Nimbus, and as you might suspect with that name,
Speaker 1: it involves cloud computing centers. The workers who are leading
Speaker 1: the petition are two Jewish Google employees, and they're worried
Speaker 1: that the cloud computing tech quote allows for further surveillance
Speaker 1: of an unlawful data collection on Palestinians and facilitates expansion
Speaker 1: of Israel's illegal settlements on the Palestinian land end quote,
Speaker 1: and the two say that more than one thousand employees
Speaker 1: have signed a petition, though the petition itself allows employees
Speaker 1: to remain anonymous, and all but three have done so,
Speaker 1: so it's obviously hard to verify. According to the Jewish
Speaker 1: Telegraphic Agency, the cloud computing contract has clauses in it
Speaker 1: that are meant to prevent Amazon and Google from pulling
Speaker 1: out of the deal, even if they're under the threat
Speaker 1: of boycott, so it's questionable whether the petition will make
Speaker 1: any headway, though it does bring more attention to the project.
Speaker 1: Last week, I talked about how Hurts, the rental car company,
Speaker 1: had signed a deal with Tesla to buy one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand Tesla vehicles by the end of next year. Well
Speaker 1: Elon Musk then went out and tweeted that the ink
Speaker 1: has not even been put to paper yet, that no
Speaker 1: contract has been signed, which, hey, you know, woopsie, because
Speaker 1: you know, the initial news about that deal pushed Tesla
Speaker 1: stock value up more than ten percent, like around twelve
Speaker 1: percent actually, so that means if you had Tesla stock,
Speaker 1: you potentially could have seen your wealth increase pretty dramatically
Speaker 1: before Musk revealed that the deal hadn't actually been done yet,
Speaker 1: which you know, elon Musk and the stock market, there
Speaker 1: are all these stories that don't paint Musk in a
Speaker 1: very good light in the way he communicates things. Um.
Speaker 1: But then, to be fair, if the contract wasn't signed
Speaker 1: and someone claimed that it was, it's not really on
Speaker 1: Musk's shoulders this time. But yeah, stock markets are fun,
Speaker 1: and by fun I mean we all play pretend and
Speaker 1: hoping you make money. A Hurts, by the way, is
Speaker 1: still communicating as though this has been a done deal
Speaker 1: for some time. In fact, the company had told the
Speaker 1: BBC that Hurts is already receiving deliveries of Tesla vehicles,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of weird, right. Hurts was directly asked
Speaker 1: by the BBC if the contract was in fact signed,
Speaker 1: and a rep said, oh, we don't comment on business
Speaker 1: dealings to the press. Yeah, okay. Tesla is also opening
Speaker 1: up a program in the Netherlands that will help people
Speaker 1: with e vs UH for the first time evs, by
Speaker 1: the way, electric vehicles for the first time. Tesla is
Speaker 1: opening up ten supercharger locations in the Netherlands to people
Speaker 1: who are driving any type of electric vehicle not just
Speaker 1: Tesla vehicles. Previously, you needed to be driving a Tesla
Speaker 1: in order to make use of the supercharger stations. Now
Speaker 1: anyone in the Netherlands with an electric vehicle can establish
Speaker 1: an account with Tesla through the company's mobile app uh A,
Speaker 1: establish a payment method in the app, and they use
Speaker 1: a selection called charge your Non Tesla, which will then
Speaker 1: give them directions to a participating supercharger station and they
Speaker 1: pay through the app. There are a few other steps
Speaker 1: for non Tesla drivers. The supercharger stations were made to
Speaker 1: be compatible with Tesla vehicles, and with a Tesla car,
Speaker 1: it's essentially plug in play. You plug it in, it
Speaker 1: does everything on its own. It automatically shuts off when
Speaker 1: it's done charging. But for non Tesla evs, users will
Speaker 1: actually have to indicate in the app when the charging
Speaker 1: station should begin charging the car and when it should stop.
Speaker 1: It will also cost non Tesla drivers a bit more
Speaker 1: to do it than Tesla owners will have to pay. Now,
Speaker 1: will we see the same sort of program rolled out
Speaker 1: in the United States. In order for that to happen,
Speaker 1: we would need some special adapters because here in the States,
Speaker 1: Tesla has proprietary connectors that means no other EV company
Speaker 1: makes a port that fits the Tesla a charging system,
Speaker 1: but the company has indicated that this is the way
Speaker 1: of the future. So I suspect we'll see Tesla offering
Speaker 1: up adapters, you know, for a fee, of course, so
Speaker 1: that EV drivers in the US will be able to
Speaker 1: take advantage of supercharger locations whenever the company chooses to
Speaker 1: make that available, and that will be a good thing
Speaker 1: because it will extend the driving range of electric vehicles effectively,
Speaker 1: like you don't have to search around for a charging
Speaker 1: station if you have an app that tells you where
Speaker 1: the next one is, that's really useful. Back in two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen, Dell, the computer company that was made famous
Speaker 1: in my childhood with the marketing phrase dude, you're getting
Speaker 1: a Dell, merged with a company that's called e m C.
Speaker 1: And as a result of that merger, the virtualization and
Speaker 1: cloud computing company vm ware essentially came along for the ride,
Speaker 1: with Dell gaining more than eight percent ownership of vm ware.
Speaker 1: But over the last few years, Dell has begun to
Speaker 1: spin off some of its acquired properties, mostly in an
Speaker 1: effort to manage debt. Vm Where is the latest of
Speaker 1: those spinoffs, and now Dell has divested itself of its
Speaker 1: more than ownership of vm Ware, and vm Ware is
Speaker 1: an independent company. Vm Ware's CEO UM released a statement
Speaker 1: that says, quote as a standalone company, we now have
Speaker 1: the flexibility to partner even more deeply with all cloud
Speaker 1: and on premises infrastructure companies to create a better foundation
Speaker 1: that drives results for our customers. Today's move will strengthen
Speaker 1: our mission to be the Switzerland of the cloud computing
Speaker 1: industry end quote which cool. Last month I talked about
Speaker 1: how US telecom companies are to remove Huahwei equipment from
Speaker 1: their networks, which is a directive from the United States government.
Speaker 1: Last Friday, that effort began in earnest as the FCC
Speaker 1: launched a reimbursement program. This will allow telecom companies to
Speaker 1: seek financial assistance to actually make this happen, because it's
Speaker 1: a pretty tricky thing to do, particularly if you want
Speaker 1: to avoid interruptions in service when you've got a network
Speaker 1: with all these pieces that are working together. Removing pieces
Speaker 1: after they're all integrated is not the easiest thing in
Speaker 1: the world to do. However, once these companies get a check, well,
Speaker 1: the timers starts for them, because the rules state that
Speaker 1: the companies that receive financial assistance have a year to
Speaker 1: remove network components once those checks come in. These are
Speaker 1: networks components supplied by Huawei as well as a second
Speaker 1: Chinese company called Zte corp Or Corporation. And you might wonder, well,
Speaker 1: why is this even happening in the first place, And
Speaker 1: it's largely concerned about national security. China has been responsible
Speaker 1: for and home to many surveillance and espionage efforts against
Speaker 1: other nations, particularly the United States, and it's pretty well
Speaker 1: known that China's government funds hacker groups to target US
Speaker 1: based businesses and institutions. And so the thinking goes, it
Speaker 1: might not be a great idea to rely upon critical
Speaker 1: network infrastructure that came out of China. As you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's possible that Chinese companies have built in ways
Speaker 1: in which these companies could perform espionage duties on behalf
Speaker 1: of the Chinese government. Um And I should add that
Speaker 1: the companies deny that this would be the case, But then,
Speaker 1: considering the amount of influence China's government has on Chinese companies,
Speaker 1: it could be a little difficult to accept that claim.
Speaker 1: We've got a few more stories, but we're gonna take
Speaker 1: one more break and we'll be right back. Okay, we
Speaker 1: left off in China. Let's go back to China, because
Speaker 1: that's where Yahoo has called it quits. And some of
Speaker 1: you might even be surprised that Yahoo is still a thing,
Speaker 1: because that company had its own dramatic rise and fall
Speaker 1: and sort of was scavenged from the wreckage. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it was operating in China. But over the years, in fact,
Speaker 1: since like two thousand thirteen or so, Yeahoo had been
Speaker 1: shutting down services in that country, and now it has
Speaker 1: ended all operations in China, stating that the move is
Speaker 1: quote in recognition of the increasingly challenging business and legal
Speaker 1: environment end quote, which is a very polite way of
Speaker 1: saying that it's incredibly hard to do business in China
Speaker 1: for many reasons, especially in the tech industry, and most
Speaker 1: of the reasons get pretty ugly when you start digging down.
Speaker 1: For example, China's government has been passing legislation that puts
Speaker 1: tight restrictions on tech companies and limiting their services dramatically.
Speaker 1: Many of these regulations restrict how and when Chinese citizens
Speaker 1: can access tech services. China's government states it's cracking down
Speaker 1: on practices that could tend towards monopolistic control of a
Speaker 1: particular industry or field. And I can get behind the
Speaker 1: idea that we should not allow monopolies to happen, but
Speaker 1: in the case of China, it's hard not to view
Speaker 1: the government itself as wanting to hold monopolistic control of
Speaker 1: pretty much everything, at least as far as what citizens
Speaker 1: can access. So in other words, I guess there's not
Speaker 1: really any good guys here. And while China has an
Speaker 1: enormous population and thus a potentially huge market, these increased
Speaker 1: regulations and restrictions have convinced more than a few companies
Speaker 1: to abandon operations in China as it has started to
Speaker 1: get to be more trouble than what it's worth, which
Speaker 1: is mind blowing, right. You think about more than a
Speaker 1: billion people live there and for that to be more
Speaker 1: trouble than what it's worth and to pull out, that's
Speaker 1: a lot of trouble, y'all, because that's a lot of
Speaker 1: money left on the table. Gamers who love hedgehogs might
Speaker 1: be excited to learn that Sega, the Japanese video game
Speaker 1: company famous for Sonic in the Hedgehog, announced it was
Speaker 1: forming a strategic alliance with Microsoft by leveraging Microsoft's Azure program.
Speaker 1: So Azure is a cloud computing service and it's typically
Speaker 1: used to develop and manage apps. Sega's plan is to
Speaker 1: form a new process when it comes to game development.
Speaker 1: Sega has an initiative called super Game and this is
Speaker 1: part of it. It's really an incredible effort to overhaul
Speaker 1: how the company i dates and develops games and to
Speaker 1: tap into the potential of five G connectivity. So there's
Speaker 1: been the tendency toward cloud gaming over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, and what was at first a really jan
Speaker 1: Kee experiences gradually evolved and Sega is banking on the
Speaker 1: gaming of the future to be largely mobile and connected,
Speaker 1: and so the company is leaning on a cloud based
Speaker 1: service like Azure, which makes sense. The website nicaia Asia
Speaker 1: reports that Nintendo will produce twenty fewer Nintendo Switch consoles
Speaker 1: for fiscal year one than was originally predicted. And for Nintendo,
Speaker 1: the fiscal year ends in March, so March. Of the
Speaker 1: reason for the decline isn't due to decreased demand, but
Speaker 1: rather to the ongoing semiconductor chip shortage. The original plan
Speaker 1: was for Nintendo to produce as many as thirty million
Speaker 1: Switch consoles, but the final number will be closer to
Speaker 1: twenty four million. And this is a pretty tough story.
Speaker 1: I mean, the company has seen declining sales of the Switch,
Speaker 1: but the demand for the console is still super high.
Speaker 1: So that means the reason for the decline in sales
Speaker 1: is largely issues with production. If the company could just
Speaker 1: ramp up production, those sales numbers would likely be going
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction. This is a strong example of
Speaker 1: how supply chain issues can have huge impacts on company performance,
Speaker 1: not just for video game consoles, but for everything from
Speaker 1: computers to graphics cards to cars. In News of the Obvious,
Speaker 1: the Squid cryptocurrency, supposedly tying into the popular Squid game
Speaker 1: TV series from Korea has turned out to be a scam. Now,
Speaker 1: I say that it's news of the obvious because when
Speaker 1: it comes to red flags, the Squid cryptocurrency really took
Speaker 1: the cake. For one thing, you could buy squid currency,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't sell it. That's kind of weird, right,
Speaker 1: I Mean then you're like, well, how is this a commodity?
Speaker 1: I mean, how is it an actual cryptocurrency? If you
Speaker 1: can only exchange it in one direction with real currency
Speaker 1: for the squid based currency. That should have been a
Speaker 1: huge red flag right away. On top of that, the
Speaker 1: website promoting squid said the crypto was going to be
Speaker 1: used in an online game that was inspired by the
Speaker 1: TV series where people play various childlike games but for
Speaker 1: very very high stakes, So you could purchase these cryptocurrency tokens,
Speaker 1: and then the idea was he would use these tokens
Speaker 1: inside this online game. But the site also that was
Speaker 1: promoting this also had tons of spelling errors in it,
Speaker 1: and that at least suggested that the people who were
Speaker 1: behind it were not being terribly careful in setting it up,
Speaker 1: which is another big red flag. Well, the creators of
Speaker 1: this supposed cryptocurrency took the money and then they ran.
Speaker 1: The value had gone up to nearly three thousand dollars
Speaker 1: per squid unit, and that's when the scam artists pulled
Speaker 1: the plug. They pulled all their money out of it,
Speaker 1: probably fearing that their ruse would be discovered before they
Speaker 1: could cash out, and then the value of squid went
Speaker 1: from being nearly three grand a unit to a big
Speaker 1: old fat goose egg that is zero. So the con artists.
Speaker 1: They made off with a couple of million dollars of
Speaker 1: real money. Keep in mind, this is like a fake cryptocurrency,
Speaker 1: so it's not like they were able to cash out
Speaker 1: their cryptocurrency and get all that value back. The value,
Speaker 1: or the perceived value anyway, was probably in the you know,
Speaker 1: dozens of not hundreds of millions of dollars, but they
Speaker 1: just took the real money and ran with it. So
Speaker 1: this was a heck of an attack of opportunity. The
Speaker 1: hucksters tapped into a love of a popular TV series,
Speaker 1: the desire to virtually play in Squid Game, which I mean,
Speaker 1: if you've seen the show, you would know that the
Speaker 1: only way you would want to play is virtually and
Speaker 1: also depended upon the general ignorance that folks have about cryptocurrency. Now,
Speaker 1: I hope none of you got pulled into this scam now,
Speaker 1: just in case it did happen to you, Like that sucks,
Speaker 1: but don't feel like terrible about it. I have done
Speaker 1: some monumentally dumb things in the past when my enthusiasm
Speaker 1: got the better of me, where I got so excited
Speaker 1: about something I failed to really think about what I
Speaker 1: was doing, and I ended up paying the price later.
Speaker 1: So I am not immune to this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I don't mean to suggest that I'm above it all.
Speaker 1: It's why I actually mentioned critical thinking so often in
Speaker 1: this this podcast. It's not just to tell you to
Speaker 1: use critical thinking. It's also to remind me that I
Speaker 1: need to do the same. Finally, do you remember the
Speaker 1: rewind videos that YouTube used to make. They started doing
Speaker 1: them in two thousand eleven, crafting ah from two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven two thousand eighteen. It was kind of a montage
Speaker 1: set to music. They would feature some of the most
Speaker 1: popular YouTube creators and channels in a video celebrating the year,
Speaker 1: and it would have like a loose thematic link between
Speaker 1: the creators, often grouping tons of people who otherwise never
Speaker 1: interacted with each other. They just all made popular videos,
Speaker 1: all being like in a bus or something. Um well,
Speaker 1: they didn't do one in because, you know, was a
Speaker 1: total bust. Plus getting a bunch of people together for
Speaker 1: a complicate did choreograph video shoot probably sounded like a
Speaker 1: bad idea during a pandemic. Now YouTube says that it's
Speaker 1: not gonna do rewind videos moving forward. It is made
Speaker 1: its last one. By the way, the two thousand uh
Speaker 1: nineteen rewind video was slightly different from the ones from
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven to two thousand eighteen. That's because two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen was received so poorly. It became the most
Speaker 1: down voted video of all time within one week of
Speaker 1: it being up, largely because there were certain people who
Speaker 1: were left out of the video. Some of them I
Speaker 1: think should have been left out of the video because
Speaker 1: they are reprehensible people. But they still have lots and
Speaker 1: lots and lots of fans who disagree with me, and
Speaker 1: they made that disagreement known by downloding the video. So
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen they said, okay, you know what message received,
Speaker 1: We're just gonna make a video that features some of
Speaker 1: the videos that got the most likes. So literally, you
Speaker 1: chose these videos. It's not on us have fun while
Speaker 1: we're not even doing that anymore. And it's largely because
Speaker 1: YouTube has grown so large and videos are so diverse
Speaker 1: across so many different genres and topics that it is
Speaker 1: literally impossible to make a rewind video that even represents
Speaker 1: a fraction of what is going on on YouTube that
Speaker 1: if you were to try and do it, unless that
Speaker 1: video was, you know, eighteen hours long, and featured flashes
Speaker 1: that lasted maybe a couple of seconds of each person.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't even scratch the surface. So instead YouTube says
Speaker 1: we're going to leave that to individual creators to make
Speaker 1: their own kind of rewind videos to be a reflection
Speaker 1: on the year. But we're not gonna do it anymore.
Speaker 1: And I mean it makes sense to me, Like you
Speaker 1: look at YouTube and you start to forget all the
Speaker 1: different content that's on there, because like if if you're
Speaker 1: like me, you start to kind of narrow in on
Speaker 1: the content you like, and you your mind forgets that
Speaker 1: everything else is on there too. I mean everything like
Speaker 1: d I O. Y guides to critical analysis of the
Speaker 1: cultural appropriation and Disney films too, comedy videos that I
Speaker 1: have to admit I am too old to find funny
Speaker 1: two recipe videos that are far more useful than recipes
Speaker 1: you find online because you don't have to wade through
Speaker 1: a novel before you get to the recipe. So I
Speaker 1: understand where YouTube's coming from, but I think we should
Speaker 1: have a moment of silence for rewind two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: to two thousand nineteen. That's enough silence, Okay. That wraps
Speaker 1: up the news items for Tuesday, November two, two thousand
Speaker 1: twenty one. If you have suggestions for topics I should
Speaker 1: cover on tech Stuff, reach out and let me know
Speaker 1: what those are. The best way to do that is
Speaker 1: on Twitter and the handle for the show is text
Speaker 1: Stuffs H. S W. And I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i
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Speaker 1: your favorite shows.