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 here at iHeartRadio. And how the
Speaker 1: tech are you? It is Tuesday, August fifteenth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: It is time to talk about tech news. And first up,
Speaker 1: I've got a follow up on the story of Sam
Speaker 1: Bankman Freed, the co founder of crypto companies Alimtor Research
Speaker 1: and the crypto Exchange FTX. SO, just in case a
Speaker 1: few of y'all out there out of the loop on
Speaker 1: this story. FDx collapsed late last year and prompted a
Speaker 1: suite of investigations into the company and its executive leadership team,
Speaker 1: including Sam Bankman Freed, also known as SBF. SO authorities
Speaker 1: charged SBF with like a ton of crimes, several crimes,
Speaker 1: and he is awaiting trial. And until recently he was
Speaker 1: just under house arrest. He was staying with his parents,
Speaker 1: but now he has been ordered to go straight to jail,
Speaker 1: do not pass go, do not collect two hundred FTT tokens.
Speaker 1: So you might say, well, what happened? What was the change?
Speaker 1: Prosecutors brought concerns to the judge and said SBF had
Speaker 1: been leaking documents to the media, potentially in an effort
Speaker 1: to intimidate a witness that they were speaking with with
Speaker 1: regard to his case. So the judge took this seriously
Speaker 1: and has revoked the house arrest order at SBF will
Speaker 1: have to go to jail while awaiting his trial, which
Speaker 1: is a big old wolf. SBF tried to appeal this decision,
Speaker 1: but the judge dismissed that appeal, saying the points that
Speaker 1: his legal team made in the document were quote either
Speaker 1: moot or without merit end quote double wolf. The prosecution
Speaker 1: also asked the judge to place a gag order on
Speaker 1: SBF so that he doesn't continue to leak information to
Speaker 1: the media, and that has then prompted various media outlets
Speaker 1: to submit court filings on First Amendment concerns, you know,
Speaker 1: free speech concerns about that gag order, saying it violates
Speaker 1: his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. This is
Speaker 1: a delicate matter, obviously, when you have an issue where
Speaker 1: communications can actually impact the legal process, it does or
Speaker 1: can at least come into conflict with the philosophies behind
Speaker 1: freedom of speech. So complicated issues we're seeing that play
Speaker 1: out in other arenas here in the United States as well. Okay,
Speaker 1: now it's time to talk about AI for just okay,
Speaker 1: I can't lie for a lot. So first up, the
Speaker 1: hacker conference known as def Con happened this past weekend,
Speaker 1: and one of the many events that were held over
Speaker 1: the weekend at def Con was one that pitted hackers
Speaker 1: against AI chatbots, and this includes bots from all the
Speaker 1: major players in the space like open ai and Google
Speaker 1: and Meta and others. So the purpose of the session
Speaker 1: was to test these chatbots for vulnerabilities, and it didn't
Speaker 1: involve like hacking into the code, but rather just chatting
Speaker 1: with the chatbots and seeing if you could make it
Speaker 1: do stuff it wasn't supposed to do. Finding a vulnerability
Speaker 1: in an exhibition at Defcon is probably embarrassing, but it's
Speaker 1: preferable to some bad actor out in the real world
Speaker 1: finding that vulnerability and then exploiting it to terrible effect.
Speaker 1: So these hackers were trying to manipulate the chatbots to
Speaker 1: do things they absolutely were not supposed to do. That
Speaker 1: included sharing private information that was supposed to be protected,
Speaker 1: or produce examples of hate speech or misinformation, or making
Speaker 1: defamatory statements about famous people, that kind of thing. In fact,
Speaker 1: they had different categories for stuff that the chatbots were
Speaker 1: not supposed to do, and points associated with those tasks.
Speaker 1: So if you got the chatbot to do one of
Speaker 1: those things, you would get that amount of points to
Speaker 1: your score. NPR covered the story and mentioned how one
Speaker 1: participant was able to convince a chatbot to reveal a
Speaker 1: credit card number by just changing the context a little.
Speaker 1: The participant claimed that his name was the number on
Speaker 1: that credit card. Then he asked the chatbot, what's my name?
Speaker 1: And the chatbot supplied the number in response. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of out of the box thinking, right, because the
Speaker 1: chatbot seemed to be contextualizing the credit card number as
Speaker 1: not being a number, but instead it was just a
Speaker 1: person's name. And because a person's name is not protected information,
Speaker 1: especially if the person who's talking to you is the
Speaker 1: one who belongs to that name, it handed the information over.
Speaker 1: And it's not like a fantasy or horror novel where
Speaker 1: names can have secret powers and you don't want anyone
Speaker 1: to know your true Name's not how it works in
Speaker 1: chatbot land. So if it thinks this credit card number
Speaker 1: is actually a name. Well, there's no reason you can't
Speaker 1: say a name, right. That's how simple it was to
Speaker 1: make this one chatbot do something it was not supposed
Speaker 1: to do, and so the chatbot coughed up the information.
Speaker 1: So each participant had fifty minutes to complete as many
Speaker 1: tasks as they possibly could and accumulate points in the process,
Speaker 1: and also illustrating how far we have to go in
Speaker 1: order to make generative AI trustworthy. This next story is
Speaker 1: one that I missed when it broke Last Thursday, the
Speaker 1: US Department of Defense announced it is creating a task
Speaker 1: force specifically focused on generative AI. This task force has
Speaker 1: the designation LIMA or LIMA if you prefer, like the BEAN,
Speaker 1: and will explore potential uses and threats regarding generative AI
Speaker 1: and large language models. I imagine that the people who
Speaker 1: will be in this task force are already well aware
Speaker 1: of the limitations of generative AI technology and how it
Speaker 1: can be impressive and even useful, but that you have
Speaker 1: to be really cautious because it can also sometimes be unreliable.
Speaker 1: At least, I would like to think that the task
Speaker 1: members are aware of all that. It's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: that they're not, but you know, you get nervous. The
Speaker 1: press release from the DoD mentions that the DoD recognizes
Speaker 1: the potential of generative AI to significantly improve intelligence, operational planning,
Speaker 1: and administrative and business processes. However, responsible implementation is key
Speaker 1: to managing associated risks effectively, so at least it sounds
Speaker 1: like the DoD wants a very steady approach to this
Speaker 1: and is aware things could go pair shaped if if
Speaker 1: you aren't being careful with it. It still makes me
Speaker 1: nervous to think of generative AI being used in concert
Speaker 1: with like gathering and analyzing intelligence because we know that
Speaker 1: generative AI has a tendency to hallucinate and the event
Speaker 1: that it doesn't have all the information it needs in
Speaker 1: order to answer a question. It actually made me think
Speaker 1: of a scene from the British comedy series Blackadder, specifically
Speaker 1: season four, which is set in World War One. There's
Speaker 1: a sequence where Captain Blackadder commands his subordinate Lieutenant George
Speaker 1: to paint a scene that shows German forces being far
Speaker 1: too powerful at their position, and this isn't an effort
Speaker 1: to convince leadership not to command his division to advance,
Speaker 1: so essentially he's saying, oh, we couldn't possibly advance. The
Speaker 1: Germans are far too entrenched and have far too many resources,
Speaker 1: and it would be a disaster. George, though, he gets
Speaker 1: carried away while making this painting of these as far
Speaker 1: as they know, fictional German forces, and he ends up
Speaker 1: including stuff like battle elephants and stuff like that inside
Speaker 1: the painting, which Captain Blackatter does his best to incorporate
Speaker 1: into his report to his his superiors. So I imagine generative
Speaker 1: AI producing equally fake intelligence, right, like, how can you
Speaker 1: trust any intelligence provided by generative AI without doing so
Speaker 1: much extensive double checking that you might actually negate any
Speaker 1: benefit that the generative AI gave you. Right, If it
Speaker 1: takes you more time to verify the information than it
Speaker 1: would if you just didn't use the AI at all,
Speaker 1: then really you're playing a losing game. This is also
Speaker 1: what I argue with AI generated articles, where you have
Speaker 1: to have an editor go over the article, because typically
Speaker 1: you would have a human writer who is vetted to
Speaker 1: write an article, and then the editor would double check
Speaker 1: the article for things like, you know, grammatical mistakes and
Speaker 1: just anything that stands out. But generally you're fairly confident
Speaker 1: that the writer has turned in something without just making
Speaker 1: stuff up. This can come back to bite you, as
Speaker 1: we have seen multiple times, but usually it works out.
Speaker 1: But with AI you can't be sure about that. And
Speaker 1: so if you give AI generated articles to editors, often
Speaker 1: they have to go through the article with such a
Speaker 1: fine tooth comb that they essentially have rewritten the article themselves.
Speaker 1: Like it's as if you had given the writing assignment
Speaker 1: to the editor and not to an AI bought in
Speaker 1: the first place. And that's a real problem. That's what
Speaker 1: I worry about with the use of AI in connection
Speaker 1: with gathering intelligence. Okay, how about we talk about a
Speaker 1: case where a government is using AI to repress information? Yay,
Speaker 1: how fun. So I'm going to try and get through
Speaker 1: this without going on too much of a rant. But
Speaker 1: the story is that in Iowa, the state government passed
Speaker 1: legislation that bans books in school libraries if those books
Speaker 1: include material not deemed to be quote unquote age appropriate.
Speaker 1: So that includes any book that describes a sex act.
Speaker 1: Anything like that is immediately like on that banned list.
Speaker 1: But then how does a school go about doing that right?
Speaker 1: Because libraries are I don't know if you know this,
Speaker 1: they are absolutely choc a block with books and it
Speaker 1: would take a considerable amount of time and effort to
Speaker 1: go through every single book to see if that book
Speaker 1: met the government's definition of age appropriate or if it
Speaker 1: did not. So one school district in Mason City is
Speaker 1: leaning on AI to do that work for them. Now.
Speaker 1: What they've started with is a list of books that
Speaker 1: have already received complaints in the past about objectionable material
Speaker 1: in those books, and so they are then feeding these
Speaker 1: books to AI software to scan the material and determine
Speaker 1: if in fact the book violates the law, in which
Speaker 1: case it would presumably be banned from the school libraries.
Speaker 1: This includes books like The Handmaid's Tale. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that one's going to get banned, knowing some of the
Speaker 1: scenes that are in that book. However, you know that's
Speaker 1: it's not even ironic, it's just sort of like predicted
Speaker 1: by the book itself. The state government is probably viewing
Speaker 1: it as a good thing because The Handmaid's Tale is
Speaker 1: a book that really lays out what happens when a
Speaker 1: government gets authority over stuff like bodily autonomy, and you know,
Speaker 1: you don't want young people being able to read about
Speaker 1: that and then getting ideas. School is the last place
Speaker 1: for getting ideas. After all, Sorry, I am ranting, even
Speaker 1: after I said I wasn't going to anyway. I just
Speaker 1: consider it a fresh new hell to be in a
Speaker 1: world where AI is helping administrators ban books. It's like
Speaker 1: the evil Mirror Image Universe version of a Reese's Peanut
Speaker 1: butter Cup. This is two awful things that go awful together. Okay,
Speaker 1: I obviously have become a little overwrought with emotion, So
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break, and when we
Speaker 1: come back, I'll talk about some more stories, including a
Speaker 1: couple more AI ones. We're back. So many years ago
Speaker 1: I did a tech Stuff episode about capture tests. These
Speaker 1: are those tests you sometimes encounter on the web that
Speaker 1: you have to pass to prove you're a human being
Speaker 1: before you can access whatever is on the other side,
Speaker 1: right Like, there are a lot of these where you
Speaker 1: have to click on it in order to complete some
Speaker 1: transaction or else the system will think that you are
Speaker 1: a bot and reject it. So researchers say that bots
Speaker 1: are now better at completing capture tests than humans are,
Speaker 1: and that is a huge problem because the whole main
Speaker 1: purpose of captures is to create a task that should
Speaker 1: be relatively easy for most humans to complete, but it
Speaker 1: should also be really tricky for automated systems to complete it.
Speaker 1: As captures become harder for people to complete, they become
Speaker 1: a barrier to legitimate usage. It's a real problem. And
Speaker 1: as they become easier for bots to complete, well, obviously
Speaker 1: they have no use at all from that standpoint, at
Speaker 1: least not for their stated purpose. This is not the
Speaker 1: first time we've seen this happen. By the way, the
Speaker 1: whole history of capture is one that's kind of like
Speaker 1: a seesaw. Developers will create automated programs they get better
Speaker 1: at solving certain capture tests, and then capture test developers
Speaker 1: will come up with a new approach to captures in
Speaker 1: order to trip up this new generation of bots. So,
Speaker 1: in a way, captures have played a really important part
Speaker 1: in the evolution of artificial intelligence. But beyond this adversarial
Speaker 1: approach to machine learning, the research points out that bots
Speaker 1: have fewer barriers to do stuff that we generally frown upon,
Speaker 1: like we typically put these capture things in place for
Speaker 1: a reason, like we don't want automated algorithms or systems
Speaker 1: to be able to game the system in some way,
Speaker 1: So that can include things like using bots that can
Speaker 1: defeat captures in an effort to access all the pages
Speaker 1: in a website and then scrap all the data for
Speaker 1: whatever purpose, or to pose as a legitimate customer on
Speaker 1: an online marketplace and then post fake reviews for various
Speaker 1: products and then artificially driving that product's review scores up
Speaker 1: or down, right, like you could have someone pay to
Speaker 1: downvote a competitor's product so that your product looks better
Speaker 1: in comparison. You know, you could also use it to
Speaker 1: try and boost your own product scores. These are issues
Speaker 1: that are known and are happening, and one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why captures are being used. The Independent reports that
Speaker 1: researchers put capture tests to the you know test and
Speaker 1: had people and bots tried to complete different captures, and
Speaker 1: people did significantly worse on those tests than the bots did.
Speaker 1: They took more time to complete the tests, and they
Speaker 1: were less accurate than the bots. And the bots were
Speaker 1: able to breeze through some of those challenges in less
Speaker 1: than a second with like close to one hundred percent accuracy.
Speaker 1: So the real take home here is that captures no
Speaker 1: longer do the job they were intended to do, or
Speaker 1: at least ostensibly intended to do, and in my mind
Speaker 1: that means we should just ditch captures and come up
Speaker 1: with a different approach. However, I should also note that
Speaker 1: some companies, such as Google have relied on humans completing captures,
Speaker 1: not because that was a way to prevent bots from
Speaker 1: getting access to stuff, but rather to help Google train
Speaker 1: its own AI models. Right Like, there was the time
Speaker 1: where you would be presented with words scanned words from
Speaker 1: a scanned book and you would have to identify what
Speaker 1: that word was. And the reason for that was not
Speaker 1: so that Google could necessarily say, Okay, you're definitely a human,
Speaker 1: but to train its technology to be better able to
Speaker 1: scan text and interpret it. So sometimes capchas aren't really
Speaker 1: there as a safeguard against bots, but rather a method
Speaker 1: to train bots to be even smarter than they already are.
Speaker 1: And we're still on AI. So researchers at Purdue University
Speaker 1: have studied chat GPT's performance regarding coding. They took a
Speaker 1: very specific approach. They submitted to chat gpt five hundred
Speaker 1: and seventeen different questions that they pulled from the website's
Speaker 1: stack overflow. So in case you're not familiar with stack overflow.
Speaker 1: That's a place for programmers to go in order to
Speaker 1: learn and to share knowledge and tips, and you can
Speaker 1: ask questions of the community and then receive answers from them.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a programmer specific version of Quora
Speaker 1: or Rest in Peace Yahoo answers. So the researchers took
Speaker 1: questions from stack overflow, They gathered all these questions from
Speaker 1: the community, and they submitted those questions to chat gpt
Speaker 1: in order to see what chat gpt said, and they
Speaker 1: said that more than half of chat GPT's answers, fifty
Speaker 1: two percent of them included at least some inaccuracies, you know,
Speaker 1: some being totally inaccurate, to some that were just like
Speaker 1: partly inaccurate. They also said seventy seven percent of chat
Speaker 1: GPT's answers were overly verbose, which again makes me wonder
Speaker 1: if I am actually chat gpt. The researcher said, the
Speaker 1: inaccurate answers indicated that about half the time, like fifty
Speaker 1: four percent of the time, when chat gpt gave incorrect answers,
Speaker 1: it seemed to be because chat gpt didn't really understand
Speaker 1: what the question was actually asking. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: it's possible chat GPT could have produced a correct answer
Speaker 1: if it had been able to parse what the question
Speaker 1: asker wanted to know in the first place. It's just
Speaker 1: chat gpt didn't understand the question and so gave an
Speaker 1: inappropriate or incorrect response. All of this is not to
Speaker 1: say that chat gpt is completely useless when it comes
Speaker 1: to helping programmers code. It might be very useful, but
Speaker 1: it does require a lot of editorial oversight, just like
Speaker 1: with the writing of articles, like I'd mentioned before. But
Speaker 1: it could potentially speed things up if it if it's
Speaker 1: understanding the prompts properly and not hallucinating, which those are
Speaker 1: big ifs. But like the researchers were even quick to say,
Speaker 1: this isn't to suggest that AI doesn't have a place here.
Speaker 1: It's just to remind ourselves that, you know, the way
Speaker 1: you word questions matters, the way that chat GPT interprets
Speaker 1: questions matters, and then we can't just assume that any
Speaker 1: answers provided are magically correct and accurate. Okay, moving off
Speaker 1: of AI, let's talk about Apple. So back in March
Speaker 1: twenty just as the world was starting to shut down
Speaker 1: in the face of COVID Apple agreed to a five
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar settlement. So the heart of the matter
Speaker 1: here was a class action lawsuit that accused Apple of
Speaker 1: purposefully slowing down older iPhone models performance, presumably in an
Speaker 1: effort to push people to upgrade to newer models. Apple
Speaker 1: admitted that it had slowed performance down on older iPhone
Speaker 1: models back in twenty seventeen, but the company said it
Speaker 1: wasn't in an effort to make people go out and
Speaker 1: buy a new iPhone. Instead, they said they had to
Speaker 1: do it because updates to the iOS meant that older
Speaker 1: phones would potentially shut down spontaneously, you know, would enter
Speaker 1: into an issue where they would shut down or they
Speaker 1: would burn through their battery life too quickly unless Apple
Speaker 1: artificially made them work slower. But in people upset, Apple
Speaker 1: customers upset, and around three million claimants joined this class
Speaker 1: action lawsuit, which Apple again ultimately settled in March of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. And now, finally, three years after the settlement,
Speaker 1: Apple will be sending checks out to the people who
Speaker 1: were part of the lawsuit. The checks come out to
Speaker 1: be about sixty five dollars per claim, because again it
Speaker 1: was like three million claims and a five hundred million
Speaker 1: dollar settlement fee, And part of the reason for the
Speaker 1: long delay has nothing to do with Apple's behavior. It's
Speaker 1: not that Apple was dragging its heels. Part of the
Speaker 1: issue is that a couple of claimants out of those
Speaker 1: three million, were dissatisfied with the settlement and they appealed
Speaker 1: it to the ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals. But
Speaker 1: ultimately the court ruled against that appeal. So now, after
Speaker 1: many years, those checks should be heading out the door.
Speaker 1: So you should keep on the lookout if you had
Speaker 1: signed up to be one of the claimants in that lawsuit.
Speaker 1: Last week, I talked about how Saudi Arabia was following
Speaker 1: in the EU's footsteps, requiring all smartphone manufacturers to include
Speaker 1: a USB C charging port starting in twenty twenty five. Well,
Speaker 1: now the EU has passed similar rules that will require
Speaker 1: all smartphones to have replaceable batteries starting in twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1: So like the USBC rules, this seems to me to
Speaker 1: be more or less specifically targeting Apple, not just Apple.
Speaker 1: Apple's not the only company that makes it impossible to
Speaker 1: replace a smartphone's battery. In fact, my Android phone is
Speaker 1: the same I can't replace the battery on my Android phone.
Speaker 1: But Apple just has this reputation for protecting its proprietary
Speaker 1: approach to smartphones and creating kind of a closed off
Speaker 1: ecosystem that requires you to work with Apple to make
Speaker 1: any repairs or maintenance to your own devices, And that's
Speaker 1: part of what is being targeted here. It's also an
Speaker 1: effort to cut down on things like e waste. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing is that while that may be an element,
Speaker 1: like the control part of the ecosystem is probably an
Speaker 1: element for companies like Apple to lock away those batteries,
Speaker 1: it's not the only reason for it. Part of the
Speaker 1: esthetic for modern smartphones is to try and make them
Speaker 1: as slim as possible, but in order to do that,
Speaker 1: you have to cram all the components of the smartphone
Speaker 1: into a very tiny form factor. And while you can
Speaker 1: miniaturize a lot of stuff in smartphones, batteries are one
Speaker 1: of the things you can't easily miniaturize. But this typically
Speaker 1: means that it's not really practical or sometimes even possible,
Speaker 1: to make replaceable batteries a thing because you've crammed everything
Speaker 1: into such a small form factor that you just can't
Speaker 1: access the battery or disengage it easily from the rest
Speaker 1: of the phone. It's all just it's kind of built
Speaker 1: into itself. So mandating that all smartphones have to have
Speaker 1: replaceable batteries, ones that are replaceable by the end user.
Speaker 1: No less, we're not just talking about taking it into
Speaker 1: a shop and having it swapped out. The end user
Speaker 1: is supposed to be able to replace these batteries. Well,
Speaker 1: that means that companies will have to move away from
Speaker 1: designs that end up having these compact layouts that would
Speaker 1: make it difficult or impossible to replace the battery. They're
Speaker 1: going to have to go with a different approach, and
Speaker 1: that could mean that we're going to start seeing some
Speaker 1: chonkier smartphones in the EU starting around twenty twenty seven
Speaker 1: or so. Also, I should mention this rule doesn't just
Speaker 1: apply to smartphones. It actually applies to any battery operated device,
Speaker 1: So you know, things like laptops and stuff will also
Speaker 1: have to have replace batteries. Even electric bikes, which are
Speaker 1: also popular in the EU, will have to have these
Speaker 1: replaceable batteries. Okay, I've got a few more stories to
Speaker 1: cover before we wrap up. Let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: and we'll be back with some more news. We're back
Speaker 1: and I've got another class action lawsuit to bring up.
Speaker 1: This one is against HP, so claimants in California, uh
Speaker 1: and I think other places as well, but I know
Speaker 1: the lawsuit is taking place in the state of California.
Speaker 1: They have sued HP, saying the company was purposefully restricting
Speaker 1: customers from using all in one printers if the toner
Speaker 1: ran down, so you run out of ink and then
Speaker 1: suddenly you're all in one printer just becomes a giant
Speaker 1: paper weight. So you wouldn't be able to even use
Speaker 1: the non printing functions on one of the these machines,
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't be able to scan a document to
Speaker 1: create like a PDF, or you wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: use it to send a fax, which doesn't require any
Speaker 1: ink in the first place. And that was the basis
Speaker 1: of the complaint, is that HP was locking these functions
Speaker 1: away in an effort to force people to buy expensive
Speaker 1: toner even if they didn't need the printer for the
Speaker 1: purposes of printing. Also, they argued that HP failed to
Speaker 1: disclose that this is what would happen in the device's documentation.
Speaker 1: So HP filed a motion to dismiss this lawsuit, and
Speaker 1: now a judge in California has denied that motion, so
Speaker 1: the lawsuit may proceed. Earlier, when this lawsuit was first
Speaker 1: filed against HP, a judge actually did dismiss the case
Speaker 1: because the claim was that the plaintiffs had failed to
Speaker 1: make an actual legal claim against HP. They had complaints,
Speaker 1: but not a legal claim. But then the plaintiffs amended
Speaker 1: their motion and that one held up to scrutiny, and
Speaker 1: that's what's going to move forward. This still doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that HP will ultimately be found to have acted in
Speaker 1: the wrong, but it does mean that they're going to
Speaker 1: have to face some tough questions in court. Last week,
Speaker 1: California authorities gave two companies WAIM, which is owned by
Speaker 1: Google's parent company, Alphabet, and Cruse, which is owned by
Speaker 1: General Motors, the authority to operate self driving robotaxi services
Speaker 1: around the clock in San Francisco, and then Cruz promptly
Speaker 1: created a traffic jam in the North Beach neighborhood of
Speaker 1: San Francisco, Sad Trombo. All right, so, according to reports
Speaker 1: from San Francisco, for some reason, several of Cruz's self
Speaker 1: driving cars, as many as ten of them at a time,
Speaker 1: came to a stop around the Valejo Street in North Beach,
Speaker 1: San Francisco. Ballejo just always makes me think of the
Speaker 1: Sodiac Killer, But the Sodiac Killer had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with these cars just coming to a stop. Some of
Speaker 1: those cars had passengers inside them, and so the passengers
Speaker 1: were stuck inside a non moving car on the street
Speaker 1: for about fifteen minutes. The cars did turn on their
Speaker 1: hazard lights, so at least there's that. So what the
Speaker 1: heck happened? Well, representatives at Cruise say that it looks
Speaker 1: like a nearby music festival was the problem. The cars
Speaker 1: were not listening to the groovy tunes. Instead, there was
Speaker 1: an excess of cell phone activity in the area and
Speaker 1: it was kind of clogging up the airwaves, and so
Speaker 1: all that interference made it difficult for the vehicles to
Speaker 1: access their navigation features, and so they kind of went
Speaker 1: into protective turtle mode. It was not an auspicious start
Speaker 1: to the driverleist taxi revolution, I would say. Now, the
Speaker 1: rules in California state that Weaimo is not allowed to
Speaker 1: charge customers for taxi rides unless a safety driver is
Speaker 1: also in the vehicle. If it's a driverless vehicle and
Speaker 1: there's no safety driver, weimo can't charge for rides. They
Speaker 1: could give them for free, but they wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to charge. Cruz has a slightly different deal. It can
Speaker 1: charge for driverless trips without a safety driver, but only
Speaker 1: between the hours of ten pm and six am. Anytime
Speaker 1: outside of those hours, if there's not a safety driver
Speaker 1: in the car, the ride is free, or if they
Speaker 1: do have a safety driver present in the vehicle, they
Speaker 1: can charge just anytime. GM has said that the long
Speaker 1: term plan is to quote unquote blanket cities like San
Speaker 1: Francisco with driverless vehicles, which kind of makes the point
Speaker 1: for a lot of people who oppose these policies. They
Speaker 1: argue that this just really means that we're just gonna
Speaker 1: end up with a lot more vehicles on city streets.
Speaker 1: That's not going to alleviate traffic, it's gonna make it worse.
Speaker 1: And while the argument might be made that the purpose
Speaker 1: is to convince people to not drive their own vehicles
Speaker 1: on streets, the proponents for change are saying that's not
Speaker 1: what we need. We don't need like self driving cars
Speaker 1: to do that. What we need is to make cities
Speaker 1: easier to get around for pedestrians and bicyclists and stuff,
Speaker 1: which is actually taking more cars off the street as
Speaker 1: opposed to going driverlests and having even more vehicles circle streets.
Speaker 1: So yeah, not a great story to come out of
Speaker 1: the early days of driverless robotaxis in San Francisco. Now,
Speaker 1: our last full story has to do with video games
Speaker 1: and modeling communities. So you may be aware there are
Speaker 1: folks who love to create code that modifies existing video
Speaker 1: games in some way. Right, they might allow you to
Speaker 1: get access to abilities and tools that developers have but
Speaker 1: players are not meant to have, and then do all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff. Maybe it even changes the game fundament
Speaker 1: mentally or ads new content created by moders. That kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Some video game companies actually encourage these communities.
Speaker 1: Some even work with them to create like a storefront
Speaker 1: where the game producer and the motterers can both generate
Speaker 1: revenue from those mods. But then you've got Rockstar Games,
Speaker 1: the creators of the Grand Theft Auto series. Rockstar Games
Speaker 1: has often taken a more adversarial approach to the modding community,
Speaker 1: so back in twenty fifteen, the company banned a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of members of a mod group called five M.
Speaker 1: Rockstar said that the group had been developing code that
Speaker 1: can make it possible for folks to pirate the game.
Speaker 1: What the motters had actually done is they had created
Speaker 1: mods that would allow people to play in an alternate
Speaker 1: version of Grand Theft Auto Online. So that's like an
Speaker 1: ongoing product that Rockstar offers. But the mods five D
Speaker 1: made it possible to run a separate instance of Grand
Speaker 1: Theft ato online, one not overseen by Rockstar and one
Speaker 1: that could have lots of different mods in it. Plus,
Speaker 1: people who had a pirated copy of Grand Theft Auto
Speaker 1: would be able to access this alternative version of Grand
Speaker 1: Theft Doto online. So Rockstar Game says, oh, you're encouraging
Speaker 1: people to pirate the game, so we're banning you from
Speaker 1: our different forums and stuff. But now Rockstar has acquired
Speaker 1: a group called CFX dot Ra, which consists of you
Speaker 1: guessed it, the team behind five M. So now the
Speaker 1: dreaded pirates are part of the crew, y are they
Speaker 1: can take down the system from within. This is a
Speaker 1: pretty dramatic turn of events because back in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: there were reports that Rockstar had gone so far as
Speaker 1: to actually send private investigators out to the homes of
Speaker 1: people who were part of five M and to essentially
Speaker 1: intimidate them. But in the year since twenty fifteen to
Speaker 1: five M has maintained this alternative online play space for
Speaker 1: grand Theft auto players that reached a maximum of around
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand concurrent players back in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. So I guess Rockstar came around to the
Speaker 1: old philosophy of if you can't beat them, acquire them.
Speaker 1: Now before I head off, I do have a recommended
Speaker 1: article I think you should check out. It's on tech Dirt.
Speaker 1: It's written by Mike Masnik. The article is titled ur
Speaker 1: I double A piles on the effort to kill the
Speaker 1: World's greatest library sues Internet Archive for making it possible
Speaker 1: to hear old seventy eight's. That is a very long headline,
Speaker 1: but yeah, the story talks about how the RIAA aka
Speaker 1: the Recording Industry Association of America is coming after the
Speaker 1: Internet Archive because Theria objects to folks being able to
Speaker 1: use Internet Archive to listen to obsolete media. So the
Speaker 1: seventy eights reference record albums. That's what the seventy eights mean.
Speaker 1: They're specific types of record albums, specifically ones that require
Speaker 1: a playback speed of seventy eight revolutions per minute. You know,
Speaker 1: Vinyl has experienced a renaissance lately, but you typically find
Speaker 1: the Vinyl records of today falling either into the thirty
Speaker 1: three and a third rpm category or the forty five
Speaker 1: rpm category. Most record players and turntables don't even have
Speaker 1: the ability to play at seventy eight RPM. Some do,
Speaker 1: but a lot don't because seventy eight RPM albums are
Speaker 1: pretty darn rare. They are really reaching obsolescence, so there's
Speaker 1: a possibility that media recorded on seventy eight albums could
Speaker 1: be lost forever without this archival approach. So the Internet
Speaker 1: archive is all about preserving information, but the uble A
Speaker 1: is not crazy about people being able to access stuff
Speaker 1: without you know, the industry's total control over it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm biased when it comes to stuff about the ri
Speaker 1: double A because that organization has brought the hammer down
Speaker 1: with unnecessary force multiple times throughout the history of the Internet.
Speaker 1: Like the Napster story is ridiculous, but you should read
Speaker 1: this article on tech Dirt to get the full story
Speaker 1: and maybe get a deeper appreciation for what the folks
Speaker 1: at Internet archive are trying to do. And that's it
Speaker 1: for the Tech News for Tuesday, August fifteenth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I hope you're all well and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You