WEBVTT - Tech News: Is TikTok's Fate Sealed? 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:12.319 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. He there, 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.920 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:15.960 --> 0:00:19.079 I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:22.079 are you. It's time for the tech news for Tuesday, 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:26.439 March twenty eighth, twenty twenty three, and we start off 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:29.680 with a little bit of sad news. So last Friday, 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:33.800 Gordon Moore passed away at the age of ninety four. 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:36.960 That's a ripe old age. Now I plan to do 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:42.159 an episode about more to really go into detail about 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:45.320 his life and contributions. But he is someone that I 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:48.639 have talked about a lot in past episodes of tech 0:00:48.680 --> 0:00:52.560 Stuff because he's a pretty important person in the world 0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:56.440 of tech. He's the man who first observed that semiconductor 0:00:56.520 --> 0:01:01.640 fabrication companies had followed a particular trajectory, namely that the 0:01:01.680 --> 0:01:06.240 companies were cramming twice as many components onto a square 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:10.959 inch of silicon every two years or so. So if 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:14.039 you were able to put ten thousand components on a 0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:17.720 square inch of silicon in year one, two years later, 0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:22.280 by year three, you're cramming twenty thousand on there by 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.320 year five. That would go up to forty thousand and 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:28.679 so on, and it gets real big, real fast. Now, 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:32.559 this observation came to be known as Moore's law, which 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:35.280 is funny because you know, he was making an observation 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:38.520 and saying that you could predict what would happen based 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:42.080 on this observation, But he wasn't saying that there was 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:47.640 some fundamental law that drove this. His initial observations were 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:52.080 really more about economic factors that would fund that kind 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:55.200 of innovation and make it necessary in order to be competitive. 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:58.800 But later interpretations of his observation would kind of boil 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:03.720 down to a predict that computing processing power doubles every 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:06.520 two years or so. But Moore's law was just one 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:09.040 of his big contributions. Another huge one is that he 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:12.840 was a co founder of Intel. So we'll do a 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:16.840 full episode about him and his contributions soon, and in 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:21.840 the meantime, Fair Winds and following sees Gordon Moore. Markets 0:02:21.880 --> 0:02:26.639 Insider reports that, according to analyst Dan Ives, TikTok has 0:02:26.680 --> 0:02:31.120 a ninety percent chance of being banned in the US 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:35.080 if things continue as they are now. This follows shall 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:40.799 she Chew, which is TikTok's CEO appearing before Congress. Now, 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:44.200 as I mentioned last week, I was writing and recording 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:47.800 during his testimony, so I had to follow up on 0:02:47.840 --> 0:02:51.200 what was going on, and I couldn't watch very much 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:54.000 of it, y'all because it was not pretty. There was 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:59.640 some real ethnocentric xenophobic behavior on display in Congress, some 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:02.960 of it really really ugly, and there were a lot 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:06.120 of assumptions about choose heritage. It seemed like everybody was 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:11.760 assuming he's Chinese. He's not. He comes from Singapore, not China. 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:16.080 There was also a lot of railroading where like no 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:19.160 one was asking a question at one point, like they 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:23.960 were essentially making accusations and statements but not asking anything. 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:29.360 And it's kind of like counterproductive. I mean, if someone's 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:33.080 there to provide testimony, you're supposed to ask them questions 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:36.600 so that they can answer, then you follow up. And 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:39.280 it looked like a lot of them, the people in 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:42.920 Congress were kind of using it to grandstand, and you know, 0:03:43.240 --> 0:03:46.920 a lot of TikTok folks, like a lot of users 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:50.280 took the ball and ran with it by creating a 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:54.800 bunch of satirical videos pointing out how Congress was behaving. 0:03:55.320 --> 0:04:00.880 Of course, TikTok users have their own bias obviously, so 0:04:01.400 --> 0:04:05.160 according to Ives the analyst, TikTok has a couple of 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:09.080 options if it wants to avoid being obliterated, and it's 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:11.160 pretty much what we heard a few years back when 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:15.120 former President Donald Trump started to go after TikTok. The 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:19.120 company can either hold an initial public offering or IPO 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:24.039 and go public and in the process presumably break its 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:27.159 connection with byte Dance, though you would have to take 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:30.520 some real steps to make sure that happened, or it 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:33.520 could be sold off to some other company, you know, 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:37.920 not a Chinese company. Now. Honestly, I don't know how 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:41.200 to feel about all this. On the one hand, China 0:04:41.440 --> 0:04:45.520 very much is focused on digital espionage. Like that's not 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:51.320 a controversial thing to say. China's actively pursuing digital espionage 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:54.719 in multiple venues. I don't know that TikTok's one of 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:58.360 them necessarily, it wouldn't surprise me if it were. But 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:01.520 you know, it's there's no denying China's in that business. 0:05:01.920 --> 0:05:05.760 But then so is everybody else, including the United States. 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:09.039 It's not like China's the outlier here. You can also 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:13.560 argue that even the private and public companies here in 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:15.960 the US and the tech sector are, when you get 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:19.360 down to it, focused on digital espionage with regard to users. 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:22.880 They are in the business of buying and selling personal 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:29.120 information about people like us. No one is clean on this. 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:31.520 In other words, like you can't just single out TikTok 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:35.080 and say you are bad because you're collecting information, because 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:38.719 that's the truth across the board. You could say everyone's 0:05:38.720 --> 0:05:41.520 bad and that would be true. But yeah, singling out 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:45.400 TikTok for that specific purpose doesn't hold a lot of water. Now, 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:50.840 the national security component does complicate things further, but it 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:55.039 also creates an opening for xenophobic ideologies to take hold, 0:05:55.200 --> 0:05:58.719 which gets pretty ugly. Like there are elements of the 0:05:58.839 --> 0:06:04.119 rhetoric that we're starting to sound a bit like McCarthyism 0:06:04.480 --> 0:06:07.080 from back in the nineteen fifties. If you don't know 0:06:07.120 --> 0:06:08.880 what that is, you need to look up the Red 0:06:09.040 --> 0:06:12.520 Scare and educate yourself. And you know, some of the 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:16.880 concerns might be based in reality, but they can become 0:06:16.920 --> 0:06:20.520 exaggerated and also conflated with other things, and it just 0:06:20.720 --> 0:06:23.919 can get very very ugly, very very quickly. So the 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:26.200 whole thing is a huge mess. And I sure as heck, 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:29.440 do not know what the best way forward is. I 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:32.880 just feel pretty comfortable saying whatever the best way happens 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:35.520 to be, that ain't the way we're going right now. 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:39.760 Joseph Cox of Motherboard has a piece about the FBI's 0:06:39.760 --> 0:06:44.680 contract with a company called Team Simru or perhaps Simru 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:48.160 it's see why Mru, I'm not sure how to pronounce it. 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:53.360 And the contract is to acquire what is called NetFlow data. 0:06:53.440 --> 0:06:55.440 This is kind of like a big picture of view 0:06:55.720 --> 0:06:59.840 of information that's moving across networks like the Internet. You 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:02.880 can see which servers are connecting to one another, transmitting 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:08.119 information from endpoint to endpoint. So Team Simru is able 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:11.400 to get this data by doing deals with Internet service providers. 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:16.400 Team Simru offers ISPs threat detection services and in return, 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:21.080 the ISPs trade this data, which Team Simru then sells 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:24.840 to clients like the FBI. Apparently. Now. The reason this 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:28.600 is important is it marks a kind of loophole that 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:30.840 the FBI has leaned on in order to get an 0:07:30.840 --> 0:07:35.240 eye on data transmissions without first going through the legal 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:39.760 process to do so lawfully. Right, instead of getting a warrant, 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:44.080 a digital warrant, they just buy the data outright. Now, 0:07:44.160 --> 0:07:47.320 NetFlow is not quite the same thing as spying on 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:51.720 the actual information being exchanged itself. It can, however, include 0:07:51.720 --> 0:07:54.480 a lot of stuff like what you are l you're visiting, 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:57.080 so you know which websites people are going to during 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:01.840 a given Internet session, and NetFlow can definitely provide clues 0:08:02.480 --> 0:08:05.840 as to potential illegal activity, so you might be able 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:09.200 to find which servers are associated with a hacker group, 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:13.080 for example. But the issue is that metadata can tell 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:16.760 us a lot about a person by itself. Like you 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:21.200 might think the information within a conversation is important, and 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:25.840 it is, but the metadata about that conversation can give 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:28.880 you a lot of clues all on its own. Now, 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:30.960 I've mentioned this before, but there have been a lot 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:34.000 of demonstrations showing that with just a few data points 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:37.880 you can really narrow down the specific Internet users identity 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:42.040 with incredible accuracy and precision. So this practice of just 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:47.200 buying information from companies like team cymru it gets into 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:51.720 some really dangerous surveillance state territory. Here, if you'd like 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:54.880 to learn more, you can visit vice dot com and 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:58.640 just read the article. Here is the FBI's contract to 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:02.960 buy mass Internet data. The facial recognition company clear View, 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:08.280 which built out an enormous database of images using questionable means, 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:13.839 mainly scraping social network platforms to gather digital photos without 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:19.440 first getting the consent of users of those platforms, says 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:23.640 that it has facilitated almost a million searchers or US police. 0:09:23.679 --> 0:09:26.640 This is according to the company itself that has made 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:31.120 that claim. They revealed this startling information and a piece 0:09:31.160 --> 0:09:35.640 for the BBC. Clearview has received some high profile criticism 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.320 in the United States, and several cities here in the 0:09:38.400 --> 0:09:42.160 US outright banned their police forces from using the service. 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:46.800 They say do not make use of clear Views services. Now, 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:49.920 as I've mentioned several times in the past, facial recognition 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:54.400 technology is far from perfect and frequently encounters issues when 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:58.280 identifying people of color in particular, and ultimately, these are 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:01.160 the same people who received dispropor or sets, scrutiny and 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:05.720 abuse from law enforcement. Making matters worse is that it's 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:09.480 very difficult to say which police departments have been frequent 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:13.000 customers for clear View, because there are very few laws 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:16.719 and regulations that require police to disclose that kind of information. 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:20.200 So this lack of transparency creates a further gap of 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:24.760 distrust between police and citizens, and scraping social media for 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.400 data like this typically goes against the terms of services 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:32.040 for those social networks. Facebook has come down hard on 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:36.520 companies that have tried to scrape Facebook in order to 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:41.680 gather data. Also academic researchers. Facebook's really gone hard against 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:46.400 academic researchers doing that. So essentially, companies like Meta slash 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:48.760 Facebook don't like anyone else being able to do what 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:54.040 they are very very definitely doing themselves. I mean it's 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:58.080 I don't have information on it. I cannot say with 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:01.319 evidence that they do, but it would shock me if 0:11:01.360 --> 0:11:04.600 they are not making use of that technology that they 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:06.440 don't want anyone else to be able to use on 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:11.719 their platforms. Okay, with that cheerful note, let's take a 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:24.199 quick break. We'll come back with some more tech news. Okay, 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:28.400 we're back. So this past weekend, an organization called the 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:35.440 Military Cyber Professional Association, or MCPA, petitioned lawmakers to create 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:39.520 a new branch of the US military that would focus 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:43.720 solely on digital and cyber threats. The group, which consists 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:46.640 of folks who have worked in digital security within the military, 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:50.480 some of them current military officials, some of them former ones. 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:53.160 They say that one of the largest challenges that the 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:56.600 United States faces with digital warfare in mind is that 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.839 up to now, each branch of the military has its 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:05.040 own independent methodology to fight cyber threats, and there is 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:11.120 a unified office that can take some actions, but it's 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:14.800 not a full branch of the military. So the MCPA 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:18.320 is saying this creates gaps in US defenses and that 0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:24.600 if we are to actually have a real strong national 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:28.160 security approach to cybersecurity, there needs to be a military 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:33.080 branch specifically dedicated to cyber warfare and defense. This branch 0:12:33.360 --> 0:12:38.920 could establish best practices, it could spearhead projects to protect 0:12:38.960 --> 0:12:43.800 the United States, and it would be a fully funded 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:47.800 branch of the military, as opposed to something that could 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:52.160 see its funding ebb and flow based upon the individual 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:57.880 branches of the military that already exist. We've already established 0:12:57.920 --> 0:12:59.920 a new branch of the military here in the United 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:04.320 States in the recent past, the Space Force being the 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:09.199 most recent branch. So if this did happen, I mean 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:13.600 there is precedents, recent precedents. Before Space Force, it was 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:17.280 like seventy two years since the last time the US 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:20.280 had created a branch of the military. But Hey, we're 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:22.920 on a roll now, right, I mean two, that's a streak. 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:26.120 We can start creating branches for everything. Whether or not 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:30.440 anyone actually makes a move on this to turn this 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:35.000 proposal into something more actionable remains to be seen. There 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:39.720 does not appear to currently be a lot of behind 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:43.959 this in Congress or in the executive branch, so we 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.000 may not see any movement on this in the near future. 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:50.280 It may take a while. I do think that it's 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:53.560 not a bad idea to establish such a branch, to 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:58.360 have something that is well funded and can attract talent 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:03.160 and maintain and keep that talent in order to fight 0:14:03.280 --> 0:14:08.200 off things like the various hacker groups that are constantly 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:12.880 poking at vulnerabilities within the United States to find a 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:15.439 way to get a foothold. I think it's important to 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:18.920 establish a defense against that, and the longer we wait, 0:14:18.960 --> 0:14:23.000 the harder it will be to do it effectively. So personally, 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:25.760 I think it's not a bad idea. I'm not a 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:30.280 huge fan of creating more military necessarily, but this is 0:14:30.320 --> 0:14:33.800 the way the future is going, and with the increase 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:38.040 in things like ai USE, it's going to be a necessity, 0:14:38.280 --> 0:14:42.360 and I would rather see us be proactive than reactive. 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:44.680 I mean, we're already going to be at least a 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:47.840 little reactive, but you know, we could argue we're proactive. 0:14:49.680 --> 0:14:53.400 Zoe Schiffer over at Platformer has a great article titled 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:58.000 the Secret list of Twitter VIPs getting boosted over everyone else, 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:02.080 which obviously reveals how some of Twitter's internal documents show 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:06.040 that the platform is being, let's say, inconsistent with how 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.120 it applies the rules. I'm sure this comes as a 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:13.080 massive shock to everyone, all right. So the heart of 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:15.960 the matter comes from Elon Musk saying that to hold 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:20.680 onto that blue verified check mark that some users have, 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:23.440 they're going to have to pony up the eight bucks 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:27.680 a month subscription fee to Twitter Blue. Or actually it's 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:29.880 more than that, if you're talking about a brand and 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.600 like a company as opposed to an individual. Elon Musk 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:37.880 says that this is really about treating everyone equally, that 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:41.840 people shouldn't be elevated over others with that blue check mark. 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:45.880 But already that's just a fricking lie, right, because if 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:49.080 it were about treating everyone equally, either you get rid 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:51.680 of the blue check mark entirely so no one has it, 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:55.080 or everybody gets the blue check mark, which is the 0:15:55.120 --> 0:15:57.960 same thing as nobody having it, but you wouldn't have 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:02.000 to pay for it. That's not about treating people equally. 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:05.000 You're talking about a paid for version and a non 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:08.920 paid for version. That's not equal. Besides, the blue check 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:13.440 mark was never intended to be a status symbol. That's 0:16:13.440 --> 0:16:16.160 why it turned into what it was meant to be. 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:19.920 Was a way for Twitter to show that it had 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:25.320 verified the identity of that Twitter account, and that Twitter 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:29.600 could vouch that that account actually did represent the person 0:16:29.800 --> 0:16:33.640 or brand that it was connected to. So if you 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:36.960 saw I don't know Nicholas Holt on Twitter and there's 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:39.280 a blue check mark, you know, oh, that actually does 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:43.680 belong to the actor Nicholas Holt, or probably to his 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:48.440 PR personnel who handle his social media accounts, but you 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:50.400 would know that that's the official one and it's not 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:53.600 just someone claiming to be that. That was the reason 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:56.560 for the verified check mark. It was to verify the 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:59.360 person was who they said they were. But of course 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:02.360 the checkmark did become a sort of social capital kind 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:05.919 of thing, like people were like, I'm important enough to 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:09.960 have a check mark, and that this somehow raised them 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:13.359 in social status above everyone else on Twitter, where social 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:16.560 status means really nothing, I would argue. I mean, I 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:21.359 say that as someone who got a blue check mark anyway. 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:26.280 Now the new version is weird because what the blue 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:28.680 check mark means is that the person's willing to pay 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:31.560 a fee to keep that blue check mark. I don't 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:33.720 know when that actually comes into play. I haven't even 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:36.520 seen a message saying hey, you're gonna need to pay 0:17:36.720 --> 0:17:38.800 a subscription to keep your blue check mark. It may 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:40.800 have come through and I just ignored it because I 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:44.679 don't pop on Twitter that much anymore. So it's entirely 0:17:44.680 --> 0:17:47.359 possible that's just on me, not on Twitter. Anyway. It 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:50.920 turns out that this version, the new version, that Elon 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:55.000 Musk is talking about, is even less fair than what 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.520 we had heard before, because while he's saying, hey, you're 0:17:58.520 --> 0:18:01.120 gonna have to pay if you want that blue check mark, 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:05.120 there are around thirty five VIP users of Twitter who 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:09.040 not only are secure with their status, they actually get 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:13.120 a boost from Twitter. They get higher visibility than everybody 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:18.159 else does so that they appear in more Twitter timelines. 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:22.000 Now it will come as no surprise that Elon Musk 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:23.600 is in there. We've talked about in the past, how 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:28.159 Elon Musk has his Twitter feed boosted above other stuff 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:31.919 so that he shows up in more feeds. But others 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:35.399 are also on that list, and it ranges from ultra 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:42.200 conservative commentator Ben Shapiro to the progressive politician Alexandria Okazia Cortez. 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:46.520 And then there's a few celebrities thrown in there. There's 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:49.640 some athletes in there, there's other politicians in there. It's 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:53.199 a real animal farm situation. You know, all Twitter users 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:57.080 are equal, but some are more equal than others. Probably 0:18:57.119 --> 0:18:59.040 not a big surprise to most of you out there. 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:02.360 It wasn't a big surprise to me. But again, just 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:08.639 more evidence that things at Twitter are our topsy turvy. 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:12.520 And hey, if your account doesn't have that paid for 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.840 blue check mark, it sounds like your tweets ain't ever 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:18.760 gonna show up as a recommended tweet in the four 0:19:18.920 --> 0:19:22.399 you page of Twitter. So if you go to Twitter, 0:19:22.440 --> 0:19:25.040 you'll see there's like a four you thing, And the 0:19:25.119 --> 0:19:29.119 stuff in the four you section is curated for you. 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:32.159 It's supposed to be stuff that the algorithm serves to 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:36.520 you that you are likely to find interesting or engaging. 0:19:37.359 --> 0:19:41.280 That's the purpose. Actual practice varies because goodness knows. The 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:43.520 last time I checked it out, I was like, none 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:47.200 of this feels like it's for me, but whatever. So anyway, 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:49.359 if you don't have a blue check mark, if you 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:54.280 haven't paid that subscription fee, then your tweets aren't going 0:19:54.320 --> 0:19:57.239 to be showing up in anyone's for you page. So 0:19:57.280 --> 0:19:59.280 I guess this is an incentive to try and get 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:01.920 more people to pay for that check mark so that 0:20:01.960 --> 0:20:05.880 they get increased visibility on the platform. This change will 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:09.359 take effect on April fifteenth, according to Elon Musk. Not 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:12.600 only that, but only the paid for accounts will be 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:16.200 able to vote in Twitter polls. Now. Musk says this 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:19.280 is to fight off the issue with AI bots, which 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.399 is funny because I thought his whole plan was to 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:26.840 eliminate bots from the platform. I remember distinctly him talking 0:20:26.880 --> 0:20:29.800 about this in the lead up to him purchasing Twitter, 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:32.080 that this was a big part of what his plan was. 0:20:32.560 --> 0:20:34.840 But I guess now he's saying, Nope, you can't do that. 0:20:34.920 --> 0:20:38.280 It's impossible. So the bots are going to ruin everything 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.679 like the ding dang poles unless we make it a 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:46.879 paid for service. So this could also maybe have something 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:49.520 to do with the fact that, you know, a few 0:20:49.520 --> 0:20:51.600 months ago, he ran a poll asking if he should 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:55.680 step down from Twitter, and the majority voted yes, and then, 0:20:56.240 --> 0:20:58.840 you know, one of his followers later suggested that maybe 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:01.399 only people who are subscribe to Twitter Blue should be 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:03.399 able to vote in those kinds of polls, and he 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:07.560 was like, huh, interesting, world may never care. I mean, 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:12.200 the world may never know whatever. CNBC reports that Twitter 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:17.120 also applied for a subpoena against gethub, the collaborative developer platform, 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:20.760 because someone using the handle free speech Enthusiast shared what 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:24.320 appeared to be segments of Twitter's own source code. Get 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:27.119 Hub complied with the court order and remove the code, 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:30.560 so it's no longer up there. Interestingly, Musk himself had 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:33.920 previously said he would make the source code for Twitter's 0:21:33.960 --> 0:21:38.440 recommendation algorithm and open source code in an attempt to 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:41.960 suss out if there is any actual bias or preference. 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:44.359 You know, there are a lot of allegations that Twitter 0:21:45.320 --> 0:21:51.240 downplay conservative messaging and prevents it from getting as large 0:21:51.760 --> 0:21:56.639 an audience as other messages, so making it open source 0:21:56.680 --> 0:21:59.600 would allow people to comb through the code and see 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:03.840 is in fact bias there. Also to find any mistakes 0:22:03.840 --> 0:22:06.720 in the algorithm, or a way to create the algorithm 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:09.160 so that it is more effective in what it's supposed 0:22:09.200 --> 0:22:11.200 to do. And the whole idea is that this is 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:15.920 going to create better transparency and fairness moving forward. But 0:22:16.000 --> 0:22:18.359 you know, it hasn't happened yet. And as we just said, 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:23.440 Twitter moved to strike source code off of GitHub, though 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:26.320 I don't know necessarily that the source code in question 0:22:26.640 --> 0:22:30.480 related to the recommendation algorithm, the stuff that was on GitHub, 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:34.440 and obviously it should be done on Twitter zone terms. 0:22:34.440 --> 0:22:36.720 I do believe that. I'm just I don't know when 0:22:36.760 --> 0:22:41.680 we're going to see that code actually become open source. Okay, 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:43.880 I've got a few more news stories in the tech 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:46.600 world to cover before we wrap this up, so let's 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:58.440 take another quick break and we'll be right back. The 0:22:58.520 --> 0:23:02.840 chief technology officer of Nvidia, guy named Michael Kagan, recently 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:07.879 dismissed cryptocurrencies, saying they don't quote bring anything useful for 0:23:08.080 --> 0:23:11.239 society end quote. This is according to an article in 0:23:11.440 --> 0:23:15.840 the Guardian. This is interesting. It was not that long 0:23:15.880 --> 0:23:19.919 ago that Nvidio was selling truckloads of GPUs to the 0:23:20.000 --> 0:23:24.360 crypto mining community. It was really big business, so much 0:23:24.400 --> 0:23:27.840 so that it actually became very difficult for anyone else 0:23:27.960 --> 0:23:31.959 to find a new GPU, and if you did find one, 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:35.360 chances are the price was marked up so high that 0:23:35.440 --> 0:23:38.800 it would be difficult to justify buying one. The aftermarket 0:23:38.840 --> 0:23:43.479 on these things was insane. You had people either buying 0:23:43.480 --> 0:23:48.320 them up to use as crypto mining rigs, or buying 0:23:48.359 --> 0:23:51.200 them up and then selling them at an insane markup 0:23:51.440 --> 0:23:56.960 to gamers. But then Ethereum, the cryptocurrency that had fueled 0:23:57.080 --> 0:24:01.240 this GPU frenzy, finally made the trend transition from proof 0:24:01.240 --> 0:24:05.040 of work to proof of steak operations. So with proof 0:24:05.040 --> 0:24:08.359 of work, you need a lot of computing processing power 0:24:08.440 --> 0:24:11.560 to be a successful miner in the system and to 0:24:11.800 --> 0:24:16.840 be awarded new crypto tokens by participating in that system. 0:24:17.160 --> 0:24:19.840 But with proof of steak, you just have to have 0:24:19.880 --> 0:24:23.639 a big old pile of cryptocins already, and then you 0:24:23.800 --> 0:24:28.160 stake some portion of those crypto coins in the system, 0:24:28.280 --> 0:24:30.520 and the more you stake, the more likely you are 0:24:30.640 --> 0:24:34.840 going to make even more money. Well, once it made 0:24:34.880 --> 0:24:39.359 that transition, you suddenly didn't need all those GPUs to 0:24:39.480 --> 0:24:42.480 just churn away at all hours of day and night, 0:24:42.880 --> 0:24:47.400 so really overnight the demand for GPUs plummeted because now 0:24:47.480 --> 0:24:52.000 cryptomners had no use for them, and not every cryptocin 0:24:52.080 --> 0:24:56.160 has moved off of proof of work. There are cryptocurrencies 0:24:56.160 --> 0:24:58.119 out there that still depend on proof of work, like 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:02.119 Bitcoin being the big one. Bitcoin is such a big 0:25:02.160 --> 0:25:06.879 fish that GPUs don't have enough output. They They're processing 0:25:06.920 --> 0:25:12.920 power is nowhere close to being competitive for bitcoin mining, 0:25:13.119 --> 0:25:16.080 so you wouldn't buy a GPU if you wanted to 0:25:16.080 --> 0:25:19.879 try and be a bitcoin miner. And then for smaller 0:25:20.240 --> 0:25:24.119 crypto tokens, you know, less valuable ones, GPUs are overkill 0:25:24.480 --> 0:25:27.840 because you'd spend more on electricity bills than you would 0:25:27.920 --> 0:25:30.720 make through mining, so it doesn't make sense to use 0:25:30.880 --> 0:25:34.000 GPUs for that. So in other words, what I'm saying 0:25:34.080 --> 0:25:36.520 is it sounds like a little bit of suspicious timing 0:25:36.600 --> 0:25:39.960 for Kagan to say that that cryptocurrency offers nothing useful 0:25:39.960 --> 0:25:43.720 to society. It certainly offers nothing really useful for Nvidia 0:25:43.880 --> 0:25:48.520