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 with iHeart Podcasts. And how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the week ending on Friday, June twenty first, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: And we've had a little shuffle this week for the
Speaker 1: title of world's most valuable company. And by that I
Speaker 1: mean how a company is valued based upon the number
Speaker 1: of shares that are available and the price per share.
Speaker 1: All the contenders are tech companies and earlier this month,
Speaker 1: Apple toppled Microsoft after Apple held its Worldwide Developer Conference
Speaker 1: and got investors all excited, but that victory was short lived.
Speaker 1: Microsoft regained the throne just two days later. This week,
Speaker 1: a new challenger pushed past Apple to take a swing
Speaker 1: at the king that was Nvidia. Like Apple, Nvidia achieved
Speaker 1: the title of most valuable company in the world, only
Speaker 1: to relinquish it back to Microsoft a couple of days later.
Speaker 1: But on June eighteenth, Nvidia was on top of the
Speaker 1: world with a market value of three point three four
Speaker 1: trillion dollars. Geez Louise. Anyway, since then Nvidia stock price
Speaker 1: dipped about three point four percent, and that was enough
Speaker 1: to give Microsoft the top spot again, even though Microsoft
Speaker 1: had also had a smaller dip in stock value in
Speaker 1: that same time. Now, in case you're not familiar with Nvidia,
Speaker 1: it's a microprocessor design company. Like they make the designs
Speaker 1: for things like, you know, microprocessors, specifically graphics processing units
Speaker 1: or GPUs, and then other companies fabricate those designs. Recently,
Speaker 1: in Vidia's really big business has been in designing chips
Speaker 1: that are used by companies for the purposes of running
Speaker 1: AI implementations. On the tech and politics front, the US
Speaker 1: White House has banned the sale of products and services
Speaker 1: from the Russian cybersecurity company Kispersky Labs. So Kispersky Lab
Speaker 1: it's a huge name in the cybersecurity space. They've played
Speaker 1: a key part in identifying and mitigating various threats across
Speaker 1: the Internet. Kisperski also makes lots of different products, including
Speaker 1: antivirus software. So why would the US ban it? Well,
Speaker 1: the main concern is that the White House believes the
Speaker 1: Russian government could and would force Kaspersky Lab to harvest
Speaker 1: and weaponize data from other countries, you know, primarily the
Speaker 1: United States obviously, but there's also a fear that the
Speaker 1: Russian government could force Kisperski Lab to actually serve as
Speaker 1: a delivery system for malware rather than as a protection
Speaker 1: against it. Imagine being told that your antivirus software needs
Speaker 1: to be updated, and so you update it, but secretly
Speaker 1: it's actually delivering malware to you. That's part of the concern. Now,
Speaker 1: Kasperski Lab has protested this ban, which makes sense, and
Speaker 1: have said that well, this is a case where the
Speaker 1: US government is reacting to a perceived hypothetical threat as
Speaker 1: opposed to know an actual threat, which is a sentiment
Speaker 1: that we may have also heard regarding the upcoming US
Speaker 1: ban on TikTok. I'll talk more about that in just
Speaker 1: a moment. Kasperski Lab says it will pursue all legal
Speaker 1: avenues open to the company to push back against this ban.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I feel about this one, honestly,
Speaker 1: because I mean, Kaspersky Lab undeniably has done some amazing work,
Speaker 1: and without their contributions, I do believe the Internet would
Speaker 1: be a much more dangerous place than it is already.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, I don't think there's any way
Speaker 1: you can deny that Russia has an authoritarian government in
Speaker 1: place with various agencies that have shown in the past
Speaker 1: to be more than willing to put pressure on whatever
Speaker 1: levers they have to gain an advantage. But is that
Speaker 1: potential enough to justify a ban. If you don't have
Speaker 1: a specific instance to point out of saying yes, this
Speaker 1: is happening, then are you justified in banning. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel good to me, but at the same
Speaker 1: time I can understand the concern. So you could also
Speaker 1: argue that this is really just more political posturing, that
Speaker 1: it's the US attempting to kind of shut down an
Speaker 1: important business that's in Russia as a way to indirectly
Speaker 1: pressure Russia itself. I'm not smart enough to understand all
Speaker 1: the ins and outs, so I just look at it
Speaker 1: and think, wow, that's a big mess. Also, speaking of TikTok,
Speaker 1: Reuter's reports that TikTok and its parent company byte Dance,
Speaker 1: the Chinese company, have requested essentially a dismissal of the
Speaker 1: upcoming national ban on TikTok in the US that's scheduled
Speaker 1: to happen on January nineteenth, twenty twenty. So the argument
Speaker 1: that TikTok is making is that despite several attempts to
Speaker 1: negotiate a solution to the various concerns the US government
Speaker 1: has raised regarding TikTok and its relationship to its pairing company,
Speaker 1: the US government has refused to really engage on a
Speaker 1: serious level since twenty twenty two. So TikTok is saying,
Speaker 1: We've come forward in good faith in an attempt to
Speaker 1: work this out, and the government has just roadblocked us
Speaker 1: and then gone to a ban which doesn't seem fair.
Speaker 1: And then also TikTok's arguing that this is a violation
Speaker 1: of First Amendment rights as well. TikTok reps have also
Speaker 1: claimed that divestiture from the Chinese pairing company is quote
Speaker 1: not possible technologically, commercially, or legally end the quote. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I feel like I need to call bs
Speaker 1: on at least the first two of those three, simply
Speaker 1: because we've also read reports that TikTok has quietly been
Speaker 1: working on an alternative recommendation algorithm, which sounds like it
Speaker 1: could be a contingency plan if this band does go through.
Speaker 1: You know, the band hinges on TikTok's relationship to Byte
Speaker 1: Dance and by extension, China itself. The band has said
Speaker 1: that if TikTok were to be divested from Byte Dance,
Speaker 1: that this band would not necessarily happen. So the fact
Speaker 1: that TikTok has apparently been working on this alternative recommendation algorithm,
Speaker 1: one that's distinctly independent of the version that Byte Dance
Speaker 1: uses for say du Yan, the Chinese version of TikTok
Speaker 1: or the Chinese you know, like close cousin of TikTok,
Speaker 1: That to me suggests that TikTok is quietly exploring those possibilities.
Speaker 1: But obviously the company wants to avoid having to do
Speaker 1: that at all, and it would be better for the
Speaker 1: company if they didn't have to go through the whole
Speaker 1: divestiture process. As for commercially, I mean, TikTok still operates
Speaker 1: rather independently from the other products of Byte Dance, so
Speaker 1: I would imagine that divesting it commercially actually is entirely possible.
Speaker 1: I mean, no one by Dance wouldn't want to do
Speaker 1: it because TikTok makes money, so why would you want to?
Speaker 1: But I still think it's possible. I don't think it's impossible.
Speaker 1: That's based on my own opinion, but yeah, the legal part,
Speaker 1: that's harder for me to answer. That's what the courts
Speaker 1: are for. I personally have doubts that the courts are
Speaker 1: going to reach a decision as to whether the ban
Speaker 1: is legal or not before the deadline actually gets here,
Speaker 1: But we'll see. Reuter's also reports that Apple has recently
Speaker 1: switched gears and has stopped work on a successor to
Speaker 1: the Apple Vision Pro, which is Apple's mixed reality headset.
Speaker 1: That headset has a hefty price tag, and it's also
Speaker 1: had a fairly slow start, which I believe mostly comes
Speaker 1: down to two really big reasons. The first is obviously
Speaker 1: the base cost. It is huge. It's a whopping three
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars at the beginning, before you've done any
Speaker 1: like upgrades or accessories or anything like that. And that's
Speaker 1: a lot more money than most people can PLoP down
Speaker 1: for a new tech gadget. But the other big barrier
Speaker 1: is that development for this platform is still in its
Speaker 1: very early days, which means there's really not that much
Speaker 1: you can do with the darn thing. Yet every review
Speaker 1: I have read of the Vision Pro says that it
Speaker 1: performs really well. It's really impressive. But that outside of
Speaker 1: the basic things you're able to do, there's just not
Speaker 1: much there yet. And for developers, I could see why
Speaker 1: there'd be a reluctance to jump on board because if
Speaker 1: the installed base of potential customers is a very small one,
Speaker 1: you might not be able to capitalize on the invested
Speaker 1: time and energy it took to make something compelling because
Speaker 1: there's just not enough people to pay that investment off anyway. Now,
Speaker 1: Apple is reportedly backing away from making a true Apple
Speaker 1: Vision Pro two or whatever they would call it, but
Speaker 1: the company is still working on a more affordable mixed
Speaker 1: reality headsint at that would be available before the end
Speaker 1: of next year. Presumably such an affordable model will have
Speaker 1: fewer features than the Vision Pro. What I find interesting
Speaker 1: is whether or not customers will flock to a cheaper
Speaker 1: version of this platform, or if the lack of those
Speaker 1: certain features is going to sap away any excitement about
Speaker 1: the technology and people won't be willing to pay for
Speaker 1: it because you know, it'll be a cheap imitation of
Speaker 1: the thing that came out a couple of years earlier.
Speaker 1: If I had to make a guess, I would say
Speaker 1: more folks would be willing to buy a less expensive
Speaker 1: headset made by Apple, because Apple's reality distortion field is
Speaker 1: still a thing, and maybe we would hear folks later
Speaker 1: complain that the headset isn't as impressive as they were
Speaker 1: led to believe, but who knows. I guess we'll find
Speaker 1: out before the end of next year. Okay, we've got
Speaker 1: more tech news to cover before we get to that, though,
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Ilia Sutzkev,
Speaker 1: one of the co founders of open ai, who later
Speaker 1: was forced to resign from the board of directors and
Speaker 1: then a couple months later resigned completely from the company itself,
Speaker 1: is now starting his own AI company, which is called
Speaker 1: Safe Superintelligence, and as the name indicates, the founding principles
Speaker 1: are similar to what inspired the initial creation of open Ai,
Speaker 1: before that company began to embrace profit to a greater degree.
Speaker 1: The Safe Superintelligence website says the company will have offices
Speaker 1: in Palo Alto, California, and Tel Aviv. Sutzkever posted on
Speaker 1: x that the plan is for the company to focus
Speaker 1: entirely on the safe development and deployment of AI, without
Speaker 1: regard to stuff like market forces and trends and things
Speaker 1: like that how he's going to achieve that remains to
Speaker 1: be seen because AI development is a really expensive thing.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's why open Ai launched a for profit
Speaker 1: arm in the first place. But I do think it's
Speaker 1: a lofty goal to aim for. I just don't know
Speaker 1: how achievable it is. AI company Anthropic has unveiled the
Speaker 1: Claude three point five Sonnet AI language model this week.
Speaker 1: In fact, I've already started seeing ads online for this thing.
Speaker 1: The model can do pretty much all the things we
Speaker 1: associate with chatbots built on generative AI. You know. It
Speaker 1: can respond to prompts, it can write code, it can
Speaker 1: analyze text. According to Ours Technica's Binge Edwards, it can
Speaker 1: be really difficult to compare different AI models to each
Speaker 1: other for various reasons. But that being said, Claude three
Speaker 1: point five Sonnet seems to perform pretty well impressively so.
Speaker 1: In fact, now I haven't used it yet, but then
Speaker 1: I don't use any AI models on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: I've only dipped my toe in goofy ways to see
Speaker 1: what kind of response I can get for silly queries.
Speaker 1: But for those of y'all who are either researching AI
Speaker 1: or occasionally making use of AI. It might be something
Speaker 1: you want to check out just to see if it
Speaker 1: gives you better responses than alternatives on the market. Back
Speaker 1: to Reuters, which reports that Amazon is looking to monetize
Speaker 1: its Alexa service soon. The plan, which is code named Banyan,
Speaker 1: is to introduce a more advanced version of the Alexa assistant,
Speaker 1: capable of holding generative AI conversations with users. Access to
Speaker 1: this level of Alexa will actually require a monthly fee
Speaker 1: somewhere in the neighborhood of five dollars a month. The
Speaker 1: report says that Amazon is given developers until August to
Speaker 1: get this version of Alexa ready, though that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: tell us when such a service would actually launch. I
Speaker 1: honestly don't know if this is going to work from
Speaker 1: a commercial standpoint. I'm not sure most folks care if
Speaker 1: their personal assistant is generating a conversation or just pulling
Speaker 1: something directly off the web to answer various questions. That's
Speaker 1: possibly due to the fact that as I get older,
Speaker 1: I see fewer reasons for me to use tools like
Speaker 1: this for anything beyond really basic stuff like, you know,
Speaker 1: asking for an update on the weather or whatever, which
Speaker 1: is like ninety nine times out of one hundred, if
Speaker 1: I'm asking my smart assistant speaker for something, it's to
Speaker 1: give me an update on whether. Other times it's to
Speaker 1: play music so that my dog can listen to music
Speaker 1: while I'm leaving the house. The rare occasions I do
Speaker 1: that or to ask if certain fruits are safe for
Speaker 1: dogs to eat. Those are like my three go tos.
Speaker 1: But Amazon's trying to find a way to make Alexa moneymaker,
Speaker 1: and maybe this will work out for them. I personally
Speaker 1: have my doubts. I think a lot of people will say,
Speaker 1: why am I going to pay for something that previously
Speaker 1: I got to use for free, even if the new
Speaker 1: version is at least in theory better. Meta has reorganized
Speaker 1: its Reality Labs division. A quick reminder, this is the
Speaker 1: part of Meta formerly Facebook that is tasked with bringing
Speaker 1: the metaverse into reality, whether people want it or not.
Speaker 1: It's the division that Meta has dedicated billions of dollars
Speaker 1: to in that effort, which is something that has concerned
Speaker 1: many investors in that company. But anyway, this reorg has
Speaker 1: divided Reality Labs into two major organizations, one that will
Speaker 1: focus on wearables and the other that will focus on
Speaker 1: the metaverse. So wearables are things like the Quest VR
Speaker 1: headsets and the ray Band smart glasses. The Verge reports
Speaker 1: that the reorganization also meant the company laid off a
Speaker 1: quote unquote small number of employees, although I haven't seen
Speaker 1: any sources that give more detail as to how much
Speaker 1: a small number actually is. Bloomberg reports that Elon Musk
Speaker 1: is pushing hard to get an X payment service launched
Speaker 1: before the end of this year. You might recall that
Speaker 1: one thing Musk wanted to do with Twitter, apart from
Speaker 1: opening it up to folks who had previously been banned
Speaker 1: from the platform for violating various policies, was to convert
Speaker 1: it into sort of an everything app, an app where
Speaker 1: you could chat with friends, post to the general population,
Speaker 1: shop for goods and services, and pay for stuff like
Speaker 1: transfer money, all from one app. The payment service thing
Speaker 1: is part of this overall puzzle, and one that Musk
Speaker 1: has aggressively pushed for this year. To that end, X
Speaker 1: has secured payment transmitter licenses with twenty eight states here
Speaker 1: in the US, by the company's goals to secure such
Speaker 1: licenses for every state by the end of the year.
Speaker 1: It sounds to me like this is really a matter
Speaker 1: of when not if, and at some point we will
Speaker 1: see the X payment services roll out, possibly with many
Speaker 1: other features to follow. Must's goal is to get users
Speaker 1: to rely on X for financial transactions and to store
Speaker 1: their money in high yield savings accounts, which might work.
Speaker 1: It might actually entice people who have so far either
Speaker 1: stayed off of the platform for various reasons or who
Speaker 1: left due to similar reasons, and to have them come
Speaker 1: back and jump in and order not to lose out
Speaker 1: on an opportunity. However, I think it's safe to say
Speaker 1: that skeptics like myself, you know, folks who have seen
Speaker 1: Musk apply the ban hammer on X in a very
Speaker 1: mercurial way, are less eager to put our money into
Speaker 1: a platform where the owner has been shown to be unpredictable, temperamental,
Speaker 1: perhaps unreliable is another good word. I just I think
Speaker 1: it would be very risky to do personally. That's my
Speaker 1: own opinion though, so you know, if you don't value
Speaker 1: my opinion. One, I don't know why you're listening, but
Speaker 1: thank you anyway, And two, yeah, do you don't make
Speaker 1: your own decisions? It's totally cool if you happen to
Speaker 1: live near Dallas, Texas or King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. I
Speaker 1: have a homework assignment for you. Don't worry. It's not
Speaker 1: coming up anytime soon. It'll be next year, but it's
Speaker 1: to visit either of the two Netflix House venues that
Speaker 1: are opening up in the upcoming months. They're slated to
Speaker 1: open in twenty twenty five. Netflix first announced the intent
Speaker 1: to debut some brick and mortar locations, and now we
Speaker 1: know where those first two are going to be. Dallas, Texas,
Speaker 1: King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. They'll be taking over the spaces
Speaker 1: of former department stores and shopping centers, which I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe that'll breathe some new life into malls. I haven't
Speaker 1: been to a mall in years, but in fact, the
Speaker 1: place where I used to go when I was a
Speaker 1: kid is now essentially vacant. I think there's like only
Speaker 1: a handful of stores that are still open and everything
Speaker 1: else is closed down, which, as I understand, it is
Speaker 1: not that unusual today. But then I don't ever leave
Speaker 1: the house, So what do I know anyway? What's going
Speaker 1: to go on in these Netflix houses beats me. Netflix
Speaker 1: has not shared a whole lot of information. They have
Speaker 1: said that there will be themed experiences as well as
Speaker 1: some special food and drink offerings, and that presumably these
Speaker 1: are going to draw inspiration from original Netflix films and series.
Speaker 1: And when I think back to some of those originals
Speaker 1: on Netflix, I'm not convinced I really want to experience
Speaker 1: that stuff myself in real life, but I am definitely curious,
Speaker 1: and heck, maybe I'll go to the King of Presha
Speaker 1: one because my partner has family up in that area,
Speaker 1: So maybe if we're happy to be there, I'll be like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's go see what this is all about. The two
Speaker 1: astronauts who recently journeyed to the International Space Station aboard
Speaker 1: a Boeing Starliner spacecraft are staying a little bit longer
Speaker 1: than they had planned. This is because the Starliner experienced
Speaker 1: some technical issues that engineers really want to review further
Speaker 1: before bringing the astronauts back home in the spacecraft on
Speaker 1: June twenty six. So, during the trip to the ISS,
Speaker 1: the star Liner had a few helium leaks, like five
Speaker 1: of them. Now, helium itself is non toxic, it's non flammable,
Speaker 1: so as long as the leaks weren't bad enough to
Speaker 1: displace oxygen and cause asphyxiation, then the astronauts were deemed
Speaker 1: to be safe. Then five of the twenty eight reaction
Speaker 1: control system thrusters on the star Liner also failed as
Speaker 1: the spacecraft was nearing the iss. It's not exactly the
Speaker 1: sort of thing you want to chance when you're bringing
Speaker 1: folks back home, as these thrusters play a part in
Speaker 1: orienting the spacecraft properly upon re entry. NASA reps have
Speaker 1: said the agency wants to review the test spacecraft's issues
Speaker 1: before signing off on future missions, which makes perfect sense
Speaker 1: to me. Okay, some quick reading recommendations for y'all. Mickey
Speaker 1: Carroll has a piece for sky News titled self driving
Speaker 1: cars found to be safer except at dawn, dusk, or
Speaker 1: when turning according to a study. I recommend reading that
Speaker 1: it's one of the biggest selling points for R and
Speaker 1: D and self driving vehicles. This idea that you know,
Speaker 1: ideally they would be fre safer on the roads than
Speaker 1: vehicles that were driven by human beings. But as this
Speaker 1: study points out, there are still scenarios in which AI
Speaker 1: powered vehicles are more prone to accidents, and obviously that
Speaker 1: shines a spotlight on areas where engineers need to improve safety.
Speaker 1: Next up is a piece by Mike Masnik at tech
Speaker 1: Dirt titled five hundred thousand books have been deleted from
Speaker 1: the Internet Archives Lending Library. I talked a little bit
Speaker 1: about this when I did an episode about the Internet
Speaker 1: Archive recently, but this piece dives into how publishers have
Speaker 1: leveraged their considerable power to deny the archive access to
Speaker 1: library copies of various works. And last up is a
Speaker 1: piece by Ashley Bellinger of Ours Technica titled lawsuit Meta
Speaker 1: engineer told to resign after calling out sexist hiring practices.
Speaker 1: This article details the claims made by a former Meta
Speaker 1: employee who says the company retaliated against him after he
Speaker 1: brought forward concerns and misogynistic practices in the company. All
Speaker 1: of those are well worth your time to read. That's
Speaker 1: it for this week. I hope you are all well
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again again really soon.
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