Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? This is the tech
Speaker 1: news for Thursday, January twenty twenty two. And uh, if
Speaker 1: you are a Roku user, you may have experienced a
Speaker 1: loss in service last night, that being Wednesday, January nineteenth,
Speaker 1: in case you missed when I had just said the date.
Speaker 1: Apparently something on the back end uh in technical terms,
Speaker 1: done messed up as several owners of Roku streaming devices
Speaker 1: and Roku television's saw their devices freeze or get caught
Speaker 1: in a reboot loop. People took to Twitter to express
Speaker 1: their frustration as their respective idiot boxes appeared to waive
Speaker 1: the white flag. Idiot boxes or what some hoity toity
Speaker 1: folks in the nineteen fifties used as a slang for television's. Apparently,
Speaker 1: some users weren't even able to use non Roku services
Speaker 1: on their Roku televisions, including stuff like video game consoles,
Speaker 1: media players like DVD and blue ray, set top boxes,
Speaker 1: or cable boxes, so the television was just defunct. Roku
Speaker 1: was able to restore services later that night. But it's
Speaker 1: another reminder that a lot of the technology we seek
Speaker 1: out today relies heavily on a back end somewhere else,
Speaker 1: and when something goes wrong in the back end, our
Speaker 1: tech stops working, which is kind of like what happens
Speaker 1: to me when my back end starts to act up.
Speaker 1: But that's probably t m I. Anyway, When we think
Speaker 1: of this, along with stuff like the one outage of
Speaker 1: a large part of Amazon Web Services, we really see
Speaker 1: how vulnerable some of our technology is to failure, and
Speaker 1: it's beyond our control. We can't do anything about it.
Speaker 1: We have to wait for someone else to fix something
Speaker 1: somewhere else. Now, all that being said, most of the
Speaker 1: time our technology works just fine because most of the
Speaker 1: companies running those back end systems are spending a lot
Speaker 1: of resources building out redundancy to minimize the chances of outages.
Speaker 1: I mean, outages are just bad for business, So this
Speaker 1: makes sense now. The outages still occasionally happen, but they
Speaker 1: haven't been too frequent, and in most cases companies have
Speaker 1: been able to resolve the issues within a few hours.
Speaker 1: So while I think it's good to reflect on how
Speaker 1: much of our tech relies on centralized systems that are
Speaker 1: beyond our control. It's good to be aware of that.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't go so far as to say we're headed
Speaker 1: toward catastrophe because of that model. Also, the specifics of
Speaker 1: what actually went raw with Roku, as at least as
Speaker 1: I record this uh, haven't been disclosed. Roku hasn't said
Speaker 1: what happened as I record this episode. I'm sure by
Speaker 1: the time this goes live will know more. The International
Speaker 1: Committee of the Red Cross has been hit with a
Speaker 1: cyber attack. More specifically, a firm based in Switzerland that
Speaker 1: provides data storage services to the Red Cross was the
Speaker 1: actual target. The Red Cross has yet to name what
Speaker 1: that firm is, which I think is an incredible courtesy
Speaker 1: to the company. The hackers gained access to personal information
Speaker 1: of more than half a million people in the process,
Speaker 1: and that includes people who are in truly dire situations,
Speaker 1: like people who are separated from their families in the
Speaker 1: wake of a natural disaster or military conflict. In other words,
Speaker 1: people who have already lost an incredible amount like in
Speaker 1: some cases everything but their lives now have had their
Speaker 1: data compromised through this attack. At the time of recording,
Speaker 1: I don't have information on who was responsible for the
Speaker 1: attack nor what their intentions were in the first place.
Speaker 1: The Red Cross says that ransomware was not a factor.
Speaker 1: The Red Cross released a statement saying the organization is
Speaker 1: committed to contacting affected individuals and informed them of potential
Speaker 1: risks they face as a consequence of this breach. So
Speaker 1: do you remember on Tuesday when we had that breaking
Speaker 1: news at the time anyway, that Microsoft was showing out
Speaker 1: more than sixty eight billion dollars in cold hard cash
Speaker 1: to purchase the video game company Activision Blizzard. If you
Speaker 1: didn't listen to that episode and you've somehow avoided that news,
Speaker 1: well surprise anyway. Microsoft has released a press statement that
Speaker 1: said the acquisition would repel the company into third place
Speaker 1: in the largest video game companies by revenue category, behind
Speaker 1: Sony Intencent. And then Bloomberg reported that Sony's stock price
Speaker 1: fell on Wednesday. That represents some twenty billion dollars of
Speaker 1: market value, which is a big old yawlsa. Now, I
Speaker 1: am no financial expert by any stretch of the imagination,
Speaker 1: but I have a gut feeling that this drop in
Speaker 1: value is strictly temporary and largely reactionary. I've seen some
Speaker 1: analysts suggest that Microsoft will turn some franchises like the
Speaker 1: popular Call of Duty series, which is one of Activision
Speaker 1: Blizzards big titles, that Microsoft will turn that into Xbox
Speaker 1: and PC exclusive titles, or at least they will contain
Speaker 1: a lot of content that's exclusive to those platforms and
Speaker 1: won't be allowed on other platforms, and that this could
Speaker 1: in turn really hurt Sony because you know, PlayStation owners
Speaker 1: wouldn't have access to that content. It will give them
Speaker 1: an incentive to switch platforms. But then, you know, I
Speaker 1: hear these arguments, but Sony has long leveraged exclusive content
Speaker 1: on its consoles, either with exclusive titles where the only
Speaker 1: place you can play those titles is on a PlayStation,
Speaker 1: or with exclusive levels or other content like That's been
Speaker 1: part and parcel of sony strategy for years, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it's done that way more frequently than Microsoft. Now that
Speaker 1: I think Microsoft wouldn't have loved to do the same thing,
Speaker 1: they just didn't have the same opportunities in many cases.
Speaker 1: And so far, at least, Microsoft is sending out the
Speaker 1: message that they don't intend to limit the platforms upon
Speaker 1: which games are appearing, so that seems to be saying
Speaker 1: We're not going to suddenly turn off these titles for PlayStation. Uh.
Speaker 1: Of course, that that message could just have the unspoken
Speaker 1: for now, you know at the end of it. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's also possible. In fact, Pole at
Speaker 1: Microsoft had have said as much that the company really
Speaker 1: just wants to get a version of Xbox game Pass
Speaker 1: on PlayStation, which would be a heck of a thing.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's a subscription based service that lets
Speaker 1: people you know, access different video games for a monthly
Speaker 1: fee instead of buying titles individually. And of course, titles
Speaker 1: can disappear from the service after a while, kind of
Speaker 1: like how some content can appear on Netflix and then
Speaker 1: suddenly be inaccessible. Cough that Mitchell and web look cough anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: it would be really interesting to see if Microsoft could
Speaker 1: get game Pass onto PlayStation. It would be away for
Speaker 1: Microsoft to make money off of a competitor's platform. That
Speaker 1: would be incredible. Um. But I suspect at any rate
Speaker 1: that we're gonna see Sony's market value recover before too long.
Speaker 1: In fact, this acquisition isn't even scheduled to close until
Speaker 1: sometime in Microsoft's twenty three fiscal year. Now, I should
Speaker 1: point out that that fiscal year actually starts July one
Speaker 1: of this year two. Uh. Microsoft fiscal year goes from
Speaker 1: July one to June each year, so fiscal year two
Speaker 1: will end June and fiscal year twenty twenty three will
Speaker 1: start July one, two. Because fiscal years and calendar years
Speaker 1: frequently don't line up. I mean, it's different for every company,
Speaker 1: but it is not unusual to see a company have
Speaker 1: its fiscal year that is significantly offset from the calendar year. Now.
Speaker 1: One of the things some folks have commented on with
Speaker 1: these Microsoft acquisitions, not just in gaming but in other
Speaker 1: fields as well, is that the company has hiking up
Speaker 1: its bridges to wade on into the metaverse competitive landscape,
Speaker 1: as nebulous and vague as that is. Meanwhile, Ken Kutaragi,
Speaker 1: who invented the PlayStation, a former Sony executive, has expressed
Speaker 1: some skepticism about the metaverse concept, saying I can't see
Speaker 1: the point of doing it, and y'all know me. Y'all
Speaker 1: know I side with Kutaragi on this one, but I
Speaker 1: also admit that my lack of enthusiasm about the metaverse
Speaker 1: could totally be because I have blinders on and I'm
Speaker 1: just not seeing the big picture. Uh. That's I totally
Speaker 1: confess that could be the case. I don't see it,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that there's not something to be seen. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's a lot of stuff out there that
Speaker 1: gains a lot of traction that just baffles me, and
Speaker 1: it proves to me that I'm one of those folks
Speaker 1: who gets more and more out of touch as I
Speaker 1: get older. It's that's I'm aware of it, and I
Speaker 1: cannot stop it because I see stuff go popular and
Speaker 1: I think I don't get it. But this isn't about
Speaker 1: me anyway. Kudaragi like in the metaverse, which people will,
Speaker 1: you know, presumably inhabit virtual spaces and be represented by
Speaker 1: an avatar to stand in for their physical buddy. He
Speaker 1: compared that to anonymous message board sites. Kutaragi appeared to
Speaker 1: be saying that, you know, it's just a technological way
Speaker 1: to pretend to be someone who you are not. And
Speaker 1: when you put it that way, I can actually totally
Speaker 1: see how the metaverse could potentially get super popular because
Speaker 1: we've already seen social networking sites flourish as people use
Speaker 1: those sites to create an image of their own lives
Speaker 1: that isn't necessarily a reflection of reality. You know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a presentation of their idealized life, and it's
Speaker 1: leaving out all the messy stuff and all the mundane stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, so many Instagrammers out there have kind of
Speaker 1: cultivated this aura of being special and constantly blessed with
Speaker 1: good fortune, you know, taking photos of themselves and exotic
Speaker 1: locations with like expensive surroundings and you know, in great lighting,
Speaker 1: and they look perfect, and they're using filters to make
Speaker 1: them look even more perfect. It's become, you know, a
Speaker 1: whole trope. And in fact, it's also a concern for
Speaker 1: folks who worry about young kids, especially girls and young women,
Speaker 1: who might experience mental health problems as they encounter this
Speaker 1: presentation of a seemingly perfect life and they're comparing their
Speaker 1: own lives negatively to that fake really example, So yeah,
Speaker 1: in that respect, I could see how the metaverse could
Speaker 1: take off, right where everyone says, finally I can present
Speaker 1: to the world a version of myself that I wish
Speaker 1: I were, as opposed to this sack of meeting bones
Speaker 1: that I am. And meanwhile, I'm sitting here thinking like
Speaker 1: I'm okay being a sack of meeting bones. I'll just
Speaker 1: I'll be a grumpy hermit in the ldite forest. I
Speaker 1: suppose uh, because this is not a selling point for me.
Speaker 1: But um yeah, that seems to be what Kutaragi is saying.
Speaker 1: I could be reading way too much into that. I
Speaker 1: I admit I got a lot of baggage when it
Speaker 1: comes to the concept of the metaverse. Okay, we've got
Speaker 1: lots of other stories to cover, but before we get
Speaker 1: to those, let's take a quick break. So before the break,
Speaker 1: you know, we were talking about the metaverse, and of
Speaker 1: course we're not done yet, because that is the topic
Speaker 1: in early two. I sure hope by the end of
Speaker 1: this year people aren't talking about as much, but I
Speaker 1: think that might be a hope in vain. But PC
Speaker 1: Gamer and several other outlets have reported that meta slash
Speaker 1: Facebook holds a bunch of patents that may point toward
Speaker 1: how the company will leverage certain technologies uh and the
Speaker 1: metaverse to make truckloads more money, mainly through advertising. So
Speaker 1: those patents include a lot of stuff about haptic feedback
Speaker 1: and tracking user movement, so a lot of stuff about
Speaker 1: how a user will interact with a virtual environment. How
Speaker 1: that virtual environment will be able to detect act what
Speaker 1: the users doing and thus render it so that it
Speaker 1: makes sense within the virtual environment. And beyond that, it's
Speaker 1: supposed to, you know, kind of help the virtual environment
Speaker 1: understand why where someone is looking. And you can see
Speaker 1: why that would be important, right because it needs to
Speaker 1: present to the viewer an appropriate image. If I'm you know,
Speaker 1: standing around and I'm turning my head left and right,
Speaker 1: well the virtual environment better reflect that or else it's
Speaker 1: going to be a terrible experience, probably make me sick,
Speaker 1: and I'll never want to do it again. But some
Speaker 1: of the tech that is covered by the patents includes
Speaker 1: eye tracking stuff, so that the system running the show
Speaker 1: knows not just where your head is pointed, but exactly
Speaker 1: what you're looking at, like what are you looking at
Speaker 1: within your field of view? Not just you know where
Speaker 1: you're pointed to. And there are a lot of legit
Speaker 1: reasons to want that tech in a virtual environment. For one, thing,
Speaker 1: that can really teach developers what people are focusing on,
Speaker 1: which can lead to improvements behind the scenes. You know,
Speaker 1: you can look at those analytics and say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: what's working and what's not working. Maybe developers have created
Speaker 1: something really cool in that virtual environment, but it's being overlooked.
Speaker 1: It's not getting any attention. And it's not that the
Speaker 1: thing they created was bad, it's just for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: the way it's positioned or whatever, is not getting people's attention.
Speaker 1: So maybe that means developers should either not dedicate their
Speaker 1: resources to building out similar stuff in the virtual world,
Speaker 1: that it would just be a waste of time, or
Speaker 1: maybe it would let them know that, hey, we need
Speaker 1: to do something different with this asset because it could
Speaker 1: have an impact. It's just not having an impact here.
Speaker 1: So those are like legit reasons to use eye tracking.
Speaker 1: But of course another major application of eye tracking tech
Speaker 1: is to figure out where you might best serve ads
Speaker 1: to inhabitants in the metaverse. You might say, where are
Speaker 1: people looking a lot, Let's make sure we put ads
Speaker 1: where people are looking, because then we can use the data,
Speaker 1: the eye tracking data, and go to advertisers and say, look,
Speaker 1: if you put an ad up in this spot in
Speaker 1: the metaverse, x number of people are guaranteed to see
Speaker 1: it every month, and thus we can charge bookoos of
Speaker 1: money for you to have an ad place there and
Speaker 1: This kind of makes me think of films like Minority Report.
Speaker 1: They're little sequences in Minority Report where we see people
Speaker 1: encounter digital ads all around them as they're just navigating
Speaker 1: through their day. And I can see this tech being
Speaker 1: used for stuff like augmented reality headsets, not just virtual reality,
Speaker 1: which you know, depending on the application of augmented reality,
Speaker 1: using eye tracking tech could be really cool and useful.
Speaker 1: But I suspect a lot of focus no pun intended,
Speaker 1: we'll be on how to monetize the capabilities, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, companies like Meta already kind of know what
Speaker 1: you look at anyway, right, So yeah, this this definitely
Speaker 1: sounds creepy because the idea of them analyzing where you're
Speaker 1: looking sounds really invasive. But let me let you in
Speaker 1: on a little secret because based on your browsing habits
Speaker 1: and how much time you spend on social networks, MENA
Speaker 1: already knows what you're looking at. Really, they already know
Speaker 1: what you're interested in. Um, they already know what you're
Speaker 1: not interested in based upon your behaviors. Like that kind
Speaker 1: of data can be analyzed and they know how to
Speaker 1: target you specifically. The browsing data and habits give pretty
Speaker 1: much all the information needed, so the eye tracking thing
Speaker 1: just becomes a more overt way of doing that and
Speaker 1: provides a more precise way of implementing ads. But let
Speaker 1: me tell you the creepy surveillance stuff that's already out
Speaker 1: there that exists. That is the Facebook of today, and
Speaker 1: you don't need eye tracking software too or hardware to
Speaker 1: make that happen. Happy Thursday, y'all. On Monday this week,
Speaker 1: hackers compromised a cryptocurrency trading platform called crypto dot com
Speaker 1: and they were able to make off with around thirty
Speaker 1: four million dollars worth of cryptocurrency. That is a heck
Speaker 1: of a bank heist. The company recently copped to the
Speaker 1: hack in a blog post, and it had halted withdrawals
Speaker 1: for about fourteen hours for all users and send on
Speaker 1: a message that essentially said, hey, y'all, it's tot's okay.
Speaker 1: Your money is safe. But for four three customers that
Speaker 1: wasn't really the case, at least not temporarily, because it
Speaker 1: was their accounts that got hit and the hackers were
Speaker 1: able to drain some of those accounts. Crypto dot Com
Speaker 1: forced all users to reset their two factor authentication methods
Speaker 1: so that they can access to their accounts. I've talked
Speaker 1: about two factor authentication lots of times in the past
Speaker 1: for those who are not really familiar with what that means.
Speaker 1: It means you need you need two different ways of
Speaker 1: authenticating who you are in order to access something, and
Speaker 1: it falls into different buckets. And typically we think of
Speaker 1: those buckets as being something you possess, like say your phone, uh,
Speaker 1: something you know like a password, and something you are
Speaker 1: like biometric data that's related to some unique physical feature
Speaker 1: that you have, and that you need to provide one
Speaker 1: from one of those from at least two categories for
Speaker 1: to be able to access whatever it is. So commonly
Speaker 1: this is something where it's like your password and then
Speaker 1: you get a text message on your phone with like
Speaker 1: a six digit key, and it's only when you provide
Speaker 1: both of those pieces of information that you can gain
Speaker 1: access to your account. To factor authentication or multi factor
Speaker 1: authentication is very smart. You want to use it, if
Speaker 1: it's available, you want it turned on. I know it
Speaker 1: can be a half soul, but it is superior to
Speaker 1: just relying on a single factor. However, as interesting as
Speaker 1: it is that you know crypto dot Com told all
Speaker 1: its users you need to reset your two factor authentication.
Speaker 1: It appears that the hackers were able to access those
Speaker 1: four three accounts without using two factor authentication in the
Speaker 1: first place. So I don't know all the details about
Speaker 1: the hack, but if that's the case, if the hackers
Speaker 1: were getting access to stuff and they weren't having to
Speaker 1: use two factor authentication, that's kind of like saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I know your house was robbed the other night,
Speaker 1: so we've replaced all the locks on your front door,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that the thieves came in through
Speaker 1: the window. Like, Okay, well, I'm glad the door is
Speaker 1: more secure. But if that's not how the the information
Speaker 1: or in this case, the money was accessed, then that's
Speaker 1: not really a solution. However, to the company's credit, it
Speaker 1: did cover the losses experienced by each of those four accounts.
Speaker 1: It restored the money in whatever cryptocurrency form it was
Speaker 1: in to all FOE accounts, presumably under crypto dot COM's
Speaker 1: own expense, and the hackers are reportedly in the middle
Speaker 1: of using various crypto apps to launder the money they've stolen.
Speaker 1: What a world. Okay, we're gonna take another quick break
Speaker 1: when we come back we're gonna have a butt load
Speaker 1: of Google news as well some other stuff. Okay, time
Speaker 1: to transition into the Google heavy portion of the news
Speaker 1: for today. First up, Alphabet CEO Sandar Pichai, along with
Speaker 1: Apple CEO Tim Cook have reportedly been making the rounds
Speaker 1: with lawmakers in the US, arranging private phone calls to
Speaker 1: talk with senators about stuff. And you might wonder why, Well,
Speaker 1: it's because of a piece of proposed legislation called the
Speaker 1: American Innovation and Choice Online Act that could potentially really
Speaker 1: shake things up for some big tech companies like Apple
Speaker 1: and Google and Amazon. Part of that act focuses on
Speaker 1: the practice of a company promoting its own products over
Speaker 1: competitors in the company's various marketplaces. So let's stick with Google.
Speaker 1: So this would mean that Google would not be allowed
Speaker 1: to give its own products and services a promotional advantage
Speaker 1: in Google ads on Google platforms like Search. Apple wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to do the same thing with Apple products
Speaker 1: and services on Apple platforms, And of course Amazon has
Speaker 1: been dingd for this multiple times, with the company being
Speaker 1: accused of promoting its own products over that of competitors
Speaker 1: on the Amazon marketplace. So if this legislation were to pass,
Speaker 1: that would be a huge threat to the current business
Speaker 1: models that these big tech companies rely upon. It's one
Speaker 1: of the big ways these companies become so gargantuan in
Speaker 1: the first place, and competitors say the practice is you know,
Speaker 1: completely unfair, and even if the competitor were to offer
Speaker 1: a superior product at a superior price, they are at
Speaker 1: a promotional disadvantage. Whether the tech CEOs are making headway
Speaker 1: with the senators, that's hard to say. I mean, money talks,
Speaker 1: especially in politics, So it's entirely possible that you know,
Speaker 1: these CEOs are persuading enough lawmakers to oppose or amend
Speaker 1: the legislation to the point that it doesn't really do
Speaker 1: anything um And of course, again this is proposed legislation.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's been voted on yet. But there's
Speaker 1: definitely a growing resentment toward big tech from multiple sectors,
Speaker 1: including the common populace, and it has been growing for
Speaker 1: some time now. So there might be some pressure from
Speaker 1: constituents for some of these senators to kind of stick
Speaker 1: to their guns and pass the legislation. We'll have to
Speaker 1: wait and see if that comes to pass. In other
Speaker 1: Google news, the company is reportedly establishing a new business unit.
Speaker 1: This one focuses on blockchain and distributed computing and data
Speaker 1: storage technologies like future ones. And this is according to Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: which published that the the outlet had received a leaked
Speaker 1: email from within the company revealing the fact that they
Speaker 1: have established this blockchain business unit. Now, does this mean
Speaker 1: that Google is going to launch its own cryptocurrency in
Speaker 1: the future, or that maybe, you know, Android users or
Speaker 1: Chrome users are going to be flooded with ads for
Speaker 1: Google and f t s. I don't know. I hope not,
Speaker 1: but I can't say for certain. But it is at
Speaker 1: least an early indicator that Google is experimenting with more
Speaker 1: technologies associated with stuff like the concept of Web three
Speaker 1: and the metaverse. Google has already obviously been working with
Speaker 1: virtual reality and augmented reality applications. I mean, Google Glass
Speaker 1: was a very early a R commercial product, had a
Speaker 1: very limited commercial run, but it was something like that.
Speaker 1: So Google certainly has been dipping its toe in various
Speaker 1: disciplines that are converging towards this metaverse concept. And I'm
Speaker 1: thinking this might be just sort of a way for
Speaker 1: Google to stay involved in the game. I don't see
Speaker 1: Google as a company that's going to lead the way
Speaker 1: in that space. But I also see it as a
Speaker 1: company that doesn't want to find itself completely left out.
Speaker 1: Google has a dominant position, some might call it a
Speaker 1: monopolistic position when it comes to certain things like like
Speaker 1: search and ad revenue or add ad services um and
Speaker 1: I'm sure the company is thinking, well, we want to
Speaker 1: future proof that. We don't want to make sure. We
Speaker 1: want to make sure that the next stage of the Web,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be, doesn't cut us out of it.
Speaker 1: So that's what I see this as. I don't see
Speaker 1: it necessarily as an indication that we're going to, you know,
Speaker 1: see a Google version of crypto anytime soon, although that
Speaker 1: could happen, I just I'm not seeing it right now.
Speaker 1: And for a long time, Google has offered a service
Speaker 1: in its g Suite product that gives you the chance
Speaker 1: to create a custom domain built on top of Google,
Speaker 1: and that gives you a lot of different options, including
Speaker 1: you can have a Gmail address that isn't a Gmail address,
Speaker 1: I mean it is Gmail, but the domain like it
Speaker 1: could be a custom one. Like I could have a
Speaker 1: Gmail address that has the domain Jonathan Strickland is awesome
Speaker 1: dot com instead of Gmail dot com. Not that I
Speaker 1: have an account with that domain, but I could if
Speaker 1: I wanted to, and if it were available anyway. From
Speaker 1: the moment the Google offered that service up through two
Speaker 1: thousand and twelve, there was a free basic version of
Speaker 1: the product, so you could enroll, you could get that
Speaker 1: custom domain. You didn't have to spend any money, and
Speaker 1: it was the bare bones version, but it existed, and uh,
Speaker 1: if you ponied up the cash, then you could get
Speaker 1: access to other extra features. Yeah, that basic service was
Speaker 1: free of charge. But then in two thousand twelve, Google
Speaker 1: stopped offering it for free, but it also allowed those
Speaker 1: who had established a free account to keep using it. Now,
Speaker 1: a decade later, the company has made the decision to
Speaker 1: come to each one of those users who still has
Speaker 1: an established free account and have for years, and now
Speaker 1: Google is going to say you must pay tribute. We
Speaker 1: will burn your domain to the ground and so salt
Speaker 1: into the earth. Okay, not not that, but it's the
Speaker 1: gist of what they're saying. So for the folks who
Speaker 1: did get in early, while those free days are coming
Speaker 1: to an end, and then they will have to either
Speaker 1: pay or they will see their accounts suspended starting on
Speaker 1: May first. Anyone with a free account but who has
Speaker 1: billing information attached to their Google account will then be
Speaker 1: upgraded quote unquote to the paid service automatically, which is
Speaker 1: fun times and starting in July, those accounts will start
Speaker 1: to get billed every month for continued use of the service.
Speaker 1: If an account does not have billing information attached to it,
Speaker 1: and if the user hasn't you know, updated their account
Speaker 1: to have billing infoe attached by July one, their account
Speaker 1: will be suspended. This is a pretty tough pill to swallow.
Speaker 1: To have a free service suddenly switch up on you
Speaker 1: like that. That's never fun. On a slightly more fun note,
Speaker 1: Google has launched a beta program in South Korea, Taiwan,
Speaker 1: and Hong Kong, and people in those regions can get
Speaker 1: beta access to a Google Play Games app on Windows eleven.
Speaker 1: Google had previously committed to bringing Android games to Windows
Speaker 1: eleven back in December, and when does eleven includes an
Speaker 1: Android app layer that's supposed to make this seamless. There's
Speaker 1: been some use of Google apps onto Windows platforms in
Speaker 1: the past, but this is supposed to make it really work. Uh.
Speaker 1: At first, I was like, this doesn't interest me, And
Speaker 1: then I thought, hum, if I have some Windows eleven machines,
Speaker 1: that means I could play Marvel Puzzle Quest on a
Speaker 1: PC and have my progress SYNCD across all devices. And
Speaker 1: I started to come around to it because that's actually
Speaker 1: the only Android game I currently have installed on my phone.
Speaker 1: And I know I people will tell me that's not
Speaker 1: even a good one. I don't care. I play it
Speaker 1: pretty much every day. Um Google has said it will
Speaker 1: expand this to other regions throughout two but it has
Speaker 1: yet to release a timeline for that rollout. Amazon is
Speaker 1: continuing to build on its presence in the brick and
Speaker 1: mortar world. The company had already opened up a few
Speaker 1: of its famous grocery stores, as well as purchased the
Speaker 1: Whole Foods chain, and I had a couple of brick
Speaker 1: and mortar bookstores. Now. Amazon has announced that it will
Speaker 1: open a clothing store in Glendale, California, later this year
Speaker 1: called Amazon Style, and the store will cover clothing from
Speaker 1: a number of different designers at different price points, everything
Speaker 1: from budget to high level designers, and the company says
Speaker 1: that the stores will incorporate technology on a pretty fundamental
Speaker 1: level and customers will interact with that technology using their smartphones.
Speaker 1: So Amazon says it will reserve floor space to display items,
Speaker 1: so there won't be any racks of clothes there. Instead,
Speaker 1: you'll see an example of an outfit and uh way
Speaker 1: to scan that outfit presumably, so use your phone, you
Speaker 1: scan the outfit, and then you can use the app
Speaker 1: to select you know, the size you want, the color
Speaker 1: you want, the style you want of whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and have it sent to a fitting room or even
Speaker 1: to a pickup counter um anyway, then you could go
Speaker 1: to the fitting room and try on the items. And
Speaker 1: in the fitting rooms they're gonna have touch screens where
Speaker 1: let's say you get in there and you try something on,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, you want to get those pleather
Speaker 1: chaps you see on the show floor, and you have
Speaker 1: some sent to the fing room, and you go back
Speaker 1: there and you say, yeah, these are just a little
Speaker 1: too loose. They don't give them took us the own
Speaker 1: f I was hoping for, And you could use the
Speaker 1: touch screen to request a smaller size of pleather chaps
Speaker 1: to be sent to the fitting room, so you can
Speaker 1: really get that lift that you wanted. You might wonder
Speaker 1: why I picked pleather chaps so back in Oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, more than twenty years ago, I was in
Speaker 1: a play where I had to wear pleather chaps. So
Speaker 1: it's just one of those things pops up in your
Speaker 1: head every now and then. Anyway, Uh. Amazon also plans
Speaker 1: to use its palm scanning technology that's used in other
Speaker 1: stores to link customer accounts to specific customers, so you could,
Speaker 1: you know, pick out the stuff that you want to
Speaker 1: go to the pickup counter, scan your palm, and you
Speaker 1: would automatically have the price of your purchases deducted from
Speaker 1: your account. Now, as someone who hates to shop for
Speaker 1: clothing at all, none of this appeals to me, but
Speaker 1: I could easily imagine it being excited to folks who aren't,
Speaker 1: you know, a grumpy chaps like myself. Twitch, another Amazon property,
Speaker 1: published an open letter from the company's Vice president of
Speaker 1: Global Trust and Safety, Angela Hessian, to lay out how
Speaker 1: the platform has recently been tackling issues of abuse on Twitch,
Speaker 1: and one of the measures was that Twitch deleted millions
Speaker 1: of automated butts in order to curtail what are called
Speaker 1: hate raids. Now, if you're not familiar with Twitch, you
Speaker 1: might not be aware of raids in general. Twitch is
Speaker 1: a live streaming platform mainly geared towards video games, but
Speaker 1: there are other types of content on Twitch as well,
Speaker 1: and raids don't necessarily have to be negative. In fact,
Speaker 1: a raid can be really uplifting and awesome. So essentially,
Speaker 1: a raid is when someone directs their audience to another streamer.
Speaker 1: So you might have like popular streamers who have thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of people watching at a time, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they like to do this to give kind of like
Speaker 1: a crazy short term boost to lesser known or sometimes
Speaker 1: outright obscure streamers who are on the platform. So you
Speaker 1: could have someone who's really influential on Twitch come across
Speaker 1: a person that they like, but that person has very
Speaker 1: few viewers of their own, and then the popular person
Speaker 1: will say, hey, let's go show them some love and
Speaker 1: open up a link to that other, you know person's
Speaker 1: stream and send floods of enthusiastic fans to go and
Speaker 1: you know, show some love. Well. I hate raid is
Speaker 1: obviously a much nastier beast as the name implies. This
Speaker 1: is when a streamer gets hit with a flood of
Speaker 1: abusive accounts hurling awful trash and chat and generally just
Speaker 1: being terrible people. And of course the you know, the
Speaker 1: people who are disproportionately the target of these kinds of
Speaker 1: attacks tend to be, you know, people of color, or
Speaker 1: people who are in the l g B t Q
Speaker 1: plus community, or women, those tend to be the most
Speaker 1: frequent targets of this kind of abuse. So Twitch has
Speaker 1: deleted millions of bots that were essentially programmed to just
Speaker 1: spread misery and abuse, which I think is definitely a
Speaker 1: step in the right direction. Now, it's upsetting that anyone
Speaker 1: would go to the trouble to set a bot loose
Speaker 1: with this kind of intent in the first place. But
Speaker 1: those are much deeper social problems that I don't expect
Speaker 1: a company like Twitch to solve because it can't. But
Speaker 1: seeing Twitch try to mitigate the you know, implementation of
Speaker 1: that problem is a good thing. Not that the problem
Speaker 1: is going to go away or even necessarily get better.
Speaker 1: People who are determined to be hateful and nasty and
Speaker 1: harmful will always find ways to do that. Now, hopefully
Speaker 1: Twitch can make that hard enough and frustrating enough that
Speaker 1: most evil trolls out there won't stick it out to
Speaker 1: see it through. Uh, I mean, come on, there are
Speaker 1: better things for you to do with your time than
Speaker 1: try to torture someone else. And finally, in news that
Speaker 1: for me falls into the I'll believe it when I
Speaker 1: see it category, the young Company Space Entertainment Enterprise or
Speaker 1: c s E has announced plans that will build and
Speaker 1: operate a space station module that will include a content
Speaker 1: studio as well as a sports arena by December of
Speaker 1: twenty four. Now SEE is the company that's working with
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise on an upcoming space movie with scenes that
Speaker 1: will actually be shot in space, because apparently that will
Speaker 1: add authenticity to something, and and apparently Tom Cruise won't
Speaker 1: be satisfied with, you know, the crazy stuff he's done
Speaker 1: in order to make a movie in the past. He
Speaker 1: has to top it every time, so instead of hanging
Speaker 1: outside an airplane, he has to go into space. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this is all going to be part of axioms space
Speaker 1: station modules. Those, in turn will be connected to the
Speaker 1: International Space Station on a temporary basis. Axiom secured permission
Speaker 1: from NASA back in to build out modules for the
Speaker 1: I s S that will have a private commercial purpose,
Speaker 1: and the eventual plan is that the Axiom modules will
Speaker 1: detach from the International Space station, and then Axiom will
Speaker 1: have its own space station, its own independence station down
Speaker 1: the line when it's time to sunset the old International
Speaker 1: Space Station, which is well pasted its expiration date its
Speaker 1: original expiration date anyway for some of the modules. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's been an operation for quite some time
Speaker 1: and expected to continue for the next few years at least. Now.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm being way too pessimistic here. It's entirely possible
Speaker 1: that we will see this module dedicated to content creation
Speaker 1: and uh space sports by the end of I don't
Speaker 1: know what kind of space sports. I do know they
Speaker 1: will definitely be the kind I'll never be able to do,
Speaker 1: for lots of reasons, among which are my lack of
Speaker 1: athletic ability and my suspicion that going up there would
Speaker 1: cost more than I will ever make in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: More fun times, but it is kind of cool. And
Speaker 1: you know what, it's Axiom that's actually building out this module,
Speaker 1: which I think is going to be called C one.
Speaker 1: And because axioms already in the process of building out modules,
Speaker 1: and these are inflatable modules as well, um they they
Speaker 1: use air to hold a firm shape in space. Because
Speaker 1: of that, it's it's actually not maybe that far fetched
Speaker 1: to think that it will be ready by It just
Speaker 1: seems like an incredibly aggressive plan. But then these plans
Speaker 1: could have been in the works for ages and we're
Speaker 1: just now being let in on it. Um. I just
Speaker 1: whenever anything involves space, I automatically think any deadline you
Speaker 1: hear is more of a suggestion. Other evidence to point
Speaker 1: to that the James Webb Space Telescope, which was supposed
Speaker 1: to launch like more than twenty years ago, I think,
Speaker 1: And finally did um always good to put an asterisk
Speaker 1: next to those dates. That's it for the news for Thursday,
Speaker 1: January two. If you have suggestions for topics I should
Speaker 1: cover on tech Stuff, feel free to reach out to
Speaker 1: be on Twitter. The handle for the show is text
Speaker 1: Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon Y. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
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