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, Diamond Executive producer with I Heart Radio, and
Speaker 1: how the tech are you. It's time for the tech
Speaker 1: news for Tuesday, October eleventh, two thousand twenty two. Let's
Speaker 1: get to it. Today, Meta will hold its Connect conference,
Speaker 1: and folks are expecting that Mark Zuckerberg will give an
Speaker 1: update as to the whole journey to the Metaverse thing,
Speaker 1: and part of that will be unveiling of the high
Speaker 1: end VR a gear that has been called Project Cambria
Speaker 1: internally anyway, we expect it will probably be called something
Speaker 1: else when it's released. The going bet now as it's
Speaker 1: going to be the Quest pro By the time you
Speaker 1: hear this, you might very well know that already, because
Speaker 1: I'm recording this before the conference happens. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what features this new VR device is going to have,
Speaker 1: but the guess is that it's going to have higher
Speaker 1: resolution experiences. It's gonna incorporate eye tracking that can go
Speaker 1: from interesting to creepy real quick, and it might have
Speaker 1: some other mixed reality features built into it, as in, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you've got augmented reality and my virtual reality. Hey you
Speaker 1: got virtual reality and my augmented reality? Say that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Anyway, we don't know the details, we don't
Speaker 1: know how expensive this thing is going to be. But
Speaker 1: since Meta not too long ago hiked the price of
Speaker 1: the two quest two models, there's a base model in
Speaker 1: a slightly better model, those prices went up by a
Speaker 1: hundred dollars each. They currently cost three and four nine, respectively.
Speaker 1: And my guess is that Project Cambria will be fairly expensive.
Speaker 1: Considering that Meta has had a really bad year this year,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine and that they're going to try and
Speaker 1: sell this at a massive loss. The company has been
Speaker 1: dealing with scandals, it's seen a decline in its user base.
Speaker 1: It's been trying in largely failing, to fight off TikTok's
Speaker 1: appeal to younger users. It's been reeling from Apple's move
Speaker 1: to give iOS users the ability to cut off app tracking,
Speaker 1: which is really hurt their advertising model. Uh. It's seen
Speaker 1: at stock price go down over the year by more
Speaker 1: than sixty percent, like more than a hundred dollars per share.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there are a lot of folks over
Speaker 1: at Meta who feel the company really needs a win,
Speaker 1: so maybe that's what we'll get later today. The conference
Speaker 1: begins at one pm Eastern. As I'm recording this, it's
Speaker 1: about an hour away, so I'm sure I'll have a
Speaker 1: lot more to talk about on Thursday's episode. The New
Speaker 1: York Times published an article titled quote, Skepticism, Confusion, Frustration
Speaker 1: inside Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse struggles end quote, and this piece
Speaker 1: had some light on how folks inside the company are
Speaker 1: frustrated and confused by Zuckerberg's push toward all things metaverse.
Speaker 1: The Times quotes several folks, many of them unnamed because
Speaker 1: they didn't want to put their jobs at risk, which
Speaker 1: is totally understandable. One investor that the Times quoted was
Speaker 1: a guy named Matthew Ball, who I think rightfully pointed
Speaker 1: out that while Zuckerberg is focusing on the metaverse, the
Speaker 1: problems that Meta is facing right now are not necessarily
Speaker 1: directly metaverse related. Apart from the fact that the company
Speaker 1: is investing billions into something that's still many years away.
Speaker 1: I think the Ball's point is that Zuckerberg is failing
Speaker 1: to address the real world problems that Meta has encountered
Speaker 1: this year. Which means not only is Zuckerberg looking at
Speaker 1: something that doesn't fix the issues that the company currently faces,
Speaker 1: those issues are also getting worse because the attention is
Speaker 1: on this metaverse stuff. The piece also rewards the several
Speaker 1: employees and Meta are frustrated with Zuckerberg changing his mind
Speaker 1: about projects and rapidly demanding changes. They say that the
Speaker 1: most important project is m MH, which is make Mark happy. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this whole approach disrupts processes and makes them really failed
Speaker 1: to make a lot of progress. The piece also mentions
Speaker 1: that Zuckerberg has been urging Meta teams to hold virtual
Speaker 1: meetings within the company's Horizon Workrooms app and that was
Speaker 1: a huge inconvenience for a lot of employees because they
Speaker 1: had not purchased a VR headset or had one set up,
Speaker 1: so it sent lots of folks scrambling in order to
Speaker 1: catch up. Also, by the way, just on a side note, yuck.
Speaker 1: I mean, if if my boss told me that I
Speaker 1: needed to buy a four hundred or five dollar piece
Speaker 1: of equipment just so that I could attend work meetings,
Speaker 1: I'd be pretty angry about that. Hopefully those employees will
Speaker 1: get reimbursed for having to purchase VR equipment just to
Speaker 1: attend meetings or something. The Times piece also says that
Speaker 1: and Helnal poll of Meta of one thousand employees revealed
Speaker 1: that less than sixty of them felt they really understood
Speaker 1: the company's metaverse strategy. So still more than half say
Speaker 1: they understand it, but like more than say I don't
Speaker 1: really get it now the very least I would think
Speaker 1: that reveals a problem with internal communications. It's very hard
Speaker 1: to be a trailblazer if the folks on your team
Speaker 1: don't understand where they're trying to go to. Again, maybe
Speaker 1: the conference later today will indicate that the company has
Speaker 1: addressed some of these issues. Will have to wait and see,
Speaker 1: or you won't. You probably have already heard about it.
Speaker 1: Let's pop on over to YouTube next. The platform is
Speaker 1: making yet another change when it comes to users and
Speaker 1: their accounts. YouTube sent out emails to YouTube account holders
Speaker 1: and released an announcement that says the platform will soon
Speaker 1: switch to at name style handles, much like other social
Speaker 1: platforms like Twitter. So users who will have a channel,
Speaker 1: they'll be able to secure a unique handle that applies
Speaker 1: across the platform. So this handle feature will allow users
Speaker 1: to mention others and stuff like video titles and comments.
Speaker 1: So let's say you decided to do a YouTube video
Speaker 1: about how awesome I am. You could tag me in
Speaker 1: the title of your video, and I would be aware
Speaker 1: that it existed, and because you're appealing to my ego,
Speaker 1: I would likely promote that video because I want people
Speaker 1: to know how awesome I am. Now, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: you should do this, by the way, Specifically, don't do
Speaker 1: this with me because my social reach is pathetically small
Speaker 1: because I'm almost never on social these days, so it
Speaker 1: won't do you any good. But if you try it
Speaker 1: with folks who have a large, active following, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it could work. Maybe you just irritate them. You
Speaker 1: just don't know. Anyway, the apt feature can be useful
Speaker 1: for community engagement, though it can also be irritating as
Speaker 1: heck if it's misused, but that is the way of things.
Speaker 1: I find this change interesting but because back when Google
Speaker 1: Plus was still a thing, Google was really pushing to
Speaker 1: require everyone to use their real legal name across Google platforms,
Speaker 1: and that included Google Plus and YouTube. So this motivation
Speaker 1: for this push came from a relatively good place, like
Speaker 1: it wasn't just that they wanted to force you to
Speaker 1: use your real name. The idea was that if you
Speaker 1: hold people accountable by making them use their real names,
Speaker 1: then they're going to be more careful about the stuff
Speaker 1: they say online and you would see a big decrease
Speaker 1: in stuff like abuse and trolling. But it was very
Speaker 1: clear that the company had not considered a lot of
Speaker 1: other issues that come along with forcing people to use
Speaker 1: their real names. Here's a relatively benign example. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of popular YouTube personalities who are known by
Speaker 1: a sort of stage name or a handle, and if
Speaker 1: you forced them to change to their real name, that
Speaker 1: kind of messes with branding. It also poses as a
Speaker 1: potential privacy and security risk. Anyway, YouTube, throughout their history
Speaker 1: has really followed a rocky course when it comes to
Speaker 1: how we identify users and channels on the site. They've
Speaker 1: gone back and forth between being able to use handles
Speaker 1: being able to use real names. Um, and these new
Speaker 1: handles aren't actually going to rename anything. Instead, in theory,
Speaker 1: it will make it easier to interact with other users
Speaker 1: on the platform because you can tag them. Securing handles
Speaker 1: looks like it's going to be a first come, first
Speaker 1: served approach. Once it opens up. But YouTube is also
Speaker 1: going to reach out to some channels in advance to
Speaker 1: give them the opportunity to secure their handle before the
Speaker 1: general public can rush in and grab them up. Which
Speaker 1: makes sense. You don't want, uh, someone rushing in to
Speaker 1: grab Jack septic I before Sean gets a chance to
Speaker 1: do it. I call him Sean even though I've never
Speaker 1: talked to him and he doesn't know who I am.
Speaker 1: But anyway, that's an example, right, You wouldn't want someone
Speaker 1: to to do the equivalent of website squatting or U
Speaker 1: r L squatting on these handles. So those channels are
Speaker 1: going to get the first chance to do it. UH
Speaker 1: don't know what the criteria is going to be for that.
Speaker 1: I assume it's going to be like the check marked
Speaker 1: folks first and then maybe opened up to others after that.
Speaker 1: We'll have to see. This past weekend was twitch Con,
Speaker 1: which was an in person convention relating to Twitch streamers
Speaker 1: and their fan bases. I got a couple of different
Speaker 1: things to say about this. One is that Twitch has
Speaker 1: been in the hot seat of criticism from creators recently,
Speaker 1: primarily because of the company's revenue strategy. There have been
Speaker 1: a lot of times where streamers have criticized Twitch for
Speaker 1: lots of different things. For example, for uh somewhat vague
Speaker 1: and uneven application of content standards, where some people say
Speaker 1: it appears that certain folks get a past for publishing
Speaker 1: content that other folks get reprimanded for. That's one example.
Speaker 1: But the one that has been and in the focus
Speaker 1: more recently has to do with revenue split. So until
Speaker 1: very recently, Twitch had a revenue split for almost all
Speaker 1: Twitch streamers. That was that means that streamers would get
Speaker 1: fifty of revenue coming from subscriptions and Twitch would get
Speaker 1: the rest. There are other ways that Twitch makes revenue
Speaker 1: from these things, and that streamers make revenue from these
Speaker 1: things as well, but that's really kind of the focus. Now.
Speaker 1: Certain streamers who were kind of viewed as top performers
Speaker 1: and thus likely to attract more people to joining Twitch,
Speaker 1: they got a special treatment. They got a seventy thirty split,
Speaker 1: so Twitch would only take thirty percent of their revenue
Speaker 1: and the streamer would get to keep seventy. But that
Speaker 1: was like this small elite group, and that's actually much
Speaker 1: closer to the kind of revenue new split strategies we
Speaker 1: see in other online platforms. But late last month, Twitch
Speaker 1: said that any remaining seventy streamers out there will also
Speaker 1: get switched to a fifty fifty arrangement once they earn
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars as a threshold. And for those elite streamers,
Speaker 1: that's going to be a big setback. Going from a
Speaker 1: take to take is tough, and while we have yet
Speaker 1: to see how this is all going to play out,
Speaker 1: it's safe to say there are some Twitch streamers upset
Speaker 1: with this change. Now, maybe they'll try and offset it
Speaker 1: by incorporating more advertising in their streams, because if you
Speaker 1: have more ads, then you generate more revenues, so you
Speaker 1: can make up for the fact that you are getting
Speaker 1: a smaller cut of the revenue you generate by putting
Speaker 1: in more ads. But if you put in more ads,
Speaker 1: then you might push away Twitch viewers. They might get
Speaker 1: fed up with how many ads there are compared to
Speaker 1: the amount of content they're getting. But anyway, let's talk
Speaker 1: about twitch Con, particularly because the big story coming out
Speaker 1: of twitch Con isn't about twitches policies had to do
Speaker 1: with some really unfortunate injuries that were incurred by let's
Speaker 1: call them enthusiastic streamers who leapt into a a foam pit,
Speaker 1: that is, a pit that had foam blocks, like the
Speaker 1: kind of blocks he would use for packing material, right,
Speaker 1: those dark like charcoal gray foam blocks, that kind of
Speaker 1: thing um And that pit proved to be far too shallow,
Speaker 1: and since this was all done in a venue with
Speaker 1: concrete floor, and then that some folks got hurt, a
Speaker 1: few of them seriously injured. One of those was streamer
Speaker 1: Adriana Chichick, who, after landing in the pit, said she
Speaker 1: was unable to get up and she ultimately got some
Speaker 1: medical attention, and she has since said that she broke
Speaker 1: her back in two places and is going to undergo
Speaker 1: surgery to insert a metal rod into her spine to
Speaker 1: correct for the damage. The foam pit was part of
Speaker 1: an American Gladiator's type attraction. It was sponsored by Lenovo
Speaker 1: and Intel, and it was subsequently shut down after numerous injuries.
Speaker 1: And on a personal note, I just want to say,
Speaker 1: I hope the various folks who got injured in that
Speaker 1: pit have a swift recovery. And to all those websites
Speaker 1: out there that used animated gifts to show the moments
Speaker 1: where folks got injured. Gross next time, just make it
Speaker 1: a playable video. I did not want to actually see
Speaker 1: people get hurt. Um that kind of stinks, And I
Speaker 1: really hope that the hurt people get well soon. That's
Speaker 1: obviously the most important part. All right, speaking of advertising,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we've got some more news items. You know. I've talked
Speaker 1: a lot on this show about how remote work has
Speaker 1: really changed things for employees, how they are reluctant to
Speaker 1: go back to working in the office, which is totally understandable. Like,
Speaker 1: if you are able to do your job effectively at home,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of good reasons to do it
Speaker 1: that way. Right, you're not driving all the time or
Speaker 1: otherwise commuting, you know, you you can really be efficient,
Speaker 1: and you can stay in the comfort of your home.
Speaker 1: You can help look after your family. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of good reasons. But I've also talked about how
Speaker 1: some companies and managers are not crazy about remote work,
Speaker 1: partly because it makes it harder to monitor employees. It's
Speaker 1: weird because, like every study you see about this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff shows how that approach demoralizes employees, which ultimately
Speaker 1: means you hurt the bottom line. Employees don't do as
Speaker 1: good a job if they're not happy. And yet we
Speaker 1: still see this happening like like it's it's like a
Speaker 1: teacher having to watch over a classroom to make sure
Speaker 1: no one's cheating during a pop quiz. You don't feel
Speaker 1: great if you feel like your boss is treating you
Speaker 1: like a misbehaving child. Anyway, there's one recent story that
Speaker 1: really caught my eye that kind of turned things around
Speaker 1: on a company that was doing the sort of thing.
Speaker 1: A Florida based company called chett To hired a remote telemarketer.
Speaker 1: This telemarketer was based in the Netherlands. Now, according to
Speaker 1: a subsequent lawsuit that the telemarketer brought against chet Do,
Speaker 1: the company managers ordered him to activate his webcam and
Speaker 1: to keep it on throughout the entirety of his work day.
Speaker 1: They also demanded that he screen share his screen the
Speaker 1: entire time, and the telemarketer politely declined to acquiesce to
Speaker 1: the company's request, and chatt To then fired this telemarketer.
Speaker 1: So then he sued the company, And like I said,
Speaker 1: this guy is based in the Netherlands. So a Dutch
Speaker 1: court took up the case, and y'all, we don't treat
Speaker 1: things like privacy that seriously here in the United States,
Speaker 1: but they sure as heck do in Europe and the
Speaker 1: Netherlands in particular. So the court found that the company
Speaker 1: was being unreasonable and that the company demands on the
Speaker 1: employee were quote in conflict with the respect for the
Speaker 1: privacy of the workers end quote which it would be
Speaker 1: very hard to agree to argue against. Rather, and that
Speaker 1: that the company far overstepped the boundaries that an employer
Speaker 1: has when it comes to its employees. So this Dutch
Speaker 1: court found in favor of the telemarketer. They said this
Speaker 1: was a case of unfair dismissal, and as a result,
Speaker 1: the court has ordered Chett to to pay the telemarketers
Speaker 1: court costs, to pay his back wages, to pay a
Speaker 1: fine of fifty thou dollars, and it has to drop
Speaker 1: the non compete clause from the telemarketers employment agreement. And
Speaker 1: whether any of this happens or not, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Chetto did not show up for the court case. Again,
Speaker 1: I'm not shocked, but I imagine this will at least
Speaker 1: make companies a little less eager to hire telemarketers in
Speaker 1: the Netherlands right or teleworkers in general. As well as
Speaker 1: other places that are like in the EU, for example,
Speaker 1: where you have governed moments and regulatory agencies that take
Speaker 1: stuff like privacy seriously. And uh, honestly, I think that
Speaker 1: the requirement of having the webcam turned on was unreasonable
Speaker 1: from the get go. I think it's unreasonable for any
Speaker 1: company to demand that, at least as a general rule.
Speaker 1: I think it's unreasonable. So hopefully we see stories like
Speaker 1: this that convinced companies not to follow those kinds of tactics. Uh,
Speaker 1: it might take a while for that to really filter
Speaker 1: through to all the different companies in the United States,
Speaker 1: because again, we're in a country that does not traditionally
Speaker 1: value or protect privacy to any great extent. Yesterday, CNN
Speaker 1: decided to sunset its Vault project. So this was an
Speaker 1: n f T initiative that CNN launched last year, and
Speaker 1: and the news company was minting n f T s
Speaker 1: that were tied to real world events and headline So
Speaker 1: the pitch that CNN gave to investors was that you
Speaker 1: could purchase an n f T and own a piece
Speaker 1: of history. You could own a headline, a moment of
Speaker 1: newsworthy activity, which I find absolutely laughable. I find it
Speaker 1: ludicrous because really, what you end up owning is a
Speaker 1: digital token that at least in theory, represents this thing.
Speaker 1: But it's just a digital token. It's a token that
Speaker 1: can be traded or sold on a digital marketplace. But
Speaker 1: it's not like you actually own a moment, like like,
Speaker 1: let's say there's a moment where celebrity, a totally disked
Speaker 1: celebrity be at a public event or whatever, and you're like, done,
Speaker 1: I need to own that. I need to own the
Speaker 1: moment where Harry Styles spit on Crisp Pine or whatever
Speaker 1: it was, And so you buy an n f T
Speaker 1: that represents that headline. You don't actually own anything other
Speaker 1: than a token. Anyway, None of that stopped people from
Speaker 1: buying n f t s because, as we have established
Speaker 1: another episodes, n f t s, especially early on, we're
Speaker 1: really seen as a potential cash grab, both for the
Speaker 1: markets that were minting n f t s and for
Speaker 1: the people who were buying them. It was like a
Speaker 1: speculative market, and you can think of it as like
Speaker 1: a long shot bet. You might think, all right, well,
Speaker 1: each individual n f T is not that expensive, maybe
Speaker 1: it's twenty bucks or something for the cheap ones that's
Speaker 1: not terrible. And if it turns out that this one
Speaker 1: is gonna end up being a seven digit item on
Speaker 1: a marketplace, then I'm gonna make a huge profit from
Speaker 1: a small investment. Of course, I'm gonna be tempted to
Speaker 1: do that. But since those days, obviously the crypto market
Speaker 1: has taken a real dive across multiple blockchains. We have
Speaker 1: seen cryptocurrencies and an n f T values plummet and uh.
Speaker 1: More and more people have expressed skeptic skepticism or just
Speaker 1: outright dismissal of n f T s, and some folks
Speaker 1: who were invested in the vault are now talking about
Speaker 1: talking with lawyers potentially bringing lawsuits against CNN and accusing
Speaker 1: the company of pulling the rug out from investors a
Speaker 1: so called rug poll. So rug pull is when someone
Speaker 1: sets up a project and gets investors involved in the
Speaker 1: project and then subsequently cancels the project and then runs
Speaker 1: off with the cash. That's a rug pole right where
Speaker 1: you've set up the scheme where you can convince a
Speaker 1: lot of people to pour money in early on, and
Speaker 1: then you take the money and run. Well. CNN has
Speaker 1: said that's not the case, and it's planning to compensate
Speaker 1: investors by paying out the purchase price of n f
Speaker 1: T s that investors were holding as captured on October six.
Speaker 1: So if you bought an n f T like a
Speaker 1: year ago, you don't get the value of the n
Speaker 1: f T that you paid for at the point of purchase.
Speaker 1: You you get whatever it was worth on October six
Speaker 1: of this year. So CNN estimates that means folks are
Speaker 1: going to recapture around twenty of what they invested in because,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, crypto had a really bad time
Speaker 1: of it this year, and the value of stuff like
Speaker 1: n f T s has taken a nose dive. It
Speaker 1: also gets worse. Marketplaces have processing fees, so if you
Speaker 1: want to extract your money from an investment on these marketplaces,
Speaker 1: you have to pay a processing fee in in as
Speaker 1: part of that. Well, the marketplace that CNN used was
Speaker 1: connected to the Flow blockchain, and the Flow blockchain has
Speaker 1: a four dollar processing fee for transactions. So let's say
Speaker 1: you bought one n f T from CNN. Let's say
Speaker 1: it was a twenty n f T. We You're only
Speaker 1: gonna get of that value back, right, That's all you're
Speaker 1: gonna get. So one fifth of what you paid and
Speaker 1: you paid twenty bucks, well, one fifth means you would
Speaker 1: get four dollars back, but you also have to pay
Speaker 1: a processing fee if you want to withdraw your money
Speaker 1: from the marketplace. That processing fee is also four dollars,
Speaker 1: which means you get nothing. You get no money back
Speaker 1: because of the reduction in the purchase price and that
Speaker 1: processing fee on top of it. This is another reason
Speaker 1: why lots of critics of n f T s pointed
Speaker 1: in f T s as being dangerous and not a
Speaker 1: good investment, because on top of everything else, you've got
Speaker 1: these processing fees that eat into any profit you might make,
Speaker 1: and you are not guaranteed by any stretch of the imagination,
Speaker 1: to make a profit in the first place. So it
Speaker 1: may mean that you get even less back out if
Speaker 1: you decide that you don't want to be invested in
Speaker 1: the market anymore. Last week, six robotics companies, including Boston Dynamics,
Speaker 1: signed a pledge stating that these companies are not going
Speaker 1: to develop robots that can harm humans, and the company
Speaker 1: has also urged other robotics companies to follow suit. And
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of talk about robotics and how
Speaker 1: they could be put to military use. A lot of
Speaker 1: early ones, including at Boston Dynamics, were talked about as
Speaker 1: sort of a load bearing device that could help carry
Speaker 1: heavier equipment in the field for military, so kind of
Speaker 1: like a mule that it would be carrying this stuff.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily weaponized itself, but it might carry weapons that
Speaker 1: you know, other soldiers can can take off of it
Speaker 1: and use. But there's also been conversations about weaponized platforms,
Speaker 1: whether paired with a human operator who works remotely to
Speaker 1: actually fire the weapons, or even and autonomous system that
Speaker 1: would have stuff like image recognition capabilities that would be
Speaker 1: capable of engaging in combat. So you could have a
Speaker 1: combat ready weaponized robotics platform. And that thought is really scary,
Speaker 1: particularly because we know that computer vision isn't even close
Speaker 1: to perfect. You know, we've seen so many stories of
Speaker 1: computer systems misidentifying people or having a bias against specific
Speaker 1: populations because the computer models themselves are faulty. We've seen
Speaker 1: that over and over again. Now imagine such an imperfect
Speaker 1: system armed with a gun, so that not only is
Speaker 1: this a deadly weapon, it's one that could misidentify targets. Uh,
Speaker 1: it could identify something as a target that's not a
Speaker 1: target at all, and that leads to tragedy. Also, there's
Speaker 1: a fear that if you have robot soldiers that is
Speaker 1: what it really amounts to, that you would be less
Speaker 1: reluctant to engage in combat because obviously you're not putting
Speaker 1: people your people in harm's way, you're using equipment. So
Speaker 1: there's a fear that this could lead to increased aggression
Speaker 1: around the world. It's a very sobering idea. So these
Speaker 1: companies stressed that their robotic platforms it have significant positive
Speaker 1: use cases, like they could really help contribute to lots
Speaker 1: of human endeavors. But if robotics companies agree to weaponize
Speaker 1: their platforms, that will in turn undermine any efforts to
Speaker 1: make robots for peaceful applications because it erodes trust and
Speaker 1: it encourages fear. So people will be less likely to
Speaker 1: invest in robotics companies that could be making stuff that
Speaker 1: could really make positive changes in peaceful ways because there
Speaker 1: are these other companies that are making kill bots. Essentially,
Speaker 1: I'm really on the same page as these companies. I
Speaker 1: think that this is the responsible thing to do. I
Speaker 1: think it's the right thing to do. But whether we
Speaker 1: see this spread throughout the entire robotics industry or not,
Speaker 1: I just don't know. Russian speaking hackers have managed to
Speaker 1: take down more than a dozen airport websites yesterday morning,
Speaker 1: including the site for my home airport, Atlanta's Hertsfield Jackson
Speaker 1: Internet National Airport. Now, the hackers appear to be aligned
Speaker 1: with the Russian government, meaning their motivations appear to be
Speaker 1: based off what the Russian government is doing, but it's
Speaker 1: unknown whether or not they have any sort of state
Speaker 1: sponsor relationship with the government, and maybe that they're acting
Speaker 1: completely independently. In that case, they would be acting more
Speaker 1: like anonymous does. It could be a loose group of
Speaker 1: hackers that choose their own targets and they don't have
Speaker 1: any actual connection with any authority, figure, or agency or
Speaker 1: anything like that. So no one's going so far as
Speaker 1: to say that Putin, for example, ordered hackers to take
Speaker 1: down airport web pages, and I'm guessing that that's not
Speaker 1: the case. I don't think Putin would have done that
Speaker 1: simply because it's not an effective way to really disrupt things.
Speaker 1: In fact, the airport websites that were affected had no
Speaker 1: impact on actual travel whatsoever. Which isn't a surprise. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think I have ever pulled up the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Airports website. Instead, I rely upon whichever air carrier i'm using.
Speaker 1: I use their web page or their app. I don't
Speaker 1: go to the airport's web page itself. So this sounds
Speaker 1: like it was, you know, barely an inconvenience in some ways.
Speaker 1: Many of the sites were back up by late mornings.
Speaker 1: That really shows that it wasn't a very effective attack.
Speaker 1: It's just a temporary disruption. The hackers reportedly used a
Speaker 1: di DOS, or distributed denial of service attack on these sites.
Speaker 1: Those tend to be fairly superficial sorts of attacks that
Speaker 1: can be effective, um, particularly if you have your website
Speaker 1: hosted on a service that doesn't have good di DOS
Speaker 1: protection on it. But it's it's a temporary effect. It's
Speaker 1: not like something more insidious like breaching a system. It's
Speaker 1: nothing like that. It's just really shutting down on traffic
Speaker 1: to that website temporarily. So I'll be chatting more about
Speaker 1: de DOS attacks a little bit later this week. That's
Speaker 1: a preview. I've talked about them before, but I have
Speaker 1: an idea for a themed set of episodes, so that
Speaker 1: will be coming a little bit later. Also coming later
Speaker 1: will be another couple of news stories, but before we
Speaker 1: get to that, let's take another quick break. Delta Airlines
Speaker 1: has pledged to invest sixty million dollars in startup job
Speaker 1: By Aviation, which is in the electric air taxi business.
Speaker 1: That's going a pretty far away. It's not really a
Speaker 1: business yet, but that's what they're developing. Is is electric
Speaker 1: air taxis. Delta also said that should the project hit
Speaker 1: certain milestones uh in in a certain amount of time,
Speaker 1: the company might up that investment as high as two
Speaker 1: hund million dollars. Job has created an electric vehicle takeoff
Speaker 1: and landing vehicles that this v tall vehicles v t
Speaker 1: o L or e v O t L in this case,
Speaker 1: because they are electric. They look like really large drones,
Speaker 1: like like kind of like quad copter drones, but they're
Speaker 1: big enough to hold people and luggage in them. The
Speaker 1: model mentioned in Andrew Jay Hawkins article about this, which
Speaker 1: was published on The Verge can hold up to five
Speaker 1: people and the idea is to create a home to
Speaker 1: airports service. But I maintain that's actually a misleading phrase
Speaker 1: because these e v O t L vehicles are gonna
Speaker 1: need a lot of clear space in order to land
Speaker 1: and take off from them. I mean they're still gonna
Speaker 1: be able to do this vertically, so not as much
Speaker 1: space as like an airplane would need, but essentially the
Speaker 1: same kind of space that a helicopter would need in
Speaker 1: order to land and take off. So you know they're
Speaker 1: gonna need what what folks are calling to ports, these uh,
Speaker 1: these these small cleared areas where these vehicles can operate,
Speaker 1: very similar to helicopter takeoff pads. Right, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: the same sort of thing as that. It might be
Speaker 1: on the top of the building, it might be in
Speaker 1: an otherwise cleared area, but it can't just be anywhere.
Speaker 1: You're not going to see one of these things pull
Speaker 1: up right outside your home. So it's not like you
Speaker 1: step out the front door, walk down the driveway and
Speaker 1: jump into one of these flying air taxis. That's not
Speaker 1: how it's gonna work. Instead, you're gonna have to head
Speaker 1: to the nearest vertiport two catch your ride to the airport.
Speaker 1: So I think calling it home to airport is misleading.
Speaker 1: I just don't think that's a good way of describing this,
Speaker 1: because you do still have to go somewhere else, and
Speaker 1: depending upon the distribution of vertiports, it might not really
Speaker 1: be that effective of a way to reduce the amount
Speaker 1: of time it takes for you to get to an airport.
Speaker 1: Maybe it will. Also, we don't know how much it's
Speaker 1: gonna cost, We don't know where it's going to be available,
Speaker 1: though Los Angeles and New York are likely to be
Speaker 1: the first cities to use these kind of things. Moreover
Speaker 1: than that, you know, we've we've got that sort of
Speaker 1: element that we have to factor with. But one that's
Speaker 1: even more important is that federal agencies have to create
Speaker 1: certifications and approval processes for these kinds of vehicles, and
Speaker 1: that has not happened yet. Right You're not going to
Speaker 1: have the f a A just allow unlicensed or uncertified
Speaker 1: electric vehicles to fly through airspace. That's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: And no company so far has had its its air
Speaker 1: taxi kind of vehicle receive any kind of certification from
Speaker 1: these agencies. So there's a lot of legal process to
Speaker 1: get through. It's not just technical, although there are other
Speaker 1: technical challenges to like how do you scale up production
Speaker 1: so that you meet demand If it turns out there's
Speaker 1: enough demand where this company is going to need to
Speaker 1: mass produce these vehicles. How does it do that? It's
Speaker 1: very different from producing a single one. So there are
Speaker 1: a lot of unanswered questions, and there are a lot
Speaker 1: of things that have to fall into place before we
Speaker 1: ever see air taxis being used, um, you know, in
Speaker 1: a in an official consumer way. So Delta is pledging
Speaker 1: money into something that could eventually mature into a useful service.
Speaker 1: But we're still a good ways out from that because
Speaker 1: we have all these other steps that have to take
Speaker 1: place first. CNBC reports that the Biden Labor Department has
Speaker 1: released a proposal today that could require regulators and courts
Speaker 1: to reclassify gig workers as employees. Right now, the going
Speaker 1: standard in the United States is to classify folks who
Speaker 1: work in the gig economy as independent contractors, and that
Speaker 1: has pros and cons. On the workers side, one of
Speaker 1: the pros is that independent contractors have a lot more
Speaker 1: freedom to define their own hours, so they can hop
Speaker 1: on and hop off of work at a very flexibly
Speaker 1: at their own schedule. But on the flip side, employers
Speaker 1: can treat independent contractors very different from employees. They don't
Speaker 1: have to, for example, provide health benefits too independent contractors.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the big downsides for people who
Speaker 1: work in the gig economy. They can be heavily exploited
Speaker 1: and receive very little protection in return. They might not
Speaker 1: get overtime pay, they might not be allowed to form
Speaker 1: a union. There are a lot of downsides from the
Speaker 1: employee side. So there's a possibility that in the future
Speaker 1: will see UH a federal level rule put into place
Speaker 1: where companies like door Dash and lift and Uber will
Speaker 1: not be able to classify their workers as independent contractors.
Speaker 1: They'll have to treat them as employees. That would be
Speaker 1: a massive change to their business model. UH. It would
Speaker 1: likely mean we'd see prices go up for a lot
Speaker 1: of these services because the company's gonna pass that that
Speaker 1: cost on to us the end consumer. And honestly, we
Speaker 1: don't know how many of these would even just fold
Speaker 1: up and go away as opposed to trying to work
Speaker 1: within that system. UM. I think, ultimately, from a personal
Speaker 1: opinion standpoint, this is a good move. I really want
Speaker 1: to I always want to see more protections for the
Speaker 1: people who are doing the work. I'm not as concerned
Speaker 1: for the people at the top who are benefiting from
Speaker 1: the exploitation of their workforce, not really losing sleep about
Speaker 1: their how much take home bay they get. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, I really worry more about the
Speaker 1: people who are actually doing all the labor. So I
Speaker 1: just don't know what happens if this rule goes into place,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if those models hold up under
Speaker 1: those sets of rules, or if we'll actually see them
Speaker 1: all kind of collapse in on themselves because the only
Speaker 1: way they can exist as a business is through being
Speaker 1: able to exploit the labor force the way it does. UH.
Speaker 1: If it turns out that's the way, I would argue
Speaker 1: that says that business is not a great one for
Speaker 1: us to support, because we shouldn't be exploiting people to
Speaker 1: that level. But I'm also in a position of privilege
Speaker 1: and I understand that, so you know, I'm not suggesting
Speaker 1: that my point of view is the right one or
Speaker 1: the only one or anything like that. It's just kind
Speaker 1: of how I come at things anyway. These are just
Speaker 1: proposed sets of rules. Nothing has been enacted, nothing has
Speaker 1: been voted on, UH, and it may never come to that.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting that we're seeing movement on that front. Finally,
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention that artist Ashley Zelinski has created
Speaker 1: a gallery of art that is based on and inspired
Speaker 1: by images taken by the James web Space Telescope. These
Speaker 1: include three dimensional physical sculptures, includes things like lasers that
Speaker 1: create different images within a foggy environment, and some exhibits
Speaker 1: that require visitors to to don a virtual reality headset
Speaker 1: in order to see virtual uh exhibits, all of which
Speaker 1: are again inspired by these images created by the James
Speaker 1: Webb Space Telescope. And I just think that's really interesting idea. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think that that creates this super cool experience too
Speaker 1: kind of encounter the scientific data, but in a completely
Speaker 1: different context. Right, You're not looking at it as just
Speaker 1: a flat image. You're not looking at it as numbers
Speaker 1: on a chart, you're not looking at it as statistics.
Speaker 1: You're looking at it as an interpretation of that data.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a super cool idea. It's in
Speaker 1: New York City's O n X Studio, and so I'm
Speaker 1: I have not seen it. I don't live in New York,
Speaker 1: so I'm not It's not convenient to me, but I
Speaker 1: would love to visit it because it just sounds like
Speaker 1: such a interesting approach to taking something that is more
Speaker 1: abstract and not as accessible for most of us and
Speaker 1: turning it into something that could have potentially a really
Speaker 1: emotional impact on you. Um. I just love these ideas
Speaker 1: of artists taking inspiration from the scientific endeavors. Of course,
Speaker 1: I say that because I have a tattoo on my
Speaker 1: back that was part of an art project for NASA,
Speaker 1: so so I i I am a canvas for that
Speaker 1: kind of an art project. In fact, we shot a
Speaker 1: video of Forward Thinking where I was getting this hattoo
Speaker 1: as I was delivering the the episode on camera. So
Speaker 1: that's an experience I never thought I would have when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, but I got it, so that
Speaker 1: was kind of cool. Anyway, I just thought that it
Speaker 1: was an interesting concept. If you are in New York
Speaker 1: City and you can go to O n X Studio
Speaker 1: and check this out, let me know what you think,
Speaker 1: because I'm curious. I would love it to be like
Speaker 1: a really awesome, impactful experience. Obviously, with art such a
Speaker 1: personal thing, one person might walk out saying my life
Speaker 1: has been changed forever, and the other person could walk
Speaker 1: out saying I could have done something else with those
Speaker 1: two hours of my time. It's very individual in that way,
Speaker 1: but I am very curious about it. So that's how
Speaker 1: I went in this episode, was talking about that. If
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, reach out. You can download the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app for navigate over to tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: use that microphone icon, leave a voice message up to
Speaker 1: thirty seconds in length, or reach out on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again, Release it y. Tech Stuff
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