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 Yet It's time for the tech News for Thursday,
Speaker 1: November ninth, twenty twenty three, and let's start off this
Speaker 1: episode with a sincere get well soon for Apple co
Speaker 1: founder Steve Wozniak. Reuter's reports that while in Mexico City,
Speaker 1: Wosniak admitted himself to the hospital. There are actually conflicting
Speaker 1: reports as to what prompted this move, and in the
Speaker 1: absence of solid information, I think it just makes sense
Speaker 1: for us to say we hope you feel better very soon,
Speaker 1: mister Wosniac. For those of you who are not familiar
Speaker 1: with his name, Wosniak was the other Steve who created Apple,
Speaker 1: the other one, of course, being Steve Job and between
Speaker 1: the two of them, Wozniak was really the big tech geek.
Speaker 1: He was the programmer, he was the phone freak. He
Speaker 1: was the mischievous man who always wanted to know how
Speaker 1: stuff worked. And he's been sort of this kind of
Speaker 1: beloved figure in the tech world for several decades and
Speaker 1: hopefully he'll be right his reign very soon. CNN's Brian
Speaker 1: fun has a piece titled Mark Zuckerberg personally rejected Meta's
Speaker 1: proposals to improve teen mental health. Court document's allege as
Speaker 1: that headline indicates, this is pretty ugly stuff. So according
Speaker 1: to these documents, these internal documents from Meta, numerous people
Speaker 1: inside the company, including top executives like Adam Massari, the
Speaker 1: CEO of Instagram, repeatedly brought matters relating to teen mental
Speaker 1: health and well being to Zuckerberg's attention, only to be
Speaker 1: shut down. The article really paints Zuckerberg as a tech
Speaker 1: executive unconcerned about what impact his company might have on
Speaker 1: its users. That really plays into this popular perception of
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg as sort of an unfeeling, robotic sort of person
Speaker 1: who has a reputation for expecting his you know, his
Speaker 1: staff to carry out his decisions without objections. Now, one
Speaker 1: example that was cited in the article relates to the
Speaker 1: beauty filters on Instagram. I'm sure most of y'all are
Speaker 1: familiar with these, but just in case you're not, these
Speaker 1: are digital filters that apply some alterations to images. So
Speaker 1: you take an image with your phone, the filter changes
Speaker 1: them slightly, and the whole goal is to make the
Speaker 1: final image appear more attractive. So the argument goes that
Speaker 1: as teens encounter picture after picture of impossibly perfect people,
Speaker 1: their own sense of self begins to suffer. There's a
Speaker 1: worry that these kinds of users will start to feel
Speaker 1: like they're an ugly outsider when all the folks on
Speaker 1: the phone seem to live perfect lives, have perfect skin,
Speaker 1: and travel to perfect places. Of course, any of y'all
Speaker 1: who have actually interacted with an influencer, you probably have
Speaker 1: this all figured out. They're just as messed up as
Speaker 1: the rest of us are, sometimes even more so. I'm
Speaker 1: actually reminded of a recent walk I took in a
Speaker 1: park where I saw a young person doing the whole
Speaker 1: influencer thing and working very hard to make a completely
Speaker 1: artificial scene appear to be something they just naturally happened upon.
Speaker 1: I can tell you the process to get to that
Speaker 1: final picture was anything but natural, but that's obviously just anecdotal,
Speaker 1: it's not really evidence. The point is, it appears as
Speaker 1: though Zuckerberg has consistently and repeatedly scuttled any efforts to
Speaker 1: make changes to Meta's various platforms out of a concern
Speaker 1: for the well being of users. Now, I don't think
Speaker 1: we can go so far as to say that Meta
Speaker 1: is a company ruled by a person who is only
Speaker 1: can concerned with that company, or that all the other
Speaker 1: leaders in Meta are somehow these valiant warriors trying to
Speaker 1: do what's right. It's obviously way more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: But this is, as the kids used to say, not
Speaker 1: a good look for mister Zuckerberg. He and the company
Speaker 1: are in an ongoing lawsuit. That's why these documents were
Speaker 1: even uncovered in the first place. It's all part of
Speaker 1: that lawsuit that was brought against the company by the
Speaker 1: state of Massachusetts, and we'll have to see how these
Speaker 1: revelations affect the case. RDIBT at zd net has an
Speaker 1: article titled Microsoft reveals plans to protect elections from deep
Speaker 1: fakes and other misinformation. So here on tech stuff, I've
Speaker 1: talked about concerns regarding say, generative AI and deep fakes
Speaker 1: and other technologies that have the capacity to threaten the
Speaker 1: process of democracy. Because when you get down to it,
Speaker 1: you don't even really have to directly attack democracy in
Speaker 1: order to weaken it. You just have to show that
Speaker 1: it's possible to attack democracy, because if people are convinced
Speaker 1: that nothing they see is reliable, they lose faith in
Speaker 1: the system and the whole thing starts to crumble. Now
Speaker 1: we're not quite there yet, and that's why efforts to
Speaker 1: push back against technology that does pose a threat to
Speaker 1: fair elections and other democratic processes is important. Microsoft's approach
Speaker 1: is to institute what they call a five part plan
Speaker 1: to fight back. Now, among those parts, there's one that
Speaker 1: is about introducing a new kind of tool that they're
Speaker 1: calling the Content Credentials as a Service tool. This would
Speaker 1: let someone who creates some form of digital content sign
Speaker 1: that work digitally, and that digital signature would travel with
Speaker 1: the content wherever it happens to go, so if someone
Speaker 1: clicks through, they'll see the person responsible for that piece
Speaker 1: of content. It's meant to ensure things like transparency and accountability.
Speaker 1: That's one little example of what Microsoft is planning. Some
Speaker 1: other parts of the plan include assisting and educating various
Speaker 1: campaigns and candidates as they navigate a world that now
Speaker 1: has this powerful AI enabled technology in it. To no
Speaker 1: surprise at all, Microsoft's plan also includes really promoting bing
Speaker 1: search as being the most reliable when it comes to
Speaker 1: presenting real information and weeding out misinformation and AI generated stuff.
Speaker 1: So we'll see how that goes, because so far Bing's
Speaker 1: command of web search has been let's call it underwhelming.
Speaker 1: Although at the same time, Google is currently involved in
Speaker 1: a huge antitrust lawsuit that in part hinges on how
Speaker 1: Google has used various measures such as paying enormous sums
Speaker 1: to other companies like Apple, in order to guarantee that
Speaker 1: Google Search would be a default option on lots of devices.
Speaker 1: So maybe in the future Bing will have a larger
Speaker 1: share of the market because Google will be forced to
Speaker 1: break up. We'll have to see. If you're a Lego
Speaker 1: fan and you have an account on the online marketplace Bricklink,
Speaker 1: then it's time to hit those bricks because the company
Speaker 1: has detected a breach in its systems and there has
Speaker 1: been some quote unquote suspicious activity on the bricklink online marketplace.
Speaker 1: So at this marketplace, folks can sell parts and accessories
Speaker 1: with Lego. Other folks can obviously buy them. It's just
Speaker 1: an online exchange place for that kind of stuff. And
Speaker 1: apparently some bad actors, some hackers, got unauthorized access to
Speaker 1: some seller accounts and started to sell stuff off at
Speaker 1: insane discounts and divert payments to themselves as opposed to
Speaker 1: the actual seller who should have been in control of
Speaker 1: the whole thing. And the company says it's likely that
Speaker 1: what happened was these hackers did some credential stuffing. They
Speaker 1: found some compromised user names and words on the Internet,
Speaker 1: they applied those over on Bricklink, and they found a
Speaker 1: few that worked, and that that's what they've been doing.
Speaker 1: They did announce that the hackers had issued a ransomware
Speaker 1: demand from the company, but they said there's no evidence
Speaker 1: that the hackers actually got access to any company systems.
Speaker 1: So that's why they're saying, like, we think that this
Speaker 1: is not an actual ransomware intrusion, but rather someone being
Speaker 1: able to use passwords to hack into accounts. So they
Speaker 1: do suggest that users who have a Bricklink account go
Speaker 1: in and update their password to a strong password that's
Speaker 1: unique just for that service. You should be doing that anyway.
Speaker 1: You should not be reusing the same password over and
Speaker 1: over again. Just a bad idea, because all it takes
Speaker 1: is one thing to get compromised, and then they have
Speaker 1: the skeleton key to all of your accounts. You don't
Speaker 1: want to do that. So just thought that was interesting
Speaker 1: that it was hitting the lego community. Now, it should
Speaker 1: come as no surprise that Amazon is reportedly working on
Speaker 1: a massive artificial intelligence model. Of course it is. It's
Speaker 1: a huge company, and all the other huge companies are
Speaker 1: likewise hard at work at creating language models. According to
Speaker 1: Business Insider, the Amazon model currently has the code name Olympus,
Speaker 1: which seems pretty darn humble. I mean, it's the home
Speaker 1: of the gods and everything. The Information reports further that
Speaker 1: Amazon plans to integrate this large language model into lots
Speaker 1: of stuff that faces customers, like its online store and
Speaker 1: in that smart speaker line of products that have that
Speaker 1: woman's name that I won't say, just so I don't
Speaker 1: accidentally set any off near you. Then, Reuter's reports that
Speaker 1: Olympus is actually a much larger large language model than
Speaker 1: even open AI's famous GBT, in fact, twice as large.
Speaker 1: That does not necessarily mean it's better, but it is bigger.
Speaker 1: Rumor has it Amazon will be unveiling its plans for
Speaker 1: AI next month, and that we might find out how
Speaker 1: this could be incorporated into Amazon products moving forward, and
Speaker 1: whether accessing those features will require some sort of additional
Speaker 1: subscription or something. On a semi related note, the Hollywood
Speaker 1: strike with sag AFTRA has come to a close. This
Speaker 1: is the one that involved the union represented actors in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: So that strike is probably to a close, I should say,
Speaker 1: because the strike leaders were finally able to negotiate a
Speaker 1: deal with the AMPTP, that's the organization that represents like
Speaker 1: the producers in Hollywood studios. But there are a few
Speaker 1: components that need to happen, like there has to be
Speaker 1: a full vote from the union to support this deal
Speaker 1: before it's well and truly in place. Most folks seem
Speaker 1: to think that is going to happen this week. And
Speaker 1: there's some things in that deal that touch on tech,
Speaker 1: which is why talking about it. Part of it has
Speaker 1: to do with things like residual payments for stuff that's
Speaker 1: on streaming services as opposed to on more traditional media
Speaker 1: like film or television. There were really established ways to
Speaker 1: determine how much money an actor would receive from stuff
Speaker 1: they had done continuing to perform well in movies or
Speaker 1: on TV or whatever, but there was less clarification in
Speaker 1: the streaming world because that's a relatively new form of media,
Speaker 1: so there's some elements of that in there, and there's
Speaker 1: also elements that have to do with generative artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: Now I can't give any details because so far the
Speaker 1: terms of the deal are undisclosed, but the Union as
Speaker 1: a whole will vote to ratify the deal pretty soon,
Speaker 1: and assuming that happens, business will be back to whatever
Speaker 1: passes for normal in Hollywood. Okay, we're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break. When we come back, we've got some
Speaker 1: more tech news stories. We're back. So. While Google is
Speaker 1: facing heavy legal pressure here in the United States in
Speaker 1: that antitrust matter I mentioned earlier, the company is also
Speaker 1: pushing against Apple over in the EU. Google reportedly is
Speaker 1: petitioning lawmakers in the EU to force Apple to stop
Speaker 1: gatekeeping the infamous I Message app. The EU has a
Speaker 1: law called the Digital Markets Act, and Google argues that
Speaker 1: Apple's I Message is not in alignment with that law,
Speaker 1: and that law says that Apple should allow I Message
Speaker 1: to integrate seamlessly with all other messaging platforms. And this
Speaker 1: really comes down to text bubbles and what color they are,
Speaker 1: right like, whether they're blue or green. It's crazy to
Speaker 1: me that that's what it really comes down to it's
Speaker 1: even crazier that people would actually judge someone if their
Speaker 1: text bubble in a group chat was the quote unquote
Speaker 1: wrong color that you know, somehow they're not as good
Speaker 1: a person because they have a different kind of technology.
Speaker 1: They don't have an iPhone, they're using an Android phone.
Speaker 1: I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that. I mean,
Speaker 1: after all, I've seen the exact same sort of tribalistic
Speaker 1: behavior in the gaming community forever. Right. You just ask
Speaker 1: a group of gamers what's better PlayStation or Xbox and
Speaker 1: then you watch the blood fly. So I guess it
Speaker 1: isn't that biggest surprise. It's just kind of pathetic if
Speaker 1: you ask me. Anyway, Apple says that it already meets
Speaker 1: the requirements of the Digital Markets Act, So I guess
Speaker 1: we'll see if Google's push for this wins out or not.
Speaker 1: If it does, it may mean that we won't have
Speaker 1: those different colors of text bubbles in the future, and
Speaker 1: we'll have to judge people on other things, you know,
Speaker 1: like whether or not they're a good person. Meanwhile, Apple
Speaker 1: is potentially facing a big old tax bill in the EU,
Speaker 1: specifically the of tax breaks that the company got from Ireland.
Speaker 1: So this matter has actually a very long history. The
Speaker 1: way it works is that several years ago the government
Speaker 1: of Ireland extended some hefty tax breaks to Apple to
Speaker 1: attract Apple to build a facility in Ireland, to essentially
Speaker 1: make Ireland its foothold for Europe and other parts of
Speaker 1: the world. But these tax breaks were themselves, according to
Speaker 1: one court case, not entirely legal. So this whole mess
Speaker 1: goes to court, and originally the court agrees that the
Speaker 1: tax breaks were not legal, that Apple therefore owed billions
Speaker 1: of dollars worth of back taxes, and then Apple appealed
Speaker 1: this decision. Three years ago, another court overturned the earlier judgment,
Speaker 1: and now a lawyer advising the European Union says that
Speaker 1: the decision to overturn was itself incorrect, that it was
Speaker 1: guided by a bunch of legal errors, and the court
Speaker 1: made a mistake in overturning the original court's decision against Apple,
Speaker 1: and that Apple should therefore end up forking over around
Speaker 1: thirteen billion with a b euro worth of back taxes.
Speaker 1: At the heart of the matter is whether or not
Speaker 1: the tax breaks Ireland offer to Apple constitute what the
Speaker 1: EU defines as quote unquote state aid. So every member
Speaker 1: state in the EU actually governs its own tax laws,
Speaker 1: but the EU as a whole has authority over matters
Speaker 1: where a government offers government backed aid to say, a
Speaker 1: giant corporation, so as obi Wan would put it, it
Speaker 1: all depends upon your point of view. Obviously, Apple reps
Speaker 1: argue that that interpretation is not accurate. The most recent
Speaker 1: court decision to overturn the ruling against Apple is really
Speaker 1: the right one, and that one should stand. Ireland's government
Speaker 1: also protests being said that to have offered state aid
Speaker 1: to Apple. Ireland says that's not what it did. It
Speaker 1: created an incentive to bring Apple over to Ireland in
Speaker 1: order to turn Ireland into kind of a high tech
Speaker 1: hub for companies mostly originating from the United States, to
Speaker 1: have a base of operations for the rest of the
Speaker 1: European Union. The whole darn story is taxing, if you
Speaker 1: ask me. Speaking of taxes, authorities in Italy say that
Speaker 1: Airbnb and the landlords using Airbnb have not been paying taxes,
Speaker 1: at least not to the level that they should be,
Speaker 1: and as such, Italian authorities are getting ready to seize
Speaker 1: more than eight hundred and thirty million dollars from Airbnb
Speaker 1: as a result. Now, whether these authorities will also turn
Speaker 1: their wrath to the actual landlords, that remains to be
Speaker 1: seen so far, of just seen mention of only Airbnb.
Speaker 1: So a lot of places around the world have been
Speaker 1: striking out against Airbnb recently. The City of New York has,
Speaker 1: you know, lots of other places. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of places that have issues with housing availability that have
Speaker 1: been really critical of Airbnb. So the complaint is that
Speaker 1: landlords are scooping up properties that should be going to
Speaker 1: residents and instead they're using them for short term rentals. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you've got an ongoing housing crisis in some of these places,
Speaker 1: obviously in Italy. The issue also involves failing to pay
Speaker 1: the appropriate amount in taxes on these rental agreements. Airbnb
Speaker 1: reps say, unsurprisingly that they are disappointed by the decision
Speaker 1: to go after their money. They also claim that they
Speaker 1: have operated within the law. The company has the right
Speaker 1: to appeal, which I can't imagine them not doing. I'm
Speaker 1: sure they will. And CNN Business indicates that the actual
Speaker 1: process for the authorities to get this money is not
Speaker 1: exactly straightforward. It's not like it's easy to do. So
Speaker 1: it may be that this matter drags on for a
Speaker 1: very long time, but it really extends beyond tech into
Speaker 1: the political and financial realms. I just thought that was
Speaker 1: worth talking about because, like a lot of other companies,
Speaker 1: particularly in Silicon Valley, Airbnb would often get the label
Speaker 1: of being disruptive, and I just think it's good to
Speaker 1: remember that sometimes when you're disruptive, sooner or later the
Speaker 1: establishment hits back, and it's usually much bigger than you are.
Speaker 1: That's not saying that that's the right thing, but it's
Speaker 1: certainly something that can happen, and I think that's what
Speaker 1: we're seeing with Airbnb now. Disney CEO Bob Iger addressed
Speaker 1: investors in a recent earnings call, and one thing he
Speaker 1: mentioned is that starting next month, the company will roll
Speaker 1: out a beta test of a streaming app that combines
Speaker 1: both Disney Plus and Hulu into a service. This has
Speaker 1: long been rumored to be in the works, and Disney
Speaker 1: is currently in the process of acquiring comcasts thirty thirty
Speaker 1: percent stake in Hulu for around eight point six billion
Speaker 1: dollars at least. Eiger indicated that the plan is to
Speaker 1: roll out the service in full sometime next spring. So
Speaker 1: it sounds like only people who are currently subscribed both
Speaker 1: to Disney Plus and to Hulu at the moment are
Speaker 1: going to have access to this beta program in the
Speaker 1: short term, which means I'm out. I'm just on Disney Plus.
Speaker 1: I haven't done Hulu yet, so I'll have to keep waiting.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of stuff on Hulu I want to see,
Speaker 1: but I've been dragging my feet because I was pretty
Speaker 1: sure that this thing was going to happen. And lastly,
Speaker 1: I want to pour one out for a may Goal,
Speaker 1: the online service that would match strangers up in chats
Speaker 1: video chats online. So even if you've never used a
Speaker 1: may Go before, I bet you can guess that a
Speaker 1: lot of people took the opportunity to being randomly matched
Speaker 1: with a stranger in a semi anonymous way to engage
Speaker 1: in behavior, let's say, was questionable. There was never a
Speaker 1: shortage of stories about people on Omego harassing folks or
Speaker 1: using things like racist slurs, or exposing themselves that was
Speaker 1: one that was frequently mentioned, or attempting to groom young users.
Speaker 1: Really disturbing stuff like that. There are no shortage of
Speaker 1: videos about that online too. But other folks made really
Speaker 1: creative artistic uses of omegol. There's some great compilation videos
Speaker 1: on YouTube of musicians who would delight strangers by playing
Speaker 1: like a personal concert for them, just by being matched
Speaker 1: up to them. That kind of stuff I think is
Speaker 1: super awesome, and I'm sad that that's going to go.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of strangers being able to connect
Speaker 1: with each other and just have a conversation. You never
Speaker 1: know where that's going to go. The problem is the
Speaker 1: bad actors were really, really bad, and that overall gave
Speaker 1: a stain on omegl and the creator of omegol announced
Speaker 1: that it was just too much to try and keep
Speaker 1: the site running, to fight against people who were abusing
Speaker 1: the site, and to fight the organizations that had condemned
Speaker 1: the entire site due to the behavior of these bad actors.
Speaker 1: I recommend actually going over to omegle dot com and
Speaker 1: reading the whole open letter yourself to draw your conclusions
Speaker 1: about the whole thing. And that's it for the news
Speaker 1: today for Thursday, November ninth, twenty twenty three. I hope
Speaker 1: you are all well, and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production for more
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