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'mond executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech are you.
Speaker 1: It's time for the tech news for Tuesday, June thirteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, and today marks the second day that
Speaker 1: hundreds of subreddits thousands in fact, have gone dark in
Speaker 1: response to Reddit changing its API policy that's application programming interface.
Speaker 1: This has necessitated the shutdown of several popular apps. So
Speaker 1: as a refresher, Reddit put in a new fee system,
Speaker 1: and the more an app needs to reference Reddit, so essentially,
Speaker 1: the more frequently the app makes requests from Reddit, the
Speaker 1: more the developer is going to have to pay a
Speaker 1: monthly fee, and it depends entirely on how many references
Speaker 1: the app is making collectively to Reddit. Reddit representatives say
Speaker 1: that this is necessary because increased activity on the platform
Speaker 1: drives up hosting costs, and the money to pay those
Speaker 1: bills has to come from somewhere. Developers say the new
Speaker 1: fee schedule is prohibitively expensive and that it sure does
Speaker 1: seem like Reddit is pricing out competitors, which would leave
Speaker 1: only reddits own app standing in solidarity with these app developers.
Speaker 1: The moderators of tons of popular subredits, including the technology Subreddit,
Speaker 1: have gone private for a couple of days. Also side note,
Speaker 1: I often use the technology subreddit to keep an eye
Speaker 1: on tech stories for these episodes because it's a very
Speaker 1: good aggregation site for that kind of thing. You see
Speaker 1: lots of people crawling the web and finding cool technology articles.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly helpful if you want to put together a
Speaker 1: news episode. So what I'm saying is that this is
Speaker 1: also making me work harder, which we all know I hate.
Speaker 1: But more seriously, whether this is going to prompt Reddit
Speaker 1: to change its policy, I don't know. I would actually
Speaker 1: be really surprised if it did. I think it's going
Speaker 1: to bring a lot more attention to the issue, but
Speaker 1: I don't know that it's necessarily going to change things.
Speaker 1: I think the only thing that would change reddits stance
Speaker 1: would be either if a lot of people just left
Speaker 1: the platform entirely, which means there would be fewer people
Speaker 1: to sell advertising for and that would be a huge
Speaker 1: drop in revenue, or if there was some sort of
Speaker 1: official investigation into whether or not Reddit is engaging in
Speaker 1: anti competitive practices that could also so force a change,
Speaker 1: But in the lack of either of those things happening,
Speaker 1: I just don't I don't imagine it will change, But
Speaker 1: I could be wrong. Maybe there will be enough pressure
Speaker 1: on Reddit to at least have them tweak the policy.
Speaker 1: We'll have to wait and see. The various announcements that
Speaker 1: loosely speaking, make up the Summer Games Fest are wrapping
Speaker 1: up this week. Microsoft held its event over the weekend,
Speaker 1: but one thing the company didn't dive into was the
Speaker 1: fate of the Activision Blizzard deal. Now. As I'm sure
Speaker 1: most of you know, Microsoft announced ages ago now that
Speaker 1: it planned to acquire Activision Blizzard, which at the time
Speaker 1: was weathering a pretty big storm with regard to the
Speaker 1: company's reputation for a toxic work environment and general tolerance
Speaker 1: toward harassment and that kind of thing. The plan was
Speaker 1: to have this deal finalized by this summer, been some
Speaker 1: notable hurdles. Regulators in the UK have refused to allow
Speaker 1: the deal to proceed, at least in the UK. They
Speaker 1: say that it would give Microsoft an unfair market advantage
Speaker 1: in the sector, particularly with regard to cloud gaming services. Recently,
Speaker 1: Activision representatives requested that they be able to address this
Speaker 1: issue when it comes up for appeal with those UK
Speaker 1: regulators a little bit later this summer. Microsoft reps have
Speaker 1: argued that the UK is holding things up where regulators
Speaker 1: elsewhere have given the green light to the acquisition, like
Speaker 1: the European Union or regulators in Japan. But that argument
Speaker 1: is going to be a lot harder to make because
Speaker 1: the US Federal Trade Commission or FTC, is now seeking
Speaker 1: an injunction and a temporary restraining order to block the deal. Okay,
Speaker 1: you might say, well, didn't the FTC already object to this,
Speaker 1: And the answer to that is yes, they actually challenged
Speaker 1: the acquisition late last year, back in December of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. But justice moves slowly, like glacially slow, and
Speaker 1: so the FTC is looking for this injunction to temporarily
Speaker 1: stop the deal from closing while the challenge to the
Speaker 1: deal inches closer to actually making it into a courtroom.
Speaker 1: And it might seem a bit absurd that a major
Speaker 1: US government agency would have to get a restraining order
Speaker 1: to put a temporary block on a deal while the
Speaker 1: actual case to decide if the deal is even legal
Speaker 1: or not meets court schedules. It does sound a little
Speaker 1: bit mad, as they say, but that's how it works.
Speaker 1: On Microsoft's side, the request for an injunction might not
Speaker 1: necessarily be a bad thing because if a court denies
Speaker 1: that injunction, that could give Microsoft a bit of a
Speaker 1: legal boost, as it were, and company reps both for
Speaker 1: Microsoft and Activision have said they're eager to get this
Speaker 1: matter to the court because in their opinion, it's an
Speaker 1: open and shutcase that there's no unfair market advantage or
Speaker 1: any competitive element to the deal. So maybe we'll see
Speaker 1: the deal go through despite all these hurdles. Twitter's new CEO,
Speaker 1: Linda Yakarino, sent out her first official communication to Twitter's
Speaker 1: staff this week. The memo's title was building Twitter two
Speaker 1: point zero Together. Now you might recall that Twitter's previous CEO,
Speaker 1: a guy named Elon Musk, revealed aspirations of evolving the
Speaker 1: Twitter service into a much more robust app capable of
Speaker 1: doing pretty much any basic app stuff, including handling financial transactions.
Speaker 1: In the memo, she wrote, quote, it has become increasingly
Speaker 1: clear that the global town square needs transformation to drive
Speaker 1: civilization forward through the unfiltered exchange of information and open
Speaker 1: dialogue about things that matter most to us end quote.
Speaker 1: This seems to echo the message of free speech that
Speaker 1: Elon Musk frequently stated. But that's a message that's actually
Speaker 1: really muddled, because in the Elon era, it seemed like
Speaker 1: free speech mostly just applied to Elon and to the
Speaker 1: people he liked, but not necessarily anybody else. And yes,
Speaker 1: I am editorializing, but what I'm saying is backed up
Speaker 1: by evidence. I mean, you just have to think back
Speaker 1: to the time when Twitter suddenly started to clamp down
Speaker 1: on any tweets that contain links to other platforms like
Speaker 1: Instagram or masted on. Apparently that speech was not allowed
Speaker 1: to be free. So like when I make these snarky comments,
Speaker 1: it's not without reason. Anyway. While I have suspicions as
Speaker 1: to the sincerity of Twitter's mission, I have to say
Speaker 1: that our new CEO's communication style is more uplifting and
Speaker 1: humorous than Elon's typically were. If you read the memo,
Speaker 1: it definitely feels a bit more supportive. On that side,
Speaker 1: it still says you're gonna have to work real hard,
Speaker 1: like it's repeating that little line, but it's more like
Speaker 1: a almost like a pep rally kind of we're all
Speaker 1: in this together and we can do it as opposed
Speaker 1: to you will do it or you will suffer, which,
Speaker 1: granted I'm paraphrasing, but a lot of Elon Musk's messages
Speaker 1: to employees kind of felt like that. But whether any
Speaker 1: of this translates into real improvement at Twitter, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But sticking with Twitter, a user named Alessandro Paluzzi, who
Speaker 1: describes himself as a leaker, a mobile developer, and a
Speaker 1: reverse engineer, posted that he found something interesting. A limit
Speaker 1: to the number of direct messages or DMS you are
Speaker 1: allowed to send. When you hit that limit, you get
Speaker 1: a message from Twitter saying you've hit the maximum limit
Speaker 1: for direct messages in a single day. Sign up for
Speaker 1: Twitter Blue to continue messaging. Baluzzi followed that up with quote,
Speaker 1: currently the limit is five hundred per day, but I
Speaker 1: bet this limit will be reduced when this will be
Speaker 1: rolled out end quote. Elon Musk, who still heads up
Speaker 1: product and development at Twitter even though he's no longer CEO,
Speaker 1: indicated that the deployment should happen later this week, So
Speaker 1: I guess we'll see what the limit is once we
Speaker 1: get there. Is that going to drive more people to
Speaker 1: actually subscribe to Twitter Blue. Well, in my experience, folks
Speaker 1: get really irritated when they're asked to pay for something
Speaker 1: that previously they were able to access for free. So
Speaker 1: I have my doubts. And now to talk of Twitter past.
Speaker 1: Jack Dorsey, one of the co founders of Twitter and
Speaker 1: the former CEO of the company, alleged that in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: the government of India threatened to shut Twitter down in
Speaker 1: that country. Why well, according to Dorsey, it's because armers
Speaker 1: who were protesting the government in twenty twenty were using
Speaker 1: Twitter to share their thoughts and complaints and criticisms of
Speaker 1: India's government, and that government officials wanted to shut all
Speaker 1: that down. In addition, Dorsey says the government wanted Twitter
Speaker 1: to censor journalists who supported the protests, who or who
Speaker 1: called into question the government's positions. Government representatives deny these allegations.
Speaker 1: They say there were no arrests, there were no raids,
Speaker 1: there were no shutdowns, but that Twitter had acted in
Speaker 1: violation of Indian law and that the platform was essentially
Speaker 1: ignoring India's sovereignty. The matter is a messy one. Twitter
Speaker 1: initially blocks more than two hundred accounts upon direction of
Speaker 1: India's government, but then reverse that decision after Twitter says
Speaker 1: it determined there was insufficient reasons to block those accounts
Speaker 1: and cited India's own free speech laws. India's government allegedly
Speaker 1: then said failure to block the accounts would result in
Speaker 1: government raids on Twitter offices and a show down, and
Speaker 1: again the government reps in India deny those claims. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got some more news to cover, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. We're back. So YouTube is making
Speaker 1: it easier to qualify for the YouTube Partners program. This
Speaker 1: is where you can implement things like tipping and YouTube shopping,
Speaker 1: where you can sell your own merch and channel memberships
Speaker 1: and more. It's really a way of monetizing the videos
Speaker 1: that you put up on YouTube. So previously, in order
Speaker 1: to qualify, you need to have at least one thousand
Speaker 1: subscribers and either four thousand watch hours within the past
Speaker 1: year or ten million views of YouTube shorts within the
Speaker 1: last ninety days. But now the requirements have been reduced
Speaker 1: to five hundred subscribers plus three public uploads over the
Speaker 1: last night days and at least three thousand watch hours
Speaker 1: over the last year or three million short views in
Speaker 1: the last ninety days. This seems to favor people who
Speaker 1: work in short form content because they're more likely to
Speaker 1: meet the requirement of having three uploads in ninety days.
Speaker 1: But some of my favorite YouTube channels are producing long
Speaker 1: form content and they publish much less frequently, but their
Speaker 1: videos get tons and tons of views, like more than
Speaker 1: a million views. Their work is incredible. So I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about channels like Folding Ideas or Jenny Nicholson. So a
Speaker 1: startup channel like those might really make great content and
Speaker 1: might get lots and lots of views, but it wouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily qualify because you wouldn't have the three public uploads
Speaker 1: in ninety days. However, maybe YouTube also has a process
Speaker 1: to consider outliers like that, Like if you are garnering
Speaker 1: more than a million views per video, it's just that
Speaker 1: your videos take a longer time to publish because you're
Speaker 1: making long form content and you're putting a lot of
Speaker 1: work into them. I imagine YouTube would still consider those
Speaker 1: for the program, even if on the base of it
Speaker 1: it doesn't qualify. It just seems like it would be
Speaker 1: short sighted not to. Now there is a disturbance in
Speaker 1: the force, and by force I mean the crypto community
Speaker 1: and by disturbance, I mean the US Securities Exchange Commission
Speaker 1: or SEC is taking aim at more than fifty different cryptocurrencies. Why. Well,
Speaker 1: the SEC argues that a whole bunch of alt coins,
Speaker 1: which essentially refer to smaller cryptocurrencies that aren't Bitcoin or ether,
Speaker 1: don't really count as currencies. There instead securities. But what
Speaker 1: the heck is a security? Well this isn't a finance podcast,
Speaker 1: but it comes up all the time in tech news,
Speaker 1: and frankly, I felt the need to brush up on
Speaker 1: it myself. So I went to Investopedia, which has their
Speaker 1: own definition, and they define it as quote fungible negotiable
Speaker 1: financial instrument that holds some type of monetary value end quote. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: they also give some examples to clarify things. So stock
Speaker 1: in a company is a kind of security. It's fungible,
Speaker 1: it's negotiable, and it holds monetary value as determined by
Speaker 1: the market. A bond, likewise, counts as a security, and
Speaker 1: so securities, Investipedia explains, typically fall into one of three categories. Equity,
Speaker 1: which means the security represents some percentage of ownership in
Speaker 1: something like a company. A second type is debt, meaning
Speaker 1: you can actually purchase debt that other people owe, and
Speaker 1: then they have to pay you, so you get the
Speaker 1: debt payments plus whatever the interest rate is, so you
Speaker 1: get more than what you purchase the debt for. And
Speaker 1: then the third type is a hybrid between equity and debt.
Speaker 1: And here's the real kicker. The SEC has the authority
Speaker 1: to oversee public sales of securities. It has to be regulated,
Speaker 1: and crypto coins operate largely in crypto exchanges that are
Speaker 1: operating outside the domain of the SEC. So if THEEC
Speaker 1: is successful in saying yes, these are securities, then they
Speaker 1: have the authority to oversee those exchanges. And as a result,
Speaker 1: a lot of crypto exchanges have started to remove the
Speaker 1: alt coins that the SEC has targeted in various lawsuits
Speaker 1: because these exchanges don't want to get dinged for allowing
Speaker 1: unregulated securities deals. This is actually one of the big
Speaker 1: things that Binance is currently facing with US regulators, so
Speaker 1: this could have a very large negative impact on crypto coins,
Speaker 1: potentially preventing those specific coins from getting funding within the
Speaker 1: US market calendars. On July eleventh, the Nothing Company will
Speaker 1: release the second generation of the Nothing Phone aka the
Speaker 1: Nothing Phone two. This is the smartphone that can display
Speaker 1: simple images on the back of the phone has some
Speaker 1: LEDs on the backside of the phone, which is a
Speaker 1: clear back like you can see the innards of the
Speaker 1: phone through the back, but the images that the LEDs
Speaker 1: show will create basic designs like a basic pattern, and
Speaker 1: Nothing calls these patterns glyphs, and those glyphs indicate incoming
Speaker 1: notifications and depending upon the style of the glyph, it
Speaker 1: can tell you what sort of notification it is, like
Speaker 1: a text message versus an email, et cetera. Now, the
Speaker 1: original Nothing phone got decent reviews, but it wasn't widely
Speaker 1: available here in the United States. Apparently the phone two
Speaker 1: will have more of a reach here in the US,
Speaker 1: and one of the big selling points of the original
Speaker 1: Nothing phone was a lack of bloatwear, that is, apps
Speaker 1: that are pre installed on a device that can be
Speaker 1: difficult or impossible to remove. Nothing It only included a
Speaker 1: couple of apps on the device that were necessary in
Speaker 1: order to operate things like the phone's camera. The underlying
Speaker 1: operating system of the Nothing phone is a version of
Speaker 1: Android that, according to reviewers, was pretty closed to stock Android.
Speaker 1: But we'll have to wait until July eleventh, to find
Speaker 1: out how the phone too stacks up against its predecessor
Speaker 1: and the competitors that are already on the market. And
Speaker 1: now to wrap up with some recommendations, I've got a
Speaker 1: pair of articles from Wired to recommend. As always, here's
Speaker 1: my disclaimer. I have no relationship with Wired, nor do
Speaker 1: I know the folks who wrote these articles. They may
Speaker 1: also be behind a paywall. I'm not certain I have
Speaker 1: a subscription to Wired. In my opinion, it's worth subscribing to,
Speaker 1: but anyway, First up as an article titled the US
Speaker 1: is openly stockpiling dirt on all its citizens, written by
Speaker 1: Dell Cameron. The article details a report from the Office
Speaker 1: of the Director of National Intelligence that shows how various
Speaker 1: agencies in the US federal govern are buying up enormous
Speaker 1: databasis of personal information that belonged to American citizens. And
Speaker 1: considering that's the same sort of shady stuff that folks
Speaker 1: are worried about with TikTok, I figure it pays to
Speaker 1: be informed about how the US is doing pretty much
Speaker 1: the same darn thing. I wouldn't say it's a happy read,
Speaker 1: but it's an important one. The second Wired article is
Speaker 1: by Matt Laslow, and it's titled UFO Whistleblower, Meet a
Speaker 1: conspiracy loving Congress. Now you might recall from last week
Speaker 1: I reluctantly talked about a piece written in the Debrief
Speaker 1: about a former US intelligence employee who claims to have
Speaker 1: knowledge of the existence of aircraft that was built by
Speaker 1: some sort of non human intelligence. Now this person hasn't
Speaker 1: actually seen any of this alleged non human created stuff.
Speaker 1: They haven't even seen photographs of it. Instead, they have
Speaker 1: to rely on second or third hand reports. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: Wired article talks about how, in our current environment here
Speaker 1: in the US, unsubstantiated claims can end up going a
Speaker 1: whole lot further than they used to. It's well worth
Speaker 1: a read. On a related note, I also recommend the
Speaker 1: episode of the Michael Shermer Show. It's a podcast, it's
Speaker 1: also available on YouTube, and it is called is the
Speaker 1: Government Hiding Aliens? The too long didn't watch version of
Speaker 1: the answer is no, but Shermer goes into detail as
Speaker 1: to why people should be skeptical of these claims. Those
Speaker 1: are my recommendations. I hope you are all well. I'll
Speaker 1: be back again on Thursday with more news, assuming you
Speaker 1: know news happens so I'll talk to you again really soon.
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