Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works, and I love all things tech, and
Speaker 1: one of the greatest things about technology, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: is that it's always evolving. However, that does make covering
Speaker 1: technology somewhat challenging or perhaps frustrating or infuriating, particularly if
Speaker 1: you try to do an evergreen style show like tech Stuff. Ideally,
Speaker 1: an episode of tech Stuff goes out and you should
Speaker 1: be able to listen to it today, next week, two
Speaker 1: years from now. But sometimes stories will update, you know,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll continue more things will happen between the time
Speaker 1: I record a show and even when it goes live
Speaker 1: some times. So this episode is all about giving updates
Speaker 1: to various stories I've mentioned in previous episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: but mostly these are updates that are too short to
Speaker 1: merit a full episode on their own. So let's get started.
Speaker 1: And I've done several episodes on the concept of net neutrality,
Speaker 1: including ones about the FCC reclassifying the Internet service providers
Speaker 1: as common carriers, and the various campaigns for and against
Speaker 1: the whole idea of mandating net neutrality. So if you
Speaker 1: aren't familiar with the concept neutrality, it encompasses several things,
Speaker 1: but one of the things it says is that all
Speaker 1: traffic on the Internet should be treated equally, whether that
Speaker 1: is data that belongs originally to the Internet service provider
Speaker 1: let's say that they also own some other services, or
Speaker 1: it's to a competitor. All that data should be able
Speaker 1: to travel across the Internet without any sort of interference
Speaker 1: or preferential treatment or uh negative treatment in the case
Speaker 1: of a competitor's services. It should all just go no
Speaker 1: matter what device you have connected to the Internet, and
Speaker 1: no matter what service you connect to, it should be
Speaker 1: treated equally well. In early June two thousand eighteen, the
Speaker 1: f c C repealed the previously established net neutrality rules,
Speaker 1: and those rules included restrictions on Internet service providers, such
Speaker 1: as being able to give preferential treatment to certain types
Speaker 1: of web traffic over others, or charging more for different
Speaker 1: types of content. So, in other words, these rules were
Speaker 1: meant to keep I s p s from being able
Speaker 1: to serve up their own services on a fast track
Speaker 1: while potentially slowing down or charging more or both for
Speaker 1: competing services. So as an example, imagine you have an
Speaker 1: Internet service provider, let's call it Bombast, and it has
Speaker 1: its own streaming video service, and you can watch certain
Speaker 1: films and certain television shows using that service. The I
Speaker 1: s P might make the service free to anyone who
Speaker 1: is a subscriber to that Internet service providers, so you're
Speaker 1: already a bomb Bast customer. You get those services for free.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but they serve those videos on
Speaker 1: a fast track, right They're using a lot of bandwidth
Speaker 1: to get that stuff to you, and that way, on
Speaker 1: your side, there's no buffering, there's no delays. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a good user experience. However, that same I s
Speaker 1: P then puts the brakes on competing services like Netflix,
Speaker 1: so that you, as a Bombast customer, have a less
Speaker 1: user friendly experience. When you try to use Netflix, everything
Speaker 1: takes forever to load. You might even have to pay
Speaker 1: extra just to be able to access the Netflix service.
Speaker 1: Under the previous net neutrality rules, that would be a
Speaker 1: big no no, but now those rules are gone. Several
Speaker 1: states in the United States have introduced bills that are
Speaker 1: intended to act as a type of net neutrality on
Speaker 1: the state level, but that's kind of a haphazard way
Speaker 1: to go about it because not every state is proposing
Speaker 1: such legislation. A little more than half of the states
Speaker 1: and the u US have some form of legislation either
Speaker 1: passed or in the process, and there's no guarantee that
Speaker 1: the bills that have been proposed will be passed in
Speaker 1: all the states that have taken up the SLACK. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the US Senate voted to reverse the f c C repeal,
Speaker 1: and it passed in the Senate. However, in the United
Speaker 1: States we have not just the Senate, we also have
Speaker 1: the House of Representatives, and in the House, the measure
Speaker 1: did not see the same momentum. They needed two representatives
Speaker 1: to agree to vote on that bill just to just
Speaker 1: to have a vote for it, and every Democrat representative
Speaker 1: signed the petition for this, but it was still more
Speaker 1: than forty signatures short of getting the measure to the
Speaker 1: voting floor, at least as of the recording of this podcast.
Speaker 1: So net neutrality currently in the United States is a
Speaker 1: a dead concept. At the federal level, the f c
Speaker 1: C is now pushing that over to the Federal Trade
Speaker 1: Commission and saying this belongs to them, not to us.
Speaker 1: They'll make sure that no anti competitive monopolistic behaviors happened
Speaker 1: across the internet. Meanwhile, critics of this say that fat
Speaker 1: chance like that this was our best way of making
Speaker 1: certain that users had a fair shake. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of rhetoric on both sides of this issue, and
Speaker 1: it continues to be a big issue in the US. Recently,
Speaker 1: I also did some episodes giving an update on what
Speaker 1: Microsoft has been up to since. One of the things
Speaker 1: I mentioned was a dual touchscreen device called Andromeda. Well,
Speaker 1: on July two, two eighteen, I saw an article stating
Speaker 1: that the dual panel mobile device running the Andromeda OS
Speaker 1: has been put on hold. So again, just after I
Speaker 1: published this Microsoft update, they go and do this. But
Speaker 1: what's really going on? Well, one thing I did not
Speaker 1: mention in the update episodes for Microsoft is that back
Speaker 1: in two thousand fifteen, Microsoft was calling Windows ten the
Speaker 1: lab version of Windows. Now. That was not to say
Speaker 1: that the company would release Windows ten then brush its
Speaker 1: hands off and walk away whistling merrily. Instead, Windows was
Speaker 1: meant to evolve almost like it's a service on demand,
Speaker 1: so not your your traditional operating system, where you would
Speaker 1: pay for an update, or you would get a regular update.
Speaker 1: It's the foundation. Windows ten is a foundation for the
Speaker 1: service of an operating system, and Microsoft would continue to
Speaker 1: support it and update it with new features as time
Speaker 1: goes on, but there would be no Windows eleven. There
Speaker 1: would just be updates to Windows ten that would roll
Speaker 1: on out to users. One of those updates, which is
Speaker 1: scheduled for the fall of two thousand eighteen, is code
Speaker 1: named Redstone five. And what was supposed to happen was
Speaker 1: that the Andromeda operating system, the mobile version of Windows
Speaker 1: that was going to run on this upcoming dual touchscreen
Speaker 1: foldable mobile device, it would be included in that update
Speaker 1: to Windows ten. So you would have of this interoperability
Speaker 1: between the full build of Windows for desktops and bcs
Speaker 1: and laptops that kind of thing, and the mobile version
Speaker 1: that would exist on the Andromeda device. The Andromeda phone,
Speaker 1: or mobile device I should call it, was rumored to
Speaker 1: have cellular technology built into it, but not necessarily in
Speaker 1: a way that was made to make it a competitor
Speaker 1: with iOS or androids. So in other words, calling it
Speaker 1: a mobile device is more accurate than a phone. It
Speaker 1: might have had cellular technology built into it, but it
Speaker 1: was really meant to increase the devices functionality, allowing you
Speaker 1: to connect to the Internet, whether you had WiFi access
Speaker 1: or not, so could you make calls on it. You
Speaker 1: might be able to use a service like Skype, which
Speaker 1: Microsoft owns, and make a call through that, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily meant to act as a smartphone. It was
Speaker 1: more like a device that could also make calls. But
Speaker 1: as it turns out, it's all a moot point. In
Speaker 1: the spring, Microsoft shook up the mobile division with another
Speaker 1: reorganization ation, and the company reevaluated its strategy. The elements
Speaker 1: of Andromeda OS either did not align with this new
Speaker 1: strategy or they weren't ready to go, but either way,
Speaker 1: they are not going to be part of the red
Speaker 1: Stone five update, and the development has been shelved, possibly forever,
Speaker 1: and some folks like zd Nets Mary Joe Folly have
Speaker 1: pointed out this might not be a bad idea. The
Speaker 1: Andromeda was rumored to only be able to run Microsoft
Speaker 1: Store apps, which limited its utility considerably. Fully cites sources
Speaker 1: that say Microsoft may still try to develop a multi
Speaker 1: screen device running a build of Windows in the future,
Speaker 1: but then it might more closely resemble a laptop inform
Speaker 1: factor rather than a handheld device. Back on May twenty second,
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, I published an episode about Project Maven,
Speaker 1: which focused on incorporating elements of artificial intelligence in a
Speaker 1: drone program for the military. Google had been involved in
Speaker 1: that project and faced criticis them both from within and
Speaker 1: from outside the company about its involvement. On June one,
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, several headlines reported Google would not renew
Speaker 1: the project, may even contract, according to Google employees. The
Speaker 1: CEO of Google Cloud, Diane Green, addressed the company and
Speaker 1: announced that once the current contract is over, Google will
Speaker 1: not seek a renewal, and as a reminder, Google had
Speaker 1: maintained that its work on the project focused solely on
Speaker 1: non aggressive technologies and open source software, but emails from
Speaker 1: within Google showed that executives were really eager to land
Speaker 1: lucrative contracts with the Pentagon to provide services like machine learning,
Speaker 1: which could then be used to support surveillance efforts. Presumably
Speaker 1: that same technology might in the future be used to
Speaker 1: create autonomous or semi autonomous weapons platforms. So while Google
Speaker 1: might have the plausible deniability of saying our work was
Speaker 1: just to help with identifying places and people and activity.
Speaker 1: It wasn't meant to be used in and direct combat applications.
Speaker 1: You could argue, well, with some small adaptation, you could
Speaker 1: make that technology uh more of a weapons platform. So
Speaker 1: it's to me it's one of those kind of weak
Speaker 1: arguments at some moonpoint, though Google has now backed away
Speaker 1: from that contract. The dramatic Bitcoin roller coaster story continues
Speaker 1: today in the cryptocurrency hit an all time high of
Speaker 1: nearly twenty thousand dollars per bitcoin. That was toward the
Speaker 1: end of seventeen. Now, remember bitcoin is a digital currency
Speaker 1: that can be divided up into much smaller subunits. After
Speaker 1: reaching those incredible highs, the currency has slumped quite a bit.
Speaker 1: At the end of June two eighteen, the value dipped
Speaker 1: below six thousand dollars per bitcoin, which is still you know,
Speaker 1: pretty pretty high, but it's a huge drop from that
Speaker 1: twenty grand it enjoyed back in December twenty seventeen. And
Speaker 1: as I researched these updates, Bitcoin is in another bit
Speaker 1: of an upswing. It's recovered to above six thousand dollars again,
Speaker 1: like it dropped down to about five thousand, eight hundred.
Speaker 1: Now it's back above six thousand, but cryptocurrencies in general
Speaker 1: have had a really rough time of it. Recently, the
Speaker 1: Japanese government passed some strict laws to try and eliminate
Speaker 1: the use of cryptocurrencies and money laundering exploits, and some
Speaker 1: high profile digital currency exchanges have been hacked recently. These
Speaker 1: sort of events have really hurt cryptocurrencies in general. Just
Speaker 1: like all currencies, their value rests partly on perception. If
Speaker 1: we believe them to have value, they have value. And
Speaker 1: if everyone just woke up one morning and said, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, that's actually worthless, it would in fact be
Speaker 1: worthless because no one would accept the currency for anything.
Speaker 1: So it's only our our belief that it it's worth
Speaker 1: anything that makes it worth anything. Now this is true
Speaker 1: for any currency. It's you have the the assurance of
Speaker 1: most currencies that have a bank or from behind them
Speaker 1: that they are backing the value of that. But ultimately
Speaker 1: it's just that we all agree that it's worth something.
Speaker 1: If we all woke up and said, you know what,
Speaker 1: this paper money really isn't you can't really do anything
Speaker 1: with it. It's not really it doesn't have any real
Speaker 1: worth to it, then the currency could collapse if everybody
Speaker 1: did it. Now, the funny thing is that as I
Speaker 1: researched this, I'm aware that this story could actually be
Speaker 1: totally different by the time the updates go live, which
Speaker 1: is how crazy and volatile Bitcoin tans to be. And
Speaker 1: it also means that I may have to do an
Speaker 1: update to my updates episode. The irony is not lost
Speaker 1: upon me. While I wallow in some self pity as
Speaker 1: I think about this, Let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. Back at the beginning of two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: I did three episodes about YouTube's history, and that also
Speaker 1: deserves a bit of an update now. Just as I
Speaker 1: was king on the YouTube episodes, the company was getting
Speaker 1: ready to roll out some major changes to its partner platform.
Speaker 1: YouTube partner program is it's the platform that creators can
Speaker 1: use to monetize their videos, and essentially it allows channel
Speaker 1: owners to elect to have ads served against their videos.
Speaker 1: YouTube gets a cut and the video owner gets the rest.
Speaker 1: So if you have a really popular channel with videos
Speaker 1: that get a lot of views, you can stand to
Speaker 1: make some decent money from advertising. But in the spring
Speaker 1: of YouTube was trying to deal with a really controversial
Speaker 1: problem some users had been uploading videos that featured hateful content.
Speaker 1: There could be racist content, misogynists content, other forms of
Speaker 1: hate speech, and some of those users were YouTube partners.
Speaker 1: They had a large following, and they had ads served
Speaker 1: up against their videos, and advertisers were not too keen
Speaker 1: to have their brands associated with someone who was spouting
Speaker 1: off hateful garbage. So youtubes Are sponse was to create
Speaker 1: a new algorithm that attempted to flag videos that might
Speaker 1: have problematic content in them and then demonetize those videos,
Speaker 1: essentially flip the switch off so that ads would no
Speaker 1: longer be served against those videos, and no matter how
Speaker 1: many views such a video would get, it would never
Speaker 1: earn any money for the creator. Now, I personally do
Speaker 1: not have a problem with YouTube demonetizing videos that advocate
Speaker 1: for violence or spout off hateful things. YouTube is a company.
Speaker 1: They have the right to do that, and I don't
Speaker 1: see a problem with cutting off this, especially considering that
Speaker 1: the business side of it is that YouTube has to
Speaker 1: work with the advertisers too, and not a lot of
Speaker 1: advertisers are too eager to have their brand associated with
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. However, the algorithm affected a much
Speaker 1: broader spectrum of videos, including educational videos, advocacy videos, news
Speaker 1: oriented videos covering topics racism in a newsworthy way. Some
Speaker 1: of these videos were getting tagged as being inappropriate, even
Speaker 1: when there was no real inappropriate content in them. Creators
Speaker 1: began to refer to it as the apocalypse. YouTube had
Speaker 1: swung hard in an effort to keep major advertisers on
Speaker 1: the platform because there were a lot of big ones
Speaker 1: that were threatening to leave. The alternative was losing some
Speaker 1: of those valuable clients, and we're talking big companies like
Speaker 1: auto companies and major retailers. However, in the process of
Speaker 1: trying to mollify these major companies, the creators who are
Speaker 1: actually making the content that ads were getting served up against,
Speaker 1: we're hurting. So YouTube adjusted the algorithm in the fall
Speaker 1: of seventeen to try and correct some of these problems,
Speaker 1: kind of a course correction, and the company noted that
Speaker 1: no fix was ever going to be perfect, and there
Speaker 1: would be some instances that would have to be handled
Speaker 1: on a case by case basis where someone might see
Speaker 1: that a video they've uploaded has suddenly been flagged as
Speaker 1: being demonetized, and you would have to take it up
Speaker 1: to YouTube and say, I really don't think that this
Speaker 1: should count, and here are my reasons why, and could
Speaker 1: you give me an explanation as to why my video
Speaker 1: has been demonetizeding what I can do to fix this.
Speaker 1: Of course, the problem is during this time you're not
Speaker 1: making any money off views. They're coming to that video
Speaker 1: and you might eventually get monetized again. Let's say that
Speaker 1: YouTube says, oh, you're right, that was completely on us.
Speaker 1: The algorithm was over zealous. Let's fix this. It is monetized.
Speaker 1: We flipped the switch. You're good to go. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: good to go from that point forward. But all views
Speaker 1: that had happened before then don't count because no ads
Speaker 1: were served against your video at that time. And the
Speaker 1: way videos tend to work, I mean, there are long
Speaker 1: tail videos that will get views months and months and
Speaker 1: months after they go live. I had a video go
Speaker 1: viral nine months after it was published on YouTube. So
Speaker 1: there are those cases. But a lot of videos it's
Speaker 1: the first couple of days, maybe the first week, where
Speaker 1: they get the majority of their views. So if it
Speaker 1: takes too long to monetize a video again, that's lost revenue. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Now we're back up to January of two thousand eighteen.
Speaker 1: That was when I was actually publishing the episodes about
Speaker 1: YouTube up to that time. To qualify for the Partner platform,
Speaker 1: your YouTube channel would need to have accrued at least
Speaker 1: ten thousand views across however many videos you had. If
Speaker 1: you had one video that did great and you had
Speaker 1: ten thousand views on it, that counted. If you had
Speaker 1: a thousand videos and each one got ten views, that
Speaker 1: gonna do, although you would still be under review about
Speaker 1: whether or not you joined the partner platform, but the
Speaker 1: overhaul ended up changing all of that. Anyway. Now, to
Speaker 1: be a partner on YouTube, you have to have at
Speaker 1: least one thousand subscribers to your channel, and you have
Speaker 1: to have at least four thousand hours of watch time
Speaker 1: over a twelve month period across all your videos. That's
Speaker 1: somewhat problematic because if you're a creator who specializes in
Speaker 1: short form videos, you might end up having lots of
Speaker 1: views but still end up on the short end of
Speaker 1: total accumulated view time. Because let's say that I make
Speaker 1: a crazy popular video series, but each of those videos
Speaker 1: is about three minutes long, and let's say that I'm
Speaker 1: doing it maybe once a week, I have to go
Speaker 1: for a long time and hope for really really big
Speaker 1: audience reach. To reach that four thousand hours of total
Speaker 1: view time, people have to watch tons of my videos.
Speaker 1: I might have to step up production and start publishing
Speaker 1: much more frequently to get to that four thousand hours
Speaker 1: of total view time within twelve months. So if I
Speaker 1: make really good longer form content, I could hit that
Speaker 1: number with fewer actual viewers. Right. If each of my
Speaker 1: videos is like an hour long and it's really really good,
Speaker 1: people tend to watch for the majority of the video,
Speaker 1: I'll hit that four thousand hour number way faster now.
Speaker 1: YouTube says that if you're uploading videos four or five
Speaker 1: times a week and you have about a thousand subscribers,
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be too hard to hit that four thousand
Speaker 1: hours of you content, but your mileage may vary. For
Speaker 1: those who have actually met those requirements, some of them
Speaker 1: have found the new approval process to take a really
Speaker 1: long time. In April two thousand eighteen, the CEO of
Speaker 1: YouTube said that the company would launch a pilot program
Speaker 1: in which creators could provide more feedback about video content
Speaker 1: in an effort to help YouTube find appropriate advertiser matches
Speaker 1: and potentially sidestep false positive or flip flopping issues where
Speaker 1: an ad gets monetized and then demonetized and back again
Speaker 1: multiple times. So, in other words, let's say that you're
Speaker 1: making a comedy series, and let's say it's a little raunchy,
Speaker 1: not outside of YouTube's rules and regulations. You're you're still
Speaker 1: well within that, but maybe it's a little bit more
Speaker 1: on the rowdy side than your typical video might be.
Speaker 1: That might mean that certain advertisers wouldn't want to be
Speaker 1: associated with you, but other advertisers might be perfectly fine.
Speaker 1: And this process would allow you a way to tell YouTube,
Speaker 1: here's what my video series has in it. Here are
Speaker 1: the potentially problematic points. Uh So, can you find advertisers
Speaker 1: that are okay to work with my particular content, and
Speaker 1: then YouTube will match the two up. This benefits everybody.
Speaker 1: It benefits the advertiser, it benefits the creator, and ultimately
Speaker 1: it benefits YouTube. YouTube only is making money when those
Speaker 1: ads are being served against other content. Uh on the
Speaker 1: setting aside subscriber models and all that kind of stuff. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, this is supposed to be the solution
Speaker 1: for everybody. The problem is it hasn't yet been really formulated.
Speaker 1: In June, YouTube rolled out some more features, such as
Speaker 1: channel membership model. Uh. This is where creators who are
Speaker 1: partners can create a membership channel and charge users four
Speaker 1: dollars a month to access special members only content, including
Speaker 1: video streams and emojis. If this sounds familiar, it's because
Speaker 1: it's pretty much what Twitched us with live streaming. With Twitch,
Speaker 1: you can be a subscriber and you can get uh
Speaker 1: special material through your subscription and creators when ten thousand
Speaker 1: subscribers can sell merchandise directly from their channels through a
Speaker 1: company called t Spring. But t Spring also takes a
Speaker 1: pretty healthy cut of all sales, so you only get
Speaker 1: a portion of those sales, which makes sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's t Spring that's supplying the actual material. But still,
Speaker 1: um so, some people say that these these moves on
Speaker 1: YouTube's part to try and create new revenue streams for
Speaker 1: content creators is still not really on the right track.
Speaker 1: One last bit about the YouTube updates. YouTube recently posted
Speaker 1: an apology on Twitter to the l g B t
Speaker 1: Q community regarding how it's algorithm unfairly demonetized people in
Speaker 1: that community. You know, creators in the l g B
Speaker 1: t q community who had uploaded videos to their YouTube
Speaker 1: channels start seeing their videos demonetized at a much high
Speaker 1: or rate um even though they were treating the subject
Speaker 1: matter with respect. They were not being racist or misogynistic
Speaker 1: or using hate speech. They were treating real issues, and
Speaker 1: they were seeing their videos get demonetized. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: this is kind of discrimination. And not only that, but
Speaker 1: some of their content got paired with ads that actually
Speaker 1: ran with homophobic language, ads that were viewing that were
Speaker 1: essentially from from organizations that view uh homosexuality as a
Speaker 1: sin or as something that is immoral. And so this
Speaker 1: was like a real slap in the face. Not only
Speaker 1: were a lot of these videos getting demonetized, the ones
Speaker 1: that weren't demonetized were getting paired with ads that outright
Speaker 1: said the person who created the content was bad in
Speaker 1: some way. The tweet said the company had taken action
Speaker 1: on those ads and would tighten enforcement on its policies,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure a lot of people appreciate, but it's still,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's not a great thing to have
Speaker 1: to apologize for back in two thousand fourteen, So it's
Speaker 1: going back quite a ways. I did a couple of
Speaker 1: episodes about the automotive company Tesla, and a lot has
Speaker 1: happened since two thousand fourteen. I could probably do a
Speaker 1: full update episode, but I want to concentrate on just
Speaker 1: a couple of little things. Uh. In fact, one of
Speaker 1: the things that happened since then was some various incidents
Speaker 1: involving Tesla's driver assist features, which the company referred to
Speaker 1: as autopilot, a term that I really didn't care for,
Speaker 1: but I did a full episode about that. Scott Benjamin
Speaker 1: joined me in two thousand and sixteen to talk about that.
Speaker 1: But so rather focus on those tragic stories, I thought,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that just a few days before I came
Speaker 1: in to record this episode, Tesla hit a milestone it
Speaker 1: had been striving towards, and that was to produce at
Speaker 1: least five thousand Model three Tesla electric cars in a
Speaker 1: week in its manufacturing facilities. The Model three is Tesla's
Speaker 1: sports sedan that's supposed to be in the more affordable range,
Speaker 1: but affordable is means different things to different people. The
Speaker 1: prices on the low end started thirty six thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: The company unveiled the Model three in two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: and they were taking pre orders and reservations for the
Speaker 1: vehicle for quite some time. At one point the company
Speaker 1: had more than five hundred thousand pre orders five hundred
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand, I believe for the Model three, but over
Speaker 1: time they lost thousands. They were down to four hundred
Speaker 1: twenty thousand reservations. In June two thousand eighteen, Elon Musk
Speaker 1: had claimed the company would hit ten thousand cars produced
Speaker 1: per week at some point in twenty eighteen, which I
Speaker 1: guess could still happen. But they just hit five thousand,
Speaker 1: and it's July eighteen now. But the five thousand vehicle
Speaker 1: per week milestone still is a really big one, even
Speaker 1: though Wall Street wasn't as impressed. Not to be fair,
Speaker 1: the expectation was that by the end of the quarter
Speaker 1: that ended in June eighteen, Tesla would have delivered fifty
Speaker 1: one thousand vehicles across all of its models for that
Speaker 1: fiscal year, but the ACTU number was forty thousand, seven
Speaker 1: hundred forty so more than ten thousand vehicles short. The
Speaker 1: company's share prices fell nearly four percent after the quarterly
Speaker 1: report was posted, and on another note, as of July two,
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, Tesla has delivered twenty eight thousand, three
Speaker 1: eighty six Model three cars to customers who had put
Speaker 1: down a reservation, so only about four hundred thousand ago,
Speaker 1: I guess. In February eighteen, I did a couple of
Speaker 1: episodes about Uber, and I've got some updates about that
Speaker 1: company as well. One of those updates is that Uber
Speaker 1: is once again allowed to operate in London. You may
Speaker 1: remember that London had passed a ban on Uber, but
Speaker 1: a judge in the UK overturned the band, but with
Speaker 1: several conditions. Uber now has a fifteen month license to
Speaker 1: operate within the City of London, but the company must
Speaker 1: submit to an independent review looking into policies, procedures and
Speaker 1: safety records every six months, and the company must notify
Speaker 1: UK government officials of any major che changes in processes
Speaker 1: or policies. In New York City, the Taxi and Limousine
Speaker 1: Commission proposed new rules regarding how much Uber drivers get
Speaker 1: to take home. The take home pay that is not
Speaker 1: not passengers. They're not allowed to take any passengers to
Speaker 1: their home. That's that's kind of against the rules now.
Speaker 1: The study commission by this group stated that Uber driver
Speaker 1: salaries have remained low despite what it called the rapid
Speaker 1: growth of the industry, and the rules, if adopted, would
Speaker 1: require Uber to step in and make up shortcomings and
Speaker 1: driver earnings. So the threshold is seventeen dollars twenty two
Speaker 1: cents per hour. If a driver were to average that
Speaker 1: over the course of a week, everything's fine. But if
Speaker 1: that if it were to drop below that average in
Speaker 1: the course of a week, Uber would have to come
Speaker 1: in and pay to make up the shortfall. Of course,
Speaker 1: that only applies to times when someone would actually be
Speaker 1: working on the clock for Uber, it's not just the
Speaker 1: week in general. And the study said that Uber could
Speaker 1: lower the amount they take from passenger fairs. In other words,
Speaker 1: the company could take a smaller percentage to help make
Speaker 1: this possible. And according to the study, the media net
Speaker 1: hourly earnings in New York was fourteen dollars and cents,
Speaker 1: which is nearly three dollars per hour below the amount
Speaker 1: the new rules would call for. Nationwide, the company's drivers
Speaker 1: make an average of eleven dollars and seventy seven cents
Speaker 1: per hour once you deduct Uber's cut and car expenses.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I'm saying Uber, but this actually
Speaker 1: applies to all ride hailing services. It's not just Uber,
Speaker 1: it's also lift in others um In New York City,
Speaker 1: by the way, this Taxi and Limousine Commission can actually
Speaker 1: adopt these rules without any involvement from either the City
Speaker 1: Council or the mayor because it's New York City and
Speaker 1: the Taxi and Limo Commission is a powerful entity there.
Speaker 1: The city is meanwhile considering options to regulate car hailing services.
Speaker 1: In general, traffic has gotten really bad because there are
Speaker 1: a lot more people who have started driving for those services.
Speaker 1: It's actually put more cars on the streets, and there's
Speaker 1: an ongoing concern that driving for the services doesn't really
Speaker 1: amount to a living, livable wage. And because a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who are driving for these services come
Speaker 1: from low income families, it can actually tramp them in
Speaker 1: a terrible situation in which they have car payments and
Speaker 1: car insurance and they're struggling to meet these extra expenses
Speaker 1: they normally wouldn't have because they're not taking home as
Speaker 1: much pay as they were originally not maybe promises the
Speaker 1: wrong word, but lead to believe they could earn, so
Speaker 1: ends up being like working for the company store, right,
Speaker 1: Like everything you earn has to be spent at the
Speaker 1: company store to buy the stuff you need to keep
Speaker 1: a living, and because of the prices in the company store,
Speaker 1: you're never going to earn enough to get free. Same
Speaker 1: sort of thing here, except in this case, it's not
Speaker 1: the company store, it's car payments and insurance. Well, I've
Speaker 1: got some more updates to give you about stuff that's
Speaker 1: happened since I've had episodes go live. But before I
Speaker 1: do that, let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay,
Speaker 1: I could probably do a full episode with an update
Speaker 1: on what Facebook has been doing since two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: because that's when Chris Poulette and I originally published the
Speaker 1: Facebook Story, which I think was a one episode thing too,
Speaker 1: so it's it's a pretty high view of what Facebook
Speaker 1: has been doing. But I did do a follow up
Speaker 1: episode about Facebook's I p O in two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: and I've done numerous episodes where I've talked about Facebook.
Speaker 1: But I'll probably have to do more episodes about the
Speaker 1: whole company in the near future, give it the full
Speaker 1: treatment that I tend to do for companies these days.
Speaker 1: But for the time being, one story I have to
Speaker 1: talk about is Mark Zuckerberg's appearances before the US government.
Speaker 1: So Facebook was already under scrutiny after reports and service
Speaker 1: that Russian individuals or companies have been funding targeted political
Speaker 1: advertising aimed to influence the US presidential election back in sixteen,
Speaker 1: and that Facebook had become a platform on which propaganda
Speaker 1: and fake news was spreading rapidly. It was just becoming
Speaker 1: a tool to radicalize people and to mislead people. And
Speaker 1: then came Cambridge Analytica, and I'll have to do a
Speaker 1: full episode about Cambridge Analytica at some point to really
Speaker 1: go into all the detail about that company. It's become
Speaker 1: such a huge news item in twenty eighteen. But in short,
Speaker 1: it was a British company that specialized in the collection
Speaker 1: and mining of data, specifically for political consulting gigs. It,
Speaker 1: by the way, has filed for insolvency, which is why
Speaker 1: I now use the past tense to refer to it.
Speaker 1: Though the guy who was the director of the company
Speaker 1: is also the head of eight or so other companies
Speaker 1: that all are registered to the same physical address. So
Speaker 1: just because the name Cambridge Analytica is technically quote unquote gone,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean the game is over anyway. During the election season,
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign hired Cambridge Analytica as a consulting firm
Speaker 1: for their campaign. The firm managed to get hold of
Speaker 1: the private information of more than eighty million Facebook users.
Speaker 1: The firm claimed it could use this data to identify
Speaker 1: user political preferences and then target those users to influence voting,
Speaker 1: right to to kind of guide people. The firm worked
Speaker 1: with a professor at Cambridge University to develop an app
Speaker 1: that Facebook users were encouraged to download, and that app,
Speaker 1: or really to just install on Facebook, not even fully download,
Speaker 1: but that app would scrape user Facebook profiles for information
Speaker 1: about them and all of their friends. And the US
Speaker 1: Congress ended up calling Zuckerberg in to explain themselves and
Speaker 1: the company in an effort to find out just what
Speaker 1: sort of information was used and what Facebook's policies were
Speaker 1: regarding user privacy and security. So Zuckerberg was under questioning
Speaker 1: for five hours over in Congress, and he didn't shy
Speaker 1: away from taking responsibility. At one point he said, quote,
Speaker 1: we didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility
Speaker 1: and that was a big mistake and it was my mistake,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and
Speaker 1: I'm responsible for what happens here. End quote. He said
Speaker 1: the company failed to handle the Cambridge Analytica problem correctly.
Speaker 1: He said Facebook was told that Cambridge Analytica had deleted
Speaker 1: the data it had collected, and that Facebook failed to
Speaker 1: follow up to make certain that that was actually the case,
Speaker 1: and that was a big mistake. He also said the
Speaker 1: company was hiring a special counsel to investigate all apps
Speaker 1: that have access to large amounts of user data to
Speaker 1: make certain that those two were not violating Facebook's policies. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, he was saying the company would now
Speaker 1: actually enforce the rules they had created. They had created
Speaker 1: these rules, which sounded good, the idea being that if
Speaker 1: you create an app for Facebook, you're only supposed to
Speaker 1: ask for the information you actually need in order for
Speaker 1: your app to work, and you're not supposed to do
Speaker 1: anything nefarious with that data. Anything you do plan to
Speaker 1: use with that data you're supposed to communicate to the
Speaker 1: end user. So at least in theory, the end user
Speaker 1: has the opportunity to say I'm not really cool with
Speaker 1: that and and back out. Although very few of us
Speaker 1: tend to read all of that stuff, and that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of on us. Anyway. Facebook wasn't really enforcing those
Speaker 1: rules to any great extent. They were just kind of
Speaker 1: codifying the rules so that Facebook could say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: that's our rules. Say this, but unless you actually enforce rules,
Speaker 1: they don't really mean much anyway. At one point, Senator
Speaker 1: Dick Durbin actually asked Zuckerberg if Zuckerberg would be willing
Speaker 1: to share the name of the hotel he stayed at
Speaker 1: the night before or who he had messaged earlier that week,
Speaker 1: and Zuckerberg said he would rather not do that publicly,
Speaker 1: and Senator Dick Durbin said, quote, I think that maybe
Speaker 1: what this is all about your right to privacy, the
Speaker 1: limits of your right to privacy, and how much you
Speaker 1: give away in modern America in the name of connecting
Speaker 1: people around the world end quote. So, in other words, stating,
Speaker 1: if you're not willing to give up this basic information,
Speaker 1: and you realize the value of that information, and you
Speaker 1: realize the impact that information could have if it got
Speaker 1: out to other people, why are you allowing your platform
Speaker 1: to do this on a broad scale to billions of people,
Speaker 1: or at least a billion people, since that's how many
Speaker 1: people Facebook has these days, well, the story continues to
Speaker 1: unfold as of the time I'm researching the show. The
Speaker 1: Washington Post recently said that five people familiar with the
Speaker 1: matter told journalists that the Department of Justice, the FBI,
Speaker 1: the U S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal
Speaker 1: Trade Commission we're all investigating the Cambridge analytic a matter
Speaker 1: and Facebook's actions and statements over the last several years.
Speaker 1: The agencies are trying to figure out how much Facebook
Speaker 1: employees knew about what was going on, and how truthful
Speaker 1: the communication from Facebook to the authorities has been up
Speaker 1: to this point, and if things have not all been
Speaker 1: on the up and up, I expect we're gonna see
Speaker 1: some massive fines. In fact, Facebook could face billions of
Speaker 1: dollars in fines if these agencies find that the company
Speaker 1: was culpable in any way to what went on with
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica. Now unrelated to all of that mess, but
Speaker 1: still a Facebook story. Is when I wanted to touch on,
Speaker 1: Facebook had been pursuing a project called the Aquila Program.
Speaker 1: The goal of that program was to use solar powered,
Speaker 1: high altitude drones that would act as a backbone for
Speaker 1: wireless internet connectivity in places that have limited or no
Speaker 1: access to the Internet. So I think of things like
Speaker 1: the continent of Africa and imagine these drones flying way, way,
Speaker 1: way up in the atmosphere, and they're powered by the sun.
Speaker 1: They have batteries so that they can continue to fly
Speaker 1: at night, they recharged during the day, and they are
Speaker 1: able to broadcast uh WiFi signals across to each other
Speaker 1: using mostly stuff like lasers actually, and then beam that
Speaker 1: information down to ground stations, giving people on the ground
Speaker 1: Internet access. It's a pretty cool idea, but it is
Speaker 1: no more. The Facebook had only managed to do two
Speaker 1: test flights of its drone technology. The first one ended
Speaker 1: in a crash, so not a successful test. The second
Speaker 1: one had a modest success, but still performed below expectations,
Speaker 1: so Facebook decided to shelve it. Google actually had a
Speaker 1: similar drone program it was working on. It also has
Speaker 1: shuttered that effort, but Project Loon, which uses high altitude
Speaker 1: balloons rather than drones, is still in development over at Google.
Speaker 1: Well that's just a quick series of updates about various
Speaker 1: stories in the tech world. There are clearly tons more
Speaker 1: I could have touched on, but I can only do
Speaker 1: so many per episode, so I'll probably do more of
Speaker 1: these in the future, where I will do like a
Speaker 1: grab bag of updates about various things going on in
Speaker 1: the tech world that maybe again don't marrit a full episode.
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica will definitely get a full episode, a full
Speaker 1: treatment from the entire story, probably a little bit later
Speaker 1: once more of these investigations have been wrapped up, so
Speaker 1: I can have kind of a beginning, middle and into that.
Speaker 1: But expect that in the future. And if you guys
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for other topics I should cover on
Speaker 1: tech stuff, whether it's a company, a technology, an issue
Speaker 1: in tech. Maybe there's someone you want me to interview
Speaker 1: or have on as a guest, make certain to let
Speaker 1: me know. Send me a message the email addresses tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop me
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook or Twitter. They handle with both
Speaker 1: of those. Is tech stuff H s W. Don't forget
Speaker 1: to follow us on Instagram and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon from more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is that how stuff Works dot com. M