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 iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are Young. It's time for the tech news for Thursday,
Speaker 1: April thirteenth, twenty twenty three, and first up, Carl Bode
Speaker 1: of tech Dirt has an article about how telecommunications companies
Speaker 1: are running into trouble when it comes to accessing the
Speaker 1: money meant to fund the rip and replace mandate they
Speaker 1: are under all right, So to understand this, we actually
Speaker 1: have to go back a little bit. Several years ago,
Speaker 1: beginning under the Trump administration, the US government demanded that
Speaker 1: US telecom companies remove and replace any telecom infrastructure components
Speaker 1: that came from the Chinese company Huawei. The main concern
Speaker 1: is that these components could potentially serve as a way
Speaker 1: for Huawei and then by extension, the Chinese government, to
Speaker 1: penetrate US communications networks and spy on US. Essentially, this
Speaker 1: is understandably a concern for one thing. As Boat actually
Speaker 1: points out, the US has a history of doing this
Speaker 1: to US telecom companies itself. See also the NSA and
Speaker 1: HECK if we're going to do this to ourselves, doesn't
Speaker 1: it stand to reason that other people will try to
Speaker 1: do it to us too. Snarkiness aside, and we should
Speaker 1: still be concerned about our own government, those of us
Speaker 1: in the United States. That's where I am, but our
Speaker 1: own government spying on us should always remain a concern.
Speaker 1: It's also a concern that foreign governments could try to
Speaker 1: do similar things by building into components this capacity. So
Speaker 1: the government told companies, hey, if you got any Huawei
Speaker 1: gear in your infrastructure, you need to ditch and replace
Speaker 1: it with something else. And to that end, the government
Speaker 1: has authorized around two billion dollars in funds to help
Speaker 1: companies do this, particularly these smaller telecom companies that don't
Speaker 1: have the same resources as the ginormous telecom companies. But
Speaker 1: now it appears as though one the money allocated isn't
Speaker 1: nearly enough to cover the job, and two a lot
Speaker 1: of companies have encountered resistance or at the very least
Speaker 1: and unresponsive government as far as getting hold of those
Speaker 1: funds goes. Meanwhile, Bode points out the government has sort
Speaker 1: of pivoted to really focus on TikTok rather than Huawei,
Speaker 1: and while TikTok may also pose a risk to some degree.
Speaker 1: By comparison, it's really nothing when you take into account
Speaker 1: the actual infrastructure of the communication system within the United
Speaker 1: States itself. So I think it's fair to say that
Speaker 1: Bode at least feels leaders are leaning harder on optics
Speaker 1: and easier to sell story than they are in putting
Speaker 1: in the work to actually follow through on an earlier mandate.
Speaker 1: On the AI front, China's Cyberspace Administration has published proposed
Speaker 1: regulations with regard to AI development, and to be specific,
Speaker 1: we're talking about generative AI stuff like chat GPT, for example,
Speaker 1: And I'm currently working on an episode that will cover
Speaker 1: stuff like AI and regulations because I feel like, similar
Speaker 1: to what Bode was saying about TikTok in the earlier story,
Speaker 1: we're kind of being led to a perspective on AI
Speaker 1: that I think is reductive and also ultimately misleading. Now
Speaker 1: I am not saying that we shouldn't be concerned about
Speaker 1: generative AI, but I am concerned about generalizing generative AI
Speaker 1: to mean artificial intelligence in total, because I think it
Speaker 1: misses the big picture and creates opportunities for lots of
Speaker 1: comes down the road. But anyway, that's for a future
Speaker 1: episode that's going to take me a long time to
Speaker 1: put together. Anyway, officials in China are pushing for laws
Speaker 1: that would place tight restrictions on generative AI. Such AI.
Speaker 1: These regulation state would need to avoid creating statements that
Speaker 1: undermine or contradict the state itself. Now, some of this
Speaker 1: comes across as being kind of reasonable, right, like, not
Speaker 1: the upset the state, but that generative AI should have
Speaker 1: some restriction so that doesn't do stuff like promote terrorism
Speaker 1: or extremism. That sounds reasonable, though we do have to
Speaker 1: remember that what China officials define as terrorism and extremism
Speaker 1: can cover a wide spectrum and can include stuff like
Speaker 1: I'm not sure the government is doing the right thing here. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it should come as no surprise that China wants to
Speaker 1: avoid a future in which AI could subvert the state's power,
Speaker 1: because that's powerful the course for China in general. A
Speaker 1: lot of stuff in China law. The laws in China
Speaker 1: ultimately kind of lead back to cementing the state's authority.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, many of the proposed regulations are
Speaker 1: not that different to what we're hearing in other countries,
Speaker 1: including the United States. Namely that generative AI should not
Speaker 1: compromise a person's privacy. That's reasonable. They should respect laws,
Speaker 1: including those protecting intellectual property. That's something that a lot
Speaker 1: of creators have been calling for. That they should not
Speaker 1: create discriminatory content. They should not promote things like hate
Speaker 1: speech and racism, they should not propagate misinformation. All of
Speaker 1: these are regulations that we're hearing about, or at least
Speaker 1: proposed regulations. We're hearing about all over the world, not
Speaker 1: just in China, and I do think that regulations for
Speaker 1: generative AI are likely a necessary step. You could argue, hey,
Speaker 1: we should just leave this up to the companies to
Speaker 1: build in these protections themselves, but generally speaking, when you
Speaker 1: just leave stuff to an industry, the stuff that comes
Speaker 1: out is not necessarily the best for the public good. Overall,
Speaker 1: I feel that a lot of nations can look at
Speaker 1: China's example, or rather it's proposed example, and use that
Speaker 1: when thinking about how to frame their regulations. They can
Speaker 1: sit there and say, well, here are things that we
Speaker 1: should try and aim for, and here are the things
Speaker 1: that we should try to avoid. Right, so you can
Speaker 1: take it as both an example of what to do
Speaker 1: and what not to do. There's a line, and maybe
Speaker 1: sometimes it's a fine line between protecting the public and
Speaker 1: then protecting the status quo. Also on the subject of
Speaker 1: AI and a bit about Elon Musk, but trust me,
Speaker 1: this is not going to be like Tuesday's episode, where
Speaker 1: more than half the show focused on Musk and Twitter.
Speaker 1: Ours Technica and Business Insider have reported that Musk is
Speaker 1: purchasing around ten thousand GPUs or graphics processing units. In fact,
Speaker 1: that he's already done so and spent millions in the process,
Speaker 1: And you might wonder, well, why would you want ten
Speaker 1: thousand GPUs. That's not entirely clear, but the speculation is
Speaker 1: that this is part of Musk's plan to create a
Speaker 1: competing artificial intelligence lab. So y'all might remember that a
Speaker 1: month or two ago I did an episode about open ai,
Speaker 1: and in that episode I mentioned that Musk was one
Speaker 1: of the founders of open ai, but that he left
Speaker 1: the organization in twenty eighteen. There are different stories about
Speaker 1: why he left, and it's possible that the truth is
Speaker 1: either unknown to the public or that the truth is
Speaker 1: actually a combination of the various stories that are out there.
Speaker 1: But one thing that's pretty clear is that Musk did
Speaker 1: not like the direction open Ai was going in. According
Speaker 1: to Ours Technica, one complaint Musk had was that open
Speaker 1: Ai was to quote unquote woke. Now, Originally, when I
Speaker 1: was framing out this episode, I had a whole lot
Speaker 1: I was going to say about that, But honestly, anyone
Speaker 1: who has listened to me for a while already knows
Speaker 1: where I would go with that. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: drop it because there's no need for me to get
Speaker 1: on the soapbox anyway. Musk's move seemingly contradicts his participation
Speaker 1: in signing a letter for AI Research to kind of
Speaker 1: pump the brakes a bit out of a concern that
Speaker 1: AI could do more harm than good if we don't
Speaker 1: create some checks and balances. And for the cynics among you,
Speaker 1: you might say, Aha, Musk was doing this not because
Speaker 1: of his concern that AI is going to go all
Speaker 1: terminator on us, but because he wanted to put a
Speaker 1: freeze on the AI industry in general so that he
Speaker 1: could make up some lost ground because they're getting started
Speaker 1: late in the game. And I'll leave it to you
Speaker 1: to figure out, like what scenario was most likely true.
Speaker 1: We don't know at the end of the day. You know,
Speaker 1: unless you happen to be one of Musk's closest circle,
Speaker 1: you'd probably don't know. But yeah, you know, it's kind
Speaker 1: of fun to speculate. One other quick update on Twitter
Speaker 1: related stories. NPR, which I mentioned earlier this week, Twitter
Speaker 1: had previously labeled as state affiliated media, and then after
Speaker 1: objections were raised, they change that label to government funded
Speaker 1: has now said sayonara to Twitter. So reportedly National Public
Speaker 1: Radio will halt the use of its fifty two Twitter feeds.
Speaker 1: Individual NPR stations, like the local affiliates, may or may
Speaker 1: not follow suit. A lot of them already have. Also,
Speaker 1: NPR is not forcing staff to suspend their own personal
Speaker 1: Twitter accounts. They can maintain them if they want to. PBS,
Speaker 1: that's the public broadcast TV organization here in the United States,
Speaker 1: has also issued a statement indicating that it will no
Speaker 1: longer use Twitter. So for people like me, this feels
Speaker 1: like a pretty massive blow to Twitter. Now, I recognize
Speaker 1: that my own experience on Twitter is not universal, so
Speaker 1: I don't want to fall into the trap of generalizing
Speaker 1: from my own experience and then just projecting that on everybody. Instead,
Speaker 1: I will say that when I was on Twitter, regularly.
Speaker 1: There were three main things that drew me there. One,
Speaker 1: Twitter gave me a platform where I could share my thoughts,
Speaker 1: which more often than not were stupid jokes that were
Speaker 1: not very funny to anyone other than myself, which is
Speaker 1: essentially the kind of stuff I say on the show
Speaker 1: all the time. Two, I could follow celebrities, and that
Speaker 1: was fun because there were people that I admired in
Speaker 1: show business, and sometimes they would tweet to other people
Speaker 1: that I also admired in show business, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of like I was eavesdropping on famous people chit
Speaker 1: chatting with each other, and that was kind of fun.
Speaker 1: And Three, and most importantly, I would go to Twitter
Speaker 1: because news outlets were using Twitter to post breaking news stories.
Speaker 1: So if you just kept Twitter running on in the background,
Speaker 1: it meant that you were keeping up to date with
Speaker 1: the latest news. But for a major media organization to
Speaker 1: pull out of Twitter, well that takes a swing at
Speaker 1: one of those foundational pillars for Twitter content. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: I have no clue what the majority of Twitter users
Speaker 1: use as the reason they go to Twitter, right Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what most people use Twitter for. It's
Speaker 1: entirely possible that the vast majority of them don't give
Speaker 1: a fig about the news. And even if other media
Speaker 1: organizations follow the lead of NPR and PBS, these users
Speaker 1: are not going to bat an eyelash at that, because
Speaker 1: that's not what they go to Twitter four in the
Speaker 1: first place. I just think that for folks who are
Speaker 1: like me, this becomes yet another reason to just ditch Twitter. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got more news stories to cover before we get
Speaker 1: to those, let's take a quick break. We're back. So
Speaker 1: morale over at Meta is unsurprisingly on the decline, according
Speaker 1: to various news reports. The company has obviously held a
Speaker 1: couple of high profile rounds of layoffs, with potentially more
Speaker 1: in the future, and according to The Straits Times, those
Speaker 1: layoffs amount to nearly thirty percent of the company's staff.
Speaker 1: So just imagine. Let's say that you work in a company,
Speaker 1: or you know, whatever business you work at. Imagine that
Speaker 1: you're in a room with all of your coworkers and
Speaker 1: you're told that out of every three of them, one
Speaker 1: is going to be laid off. One out of every
Speaker 1: three employees are going to be laid off, which may
Speaker 1: or may not include you. And it's all in the
Speaker 1: name of the Year of efficiency. That's what Zuckerberg has said.
Speaker 1: The Straits Times goes on to say that while Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: has been pushing employees to go back to the office,
Speaker 1: the same is not necessarily true for upper management. A
Speaker 1: lot of executives have ended up working remotely from other locations,
Speaker 1: and so unlike the rank and file of META, they
Speaker 1: are not required to come in. So you're being coerced
Speaker 1: or forced to come back to your office. But meanwhile
Speaker 1: you are seeing that the leadership are not under the
Speaker 1: same rules. That also starts to contribute to problems with morale.
Speaker 1: There becomes this very obvious disconnect between what's expected of
Speaker 1: you and what's expected of leadership. Zuckerberg himself is on
Speaker 1: parental leave, which you know, first of all, parental leave
Speaker 1: is a great benefit. All employees should have access to
Speaker 1: parental leave. Parental leave is what allows parents to spend
Speaker 1: that time they need with their children in order to
Speaker 1: make certain that their kids are going to be growing
Speaker 1: up healthy and safe. And I am fully in favor
Speaker 1: of parental leaf for all employees. And I'm not a parent,
Speaker 1: like I don't have kids and I'm never going to
Speaker 1: have kids, but I am fully in favor of parental
Speaker 1: leave because I want those kids to grow up to
Speaker 1: being well adjusted, productive members of society so they can
Speaker 1: take care of me when I'm too old to do anything.
Speaker 1: So it is in my own self interest to care
Speaker 1: about the kids. But anyway, I'm not going to throw
Speaker 1: shade at anybody for taking parental leave, and that includes
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg. I am not going to shame the leader
Speaker 1: of the company who's telling people to go back into
Speaker 1: the office for taking time off if that's if it
Speaker 1: means that he's spending time with his child is newborn.
Speaker 1: To me, that's justifiable. However, his absence again adds to
Speaker 1: morale issues within the company. Employees have said that they
Speaker 1: felt increased pressure to show that they are working hard
Speaker 1: on projects. You know, a lot of the framing of
Speaker 1: this has been around executive saying that they had more
Speaker 1: employees than they had work to do, and that a
Speaker 1: lot of employees we're spending the majority of their time
Speaker 1: not really being productive at all because there wasn't enough
Speaker 1: work for them to tackle. So part of this was
Speaker 1: talking about like a reorganization to bring into alignment the
Speaker 1: workload with the workforce, and that may or may not
Speaker 1: be true. It probably is true to a certain degree,
Speaker 1: and the remaining employees feel that they need to justify
Speaker 1: their employment right, that they need to make certain that
Speaker 1: they are not doing anything that could potentially put their
Speaker 1: job at risk in the current economic climate. That is
Speaker 1: incredibly understandable. But meanwhile top leadership is largely absent from
Speaker 1: Meta HQ. Also, the company has been scaling back on
Speaker 1: employee benefits like meals and subsidies for ride healing services
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing, which again makes sense the
Speaker 1: companies cutting back on costs, although employees might be asking,
Speaker 1: are these the costs that make the most sense to
Speaker 1: cut back on its stuff that affects quality of life.
Speaker 1: You have already laid off a third of us. The
Speaker 1: bosses are never around. You know, you're making us come
Speaker 1: back into the office, but are pulling out some of
Speaker 1: the benefits of working in an office. The icing of
Speaker 1: the cake, of course, is that tech companies at large
Speaker 1: are implementing hiring freezes or they're even actively downsizing. So
Speaker 1: it's not like the solution for the employees just to
Speaker 1: hand in their resignation and then go find their dream
Speaker 1: jobs somewhere else. It is a really bad situation. Potentially
Speaker 1: made worse by Meta continually emphasizing business strategies that, at
Speaker 1: least in the near term, are not likely to generate
Speaker 1: significant revenue, which means that not only are the employees
Speaker 1: getting more and more unhappy, that's not going to make
Speaker 1: shareholders happy either, which in turn will potentially fuel other
Speaker 1: cutbacks in the future, and it becomes this kind of
Speaker 1: perpetuating cycle. The state of Arkansas has followed the state
Speaker 1: of Utah's lead in passing a bill that will require
Speaker 1: anyone under the age of eighteen to get parental consent
Speaker 1: before they can open a social media account. Rob Thubron
Speaker 1: of tech Spot has a piece about this in which
Speaker 1: he talks about how the law has some perplexing exceptions,
Speaker 1: some of which could potentially really undermine the whole law itself. So,
Speaker 1: for example, Lebron says that some of the amendments to
Speaker 1: this bill appear to exempt social platforms where users can
Speaker 1: quote generate short video clips of dancing, voiceovers, or other
Speaker 1: acts of entertainment in which the primary purpose is not
Speaker 1: educational or informative end quote. So, first of all, there's
Speaker 1: all sorts of content on all of these social platforms, right,
Speaker 1: some of which is intended to be educational at least
Speaker 1: to some degree, or informative. You know, you have the
Speaker 1: infotainments where it's trying to teach you something, and that
Speaker 1: same platform may also host content that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with education or information. It's all about just entertainment, right,
Speaker 1: like making you laugh or creating a scary video or
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. And with this wording, it makes
Speaker 1: it sound like a platform like TikTok, for example, would
Speaker 1: potentially be exempt from the rule because it's a platform
Speaker 1: that allows users to generate short video clips of dancing
Speaker 1: and voiceovers and other kinds of entertainment. So that's weird
Speaker 1: because the government in general is really down on TikTok
Speaker 1: right now. But based on that wording, it sounds like
Speaker 1: TikTok would not be subjected to these rules. Potentially, a
Speaker 1: platform like Instagram or Snapchat would not be subjected to
Speaker 1: that rule. In addition to those other amendments, exempt services
Speaker 1: like email and messaging services as well as video streaming,
Speaker 1: professional networking, and gaming focused social services. So with those exemptions,
Speaker 1: it sounds like okay, so LinkedIn would not be covered
Speaker 1: by this rule. You could create a LinkedIn account and
Speaker 1: not have to go through age verification. But then that
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense. I mean, what thirteen year old
Speaker 1: wants to build a LinkedIn profile? But then you start
Speaker 1: to wonder, well, if gaming focused services are potentially exempt,
Speaker 1: does that mean that Twitch is exempt from this rule
Speaker 1: as well. I mean, I guess what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: that there sounds like there's a ton of wiggle room
Speaker 1: with these amendments, and it could be that this particular
Speaker 1: law won't actually do anything but take up space in
Speaker 1: a rule book. So the intent is to make sure
Speaker 1: that children receive some protection, particularly when it comes to
Speaker 1: the practices of data collection and exploitation, and I'm fully
Speaker 1: in agreement with that. I don't think that kids should
Speaker 1: be necessarily subjected that. I don't think anyone should. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think at this point that the power of our
Speaker 1: information should be shifted back toward the individual, kind of
Speaker 1: the way the EU tries to do it. I think
Speaker 1: that that needs to be sort of a global rule.
Speaker 1: It just isn't. But I certainly think that that should
Speaker 1: apply to children. But I'm not sure that this bill
Speaker 1: as reported achieves that goal. Maybe I'm wrong anyway. For
Speaker 1: the few social platforms out there, that somehow cannot argue
Speaker 1: their way out of being subject to this rule. They
Speaker 1: will have to enlist the services of a third party
Speaker 1: verification company, which will end up going through steps so
Speaker 1: that users will have to submit information about themselves to
Speaker 1: prove their identity and their age before citizens in Arkansas
Speaker 1: have a chance to sign up for an account. This
Speaker 1: does not go It's not retroactive, so existing accounts are
Speaker 1: grandfathered in. If a fourteen year old already has, say
Speaker 1: a Facebook account, that fourteen year old doesn't have to
Speaker 1: go through this process, but moving forward, knew users would
Speaker 1: have to, assuming that the platform was subjected to this
Speaker 1: kind of restriction, and anyone below the age of eighteen
Speaker 1: will need parental consent before they are allowed to create
Speaker 1: that profile. So yeah, I don't know. We'll have to see.
Speaker 1: I haven't. In full disclosure, I have not read this law.
Speaker 1: I haven't sat down to read the actual language of
Speaker 1: the law itself. I'm not an expert in law either,
Speaker 1: so even if I did read it, I would probably
Speaker 1: not walk away with a full understanding of it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like there's some pretty big gaps here,
Speaker 1: and it's potentially a useless law. If it turns out
Speaker 1: that everyone falls under at least one exemption, then the
Speaker 1: law doesn't apply to anybody, So we'll have to see.
Speaker 1: I do know that the state of Utah's version is
Speaker 1: far more restrictive than the state of Arkansas, so that's
Speaker 1: a much different story, and other states are currently debating
Speaker 1: their own version of this kind of law. Again, I
Speaker 1: do think it's important to have laws in place to
Speaker 1: protect children. I don't know if age verification is the
Speaker 1: big one. I guess it's part of it, because you
Speaker 1: do need to know who needs to be protected, right,
Speaker 1: But I think there need to be some laws that
Speaker 1: just are going across the board to protect the privacy
Speaker 1: of children online and to do it better than the
Speaker 1: way it's been done in the past, because often it
Speaker 1: feels like the cannon is being pointed in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: But again, I'm no expert in law, so all I
Speaker 1: know is that the consequences often end up being unintentionally
Speaker 1: harmful toward parties that have very little to do with
Speaker 1: the actual problem. All Right, we're gonna take another quick break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I've got a couple more stories
Speaker 1: I want to cover. All right, Now, here's some good news. Today,
Speaker 1: Apple posted that the company has set a target to
Speaker 1: use one hundred percent recycled cobalt by twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: in Apple design batteries. This follows some other initiatives that
Speaker 1: also look to increase recycled material content and Apple products.
Speaker 1: In fact, Apple said that you know, for products that
Speaker 1: have magnets in them, they're going to aim for one
Speaker 1: hundred percent recycled rare earth elements by twenty twenty five. Now,
Speaker 1: I've talked in past episodes about how modern electronics require
Speaker 1: some specific materials, and some of these materials are difficult
Speaker 1: to come by. Some of them rely upon mining operations
Speaker 1: in areas of the world where the mine operations are
Speaker 1: using what amounts to slave labor. Like it contributes to
Speaker 1: human misery, it contributes to human trafficking. It also ends
Speaker 1: up supporting militias that end up creating instability in various regions.
Speaker 1: It's a really big human rights nightmare in some parts
Speaker 1: of the world, and even in the places where that's
Speaker 1: not an issue, where the human rights piece of the
Speaker 1: puzzle isn't really relevant, all of these mining operations create
Speaker 1: environmental problems. So switching to recycled materials is a huge deal.
Speaker 1: It removes the reliance upon new mining operations for those
Speaker 1: particular components. It drastically reduces e waste, which is a
Speaker 1: huge deal. It's incredibly frustrating that we've got mountains of
Speaker 1: defunct or unwanted electronics that either are not being reused
Speaker 1: so that they continue useful life beyond their initial one
Speaker 1: or recycled. The recycling process is tricky. It's not the
Speaker 1: easiest thing in the world to do, and to do
Speaker 1: it in a way where you're actually doing it economically
Speaker 1: and efficiently is hard. So in some ways it's understandable
Speaker 1: that there's this issue here, but Apple is framing this
Speaker 1: as part of the company's overall strategy to achieve carbon
Speaker 1: neutral status by twenty thirty. And I really hope Apple
Speaker 1: achieves these various goals because it helps deal with some
Speaker 1: really troubling problems in tech that we don't often talk
Speaker 1: about because they're they're not always obvious, and that includes
Speaker 1: e waste, which I've talked about on this show before,
Speaker 1: and I hope to see more companies follow suit. And
Speaker 1: of course, activist groups and consumers should always keep an
Speaker 1: eye on companies to pressure them to make these sorts
Speaker 1: of goals and then to sincerely pursue those goals, not
Speaker 1: just to say they want to do this, but then
Speaker 1: to follow through. And it may mean that in the
Speaker 1: long run, certain things get more expensive because it's not
Speaker 1: always you know, economically advantageous to go the recycling route
Speaker 1: versus mining new materials, but it may do the best
Speaker 1: public good in the long run, and you have to
Speaker 1: start balancing these things out at some point. We can't
Speaker 1: just all continue to live like it's the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: I lived through the nineteen eighties. We don't really need
Speaker 1: to go back there, y'all. I mean, the music was dope,
Speaker 1: you know, new wave, fantastic, but there was a lot
Speaker 1: of other stuff about the eighties that was not good.
Speaker 1: We now know when Google is going to shut down
Speaker 1: Google Currents, which is yet another Google service that will
Speaker 1: shuffle off its digital coil and go into the great
Speaker 1: Graveyard of Google products and services. So Google introduced this
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, back in twenty nineteen actually,
Speaker 1: and now we'll shut it down. But it's done that
Speaker 1: with lots of stuff. In fact, if you are to
Speaker 1: look at a list of things that Google introduced then
Speaker 1: later shut down it is a very long list. I've
Speaker 1: done full episodes about it and only covered like ten
Speaker 1: percent of the various products that Google has abandoned. And
Speaker 1: I also think that probably a lot of y'all are
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with Currents. So Currents was a collaborative platform. Technically
Speaker 1: it still is. It hasn't been shut down yet. It's
Speaker 1: a collaborative platform for G Suite customers. And the g
Speaker 1: Suite is a suite of productivity services that companies use,
Speaker 1: so kind of like Microsoft Office, it's a cloud based
Speaker 1: group of services, and it comes out of Google. So
Speaker 1: Currents was kind of a collaborative tool that worked with
Speaker 1: these various G Suite services and itself, it was kind
Speaker 1: of a replacement for Google Plus. Google Plus was shut
Speaker 1: down by Google several years ago. At this point, Google
Speaker 1: introduced Currents in twenty nineteen, like I said, and now
Speaker 1: the company has indicated it will start to shut it
Speaker 1: down beginning on July fifth. Now we've known that Google
Speaker 1: was going to phase out Currents for a while. It's
Speaker 1: just that the news now is that we know when
Speaker 1: it's going to start to happen. And that's like I said.
Speaker 1: The fifth of July. Also, Google already has a kind
Speaker 1: of a replacement in line. It's a service called spaces.
Speaker 1: This is also pretty much Google's m O. The company
Speaker 1: will introduce something, it will then evaluate that's something that product,
Speaker 1: It will scavenge all the most useful features off of
Speaker 1: that product, and then incorporate those features into something else,
Speaker 1: either a new Google product or maybe an existing Google service,
Speaker 1: and then it will kill off whatever the original something
Speaker 1: was so fairthee well Google currents, we didn't even know ye. Finally,
Speaker 1: the state of Colorado has passed the Consumer Right to
Speaker 1: Repair Agricultural Equipment Act this week. It makes Colorado the
Speaker 1: first state to pass a law giving farmers and independent
Speaker 1: technicians the legal right to repair equipment agricultural equipment beginning
Speaker 1: next year. As I have covered on this show, there's
Speaker 1: been a history of companies such as John Deer. It's
Speaker 1: not the only one that does it, it's just arguably
Speaker 1: the most famous one to include features on the equipment
Speaker 1: they sell to farmers. That makes it difficult or even impossible,
Speaker 1: for someone to do their own maintenance on equipment that
Speaker 1: they have purchased. Instead, farmers would have to haul their
Speaker 1: equipment to the closest licensed John deer repair operation for
Speaker 1: maintenance and repair. So for people who depend on heavy
Speaker 1: machinery working properly in order to do their jobs, and
Speaker 1: these are jobs that are on a deadline when it
Speaker 1: comes to stuff like planting and harvesting while avoiding waste. Right,
Speaker 1: you have a limited amount of time where you can
Speaker 1: work before you're losing the yield you could have, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to contribute to things like food waste
Speaker 1: that's already a huge problem. So this is a big obstacle.
Speaker 1: Right if you are not able to do this maintenance
Speaker 1: and repair work when you need it, and you have
Speaker 1: to take more time out of your operations in order
Speaker 1: to transport a piece of equipment, however many miles it
Speaker 1: may be to the closest licensed repair center, that's a
Speaker 1: huge deal. And without the legislative system stepping into force
Speaker 1: companies to allow customers a chance to maintain and repair
Speaker 1: their equipment, there was very little reason to believe that
Speaker 1: it was ever going to change. The agricultural equipment industry
Speaker 1: has spent a decent amount of time and money lobbying
Speaker 1: against this kind of legislation, arguing that as equipment becomes
Speaker 1: more sophisticated, it can become dangerous or impractical for anyone
Speaker 1: not licensed to work on the equipment to be able
Speaker 1: to access it. I mean, based on this argument, that
Speaker 1: you can make the dang problem so much worse. But
Speaker 1: critics have argued that this stance is at best not
Speaker 1: the whole story. At worst, it's completely insincere, and that
Speaker 1: the real reason behind turning equipment into a black box
Speaker 1: is just to provide an ongoing source of revenue because
Speaker 1: those repair shops have to pay licensing fees to the
Speaker 1: company like John Deer in our example, and having a
Speaker 1: closed off ecosystem creates a lot more revenue streams that
Speaker 1: all go to you instead of potentially to some independent
Speaker 1: repair person. So the new law, which takes effect next January,
Speaker 1: will require manufacturers to provide diagnostic tools and repair manuals
Speaker 1: and similar resources to farmers and independent repair technicians. There
Speaker 1: are a couple of exceptions, however, matters relating to security
Speaker 1: or to emissions are not covered by this new law,
Speaker 1: so farmers will still have to rely on officially licensed
Speaker 1: technicians for repairs or maintenance that fall under the situations.
Speaker 1: Now we'll have to watch to see if the industry
Speaker 1: tries to categorize pretty much every single problem as falling
Speaker 1: into one or both of those buckets. And that's it.
Speaker 1: That's all the news I have for you today, Thursday,
Speaker 1: April thirteenth, twenty twenty three. Hope you are all well.
Speaker 1: If you would like to reach out to me, you
Speaker 1: can still do so on Twitter. The handle there is
Speaker 1: tech Stuff hsw. I will have to get an alternative
Speaker 1: to that, because it's hard to do story after story
Speaker 1: about problems at Twitter and then still give people a
Speaker 1: Twitter handle in order to reach out to me. You
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Speaker 1: it's free to use. You can navigate over to tech
Speaker 1: Stuff by putting it in the little search field. It'll
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