Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Pay there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? It is time for
Speaker 1: the tech news for Tuesday, July two. And first are
Speaker 1: quick obligatory update on the Elon Musk Twitter situation. Twitter
Speaker 1: wants to take Musk to court as early as September
Speaker 1: uh in order to force him to acquire the company
Speaker 1: that he agreed to acquire. Musk has argued that more
Speaker 1: time is needed to prove that Twitter is infested with
Speaker 1: bots to a point that would justify backing out of
Speaker 1: the agreement to purchase the company, so he wants to
Speaker 1: push the trial to February of next year. Late February,
Speaker 1: i might add, and today a judge will hear Twitter's
Speaker 1: motion for a September trial make a decision on that.
Speaker 1: So it's possible that later this week we'll actually know
Speaker 1: when this is going to head to the courts. The
Speaker 1: general sense that I'm picking up reading various analysts takes
Speaker 1: about this case is that Musk's argument is exceedingly weak.
Speaker 1: A lot of folks feel that it's pretty much all
Speaker 1: but guaranteed that the courts will force him to either
Speaker 1: go through the deal or he'll have to pay a
Speaker 1: hefty settlement to get out of it. But don't take
Speaker 1: anything for granted. When it comes to Elon Musk. Sometimes
Speaker 1: the absurd is normal. So while that seems to be
Speaker 1: the general sense at the moment, doesn't necessarily mean that's
Speaker 1: where things are going to head. Albania's government has been
Speaker 1: digitizing its agencies over the recent past, and it launched
Speaker 1: an online portal for most government agencies and departments earlier
Speaker 1: this year. Now, the government has had to take those
Speaker 1: websites offline because of a cyber attack. The government said
Speaker 1: the attack was synchronized and sophisticated, and that it originated
Speaker 1: outside of Albania. The government is currently working with Microsoft
Speaker 1: as well as a cybersecurity company to get systems back
Speaker 1: online and safe from further attacks. No word as of
Speaker 1: the time of this recording on who was responsible for
Speaker 1: carrying out those attacks or what their goal was beyond disruption.
Speaker 1: Russia has hit Google with a twenty one point one
Speaker 1: billion rouble fine that amounts to about three seventy four
Speaker 1: million dollars, and you might wonder Okay, well, what's the deal. Well,
Speaker 1: the Russian government says that Google has failed to remove
Speaker 1: prohibited information, namely information regarding Russia's invasion and war in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Google has also blocked state backed Russian media from posting
Speaker 1: on platforms like YouTube. So that is a double whammy
Speaker 1: against the Russian government, which has been leaning really hard
Speaker 1: on its propaganda machine to fight back against Russian citizens
Speaker 1: opposition to the war in Ukraine. The Affinity Credit Union,
Speaker 1: which is based in the United States state of Iowa,
Speaker 1: has filed a lawsuit against Apple. At the heart of
Speaker 1: this complaint is yet another charge of Apple engaging in
Speaker 1: anti competitive practices, something we've heard a lot of in
Speaker 1: the recent past. This time it's regarding its mobile wallet
Speaker 1: and contactless payment system. So essentially, this lawsuit argues that
Speaker 1: Apple requires all payment card issuers that is, credit cards
Speaker 1: and debit cards to use Apple's mobile wallet if they
Speaker 1: want their customers to be able to use contactless payment.
Speaker 1: Apple only allows its own digital wallet to use that feature,
Speaker 1: so while you could download a different digital wallet on
Speaker 1: an iOS device, that wallet would not be able to
Speaker 1: take advantage of contactless payment. Further, to get access to
Speaker 1: Apple's mobile wallet, payment card issuers have to pay a
Speaker 1: fee on all credit or debit transactions. Now, if you
Speaker 1: contrast that with Android, you can actually on an Android
Speaker 1: device have all sorts of different mobile wallets downloaded to
Speaker 1: the device, and all of them can use contactless payment,
Speaker 1: and they don't levy fees on payment card issuers. And
Speaker 1: so you can see where there's some fuel for a
Speaker 1: lawsuit here. Apple has been the target of numerous lawsuits
Speaker 1: like this one fairly recently, as more companies and governments
Speaker 1: scrutinized the company's practices, and over the last few years,
Speaker 1: Apple has really leaned more heavily on being a company
Speaker 1: that offers and facilitates services more than being a company
Speaker 1: known for focusing on new innovative hardware. Of course, Apple
Speaker 1: still does make hardware, still releases hardware. We still get
Speaker 1: new iPhones and and Max and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: But it's been a few years since Apple has really
Speaker 1: been touted as an innovative hardware company, and Tim Cook
Speaker 1: has really put a lot of enthusiasm behind developing Apple
Speaker 1: as a services company, because, of course, you can only
Speaker 1: sell a piece of hardware to a person once, right,
Speaker 1: If I sell you an iPhone. I can't sell that
Speaker 1: same iPhone a second time. But if I get you
Speaker 1: on a service that has a recurring subscription fee, I
Speaker 1: can have a paying customer for you know, an indeterminate
Speaker 1: amount of time. It's not just a one time thing.
Speaker 1: So Tim Cook has really pushed the company into that
Speaker 1: kind of revenue model. However, the structures that Apple has
Speaker 1: built in order to give itself a dominant position on
Speaker 1: its own platform has brought it under scrutiny, and it
Speaker 1: may turn out that this focus on services is going
Speaker 1: to cause a lot more headaches as Apple tries to
Speaker 1: avoid accusations of restricting competition on its own platforms. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you happen to know this, but
Speaker 1: we are still in the middle of a pandemic. Anyway.
Speaker 1: That pandemic has forced some rapid and dramatic changes across
Speaker 1: our lives, which is again staying the obvious and then
Speaker 1: includes how we work. And that leads us to our
Speaker 1: next story, which is that Meta, the company that owns
Speaker 1: you know, Facebook and Instagram, has discovered that when hiring
Speaker 1: folks who wanted to work remotely, they actually saw an
Speaker 1: unexpected side benefit that the new hires were more diverse
Speaker 1: than what the company typically saw when it would hire
Speaker 1: new employees who were coming into work at the office.
Speaker 1: So there were more women and there were more people
Speaker 1: of color in the hires that they were bringing on.
Speaker 1: The Washington Post ran an article about this, showing that
Speaker 1: the hiring saw people from underrepresentative groups joining the company
Speaker 1: in larger numbers than before. Now, I've always been a
Speaker 1: big proponent of purposefully making moves like that, you know,
Speaker 1: actively and consciously working to diversify our workforce because more
Speaker 1: perspectives and different ways of coming up with ideas have
Speaker 1: an enormous benefit on the company's operations, and it can
Speaker 1: also help a company avoid making decisions that would in
Speaker 1: hindsight be viewed as being what I like to call
Speaker 1: bone headed, or misogynistic or racist. It's good to have
Speaker 1: voices that can say, hey, that's not such a good
Speaker 1: idea on occasion. Anyway. This report suggests that these underrepresented
Speaker 1: groups are more comfortable working remotely, and it further indicates
Speaker 1: that Silicon Valley offices aren't really known for their diversity,
Speaker 1: so not surprisingly, the region isn't really favored by underrepresented
Speaker 1: groups who might feel pressured or they might encounter microaggressions
Speaker 1: as they go to the office every day, and of
Speaker 1: course by working from home, they sidestep a lot of
Speaker 1: that and it ends up causing less stress on their
Speaker 1: lives as they try and do their jobs. So when
Speaker 1: I read these articles, I realized that, you know, listening
Speaker 1: really is important and that folks like me need to
Speaker 1: do a lot more listening. Anyway, it was interesting consequence
Speaker 1: that that followed the move to remote work, you know,
Speaker 1: to see this increase in diversity, and hopefully we'll see
Speaker 1: increase diversity in Meta and other tech companies moving forward,
Speaker 1: because honestly, we all benefit from that. One issue that
Speaker 1: has plagued Amazon, apart from its workers having the temerity
Speaker 1: to want to unionize the radicals, is the issue of
Speaker 1: fake reviews. UH. Fake reviews skew results in Amazon's searches,
Speaker 1: and they guide people to purchasing products that don't justify
Speaker 1: the glowing five star ratings that have been posted by
Speaker 1: fake accounts or people who are paid or otherwise compensated
Speaker 1: in order to generate positive reviews. And Amazon has made
Speaker 1: another big move to push back against this trend of
Speaker 1: fake reviews by taking legal action against more than ten
Speaker 1: thousand Facebook group administrators. So those groups, according to Amazon,
Speaker 1: coordinate and facilitate fake reviews for Amazon products or products
Speaker 1: that are listed on Amazon, not just Amazon products, and
Speaker 1: they promised free stuff to folks who will post fake
Speaker 1: reviews for a selection of products. Amazon has been waging
Speaker 1: war against fake reviews for a while now, going so
Speaker 1: far as to ban certain merchants from the platform, even
Speaker 1: really big notable ones. But this is interesting to see
Speaker 1: them going after the groups that are meant to to
Speaker 1: recruit people to post these fake reviews. Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: have a few more news items. Okay, we're back. Next
Speaker 1: news item up. Clear Trip a flight booking website that's
Speaker 1: popular in India. Though lots of places actually use clear Trip,
Speaker 1: it's just mostly used in India. Uh. It's also accompanied
Speaker 1: by the way that Walmart has a majority ownership in
Speaker 1: has recently had a data breach that was serious enough
Speaker 1: to prompt the company to alert customers about it. The
Speaker 1: company says that someone gained illegal and unauthorized access to
Speaker 1: quote a part of clear trips internal systems end quote.
Speaker 1: They also said the intrusion only essentially scraped surface level
Speaker 1: data like a customer's profile information, but not like their
Speaker 1: sensitive info like passwords and payment methods and such, although
Speaker 1: they did say, hey, if it makes you feel better,
Speaker 1: you can reset your password. The newspaper The Register contacted
Speaker 1: clear Trip to get more information about this. They asked
Speaker 1: what data did the intruders specifically gain access to, how
Speaker 1: much were they able to access, how did they gain
Speaker 1: access into the system in the first place, did they
Speaker 1: extract any information? Is that detectable? And when the heck
Speaker 1: did this happen? And when did clear Trip actually alert customers?
Speaker 1: Now when it happened is a big deal because India
Speaker 1: has a law that states any company that detects a
Speaker 1: data breach has the responsibility to report the breach to
Speaker 1: authorities within six hours. Anyway, as of this recording, clear
Speaker 1: Trip had not clarified the matter. Samsung tweeted out a
Speaker 1: series of messages that created a puzzle for the curious.
Speaker 1: The puzzle included a message saying when will something greater arrive?
Speaker 1: And then this was followed by six circles, and each
Speaker 1: circle had had slightly different shades different colors of circles,
Speaker 1: and another message had a grid of letters symbols and
Speaker 1: numbers arranged. And then a third message had a a
Speaker 1: grid similar grid, same with same height, but instead of
Speaker 1: numbers and symbols and such, it had circles with different
Speaker 1: colors in them. Now collectively that puzzle would reveal a date.
Speaker 1: And see what would happen is you would have to
Speaker 1: look at those six circles in the first picture, and
Speaker 1: then you would find identical shaded circles that were in
Speaker 1: the third picture of the circles that were in the grid.
Speaker 1: So you'd find the ones that matched the shade, so
Speaker 1: circle number one had matched a specific circle within the grid.
Speaker 1: Then you would look for the corresponding symbol that was
Speaker 1: in the same same position of the grid on picture
Speaker 1: number two. I know it sounds confusing, but ultimately, if
Speaker 1: you did all this matching, you would discover that the
Speaker 1: an original message was spelling out the date zero eight
Speaker 1: one zero to two, which if we're reading dates the
Speaker 1: way we Americans do, which is the right way, that
Speaker 1: would be August two. Of course, could be that we're
Speaker 1: supposed to read the date the wrong way, in which
Speaker 1: case it's the eighth of October. But you know that
Speaker 1: would just be silly, right it's gotta be August right
Speaker 1: either way, most folks expect Samsung will be announcing a
Speaker 1: few new products, including a Galaxy Fold four, a Galaxy
Speaker 1: Flip four, and a Galaxy Watch five. Hopefully the announcement
Speaker 1: itself will be more exciting than the puzzle was. Earlier
Speaker 1: in this episode, I talked about how Elon Musk is
Speaker 1: leaning hard on the bots issue on Twitter to justify
Speaker 1: backing out of the acquisition deal. Well, other folks apparently
Speaker 1: leaned on bots hard to elevate the call for Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers to release the so called Snyder cut of the
Speaker 1: Justice League movie. Rolling Stone reports that fake accounts and
Speaker 1: bots amplified the message and that it was above the
Speaker 1: normal threshold. You know, bots usually make up three to
Speaker 1: five percent of all accounts that are involved in conversations
Speaker 1: on trending topics, but when it came to the Snyder cut,
Speaker 1: it was more like thirteen. Now, granted, that still means
Speaker 1: around seven of all the accounts that we're calling for
Speaker 1: a Snyder cut were legitimate. They were from real users,
Speaker 1: So it's not like this was a holy manufactured online crusade,
Speaker 1: but it is an interesting outlier. Like why why this
Speaker 1: topic why were more bots calling for this than anything else.
Speaker 1: Warner Media actually investigated the issue after receiving numerous complaints
Speaker 1: that the call for the Snyder cut wasn't all it
Speaker 1: appeared to be, which makes you wonder why, Like, why
Speaker 1: was this such a big deal? Why were people so
Speaker 1: upset one way or the other? I mean, I get why,
Speaker 1: like fans wanted to see what the original intended movie was,
Speaker 1: but I don't. I don't know why there was controversy
Speaker 1: on either side apart from like some other issues with Snyder,
Speaker 1: But I don't know. This one really confuses me. And
Speaker 1: why bring bots into it? Then? I need to know,
Speaker 1: So I'm hoping that we learned more about this. The
Speaker 1: M I T Technology Review has a fun article titled
Speaker 1: Sony's Racing AI destroyed its human competitors by being nice
Speaker 1: and fast. So we're talking about car racing here, and
Speaker 1: we're actually talking about video game or simulated car racing.
Speaker 1: Using Grand Tarismo as the game engine, so to speak,
Speaker 1: Sony developed an AI that could operate within the rules
Speaker 1: of the game. So by that, I mean this AI
Speaker 1: was operating like an actual driver. It was not able
Speaker 1: to bend physics and cheat. I know, Anyone who's played
Speaker 1: racing games knows that sometimes these games will fudge the
Speaker 1: physics a bit, like there's always cases with things like
Speaker 1: rubber banding. Rubber Banding is when um the the You know,
Speaker 1: if if you get too far ahead of all the
Speaker 1: AI controlled cars, they suddenly magically catch up to you,
Speaker 1: as if they were attached to you by an invisible
Speaker 1: rubber band. That was not going on here, at least
Speaker 1: according to Sony that was not the case. Like this
Speaker 1: was all legit where the AI had to operate by
Speaker 1: the same rules as any human driver would, and it
Speaker 1: quickly showed that on a blank racetrack it could. It
Speaker 1: could actually race faster than humans could. It didn't do
Speaker 1: so well in full races, like when the racetrack had
Speaker 1: a whole group of human drivers in it. The AI
Speaker 1: wasn't as competitive until Sony went and tweaked the AI
Speaker 1: brought it back, and then it did really well and
Speaker 1: was able to beat human drivers again. The AI, which
Speaker 1: is called Gt. Sophie, interacts with the game ten times
Speaker 1: a second. It collects information about the AI vehicle's position
Speaker 1: relative to the track as well as relative to the
Speaker 1: other racers, and it also tracks the physical forces that
Speaker 1: are all acting upon the vehicle, which means that quote
Speaker 1: unquote knows when to do things like apply the brakes
Speaker 1: or begin a turn without pushing the car past its limitations.
Speaker 1: The article goes into a bit more detail as to
Speaker 1: the process that Sony used to train the AI, and
Speaker 1: it's really interesting stuff. So if you're interested in this topic,
Speaker 1: I recommend you check that article out again. It is
Speaker 1: titled Sony's Racing AI destroyed its human competitors by being
Speaker 1: nice and fast, and it's in the M I T
Speaker 1: Technology Review. Finally, and in similar news, Microsoft recently announced
Speaker 1: Project air Sim, which quote uses the power of Azure
Speaker 1: to generate massive amounts of data for training AIM models
Speaker 1: on exactly which actions to take at each phase of
Speaker 1: flight from takeoff to cruising to landing end quote. According
Speaker 1: to Jake's Siegel of Microsoft, the idea is that Project
Speaker 1: air Sim will create realistic simulations of various flight conditions
Speaker 1: while training AI on how to pilot an aircraft in
Speaker 1: those situations, all with the goal to accelerate autonomous aircraft development.
Speaker 1: And when I say aircraft, you could really substitute the
Speaker 1: word drone in there pretty reliably. So Microsoft has built
Speaker 1: a platform that will allow drone manufacturers to refine their
Speaker 1: autonomous flying systems. This product replaces an earlier one that
Speaker 1: was just called air sim, but that one required customers
Speaker 1: to have a deeper knowledge and experience with machine learning systems.
Speaker 1: Project air sim simplifies matters. It kind of keeps all
Speaker 1: that pesky coding stuff behind a user interface that's more
Speaker 1: intuitive for customers to use. And that's it for the
Speaker 1: news for Tuesday, July two thousand twenty two. If you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for future topics on tech Stuff, please
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