Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey 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 a lot of all things tech. And it is
Speaker 1: time for the news for Thursday, February four, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Let's get to it, and I think our top story
Speaker 1: should be pretty obvious, and that's that Jeff Bezos is
Speaker 1: stepping down as CEO of Amazon later this year. The
Speaker 1: announcement came out on Tuesday, which I think was pretty rude,
Speaker 1: as I had already recorded and published the news episode
Speaker 1: for that day by the time the press release came out.
Speaker 1: Not a lot of consideration there for me. Jeff. This
Speaker 1: comes after a banner year for Amazon, at least the
Speaker 1: corporate coffer part of it. While millions of folks were
Speaker 1: struggling to find out how to work and parent and
Speaker 1: all that stuff during a pandemic. Amazon passed the one
Speaker 1: trillion dollar market cap, and it's well in its way
Speaker 1: to to trillion at this point. Heck, Amazon made one
Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars in one quarter. That means three months.
Speaker 1: Bezos will not be leaving the company entirely he'll actually
Speaker 1: be playing a pretty firm hand with Amazon as the
Speaker 1: executive chairman of the board of directors. As for his replacement,
Speaker 1: that will be Andy Jesse, who heads up the Amazon
Speaker 1: Web Services Division a k a a w S. And
Speaker 1: while I think most folks probably think of Amazon as
Speaker 1: an online retail company, you know where you go to
Speaker 1: buy everything from books to boats, more than half of
Speaker 1: Amazon's operating income actually comes from a WS. The division
Speaker 1: is responsible for enormous server farms that provide hosting services
Speaker 1: for cloud based applications web companies. You might remember a
Speaker 1: recent news item that AWS booted the social network Parlor
Speaker 1: or parlay from its servers for failing to moderate content
Speaker 1: on the platform, which was a violation of Amazon's policies.
Speaker 1: Jesse will take over for Bezos later this year. According
Speaker 1: to Bezos, he will quote focus my energies and attention
Speaker 1: on new products and early initiatives end quote. In addition
Speaker 1: to that work, Bezos also will spend more time with
Speaker 1: several of his other companies, such as his private space
Speaker 1: company Blue Origin, and I guess maybe figuring out what
Speaker 1: he's gonna do with that more than five billion dollars
Speaker 1: he has in wealth. Now, based on this reporting, you
Speaker 1: might think that I envy Jeff Bezos, and you would
Speaker 1: be right. But he's a business genius and I'm not.
Speaker 1: So I also understand that I'm just not the type
Speaker 1: of person to a mass that kind of wealth. Also,
Speaker 1: as we'll be talking about in a little bit, I
Speaker 1: probably don't have the stomach to do some of the
Speaker 1: things that billionaires do in order to become billionaires. And
Speaker 1: now for a few more Amazon stories, we could think
Speaker 1: of this as being lost in the Amazon. So next
Speaker 1: up our plans that Amazon has for a new glass
Speaker 1: tower high rise building in Arlington, Virginia. This would be
Speaker 1: part of Amazon's HQ two headquarters project. You might remember
Speaker 1: that several years ago all of the United States was
Speaker 1: in a bidding war to become the place for Amazon's headquarters,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people, myself included, assumed that Amazon
Speaker 1: was just playing the long game, trying to you know,
Speaker 1: put some leverage on the choices that were already at
Speaker 1: the top of its list to get them to give them,
Speaker 1: you know, much better tax and syntoms and stuff. This
Speaker 1: is the outcome of that. So the design of this
Speaker 1: tower calls for it to be three fifty feet or
Speaker 1: around a hundred six meters tall, and around this tower
Speaker 1: will be three twenty two story buildings that will also
Speaker 1: be part of the HQ two campus now. According to
Speaker 1: a press release, the tower is meant to connect people
Speaker 1: with nature and have a vertical forest arranged in a
Speaker 1: couple of spiraling walkways that go from the base all
Speaker 1: the way to the top of the tower. There will
Speaker 1: be some public spaces incorporated, though not throughout the whole structure,
Speaker 1: and Amazon plans to offer public tours of the building,
Speaker 1: which will be called the Helix. Now. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a setting in an Assassin's Creed game to me, but
Speaker 1: Amazon says the inspiration for the design comes from the
Speaker 1: helix shape found and everything from conk shells to DNA.
Speaker 1: Inside the space will be a massive meeting area capable
Speaker 1: of holding people, and there will be an artist in
Speaker 1: residence program there. And spiraling around that exterior is that
Speaker 1: green space allowing people to kind of stroll up a
Speaker 1: wooded spiral walkway. Looks like it might be stairs all
Speaker 1: the way up, so it might be a little rough
Speaker 1: if you aren't like used to climbing a lot of steps,
Speaker 1: and you can go all the way to the tippy top. Apparently,
Speaker 1: my favorite description of the artist rendering for the helix
Speaker 1: comes courtesy of Jacob Krastanaki's of The Verge, who calls
Speaker 1: it a quote glass poop emoji covered in trees end quote. Also,
Speaker 1: I should point out that as of this recording, this
Speaker 1: whole thing is just a proposal for Amazon to move forward.
Speaker 1: They will need to get clearance from Arlington City government
Speaker 1: before they can break any ground on the structure. In
Speaker 1: a previous news update, I talked about how workers at
Speaker 1: an Amazon warehouse and Bessemer, Alabama, which I just want
Speaker 1: to call Bessame, was that they were attempting to unionize
Speaker 1: and if they manage that, they will be the first
Speaker 1: of Amazon's US based warehouses to do it. The company
Speaker 1: isn't exactly backing down from this development, however. The Seattle
Speaker 1: Times reports that Amazon has funded a pr campaign against
Speaker 1: the unionization efforts that employees are pursuing with the retail,
Speaker 1: wholesale and department store union. According to the papers sources,
Speaker 1: Amazon employees have been ordered to attend mandatory meetings in
Speaker 1: which managers present quote anti union propaganda thinly veiled as
Speaker 1: factual information end quote. These meetings are pretty small. There
Speaker 1: are about fifteen employees per meeting and they last about
Speaker 1: half an hour. While I'm sure the meetings aren't much fun,
Speaker 1: I also imagine managers must have a pretty tough message
Speaker 1: to sell. After all, if you work for a company
Speaker 1: that makes one hundred billion dollars in just three months,
Speaker 1: I figure you might start asking yourself questions like, Hey,
Speaker 1: couldn't you afford better compensation and benefits for us? According
Speaker 1: to the Seattle Times piece, Amazon hasn't had to worry
Speaker 1: about unions a lot due to the fact that the
Speaker 1: company pays a little bit better than most competing retail
Speaker 1: and warehouse based jobs, and to the employee turnover is
Speaker 1: so high that there aren't a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are in a position for long enough for any real
Speaker 1: momentum to build. But the pandemic really change things. Not
Speaker 1: only did it spur on more consumer activity well a
Speaker 1: lot more folks buying stuff online, and also more cloud
Speaker 1: based activity, with more businesses having to move to the
Speaker 1: cloud to conduct business, but it also brought to light
Speaker 1: work conditions in these warehouses that included a higher risk
Speaker 1: of spreading COVID nineteen. In addition, the black Lives Matter
Speaker 1: movement has played a part. Many of the employees at
Speaker 1: Amazon's Bessemer where house are black. Employees, will vote on
Speaker 1: whether to unionize later this month. That voting process actually
Speaker 1: extends all the way through March, and employees should expect
Speaker 1: to see a lot more anti union rhetoric from Amazon
Speaker 1: in the meantime. And we're not quite out of the
Speaker 1: Amazon yet. The company will pay a settlement of sixty
Speaker 1: one point seven million dollars over allegations brought against it
Speaker 1: by the US Federal Trade Commission, or f TC. The
Speaker 1: reason well, according to the FTC, Amazon didn't pay its
Speaker 1: Flex delivery driver force the full amount of tips that
Speaker 1: were received from customers. Flex drivers, by the way, our
Speaker 1: delivery personnel who pick up shifts on demand to deliver
Speaker 1: stuff like Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods orders, as well
Speaker 1: as help with particularly heavy delivery days. And who boy,
Speaker 1: this thing, I mean, it really makes my blood boil.
Speaker 1: I'm in a position in which I can afford to
Speaker 1: tip delivery personnel, and because I did penn upon them
Speaker 1: so much, and because these workers are in a much
Speaker 1: more risky position than I am, I feel like tipping
Speaker 1: is away from me to support them and to thank
Speaker 1: them for doing a tough and demanding job. So to
Speaker 1: hear about companies pocketing money from tips from customers, money
Speaker 1: that customers expect will go to the delivery employee, not
Speaker 1: you know, the machine that is profiting from that employee's work, Well,
Speaker 1: that just burns my biscuits, y'all. Now, granted, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about kind of the situation that we're in right now,
Speaker 1: but these allegations are actually from before the pandemic. In sixteen,
Speaker 1: the FTC says that Amazon made a policy change. Drivers
Speaker 1: had been earning between eighteen to twenty an hour plus tips.
Speaker 1: Amazon pushed them to a lower hourly rate, and, according
Speaker 1: to the FTC, quote intentionally failed end quote to tell
Speaker 1: drivers about the change and then use the tips from
Speaker 1: customers to pad out the difference between the new lower
Speaker 1: hourly rate and the old higher hourly rate, the one
Speaker 1: that people were promised. So, in other words, Amazon, according
Speaker 1: to the FTC, was using tips to subsidize what had
Speaker 1: been the promised hourly rate before they changed it, which
Speaker 1: is pretty dang scummy. Amazon of course, disagrees with the
Speaker 1: FDC's conclusions, stating that there was never any intentional miscommunication
Speaker 1: and then the company added quote additional clarity in two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen end quote and just to be clear, while
Speaker 1: I am dunking on Amazon right now. Other companies have
Speaker 1: similarly used tips to subsidize worker wages in the past.
Speaker 1: Door Dash did that up to two thousand nineteen, at
Speaker 1: which point the CEO of the company said that door
Speaker 1: Dash would stop doing that. Instacart also had a similar
Speaker 1: approach until the company was called out on it. So
Speaker 1: if you are someone who tips still have refolks, and
Speaker 1: if you use delivery folks and you can afford to tip,
Speaker 1: you probably should be doing that. It's good to also
Speaker 1: do a bit of research on the various companies to
Speaker 1: make sure that those tips are actually going to the
Speaker 1: people who are doing the work, not subsidizing a company's payroll.
Speaker 1: Let's move over to Google. For the first time, Google
Speaker 1: revealed how much revenue it generated through its cloud services business.
Speaker 1: The division brought in thirteen point oh six billion dollars
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. However, it also reported an operating loss
Speaker 1: of five point six one billion dollars, so it costs
Speaker 1: more than they made that those losses don't indicate a
Speaker 1: floundering business. Rather Google has been pouring a lot of
Speaker 1: money into expanding its cloud services division, including hiring on
Speaker 1: more sales personnel. As I mentioned earlier, cloud services are
Speaker 1: a big business. I mean, they represent more than half
Speaker 1: of Amazon's revenue for twenty twenty, and Google is pressure
Speaker 1: to diversify as its chief source of revenue is through
Speaker 1: online advertising. That's a sector that was hit very hard
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty as companies across various industries began to
Speaker 1: scale back marketing efforts during the pandemic. I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: see a lot more about Google being a cloud services
Speaker 1: company moving forward. And rounding out this first segment of
Speaker 1: our news episode is the story of India issuing a
Speaker 1: warning to Twitter. Now, the heart of the matter is
Speaker 1: the issue of ongoing protests among farmers in India. That
Speaker 1: whole political situation is incredibly complicated, and I am no
Speaker 1: expert on Indian politics or agricultural policies, but basically, if
Speaker 1: I'm interpreting it correctly, I believe the main concern is
Speaker 1: that a trio of farm acts that were passed by
Speaker 1: the Indian government in September twenty twenty might set the
Speaker 1: stage for big corporations to dominate the farming into street
Speaker 1: in India and muscle out all the independent farmers. That
Speaker 1: appears to be the interpretation now. While the majority Indian
Speaker 1: government has kind of dismissed such concerns, calling this misinformation
Speaker 1: or a misunderstanding, members of the opposition have voiced concerns
Speaker 1: and farmers in India have organized some pretty massive and
Speaker 1: sometimes violent protests. Part of the government's response to the
Speaker 1: protests has been to pressure Twitter to block high profile
Speaker 1: accounts in India that support the protests, as well as
Speaker 1: you know, restrict certain hashtags that allow people to easily
Speaker 1: share online ideas about protests. Initially, Twitter did block requested profiles,
Speaker 1: but then a few hours later they lifted the ban,
Speaker 1: and the Indian government says that Twitter is acting like
Speaker 1: some sort of social arbiter that's acting like it's above
Speaker 1: the law, and so India is threatening legal action against Twitter.
Speaker 1: Some internet advocacy groups are pushing back against the Indian government,
Speaker 1: such as Rahman Chimah, who works for the advocacy group
Speaker 1: Access Now. Chima says that the Indian government needs to
Speaker 1: explain how their actions against Twitter are not a violation
Speaker 1: of India's own constitution. This is a very big story
Speaker 1: that is very much still playing out right now, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure I will be following up on this again
Speaker 1: in the future. Well, that wraps up our first round
Speaker 1: of news. When we come back, we'll talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about some other stuff, including an update on the
Speaker 1: good old solar Winds hack. But first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. We're back, and as I said before the break,
Speaker 1: we're going to start this segment with some updates on
Speaker 1: the solar wind hack. Now, as a quick refresher, solar
Speaker 1: wind is a software vendor that makes products for big
Speaker 1: companies and government agencies. The software is mostly geared around
Speaker 1: stuff like I T resource management, monitoring network systems. Hackers,
Speaker 1: likely backed by Russia, compromised a software product called Orion
Speaker 1: and inserted some malware that allowed the hackers to get
Speaker 1: access to compromise systems, that is, you know, the customers
Speaker 1: using Orian software. So when solar Winds pushed out updates
Speaker 1: to Orion and customers installed those updates, the malware essentially
Speaker 1: went along for the ride. Now we've heard that security
Speaker 1: analysts have identified three previously undisclosed vulnerabilities in solar Winds products.
Speaker 1: Two of those are also in Orion and one is
Speaker 1: in a separate piece of software. These vulnerabilities could allow
Speaker 1: hackers to get access to secured credentials in networks or worse,
Speaker 1: and Solar Winds has already addressed the vulnerabilities. They have
Speaker 1: patched them out, and they've issued a patch. They've sent
Speaker 1: it out, which means that analysts are suggesting that network
Speaker 1: administrators install these patch is right away. Of course, this
Speaker 1: gets to the really insidious nature of the supply chain hack,
Speaker 1: as Shannon Morrise pointed out when she was on the
Speaker 1: show earlier this week, because you're you're talking about an
Speaker 1: attack that takes advantage of a trusted partner that ends
Speaker 1: up undermining the trust. So now the analysts are saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know that thing you did that burns you, well,
Speaker 1: you kind of want to do it again because this
Speaker 1: will solve some problems. But you know a lot of
Speaker 1: people have been burned already. It's a scary thing. In
Speaker 1: the USA USA section of our news, Bloomberg reports that
Speaker 1: the United States has dropped off the top ten list
Speaker 1: of the Bloomberg Innovation Index, which quote analyzes dozens of
Speaker 1: criteria using seven equally weighted metrics, including research and development, spending,
Speaker 1: manufacturing capability, and concentration of high tech public companies end quote.
Speaker 1: South Korea is at the top of the list, taking
Speaker 1: the title away from Germany, which has fallen to fourth place.
Speaker 1: In places two and three, you've got Singapore in Switzerland respectively. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: this is one index. This is one way of looking
Speaker 1: at innovation, and it's from one media outlet. So depending
Speaker 1: upon your point of view, you either think, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is right on the money, or you might think this
Speaker 1: is a load of ludicrous, meaningless analysis. Somewhere in that
Speaker 1: is the truth, and I can't tell you where it is.
Speaker 1: I'm just reporting it. So before anyone writes to me,
Speaker 1: just remember I'm the messenger here. But another news Bibo
Speaker 1: is coming back in some form. Do you remember Bibo?
Speaker 1: You might not. Uh. It was really popular in the
Speaker 1: UK and in a few other places. It came out
Speaker 1: of the United States, but it didn't get a whole
Speaker 1: lot of traction here compared to some other places. Bibo
Speaker 1: was a social network site founded by a husband and
Speaker 1: wife team of Michael and show Chee Birch in two
Speaker 1: thousand five in San Francisco, California, and it had the
Speaker 1: motto blog early blog often you know Bibo. The profiles
Speaker 1: were kind of modular in nature. You had a module
Speaker 1: where you could add friends. You had one that would
Speaker 1: let you receive and send messages with those friends. But
Speaker 1: you can also switch things up. You could put in
Speaker 1: modules to include photos or videos and other stuff. It
Speaker 1: was like a more customizable Facebook or MySpace page. Bibo
Speaker 1: also allowed users to link their social accounts from other
Speaker 1: services to Bibo, so that Bibo would become a type
Speaker 1: of aggregator. So if Bibo were around today in that form,
Speaker 1: imagine that instead of having to find out what your
Speaker 1: buddy Susan is doing on Instagram and then over on
Speaker 1: Twitter and so on, you would just go to Susan's
Speaker 1: Bibo page. Then you could see all of her activities
Speaker 1: aggregated there, assuming that Susan had set up a profile
Speaker 1: that way, of course. And it was a pretty nifty
Speaker 1: little site, but a O L must have thought it
Speaker 1: was super duper nifty, as a O L shelled out
Speaker 1: eight hundred fifty million dollars to acquire it in two
Speaker 1: thousand eight. This, by the way, has often been cited
Speaker 1: as one of the worst acquisitions of all time, not
Speaker 1: because Bibo wasn't good, but because A o L didn't
Speaker 1: really have any idea of what to do with it
Speaker 1: and they spent way too much money on it. The
Speaker 1: CEO who was responsible for that decision wasn't around for
Speaker 1: very long, and the Bibo acquisition is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons for their hasty departure. But A O L would
Speaker 1: unload Bibo in for ten million dollars, which really doesn't
Speaker 1: make that hundred fifty million dollar acquisition look pretty dumb
Speaker 1: in you know, retrospect. But a couple of years after that,
Speaker 1: the company that bought Bibo from A O L itself
Speaker 1: had to file for bankruptcy, and that husband and wife
Speaker 1: team who started at all were able to acquire Bibo
Speaker 1: for one million dollars, so they sold it for fifty million.
Speaker 1: They bought it back for one million. Talk about a
Speaker 1: short sell. That's amazing. Now, they tried to switch things
Speaker 1: up again. They changed it into more of an e
Speaker 1: sports streaming service. But then Amazon comes along, and Amazon
Speaker 1: owns Twitch, and Amazon says, hey, we want that technology,
Speaker 1: so they purchased the tech of Bibo for twenty five
Speaker 1: million dollars. So now you've got this husband and wife
Speaker 1: team who were able to sell at least the technology
Speaker 1: of their company for a big profit twice well. While
Speaker 1: the tech went to Amazon, the couple retained the rights
Speaker 1: to the name Bibo, and now we know that Bibo
Speaker 1: is on the way back. Michael Burch says it will
Speaker 1: be a live social networking tool which will tell you
Speaker 1: which of your friends are currently online and allow for
Speaker 1: more real time interactions between people, as opposed to the
Speaker 1: more asynchronous approach of things like Facebook. Michael Birch has
Speaker 1: said he's the only one coding the project right now,
Speaker 1: which is both cool and bonkers. He hopes to start
Speaker 1: sending out invites to a select group of people to
Speaker 1: test it out by the end of the month, with
Speaker 1: a full launch that would follow later in if things
Speaker 1: are going well. So can Bibo make it in a
Speaker 1: world dominated by Facebook? Or is it just doomed to
Speaker 1: be a curiosity? I really hope it can make it,
Speaker 1: assuming Birch is able to do some really important stuff
Speaker 1: like make sure he can protect user data and all
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But who knows, maybe he'll get
Speaker 1: a chance to sell Bibo for a third time. Our
Speaker 1: next story is about gravitational wave detectors. Now gravity is
Speaker 1: one of the four fundamental forces of our universe, the
Speaker 1: four that we know about anyway, the other three being
Speaker 1: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and the
Speaker 1: electromagnetic force. The force of gravity is the attraction between
Speaker 1: two objects that have mass or energy. The magnitude of
Speaker 1: that attractive force depends upon the relative mass and proximity
Speaker 1: of the two objects. The bigger they are and the
Speaker 1: closer they are together, the stronger the attraction of gravity
Speaker 1: is between them, and it is the weakest of the
Speaker 1: fundamental forces. There are gravitational waves moving through the universe
Speaker 1: all the time, but detecting them on Earth is hard
Speaker 1: because they are very weak, and we're talking about waves
Speaker 1: that measure about Adam's nucleus in amplitude, So measuring that
Speaker 1: is hard, and it falls into a realm of quantum
Speaker 1: physics that gets real whibbly wobbly. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle plays
Speaker 1: a role. I think I'm not really sure that was
Speaker 1: an uncertainty joke. It it actually does play a part.
Speaker 1: So the uncertainty principle tells us that for certain sets
Speaker 1: of measurements, we can't know everything. For example, the classic
Speaker 1: one is a particle's momentum and its position. The more
Speaker 1: we know about one of those, the less we can
Speaker 1: know about the other. So the more we know about
Speaker 1: its position, the less we know about its momentum, and
Speaker 1: vice versa. Now, because of this fundamental quantum effect that
Speaker 1: I frankly do not really understand, there is a sort
Speaker 1: of background noise that gravitational waves can get lost in.
Speaker 1: So it's only when a wave has enough oo finite
Speaker 1: that we can differentiate the wave from sort of background
Speaker 1: quantum static. But physicists now say they've developed a method
Speaker 1: that is six times more sensitive to gravitational waves while
Speaker 1: still obeying the uncertainty principle. The method sacrifices the measure
Speaker 1: of brightness of lasers in order to get a more
Speaker 1: precise measurement than the researchers say, Well, the brightness of
Speaker 1: the lasers is kind of not important to us at all,
Speaker 1: so it's okay for us to sacrifice that. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be straight with you, All of this goes
Speaker 1: way over my head. I just love that scientists can
Speaker 1: look at fundamental limitations of our universe, you know, stuff
Speaker 1: you cannot escape, and they figure out to do of
Speaker 1: an approach that works within those limitations, which is really cool,
Speaker 1: and all of this will be put to use so
Speaker 1: that extremely smart people can learn more about how our
Speaker 1: universe works. And I can't wait to learn more myself,
Speaker 1: probably learning that I am incapable of understanding anything, but
Speaker 1: I can tell it's really neat And moving from the
Speaker 1: cosmological to the extremely terrestrial, TikTok announced that it has
Speaker 1: a new warning message to put in front of videos
Speaker 1: that could contain misinformation. Now, obviously, misinformation has been a
Speaker 1: big topic of discussion recently, from the U S Election
Speaker 1: to the pandemic. We've seen people make use of online
Speaker 1: platforms to spread lies and misleading information that can have
Speaker 1: devastating consequences. And likewise, we've seen companies like Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Google react to this in different ways and at
Speaker 1: different speeds. They haven't necessarily been quick to action. Now,
Speaker 1: TikTok will include a warning message saying caution video flagged
Speaker 1: for unverified content. These are for videos that contain information
Speaker 1: that has not been verified by fact checkers who work
Speaker 1: for TikTok. So if a fact checker watches a video
Speaker 1: that contains information and that fact checker is not able
Speaker 1: to verify the information, they can flag it and this
Speaker 1: warning will appear before that video. Now, what we don't
Speaker 1: know is how many people TikTok employees to be fact checkers,
Speaker 1: or how many videos they look at in an average day,
Speaker 1: or what percentage uh those videos represent if you compare
Speaker 1: it against all videos uploaded to TikTok. I mean, my
Speaker 1: guess is that they're going to be focusing on videos
Speaker 1: that have tags that are part of sensitive topics. You know,
Speaker 1: like if there's a tag that indicates it something about
Speaker 1: an election or or COVID or something like that, that
Speaker 1: that's going to be the video that gets tagged in
Speaker 1: order for a fact checker to watch it. Because when
Speaker 1: your app has more than eight hundred million users, you
Speaker 1: just can't keep up with everything. Besides, most of the
Speaker 1: stuff on TikTok doesn't really merit fact checking. You don't
Speaker 1: really need to watch the video to see if someone's
Speaker 1: doing that flossing dance properly or any of the other
Speaker 1: you know, seven dances that are done on TikTok. I
Speaker 1: I don't have TikTok. I'm throwing a lot of shade
Speaker 1: for an old man. I'm just yelling at clouds here.
Speaker 1: I apologize However, one thing I hope the fact checkers
Speaker 1: can determine is exactly when the weller men will come
Speaker 1: to bring us sugar and tea and rum, because I've
Speaker 1: been waiting and that guy has not shown up. And
Speaker 1: before we go to another break, I've got an update
Speaker 1: on the ongoing battle between Epic Games and Apple. Now,
Speaker 1: in case you didn't know, Epic Games makes, among other things,
Speaker 1: the game Fortnite, which I kind of just referenced, and
Speaker 1: Fortnite used to be available on iOS platforms like the
Speaker 1: iPhone and iPad, and it's also available on tons of
Speaker 1: other platforms. But Epic was not really happy with Apple's
Speaker 1: policy of taking a thirty cut off of all in
Speaker 1: app purchases made on apps that are on the the
Speaker 1: Apple products the Apple platforms. When I say all in
Speaker 1: app purchases, that's with an asterisk because it actually depends
Speaker 1: upon the nature of the purchase. But if it's an
Speaker 1: in app purchase for something that makes a change to
Speaker 1: the app itself, like a cosmetic change or anything like that,
Speaker 1: Apple gets cut. Well. Epic wasn't too keen on the
Speaker 1: idea of Apple taking money from Epics sales. They didn't
Speaker 1: know how they could you know, get the full amount
Speaker 1: of those purchases. And they weren't really keen on the
Speaker 1: idea either of hiking purchases hiking the price up for
Speaker 1: iPhone users because they figured that would be a loss
Speaker 1: in revenue. So they found kind of a cheeky work
Speaker 1: around and they allowed users to buy in app purchases,
Speaker 1: but they were able to do it outside the app itself,
Speaker 1: thus sidestepping Apple, and Apple said dirty pool old man
Speaker 1: and kicked Fortnite off the app store, and they moved
Speaker 1: to do more than that, including preventing Epic from doing
Speaker 1: any other work within iOS, which was bad news not
Speaker 1: just for Epic but many other game developers because one
Speaker 1: of the other things that Epic overseas is the Unreal Engine,
Speaker 1: which is a game engine used by lots of different
Speaker 1: game companies to build their games within Now, with the
Speaker 1: ban in place, Epic wouldn't be able to update the
Speaker 1: iOS version of Unreal, and there would be a big
Speaker 1: ripple effect. Any game that relied on Unreal would be
Speaker 1: affected anyway. What followed were various lawsuits and the latest
Speaker 1: development is that a judge has ordered that Apple CEO
Speaker 1: Tim Cook has to attend a seven hour deposition related
Speaker 1: to epics case against Apple. Now, in Apple's favor is
Speaker 1: the act that the company has an established policy that
Speaker 1: developers agreed to if they want to make products for
Speaker 1: Apple platforms. But Apple is also one of the US
Speaker 1: companies frequently scrutinized for anti competitive practices, and Epic might
Speaker 1: try to make the case that because Apple does not
Speaker 1: allow users to download apps anywhere other than on the
Speaker 1: official app store, they're running what is essentially a monopoly
Speaker 1: because you can't go outside Apple to get an app
Speaker 1: to run on your iOS device. So the deposition gives
Speaker 1: EPICS legal team the chance to kind of fish around
Speaker 1: a bit to see if they can find any pathway
Speaker 1: that would be likely to illegal victory. This is still
Speaker 1: a pretty early step in the whole litigation process, and
Speaker 1: we've got a long way to go, So before we
Speaker 1: try and go down that path, let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break and we're back. You know, when I was looking
Speaker 1: at news items to include in today's episode, one that
Speaker 1: caught my eye was from Science Daily and it had
Speaker 1: the headline quote load reducing backpack powers electronics by harvesting
Speaker 1: energy from walking end quote, which is neat and it
Speaker 1: really is neat. I'm not throwing shade on this. I
Speaker 1: think it's really cool. I mean the design reduces the
Speaker 1: amount of strain a person will feel while carrying a
Speaker 1: packed backpack, and it has the ability to send some
Speaker 1: power to various bits of electronic gear. It could be
Speaker 1: really useful for everyone from hikers to soldiers. So how
Speaker 1: does it manage this? Well, first, let's consider the load
Speaker 1: bearing part. So imagine that the part of the backpack
Speaker 1: that's actually against your back is more like a track,
Speaker 1: kind of like a rail track, and the backpack itself
Speaker 1: is able to move up and down a little bit
Speaker 1: on this track. So the container part of the backpack
Speaker 1: is sort of like a train on a rail system,
Speaker 1: and it's held in place with elastic like connectors, so
Speaker 1: they act like shock absorbers. So the backpack can move
Speaker 1: up and down against this track, but it's very gentle
Speaker 1: in the way it moves, and it's sort of like
Speaker 1: a steadicam where if you've ever used a steadicam or
Speaker 1: seen one used, you can move around and the camera
Speaker 1: is able to maintain its relative position over a fixed point.
Speaker 1: The system reduces the amount of strain the where would feel,
Speaker 1: and according to the researchers, it makes loads feel about
Speaker 1: twenty lighter than what they really are. Now. As for
Speaker 1: the energy harvesting part, that comes courtesy of triboelectric nanogenerators
Speaker 1: or t e n G devices. Now, essentially these change
Speaker 1: kinetic energy into electrical energy, which isn't that unusual. I mean,
Speaker 1: think of something like a dynamo which mechanically rotates magnets
Speaker 1: to induce current to flow through a conductor. The researchers
Speaker 1: include Jeong Lin, Wong Ching and others, and they've been
Speaker 1: working on this for a while. They've got a working prototype,
Speaker 1: but there's no telling if we will ever see a
Speaker 1: consumer product using this technology. However, it's still really interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: One news item I missed out in Tuesday's episode is
Speaker 1: that Iron Man is trying to save the world again.
Speaker 1: That's a really dumb way for me to say that.
Speaker 1: Robert Downey Jr. Who you know isn't Iron Man but
Speaker 1: who is one cool dude, launched a venture fund with
Speaker 1: the intent to provide investments into sustainability startup companies. Now,
Speaker 1: this is an extension of the Footprint Coalition that Robert
Speaker 1: Downey Jr. Launched a couple of years ago, and it's
Speaker 1: classified as a rolling fund, which was a new term
Speaker 1: to me, but it's actually pretty simple to understand. These
Speaker 1: funds raise money on a quarterly basis and they invest
Speaker 1: it as they go, which is why they are called
Speaker 1: rolling funds. This one will allow for up to two
Speaker 1: thousand investors at a commitment of five thousand dollars per quarter.
Speaker 1: Now a twenty grand commitment for a year is still
Speaker 1: a huge deal, but it's a much lower threshold than
Speaker 1: most investment organizations which are working in the hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands or millions of dollars. Our DJ has said that
Speaker 1: it opens up the fund to quote real people end
Speaker 1: quote and that and this is my favorite quote. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit more slam Dance than sun Dance. I
Speaker 1: kind of dig it. The plan is for the fund
Speaker 1: to invest in ten companies, with six of those companies
Speaker 1: being in early stages of startup and the other four
Speaker 1: in later stages of startup, and woven with the investments
Speaker 1: will be a sort of narrative building element, a media
Speaker 1: savvy element there really aims to bring more attention to
Speaker 1: sustainability and ways that people can participate to make it
Speaker 1: a collaborative effort. Which sounds pretty neat. I like this
Speaker 1: idea of bringing the power to the people. I think
Speaker 1: that's cool. Next up, Gearbox Software, known for games like
Speaker 1: the Borderlands franchise, has a new owner. The Embracer Group,
Speaker 1: which owns several other game companies like th HQ. Nordic
Speaker 1: has acquired Gearbox for the princely sum of one point
Speaker 1: three billion dollars. Actually it's more like one point three
Speaker 1: seven eight billions, almost one point four now. According to
Speaker 1: Gearbox Software founder and CEO Randy Pitchford, who I think
Speaker 1: it's safe to say is a controversial figure, operations won't
Speaker 1: really change at the company of Gearbox. There are still
Speaker 1: plans on further Borderlands games being developed in partnership would
Speaker 1: take two take two as a company that publishes the
Speaker 1: Borderlands games that Gearbox develops. So now Borderlands and other
Speaker 1: games like Duke Nukem and Homeland will join stuff that
Speaker 1: Embracer already owns, like the Saints Row franchise, or Dead
Speaker 1: Island or Time Splitters even and Pitchford says that this
Speaker 1: really means that Gearbox will be able to expand and
Speaker 1: hire more talent and develop new games on top of
Speaker 1: continuing popular franchises. The Global Wealth company Morgan Stanley published
Speaker 1: a report that says the United States is likely to
Speaker 1: move away from coal fired power plants by twenty thirty three,
Speaker 1: with most power generation coming from renewable energy sources instead
Speaker 1: of coal. Among those sources, wind would make up the
Speaker 1: largest percentage. Morgan Stanley predicts it will get up to
Speaker 1: as much as of all power sources for the US
Speaker 1: by But for all that to work, we're going to
Speaker 1: need to see a lot of faster growth in wind
Speaker 1: and solar power infrastructures. And we can't forget the challenge
Speaker 1: of job creation. We need to offset the job losses
Speaker 1: from mining operations, for example, so those jobs will exist,
Speaker 1: but we'll also need to invest in training and opportunities
Speaker 1: to make sure people aren't left him That's one of
Speaker 1: the biggest concerns about moving away from fossil fuels. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: you've got the fossil fuel companies that lobby like crazy
Speaker 1: and pour a lot of money into politics in order
Speaker 1: to try and shape policy. But you also have very
Speaker 1: real people who have jobs in those industries, and unless
Speaker 1: we give them a way to segue into a new career,
Speaker 1: they get left behind and that is. That's a tough
Speaker 1: thing to really wrap your head around. And finally, in
Speaker 1: the rumors that just will not die department, we've got
Speaker 1: Apple cars, and I think the two things people predict
Speaker 1: Apple will eventually get around to making will be a
Speaker 1: car and a television. And as it stands, Apple has
Speaker 1: partnered with other companies to incorporate some Apple technology into
Speaker 1: stuff like car infotainment systems, but we haven't actually seen
Speaker 1: a real, honest to goodness Apple mobile yet. Well. A
Speaker 1: recent report states that Apple is investing around three point
Speaker 1: six billion dollars in Kia Motors as quote part of
Speaker 1: a planned manufacturing partnership between the two companies end quote. Now,
Speaker 1: that could mean that Apple might rely on Kia's manufacturing
Speaker 1: facility here in Georgia to build what I can only
Speaker 1: assume will eventually be called the I Car. Even if
Speaker 1: all of this is on track and we are going
Speaker 1: to get an Apple branded car, we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: wait a few years to see a car roll off
Speaker 1: the production line. So don't you know, hold your breath
Speaker 1: for it. We're talking probably at the earliest my guests
Speaker 1: would be probably closer to but it would be kind
Speaker 1: of interesting for Tim Cook to be on a stage
Speaker 1: at a keynote and say one more thing and then
Speaker 1: you see the Apple car and then he gets it
Speaker 1: and drives off. That would be a pretty cool mic
Speaker 1: drop moment. And that set for this episode of tech
Speaker 1: Stuff and the news of the week. Make sure you
Speaker 1: check out our other episodes of tech Stuff because I
Speaker 1: do episodes on Mondays and Wednesdays where I cover specific
Speaker 1: topics in depth, and then on Friday's we get to
Speaker 1: listen to a classic episode from the archives. I've got
Speaker 1: more than episodes. Chances are you have not heard all
Speaker 1: of them, and most of them are worth listening to.
Speaker 1: I admit in a couple of them my puns get
Speaker 1: out of hand. If you have any suggestions for future
Speaker 1: topics I should cover in episodes of tech Stuff, let
Speaker 1: me know. The best way to reach me is over
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff
Speaker 1: H S W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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