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Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Johnathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And

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Speaker 1: how the tech are you? And it's time for the

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Speaker 1: tech news for February one, twenty twenty two. And I've

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Speaker 1: got an update on the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard,

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Speaker 1: the video game company. And the update is that the

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Speaker 1: United States Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, will review the

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Speaker 1: deal to determine if, in fact, the deal would negatively

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Speaker 1: impact competition within the video game industry. Microsoft is no

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Speaker 1: stranger to antitrust investigations, having been the focus of several

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Speaker 1: of them over the last several decades. One thing that

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Speaker 1: does make this one a little odd is that apparently

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Speaker 1: the US Justice Department will not review the deal, and

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Speaker 1: typically you see the d o J work with the

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Speaker 1: FTC on these things together. Now, I want to stress

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Speaker 1: that it's way too early to conclude what effect this

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Speaker 1: investigation will have on the deal. It's possible the FTC

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Speaker 1: will just approve the acquisition. It's also possible that it

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Speaker 1: might require certain concessions before allowing the deal to go through.

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Speaker 1: Part of the deal might look at whether or not

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Speaker 1: Microsoft plans to continue releasing Activision Blizzard games for non

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Speaker 1: Microsoft platforms, you know, like the Sony PlayStation. Like if

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Speaker 1: Microsoft said, yeah, from now on, Call of Duty is

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Speaker 1: going to be PC and Xbox exclusive, that could be

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Speaker 1: an issue. But in the early statements that I have

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Speaker 1: seen around this deal, it seems to me that Microsoft

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Speaker 1: is at least indicating that it's not going to shut

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Speaker 1: out PlayStation at least not in the near term, so

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Speaker 1: that might not be an issue at all. In fact,

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Speaker 1: Microsoft will end up owning a former PlayStation mascot should

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Speaker 1: this deal go through. I'm talking about crash Bandicoot, which

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Speaker 1: at one time was kind of a mascot for the

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Speaker 1: Sony PlayStation, and now well that's one of the properties

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Speaker 1: owned by Activision Blizzards. So should Microsoft's deal go through,

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Speaker 1: crash Bandicoot, the former PlayStation mascot will be a Microsoft property. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: we knew that the deal would fall under scrutiny, particularly

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Speaker 1: right now because governments around the world are tightening up

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Speaker 1: regulations on mergers and acquisitions in business in general, like

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Speaker 1: any big company, a lot of governments around the world

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Speaker 1: are really looking more closely at proposed mergers and acquisitions,

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Speaker 1: but they're definitely doing that big time in the tech sector. Now,

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Speaker 1: if I had to make a prediction, I'd say this

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Speaker 1: deal squeaks through. I don't foresee any obvious red flags,

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Speaker 1: at least not from a regulatory standpoint. I don't think

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Speaker 1: it's always great to see consolidation in a market in general.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you're you're talking about a decreased number of choices,

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Speaker 1: and decreased choice typically does not benefit the end consumer,

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Speaker 1: so I don't I'm not a huge fan of it. However,

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure there's a real case to be made

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Speaker 1: that Microsoft would have an unfair advantage in the industry.

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Speaker 1: I mean, Microsoft itself points out quite eagerly that both

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Speaker 1: Sony and Tencent would still be larger video game companies,

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Speaker 1: at least by revenue. So we'll see if the FTC

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Speaker 1: pushes back on this. I would be surprised to see that,

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Speaker 1: but stranger things have happened, and obviously I'm not privy

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Speaker 1: to all the details of the deal. It could be

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Speaker 1: that there's stuff in there I just don't know about.

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Speaker 1: That would be an issue. Speaking of Sony and acquisitions,

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Speaker 1: the Japanese company is making a purchase of its own.

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Speaker 1: It is buying Ge Studios. Current gamers probably think of

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Speaker 1: Bungee as the studio that's behind the Destiny games, but

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Speaker 1: I will always think of Bungee as the game company

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Speaker 1: that originally brought us Halo. Bungee handed Halo off to

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Speaker 1: Microsoft's three forty three Industries in two thousand seven, so

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Speaker 1: Bungee is not involved in Halo anymore. That happened after

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Speaker 1: Bungee left the Microsoft fold and became an independent studio.

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Speaker 1: Also a fun fact, Bungee originally started developing Halo with

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Speaker 1: the Mac platform in mind. It was supposed to be

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Speaker 1: a Mac game before it made its way to become

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Speaker 1: an Xbox exclusive, at least initially. Anyway, Sony is acquiring

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Speaker 1: Bungee for a three point six billion dollars. That's a

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Speaker 1: fraction of what the Microsoft Activision Blizzard deal is, but

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Speaker 1: then that's to be expected. Bungee is uh, It's not

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Speaker 1: a small studio, but it's definitely smaller than Activision Wizard.

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Speaker 1: The company has already released a statement saying that future

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Speaker 1: Bungee games will continue to be available on multiple platforms, So,

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Speaker 1: in other words, this does not appear to be a

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Speaker 1: move to make Destiny a PlayStation exclusive franchise, though we're

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Speaker 1: probably going to continue to see PlayStation exclusive content for

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Speaker 1: the games, and just the game itself will be available

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Speaker 1: on multiple platforms. Reportedly, Sonny plans to take a hands

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Speaker 1: off approach when it comes to overseeing Bungee and allow

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Speaker 1: Bungee to continue to operate as if it were a

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Speaker 1: fully independent studio. We might also see some moves to

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Speaker 1: adapt Bungee intellectual property into other formats like movies. You know,

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Speaker 1: considering the trailer I saw recently for the live action

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Speaker 1: Halo project, I think they should just take their time

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Speaker 1: on that one. I'm throwing a little shade early today.

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Speaker 1: And to round out our trilogy about acquisitions, let's talk

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Speaker 1: about Word All now. If you're not familiar with the game,

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Speaker 1: it's a simple online word guessing game. So the standard

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Speaker 1: version requires players to guess a five letter word, and

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Speaker 1: after you submit your guests, you will see which, if

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Speaker 1: any of the letters you chose are correct. A letter

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Speaker 1: that's highlighted in yellow means that you have guessed a

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Speaker 1: correct letter, but it's in the wrong place in the word.

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Speaker 1: A letter in green matches that It tells you that

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Speaker 1: you matched both the letter and where it appears in

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Speaker 1: the word, and that that should be locked into place,

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Speaker 1: and you get six guesses before you lose around and

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Speaker 1: it's kind of like the old board game Mastermind. I

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Speaker 1: don't know how many of you out there have played that.

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Speaker 1: It used to be one of my favorites as a kid.

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Speaker 1: Very simple to play, um and and interesting to kind

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Speaker 1: of develop strategies for it. And I loved it. And uh,

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Speaker 1: you're and of course you're using letters instead of little

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Speaker 1: pegs Mastermind used pegs had different colors and you would

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Speaker 1: try to guess a I think it was a sequence

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Speaker 1: of four, if maybe six, I can't remember, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: I love that game. Anyway. What helped propel wordle into

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Speaker 1: viral popularity is that you can share your results of

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Speaker 1: each round on social platforms, and typically those those results

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Speaker 1: just show your guests sequences. It doesn't show the actual

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Speaker 1: letters you guess, but instead shows solid blocks that represent

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Speaker 1: the letters. And so I remember seeing it on Twitter

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Speaker 1: several weeks ago and being stopped as to what the

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Speaker 1: all the gray, yellow, and green blocks. Men Like you'd

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Speaker 1: see one line that was mostly gray, maybe there was

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Speaker 1: a yellow or maybe a green block in there, then

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Speaker 1: then a couple of other blocks until you got one

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Speaker 1: solid row of green. I had no idea what it

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Speaker 1: was until I looked further into it. And really that

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Speaker 1: was a brilliant little game mechanic because it got a

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Speaker 1: lot of folks like me into the game, just saying,

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Speaker 1: what the heck are all these blocks that are showing

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Speaker 1: up on my Twitter? And now The New York Times

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Speaker 1: has purchased that game from its creator, a guy named

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Speaker 1: Josh Wardle. Wardle is a software engineer who built the

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Speaker 1: game as a gift to his partner who loves word games,

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Speaker 1: and the deal is reportedly in the quote low seven

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Speaker 1: figures end quote. So we're talking at least a million bucks.

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Speaker 1: So way to go, Josh Wardle. That is awesome for you. However,

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Speaker 1: for fans of the game, well a lot of them

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Speaker 1: are a little nervous that eventually The New York Times

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Speaker 1: will put Wordle behind a paywall. For the moment, at least,

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Speaker 1: the Time says it will keep Wordle free to play,

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Speaker 1: but it will be interesting to see if the Wordle

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Speaker 1: community continues strong, or if the association of a once

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Speaker 1: you know, scrappy little independent game now being owned by

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Speaker 1: a media company is going to be enough to turn

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Speaker 1: folks off of it. Like, there's some people who are

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Speaker 1: who are gonna probably say I'm gonna bounce because I'm

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Speaker 1: not interested now that it's you know, a corporate asset.

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Speaker 1: But we'll see. I kind of hope that it stays

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Speaker 1: free to play and sticks around because I think I

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Speaker 1: really like the community that's kind of built up around

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Speaker 1: word all um, and I enjoy playing the game. I'm

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Speaker 1: I'm decent at it, but then I think most people are,

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Speaker 1: so it's kind of a fun bonding experience. All right.

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Speaker 1: Let's go back to some antitrust talk. According to the

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Speaker 1: Financial Times, several big tech companies, including Google, Amazon, Facebook,

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Speaker 1: and Apple are trying a slightly different approach while funding

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Speaker 1: lobbyists to try and stave off some of the recent

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Speaker 1: trends the U. S. Government has followed regarding you know,

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Speaker 1: curbing big tech acquisitions and mergers and policies. So, for example,

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Speaker 1: Apple and Google have both been trying to sway lawmakers

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Speaker 1: to allow the companies to continue to force app developers

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Speaker 1: to use the App store payment systems, something that various

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Speaker 1: lawmakers and courts have been pushing back on. The new

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Speaker 1: tactic appears to be an attempt at framing these conversations

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Speaker 1: as if you regulate big tech companies here in the

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Speaker 1: United States, then China wins. Now I'm oversimplifying, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: the argument is essentially that the US, you know, if

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Speaker 1: it beefs up antitrust regulations, that will give China the

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Speaker 1: opportunity to capitalize on the situation. Now, I'm not sure

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Speaker 1: how realistic that argument really is. I mean, on the

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Speaker 1: one hand, China certainly is big on pouncing on opportunities.

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Speaker 1: That much is absolutely true. But on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: the current regime in China has also shown that it

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Speaker 1: has grown suspicious of big businesses within China and has

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Speaker 1: started to restrict companies and push back against them. Potentially,

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Speaker 1: that's to make certain that no company accumulates enough influence

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Speaker 1: and power to threaten the government's absolute control over the nation.

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Speaker 1: Of course, whether or not an argument is logically sound

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Speaker 1: doesn't really matter. If the argument just works right, you

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Speaker 1: don't have to make a good argument for people to

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Speaker 1: believe it. See also all the anti facts and COVID

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Speaker 1: denial stuff. So we'll just have to see if lawmakers

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Speaker 1: buy into this premise. All right, We're gonna take a

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Speaker 1: quick break, but we'll be back with some more news

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Speaker 1: after this. Apple CEO Tim Cook's house has disappeared, or rather,

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Speaker 1: a blurry digital wall blocks his home in street level

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Speaker 1: views in both Apple Maps and Google Maps, so if

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Speaker 1: you cruise down his street in Balo Alto, California and

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Speaker 1: look at where he lives, you'll just see a big

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Speaker 1: blurry mess. Now. Cook has been the target of some

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Speaker 1: pretty disturbing stalking activity in recent months, so this is

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Speaker 1: likely a move to help avoid future issues along those lines.

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Speaker 1: And at first I was thinking, man, must be nice

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Speaker 1: to be able to remove yourself from folks just being

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Speaker 1: able to look at your stuff. But then I found

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Speaker 1: out that actually anyone can submit a report to have

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Speaker 1: their home blurred out in maps applications. Both Apple and

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Speaker 1: Google have a process for that. So if for any

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Speaker 1: reason you would rather folks not have the oportunity to

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Speaker 1: be nosy, looky, lose on street view, you can apply

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Speaker 1: to have your home blurred out. So I retract my

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Speaker 1: snooty statement. Tesla is issuing a recall a software recall

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Speaker 1: on more than fifty vehicles manufactured between two thousand and

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Speaker 1: sixteen and two thousand twenty two because of a rolling

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Speaker 1: stop feature that, frankly, I'm shocked was even a thing

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Speaker 1: in the first place. So here's the deal. Tesla incorporated

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Speaker 1: a mode and its full self driving beta, which, as

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Speaker 1: I always have to point out, is not really full

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Speaker 1: self driving mode, even though the company calls it that.

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Speaker 1: And this particular little feature was called the assertive mode.

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Speaker 1: And one of the things that cars would do while

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Speaker 1: in assertive mode is they would not come to a

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Speaker 1: complete stop at stop signs under certain conditions. Instead, the

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Speaker 1: cars would slow down and then roll through the intersection.

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Speaker 1: The company's stress this would only happen if the car

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Speaker 1: verified there were no other vehicles or any pedestrians or

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Speaker 1: obstacles detected within the intersection before doing it. But even so,

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Speaker 1: a rolling stop is, you know, illegal in most states.

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Speaker 1: Here in the US, drivers are obligated to come to

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Speaker 1: a complete stop at a stop sign, even if it

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Speaker 1: seems obvious that there are no cars or pedestrians or

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Speaker 1: anything else in the way. It's a basic rule of

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Speaker 1: the road. I found it shocking that Tesla would just

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Speaker 1: ignore that. I mean, I get the fact that tons

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Speaker 1: of human drivers behave that way, but that doesn't make

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Speaker 1: it legal or right anyway, Tesla is rolling back the

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Speaker 1: software update that allowed cars to be this u assertive.

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Speaker 1: We've heard a lot about how hackers have used their

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Speaker 1: skills to make money, but you know, more often than not,

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Speaker 1: we're talking either about white hat hackers who discover a

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Speaker 1: vulnerability and they report it and they claim a juicy

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Speaker 1: bug bounty for their efforts, or we talk about hackers

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Speaker 1: who target a company with like brutal ransomware. But in

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Speaker 1: this case, I'm talking more about good old insider trading.

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Speaker 1: And in case you're not familiar with that term, insider

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Speaker 1: trading describes the situation in which a person who has

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Speaker 1: knowledge inside knowledge about a company's performance acts on that

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Speaker 1: knowledge in the stock market before the information goes public. So,

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Speaker 1: for example, let's say I was working for Microsoft and

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Speaker 1: I heard about the Activision Blizzard deal before it had

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Speaker 1: actually been announced to the public. So I decided to

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Speaker 1: buy up some stock and Activision, thinking well, the price

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Speaker 1: is going to go up once this news goes live,

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Speaker 1: And that's insider trading, and it's a big no no.

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Speaker 1: I would be in huge trouble if folks discovered I

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Speaker 1: had done that, or even if I had just given

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Speaker 1: a stock tip to someone I know so that they

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Speaker 1: could do it for me by proxy or whatever. Well,

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Speaker 1: a group of hackers, allegedly including the head of a

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Speaker 1: Russian cybersecurity firm, managed to intercept reports various publicly traded

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Speaker 1: companies had been filing with the u S Securities and

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Speaker 1: Exchange Commission or SEC. Now, investors always pay close attention

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Speaker 1: to these reports, which companies file quarterly. If a company

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Speaker 1: posts incredible quarterly results, it could lead to a big

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Speaker 1: jump in stock prices. So these hackers were intercepting reports

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Speaker 1: and scouring them before the SEC would make them public,

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Speaker 1: and then they would move to make stock trades in

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Speaker 1: advance of the report's becoming public information, and they made

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Speaker 1: money this way. The SEC said that the trades were

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Speaker 1: so on point that it would be a trillion to

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Speaker 1: one chance to manage to make all those advantageous trades

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Speaker 1: without insider information. Anyway, the group targeted two companies that

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Speaker 1: serve as sort of a liaison between publicly traded companies

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Speaker 1: and the SEC, which is pretty smart. They didn't have

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Speaker 1: to touch SEC itself, and they didn't have to target

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Speaker 1: each individual company. They went with, you know, kind of

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Speaker 1: a sort of a sorting company in a way. It's

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Speaker 1: it's a coming that files on behalf of others. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They're like three big ones in the US that do that,

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Speaker 1: and they targeted two of them. I'm not sure what's

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Speaker 1: going on with the hackers right now, but since the

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Speaker 1: SEC is aware of the scheme, I imagine this particular

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Speaker 1: well has dried up for them. But yeah, I I

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Speaker 1: don't know how. You know what the stats is, whether

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Speaker 1: they're walking free or not. They did make off with

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Speaker 1: more than eighty million dollars in the process. That's a

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Speaker 1: big yaza uh oh. You know. We talked about PlayStation earlier.

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Speaker 1: In additional PlayStation news, Discord, the messaging platform most associated

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Speaker 1: with gaming, is rolling out support to the PlayStation family

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Speaker 1: of consoles right now. This comes several months after the

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Speaker 1: initial announcement that Discord would be coming to PlayStation consoles.

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Speaker 1: So PS four and PS five owners with a Discord

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Speaker 1: account can connect that account to their consoles and then

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Speaker 1: those players activities on their PlayStation will show up and

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Speaker 1: discord um Discords a very handy communication system, again largely

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Speaker 1: associated with games, So welcome PlayStation players to Discord. You know,

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Speaker 1: usually I advocate for harmony. But when the Harmony of

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Speaker 1: the C's, a cruise ship in the Royal Caribbean line,

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Speaker 1: sailed into the hazard zone for a SpaceX launch, it

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Speaker 1: was pretty hard to be on harmon east side. This

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Speaker 1: happened just this past Sunday when a scheduled Falcon nine

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Speaker 1: launch had to be scrapped when this giant cruise ship

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Speaker 1: moved into the launch vehicles downrange hazard zone. Now, the

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Speaker 1: launches take place at Cape Canaveral and the nearby Port

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Speaker 1: Canaveral is a popular departure port for various cruise ships.

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Speaker 1: Before every launch at Cape Canaveral, pilots and mariners you know,

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Speaker 1: people flying planes and people piloting boats, they are supposed

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Speaker 1: to check for notices UH notices to airmen in the

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Speaker 1: case of pilots, and notices to mariners for the case

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Speaker 1: of you know, boat people to make note of hazard

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Speaker 1: zones during specific dates and then avoid those zones. Now,

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Speaker 1: the SpaceX launch scrub meant that the payload and Italian

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Speaker 1: weather satellite would be delayed for the fourth time in

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Speaker 1: a row because the planned launches for Thursday, Friday and

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Speaker 1: Saturday all fell through due to bad weather. Fortunately, SpaceX

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Speaker 1: was able to hold a successful launch yesterday, that is Monday,

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Speaker 1: and delivered payload. No telling yet what if any repercussions

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Speaker 1: Royal Caribbean will face for its ship moving into the

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Speaker 1: hazard zone. I imagine that at the very least the

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Speaker 1: captain of that vessel is going to have a rough

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Speaker 1: time of it in the near future. And finally, some

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Speaker 1: engineers at the University of Maryland outfitted a drone with

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Speaker 1: wings modeled after the air screw as designed by Leonardo

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Speaker 1: da Vinci. The drone is called the Crimson Spin and

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Speaker 1: it has four propellers in that aerial screw shape. So

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Speaker 1: da Vinci proposed the aerial screw as a one person

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Speaker 1: flying vehicle, but it was really more of a thought

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Speaker 1: exercise about lift and the shape you would need in

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Speaker 1: order to generate lift. That was never something that actually

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Speaker 1: took flight, and there has been debate about whether or

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Speaker 1: not you could achieve flight using that design. The engineering team,

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Speaker 1: using modern day materials and a basic quad copter, proved

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Speaker 1: that it in fact does work. They submitted their findings

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Speaker 1: that the Transformative Vertical Flight twenty two conference, which I

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Speaker 1: did not realize was a thing, and while their demonstration

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Speaker 1: used a small quad Copter drone. They suspect that you

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Speaker 1: could actually scale this up to work on a human

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Speaker 1: sized aircraft if you so desired. Now, this is all

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Speaker 1: thanks to our modern access to rigid, lightweight materials. Da

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Speaker 1: Vinci would have had to rely on stuff like leather

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Speaker 1: and wood and rope, and these materials are are too

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Speaker 1: dense and too heavy for craft to generate enough lift

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Speaker 1: to counteract its weight. But with stuff like aluminum and plastics,

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Speaker 1: it's a different story. It's not exactly going to lead

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Speaker 1: us to a new approach to aircraft design, but I

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Speaker 1: think it's pretty awesome that we can say Da Vinci

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Speaker 1: was really onto something. Here and there is your tech

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Speaker 1: news for Tuesday, February one, twenty twenty two. If you

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Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics I actually cover on tech Stuff,

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Speaker 1: reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the

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Speaker 1: show is text Stuff hs W, and I'll talk to

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Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart

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Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit

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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.