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: Johnathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And
Speaker 1: how the tech are you? And it's time for the
Speaker 1: tech news for February one, twenty twenty two. And I've
Speaker 1: got an update on the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard,
Speaker 1: the video game company. And the update is that the
Speaker 1: United States Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, will review the
Speaker 1: deal to determine if, in fact, the deal would negatively
Speaker 1: impact competition within the video game industry. Microsoft is no
Speaker 1: stranger to antitrust investigations, having been the focus of several
Speaker 1: of them over the last several decades. One thing that
Speaker 1: does make this one a little odd is that apparently
Speaker 1: the US Justice Department will not review the deal, and
Speaker 1: typically you see the d o J work with the
Speaker 1: FTC on these things together. Now, I want to stress
Speaker 1: that it's way too early to conclude what effect this
Speaker 1: investigation will have on the deal. It's possible the FTC
Speaker 1: will just approve the acquisition. It's also possible that it
Speaker 1: might require certain concessions before allowing the deal to go through.
Speaker 1: Part of the deal might look at whether or not
Speaker 1: Microsoft plans to continue releasing Activision Blizzard games for non
Speaker 1: Microsoft platforms, you know, like the Sony PlayStation. Like if
Speaker 1: Microsoft said, yeah, from now on, Call of Duty is
Speaker 1: going to be PC and Xbox exclusive, that could be
Speaker 1: an issue. But in the early statements that I have
Speaker 1: seen around this deal, it seems to me that Microsoft
Speaker 1: is at least indicating that it's not going to shut
Speaker 1: out PlayStation at least not in the near term, so
Speaker 1: that might not be an issue at all. In fact,
Speaker 1: Microsoft will end up owning a former PlayStation mascot should
Speaker 1: this deal go through. I'm talking about crash Bandicoot, which
Speaker 1: at one time was kind of a mascot for the
Speaker 1: Sony PlayStation, and now well that's one of the properties
Speaker 1: owned by Activision Blizzards. So should Microsoft's deal go through,
Speaker 1: crash Bandicoot, the former PlayStation mascot will be a Microsoft property. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we knew that the deal would fall under scrutiny, particularly
Speaker 1: right now because governments around the world are tightening up
Speaker 1: regulations on mergers and acquisitions in business in general, like
Speaker 1: any big company, a lot of governments around the world
Speaker 1: are really looking more closely at proposed mergers and acquisitions,
Speaker 1: but they're definitely doing that big time in the tech sector. Now,
Speaker 1: if I had to make a prediction, I'd say this
Speaker 1: deal squeaks through. I don't foresee any obvious red flags,
Speaker 1: at least not from a regulatory standpoint. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's always great to see consolidation in a market in general.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're you're talking about a decreased number of choices,
Speaker 1: and decreased choice typically does not benefit the end consumer,
Speaker 1: so I don't I'm not a huge fan of it. However,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure there's a real case to be made
Speaker 1: that Microsoft would have an unfair advantage in the industry.
Speaker 1: I mean, Microsoft itself points out quite eagerly that both
Speaker 1: Sony and Tencent would still be larger video game companies,
Speaker 1: at least by revenue. So we'll see if the FTC
Speaker 1: pushes back on this. I would be surprised to see that,
Speaker 1: but stranger things have happened, and obviously I'm not privy
Speaker 1: to all the details of the deal. It could be
Speaker 1: that there's stuff in there I just don't know about.
Speaker 1: That would be an issue. Speaking of Sony and acquisitions,
Speaker 1: the Japanese company is making a purchase of its own.
Speaker 1: It is buying Ge Studios. Current gamers probably think of
Speaker 1: Bungee as the studio that's behind the Destiny games, but
Speaker 1: I will always think of Bungee as the game company
Speaker 1: that originally brought us Halo. Bungee handed Halo off to
Speaker 1: Microsoft's three forty three Industries in two thousand seven, so
Speaker 1: Bungee is not involved in Halo anymore. That happened after
Speaker 1: Bungee left the Microsoft fold and became an independent studio.
Speaker 1: Also a fun fact, Bungee originally started developing Halo with
Speaker 1: the Mac platform in mind. It was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a Mac game before it made its way to become
Speaker 1: an Xbox exclusive, at least initially. Anyway, Sony is acquiring
Speaker 1: Bungee for a three point six billion dollars. That's a
Speaker 1: fraction of what the Microsoft Activision Blizzard deal is, but
Speaker 1: then that's to be expected. Bungee is uh, It's not
Speaker 1: a small studio, but it's definitely smaller than Activision Wizard.
Speaker 1: The company has already released a statement saying that future
Speaker 1: Bungee games will continue to be available on multiple platforms, So,
Speaker 1: in other words, this does not appear to be a
Speaker 1: move to make Destiny a PlayStation exclusive franchise, though we're
Speaker 1: probably going to continue to see PlayStation exclusive content for
Speaker 1: the games, and just the game itself will be available
Speaker 1: on multiple platforms. Reportedly, Sonny plans to take a hands
Speaker 1: off approach when it comes to overseeing Bungee and allow
Speaker 1: Bungee to continue to operate as if it were a
Speaker 1: fully independent studio. We might also see some moves to
Speaker 1: adapt Bungee intellectual property into other formats like movies. You know,
Speaker 1: considering the trailer I saw recently for the live action
Speaker 1: Halo project, I think they should just take their time
Speaker 1: on that one. I'm throwing a little shade early today.
Speaker 1: And to round out our trilogy about acquisitions, let's talk
Speaker 1: about Word All now. If you're not familiar with the game,
Speaker 1: it's a simple online word guessing game. So the standard
Speaker 1: version requires players to guess a five letter word, and
Speaker 1: after you submit your guests, you will see which, if
Speaker 1: any of the letters you chose are correct. A letter
Speaker 1: that's highlighted in yellow means that you have guessed a
Speaker 1: correct letter, but it's in the wrong place in the word.
Speaker 1: A letter in green matches that It tells you that
Speaker 1: you matched both the letter and where it appears in
Speaker 1: the word, and that that should be locked into place,
Speaker 1: and you get six guesses before you lose around and
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the old board game Mastermind. I
Speaker 1: don't know how many of you out there have played that.
Speaker 1: It used to be one of my favorites as a kid.
Speaker 1: Very simple to play, um and and interesting to kind
Speaker 1: of develop strategies for it. And I loved it. And uh,
Speaker 1: you're and of course you're using letters instead of little
Speaker 1: pegs Mastermind used pegs had different colors and you would
Speaker 1: try to guess a I think it was a sequence
Speaker 1: of four, if maybe six, I can't remember, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that game. Anyway. What helped propel wordle into
Speaker 1: viral popularity is that you can share your results of
Speaker 1: each round on social platforms, and typically those those results
Speaker 1: just show your guests sequences. It doesn't show the actual
Speaker 1: letters you guess, but instead shows solid blocks that represent
Speaker 1: the letters. And so I remember seeing it on Twitter
Speaker 1: several weeks ago and being stopped as to what the
Speaker 1: all the gray, yellow, and green blocks. Men Like you'd
Speaker 1: see one line that was mostly gray, maybe there was
Speaker 1: a yellow or maybe a green block in there, then
Speaker 1: then a couple of other blocks until you got one
Speaker 1: solid row of green. I had no idea what it
Speaker 1: was until I looked further into it. And really that
Speaker 1: was a brilliant little game mechanic because it got a
Speaker 1: lot of folks like me into the game, just saying,
Speaker 1: what the heck are all these blocks that are showing
Speaker 1: up on my Twitter? And now The New York Times
Speaker 1: has purchased that game from its creator, a guy named
Speaker 1: Josh Wardle. Wardle is a software engineer who built the
Speaker 1: game as a gift to his partner who loves word games,
Speaker 1: and the deal is reportedly in the quote low seven
Speaker 1: figures end quote. So we're talking at least a million bucks.
Speaker 1: So way to go, Josh Wardle. That is awesome for you. However,
Speaker 1: for fans of the game, well a lot of them
Speaker 1: are a little nervous that eventually The New York Times
Speaker 1: will put Wordle behind a paywall. For the moment, at least,
Speaker 1: the Time says it will keep Wordle free to play,
Speaker 1: but it will be interesting to see if the Wordle
Speaker 1: community continues strong, or if the association of a once
Speaker 1: you know, scrappy little independent game now being owned by
Speaker 1: a media company is going to be enough to turn
Speaker 1: folks off of it. Like, there's some people who are
Speaker 1: who are gonna probably say I'm gonna bounce because I'm
Speaker 1: not interested now that it's you know, a corporate asset.
Speaker 1: But we'll see. I kind of hope that it stays
Speaker 1: free to play and sticks around because I think I
Speaker 1: really like the community that's kind of built up around
Speaker 1: word all um, and I enjoy playing the game. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm decent at it, but then I think most people are,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of a fun bonding experience. All right.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to some antitrust talk. According to the
Speaker 1: Financial Times, several big tech companies, including Google, Amazon, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Apple are trying a slightly different approach while funding
Speaker 1: lobbyists to try and stave off some of the recent
Speaker 1: trends the U. S. Government has followed regarding you know,
Speaker 1: curbing big tech acquisitions and mergers and policies. So, for example,
Speaker 1: Apple and Google have both been trying to sway lawmakers
Speaker 1: to allow the companies to continue to force app developers
Speaker 1: to use the App store payment systems, something that various
Speaker 1: lawmakers and courts have been pushing back on. The new
Speaker 1: tactic appears to be an attempt at framing these conversations
Speaker 1: as if you regulate big tech companies here in the
Speaker 1: United States, then China wins. Now I'm oversimplifying, but yeah,
Speaker 1: the argument is essentially that the US, you know, if
Speaker 1: it beefs up antitrust regulations, that will give China the
Speaker 1: opportunity to capitalize on the situation. Now, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how realistic that argument really is. I mean, on the
Speaker 1: one hand, China certainly is big on pouncing on opportunities.
Speaker 1: That much is absolutely true. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: the current regime in China has also shown that it
Speaker 1: has grown suspicious of big businesses within China and has
Speaker 1: started to restrict companies and push back against them. Potentially,
Speaker 1: that's to make certain that no company accumulates enough influence
Speaker 1: and power to threaten the government's absolute control over the nation.
Speaker 1: Of course, whether or not an argument is logically sound
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter. If the argument just works right, you
Speaker 1: don't have to make a good argument for people to
Speaker 1: believe it. See also all the anti facts and COVID
Speaker 1: denial stuff. So we'll just have to see if lawmakers
Speaker 1: buy into this premise. All right, We're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break, but we'll be back with some more news
Speaker 1: after this. Apple CEO Tim Cook's house has disappeared, or rather,
Speaker 1: a blurry digital wall blocks his home in street level
Speaker 1: views in both Apple Maps and Google Maps, so if
Speaker 1: you cruise down his street in Balo Alto, California and
Speaker 1: look at where he lives, you'll just see a big
Speaker 1: blurry mess. Now. Cook has been the target of some
Speaker 1: pretty disturbing stalking activity in recent months, so this is
Speaker 1: likely a move to help avoid future issues along those lines.
Speaker 1: And at first I was thinking, man, must be nice
Speaker 1: to be able to remove yourself from folks just being
Speaker 1: able to look at your stuff. But then I found
Speaker 1: out that actually anyone can submit a report to have
Speaker 1: their home blurred out in maps applications. Both Apple and
Speaker 1: Google have a process for that. So if for any
Speaker 1: reason you would rather folks not have the oportunity to
Speaker 1: be nosy, looky, lose on street view, you can apply
Speaker 1: to have your home blurred out. So I retract my
Speaker 1: snooty statement. Tesla is issuing a recall a software recall
Speaker 1: on more than fifty vehicles manufactured between two thousand and
Speaker 1: sixteen and two thousand twenty two because of a rolling
Speaker 1: stop feature that, frankly, I'm shocked was even a thing
Speaker 1: in the first place. So here's the deal. Tesla incorporated
Speaker 1: a mode and its full self driving beta, which, as
Speaker 1: I always have to point out, is not really full
Speaker 1: self driving mode, even though the company calls it that.
Speaker 1: And this particular little feature was called the assertive mode.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that cars would do while
Speaker 1: in assertive mode is they would not come to a
Speaker 1: complete stop at stop signs under certain conditions. Instead, the
Speaker 1: cars would slow down and then roll through the intersection.
Speaker 1: The company's stress this would only happen if the car
Speaker 1: verified there were no other vehicles or any pedestrians or
Speaker 1: obstacles detected within the intersection before doing it. But even so,
Speaker 1: a rolling stop is, you know, illegal in most states.
Speaker 1: Here in the US, drivers are obligated to come to
Speaker 1: a complete stop at a stop sign, even if it
Speaker 1: seems obvious that there are no cars or pedestrians or
Speaker 1: anything else in the way. It's a basic rule of
Speaker 1: the road. I found it shocking that Tesla would just
Speaker 1: ignore that. I mean, I get the fact that tons
Speaker 1: of human drivers behave that way, but that doesn't make
Speaker 1: it legal or right anyway, Tesla is rolling back the
Speaker 1: software update that allowed cars to be this u assertive.
Speaker 1: We've heard a lot about how hackers have used their
Speaker 1: skills to make money, but you know, more often than not,
Speaker 1: we're talking either about white hat hackers who discover a
Speaker 1: vulnerability and they report it and they claim a juicy
Speaker 1: bug bounty for their efforts, or we talk about hackers
Speaker 1: who target a company with like brutal ransomware. But in
Speaker 1: this case, I'm talking more about good old insider trading.
Speaker 1: And in case you're not familiar with that term, insider
Speaker 1: trading describes the situation in which a person who has
Speaker 1: knowledge inside knowledge about a company's performance acts on that
Speaker 1: knowledge in the stock market before the information goes public. So,
Speaker 1: for example, let's say I was working for Microsoft and
Speaker 1: I heard about the Activision Blizzard deal before it had
Speaker 1: actually been announced to the public. So I decided to
Speaker 1: buy up some stock and Activision, thinking well, the price
Speaker 1: is going to go up once this news goes live,
Speaker 1: And that's insider trading, and it's a big no no.
Speaker 1: I would be in huge trouble if folks discovered I
Speaker 1: had done that, or even if I had just given
Speaker 1: a stock tip to someone I know so that they
Speaker 1: could do it for me by proxy or whatever. Well,
Speaker 1: a group of hackers, allegedly including the head of a
Speaker 1: Russian cybersecurity firm, managed to intercept reports various publicly traded
Speaker 1: companies had been filing with the u S Securities and
Speaker 1: Exchange Commission or SEC. Now, investors always pay close attention
Speaker 1: to these reports, which companies file quarterly. If a company
Speaker 1: posts incredible quarterly results, it could lead to a big
Speaker 1: jump in stock prices. So these hackers were intercepting reports
Speaker 1: and scouring them before the SEC would make them public,
Speaker 1: and then they would move to make stock trades in
Speaker 1: advance of the report's becoming public information, and they made
Speaker 1: money this way. The SEC said that the trades were
Speaker 1: so on point that it would be a trillion to
Speaker 1: one chance to manage to make all those advantageous trades
Speaker 1: without insider information. Anyway, the group targeted two companies that
Speaker 1: serve as sort of a liaison between publicly traded companies
Speaker 1: and the SEC, which is pretty smart. They didn't have
Speaker 1: to touch SEC itself, and they didn't have to target
Speaker 1: each individual company. They went with, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: a sort of a sorting company in a way. It's
Speaker 1: it's a coming that files on behalf of others. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're like three big ones in the US that do that,
Speaker 1: and they targeted two of them. I'm not sure what's
Speaker 1: going on with the hackers right now, but since the
Speaker 1: SEC is aware of the scheme, I imagine this particular
Speaker 1: well has dried up for them. But yeah, I I
Speaker 1: don't know how. You know what the stats is, whether
Speaker 1: they're walking free or not. They did make off with
Speaker 1: more than eighty million dollars in the process. That's a
Speaker 1: big yaza uh oh. You know. We talked about PlayStation earlier.
Speaker 1: In additional PlayStation news, Discord, the messaging platform most associated
Speaker 1: with gaming, is rolling out support to the PlayStation family
Speaker 1: of consoles right now. This comes several months after the
Speaker 1: initial announcement that Discord would be coming to PlayStation consoles.
Speaker 1: So PS four and PS five owners with a Discord
Speaker 1: account can connect that account to their consoles and then
Speaker 1: those players activities on their PlayStation will show up and
Speaker 1: discord um Discords a very handy communication system, again largely
Speaker 1: associated with games, So welcome PlayStation players to Discord. You know,
Speaker 1: usually I advocate for harmony. But when the Harmony of
Speaker 1: the C's, a cruise ship in the Royal Caribbean line,
Speaker 1: sailed into the hazard zone for a SpaceX launch, it
Speaker 1: was pretty hard to be on harmon east side. This
Speaker 1: happened just this past Sunday when a scheduled Falcon nine
Speaker 1: launch had to be scrapped when this giant cruise ship
Speaker 1: moved into the launch vehicles downrange hazard zone. Now, the
Speaker 1: launches take place at Cape Canaveral and the nearby Port
Speaker 1: Canaveral is a popular departure port for various cruise ships.
Speaker 1: Before every launch at Cape Canaveral, pilots and mariners you know,
Speaker 1: people flying planes and people piloting boats, they are supposed
Speaker 1: to check for notices UH notices to airmen in the
Speaker 1: case of pilots, and notices to mariners for the case
Speaker 1: of you know, boat people to make note of hazard
Speaker 1: zones during specific dates and then avoid those zones. Now,
Speaker 1: the SpaceX launch scrub meant that the payload and Italian
Speaker 1: weather satellite would be delayed for the fourth time in
Speaker 1: a row because the planned launches for Thursday, Friday and
Speaker 1: Saturday all fell through due to bad weather. Fortunately, SpaceX
Speaker 1: was able to hold a successful launch yesterday, that is Monday,
Speaker 1: and delivered payload. No telling yet what if any repercussions
Speaker 1: Royal Caribbean will face for its ship moving into the
Speaker 1: hazard zone. I imagine that at the very least the
Speaker 1: captain of that vessel is going to have a rough
Speaker 1: time of it in the near future. And finally, some
Speaker 1: engineers at the University of Maryland outfitted a drone with
Speaker 1: wings modeled after the air screw as designed by Leonardo
Speaker 1: da Vinci. The drone is called the Crimson Spin and
Speaker 1: it has four propellers in that aerial screw shape. So
Speaker 1: da Vinci proposed the aerial screw as a one person
Speaker 1: flying vehicle, but it was really more of a thought
Speaker 1: exercise about lift and the shape you would need in
Speaker 1: order to generate lift. That was never something that actually
Speaker 1: took flight, and there has been debate about whether or
Speaker 1: not you could achieve flight using that design. The engineering team,
Speaker 1: using modern day materials and a basic quad copter, proved
Speaker 1: that it in fact does work. They submitted their findings
Speaker 1: that the Transformative Vertical Flight twenty two conference, which I
Speaker 1: did not realize was a thing, and while their demonstration
Speaker 1: used a small quad Copter drone. They suspect that you
Speaker 1: could actually scale this up to work on a human
Speaker 1: sized aircraft if you so desired. Now, this is all
Speaker 1: thanks to our modern access to rigid, lightweight materials. Da
Speaker 1: Vinci would have had to rely on stuff like leather
Speaker 1: and wood and rope, and these materials are are too
Speaker 1: dense and too heavy for craft to generate enough lift
Speaker 1: to counteract its weight. But with stuff like aluminum and plastics,
Speaker 1: it's a different story. It's not exactly going to lead
Speaker 1: us to a new approach to aircraft design, but I
Speaker 1: think it's pretty awesome that we can say Da Vinci
Speaker 1: was really onto something. Here and there is your tech
Speaker 1: news for Tuesday, February one, twenty twenty two. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics I actually cover on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the
Speaker 1: show is text Stuff hs W, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
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