Speaker 1: Welcome to tech 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 iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: how the tech are you. It's time for the tech
Speaker 1: News for Tuesday, November one, two thousand twenty two, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna start off with some semi stale news. When
Speaker 1: I published the last news episode, which was on last Thursday,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk had yet to finalize his acquisition of Twitter,
Speaker 1: but that actually did happen later on that day last Thursday,
Speaker 1: and Musk changed his bio on Twitter to Chief Twit.
Speaker 1: He's changed it a couple of times since then. Since
Speaker 1: that moment, a lot has happened and continues to happen
Speaker 1: over at Twitter. Musk fired former CEO Paragugrival, former Chief
Speaker 1: Finance Chill officer Ned Siegel, policy head vi J. Gutty,
Speaker 1: and general counsel Sean Edgett to start. Musk subsequently named
Speaker 1: himself CEO, which makes Musk the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX
Speaker 1: and Twitter. At the same time. He has also dissolved
Speaker 1: Twitter's board of directors and named himself sole director. So
Speaker 1: now Musk answers only to himself as both CEO and director,
Speaker 1: though I gotta be fair. Twitter is now a private company,
Speaker 1: so it has different needs from a publicly traded company,
Speaker 1: so a board of directors isn't necessarily performing the same
Speaker 1: function at Twitter as it would have when it was
Speaker 1: still a publicly traded company. The Washington Post, which previously
Speaker 1: reported that Musk planned to lay off as much as
Speaker 1: seventy of staff, which Musk later refuted, says now that
Speaker 1: up to the company could be laid off shortly, with
Speaker 1: a possible overall cut in the long term. In fact,
Speaker 1: according to several reports, the plan was to have some
Speaker 1: of those cuts take effect before today, because November one
Speaker 1: marks when several Twitter employees will receive grants of shares.
Speaker 1: But Elon Musk has straight up denied this news said
Speaker 1: that's not true. It was never the plan. He is
Speaker 1: also considering changing the verification process at Twitter right now.
Speaker 1: The way verification works is Twitter looks into accounts held
Speaker 1: by quote unquote notable people, and then in at least
Speaker 1: cases where Twitter agrees that they're notable, will go through
Speaker 1: the process to verify that the Twitter account actually belongs
Speaker 1: to the person claiming to be that person, right, like
Speaker 1: in my case, to make sure that it's me, not
Speaker 1: someone posing as me. That's why I put notable in
Speaker 1: in quotes kind of because my personal Twitter handle does
Speaker 1: have a verification check I've got that little blue check mark,
Speaker 1: and I do not and I qualify as notable, but
Speaker 1: there I am. Anyway, Musk is considering making this whole
Speaker 1: verification process a paid for feature wrapped into another subscription service,
Speaker 1: and that the service, which currently goes for about five
Speaker 1: bucks a month, would then be twenty dollars a month
Speaker 1: and you would have to pay that in order to
Speaker 1: maintain your verified status. We don't know much more about this,
Speaker 1: like would this mean that anyone with the financial means
Speaker 1: could get the verification tick? So it's not whether or
Speaker 1: not you're notable, it's whether or not you're willing to
Speaker 1: spend two bucks a year to get it. If so,
Speaker 1: would that mean that the tick even has any real
Speaker 1: value anymore? For those power users still on Twitter, are
Speaker 1: they going to cough up the cash to maintain their status?
Speaker 1: I mean, I can tell you that I'm not going to,
Speaker 1: But then I've used Twitter maybe four or five times
Speaker 1: over the last half a year, so it would be
Speaker 1: a waste of money for me to do that, no
Speaker 1: matter what, or could it mean that someone could actually
Speaker 1: pose as someone else, pay the money, get the verification tick,
Speaker 1: and then be seen as a legitimate voice for that
Speaker 1: person when in fact they have no connection. Is that
Speaker 1: a possibility? According to the Verge, which cited internal emails
Speaker 1: as a source, Currently, verified accounts like mine will have
Speaker 1: ninety days to subscribe to the new process or else
Speaker 1: lose that blue tick mark. Shucks, I guess it'll be
Speaker 1: gone for me. Musk also hinted that he's interested in
Speaker 1: bringing back the short form video platform Vine, which Twitter
Speaker 1: bought in two thousand twelve and then began to sunset
Speaker 1: in sixteen. It would take a few years before it
Speaker 1: was dead dead. Uh. Kind of interesting because you could
Speaker 1: argue that Vine in many ways presaged the arrival of
Speaker 1: platforms like TikTok, although Vine was a very short form
Speaker 1: video platfor form um and it took a lot of
Speaker 1: work to make a really good Vine. Reports say that
Speaker 1: Musk has given various teams within Twitter extremely tight deadlines
Speaker 1: to see these projects through, like the overhaul of the
Speaker 1: verification process and the resurrection of Vine, like a crazy
Speaker 1: aggressive deadline, at least in some cases, like by the
Speaker 1: end of this week kind of stuff. Musk has also
Speaker 1: really pushed hard on the Twitter staff already, and we
Speaker 1: know more about the folks who helped fund Musks take
Speaker 1: over a Twitter, which is causing other kinds of scandal. Uh.
Speaker 1: The people who helped Musk get the financing to to
Speaker 1: make this purchase include the former CEO of Twitter, the
Speaker 1: co founder, Jack Dorsey, investor Jason Kellicanis is another one,
Speaker 1: and a company that represents the interest of the Prince
Speaker 1: of Saudi Arabia is a major investor in this new Twitter.
Speaker 1: You might remember. The Prince of Saudi Arabia is the
Speaker 1: same guy who's been accused of ordering the assassination of
Speaker 1: journalist Jamal ka Shogi and is currently leading a country
Speaker 1: that has a horrifyingly long list of human rights crises
Speaker 1: to its name. The Saudi Arabian angle, in particular, has
Speaker 1: prompted U S Senator Chris Murphy to ask for a
Speaker 1: government review of Twitter's deal on the grounds of national security.
Speaker 1: So this story is not yet over. I expect we're
Speaker 1: going to see a pretty tumultuous time for Twitter in
Speaker 1: the near term. Let's switch gears, which is a pun.
Speaker 1: But you don't know it yet. We're gonna talk about Tesla. Okay,
Speaker 1: now you know. Anyway, Reuters reports that the Electric Vehicle
Speaker 1: Company hopes to go into mass production of its cyber
Speaker 1: truck by the end of next year. Elon musk Are
Speaker 1: initially unveiled the cyber truck back in twenty nineteen two. Well, well,
Speaker 1: let's say it was not too universal acclaim. Some folks
Speaker 1: found the design to be puzzling. Uh. The event also
Speaker 1: had some technical issues. For example, after proclaiming the armor
Speaker 1: glass windows on the truck to be virtually unbreakable, Franz
Speaker 1: von Holshausen through a metal ball the driver's side window
Speaker 1: to demonstrate this, except the metal ball shattered two of
Speaker 1: the windows. Musk said the reason for that was because
Speaker 1: earlier in the demonstration they showed how tough the doors
Speaker 1: on the truck were and they struck it with a sledgehammer,
Speaker 1: and that that subsequently weakened the windows and that's why
Speaker 1: they shattered with the metal ball. Anyway, it was one
Speaker 1: setback in that unveiling, but another was that a lot
Speaker 1: of folks found the angular design of the truck's body
Speaker 1: to be unusual and not in a cool way. Tesla
Speaker 1: stock dropped a bit in value after the unveiling, but
Speaker 1: according to the company, around a quarter of a million
Speaker 1: pre orders came in just five days later, so it
Speaker 1: seemed like it was finding its audience. The plan was
Speaker 1: to go into production by late one, but delays, not
Speaker 1: the least of which came courtesy of the pandemic, have
Speaker 1: pushed that back a few times now to late twenty three.
Speaker 1: Acquaint reuters, I'm curious if the folks who plopped down
Speaker 1: to Ben Franklin. Uh, that's a hundred bucks to y'all
Speaker 1: non Americans out there to reserve a cyber truck are
Speaker 1: still excited about the prospect of potentially owning one by
Speaker 1: the end of next year. At least a hundred bucks
Speaker 1: isn't really that much money when you compare it to
Speaker 1: the final selling price of the cyber truck that's likely
Speaker 1: going to range between forty dollars to seventy thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: depending upon the truck's configuration, as the truck will come
Speaker 1: in single, double, and triple motor versions. Now for a
Speaker 1: bunch of Meta news. On Monday, Meta's company Instagram dealt
Speaker 1: with a software bug that impacted thousands of users around
Speaker 1: the world, people reporting that Instagram suspended their accounts for
Speaker 1: no reason and others were just unable to access their
Speaker 1: accounts at all. Whatever the bug was, it took several
Speaker 1: hours for Meta to fix it. By the end of
Speaker 1: the day on Monday, reports from affected users had dwindled significantly,
Speaker 1: indicating that people were able to get back to watching
Speaker 1: reels and wondering why they don't see photos of their
Speaker 1: friends on there anymore. An activist group called Some of
Speaker 1: Us That's s U m of us published a report
Speaker 1: over the weekend titled stop the Steal two point oh.
Speaker 1: How Meta and TikTok are promoting a coup. This time,
Speaker 1: the focus was not on US elections, but rather the
Speaker 1: ones that happened this past Sunday in Brazil. In that contest,
Speaker 1: the incumbent President bolson Aro, a hard right conservative, faced
Speaker 1: off against a former president, Lula da Silva, a leftist candidate.
Speaker 1: The report alleges that Meta and TikTok both pushed forward
Speaker 1: false narratives promoted by boson Naro, namely that the election
Speaker 1: process wasn't to be trusted. If he lost, it would
Speaker 1: be indicative that the system doesn't work, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: like if I win, everything's great, and if I lose,
Speaker 1: it's because the system is broken and corrupt. The group
Speaker 1: accused both Meta and TikTok with allowing baseless conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: to spread across their platforms, and that since these messages
Speaker 1: included calls for a military coup, that the platforms were
Speaker 1: taking a prominent role in the destabilization of Brazil. A
Speaker 1: campaign director with the group named Flora rebell oh Ar
Speaker 1: Dwine did not mince words. She said, at this point,
Speaker 1: it is safe to say that Meta has become Bolsonaro's
Speaker 1: official disinformation machine. Their report comes in on the heels
Speaker 1: of another one from the human rights group Global Witness,
Speaker 1: which submitted political ads in Brazil containing misinformation to both
Speaker 1: YouTube and Meta. They found that YouTube accepted every single ad.
Speaker 1: Facebook was a little better. They only accepted half of
Speaker 1: the ads. So I guess good for Facebook for performing
Speaker 1: better than YouTube, which just accepted falsehoods without question. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the election finally happened this past Sunday, and Lula da
Speaker 1: Silva squeaked out a win over Bolsonaro, and I mean
Speaker 1: squeaked out like a percentage point. It remains to be
Speaker 1: seen if the incumbent president will actually peacefully hand over power.
Speaker 1: One bit of news I missed last week was that
Speaker 1: Business Insider reported employees at Meta are facing some really
Speaker 1: tough conditions, maybe not quite as chaotic as Twitter staff are,
Speaker 1: but not that far behind either. Reportedly, managers are telling
Speaker 1: employees they need to up their output significantly if they
Speaker 1: want to make it through potential layoffs. One unnamed worker
Speaker 1: in the report said, quote, you have three months to
Speaker 1: prove your worth, put in two effort, or you can
Speaker 1: resign now if you don't like it. End quote. That
Speaker 1: sounds pretty harsh. Mark Zuckerberg has indicated recently that he
Speaker 1: thinks Meta staff is bloated, that there are more folks
Speaker 1: that are there than are needed to get the work done,
Speaker 1: and that the company is not being nearly as productive
Speaker 1: or efficient as it can be, which may well be true,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like employee morale is generally pretty low
Speaker 1: and lots of folks are trying to line up other
Speaker 1: options should they find themselves in the job market in
Speaker 1: the near future. When you take this news and stride
Speaker 1: with Zuckerberg being absolutely dedicated to his metaverse, vision even
Speaker 1: in the face of skepticism and resistance, it starts to
Speaker 1: look ugly because people begin asking if Meta is even
Speaker 1: on the right course, or if Zuckerberg is chasing after
Speaker 1: a vision that's never going to be the big hit
Speaker 1: he's banking on. One thing is clear, the company's reputation
Speaker 1: has taken a massive beating over the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: The stock price for Meta is down to around nine
Speaker 1: dollars per share, which sounds like a lot, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, But if you look at the high point
Speaker 1: over the last fifty two weeks, the high point for
Speaker 1: that stock was three hundred fifty three dollars per share.
Speaker 1: Now it's down to ninety four. The company has lost
Speaker 1: a ton in market capital as a shan and investors
Speaker 1: are clearly worried about where Meta is headed. Will layoffs
Speaker 1: help the company or is this a bigger issue that
Speaker 1: requires Mark Zuckerberg to reevaluate his position on the metaverse initiative?
Speaker 1: Smarter people than I have to answer that question. All Right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to a quick break, but we'll be
Speaker 1: back with more news. Right after this. We're back, we
Speaker 1: get some more Meta news, and you know it was
Speaker 1: the prolific poet Carly ray Jepson, who once said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I just met you and this is crazy, but here's
Speaker 1: my number, so call me maybe. Well, we know that
Speaker 1: c r J didn't need to say that to Meta, because,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, Meta has lots of people's phone numbers,
Speaker 1: even if they never signed up for an account on
Speaker 1: any of their platforms, they probably have your phone and
Speaker 1: your email, whether you've ever been on a Meta platform
Speaker 1: or not. So it turns out Meta has tons of
Speaker 1: phone numbers and emails all of people who have never
Speaker 1: had a Facebook or an Instagram account. And you might
Speaker 1: wonder how did that happen? Well, if someone you know
Speaker 1: has your contact information in their contacts and then they joined,
Speaker 1: say Facebook, and in the process they allow Facebook to
Speaker 1: access their contact list, boom, your information has gone from
Speaker 1: their contact list into Meta's database, even without your consent
Speaker 1: or participation. Isn't that awesome? It actually reminds me a
Speaker 1: lot of the Cambridge Analytica scandal from several years ago.
Speaker 1: If you recall that all got started when an app
Speaker 1: developer took advantage of a loophole and Facebook's API and
Speaker 1: created an app that people could download and use they
Speaker 1: would get paid for using it. It was a survey app,
Speaker 1: and what they would do when they when they downloaded
Speaker 1: it installed it is they would share of their access
Speaker 1: to their Facebook context, which gave the developer the chance
Speaker 1: to view all of the downloaders friends as if the
Speaker 1: developer were one of those friends, like they could see
Speaker 1: it as if they were the account, the primary account. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there's a decent chance your contact information is in this database,
Speaker 1: even if you've never touched Facebook or Instagram. Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: Meta actually created a tool that lets you check to
Speaker 1: see if your info is in that database, and it
Speaker 1: gives you the option to delete your information from that
Speaker 1: database and even block Meta from ever including it again. Curiously,
Speaker 1: Meta has not advertised this tool. They have not alerted
Speaker 1: people that it exists. In fact, a link to it
Speaker 1: is buried in a very long page about how the
Speaker 1: company handles non user information, which means, if you don't
Speaker 1: use Facebook, you would have to navigate to this page
Speaker 1: for people who don't use Facebook to learn about how
Speaker 1: your information may have been collected by the company, which
Speaker 1: sounds counterintuitive, right, How many people are gonna do that?
Speaker 1: You're onto something there? But anyway, if you would like
Speaker 1: to see if your info is in Meta's clutches, and
Speaker 1: if you want to delete it, you can do so
Speaker 1: by going to this U r L Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash Contacts slash removal that will let you check your
Speaker 1: phone number and your email address against the database, and
Speaker 1: if the info comes up because someone shared their contact
Speaker 1: list and you happen to be in it, you can
Speaker 1: have it deleted and scrubbed from Meta's databases. Again, they
Speaker 1: don't really let you know that this thing exists, but
Speaker 1: it does. Today, Google kills off yet another product. Hangouts
Speaker 1: is going to join other Google casualties like Wave and
Speaker 1: Google Plus and honestly countless others. There are entire websites
Speaker 1: that are dedicated to documenting all the projects Google either launched,
Speaker 1: are acquired, and then subsequently shut down. There is no
Speaker 1: shortage of them. Hangouts was sort of Google's attempt at
Speaker 1: unifying various messaging services across the company. You know, the
Speaker 1: company had launched a whole bunch of different ones under
Speaker 1: different divisions because Google didn't really structure messaging as a
Speaker 1: central pillar of product development. Instead, messaging would fall under
Speaker 1: the domain of different departments. So you've got a bunch
Speaker 1: of separate products that were all geared toward messaging, like
Speaker 1: Android had one, and Gmail had one, and Google Plus
Speaker 1: all had their own messaging systems. Hangouts started as the
Speaker 1: Google Plus entry and was ultimately an attempt to unify
Speaker 1: all these disparate strategies into a single product, and for
Speaker 1: a short while, Hangouts managed to do that, Like You
Speaker 1: managed to have all these other things folded into Hangouts,
Speaker 1: which unified Google strategy and arguably was a really good move. However,
Speaker 1: the problem was Hangouts was under the domain of Google Plus,
Speaker 1: and Google Plus was a massive failure. Despite an initial
Speaker 1: spike in interest as the service launched, it failed to
Speaker 1: get a sustainable user base going. So once Google Plus
Speaker 1: got struck that man, Hangouts was kind of without a
Speaker 1: parent anymore and it languished, and so you didn't really
Speaker 1: have this centralized position, the centralized strategy when it comes
Speaker 1: to messaging, and Google would then also capitulate to the
Speaker 1: demands of cell phone carriers because the cell phone carriers
Speaker 1: didn't like the idea of SMS being lumped in with
Speaker 1: other messaging services. They wanted an independent SMS app in
Speaker 1: order to maintain a hold on that type of messaging.
Speaker 1: They didn't want it to be lumped in with all
Speaker 1: the other kinds of messaging services. So the a placement
Speaker 1: for Hangouts today, at least in Gmail, is Google Chat.
Speaker 1: It is not as good as Hangouts was at its peak.
Speaker 1: It's definitely an inferior product. I use it all the
Speaker 1: time with my co host aerial Casting for our show
Speaker 1: Large Neugron Collider. We use Google Chat to stay in
Speaker 1: contact with each other, but it is not the same
Speaker 1: as Hangouts at its peak. Now Hangouts has not been
Speaker 1: good for ages. It really suffered once it lost its
Speaker 1: lifeline with Google. Plus. The simple fact is Google really
Speaker 1: fumbled the ball when it comes to messaging. It cannot
Speaker 1: hold a candle to Apple, which has made its own
Speaker 1: I message platform a bit of a status symbol, not
Speaker 1: just a bit is a status symbol, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it has a very quick way to identify those poor
Speaker 1: schlubs who are messaging with an Android phone rather than
Speaker 1: an iPhone by having that different color little bubble pop up.
Speaker 1: Now I say this as an Android user, I have
Speaker 1: no interest in switching to iPhone, but I do admit
Speaker 1: like iPhone has a lock on the status of messages
Speaker 1: and you can be looked down upon for using an
Speaker 1: Android phone from Apple users. And you know what, if
Speaker 1: I cared about what they thought, I bet that would
Speaker 1: hurt my feelings. And other Google news, the company will
Speaker 1: no longer require app developers in India to use Google's
Speaker 1: own billing system for in app purchases. We've seen this
Speaker 1: story unfold all around the world at different speeds and scales.
Speaker 1: More and more regions are pushing back against both Apple
Speaker 1: and Google for their policies that require app developers to
Speaker 1: only use the in house building systems of the respective platforms.
Speaker 1: And that's because those in house building systems guarantee a
Speaker 1: cut for the platforms themselves. So we're typically talking about
Speaker 1: a thirty percent cut. It can be lower, like as
Speaker 1: low as fifteen percent, but it's typically a thirty percent
Speaker 1: cut of every in app purchase goes to Apple or Google,
Speaker 1: depending on what platform you're on, um as sort of
Speaker 1: the cost of doing business. This is why Apple CEO
Speaker 1: Tim Cook has been so bullish on adopting a services
Speaker 1: strategy rather than focusing on hardware production the way Apple
Speaker 1: typically was thought of, because services provide a steady stream
Speaker 1: of revenue and all you really have to do is
Speaker 1: provide the platform right, and in many places we're starting
Speaker 1: to see governments labeled the policy as anti competitive and unfair.
Speaker 1: So we've seen lots of calls for the companies to
Speaker 1: allow developers to use whichever building service they want. They
Speaker 1: can go with the in house building service, or they
Speaker 1: could choose a third party building service. That's a move
Speaker 1: that both Apple and Google have repeatedly resisted around the world.
Speaker 1: In some cases, we've seen stories where a company has
Speaker 1: placed like Apple has placed restrictions so that a developer
Speaker 1: technically can choose a third party building system, but we'll
Speaker 1: have to spend even more money if they use the
Speaker 1: alternative then if they stick with the in house method.
Speaker 1: So in other words, apples like, oh, sure you can
Speaker 1: choose a third party, but now you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: pay us. That kind of approach, which obviously doesn't fly
Speaker 1: well in the face of regulators. India's Competition Commission ordered
Speaker 1: Google to make this change, allowing developers to choose whichever
Speaker 1: building system they wish, and now, at least in India
Speaker 1: they can. We may see such things roll out to
Speaker 1: other parts of the world. Like I said, the European
Speaker 1: Union has really been pushing on this, We've seen sub
Speaker 1: movement here in the United States. Um, it's not the
Speaker 1: same everywhere, but we are starting to see a growing
Speaker 1: movement to prevent companies like Apple and Google from dominating
Speaker 1: the space using you know, this in house approach. Over
Speaker 1: on the same Brain YouTube channel, Microsoft Xbox head Hauncho
Speaker 1: Phil Spencer said, quote, We're not taking Call of Duty
Speaker 1: from PlayStation that it's not our intent. Our intent is
Speaker 1: not to do that, and as long as there's a
Speaker 1: PlayStation out there to ship to, our intent is that
Speaker 1: will continue to ship Call of Duty on PlayStation, similar
Speaker 1: to what we've done with Minecraft since we owned that
Speaker 1: end quote. You might think why would Phil Spencer say this, Well,
Speaker 1: there's been this growing concern since Microsoft is pursuing an
Speaker 1: acquisition of the company Activision Blizzard, that Microsoft would then
Speaker 1: restrict the distribution of titles from Activision Blizzard to either
Speaker 1: just PCs and Xboxes or essentially anything other than Sony
Speaker 1: PlayStation because Sony is the biggest competitor in the video
Speaker 1: game space from Microsoft perspective. So by using that Minecraft example,
Speaker 1: Spencer is pointing out that Microsoft has really expanded access
Speaker 1: to Minecraft, and it really does seem these days like
Speaker 1: pretty much anything with a screen can run a Minecraft game.
Speaker 1: So Spwer is making a case that Microsoft plan to
Speaker 1: acquire Activision Blizzard does not represent a threat to the
Speaker 1: greater video game landscape, that a company like Sony could
Speaker 1: continue to expect Activision Blizzard titles having PlayStation versions. Why
Speaker 1: is he doing that? Well? Over in Europe, Microsoft is
Speaker 1: facing some potential government investigations into its acquisition deal, and
Speaker 1: those investigations could scuttle the whole deal or at the
Speaker 1: very least delay it. Neither outcome is something that Microsoft
Speaker 1: is particularly interested in seeing. So the chief concern appears
Speaker 1: to be that Microsoft consolidates and becomes an anti competitive
Speaker 1: video game company, preventing Sony from access to titles that
Speaker 1: are really popular with gamers and forcing gamers to buy
Speaker 1: Microsoft platforms if they want to access those games. And
Speaker 1: Microsoft is saying that's not on our plan at all,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense, will make way more money if
Speaker 1: we continue to make titles for the PlayStation. Uh. Microsoft
Speaker 1: supporters have claimed that Sony is fueling the fear in Europe,
Speaker 1: that it's Sony representatives who are talking to regulators and
Speaker 1: getting them concerned about this deal and effort to investigate
Speaker 1: and potentially derail it. Uh. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: true or not, but that's the reporting that's going on
Speaker 1: over in Europe. As for what I think, well, I
Speaker 1: think Sony definitely has a bias here. I mean, Sony
Speaker 1: has an interest, a vested interest in seeing that this
Speaker 1: doesn't go through because they don't want to see Microsoft's
Speaker 1: influence grow in a competitive market in the video game space. Uh.
Speaker 1: So I don't think that the arguments are completely earnest
Speaker 1: and sincere. However, I also think that consolidation leads to
Speaker 1: bad outcomes in the long run, and that increased competition
Speaker 1: leads to the best outcomes for consumers. So it's complicated,
Speaker 1: especially in the video game space, like we're seeing more
Speaker 1: and more really big companies absolute really dominate that market,
Speaker 1: where you you're getting down to just less than you know,
Speaker 1: you could count the number of massive companies on one hand,
Speaker 1: and when you start to see that competition dwindle. Uh.
Speaker 1: The consumer typically is the person who suffers the most
Speaker 1: in the long run. So while I don't think Sony's
Speaker 1: argument is particularly genuine, I also am a little concerned
Speaker 1: about seeing fewer and fewer players in the video game space.
Speaker 1: And that's not even touching on all the the controversy
Speaker 1: coming out of Activision Blizzard in the various reports we've
Speaker 1: heard over the last year and a half. Really, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got a couple more stories to go through before
Speaker 1: we get to those. Let's take another quick break. Before
Speaker 1: the break, we were talking about Microsoft. I mentioned that
Speaker 1: there's a suspicion and that Sony has been influencing regulators
Speaker 1: and the EU too kind of view the Activision Blizzard
Speaker 1: acquisition with a skeptical eye. But we also have some
Speaker 1: specific Sony news to cover. The company's latest earnings release
Speaker 1: call has some bad news in it with regard to
Speaker 1: video games. The company revealed that saw a drop in
Speaker 1: PlayStation Plus subscribers. So, for those of you all who
Speaker 1: are not in on the whole PlayStation lingo, PlayStation Plus
Speaker 1: is a monthly subscription service for PS four and PS
Speaker 1: five owners. That service gives those owners access to online play.
Speaker 1: So if you don't have this service, you can't play
Speaker 1: online games on the PS four and PS five. There
Speaker 1: are three separate tiers of subscriptions. The basic tier is
Speaker 1: called Essential, then you have Extra, then you have Premium,
Speaker 1: and Obviously, these are at three different price points, and
Speaker 1: as you would imagine, the more expensive you go, the
Speaker 1: more benefit as you get, mostly in the form of
Speaker 1: access to additional PS four and PS five titles. It's
Speaker 1: a lot like Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass service. The two
Speaker 1: are similar in many ways, and Microsoft has really been
Speaker 1: pushing hard on Xbox Game Pass, kind of positioning it
Speaker 1: in an attempt to make that model the future of gaming.
Speaker 1: And you can understand why because if you get people
Speaker 1: hooked in on subscriptions, you've got a guaranteed ongoing revenue source, right,
Speaker 1: Whereas if you're just focused on producing games, your next
Speaker 1: title might be a clunker and a big failure and
Speaker 1: you don't make that much money. You might lose money
Speaker 1: on it because you spent so much in production you
Speaker 1: weren't able to recapture that in sales. If you're switch
Speaker 1: your your bottle around where you're selling subscriptions as opposed
Speaker 1: to focusing on selling games, well yeah, you might release
Speaker 1: some clunkers, but you still have all the great titles
Speaker 1: that that subscription has access to, which keeps people coming
Speaker 1: back over and over again. So Sony is trying to
Speaker 1: do the same thing and in fact, both companies have
Speaker 1: been trying to do this for for years. But Sony
Speaker 1: is losing some traction because while the division still managed
Speaker 1: to increase revenue year over year, it did lose some subscribers,
Speaker 1: a few million subscribers, so at least it's not losing money,
Speaker 1: it's just losing people. The earnings report also revealed that
Speaker 1: Sony's sales of the PS five have remained flat year
Speaker 1: over year, which is not a surprise. You can really
Speaker 1: chalk that up to being the fault of the supply chain.
Speaker 1: Ever since its launch, PS five has kind of trickled
Speaker 1: into stores here and there, and ear gamers just scoop
Speaker 1: up units as quickly as they hit store shelves. The
Speaker 1: supply chain issues Sony has faced since the pandemic began
Speaker 1: have not improved significantly. Sony has subsequently adjusted its profits
Speaker 1: forecast for this year. They reduced it from two hundred
Speaker 1: fifty five billion in down to two hundred twenty five
Speaker 1: billion year, so reducing it by thirty billion yen that's
Speaker 1: about oh two million dollars. I think anyway, the company
Speaker 1: will find ways to increase production on the PS five eventually,
Speaker 1: at least I hope so because if it does, I
Speaker 1: suspect that will go a very long way towards turning
Speaker 1: things around. With a larger PS five user base out there,
Speaker 1: you're going to find more developers who will focus on
Speaker 1: producing games meant just for the PS five, because right
Speaker 1: now a lot of developers are kind of straddling console
Speaker 1: generations because there just aren't enough PS five users out
Speaker 1: there to justify a fully committed production of a current
Speaker 1: generation game. So instead we're seeing companies make games that
Speaker 1: could be played on either the PS four or PS five,
Speaker 1: which means they're they're pulling their punches, they're holding back.
Speaker 1: They haven't really focused on making games that take full
Speaker 1: advantage of current console generations capabilities. And again, it makes sense.
Speaker 1: If your user base is small, you can't pour the
Speaker 1: same amount of money and effort into making games for
Speaker 1: it because you'll never get a return on that investment.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of a chicken and egg problem here.
Speaker 1: Until there are more PS five units out there, then
Speaker 1: there's no real incentive for developers to really go all
Speaker 1: in on creating current generation games. This, by the way,
Speaker 1: also applies to Microsoft, not just to Sony. It's just
Speaker 1: this was specifically about the Sony's Earnings Call. Finally, researchers
Speaker 1: at the University of Florida have discovered a potentially catastrophic
Speaker 1: vulnerability in LDAR systems that are used by several companies
Speaker 1: as they're working towards creating autonomous vehicles. Namely, the researchers
Speaker 1: found that by using a well aimed and precisely timed laser,
Speaker 1: a person could create blind spots in ALDAR system and
Speaker 1: that would mean that an autonomous vehicle could potentially be
Speaker 1: unable to detect obstacle, including pedestrians, that are masked by
Speaker 1: this blind spot. So it's not that different to having
Speaker 1: someone shine a very bright light in your eyes. You
Speaker 1: can't make out anything that could be behind that light.
Speaker 1: Same sort of thing. Now, the research makes it sound
Speaker 1: like these pieces that you would need to create this
Speaker 1: kind of system are pretty cheap and easy to get,
Speaker 1: so it would not be hard to put together something
Speaker 1: that would be capable of fooling light our systems or
Speaker 1: masking light our systems. But the actual attack sounds like
Speaker 1: it would require a certain level of sophistication and skill
Speaker 1: because you would need to accurately track the vehicle, aim
Speaker 1: and time the firing of the laser in order to
Speaker 1: mask the light are properly, but it is possible the
Speaker 1: researchers were able to do it, and if they're able
Speaker 1: to do it, then a bad actor would be able
Speaker 1: to do this. So it is a vulnerability, and so
Speaker 1: the researchers are urging companies that produce and use these
Speaker 1: kinds of light our systems to factor that in and
Speaker 1: to build in protections against such attacks, effectively patching the vulnerability.
Speaker 1: In fact, the scientists who worked on this project even
Speaker 1: suggested upgrades that would protect vehicles and their passengers from
Speaker 1: such attacks in the future, which is great, right, It's
Speaker 1: not just pointing out a problem, but saying here's the
Speaker 1: solution to that problem, so that we're not just automatically
Speaker 1: striking this from being a possible technology in the future. Rather,
Speaker 1: it's being aware of the limitations and taking steps to
Speaker 1: overcome those limitations before it becomes like a potential target
Speaker 1: where we could have a tragedy occur as a result
Speaker 1: of failing to address this vulnerability. All right, that's the
Speaker 1: news for Tuesday, November one, two thousand twenty two. Hope
Speaker 1: you're all well. If you'd like to get in touch
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Speaker 1: There are a lot of different reasons to be concerned
Speaker 1: about it, and then I'm concerned about it too, obviously,
Speaker 1: But I still check it, so if you do still
Speaker 1: use Twitter, and no judgment. By the way, if you
Speaker 1: want to use Twitter, I don't. I think that's fine.
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Speaker 1: the future, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah.
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