Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you. It's time for the
Speaker 1: tech news for Thursday, June two thousand, twin D two.
Speaker 1: Let's get to it now. Here in the United States,
Speaker 1: one of the big big stories is that the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court has overturned the historic decision in Roe versus Wade,
Speaker 1: which guaranteed the legal protection for a woman to choose
Speaker 1: to have an abortion. To get into all of this
Speaker 1: would go well beyond the scope of this podcast, but
Speaker 1: the ramifications of that decision have spilled over into the
Speaker 1: tech community in numerous ways. For example, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of apps designed to help women keep track of
Speaker 1: their periods, and women in many states have been deleting
Speaker 1: those apps from their devices, and some political leaders are
Speaker 1: calling on rules that would grant protections regarding the privacy
Speaker 1: of personal data for people who use these kinds of apps.
Speaker 1: The fear is that a woman who's using that kind
Speaker 1: of an app in a state that has outlawed abortion
Speaker 1: could be put in a position in which accords subpoenas
Speaker 1: the app creator to get access to that woman's private
Speaker 1: medical information in a case brought against her, which is
Speaker 1: a truly disturbing thought and unfortunately as it's a possible
Speaker 1: realistic scenario. And so we're seeing this exodus from apps
Speaker 1: like that and a movement in liberal political circles to
Speaker 1: bolster privacy protection. Those privacy protections are long overdue, they
Speaker 1: span so much, especially for medical privacy. These are protections
Speaker 1: that we've need did for ages. We're just now starting
Speaker 1: to see some serious movement because of this crisis. Now,
Speaker 1: one way companies, including those in big tech, have responded
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court's decision is to offer to offset
Speaker 1: or cover the cost of travel for employees who need
Speaker 1: to go out of state in order to get medical
Speaker 1: services like an abortion. And that's because several states in
Speaker 1: the US have already ruled abortions to be illegal or
Speaker 1: they're in the process of doing so, and a few states,
Speaker 1: like Texas, have proposed making it illegal to even go
Speaker 1: outside the state to seek an abortion, which crosses into
Speaker 1: some very tricky legal territory because there's a question about
Speaker 1: whether a state can legislate on things that happen outside
Speaker 1: of that state. Those sorts of rules, by the way,
Speaker 1: are a big reason why women are dumping those period
Speaker 1: tracking apps. They don't want to uh to provide evidence
Speaker 1: that could be used against them in a legal case
Speaker 1: in one of these states. Anyway, and Gadget reports that
Speaker 1: Big Text offer to help support employees really falls short
Speaker 1: because for a lot of these companies, only a small
Speaker 1: percentage of the folks who work for the company are
Speaker 1: actually designated as employees. Many of these companies rely heavily
Speaker 1: on contract workers, and they are not classified as company employees,
Speaker 1: and therefore they are not covered by these sorts of policies.
Speaker 1: When you look at companies like Uber and Left, this
Speaker 1: is particularly extreme. These companies have fought very hard in
Speaker 1: courts to avoid having to classify drivers as employees. They
Speaker 1: have insisted that drivers are instead independent contractors, and as
Speaker 1: such those employees would not be eligible for the benefit
Speaker 1: of having travel expenses covered by the company. This issue
Speaker 1: extends beyond the tech industry, but tech is particularly prone
Speaker 1: to it. Ours Technical reports that Facebook and Instagram have
Speaker 1: been removing posts about abortion pills well individual states might
Speaker 1: make abortion illegal. These pills are still legal by federal law.
Speaker 1: They've been deemed safe by the Food and Drug Administration.
Speaker 1: As such, women will still have the option to order
Speaker 1: those kinds of pills through the mail, even if they
Speaker 1: happen to live in a state that has outlawed abortion.
Speaker 1: But people who are posting this kind of information on
Speaker 1: Facebook and Instagram have seen their posts deleted, and in
Speaker 1: a few cases the people have received a ban from
Speaker 1: posting on the platforms, typically a band that lasts twenty
Speaker 1: four hours. Now, it appears that the issue relates to
Speaker 1: Facebook's policy regarding pharmaceutical drugs. Namely, it is against Facebook's
Speaker 1: policy to offer, to sell, or to give away pharmaceutical drugs,
Speaker 1: so those sorts of posts will get removed. And that
Speaker 1: makes sense, right. I mean, if I had a prescription
Speaker 1: bottle that was filled with say, oxycotton, I shouldn't be
Speaker 1: allowed to post on Facebook. Hey I've got these opiates?
Speaker 1: Who wants one? That would be irresponsible. However, outlets like
Speaker 1: The Associate to Press and Vice have experimented with various
Speaker 1: kinds of posts about these abortion pills, and they found
Speaker 1: that a lot of them would be removed, even if
Speaker 1: the posts weren't offering drugs but were rather worded to
Speaker 1: inform people about accessibility. So, in other words, it's not
Speaker 1: against Facebook's policy to say, if you need access to
Speaker 1: this drug, here is where you can legally procure it,
Speaker 1: right like, this is the type of drug you need
Speaker 1: to ask for, here are the places where you can
Speaker 1: order it. That should be fine, And yet the investigations
Speaker 1: discovered that the posts were frequently being removed. Further, ap
Speaker 1: tested the policy by posting something similar about different uh
Speaker 1: controlled substances and objects, you know, stuff like guns in marijuana.
Speaker 1: Facebook has a policy against posting giving away or selling
Speaker 1: those as well, so there's a restriction there, and so
Speaker 1: a p would post some stuff wor did very similar
Speaker 1: lead to the way that it had worded some of
Speaker 1: the abortion pill posts. And they noticed that these other posts,
Speaker 1: the ones about marijuana, our guns or whatever, they would
Speaker 1: stay up, whereas the abortion pills posts were often removed
Speaker 1: within minutes of being posted, which suggests that Meta is
Speaker 1: taking a more aggressive approach with abortion pills than it
Speaker 1: is with anything else. Ours Technica also points out the
Speaker 1: Meta is one of the tech companies offering to cover
Speaker 1: travel costs for employees who need to travel to seek
Speaker 1: an abortion. However, Meta also restricts employees from discussing abortion
Speaker 1: openly in the workplace, and that creates this kind of
Speaker 1: situation where employees aren't sure how they can actually get
Speaker 1: the clearance they need and get the coverage they need
Speaker 1: if they are also forbidden from talking about it in
Speaker 1: in the workplace, it definitely complicates matters. Meanwhile, over at TikTok,
Speaker 1: a lot of users are creating videos that usked the
Speaker 1: decision to overrule the Row versus Weide decision. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: of those protests go beyond what TikTok allows, however, as
Speaker 1: many videos that include or claim to include personal information
Speaker 1: about the conservative judges who voted to overrule the case
Speaker 1: have been proliferating across the app. TikTok has been taking
Speaker 1: down such videos because, I mean, it violates the policy.
Speaker 1: You aren't supposed to docks people, but those kind of
Speaker 1: things are popping up faster than the platform can respond.
Speaker 1: The personal information includes home addresses, uh, though those addresses
Speaker 1: are also the same as ones that are publicly available,
Speaker 1: so you could argue these videos aren't revealing personal information,
Speaker 1: they're just spotlighting information that you could already find elsewhere.
Speaker 1: But other videos claimed to show stuff like credit card
Speaker 1: numbers for cards that belonged to the justices. Uh. The
Speaker 1: justices are finding themselves docks across TikTok, which I'm gonna
Speaker 1: guess is something most of them can't really get their
Speaker 1: heads wrapped around, because, let's face it, they're old. The
Speaker 1: not a judgment I'm younger than the justices, although Amy
Speaker 1: Coney Barrett is just three years older than I am.
Speaker 1: But I sometimes have my trouble getting my noodle wrapped
Speaker 1: around TikTok. In fact, most days I have trouble getting
Speaker 1: my noodle wrapped around TikTok. So I wouldn't blame the
Speaker 1: justices if they were a little clueless about that themselves.
Speaker 1: Brendan Carr, a commissioner with the FCC, recently sent a
Speaker 1: letter to Apple and Google demanding that they remove TikTok
Speaker 1: from their respective app stores. Now, this is not related
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court dock Sing situation. Rather, this goes
Speaker 1: back to a concern that the US government has had
Speaker 1: about TikTok for a few years, namely the possibility that
Speaker 1: TikTok is really a data gathering service for the Chinese
Speaker 1: government see TikTok's parent company is a Chinese corporation called
Speaker 1: byte Dance, and for years, the suspicion was that byte
Speaker 1: Dance was siphoning off personal information from TikTok users, particularly
Speaker 1: in the United States, in an effort to spy on
Speaker 1: US citizens, and developed various strategies such as how to
Speaker 1: conduct misinformation campaigns and we're gonna come back to misinformation
Speaker 1: a little bit later in this episode, anyway, BuzzFeed News
Speaker 1: reported that some leaked recorded audio from an internal TikTok
Speaker 1: meeting indicated that Chinese based employees have been regularly accessing
Speaker 1: US users private information, and that does sound creepy. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's creepy no matter who is doing the snooping. TikTok
Speaker 1: recently announced it had migrated operations to servers and Oracles infrastructure,
Speaker 1: implying that the service now has sort of a built
Speaker 1: in gap between its operations and the Chinese parent company.
Speaker 1: But Car argues that TikTok is nothing more than a
Speaker 1: surveillance operation in the guise of a video sharing platform.
Speaker 1: It's notable, then, no other FCC commissioners signed their name
Speaker 1: to cars letter, so it's just Car alone. But um,
Speaker 1: that's the case, and CAR has given the companies until
Speaker 1: July eight to respond, So I'm sure we'll follow up
Speaker 1: on this story later. Well, we've got a few more
Speaker 1: stories to go, but before we get to those, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. The web browser Firefox, which arguably
Speaker 1: has the best reputation for protecting privacy, at least among
Speaker 1: the major web browsers, has added a new optional feature
Speaker 1: to help with privacy. It strips away u r L
Speaker 1: query parameters. And you might think, well, what the heck
Speaker 1: is that. Well, if you've ever hovered your cursor over
Speaker 1: a link and you notice that the associated u r
Speaker 1: L looks a little strange because there's this weird string
Speaker 1: of characters in there. There might be an equal sign,
Speaker 1: and like it just seems like it's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff in addition to the actual u r L you
Speaker 1: are trying to visit. Well, often that string is really
Speaker 1: a way of tracking users who click on those u
Speaker 1: r l s. It's kind of like cookies and that
Speaker 1: it's a method of keeping track of user behaviors, And
Speaker 1: of course that's really valuable information. For one thing, it
Speaker 1: can help companies like Meta sell targeted ads. Uh, but
Speaker 1: user behavior is really the currency of the Internet. So
Speaker 1: this option in Firefox now strips out those U r
Speaker 1: L tracking strings, so you just go to the link
Speaker 1: without leaving behind those kind of footprints. The feature is
Speaker 1: part of the Enhanced Tracking Protection option in Firefox, which
Speaker 1: you can access by going to Settings, then Privacy and
Speaker 1: Security and changing the Enhanced Tracking Protection to the strict setting.
Speaker 1: Over in the United Arab Emirates, Amazon has bowed to
Speaker 1: governmental pressure to remove listings for lgbt Q plus related products,
Speaker 1: including media and rainbow flags Amazon. The company says it's
Speaker 1: committed to supporting diversity and inclusion, but that the company
Speaker 1: also must adhere to local laws. In the UAE, anything
Speaker 1: other than heterosexuality is illy goal, and so Amazon has
Speaker 1: capitulated to the government's demands that anything remotely suggesting that
Speaker 1: it's okay to be anything other than straight must be eradicated.
Speaker 1: What a way to close out pride month Amazon. The
Speaker 1: blockchain continues to be a buzzy concept in tech. It's
Speaker 1: what underpins cryptocurrency, n f t s and the evolving
Speaker 1: concept of Web three. But a recent report out of
Speaker 1: the Pentagon says that blockchain technology anal it's cracked up
Speaker 1: to be, namely that the decentralized nature of blockchain isn't
Speaker 1: as decentralized as people claim it is. The Pentagon found
Speaker 1: that frequently a small number of entities can disrupt the blockchain.
Speaker 1: A security research company called Trail of Bits specifically looked
Speaker 1: into Bitcoin and ethereum and found that four entities working
Speaker 1: together could disrupt Bitcoin, and only two entities would be
Speaker 1: required to do the same with Ethereum. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: this isn't just any four or any two. We're talking
Speaker 1: about prominent entities in both communities that own a significant
Speaker 1: bulk of the cryptocurrency. Further, Trail of Bits found that
Speaker 1: many of the servers connected to these networks are running
Speaker 1: on outdated software. That software can sometimes contain vulnerabilities, which
Speaker 1: bring the entire network into risk. Uh. The agency also
Speaker 1: discovered that various mining pool communities have lackluster or even
Speaker 1: totally absent security. So essentially, the report brings into question
Speaker 1: the viability of blockchain technology to handle critical transactions in
Speaker 1: a way that's trustworthy. The full report is titled Our
Speaker 1: block Chains, Decentralized, Unintended Centralities and Distributed Ledgers. And one
Speaker 1: of the big reasons this is important is that a
Speaker 1: huge selling point of that web three evangelists repeat, is
Speaker 1: this idea of a decentralized approach to transactions. You know,
Speaker 1: they've argued that this democratizes the web in a way
Speaker 1: that's closer to the original version of what the Web
Speaker 1: could be. So instead of these massive gum and he's
Speaker 1: like Google and Meta essentially carving out the Internet and
Speaker 1: owning big chunks of it, it would be distributed across
Speaker 1: all the users. But according to this report, that's just
Speaker 1: not necessarily the case. There's still centralization. It's just it's
Speaker 1: just a different group of names than what we have today.
Speaker 1: So he could say, it's just you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: the same song, just different words. I said we would
Speaker 1: talk more about misinformation in this episode, and here we go.
Speaker 1: A cybersecurity firm called mandy It Incorporated has accused China
Speaker 1: of funding misinformation campaigns targeting a Canadian rare earth mining operation.
Speaker 1: So China currently dominates the rare earth materials market with
Speaker 1: around eight of the market share, and pretty much all
Speaker 1: of the advanced electronics we rely upon requires at least
Speaker 1: some rare earth materials in them, so that's a heck
Speaker 1: of a lucrative market to dominate Mandy and says that
Speaker 1: a company called dragon Bridge, known for it's misinformation campaigns,
Speaker 1: has spearheaded an effort to undermine no pun intended the
Speaker 1: Canadian company Appia, rare Earth's and uranium corporation. Namely Mandyan says,
Speaker 1: the dragon Bridge operatives have taken to social media, They've
Speaker 1: created fake accounts and they've started posting messages that's just
Speaker 1: Appias operations are hazardous and environmentally destructive. Moreover, Mandian says
Speaker 1: that the same group did something similar to two other
Speaker 1: rare earth mining companies, one in Australia and one of
Speaker 1: the United States, and the tactic is all about stirring
Speaker 1: up controversy and outrage and then just letting that snowball
Speaker 1: into a massive issue. So you stir the pot, in
Speaker 1: other words, and then you let other people take it
Speaker 1: from there. Dragon Bridge has been involved in other misinformation
Speaker 1: campaigns that align with Chinese government's goals, such as in
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, when the network spread misinformation about advocates
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong who are attempting to promote democratic measures. Niantic,
Speaker 1: the company behind Pokemon Go, recently laid off around ninety employees,
Speaker 1: saying that the company needs to streamline operations. Pokemon Go
Speaker 1: has been a gargantuan success, but Niantic so far has
Speaker 1: been unable to replicate that with its subsequent efforts. The
Speaker 1: company launched a Harry Potter themed game a few years ago,
Speaker 1: kind of similar to Pokemon Go, but adoption was so
Speaker 1: low that Niantic would later just shut it down. Kotaku
Speaker 1: reports that Niantic has canceled four projects, which included a
Speaker 1: Transformers themed game, a game called Hamlet that was a
Speaker 1: collaboration with the theater company Punch Drunk, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: is a really cool theater company. They work in immersive
Speaker 1: theatrical experiences. Perhaps their best known one is a project
Speaker 1: called Sleep No More in New York. And then they
Speaker 1: also canceled a couple of games that have names that
Speaker 1: sound to me like they are internal code names, like
Speaker 1: not the official name of the game. Of those were
Speaker 1: called Snowball and Blue Sky. I should also mention that
Speaker 1: very recently Niantic announced a project partnership with the NBA.
Speaker 1: That's the National Basketball Association for those unfamiliar with that organization.
Speaker 1: So it's not like everything is shutting down. I mean,
Speaker 1: this was a really big announcement they made pretty recently.
Speaker 1: UM My guess is that this has led to a
Speaker 1: pretty tense situation within Niantic, and I hope that the
Speaker 1: folks who were affected by the layoffs land on their
Speaker 1: feet very quickly. There's an ongoing struggle in the United
Speaker 1: States among companies vying for access for the twelve giga
Speaker 1: Hurts spectrum of frequencies. SpaceX has filed a complaint with
Speaker 1: the FCC stating that the Dish network, which offers cellular
Speaker 1: service as well as satellite television service, that Dish network
Speaker 1: is moving into five G in a way that is
Speaker 1: going to negatively impact SpaceX is Starlink customers. Starlink is
Speaker 1: the satellite internet service that SpaceX launched in some regions.
Speaker 1: SpaceX reps say that dishes twelve giga hurts five G
Speaker 1: service is going to disrupt Starlink connectivity and that it
Speaker 1: would be so severe that quote Starlink customers will experience
Speaker 1: harmful interference more than seventy seven of the time and
Speaker 1: total outage of service seventy four percent of the time,
Speaker 1: rendering Starlink unusable for most Americans end quote. Further, the
Speaker 1: letter accuses Dish network of intentionally misleading the FCC into
Speaker 1: believing that the services wouldn't interfere with one another. Dish
Speaker 1: network reps say that the company is evaluating the claims
Speaker 1: that SpaceX has made in the filing, and a third
Speaker 1: party company submitted a report saying that more than Starlink
Speaker 1: customers should experience no disruption due to interference from five G.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to sort out all the claims here
Speaker 1: and to see what is true. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: you've got Dish and starlink to satellite based services that
Speaker 1: are competing against each other, which raises questions about allegations
Speaker 1: and reports. Right like, you have to make sure that
Speaker 1: the claims are valid and not that this is some
Speaker 1: attempt to hinder a compare a strategy, or on the
Speaker 1: flip side, that Dish isn't purposefully misrepresenting data in an
Speaker 1: effort to get a competitive edge on Starlink. And on
Speaker 1: the other hand, well, it's totally possible for radio waves
Speaker 1: to actually cause interference. I mean, that's why we have
Speaker 1: strict rules about how we can use the electromagnetic spectrum.
Speaker 1: There are some frequency bands reserve for very specific uses,
Speaker 1: and it's illegal to operate in those bands otherwise, So
Speaker 1: this will likely require more testing to see if space
Speaker 1: X's claims are accurate and if so, what solution the
Speaker 1: parties might arrive at to ensure that services don't disrupt
Speaker 1: one another, and yet both companies are allowed to do business.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna have another break, and when we
Speaker 1: come back, we've got a couple more news stories to
Speaker 1: close out. Okay, let's finish with a couple of kind
Speaker 1: of cool stories, or at least I think they're cool.
Speaker 1: One is that Cambridge University Hospitals and the University of
Speaker 1: Cambridge are partnering with a US based mixed reality company
Speaker 1: called gig XR to create virtual simulations of patients with
Speaker 1: medical emergencies and conditions. And they're starting with respiratory issues,
Speaker 1: but this could easily branch out and cover lots of
Speaker 1: different medical emergencies. And it's not unusual for doctors and
Speaker 1: nurses another medical staff who are going through training to
Speaker 1: have to do simulated UH emergencies and simulated visits. You know,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of actor friends who at one
Speaker 1: time or another took on a gig to be a
Speaker 1: fake patient to help train medical staff and how to
Speaker 1: assess and diagnose patients. So they'd be given a list
Speaker 1: of you know, their their symptoms and conditions, and it
Speaker 1: was their job to answer questions. So the medical staff
Speaker 1: would come in and ask as if the person was
Speaker 1: a real patient, asked them about what they were experiencing,
Speaker 1: how long you know, family history, that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and the actor's job was to give the facts that
Speaker 1: they had been uh given so that the medical staff
Speaker 1: could try and make a determination on what to do next. Now,
Speaker 1: this partnership is really about using mixed reality so that
Speaker 1: medical personnel can interact with a virtual patient, which is
Speaker 1: even better because you can program a virtual patient in
Speaker 1: a way that is consistent, whereas with actors, some people
Speaker 1: take the whole acting thing to a level that it
Speaker 1: probably doesn't need to go to. So this is an
Speaker 1: augmented reality approach that means that the headsets that medical
Speaker 1: staff will be wearing, it's actually gonna show them their
Speaker 1: real surroundings, and the virtual patient will be digitally overlaid
Speaker 1: on top of their the staff's real worldview, and that
Speaker 1: gives the trainees the opportunity to practice their skills and
Speaker 1: knowledge in a realistic but still low stakes environment. Right,
Speaker 1: So they can you know, practice making real time decisions
Speaker 1: and how to diagnose and tree patients and then they'll
Speaker 1: see the results right away, and if they've made the
Speaker 1: wrong decision, well, no one actually suffers for it. It's
Speaker 1: a virtual patience and no one's going to uh to
Speaker 1: suffer any consequences of that, other than the trainee learning
Speaker 1: that they made the wrong call and they have to
Speaker 1: figure out, you know, how to fix that make sure
Speaker 1: that they learn the proper way. Uh So it's not
Speaker 1: no stakes, but it's definitely lower stakes. You don't have
Speaker 1: to worry that you know, you made the wrong call
Speaker 1: and someone got more sick or maybe even died because
Speaker 1: of it. The application is called Hollow Scenarios, and honestly,
Speaker 1: I think it's a brilliant application of augmented reality technology.
Speaker 1: It's one of the ones that I really I really like.
Speaker 1: It really appeals to me. I like this idea of
Speaker 1: using technology to aid in the training of people in
Speaker 1: particularly difficult roles. Rob Manfred is a commissioner with the
Speaker 1: mL B or Major League Baseball, and he made a
Speaker 1: recent announcement that is making some waves. He said that
Speaker 1: the MLB is on track to implement an automated strike
Speaker 1: zone system by two thousand twenty four. And he didn't
Speaker 1: go so far as to say this is a certainty,
Speaker 1: but it definitely appears to be the direction the MLB
Speaker 1: is going in. And I'm not gonna describe or explain
Speaker 1: the full game of baseball, t'all. I know a lot
Speaker 1: of you aren't in the United States. Baseball might not
Speaker 1: be that familiar a sport, but you probably know that
Speaker 1: in baseball, you've got one team that's in the field
Speaker 1: and one team that's at bat and a single batter
Speaker 1: comes up. A pitcher throws a pitch at the batter,
Speaker 1: at the batter strike zone, probably not at the batter themselves,
Speaker 1: hopefully not, and then the batter has to try and
Speaker 1: hit the ball and advance around the bass. Right, that's
Speaker 1: the basic idea. Well, there is a thing called a
Speaker 1: strike zone. UH. This zones borders are determined by the
Speaker 1: width of home plate which the batter stands at. UH.
Speaker 1: And the width of home plate does not change batter
Speaker 1: to batter, Right, It's always going to be the same
Speaker 1: with the area between the batter's knees and the midpoint
Speaker 1: of their Torso make the vertical borders of the strike zone.
Speaker 1: So if a pitch passes through that that area you know,
Speaker 1: in between the middle of the torso and the knees
Speaker 1: and within the width of the home plate, that's a strike.
Speaker 1: It's a strike whether the batter swings or not. So
Speaker 1: if the batter doesn't swing and the ball goes through
Speaker 1: but it passes through that zone, it's considered a legitimate
Speaker 1: pitch and it's a strike against the batter. Three strikes
Speaker 1: and you're out. If a pitch passes outside that zone
Speaker 1: and the batter doesn't swing, it's a ball. And if
Speaker 1: a pitcher throws four balls to a single batter, well,
Speaker 1: that batter gets to walk to first space and then
Speaker 1: the next batter comes up to the plate. Now, the
Speaker 1: problem is we rely on human umpires to decide if
Speaker 1: a pitch was a strike or a ball. Right batter
Speaker 1: hasn't swung, so the umpire has to decide was that
Speaker 1: ball a strike, did it pass through the strike zone
Speaker 1: or did it pass outside and thus was a ball.
Speaker 1: The umpire is positioned behind the catcher, who in turn
Speaker 1: is behind the batter, and the umpire has to make
Speaker 1: a judgment call, and that can sometimes be tricky, and
Speaker 1: with the benefit of stuff like cameras, we can often
Speaker 1: see when these calls are bad, when they're incorrect calls,
Speaker 1: and an incorrect call can have a massive impact on
Speaker 1: a game. Like if it's a full count, like there's
Speaker 1: two strikes and three balls against a batter and the
Speaker 1: pitcher throws a ball, whether that if that if that
Speaker 1: pitch is a strike or a ball, that makes all
Speaker 1: the difference for that at bat. And we've had some
Speaker 1: recent cases where um, a ball that was thrown outside
Speaker 1: the strike zone was called as a strike and thus
Speaker 1: brought an end to a batter's at bat when it
Speaker 1: shouldn't have. And um, that's that makes people mad. Why
Speaker 1: there's been a call for this kind of a system
Speaker 1: to kind of remove human error from this part of
Speaker 1: the game. Now, these kind of systems have been in
Speaker 1: place in minor leagues for a bit. Sometimes it's used
Speaker 1: as a way to consult after a call is made
Speaker 1: to make sure that it was the right call. So
Speaker 1: it's almost like instant replay, so that you can make
Speaker 1: sure that when an umpire calls a strike that in
Speaker 1: fact it was a strike or else it could be overruled.
Speaker 1: But the proposed approach that they're talking about for two
Speaker 1: thousand twenty four. It could involve a system that sends
Speaker 1: information to the umpire via an earpiece. So in that case,
Speaker 1: the umpire's job, at least for that part of the game,
Speaker 1: would be to repeat what the system has determined, rather
Speaker 1: than to make a call themselves. And personally, I'm all
Speaker 1: for this approach. You don't have to worry about a
Speaker 1: robot taking sides in a game, or zoning out and
Speaker 1: thus missing something important, or blinking at the wrong moment,
Speaker 1: or just having an issue with perception as long as
Speaker 1: all the cameras and sensors are in working war that
Speaker 1: is so I say, bring on our robot pumps. And
Speaker 1: that's it for this episode of text Stuff the Tech
Speaker 1: News for Thursday June twenty two. Hope you are all well.
Speaker 1: If you have any suggestions for future episodes and you
Speaker 1: requests anything like that, you can send those to me
Speaker 1: via the I Heart Radio app, which is free to download.
Speaker 1: You can just navigate over to the tech Stuff part
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Speaker 1: I'll let you record a voice message up to thirty
Speaker 1: seconds in length and let me know if you want
Speaker 1: me to use the audio in an episode and I'll
Speaker 1: do that. Or of course, you can reach out on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is text Stuff hs W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite