Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech are you.
Speaker 1: It's time for the tech news for November two, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, rapidly running out of days. In twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three and yesterday, I did an episode about the history
Speaker 1: of ad blockers, But one thing I didn't really cover
Speaker 1: in great detail was YouTube and YouTube's battle against ad blocking. Well,
Speaker 1: the platform has been rolling out an escalating response to
Speaker 1: users who have been employing ad blockers on YouTube while
Speaker 1: trying to watch YouTube videos. Gizmoto's Kevin Hurler has a
Speaker 1: piece on this on Gizmoto titled YouTube's ad blocker crackdown
Speaker 1: is getting harder to dodge, and he explains that earlier
Speaker 1: in October, YouTube began to show a pop up notification
Speaker 1: to ad blocker users, and the notification said that video
Speaker 1: playback would not work until the user disabled ad block
Speaker 1: or otherwise whitelisted YouTube. Now, initially, folks could just close
Speaker 1: out the pop up and continue on their merry way.
Speaker 1: A little bit later, YouTube beef this up. They then
Speaker 1: had a little checkbox you had to click on to
Speaker 1: notify YouTube that you were acknowledging you had been alerted
Speaker 1: to this policy, that you should not be using ad blockers,
Speaker 1: that this is against YouTube's terms of service, and then
Speaker 1: you could go on your merry way. Now, YouTube will
Speaker 1: just keep that pop up in place, and it'll block
Speaker 1: all activity. You won't be able to do anything else
Speaker 1: on YouTube until you actually take the steps to either
Speaker 1: disable or pause ad blocking entirely, or to whitelist YouTube.
Speaker 1: Hurler also points out that the Wall Street Journal has
Speaker 1: tracked YouTube's ad revenue over the last three quarters and
Speaker 1: that revenue has been on the decline. So we're not
Speaker 1: saying that YouTube is losing money. It's not that. It's
Speaker 1: just they're not making as much money as they had previously.
Speaker 1: It's going down. That's a trend that most companies are
Speaker 1: not super happy about. YouTube has been pushing for a
Speaker 1: lot more folks to subscribe to YouTube premium. That's been
Speaker 1: a campaign that's been going on for several months now,
Speaker 1: and they have also introduced a lot of new types
Speaker 1: of ads, including unskippable ads, longer ones too like it
Speaker 1: used to be that an unskippable ad would last maybe
Speaker 1: five or ten seconds, but now we have full thirty
Speaker 1: second unskippable ads on say YouTube TV, for example. And
Speaker 1: it has also started to remove some of the controls
Speaker 1: that video creators had when it came to where they
Speaker 1: would place ads against their content. I remember talking about
Speaker 1: how some ASMR creators were very upset because at least initially,
Speaker 1: it looked like they wouldn't have the opportunity to specify
Speaker 1: that ads should only be pre roll, for example, a
Speaker 1: not post roll, and that by removing that control, it
Speaker 1: meant that an ASMR AD or an ASMR video rather
Speaker 1: might have allowed an intrusive ad play after the video,
Speaker 1: thus potentially undoing all the work that the ASMR video
Speaker 1: was intended to do. Well. I suspect we're going to
Speaker 1: continue to see shifts in strategy from YouTube because they're
Speaker 1: going to continue to try and find the most lucrative
Speaker 1: way to make as much money as possible. That's kind
Speaker 1: of what businesses do. And I'm sure we'll also see
Speaker 1: new approaches to ad blocking go on as well. And
Speaker 1: so it goes. David Ingram and kat Tinbarge have a
Speaker 1: really good piece over at Nbcnews dot Com. It's titled
Speaker 1: critics renewed Calls for a TikTok band, claiming play has
Speaker 1: an anti Israel bias. So the journalists walk a pretty
Speaker 1: tight line in an attempt to be really objective in
Speaker 1: this piece, and they explain that several politicians are saying
Speaker 1: that TikTok is spreading propaganda to young people and favoring
Speaker 1: a pro Palestinian stance over a pro Israeli stance that
Speaker 1: with regard to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Speaker 1: But the reporters actually found that if you look at
Speaker 1: the stats on TikTok in the United States over the
Speaker 1: last month or so, the period of time covered by
Speaker 1: the point when Hamas attacked Israel and then Israel's response
Speaker 1: to that attack, not only are posts with a hashtag
Speaker 1: such as stand with Palestine not outpacing ones that have
Speaker 1: the hashtag stand with Israel, but also that those Israel
Speaker 1: posts are actually outperforming the Palestine ones. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: the stats seem to directly contradict the claims these politicians
Speaker 1: are making. They're saying there's this anti Israel bias across TikTok.
Speaker 1: The reporters are saying, well, based upon what we're seeing
Speaker 1: at least over the last thirty days or so here
Speaker 1: in the United States, there doesn't appear to be any
Speaker 1: indication of bias. In fact, we're seeing a trend toward
Speaker 1: the opposite if you're looking at those stats. The reporters
Speaker 1: say that the claims appear to be based mostly on
Speaker 1: anecdotal evidence, and also by taking sort of a longer
Speaker 1: view across the entire history of TikTok. Like if you
Speaker 1: look at all of TikTok's history and you're looking at
Speaker 1: the trends of you know, stand with say, stand with
Speaker 1: a Palestine or stand with Israel, then things get a
Speaker 1: little less clear, right, because you're looking across the entire
Speaker 1: history of the platform, but not the current events. And
Speaker 1: we all also know that anecdotal evidence is really useless
Speaker 1: with TikTok, right because TikTok's algorithm looks at what content
Speaker 1: you are engaging with on the platform, and then TikTok
Speaker 1: essentially draws the conclusion of, Oh, this is what this
Speaker 1: person wants to see, so let me just give them
Speaker 1: a whole bunch more of that. It reminds me of
Speaker 1: a routine that Patton Oswalt used to do where he
Speaker 1: talked about tvo, where he said he used TVO to
Speaker 1: record a couple of Westerns that he wanted to watch,
Speaker 1: and then TVO made the conclusion that he just really
Speaker 1: liked content that had horses in it, and so he
Speaker 1: got a whole bunch of horse content recorded on his behalf.
Speaker 1: This is sort of what it's reminding me of, which
Speaker 1: means that, you know, if you were to go on
Speaker 1: TikTok and let's say you actually did see a pro
Speaker 1: Palestinian video and you objected to that video for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: and maybe you even leave a comment giving your different
Speaker 1: point of view and what I am sure would be
Speaker 1: a reasonable and polite way, then TikTok doesn't see that as, Oh,
Speaker 1: this person ends up disagreeing with this content, I should
Speaker 1: show other points of view instead, TikTok says, Oh, this
Speaker 1: user has engaged with this content, I should show them
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of the same sort of stuff. So
Speaker 1: to you, the user, it seems like there's just this
Speaker 1: flood of content presenting just one side of an issue,
Speaker 1: and you might not see very many, if any, examples
Speaker 1: of the other side. But that's a very different thing
Speaker 1: than arguing that the entire platform has a bias. In fact,
Speaker 1: the reporters even point out that in other nations governments
Speaker 1: are actually arguing that the opposite is true, that TikTok
Speaker 1: has a pro Israel and anti Palestinian bias. So there
Speaker 1: are different governments making opposite conclusions about a supposed bias
Speaker 1: within TikTok. And I think the truth of the matter
Speaker 1: is this is really more to do with the sort
Speaker 1: of brute force approach of TikTok's algorithm. That is probably,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, what is fueling this, and that you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not a huge fan of TikTok, right, I do
Speaker 1: have some concerns about the potential link to China. That
Speaker 1: is something that I worry about, although I also acknowledge
Speaker 1: that as far as I can determine, there's not really
Speaker 1: much evidence to point to actual cases of Chinese officials
Speaker 1: using TikTok to you know, surveil national security matters or
Speaker 1: anything like that. But the potential is there, and that's
Speaker 1: what is I think a little concerning. But I don't
Speaker 1: really know that it's you know, that this particular argument
Speaker 1: has much merit. In fact, I think it doesn't have
Speaker 1: much merit the argument that TikTok has some sort of
Speaker 1: specific bias when it goes to the ongoing conflict between
Speaker 1: Israel and Hamas. I think that in most cases it's
Speaker 1: either a failing of critical thinking, or perhaps it's someone
Speaker 1: who's trying to score political points by you bashing against TikTok,
Speaker 1: or perhaps a combination of the two that's really to
Speaker 1: blame here. Next up, Scarlett Johansson is the latest famous
Speaker 1: person in a face off against artificial intelligence. The Verge
Speaker 1: reports that Johansson's lawyer is taking legal action against a
Speaker 1: software developer company. That company is called Convert Software or
Speaker 1: Convert Software. The company creates an app that's called Lisa
Speaker 1: AI nineties Yearbook an avatar and ran an advertisement about
Speaker 1: this app, and it included an AI generated copy of
Speaker 1: Johanson's voice. So it starts off with like a little
Speaker 1: segment of a behind the scenes thing from her filming
Speaker 1: of Black Widow, and then you get the a imitation
Speaker 1: of Johansson giving information about this app. Apparently this was
Speaker 1: all done without Johanson's knowledge or consent. And while the
Speaker 1: ad did feature a little bit of text that said
Speaker 1: the person in the app doesn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with the app itself. Her lawyer is saying, that doesn't
Speaker 1: really cut the mustard, and we are definitely getting into
Speaker 1: some tricky territory here. As I've talked about before, the
Speaker 1: laws here in the United States aren't exactly up to
Speaker 1: date with technological capabilities. There are very few protections in
Speaker 1: place when it comes to impersonation. Now, there are limits,
Speaker 1: like if you were to go so far as to
Speaker 1: impersonate someone in an effort to slander them, for example,
Speaker 1: that would be something that you could take legal action
Speaker 1: against because it goes under slander. Or if you were
Speaker 1: to impersonate someone and have that person apparently endorse a product,
Speaker 1: not just voice an ad, but to actually say that
Speaker 1: they had used and approved of that product. That could
Speaker 1: get you in some big legal trouble too, because the
Speaker 1: law states that in order to make an endorsement, you
Speaker 1: have to have actually used the product or service in question,
Speaker 1: and you have to give your real opinion about it,
Speaker 1: and that otherwise the endorsement can be misleading and false advertising.
Speaker 1: So obviously, if you're using an impersonation of a celebrity
Speaker 1: to make an endorsement, that would be a huge problem.
Speaker 1: But there doesn't seem to be, as far as I'm aware,
Speaker 1: very much information legally about impersonating someone in an effort
Speaker 1: to just do a regular ad, not an endorsement, but
Speaker 1: a regular ad. So I don't know if there is
Speaker 1: a legal basis to hold convert software accountable, but I
Speaker 1: suspect that cases like this one and a few others
Speaker 1: that have popped up over the last year or so
Speaker 1: are going to lead to new legislation that will expressly
Speaker 1: cover these situations in the future. All right, So who
Speaker 1: do you go to? If you're employe lets you go
Speaker 1: in order to automate your job and then hand your
Speaker 1: job over to AI? What do you do? Well? May
Speaker 1: I suggest that you use an AI powered career counselor
Speaker 1: to get you out of the situation? Sounds a bit trippy.
Speaker 1: So this actually has to do with LinkedIn. LinkedIn has
Speaker 1: deployed an AI chat bot feature that's meant to serve
Speaker 1: as a kind of career advisor. At the moment, the
Speaker 1: feature is in limited run. Only the people who are
Speaker 1: actually LinkedIn premium subscribers can use this feature right now.
Speaker 1: And you don't just sit down with this AI chatbot
Speaker 1: and then have a deep soul searching heart to heart
Speaker 1: about where your career needs to go at the stage
Speaker 1: in your life. Instead, the chatbot will activate when you
Speaker 1: are attempting to evaluate a job offer or maybe a
Speaker 1: job listing and you're trying to figure out am I
Speaker 1: a good fit for this position? Neuel. You can ask
Speaker 1: those specific types of questions and a little drop down menu,
Speaker 1: and the chatbot will essentially do an analysis of your
Speaker 1: resume and job experience that kind of thing, and then
Speaker 1: also analyze the job listing in particular and give you
Speaker 1: some guidance as to whether or not maybe you're a
Speaker 1: good fit for the job, or maybe you're just pooling
Speaker 1: yourself and you should go back to being a sign spinner.
Speaker 1: No shade on sign spinners, by the way, folks got
Speaker 1: to get that Dala dolla, and goodness knows, I'd be
Speaker 1: the worst sign spinner in the history of the gig
Speaker 1: if I were to give it a try. Also, real talk,
Speaker 1: let's say I lose my job. I honestly do not
Speaker 1: know what I would do for a living at this
Speaker 1: point in my life. It is a sobering thought, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people struggle when they find
Speaker 1: themselves in a similar situation where maybe they've done a
Speaker 1: specific job for a very long time, maybe there aren't
Speaker 1: that many analogs out there where they could port their
Speaker 1: skins over to something else. It's terrifying. So I think
Speaker 1: a tool that can help someone prioritize their own time
Speaker 1: when they're in a job search mode, I think that's
Speaker 1: a great thing. I think that's a very good use
Speaker 1: of technology to help people kind of narrow their focus. However,
Speaker 1: several things need to be true in order for me
Speaker 1: to be really one hundred percent in favor of this tool. First,
Speaker 1: the tool needs to work right. It needs to actually
Speaker 1: work well. Second, I would want to see this tool
Speaker 1: rolled out to anyone who's a LinkedIn user, not just
Speaker 1: those who are premium subscribers, because I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: in a position where you need to find a new job,
Speaker 1: you might also be in a position where you can't
Speaker 1: really afford to pay for extras in order to get
Speaker 1: that new job. And I would like to see the
Speaker 1: people who need this the most have access to it
Speaker 1: without having to sacrifice to pay for that access. Three,
Speaker 1: I also hope this AI powered tool isn't prone to
Speaker 1: unfair bias. So, for example, I would hope the tool
Speaker 1: doesn't assume that a woman would just be a bad
Speaker 1: fit for an engineer position because she is a she.
Speaker 1: I would want all those things to be true in
Speaker 1: order to really feel good about this tool, So hopefully
Speaker 1: those are all true eventually. Okay, we've got a lot
Speaker 1: more news to go, but before we get to that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. We're back. So the Attorney
Speaker 1: General for New York is going after a group of
Speaker 1: companies that are in the cryptocurrency space, and she's arguing
Speaker 1: that these companies have defrauded customers out of more than
Speaker 1: a billion dollars yikes, and they do have a connection
Speaker 1: with some pretty infamous failures in the crypto space from
Speaker 1: last year. So the companies that are part of this
Speaker 1: entire investigation and legal action include the Digital Currency Group,
Speaker 1: which is the parent company for another party in this
Speaker 1: in this legal action, Genesis. That's a crypto lending company,
Speaker 1: as well as a crypto exchange company called Gemini or
Speaker 1: if you preferred Gemini, and Gemini is the one that
Speaker 1: was co founded by the infamous Winkle Voss twins, you know,
Speaker 1: who also played a part in the early days of Facebook,
Speaker 1: and that's why it's called Gemini, right, Gemini are the
Speaker 1: twins when you're talking about astrology, So very clever. But
Speaker 1: the charges allege that these companies incurred massive losses and
Speaker 1: then tried to hide that information from investors because they
Speaker 1: wanted to keep the money flowing in. And if you're
Speaker 1: telling investors we're losing lots of money, chances are they're
Speaker 1: not going to be super willing to invest more into you. Now,
Speaker 1: one key element of the case involves what was a
Speaker 1: collaboration between Gemini, the crypto exchange, and Genesis, the crypto
Speaker 1: lending company. The service was called Gemini Earn Earn, So basically,
Speaker 1: the idea was that the investors who were using the
Speaker 1: crypto exchange Gemini, could loan money out to the crypto
Speaker 1: loaner company, Genesis. So Gemini customer says, all right, I
Speaker 1: will give X amount of my cash out to Genesis
Speaker 1: as a loan. Genesis in turn would loan that investor
Speaker 1: money out to its own customers, and the idea was
Speaker 1: that the customers would pay interest on the loan, Genesis
Speaker 1: would pay interest on the loaned money from the investors,
Speaker 1: and the money would trickle back up the chain and
Speaker 1: everybody would make cash right, So the interest rates were
Speaker 1: listed as high as eight percent. At certain points, you
Speaker 1: get eight percent return on your investment. Not bad. And
Speaker 1: according to the lawsuit, Gemini performed a risk analysis on
Speaker 1: Genesis and then determined that it would actually be really
Speaker 1: risky to loan money to Genesis, but Gemini did not
Speaker 1: communicate the information to its customers to the investors on Gemini,
Speaker 1: so they didn't tell the investors, hey, heads up, this
Speaker 1: is a risky loan. Instead they said, yeah, dog, it's
Speaker 1: totally safe and you can increase your wealth this way. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Genesis totally fumbled the bag because it was loaning out
Speaker 1: considerable amounts of money to entities that then went broke,
Speaker 1: one of which being Alimator Research. So if that name
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, that's because Alimator Research was one of the
Speaker 1: two crypto companies that Sam Bankman Freed co founded, you know,
Speaker 1: the other one being obviously the FTX Exchange, and Alimator
Speaker 1: Research went bankrupt. So this huge amount of money that
Speaker 1: was loan to Alamator Research was effectively lost. So this
Speaker 1: lawsuit is saying that JEM and I became aware that
Speaker 1: Genesis earned was not a good investment opportunity from a
Speaker 1: risk standpoint, but then specifically did not tell their own
Speaker 1: customers this information, which allowed the investors to continue to
Speaker 1: funnel money into an operation that was really not likely
Speaker 1: to create a return and in fact ended up being
Speaker 1: a huge failure. So this is another story pointing out
Speaker 1: how precarious a lot of the crypto community is. That's
Speaker 1: not to say that all cryptocurrency companies or crypto companies
Speaker 1: in general are in the same boat. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: they're all just a guaranteed loss. That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I am saying there are lots of examples of companies
Speaker 1: that are in that space that tried to capitalize on
Speaker 1: a boom period, Like they were really quick and rushing in,
Speaker 1: and they made some big, risky decisions, and then when
Speaker 1: that boom kind of ended, these companies found themselves out
Speaker 1: of their depth and a lot of them ended up collapsing.
Speaker 1: So just again a word of caution before you start
Speaker 1: investing into cryptocurrency. I'm not a financial advisor. I cannot
Speaker 1: give any sort of advice. Personally, I think that it
Speaker 1: is not worth the risk in most cases. I'm still
Speaker 1: not sold on cryptocurrency in general, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: largely a technology that benefits a few at the expense
Speaker 1: of many, similar to things like a pyramid scheme or
Speaker 1: a Ponzi scheme. I'm not saying that all cryptocurrencies are
Speaker 1: a Ponzi scheme either, just that there are some similarities,
Speaker 1: and I haven't seen a lot of evidence for, you know,
Speaker 1: like ones that are treated less as a commodity exchange
Speaker 1: and more like an actual currency. It's just it's rare. Okay.
Speaker 1: Reuter's reports that the company we Work could be filing
Speaker 1: for bankruptcy as early as next week. So first of all,
Speaker 1: to get this out of the way, we Work isn't
Speaker 1: really a tech company really, but I cover it because
Speaker 1: everyone treats it like it was a tech startup. It
Speaker 1: was a darling among tech venture capitalysts when we Work
Speaker 1: first launched, despite the fact that We Work's entire business
Speaker 1: model was predicated upon an idea that wasn't remotely new
Speaker 1: or innovative. It's it wasn't like we Work was breaking
Speaker 1: the mold and coming up with something that had never
Speaker 1: been tried before. It was actually a business idea that
Speaker 1: traditionally had proven to be really challenging, and one had
Speaker 1: pretty low profit margins. So we Work's business model, in
Speaker 1: case you're not aware, is the company purchases or leases
Speaker 1: office space in large, typically urban communities, and then it
Speaker 1: will lease or sub lease those spaces to various individuals
Speaker 1: and small companies so that they will have an office
Speaker 1: location they can use, but they don't have to go
Speaker 1: to the extent of actually, you know, purchasing or renting
Speaker 1: dedicated office space that would require a much larger financial investment,
Speaker 1: so they can save money by renting at a smaller
Speaker 1: fee a section of office space in this communal office
Speaker 1: location run by we Work. Now, that's it as far
Speaker 1: as the business plan goes. But the WeWork story has
Speaker 1: all sorts of bizarre twists and turns. Some of it
Speaker 1: is your classic conflict of interest stuff because it was
Speaker 1: discovered that the company's founder was acquiring a real estate
Speaker 1: on his own and then using we Work to purchase
Speaker 1: a lease from him for that property, which is certainly questionable.
Speaker 1: Right Like if you run a company and then on
Speaker 1: your own, you go out and buy something and then
Speaker 1: you direct your company to purchase the thing you bought
Speaker 1: at a huge profit for you personally, that there is
Speaker 1: pretty darn questionable. But on top of that, his wife
Speaker 1: was drafting some very weird corporate documents that seem to
Speaker 1: have more in common with Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop company, which
Speaker 1: you know, kind of makes more sense when you realize
Speaker 1: the two women are actually related to each other. The
Speaker 1: whole story is weird. There are entire documentaries about it,
Speaker 1: and great YouTube videos as well. Maybe at one point,
Speaker 1: we Work was seen as a being at like a
Speaker 1: massive disruptor in office real estate, but now the company
Speaker 1: finds itself on the verge of obsolescence tech stuff. We're
Speaker 1: more of a general kind of business podcast. I would
Speaker 1: probably do a full series of episodes about we Work
Speaker 1: and really dive into the evolution and fall of that company,
Speaker 1: but I think I'm going to leave that to other shows.
Speaker 1: It just figured I should cover this because we Work
Speaker 1: was treated as though it were a tech startup from
Speaker 1: the very beginning, and now we're seeing the end of it.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about an actual tech company. So by
Speaker 1: the end of today, you know, Thursday, November two, Apple
Speaker 1: is expected to post a quarterly result that will indicate
Speaker 1: a decline in revenue for the fourth consecutive quarter. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, over the course of a year, Apple's
Speaker 1: revenue has declined quarter by quarter at least compared to
Speaker 1: the same time last year, right, and revenue decline is
Speaker 1: not something that you really want to see. This is
Speaker 1: all according to CNBC. Now, this is not to say
Speaker 1: that Apple is in trouble. That's not the case. Again,
Speaker 1: we're talking about decline in revenue, but we're not talking
Speaker 1: about the company losing money. It's just not making as
Speaker 1: much money as it did this time last year. The
Speaker 1: company is still making boatloads of money every year. The
Speaker 1: expectation for this quarter, which will know for sure by
Speaker 1: the end of today, but the expectations that Apple's going
Speaker 1: to report on making around eighty nine point two eight
Speaker 1: billion dollars in sales. That's billion with a B. That
Speaker 1: is an unimaginable amount of money to me. And that's
Speaker 1: just one quarter of the year. However, even at eighty
Speaker 1: nine point to eight billion dollars, that's still a one
Speaker 1: percent drop from what the company made in sales this
Speaker 1: time last year. Now, they're probably tons of reasons for
Speaker 1: this decline, and a lot of those reasons, I would
Speaker 1: argue are totally outside of Apple's direct control right, like
Speaker 1: the state of the economy in general is an example.
Speaker 1: Apple doesn't control that, and some people, I'm guessing, are
Speaker 1: willing to stick with their current technology and use it
Speaker 1: for maybe longer than they typically would because they're just
Speaker 1: trying to be a little more careful with their own
Speaker 1: personal budget. Then you also have Apple customers who might
Speaker 1: feel that some of the more recent products Apple has
Speaker 1: released just haven't been innovative enough or shown enough reasons
Speaker 1: to upgrade from what you're currently using. So this would
Speaker 1: be the people who say, oh, you know, Apple doesn't
Speaker 1: end up creating really cool products the way it used to.
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily disagree with that, I guess because part
Speaker 1: of it is that it's been a while since Apple
Speaker 1: has been able to introduce sort of a new product
Speaker 1: category and do the same thing that it did with
Speaker 1: things like it be three players with the iPod, smartphones
Speaker 1: with the iPhone tablet, computers with the iPad, et cetera.
Speaker 1: It's been a while since they've been able to do
Speaker 1: something like that, and I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: had this expectation that every few years, Apple was just
Speaker 1: going to come out with a new product line that
Speaker 1: would redefine a gadget and create a brand new way
Speaker 1: for Apple to print money. But that's hard to do,
Speaker 1: and it's also hard to like innovate in a way
Speaker 1: where you're significantly improving the performance and quality of the
Speaker 1: products you're making. So, you know, I don't fully blame
Speaker 1: Apple for this. I do think it puts a lot
Speaker 1: more pressure on the company to try and create those
Speaker 1: innovative products. I think Apple's experimentation with augmented and mixed
Speaker 1: reality kind of show that the company has been thinking
Speaker 1: about that but just hasn't been able to nail the
Speaker 1: execution in a way that I think is going to
Speaker 1: have a huge impact on the market. We'll see. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm wrong. I've been wrong about lots of outher Apple stuff.
Speaker 1: I didn't think the iPad was going to make it,
Speaker 1: and I was completely wrong about that, So maybe I'm
Speaker 1: totally wrong about mixed reality too. We'll have to see.
Speaker 1: But I imagine that it's going to take another year
Speaker 1: for investors to really get super excited about Apple again
Speaker 1: in order to, you know, kind of reverse this trend.
Speaker 1: I don't think investors are losing hope in Apple, because again,
Speaker 1: the company is a juggernaut it makes so much money
Speaker 1: that it's hard to say, oh, well, I'm going to
Speaker 1: pull out Apple because their sales went down a little
Speaker 1: bit this year compared to last year. But then again,
Speaker 1: investors are finicky people at times, so who knows. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got a few more stories to cover. But before
Speaker 1: I do that, let's take another quick break. So we're back,
Speaker 1: and there is a deal. It's actually been in development
Speaker 1: for several years I think five years now that may
Speaker 1: finally be close to closing in the not too distant future.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking about the Walt Disney companies purchase of
Speaker 1: the streaming platform Hulu. So Disney has been part of
Speaker 1: Hulu for years, Like that's not new. But once upon
Speaker 1: a time, Hulu was kind of a collaborative project. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of different companies that were part of
Speaker 1: Hulu early on, largely because these were companies that were
Speaker 1: trying to oppose Netflix. The idea being that they didn't
Speaker 1: want to lose control of who actually has access to
Speaker 1: certain content. The studios thought, well, if we have our
Speaker 1: own streaming platform, we can compete against Netflix. Netflix will
Speaker 1: not be the only game in town. They will not
Speaker 1: dominate the streaming landscape. So Hulu became a thing. These days, however,
Speaker 1: the stakeholders really come down to Disney and then Comcast.
Speaker 1: Comcast owns about a third, in fact a third of Hulu,
Speaker 1: like thirty three percent of Hulu. So again, five years ago,
Speaker 1: these two entities agreed that Disney would purchase Hulu in
Speaker 1: total and pay out Comcast for its shares. They recently
Speaker 1: came to an agreement about how much that will be.
Speaker 1: At minimum, which is eight point six one billion dollars.
Speaker 1: That's what Disney will have to pay to get full
Speaker 1: ownership of Hulu. And again that's not for all of Hulu.
Speaker 1: That's representing one third of Hulu now, I say at least,
Speaker 1: because the amount actually will depend upon what Hulu's fair
Speaker 1: market value was on September thirtieth, that's when this agreement
Speaker 1: actually happened, although we're only really hearing details about it
Speaker 1: now as we're getting close to earnings calls and such.
Speaker 1: So the eight point six one was based on a
Speaker 1: minimum valuation that of Hulu being twenty seven point five
Speaker 1: billion dollars. But that agreement was made half a decade ago.
Speaker 1: It was kind of just based off of projections, so
Speaker 1: it's possible that on September thirtieth, Hulu's fair market value
Speaker 1: was higher than twenty seven point five billion dollars, perhaps
Speaker 1: even significantly higher. And if that's the case, Disney will
Speaker 1: be beholden to make up the difference of that, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty three percent of that. So like if instead of
Speaker 1: twenty seven point five billion, uh an analysis says that
Speaker 1: on September thirtieth of this year, Hulu is worth like
Speaker 1: forty billion. Disney's going to have to pay the difference
Speaker 1: there to in addition to that eight point six one
Speaker 1: billion dollars to complete the transaction. So it's not paid
Speaker 1: for and done, but it's up. It'll be interesting to
Speaker 1: see what Disney does. You know, We've heard rumors that
Speaker 1: Disney plans on integrating Hulu with the Disney Plus streaming platform,
Speaker 1: which is the one reason why I haven't subscribed to Hulu.
Speaker 1: I am a Disney Plus subscriber, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll just wait because if these two merge, I
Speaker 1: may end up just you know, I'll probably have to
Speaker 1: pay more because I can't imagine the price remaining the same,
Speaker 1: but I may be able to access both on the
Speaker 1: same platform. So we'll see Disney is going to hold
Speaker 1: an earnings call next week, so there's a good chance
Speaker 1: that I will have an update next week and I
Speaker 1: can talk more about it then. The Guardian here this
Speaker 1: is our technically our final story, but I do have
Speaker 1: some recommendations afterwards. But The Guardian reports that the Pentagon
Speaker 1: here in the United States has launched an online reporting
Speaker 1: tool for folks who have information about unidentified anomalist phenomena
Speaker 1: or UAPs. So UAP is the current acceptable term for
Speaker 1: what we used to call UFOs right unidentified flying objects
Speaker 1: now at the moment, this tool is not open to
Speaker 1: the public. Right now, only folks who have quote direct
Speaker 1: knowledge of US government programs or activities related to UAP
Speaker 1: dating back to nineteen forty five end quote have access
Speaker 1: to this particular tool, which is like an online form.
Speaker 1: The Pentagon does plan to roll out a publicly accessible
Speaker 1: version of this tool sometime in the future. I don't
Speaker 1: have a timeline on that, but it is supposed to
Speaker 1: be coming. You could not pay me enough to be
Speaker 1: the person who has to filter through all the stuff
Speaker 1: that's going to come through that public portal. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they're going to be countless hoaxes there'll be people who
Speaker 1: are just playing trolling, they'll be true believers who are
Speaker 1: spouting off stuff about UAPs. The sheer volume of weirdness
Speaker 1: that is going to hit that inbox is unfathomable to me.
Speaker 1: This is all part of the US government's attempt to
Speaker 1: make the whole UAP investigation stuff more transparent. So does
Speaker 1: this mean, like various conspiracy theories have argued that the
Speaker 1: US government has secretly been hiding evidence of aliens, that
Speaker 1: maybe we've even found examples of alien technology and then
Speaker 1: reverse engineered it in order to create amazing updates to
Speaker 1: our tech. No, it does not mean that. In fact,
Speaker 1: the government officials who have been part of this project
Speaker 1: say I'm not aware of anyone doing anything even remotely
Speaker 1: related to that. So if it's happening, I've never heard
Speaker 1: of it. I suspect that no amount of transparency is
Speaker 1: ever going to eliminate the various stories that circulate about
Speaker 1: suspect did cover ups and conspiracies all meant to hide
Speaker 1: the truth from the rest of US. I don't think
Speaker 1: that that's at all likely. I don't think it's even possible.
Speaker 1: But I don't think there's any way to ever stop
Speaker 1: those stories, I still find it very difficult to believe
Speaker 1: that any alien civilization has visited us, not because it
Speaker 1: would be completely impossible, but when you start the factor
Speaker 1: in the requirements that would be necessary for aliens to
Speaker 1: get here, it becomes diminishingly likely that it's happened. And
Speaker 1: by that I mean, let's take into consideration what has
Speaker 1: to happen for aliens to find us. So, assuming that
Speaker 1: the aliens are looking for signs of things like radio communications,
Speaker 1: which would indicate that there's the presence of an intelligent
Speaker 1: life somewhere, well, radio travels at the speed of light,
Speaker 1: and let's say this alien civilization is three hundred light
Speaker 1: years away from us. Well, we've only been really making
Speaker 1: radio communications for a little more than a century, so
Speaker 1: it would still take two hundred years for those very
Speaker 1: weak radio signals to even be detectable to a civilization
Speaker 1: that's three hundred light years away. Then you have to
Speaker 1: actually travel that distance to get here on Earth. And
Speaker 1: even if they had light speed travel, which as far
Speaker 1: as we are aware, is impossible to do unless you
Speaker 1: are some sort of life form that's pure energy, then
Speaker 1: it's going to take you three hundred years at minimum,
Speaker 1: to make that journey. So we're talking five hundred years
Speaker 1: out from when we started transmitting in radio waves. That's
Speaker 1: what I mean when I say I just don't think
Speaker 1: it's likely that we've been visited by aliens. Now, could
Speaker 1: an alien civilization capable of space travel, just by happenstance
Speaker 1: come across Earth. I guess I don't know why they
Speaker 1: would like just randomly joy writing across the universe and
Speaker 1: then you make a little pitstop in a tiny little
Speaker 1: solar system and you happen to land on a planet
Speaker 1: that supports life like that just again seems unlikely, But
Speaker 1: I digress. I'm sure that this tool is going to
Speaker 1: get a lot of use, and my thoughts go out
Speaker 1: to whomever it is that has to go through all
Speaker 1: that information. Okay, before we wrap up, I do have
Speaker 1: a couple of article suggestions for you all today. One
Speaker 1: is from MIT News. David L. Chandler is the author
Speaker 1: of this piece. It is titled Engineers develop an efficient
Speaker 1: process to make fuel from carbon dioxide. So, as the
Speaker 1: title indicates, the story is all about how some researchers
Speaker 1: have used a variety of different strategies to make it
Speaker 1: more practical to turn CO two into a stable fuel,
Speaker 1: and you would be able to store this fuel for
Speaker 1: an indefinite amount of time and use the fuel to
Speaker 1: power stuff like you could use it to do things
Speaker 1: like heat homes and things like that, or use it
Speaker 1: in fuel cells typically, and you would also be tapping
Speaker 1: into renewable energy sources to actually power the conversion processes. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you could find ways to turn the
Speaker 1: CO two into fuel without having to place more demand
Speaker 1: on carbon generating power plants. It's an interesting read. I
Speaker 1: am curious as to what byproducts the fuel produces when
Speaker 1: it's consumed, right, you know, like your typical fuel cell
Speaker 1: uses hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity, and the byproducts
Speaker 1: are heat and water vapor, and that's it. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the byproducts are for the CO two based
Speaker 1: fuel cells, and I should look at it up and
Speaker 1: read into it, but I think the article itself is
Speaker 1: worth a read. The other article recommendation I have is
Speaker 1: from Rollingstone dot com. It is titled HBO bosses used
Speaker 1: secret fake accounts to troll TV critics. This one's by
Speaker 1: Cheyenne Roundtree, and again the title shows that some executives
Speaker 1: over at HBO really wanted to make some TV critics
Speaker 1: feel badly about their opinions about HBO programs, and this
Speaker 1: happened a couple of years ago, and honestly, reading over
Speaker 1: the messages that were part of this ridiculous campaign over
Speaker 1: at HBO gave me real mean girls in high school vibes.
Speaker 1: So check it out. That's it for the Tech News
Speaker 1: for Thursday, November second, twenty twenty three. I hope you
Speaker 1: are all well and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows