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 November two thousand, twin d two and
Speaker 1: I didn't have a news episode this past Tuesday, which
Speaker 1: means we've got a little bit of a Twitter backup
Speaker 1: to get through because things are still going bonkers over there.
Speaker 1: Starting off in Twitter b E. That is, before Elon,
Speaker 1: the corporate culture encouraged internal criticism. Some would say criticism
Speaker 1: was tolerated to a fault in fact, but the point
Speaker 1: is Twitter employees were never punished for criticizing company leadership
Speaker 1: or policies. Well, that's very much changed. One engineer, Eric Fraunhofer,
Speaker 1: who had worked for Twitter for eight years and got
Speaker 1: involved in a Twitter conversation with Elon Musk in an
Speaker 1: effort to correct what he saw his Musk's errors regarding
Speaker 1: how Twitter operates on a technical level, has been let go.
Speaker 1: He has since said that Musk was just completely wrong
Speaker 1: about Twitter's technical operations and so he was stepping in
Speaker 1: to actually provide the real answers. Musk did not care
Speaker 1: for that critique, and fron Huffer was fired. A couple
Speaker 1: of other employees were similarly let go for doing similar things,
Speaker 1: and the following day some Twitter employees expressed support for
Speaker 1: their former colleagues, and they too were shown the door,
Speaker 1: which led to a lot of Twitter employees going back
Speaker 1: and scrubbing their various accounts uh messages on like Twitter
Speaker 1: and Slack and that kind of thing in an effort
Speaker 1: to not hire Sawon. I guess, And according to Casey Newton,
Speaker 1: who does an incredible newsletter each several times a week
Speaker 1: actually about tech, about two dozen folks were affected by
Speaker 1: these firings. Some other outlets are reporting even more than that.
Speaker 1: So the word seems to be you don't criticize Elon
Speaker 1: Musk or you'll get canned. So I guess the free
Speaker 1: speech absolutist has his own thoughts about the kinds of
Speaker 1: speech that shouldn't be expressed. Though, to be fair, free
Speaker 1: speech has never met You're actually free from the consequences
Speaker 1: of what you say, only that you are allowed to
Speaker 1: say it. So yeah, I'm being a bit cheeky here. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Several of the folks fired had been at Twitter for
Speaker 1: nearly a decade or longer, which is bad news for
Speaker 1: a company that recently purged about half of all employees
Speaker 1: and still needs to get stuff done. As for those
Speaker 1: left behind, well, they have a tough decision to make. Today.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk has issued a deadline. Twitter employees must fill
Speaker 1: out an online form to indicate whether or not they
Speaker 1: will be willing to do grueling work at long hours
Speaker 1: or else leave the company. Musk alerted employees to this
Speaker 1: yesterday in an email titled a fork in the Road.
Speaker 1: So they have until the end of today to fill
Speaker 1: out the form. And y'all, this is smelling awful, similar
Speaker 1: to a loyalty pledge, which is given me seriously bad vibes.
Speaker 1: But for some a Twitter, this could be the push
Speaker 1: they need to determine if they in fact want to
Speaker 1: stay at the company and try to transform the platform
Speaker 1: or hack just keep it running while working with half
Speaker 1: the personnel, or if they'd rather take a chance and
Speaker 1: make a big career change, which is tough in a
Speaker 1: market where you're seeing lots of layoffs across big tech.
Speaker 1: It could be that Musk is actually looking to further
Speaker 1: thin the ranks of Twitter though much of the analysis
Speaker 1: that I have read suggests that such a move would
Speaker 1: be risky because it's already going to be hard for
Speaker 1: the remaining staff to just keep things going while also
Speaker 1: creating the projects that Musk wants implemented. On a related note,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk had to appear in a court in Delaware
Speaker 1: to defend his fifty six billion dollar compensation package at Tesla.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about Tesla in a second. This lawsuit
Speaker 1: came from Tesla shareholder Richard Tornetta, who accuses Tesla and
Speaker 1: Elon Musk for leveraging a compliant board of directors to
Speaker 1: create an insanely lucrative compensation package from Musk while hiding
Speaker 1: crucial information from shareholders who were encouraged to sign off
Speaker 1: on this compensation deal, which they did. In his testimony,
Speaker 1: Musk said he intends to find someone else to run
Speaker 1: Twitter in the future, but later that same day, which
Speaker 1: again was just yesterday, he said it would take some
Speaker 1: time because he wants to hand Twitter over once it
Speaker 1: is in a quote unquote strong place. Well, considering how
Speaker 1: things have been going for Twitter over the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks and the amount of ground that's been lost
Speaker 1: as various advertisers have pulled back from the platform. It
Speaker 1: may take a long time for Twitter to be in
Speaker 1: a strong place, So why would Musk talk about Twitter
Speaker 1: in a trial that's really about his compensation with Tesla. Well,
Speaker 1: several Tesla shareholders have shown concerned that Musk is far
Speaker 1: too distracted by Twitter to lead Tesla effectively. According to
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, Tesla board member James Murdoch has
Speaker 1: said that Musk has someone in mind who would serve
Speaker 1: as CEO of Tesla as well, indicating that perhaps Musk
Speaker 1: is thinking of handing control over to another person. Musk
Speaker 1: says he thinks of himself now as a leader, but
Speaker 1: as an engineer, something that I think fron Hoffer would
Speaker 1: take Umbridge to. Anyway, this trial will be decided by
Speaker 1: a judge. It is not a jury trial, so a
Speaker 1: judge ultimately makes the decision about whether or not Tesla
Speaker 1: and the board of directors misled shareholders. Uh interesting side
Speaker 1: note that that judge is Chancellor Kathleen McCormick. She happens
Speaker 1: to be the judge who was also overseeing Twitter's lawsuit
Speaker 1: against Musk back when Musk was still trying to back
Speaker 1: out of his acquisition deal. That was the trial that
Speaker 1: ultimately got called off because Musk ultimately agreed to buy Twitter.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Tesla, the US government has released data showing
Speaker 1: that Tesla has identified two additional car crash fatalities connected
Speaker 1: to its driver assistance systems, but details are a bit scarce.
Speaker 1: One of those two accidents happened nearly a year ago,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of shocking to get word of it now.
Speaker 1: But both happened in California. Both involved some form of
Speaker 1: driver assistance modes being engaged. But the NHTSA, the National
Speaker 1: Highway Traffic and Safety Administration uh OR authority rather doesn't
Speaker 1: distinguish between autopilot and full self driving, So I don't
Speaker 1: know which mode was actually in operation for either of
Speaker 1: these crashes. It could have been one or the other.
Speaker 1: The n h t s A categorizes both autopilot and
Speaker 1: full self driving from Tesla as s A E level
Speaker 1: two on the Driving Automation Scale. Now remember that scale
Speaker 1: goes from zero, which has really no active driver assist features.
Speaker 1: It could have warnings and stuff like that, but it doesn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't really take over control of the vehicle, and
Speaker 1: then you go all the way up to level five,
Speaker 1: which is where you have a fully automated vehicle, where
Speaker 1: you know there are no controls for humans at all.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is is is vehicle operated. But level two,
Speaker 1: where both autopilot and full self driving are still requires
Speaker 1: human operation and human attention. Since July of two thousand
Speaker 1: twenty one, almost all of the fatal accidents involving driver
Speaker 1: assistance systems that have been reported to the nh T
Speaker 1: s A have been Tesla vehicles or have involved Tesla vehicles.
Speaker 1: But the NHT essay also points out there's not a
Speaker 1: standardized approach across all automakers, all car manufacturers on how
Speaker 1: to track crashes that involve some form of driver assistance
Speaker 1: system in them. So, because there's not a unified and
Speaker 1: standardized approach here, you cannot definitively say that one brand
Speaker 1: of car is inherently less safe than another. So while
Speaker 1: you look at this this set of figures and you say, wow,
Speaker 1: Tesla's a driver assistance systems have led to some terrible accidents,
Speaker 1: I mean that is true, but it doesn't give you
Speaker 1: the full story because we don't have a unified version
Speaker 1: of metrics and processes so that we can definitively say,
Speaker 1: all right, this company seems to be doing something far
Speaker 1: more effect active and responsible than this company. We can't
Speaker 1: really do that because it's not a level playing field,
Speaker 1: because we don't know all the different methodologies used to
Speaker 1: track and report this data, which makes it not really
Speaker 1: that useful. In my mind, I think we need to
Speaker 1: create standards that that need to be adopted by the
Speaker 1: entire industry in order to have a better view of
Speaker 1: what's actually happening. I know I dump on Tesla a lot,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it's fair to draw a conclusion
Speaker 1: that Tesla is inherently worse at this than other companies
Speaker 1: when we know that there's not a standardized way to
Speaker 1: actually get metrics on all of this and some more
Speaker 1: bad news for Elon Musk, this time stemming from SpaceX.
Speaker 1: So this past summer, five SpaceX employees signed off on
Speaker 1: a letter that called on the company to acknowledge and
Speaker 1: condemn Elon Musk's behavior on Twitter relating to a news
Speaker 1: rep art that SpaceX had settled a sexual harassment lawsuit
Speaker 1: out of court, one that involved Musk and an employee
Speaker 1: of SpaceX. So these five employees, who's who wrote this
Speaker 1: letter saying Elon Musk's behavior was unacceptable and the company
Speaker 1: should call him out on it. Then found themselves out
Speaker 1: of a job, and the following day around twenty engineers
Speaker 1: had to attend a meeting in which a Tesla VP
Speaker 1: named John Edwards allegedly equated the letter to an quote
Speaker 1: unquote extremist act. That loyalty pledged thing I mentioned about
Speaker 1: Twitter seems to apply to Musk's other operations, I guess anyway.
Speaker 1: Some of these employees say that the letter ultimately led
Speaker 1: to nine people getting fired from SpaceX. Eight of them
Speaker 1: have now joined in an effort with the National Labor
Speaker 1: Relations Board or in l RB to bring unfair labor
Speaker 1: practices charges against SpaceX. Moreover, this issue seems to add
Speaker 1: to this this perception that Elon Musk very much does
Speaker 1: not like having his authority questioned or restricted in any way.
Speaker 1: It's not a good look. Is kind of authoritarian in
Speaker 1: its approach, and again, like having someone being very flippant
Speaker 1: about a sexual harassment lawsuit being dismissed doesn't come across
Speaker 1: great either. Anyway. That's all the Twitter slash Elon Musk
Speaker 1: stuff I have for now, So that's good. When we
Speaker 1: come back. We'll move on to totally different tech news.
Speaker 1: We're back. Sir Christopher Home, a man who came from
Speaker 1: humble beginnings to rise to billionaire in the world of
Speaker 1: financial trading, has some stern words for Google, or specifically
Speaker 1: Google's parent company, Alphabet. So Hans Hedge Fund, which is
Speaker 1: called t c I, has a massive steak in Alphabet.
Speaker 1: It's valued at around six billion dollars billion with a B.
Speaker 1: And Han recently sent a letter to Alphabet arguing that
Speaker 1: Alphabet one has too many employees, to it pays its
Speaker 1: employees way too much, and three it wastes too much
Speaker 1: money on projects that don't drive revenue and accrew huge losses.
Speaker 1: So he's calling for Alphabet to downsize and eliminate employee
Speaker 1: positions that he feels the company has, you know, too
Speaker 1: many of. He's saying that there are too many people
Speaker 1: working there and they're not doing enough work. That this
Speaker 1: is inefficient and costly and should be addressed quickly. Moreover,
Speaker 1: he wants to see the folks who are at Alphabet
Speaker 1: make less money, because Alphabet's median salary is somewhere je
Speaker 1: shy of three hundred thousand dollars a year. That's according
Speaker 1: to filings with the SEC, which is a big old wow,
Speaker 1: like the median salaries around three hundred k. Wow. Now,
Speaker 1: I imagine that doesn't include like contractors and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, but still three d k that's a lot
Speaker 1: of cheddar. And you know, Hans thinks it's too much cheddar,
Speaker 1: as more cheddar should be going to the billionaires like him.
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean, I get that Alphabet's compensation is
Speaker 1: well above that of the competition, but I find it
Speaker 1: hard to be on the side of a guy who
Speaker 1: literally has more wealth than most people, including myself, will
Speaker 1: ever come close to hard to side with the super
Speaker 1: rich guy, you know. But anyway, he also wants to
Speaker 1: see subsidiaries like Weymo get the old Google treatment and
Speaker 1: get shut down. Weymo is Google's self driving vehicle company,
Speaker 1: and Weymo, he argues, has lost billions of dollars while
Speaker 1: other car manufacturers have kind of backed off of trying
Speaker 1: to make autonomous cars reality. He cited some various initiatives
Speaker 1: that had previously been launched and since abandoned and says
Speaker 1: Google should do the same thing. So will Alphabet capitulate
Speaker 1: to his demands? Well, the tech industry as a whole
Speaker 1: is definitely slimming down due to various economic pressures. Because
Speaker 1: we're in that ding dang durn economic uncertainty that we
Speaker 1: still have not really named. I think we're gonna skip
Speaker 1: recession and go straight to depression personally, but anyway, it
Speaker 1: would not be surprising to see Alphabet make a move
Speaker 1: like this. We know that Google has been pulling back
Speaker 1: on hires and also has started to restrict things like
Speaker 1: company travel, so it would not be surprising to see
Speaker 1: Alphabet make that move, especially since we know so many
Speaker 1: other companies in the tech space are are doing that.
Speaker 1: In fact, while we're on the topic of layoffs, let's
Speaker 1: talk Amazon. Just as we're entering the frenzy of the
Speaker 1: holiday season, though maybe the season will be less of
Speaker 1: a frenzy due to the aforementioned economic uncertainty, Amazon is
Speaker 1: following the band and has begun to layoff employees. Some
Speaker 1: reports suggest that these layoffs could reach around ten thousand
Speaker 1: jobs total. The company started by laying off employees who
Speaker 1: are working in the hardware divisions, which produces stuff like
Speaker 1: Amazon Fire, Amazon Echo, the Kindle, and devices with Amazon's
Speaker 1: personal assistant, whom I will not name so that you're
Speaker 1: smart speakers don't talk back at me because they're mean.
Speaker 1: You should have a discussion with those smart speakers about
Speaker 1: their behavior. Words can hurt anyway. It's just a super
Speaker 1: tough time at the big tech companies right now with
Speaker 1: so many people being let go. And I can speak
Speaker 1: from experience, it fights to get laid off around Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: I had that happened to me at a former job,
Speaker 1: and even seventeen years later, it still stings. The cuts
Speaker 1: at Amazon are mostly targeting corporate staff and might amount
Speaker 1: to around three percent of the total workforce, but the
Speaker 1: company's warehouse divisions are unlikely to see extensive cuts. That
Speaker 1: makes sense. We are getting into the holidays, there's going
Speaker 1: to be a lot of activity in those warehouses, so
Speaker 1: it makes sense that the cuts were seeing are going
Speaker 1: to be on the corporate side, not necessarily the warehouse side.
Speaker 1: CNBC reports that Amazon has sent out a voluntary severance
Speaker 1: message to some employees, giving them the option to take
Speaker 1: a severance package and leave the company voluntarily rather than
Speaker 1: risk being laid off later down the road. Those employees
Speaker 1: will have until November twenty nine to make their decision,
Speaker 1: and if they take the package. Their employment with Amazon
Speaker 1: will end on December twenty three. By the way, I
Speaker 1: saw that Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder, has dedicated to giving
Speaker 1: away almost all of his wealth two various charitable organizations
Speaker 1: and efforts. And I saw that someone had posted clearly
Speaker 1: he was visited by three spirits, So good on you.
Speaker 1: I wish I had your name in front of me,
Speaker 1: because that was a great joke and I really laughed
Speaker 1: when I saw it. Okay, let's talk about Netflix, and
Speaker 1: Netflix has announced a change to how subscribers can manage
Speaker 1: access to various devices. So previously cutting off access revoking
Speaker 1: access to devices was an all or nothing deal. You
Speaker 1: could revoke access to all devices you had signed into.
Speaker 1: Let's say you did something silly like let's say you
Speaker 1: went to stay at an Airbnb and they had a
Speaker 1: smart TV, so you logged into your Netflix account and
Speaker 1: then you left the Airbnb, but you realize you forgot
Speaker 1: to log out of that smart TV, so your account
Speaker 1: is still active on there. Well, you could revoke access,
Speaker 1: but the problem was it applied to every single device
Speaker 1: you were logged into, so you lost everything, which meant
Speaker 1: that you had to go through the whole process of
Speaker 1: getting access again for the stuff you actually own, like say,
Speaker 1: your own television or whatever. Well, now Netflix is letting
Speaker 1: users get more granular. You can revoke access to specific
Speaker 1: devices while you retain it everywhere else. It also gives
Speaker 1: users the chance to shut down access to their account if,
Speaker 1: for example, they lent it to say that no good
Speaker 1: mooture of a cousin of yours or whatever. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: projecting anyway, because Netflix will be instituting a sub account
Speaker 1: charge for users who let other households also access their accounts.
Speaker 1: This move lets users nope right on out of that
Speaker 1: by cutting off the access. So instead of Netflix saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we noticed that this other household is using your account regularly,
Speaker 1: sometimes at the same time you're using the account, so
Speaker 1: we're gonna charge you a monthly fee to have this
Speaker 1: additional uh feed go out, you could say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to revoke that access and I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'll just pay mine and then they can go and
Speaker 1: get their own Netflix account. So that is going to
Speaker 1: be an option to although really Netflix is pointing more
Speaker 1: at the case I mentioned where you've perhaps traveled somewhere,
Speaker 1: logged into Netflix, forgot the log out and you wanted
Speaker 1: to revoke access that way. Anyway, the feature is now
Speaker 1: live to all Netflix users, and may the odds be
Speaker 1: ever in your favor. Meta is making some changes to
Speaker 1: what Facebook users will display in their profiles. Starting on
Speaker 1: December one, Facebook is going to remove some fields that
Speaker 1: are currently active in profiles. Those fields include religious views,
Speaker 1: political views, the interested in field, which in this case
Speaker 1: the interested in relates to sexual orientation, as well as
Speaker 1: the address field. All of those are to go away
Speaker 1: starting December one. Meta has not yet shared what prompted
Speaker 1: this decision, like, we know what's going to happen, but
Speaker 1: the company has not yet said why it's made this decision.
Speaker 1: I think it might be to mitigate issues like harassment
Speaker 1: that could potentially be part of it, but the company
Speaker 1: has not said for sure. Ever. Note, the note taking
Speaker 1: app that burst onto the scene in two thousand eight,
Speaker 1: announced that the mobile developer company called Bending Spoons will
Speaker 1: acquire ever note early next year. And Evernote made a
Speaker 1: pretty big splash when it first debuted, But honestly, I
Speaker 1: had not heard very much about it over the last
Speaker 1: several years. Apparently I'm not alone. They kind of fell
Speaker 1: into semi obscurity. I mean, the people who love every
Speaker 1: Note continued to love every Note, although from what I understand,
Speaker 1: the service made some changes that upset a lot of
Speaker 1: users before backing off of those changes. But this announcement
Speaker 1: said that this upcoming merger will allow every Note to
Speaker 1: make quote accelerated improvements across our teams, professional, personal and
Speaker 1: free offerings, which is fantastic news for lovers of Evernote
Speaker 1: everywhere end quote. Glad to hear it. I would like
Speaker 1: to see folks continue to be gainfully employed and be
Speaker 1: able to work on a on a platform that they
Speaker 1: really believe in. Also, I want to say, bending spoons
Speaker 1: is a pretty funny name. Just makes me think of
Speaker 1: your ee Geller and the Charlatans who claim that they
Speaker 1: can use psychic powers to bend spoons, when in fact
Speaker 1: the psychic powers are actually their hands. Okay, enough of
Speaker 1: my skeptical critique. We're gonna take another quick break. When
Speaker 1: we come back, we have a couple more news items
Speaker 1: to get through. Okay, this next story is pretty upsetting.
Speaker 1: Israel has deployed robotic guns on guard towers in the
Speaker 1: West Bank. The guns use artificial intelligence to identify and
Speaker 1: track targets, but are actually fired remotely by guards who
Speaker 1: are stationed inside these guard towers. So while the guns
Speaker 1: are using computer assist aiming, kind of like what you
Speaker 1: see in video games, especially video games that allow players
Speaker 1: on console to go up against PC gamers, because you know,
Speaker 1: console controllers don't have the same level of speed and
Speaker 1: precision as a mouse and keyboard, so often console players
Speaker 1: get a little aim assist boost where the computer helps
Speaker 1: guide those crosshairs just a little bit so you can
Speaker 1: get hits. This AI does effectively the same thing, but
Speaker 1: to a real world gun, not a video game gun. However,
Speaker 1: a human being still has to fire the gun, so
Speaker 1: the guns are outfitted with what Israel refers to as
Speaker 1: non lethal ammunition, which includes stuff like tear gas and
Speaker 1: sponge tipped bullets. I think non lethal might be a
Speaker 1: bit aspirational there. Let's say that they are intended to
Speaker 1: be non lethal anyway. The location of these guns is
Speaker 1: around the Palestinian refugee camp, which has led to criticism
Speaker 1: that Israel is using Palestinians as targets to train its AI,
Speaker 1: while the Israeli government claims that the guns are there
Speaker 1: to protect both Israeli and Palestinian lives activist Issa Amro
Speaker 1: criticized the tech and said that the possibility that could
Speaker 1: be misused or even hacked, which is terrifying, puts thousands
Speaker 1: of lives at risk. Even if it's never hacked. The
Speaker 1: fact that people could think that such a thing could
Speaker 1: happen means that you've got this this tool of fear
Speaker 1: there right Like it's terrifying to think about. So you
Speaker 1: don't even need the hack to happen for it to
Speaker 1: already have a negative impact, not to mention that, I
Speaker 1: think just having a robotic gun as a negative impact
Speaker 1: on the face of its full stop. Meanwhile, Omar Shakir,
Speaker 1: a leader at Human Rights Watch, warrens that using AI
Speaker 1: assisted weapons with a remote ire could put Israel on
Speaker 1: a slippery slope toward becoming quote a powder keg for
Speaker 1: human rights abuse end quote. We've seen several robotics companies
Speaker 1: recently pledged to never develop any sort of weapons systems.
Speaker 1: But while that's reassuring, we also know that military is
Speaker 1: around the world, including the United States military, are working
Speaker 1: hard to do just that, to build robotic platforms for weapons,
Speaker 1: and that you know we've seen that with drones. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's one robotic platform that has weapons, but we're seeing
Speaker 1: it across multiple implementations now, and you can kind of
Speaker 1: understand why. I mean, there's this desire to create weapons
Speaker 1: that keep your own soldiers out of harm's way. Right
Speaker 1: this way, you're not putting your soldiers lives at risk.
Speaker 1: But critics really fear that a use and implementation of
Speaker 1: robotic platforms will lead to more conflicts around the world.
Speaker 1: There will be less resistance to getting into armed conflicts
Speaker 1: if you're thinking that your side doesn't really risk any losses,
Speaker 1: and that can see widespread human rights crises as a result,
Speaker 1: which is the big reason why I'm dead set against
Speaker 1: robotic weapons platforms. Intel launched a new product called fake Catcher,
Speaker 1: which is designed to detect deep fake videos. Now. According
Speaker 1: to Intel, fake Catcher has a nineties accuracy rate in
Speaker 1: detecting deep fakes. The product looks for tail tale signs
Speaker 1: of face and landmark manipulations, you know, movements that might
Speaker 1: be too subtle for humans to really pick up on,
Speaker 1: but that indicate a computer generated the image or video.
Speaker 1: It even looks for really small indicators like how our
Speaker 1: veins change color as our hearts pump blood through them,
Speaker 1: which is kind of creepy. And there's a growing concern
Speaker 1: over how deep fakes could be used to push misinformation
Speaker 1: campaigns or to smear someone by posting fake content of them.
Speaker 1: And of course there's also the terrible world of deep
Speaker 1: fake adult content, where innocent people have had their images
Speaker 1: used in this kind of adult content without their consent,
Speaker 1: and that can lead to really harmful situations, everything from uh,
Speaker 1: you know, professional impact to mental and emotional trauma. So
Speaker 1: it is important that we have tools developed that are
Speaker 1: good at detecting deep fix Of course, the flip side
Speaker 1: of that is that we often see this as a
Speaker 1: seesaw kind of approach. Right. As tools get better at
Speaker 1: detecting deep fakes, deep fakes get better at evading tools,
Speaker 1: and the process continues. Activision Blizzard will be suspending several
Speaker 1: online games in China due to a failure to reach
Speaker 1: a licensing deal with Chinese game company net Ease. So
Speaker 1: let's break this down really quickly. Net Ease is a
Speaker 1: game's publisher and distributor in China. Blizzard has partnered with
Speaker 1: net Ease to bring certain titles like World of Warcraft,
Speaker 1: over Watch two, Diablo three, and more to the Chinese market,
Speaker 1: but this lie something. Agreement expires every so often and
Speaker 1: then comes up for renegotiation, and apparently the most recent
Speaker 1: negotiation talks broke down as Blizzard failed to reach an
Speaker 1: agreement for certain titles. Other ones will remain unaffected because
Speaker 1: they're under separate agreements. So after January twenty three, games
Speaker 1: that include World of Warcraft, Overwatch two, Diablow three, Hearthstone,
Speaker 1: Heroes of the Storm, StarCraft, and Warcraft three Reforged will
Speaker 1: become unavailable in China. Other titles like Diablow Immortal will
Speaker 1: continue development in China because, as I said, they were
Speaker 1: part of a separate deal that was already signed. Apparently,
Speaker 1: some of the obstacles blocking this deal centered around not distribution,
Speaker 1: but the ownership of intellectual property and and player data.
Speaker 1: So Blizzard says it's working to find alternatives to bring
Speaker 1: titles back to Chinese players, but there's no telling on
Speaker 1: when or if that will happen. Microsoft has made a
Speaker 1: move that will likely send at least some corporate leaders
Speaker 1: to throw a tantrum. The company has introduced games in
Speaker 1: its Microsoft Teams product in an app called Games for Work.
Speaker 1: So the games include a bunch of casual titles, stuff
Speaker 1: like mind Sweeper, Solitaire, that sort of stuff. But they
Speaker 1: also have multiplayer capability, so it allows employees to match
Speaker 1: up against their coworkers in various games. So you can
Speaker 1: go up against someone else in a game of Solitaire
Speaker 1: to the death. Okay, I got a little carried away.
Speaker 1: It's probably not to the death. Microsoft says that their
Speaker 1: data shows employees who play games together for forty five
Speaker 1: minutes are then more productive than those who engage in
Speaker 1: other team building activities. But based on how some bosses,
Speaker 1: particularly in the tech space, seemed to be obsessed with
Speaker 1: monitoring employees, I can't see this going over well at
Speaker 1: a lot of places. Nope, work is supposed to be
Speaker 1: oppressive and joy list, so forget about games. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: just projecting now. To be clear, I'm being facetious. I
Speaker 1: still work remotely. I have not been pressured to return
Speaker 1: to the office, and as long as I keep regular hours,
Speaker 1: everything's pretty cool for me. But I realized that my
Speaker 1: situation is kind of an outlier in the tech space,
Speaker 1: and that stinks. I think tons of companies actually really
Speaker 1: benefited from employees working remotely with more autonomy. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: game's app is available now, and Microsoft says it will
Speaker 1: soon be updating the service with more features and more games.
Speaker 1: So maybe you'll end up playing games on Microsoft Teams
Speaker 1: with teammates occasionally when you're taking a break, which sounds
Speaker 1: kind of cool to me. Finally, Upside Foods has received
Speaker 1: pre market consultation approval from the Food and Drug Administration
Speaker 1: in the U s a k A the f d A.
Speaker 1: And why the heck am I covering a food story
Speaker 1: in tech stuff? Well, Upside food makes chicken. Like. This
Speaker 1: company doesn't butcher chickens and then sell the meat. It
Speaker 1: makes chicken meat. That's right. Upside Foods is a company
Speaker 1: that makes lab grown meat, meaning the company harvests animal
Speaker 1: cells but doesn't slaughter the animals, and it cultivates those
Speaker 1: cells and bioreactors to make lab grown meat. The FDA
Speaker 1: approval is an important step towards bringing this product to market,
Speaker 1: though there are several other steps that have to happen. First.
Speaker 1: For one thing, the lab will require an inspection from
Speaker 1: the United States Department of Agriculture a k the U
Speaker 1: S d A, and then the FDA will actually have
Speaker 1: to inspect the real food produced before it could be
Speaker 1: sold in the US, so there are other regulatory steps
Speaker 1: that have to be made, but the f d A
Speaker 1: pre approval stage is a necessary and important step. Also,
Speaker 1: Upside Foods will have to take some time to scale
Speaker 1: up production if it passes all these inspections, it's not
Speaker 1: going to be able to go into mass production right away.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the company plans to provide lab grown
Speaker 1: chicken only to fancy schmancy restaurants when it starts off,
Speaker 1: so there will definitely be a huge up charge in
Speaker 1: the beginning because you'll have to travel to some pretty
Speaker 1: exclusive restaurants to get a bite of Upside chicken. And
Speaker 1: that makes sense because the process to grow the meat
Speaker 1: is itself incredibly expensive. In fact, analysts estimate that once
Speaker 1: it hits market, lab grown meat will be maybe three
Speaker 1: times or more expensive than your typical butchered meat, and
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that's gonna be a massive impediment to its adoption.
Speaker 1: They might be a massive impediment even to get into
Speaker 1: grocery stores. I don't think most folks can necessarily afford
Speaker 1: to triple the amount of money they spend on meat,
Speaker 1: even if they are comforted by the idea that no
Speaker 1: animal died to provide that meat, So I imagine this
Speaker 1: kind of gradual rollout is one that can lead to
Speaker 1: reductions and production cost over time. Personally, I'm all for
Speaker 1: the lab grown approach. I you think that it's going
Speaker 1: to take time to perfect it so that things like
Speaker 1: taste and consistency are really on par with what you
Speaker 1: would get if you were buying fresh meat. But the
Speaker 1: idea of being able to do that without harming animals,
Speaker 1: and also being able to scale back the livestock industry,
Speaker 1: which is a huge environmental impact on our world right.
Speaker 1: If we're able to scale that back significantly, that would
Speaker 1: be a huge, huge wind as far as fighting against
Speaker 1: climate change. So there are multiple reasons to really be
Speaker 1: on board with lab grown meat. Um, but it's gonna
Speaker 1: take a while for us to get to a point
Speaker 1: where it becomes cost effective. When it starts off, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be so prohibitively expensive that only super fancy pants
Speaker 1: people are going to get a chance to try it. Um.
Speaker 1: If a fancy pants restaurant that serves lab grown meat
Speaker 1: wants to invite me to try some, I'm happy to
Speaker 1: do it. I just can't you know, I can't take
Speaker 1: out a loan to have an appetizer. All right, That
Speaker 1: wraps up this episode of tech Stuff News. If you
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