Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff production from I Heart Radio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and a love
Speaker 1: of all things tech. And this is the tech news
Speaker 1: for Thursday, June one. And following up on antitrust news,
Speaker 1: proposed piece of legislation here in the United States would
Speaker 1: make it illegal for tech companies to prevent users from
Speaker 1: removing pre installed apps on devices. So at the heart
Speaker 1: of the matter here would be competitive advantage. And we'll
Speaker 1: use Apple as an example. So currently Apple can and
Speaker 1: does pre install its own apps on iPhones. Apple also
Speaker 1: prevents users from being able to uninstall some of those apps.
Speaker 1: So even if some other developer makes an iPhone app
Speaker 1: that gets approved, goes into the iPhone App Store and
Speaker 1: it does the same thing as a native Apple app,
Speaker 1: you can't just swap them out. You can't uninstall the
Speaker 1: Apple app and replace it with this new one. They
Speaker 1: would have to sit side by side, so you could
Speaker 1: install the new third party app, but the Apple app
Speaker 1: would stay on your phone, mocking you, judging you. But
Speaker 1: if this legislation becomes law, Apple would be required to
Speaker 1: make its own apps removable so that people could choose
Speaker 1: to go with a competitor if they wanted to. The
Speaker 1: argument is that by making it impossible to remove the apps,
Speaker 1: Apple is discouraging competition, and since Apple is the source
Speaker 1: of both those apps and the hardware that those apps
Speaker 1: run on, this is a big problem. There are currently
Speaker 1: a few different pieces of proposed antitrust legislation in the
Speaker 1: US that could have an enormous impact on the tech
Speaker 1: industry should they actually be passed into law. So will
Speaker 1: keep pace with the story as it develops. Meanwhile, in
Speaker 1: the US Senate, a proposed bill would require companies to
Speaker 1: make it easier for customers to cancel a service at
Speaker 1: the end of a free trial, and it's being called
Speaker 1: the Unsubscribed Act, And this would address situations in which
Speaker 1: a company entices new customers with a free trial and
Speaker 1: then switches those customers to a paid subscription service without
Speaker 1: you know, much notice or an easy way to cancel out.
Speaker 1: They would also affect companies that break out the monthly
Speaker 1: rate of a service but they charge in larger increments,
Speaker 1: like they'll say, oh, you'll get you know charged a month,
Speaker 1: but then they actually make you pay for half a
Speaker 1: year or a year all at once, which is not great, right,
Speaker 1: because what if you change your mind about the service
Speaker 1: you've already paid for, you know, six months you don't
Speaker 1: want to have to pay for half a year or more,
Speaker 1: and then a week in you realize this service isn't
Speaker 1: for me. I think it's interesting to see more moves
Speaker 1: to address consumer rights. We've seen that kind of a
Speaker 1: few times in recent months, and I think this also
Speaker 1: points to how more politicians have been on the receiving
Speaker 1: end of these corporate policies. Typically here in the United States,
Speaker 1: we see politics lag behind tech quite a bit because,
Speaker 1: I mean, let's face it, a lot of politicians tend
Speaker 1: to be old people who are perhaps not quite as
Speaker 1: in touch with technology and tech services as younger people.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty general statement. I get it, uh, And
Speaker 1: I don't mean to say that all old people are
Speaker 1: clueless when it comes to tech. I am rapidly becoming
Speaker 1: an old person, and I like to think that, you know,
Speaker 1: I got a clue or two. But politicians in particular
Speaker 1: traditionally have not been on that bleeding edge of technology scale. Now,
Speaker 1: while we're past the initial n f T craze, we've
Speaker 1: got another one to talk about. Tim berners Lee, the
Speaker 1: man who has since really invented the World Wide Web,
Speaker 1: is now going to auction off and n f T
Speaker 1: representing the original files used to create the first web pages.
Speaker 1: Now again we need to talk about what an n
Speaker 1: f T actually is. That initialism stands for non fungible token,
Speaker 1: and that means it's a thing that represents something that
Speaker 1: itself is not interchangeable. So a US dollar is interchangeable
Speaker 1: with any other US dollar, or U S dollars interchangeable
Speaker 1: with four U S quarters or twenty U S nickels,
Speaker 1: and you get the point. But an n f T
Speaker 1: represents a unique instance of something. However, that being said,
Speaker 1: an n f T doesn't give the owner the right to,
Speaker 1: you know, do anything with whatever it is that n
Speaker 1: f T represents. It's more like you have a certificate
Speaker 1: of ownership of that thing. Like if you've ever seen
Speaker 1: ads for a company that will let you quote, purchase
Speaker 1: and name a star, end quote. It's kind of like that,
Speaker 1: except it's a token that sits on top a blockchain
Speaker 1: and you can buy and you can sell n f
Speaker 1: t s, so you can make them a commodity. But
Speaker 1: they really just represent the idea of ownership in a
Speaker 1: way that's so nebulous that it makes me grouchy. Thanks
Speaker 1: a lot in f T s over in China, the
Speaker 1: Chinese military is training AI combat pilots and using those
Speaker 1: pilots to train human pilots. So human pilots have been
Speaker 1: training with and against, depending upon how you view it,
Speaker 1: AI controlled simulated aircraft. So this is all computer simulations.
Speaker 1: So according to the military, the AI displays an incredible
Speaker 1: ability to learn and apply knowledge and rapidly gain a
Speaker 1: level of expertise similar to that of China's Golden Helmet squadron,
Speaker 1: and the Golden Helmet is an elite group of human pilots.
Speaker 1: The humans participating in the sessions say that the AI
Speaker 1: pilots are able to adapt quickly, so you might defeat
Speaker 1: them once using certain tactics, and then they would turn
Speaker 1: around and use those exact same tactics in the next
Speaker 1: matchup and defeat the human pilots. The project is really, again,
Speaker 1: more about training up human pilots. It's not really about
Speaker 1: creating autonomous fighter jets down the line, at least not yet.
Speaker 1: Guy Snodgrass, a former U. S. Navy commander, expressed some
Speaker 1: skepticism about the usefulness of this project. His point of
Speaker 1: view is that the Chinese pilots might just be learning
Speaker 1: how to fight against AI opponents rather than how to
Speaker 1: engage with actual human pilots who may display very different
Speaker 1: tactics and behaviors, and since we're not in a world
Speaker 1: with robot jet fighters, that could end up being useless
Speaker 1: in a real combat situation. Amazon appears to be removing
Speaker 1: certain tech brands and online storefronts from the Amazon service,
Speaker 1: and the reason behind this ties into the issue of
Speaker 1: fake reviews, something that Amazon has really been struggling with recently.
Speaker 1: Several brands have made it a practice to include a
Speaker 1: card or a slip of paper inside the box of
Speaker 1: various gadgets stuff like you know, charging cables or computer
Speaker 1: mice or something like that, and those cards give you
Speaker 1: an offer to get a like gift card usually or
Speaker 1: credit in a store in return for posting a favorable
Speaker 1: review on Amazon. Typically, the card has some instructions on
Speaker 1: it to guide the consumer through that process of posting
Speaker 1: the review and then sending it to the vendor in
Speaker 1: order to verify that the review was posted, and in return,
Speaker 1: the consumer gets a gift card or credit, so it's
Speaker 1: kind of like bribing for a good review. This practice
Speaker 1: does drive up reviews that might not actually reflect the
Speaker 1: quality or reliability of a product, and Amazon has become
Speaker 1: pretty sensitive to this problem of fake reviews recently, so
Speaker 1: now Amazon appears to be removing entire brands from the store.
Speaker 1: On a related note, Amazon has called social media platforms
Speaker 1: to task, saying that they are helping perpetuate the fake
Speaker 1: review problem. Amazon says that companies that deal in fake
Speaker 1: reviews either as a vendor that's trying to get people
Speaker 1: to positively review it's stuff or as kind of a
Speaker 1: middleman service provider that allows other vendors to purchase good reviews,
Speaker 1: they often turn to social media to recruit folks in
Speaker 1: those efforts, and Amazon says that Amazon's alerted various social
Speaker 1: media platforms about this problem and that the platforms have
Speaker 1: traditionally been pretty slow to do anything about it. Now,
Speaker 1: you could argue that Amazon's structure is what ultimately enables
Speaker 1: the practice of fake reviews to flourish, but there is
Speaker 1: no doubt that using social media to recruit more folks
Speaker 1: to the effort is a problem. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: fair to place all or even most of the blame
Speaker 1: on social media. But I do think that a lot
Speaker 1: of social media platforms, notably Facebook, have traditionally moved very
Speaker 1: slowly to address problems with fraudulent, misleading, or deceptive practices
Speaker 1: on the platform. Twitter is not much better. It's honestly
Speaker 1: a really big mess. General Motors, the number one auto
Speaker 1: brand in the United States, announced yesterday that the company
Speaker 1: will invest thirty five billion dollars in electric vehicle technologies
Speaker 1: through five That marks a significant increase in investment, and
Speaker 1: it coincides with a general trend across the world that
Speaker 1: sees auto companies moving away from producing fossil fuel powered
Speaker 1: vehicles and moving more toward electric ones. According to Reuters,
Speaker 1: a consulting firm called Alex Partners projects that by electric
Speaker 1: vehicles will make up nearly of our all car sales,
Speaker 1: and today it's more like two. We're definitely headed toward
Speaker 1: a future in which all new vehicles will be electric vehicles.
Speaker 1: And I should also add that while electric vehicles could
Speaker 1: lead to a decrease in carbon emissions, though that also
Speaker 1: depends upon where the electricity to power those vehicles has
Speaker 1: come from. Evs are also the source of some pretty
Speaker 1: serious environmental concerns. The lithium used in lithium ion batteries
Speaker 1: is a substance that you know, people mind, and some
Speaker 1: of those mining operations can have a catastrophic effect on
Speaker 1: the environment, at least in the immediate area around the mines. Plus,
Speaker 1: there are some serious concerns about worker welfare and safety
Speaker 1: because many of these minds are in places where workforces
Speaker 1: can be heavily exploited by companies that run the minds.
Speaker 1: So I guess the moral of that story is that
Speaker 1: these issues are really complicated and there are no simple solutions.
Speaker 1: SpaceX is facing some tough questions from Texas law enforcement. Allegedly,
Speaker 1: private security guards working for SpaceX denied people access to
Speaker 1: a county road, a public road, in other words, a
Speaker 1: road that SpaceX doesn't own, and the local government says
Speaker 1: that it never gave SpaceX authorization to close down the
Speaker 1: public roads, so by denying citizens the use of those roads,
Speaker 1: those employees, the security guards, and potentially the company itself,
Speaker 1: has broken the law. In addition, there are questions as
Speaker 1: to whether the security personnel had the required licenses to
Speaker 1: serve as security or to carry a weapon, though at
Speaker 1: the time of the reporting, it was unclear as to
Speaker 1: whether the security personnel in question were armed or not.
Speaker 1: Earlier this year, the japan Supersonic Research Organization got off
Speaker 1: the ground figuratively speaking, in an effort to develop supersonic
Speaker 1: passenger jets. The organization now includes several Japanese aerospace and
Speaker 1: manufacturing companies. There hasn't been a supersonic passenger jet since
Speaker 1: the Concord, which operated for several years before some high
Speaker 1: profile disasters and the harsh reality of economics forced the
Speaker 1: company out of business. Creating a fuel efficient supersonic jet
Speaker 1: is one of several challenges that One of the reasons
Speaker 1: that was so expensive with the Concorde is just jet
Speaker 1: fuel prices were really dragging down the company figuratively speaking, again,
Speaker 1: because it's just too expensive to operate. You had to
Speaker 1: charge higher and higher prices for for flights and eventually
Speaker 1: get to a point where you kind of price yourself
Speaker 1: out of the market. But another big challenge is to
Speaker 1: limit the effects of sonic booms. When you travel faster
Speaker 1: than the speed of sound, you create a sonic boom
Speaker 1: and that travels with you. So if an aircraft is
Speaker 1: flying faster than the speed of sound, there's a boom
Speaker 1: that kind of trails behind the aircraft, and it does
Speaker 1: so consistently as long as that aircraft is going faster
Speaker 1: than speed of sounds. So anything the aircraft passes over
Speaker 1: will experience a sonic boom shortly afterward. For that reason,
Speaker 1: the Concords supersonic flight paths were restricted to being over
Speaker 1: the Atlantic. Once they got to the point where they
Speaker 1: were going to pass over land, they had to slow
Speaker 1: down below supersonic speeds because nobody wants these enormously allowed
Speaker 1: booms to pass over their their area, like it could
Speaker 1: be strong enough to shatter glass in some cases. There's
Speaker 1: no word yet if the Japanese are planning on restricting
Speaker 1: their supersonic aircraft to flying just over the oceans when
Speaker 1: they're in supersonic mode um and we probably won't see
Speaker 1: these aircraft until about twenty thirty or so. However, the
Speaker 1: engineers do say that the design of the aircraft they
Speaker 1: have created should mean that it will produce a sonic
Speaker 1: boom that's only half as loud as the Concords, so
Speaker 1: that's some progress. There are a lot of other companies
Speaker 1: and organizations around the world working on supersonic and hypersonic aircraft,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them are working on ways to
Speaker 1: try and minimize that sonic boom so that these aircraft
Speaker 1: could travel not just over the ocean, but over land
Speaker 1: as well at supersonic speeds. But that's something that's still
Speaker 1: in development, and I mean there are big challenges like
Speaker 1: how do you make something like that fuel efficient so
Speaker 1: that it makes economic sense to operate it. If it's
Speaker 1: too expensive to operate for anyone to ever bother flying
Speaker 1: on it, well then there's doesn't too much of use,
Speaker 1: does it. And that's it. That's all the news that
Speaker 1: I have for you today, Thursday, June one. If you
Speaker 1: have any suggestions for topics I should cover in future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, let me know on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle is tech stuff hs W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.