Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech news for Tuesday,
Speaker 1: April twenty fifth, twenty twenty three. Last week, I talked
Speaker 1: about how the SpaceX Starship launch was a success despite
Speaker 1: the fact that the ding dang darn thing sploded all
Speaker 1: over the Gulf of Mexico. As a reminder, this was
Speaker 1: a test launch of the world's most powerful launch vehicle
Speaker 1: ever and had no crew aboard it, thank goodness, and
Speaker 1: the purpose was just to get the launch vehicle off
Speaker 1: the ground without destroying the launch tower in the process.
Speaker 1: While there was a hope that the starship would actually
Speaker 1: be able to achieve orbit, that was a secondary goal.
Speaker 1: So when there was an engine failure and a failure
Speaker 1: for the first stage to separate from the second and
Speaker 1: then the ship began to spin in the air, SpaceX
Speaker 1: chose to toggle a self destruct switch so that the
Speaker 1: starship would detonate safely over the Gulf and not go
Speaker 1: flying off somewhere. Since then, we've learned that there was
Speaker 1: extensive damage to the launch pad itself during the launch,
Speaker 1: while the tower remained standing. There are craters in debris
Speaker 1: across the launch area, and it may be weeks or
Speaker 1: maybe months before the launch pad is ready for another launch.
Speaker 1: It will take some extensive repairs, and in the meantime,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk has indicated that SpaceX may make some changes
Speaker 1: to the launchpad to give it a better chance of
Speaker 1: holding up to the incredible heat and force generated by
Speaker 1: the thirty three rocket engines of the Starship's first stage.
Speaker 1: This actually isn't dissimilar to issues NASA has encountered with
Speaker 1: their Space Launch System, which has about half the thrust
Speaker 1: power of the Starship. The SLS has also damaged lawn
Speaker 1: bunch facilities during operations. It turns out when you play
Speaker 1: with really big rockets, you can sometimes end up with
Speaker 1: a real big hole in the ground. Now, let's talk
Speaker 1: about Twitter. So last week the platform pulled the trigger
Speaker 1: on a promise it had been making for a while.
Speaker 1: Folks who had a verified check mark but who were
Speaker 1: not subscribed to Twitter blue saw those check marks go
Speaker 1: bye bye, which includes yours truly, my check mark went away,
Speaker 1: and Elon Musk, ever the mature businessman comped certain celebrities
Speaker 1: and gave them their check marks. These were mainly celebrities
Speaker 1: who had been criticizing the move to turn the verification
Speaker 1: system into a paid perk as opposed to, you know,
Speaker 1: a means of actually verifying a user's identity. And the
Speaker 1: blue check mark implies, or actually, heck it outright says it,
Speaker 1: if you were to hover your mouse over the check mark,
Speaker 1: that the person who has the check mark had paid
Speaker 1: for that privilege, even though in the case of folks
Speaker 1: like the famous author Stephen King, that wasn't the case.
Speaker 1: He had not paid the Twitter subscription. The check mark
Speaker 1: returned because Elon Musk, I guess wanted to rub it
Speaker 1: in Stephen King's face because King had been criticizing the
Speaker 1: whole paid for check mark thing in the first place,
Speaker 1: and now it makes it seem like Stephen King had
Speaker 1: paid for it, makes him seem like he's a hypocrite,
Speaker 1: when in fact he didn't pay for this. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of trash talking about Twitter turning
Speaker 1: the check mark into a revenue generating scheme, and that
Speaker 1: you know, now these critics have been branded with that
Speaker 1: check mark as opposed to the check mark being a verification,
Speaker 1: and Musk then expanded his generosity because Twitter accounts with
Speaker 1: more than a million followers began to see their check
Speaker 1: marks returned, even though they hadn't asked for it. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing a tweet from author Neil Gaiman who expressed
Speaker 1: curiosity about this. He went so far as to point
Speaker 1: out that he had not subscribed to Twitter Blue, and
Speaker 1: yet his check mark had returned. And now that check
Speaker 1: mark is sort of viewed as a badge of dishonor like.
Speaker 1: The implication is that people who have a check are
Speaker 1: desperate for recognition and have paid for it. So even
Speaker 1: people who did subscribe to Twitter Blue, some of them
Speaker 1: are now trying to dump it in order to get
Speaker 1: rid of that check mark, because they don't want to
Speaker 1: be associated with a perception that they're paying to be recognized.
Speaker 1: It's actually a pretty fascinating situation. Something that was once
Speaker 1: viewed as a kind of status symbol and something to
Speaker 1: be desired is now looked at as almost being taboo.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a possible sociology dissertation in there somewhere,
Speaker 1: and you're welcome, grad students. By the way, this gets
Speaker 1: even more confusing because Twitter accounts that belong to people
Speaker 1: who are no longer with us, people who have died.
Speaker 1: Over the past few years, they've seen their check marks return,
Speaker 1: and again, if you hover your mouth over the check mark,
Speaker 1: it says that the person who owns that account is
Speaker 1: paying for a Twitter Blue subscription, which you know, raises
Speaker 1: questions as to how dead people were able to do that.
Speaker 1: So again, not like the smoothest transition. A real shock
Speaker 1: when you think about how Twitter has laid off seven
Speaker 1: thousand of their employees over the last several months. On
Speaker 1: a related note, some folks on Twitter are asking if
Speaker 1: perhaps these check marks represent false advertising in a way.
Speaker 1: So Twitter user drill Dril brought this question up, asking
Speaker 1: if maybe this falls under the umbrella of a false endorsement.
Speaker 1: So the argument kind of goes like this. The check
Speaker 1: mark claims that the person whose name is in front
Speaker 1: of that check has paid for this service. But as
Speaker 1: we've seen, many, maybe even most, of the celebrities who
Speaker 1: currently have a check mark didn't actually pay for it,
Speaker 1: So that could imply that this celebrity is approving of
Speaker 1: the service right because the claim is that they paid
Speaker 1: for it, even if they haven't Twitter is saying they did.
Speaker 1: And so you see a celebrity's name, you see that
Speaker 1: check mark after it, You see the check mark claiming
Speaker 1: that the person with the check mark has paid for
Speaker 1: a subscription. That seems like the celebrity is endorsing the service,
Speaker 1: like they're saying, this is cool, That's why I bought it,
Speaker 1: And that could be seen as an endorsement, even though
Speaker 1: the celebrities have not done that. They haven't made any
Speaker 1: kind of deal with Twitter. There's no endorsing going on.
Speaker 1: It's against their will, right, even if they don't really
Speaker 1: care one way or another. They didn't seek it out.
Speaker 1: So when you view it that way, it does sound
Speaker 1: like Twitter. It could be violating some rules here with
Speaker 1: various high profile accounts pulled in by association. However, it's
Speaker 1: not a cut and dry case, so to be seen
Speaker 1: as actually being illegal, this matter would have to be
Speaker 1: framed as a type of advertisement, like it's an advertisement
Speaker 1: of Twitter Blue subscriptions. That's what the laws cover fair
Speaker 1: practices and advertising. But if you could frame it as
Speaker 1: not being an advertising issue, if it's in a different context,
Speaker 1: well you don't have that same legal foundation to support
Speaker 1: your argument. So it may never go any further than this.
Speaker 1: You know, we may not see anyone ever bring legal
Speaker 1: action against Twitter for forcing a check mark on people
Speaker 1: who don't want it, but it raises some really weird
Speaker 1: questions that I didn't think I would ever be asking.
Speaker 1: And one last Twitter piece for today before we move
Speaker 1: on to other news. Keith Berghart, a computer scientist at
Speaker 1: the Information Sciences Institute, has shared results from a research
Speaker 1: project that looks at hate speech on Twitter. So Burghart
Speaker 1: and his research team created a methodology to identify and
Speaker 1: quantify hate speech on Twitter. Essentially, the team identified about
Speaker 1: four dozen keywords closely associated with hate speech. I didn't
Speaker 1: dare look at the list because I have a feeling
Speaker 1: it would just make me sick. But they use these
Speaker 1: keywords as the starting point. They started to search for
Speaker 1: tweets that contain these keywords, but then they fed those
Speaker 1: tweets to a tool called Perspective API. This tool tries
Speaker 1: to identify examples of hate speech, and it differentiates between
Speaker 1: hate speech and something that's not hate speech. So, for example,
Speaker 1: you might have a tweet that is discussing hate speech,
Speaker 1: but it is not actually an example of hate speech.
Speaker 1: You would want to separate that out. Or you might
Speaker 1: have a tweet that's meant perhaps in a sexual context,
Speaker 1: but not a hateful one. You'd want to separate that
Speaker 1: out too, So they use this tool. They filtered through
Speaker 1: the results and then they compared the amount of hate
Speaker 1: speech present on Twitter before us took control of the
Speaker 1: company late last year, and how things are going now
Speaker 1: that he's in charge. And the findings are likely confirming
Speaker 1: your guesses. Incidents increased after Musk took control, both in
Speaker 1: the number of hateful keywords appearing in individual tweets, so
Speaker 1: more of these keywords are cropping up now, and also
Speaker 1: how frequently hateful users are tweeting out hate speech, So
Speaker 1: the number of times that people are tweeting out these
Speaker 1: things has increased. In fact, it was close to twice
Speaker 1: as much as it was before Musk took over. Now,
Speaker 1: I should also add hate speech has always been a
Speaker 1: problem on Twitter. This is not unique to Musk taking
Speaker 1: over the company. It was present before he ever started
Speaker 1: to express any interest in buying Twitter. And also, we
Speaker 1: haven't even had a full year's worth of data since
Speaker 1: Musk took over, right, we had a year has not passed,
Speaker 1: so we have a pretty small all sample size of data.
Speaker 1: We should keep that in mind too. This might not
Speaker 1: be a trend. It might be a spike, and it
Speaker 1: could be that over time the spike levels out. Again,
Speaker 1: we don't know yet, so I don't want anyone to
Speaker 1: jump to conclusions just to say, all right, well, Twitter
Speaker 1: is now a haven for hate and it will be
Speaker 1: like that forever. We don't know that. We do know
Speaker 1: that the incidents have definitely increased since Musk took over,
Speaker 1: but that's as far as we can go. News like
Speaker 1: this is not good good for Twitter obviously. It's still
Speaker 1: trying to attract advertisers back to the platform, and when
Speaker 1: you see a report like this, that's a that's not
Speaker 1: a big selling point. Okay, we've got a lot more
Speaker 1: news to cover before we get into any more. Let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. We're back. Snapchat launched it's My
Speaker 1: Ai feature last week to users around the world. So
Speaker 1: before that, the feature was only available to Snapchat users
Speaker 1: who had enrolled in a subscription service, so it was
Speaker 1: a subscriber only feature until last week. Now, the reception
Speaker 1: of the feature has been pretty mixed, with the most
Speaker 1: vocal users going the old review bombing route and giving
Speaker 1: the Snapchat app a terrible review. According to tech Crunch,
Speaker 1: users hit the Snapchat app with an average of one
Speaker 1: point sixty seven stars out of five. Seventy five percent
Speaker 1: of all reviews last week were one star. That is brutal.
Speaker 1: The chief reason cited for these low reviews was the
Speaker 1: incorporation of the AI chatbot. As it stands, the AI
Speaker 1: feature is pinned to the top of the app's chat feature.
Speaker 1: Users who are critical of this inclusion wanted a way
Speaker 1: to turn it off or opt out of the feature,
Speaker 1: and currently there's not a way to do that. Criticisms
Speaker 1: ranged from this is lame to this is creepy. One
Speaker 1: alleged exchange between the AI and a user named Brittany
Speaker 1: made the rounds on Twitter. Some screenshots showed that Brittany
Speaker 1: asked the AI tool to point her in the direction
Speaker 1: of the closest gas station, So the AI suggested a
Speaker 1: gas station that was about five miles away from her,
Speaker 1: and then Brittany followed that up by asking how did
Speaker 1: the AI know where she was? The AI essentially said,
Speaker 1: I don't know where you are, but Snapchat may have
Speaker 1: access to your location. Well, Brittany then says, well, how
Speaker 1: is that possible because I chose to have snapchat hidden
Speaker 1: from maps, it shouldn't know my location. Then the AI said, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't have access to your location. I can't tell
Speaker 1: you where the closest gas station is actually, And Brittany said,
Speaker 1: but you kind of already did that. So now I
Speaker 1: cannot say for sure that this exchange was legitimate. The
Speaker 1: screenshots could be faked, they could be photoshopped or something.
Speaker 1: But I have seen similar issues with other AI chatbots
Speaker 1: out there, chatbots who seem to unwittingly reveal that their
Speaker 1: creators know way more about us than they let on,
Speaker 1: including things where you ask a chatbot, hey, where am
Speaker 1: I right now? And the chatbot says, oh, I don't
Speaker 1: know where you are, so what's my location? I don't
Speaker 1: have that information. Okay, what's the closest gas station? And
Speaker 1: then it tells you, which obviously points out that somehow
Speaker 1: it did know your location, or at least the general location.
Speaker 1: It raises a lot of questions anyway. While I can't
Speaker 1: say for sure that Britney's exchange was real, though to
Speaker 1: be clear, I have no reason to doubt it either,
Speaker 1: I can say for sure that a lot of users
Speaker 1: have been vocal in their dislike of this new feature.
Speaker 1: That doesn't necessarily mean everyone hates it. Of course, it
Speaker 1: is possible that the vast majority of Snapchat users actually
Speaker 1: love AI. They're just being quiet about it, and the
Speaker 1: only people who are making a fuss are the ones
Speaker 1: who hate it. That's a possibility. While some music studios
Speaker 1: are attempting to use law so that they can stave
Speaker 1: off a wave of AI generated deep fake songs featuring
Speaker 1: recognizable voices signed to their labels, one musical artist is
Speaker 1: welcoming our robot overlords. That artist is Grimes. She has
Speaker 1: told her fans that she wants to see what AI
Speaker 1: collaborations can come up with. She said that she asks
Speaker 1: for a fifty percent split in royalties on quote any
Speaker 1: successful AI generated song that uses my voice end quote,
Speaker 1: that being her voice, not my voice. She said she
Speaker 1: is putting no boundaries on this. There are no legal bindings.
Speaker 1: She is not represented by a label, so there's no
Speaker 1: danger of a giant company swooping in and saying no, no, no,
Speaker 1: actually we own her voice, you can't have it. Grimes
Speaker 1: says she wants to see what can come of this,
Speaker 1: that she's willing to serve as a guinea pig, and
Speaker 1: if she can create a model where an artist receives
Speaker 1: compensation when someone else uses an AI generated version of
Speaker 1: that person's voice, it could really shake things up in
Speaker 1: the art world. I'm not saying that AI generated voices
Speaker 1: will totally replace the real McCoy, but I could also
Speaker 1: see some artists experiment with this, particularly if it means
Speaker 1: you can sit back and collect the checks while the
Speaker 1: robots do all the work. I am being a little
Speaker 1: facetious here because clearly this only works because Grimes already
Speaker 1: has done all the work. She has created art that
Speaker 1: people want to emulate in the first place, and without that,
Speaker 1: none of this works. An appeals court has issued a
Speaker 1: ruling regarding the ongoing struggles between Apple and Epic Games.
Speaker 1: The ruling upholds an earlier court's decision, which mostly finds
Speaker 1: in favor of Apple, with one big exception. So just
Speaker 1: as a reminder, this whole thing started when Epic Games,
Speaker 1: the publisher for Fortnite, encouraged players on Iowa US and
Speaker 1: Android devices, to use some workarounds for in game transactions
Speaker 1: that would go outside the InApp transaction services. That way,
Speaker 1: Epic Games would keep the full amount of the transaction
Speaker 1: rather than Apple, or in the case of Android devices,
Speaker 1: Google getting a thirty percent cut of every one of them.
Speaker 1: Apple brought down the meteor hammer on Epic Games, and
Speaker 1: a big legal fight has been going on ever since. Well.
Speaker 1: While this particular part of the legal battle has mostly
Speaker 1: found in favor of Apple, the one bit that helps
Speaker 1: developers like Epic Games out is that Apple has to
Speaker 1: allow links and buttons that go to third party in
Speaker 1: app payment options if that's what the developer wants. So
Speaker 1: Apple doesn't have to include these options by default, but
Speaker 1: if a developer wants to give users the chance to
Speaker 1: use some other transaction method, Apple isn't allowed to block that.
Speaker 1: Apple has said it disagrees with this ruling. No big
Speaker 1: surprise there, and the company has fourteen days to file
Speaker 1: an appeal to this decision. If they do appeal, then
Speaker 1: the case would then go to either a larger group
Speaker 1: of judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which
Speaker 1: is where this last case was heard, or it would
Speaker 1: go straight to the US Supreme Court. Microsoft is backed
Speaker 1: down in the EU in an effort to sidestep a
Speaker 1: potential anti trust probe, kind of thematically tagging onto the
Speaker 1: back of the Apple story here. So in this case,
Speaker 1: at issue is Microsoft's practice of bundling Microsoft Teams with
Speaker 1: its Office suite of productivity software. So competitors like Slack
Speaker 1: have argued that Microsoft forcing Teams into Office bundles is
Speaker 1: an anti competitive practice that Microsoft is trying to muscle
Speaker 1: out competition from any other video conferencing or messaging services.
Speaker 1: This really isn't that different from when Microsoft faced similar
Speaker 1: complaints when it bundled its web browser, which was then
Speaker 1: Internet Exploited or with the Windows operating system, though that
Speaker 1: case was further complicated by how deeply integrated Internet Explorer
Speaker 1: was with Windows. It has long been a key element
Speaker 1: in Microsoft's strategy to bundle programs together in an effort
Speaker 1: to dominate a market. While users might prefer to go
Speaker 1: a la carte when it comes to picking and choosing
Speaker 1: productivity tools, Microsoft's approach has mostly been an all or
Speaker 1: nothing affair. Now, Microsoft says it will offer options for
Speaker 1: EU customers to purchase Office with or without Microsoft Teams,
Speaker 1: though how that's actually going to manifest remains to be seen. Also,
Speaker 1: that might not be enough to prevent an antitrust probe anyway,
Speaker 1: We'll just have to see what the regulators say. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, Alphabet, Google's parent company began work on
Speaker 1: a truly massive project building out a mega campus in
Speaker 1: San Jose, California. Do you know the way to San Jose?
Speaker 1: And when I say a mega campus, I mean this
Speaker 1: thing was to be huge, like eighty acres in size.
Speaker 1: According to Ours Technica, the Finnish campus was to include offices,
Speaker 1: housing units, parks, hotels, restaurants, shops, theaters, museums, and more like.
Speaker 1: It sounded like a city within a city, just to
Speaker 1: say that happens to be, you know, owned and operated
Speaker 1: by Google. But now the company has hit pause on
Speaker 1: those plants, or perhaps even stop, while construction crews have
Speaker 1: already performed a wave of demolition work that now looks
Speaker 1: like it's just going to be in limbo. According to CNBC,
Speaker 1: that demolition work destroyed some landmarks in San Jose and
Speaker 1: forced others to relocate to other parts of the city.
Speaker 1: And now Google has nothing to go in those places.
Speaker 1: It's just bulldozed territory. And there's a real fear that
Speaker 1: these spots in San Jose will just remain un finished
Speaker 1: for the foreseeable future. Google, like most big tech companies,
Speaker 1: has been making some serious cost cutting moves recently, so
Speaker 1: it's not exactly a surprise that the company would back
Speaker 1: off on such an aggressive plan. In fact, one wonders
Speaker 1: what convinced Google executives to even pursue this idea back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one. That was a year after the
Speaker 1: pandemic had begun and the world had really kind of
Speaker 1: adjusted to a remote work situation, which makes it seem
Speaker 1: like a pretty weird time to say, Hey, no one's
Speaker 1: in the office, so let's build a whole lot more
Speaker 1: office space, like a truly enormous amount office space, And
Speaker 1: following rounds of layoffs at Google it measures like desk
Speaker 1: sharing procedures and offices, it really seems like office space
Speaker 1: isn't way up on the company's priorities. So the question
Speaker 1: remains what happens to all that property in San Jose.
Speaker 1: And I don't know the answer to that except to say, yuck, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got a handful more stories to go through before
Speaker 1: we get to that. Let's take another quick break, okay.
Speaker 1: California's Senate Judiciary Committee is set to deliberate on a
Speaker 1: proposed bill that if passed, would let Californians opt to
Speaker 1: delete their personal information from a company's database if they
Speaker 1: wanted to. It's nicknamed the Delete Act, and it's likely
Speaker 1: to face some pretty stiff opposition from the tech space.
Speaker 1: As I'm sure you all know, a lot of money
Speaker 1: in tech comes from data. There are companies that exist
Speaker 1: solely to collect and sell data to other companies. And
Speaker 1: while the main focus is on advertising, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of other issues here, even if you don't have
Speaker 1: a problem with targeted ads themselves, namely, law enforcement agencies
Speaker 1: have been known to use this data when it's inconvenient
Speaker 1: to you know, secure a warrant to sue such information
Speaker 1: through proper channels. Why do that when you can just
Speaker 1: buy it? Or when someone has a personal acts to
Speaker 1: grind and they use this data to track down like
Speaker 1: a former boss or that ex romantic partner. We've seen
Speaker 1: instances of that as well. So the Act is proposing
Speaker 1: a solution in which companies are obligated to allow Californians
Speaker 1: the option to just remove themselves from that data picture.
Speaker 1: This is not the first time that progressive lawmakers in
Speaker 1: California have tried something like this, but as I said,
Speaker 1: resistance in the tech sector is high to such legislation,
Speaker 1: and I imagine the journey to get this bill passed
Speaker 1: will be a lot like a walk in moor door.
Speaker 1: It ain't simple. Reuter's reports that GM and Samsung are
Speaker 1: working together to build an electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant
Speaker 1: here in the United States. Now, you may know that
Speaker 1: one of the challenges the world faces as more countries
Speaker 1: pass mandates to switch from in turn combustion engine vehicles
Speaker 1: to electric vehicles is that right now we do not
Speaker 1: produce enough batteries to meet global demand. Well, it's going
Speaker 1: to take a few years for car companies to completely
Speaker 1: change over to manufacturing evs, and in the meantime, projects
Speaker 1: like this one aim to reduce some of the bottlenecks
Speaker 1: in the production line. Now, there will be other bottlenecks,
Speaker 1: such as just getting the raw materials necessary to make batteries,
Speaker 1: but GM and Samsung are taking steps to build out
Speaker 1: the infrastructure that's going to be necessary if this conversion
Speaker 1: to evs is to succeed. Also, it's interesting to see
Speaker 1: a partnership between a South Korean tech company and a
Speaker 1: Detroit based auto manufacturer. Speaking of GM, the company is
Speaker 1: also phasing out its Chevy Bolt EV and EUV models
Speaker 1: this year. This is a blow to the affordable EV market,
Speaker 1: as the Bolt was one of the least expensive electric
Speaker 1: vehicles available to consumers here in the United States. But
Speaker 1: the Bolt is built on top of technology that no
Speaker 1: longer competes with more recent innovations, and it doesn't look
Speaker 1: like Chevy has a replacement in mind for the Bolt,
Speaker 1: at least nothing that's meant to take out that spot
Speaker 1: in the market, the affordable EV market. Rather, the company
Speaker 1: is focusing more on vehicles like electric trucks and electric
Speaker 1: SUVs because that seems to be what customers want, so
Speaker 1: fare thee well Chevy Bolt. Chinese company net Ease, which
Speaker 1: had served as the Chinese distributor for Blizzard Games until
Speaker 1: early this year, is now suing Blizzard for around forty
Speaker 1: four million dollars. So here's the rundown. Net Ease and
Speaker 1: Blizzard were in negotiations to renew the licensing deal between
Speaker 1: the two of them, but the companies failed to come
Speaker 1: to agreeable terms, so Blizzard opted to just leave net
Speaker 1: E's behind, and in the process, Blizzard shut down their
Speaker 1: servers in China, which meant players in China could no
Speaker 1: longer access their Blizzard games. Neties says that Blizzard failed
Speaker 1: to make good on several contractual obligations, including a failure
Speaker 1: to bring certain announced games to market or to issue
Speaker 1: refunds to Chinese players. Blizzard, for its part, says the
Speaker 1: company has yet to be served with any legal papers
Speaker 1: regarding a lawsuit, So they're saying Netties is saying they're
Speaker 1: suing us, but we haven't received a lawsuit. Also, Blizzard
Speaker 1: still is not running games in China because the company
Speaker 1: hasn't found a replacement for Nettie's and Chinese law mandates
Speaker 1: that game companies from outside the country have to work
Speaker 1: through a Chinese company in order to sell games and
Speaker 1: services to citizens within China. Once upon a time, scalpers
Speaker 1: looking to sell PlayStation five consoles and insane markups were
Speaker 1: sitting pretty because there was a shortage of inventory. That
Speaker 1: meant that someone who wanted a PS five had very
Speaker 1: few options open to them. If they missed out on
Speaker 1: a chance to scoop up one of just a few
Speaker 1: units that became available on any given day, they were
Speaker 1: back to waiting for the next one, or they would
Speaker 1: have to give it to the temptation to buy one
Speaker 1: from a scalper at a crazy inflated price. But now
Speaker 1: Sony has produced more consoles, plus a lot of households
Speaker 1: that really wanted one now have one. And that means
Speaker 1: that today's scalpers are starting to find out they're just
Speaker 1: playing out of luck, and at times some of them
Speaker 1: have been reduced to selling consoles for less than retail price.
Speaker 1: And I know it is a sad day when predatory
Speaker 1: jerks are hoisted by their own petard. And it only
Speaker 1: took a couple of years to get there. Finally, it's
Speaker 1: an historic time for the Palo Alto Research Center aka
Speaker 1: Park PARC. Back in nineteen seventy, Xerox founded Park as
Speaker 1: an R and D lab, similar to famous tech labs
Speaker 1: like Bell Laboratories. The researchers at Park ex faed and
Speaker 1: invented new technologies, some of which would emerge to change
Speaker 1: the world. For example, the GUY, or graphical user interface,
Speaker 1: was really first implemented at Xerox Park. Then one day
Speaker 1: an enterprising fellow named Steve Jobs went for a tour
Speaker 1: of Park's facilities and saw a demonstration of the GUY,
Speaker 1: also of the computer mouse, which wasn't invented at Park
Speaker 1: but was heavily used there, and Steve Jobs got this
Speaker 1: bright idea to offer up something similar in a personal computer,
Speaker 1: and then we get the story of the Mac Well.
Speaker 1: Xerox is now saying farewell to Park, and to be clear,
Speaker 1: Parks spun off of Xerox to become an independent company
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, but Park's keys have now
Speaker 1: been handed over to SRII International. That organization actually began
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty six as part of Stanford University, though
Speaker 1: the organization that would evolve into SRI International actually spun
Speaker 1: off from Stanford in nineteen seventy, the same year that
Speaker 1: Park was founded. Today, SRI International is a nonprofit scientific
Speaker 1: research institute, so it sounds like a pretty great match
Speaker 1: with Park. It'll be an organization dedicated to doing cutting
Speaker 1: edge research in science and technology, potentially creating new products
Speaker 1: along the way. Xerox is going to keep a preferred
Speaker 1: research agreement with the newly merged organization, kind of like
Speaker 1: a first rights sort of situation. It also will continue
Speaker 1: to hold many of the patents that were secured by
Speaker 1: Park prior to this handoff. But yeah, interesting times. I
Speaker 1: should probably do a full episode about Xerox Park. Now
Speaker 1: that this has happened, all right, that wraps up the
Speaker 1: news for today, Tuesday, April twenty fifth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I hope you are all well and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
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