Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jovin Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the week ending July twelfth, two thy twenty four. There
Speaker 1: was actually a ton of news this week. I guess
Speaker 1: making up for last week, so I'm just covering like
Speaker 1: half of it because there was so much, I had
Speaker 1: to choose which stories I was going to include. As
Speaker 1: it stands, this is going to be a long one,
Speaker 1: so let's get to it. Last week, the German newspaper
Speaker 1: Der Spiegel and a Russian independent news site called The
Speaker 1: Insider revealed that Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service aka the SVR
Speaker 1: has a program that they call Project Kailo. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's name after Kylo Renn from the Star
Speaker 1: Wars films. Anyway, this project's aim is to spread misinformation
Speaker 1: and propaganda in support of Russia's goals, particularly with regard
Speaker 1: to the ongoing war with Ukraine. And I find it
Speaker 1: interesting that a lot of media sites reference this as
Speaker 1: a bombshell report, linking Russia to these efforts. I think
Speaker 1: it's surprising, not because I don't think it's important. I
Speaker 1: do think it's important. I just figured we were all
Speaker 1: working under the assumption that this was in fact happening already.
Speaker 1: I guess the appearance of confirmation is really the story
Speaker 1: here anyway. The report says that the svr's playbook involves
Speaker 1: establishing fake news websites and then flooding these websites with
Speaker 1: misleading content, often boosted through the use of generative AI.
Speaker 1: You can write a whole lot of stuff if you
Speaker 1: offload it to AI, and if you're not really concerned
Speaker 1: about the accuracy of it, I mean, if your goal
Speaker 1: is to create misinformation, accuracy really isn't in your top concerns.
Speaker 1: The agency also made heavy use of social networking and
Speaker 1: media platforms to spread these messages, so establishing a place
Speaker 1: to post everything and then a distribution method for getting
Speaker 1: it out in front as many eyeballs as possible. So,
Speaker 1: according to these newspapers, the agency went to the trouble
Speaker 1: of actually hiring real world people to pose as protesters
Speaker 1: in various Western countries in an effort to amplify messaging,
Speaker 1: and then beyond that, they helped distribute video footage of
Speaker 1: these protests in order to get a wider release of
Speaker 1: that messaging. This is interesting because here in the United States,
Speaker 1: actually not too far from the state where I live,
Speaker 1: there was a notable white supremacist march that took place
Speaker 1: in Nashville, Tennessee. And I'm curious as to whether or
Speaker 1: not that march was amplified by efforts like this, where
Speaker 1: people were specific brought in to boost the numbers and
Speaker 1: make them larger. And then obviously that video footage of
Speaker 1: that that particular march got pretty wide circulation. And I
Speaker 1: mean it may not be at all related to the
Speaker 1: Russian efforts. I want to make that clear. This could
Speaker 1: be completely independent of that, but it does sort of
Speaker 1: fall in line with that same strategy. Also last week,
Speaker 1: Cowlan McGee and I apologize for butchering the name, but
Speaker 1: McGee wrote a piece for I News, which is an
Speaker 1: English news site, and in that piece, McGee writes that
Speaker 1: French officials identified Russian propaganda as pushing French citizens to
Speaker 1: support far right candidates during their parliamentary elections. Those took
Speaker 1: place just this past Sunday. Now, those efforts ultimately fell
Speaker 1: a little short. The far right did win quite a
Speaker 1: few seats, like one hundred and forty two seats in parliament,
Speaker 1: but that puts them in third place, behind the Left
Speaker 1: wing Party, which won one hundred eighty eight seats and
Speaker 1: the Centrist Party, which won one hundred and sixty one seats. However,
Speaker 1: no single party secured two hundred and eighty nine or
Speaker 1: more seats, which means France's president now faces the tough
Speaker 1: challenge of appointing a prime minister because with they don't
Speaker 1: have the support of a single parliamentary party. Right, there's
Speaker 1: no party that holds a majority, and if the prime
Speaker 1: minister doesn't have the support of parliament, then the government
Speaker 1: kind of stops working. So what I'm saying is that
Speaker 1: Russia's campaign, assuming that it actually had an impact on
Speaker 1: the French elections at all, was not a total failure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't secure a majority, but if you're thinking it's
Speaker 1: more in an effort to disrupt politics and to add
Speaker 1: some instability to Western governments, then there was success here,
Speaker 1: or at least it's in alignment with Russia's goals. Whether
Speaker 1: or not the efforts moved the needle at all, that's
Speaker 1: that's another question. McGee's piece in IEWS lists out numerous
Speaker 1: examples of Russian attempts to misinform, from bought controlled social
Speaker 1: accounts to fake news sites pushing lies to the public,
Speaker 1: and obviously France is just one nation that's targeted by Russia.
Speaker 1: The convergence of tools like AI and social networks, on
Speaker 1: top of how easy it is to just launch a website,
Speaker 1: has really created a perfect storm for the creation and
Speaker 1: distribution of propaganda. So, as always, I recommend viewing media
Speaker 1: through the lens of critical thinking. It's not a guarantee
Speaker 1: that you still won't get misled. That can still happen,
Speaker 1: but using critical thinking really helps cut down on the
Speaker 1: frequency at which that can happen. Make sure you're paying
Speaker 1: attention to the source of that information and what their
Speaker 1: sources are, because if we're all looking at news that's
Speaker 1: all drawing its information from a single source, and that
Speaker 1: source is compromised, well then we can't trust any of
Speaker 1: the news that was reported from it. We're in the
Speaker 1: United States, the Department of Justice announced just this past
Speaker 1: Tuesday that it had identified and disrupted a Russian operation
Speaker 1: making use of bots and misinformation to sew discord here
Speaker 1: in the states, which just as a point of reference, y'all,
Speaker 1: we do not need outside help on that. We're really
Speaker 1: good at sowing discord amongst ourselves. Anyway, the DOJ seized
Speaker 1: two domains in around one thousand social accounts believed to
Speaker 1: be part of this Russian operation. The associated accounts received
Speaker 1: a ban on x formerly known as Twitter, and they
Speaker 1: had a history of posting content with a pro Kremlin perspective.
Speaker 1: Apart from using AI to undermine governments and societies, it
Speaker 1: seems like there's not really enough of a use case
Speaker 1: for artificial intelligence to justify the truly insane amount of
Speaker 1: investment that's going into it. Now that's not just my opinion,
Speaker 1: although it is my opinion. Goldman Sachs released a newsletter
Speaker 1: warning that told businesses there there just might be this crazy,
Speaker 1: uns sustainable bubble forming around AI. But to be clear,
Speaker 1: I am applying my own point of view to what
Speaker 1: Goldman Sachs found. They didn't use words like crazy, and
Speaker 1: in fact, they were pretty light with the use of
Speaker 1: the word bubble, although at least one Goldman sax rep
Speaker 1: did refer to it as a potential bubble, not definitively
Speaker 1: a bubble, but it could be so. The report revealed
Speaker 1: that around a trillion dollars is on track to pour
Speaker 1: into the generative AI space, and that includes stuff like
Speaker 1: building out and outfitting data centers, you know, the purchase
Speaker 1: of new hardware, research and development, all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Goldman Sachs says, there's also no killer application for AI
Speaker 1: that kind of justifies this crazy expenditure. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: the research newsletter says, companies are rushing into the AI
Speaker 1: space without really a clear goal or any assurance that
Speaker 1: the investment they're making is going to pay off down
Speaker 1: the road. It could be that the companies that are
Speaker 1: spending billions of dollars in the AI generative AI specifically
Speaker 1: in that field, that they're setting huge piles of cash
Speaker 1: on fire. Alah, the joker in that Dark Night movie.
Speaker 1: Jim Cavello, the head of Goldman Sachs's Global equity research,
Speaker 1: put it this way, quote, what one trillion dollar problem
Speaker 1: will AI solve? Replacing low wage jobs with tremendously costly
Speaker 1: technology is basically the polar opposite of the prior technology
Speaker 1: transitions I've witnessed in my thirty years of closely following
Speaker 1: the tech industry end quote. So what he's saying is
Speaker 1: there's not a clear problem that AI is solving, especially
Speaker 1: not one that amounts to a one trillion dollar problem,
Speaker 1: and that the ways we are seeing AI being applied
Speaker 1: right now are low cost things. And in fact, it
Speaker 1: could mean that you're spending more money with AI than
Speaker 1: you were with human beings, so you're actually costing yourself
Speaker 1: more money and you're funding that whole process. So it
Speaker 1: really sounds like shots fired across the ballot companies that
Speaker 1: have been downsizing staff in favor of relying more on
Speaker 1: generative AI, such as oh I don't know HowStuffWorks dot
Speaker 1: Com my former employer. We'll have more about the issue
Speaker 1: of AI displacing creatives later in this episode, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm still obviously salty about that, even though I wasn't
Speaker 1: directly affected, right, I had already moved on from how
Speaker 1: stuff works, or really my part of the company moved
Speaker 1: on from How Stuff Works. But I'm still upset that
Speaker 1: site ended up laying off the editorial staff in favor
Speaker 1: of AI generated articles. I think that was an enormous mistake.
Speaker 1: I plan on doing an episode in the near future
Speaker 1: about one of the many reasons I think that's a
Speaker 1: massive mistake, because it's not just that very talented, dedicated
Speaker 1: people lost their jobs over it. That's a big part
Speaker 1: of it. I mean, there's an emotional attachment, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong. But I also think that there is a
Speaker 1: technological mistake that's being made, and I'm not the only one.
Speaker 1: It involves things like model collapse, as in large language
Speaker 1: model collapse, but we'll talk about that in a future
Speaker 1: episode not too long from now. Anyway, the report warns
Speaker 1: that any returns on investment are likely to be many
Speaker 1: years down the road because it's going to take time
Speaker 1: to build the AI infrastructure that actually creates meaningful improvements
Speaker 1: in stuff like business performance and costs. So in the
Speaker 1: short term, it's far more likely that running AI operations
Speaker 1: is actually going to cost more than going the alternative route.
Speaker 1: And all of that obviously becomes dangerous for companies that
Speaker 1: are currently investing heavily in the space. They might find
Speaker 1: themselves either in need of a severe course correction or
Speaker 1: they might have to convince stakeholders to you know, patiently
Speaker 1: wait for things to pay off in the future. That's
Speaker 1: kind of what Meta has been doing, particularly in the
Speaker 1: Reality Labs division, and metaverse stuff. Zuckerberg has to keep saying,
Speaker 1: this is going to cost us a lot of money
Speaker 1: in the short term, but in the long term, we
Speaker 1: believe it's the future of our business. I remain unconvinced
Speaker 1: that that's going to be the case, but that's the
Speaker 1: argument Zuckerberg has to make two investors pretty much every
Speaker 1: earnings called because they have to grapple with the fact
Speaker 1: that they're spending billions of dollars in this division and
Speaker 1: they don't have a lot to show for it yet,
Speaker 1: and the stuff they have shown has not really created
Speaker 1: an amazing response among consumers or investors. I expect we're
Speaker 1: going to see very similar stories play out in the
Speaker 1: AI space. Speaking of AI displacing jobs, into It, a
Speaker 1: company that specializes in tax preparation software announced a reorganization
Speaker 1: this week and that's going to result in downsizing staff
Speaker 1: by around ten percent of the company. Company reps say
Speaker 1: this is part of the long term strategy in which
Speaker 1: into It will hire at least that same number of
Speaker 1: people that they're laying off this year. So they're saying,
Speaker 1: like next year they're going to hire as many or
Speaker 1: more people as what they are laying off right now.
Speaker 1: That number is around one eight hundred staff and that
Speaker 1: this long term plan also involves incorporating artificial intelligence in
Speaker 1: into its offerings. No big surprise there that they're saying
Speaker 1: AI is going to be a big part of their
Speaker 1: ongoing strategy. That is kind of the messaging we're hearing
Speaker 1: across all industries right now. So into Its CEO further
Speaker 1: said that more than half of those one eight hundred
Speaker 1: employees who are being let go were selected because they
Speaker 1: failed to meet company expectations, which is a big old yikes.
Speaker 1: Like when you know arguably around five percent or more
Speaker 1: of your company isn't meeting expectations, that's to me, that's
Speaker 1: a management problem. That means that managers are not doing
Speaker 1: their job in making sure that employees have what they
Speaker 1: need and understand what they need to do in order
Speaker 1: to meet expectations. But I mean, what do I know.
Speaker 1: I'm not an expert in business or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It just it just seems that way to me. So
Speaker 1: I do think for the record that AI will have
Speaker 1: its place. I'm not totally against AI. I know I
Speaker 1: come down hard on AI a lot on this show.
Speaker 1: I do think there will be ways to integrate AI
Speaker 1: into business strategies that will be overall beneficial and not
Speaker 1: just beneficial to the bottom line, which is kind of
Speaker 1: the cynical way of looking at it right now, but
Speaker 1: to people who are actually working at those companies. I
Speaker 1: do think there are ways to use AI to enhance
Speaker 1: people's work so that they can focus on the things
Speaker 1: that really matter, while AI handles little details that are
Speaker 1: important but are not necessary for humans to handle personally.
Speaker 1: I just think there's also a ton of company executives
Speaker 1: out there who are rushing into integrating AI without fully
Speaker 1: thinking about the consequences they're going to encounter and the
Speaker 1: lives are going to impact. They're doing it quickly without
Speaker 1: fully thinking it through, and that's what leads to really
Speaker 1: big messes. Okay, speaking of a big mess, I just
Speaker 1: made one by spelling my coffee. We're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break and I'll be right back. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: Coffee spillage has been contained. Cleaning efforts are ongoing, but
Speaker 1: let's get back into the episode. So, a hacker group
Speaker 1: called sieged Sec. Sie ged Sec says it has breached
Speaker 1: the systems of an organization called the Heritage Foundation and
Speaker 1: stolen a large amount of data and subsequently released that
Speaker 1: data online. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative political or
Speaker 1: organization and think tank. It is credited with being responsible
Speaker 1: for a broad platform of policy proposals, collectively referenced as
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five. Now, to go into Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five is well beyond the scope of this podcast. However,
Speaker 1: I can recommend you check out the June twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four episode of Stuff they Don't Want You
Speaker 1: to Know. It is titled Project twenty twenty five. Should
Speaker 1: we be concerned anyway? The sieged sec hackers carried out
Speaker 1: the attack in part to ensure more quote transparency to
Speaker 1: the public regarding who exactly is supporting Heritage end quote.
Speaker 1: So that quote comes from a hacker who uses the
Speaker 1: handle vo viio. This hacker spoke with the new site
Speaker 1: Cyberscoop about the breach. That breach is mostly apparently a
Speaker 1: list of names of people who have been involved with
Speaker 1: or contributed to the Heritage Foundation. This is all part
Speaker 1: of a quickly developing story regarding Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of information and misinformation out about
Speaker 1: that as well. So again, use critical thinking when you're
Speaker 1: looking into this stuff. I do think personally that it's
Speaker 1: something to be concerned about, and that it is. There
Speaker 1: are elements of it that are pretty darn scary if
Speaker 1: you if you care about stuff like say LGBTQ rights,
Speaker 1: it's very scary, or women's autonomy rights, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: It gets pretty frightening. But I recommend everyone do their
Speaker 1: research and learn about it, and you know, mind where
Speaker 1: you're getting your information, so that you're you've got a
Speaker 1: reasonable handle on what's going on, because it's always important
Speaker 1: to keep that in mind when you're engaging with material,
Speaker 1: particularly material that might be confirming any biases you happen
Speaker 1: to have. I have to remind myself of that all
Speaker 1: the time. Marco Risol of hackerdose dot com has an
Speaker 1: article titled hackers may use Telegram video to gain full
Speaker 1: control of your phone. That is a heck of a headline.
Speaker 1: So first off, in case you are not familiar with Telegram,
Speaker 1: that's a smartphone based messaging app. It's also cloud based
Speaker 1: messaging and it offers end to end encryption. You can
Speaker 1: do voice calls, video calls, text messages. It has become
Speaker 1: a favored messaging app among those who value their privacy
Speaker 1: and they don't want their communications to be snoopable. They
Speaker 1: want to do end to end encryption. But an X
Speaker 1: or Twitter user, depending on how you want to call
Speaker 1: that service called. Today cyber News posted that a vulnerability
Speaker 1: in the Android version of Telegram allows an on ramp
Speaker 1: for malware. So the alleged exploit involves the target receiving
Speaker 1: a link to a video that if the target tries
Speaker 1: to launch, the video, prompts a pop up message, and
Speaker 1: that message says that Telegram's native video player is unable
Speaker 1: to play the media file in question, So don't worry,
Speaker 1: because you will be prompted to go toward a site
Speaker 1: that is claimed to be a third party video service
Speaker 1: that then will play the video. So it's saying, oh,
Speaker 1: Telegram can't play this, but just click this link, you'll
Speaker 1: go to a site that will play the video. Except
Speaker 1: it's all a ploy to trick the target into unknowingly
Speaker 1: consenting to downloading malware. The malware infects the phone and
Speaker 1: effectively hands control over to a remote operator who has
Speaker 1: essentially full administrative access to the device. At that point,
Speaker 1: they can access the camera on the phone, the microphones
Speaker 1: call logs, they can see all the apps that are
Speaker 1: saved to the phone, all that kind of stuff, all
Speaker 1: of that allegedly becomes available to the hackers. That is,
Speaker 1: if these claims are in fact true, and they might
Speaker 1: not be so. The tweet included a video demonstration of
Speaker 1: this exploit in action. However, the resolution of the video
Speaker 1: was not great, and thus it was difficult to verify
Speaker 1: that this is a legitimate video of an actual exploit.
Speaker 1: Earlier this year, Telegram actually debunked a different vulnerability claim
Speaker 1: that was made against it. So there's already precedent for
Speaker 1: false claims against Telegram, and it could turn out that
Speaker 1: this new allegation is also a hoax. But I would
Speaker 1: suggest to anyone who's using Telegram, or really any messaging
Speaker 1: service for that matter, to think twice before clicking on
Speaker 1: links to stuff, particularly if it is in relation to
Speaker 1: a message that has a clickbaity kind of vibe to it,
Speaker 1: right Like, if you get a video that's appealing to
Speaker 1: either your paranoia, right like it's a video saying, hey,
Speaker 1: is this you and this video? Or if it's something
Speaker 1: that's very it's like appealing to a salacious sign of
Speaker 1: human nature. Anything like that that should raise red flags.
Speaker 1: And you should be very cautious before following any links
Speaker 1: because it's a tried and true method to trick people
Speaker 1: into a trap. If you were an AT and T
Speaker 1: cellular customer between May and November in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: I have some bad news. There's a really good chance
Speaker 1: that your phone number and some information about who you
Speaker 1: texted and called has been leaked in a massive data breach.
Speaker 1: So AT and T says that essentially all cellular customers
Speaker 1: at that time period were involved in this data leak,
Speaker 1: in which some third party was able to download the
Speaker 1: information off of a cloud platform that AT and T uses.
Speaker 1: So this is another case where a hackers target not
Speaker 1: the company itself, not AT and T, but a business
Speaker 1: to business operator that AT and T uses. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a provider that has this cloud services platform, and
Speaker 1: the hackers targeted that provider. AT and T says that
Speaker 1: names were not included in this data leak. It was
Speaker 1: just numbers and then metadata about the text messages and
Speaker 1: phone calls those numbers were engaged in. However, AT and
Speaker 1: T also says it can be rather trivial to match
Speaker 1: a name with a phone number. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of databases out there that have information about phone numbers
Speaker 1: and who those numbers belong to. So all that info
Speaker 1: may already be out in the wild, and just with
Speaker 1: a little cross referencing, a hacker can figure out who
Speaker 1: this number belongs to. Some of the call and texting
Speaker 1: data related to some of the numbers was part of
Speaker 1: this attack, as I've mentioned, So it's not the contents
Speaker 1: of those phone calls or the texts. It's not like
Speaker 1: the hackers can read what someone has texted to someone else. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's a call log or a text log, so you
Speaker 1: can see which numbers have communicated with one another. According
Speaker 1: to AT and T spokesperson Alex Byers, this breach is
Speaker 1: unrelated to a different incident that the company acknowledged back
Speaker 1: in March. So AT and T has been the target
Speaker 1: of two massive hacker attacks and data breaches. Not great,
Speaker 1: Apple has assuaged the concerns of EU regulators, at least
Speaker 1: for now, regarding the company's Tap to Pay iPhone payment system.
Speaker 1: So regulators in the EU had accused Apple of jealously
Speaker 1: guarding that Tap to pay system in order to maintain
Speaker 1: a monopoly over payment processing through the iPhone, and if
Speaker 1: Apple did not open that up to third parties, to
Speaker 1: other like payment processing companies and such, Apple could face
Speaker 1: a pretty sizable fine, which is putting it lightly. By
Speaker 1: pretty sizable, I mean ten percent of the company's global revenue.
Speaker 1: Apple is a three trillion dollar company, so that is
Speaker 1: like billions of euros or billions of dollars worth of
Speaker 1: money if Apple failed to comply to these regular later
Speaker 1: demands or the company would have to cease operations in
Speaker 1: the EU to avoid it. So the services that Apple
Speaker 1: is opening things up like Apple has committed to doing
Speaker 1: this include third parties that might have their own mobile
Speaker 1: wallet features as well as their own payment processing services,
Speaker 1: but it could also include things like using your mobile
Speaker 1: phone to do stuff for all sorts of transactions, like
Speaker 1: as a hotel key or as a ticket to an event,
Speaker 1: or as a corporate badge to get into a building.
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff. It all uses NFC or near
Speaker 1: field communications technologies. So Apple appeers to have committed to this.
Speaker 1: They have a deadline of July twenty fifth to open
Speaker 1: up their system to other companies. If they do so,
Speaker 1: there'll be no further problems. If they don't, then they
Speaker 1: are facing the potential of a massive fine. Apple is
Speaker 1: not the only tech company that has had to contend
Speaker 1: with EU regulations recently. You know, the app formerly known
Speaker 1: as Twitter has been called to task for breaching online
Speaker 1: content rules under the EU's Digital Services Act or DSA.
Speaker 1: So EU regulators investigated X for seven months and found
Speaker 1: the company failed to comply with various rules requiring it
Speaker 1: to make available a searchable advertising repository so that the
Speaker 1: regulators can ensure that the advertising policies on the platform
Speaker 1: are within EU's laws. Worst, the regulators accuse X of
Speaker 1: denying them access to public data that they're supposed to
Speaker 1: be able to review. In addition, the regulators found that
Speaker 1: X's blue check mark system, which previously was all about
Speaker 1: verifying an account, but now it just means that you've
Speaker 1: paid for that service. They're now in opposition to industry practice, and,
Speaker 1: as Reuter's reporter Thu Yung Chi puts it, quote, negatively
Speaker 1: affect user's ability to make free and informed decisions about
Speaker 1: the authenticity of the accounts they interact with. End quote.
Speaker 1: X could face a fine of up to six percent
Speaker 1: of its annual global revenue. That would definitely be a
Speaker 1: huge blow to the company. I mean, it's a company
Speaker 1: that has continued to struggle in an effort to keep
Speaker 1: advertisers on board. Like revenue for Twitter, Slash, X has
Speaker 1: been a real sticky subject over the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: X will have a chance to defend itself. So this
Speaker 1: is not a cut and dried decision yet. X can
Speaker 1: come forward and attempt to either defend itself or make changes.
Speaker 1: But the European Commission says that if the findings of
Speaker 1: the investigation hold up to scrutiny, X will be fined
Speaker 1: and forced to change should it continue to operate within
Speaker 1: the EU. So yeah, tough news for X. Moving on
Speaker 1: to a different Elon Musk led company, According to Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: Tesla has had to make an adjustment to its schedule,
Speaker 1: which doesn't surprise me even a little bit. So several
Speaker 1: months ago, back in April, Elon Musk gave August eighth
Speaker 1: as a date at which time Tesla would unveil its
Speaker 1: Robotaxi business. Now, this was during the same earnings call
Speaker 1: in which Musk also told everybody that Tesla would no
Speaker 1: longer work toward releasing a low cost electric vehicle, which
Speaker 1: was a big blow. But you know, the Robotaxi thing
Speaker 1: was meant to kind of shift focus, I think, and
Speaker 1: to reframe Tesla as being more than an electric vehicle company.
Speaker 1: Like Musk has said that you should think of Tesla
Speaker 1: as an AI and robotics company. Now Tesla says it
Speaker 1: has had to delay the event and push it back
Speaker 1: to October because it turns out building autonomous taxis is
Speaker 1: actually really hard, which is something I think most people
Speaker 1: already understood. I mean, we've heard plenty of stories about
Speaker 1: how other robotaxi services have encountered issues, and goodness knows,
Speaker 1: there's no shortage of issues with Tesla's own autonomous offerings.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking specifically about autopilot and full self driving mode.
Speaker 1: So I wish to throw no shade at the engineers
Speaker 1: over at Tesla who've been working on this. I think
Speaker 1: instead this is more of a case of Elon Musk
Speaker 1: proposing an overly aggressive time table for a launch, something
Speaker 1: he's done a few times in the past, possibly as
Speaker 1: an effort to soften the blow of harder news, in
Speaker 1: this case canceling a low cost EV that was something
Speaker 1: that investors thought would really help push Tesla to the
Speaker 1: next level, and it clearly is not gonna happen. So
Speaker 1: it could be that you could argue the August eighth
Speaker 1: thing was kind of a hail Mary pass to get
Speaker 1: attention away from the low cost ev setback, and that
Speaker 1: now we're just seeing that naturally that was too aggressive
Speaker 1: a timetable, or it might be much more innocent than that.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, we're going to take another quick break.
Speaker 1: We will be back with some more tech news. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm back, so Kyle Barr of Gizmoto reports that analysts
Speaker 1: are ringing the death knell for Apple Vision Pro sales.
Speaker 1: That's Apple's mixed reality headset that they introduced earlier this year.
Speaker 1: The analysts are saying that pretty much everyone who was
Speaker 1: willing to fork over the cash for one of those
Speaker 1: three five hundred dollars headsets now has one, and that
Speaker 1: there just aren't other people who are willing to do that. So,
Speaker 1: according to the analysts that bar sites, sales for the
Speaker 1: rest of twenty twenty four are likely to be pretty
Speaker 1: darn low that by August you're looking at a seventy
Speaker 1: five percent drop off in sales. An analyst firm called
Speaker 1: IDC reports that Apple has not yet sold one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand units of the ding dang darn thing. Current estimations
Speaker 1: say that's not really going to change for the rest
Speaker 1: of this year, and in my opinion, the issue is twofold.
Speaker 1: They are two main problems Apple faces with the Apple
Speaker 1: Vision pro First off, it is undeniably really expensive, and
Speaker 1: that is a big bar for entry, right like, not
Speaker 1: a lot of people have thirty five hundred dollars to
Speaker 1: drop on a tech toy. Let's be honest, it is
Speaker 1: a toy right now. Because that brings us to problem
Speaker 1: number two. There are a limited number of applications for
Speaker 1: this technology as it stands right now. Now, I personally
Speaker 1: have not had the chance to try out a headset.
Speaker 1: From what I hear, it's a really impressive experience. The
Speaker 1: problem is there's just not a whole lot you get
Speaker 1: to do. The things it does are allegedly really incredible,
Speaker 1: but they're also limited in number. Very few applications have
Speaker 1: actually been developed for the platform itself. That actually makes
Speaker 1: sense because they're such a small user base. Now I've
Speaker 1: said this many times before, but if you are a developer,
Speaker 1: you have to choose which platforms you're going to develop
Speaker 1: four and from a financial standpoint, it only makes sense
Speaker 1: to aim at platforms that are likely to see a
Speaker 1: good return on investment. You want all that time and
Speaker 1: effort that you're pouring into this development process to pay off.
Speaker 1: So with that in mind, you want your work to
Speaker 1: reach as many potential customers as possible, or a group
Speaker 1: of customers who are more likely to spend money on
Speaker 1: the thing you have made. That's not really a thing
Speaker 1: if fewer than one hundred thousand people have even bought
Speaker 1: into the platform. Apple is reportedly working on a lower
Speaker 1: cost headset that would launch late next year. That could
Speaker 1: potentially change things, but the cost needs to reach a
Speaker 1: level where more curious people can actually afford it. So
Speaker 1: even if you cut the price in half, that's really
Speaker 1: not enough, right, Like, that's still like seventeen hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: That's still a lot of money. So even cutting the
Speaker 1: price in half is not likely to see a huge
Speaker 1: rush of custom I mean, you'll probably see more than
Speaker 1: you did with thirty five hundred, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: But this might be enough to be a tipping point
Speaker 1: for developers. We might see more developers willing to spend
Speaker 1: the time and effort it takes to create things, specifically
Speaker 1: for the Vision platform, and maybe then we'll see some
Speaker 1: really innovative uses of augmented reality and virtual reality and
Speaker 1: have those find their way to the headset. I would
Speaker 1: actually love to see that happen, because as much as
Speaker 1: I have dogged on Apple for the Vision pro, I
Speaker 1: do think AR could be super cool if it's done correctly.
Speaker 1: It's just really hard to do because typically it means
Speaker 1: that people have to wear a bulky, power hungry headset
Speaker 1: on their face, and that's a big ask, Like that's
Speaker 1: asking a lot of folks to do that, and as
Speaker 1: we've seen time and again, people are rarely willing to
Speaker 1: do that unless it's for something very specific like gaming.
Speaker 1: Right VR gaming is an exception, but most people, like
Speaker 1: when it came to three D television, they weren't willing
Speaker 1: to take that step. So it's going to take some
Speaker 1: pretty compelling applications, I think, to win people over beyond
Speaker 1: just you know, your pool of bleeding edge adopters. And
Speaker 1: now for the cantankerous old coot section of our show,
Speaker 1: I bring you my physical media is dying and I'm
Speaker 1: mad about it. Rant I'm not the only one doing
Speaker 1: the sort of ranting, by the way, Sharon Harding of
Speaker 1: Ours Technica has a piece titled DVDs are dying right
Speaker 1: as streaming has made them appealing again, and that piece
Speaker 1: really goes into this so, as Harding points out, the
Speaker 1: streaming landscape actually can make it harder if you are
Speaker 1: a fan of specific stuff apart from original titles that
Speaker 1: spawned out of these streaming platforms. It can be hard
Speaker 1: to predict where stuff is going to end up. So
Speaker 1: you might start watching, you know, a series on one
Speaker 1: streaming platform and then it jumps ship to a different
Speaker 1: streaming platform. If you're not a subscriber to this other service,
Speaker 1: you're out of luck. This has happened to me on
Speaker 1: multiple occasions. Worse yet, you can have a licensing agreement
Speaker 1: expire and no one has the thing you wanted to watch.
Speaker 1: So maybe you start a series, the licensing agreement expires,
Speaker 1: the series disappears from that platform, no one else has
Speaker 1: picked it up, and you're just left without being able
Speaker 1: to watch it. That's really frustrating. Buying digital copies isn't
Speaker 1: a guarantee to fix this, right, because there's always the
Speaker 1: chance that the provider will stop supporting the service or
Speaker 1: even go out of business. Then you're left without the
Speaker 1: media that you have purchased, or rather the media that
Speaker 1: you've paid to watch. I always think about that too,
Speaker 1: like I have libraries of digital films that I like
Speaker 1: to go to every now and again, but there's always
Speaker 1: the chance that the company will just stop supporting that service,
Speaker 1: and even though I have paid to access that media,
Speaker 1: the service no longer will work and I won't be
Speaker 1: able to watch the thing I paid for. So you
Speaker 1: might turn to the solid of physical media like Blu
Speaker 1: rays and DVDs, because then you can keep a copy
Speaker 1: for yourself and no one is going to take that
Speaker 1: away from you, except that physical media is dying out
Speaker 1: too harding details how red Box, which is a DVD
Speaker 1: rental service that operated red kiosks filled with DVDs across
Speaker 1: the United States. Red Box is shutting down. It went
Speaker 1: into bankruptcy initially went into chapter eleven. Now it's shifting
Speaker 1: to chapter seven, which includes liquidation of all assets. I'm
Speaker 1: sure Mike of Red Letter Media is distressed to really
Speaker 1: hear about this one, because red Box is kind of
Speaker 1: his go to for really trashy movies. The closure means
Speaker 1: that twenty four thousand kiosks are shutting down, as will
Speaker 1: the services that were operated by Redbox's parent company, Chicken Soup.
Speaker 1: For the soul entertainment that includes services like Crackle and
Speaker 1: Popcorn Flicks, they're also going bye by. So it's not
Speaker 1: just the physical media. Some streaming media s business are
Speaker 1: going way too. Meanwhile, big box stores are cutting back
Speaker 1: on DVD sales and repurposing that floor space for other products.
Speaker 1: Like Target, for example, is going to shift to a
Speaker 1: strategy where they only offer DVDs seasonally and then the
Speaker 1: rest of the time that space will be meant for
Speaker 1: something else. Sony has announced it's going to stop producing
Speaker 1: recordable Blu ray discs in the near future, and Harding
Speaker 1: does a really great job of explaining the reasoning behind
Speaker 1: why all these shifts are happening, Because the numbers don't
Speaker 1: lie and physical media is far less profitable these days.
Speaker 1: There's just fewer people buying physical media, but considering the
Speaker 1: chaos that is streaming, this means consumers will have fewer
Speaker 1: options when it comes to ensuring that they have access
Speaker 1: to the media they love. Heck, over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, I've actually started collecting physical media again. I
Speaker 1: had kind of shifted away from that for quite some time,
Speaker 1: but I'm back to it now and it's largely because
Speaker 1: of this issue. I even belong to a monthly horror
Speaker 1: movie club where I get four discs per month. And
Speaker 1: for folks like me, this trend is pretty sad and
Speaker 1: also frustrating. It's also totally understandable. It's not like I
Speaker 1: fault the companies for doing this. I don't expect companies
Speaker 1: to continue to manufacture physical discs at a loss, but
Speaker 1: the fact is we're seeing this move away from physical
Speaker 1: media entirely while simultaneously dealing with the constantly shifting landscape
Speaker 1: of streaming, and that stinks. Speaking of physical media, the
Speaker 1: German Navy is looking to phase out a legacy technology
Speaker 1: for its fleet of anti submarine frigates. See. These ships
Speaker 1: currently rely on the storage system that saves data to
Speaker 1: eight inch floppy discs. Yeah, floppy discs. I wager there's
Speaker 1: some of y'all out there who have never even used
Speaker 1: floppy discs. I grew up using five and a quarter
Speaker 1: and then later three and a half inch floppies. There
Speaker 1: are people older than me who used much larger floppy discs.
Speaker 1: Apart from an escape room that I participated in recently.
Speaker 1: I haven't touched a floppy disk in years. It's kind
Speaker 1: of crazy to think that the German Navy is still
Speaker 1: running equipment that relies on this legacy technology. Some would
Speaker 1: call it an obsolete technology, but here we are moving
Speaker 1: stuff to a new system. Isn't easy. Modernizing hardware requires
Speaker 1: a lot of considerations because changing one thing can sometimes
Speaker 1: break something else. According to the site Tom's Hardware, the
Speaker 1: German Navy is looking at an emulator to provide the
Speaker 1: same kind of storage and data retrieval services as the
Speaker 1: floppy disk system did, and that means the Navy won't
Speaker 1: have to retool their entire process. The emulator would serve
Speaker 1: as a substitute for the floppy drive, but otherwise things
Speaker 1: would largely operate the same way they have for years.
Speaker 1: Kind of wild that we're into twenty twenty four and
Speaker 1: this is finally being addressed. Hurricane Beryl packed a heck
Speaker 1: of a wallop when it landed in Texas earlier this week.
Speaker 1: The storm knocked out power for nearly two two million
Speaker 1: Houston residents. Meanwhile, a massive heat wave created really dangerous
Speaker 1: situations for folks living in the Houston area. Not only
Speaker 1: did they have to deal with flooding and other damage
Speaker 1: from the hurricane, but the temperatures and humidity meant that
Speaker 1: going without power and access to air conditioning was like
Speaker 1: a real health hazard, making matters more complicated than necessary
Speaker 1: would be. Center Point Energy, a utility company in the
Speaker 1: Houston area, Texas, famously is not part of the US
Speaker 1: National Power Grid. Texas opted to go at lone wolf style,
Speaker 1: which frequently does not work out so great for the
Speaker 1: residents of Texas, but it seems to make business executives
Speaker 1: and local politicians a whole lot of money anyway. Center
Speaker 1: Point Energy doesn't have a dedicated app, so Houston citizens
Speaker 1: began to turn to a different app in an effort
Speaker 1: to get information about where power outages currently are in
Speaker 1: the city. That app happens to belong to the fast
Speaker 1: food chain WAA Burger. Waaburger's app includes a map that
Speaker 1: shows all local Waterburger locations within the Houston area, and
Speaker 1: there's an icon that indicates whether or not the store
Speaker 1: is open. So by opening up the map and seeing
Speaker 1: where stores are closed and where they're open, Houston citizens
Speaker 1: could actually figure out which regions were still affected by
Speaker 1: power allagies because the ones that have power allagies. Clearly
Speaker 1: those restaurants aren't going to be open. So users shared
Speaker 1: this discovery on x and subsequently Waaburger's app saw a
Speaker 1: flurry of downloads. It went from being fortieth on iOS's
Speaker 1: app store to sixteenth. Necessity is the Mother of Invention. Waaburger,
Speaker 1: for its part, has responded by saying they never intended
Speaker 1: their app to be used this way, and they really
Speaker 1: hope that people are safe. Like they're not objecting to
Speaker 1: the app being used this way, they're showing their concern
Speaker 1: for the community. Researchers have created a urine processing system
Speaker 1: meant for space suits, similar to this still suits in
Speaker 1: the science fiction series Doom. The researchers have created a
Speaker 1: system that includes a quote vacuum based external catheter leading
Speaker 1: to a combined forward reverse osmosis unit end quote in
Speaker 1: order to take an astronaut's urine, remove all the yucky bits,
Speaker 1: and purify it into drinkable water. And it's said to
Speaker 1: be eighty seven percent efficient, so I assume that means
Speaker 1: it can reclaim about eighty seven percent of the water
Speaker 1: content in urine. That means you can pee and in
Speaker 1: about five minutes enjoy a refreshing beverage made from your pee.
Speaker 1: I'm being a little cheeky about this because we all
Speaker 1: need to remember all the water of our planet has
Speaker 1: been here for millions of years, hundreds of millions of years.
Speaker 1: For us, water is kind of like the force. It
Speaker 1: binds us and penetrates us and moves through us. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it moves through us in the middle of a Peter
Speaker 1: Jackson movie. He really needs to make his films less
Speaker 1: than four hours long. Anyway. I think most folks are
Speaker 1: aware that water purification is a thing. We depend on
Speaker 1: water purification already, right, like we process waste water so
Speaker 1: that we can then purify it and make it drinkable
Speaker 1: and usable. Again, it's just a little freaky to think
Speaker 1: of it as a miniaturized system that's wearable and that
Speaker 1: you could complete this purification process in less than ten minutes.
Speaker 1: The system will undoubtedly be handy if we ever do
Speaker 1: figure out a safe way to send astronauts on longer
Speaker 1: space missions like to Mars and such. This kind of
Speaker 1: thing will be necessary in order to be able to
Speaker 1: process the water that is brought on board and to
Speaker 1: maximize it to use it as long as is possible.
Speaker 1: Because every bit of weight that you add to a
Speaker 1: space mission requires more energy to get that thing off
Speaker 1: the planet. So these considerations are challenging. You have to
Speaker 1: have ways to be able to process this stuff, and
Speaker 1: to do so while it's worked within a suit means
Speaker 1: that you can do it even if someone has gone
Speaker 1: out on a spacewalk mission. You know, when you're on
Speaker 1: board a spacecraft or in the space station using the
Speaker 1: onboard facilities whenever you need to use the bathroom that
Speaker 1: has these sort of reclamation systems built into it already.
Speaker 1: But if you're doing something that's just in the suit,
Speaker 1: then typically what you're really relying upon is essentially a diaper.
Speaker 1: So this kind of system opens up the capacity for
Speaker 1: recapturing water from waste even when you're out on a
Speaker 1: spacewalk and you're not inside a spacecraft. Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: a couple of article recommendations for you all this week.
Speaker 1: First up is Samuel Aksen's piece for Ours Technica. It
Speaker 1: is titled shady company relaunches popular old tech blogs steals
Speaker 1: writer's identities yuck. Okay, so apparently this web advertising company
Speaker 1: has resurrected some dead blogs blogs that used to be
Speaker 1: active on the Internet but haven't been for years, and
Speaker 1: are using AI to pose as the people who originally
Speaker 1: contributed to those blogs, and thus churning out garbage articles
Speaker 1: with the bylines of people who aren't actually creating that work. Clearly,
Speaker 1: this is unethical, Like, there's no question this is unethical.
Speaker 1: If you were one of those writers and you started
Speaker 1: to see junk getting pushed out with your name attached
Speaker 1: to it, that would be bad because imagine that you're
Speaker 1: applying for a job and your potential employer has researched
Speaker 1: you and just found all these articles that are just terrible.
Speaker 1: They're subpar, and they have your name attached to it,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't written by you. That would be really awful.
Speaker 1: As someone who used to write for a website, you know,
Speaker 1: a website that notably dumped its editorial staff in favor
Speaker 1: of AI generated pieces, I definitely have concerns about this
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So yeah, I think it's well worth
Speaker 1: a read. Next up, there's a piece by Sky Jacobs
Speaker 1: of tech Spot. It is titled why you should be
Speaker 1: Suspicious of that verified Amazon customer review. It examined something
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people had already suspected that
Speaker 1: those reviews you see on Amazon listings, even from supposed
Speaker 1: trusted consumers, are sometimes just bought and paid for by
Speaker 1: various merchants, meaning you can't trust the reviews, which strikes
Speaker 1: right at the heart of one of Amazon's most valuable contributions.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think customer reviews are part of what
Speaker 1: helped Amazon navigate the dot com bubble crisis in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands. Anyway, both of those articles are well
Speaker 1: worth your time and you should check those out. That's
Speaker 1: it for the news this week. I'll chat with you
Speaker 1: next week, probably about large language model collapse and how
Speaker 1: AI training itself on other AI ultimately leads to a
Speaker 1: desolate landscape of garbage content that's fun to talk about.
Speaker 1: We'll chat about that next week, as well as some
Speaker 1: other stuff. And I hope you have a fantastic weekend,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
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