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 iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the week ending Friday, April twenty sixth, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and first up. I covered one really big news item
Speaker 1: earlier this week on Wednesday's episode, which is that the
Speaker 1: US Senate approved a bill that gives the Chinese company
Speaker 1: byte Dance one year to divest itself of TikTok or
Speaker 1: else face a nationwide band. President Biden signed that bill
Speaker 1: into law as was expected. And the only other update
Speaker 1: I really have is that Reuter's reports Byteedance would rather
Speaker 1: choose to shut TikTok down than to sell it off
Speaker 1: to someone else. Of course, that's not likely to happen
Speaker 1: right away. I mean, for one thing, they have a year,
Speaker 1: but by Dance also plans to challenge the law on
Speaker 1: constitutional grounds, as do others, So we have a ways
Speaker 1: to go before this story ends one way or the other,
Speaker 1: whether courts uphold it or say that in fact, it's unconstitutional.
Speaker 1: And if you're wondering why bite Dance would rather just
Speaker 1: scuttle all operations in the United States and just call
Speaker 1: it a loss. It really comes down to that juicy
Speaker 1: recommendation algorithm that TikTok uses, you know, the one that
Speaker 1: former engineers for an earlier app called ninety nine fongs
Speaker 1: say is their work and that they should be compensated
Speaker 1: for it. Byte Dance does not want to part with
Speaker 1: that algorithm. It is a key component of other apps
Speaker 1: that the company owns and operates, including the Chinese cousin
Speaker 1: to TikTok do Yin. And that's it for the update
Speaker 1: for that story. This week, the US Federal Communiticationations Commission,
Speaker 1: or FCC reinstated some, but not all, of net neutrality
Speaker 1: regulations in the United States. So as a quick reminder,
Speaker 1: net neutrality covers a fairly broad spectrum of concepts, but
Speaker 1: you can kind of boil it down to say that
Speaker 1: the rules mean all companies that provide internet infrastructure agree
Speaker 1: to let all traffic cross their networks without interference, no
Speaker 1: matter who it's from, to whom it's going, or what
Speaker 1: kind of device the endpoint is using. So under net neutrality,
Speaker 1: a provider would not give advantages to their own content
Speaker 1: while throttling traffic from competitors. So if you got your
Speaker 1: Internet service from Comcast, Comcasts wouldn't be allowed to put
Speaker 1: its own services on a fast lane while inhibiting stuff
Speaker 1: from like you know, Netflix or Max or Hulu or whatever,
Speaker 1: or charging those companies an arm in a leg in
Speaker 1: order to also be in the fast lane. The measure
Speaker 1: passed three to two in the FCC. It went right
Speaker 1: down party lines, which is pretty much par for the
Speaker 1: course these days. So three Democratic appointees voted for it
Speaker 1: and to Republican appointees voted against it. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: this is not the first time the FCC has established
Speaker 1: net neutrality rules. It did so under the Obama administration,
Speaker 1: but then under the Trump administration the FCC revoked those
Speaker 1: earlier rules, so this should really indicate that these rules
Speaker 1: are far from set in stone. A tech analyst named
Speaker 1: Ming chi Quo has posted in Medium that Apple has
Speaker 1: scaled back its production of the Vision Pro mixed reality headsets. So,
Speaker 1: according to this post, Apple initially expected a demand of
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand headsets, but this
Speaker 1: cut will bring it down to a little bit around
Speaker 1: the half of that. Like four hundred thousand to four
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand units. Further, the post says that
Speaker 1: Apple expects sales to dip even more next year, and
Speaker 1: that the company has adjusted its product roadmap as a result.
Speaker 1: So Apple often releases updated models of its various tech
Speaker 1: platforms from year to year, like Max and iPhones and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But the post says that the
Speaker 1: company is no longer planning to release a new headset
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five. So could it be that mixed
Speaker 1: reality is one arena in which Apple's reality distortion field
Speaker 1: just doesn't extend. So in the past I've predicted that
Speaker 1: various Apple products wouldn't go very far. I mean, the
Speaker 1: iPad is a really big example of one where I
Speaker 1: whiffed big time. So I've been so incredibly wrong in
Speaker 1: the past. But maybe the challenges of getting a broad
Speaker 1: audience for a mixed reality headset are too great even
Speaker 1: for Apple, and to be fear to the company, mixed
Speaker 1: reality is a very tough sell. I mean, the headsets
Speaker 1: are expensive. You know, you have to wear them on
Speaker 1: your head, so that's got a strike against it for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. And there's a very limited number
Speaker 1: of applications for these headsets right now. Despite the fact
Speaker 1: that what they do appears to be really incredible, it's
Speaker 1: a a very limited set of things that they do,
Speaker 1: so with all of these things taken into account, it's
Speaker 1: tough to get traction. So it's a pretty big uphill battle,
Speaker 1: and I don't think Apple's gonna win it. Tesla has
Speaker 1: had a wild week that I think proves the point
Speaker 1: that if we live inside a computer simulation, there's some
Speaker 1: serious bugs in the programming. So Tesla held its twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four Q one earnings call this week, and the
Speaker 1: company revealed that, at least according to The Verge, Tesla's
Speaker 1: net income is down nine percent year over year and
Speaker 1: has hit a six year low. Oh and quote, net
Speaker 1: income attributable to common stockholders has slid fifty five percent
Speaker 1: end quote. That's according to Andrew Hawkins of The Verge,
Speaker 1: and he attributes this both to Tesla's price cutting efforts
Speaker 1: and cooling demand for evs among the buying public. Elon
Speaker 1: Musk says the auto industry in general has pivoted from
Speaker 1: EV's back to hybrids, and that certainly is going on
Speaker 1: here in America. I mean, we have seen a few
Speaker 1: different auto manufacturers switch gears to use a pun and
Speaker 1: to favor hybrids over evs for at least the near term.
Speaker 1: The earnings call included a section that teased Tesla's upcoming
Speaker 1: robotaxi product, which we're told we're going to hear more
Speaker 1: about on August eighth. I'll remind you that, according to
Speaker 1: various states that have regulatory requirements for autonomous taxi services,
Speaker 1: Tesla has not yet begun the licensing procedures to get
Speaker 1: permission to operate such a service in those states. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe that's changed since the initial teas of the robotaxi service.
Speaker 1: Maybe Tesla has started to file that paperwork. I haven't
Speaker 1: heard that. But what happened after this earnings call is
Speaker 1: where things really went bonkers from me. So you had
Speaker 1: this earnings call, things sound dire. You know, you're down
Speaker 1: significantly from the previous year, and the stock price would
Speaker 1: surge twelve percent in trading on Wednesday. So I told
Speaker 1: you is a mad world out there. The stockholder enthusiasm
Speaker 1: appears to be linked to things like the upcoming robotaxi effort,
Speaker 1: Musk claiming that Tesla isn't so much an auto manufacturer
Speaker 1: as it is a digital platform, as well as Musk's
Speaker 1: announcement that the company plans to introduce new models early
Speaker 1: next year, if not sooner. I have no idea if
Speaker 1: any of that is realistic. Keep in mind, we're also
Speaker 1: talking about the same company that had delayed the launch
Speaker 1: of the cyber truck numerous times before it finally rolled
Speaker 1: off lots. But the shareholders seem happy for now. In
Speaker 1: other Muskie news, Elon's Ai company x Ai, because Elon
Speaker 1: Musk continues to be obsessed with the letter x is
Speaker 1: getting close to raising six billion with a B dollars
Speaker 1: in investments on evaluation of eighteen billion dollars. According to
Speaker 1: tech Crunch. Not that long ago, the numbers looked a
Speaker 1: lot different. It was more like an effort to raise
Speaker 1: three billion dollars with evaluation of fifteen billion. But various
Speaker 1: heavy hitting and groups charged forward to get a piece
Speaker 1: of the action, and Xai quickly tweaked those numbers. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like running a lemonade stand. You know,
Speaker 1: you've been selling tall, frosty glasses of tangy lemonade for
Speaker 1: like twenty five cents, but then there's this great lemon
Speaker 1: blight that wipes out nearly all lemons except for the
Speaker 1: ones that you have. And it also coincides with like
Speaker 1: a massive heat wave, and you've got the market cornered
Speaker 1: on your sweet and sour zipper, so you hike the
Speaker 1: price to five bucks for a shot. Anyway, the sales
Speaker 1: pitch for XAI sounds like something from a science fiction
Speaker 1: film where we find out how the killer robots got
Speaker 1: their start. So, namely, Musk plans to leverage data from
Speaker 1: his various other companies to use as training information for
Speaker 1: the AI developed by XAI. So those businesses include stuff
Speaker 1: like x formerly known as Twitter, which is a stakeholder
Speaker 1: in XAI, SpaceX, Tesla, and even Neuralink that's the brain
Speaker 1: computer interface company that Musk has. So Musk's vision is
Speaker 1: a world in which all these other businesses are feeding
Speaker 1: his XAI with real world data and experience and thus
Speaker 1: accelerating that AI's learning patterns, and voila, we get miracle
Speaker 1: robots and such. I remain skeptical. Now, a quick hop
Speaker 1: away from Tesla will take us over to a story
Speaker 1: about Fisker, which is an electric vehicle auto company that,
Speaker 1: according to SFGate dot com, is now on the brink
Speaker 1: of collapse. Huh, I'm business on the brink. That would
Speaker 1: actually be a really good name for a podcast. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this week, Fisker filed with the SEC and revealed that
Speaker 1: the company is pretty much broke. Back in March, it
Speaker 1: was unable to make an interest payment. Now, granted, it
Speaker 1: was a whopper of an interest payment, it was eight
Speaker 1: point four million dollars. But the filing revealed that, you know,
Speaker 1: this company, Fisker is on borrowed time. So unless creditors
Speaker 1: give the company some serious slack or it hits some
Speaker 1: crazy financial windfall, the screw will need to file for
Speaker 1: bankruptcy within thirty days. The filing doesn't sugarcoat things either. Essentially,
Speaker 1: it says giving us more money is really risky because
Speaker 1: we haven't proven we're able to do what we need
Speaker 1: to do. But yeah, we've seen a few stories about
Speaker 1: startups attempting to establish a foothold in the auto industry.
Speaker 1: More often than not, it does not work out. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more news stories to get through
Speaker 1: before we get to that. Let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsors. We're back and we're going to
Speaker 1: take a little stroll over to Meta Meta also held
Speaker 1: an earnings call this week, but investors were not nearly
Speaker 1: as charmed by the revelations as those who were following
Speaker 1: the Tesla announcements. The call began with talk about AI
Speaker 1: to no big surprise, and then Zuckerberg also talked about
Speaker 1: the metaverse, which is funny because you don't hear that
Speaker 1: term bandied about nearly as much these days. I think
Speaker 1: AI I largely displaced the metaverse concept that became like
Speaker 1: the new thing that business leaders got excited about. But
Speaker 1: as CNBC's Ashley Caput put said, quote, he spent almost
Speaker 1: the entirety of his opening remarks focused on the many
Speaker 1: ways Meta loses money end quote, Mizcaput, I believe you
Speaker 1: have spilt some tea all over the place. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Meta is very good at spending a lot of money
Speaker 1: on stuff that isn't making very much by comparison. So,
Speaker 1: for example, Reality Labs brought in four hundred and forty
Speaker 1: million dollars in sales, and that's a lot of cheddar,
Speaker 1: but that same division racked up a financial loss of
Speaker 1: three point eighty five billion dollars. Anyway, Zuckerberg also seemed
Speaker 1: prepared for the financial blow that would follow this earnings
Speaker 1: call because he acknowledged that investors are generally not very
Speaker 1: happy about Meta spending billions of dollars on projects that
Speaker 1: are not yet monetizable. Sure enough, in the wake of
Speaker 1: the earnings call, Meta's stock price dropped nineteen percent in
Speaker 1: extended trading at some points. As for the future, Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: revealed that the company estimates capital expenditures for twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four to be in the thirty five billion to forty
Speaker 1: billion dollar range. That's more than what the company had
Speaker 1: previously estimated, So I guess making the future is real expensive.
Speaker 1: Microsoft also had an earnings call this week, and the
Speaker 1: company explained that the absolute rush to develop AI has
Speaker 1: meant the demand for cloud based computing power is greater
Speaker 1: than the supply of resources. So the report showed that
Speaker 1: Microsoft has increased capital expenditures by nearly eighty percent year
Speaker 1: over year in an effort to meet this demand to
Speaker 1: build out things like data centers and such, and the
Speaker 1: company is going to have to spend even more in
Speaker 1: the next couple of years in order to really feed
Speaker 1: the hungry beast that is AI. This is kind of
Speaker 1: like seeing Parkinson's law of data on steroids, So Parkinson's
Speaker 1: law of data in case you don't know what that is,
Speaker 1: it says that information will fill any space made available
Speaker 1: to it, like it doesn't matter how big your library
Speaker 1: or filing cabinet or storage drive is, any way of
Speaker 1: having a way of retaining information, it will fill up.
Speaker 1: Like I remember when we would get a computer with
Speaker 1: a hard drive like one hundred and twenty eight megabytes
Speaker 1: or something, and I'd think, oh, we'll never fill all
Speaker 1: this up, which was ridiculous obviously, Well, this seems to
Speaker 1: be that same kind of issue. The compute power instead
Speaker 1: of storage power just will get swallowed up as soon
Speaker 1: as you make it available. Microsoft keeps adding to it,
Speaker 1: and customers in the form of companies running these AI
Speaker 1: implementations just buy it right up. But the expenditures that
Speaker 1: Microsoft is making in order to meet this demand so
Speaker 1: far are actually outpacing income. So that could be a
Speaker 1: sticky wicket. At some point you could meet a tipping
Speaker 1: point where it just you're spending more money than you
Speaker 1: could possibly bring back in, especially if some of these
Speaker 1: startup AI companies of fizzle out. So we'll have to
Speaker 1: see where this kind of levels out. I'm sure there
Speaker 1: will be a point, I don't know when that'll happen.
Speaker 1: Google is facing sanctions in South Korea after that nation's
Speaker 1: Fair Trade Commission, the Korea's version of FTC, determined that
Speaker 1: Google's practice of giving YouTube Premium subscribers access to YouTube
Speaker 1: Music as well essentially amounts to bundling these services together
Speaker 1: and is an anti competitive practice that has hurt domestic
Speaker 1: companies streaming platforms. So YouTube Music became the top music
Speaker 1: streaming service in the Korean market, it surpassed even the
Speaker 1: native Korean services, and the FTC launched an investigation into
Speaker 1: the matter last year and now is preparing to determine sanctions.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, Korean companies are saying this is too little,
Speaker 1: too late, and that the whole determination process is just
Speaker 1: far too long to be of any good because by
Speaker 1: the time a decision has arrived at the damage has
Speaker 1: already been done. Meanwhile, the u US FTC, in our case,
Speaker 1: it's the Federal Trade Commission, ruled that companies are no
Speaker 1: longer allowed to force employees into non compete agreements. This
Speaker 1: applies across all industries, obviously, but inside the tech world
Speaker 1: it is a particularly huge development. Companies have long relied
Speaker 1: on non competes to prevent employees from jumping ship and
Speaker 1: working with a competitor, potentially bringing valuable skills and knowledge
Speaker 1: to that competitor. In fact, some of the podcasters you
Speaker 1: listen to may have non compete clauses in their work agreements,
Speaker 1: you know, like ones you might be listening to right now.
Speaker 1: But the FTC says that kind of thing is not
Speaker 1: going to fly anymore. And you, as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: that decision has not exactly been met with universal approval
Speaker 1: among corporations out there, including tech companies. So on the contrary,
Speaker 1: industry groups are already suing the FTC, arguing that the
Speaker 1: agency lacks the authority to make and enforce such a ruling.
Speaker 1: This rule will go into effect on August twenty second
Speaker 1: of this year, at which point all current non competes,
Speaker 1: at least for anyone who isn't in an executive policy
Speaker 1: making position and earning you know, more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars a year, all non competes will
Speaker 1: be null and void, and companies will not be allowed
Speaker 1: to issue new ones. The lawsuits will continue until a
Speaker 1: final decision is made. My guess is that ultimately this
Speaker 1: is going to have to go all the way to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. That's going to take years. So in
Speaker 1: the meantime, I say, make hay while the sun shines. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got a couple of weird AI stories to get throughs.
Speaker 1: First up is a case in Maryland in which the
Speaker 1: athletic director for a high school was found to have
Speaker 1: used AI to impersonate the voice of that school's principle.
Speaker 1: So the accusation goes that this athletic director fabricated and
Speaker 1: audio recording using an AI copy of the principal's voice,
Speaker 1: and this recording included some really awful stuff like racist
Speaker 1: and antisemitic messaging. Apparently this all happened back in January
Speaker 1: when the principle informed the athletic director that his contract
Speaker 1: was not going to be renewed. There were various issues
Speaker 1: and problems with this particular staff member. The athletic director
Speaker 1: then fabricated the recording and posted it to social media,
Speaker 1: which prompted a viral response. It led to the principle
Speaker 1: being placed on leave. And now it's revealed that the
Speaker 1: whole thing was a fraud. And I'm sure we'll never
Speaker 1: hear of any other outlandish potentially criminal uses of AI
Speaker 1: in voice replication technology, he said sarcastically. The other weird
Speaker 1: AI story deals with Drake and it's about a disk track.
Speaker 1: And yes, I know how lame it is to hear
Speaker 1: me say the phrase disc track. I have not earned
Speaker 1: any place at all within rap or hip hop culture,
Speaker 1: but anyway, this particular track was aimed at Kendrick Lamar,
Speaker 1: and the track included a recording of an AI impersonation
Speaker 1: of Tupac Shakur, who, of course died at the age
Speaker 1: of twenty five. Way back in nineteen ninety six. Shaquur's
Speaker 1: estate issued a cease and desist order against Drake and
Speaker 1: threaten legal actions saying that the estate did not give
Speaker 1: permission for the use of Shakur's audio likeness on this track.
Speaker 1: Shakur wasn't the only artist who is replicated for the
Speaker 1: purposes of hyping up Drake and or dissing Lamar. Snoop
Speaker 1: Dogg was also copied by AI, and you know Snoop
Speaker 1: dog is very much alive. The issue really highlights the
Speaker 1: legal gaps that currently exist with regard to technology's ability
Speaker 1: to copy not just a specific work, but a person's
Speaker 1: voice or style. Those sorts of things aren't eligible for copyright.
Speaker 1: You cannot copyright a voice or a style. You have
Speaker 1: to have something that's set down in some sort of
Speaker 1: established format for it to be eligible for copyright. So
Speaker 1: in the absence of copyright protection, the best avenue for
Speaker 1: those who have been copied tends to relate to publicity rights,
Speaker 1: which doesn't really apply to most of us. It's really
Speaker 1: more of something that applies to notable people. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm sure we'll never hear of any other versions of
Speaker 1: this very problem due to AI sarcasm. Again in good
Speaker 1: space news, NASA was able to fix some issues with
Speaker 1: the Voyager one spacecraft, which is currently the human made
Speaker 1: object that is furthest from its home planet. Voyager is
Speaker 1: in interstellar space, and last year the spacecraft had a
Speaker 1: malfunction that prevented it from being able to send data
Speaker 1: back to Earth. So for months, engineers at NASA worked
Speaker 1: to fix this problem, and now Voyager can send at
Speaker 1: least some data relating to its health and operations back
Speaker 1: to US, and NASA hopes to get other operations online
Speaker 1: in the near future. The solution largely revolved around addressing
Speaker 1: operations to different sectors of the computer system's memory. That
Speaker 1: must have been hard, because we're not talking about a
Speaker 1: massive amount of space here. I mean there's a massive
Speaker 1: amount of outer space, sure, but not a massive amount
Speaker 1: of computer memory space. Voyager has long since completed its
Speaker 1: primary mission, which was, along with Voyager two, to observe
Speaker 1: the outer planets of our Solar system, and now it's
Speaker 1: giving us information on the nature of interstellar space, which
Speaker 1: is pretty darn cool. Okay, I've gotten article recommendation for
Speaker 1: y'all before I sign off. It's from torrent Freak. It
Speaker 1: was written by Andy Maxwell. It's titled us Know Your
Speaker 1: Customer proposal will put an end to anonymous cloud users,
Speaker 1: which is alarming. The piece explains the whole issue, including
Speaker 1: the reasons behind wanting to clamp down on anonymity in
Speaker 1: the first place, and how this could impact services such
Speaker 1: as VPNs and such. It's well worth your time. That's
Speaker 1: it for this week. I hope you're all well, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
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