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 on Friday, October eighteenth, twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and over at X the platform formerly known as Twitter,
Speaker 1: I think I'll always call it that, maybe just offspite anyway,
Speaker 1: there was another change in how the platform works, and
Speaker 1: it appears to have prompted yet another exodus among a
Speaker 1: subset of users. So this time it all has to
Speaker 1: do with the block feature. Now, in ye olden days,
Speaker 1: if you chose to block someone on Twitter, not only
Speaker 1: would they no longer be able to comment on, or
Speaker 1: quote or repost any of your tweets, I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to see any of those tweets in the first place.
Speaker 1: So to the blocked person, you would seem to have
Speaker 1: disappeared off the platform. But earlier this week, for reasons
Speaker 1: I don't fully understand, X revealed that it was going
Speaker 1: to change the block feature. And the block feature will
Speaker 1: still block someone from commenting on or retweeting your posts,
Speaker 1: but they will be able to read everything that you
Speaker 1: have tweeted. So now, if I were still on X
Speaker 1: Slash Twitter and you were irritating me and I blocked you,
Speaker 1: you would still be able to see everything I posted,
Speaker 1: you just couldn't comment or retweet it. Now a lot
Speaker 1: of people have balked at this since it has been revealed,
Speaker 1: and they pointed out that this can create really dangerous
Speaker 1: situations for some users. Let's say that someone's getting stalked
Speaker 1: and blocking accounts was one way to limit their visibility
Speaker 1: to the stalker. Well, now the stalker could continue to
Speaker 1: read updates and potentially escalate matters, make things worse because
Speaker 1: the other person's now not aware of what's going on.
Speaker 1: They're just posting, but they don't realize that the person
Speaker 1: that they thought was blocked from seeing them can actually
Speaker 1: read everything. As Matt Binder of Mashable noted, it appears
Speaker 1: that some folks on X have felt the need to
Speaker 1: stretch their metaphorical legs and seek greener pastures or perhaps
Speaker 1: bluer skies because X competitor blue Sky announced that in
Speaker 1: the twenty four hours following X's announced changes to the
Speaker 1: block feature, blue Sky saw half a million users join
Speaker 1: the service now. Blue Sky is behind both X and
Speaker 1: metas threads, platforms and users, and all of those platforms
Speaker 1: are similar. They're kind of like that microblogging sort of thing.
Speaker 1: There's also Mastodon out there. I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 1: Mastadon also saw a surge of new folks signing on
Speaker 1: these days. I'm only kinda sorta on Threads. Even that
Speaker 1: is a bit much for me. There are issues with Threads.
Speaker 1: I have that the same as my issues with like
Speaker 1: Facebook and really Meta in general. So I don't feel
Speaker 1: great about posting there, but I have done it a
Speaker 1: couple of times. It does help scratch the itch that
Speaker 1: Twitter used to satisfy for me back in the day.
Speaker 1: But it's not great. Maybe I should switch just a
Speaker 1: Blue skyer Maston, or just accept the fact that that
Speaker 1: part of my life is over anyway. I don't understand
Speaker 1: why X made this choice to change the block feature.
Speaker 1: But I should also mention that Meta's Threads announced a
Speaker 1: change to its service that's being rolled out gradually, which
Speaker 1: is that users will be able to turn on a
Speaker 1: feature called activity Status. Now I say turn on, it
Speaker 1: may be that the status is turned on by default
Speaker 1: and you have to go in to opt out of it.
Speaker 1: But activity status tells you which users are currently online.
Speaker 1: So if this is on, if it's active for you,
Speaker 1: and it's on, it's not active for me yet I
Speaker 1: checked before I recorded today. But if it's on, then
Speaker 1: for other people that it's on, you'll see a little
Speaker 1: green dot on their profile icon that indicates that they're
Speaker 1: online at that moment. And if the green dot's not there,
Speaker 1: it either means that they aren't online or they have
Speaker 1: turned off the activity status feature. To me, it sounds
Speaker 1: like this is a bad idea too, Like I don't
Speaker 1: know anyone who is begging for this. Maybe it's just
Speaker 1: that I use threads in a different way. I always
Speaker 1: viewed threads just as I viewed Twitter as kind of
Speaker 1: an asynchronous communications tool where you post, but you're not
Speaker 1: expecting an immediate response, right, They'll respond when they get
Speaker 1: a chance to respond, that's it, and then you respond
Speaker 1: when you have a chance. It's not happening in real time.
Speaker 1: But Meta appears to be kind of trying to move
Speaker 1: threads into that space a little bit. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe that is something that a lot of people have
Speaker 1: been asking for. But if you're like me, and you
Speaker 1: aren't keen on everybody being aware of when you're on
Speaker 1: the service, You'll probably want to turn the activity status
Speaker 1: to off if you are in fact using once it
Speaker 1: is rolled out. That is, so I'll be curious to
Speaker 1: see how this rollout happens. Like I said, I don't
Speaker 1: have it yet, so I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: opt out or opt in. I would much prefer it
Speaker 1: to be opt in and have it off by default,
Speaker 1: but I suspect that will not be how it turns out.
Speaker 1: We'll have to see. Sarah Perez of tech Crunch has
Speaker 1: an article this week titled Elon Musk's X is changing
Speaker 1: its privacy policy to allow third parties to train AI
Speaker 1: on your posts. So maybe some of those folks headed
Speaker 1: to Blue Sky are more concerned about their posts being
Speaker 1: used to fuel our future robotic overlords and less concerned
Speaker 1: about the block feature. I don't know. Perez notes that
Speaker 1: X changed its privacy policy and it now includes the
Speaker 1: option for third party collaborators to slurp up all that
Speaker 1: tasted tasting data that you have generated over the years,
Speaker 1: so that the next generation of trollbot or whatever can
Speaker 1: lean on the collective wisdom of X, and I do
Speaker 1: use all of those terms sarcastically. Users will apparently be
Speaker 1: able to opt out of this feature. The new section
Speaker 1: of the policy states, quote, depending on your settings or
Speaker 1: if you decide to share your data, we may share
Speaker 1: or disclose your information with third parties if you do
Speaker 1: not opt out. In some instances, the recipients of the
Speaker 1: information may use it for their own independent purposes in
Speaker 1: addition to those stated in excess privacy policy, including for example,
Speaker 1: to train their artificial intelligence models, whether generative or otherwise
Speaker 1: end quote. Perez notes that as of the writing of
Speaker 1: this article, there was no clear setting that would relate
Speaker 1: to this policy, so if you went into your settings,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't see something that was clearly marked as allowing
Speaker 1: you to opt out of this third party collaborator stuff.
Speaker 1: But the policy itself won't go into effect until November fifteenth,
Speaker 1: so it is possible that that setting will arrive before
Speaker 1: or when that happens. Getting back to Meta, the company
Speaker 1: has apparently been making some staff cuts, and they sound
Speaker 1: like they're not quite as sweeping as earlier rounds of
Speaker 1: layoffs with the company, where like more than ten thousand
Speaker 1: people were like go at a time. Alex Heath and
Speaker 1: Jay Peters of the Verge report that the layoffs have
Speaker 1: affected multiple divisions within Meta, including Instagram, Wattsapp, and the
Speaker 1: company's all Things Metaverse department Reality Labs. As Maxwell Zeph
Speaker 1: of tech Crunch has put it, the layoffs meant are
Speaker 1: meant to quote reallocate resources within the company end quote.
Speaker 1: So that's your standard reorganization slash restructuring language you hear
Speaker 1: from corporate entities. Sometimes these moves reflect an organization realizing
Speaker 1: that it has overstaffed certain departments and so operations have
Speaker 1: become inefficient and wasteful, so the layoffs are an effort
Speaker 1: to realign that. In other cases, it's more like company
Speaker 1: leaders have decided they want to try and accomplish more
Speaker 1: with less and say like, let's try and do the
Speaker 1: same thing we're doing now, but with fewer people, so
Speaker 1: are not spending as much money. It's hard to say
Speaker 1: what this particular instance really qualifies. As Zeph at tech
Speaker 1: Crunch also mentioned that the company declined to answer questions
Speaker 1: regarding how many employees in total were let go, but
Speaker 1: the layoffs definitely included some prominent folks who have taken
Speaker 1: the social media to make it known that they are
Speaker 1: currently in the job market. So I'm sure the cuts
Speaker 1: are deeply felt within the departments where they happened. It's
Speaker 1: just unclear as to how extensive those cuts actually have been.
Speaker 1: Instagram has instituted some features to help protect users, particularly teens,
Speaker 1: from sextortion attempts, as reported by Ayisha Malik of tech Crunch. Now, previously,
Speaker 1: it was possible for someone to use screen capture tools
Speaker 1: to copy images that were sent through direct messages. While
Speaker 1: the sender would receive a notification that the image they
Speaker 1: had sent had been saved, they couldn't really do anything
Speaker 1: about it. And if the recipient of the message chose
Speaker 1: to blackmail the sender, you know, threatening to share the
Speaker 1: images that were sent to them unless the sender followed
Speaker 1: you know, instructions, well that's where the sextortion stuff comes in,
Speaker 1: which is pretty damn horrifying. Manipulating someone in order to
Speaker 1: give them to send compromising images and then threatening them
Speaker 1: by saying you're going to share those potentially with like
Speaker 1: friends and family or whatever unless they do whatever it
Speaker 1: is you tell them to do. It's disgusting anyway. Now
Speaker 1: Instagram prevents screen captures of those kinds of images that
Speaker 1: are sent as a view once or allow replay messages.
Speaker 1: If it's sent through dms like that, you can no
Speaker 1: longer take screen captures. Plus they'll only display on the
Speaker 1: mobile version of the app. You cannot access these through
Speaker 1: a desktop version of Instagram. They will not display the
Speaker 1: images at all in an effort to prevent abuse. This
Speaker 1: new process complements Instagram's recent rollout of teen accounts, which
Speaker 1: includes a suite of features meant to give younger users
Speaker 1: more protection while they're on the program. Meta has a
Speaker 1: lot of ground to make up in this area because
Speaker 1: the company has long been criticized for failing to ensure
Speaker 1: the safety of younger users while simultaneously trying to court
Speaker 1: them over to use the platform. That was a big
Speaker 1: part of the whistleblower bruhaha from a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago was that the revelation was one Meta at the
Speaker 1: time it was Facebook. Facebook was well aware of the
Speaker 1: potential harm it could cause, and two, while it did
Speaker 1: very little to address that harm, it was actively trying
Speaker 1: to get more young people to join the platform. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an important step, but clearly it's just one
Speaker 1: small step on a longer journey. Okay, we've got more
Speaker 1: journey ahead of us too, but before we get to that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors. We're back.
Speaker 1: Meda's Oversight Board, which I'll remind you, is an organization
Speaker 1: that's independent of Meta. It advises Meta on content moderation decisions.
Speaker 1: It is now seeking public comments regard immigration related content
Speaker 1: that potentially could be harmful to immigrants. The board has
Speaker 1: expressed concern that Meta's current policy only shields vulnerable populations
Speaker 1: like immigrants, migrants, and asylum seekers from the most harmful
Speaker 1: forms of hate speech, but it leaves those people open
Speaker 1: to perhaps less overt, but no less dangerous attacks. And
Speaker 1: they have shown two examples of posts containing hate speech
Speaker 1: or things that are bordering on hate speech that Meta
Speaker 1: did not remove even after human review of those items
Speaker 1: were brought to the company's attention. So One of them
Speaker 1: happened in Poland and contained a derogatory term for black people.
Speaker 1: The other one happened in Germany and featured a picture
Speaker 1: of a white, blonde haired, blue eyed woman holding up
Speaker 1: her hand, and there was a message saying outsiders should
Speaker 1: stop coming into Germany. It got more explicit and hateful
Speaker 1: from there, but I don't want to even repeat it
Speaker 1: because it's gross. Anyway, Metta left both of those messages
Speaker 1: up even after human review, and it seems pretty clear
Speaker 1: to me that the messages included speech that was meant
Speaker 1: to incite people and to be expressed at the harm
Speaker 1: of vulnerable populations, and that therefore it probably should have
Speaker 1: been taken down. And the board suggested that Meta reverse
Speaker 1: its decision and take those messages down, but Meta declined.
Speaker 1: And this is a good time to remind you that
Speaker 1: this oversight board, while it can make content moderation guidelines
Speaker 1: for Meta, Meta is in no way obligated to actually
Speaker 1: follow those guidelines. It's non binding. But now the board
Speaker 1: is looking for public comment about these issues, potentially in
Speaker 1: order to pressure Meta to make these changes. Because it's
Speaker 1: one thing for Meta to kind of ignore its oversight board.
Speaker 1: It's another thing if there's a big public campaign pressuring
Speaker 1: Meta to take more action. That's bad for optics, and
Speaker 1: I think Meta is far more sensitive to that than
Speaker 1: it is to the guidelines of its own oversight board.
Speaker 1: But that's my own personal opinion and we're not done
Speaker 1: yet with Meta. So Reuter's reports that Facebook and Blumhouse
Speaker 1: Productions have created a project in which some filmmakers, including
Speaker 1: Casey Affleck, the Spurlock Sisters, and Aniche Chiganti. Aniche's piece
Speaker 1: is already up. I watched it, and Aniche showed how
Speaker 1: he used the tool to change the background or elements
Speaker 1: of videos he shot when he was a child, and
Speaker 1: it was kind of interesting, Like there was one where
Speaker 1: it shows someone walking down their street in California that
Speaker 1: was supposed to be set in Manhattan, so he had
Speaker 1: the AI tool changed the background to look like Manhattan.
Speaker 1: It did not look like Manhattan. It did look like
Speaker 1: a big city, but it looked a little weird. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like AI generative stuff. But his whole point was
Speaker 1: that this was a way to augment the filmmaking experience,
Speaker 1: and that he stresses in it, I still needed to
Speaker 1: make the movie. I still needed to write everything, that
Speaker 1: this wasn't a tool that replaced all that it was
Speaker 1: a tool that augmented it. I remain somewhat unconvinced, not
Speaker 1: that it could be a tool used to augment I
Speaker 1: think it could be. I think generative AI could be
Speaker 1: used in ways to augment work that is not necessarily
Speaker 1: harmful to creatives. The problem I see is that a
Speaker 1: lot of the companies, the production companies that are ultimately
Speaker 1: in charge of paying for creatives, that they would just
Speaker 1: go and use generative AI as a shortcut and skip
Speaker 1: the whole artistic process because we've seen that. We have frankly,
Speaker 1: we have seen companies fire creative departments and rely on
Speaker 1: generative AI to varying degrees of failure. Really it's not
Speaker 1: really success. They're pretty awful at this stage. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's what's going on. It's the movie gen tool or project.
Speaker 1: It'll be curious. I'll be curious to see what Casey
Speaker 1: Affleck and the Spurlock sisters create. I haven't seen their
Speaker 1: output yet, seen a Niche Chaganti's, but it is interesting
Speaker 1: and I'm sure it will propel the conversation forward. I
Speaker 1: remain somewhat skeptical, largely because I mean, any project that
Speaker 1: is heavily supported by Meta, there's obviously a narrative that's
Speaker 1: trying to be promoted there. Caid Mets, Mike Isaac, and
Speaker 1: Aaron Griffith have a piece in The New York Times
Speaker 1: with the headline Microsoft and Open AI's close partnership shows
Speaker 1: signs of fraying. It's well worth reading if you can
Speaker 1: get hold of it. The article explains that there are
Speaker 1: some interesting clauses in the agreement between the two companies
Speaker 1: that suggests the relationship isn't as cozy as was previously thought.
Speaker 1: Considering Microsoft has dedicated more than ten billion with a
Speaker 1: B dollars of investment into open ai so far, I
Speaker 1: mean that's a huge amount of money. So the article
Speaker 1: details how open ai has grown kind of frustrated over
Speaker 1: stuff like access to money and access to compute power, because,
Speaker 1: as I've mentioned before, ai is incredibly expensive, both from
Speaker 1: a purely financial standpoint and energy requirements in order to
Speaker 1: power all that compute that you need. And you have
Speaker 1: companies like open ai that are trying to scale up
Speaker 1: and ramp up ever more ambitious project that's kind of
Speaker 1: require even more computational power, and yeah, that's incredibly expensive.
Speaker 1: One of the things that blew my mind in this
Speaker 1: article is that there are estimates that by twenty twenty nine,
Speaker 1: the annual computational bill for open ai is going to
Speaker 1: be somewhere like thirty seven and a half billion dollars
Speaker 1: per year. Like, think how much money you have to make.
Speaker 1: If your expenses are thirty seven point five billion dollars,
Speaker 1: open ai isn't making enough money to cover its expenses
Speaker 1: now they're look they were looking at spending around more
Speaker 1: than five billion dollars for compute power this year. So
Speaker 1: no wonder. There are a lot of analysts out there
Speaker 1: predicting that open ai was going to go bankrupt before
Speaker 1: the end of the year, except that they then got
Speaker 1: a big influx of cash from another investment round. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty crazy. Also, open ai apparently has a clause
Speaker 1: that says if Microsoft gets to artificial General Intelligence or AGI,
Speaker 1: then it severs the partnership between the two. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Microsoft is apparently worried that it's depending too heavily upon
Speaker 1: open ai and so wants to diversify its approach to
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence beyond open Ai. It's a really complicated thing,
Speaker 1: so I recommend reading that article. It's very informative. Okay.
Speaker 1: Couple of space stories. NASA's Artemis project to return to
Speaker 1: the Moon continues to hit some snags. A lot of outlets,
Speaker 1: including Ours Technica, have plenty of articles listing numerous reasons
Speaker 1: why we're not likely to see the Artemis two mission
Speaker 1: happen next year, as it was scheduled to happen, but
Speaker 1: work continues to prepare for our return to the lunar surface,
Speaker 1: and one such element is the development of new spacesuits.
Speaker 1: And this week Axiom Space and Prada, as in the
Speaker 1: luxury fashion company, unveiled a new spacesuit design. Now it's
Speaker 1: not exactly chic, but then aesthetics aren't really as important
Speaker 1: as you know, not dying, and as I've mentioned many
Speaker 1: times on this and other space is trying to kill you.
Speaker 1: So the suits have thermal protection built in that the
Speaker 1: companies say will keep astronauts safe from the dangers of
Speaker 1: extreme cold temperatures even at the South Lunar Pole in
Speaker 1: shadowed regions, for up to two hours at a time. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure when this design is going to get
Speaker 1: fitted to an actual astronaut for use in space, but
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool to see the next evolution of spacesuits. Finally,
Speaker 1: if you are aware of this news, I'm not surprised
Speaker 1: it was spectacular. SpaceX accomplished an incredible achievement when a
Speaker 1: super heavy Falcon booster returned to its launch site after
Speaker 1: propelling a payload high into the atmosphere, and as it
Speaker 1: did so, an enormous mechanical claw on the tower caught
Speaker 1: the booster as it returned under precise control. As Elon
Speaker 1: Musk wrote on x the tower caught the rocket and yeah,
Speaker 1: seeing the video of this is spectacular. It's hard for
Speaker 1: me to fathom how complicated this was from an engineering standpoint.
Speaker 1: Having such precise control of a descent and the perfect
Speaker 1: timing for the tower to grasp the booster with its claws,
Speaker 1: which are called chopsticks, that is just amazing stuff, really
Speaker 1: worth watching. And before I leave, one more reading recommendation
Speaker 1: for all of y'all. Lilahmcclellan has a piece on Fortune
Speaker 1: dot com that's titled twenty three and Me's entire board
Speaker 1: resigned on the same day founder and Vodjitski still thinks
Speaker 1: the startup is saveable. And it's a really thoughtful and
Speaker 1: I think balanced analysis of the troubled company's challenges in
Speaker 1: recent years and a complicated portrait of an assertive and
Speaker 1: controversial founder. It's well worth a read. It covers a
Speaker 1: lot of territory. That's it for this week. I hope
Speaker 1: all of you out there are doing well, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again, really soon. Tech Stuff is an
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