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 or Tuesday,
Speaker 1: December twelfth, twenty twenty three, and we'll start off with
Speaker 1: the story about how hackers can really cause widespread problems
Speaker 1: due to how various regions have computerized and networked vital infrastructure,
Speaker 1: which is not a bad thing, like updating infrastructure so
Speaker 1: that it runs efficiently is important. The problem is when
Speaker 1: components within that infrastructure provide vulnerabilities. So the story is
Speaker 1: all about a small region in Western Ireland which became
Speaker 1: the target of hackers and they managed to shut down
Speaker 1: that area's water system for around one hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: households for two days. The hackers were able to do
Speaker 1: this by targeting a programmable logic controller or PLC. These
Speaker 1: are microprocessors that are common in industrial use in lots
Speaker 1: of different industries. So unlike the CPU that's in your computer,
Speaker 1: these PLCs are meant to handle a very small selection
Speaker 1: of jobs and as such they are typically far less
Speaker 1: complex in design. Than a CPU, and they can also
Speaker 1: run extremely fast and efficiently. Because of that right, they
Speaker 1: don't have to do everything. They have to do this
Speaker 1: subset of tasks and they just do it as fast
Speaker 1: as they can. Now on the flip side, if someone
Speaker 1: is able to sabotage the PLCs in a vital industrial system,
Speaker 1: well then we get a situation like what happened in Ireland.
Speaker 1: But why did the hackers do this? Why would some
Speaker 1: rural area in iron And be the target of hackers?
Speaker 1: What could possibly be the motivation? Well, according to the record,
Speaker 1: it was because these hackers discovered the water system that
Speaker 1: this region used had components inside it that came from
Speaker 1: an Israeli company called Unitronics. So they weren't singling out
Speaker 1: this area of Ireland for any other reason other than
Speaker 1: the fact that its water system had components from this
Speaker 1: one company incorporated into it. So it really didn't matter
Speaker 1: where this was happening. It was the fact that it
Speaker 1: was this one specific company's product within their system. The
Speaker 1: hackers appear to be part of the cyber Avengers group,
Speaker 1: and the Avengers in this case is spelled av iree Nngers.
Speaker 1: That's how you know how LTE These hackers are reportedly
Speaker 1: this group has ties to Iran, meaning this was a
Speaker 1: politically motivated attack. What's more, other water systems around the world,
Speaker 1: including here in the United States, had similar attacks on
Speaker 1: their systems that also had Unitronics PLCs incorporated in them,
Speaker 1: though in those cases it seems like there was actually
Speaker 1: no loss of water service in those areas. I recommend
Speaker 1: reading the article on the record. It's by Alexander Martin.
Speaker 1: It's titled two day water outage and Remote Irish Region
Speaker 1: caused by pro Iran hackers. Has some more information about
Speaker 1: the political side of things that I find really interesting
Speaker 1: and also infuriating. There's a whole bunch of stuff about
Speaker 1: lobbying groups here in the United States that actively lobbied
Speaker 1: the US government against adopting measures that would have increased
Speaker 1: security around this sort of stuff. It really does drive
Speaker 1: you nuts when you see how companies and politicians will
Speaker 1: make bad decisions when it comes to security in favor
Speaker 1: of solutions that are less expensive. Check out that article
Speaker 1: to read more about it. Now. I didn't actually put
Speaker 1: this in my notes, but I feel like I do
Speaker 1: need to say it because it's certainly in the tech
Speaker 1: news sphere. Elon Musk has reinstated the Twitter slash x
Speaker 1: profile for Alex Jones, the former radio host who got
Speaker 1: into incredible trouble due to his misleading information and disinformation
Speaker 1: around the tragic Sandy Hook shooting incident, as well as
Speaker 1: multiple other instances of him saying horrible stuff you were
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, racist kind of of talk, misogynist talk.
Speaker 1: It's the list is almost endless, and Alex Jones have
Speaker 1: been banned years ago from Twitter due to these kinds
Speaker 1: of activities. And then Musk ran a poll, and the
Speaker 1: poll found in favor of reinstating Alex Jones's account, and
Speaker 1: so Musk did it. I'll remind you that my usually
Speaker 1: has the most followers of anyone on x also appears
Speaker 1: to have a ton of followers who have little to
Speaker 1: no activity on the service, which suggests it doesn't necessarily prove,
Speaker 1: but it suggests that a lot of those accounts maybe
Speaker 1: bots and not actual people. A lot of the accounts
Speaker 1: have very few followers of their own, so that it's
Speaker 1: not a good indication that perhaps any pole Musk puts
Speaker 1: out is actually reliable. There's no telling how much of
Speaker 1: that activity is controlled by just a few entities. That
Speaker 1: maybe have bought armies under their administration. So making these
Speaker 1: kinds of decisions by arguing that but people have spoken
Speaker 1: seems really disingenuous to me. And it also seems like
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is just hell bent on running Twitter into
Speaker 1: the ground. Even further, like, the decisions he's made are
Speaker 1: completely antithetical to trying to grow and protect a company,
Speaker 1: so very confusing. If in fact he wants Twitter to
Speaker 1: be a thing, maybe he doesn't. Next up, John Broadkin
Speaker 1: of ours Tetnica has an article titled Tesla again threatens
Speaker 1: to sue cyber truck buyers who try to resell their
Speaker 1: cars and or resell I should say that was a
Speaker 1: weird way of pronouncing that. Anyway, that's the whole story really,
Speaker 1: but hear me out. So I am not a fan
Speaker 1: of scalpers or people who use their access to you know,
Speaker 1: purchasing power in order to buy up a limited supply
Speaker 1: of whatever it is and then turn it around and
Speaker 1: sell it at a huge markup. I think that stinks.
Speaker 1: I think that stinks if you're talking about tickets to
Speaker 1: an event, it stinks with you know, like graphics cards.
Speaker 1: We saw that happen a lot especially during the pandemic
Speaker 1: and during the crypto coin boost or spike. I think
Speaker 1: it stinks with limited runs of collectibles. I'm specifically looking
Speaker 1: at you folks who would end up buying up all
Speaker 1: the tiki mugs from Trader Sam's and then turn around
Speaker 1: and sell them at like one hundred and fifty percent
Speaker 1: price increase. But at the same time, I also believe
Speaker 1: that if you buy something, then you should have the
Speaker 1: right to resell that thing if you want to. I mean,
Speaker 1: if someone's willing to buy it and you're you want
Speaker 1: to sell it, I think you should be able to,
Speaker 1: because once you buy something, it's yours right. Well not.
Speaker 1: According to Tesla, the company had a clause that stated
Speaker 1: it could sue a cyber truck owner for up to
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars if they resold their vehicle within the
Speaker 1: first year of their ownership. Now, this actually used to
Speaker 1: be in the publicly viewable version of that contract, but
Speaker 1: Tesla then nixed that after you know, folks noticed it
Speaker 1: and some began to have something to say about that policy,
Speaker 1: so it got deleted from the publicly viewable version. However,
Speaker 1: according to Broadkin, the clause is very much still in place,
Speaker 1: it's just not listed in the publicly viewable version of
Speaker 1: the agreement. So according to this now non public agreement,
Speaker 1: Tesla has right of first refusal, essentially meaning that if
Speaker 1: you purchase your cyber truck and you've had it for
Speaker 1: less than a year and you decide you want to
Speaker 1: sell it, you first have to offer Tesla the chance
Speaker 1: to buy back the vehicle themselves. I'm guessing this is
Speaker 1: because Tesla has a very long list of folks who
Speaker 1: have reserved an order for a cyber truck, and from
Speaker 1: what we understand, Tesla will not be able to meet
Speaker 1: that demand anytime soon, as in, it could be years
Speaker 1: before someone who is just now getting interested in a
Speaker 1: cyber truck would be able to buy one, because Tesla
Speaker 1: will still be filling out those reserve orders that had
Speaker 1: already been placed. Also, to make matters worse, it sounds
Speaker 1: like buyers are not made aware of this clause until
Speaker 1: after they have submitted a non refundable two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars order fee, which means they're effectively agreeing to
Speaker 1: a claw that they aren't even allowed to see beforehand,
Speaker 1: which sounds shady to me. Sticking with the cyber truck.
Speaker 1: Niko di Matia over at Yahoo has an article titled
Speaker 1: Tesla's cybertruck owner discovers unexplained wade mode buried in settings
Speaker 1: so as the story goes, a fellow named Nick Kruz
Speaker 1: Patan or Pataine shared some pictures of the cyber truck
Speaker 1: infotainment screen that indicated some features that the company hasn't
Speaker 1: actually talked about in its reveal of the cyber truck.
Speaker 1: So among those features is the aforementioned wade mode, which
Speaker 1: includes a description that reads raises ride height and pressurizes
Speaker 1: battery when driving through water. Now that kind of makes sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I'm sure at some point you have
Speaker 1: encountered a really deep puddle across a road and you
Speaker 1: had that moment of do I try to drive through
Speaker 1: this or do I need to turn around? I'm actually
Speaker 1: reminded of a trip up to Pennsylvania where my partner
Speaker 1: and I debated on that very issue for about two
Speaker 1: minutes before we decided to chance it. Luckily we made
Speaker 1: it through, but it was never a guarantee because it
Speaker 1: was a very deep puddle. So a setting that could
Speaker 1: raise the ride height and protect the battery from water
Speaker 1: makes sense It's a little odd that we found out
Speaker 1: about this from a Twitter user sharing a picture of
Speaker 1: this feature online. I should add that Elon Musk has
Speaker 1: previously claimed that the cyber truck would be able to
Speaker 1: do some pretty darn spectacular stuff like almost on the
Speaker 1: level of Chitty Chitty Bang bang, like float on deeper
Speaker 1: waters like lakes and rivers like an amphibious vehicle. So maybe,
Speaker 1: you know, wade mode was just not deemed interesting enough
Speaker 1: to talk about, like, oh, sure, it can raise its
Speaker 1: height and glide over a deep puddle. This thing's gonna
Speaker 1: sail the Seven Seas. We should probably also wait for
Speaker 1: proof that the cyber truck can float on water before
Speaker 1: folks actually try that. We've already have issues with features
Speaker 1: called autopilot and full self driving in other Tesla vehicles that,
Speaker 1: in my opinion at least fall far short of what
Speaker 1: their names at least suggest those features can do. And
Speaker 1: speaking of that, the Department of Motor Vehicles in the
Speaker 1: state of California filed a lawsuit against Tesla last year
Speaker 1: that actually focuses on how the company has advertised the
Speaker 1: autopilot and full self driving features. So the DMV of
Speaker 1: California has argued that Tesla misled consumers through the advertisement
Speaker 1: of these features, misleading them into thinking that they could
Speaker 1: do more than what the features are actually intended to do.
Speaker 1: In other words, arguing that these are more autonomous vehicle
Speaker 1: features as opposed to advanced driver assist features. That's the
Speaker 1: core of this lawsuit. Well, now Tesla has shown a
Speaker 1: couple of defenses to this lawsuit. First of all, Tesla
Speaker 1: says the case should just be dismissed. It shouldn't even
Speaker 1: go any further because the First Amendment protects Tesla, and
Speaker 1: the lawsuit will quote restrict Tesla's truthful and non misleading
Speaker 1: speech about its vehicles and their features end quote. But
Speaker 1: I think the whole point of the case that the
Speaker 1: DMV is making is that the speech about the vehicles
Speaker 1: and their features is non truthful and it is misleading,
Speaker 1: and I think that's an argument that would need to
Speaker 1: play out in court. So what Tesla is saying is, no,
Speaker 1: everything we said was true, and if we let this
Speaker 1: lawsuit go forward, it restricts our free speech, So you
Speaker 1: got to throw it out. But the court hasn't determined
Speaker 1: that the speech is true yet. This is kind of
Speaker 1: a crazy, proactive defense. In my opinion, I am not
Speaker 1: a lawyer, so what do I know. But other legal
Speaker 1: arguments that the Tesla team has made include them essentially saying, hey,
Speaker 1: we've been using these terms autopilot and full self driving
Speaker 1: for years and you never told us to cut it
Speaker 1: out before, so you really can't start doing that now
Speaker 1: or something. Again, I'm not a lawyer, so who am
Speaker 1: I to judge on these matters, But in my opinion,
Speaker 1: this all starts to sound a lot like when little
Speaker 1: kids on a playground are arbitrarily making up rules to
Speaker 1: a game that they're currently in the middle of, right,
Speaker 1: Like like, no, you can't. You can't shoot me with
Speaker 1: that gun because I have a special force field that
Speaker 1: protects against that kind of gun. You have to have
Speaker 1: a different kind of gun, and you don't have access
Speaker 1: to that yet. Like that kind of stuff where you
Speaker 1: just change the rules as you go, Calvin ball, as
Speaker 1: you might call it. So I remain skeptical that Tesla's
Speaker 1: move to have the case dismissed will be a success,
Speaker 1: but I guess it all depends upon the judge, So
Speaker 1: we'll have to wait and see. All right, I've got
Speaker 1: a ton of other news items to talk about today.
Speaker 1: Before we jump into any more of that, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsors. We're back, Okay.
Speaker 1: So Michael Wayland of CNBC has an article titled Ford
Speaker 1: cuts planned twenty twenty four production of electric f one
Speaker 1: point fifty lightning in half. So this is another blow
Speaker 1: to fans of electric vehicles. So for a while, you know,
Speaker 1: i'd say for the last like year and a half
Speaker 1: two years, the story around electric vehicles was really all
Speaker 1: about how automakers are attempting to scale up manufacturing to
Speaker 1: meet an unprecedented demand, and also about how the production
Speaker 1: of electric vehicles is simpler and cheaper than producing internal
Speaker 1: combustion engine vehicles, at least once you actually have the
Speaker 1: manufacturing process built out. And the reason for that is
Speaker 1: that electric vehicles are mechanically far simpler machines than internal
Speaker 1: combustion engine vehicles. So there are various incentives to really
Speaker 1: get into ev production right, less expensive to do, you
Speaker 1: can make it more efficiently and increase demand. So what
Speaker 1: is going on? Why would Ford cut its production in
Speaker 1: half for twenty twenty four. Well, according to Ford, the
Speaker 1: problem is actually that demand piece of the picture, that
Speaker 1: it's just not as high as what the auto industry anticipated,
Speaker 1: and so Ford plans to match production with demand, when
Speaker 1: that means scaling back a massive investment in the EV production.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense to roll out thousands of trucks
Speaker 1: if the demand is only for half that amount. So
Speaker 1: why is there a slower rise in demand than what
Speaker 1: was previously guessed at. Well, it very well may have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with actual interest in electric vehicles in
Speaker 1: general that appears to still be pretty high. It seems
Speaker 1: to have more to do with economics, which makes sense
Speaker 1: right because customers are still having to deal with high
Speaker 1: interest rates, which will affect loans as well as inflation,
Speaker 1: which affects prices. So with high prices and high interest rates,
Speaker 1: there's less incentive to go and invest in a more
Speaker 1: expensive vehicle that you're going to be paying for for
Speaker 1: longer and with those interest rates, paying a lot more
Speaker 1: over time. And that may in fact be the element
Speaker 1: that is holding back electric vehicle production. It's not anything
Speaker 1: other than that, and perhaps if that economic situation is
Speaker 1: to improve, we would see a switch like much more
Speaker 1: interest and thus much more production. So I would say
Speaker 1: that this is dependent heavily on how the economy progresses.
Speaker 1: Over the next twelve months or so, Google and its
Speaker 1: parent company Alphabet received a legal loss relating to monopolistic
Speaker 1: tendencies directly to jail, do not passco did not collect
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars. So you may already be aware that
Speaker 1: Google slash Alphabet faces scrutiny in the United States and
Speaker 1: beyond for alleged any competitive practices. The use of the
Speaker 1: word alleged any competitive practices is being really generous, because
Speaker 1: Google has certainly done some stuff that, at least in
Speaker 1: my opinion, is pretty darn anti competitive, and in fact,
Speaker 1: Google faces an existential threat, if you will, in the
Speaker 1: United States. There's the possibility that US regulatory agencies might
Speaker 1: ultimately demand that Alphabets split up into different companies in
Speaker 1: order to reduce the anti competitive nature of the business.
Speaker 1: While I also read an article by Sean Hollister at
Speaker 1: The Verge, the articles titled epic Win jury decides Google
Speaker 1: has illegal monopoly in app store fight, I am embarrassed
Speaker 1: to admit that I didn't immediately get the reference in
Speaker 1: epic Win, which I'm sure all of you already did.
Speaker 1: Because this lawsuit relates to the video game developer and
Speaker 1: publisher Epic Games. That's the company behind the insanely popular
Speaker 1: title Fortnite. Epic has already waged legal battles against Apple
Speaker 1: on this same sort of issue. Apple arguably got the
Speaker 1: upper hand in those cases. It was not a clean sweep,
Speaker 1: but Apple won more than at lost. But this time
Speaker 1: with the Google case, a jury was firmly on Epic's
Speaker 1: side and reportedly delivered a unanimous decision saying that every
Speaker 1: claim Epic made against Google was had merit that it
Speaker 1: was true, namely that Google's Android platform has a monopolistic
Speaker 1: hold on payment systems, that if you want to run
Speaker 1: an Android you have to go through Google's payment systems
Speaker 1: to do it. They also said that Google essentially has
Speaker 1: an iron grip on Android app distribution, which is interesting
Speaker 1: to me because Android does support loading and has from
Speaker 1: the earliest days of the operating system, which means you
Speaker 1: can actually set your Android device to allow you to
Speaker 1: install apps from places other than the Google Play Store,
Speaker 1: but it isn't particularly obvious that you can do this.
Speaker 1: It does require the user to go through a bit
Speaker 1: of a menu maze to get it to work, and
Speaker 1: also it does mean the user has to accept a
Speaker 1: significant level of risk that the stuff they're downloading could
Speaker 1: be malicious in nature. It's not like everything on Google
Speaker 1: Playstore is not malicious. There's some malicious stuff that has
Speaker 1: been found on there in the past, but once you
Speaker 1: get out of that store, all bets are off. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Google representative Wilson White released a statement indicating that the
Speaker 1: company will appeal the jury's decision, arguing that Google does
Speaker 1: compete in the app space, albeit mainly with Apple, which
Speaker 1: is its own kettle of anti competitive fish. As Hollister
Speaker 1: points out in the Verge article, this case and the
Speaker 1: one which a judge ruled more in favor of Apple
Speaker 1: over Epic have several differentiating factors between them. So this
Speaker 1: isn't just like one court finds in favor of app
Speaker 1: Apple and one court finds in favor of Epic. It's
Speaker 1: very different situations. In the Apple versus Epic case, that
Speaker 1: was decided by a judge, not a jury. In the
Speaker 1: Google versus Epic, it was a jury trial, not a
Speaker 1: judge decision. So yeah, there were a lot of differentiating factors.
Speaker 1: Still kind of confusing though. Meanwhile, US Senator Elizabeth Warren
Speaker 1: is scolding Apple for shutting down the app called Beeper.
Speaker 1: That's the app that would give Android users the ability
Speaker 1: to interact with iPhone users by sending messages that would
Speaker 1: then convert over into I message texts. So in other words,
Speaker 1: they would show up an I message as if the
Speaker 1: message had been sent by an iPhone owner, not an
Speaker 1: Android owner, and that way Android users could avoid the
Speaker 1: terrible social stigma of daring to use an Android device
Speaker 1: instead of an iPhone, and it would bypass Apple's policy
Speaker 1: of differentiating these by the color of the text bubble
Speaker 1: within I message. And as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: this is really only an issue here in America where
Speaker 1: folks get all tribal about the kinds of devices they
Speaker 1: use and start to form opinions about the character of
Speaker 1: a person if their text is appearing in a different
Speaker 1: color of bubble. Anyway, Apple said it had blocked Beeper
Speaker 1: due to the company reverse engineering the I message protocol
Speaker 1: and then using fake credentials to generate these I message
Speaker 1: from Android texts, so they're saying, you know, they violated
Speaker 1: our terms of service. There's also an additional concern that
Speaker 1: Beeper's methodology failed to ensure into end encryption, so there
Speaker 1: were claims that what Beeper was doing was actually storing
Speaker 1: messages in clear text, which means that if someone were
Speaker 1: to access that, they could read those messages without any problem. Right,
Speaker 1: there would be no encryption protecting the content of those messages,
Speaker 1: and that would be an enormous security flaw and I
Speaker 1: think a valid reason to shut down the app. But
Speaker 1: for the record, Beeper actually denies this. However, It's also
Speaker 1: true that Beeper did not submit to a third party
Speaker 1: review to make sure that its systems were secure before
Speaker 1: it launched, So it's a complicated issue anyway. If you
Speaker 1: would like to learn more, I recommend Sarah Perez's article
Speaker 1: in tech Crunch titled Senator Warren calls out Apple for
Speaker 1: shutting down Beeper's eye Message to Android solution. CNBC's Jonathan
Speaker 1: Vennian has an article titled more than fifteen percent of
Speaker 1: teens say they're on YouTube or TikTok almost constantly. So
Speaker 1: we need to dig down into this a bit because
Speaker 1: I feel like there are a lot of statements being
Speaker 1: made that potentially lack the support needed to make any
Speaker 1: firm assertions. So let's let's get to it. This is
Speaker 1: according to the Pew Research Center. So Pew Research does
Speaker 1: surveys all the time. They do lots of different research.
Speaker 1: I do not wish to cast dispersions on Pew Research Center,
Speaker 1: but they issued a survey measuring teenage trends online and
Speaker 1: the survey found that ninety three percent of the respondents
Speaker 1: said they use YouTube regularly, so that made YouTube the
Speaker 1: most popular platform among those surveyed. Around sixteen percent of
Speaker 1: that ninety three percent said they're on YouTube almost constantly,
Speaker 1: and that leads to the headline for the article that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about here. The other apps ranked by popularity
Speaker 1: from most popular to least included TikTok, then Snapchat, then Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Twitter. Slash x had a much lower response rate.
Speaker 1: That seems to underscore the issues we learned about back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one during the whole Facebook slash Meta
Speaker 1: whistleblower leaks, because back then we learned that executives in
Speaker 1: Facebook were really concerned about how younger generations were not
Speaker 1: adopting the Facebook platform the way previous generations had, which
Speaker 1: threatens the long term status of Facebook and potentially of
Speaker 1: the entire company. I'm not sure anything in this survey
Speaker 1: is a huge surprise. I should also add that at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the article, Vanian reveals that the Pew
Speaker 1: Research Center survey covered only or nearly not even only
Speaker 1: nearly fifteen hundred thirteen to seventeen year olds. So oney,
Speaker 1: five hundred people is actually a pretty small sample size.
Speaker 1: I would caution anyone from making overly broad conclusions based
Speaker 1: on this data. It may very well be that this
Speaker 1: is representative of the overall population of young users, but
Speaker 1: with just fifteen hundred respondents, I don't know that you
Speaker 1: could say there is a nearly fifteen percent population of
Speaker 1: teens out there who are constantly on YouTube. I think
Speaker 1: that that would be stretching the findings of this survey
Speaker 1: beyond what they can support, in my opinion. Business Insider
Speaker 1: has a piece titled a firm providing AI drive through
Speaker 1: tech to fast food chains actually relies on human workers
Speaker 1: to take orders seventy percent of the time. This was
Speaker 1: written by Soda by Mia. The piece is about a
Speaker 1: company called Presto Automations, which previously claimed that ninety five
Speaker 1: percent of orders received by the company's chat bot product
Speaker 1: needed no human intervention, so that if you were to
Speaker 1: interact with a company that used Presto Automations product, ninety
Speaker 1: five percent of the time, it would be a chatbot
Speaker 1: and no one else would ever have to step in,
Speaker 1: and your order would be complete or at least go
Speaker 1: to the kitchen of whatever fast food joint you're interacting with.
Speaker 1: But now it appears that the company has changed its
Speaker 1: tune and admitted that seventy percent of all orders coming
Speaker 1: in through its systems actually receive human oversight and assistance
Speaker 1: in order to work, and that the people who are
Speaker 1: providing this are employees who are working off site. This
Speaker 1: is according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange
Speaker 1: Commission or SEC here in the United States. That might
Speaker 1: explain the massive discrepancy in these claims, because it's one
Speaker 1: thing to say your product works all on its own
Speaker 1: nearly all the time in a general statement. It's another
Speaker 1: thing entirely to make that kind of claim to an
Speaker 1: official regulatory agency. The off site agents are said to
Speaker 1: reside in places like the Philippines, so really you could
Speaker 1: argue that what Presto Automation is actually doing is sending
Speaker 1: minimum wage jobs in the United States in the fast
Speaker 1: food industry offshore to other countries. Of course, the goal
Speaker 1: ultimately with automation is to weed out human beings entirely,
Speaker 1: meaning no one, no matter where they live, would have
Speaker 1: this kind of job. I'm not sure what all those
Speaker 1: high school students here in the United States are going
Speaker 1: to do to secure part time work once all that happens. Currently,
Speaker 1: some of the drive through companies that are using this
Speaker 1: kind of technology include McDonald's, Popeye's, Taco Bell, and Wingstop. Eventually,
Speaker 1: we're going to get to a point where none of
Speaker 1: us have jobs anymore, and the AI powered order takers
Speaker 1: won't have anyone to take orders from because no one
Speaker 1: will be able to afford a bean burrito from Taco Bell.
Speaker 1: Oh the joys of automation. This is what leads into
Speaker 1: discussions for the need for something like a universal basic income.
Speaker 1: But that's the story for another time. Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: a few more stories to cover before we conclude today's episode.
Speaker 1: Before we get to that, let's take another quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got a few more tech stories to cover before
Speaker 1: I can. Let y'all go. First up, Anton Shy love
Speaker 1: of Tom's hardware as an article titled wi Fi seven
Speaker 1: to get the final seal of approval early next year.
Speaker 1: New standard is up to four point eight times faster
Speaker 1: than Wi Fi six. Now, I feel you don't hear
Speaker 1: as much about Wi Fi standards as you do, say
Speaker 1: wireless phone standards the right Like you'll hear about things
Speaker 1: like LTE and five G and maybe even six G,
Speaker 1: but you don't hear so much about Wi Fi standards now. Obviously,
Speaker 1: engineers are constantly improving the performance and capability of wireless
Speaker 1: transmission technologies. Wi Fi is no exception to that. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of funny to talk about Wi Fi seven
Speaker 1: because at the moment, the most widely used Wi Fi
Speaker 1: standard is eight two point eleven AC, which is also
Speaker 1: known as Wi Fi five. That standard actually was finalized
Speaker 1: back in twenty fourteen wi Fi six aka eight oh
Speaker 1: two point eleven AX, which also covers Wi Fi six E.
Speaker 1: These standards are just a couple of years old and
Speaker 1: they haven't seen widespread deployment so far. That's not to
Speaker 1: say that there aren't devices out there in the wild
Speaker 1: right now that are Wi Fi six enabled. There are,
Speaker 1: they just are outnumbered by older technologies like Wi Fi five.
Speaker 1: But now we're talking about Wi Fi seven. And also
Speaker 1: just so you know, Wi Fi eight is also in development,
Speaker 1: so it's coming to in a couple of years. If
Speaker 1: you go shopping right now, to make things even more confusing,
Speaker 1: you will already find devices on the mark right now
Speaker 1: tagged as Wi Fi seven capable. So what gives. Well,
Speaker 1: companies have actually been making Wi Fi enabled products using
Speaker 1: the draft specifications for Wi Fi seven. Just you know,
Speaker 1: there are specifications, they just haven't been formally adopted and finalized.
Speaker 1: So these are not so far like, they're not scams.
Speaker 1: It's not like these are products that are making false claims.
Speaker 1: They are Wi Fi seven enabled, and with a firmware update,
Speaker 1: they should conform to the upcoming official standard. So this
Speaker 1: stuff just gets messy now. Mostly, the folks who will
Speaker 1: be largely concerned about Wi Fi seven will typically be
Speaker 1: the administrators who are trying to deploy wireless networks in
Speaker 1: extremely dense populated environments. Like think of like a big
Speaker 1: company with lots and lots and lots of employees, and
Speaker 1: considering now that tons of CEOs are really gung ho
Speaker 1: on making employees come back to the office, I argue
Speaker 1: that this is a necessary thing. So does this mean
Speaker 1: everyone out there will need to go out and get
Speaker 1: a Wi Fi seven enabled router or modem or whatever.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily. I mean, will it technically work faster than
Speaker 1: older technologies, yes, so, but you also have to have
Speaker 1: all your devices capable of working on that standard for
Speaker 1: you to take advantage of that. So it's not as
Speaker 1: simple as swapping out one element in your network. You
Speaker 1: actually have to do a lot of work to make
Speaker 1: it actually, you know, valuable, but still cool that the
Speaker 1: standard will be coming out in the not too distant future.
Speaker 1: And now for a news item that has absolutely no
Speaker 1: relevance to me whatsoever, but still cool, and it could
Speaker 1: ultimately be important for a lot of people if it
Speaker 1: ever goes beyond the concept phase. Laws Blaine, who apart
Speaker 1: from having a kick ass name, wrote an article for
Speaker 1: a new Atlist titled Hyundai unveils car tires with built
Speaker 1: in push button snow chains, which sounds absolutely rad to me.
Speaker 1: In fact, it actually reminds me of a toy from
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. You gotta remember, I'm a child of
Speaker 1: the seventies and early eighties. There was this toy called
Speaker 1: the Animal Monster truck, and this toy truck had tires
Speaker 1: that had retractable claws, like almost like tiger claws inside
Speaker 1: the tires. They could extend out to grip on the
Speaker 1: rough landscape. And I know that rocks right, because the
Speaker 1: eighties were a golden age for toys. Now, the eighties
Speaker 1: were simultaneously awful for a lot of other stuff, not music.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, new wave was awesome, but with
Speaker 1: toys and new wave music it was at the top.
Speaker 1: In other areas it was not great. But anyway, this
Speaker 1: Hyundai invention is not a toy. It's a real system
Speaker 1: that could have retractable snow chains, and this could save
Speaker 1: folks a lot of frustration and effort as the season
Speaker 1: changes and heavy snowfalls follow. Now, I don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about that. I live in Atlanta. We might get
Speaker 1: as much as an inch or maybe two inches of
Speaker 1: snow in a very heavy year. And that's not like
Speaker 1: on a single snowfall. I mean that's across all winter.
Speaker 1: You might have accumulatively two inches of snow. Most of
Speaker 1: the time we get a little bit of snow and
Speaker 1: a lot of ice, which is terrible. But for other
Speaker 1: folks this innovation could be really useful. Now. According to
Speaker 1: Blaine's article, the tires are quote partially made using compressed
Speaker 1: shape memory alloys end quote that also sounds cool as hell.
Speaker 1: You push a button, it sends an electric current to
Speaker 1: the tires, and in response to this electric current, they
Speaker 1: change shape. So I may have to do a full
Speaker 1: episode about memory alloys and talk about the technology behind
Speaker 1: them and how this works. It is a fascinating area
Speaker 1: of research and development, and unfortunately so are these tires
Speaker 1: because these are not made for production just yet. It's
Speaker 1: actually a really involved process because you can't just have
Speaker 1: a tire that does this. It has to work with
Speaker 1: a vehicle that has been outfitted to work with these
Speaker 1: kinds of tires, right You have to have a way
Speaker 1: of sending that electric signal for one thing to the tire,
Speaker 1: so the whole wheel mechanism has to be designed for this.
Speaker 1: So it's really just a concept right now. But I
Speaker 1: think it's a really cool concept, and I hope Yung
Speaker 1: Day will be able to make these kinds of tires
Speaker 1: practical and affordable, because I really do think this is
Speaker 1: one of those vehicle options that for a subset of
Speaker 1: people would be incredibly helpful and I would love to
Speaker 1: see it. Plus, you know, it's kind of like driving
Speaker 1: a transformer, a very limited transformer, but still pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And now for some article recommendations. I've actually got a
Speaker 1: bunch of these today. There were so many that I
Speaker 1: came across and I felt like y'all need to know
Speaker 1: about them because they might really appeal to you and
Speaker 1: be really informative. So first up, Eric W. Dolan wrote
Speaker 1: a piece for sipost psy Post. The piece is titled
Speaker 1: politically engaged redditors tend to be more toxic even in
Speaker 1: non political subreddits. So it's a good article. It actually
Speaker 1: details the apparent correlation, which I'll remind you is different
Speaker 1: from causation, but the correlation between being politically informed and
Speaker 1: being toxic in online forums anddotally, I would say somewhat
Speaker 1: cynically that becoming more politically informed does tend to lead
Speaker 1: to one becoming more of a pill to be around. Now,
Speaker 1: that's using my own personal experience, because I've I've just
Speaker 1: noticed that when I am actively trying to stay informed politically,
Speaker 1: I also get a lot more prickly in general, like
Speaker 1: no matter what the contact is. But that's anecdotally, right,
Speaker 1: That doesn't that's not really evidence. That's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: my own personal experience seems to reinforce this hypothesis. These
Speaker 1: links have to be thoroughly examined before you can ever
Speaker 1: make any real conclusions. But it's a great article. Check
Speaker 1: it out. Next up, Bene Edwards has a piece in
Speaker 1: Ours Technica titled as chat GPT gets lazy people test
Speaker 1: winter break hypothesis as the cause. All right, So this
Speaker 1: has to do with how some users have reported that
Speaker 1: chat gpt seems to be slacking on occasion recently, like
Speaker 1: you could submit a query to chat gpt and get
Speaker 1: an overly simplified response as opposed to the in depth
Speaker 1: responses you might have received months ago, or it might
Speaker 1: even refuse to answer your question at all. Open Aye
Speaker 1: says it is aware of this problem, it has not
Speaker 1: gone so far as to say what may have caused this,
Speaker 1: and it has led some users to suggest that perhaps
Speaker 1: chat gpt has the equivalent of the winter blues, or
Speaker 1: rather chat GPT is mimicking people who tend to get
Speaker 1: the winter blues and thus are less communicative in winter months.
Speaker 1: So maybe chat gpt is just copying us. Maybe if
Speaker 1: we just convince chat gpt that it is in Australia
Speaker 1: where the weather right now is hot and sunny, it'll
Speaker 1: stop being so gosh darn lazy anyway, check out that article.
Speaker 1: Sticking with open AI, we have another article, this one
Speaker 1: by ed Zetron, and it's an opinion piece on Scientific American.
Speaker 1: It is titled open AI's soap opera collapse bodes ill
Speaker 1: for AI benefiting humanity. Now, I don't want to give
Speaker 1: away the whole point of the article, but it largely
Speaker 1: focuses on how open ai operates in a way that
Speaker 1: seems entirely antithetical to the organization's original purpose, something that
Speaker 1: Elon Musk actually complained about a few years ago. And
Speaker 1: y'all know I am not an Elon Musk fan, but
Speaker 1: on this particular matter, I find myself agreeing with him anyway. Finally,
Speaker 1: we have an article on WES. This one is by
Speaker 1: Jules Roscoe. Is titled Eyes Everywhere. Congress is about to
Speaker 1: vote to expand mass surveillance of Americans, experts Warren. Now,
Speaker 1: that vote is to happen today Tuesday, December twelfth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, at four pm Eastern, So by the time
Speaker 1: you hear this, there may already have been a vote.
Speaker 1: But read the article. It is informative and frankly scary.
Speaker 1: All Right, that wraps up today's news episode of tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: We'll have another one on Thursday. Also, I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed yesterday's special episode of tech Stuff. It was a
Speaker 1: huge departure from what I normally do on this show,
Speaker 1: but it was a lot of fun. It's not like
Speaker 1: to ever happen again, so a one time only event,
Speaker 1: but it did let me put on my storytelling shoes,
Speaker 1: which was a lot of fun. I hope you are
Speaker 1: all well, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.