Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday,
Speaker 1: April twentieth, twenty twenty three. So it's four twenty and
Speaker 1: fittingly enough, our first story is one where technology went
Speaker 1: up in smoke. So first up. SpaceX's Starship launched this
Speaker 1: morning after scrubbing the previously scheduled launch earlier this week.
Speaker 1: A frozen valve was the reason behind the earlier cancelation.
Speaker 1: But today the world's largest, most powerful launch vehicle in
Speaker 1: our history of space exploration lifted up off its platform
Speaker 1: in South Texas to hurtle toward orbit, though it did
Speaker 1: not actually get there because around four minutes after launch,
Speaker 1: things got spicy. The first stage engines cut off as planned,
Speaker 1: but the second stage failed to separate from the first
Speaker 1: stage and the launch vehicle began spinning, and then there
Speaker 1: was a burst of flame and an explosion, with a
Speaker 1: vehicle breaking apart in the process. Or, as SpaceX's Twitter
Speaker 1: feed put it, Starship just experienced what we call a
Speaker 1: rapid unscheduled disassembly. The SpaceX team stressed that the main
Speaker 1: goal of this test was to clear the launch tower,
Speaker 1: you know, to actually get a launch and a lift off,
Speaker 1: and to clear the launch tower, which the starship did.
Speaker 1: So with that in mind, the test was a success.
Speaker 1: It's easy to say otherwise because subsequently it then exploded,
Speaker 1: but it was clearly a disappointment that the spacecraft was
Speaker 1: unable to deliver the payload into orbit as hoped. Regardless,
Speaker 1: the launch vehicle has more tests in its future. Even
Speaker 1: if the test had been completely successful, it still would
Speaker 1: have lots more tests in the future. As to what
Speaker 1: caused the failure, I'm sure there will be a full
Speaker 1: accounting of it later. I saw early speculation that several
Speaker 1: engines on one side of the first stage cut out early.
Speaker 1: I've seen other speculation that SpaceX chose to detonate the spacecraft,
Speaker 1: but as of the time I'm actually recording this, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen official word, so I'm sure by the time
Speaker 1: you listen to this that will have been cleared up.
Speaker 1: But as a recorded that has not yet happened. Now,
Speaker 1: he may as well get the other Musk related stories
Speaker 1: out of the way, because Elon Musk, obviously head of SpaceX.
Speaker 1: He appeared at an advertising conference yesterday Wednesday with a
Speaker 1: message for the crowd that Twitter is a safe place
Speaker 1: for advertisers to do business. Also, he doesn't plan to
Speaker 1: restrict the types of speech that brands may want to
Speaker 1: try and avoid, So he's saying Twitter's safe, but there's
Speaker 1: also no guarantee that a brand's messaging won't appear alongside
Speaker 1: objectionable speech, which probably isn't much of a selling point
Speaker 1: for many advertisers out there. He also sent the message
Speaker 1: don't tell us what to do. He essentially said, don't
Speaker 1: try and dictate what Twitter should do. That's my job.
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure if the strategy is going to work.
Speaker 1: The company has seen some pretty drastic drops in revenue
Speaker 1: from advertising anyway. A bunch of the regular customers with
Speaker 1: advertising on Twitter dropped the platform entirely. A lot of
Speaker 1: others stuck around, but they also reduced their spending on
Speaker 1: the platform by as much as eighty percent. Of course,
Speaker 1: some of that may have nothing to do with Twitter
Speaker 1: as a platform. The decision might be more due to
Speaker 1: the overall economic situation where a lot of companies have
Speaker 1: rained in marketing expenditures. Meanwhile, Microsoft announced its Smart Campaigns
Speaker 1: with a Multiplatform Ad Service, which is a way for
Speaker 1: advertisers to use a tool to plan out their advertising
Speaker 1: strategy on different platforms. They said that they're actually dropping
Speaker 1: Twitter starting April twenty five. Other platforms will still be
Speaker 1: available through this tool, but Twitter will not, So advertisers
Speaker 1: who use Microsoft platform for things like ad strategy and
Speaker 1: placement are going to have to rely on something else
Speaker 1: with regard to Twitter. I'm sure that this will lead
Speaker 1: to more speculation about if or when Twitter will fold.
Speaker 1: I'm not ready to make any kind of prediction like that.
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to predict that it will fold,
Speaker 1: let alone when it will fold, because as I look
Speaker 1: back over all the things that have happened with Twitter
Speaker 1: since Musk first announced his intent to buy the company,
Speaker 1: there is no way I could have anticipated all the
Speaker 1: stuff that followed. So I sure as heck am not
Speaker 1: going to try and predict the future on this one.
Speaker 1: In Tesla News, the company issued a Q one update
Speaker 1: letter in which Elon Musk announced that collectively, the beta
Speaker 1: program for Tesla's full self driving service, which I feel
Speaker 1: I need to mention, is not really full self driving
Speaker 1: has now logged more than one hundred and fifty million miles,
Speaker 1: and that really is an incredible achievement. You know, I
Speaker 1: give Tesla a lot of flak, but credit where credits due.
Speaker 1: One hundred and fifty million miles traveled is a lot. Also,
Speaker 1: with so many miles traveled, Tesla has gathered a truly
Speaker 1: enormous amount of data that can then be fed back
Speaker 1: into systems to improve performance. So theoretically, with more miles traveled,
Speaker 1: the system gets more reliable and safer. You can kind
Speaker 1: of think of every car that has full self driving
Speaker 1: act as being kind of like a student driver, only
Speaker 1: these students all share the same brain. So as one
Speaker 1: car learns a lesson, the benefits of that lesson go
Speaker 1: to the entire fleet of cars. Now, I say theoretically
Speaker 1: because there are actually other factors we have to take
Speaker 1: into consideration. So, for example, Tesla has made changes to
Speaker 1: the hardware in the construction of their vehicles, such as
Speaker 1: removing ultrasonic sensors in favor of optical ones, and these
Speaker 1: hardware changes also affect performance. So it's not just the
Speaker 1: brains of these vehicles, it's the actual sensors as well.
Speaker 1: It really doesn't matter how smart your vehicle is if
Speaker 1: it can't sense an obstacle for example. Still, it is
Speaker 1: a legitimately impressive achievement. That being said, Tesla's investors are
Speaker 1: not so happy with the company right now. Also in
Speaker 1: that letter was the revelation that the company's gross margins
Speaker 1: are below twenty percent. The net income for the company
Speaker 1: is two point nine billion dollars. That's a big old
Speaker 1: chunk of change. But this time last year, the company's
Speaker 1: income was seven hundred million dollars more than that, so
Speaker 1: it is a drop in year over year net income.
Speaker 1: Tesla has cut vehicle prices several times since the start
Speaker 1: of the year because demand has been low, so in
Speaker 1: order to try and you know, stimulate demand, they've cut
Speaker 1: some prices. And my guess is the tough economy is
Speaker 1: really playing a part in this, although another big part
Speaker 1: is that other car companies are starting to finally make
Speaker 1: up ground on Tesla, which for years had the advantage
Speaker 1: of being all in on electric vehicles and most other
Speaker 1: car companies were just kind of dipping their toe in
Speaker 1: the water at the time. Well that's starting to change
Speaker 1: now and now Tesla's facing greater competition in the electric
Speaker 1: vehicle market. So Musk tried to get ahead of a
Speaker 1: negative investor reaction. He said, quote, you're taking a view
Speaker 1: that pushing for higher volumes and a larger fleet is
Speaker 1: the right choice here versus a lower volume and higher
Speaker 1: margin end quote. And honestly, I'm not sure he had
Speaker 1: much other choice, because if not enough people are buying
Speaker 1: Tesla's right now after several price cuts, they sure as
Speaker 1: heck wouldn't be buying cars there were priced even higher.
Speaker 1: Investors still weren't happy, though, and the stock price is
Speaker 1: down by around six to seven percent six ' two seven.
Speaker 1: As I was working on this episode, it was hovering
Speaker 1: just under a seven percent drop from the day before. Okay,
Speaker 1: now it's a high time, everyone's favorite time of the news,
Speaker 1: and first up is a story I found more than
Speaker 1: a little upsetting. I mean, like this one genuinely disturbed me.
Speaker 1: All right, First, let me give some backstory. There's a
Speaker 1: Formula one racer named Michael Schumbacher who was in a
Speaker 1: terrible accident while skiing, not racing, and this happened a
Speaker 1: decade ago, back in twenty thirteen. He was severely injured
Speaker 1: in that accident. He received a brain injury in the process,
Speaker 1: and since then he's been out of the limelight. His
Speaker 1: family has stressed the need for privacy. They continue to
Speaker 1: help him day by day. And that story alone is
Speaker 1: a very tough one. Right to see someone have that
Speaker 1: kind of injury, that's just terrible. But then we get
Speaker 1: to something that is really hard to believe. A German
Speaker 1: weekly magazine called De Actual was running a supposed interview
Speaker 1: with Schumacher. Only it wasn't an interview with Schumacher, he
Speaker 1: has not given any interviews since this accident in twenty thirteen. Rather,
Speaker 1: it was an AI agent that had been instructed to
Speaker 1: respond to questions as if it were Michael Schumacher. So
Speaker 1: this weekly magazine published a quote unquote interview with an
Speaker 1: AI chatbot impersonating an athlete who is still coping with
Speaker 1: the effects of a brain injury. So to call it
Speaker 1: tasteless and unethical seems to be a gross understatement, And
Speaker 1: it kind of harkens back to what I was saying
Speaker 1: earlier this week about concepts like right to identity and
Speaker 1: right to personality. I mean, imagine if some news outlet
Speaker 1: there out there ran a supposed interview with you, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't with you. It was with a chatbot that
Speaker 1: was told to impersonate you, and then it's presented to
Speaker 1: people as if it's a legitimate interview. That would be
Speaker 1: an incredible violation. Schumacher's family are pursuing legal action against
Speaker 1: the magazine and y'all. A lot of the concerns around
Speaker 1: AI may be a little premature, Like the worry that
Speaker 1: AI is going to doom the human race might be
Speaker 1: a bit of an overreaction as things are right now.
Speaker 1: But when you see media outlets willing to go to
Speaker 1: these kinds of links to generate a story, you realize
Speaker 1: that AI could be dangerous. Sure, it is dangerous in
Speaker 1: several ways, but human beings can be downright diabolical. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more stories to go to, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back. Let's
Speaker 1: talk some more about AI. So, Reddit's CEO Steve Huffman
Speaker 1: has a message to AI companies out there. If they
Speaker 1: want to scrape content from Reddit as part of creating
Speaker 1: large language models and training AI agents, they're going to
Speaker 1: have to pay for that privilege. He spoke with The
Speaker 1: New York Times and said Reddit plans to make an
Speaker 1: exception in its API, its Application programming interface that if
Speaker 1: an AI company wants to access this tool, they'll have
Speaker 1: to pay first. Now, if you're a developer who needs
Speaker 1: access to that API for something other than training artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: good news, no charge for you. You get to use
Speaker 1: the tool. As intended. As for how much AI companies
Speaker 1: will have to pay to get access, that really hasn't
Speaker 1: been hashed out yet. Reddit has already served as a
Speaker 1: treasure trove of human centric data for companies like Google
Speaker 1: and OpenAI while they were developing their respective artificial intelligence
Speaker 1: large language models. Personally, I like this move by Reddit.
Speaker 1: I mean, we all know that information has value. Now
Speaker 1: if only the Reddit users could get a cut of
Speaker 1: the action. But that's probably taking things a little too far.
Speaker 1: In a kind of similar story, Google is leading the
Speaker 1: charge in petitioning the Australian government to allow AI projects
Speaker 1: to crawl Australian websites and to be used in Australian implementations.
Speaker 1: So currently Australia's copyright laws are potentially a barrier, creating
Speaker 1: pesky legal restrictions on what Google and other companies like
Speaker 1: open ai would consider to be information that's free for
Speaker 1: the taking and applications that should be fully open to them.
Speaker 1: Google framed its request by saying Australia could really be
Speaker 1: missing out, with one spokesperson stating quote, the lack of
Speaker 1: such copyright flexibilities means that investment in and development of
Speaker 1: AI and machine learning technologies is happening and will continue
Speaker 1: to happen overseas end quote. That's according to the Guardian.
Speaker 1: So Google essentially is saying, hey, if you don't relax
Speaker 1: those laws, my dude, you're going to have to import
Speaker 1: all those useful AI tools from somewhere else, because ain't
Speaker 1: no one going to be here to do it in
Speaker 1: Australia because your laws are whack. Now. I have no
Speaker 1: clue if Google's approach will be effective, particularly in an
Speaker 1: environment where there's an increased wariness surrounding AI and its
Speaker 1: development in the first place. I think the tide in
Speaker 1: public opinion on a I is starting to turn sour.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg has published an article titled Google's rush to win
Speaker 1: in AI led to ethical lapses employees say, and the
Speaker 1: article sites Google staff using language like cringeworthy or calling
Speaker 1: its aichatbot a pathological liar. They were using these words
Speaker 1: to describe Google Bard while it was still in development,
Speaker 1: before it had been pushed out into a beta program.
Speaker 1: They said the tool would frequently give unreliable or sometimes
Speaker 1: outright dangerous information, while doing so in an authoritative voice,
Speaker 1: so it sounds like it knows what's talking about. So
Speaker 1: one example given in the article is about scuba diving
Speaker 1: procedures and that supposedly Barred gave answers that would quote
Speaker 1: likely result in serious injury or death end quote. So
Speaker 1: that's really not good. This was during the testing phase,
Speaker 1: as I said, for Bard, and my guess is that
Speaker 1: Google had planned to keep Barred under wraps and continue
Speaker 1: to work on it within development for much much longer.
Speaker 1: But Open AI's release of chat GPT late last year
Speaker 1: convinced Google's leadership to try the old move fast and
Speaker 1: break things approach, or else the company would risk getting
Speaker 1: left behind in the AI chatbot wars. And you know,
Speaker 1: Google really hates it if it is not the dominant
Speaker 1: player in whichever markets it's competing in. It likes to
Speaker 1: have that comfortable sixty to ninety percent market share. So
Speaker 1: the article reads kind of as a warning about AI
Speaker 1: in general, that this push to create a snazzy tool
Speaker 1: could result in harmful consequences, and that the resources required
Speaker 1: to make certain that the development and deployment is following
Speaker 1: really good, strong ethical guidelines those just aren't in place
Speaker 1: or they're being ignored. Google reps told Bloomberg that quote
Speaker 1: responsible AI remains a top priority at the company end quote. Now,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, company's across the board have been far
Speaker 1: too aggressive with these tools. Open AI's leadership has even
Speaker 1: warned media outlets about its own chat pots, saying it's
Speaker 1: not reliable. But by that time the cat was already
Speaker 1: out of the artificial bag and it was too late
Speaker 1: to issue cautionary messages Anyway. The Bloomberg article is well
Speaker 1: worth a read and goes into much greater detail about
Speaker 1: the conditions that led Google to Rushbard in to a
Speaker 1: beta test, arguably prematurely. Yesterday, Meta held another round of layoffs,
Speaker 1: one of three batches the company plans to spread out
Speaker 1: across the next few months, which will ultimately see another
Speaker 1: ten thousand Meta employees cut. This is after Meta had
Speaker 1: already cut eleven thousand jobs late last year. This time,
Speaker 1: the layoffs affected engineers and tech teams, and as you
Speaker 1: might imagine, the cuts have delivered another blow to employee
Speaker 1: morale at Meta. I mentioned in a previous news episode
Speaker 1: that some Meta employees have become discouraged over recent months
Speaker 1: due to several reasons. First, layoffs are demoralizing. To the
Speaker 1: push to return to office has created a hardship on
Speaker 1: a lot of employees. And see that hardship doesn't appear
Speaker 1: to be shared by Meta's top executive leadership because a
Speaker 1: lot of them seem to be absent from Meta's HQ.
Speaker 1: Some of them have moved thousands of miles away while
Speaker 1: still serving as executives, and yet the employees are forced
Speaker 1: to go in. So yeah, news continues to be rough
Speaker 1: for the staff of Meta. By the way, if you
Speaker 1: were a Facebook user with an account any time between
Speaker 1: May two thousand and seven and December twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: you can claim your share of a huge class action
Speaker 1: lawsuit settlement. Now this has to do with Cambridge Analytica,
Speaker 1: that scandal that rocked the tech world several years ago
Speaker 1: and we still talk about it today. So in case
Speaker 1: you don't remember that whole kerfuffle, a company that catered
Speaker 1: to political campaigns, a data analytics company leveraged a survey
Speaker 1: app to gather a huge amount of information about Facebook
Speaker 1: users without their consent. The app was taking advantage of
Speaker 1: large gaps in Facebook's API, gaps that the company would
Speaker 1: subsequently close, but the damage had already been done anyway.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of legal proceedings that followed in
Speaker 1: the discovery of this transgression, including this class action lawsuit
Speaker 1: that I mentioned, and the settlement was for a whopping
Speaker 1: seven hundred and twenty five million dollars. Though Meta was
Speaker 1: let off the hook in a sense because the company
Speaker 1: didn't actually have to admit any wrongdoing as part of
Speaker 1: this settlement. But then I think it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to say with a straight face, Hey, I didn't do
Speaker 1: anything wrong and no one was hurt. I'm just paying
Speaker 1: seven hundred and twenty five million dollars out of the
Speaker 1: kindness of my heart. Anyway, the settlement itself is actually
Speaker 1: old news. The company reached an agreement late last year.
Speaker 1: The news now is that you Facebook users out there
Speaker 1: who had an account that was active during those times,
Speaker 1: you can actually submit a claim, and you have until
Speaker 1: August twenty fifth to do so if you want to
Speaker 1: do it online. The website is Facebook User Privacysettlement dot
Speaker 1: com slash hashtag, submit, dash claim. Finally, mark September twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, ondred calendars. That's when Netflix will officially
Speaker 1: stop sending DVDs out by mail. For some of y'all,
Speaker 1: what I said might actually sound strange, but not that
Speaker 1: long ago. Netflix's business model was really just renting films
Speaker 1: out through the mail. You would sign up for the service,
Speaker 1: you would make a watch list of films and shows
Speaker 1: you wanted to see, and then, based on what was available,
Speaker 1: Netflix would mail you the DVD and then you would
Speaker 1: watch it and you would put it back in its
Speaker 1: envelope and drop it off in the mail and wait
Speaker 1: for your next one. Or if you were like just
Speaker 1: about everyone I know had the service, you would do
Speaker 1: this a couple times, and then on your third DVD
Speaker 1: you just have it sit on the coffee table in
Speaker 1: the little red envelope, unopened and unwatched, and then you
Speaker 1: would just continue paying for the privilege of giving this
Speaker 1: DVD a temporary home. Or in fact, you might ultimately
Speaker 1: get charged for the DVD because he kept it so
Speaker 1: ding dang long. But anyway, Netflix's main business was all
Speaker 1: in this male centric model. The company was founded back
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety seven, and it didn't start streaming until
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, so for a decade and some change,
Speaker 1: that's just how folks use Netflix. Now we're at the
Speaker 1: end of an era, and it's funny because I've actually
Speaker 1: kind of gotten back into buying DVDs and Blu ray discs.
Speaker 1: I got tired of titles disappearing off various services, sometimes
Speaker 1: popping up on other services that I don't subscribe to,
Speaker 1: So now I'm back to purchasing physical media. I guess
Speaker 1: I'm just a human being, lost in time and lost
Speaker 1: in space and in meaning. Hope you're all well, that's
Speaker 1: it for this episode. I'll talk to you again really soon.
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