Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio
Speaker 1: and a love all things tech, and let me cover
Speaker 1: a couple of things before we get to the news today.
Speaker 1: One of those is that I might sound a little different.
Speaker 1: That's because super producer Tari sent me a brand new
Speaker 1: microphone that is a serious upgrade from the one I
Speaker 1: had been using, So if it sounds a little different,
Speaker 1: that's why. Uh. Second, I will be on vacation next week,
Speaker 1: but I will be running some reruns about General Electric
Speaker 1: during the time I'm gone. Since we now know that
Speaker 1: g E is going to split up into three companies
Speaker 1: in the near future, I thought it would be a
Speaker 1: good thing to go back over the history of that company.
Speaker 1: So those will be publishing next week as well as
Speaker 1: well as a Smart Talks with IBM episode which should
Speaker 1: come out Thursday, and then I'll be back for part
Speaker 1: of the following week and then we go into US Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: But that's all of the way. Now let's cover the
Speaker 1: tech news for Thursday, November eleven one. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to start off this News episode with a correction and
Speaker 1: an explanation about the story that I mentioned earlier this week.
Speaker 1: So on Tuesday, I talked about how Elon Musk had
Speaker 1: set up a Twitter poll about whether or not he
Speaker 1: should sell off ten percent of the stock he was
Speaker 1: holding in Tesla, and he framed it as a response
Speaker 1: to US lawmakers who said that, you know, stocks are
Speaker 1: unrealized gains that wouldn't be taxed, and that this was
Speaker 1: a way that the ultra rich billionaires like Elon Musk
Speaker 1: use in order so that they don't have to pay
Speaker 1: taxes on that. So essentially he was saying the US says,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to avoid paying taxes, should I sell ten
Speaker 1: percent of my stock? Because then you see, by selling
Speaker 1: the stock, he would have to pay taxes on the
Speaker 1: money he earned from that sale. Now, in the story,
Speaker 1: I believe I mentioned that it would be worth around
Speaker 1: twenty one billion dollars. Business Insider reports that Musk exercise
Speaker 1: two point one five million stock options for six dollars
Speaker 1: cents a share each. That means he actually purchased the
Speaker 1: stock at that price that set him back thirteen point
Speaker 1: four billion bucks. Then he sold off around four and
Speaker 1: a half million shares for a total of around five
Speaker 1: billion dollars, And you might say, hey, five billion dollars
Speaker 1: is significantly less than twenty one billion. But then Musk
Speaker 1: sold off less than his ten percent of holdings he
Speaker 1: had mentioned in Twitter. In fact, it was less than
Speaker 1: three percent that he sold off, So that is where
Speaker 1: part of that discrepancy comes in. But the big thing
Speaker 1: that Business Insider reported was that Musk had been planning
Speaker 1: to sell off that stock for months and that the
Speaker 1: poll was really more of a stunt than anything else.
Speaker 1: And honestly, if I had used a little bit of
Speaker 1: critical thinking, if I had taken my own advice, I
Speaker 1: might have come to a similar conclusion. But I fell
Speaker 1: short on that, which just goes to show that critical
Speaker 1: thinking is an active skill that you have to work at. Anyway.
Speaker 1: According to Business Insider, regulatory filings showed that Musk always
Speaker 1: planned on this course of action because those stock options
Speaker 1: that he exercised were set to expire next year and
Speaker 1: he had to act before they actually did expire. On
Speaker 1: top of that, he's going to face a pretty big
Speaker 1: tax bill coming up, like a ten billion dollar one,
Speaker 1: so liquidation was kind of a necessity. So might did
Speaker 1: he post the Twitter poll. If all this was already
Speaker 1: planned well, Speculation says that Musk might have done this
Speaker 1: in order to soften the news that the CEO of
Speaker 1: a company was selling off a large block of stocks
Speaker 1: in that company, because that's a message that could have
Speaker 1: a dramatic impact on the company's stock price. So instead
Speaker 1: of the media saying Musk suddenly dumps millions of shares
Speaker 1: of Tesla, the media says, Musk asks Twitter if he
Speaker 1: should sell stock. So the price of Tesla stock still
Speaker 1: took a hit, but by shifting accountability to Twitter rather
Speaker 1: than to himself, Musk can avoid the appearance that the
Speaker 1: CEO of a company has lost confidence in their own company,
Speaker 1: because that really that doesn't reflect reality anyway. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I was one of those stooges who pushed that narrative forward.
Speaker 1: Dang it critical thinking, why are you got to be
Speaker 1: so hard? I also mentioned on Tuesday that hackers accessed
Speaker 1: user information on the broker company robin Hood's internal systems,
Speaker 1: robin Hood allowing people to create accounts and then you know,
Speaker 1: get involved in in stock market trades and stuff. Initially,
Speaker 1: it's sounded as though the information that hackers accessed was
Speaker 1: limited to stuff like email addresses for the vast majority
Speaker 1: of those affected, UH, the names and physical addresses, and
Speaker 1: some similar information for a smaller number. So the vast
Speaker 1: the vast majority of users who were affected, it was
Speaker 1: supposedly just their email address. Now Motherboard has released screenshots
Speaker 1: showing the internal tools that the hackers used to get
Speaker 1: a closer look of at least a few accounts, maybe
Speaker 1: as few as ten UH, and they had access to
Speaker 1: stuff like bank transfer histories, which devices were authorized to
Speaker 1: access the account customers, support conversations with certain users, and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. There's no word on whether the
Speaker 1: hackers actually used the tools to make changes to the accounts.
Speaker 1: Robin Hood says that did not happen, but it does
Speaker 1: look like they would have at least been able to
Speaker 1: if they had wanted to. Also, no word on whether
Speaker 1: the hackers purposefully targeted the small number of accounts that
Speaker 1: received a more extensive probing or whether that was just
Speaker 1: you know, random. In YouTube News, the platform is saying
Speaker 1: goodbye to a feature that's been around for years, and
Speaker 1: that is of the public dislike tally. The dislike button
Speaker 1: is sticking around, but the tally is going away. Anyone
Speaker 1: familiar with YouTube knows that the like and dislike options
Speaker 1: below a video or there. I mean, you often have
Speaker 1: creators saying, if you enjoyed this video, hit that little
Speaker 1: like button. Like that's pretty common, and the assumption goes
Speaker 1: that the likes factor into YouTube's recommendation algorithm and thus
Speaker 1: makes it more likely that the video will one get
Speaker 1: greater exposure to other users, and two that if you
Speaker 1: like a video, YouTube is going to probably serve you
Speaker 1: up stuff that's similar. Now, I say assumption because YouTube
Speaker 1: is pretty darn quiet about how it's recommendation engine actually works,
Speaker 1: and it's frequently tweaking the system. And for a just
Speaker 1: you could actually see the tally of likes and dislikes
Speaker 1: below the video. But now YouTube is going to hide
Speaker 1: the number of dislikes that a video actually receives. The
Speaker 1: dislike button is still going to be there, but you
Speaker 1: won't see how many times folks have clicked on this. Uh,
Speaker 1: this YouTube says is meant to prevent a kind of
Speaker 1: snowball effect that sometimes happens where folks will dislike a
Speaker 1: video and the number will go up, and then more
Speaker 1: people will pile on and it becomes kind of an
Speaker 1: avalanche of dislikes, and some folks join in on that
Speaker 1: activity even if they've never watched the video in the
Speaker 1: first place. I made this argument on Twitter that for
Speaker 1: a very long time, the Justin Bieber music video for
Speaker 1: Baby was the most disliked video on YouTube, and I
Speaker 1: am certain that a large number of people who hit
Speaker 1: dislike on that video had never bothered to watch it.
Speaker 1: They just kind of thought it was funny to pile
Speaker 1: on and dislike the video. I'm not saying the video
Speaker 1: is good, by the way, I'm just saying that I
Speaker 1: am convinced that it earned way more dislikes than people
Speaker 1: actually watched in that in that sense, So the ideas
Speaker 1: this will help prevent those kind of instance and you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully reduce the amount of abuse people have heaped onto
Speaker 1: creators using the dislike button. Now, the video creators will
Speaker 1: still be able to see dislike counts through their analytics,
Speaker 1: and the dislikes should help YouTube continue to tune recommendations
Speaker 1: more to the individual users so that you're not flooded
Speaker 1: with more videos that you don't like. And I actually
Speaker 1: do like that because I I recently, you know, this
Speaker 1: is a personal story, I watched some videos about camping.
Speaker 1: Not that I think I'm gonna go camping anytime soon,
Speaker 1: but for some reason I got on this camping kick,
Speaker 1: and now YouTube occasionally suggests hunting videos to me. And
Speaker 1: I've got nothing against hunting, at least as long as
Speaker 1: it's not trophy hunting. I think trophy hunting is cruel
Speaker 1: and horrifying and awful and unnecessary. But whether it's you know,
Speaker 1: subsistence hunting or not, I don't want to watch videos
Speaker 1: about it. That's not my bag. So knowing the dislike
Speaker 1: feature is really more so that viewers can shape their
Speaker 1: recommendations and less about mob mentality is cool. Whether or
Speaker 1: not it works remains to be seen. I'm sure there
Speaker 1: will still be campaigns against certain videos or creators that
Speaker 1: will commence tons of folks to dislike specific videos, even
Speaker 1: if they've never watched the video. But maybe it won't
Speaker 1: be as bad as it was before because you won't
Speaker 1: see how effective the attack is. There will be no
Speaker 1: number associated with dislikes. Also, let's take a moment to
Speaker 1: mourn the passing of an amazing internet meme joke, and
Speaker 1: that is of the neutral Response video, which is a
Speaker 1: clip from the show Futurama and in the clip, there's
Speaker 1: an alien from this planet that's just filled with people
Speaker 1: who have neutral tendencies, and the alien says, I have
Speaker 1: no strong feelings one way or the other. And the
Speaker 1: joke was that the number of likes and dislikes for
Speaker 1: that video have balanced out, like whenever anyone would like
Speaker 1: the video, someone else would come along and dislike it
Speaker 1: in order to keep them even so, the current tally
Speaker 1: is at five fifty four thousand each more or less. Well,
Speaker 1: once dislikes disappear, that collective joke will be over. So
Speaker 1: that's a little sad. It seems like the concept of
Speaker 1: the metaverse is gonna be a theme for a while.
Speaker 1: I think it's a little bit odd because the concept
Speaker 1: itself isn't really that new, and arguably you could even
Speaker 1: call stuff like Second Life a type of metaverse, and
Speaker 1: that's been around for ages. Anyway. The reason I even
Speaker 1: mentioned it is that the Soul Metropolitan Government, as in
Speaker 1: Soul Korea, has announced it will create its own metaverse
Speaker 1: with Blackjack and no way, I'm still thinking about Futurama quotes.
Speaker 1: No uh, I mean it's going to create a metaverse
Speaker 1: meant to allow quote citizens to conveniently meet with Avatar
Speaker 1: officials to deal with civil complaints and consultations end quote.
Speaker 1: So essentially, this would replace the need to physically travel
Speaker 1: to a municipal office for an in person appointment, which
Speaker 1: is not a bad thing considering it, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a pandemic going at all. It's interesting that they're going
Speaker 1: the avatar route. To me, I'm not sure how that
Speaker 1: is more beneficial oversay a video conference called directly with
Speaker 1: whomever it is you need to meet, Like, how is
Speaker 1: it better than that? But the city government is willing
Speaker 1: to invest around three billion dollars into the project, which
Speaker 1: is part of a larger city plan that aims to
Speaker 1: transform Soul by twenty and I guess one benefit is
Speaker 1: the metaverse proposal would also include the ability to virtually
Speaker 1: attend mass events like imagine a giant concert that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. You could virtually be there and you would
Speaker 1: be surrounded by other virtual people watching a virtual concert,
Speaker 1: so you could still be part of a group experience
Speaker 1: without actually having to leave house. Now, again, it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to see this as being better than just say,
Speaker 1: watching a live stream video of the concert. Uh. I
Speaker 1: know that virtual reality can be really immersive. I've experienced
Speaker 1: that myself. I get that, and probably there is some
Speaker 1: sort of psychological boost compared to just watching a live
Speaker 1: stream video on a classic screen. But I think part
Speaker 1: of me would still be thinking to myself, it's weird
Speaker 1: that I have to put on all this VR gear
Speaker 1: just to witness this. You know. Then again, I've also
Speaker 1: always been a little anxious in crowds. That has actually
Speaker 1: gotten way worse since the pandemic. So maybe it's just
Speaker 1: that this particular thing is not for me anyway. There's
Speaker 1: some aspects to VR metaverse stuff that I can totally
Speaker 1: get behind, like the idea of improved accessibility for folks
Speaker 1: who otherwise would have trouble attending physical events. I think
Speaker 1: that's great to give people who otherwise couldn't have that
Speaker 1: chance to do it. That is fantastic. However, you also
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge this has improved accessibility assuming you're able
Speaker 1: to afford the hardware you need in order to run
Speaker 1: VR properly. To me, that's still an accessibility barrier. We
Speaker 1: have a few more stories to cover, but before we
Speaker 1: get to that, let's take a quick break. Before the break,
Speaker 1: I talked a little bit about accessibility. Sticking with that
Speaker 1: that theme, of the United States government has sued the
Speaker 1: ride hailing company Uber, saying that the company has failed
Speaker 1: to ensure equitable fairs for passengers with disabilities. So Uber
Speaker 1: has this weight time fee, and it's the idea is
Speaker 1: that the weight time fee charges a passenger if they
Speaker 1: force a driver to wait a couple of minutes once
Speaker 1: they arrive at a destination UH to pick someone up. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, if I call an Uber and the
Speaker 1: Uber pulls up outside my house, but I'm still inside
Speaker 1: puttering around, trying to get stuff done, putting on shoes,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be, and I'm making the driver weight,
Speaker 1: then Uber charges me for the fact that I have
Speaker 1: inconvenience the driver, I have taken time away from the driver.
Speaker 1: That's time that they could potentially be earning on another fair.
Speaker 1: That's the idea behind the policy. Unfortunately, this policy would
Speaker 1: also adversely affect people with disabilities who need more time
Speaker 1: to get into a vehicle. If they are actually taking
Speaker 1: more time to get into the vehicle and the driver
Speaker 1: is sitting there for a few minutes, this policy would
Speaker 1: pop into effect and the passengers would be essentially monetarily
Speaker 1: penalized for the fact that they can't get into a
Speaker 1: car very fast, and that's just discrimination as defined by
Speaker 1: the Americans with Disabilities Act. So that's why the United
Speaker 1: States government has sued Uber. Uber, by the way, has
Speaker 1: introduced a feature in its app that will waive weight
Speaker 1: time fees for passengers who are certified as being disabled.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what that certification process actually is. I
Speaker 1: don't know how they determine that, but the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice is seeking damages from Uber to compensate passengers who
Speaker 1: had been affected by this policy, as well as just
Speaker 1: mandating that that policy cannot apply to people with disabilities
Speaker 1: because otherwise it does discriminate and the Americans with disabilities
Speaker 1: that makes that illegal. So interesting story. Sony has recently
Speaker 1: revealed that, due to ongoing supply chain issues, the company
Speaker 1: expects to produce fewer PlayStation five consoles than they had
Speaker 1: originally planned, by the tune of one million units. Now.
Speaker 1: Their fiscal year ends in March or at the beginning
Speaker 1: of March, I believe, and so I think the original
Speaker 1: plan was to produce sixteen million units. It's going to
Speaker 1: be closer to fifteen million, and the sales goal was
Speaker 1: for fourteen point eight million, which means there's not a
Speaker 1: whole lot of margin there. They have to pray much
Speaker 1: sell every single unit they make in order to meet
Speaker 1: the numbers that they had projected. The PS five launched
Speaker 1: almost exactly a year ago. The original launch date was
Speaker 1: November twelve, and it has been consistently challenging to find
Speaker 1: in stores. You know, actually had the chance to snag
Speaker 1: one a couple of weeks ago, but a dilly dallied
Speaker 1: and then that chance went bye bye. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of you gamers out there have
Speaker 1: had similar experiences. And unfortunately, this means there will be
Speaker 1: fewer consoles produced than planned. That means it's still going
Speaker 1: to be difficult to find them in stores, which is
Speaker 1: a real blow, particularly since we're into the holiday gift
Speaker 1: buying season. Uh that, by the way, is sure to
Speaker 1: be impacted by various supply chain issues. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have found that just the stuff that they were
Speaker 1: planning on buying is taking way longer to get to
Speaker 1: them than they had originally thought. That's gonna keep going, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, the supply chain crunch is a real one,
Speaker 1: and it has created bottle throughout the entire system where
Speaker 1: you know, suddenly a facility gets flooded with products and
Speaker 1: then it has to figure out how does it deal
Speaker 1: with that to pass it further down the chain. This
Speaker 1: is a domino effect, a cascading effect that we see
Speaker 1: throughout the supply chain. So as a tech person, typically
Speaker 1: I would be expected to suggest certain like Black Friday
Speaker 1: or Cyber Monday deals that focus on stuff like TVs
Speaker 1: and electronics and sound systems, that kind of thing. This year,
Speaker 1: I humbly suggest that if you plan on buying holiday presents,
Speaker 1: patronize like local shop owners and artists and tradespeople instead,
Speaker 1: it will be a bigger benefit to your immediate community.
Speaker 1: And if enough of us actually do that, it will
Speaker 1: relieve some of the insane pressure that's on the supply
Speaker 1: side of the supply chain economy right now, and things
Speaker 1: can get to a better equilibrium. But only if enough
Speaker 1: of us actually kind of at least remove that part
Speaker 1: to the pressure on the system, Like the demand side
Speaker 1: is still super high, and that's just kind of exacerbating
Speaker 1: an already tough situation. Okay, let's go back to South Korea.
Speaker 1: I mentioned them earlier in the episode. Well, the country
Speaker 1: recently unveiled a traffic control system designed to handle urban
Speaker 1: air mobility vehicles or u a m s, which is
Speaker 1: a fancy way of saying flying machines what take passengers
Speaker 1: from one place to another place, or a flying taxi
Speaker 1: in other words. And these typically take the form factor
Speaker 1: of a really large multi rotor drone type thing, because
Speaker 1: it's not drones, more like a multi rotor helicopter in
Speaker 1: a way. So think of like like the drones you
Speaker 1: would see that are remote controlled, but much much bigger
Speaker 1: and sometimes with more rotors. The traffic control system would
Speaker 1: be a necessary component if flying taxis are to be,
Speaker 1: you know, a real thing, Like if they're to become
Speaker 1: an integral component in transportation, then you've got you've got
Speaker 1: to have some sort of system to be able to
Speaker 1: handle that. So the country is actually testing this to
Speaker 1: kind of work out the design flaws and to tweak
Speaker 1: things in order to set a foundation for a future
Speaker 1: with flying vehicles that are actually an actively carrying people
Speaker 1: to and fro. The test involved a vehicle made by
Speaker 1: a company called Volocopter, and according to the Korean Times,
Speaker 1: that particular vehicle is one that can either be piloted
Speaker 1: by a human or it can operate in an autonomous mode. Currently,
Speaker 1: South Korea requires a pilot to be present should any
Speaker 1: passengers be inside the vehicle, so you cannot, you know,
Speaker 1: use this like an autonomous taxi under South Korean law currently.
Speaker 1: I think that's a wise decision. The government says it's
Speaker 1: necessary both as a safety measure and also to help
Speaker 1: secure passenger confidence in the system. Makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: The Korean Times also reports that the expected cost or
Speaker 1: a customer to take a ride from the Incheon International
Speaker 1: Airport to Central Soul to be around nine dollars American
Speaker 1: the equivalent of ninety dollars when the pilot program No
Speaker 1: Pun Intended launches No Pun Intended, which is supposed to
Speaker 1: be in However, they say that that price should drop
Speaker 1: dramatically once the technology and the business matures, so within
Speaker 1: a decade they expect the cost to drop low enough
Speaker 1: so that it would be the equivalent of less than
Speaker 1: twenty dollars per trep. That to me is phenomenal. I
Speaker 1: think it's really optimistic, but I would love to see
Speaker 1: it happen, assuming, of course, that the system has proven
Speaker 1: to be safe and reliable. Finally, I've written and talked
Speaker 1: about brain computer interfaces quite a few times. I always
Speaker 1: find them fascinating. Creating technology that can detect and interpret
Speaker 1: brain waves and then produce some sort of meaningful output
Speaker 1: is really cool, particularly for people who have limited or
Speaker 1: no motor functions and who otherwise would find it challenging
Speaker 1: or even impossible to communicate well. Science Alert reported earlier
Speaker 1: this week on a research program called brain Gate that
Speaker 1: has developed an interface that allows a paralyzed subject, a
Speaker 1: man who volunteered to be part of this, to generate
Speaker 1: text on a screen just by imagining his own handwriting,
Speaker 1: so he can think about writing a word by hand,
Speaker 1: even though he lost all uh control of his limbs
Speaker 1: years ago, and that thought will then be interpreted by
Speaker 1: the system, and then the text will appear on a
Speaker 1: screen reflecting the letters he was imagining himself writing. Now,
Speaker 1: I've heard of other systems that use training sessions so
Speaker 1: that someone can learn how to control a cursor with
Speaker 1: their mind, and they can move the cursor around to
Speaker 1: kind of type things out on an on screen keyboard,
Speaker 1: very similar to how you would use an on screen
Speaker 1: touch keyboard. But this is the first time I've heard
Speaker 1: about something that can interpret the thoughts about writing a
Speaker 1: word and use that to display that same word on screen. Now,
Speaker 1: it's still a slow process. The subject in the research
Speaker 1: project could right around nine characters per minute, that's about
Speaker 1: eighteen words per minute, but they could do it with
Speaker 1: like accuracy before auto correct was brought in. And it
Speaker 1: still requires surgery to implant electrodes into the brain, so
Speaker 1: this is not like some hat you put on and
Speaker 1: you can use it. It is an invasive process, but
Speaker 1: for people who would otherwise find themselves unable to communicate,
Speaker 1: this technology is incredibly powerful. It's also fascinating to me
Speaker 1: that the brain can retain abilities related to fine motor
Speaker 1: movements even years after someone has lost that actual physical capability.
Speaker 1: So not only are we learning more about how to
Speaker 1: develop these systems, we're learning more about the resilience of
Speaker 1: the brain and how the brain operates. So those learnings
Speaker 1: will inform future implementations which will continue to improve. And
Speaker 1: my hope is that in the future will have systems
Speaker 1: that give people a lot more independence and autonomy and
Speaker 1: communication abilities and to dramatically improve their quality of life,
Speaker 1: even in the case where they have lost or maybe
Speaker 1: never even had abilities to to move around. I think
Speaker 1: that that is really phenomenal. All right, that wraps up
Speaker 1: the news episode for Thursday, November eleven, twenty one. If
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out. The best way
Speaker 1: to do that is on Twitter. The handle for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff hs W. I'm out next week.
Speaker 1: You'll get your g E episodes in place of me,
Speaker 1: and there will also be a Smart Talks with IBM
Speaker 1: episode on Thursday. But I will be back the following Monday,
Speaker 1: so catch you on the flip side. And if you
Speaker 1: are walking around Disney World, look for a bald guy
Speaker 1: who's probably staring on his phone because of Genie Plus.
Speaker 1: But that's a that's a topic for another podcast. All right,
Speaker 1: Bye bye, I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
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