Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and this is the
Speaker 1: tech News episode for Tuesday, January twelve, twenty one. Before
Speaker 1: I jump into it, I should also point out that
Speaker 1: when I record these episodes, I record them the day
Speaker 1: before they published. That gives my super producer TORII, enough
Speaker 1: time to edit and publish these episodes, which explains why
Speaker 1: when I recorded last Thursday's episode, I didn't have any
Speaker 1: mention of the assault on the United States Capital at all,
Speaker 1: because as I was recording that episode, that had not
Speaker 1: yet happened. In fact, it was right after I had
Speaker 1: finished recording and I was starting to go back and
Speaker 1: listen to that recording that the news was starting to
Speaker 1: break about that situation. And so today's episode has some
Speaker 1: of the fallout from that from the tech perspective. So
Speaker 1: since our last news episode, there's been a ton of
Speaker 1: developments in the United States involving social media. The President
Speaker 1: of the United States and a platform called Parlor. Twitter, Twitch, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Instagram have all banned Trump from posting to their platforms.
Speaker 1: YouTube has been removing videos. Reddit shut down a subreddit
Speaker 1: called our slash Donald Trump for violating policies that involve
Speaker 1: the restrictions against promoting hate speech or encouraging violence. And
Speaker 1: TikTok has been removing videos that relate to the riots
Speaker 1: on Capitol Hill, leading to some people joking that TikTok
Speaker 1: band Donald Trump before Trump could ban TikTok. Each of
Speaker 1: these platforms have done this because of the content and
Speaker 1: tone of the President's messaging leading up to and including
Speaker 1: the day of riots, saying that he is continuing to
Speaker 1: encourage seditious acts. There are critics of the platforms on
Speaker 1: both sides of the ideological spectrum. You've got people arguing
Speaker 1: that the platforms are trampling on the First Amendment, which
Speaker 1: seems pretty simple to dismiss as these platforms are all
Speaker 1: extensions of the private sector and the First Amendment protects
Speaker 1: citizens from government censorship. There have been multiple references to
Speaker 1: Orwell and Orwellian practices, which is particularly rich and suggests
Speaker 1: to me that a lot of people invoking the name
Speaker 1: or Well have never actually read or Well. There have
Speaker 1: also been many criticisms about the power that these tech
Speaker 1: companies have, which interestingly is also a talking point on
Speaker 1: the opposite end of the ideal logical spectrum, though that
Speaker 1: point extends to corporations as a whole, and how over
Speaker 1: the last couple of decades the United States government has
Speaker 1: granted corporations more power year by year, enabling them to
Speaker 1: have enormous political influence in the process. And then on
Speaker 1: the more liberal side of things, you've got critics saying
Speaker 1: that these platforms are moving to ban Trump, but they've
Speaker 1: proven that they could have done that if they had
Speaker 1: wanted to at any point before now, which leads to
Speaker 1: questions about why it took so long after there were
Speaker 1: numerous examples of violations of policies over the last few years,
Speaker 1: in other words, that the president had clearly violated policies
Speaker 1: of these different platforms policies that if someone that was
Speaker 1: not the president had done this, they would have found
Speaker 1: themselves facing consequences. So essentially, these critics are saying that
Speaker 1: now that we're two weeks out from Biden's inauguration, sooner
Speaker 1: than that, really one week out now, that's when the
Speaker 1: platforms have finally deemed it possible to remove Trump from them.
Speaker 1: So no one's really happy about how this was done.
Speaker 1: But some people view it as necessity to reduce the
Speaker 1: chance for further chaos, and other people see it as
Speaker 1: an attack on freedoms and a sign of too much
Speaker 1: political power. And these two lines of thought don't necessarily
Speaker 1: fall equally into the camps of democrat and republican. It
Speaker 1: is a complicated and messy situation. Meanwhile, let's talk about Parlor,
Speaker 1: which bills itself as a free speech social network. Now,
Speaker 1: this social network receives a lot of funding from conservative
Speaker 1: hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebecca. Mercer
Speaker 1: was a big investor in Cambridge Analytica back in the
Speaker 1: day and is a notable financial supporter of various right
Speaker 1: wing organizations. Parlor itself is associated with conservatives in general,
Speaker 1: and while the company says it is new role, the
Speaker 1: fact is that the vast majority of activity on Parlor
Speaker 1: falls on the conservative and frequently the far right wing
Speaker 1: side of the political spectrum. Parlor is also where a
Speaker 1: lot of the people involved in the riots on Capitol
Speaker 1: Hill have accounts, and it's a place that has been
Speaker 1: used to organize activities like that. As such, people concerned
Speaker 1: with Parlor's role in facilitating violence and assaults on the
Speaker 1: foundations of democracy began to pressure Google and Apple to
Speaker 1: remove Parlor from their respective app stores. The two companies
Speaker 1: ultimately complied, removing access to those apps, and then Amazon
Speaker 1: announced it was booting Parlor from their web services platform
Speaker 1: by eleven nine pm Pacific time on Sunday, January tent which,
Speaker 1: as I record, this was yesterday, So it is no
Speaker 1: longer on those servers. A company representative route to Parlor,
Speaker 1: stating quote, Recently, we've seen a steady increase in this
Speaker 1: violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms.
Speaker 1: It's clear that Parlor does not have an effective process
Speaker 1: to comply with the a WS terms of service end quote.
Speaker 1: That's an Amazon Web Services That's what aw S means.
Speaker 1: So this means that the actual servers that Parlor used
Speaker 1: to host their network are now no longer available to Parlor,
Speaker 1: effectively d platforming the platform. The admins of Parlor initially
Speaker 1: said that the plan was to relaunch Parlor on another
Speaker 1: web service, but that the platform might be down for
Speaker 1: about a week as a result. They also said that
Speaker 1: the plan was to rebuild Parlor from scratch, but that
Speaker 1: seems unrealistic to me. Rebuilding would take a lot longer
Speaker 1: than just a week from a coding perspective. Moreover, subsequent
Speaker 1: reports indicate that the founders aren't having much luck when
Speaker 1: it comes to finding a new home for the platform,
Speaker 1: and even the company's own legal team quit again. This
Speaker 1: brought out First Amendment defenders, but opponents pointed out that
Speaker 1: speech that incites violence or encourages sedition or treason are
Speaker 1: not protected by the First Amendment, as the saying goes,
Speaker 1: the right to swing your fist ends where the other
Speaker 1: man's nose begins. These recent developments have elevated conversations that
Speaker 1: have been going on for years about the role of
Speaker 1: social networks and their responsibility to moderate. In the United States,
Speaker 1: Section to thirty gives platforms an effective immunity against legal
Speaker 1: action for the content that users post to those platforms.
Speaker 1: Some have said that it prevents those platforms from moderating discussions,
Speaker 1: which is actually the opposite of the intent of that
Speaker 1: piece of legislation. It was meant to encourage platforms to
Speaker 1: moderate content on them, also without fear of legal action
Speaker 1: for doing so so. If a platform were to, say,
Speaker 1: remove all posts that referenced violence, the platform would not
Speaker 1: be held legally liable if someone felt that the platform
Speaker 1: was overstepping its bounds. However, rather than seeing these platforms
Speaker 1: take a more active role in moderating content, the opposite
Speaker 1: has largely been the case, and in fact, platforms have
Speaker 1: found it profitable to do so because the inflammatory content
Speaker 1: drives a lot of engagement, and that ultimately boils down
Speaker 1: to people spending more time on these platforms and thus
Speaker 1: earning those platforms more money as a result thanks to advertising.
Speaker 1: And so there has been an incentive for platforms to
Speaker 1: kind of let things be until the situation boils over
Speaker 1: because it was more profitable that way. Once things escalate
Speaker 1: beyond a certain point, the risks of housing the material
Speaker 1: end up being greater than the reward of hosting it,
Speaker 1: and that's when we see platfor worms leap to action.
Speaker 1: Now that's not to say that all social network leaders
Speaker 1: feel no responsibility for what happens on the platforms. It's
Speaker 1: more of a commentary on how the whole business is
Speaker 1: a moral in nature, not immoral necessarily, but a moral
Speaker 1: and moving forward with Democrats in control of both Houses
Speaker 1: of Congress plus the White House, after January twenty. There's
Speaker 1: a growing expectation that the US government will be taking
Speaker 1: a harder look at big tech with regulations and reform
Speaker 1: in mind, which could include a renewed push to break
Speaker 1: up some of those big companies that the government deems
Speaker 1: to be either a monopoly or at the very least
Speaker 1: practice anti competitive strategies. That's one extreme we can see.
Speaker 1: It's also possible that we'll see the government create incentives
Speaker 1: or find ways to pressure social networking companies to take
Speaker 1: a more active and transparent approach to moderating content on
Speaker 1: the networks themselves. This is something that the platforms have
Speaker 1: said might be a necessity, including Mark Zuckerberg. There's also
Speaker 1: the possibility that Section to thirty will come under fire again,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because it's a piece of legislation that
Speaker 1: gets targeted both by conservatives and by certain Democrats, but
Speaker 1: for very different reasons. Representatives from organizations like Tech Freedom
Speaker 1: argue that removing or changing Section to thirty will not
Speaker 1: solve the problem, and that any approach will require a
Speaker 1: great deal of thought and care behind it, or else
Speaker 1: it will be doomed to fail. Removing to thirty would
Speaker 1: then be nothing more than a symbolic gesture, and further,
Speaker 1: it could hurt smaller platforms and thus make the anti
Speaker 1: competitive problem in tech even worse. So the message here
Speaker 1: seems to be think carefully about the solution and don't
Speaker 1: make it something that makes the problem even worse than
Speaker 1: it already is, or just doesn't even address the problem
Speaker 1: in the first place. While there are ongoing investigations into
Speaker 1: the security failures that allowed dozens of rioters to roam
Speaker 1: the halls of the US Capital, there's a parallel effort
Speaker 1: to address the information security problems that arose as a
Speaker 1: result of unauthorized people having access to numerous computers and
Speaker 1: systems in the capital during the incident. The physical access
Speaker 1: to facilities and equipment means there's a possibility one or
Speaker 1: more people not only accessed information they should not have,
Speaker 1: but potentially they could have bugged offices, copied data, stolen computers.
Speaker 1: In fact, we know for a fact that some computers
Speaker 1: have been stolen or at least have been reported as
Speaker 1: being stolen, or maybe stolen other equipment. They could have
Speaker 1: injected malware into computer systems or more. With this sort
Speaker 1: of intrusion, you have to move forward assuming the worst
Speaker 1: that is that everything has been compromised. Otherwise you leave
Speaker 1: yourself vulnerable to the worst. It's pretty much the worst
Speaker 1: case scenario for computer security. That being said, effectively, each
Speaker 1: member of Congress has their own information system, which means
Speaker 1: there is some decentralization at play here. They're not all
Speaker 1: just automatically linked together. They're all kind of their own
Speaker 1: little silos, but they are connected to so in other words,
Speaker 1: if someone does gain access to one specific account, they
Speaker 1: do not necessarily have access to all other accounts across Congress.
Speaker 1: That's a small comfort, but since we don't yet know
Speaker 1: the extent to which systems were compromised, it's also a
Speaker 1: bit of a moot point. And depending on the level
Speaker 1: of access people were able to get, the damage they
Speaker 1: could do could still be considerable. And there's the possibility
Speaker 1: that foreign agents could have played a part in the
Speaker 1: riots on January six as well, as has been widely
Speaker 1: reported though far too late. The planning that led to
Speaker 1: these riots was largely done on platforms like Parlor and Reddit,
Speaker 1: and while there appears to have been no centralized leadership,
Speaker 1: the various smaller groups that made up the whole each
Speaker 1: shared plans extensively within their respective groups. So any foreign
Speaker 1: agency that was paying more attention than the media was
Speaker 1: could have followed along and played a part as well
Speaker 1: and taken the opportunity of access to compromise cybersecurity in
Speaker 1: the nation's capital. It will likely take many days to
Speaker 1: assess the full level of damage, and even then we
Speaker 1: likely won't know the whole story, and maybe we never will. Well,
Speaker 1: that's enough doom and gloom from the rioting at the
Speaker 1: nation's capital. I think when we come back, we're going
Speaker 1: to take a look at a totally different topic what
Speaker 1: c e S twenty twenty one is shaping up to
Speaker 1: be this week. But first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: So before the break, I mentioned it is c e
Speaker 1: S week. Now I talked about this last week. It
Speaker 1: is a very different show than what we would normally see.
Speaker 1: C e S is the Consumer Electronics Show. It's an
Speaker 1: enormous industry trade show that has had at least one
Speaker 1: big event in a physical location every year since nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven until now. In fact, since it has been
Speaker 1: held exclusively at Las Vegas in January, well, COVID has
Speaker 1: forced c e S to go virtual like lots of
Speaker 1: other events in the world, and The shift and venue
Speaker 1: is just one of the changes that we're seeing this
Speaker 1: week in c e S had more than four thousand
Speaker 1: exhibitors officially at the event, and that doesn't count the
Speaker 1: number of companies that set up shop in hotel suites
Speaker 1: but are not in an official part of the show.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that was a thing until I started
Speaker 1: going to c e S. And now we get invites
Speaker 1: to go to different hotel suites to check out technology,
Speaker 1: and I realized, Oh, the reason you did this is
Speaker 1: because renting out a hotel suite is cheaper than establishing
Speaker 1: show floor space at CEES. Plus you're not competing against
Speaker 1: everybody else in the immediate area for attention. However, in
Speaker 1: one the list of exhibitors is less than half of
Speaker 1: what it was last year. It is one thousand, nine
Speaker 1: D sixty seven. Some big companies, including companies like Ford
Speaker 1: and Toyota, aren't participating this year. And while ce S
Speaker 1: isn't exactly a car trade show, we usually see a
Speaker 1: pretty big representation of car company technology on display during
Speaker 1: the event, and it shouldn't come as a big surprise
Speaker 1: that a lot of the technology we expect to see
Speaker 1: this week and beyond into the rest of one will
Speaker 1: play into how co it has affected our lives. Companies
Speaker 1: will be introducing technologies designed to promote safety and wellness
Speaker 1: in office spaces. So we're anticipating a time when people
Speaker 1: will be able to work together in the same physical
Speaker 1: location in relative safety across more of the world. And
Speaker 1: there's likely going to be a lot more technology that
Speaker 1: supports those who will be working from home. As kind
Speaker 1: of an ongoing arrangement, We've heard from a lot of
Speaker 1: companies over the course of twenty twenty last year that
Speaker 1: moving forward they are going to allow more of their
Speaker 1: employees to work from home, you know, just as a
Speaker 1: matter of course, even after we reach something like herd
Speaker 1: immunity with COVID. One of the things that happens at
Speaker 1: c S is that the Consumer Technology Association brings together
Speaker 1: a panel of judges to pour over thousands of products
Speaker 1: and select some that are standouts in their respective categories.
Speaker 1: The judges come from various sectors and include executives from
Speaker 1: companies like Intel, Spotify, Comcast, Amazon, Apple, Google, and more.
Speaker 1: Oh and that more includes some really interesting outliers Like
Speaker 1: this year, one of the judges is a representative from
Speaker 1: Cirque to Sola Entertainment Group, which famously had a financial
Speaker 1: collapse last year. Somehow my invitation to be part of
Speaker 1: this must have been lost in the mail. But I'm
Speaker 1: just joking because I'm neither qualified to really judge this
Speaker 1: sort of stuff, nor do I relish the thought of
Speaker 1: having to examine countless examples of technology and then start
Speaker 1: assigning scores to them. Anyway, we already know the winners
Speaker 1: for this year's ce S Best of Innovation. Now. The
Speaker 1: honorees in total include two products from companies. Obviously, I
Speaker 1: am not going to list them all. That would be ludicrous,
Speaker 1: So I'm just gonna give you a a couple that
Speaker 1: that stood out to me. A Canadian company called E
Speaker 1: two I p E twip, I don't know, anyway, they
Speaker 1: submitted a product called Engineered electro Magnetic Surfaces that I
Speaker 1: think is really cool. Now, these are sheets of plastic
Speaker 1: that are very very thin, and they're semi transparent, and
Speaker 1: the sheets can reflect, redirect, or block specific radio frequency waves.
Speaker 1: So you can engineer this stuff to allow certain radio
Speaker 1: frequency waves to pass through and to block other ones
Speaker 1: and so on. The applications for such material are numerous,
Speaker 1: so you could use it to help focus signals like
Speaker 1: five G radio frequency signals to a particular location. So
Speaker 1: let's say that you wanted to have a five G
Speaker 1: wireless connection to your home. You want to set up
Speaker 1: an antenna pick up five G transmission signals and use
Speaker 1: that for your home network. You've got a router and
Speaker 1: the five G signals come in to the router and
Speaker 1: then you can connect your local network that way. Well,
Speaker 1: we know that the ultra fast version of five G
Speaker 1: has a very limited range, so you need to be
Speaker 1: close to these antenna and it also has a limited
Speaker 1: ability to penetrate walls. So even if you are close,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to pick this up with a
Speaker 1: router antenna inside your home because the signals themselves wouldn't
Speaker 1: get into your home in the first place. So you
Speaker 1: might need something akin to a satellite dish that uses
Speaker 1: this engineered material to help direct signals to the antenna.
Speaker 1: So in other words, it's capturing and redirecting more of
Speaker 1: those five G signals to get a nice strong connection,
Speaker 1: and that way you could end up having a five
Speaker 1: G connectivity to the outside world, and then your local
Speaker 1: network connects by a five G that'd be super cool.
Speaker 1: Or imagine using this material to help shield a location
Speaker 1: from outside signals, to make sure that external signals can't
Speaker 1: get into to a facility. If you need to create
Speaker 1: a cyber secure location. Let's say you've got an air gap,
Speaker 1: so you don't want to connect to the internet at large,
Speaker 1: but you still want to have an internal network complete
Speaker 1: with wireless components. So inside the building you're able to
Speaker 1: connect to WiFi, but it's only for the internal network.
Speaker 1: You would want to have something like this to block
Speaker 1: external signals from potentially interfering or snooping on you. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of other potential uses for this material
Speaker 1: as well. I just thought it was super cool. Another
Speaker 1: product that One and Innovation award is the bio Button.
Speaker 1: It is a wearable device about the size of a
Speaker 1: half dollar coin US half dollar. It monitors various bio
Speaker 1: markers like respiratory rate, heart rate, and body temperature, with
Speaker 1: a specific purpose for screening for COVID nineteen. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you wear it. I looked at pictures of this,
Speaker 1: but I didn't see any description of how it's actually warrnt.
Speaker 1: I imagine it has to be worn against the skin.
Speaker 1: If it's monitoring your temperature. Otherwise how would it know.
Speaker 1: But you pair it with a smartphone app and you
Speaker 1: receive notifications based on those bio markers, such as a
Speaker 1: clear or no clear notification before you start your day.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is just something that you use to do
Speaker 1: a quick scan as opposed to consistent monitoring, But that
Speaker 1: wasn't the implication I got when I was reading over
Speaker 1: the material. Anyway, this sort of approach could be critical
Speaker 1: to preventing further spread of the illness, with some big
Speaker 1: qualifiers there, because this approach is dependent upon detecting symptomatic
Speaker 1: cases of COVID nineteen. But we also know it's possible
Speaker 1: to be asymptomatic as well as contagious, and this device
Speaker 1: wouldn't be much help for those cases. I mean, it
Speaker 1: is looking for symptoms of COVID. If you're asymptomatic by definition,
Speaker 1: you don't have those, so it's not like it's a
Speaker 1: failsafe device that is completely dependable. Is one more measure
Speaker 1: to use in the efforts to prevent the transmission of
Speaker 1: COVID nineteam, but shouldn't be seen as the big solution.
Speaker 1: And the last one I want to highlight for This
Speaker 1: episode comes out of IBM. They received a Best of
Speaker 1: Innovation award for the Mayflower Autonomous Ship or m AS design.
Speaker 1: This ship will be fully autonomous. It will be guided
Speaker 1: by artificial intelligence from start to finish whenever it takes
Speaker 1: its trip. It's supposed to go on its maiden voyage
Speaker 1: in the spring of this year, where it will set
Speaker 1: forth from Plymouth, England and travel to Plymouth, Massachusetts, under
Speaker 1: its own power, under its own guidance, and thus echoing
Speaker 1: the famous Pilgrim's journey. It is meant to self navigate
Speaker 1: and self operate, and it could be a very valuable
Speaker 1: technology in the future to allow for stuff like cargo
Speaker 1: transportation without putting crews and risk of various hazards like
Speaker 1: storms or even pirates. Really. In addition, scientists will be
Speaker 1: able to learn more about the oceans by looking at
Speaker 1: data that the ship gathers as it navigates through environments
Speaker 1: that would be too dangerous for humans. The m AS
Speaker 1: itself is more of a prototype ship. It looks fairly
Speaker 1: futuristic and nifty, with lots of solar panels on it
Speaker 1: and stuff. It does not look like a cargo vessel
Speaker 1: in other words, and it's not meant to be. Should
Speaker 1: this technology prove viable, I expect we would see more
Speaker 1: industrial versions that would look a lot less science fiction
Speaker 1: in a lot more functional. But I will be following
Speaker 1: this story with interest to see how it develops. I
Speaker 1: think that autonomous shipping is definitely a big area of
Speaker 1: development that will see over the next few years. Uh.
Speaker 1: Kind of along the same lines that we've heard about
Speaker 1: how autonomous driving is really going to make an enormous
Speaker 1: impact in the truck industry. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: other products that received awards. These were just a few
Speaker 1: I found interesting. Let's close out with a couple of
Speaker 1: other brief c e S notes, but we'll cover more
Speaker 1: of c e S in Thursday's episode. So another c
Speaker 1: E S news, l G showed off it's TV lineup
Speaker 1: at its press conference. The smart TV line uses the
Speaker 1: web OS operating system, and the new smart TVs will
Speaker 1: have Google Stadia and in video g force now built
Speaker 1: into them. Both of these are cloud gaming services. They're
Speaker 1: very different. In Video g force Now is all about
Speaker 1: being able to access games that exist in your libraries
Speaker 1: with other services like Steam, whereas Google Stadia is more
Speaker 1: of a walled Garden, where you own the access to
Speaker 1: games within Stadia itself. To learn more about Google Stadia,
Speaker 1: make sure you check out tomorrow's episode of Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: because that's when I'll do a deep dive on that
Speaker 1: cloud gaming service. Also, Samsung showed off some new robots
Speaker 1: designed to help around the house. The butt Handy is
Speaker 1: a robot that looks like a pedestal on top of
Speaker 1: a robotic vacuum and has an articulated arm attached that pedestal,
Speaker 1: and Samsung showed off a video of it doing stuff
Speaker 1: like pouring a glass of wine from a bottle and
Speaker 1: loading a dishwasher, which come on, I mean a dishwasher
Speaker 1: is already a labor saving device, but loading a dishwasher anyway.
Speaker 1: Samsung showed all these off, along with a three other
Speaker 1: types of robots as press conference, so once again we
Speaker 1: see another push for consumer robots. I haven't seen a
Speaker 1: lot of adoption of consumer robots outside of robotic vacuums
Speaker 1: and then a few other specialized robots like gutter cleaners
Speaker 1: and pool cleaning robots. Beyond that, I haven't seen a
Speaker 1: whole lot of movement in the industry to actually go
Speaker 1: that consumer route. But maybe maybe we'll see a change.
Speaker 1: I don't know. And to close out this section, Phillips
Speaker 1: showed off a smart toothbrush. Now, we've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of different advanced toothbrushes over the last few years, including
Speaker 1: some that track how you're brushing and giving you tips
Speaker 1: on what you should do in order to get a
Speaker 1: better coverage of your mouth. This one is supposed to
Speaker 1: use artificial intelligence to monitor your oral hygiene and automatically
Speaker 1: adjust its vibration frequency based on how you brush your teeth.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you're brushing your teeth extra hard
Speaker 1: or very gently, then the vibration should kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: pick up where you left off or adjust based on
Speaker 1: how you are brushing your teeth. So the idea is
Speaker 1: that your teeth are always getting the cleaning action that
Speaker 1: they need. I don't know how much it will cost.
Speaker 1: It as part of the Sonic Care line of toothbrushes.
Speaker 1: Full disclosure, I have a Sonic Care toothbrush. Bought it myself.
Speaker 1: This is not a ad. I wasn't paid to do it.
Speaker 1: They didn't send me one. Um, so I've definitely used
Speaker 1: their products before. I do not know, like the standard
Speaker 1: Sonic here was already fairly expensive. I don't know how
Speaker 1: expensive this is gonna be or whether that will be
Speaker 1: a barrier to entry. We'll see. But some people just
Speaker 1: love having smart everything. I don't think that's necessarily smart, ironically,
Speaker 1: but you know, for some people, that's just the way
Speaker 1: they go. We have some more stories to wrap up
Speaker 1: this episode, but before we get to that, we're going
Speaker 1: to take another break. Like I said in the last section,
Speaker 1: I'll talk more about c e S on Thursday's episode.
Speaker 1: I'm sure once we have more things that have been
Speaker 1: released by then. As I mentioned before, on recording this
Speaker 1: on Monday, January eleven, the day before it publishes, so
Speaker 1: I only have a limited amount of information I can
Speaker 1: cover at the moment. Last week, however, I talked about
Speaker 1: how employees at Google are moving to unionize. Well. According
Speaker 1: to the Telegraph, some staffers at Google have been told
Speaker 1: by executives that they need to take training in how
Speaker 1: to moderate internal email discussions, including flagging those discussions whenever
Speaker 1: they might contain sensitive material. Now there's no smoking gun here,
Speaker 1: but the fear is that Google is attempting to head
Speaker 1: off the efforts to unionize, that they're keeping an eye
Speaker 1: on things with a goal of counteracting the unionization of Google,
Speaker 1: which you know, it's kind of a bad look. I
Speaker 1: also mentioned last week that Facebook changed the terms of
Speaker 1: service of WhatsApp, the messaging service that Facebook owns, and
Speaker 1: that is going to facilitate the sharing of information from
Speaker 1: the messaging platform to Facebook as a whole. In other words,
Speaker 1: Facebook would be able to mind WhatsApp for data that
Speaker 1: could be used mostly in advertising. Well now an antitrust
Speaker 1: board in Turkey has launched an investigation into Facebook because
Speaker 1: of those new terms, and just a reminder, anyone who
Speaker 1: uses WhatsApp has no choice but to agree to those
Speaker 1: terms or stop using the service. There's no opt in feature.
Speaker 1: The antitrust board also said it was ordering that Facebook
Speaker 1: stopped from implementing those terms. This is a complicated issue
Speaker 1: because a lot of privacy advocates have expressed concerns about
Speaker 1: Facebook's changes. However, Turkey also has a history of suppressing
Speaker 1: social networks as a way of stifling voices that are
Speaker 1: not in alignment with the Turkish government. So it's not
Speaker 1: a simple black and white matter here. It's it's pretty complicated.
Speaker 1: Tim berners Lee, who developed the first web page and
Speaker 1: thus is seen as the father of the Worldwide Web,
Speaker 1: advocates for a fundamental change in how the online world
Speaker 1: handles personal information rather than personal data accumulating and what
Speaker 1: he calls silos, which are essentially, you know, databases owned
Speaker 1: by some of the tech world's largest companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, etcetera.
Speaker 1: He advocates for pods p o ds that stands for
Speaker 1: personal Online Data stores. These would be individualized stores of
Speaker 1: data unique to each person and owned by that person.
Speaker 1: So you would own the collection of data about you,
Speaker 1: and that would include information about stuff like your online purchases,
Speaker 1: which websites you visit, the social networking platforms you belong to.
Speaker 1: All of that kind of stuff, the stuff that gets
Speaker 1: bought and sold today, All of that would actually belong
Speaker 1: to you, And if a company wanted to access that information,
Speaker 1: the company would first need to get your consent to
Speaker 1: get that particular bit of data, and they would also
Speaker 1: be restricted to access only the data relevant to whatever
Speaker 1: the request is. Kind of similar to the way that
Speaker 1: app permissions are supposed to work on smartphones. You know,
Speaker 1: a smartphone. When you activate an app, if it needs
Speaker 1: to access something like your camera or microphone, it asks
Speaker 1: you for permission for that, but it can't also then
Speaker 1: get permission to access other stuff that it does not
Speaker 1: expressly tell you about. It's restricted to just the things
Speaker 1: that asks you for. That's sort of the same kind
Speaker 1: of concept. Berners Lee has co founded a company called
Speaker 1: interrupt I n R U p T meant to promote
Speaker 1: adoption of this idea, but it faces an enormous challenge
Speaker 1: in that huge companies have already developed these silos and
Speaker 1: they depend heavily on them. I may need to do
Speaker 1: a full episode on this idea and the technology behind
Speaker 1: it if you want to learn more. However, I recommend
Speaker 1: the New York Times article titled he created the Web,
Speaker 1: Now He's out to remake the digital world. It blushed
Speaker 1: on January t one. And remember quimby, the short form
Speaker 1: video platform optimized for mobile devices that launched in April
Speaker 1: of and shut down just last December. Well, Roku, the
Speaker 1: company that's behind various streaming set top devices and smart
Speaker 1: TV interfaces, has arranged to acquire all of Quimby's content library.
Speaker 1: Roku will host the content, which includes more than seventy shows,
Speaker 1: on its own ad supported channel, which is otherwise free. Personally,
Speaker 1: I'm thankful that the content is going to live on
Speaker 1: and have a chance to find an audience even after
Speaker 1: Quimby's collapse. While I never thought Quimby really had a
Speaker 1: strong business case even before the pandemic, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to see content creators have the rug pulled out from
Speaker 1: under them. So it will be interesting to see if
Speaker 1: Roku not just supports these shows but then extends them,
Speaker 1: you know, whether or not some of these shows get
Speaker 1: further seasons in the future, picking up where Quimby left off,
Speaker 1: perhaps with some restructuring to bring the content closer in
Speaker 1: alignment to the running time that people are more used to,
Speaker 1: because the average Quimby video was between eight and ten
Speaker 1: minutes long, and longer form stuff was divided up into
Speaker 1: lots of eight to ten minute chapters, you could say,
Speaker 1: so glad to see that that content is back in
Speaker 1: some form. A lot of very talented people were working
Speaker 1: on Quimby content, and then it wasn't their fault that
Speaker 1: the platform failed. In fact, I would say that really
Speaker 1: the the selling point of the platform itself was a
Speaker 1: little questionable. Again, uh, you understand it. The idea was
Speaker 1: that people are spending a lot more time looking at
Speaker 1: you know, entertainment on their phones, at least when the
Speaker 1: world's not having them all locked at home, and thus
Speaker 1: creating a short form, high production, value service kind of
Speaker 1: made sense. But in a pandemic world where nobody leaves
Speaker 1: their house, uh, and everyone's able to watch stuff on
Speaker 1: entertainment systems, it's a lot harder to sell Quimby. So
Speaker 1: glad that the content sticking around, curious to see if
Speaker 1: it will have a life beyond that initial outburst of creativity.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's where Quimby is now. It's found a
Speaker 1: home on Roku. And that wraps up this news episode
Speaker 1: of Tech Stuff. We will continue covering the stories on Thursday.
Speaker 1: That will include an update on what's going on at CES,
Speaker 1: as well as I'm sure updates on the unfolding political
Speaker 1: situation with technologies role. Uh. There's already ongoing stories that
Speaker 1: I didn't include here that we're breaking as I was recording,
Speaker 1: about various big tech companies deciding to halt political spending
Speaker 1: at least in the short term, and specifically toward politicians
Speaker 1: who were seen to undermine the democratic process. So that's
Speaker 1: something that is unfolding as I record this, and of
Speaker 1: course by the time you hear it on Tuesday, that
Speaker 1: will have progressed further, so I'll give an update on
Speaker 1: Thursday about those stories. But we'll also cover other stuff,
Speaker 1: so I look forward to chatting with you. Tomorrow's episode
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff is all about Google Stadius, so I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy that. If you want to reach out
Speaker 1: to me, the best place to do it is on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is text Stuff H s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
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