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 a love of all things tech. It is time
Speaker 1: for the tech News for Thursday, December twenty one, And
Speaker 1: before I start this episode, I want to give some
Speaker 1: trigger warnings. A few of the news stories I'll be
Speaker 1: covering today center around stuff like sexual harassment and abuse,
Speaker 1: and these are important stories, but obviously they're also really upsetting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was upset by them, and I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that will come through while I talk about them
Speaker 1: in this episode, but I wanted to let all of
Speaker 1: you know about that before we get there. The first
Speaker 1: couple of stories do not cover that, but I didn't
Speaker 1: want it to come out of the blue and surprise you.
Speaker 1: But before any of that, you might remember that earlier
Speaker 1: this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook was pushing to get
Speaker 1: Apple corporate employees back into the office, citing a need
Speaker 1: for the energy that comes with getting a bunch of
Speaker 1: people together in the same space at the same time. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing probably trying to justify that incredibly expensive and
Speaker 1: expansive Apple HQ that they built not too long ago,
Speaker 1: Like that thing came together just as the pandemic was starting,
Speaker 1: and so Apple has not had a chance to get
Speaker 1: as much use out of that as I'm sure they
Speaker 1: had anticipated. But you know, and there is something to
Speaker 1: be said about in person collaboration. There is value to
Speaker 1: being in the same space with people in order to
Speaker 1: collaborate and innovate. However, there's also something to be said
Speaker 1: for how having a bunch of people who are together
Speaker 1: in the same place at the same time can create
Speaker 1: an ideal environment for COVID to spread. Now Cook, the CEO,
Speaker 1: he evently acknowledged this issue, particularly when the delta variant
Speaker 1: first emerged and became very concerning a few months ago,
Speaker 1: and so he pushed back Apple's returned to office. In fact,
Speaker 1: that got pushed back a few times right we we
Speaker 1: had it established and then pushed back, and most recently
Speaker 1: the return date was listed as February one of However,
Speaker 1: yesterday Cook sentella memo saying that the return to the
Speaker 1: office has been pushed back and there is no yet
Speaker 1: return date that's yet to be determined, So it's indefinite,
Speaker 1: but not indefinite necessarily in the sense of, you know, perpetual,
Speaker 1: but rather we just don't want to give a date yet. Uh.
Speaker 1: With the omicron variant currently spreading like crazy, this is
Speaker 1: not a surprise. Cook also announced that every Apple employee,
Speaker 1: not just the corporate ones but ret l as well,
Speaker 1: will receive a one thousand dollar bonus that can be
Speaker 1: used for work from home needs. Uh. This isn't just
Speaker 1: the right thing to do for employees. It is, but
Speaker 1: it's not just that. It's also a really good pr
Speaker 1: move considering how Apple is currently in the news regarding
Speaker 1: the Apple two movement and lawsuits alleging that the company
Speaker 1: established and facilitated a toxic work environment and, according to
Speaker 1: one former employee, engaged in retaliatory behavior after she brought
Speaker 1: her concerns forward with management. So I guess what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is that this was the right call, but it
Speaker 1: does not get the company off the hook for those other,
Speaker 1: you know, alleged transgressions. Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of Intel,
Speaker 1: says he anticipates the global chip shortage will stretch at
Speaker 1: least as far as twenty twenty three. The demand for
Speaker 1: chips is still very high and the supply side just
Speaker 1: simply can't keep up. That comes not just from the
Speaker 1: manufacturing facilities that are hit by issues related to COVID
Speaker 1: or the finishing facilities in places like China which are
Speaker 1: also hit by COVID. It's really the entire supply chain.
Speaker 1: Shipping has taken a huge hit over the pandemic, with
Speaker 1: ports getting backed up and personnel stretched to the limit,
Speaker 1: like in order to catch up, we have these other bottlenecks, right,
Speaker 1: So that is the problem is that even if you
Speaker 1: solve one part of the issue, there's still the other
Speaker 1: parts that are affected and you have to figure out
Speaker 1: how to work around those. So while companies are rushing
Speaker 1: to boost their production operations, there are other challenges that
Speaker 1: we have to solve before chips can make it from
Speaker 1: the factory to a final product, whether that product is
Speaker 1: a computer or a video game or the video game console,
Speaker 1: or a smartphone, or or a car or whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. So we should expect to see this have
Speaker 1: a ripple effect through the rest of the tech industry
Speaker 1: to continue to do so. Really, because we've already seen this,
Speaker 1: Uh that is probably gonna make it a rough year
Speaker 1: for a lot of companies and of course millions of people.
Speaker 1: Whether they're employees of those companies, or they're dependent upon
Speaker 1: those products. It's gonna be tough. Of course, this is
Speaker 1: also assuming that, you know, his expectations become reality. Now
Speaker 1: I have no reason to doubt his prediction. In fact,
Speaker 1: I worry that we're gonna see this issue extend beyond
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three unless we come up with some really
Speaker 1: creative solutions to those bottleneck issues. That I was kind
Speaker 1: of alluding to. Another piece of Intel News ties into
Speaker 1: a topic that has been picking up momentum this year,
Speaker 1: that of the metaverse. Now once again, the metaverse is
Speaker 1: this vague notion of a digital world. It might be
Speaker 1: one that could overlay or otherwise interface with our real world,
Speaker 1: where people will be able to engage in activities that
Speaker 1: normally we would associate with, you know, an actual physical space.
Speaker 1: So that could include everything from at ending a concert
Speaker 1: virtually to meeting in a conference room with a bunch
Speaker 1: of other people's avatars, to touring a foreign city or
Speaker 1: perhaps touring a fictional city in a virtual environment. There's
Speaker 1: no single implementation of the metaverse as of yet. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of this notion of the future of computing
Speaker 1: and an online interaction. In some ideations, it's a virtual
Speaker 1: world that people visit using some sort of tech like
Speaker 1: a computer or a smartphone, or most often a VR
Speaker 1: setup of some kind. In other ideations, it involves not
Speaker 1: virtual reality, but a R or augmented reality, in which
Speaker 1: we see a digital overlay on top of the world
Speaker 1: around us that enhances our experience in some way, or
Speaker 1: at least it's meant to enhance our experience anyway. It's
Speaker 1: hard to talk about the metaverse in firm terms because
Speaker 1: we don't really have it yet. However, intels Rajah Kaduri,
Speaker 1: who is a senior VP of the Accelerated Computing Systems
Speaker 1: and Graphics Group, posted an editorial suggesting that any realization
Speaker 1: of an actual metaverse will require a whole lot more
Speaker 1: than what we have at our disposal right now. I'm
Speaker 1: reminded of that classic sequence from the acclaimed film Back
Speaker 1: to the Future Too, in which we hear Rafe data
Speaker 1: Anger say to Marty McFly, those boards don't work on water,
Speaker 1: and then Jester Whitey Nogura says, unless you got power. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's the power that we need for the metaverse
Speaker 1: to work. According to Kunduri, he estimates that a metaverse
Speaker 1: as we generally imagine it to be would require us
Speaker 1: to have capabilities that are around a thousand times more
Speaker 1: powerful than what we have at our our disposal today.
Speaker 1: And that's not just computing power, it's also storage and
Speaker 1: networking infrastructure and things like that in order to support
Speaker 1: a full metaverse. As Chaim Gardenberg of The Verge points out,
Speaker 1: that seems to track because Gartenberg mentions that Horizon Worlds,
Speaker 1: which Facebook's um no, I'm sorry Meta, because that's the
Speaker 1: new company name. Meta's VR environment is called Horizon Worlds,
Speaker 1: and it can only hold at max twenty people in
Speaker 1: a virtual environment for a pretty rudimentary interactive experience. And
Speaker 1: I mean in a pandemic world, being around twenty people
Speaker 1: might feel like a lot. But that is not a
Speaker 1: full metaverse, not by a long stretch. So I think
Speaker 1: Duris post is a great example of critical thinking. It's
Speaker 1: an illustration that just because we seem to have some
Speaker 1: pieces of the metaverse puzzle in a pretty good place,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that all of the pieces are in
Speaker 1: that same place, and we won't be able to complete
Speaker 1: the picture until they're all ready to go. And that
Speaker 1: might be a while. I guess you could argue that
Speaker 1: it's good for companies like Meta Slash Facebook to get
Speaker 1: ahead of all that, But then I'm still skeptical that
Speaker 1: the metaverse will ever be more than a curiosity for
Speaker 1: the small percentage of people who can both afford the
Speaker 1: equipment to participate in it and who have the interest
Speaker 1: to actually do it. The rest of us, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure we're going to go all ready Player
Speaker 1: one or snow crash or anything like that in the
Speaker 1: near future. All Right, well, we're gonna have a whole
Speaker 1: bunch more stories after we take this break, and that's
Speaker 1: when we're gonna get into the trigger warning section. But
Speaker 1: before we get to that, let's hear these messages. Okay, So,
Speaker 1: just before the break, I was talking about the metaverse
Speaker 1: and meta and while we're on that subject, I want
Speaker 1: to talk about an article written by Tanya Bessu and
Speaker 1: published in the M I T Technology Review. It as
Speaker 1: the title, the metaverse has a groping problem. Already that's
Speaker 1: simultaneously a sad thing to see, and arguably this makes
Speaker 1: it even more sad. It's not at all surprising now
Speaker 1: for all the women who are listening to this podcast,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say some stuff that's so obvious that I'm
Speaker 1: sure you could just skip ahead because you all know this,
Speaker 1: you experience it. But for everyone else who is unaware,
Speaker 1: Women have been disproportionately targeted with abuse since okay, well,
Speaker 1: if we're talking big picture, pretty much ever. But it's
Speaker 1: definitely been that way online since the beginning of online interactions,
Speaker 1: whether it's harassment on Twitter or something like a group
Speaker 1: of abusers who are trying to docks women or something
Speaker 1: in between. Women face this kind of of abuse pretty
Speaker 1: much every day that they're online. To some extent. Now, honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't know how they manage, but anyway. Bassu writes
Speaker 1: that on November twenty six, one beta tester reported that
Speaker 1: she had been groped virtually and Meta's Horizon Worlds, and
Speaker 1: she also says that Meta's internal review found quote that
Speaker 1: the beta tester should have used a tool called safe
Speaker 1: zone end quote and saves own is quote a protective
Speaker 1: bubble that users can activate when feeling threatened end quote. Now,
Speaker 1: assuming this is not a mischaracterization of what that internal
Speaker 1: review specifically said, I just want to say that is
Speaker 1: really gross. Meta. I mean, really gross, because to me,
Speaker 1: that sounds like the internal review is saying, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: you got groped, Well, that's your fault because you should
Speaker 1: have activated this feature. And that's not how it is, y'all.
Speaker 1: Is the it's not the user's fault. It's the fault
Speaker 1: of the person who did the groping. Right, they're the
Speaker 1: ones who violated someone else. It's not the fault of
Speaker 1: the person who didn't activate a feature they may or
Speaker 1: may not have known about. It's the fault of the
Speaker 1: person who actually did the terrible thing. So again, assuming
Speaker 1: that Bessue wasn't misrepresenting the internal report, uh, and I
Speaker 1: have no reason to believe that she would. I just
Speaker 1: want to say, shame on you, Meta for making such
Speaker 1: a truly stupid and ugly statement. You can do better
Speaker 1: than that, at least I hope you can. Anyway. Nasu
Speaker 1: goes on to assert that until companies that are building
Speaker 1: out VR environments can find ways to protect people within
Speaker 1: those environments, the metaverse will never be a safe place.
Speaker 1: I imagine it would be a very unwelcome place for women,
Speaker 1: in particular, unless those women for some reason want to
Speaker 1: be harassed and hounded. The entire time they're on and
Speaker 1: news flash, they don't. Maybe it's a maybe it's dangerous
Speaker 1: to pay them all with a blanket statement like that,
Speaker 1: or to mix metaphors, but I feel pretty good about it.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever played in any like online game
Speaker 1: and a player revealed that they happen to be female,
Speaker 1: you've likely experienced at least one person being a total
Speaker 1: jackass about that. Now, I can only imagine that gets
Speaker 1: way worse in virtual environments where you have avatars and stuff.
Speaker 1: And before anyone reaches out to me and say, hey,
Speaker 1: chill out, it's not real, I just wanna say to you,
Speaker 1: sit down and shut up, because anyone who has even
Speaker 1: done the tiniest bit of research into virtual reality can
Speaker 1: tell you that the immersion of that experience is convincing
Speaker 1: enough to get our brains and bodies to behave as
Speaker 1: if it were a real experience. There are doctors who
Speaker 1: use virtual reality to treat people who have phobias because
Speaker 1: of virtual representation of a phobia can be an effective
Speaker 1: form of exposure therapy for patients. So if v are
Speaker 1: conserved as an effective psychological treatment, it stands to reason
Speaker 1: it can also contribute to legit psychological trauma. Anyway, to
Speaker 1: all my listeners out there, be good people, whether it's
Speaker 1: in the real world or a virtual one. And to
Speaker 1: all the companies out there working on metaverse solutions for
Speaker 1: goodness sake, operate under the assumption that you're gonna have
Speaker 1: some awful people log into your systems and create ways
Speaker 1: to protect the rest of us from those jerks. Staying
Speaker 1: on the topic of abuse, and to be clear, I
Speaker 1: would much rather cover happier tech news, but here's what
Speaker 1: I have. Let's talk about Tesla. Last month, Tesla employee
Speaker 1: Jessica Barrazza filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming that
Speaker 1: she and other women at the Fremont Tesla factory had
Speaker 1: experienced quote nightmarish conditions of rampant sexual harassment end quote,
Speaker 1: including being physically assaulted, and that Barazza had issued formal
Speaker 1: complaints and yet received no protection from the company, meaning
Speaker 1: Tesla was essentially complicit. And now six more women have
Speaker 1: sued Tesla with similar allegations. Those allegations definitely make the
Speaker 1: manufacturing facility sound like an absolutely horrifying place for women.
Speaker 1: David Lowe, who is serving as the attorney for these employees,
Speaker 1: says that Tesla's corporate culture shouldn't be a surprise because
Speaker 1: of how Elon Musk, the company's CEO, has engaged in
Speaker 1: misogynistic conduct and language. Low wrote in a press release
Speaker 1: that quote Elon Musk tweeting allude comment about women's bodies
Speaker 1: or a taunt toward employees who report misconduct reflects an
Speaker 1: attitude at the top that enables the pattern of pervasive
Speaker 1: sexual harassment and retaliation at the heart of these cases.
Speaker 1: End quote. Now you might also remember that SpaceX, another
Speaker 1: Musk enterprise, faces similar allegations from a former employee, an engineer,
Speaker 1: who says that the company is hostile toward women employees.
Speaker 1: So I recommend reading up on these stories because they
Speaker 1: include testimonies from the women involved, and their stories are heartbreaking,
Speaker 1: but I think are really important for people to know. Okay,
Speaker 1: we will now switch gears away from that really awful
Speaker 1: but important news. The Foreign motor company announced a project
Speaker 1: called ford Pro Charging that will help support a fleet
Speaker 1: of commercial electric vehicles. The commercial evs will include software
Speaker 1: that provides telematics two companies so that they can keep
Speaker 1: track of where their vehicles are uh the charging status,
Speaker 1: so they'll know how charge the batteries are at any
Speaker 1: given time, and also maintenance indicators. So the idea is
Speaker 1: that the system will empower companies to operate electric vehicles effectively,
Speaker 1: which is a good move considering the general trend towards
Speaker 1: migrating to e vs in favor of those rather than
Speaker 1: internal combustion engine vehicles, and having the ability to track
Speaker 1: individual vehicle performance as well as overall fleet performance is
Speaker 1: likely to create opportunities for innovation. For example, tracking charging
Speaker 1: trends can help a company come up with strategies that
Speaker 1: save in charging costs, which affects the bottom line, or
Speaker 1: tracking maintenance trends might alert a company if a particular
Speaker 1: type of electric vehicle is more or less reliable than
Speaker 1: other ones just based on the trends. These are things
Speaker 1: that ultimately down the line over time, can save an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of money. So pretty cool news in that regard. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: read It announced it was making a move toward taking
Speaker 1: the company public, filing an S one with the United
Speaker 1: States Security and Exchange Commission, or SEC. So this is
Speaker 1: when a private company moves to become a publicly traded
Speaker 1: company on the stock market. It's just one step of
Speaker 1: many that a company has to go through. It's not
Speaker 1: exactly an unexpected move. A lot of people have been
Speaker 1: predicting this, but I'm sure it is sending shock waves
Speaker 1: through Reddit itself because I'm guessing there are redditors who
Speaker 1: are worrying that a publicly traded version of Reddit will
Speaker 1: mean a more lockdown regulated Reddit. I don't necessarily think
Speaker 1: that's a bad thing, at least in many cases, because
Speaker 1: Reddit can also become a pretty brutal and abusive place. Um.
Speaker 1: But in other cases you might say, well, this is
Speaker 1: potentially a restriction on users being able to speak freely,
Speaker 1: which you know that that has its own problems too,
Speaker 1: So I get it. But considering some of the conversations
Speaker 1: I've seen on Reddit and their tone and the language used, Uh,
Speaker 1: it's an uphill battle. I think for some of those
Speaker 1: users to argue that it's a bad thing, but I
Speaker 1: get it, and we don't even know yet, right, it's
Speaker 1: just a general fear. I think Roku received some very
Speaker 1: bad news in the United States. The US International Trade
Speaker 1: Commission or i t C has ruled against Roku in
Speaker 1: a patent infringement case. A company called Universal Electronics Incorporated
Speaker 1: brought the case against Roku, saying that the company was
Speaker 1: infringing on I think six different patents, and the I
Speaker 1: t C agreed with u EI. That's the Universal Electronics Incorporated.
Speaker 1: And now I t C has barred the importation and
Speaker 1: sale of those Roku products. That band will take effect
Speaker 1: on January nine, twenty two, at which point merchants in
Speaker 1: the US will no longer be allowed to import and
Speaker 1: sell those Roku devices to American citizens, and Roku's stock
Speaker 1: price dropped twelve percent following the news. Finally, the streaming
Speaker 1: video game market is getting a bit more crowded. Twitch
Speaker 1: is the dominant player in that space, with YouTube and
Speaker 1: Facebook also vying to carve out massive slices of the market.
Speaker 1: But now TikTok is waiting into the field, launching a
Speaker 1: desktop streaming platform called TikTok Live Studio. It allows users
Speaker 1: to stream out video gameplay and other desktop applications across TikTok,
Speaker 1: though for the moment, it appears to be in a
Speaker 1: limited rollout for testing and it's not always accessible on
Speaker 1: TikTok itself. Not sure if this will graduate to a
Speaker 1: full feature for all TikTok users, but I could see
Speaker 1: the company wanting to tap into its young user base
Speaker 1: to pull some focus away from Twitch in particular, and
Speaker 1: that's it. If you have suggestions for topics I should
Speaker 1: cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out
Speaker 1: to me. The handle for the show is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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