WEBVTT - Tech News: US Senate Grills Big Tech CEOs 0:00:04.440 --> 0:00:12.440 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey thereon 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:16.160 Welcome to Tech Stuff, I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:19.200 an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the tech 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:22.119 are you. It's time for the tech news for the 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:27.080 week ending on Friday, February two, two thy twenty four 0:00:27.240 --> 0:00:31.160 and this week, tech leaders, including the CEOs of meta 0:00:31.920 --> 0:00:36.840 x formerly known as Twitter, Snap, Discord, and TikTok all 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:40.239 met with the Senate Judiciary Committee here in the United States, 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:43.480 and it was a pretty sobering experience. The committee brought 0:00:43.560 --> 0:00:48.479 forward families who had experienced tragedies in which children died 0:00:48.960 --> 0:00:53.040 after they encountered various harmful people or situations or material 0:00:53.320 --> 0:00:57.800 on these various platforms. The CEOs expressed their sympathy to 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:02.520 the families. Mark Zuckerberg even gave a somewhat emotional apology, 0:01:02.840 --> 0:01:07.080 but the politicians found the response lackluster, as did many 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:10.240 of the parents, who said that the apologies kind of 0:01:10.360 --> 0:01:12.920 rang hollow because there didn't seem to be any indication 0:01:13.120 --> 0:01:15.840 that these companies were going to do anything different. The companies, 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:19.840 of course, said that they had been implementing various new 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:24.360 policies to protect children. You know, Meta has recently done that, 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:27.640 and so have some of the other platforms, But the 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:31.039 senators demanded to know why Section two thirty, which is 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:34.840 the US law that provides something of illegal shield platforms, 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:39.319 should protect these companies from being sued by the families. Now, 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:44.800 just as a reminder, these CEOs didn't draft section two thirty. 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:47.400 In fact, section two thirty was drafted before any of 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:52.240 these companies existed. The drafting was done by actual politicians, 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:55.480 and Section two thirty is not a blanket, get out 0:01:55.480 --> 0:01:59.960 of court free card for platforms. So essentially, Section two 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:03.320 thirty says that a platform cannot be held responsible for 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:07.600 the material that's posted to that platform by users or 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:11.360 other parties. So if a user posts something illegal onto 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:16.359 a platform, that's the user's fault, not the platform's fault. Specifically, 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:21.200 section two thirty says, quote no provider or user of 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:24.799 an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:29.560 or speaker of any information provided by another information content 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:34.680 provider end quote. But this protection itself has limits. If 0:02:34.720 --> 0:02:38.440 a platform is violating federal criminal law, then it can 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:42.680 be held accountable. So if someone posts illegal material and 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:46.800 the platform is alerted to this, it's the platform's responsibility 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:52.560 to remove that material. This includes stuff like intellectual property violations. Right, 0:02:52.639 --> 0:02:55.760 so if you were to post something that you don't 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:58.760 have ownership of and the platform allowed it to stay up, 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:01.359 the platform could be held account. This is why YouTube 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:04.360 is so aggressive when removing videos that get a copyright 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:07.480 removal request, because it's safer to take something down that 0:03:07.800 --> 0:03:11.079 might be a copyright violation or it might not, rather 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:13.160 than to just leave it up long enough to determine 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:17.839 if it actually counts as a copyright violation. Anyway, politicians 0:03:17.840 --> 0:03:20.360 on both sides of the aisle have issues with Section 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:24.040 two thirty, despite you know, not seeming to really understand 0:03:24.080 --> 0:03:27.680 what section two thirty is all about. Complicating matters is 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:32.280 that these social platforms use algorithms to serve content up 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:34.960 to users. So if it were just a case of 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:38.680 users seeing the stuff that they personally followed, it might 0:03:38.720 --> 0:03:42.440 be a different story. But some legislators argue that because 0:03:42.520 --> 0:03:46.280 sites like Facebook or TikTok use an algorithm to determine 0:03:46.320 --> 0:03:50.040 what a user actually sees on their timeline, then those 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:53.960 platforms are acting more like publishers because they are curating 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:57.640 material effectively and honestly This is an argument that I 0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:01.240 at least think there's some merit to it. It's it's 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:04.360 hard to argue against it. I guess you could say 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:08.320 that these platforms don't actually know what their algorithms are 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:11.920 going to recommend to users, because it's completely dependent upon 0:04:12.280 --> 0:04:15.040 what those users have interacted with and expressed interest in 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:17.240 in the past. So it's not like the platforms are 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.400 aware of what the algorithms are doing and the whole 0:04:20.440 --> 0:04:23.360 process is automated. But at the same time, the platform 0:04:23.400 --> 0:04:27.359 itself is determining what someone sees versus all the stuff 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:31.320 that's actually available. So it's a tricky situation. Anyway, a 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:34.400 lot of Senators weren't impressed with the CEOs and promised 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:38.400 to pass laws that would weaken Section two thirty and 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:42.160 place heavy requirements on the platforms to protect children. There 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:44.640 are critics of some of these laws. There's actually multiple 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:48.200 laws that are in various stages in the Senate and 0:04:48.240 --> 0:04:50.800 the House right now. There are critics who say that 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:56.039 these laws compromise privacy and security, and they can infringe 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:58.839 upon the First Amendment, and that many of them could 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:03.480 be difficult, if not in possible, to enforce, and worse yet, 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:06.280 they could potentially pose a danger to people in the 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:12.000 LGBTQ community, because not everyone agrees as to what counts 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:16.400 as being harmful forward children, and some see just the 0:05:16.480 --> 0:05:20.280 existence of say, transgender people as a danger, like just 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:24.839 the fact that they exist, that's dangerous. So that in 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:27.920 turn is a slippery slope. So, as I said, it's 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:32.520 a complicated issue. Speaking of Zuckerberg, he gave some insight 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:36.720 into Meta's AI strategy during an earnings call yesterday. He 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:40.000 claimed that the amount of publicly shared information on the 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:44.159 company's platforms represents a larger data set than what most 0:05:44.200 --> 0:05:47.200 AI companies use when training AI, which is kind of 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:50.240 funny because you know, like Facebook, you Meta with Facebook 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:53.880 and Instagram and stuff. They do not want anyone crawling 0:05:54.240 --> 0:05:57.280 their sites. They don't want any of that. That's they say, 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:01.279 that's against their terms of service. You cannot create bots 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:04.640 to crawl these sites to gather up information. They can 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:07.240 do it, though, but no one else can. And so 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:11.040 they're saying, hey, we have this huge repository of publicly 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.680 shared pictures and videos and other stuff. It's way bigger 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:18.240 than what anyone else has, So we could train up 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:21.520 a very intelligent AI as a result of that, and 0:06:21.640 --> 0:06:25.640 Zuckerberg actually mentioned that general intelligence remains a goal of 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:28.040 general intelligence in the form of AI. I don't mean 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:32.040 that Zuckerberg is seeking general intelligence. They're too any jokes there. 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:35.839 So general intelligence would be AI that would work in 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:38.960 a way that's at least similar to how human intelligence works, right. 0:06:39.000 --> 0:06:41.640 That seems to be able to think for itself. It's 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:45.359 a kind of strong AI. So this kind of work 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:49.159 AI research and development, it's really expensive. And Zuckerberg's team 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:51.640 hinted that Meta could increase spending by as much as 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:55.240 nine billion dollars this year compared to last year, and 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:59.240 that this could just be the beginning of additional expenditures 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:02.160 and research into development, which sounds to me a lot 0:07:02.240 --> 0:07:05.600 like hol Zuckerberg warned that Meta would be spending increasing 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:08.279 amounts to build out the metaverse. For the record, they 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:13.040 gave the metaverse very brief mention in their earnings called document. 0:07:13.560 --> 0:07:17.400 They called it their metaverse efforts had put it under 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:23.840 new business initiatives. I don't know how much momentum their 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:28.160 metaverse efforts still have. Like to me, it feels like 0:07:28.440 --> 0:07:33.760 the whole metaverse craze has already significantly died down right, 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:36.280 like that was the huge thing more than a year ago, 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:41.840 and now people are not nearly as enthusiastic about it. 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:44.000 But maybe I'm just not listening to the right corners. 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:47.680 Maybe the Web three enthusiasts and the metaverse enthusiasts are 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:50.760 still going whole hog and I'm just not seeing. One 0:07:50.800 --> 0:07:52.920 big news story that happened earlier this week is that 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:56.960 Amazon called off its planned acquisition of the company I Robot, 0:07:57.160 --> 0:07:59.920 which is best known as the maker of the Roomba 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:04.160 vacuum robot. This actually surprised me, but that's because I 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:06.440 thought that this deal had already gone through. I thought 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:09.880 Amazon had already acquired I Robot. I was just under 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:13.040 the impression that they had already completed this. The two 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:15.720 companies originally agreed to this deal back in the summer 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:18.600 of twenty twenty two, so yeah, I just figured like 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:20.840 within a year and a half that they had closed 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:24.880 the deal. But no, they faced a lot of regulator opposition, 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:28.160 including here in the United States, and ultimately Amazon said 0:08:28.200 --> 0:08:32.520 that they just didn't see a way forward. So Amazon said, 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:34.320 you know what, We're going to pay the ninety five 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:36.920 million dollar fee that's going to cost us to walk 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:40.760 away from this deal, and they did, and that's really 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:44.000 bad news for iRobot. So once upon a time, the 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:48.160 Rumba was like the dominant product in robot vacuums. In fact, 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:50.959 it was, to all intents and purposes, like the only 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:55.320 name in the space. But it didn't last because obviously 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.720 other companies were going to build competing products, and some 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:03.720 of those products lost less, sometimes significantly less than the Rumba. 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:07.400 They also weren't necessarily as good as the Rumba, but 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:11.360 for a lot of consumers out there, cheaper is more 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:16.559 important than performance, so I robots It's market share decline 0:09:16.880 --> 0:09:19.160 year over year as more and more of these products 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:22.640 came out. The Amazon acquisition would have given I robot 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:25.920 the financial security to really stay in business and to 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:29.200 really invest in innovation. But with the deal falling through, 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:31.800 there's a big question mark hanging over I Robot and 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:34.680 whether or not it can even continue to function, at 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:37.880 least in the long term. Already, the company has announced 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:40.280 it will hold layoffs that will affect around three hundred 0:09:40.280 --> 0:09:44.720 and fifty employees, and I Robots CEO Colin Engel is 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:47.760 also stepping down, as he said that he and the 0:09:47.800 --> 0:09:51.400 board both felt that the company really needed a leader 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:56.120 with quote unquote turnaround experience. I feel really badly for 0:09:56.400 --> 0:09:59.360 everyone affected by these layoffs, and I hope that I 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:02.920 Robot make a recovery because the company has been responsible 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:05.880 for numerous innovations in the robotic space, you know, the 0:10:05.960 --> 0:10:08.800 robotic vacuum space in particular, like there have been a 0:10:08.800 --> 0:10:12.280 lot of innovations that I Robot has driven that then 0:10:12.360 --> 0:10:15.440 got adopted by the larger industry, and without I Robot 0:10:15.559 --> 0:10:19.760 there to actually forge that path, we may see a 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:24.240 real decrease in innovation in that space. After a Tesla 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:28.480 shareholder brought a lawsuit against Tesla five years ago, a 0:10:28.600 --> 0:10:32.160 judge in the state of Delaware has ruled that Elon 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:36.080 Musk is not, in fact entitled to a compensation package 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:40.640 with a value of upwards of fifty five billion dollars. 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:43.920 He's not going to get that, and like I said, 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:46.720 it only took five years of languishing through the court system, 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:49.440 because justice is swift here in the United States. So 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:52.960 the lawsuit argued that the board of directors was misusing 0:10:53.000 --> 0:10:56.480 company funds by enriching Elon Musk when that money probably 0:10:56.480 --> 0:10:59.000 should have gone somewhere else. Either reinvesting in the company 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:02.840 or distributed among shareholders whatever. The plaintiff argued that the 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:06.240 directors were not really independent of Musk, Essentially they were 0:11:06.280 --> 0:11:09.560 his friends and cronies, and that he was using his 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:13.240 connections as personal connections among some of the board members 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:18.720 to get this incredibly favorable compensation deal, and that the 0:11:19.360 --> 0:11:22.640 lawsuit also argued that Musk himself was effectively creating his 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:25.440 own compensation package, like Musk was the one who drew 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:28.880 it up and then got the board to sign off 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.559 on it, and gosh, I bet we all wish we 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:34.240 could do that, right. Ap News also has a really 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:37.920 helpful graphic to assist in understanding exactly how much money 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:41.800 fifty five billion dollars is for one thing. It illustrates 0:11:41.800 --> 0:11:44.720 that you could spend a dollar for every second of 0:11:44.960 --> 0:11:48.240 every day and it would take you oney seven hundred 0:11:48.240 --> 0:11:52.080 and forty four years to spend all that cash. Crazy, right, 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:56.800 No one needs that much money. Nobody needs that much money. 0:11:56.800 --> 0:11:58.319 He also said that you could give one hundred and 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:02.160 sixty three bucks to every single person in the United States, Like, 0:12:02.760 --> 0:12:04.840 that's just it's just way too much money for any 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:07.120 one person to have. I don't care who you are anyway, 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:10.160 Musk as is his custom, went to X to vent 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:13.240 his spleen and said, never incorporate your company in the 0:12:13.240 --> 0:12:16.480 state of Delaware. I recommend incorporating Nevada or Texas if 0:12:16.520 --> 0:12:20.280 you prefer shareholders to decide matters. Ironically, it was a 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:22.640 shareholder who helped decide this matter, because it was a 0:12:22.679 --> 0:12:25.600 shareholder who brought the lawsuit forward in the first place. 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:29.960 But yeah, I'm not surprised he's upset. Fifty five billion 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:32.640 dollars is like when you think you're gonna get it 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:34.880 and it turns out you're not. And also when, like 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:37.040 a couple of years ago, you spent forty four billion 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:40.160 dollars to buy a company that you are steadily running 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:42.040 into the ground. I mean, this is a lot to 0:12:42.040 --> 0:12:44.160 take in, you know, speaking of a lot to take in, 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:46.280 We've got more news to cover, but before we get 0:12:46.320 --> 0:12:59.000 to that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Okay, 0:12:59.040 --> 0:13:02.760 we're back. So this week, Apple's Vision Pro mixed reality 0:13:02.760 --> 0:13:06.760 headset finally launched. As a reminder, this is the headset 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:09.839 with a starting price point of three thy four hundred 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:12.920 and ninety nine dollars and according to various sources, Apple 0:13:12.960 --> 0:13:15.920 has sold more than two hundred thousand units so far. 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:18.320 I should point out that the company first made the 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:21.880 headsets available for pre order back in January, and the 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:25.840 majority of those sales were made in the first couple 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:29.079 of days that pre orders were open. After that they 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:33.240 trailed off significantly. But it's also two hundred thousand units. 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:36.559 That's also more than what analysts predict Apple actually has 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:40.199 available like manufactured, so some folks are going to be 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:43.040 waiting a little bit longer to get their new, very 0:13:43.080 --> 0:13:46.720 expensive toy. Brian Heater of tech Crunch has some articles 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:50.920 about his experiences using the vision Pro. I recommend checking 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:55.280 those out. He mentions that he felt some motion sickness 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:58.880 on that first day, but he also admitted he's using 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:02.400 this device a lot because that's his job, right to 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:05.360 really put it through the paces and then report back 0:14:05.400 --> 0:14:07.040 on it. You know, you might only be able to 0:14:07.120 --> 0:14:08.839 use it for two and a half hours because that's 0:14:08.840 --> 0:14:10.960 how long the battery lasts, and then you have to 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.040 recharge it. But he's been using it over and over 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:15.720 and over again. But he also makes a really good point. 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:19.560 He says the average vision Pro owner is also likely 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:24.640 to go ham at least initially upon purchasing their mixed 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:28.680 reality headset, because if you've spent three four hundred and 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:32.080 ninety nine bucks at minimum on something, you want to 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:35.920 get your money's worth. Anyway, I still think Apple's product 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:39.120 is really a niche one. Two hundred thousand units is 0:14:39.160 --> 0:14:42.920 a lot, right that we should not dismiss selling two 0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:46.040 hundred thousand of these things. But two hundred thousand units 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:48.200 is a fraction of what you would see with say 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:52.000 a new iPhone launch, for example. And while all the 0:14:52.040 --> 0:14:56.720 reviews I've read praise the headsets, pass through video quality 0:14:56.840 --> 0:14:59.560 and the image quality, I'm still not seeing a whole 0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:03.480 lot of conversation about like any real killer apps. Now. 0:15:03.520 --> 0:15:06.200 Maybe that will come in time, or maybe developers are 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:09.040 going to hold back and wait for a larger user 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:13.120 base before they invest the resources in developing apps for 0:15:13.240 --> 0:15:16.000 this thing. And if that's the case, we could really 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:18.560 have a vicious cycle thing going on, sort of catch 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:22.280 twenty two, where developers won't make apps until they are 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.520 more users, but users aren't going to buy the product 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:28.600 until there are more apps running on it. That's a possibility. 0:15:29.680 --> 0:15:32.160 I don't know. Maybe I'm ultimately wrong, Maybe this will 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.920 become the next like common household technology. But I don't 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:39.680 think that's possible at that price point, but who knows. 0:15:39.680 --> 0:15:43.200 I've been wrong so many times before. The US Federal 0:15:43.200 --> 0:15:47.520 Communications Commission or FCC, would very much like Congress to 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:50.880 make it illegal for anyone to use AI generated voices 0:15:51.000 --> 0:15:55.000 for the purposes of robocalls, pretty please. Apparently someone used 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:58.600 an AI impersonation of Joe Biden's voice to make robocalls 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:02.080 in the state of New Hampshire to tar voters, presumably 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:05.440 to attempt to suppress the vote by telling people not 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:10.320 to bother voting. This spurred the FCC into action. And 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:14.160 we've all known for a while now that AI impersonations, 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:16.760 you know, deep fakes and that sort of thing could 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:20.480 play a big part in the creation and spread of misinformation. 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:24.080 And that's the FCC's main concern and why the agency 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:28.360 wants to make this practice illegal. They can't do that themselves, obviously, 0:16:28.360 --> 0:16:31.800 they're not a lawmaking body, but they can recommend that. 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:36.320 To con Chris, the FCC proposes expanding the Telephone Consumer 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:40.320 Protection Act, which originally was drafted in the nineties, and 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:43.720 to expand that so it will protect against this AI 0:16:43.880 --> 0:16:48.240 generated voice robocall practice, and I'm all for it, because 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:51.400 we're speeding down the road toward a pretty darn chaotic destination. 0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:54.480 Anything we can do to mitigate that would be really nice, 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:58.640 in my opinion. Christopher Ray, the director of the US 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:02.160 Federal Bureau of Investmentation, is warning anybody who will listen 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:05.720 that the dangers of Chinese hackers and their ability to 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:10.400 disrupt critical US infrastructure such as electrical grids, is reaching 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:15.159 an alarming height. It has been no secret that for 0:17:15.320 --> 0:17:19.280 years now, state backed hackers have worked to infiltrate these systems. 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:22.760 Like I remember reading articles from like a decade ago 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:30.040 about discovering Chinese code embedded into US infrastructure systems, proving 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.880 that there were these kind of markers where Chinese hackers 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:38.000 had managed to get access to these things, and there 0:17:38.040 --> 0:17:41.240 have been fears that this work could lead to massive 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:43.960 cyber attacks in the future. Let's say that there's some 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:48.959 sort of event that ends up escalating and then China 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:52.760 orders to kind of take advantage of all this infiltration. 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:56.480 That's scary, Like you could have entire sections of the 0:17:56.520 --> 0:18:01.000 electrical grid shut down or overwhelmed and have it break. 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:03.800 So what's new here? If all this stuff has been 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:07.240 going on for a while. Why is Ray speaking of now, Well, 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:11.040 there's not that much that's new. But Christopher Ray's statements 0:18:11.080 --> 0:18:13.960 were made largely in frustration over the fact that despite 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:17.440 these things not actually being breaking news, despite the fact 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:20.119 that we have known about this stuff, we haven't done 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:23.320 enough about it. So he's calling for action. He's pointing 0:18:23.320 --> 0:18:28.160 out how Chinese backed hacker groups have already caused massive problems, 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:30.800 like in the private sector. We've seen that over the 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:34.359 last few years. Plus. We're in an election year here 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:36.080 in the United States. It feels like we're always in 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:38.960 an election year. This time like it just it doesn't 0:18:39.000 --> 0:18:41.439 matter what year it is, it feels like it's an 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:46.080 election year. But that becomes a huge incentive for a disruption. 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:49.679 We have seen Chinese and Russian backed groups attempt to 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:54.919 influence US politics through hacking and misinformation campaigns. So I 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:58.639 guess we'll see if anyone listens to him and actually 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:02.680 mounts a decent response to this warning. An Australian company 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:06.479 called Morse Micro has demonstrated a Wi Fi protocol that 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:13.280 they call Wi Fi Halo and it's HaLow. This uses 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:18.440 lower frequency radio signals to transmit Wi Fi over greater distances. 0:19:18.480 --> 0:19:22.680 So these radio signals have longer wave links, lower frequencies 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:28.200 than what you would typically see with like your usual 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:32.880 Wi Fi transmitters, and the range they're getting is pretty impressive. 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:36.440 We're talking like three kilometers or around one point eight miles, 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:40.399 which is good, Like that's a good distance to be 0:19:40.400 --> 0:19:43.560 able to transmit Wi Fi signals. And they say their 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:46.760 goal is to develop this technology so that it can 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:51.760 facilitate communications for stuff like Internet of Things applications, because 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:55.280 it wouldn't really be suitable for a high throughput application. 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:59.920 These transmission speeds are down to around one megabit per second. 0:20:00.320 --> 0:20:04.240 You could have some grainy video for example, but that's 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:08.200 probably the extent of it. But as a solution for IoT, 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:11.160 you know, Internet of things, it could be a really 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.919 helpful technology. You wouldn't need as great a density of 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:19.920 transmitters because of this extended range. The longer radio waves 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:25.800 also have far better penetration for solid surfaces like walls, 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:31.359 so you know, with high frequency, low wavelength a small 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:37.160 wavelength Wi Fi signals, walls are a big obstacle, right 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:42.680 if you have those ultra high frequency Wi Fi solutions, 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:45.960 they don't penetrate walls very well, so you lose signal 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:48.119 as soon as there's any kind of barrier between you 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:51.239 and the transmitter. But these it penetrates really well, so 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.280 you can be inside a building and still have access 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:57.960 to these signals. As a bonus, the technology has lower 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:02.760 power requirements than higher frequency Wi Fi solutions, so it's 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:05.760 a pretty interesting approach. But it remains to be seen 0:21:05.840 --> 0:21:10.160 if it will receive widespread adoption because there are already 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:14.200 a lot of different protocols for wireless data transmissions out there, 0:21:14.680 --> 0:21:18.880 and some of them have even greater range than Halo does, 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:22.919 but they also have lower throughput. Right they can only 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:26.320 transmit data at a lower rate. But I figure the 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:28.560 more the merrier if it means we can find an 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:35.040 ideal balance between transmission rain and transmission speeds. Negotiations broke 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:38.879 down between TikTok and the music label Universal Music Group, 0:21:39.200 --> 0:21:41.600 and the two parties were unable to agree on a 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:45.560 new licensing agreement. The previous one expired earlier this week 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:49.720 on Wednesday, so as a consequence, UMG demanded that TikTok 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:53.760 remove any UMG published tracks from the platform. And there's 0:21:53.800 --> 0:21:58.119 some really big artists who are on the UMG label, 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:02.240 including one one of the biggest in the world, Taylor Swift. 0:22:02.960 --> 0:22:05.560 I'm sure TikTok fans are going to shake it off, 0:22:05.680 --> 0:22:08.440 shake it off, but they're not going to do it 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:11.560 with the help of her music because it's being removed 0:22:11.600 --> 0:22:16.320 from TikTok. UMG officials said that TikTok's proposed compensation rate 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:20.720 was far below industry standards, and that the platform also 0:22:20.760 --> 0:22:25.160 has tons of AI generated recordings that infringe upon artists 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:29.480 and music companies intellectual property. That's a big problem. It's 0:22:29.480 --> 0:22:31.080 one of those problems we've been talking about for a 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:35.280 while now about how AI generated material can serve as 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:39.119 not just a threat from a competition standpoint, but a 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:43.919 threat in that it can be, you know, using an 0:22:44.080 --> 0:22:49.119 artist's work to generate new work without compensating the original artists. 0:22:49.119 --> 0:22:51.960 And that's a problem. So TikTok fired back, you know, 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:54.880 UMG said, hey, you're not paying enough. You pay less 0:22:54.920 --> 0:22:58.440 than other platforms do. TikTok says UMG just wanted more 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:02.399 money for the label itself, and that any argument that 0:23:02.440 --> 0:23:06.919 this is harming artists is disingenuous because UMG wasn't planning 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:09.320 on sharing that money with artists anyway, it was just 0:23:09.320 --> 0:23:12.200 going to go to the company. Now, let me be clear, 0:23:13.119 --> 0:23:17.639 all companies are greedy, full stop. TikTok is greedy. UMG 0:23:18.280 --> 0:23:21.439 is also greedy. There are no good guys on the 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:24.920 corporate side here. Maybe the artists you could argue are 0:23:24.960 --> 0:23:29.080 good guys. Wasn't it easier in your firefly catching days? 0:23:30.040 --> 0:23:33.600 That's a that's a shout out to all you swifties 0:23:33.640 --> 0:23:38.160 out there. So yeah, this is not an unusual thing 0:23:38.240 --> 0:23:40.359 to see happen, and I'm sure that a lot of 0:23:40.359 --> 0:23:44.639 TikTok users are frustrated by it. But it all comes 0:23:44.680 --> 0:23:48.520 down to the argument of who's who gets that money, 0:23:48.920 --> 0:23:53.320 and sad thing is it's almost never the artists, and 0:23:53.359 --> 0:23:55.600 that's the worst of it, right, It just comes down 0:23:55.600 --> 0:23:58.560 to which company ends up holding on to that money. 0:23:58.600 --> 0:24:02.800 The most we learned that Mercedes Benz suffered a big 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:06.560 old it whoopsie this week. It's actually a whoopsie that 0:24:06.760 --> 0:24:10.880 happened something like four months ago and lasted that whole time. 0:24:10.920 --> 0:24:14.080 Like it was, it was essentially an ongoing issue. So 0:24:14.200 --> 0:24:17.399 at the heart of the matter is a gethub token. 0:24:17.720 --> 0:24:22.480 There was a developer at Mercedes who apparently accidentally published 0:24:22.600 --> 0:24:27.040 this token on some publicly viewable source, and that meant 0:24:27.080 --> 0:24:29.760 anyone who went to that source and saw it could 0:24:29.800 --> 0:24:33.680 potentially use that token to access all sorts of very 0:24:33.760 --> 0:24:38.879 secret proprietary data, including stuff like designs for vehicles and 0:24:39.080 --> 0:24:43.320 source code for software. The fact that this system didn't 0:24:43.359 --> 0:24:47.200