WEBVTT - The Top Tech Stories of 2020 - April through July 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:15.000 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.320 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:22.120 and I love all things tech, and we are covering 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:25.720 some of the biggest text stories of twenty twenty, some 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:29.080 of them, not all of them. In our last episode, 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.040 we looked at the first three months, which means if 0:00:32.040 --> 0:00:33.959 we were to keep that pace, we would need four 0:00:34.000 --> 0:00:36.800 episodes to get through the year, assuming each quarter has 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:39.520 about the same amount of news. However, if you listen 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:42.120 to the late last episode, you also know that I 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:45.920 stuck with stories that played out through twenty twenty, so 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:49.760 maybe that will help us out. I guess we'll see. 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:53.479 I know that that's going to be at least three episodes. Spoiler, 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:56.920 we don't finish it out today, but let's jump back 0:00:57.040 --> 0:01:01.000 into April twenty. In a tip of cool Year, I 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:05.000 would start off talking about April by mentioning the various 0:01:05.040 --> 0:01:08.399 pranks and jokes that brands pulled or tried to pull. 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:14.320 Something that exasperates many of my peers who cover technology, 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:17.080 but I kind of like a good silly joke as 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:20.240 long as it's not you know, mean spirited or just 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:23.360 an outright lie posing as the truth in an effort 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:27.560 to actually trick people. But the pandemic and the Black 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:31.800 Lives Matter movement really changed things in the United States. 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:35.959 Many states or cities had issued lockdown restrictions, and a 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:40.480 lot of brands chose to give April first twenty a pass. Personally, 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:43.479 I would have preferred twice as many jokes and no pandemic. 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:48.720 But the balls in your court, grouchy tech journalists, those 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.400 jokes don't seem so bad now, do they. In our 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:54.720 previous episode, I talked about how Zoom had a huge 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:58.080 year due to more people moving their work and personal 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:01.800 connections online. In April, we would see some concerns about 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:06.080 zooms security. The company's privacy protections were brought into question, 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:09.120 and we started seeing a trend of zoom bombing, in 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:11.840 which people who were not invited to a Zoom session 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:14.680 We're showing up, often because someone had shared the link 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.160 for that meeting in a way that wasn't secure, and 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:22.399 it would prompt Zoom to institute more accessible password protection 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:27.799 options uh into an encryption and other methods to make 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:30.160 sure that the people who are joining a session were 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:32.680 the ones who are meant to, not just people who 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:35.280 happen to have a link to the online session. Now, 0:02:35.320 --> 0:02:38.400 granted these are all options. You don't have to have 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:42.760 password protection on your Zoom meeting, so it's still are 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:45.200 there still are possibilities for people to to barge in 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:49.160 on a meeting they aren't really welcome to, but there 0:02:49.160 --> 0:02:51.520 are now more options to allow you to have more 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:54.840 control over that. We also began to see various coronavirus 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:58.920 tracking apps in development. The apps had a couple of 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:02.400 real big jol leunges. So the idea is that these 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:05.840 apps can track where you go, and if you should 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:09.080 happen to be near someone else who happens to have 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:11.120 the app and who has indicated that they have been 0:03:11.160 --> 0:03:14.600 exposed to COVID, then you would get a notification saying, hey, 0:03:14.680 --> 0:03:18.080 you came into contact with someone who has already indicated 0:03:18.160 --> 0:03:21.640 that they may have been exposed. If used properly, you 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.440 can help mitigate the spread of the disease. But there's 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:28.520 also a genuine concern for privacy and a general fear 0:03:28.639 --> 0:03:30.680 that such an app would violate the privacy of the 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:33.520 people using it, or that the companies that are making 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:36.400 the apps could then later on use that information in 0:03:36.440 --> 0:03:39.920 ways that we don't necessarily approve of. And if this 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.280 were just a disease and people were just treating it 0:03:43.400 --> 0:03:47.400 as a disease, maybe all of these concerns are things 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:49.760 that we could overlook. But we have to remember that 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.680 there are other factors at play here. One of those 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:56.080 is that some people hold up pretty racist and xenophobic 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:59.680 opinion about the origins of the disease. There were so 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:03.320 many stories of people with Chinese heritage being harassed because 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.480 of that perception, and people can be pretty awful if 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:08.840 they choose to be, so there are a lot of 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:12.240 things to balance out when it comes to tracking coronavirus. 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:15.800 On top of that, the apps tend to be voluntary, 0:04:15.880 --> 0:04:18.440 which means each person has to choose to download and 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:21.360 install it, and some people are just unwilling to do that. 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:23.440 And then there's the fact that you would need to 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:28.400 update the app to reflect a diagnosis. It's an imperfect solution, 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:31.280 and in places like Europe, there were a lot of 0:04:31.320 --> 0:04:35.040 long discussions about how to balance out these various concerns. 0:04:35.480 --> 0:04:38.320 As it stands, there are lots of different apps, most 0:04:38.360 --> 0:04:41.560 of them focus on relatively small regions, but much of 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:44.160 the world is not covered by them. I mean I 0:04:44.240 --> 0:04:47.000 live in Georgia, which is the home for the Center 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:50.040 for Disease Control, and we don't have an app for 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:53.839 our state as of yet. We also started seeing cases 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:57.960 of people damaging five G towers in April of twenty twenty. 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:01.040 As I mentioned in my episode about five gen myths, 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:05.719 some people somehow corroborated these towers with the creation or 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:10.799 spread of coronavirus, as if somehow, then, for some reason, 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:16.279 the telecommunications companies were broadcasting a virus which is just impossible. 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:19.479 I mean, a virus that can affect humans. I guess 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:23.440 you could broadcast a computer virus. That's a different kettle 0:05:23.480 --> 0:05:26.520 of fish. The pandemic also delayed one of the more 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:32.239 anticipated criminal trials in recent tech history. Elizabeth Holmes, founder 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.719 of medical startup Theoris, was to have her trial begin 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:40.320 in twenty but the pandemic became a factor and the 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:43.000 court would order the trial to be delayed until the 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:48.240 spring of For those who don't know who Elizabeth Holmes 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:51.640 is or what her company, Theopness did, here's a super 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:57.159 brief rundown Holmes, who idolized Silicon Valley leaders like Steve 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.680 jobs created a company that had the goal of developing 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:03.760 a medical device. The device, which was projected to be 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:07.240 about the size of your typical desktop printer, would be 0:06:07.279 --> 0:06:10.839 able to take a very small blood sample, the tiniest 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:15.520 little droplet, and run hundreds of different analytical tests on 0:06:15.680 --> 0:06:19.920 that sample. Within a short time, perhaps an hour or two. 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.720 The device would produce a report about that sample, giving 0:06:23.720 --> 0:06:28.560 the user information about their health, diagnosing any diseases or conditions, 0:06:28.960 --> 0:06:32.599 and in theory, empowering the user. And The idea was 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:35.800 to democratize medicine in a way that would give users 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:38.680 more information about their own health and a better way 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:42.560 to interact with their primary care physician and the general 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:46.719 medical establishment. Some doctors worried that this would cause people 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:50.159 to misinterpret results, but it turns out they didn't really 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:53.320 have much to fear because the device never worked properly, 0:06:53.560 --> 0:06:56.760 at least not to the extent that the company wanted 0:06:56.800 --> 0:06:59.760 it to. It turned out the actual process was way 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:03.040 more are complicated than Holmes had first imagined, and her 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:07.120 team of engineers were tackling problem after problem in order 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:09.720 to try and make it work. In the meantime, The 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:13.040 allegations against Holmes state that she and her fellow executives 0:07:13.280 --> 0:07:18.920 purposefully misled investors, including using equipment from established blood testing 0:07:18.960 --> 0:07:23.280 companies to run blood tests while claiming that a themised 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:26.040 device was actually doing all the work. The house of 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:29.640 cards came crashing down, but not before investors had poured 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:33.160 more than seven hundred million dollars into it. Holmes is 0:07:33.200 --> 0:07:36.120 now charged with numerous counts of fraud, and we'll have 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:39.040 to wait to see how that all turns out. One 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:43.160 of the big early stories tied in with the coronavirus 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:46.320 was how ill prepared hospitals were to meet the challenge 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:49.960 of early serious cases. We saw some people try to 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:53.680 help in novel ways, such as using three D printers 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:58.800 to create airflow splitters for ventilators. So ventilators take over 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:01.920 the process of breathing for patients, and they are expensive 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:05.000 pieces of machinery and there's a limited number of them. 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:08.600 So the thought was that by using splitters, you could 0:08:08.640 --> 0:08:13.320 divert air from one ventilator to multiple patients, like two patients, 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:15.120 and that way you wouldn't have to have just one 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:18.400 ventilator per patient, and thus you could stretch the limited 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:21.320 resources you have further. And I think it was a 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:25.240 fairly clever move. But I also have very strong feelings 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:28.920 about how the United States government completely failed to meet 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:31.640 the challenge of COVID on a national scale. But i'll 0:08:31.640 --> 0:08:35.560 spare you that rant. I'm sure you're all familiar and 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:38.120 tired of hearing those kind of things already. But on 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:41.560 a related note, in April, Elon Musk said he had 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:45.720 sent ventilators to hospitals in California to help alleviate the 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:50.840 resource scarcity. Musk had sent valuable equipment, but they weren't 0:08:51.000 --> 0:08:55.640 technically ventilators. There were machines that aid in breathing assistance, 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:59.520 but there are stepped down from ventilators themselves, which, as 0:08:59.559 --> 0:09:03.160 I said, handle breathing entirely for a patient. This I 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:06.360 think was largely a case of bad communication, by which 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:09.880 I mean Musk really did help these hospitals, just not 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:12.840 in the way that was initially reported. So I don't 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:15.719 want to throw shade on Musk for this, as he 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:19.119 was doing something that actually was incredible and the hospitals 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:22.040 did have need of that equipment. But that being said, 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:25.840 Musk also used his position and platform to argue against 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:30.680 stuff like stay at home orders. He was defiant of them. 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:33.240 He said that Tesla would continue to operate even in 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:35.560 the face of stay at home orders, and he helps 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:39.520 spread misinformation about the coronavirus. So while he did help 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:43.040 some hospitals by sending them equipment, he also lent credence 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:45.880 to false narratives about COVID And I think the scales 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:49.640 mostly way on the You done did bad on this one, 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:54.320 and I almost forgot. On April six, twenty Quimby, the 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:59.400 short form high production video streaming service, officially launched. Led 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.800 by dream war its founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and former HP 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:06.800 CEO Meg Whitman. The service could not have come out 0:10:06.840 --> 0:10:10.360 at a worse time. It was geared towards mobile users, 0:10:10.600 --> 0:10:13.040 the idea being that people like to consume media on 0:10:13.080 --> 0:10:16.360 their phones well they're waiting for stuff like when they're 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:18.880 on a bus or on a subway, or when they're 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:22.240 in line for something. But of course, the service launched 0:10:22.520 --> 0:10:25.160 just as a pandemic was forcing most of us to 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:28.959 stay at home. Even without the pandemic, a new video 0:10:29.040 --> 0:10:31.120 service was going to have a really tough fight to 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:34.560 be competitive, But the use case for Quimby was pretty 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:37.960 much wiped out before it could even get started. It 0:10:38.080 --> 0:10:40.840 launched a lot of exclusive programming and gave a lot 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:44.000 of creative folks and outlet, but it couldn't tough it 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:47.880 out and it would shut down late in so R 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:50.440 I p Quimby if you want to learn more. I 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:53.079 did do a couple of episodes about Quimby earlier this year. 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:56.000 I did one a few months after it had launched, 0:10:56.000 --> 0:10:59.319 and then I did another one after the announcement that 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:02.520 Quimby was going to shut down in December. There are 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:05.280 a few other stories that happened in April, but they 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:08.080 mostly involved how the heck do we do what we 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:10.720 do when there's a pandemic going on? And I think 0:11:10.760 --> 0:11:13.280 we've heard, you know enough of those to kind of 0:11:13.480 --> 0:11:16.920 know that these stories are largely the same as companies 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:19.560 big and small. We're grappling with the challenges of a 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:24.000 world being thrown into chaos thanks to a virus. Two 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:26.520 other stories I think I should mention, though, are that 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:32.119 Nintendo revealed in April that hackers compromised one sixty thousand 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:35.839 accounts on the Nintendo network, and they stole funds from 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:39.640 account holders in the process by using any stored funds 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:41.760 that were in the those accounts to do stuff like 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:46.120 by Fortnite's virtual currency, which, as we learned in a 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:50.240 previous episode, would not be subjected to federal taxes. The 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:54.280 hackers exploited the older Nintendo Network I D system, which 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:58.240 was used for the older three DS and we U consoles. 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:01.640 The company offered to fund money to those affected and 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:05.120 urged users to change their passwords. Later on, Nintendo would 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:08.320 reveal the hat compromised more accounts than they first realized, 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:12.200 nearly twice as many in fact. The other little story 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:16.319 that from April was that Apple introduced the iPhone SE, 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:19.680 the budget model entry into the iPhone line, and it 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:22.319 looked a lot like the older iPhone eight which came 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:26.000 out back in And while it is a budget model, 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:29.600 that doesn't mean it's actually cheap. The baseline iPhone SE 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:34.240 marketed for three dollars. Still, compared to top of the 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:37.600 line phones in the iPhone line, that's definitely on the 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:43.760 less expensive side. Now we're up to May, Airbnb announced 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:46.960 it would lay off a quarter of its employees. The 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:50.680 travel industry in general was hit super hard by the pandemic, 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:54.880 from hotels to airlines, to ride share companies and more. 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:58.520 We'd see a lot of other companies follow suit, either 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:02.880 laying off employees or ending contract worker agreements, all in 0:13:02.960 --> 0:13:05.680 an effort to scale back and tighten the belt to 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:09.280 outlast the pandemic. So here are a few companies that 0:13:09.400 --> 0:13:13.839 laid off people. In Cisco laid off around thirty five 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:18.679 hundred employees, Comcast laid off another thirty dred A. T 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:22.240 and T was right behind with thirty four hundred. Salesforce 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:25.439 laid off a thousand people. Microsoft laid off nine hundred 0:13:25.559 --> 0:13:29.800 sixty employees, PayPal laid off a hundred employees, and all 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:35.240 of those companies managed to remain profitable during COVID. So 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:38.640 that's a pretty tough pill to swallow. Right, that these 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:41.280 companies were making these big cuts in an effort to 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:46.000 remain profitable during a pandemic benefits the shareholders, but not 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:49.240 the employees. Meanwhile, those workers are left to struggle and 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:53.400 find new employment in an environment that's really, really hard. 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:59.640 I mean, it is difficult to to overstate how hard 0:13:59.679 --> 0:14:02.800 it is to get a new gig in the midst 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:05.840 of a pandemic. And I'm sure some of you out 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:08.199 there either may have dealt with this personally or know 0:14:08.320 --> 0:14:11.440 someone who is dealing with it. And you know, this 0:14:11.520 --> 0:14:14.800 is tough. And then there are the companies that made 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:19.560 big cuts but we're still unprofitable during COVID. The Walt 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:23.600 Disney Company is a big one. Now I'm a big 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:28.120 Disney fan, but the company has got a pretty ugly 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:31.840 tarnish on it, having laid off more than thirty thousand 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:35.440 employees during the pandemic. And you could argue that a 0:14:35.440 --> 0:14:38.960 lot of that might be necessary from a business standpoint 0:14:39.080 --> 0:14:44.080 because some places, some points of employment within Disney, like Disneyland, 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:48.080 for example, those remain closed with no firm reopening dates. 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:50.680 So it's hard to justify, Hey, let's keep all the 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:55.720 people from Disneyland on payroll indefinitely and we have no 0:14:56.120 --> 0:14:58.560 idea when we'll be able to reopen. You can see 0:14:58.600 --> 0:15:02.480 from a business standpoint how that's a tough call. But 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:05.880 you could also argue that Disney has been printing money 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:08.960 for the last few years, with franchises like Star Wars 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:12.320 and Marvel bringing in billions of dollars from the box 0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:15.680 office alone, and that's before you even touch stuff like merchandizing. 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:20.880 The company has been losing money, however, and shareholders typically 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:23.600 are not super crazy about that, So this is a 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:27.200 very difficult road to travel here. It's I don't want 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:32.080 to to dismiss this as saying Disney bad. I am 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:34.080 not a fan of them laying off so many people 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:36.840 during a pandemic, But at the same time, you have 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:41.240 to acknowledge the realities of what business is. So it's 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:44.000 not like there's an easy decision to make here, but 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:47.120 man talking about having the magic stripped away, or rather 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:50.760 having to reckon with the realization that magic is all 0:15:50.880 --> 0:15:56.400 in perception, and when the veil has fallen, it's a 0:15:56.400 --> 0:16:00.760 lot harder to you know, recapture that feeling of Oh, 0:16:00.800 --> 0:16:05.600 it's a magical company. Uh, it's a company, and it's 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:09.400 a company that that is very much focused on its 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:13.080 forward facing pr with the public, and that took a 0:16:13.080 --> 0:16:19.120 pretty big hit in Boeing, Chevron and Exxon Mobile also 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:23.080 laid off thousands of employees and also remained unprofitable during 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:25.880 the pandemic. Uber laid off a lot of its staff. 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:29.200 Unemployment claims in the United States have hovered around one 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:31.840 million each month, with some of the most recent being 0:16:31.880 --> 0:16:35.920 between a hundred thousand and nine hundred thousand claims. UH 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:38.960 the average in a year that is not going through 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:42.320 a pandemic in the United States would be two thousand 0:16:42.360 --> 0:16:45.280 claims or so. Now we should keep that in mind 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:48.960 that as bad as all this is, at least it's 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:52.400 not the levels that we saw unemployment hit in March 0:16:53.440 --> 0:16:58.600 when the claims spiked up to six point nine million. Meanwhile, 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:02.600 companies like door Ash and insta Carts saw their valuation 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:07.320 skyrocket as demands for home delivery services increased. We saw 0:17:07.359 --> 0:17:10.199 a lot of this stuff too, with services specializing in 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:12.879 deliveries growing quickly and hiring on a lot of people. 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:16.159 So there were some industries that were actually in a 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:20.920 hiring mode, not a laying off mode. Twitter would announce 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:24.720 in May that it would flag tweets containing coronavirus misinformation 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:28.359 on its service, even if those tweets should come from 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:32.359 really important people such as President Trump, and this would 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:34.840 kick off essentially a big old mess in the United 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:38.200 States as Twitter would become more aggressive and flagging tweets 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:42.679 that contained misinformation, including those coming from Trump, and the 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:46.520 categories of misinformation would extend beyond the pandemic as well. 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:50.800 This would infuriate the President, who stepped up his opposition 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.960 to Section two thirty A bit of American legislation that 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:59.400 gives online platforms protection against what their users post, as 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:03.560 well as gives them the authority to moderate posts without 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:07.119 fear of litigation. I did a full episode about section 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:08.920 to thirty not too long ago. If you want to 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:11.960 learn more about that and what the whole argument is 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:14.800 both for and against it, I recommend you check that out. 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:17.320 Now it's time for us to take a quick break. 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:20.239 When we come back, we will get through spring and 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:24.160 start pushing into the summer of But first let's take 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:35.119 a quick break. May was when A T and T 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:39.800 agreed to stop using five G evolution in its marketing efforts. 0:18:39.880 --> 0:18:42.040 And if you listen to my episode about five G 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:45.119 Myths versus Reality, you know that A T and T 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:50.720 had rebranded its LTE service, a four G service, as 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:54.600 five G E, with the icon and users phones changing 0:18:54.640 --> 0:18:58.400 to reflect this. Now, a lot of other carriers criticized 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:00.240 A T and T for doing this. They claim that 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.240 this was a deliberate misdirection with the intent to make 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:06.720 people think that they suddenly had a five G phone, 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:09.360 when in fact they didn't. They were using a four 0:19:09.440 --> 0:19:12.360 G phone on a four G network that was being 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:15.320 labeled as five G. A T and T faced some 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:18.600 sanctions when they were using this in their marketing, and 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:22.800 so ultimately the company stopped using the terminology in its 0:19:23.119 --> 0:19:27.760 various advertising campaigns, but the five G E icon on 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:32.600 the phones stuck around. Also in May, Doug Lavero, who 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:35.719 had served as the head of human Spaceflight Operations at 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:40.880 NASA for six months, resigned abruptly, and in his resignation note, 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:44.560 he alluded to making a mistake, but there was no 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:49.200 real elaboration on what that mistake was. Speculation and rumor 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:51.600 soon took hold. I mean, if there's ever a gap 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:53.920 in knowledge, people will fill it with whatever they can. 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:56.560 So could it be that he made some sort of 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:00.439 controversial decision regarding the use of commercial space company like 0:20:00.520 --> 0:20:04.200 SpaceX might have something to do with the Artemis program, 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:08.320 which has the incredibly aggressive goal of getting people back 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:12.920 on the Moon by four At first, there wasn't much 0:20:13.080 --> 0:20:16.679 information on the matter, but later on in August, the 0:20:16.680 --> 0:20:20.400 Wall Street Journal reported that a federal criminal probe into 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:24.200 Lavero's activities was commencing That was looking to see if 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:28.280 Laverro had given any information illegally to Boeing during the 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:31.639 bidding process to design and build a new human lunar 0:20:31.760 --> 0:20:35.800 lander for the Artemis project. If he had, that would 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:39.800 be in violation of the Procurement Integrity Act. As NASA 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:44.399 isn't to show any favoritism to any particular bidding entity. 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:48.040 You're not supposed to give information that might give one 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:52.879 bitter uh of an advantage over others. And the announcement 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:56.600 of his resignation in May was particularly of concern because 0:20:56.640 --> 0:20:59.480 it happened just two weeks before NASA was to rely 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:03.600 upon SpaceX launch vehicles and spacecraft to take astronauts to 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:06.680 the International Space Station. So this was just two weeks 0:21:06.720 --> 0:21:11.280 before the first manned launch of a spacecraft on US 0:21:11.359 --> 0:21:15.640 soil since the conclusion of the Space Shuttle program. Bad timing. 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:19.520 Besides the pandemic and the election, another thing we need 0:21:19.560 --> 0:21:22.600 to remember about in the United States is the Black 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:25.920 Lives Matter movement and how they would play a big 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:30.439 part in how tech and society intersect. As organizers relied 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:34.040 on social platforms to bring people together to demonstrate in 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:38.440 the real world, so too did those who opposed the movement, 0:21:38.840 --> 0:21:43.400 So you had rights activists clashing with white supremacists online 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:47.080 and off. Some platforms like Facebook tried to take a 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:51.919 hands off Switzerland like approach. Others like Twitter, tried to 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:56.200 flag content that contained misinformation or those that glorified violence, 0:21:56.600 --> 0:22:00.119 including tweets from Trump, and it became the subject of 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:04.440 increasingly heated debates about what text role is in these 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:08.320 matters and whether or not these social platforms were making 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:13.800 things better or worse. Let's move into June. Early that month, 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:17.440 a group of Facebook employees staged a virtual walk off 0:22:17.560 --> 0:22:21.520 in protest of Zuckerberg's lack of response to Trump's messaging 0:22:21.560 --> 0:22:26.080 on Facebook, largely regarding the Black Lives Matter movement. They 0:22:26.080 --> 0:22:28.760 were arguing that he was turning a blind eye to 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:33.879 posts that clearly violated Facebook's own terms of service. Internally, 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:38.080 Facebook managers were told not to retaliate or require employees 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:41.280 to use paid time off to cover for the walkout, 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:45.080 and so the company was facing criticism both from external 0:22:45.160 --> 0:22:48.760 sources and from within the company itself. Not that this 0:22:48.800 --> 0:22:52.120 would change things very much over at Facebook for most 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:55.400 of twenty and you might think I have a bias 0:22:55.480 --> 0:22:58.320 against Facebook, And you know what, I guess I kind 0:22:58.320 --> 0:23:01.240 of do, as I've said in previous podcasts, if you 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:04.680 give the truth and lies and equal ground to stand 0:23:04.760 --> 0:23:08.399 upon lines are gonna win. It's just way easier to 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:11.080 tell people what they want to hear rather than to 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:15.120 make them listen to the truth. At the protests themselves, 0:23:15.160 --> 0:23:18.280 we saw tech also play a role. People used drones 0:23:18.320 --> 0:23:22.320 to get footage of protests, including one case at least 0:23:22.359 --> 0:23:26.879 one in which US Customs and Border Patrol flew a 0:23:27.000 --> 0:23:30.480 drone over Minneapolis. And I'm not talking about some little 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:33.240 quad captor. The drone in this case appeared to be 0:23:33.320 --> 0:23:36.600 a Predator B drone a k A and m Q 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:40.080 nine Reaper, which is designed to be a so called 0:23:40.400 --> 0:23:44.760 hunter killer drone, as in, this was a drone designed 0:23:44.760 --> 0:23:48.040 to be armed and used to track down a target 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:51.000 and fire upon it. Now, the agency said it was 0:23:51.040 --> 0:23:53.680 operating the drone purely as a means to keep police 0:23:53.760 --> 0:23:58.040 informed of potential problems like outbreaks of violence or looting. 0:23:58.440 --> 0:24:02.760 But the Customs and Border Patrol jurisdiction ends once you 0:24:02.840 --> 0:24:06.120 get one hundred miles out from US borders. I mean 0:24:06.119 --> 0:24:11.359 it's Customs and Borders Patrol. Minneapolis is three hundred miles 0:24:11.400 --> 0:24:14.760 away from the Canadian border, so that creates a pretty 0:24:14.840 --> 0:24:18.960 thorny basis for operations. How can the the U S 0:24:19.000 --> 0:24:23.240 Customs and Border Patrol justify flying a drone over Minneapolis 0:24:23.600 --> 0:24:26.879 when it has no jurisdiction over that area. This is 0:24:27.880 --> 0:24:31.760