November 9, 2023 • 21 mins
Steve Wozniak is recovering in a hospital in Mexico City and we wish him well. Internal documents from Meta show that Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly shut down initiatives meant to promote user well being. Microsoft says it has a plan for AI-generated misinformation during the election season. And the Omegle service shuts down.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Tech Are Yet It's time for the tech News for Thursday,
November ninth, twenty twenty three, and let's start off this
(00:28):
episode with a sincere get well soon for Apple co
founder Steve Wozniak. Reuter's reports that while in Mexico City,
Wosniak admitted himself to the hospital. There are actually conflicting
reports as to what prompted this move, and in the
absence of solid information, I think it just makes sense
(00:48):
for us to say we hope you feel better very soon,
mister Wosniac. For those of you who are not familiar
with his name, Wosniak was the other Steve who created Apple,
the other one, of course, being Steve Job and between
the two of them, Wozniak was really the big tech geek.
He was the programmer, he was the phone freak. He
was the mischievous man who always wanted to know how
(01:10):
stuff worked. And he's been sort of this kind of
beloved figure in the tech world for several decades and
hopefully he'll be right his reign very soon. CNN's Brian
fun has a piece titled Mark Zuckerberg personally rejected Meta's
proposals to improve teen mental health. Court document's allege as
(01:31):
that headline indicates, this is pretty ugly stuff. So according
to these documents, these internal documents from Meta, numerous people
inside the company, including top executives like Adam Massari, the
CEO of Instagram, repeatedly brought matters relating to teen mental
(01:51):
health and well being to Zuckerberg's attention, only to be
shut down. The article really paints Zuckerberg as a tech
executive unconcerned about what impact his company might have on
its users. That really plays into this popular perception of
Zuckerberg as sort of an unfeeling, robotic sort of person
(02:12):
who has a reputation for expecting his you know, his
staff to carry out his decisions without objections. Now, one
example that was cited in the article relates to the
beauty filters on Instagram. I'm sure most of y'all are
familiar with these, but just in case you're not, these
are digital filters that apply some alterations to images. So
(02:35):
you take an image with your phone, the filter changes
them slightly, and the whole goal is to make the
final image appear more attractive. So the argument goes that
as teens encounter picture after picture of impossibly perfect people,
their own sense of self begins to suffer. There's a
worry that these kinds of users will start to feel
(02:57):
like they're an ugly outsider when all the folks on
the phone seem to live perfect lives, have perfect skin,
and travel to perfect places. Of course, any of y'all
who have actually interacted with an influencer, you probably have
this all figured out. They're just as messed up as
the rest of us are, sometimes even more so. I'm
actually reminded of a recent walk I took in a
(03:19):
park where I saw a young person doing the whole
influencer thing and working very hard to make a completely
artificial scene appear to be something they just naturally happened upon.
I can tell you the process to get to that
final picture was anything but natural, but that's obviously just anecdotal,
(03:41):
it's not really evidence. The point is, it appears as
though Zuckerberg has consistently and repeatedly scuttled any efforts to
make changes to Meta's various platforms out of a concern
for the well being of users. Now, I don't think
we can go so far as to say that Meta
is a company ruled by a person who is only
can concerned with that company, or that all the other
(04:03):
leaders in Meta are somehow these valiant warriors trying to
do what's right. It's obviously way more complicated than that.
But this is, as the kids used to say, not
a good look for mister Zuckerberg. He and the company
are in an ongoing lawsuit. That's why these documents were
even uncovered in the first place. It's all part of
(04:26):
that lawsuit that was brought against the company by the
state of Massachusetts, and we'll have to see how these
revelations affect the case. RDIBT at zd net has an
article titled Microsoft reveals plans to protect elections from deep
fakes and other misinformation. So here on tech stuff, I've
talked about concerns regarding say, generative AI and deep fakes
(04:48):
and other technologies that have the capacity to threaten the
process of democracy. Because when you get down to it,
you don't even really have to directly attack democracy in
order to weaken it. You just have to show that
it's possible to attack democracy, because if people are convinced
that nothing they see is reliable, they lose faith in
(05:09):
the system and the whole thing starts to crumble. Now
we're not quite there yet, and that's why efforts to
push back against technology that does pose a threat to
fair elections and other democratic processes is important. Microsoft's approach
is to institute what they call a five part plan
to fight back. Now, among those parts, there's one that
(05:32):
is about introducing a new kind of tool that they're
calling the Content Credentials as a Service tool. This would
let someone who creates some form of digital content sign
that work digitally, and that digital signature would travel with
the content wherever it happens to go, so if someone
clicks through, they'll see the person responsible for that piece
(05:54):
of content. It's meant to ensure things like transparency and accountability.
That's one little example of what Microsoft is planning. Some
other parts of the plan include assisting and educating various
campaigns and candidates as they navigate a world that now
has this powerful AI enabled technology in it. To no
(06:15):
surprise at all, Microsoft's plan also includes really promoting bing
search as being the most reliable when it comes to
presenting real information and weeding out misinformation and AI generated stuff.
So we'll see how that goes, because so far Bing's
command of web search has been let's call it underwhelming.
(06:36):
Although at the same time, Google is currently involved in
a huge antitrust lawsuit that in part hinges on how
Google has used various measures such as paying enormous sums
to other companies like Apple, in order to guarantee that
Google Search would be a default option on lots of devices.
So maybe in the future Bing will have a larger
(06:58):
share of the market because Google will be forced to
break up. We'll have to see. If you're a Lego
fan and you have an account on the online marketplace Bricklink,
then it's time to hit those bricks because the company
has detected a breach in its systems and there has
been some quote unquote suspicious activity on the bricklink online marketplace.
(07:21):
So at this marketplace, folks can sell parts and accessories
with Lego. Other folks can obviously buy them. It's just
an online exchange place for that kind of stuff. And
apparently some bad actors, some hackers, got unauthorized access to
some seller accounts and started to sell stuff off at
(07:41):
insane discounts and divert payments to themselves as opposed to
the actual seller who should have been in control of
the whole thing. And the company says it's likely that
what happened was these hackers did some credential stuffing. They
found some compromised user names and words on the Internet,
(08:01):
they applied those over on Bricklink, and they found a
few that worked, and that that's what they've been doing.
They did announce that the hackers had issued a ransomware
demand from the company, but they said there's no evidence
that the hackers actually got access to any company systems.
So that's why they're saying, like, we think that this
(08:23):
is not an actual ransomware intrusion, but rather someone being
able to use passwords to hack into accounts. So they
do suggest that users who have a Bricklink account go
in and update their password to a strong password that's
unique just for that service. You should be doing that anyway.
You should not be reusing the same password over and
(08:44):
over again. Just a bad idea, because all it takes
is one thing to get compromised, and then they have
the skeleton key to all of your accounts. You don't
want to do that. So just thought that was interesting
that it was hitting the lego community. Now, it should
come as no surprise that Amazon is reportedly working on
a massive artificial intelligence model. Of course it is. It's
(09:06):
a huge company, and all the other huge companies are
likewise hard at work at creating language models. According to
Business Insider, the Amazon model currently has the code name Olympus,
which seems pretty darn humble. I mean, it's the home
of the gods and everything. The Information reports further that
Amazon plans to integrate this large language model into lots
(09:30):
of stuff that faces customers, like its online store and
in that smart speaker line of products that have that
woman's name that I won't say, just so I don't
accidentally set any off near you. Then, Reuter's reports that
Olympus is actually a much larger large language model than
even open AI's famous GBT, in fact, twice as large.
(09:55):
That does not necessarily mean it's better, but it is bigger.
Rumor has it Amazon will be unveiling its plans for
AI next month, and that we might find out how
this could be incorporated into Amazon products moving forward, and
whether accessing those features will require some sort of additional
subscription or something. On a semi related note, the Hollywood
(10:18):
strike with sag AFTRA has come to a close. This
is the one that involved the union represented actors in Hollywood,
So that strike is probably to a close, I should say,
because the strike leaders were finally able to negotiate a
deal with the AMPTP, that's the organization that represents like
(10:40):
the producers in Hollywood studios. But there are a few
components that need to happen, like there has to be
a full vote from the union to support this deal
before it's well and truly in place. Most folks seem
to think that is going to happen this week. And
there's some things in that deal that touch on tech,
which is why talking about it. Part of it has
(11:02):
to do with things like residual payments for stuff that's
on streaming services as opposed to on more traditional media
like film or television. There were really established ways to
determine how much money an actor would receive from stuff
they had done continuing to perform well in movies or
(11:24):
on TV or whatever, but there was less clarification in
the streaming world because that's a relatively new form of media,
so there's some elements of that in there, and there's
also elements that have to do with generative artificial intelligence.
Now I can't give any details because so far the
terms of the deal are undisclosed, but the Union as
(11:44):
a whole will vote to ratify the deal pretty soon,
and assuming that happens, business will be back to whatever
passes for normal in Hollywood. Okay, we're going to take
a quick break. When we come back, we've got some
more tech news stories. We're back. So. While Google is
(12:09):
facing heavy legal pressure here in the United States in
that antitrust matter I mentioned earlier, the company is also
pushing against Apple over in the EU. Google reportedly is
petitioning lawmakers in the EU to force Apple to stop
gatekeeping the infamous I Message app. The EU has a
(12:30):
law called the Digital Markets Act, and Google argues that
Apple's I Message is not in alignment with that law,
and that law says that Apple should allow I Message
to integrate seamlessly with all other messaging platforms. And this
really comes down to text bubbles and what color they are,
(12:50):
right like, whether they're blue or green. It's crazy to
me that that's what it really comes down to it's
even crazier that people would actually judge someone if their
text bubble in a group chat was the quote unquote
wrong color that you know, somehow they're not as good
a person because they have a different kind of technology.
They don't have an iPhone, they're using an Android phone.
(13:13):
I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that. I mean,
after all, I've seen the exact same sort of tribalistic
behavior in the gaming community forever. Right. You just ask
a group of gamers what's better PlayStation or Xbox and
then you watch the blood fly. So I guess it
isn't that biggest surprise. It's just kind of pathetic if
you ask me. Anyway, Apple says that it already meets
(13:36):
the requirements of the Digital Markets Act, So I guess
we'll see if Google's push for this wins out or not.
If it does, it may mean that we won't have
those different colors of text bubbles in the future, and
we'll have to judge people on other things, you know,
like whether or not they're a good person. Meanwhile, Apple
is potentially facing a big old tax bill in the EU,
(13:58):
specifically the of tax breaks that the company got from Ireland.
So this matter has actually a very long history. The
way it works is that several years ago the government
of Ireland extended some hefty tax breaks to Apple to
attract Apple to build a facility in Ireland, to essentially
(14:20):
make Ireland its foothold for Europe and other parts of
the world. But these tax breaks were themselves, according to
one court case, not entirely legal. So this whole mess
goes to court, and originally the court agrees that the
tax breaks were not legal, that Apple therefore owed billions
(14:42):
of dollars worth of back taxes, and then Apple appealed
this decision. Three years ago, another court overturned the earlier judgment,
and now a lawyer advising the European Union says that
the decision to overturn was itself incorrect, that it was
guided by a bunch of legal errors, and the court
(15:03):
made a mistake in overturning the original court's decision against Apple,
and that Apple should therefore end up forking over around
thirteen billion with a b euro worth of back taxes.
At the heart of the matter is whether or not
the tax breaks Ireland offer to Apple constitute what the
(15:24):
EU defines as quote unquote state aid. So every member
state in the EU actually governs its own tax laws,
but the EU as a whole has authority over matters
where a government offers government backed aid to say, a
giant corporation, so as obi Wan would put it, it
(15:45):
all depends upon your point of view. Obviously, Apple reps
argue that that interpretation is not accurate. The most recent
court decision to overturn the ruling against Apple is really
the right one, and that one should stand. Ireland's government
also protests being said that to have offered state aid
(16:08):
to Apple. Ireland says that's not what it did. It
created an incentive to bring Apple over to Ireland in
order to turn Ireland into kind of a high tech
hub for companies mostly originating from the United States, to
have a base of operations for the rest of the
European Union. The whole darn story is taxing, if you
(16:30):
ask me. Speaking of taxes, authorities in Italy say that
Airbnb and the landlords using Airbnb have not been paying taxes,
at least not to the level that they should be,
and as such, Italian authorities are getting ready to seize
more than eight hundred and thirty million dollars from Airbnb
(16:51):
as a result. Now, whether these authorities will also turn
their wrath to the actual landlords, that remains to be
seen so far, of just seen mention of only Airbnb.
So a lot of places around the world have been
striking out against Airbnb recently. The City of New York has,
you know, lots of other places. There are a lot
(17:13):
of places that have issues with housing availability that have
been really critical of Airbnb. So the complaint is that
landlords are scooping up properties that should be going to
residents and instead they're using them for short term rentals. Meanwhile,
you've got an ongoing housing crisis in some of these places,
obviously in Italy. The issue also involves failing to pay
(17:38):
the appropriate amount in taxes on these rental agreements. Airbnb
reps say, unsurprisingly that they are disappointed by the decision
to go after their money. They also claim that they
have operated within the law. The company has the right
to appeal, which I can't imagine them not doing. I'm
sure they will. And CNN Business indicates that the actual
(18:00):
process for the authorities to get this money is not
exactly straightforward. It's not like it's easy to do. So
it may be that this matter drags on for a
very long time, but it really extends beyond tech into
the political and financial realms. I just thought that was
worth talking about because, like a lot of other companies,
(18:20):
particularly in Silicon Valley, Airbnb would often get the label
of being disruptive, and I just think it's good to
remember that sometimes when you're disruptive, sooner or later the
establishment hits back, and it's usually much bigger than you are.
That's not saying that that's the right thing, but it's
(18:42):
certainly something that can happen, and I think that's what
we're seeing with Airbnb now. Disney CEO Bob Iger addressed
investors in a recent earnings call, and one thing he
mentioned is that starting next month, the company will roll
out a beta test of a streaming app that combines
both Disney Plus and Hulu into a service. This has
long been rumored to be in the works, and Disney
(19:03):
is currently in the process of acquiring comcasts thirty thirty
percent stake in Hulu for around eight point six billion
dollars at least. Eiger indicated that the plan is to
roll out the service in full sometime next spring. So
it sounds like only people who are currently subscribed both
to Disney Plus and to Hulu at the moment are
going to have access to this beta program in the
(19:25):
short term, which means I'm out. I'm just on Disney Plus.
I haven't done Hulu yet, so I'll have to keep waiting.
There's a bunch of stuff on Hulu I want to see,
but I've been dragging my feet because I was pretty
sure that this thing was going to happen. And lastly,
I want to pour one out for a may Goal,
the online service that would match strangers up in chats
video chats online. So even if you've never used a
(19:48):
may Go before, I bet you can guess that a
lot of people took the opportunity to being randomly matched
with a stranger in a semi anonymous way to engage
in behavior, let's say, was questionable. There was never a
shortage of stories about people on Omego harassing folks or
using things like racist slurs, or exposing themselves that was
(20:11):
one that was frequently mentioned, or attempting to groom young users.
Really disturbing stuff like that. There are no shortage of
videos about that online too. But other folks made really
creative artistic uses of omegol. There's some great compilation videos
on YouTube of musicians who would delight strangers by playing
(20:32):
like a personal concert for them, just by being matched
up to them. That kind of stuff I think is
super awesome, and I'm sad that that's going to go.
I love the idea of strangers being able to connect
with each other and just have a conversation. You never
know where that's going to go. The problem is the
bad actors were really, really bad, and that overall gave
(20:54):
a stain on omegl and the creator of omegol announced
that it was just too much to try and keep
the site running, to fight against people who were abusing
the site, and to fight the organizations that had condemned
the entire site due to the behavior of these bad actors.
I recommend actually going over to omegle dot com and
(21:17):
reading the whole open letter yourself to draw your conclusions
about the whole thing. And that's it for the news
today for Thursday, November ninth, twenty twenty three. I hope
you are all well, and I'll talk to you again
really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production for more
(21:41):
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Tech Are Yet It's time for the tech News for Thursday,
November ninth, twenty twenty three, and let's start off this
(00:28):
episode with a sincere get well soon for Apple co
founder Steve Wozniak. Reuter's reports that while in Mexico City,
Wosniak admitted himself to the hospital. There are actually conflicting
reports as to what prompted this move, and in the
absence of solid information, I think it just makes sense
(00:48):
for us to say we hope you feel better very soon,
mister Wosniac. For those of you who are not familiar
with his name, Wosniak was the other Steve who created Apple,
the other one, of course, being Steve Job and between
the two of them, Wozniak was really the big tech geek.
He was the programmer, he was the phone freak. He
was the mischievous man who always wanted to know how
(01:10):
stuff worked. And he's been sort of this kind of
beloved figure in the tech world for several decades and
hopefully he'll be right his reign very soon. CNN's Brian
fun has a piece titled Mark Zuckerberg personally rejected Meta's
proposals to improve teen mental health. Court document's allege as
(01:31):
that headline indicates, this is pretty ugly stuff. So according
to these documents, these internal documents from Meta, numerous people
inside the company, including top executives like Adam Massari, the
CEO of Instagram, repeatedly brought matters relating to teen mental
(01:51):
health and well being to Zuckerberg's attention, only to be
shut down. The article really paints Zuckerberg as a tech
executive unconcerned about what impact his company might have on
its users. That really plays into this popular perception of
Zuckerberg as sort of an unfeeling, robotic sort of person
(02:12):
who has a reputation for expecting his you know, his
staff to carry out his decisions without objections. Now, one
example that was cited in the article relates to the
beauty filters on Instagram. I'm sure most of y'all are
familiar with these, but just in case you're not, these
are digital filters that apply some alterations to images. So
(02:35):
you take an image with your phone, the filter changes
them slightly, and the whole goal is to make the
final image appear more attractive. So the argument goes that
as teens encounter picture after picture of impossibly perfect people,
their own sense of self begins to suffer. There's a
worry that these kinds of users will start to feel
(02:57):
like they're an ugly outsider when all the folks on
the phone seem to live perfect lives, have perfect skin,
and travel to perfect places. Of course, any of y'all
who have actually interacted with an influencer, you probably have
this all figured out. They're just as messed up as
the rest of us are, sometimes even more so. I'm
actually reminded of a recent walk I took in a
(03:19):
park where I saw a young person doing the whole
influencer thing and working very hard to make a completely
artificial scene appear to be something they just naturally happened upon.
I can tell you the process to get to that
final picture was anything but natural, but that's obviously just anecdotal,
(03:41):
it's not really evidence. The point is, it appears as
though Zuckerberg has consistently and repeatedly scuttled any efforts to
make changes to Meta's various platforms out of a concern
for the well being of users. Now, I don't think
we can go so far as to say that Meta
is a company ruled by a person who is only
can concerned with that company, or that all the other
(04:03):
leaders in Meta are somehow these valiant warriors trying to
do what's right. It's obviously way more complicated than that.
But this is, as the kids used to say, not
a good look for mister Zuckerberg. He and the company
are in an ongoing lawsuit. That's why these documents were
even uncovered in the first place. It's all part of
(04:26):
that lawsuit that was brought against the company by the
state of Massachusetts, and we'll have to see how these
revelations affect the case. RDIBT at zd net has an
article titled Microsoft reveals plans to protect elections from deep
fakes and other misinformation. So here on tech stuff, I've
talked about concerns regarding say, generative AI and deep fakes
(04:48):
and other technologies that have the capacity to threaten the
process of democracy. Because when you get down to it,
you don't even really have to directly attack democracy in
order to weaken it. You just have to show that
it's possible to attack democracy, because if people are convinced
that nothing they see is reliable, they lose faith in
(05:09):
the system and the whole thing starts to crumble. Now
we're not quite there yet, and that's why efforts to
push back against technology that does pose a threat to
fair elections and other democratic processes is important. Microsoft's approach
is to institute what they call a five part plan
to fight back. Now, among those parts, there's one that
(05:32):
is about introducing a new kind of tool that they're
calling the Content Credentials as a Service tool. This would
let someone who creates some form of digital content sign
that work digitally, and that digital signature would travel with
the content wherever it happens to go, so if someone
clicks through, they'll see the person responsible for that piece
(05:54):
of content. It's meant to ensure things like transparency and accountability.
That's one little example of what Microsoft is planning. Some
other parts of the plan include assisting and educating various
campaigns and candidates as they navigate a world that now
has this powerful AI enabled technology in it. To no
(06:15):
surprise at all, Microsoft's plan also includes really promoting bing
search as being the most reliable when it comes to
presenting real information and weeding out misinformation and AI generated stuff.
So we'll see how that goes, because so far Bing's
command of web search has been let's call it underwhelming.
(06:36):
Although at the same time, Google is currently involved in
a huge antitrust lawsuit that in part hinges on how
Google has used various measures such as paying enormous sums
to other companies like Apple, in order to guarantee that
Google Search would be a default option on lots of devices.
So maybe in the future Bing will have a larger
(06:58):
share of the market because Google will be forced to
break up. We'll have to see. If you're a Lego
fan and you have an account on the online marketplace Bricklink,
then it's time to hit those bricks because the company
has detected a breach in its systems and there has
been some quote unquote suspicious activity on the bricklink online marketplace.
(07:21):
So at this marketplace, folks can sell parts and accessories
with Lego. Other folks can obviously buy them. It's just
an online exchange place for that kind of stuff. And
apparently some bad actors, some hackers, got unauthorized access to
some seller accounts and started to sell stuff off at
(07:41):
insane discounts and divert payments to themselves as opposed to
the actual seller who should have been in control of
the whole thing. And the company says it's likely that
what happened was these hackers did some credential stuffing. They
found some compromised user names and words on the Internet,
(08:01):
they applied those over on Bricklink, and they found a
few that worked, and that that's what they've been doing.
They did announce that the hackers had issued a ransomware
demand from the company, but they said there's no evidence
that the hackers actually got access to any company systems.
So that's why they're saying, like, we think that this
(08:23):
is not an actual ransomware intrusion, but rather someone being
able to use passwords to hack into accounts. So they
do suggest that users who have a Bricklink account go
in and update their password to a strong password that's
unique just for that service. You should be doing that anyway.
You should not be reusing the same password over and
(08:44):
over again. Just a bad idea, because all it takes
is one thing to get compromised, and then they have
the skeleton key to all of your accounts. You don't
want to do that. So just thought that was interesting
that it was hitting the lego community. Now, it should
come as no surprise that Amazon is reportedly working on
a massive artificial intelligence model. Of course it is. It's
(09:06):
a huge company, and all the other huge companies are
likewise hard at work at creating language models. According to
Business Insider, the Amazon model currently has the code name Olympus,
which seems pretty darn humble. I mean, it's the home
of the gods and everything. The Information reports further that
Amazon plans to integrate this large language model into lots
(09:30):
of stuff that faces customers, like its online store and
in that smart speaker line of products that have that
woman's name that I won't say, just so I don't
accidentally set any off near you. Then, Reuter's reports that
Olympus is actually a much larger large language model than
even open AI's famous GBT, in fact, twice as large.
(09:55):
That does not necessarily mean it's better, but it is bigger.
Rumor has it Amazon will be unveiling its plans for
AI next month, and that we might find out how
this could be incorporated into Amazon products moving forward, and
whether accessing those features will require some sort of additional
subscription or something. On a semi related note, the Hollywood
(10:18):
strike with sag AFTRA has come to a close. This
is the one that involved the union represented actors in Hollywood,
So that strike is probably to a close, I should say,
because the strike leaders were finally able to negotiate a
deal with the AMPTP, that's the organization that represents like
(10:40):
the producers in Hollywood studios. But there are a few
components that need to happen, like there has to be
a full vote from the union to support this deal
before it's well and truly in place. Most folks seem
to think that is going to happen this week. And
there's some things in that deal that touch on tech,
which is why talking about it. Part of it has
(11:02):
to do with things like residual payments for stuff that's
on streaming services as opposed to on more traditional media
like film or television. There were really established ways to
determine how much money an actor would receive from stuff
they had done continuing to perform well in movies or
(11:24):
on TV or whatever, but there was less clarification in
the streaming world because that's a relatively new form of media,
so there's some elements of that in there, and there's
also elements that have to do with generative artificial intelligence.
Now I can't give any details because so far the
terms of the deal are undisclosed, but the Union as
(11:44):
a whole will vote to ratify the deal pretty soon,
and assuming that happens, business will be back to whatever
passes for normal in Hollywood. Okay, we're going to take
a quick break. When we come back, we've got some
more tech news stories. We're back. So. While Google is
(12:09):
facing heavy legal pressure here in the United States in
that antitrust matter I mentioned earlier, the company is also
pushing against Apple over in the EU. Google reportedly is
petitioning lawmakers in the EU to force Apple to stop
gatekeeping the infamous I Message app. The EU has a
(12:30):
law called the Digital Markets Act, and Google argues that
Apple's I Message is not in alignment with that law,
and that law says that Apple should allow I Message
to integrate seamlessly with all other messaging platforms. And this
really comes down to text bubbles and what color they are,
(12:50):
right like, whether they're blue or green. It's crazy to
me that that's what it really comes down to it's
even crazier that people would actually judge someone if their
text bubble in a group chat was the quote unquote
wrong color that you know, somehow they're not as good
a person because they have a different kind of technology.
They don't have an iPhone, they're using an Android phone.
(13:13):
I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that. I mean,
after all, I've seen the exact same sort of tribalistic
behavior in the gaming community forever. Right. You just ask
a group of gamers what's better PlayStation or Xbox and
then you watch the blood fly. So I guess it
isn't that biggest surprise. It's just kind of pathetic if
you ask me. Anyway, Apple says that it already meets
(13:36):
the requirements of the Digital Markets Act, So I guess
we'll see if Google's push for this wins out or not.
If it does, it may mean that we won't have
those different colors of text bubbles in the future, and
we'll have to judge people on other things, you know,
like whether or not they're a good person. Meanwhile, Apple
is potentially facing a big old tax bill in the EU,
(13:58):
specifically the of tax breaks that the company got from Ireland.
So this matter has actually a very long history. The
way it works is that several years ago the government
of Ireland extended some hefty tax breaks to Apple to
attract Apple to build a facility in Ireland, to essentially
(14:20):
make Ireland its foothold for Europe and other parts of
the world. But these tax breaks were themselves, according to
one court case, not entirely legal. So this whole mess
goes to court, and originally the court agrees that the
tax breaks were not legal, that Apple therefore owed billions
(14:42):
of dollars worth of back taxes, and then Apple appealed
this decision. Three years ago, another court overturned the earlier judgment,
and now a lawyer advising the European Union says that
the decision to overturn was itself incorrect, that it was
guided by a bunch of legal errors, and the court
(15:03):
made a mistake in overturning the original court's decision against Apple,
and that Apple should therefore end up forking over around
thirteen billion with a b euro worth of back taxes.
At the heart of the matter is whether or not
the tax breaks Ireland offer to Apple constitute what the
(15:24):
EU defines as quote unquote state aid. So every member
state in the EU actually governs its own tax laws,
but the EU as a whole has authority over matters
where a government offers government backed aid to say, a
giant corporation, so as obi Wan would put it, it
(15:45):
all depends upon your point of view. Obviously, Apple reps
argue that that interpretation is not accurate. The most recent
court decision to overturn the ruling against Apple is really
the right one, and that one should stand. Ireland's government
also protests being said that to have offered state aid
(16:08):
to Apple. Ireland says that's not what it did. It
created an incentive to bring Apple over to Ireland in
order to turn Ireland into kind of a high tech
hub for companies mostly originating from the United States, to
have a base of operations for the rest of the
European Union. The whole darn story is taxing, if you
(16:30):
ask me. Speaking of taxes, authorities in Italy say that
Airbnb and the landlords using Airbnb have not been paying taxes,
at least not to the level that they should be,
and as such, Italian authorities are getting ready to seize
more than eight hundred and thirty million dollars from Airbnb
(16:51):
as a result. Now, whether these authorities will also turn
their wrath to the actual landlords, that remains to be
seen so far, of just seen mention of only Airbnb.
So a lot of places around the world have been
striking out against Airbnb recently. The City of New York has,
you know, lots of other places. There are a lot
(17:13):
of places that have issues with housing availability that have
been really critical of Airbnb. So the complaint is that
landlords are scooping up properties that should be going to
residents and instead they're using them for short term rentals. Meanwhile,
you've got an ongoing housing crisis in some of these places,
obviously in Italy. The issue also involves failing to pay
(17:38):
the appropriate amount in taxes on these rental agreements. Airbnb
reps say, unsurprisingly that they are disappointed by the decision
to go after their money. They also claim that they
have operated within the law. The company has the right
to appeal, which I can't imagine them not doing. I'm
sure they will. And CNN Business indicates that the actual
(18:00):
process for the authorities to get this money is not
exactly straightforward. It's not like it's easy to do. So
it may be that this matter drags on for a
very long time, but it really extends beyond tech into
the political and financial realms. I just thought that was
worth talking about because, like a lot of other companies,
(18:20):
particularly in Silicon Valley, Airbnb would often get the label
of being disruptive, and I just think it's good to
remember that sometimes when you're disruptive, sooner or later the
establishment hits back, and it's usually much bigger than you are.
That's not saying that that's the right thing, but it's
(18:42):
certainly something that can happen, and I think that's what
we're seeing with Airbnb now. Disney CEO Bob Iger addressed
investors in a recent earnings call, and one thing he
mentioned is that starting next month, the company will roll
out a beta test of a streaming app that combines
both Disney Plus and Hulu into a service. This has
long been rumored to be in the works, and Disney
(19:03):
is currently in the process of acquiring comcasts thirty thirty
percent stake in Hulu for around eight point six billion
dollars at least. Eiger indicated that the plan is to
roll out the service in full sometime next spring. So
it sounds like only people who are currently subscribed both
to Disney Plus and to Hulu at the moment are
going to have access to this beta program in the
(19:25):
short term, which means I'm out. I'm just on Disney Plus.
I haven't done Hulu yet, so I'll have to keep waiting.
There's a bunch of stuff on Hulu I want to see,
but I've been dragging my feet because I was pretty
sure that this thing was going to happen. And lastly,
I want to pour one out for a may Goal,
the online service that would match strangers up in chats
video chats online. So even if you've never used a
(19:48):
may Go before, I bet you can guess that a
lot of people took the opportunity to being randomly matched
with a stranger in a semi anonymous way to engage
in behavior, let's say, was questionable. There was never a
shortage of stories about people on Omego harassing folks or
using things like racist slurs, or exposing themselves that was
(20:11):
one that was frequently mentioned, or attempting to groom young users.
Really disturbing stuff like that. There are no shortage of
videos about that online too. But other folks made really
creative artistic uses of omegol. There's some great compilation videos
on YouTube of musicians who would delight strangers by playing
(20:32):
like a personal concert for them, just by being matched
up to them. That kind of stuff I think is
super awesome, and I'm sad that that's going to go.
I love the idea of strangers being able to connect
with each other and just have a conversation. You never
know where that's going to go. The problem is the
bad actors were really, really bad, and that overall gave
(20:54):
a stain on omegl and the creator of omegol announced
that it was just too much to try and keep
the site running, to fight against people who were abusing
the site, and to fight the organizations that had condemned
the entire site due to the behavior of these bad actors.
I recommend actually going over to omegle dot com and
(21:17):
reading the whole open letter yourself to draw your conclusions
about the whole thing. And that's it for the news
today for Thursday, November ninth, twenty twenty three. I hope
you are all well, and I'll talk to you again
really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production for more
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