September 12, 2023 • 21 mins
Today, the US Department of Justice begins its anti-trust case against Google. Should it matter if Google commands more than 90% of the web search market share? Plus, a cybersecurity issue creates a huge headache for MGM Resorts and a former Apple employee brings RICO charges against the company.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey therein
Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech are you?
It's time for the tech news for Tuesday, September twelfth,
twenty twenty three. So here in the United States, the
(00:27):
White House has proposed commitments on how to go about
developing and then deploying various artificial intelligence products. These are
voluntary commitments, so there's no law or anything here. It's
nothing holding anyone to these things. It's more like a
pledge that AI companies will promise to do their very
(00:48):
best not to release AI products that actively make life worse.
That kind of thing anyway. Several companies have already signed
this pledge, and some joined the group this week. The
new ones that joined include IBM and Adobe and Nvidia.
This follows other really big companies like Google and Microsoft,
(01:10):
along with open Ai, who signed to obey these commitments
back in July. Another one that signed this week, perhaps
a bit surprisingly, was a Palenteer. And what is it
with scary tech companies taking their names from JRR Tolkien works?
Because Pallenteer comes from Lord of the Rings, and that's
(01:31):
a software company that has associations with stuff like predictive policing,
think like Minority Report, but without the psychics. They also
do deep analytics to look at things like crime statistics
and potential terrorism and things like that. Then you've got
another Tolkien based defense company. This is not one that
(01:52):
signed the AI agreement. But there's Anderil, which is Palmer
Lucky's defense company. That one's working on military drum. Anyway,
considering Pallunteer's history, I'm a little bit skeptical regarding how
sincere their commitment to the responsible development of AI might be.
Maybe that's not fair, but again, I don't think predictive
(02:14):
policing is fair either. So we're all in the wrong here.
But let's get back to these commitments. Generally speaking, they
are some fairly broad promises to essentially not create malicious
or dangerous AI, at least not on purpose. It's largely
being looked at as sort of a placeholder while the
US Congress debates on any actual laws that would govern
(02:36):
the development and deployment of AI, because you know, the
president can't just make laws. That's the that's the job
of the legislative branch. The president will then you know,
sign a bill into law. But the president cannot make
laws on their own. So that's why this is, you know,
(02:57):
sort of these these wishy washy voluntary commitments. Still, I
guess it's better than nothing. Time will tell. I suppose
a big tech court case begins today in the United States.
So in this conna, we got the US Department of
Justice and their opponent from pot's unknown, well not unknown,
(03:18):
it was a garage in California. It's Google. So the
lawsuit in this case is a really big anti trust lawsuit.
So this has to do with monopolies, you know, not
the kind where if you rolled doubles you get to
go again. The last time the US government went after
a tech company like this was way back in nineteen
ninety eight. That's when initially US courts found Microsoft guilty
(03:42):
of violating the Sherman Anti Trust Act, and ultimately the
judgment was that the company would need to break up
into two different companies, one that focused on the operating
system and one that focused on software. But an appeals
court later took the teeth out of that. Microsoft was
allowed to remain a cohesive whole and continue to grow
(04:05):
and consolidate and such. Now Google is in the government's crosshairs.
The argument is that Google has used its dominant position
to maintain a stranglehold on the web search business. Now,
keep in mind, Google's real business is mostly about displaying ads.
It's just that web search results are the vehicle through
(04:27):
which Google serves ads, So the search part is kind
of like, it's sort of beside the point. The whole
business for Google is the ad business. But most analyzes
are suggesting that Google commands more than ninety percent of
the market share for web searches, So it definitely seems
(04:51):
like we're talking monopoly territory here. I mean, if more
than nine out of ten web searches are using your product,
I don't know how you can argue you don't hold
a monopoly. Google's lawyers argue that the company actually has
plenty of competition. I mean, you know, first of all,
you got bing. Everybody knows bing, right, But beyond that,
(05:14):
they argue that there are other services that serve a
similar purpose as web searches. It's just they're not obviously
web searches. So maybe it's a service like Yelp, where
you're using Yelp to figure out where you're going to
go eat out at night, or maybe it's a service
like Amazon where you're searching for a specific product to purchase.
(05:37):
And so Google's argument is like, that's our competition, right,
so therefore we're not a monopoly. There's all these other
services that are doing similar things. I don't think those
arguments are terribly convincing personally, but then I'm not a judge,
so maybe I would be persuaded if I were. Anyway,
this case is really just a determine if Google has
(05:58):
done anything that could be considered illegal, like if they
have broken the Sherman Antitrust Act or something like that.
If the trial determines that Google has done that, then
there will have to be another trial to figure out
what to do about Google. Also, I've said that name
so many times that my smart speaker is now listening
(06:20):
to me because I heard it chime a second ago.
So if you heard that, it's just a hazard of
the business. Now. Google is not the only big tech
company facing some legal scrutiny recently. Ashley Giovic, whose name
I know I'm butchering and I will continue to do so.
She was once an employee of Apple, and she has
(06:43):
brought several civil cases against Apple over the last couple
of years. So, in twenty twenty one, Apple fired her
and said that she had violated the company's intellectual property
policies and the company accused her of leaking proprietary information
to the public. However, before she was fired, she had
(07:05):
come forward as a whistleblower and she had complaints about
Apple's effects on the environment, saying that their environmental policy
was not reflective of what the company was actually doing.
She also argued that the company had severe problems of
harassment and discrimination within corporate culture. And so she says
(07:27):
that she was fired not because of supposedly leaking proprietary information,
but rather this was a retaliatory strike against her to
silence her after she came forward with these whistleblower complaints. Now,
retaliatory action is a pretty big no no for companies.
She then brought some civil cases against Apple. They have
slowly made their way through the system. She actually won
(07:50):
one of those cases and got a preliminary win in
another one. However, the state has been very slow, or
the courts, I should say, not just the state. The
court systems have been very slow, and there is a
statute of limitations on these civil cases, so that means
that her cases are actually going to expire, they will
(08:10):
no longer be viable. And it's not her fault because
she can't just make the investigations pick up the pace.
So she has now filed a civil lawsuit against Apple
to keep her efforts alive as she awaits the results
of various investigations looking into the claims of retaliation. The
lawsuit she has filed is a RICO lawsuit. RICO stands
(08:33):
for Racketeering, Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, So there are
federal RICO laws and there are state RICO laws here
in the United States. RICO laws add in some pretty
hefty penalties, but they only cover charges that are part
of the operations of a criminal organization. So it's for
(08:55):
very specific circumstances. You can't just use racketeering charges for anything.
It has to be this case within the realm of
operations of a criminal organization. And usually we see RICO
apply to stuff like gang's an organized crime. Famously, here
in Georgia we are seeing RICO charges applied to the
alleged conspiracy to overturn the results of the twenty twenty
(09:17):
election here in my home state. So her lawsuit against
Apple is essentially saying Apple is effectively operating like a
criminal organization. She posted a lengthy blog entry on this,
and I will quote the relevant RICO passage here. It's
a long quote, but it's a very long piece. So
here we go. Quote. If an employer terminates an employee
(09:38):
in a way that constitutes an indictable criminal act that
is on the enumerated list of predicate acts for RICO,
it can then establish a RICO case with additional related
predicate acts. Apple fired me in an egregious violation of
eighteen USC. Section fifteen twelve and fifteen thirteen, with me
(10:00):
me even complaining of witness intimidation. As they did the
deed with that predicate act, I was able to weave
in their additional violations of fifteen twelve and fifteen thirteen,
their wire fraud and mail fraud, my complaints about securities fraud,
and my complaints about state criminal bribery and extortion. This
(10:21):
also opened the door to include predicate acts of Tom
Moyer's criminal bribery charge, Nancy Heinen's securities fraud charges, and
gene Levoff's securities fraud convictions. I also found a surprising
doorway into integrating my toxic torte claims at Apple's many
environmental law violations, which I will write about in detail later.
(10:42):
End quote. And again, like I said, that's a very
long quote, but it's part of a much much longer
piece where she explains her process. No word yet on
how Apple will respond to this lawsuit, but yeah, this
is a This is a pretty hefty piece of lawsuit
to be brought up against Apple. Whether it goes anywhere,
who's to say, But we will see. Okay, I've got
(11:05):
a lot more news to cover before we get to that.
Let's take a quick break. This week, TikTok has rolled
out e commerce features on its platform in the United States,
so users in the US will now see a shop tab,
(11:27):
and it's so inclined they can use that to view
and purchase items, and it gives brands more incentives to
work with TikTok and to seek out influencers in the
space and to form strategic partnerships. And for folks who
are using TikTok, it means they can shop, shop, shop
till they tick TikTok or something. This is nothing new
in other parts of the world. TikTok has had similar
(11:48):
e commerce features live in places like the UK, Singapore, Malaysia,
the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam for a while now. So
it's interesting to me because business is clearly going on
for TikTok here in the US, even as we still
occasionally see various US government officials make efforts to shut
(12:10):
TikTok down or force it to be divested from its
parent company, byte Edance. So yeah, interesting stuff if you're
a TikTok user, now, y'all. I'm headed off to Vegas
in a little bit more than a week for a
work trip. Actually it's technically for two work trips, but
those work trips are back to back, so I just
(12:30):
made it one big one. So for one week, I'm
going to be recording in a hotel room in Las Vegas.
It's really living the lush life anyway. I'm going to
be staying at a place that is owned by MGM Resorts,
and that has me a little bit concerned because this
week the company experienced some sort of undefined quote unquote
cybersecurity issue. The issue has already been a pretty serious one.
(12:54):
The company had to replace its homepage with a message
explaining that its websites were now offline, and instead gave
people various phone numbers if they needed to talk with
someone at one of the MGM resorts to do things like,
you know, make a reservation or whatever. And while I'm
familiar with the Vegas properties under MGM, it turns out
(13:15):
this cybersecurity issue was organizationwide. It's not just the MGM
properties in Vegas. Also the ones in Atlantic City and
Detroit have had at least some effect with this too.
So according to a couple sites I was reading, some
digital keys stopped working. The resorts rewards program went offline.
(13:36):
That's a pretty big deal for lots of gamblers who
you know, they use those rewards programs to kind of
eke out every single potential benefit you can get from
gambling and shopping at a particular resort. And at least
some MGM operated casinos were having issues with their slot machines.
So these days, you know, most slot machines use digital
(13:57):
video rather than physical spools. There are some that still
use spools, but they're all commanded by a micro cheb.
But some pictures shared on X formerly known as Twitter,
showed slot machines that were offline. They had error messages
on their screens. Beyond that, apparently some ATMs were also offline,
and according to at least one X user, the cashier
(14:17):
window in an MGM resort had shut down as well,
which is a big ol' ouch. The rumor mill has
circulated that the issue might stem from a ransomware attack,
but no such confirmation has been made by MGM resorts itself.
Now let's pop on over to X slash Twitter for
a second. According to an analysis firm called news Whip,
(14:38):
it looks like X has been purposefully limiting the reach
of posts containing links to articles on the New York Times.
NewsWhip saw that starting in July, there was this precipitous
drop and how frequently New York Times articles were being
shared across X, and the engagement that New York Times
had on other social media platforms remained stable. So it
(15:02):
was just on X where this dip was happening. So
unless the population of X slash Twitter just started to
behave out of line with people everywhere else, it is
a somewhat understandable conclusion to assume that X has done
something behind the scenes to limit the spread of New
York Times material across the platform. If we assume that
(15:24):
X is intentionally limiting the reach of New York Times articles,
it does once again seem to go against Elon Musk's
claimed commitment to free speech. Now, I know I say
this a lot, but I'm going to say it again anyway.
To me, it seems that Musk's idea of free speech
is only applicable to speech that he agrees with, and
(15:44):
everything else is fair game. Anyway. As far as I
can tell, The Times has yet to receive an explanation
as to why there's been this big change in engagement
and traffic on X and that it quote would be
concerned by targeted pressure applied to any news organization for
unclear reasons end quote over at a different Musk company,
(16:05):
that being Tesla. It appears that there was a bit
of a mutiny going on in the last few years,
kind of low key mutiny in the grand scheme of things.
Auto Blog reported on this, citing biographer Walter Isaacson, who
is releasing a biography about Musk this week. Apparently, Franz
von Holtzhausen, who serves as design chief at Tesla told
(16:29):
Isaacson that some engineers within Tesla really hated the design
of the cyber truck. I'll remind you the cyber truck
was announced in twenty nineteen kind of to hilarious results,
and yet has not reached a single customer, although theoretically
they could be coming out any day now. We actually
don't really have that much real information about specs and
(16:50):
capability of this vehicle, which is odd considering how close
it supposedly is to being delivered. You know, last we
heard it was going to be shipped by the end
of the month. Anyway, back to the story, So apparently
these designers took issue with the proposed cyber truck back
in the design phase and decided that they would not
be a part of it. Instead, they secretly began designing
(17:11):
their own electric pickup truck. Now, whatever happened to those designs,
or even whatever happened to the people who made them,
I can't say. I can't say. The cyber truck continues
to be a divisive topic in general. Some folks kind
of dig the weird angular body, others absolutely hate it.
I'm kind of indifferent with it. I'm more interested in
a company's ability to hold itself to deadlines and schedules,
(17:34):
which I imagine is a lot easier when the person
in charge isn't as mercurial as Musk appears to be.
The state of California has passed a bill that effectively
will ban autonomous heavy duty vehicles that operate on public
roads if those vehicles don't have a human being ready
to take over in an instant. So essentially, this bill,
(17:57):
if passed into law, will ban autonomous trucking at least
any autonomous trucking that doesn't also have a human driver
in addition to the autonomous systems. It passed the state
Senate thirty six to two. Now it goes to California
Governor Gavin Newsom's desks. If he signs the bill, then
it will become law. However, Newsom has a history of
(18:19):
siding with tech companies. He's very tech company friendly, so
it's possible he'll choose to veto the measure. In fact,
all indications seem to suggest that's what he will do.
The bill is kind of at the center of an ongoing,
heated debate within California, So you've got people who represent
the interest of truckers, you know, like Teamster Unions who
(18:41):
argue that companies that are in the autonomous vehicle space,
who have been pushing for autonomous trucking are doing so
without having a proven safety record, and that it's largely
an attempt to appeal to shareholders, to appeal to investors
to say, hey, look, we're getting ready to jump into
(19:03):
full deployment now because it's been such a slow process
of having the technology evolve over time that this has
taken longer than these companies anticipated, and in order to
give their investors something to hold on to, they're saying,
all right, we're going to jump into operations. And so
that's why Teamster Unions say that they are behind the
(19:25):
bill that would ban this. They also, of course point
out that it could have a huge negative impact on
the trucking industry as far as the truckers themselves are concerned,
it could take away their livelihoods. So the bill calls
for more extensive studies on vehicle performance and safety, and
the California Department of Motor Vehicles would have to make
(19:46):
a determination as to how safe or unsafe the tech
was by January first, twenty twenty nine, or after five
years of testing, whichever comes first. The DMV is not
thrilled with that measure. They have argued that it would
have a chilling effect innovation. If Newsom does veto the
bill as expected, it would require a two thirds majority
in both the California Senate and the state Assembly to
(20:09):
override the veto and pass it into law. That hasn't
happened since nineteen seventy nine. But based on what I'm seeing,
the California Assembly voted in favor initially sixty nine to
four when they first passed this bill, and the Senate
approved it thirty six to two. So really the support
is there if they wanted to try and override a veto.
I just don't know if they would want to do that. Okay,
(20:32):
that's it for the news for Tuesday, September twelfth, twenty
twenty three. I hope you're all well, and I'll talk
to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(20:55):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. He
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey therein
Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech are you?
It's time for the tech news for Tuesday, September twelfth,
twenty twenty three. So here in the United States, the
(00:27):
White House has proposed commitments on how to go about
developing and then deploying various artificial intelligence products. These are
voluntary commitments, so there's no law or anything here. It's
nothing holding anyone to these things. It's more like a
pledge that AI companies will promise to do their very
(00:48):
best not to release AI products that actively make life worse.
That kind of thing anyway. Several companies have already signed
this pledge, and some joined the group this week. The
new ones that joined include IBM and Adobe and Nvidia.
This follows other really big companies like Google and Microsoft,
(01:10):
along with open Ai, who signed to obey these commitments
back in July. Another one that signed this week, perhaps
a bit surprisingly, was a Palenteer. And what is it
with scary tech companies taking their names from JRR Tolkien works?
Because Pallenteer comes from Lord of the Rings, and that's
(01:31):
a software company that has associations with stuff like predictive policing,
think like Minority Report, but without the psychics. They also
do deep analytics to look at things like crime statistics
and potential terrorism and things like that. Then you've got
another Tolkien based defense company. This is not one that
(01:52):
signed the AI agreement. But there's Anderil, which is Palmer
Lucky's defense company. That one's working on military drum. Anyway,
considering Pallunteer's history, I'm a little bit skeptical regarding how
sincere their commitment to the responsible development of AI might be.
Maybe that's not fair, but again, I don't think predictive
(02:14):
policing is fair either. So we're all in the wrong here.
But let's get back to these commitments. Generally speaking, they
are some fairly broad promises to essentially not create malicious
or dangerous AI, at least not on purpose. It's largely
being looked at as sort of a placeholder while the
US Congress debates on any actual laws that would govern
(02:36):
the development and deployment of AI, because you know, the
president can't just make laws. That's the that's the job
of the legislative branch. The president will then you know,
sign a bill into law. But the president cannot make
laws on their own. So that's why this is, you know,
(02:57):
sort of these these wishy washy voluntary commitments. Still, I
guess it's better than nothing. Time will tell. I suppose
a big tech court case begins today in the United States.
So in this conna, we got the US Department of
Justice and their opponent from pot's unknown, well not unknown,
(03:18):
it was a garage in California. It's Google. So the
lawsuit in this case is a really big anti trust lawsuit.
So this has to do with monopolies, you know, not
the kind where if you rolled doubles you get to
go again. The last time the US government went after
a tech company like this was way back in nineteen
ninety eight. That's when initially US courts found Microsoft guilty
(03:42):
of violating the Sherman Anti Trust Act, and ultimately the
judgment was that the company would need to break up
into two different companies, one that focused on the operating
system and one that focused on software. But an appeals
court later took the teeth out of that. Microsoft was
allowed to remain a cohesive whole and continue to grow
(04:05):
and consolidate and such. Now Google is in the government's crosshairs.
The argument is that Google has used its dominant position
to maintain a stranglehold on the web search business. Now,
keep in mind, Google's real business is mostly about displaying ads.
It's just that web search results are the vehicle through
(04:27):
which Google serves ads, So the search part is kind
of like, it's sort of beside the point. The whole
business for Google is the ad business. But most analyzes
are suggesting that Google commands more than ninety percent of
the market share for web searches, So it definitely seems
(04:51):
like we're talking monopoly territory here. I mean, if more
than nine out of ten web searches are using your product,
I don't know how you can argue you don't hold
a monopoly. Google's lawyers argue that the company actually has
plenty of competition. I mean, you know, first of all,
you got bing. Everybody knows bing, right, But beyond that,
(05:14):
they argue that there are other services that serve a
similar purpose as web searches. It's just they're not obviously
web searches. So maybe it's a service like Yelp, where
you're using Yelp to figure out where you're going to
go eat out at night, or maybe it's a service
like Amazon where you're searching for a specific product to purchase.
(05:37):
And so Google's argument is like, that's our competition, right,
so therefore we're not a monopoly. There's all these other
services that are doing similar things. I don't think those
arguments are terribly convincing personally, but then I'm not a judge,
so maybe I would be persuaded if I were. Anyway,
this case is really just a determine if Google has
(05:58):
done anything that could be considered illegal, like if they
have broken the Sherman Antitrust Act or something like that.
If the trial determines that Google has done that, then
there will have to be another trial to figure out
what to do about Google. Also, I've said that name
so many times that my smart speaker is now listening
(06:20):
to me because I heard it chime a second ago.
So if you heard that, it's just a hazard of
the business. Now. Google is not the only big tech
company facing some legal scrutiny recently. Ashley Giovic, whose name
I know I'm butchering and I will continue to do so.
She was once an employee of Apple, and she has
(06:43):
brought several civil cases against Apple over the last couple
of years. So, in twenty twenty one, Apple fired her
and said that she had violated the company's intellectual property
policies and the company accused her of leaking proprietary information
to the public. However, before she was fired, she had
(07:05):
come forward as a whistleblower and she had complaints about
Apple's effects on the environment, saying that their environmental policy
was not reflective of what the company was actually doing.
She also argued that the company had severe problems of
harassment and discrimination within corporate culture. And so she says
(07:27):
that she was fired not because of supposedly leaking proprietary information,
but rather this was a retaliatory strike against her to
silence her after she came forward with these whistleblower complaints. Now,
retaliatory action is a pretty big no no for companies.
She then brought some civil cases against Apple. They have
slowly made their way through the system. She actually won
(07:50):
one of those cases and got a preliminary win in
another one. However, the state has been very slow, or
the courts, I should say, not just the state. The
court systems have been very slow, and there is a
statute of limitations on these civil cases, so that means
that her cases are actually going to expire, they will
(08:10):
no longer be viable. And it's not her fault because
she can't just make the investigations pick up the pace.
So she has now filed a civil lawsuit against Apple
to keep her efforts alive as she awaits the results
of various investigations looking into the claims of retaliation. The
lawsuit she has filed is a RICO lawsuit. RICO stands
(08:33):
for Racketeering, Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, So there are
federal RICO laws and there are state RICO laws here
in the United States. RICO laws add in some pretty
hefty penalties, but they only cover charges that are part
of the operations of a criminal organization. So it's for
(08:55):
very specific circumstances. You can't just use racketeering charges for anything.
It has to be this case within the realm of
operations of a criminal organization. And usually we see RICO
apply to stuff like gang's an organized crime. Famously, here
in Georgia we are seeing RICO charges applied to the
alleged conspiracy to overturn the results of the twenty twenty
(09:17):
election here in my home state. So her lawsuit against
Apple is essentially saying Apple is effectively operating like a
criminal organization. She posted a lengthy blog entry on this,
and I will quote the relevant RICO passage here. It's
a long quote, but it's a very long piece. So
here we go. Quote. If an employer terminates an employee
(09:38):
in a way that constitutes an indictable criminal act that
is on the enumerated list of predicate acts for RICO,
it can then establish a RICO case with additional related
predicate acts. Apple fired me in an egregious violation of
eighteen USC. Section fifteen twelve and fifteen thirteen, with me
(10:00):
me even complaining of witness intimidation. As they did the
deed with that predicate act, I was able to weave
in their additional violations of fifteen twelve and fifteen thirteen,
their wire fraud and mail fraud, my complaints about securities fraud,
and my complaints about state criminal bribery and extortion. This
(10:21):
also opened the door to include predicate acts of Tom
Moyer's criminal bribery charge, Nancy Heinen's securities fraud charges, and
gene Levoff's securities fraud convictions. I also found a surprising
doorway into integrating my toxic torte claims at Apple's many
environmental law violations, which I will write about in detail later.
(10:42):
End quote. And again, like I said, that's a very
long quote, but it's part of a much much longer
piece where she explains her process. No word yet on
how Apple will respond to this lawsuit, but yeah, this
is a This is a pretty hefty piece of lawsuit
to be brought up against Apple. Whether it goes anywhere,
who's to say, But we will see. Okay, I've got
(11:05):
a lot more news to cover before we get to that.
Let's take a quick break. This week, TikTok has rolled
out e commerce features on its platform in the United States,
so users in the US will now see a shop tab,
(11:27):
and it's so inclined they can use that to view
and purchase items, and it gives brands more incentives to
work with TikTok and to seek out influencers in the
space and to form strategic partnerships. And for folks who
are using TikTok, it means they can shop, shop, shop
till they tick TikTok or something. This is nothing new
in other parts of the world. TikTok has had similar
(11:48):
e commerce features live in places like the UK, Singapore, Malaysia,
the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam for a while now. So
it's interesting to me because business is clearly going on
for TikTok here in the US, even as we still
occasionally see various US government officials make efforts to shut
(12:10):
TikTok down or force it to be divested from its
parent company, byte Edance. So yeah, interesting stuff if you're
a TikTok user, now, y'all. I'm headed off to Vegas
in a little bit more than a week for a
work trip. Actually it's technically for two work trips, but
those work trips are back to back, so I just
(12:30):
made it one big one. So for one week, I'm
going to be recording in a hotel room in Las Vegas.
It's really living the lush life anyway. I'm going to
be staying at a place that is owned by MGM Resorts,
and that has me a little bit concerned because this
week the company experienced some sort of undefined quote unquote
cybersecurity issue. The issue has already been a pretty serious one.
(12:54):
The company had to replace its homepage with a message
explaining that its websites were now offline, and instead gave
people various phone numbers if they needed to talk with
someone at one of the MGM resorts to do things like,
you know, make a reservation or whatever. And while I'm
familiar with the Vegas properties under MGM, it turns out
(13:15):
this cybersecurity issue was organizationwide. It's not just the MGM
properties in Vegas. Also the ones in Atlantic City and
Detroit have had at least some effect with this too.
So according to a couple sites I was reading, some
digital keys stopped working. The resorts rewards program went offline.
(13:36):
That's a pretty big deal for lots of gamblers who
you know, they use those rewards programs to kind of
eke out every single potential benefit you can get from
gambling and shopping at a particular resort. And at least
some MGM operated casinos were having issues with their slot machines.
So these days, you know, most slot machines use digital
(13:57):
video rather than physical spools. There are some that still
use spools, but they're all commanded by a micro cheb.
But some pictures shared on X formerly known as Twitter,
showed slot machines that were offline. They had error messages
on their screens. Beyond that, apparently some ATMs were also offline,
and according to at least one X user, the cashier
(14:17):
window in an MGM resort had shut down as well,
which is a big ol' ouch. The rumor mill has
circulated that the issue might stem from a ransomware attack,
but no such confirmation has been made by MGM resorts itself.
Now let's pop on over to X slash Twitter for
a second. According to an analysis firm called news Whip,
(14:38):
it looks like X has been purposefully limiting the reach
of posts containing links to articles on the New York Times.
NewsWhip saw that starting in July, there was this precipitous
drop and how frequently New York Times articles were being
shared across X, and the engagement that New York Times
had on other social media platforms remained stable. So it
(15:02):
was just on X where this dip was happening. So
unless the population of X slash Twitter just started to
behave out of line with people everywhere else, it is
a somewhat understandable conclusion to assume that X has done
something behind the scenes to limit the spread of New
York Times material across the platform. If we assume that
(15:24):
X is intentionally limiting the reach of New York Times articles,
it does once again seem to go against Elon Musk's
claimed commitment to free speech. Now, I know I say
this a lot, but I'm going to say it again anyway.
To me, it seems that Musk's idea of free speech
is only applicable to speech that he agrees with, and
(15:44):
everything else is fair game. Anyway. As far as I
can tell, The Times has yet to receive an explanation
as to why there's been this big change in engagement
and traffic on X and that it quote would be
concerned by targeted pressure applied to any news organization for
unclear reasons end quote over at a different Musk company,
(16:05):
that being Tesla. It appears that there was a bit
of a mutiny going on in the last few years,
kind of low key mutiny in the grand scheme of things.
Auto Blog reported on this, citing biographer Walter Isaacson, who
is releasing a biography about Musk this week. Apparently, Franz
von Holtzhausen, who serves as design chief at Tesla told
(16:29):
Isaacson that some engineers within Tesla really hated the design
of the cyber truck. I'll remind you the cyber truck
was announced in twenty nineteen kind of to hilarious results,
and yet has not reached a single customer, although theoretically
they could be coming out any day now. We actually
don't really have that much real information about specs and
(16:50):
capability of this vehicle, which is odd considering how close
it supposedly is to being delivered. You know, last we
heard it was going to be shipped by the end
of the month. Anyway, back to the story, So apparently
these designers took issue with the proposed cyber truck back
in the design phase and decided that they would not
be a part of it. Instead, they secretly began designing
(17:11):
their own electric pickup truck. Now, whatever happened to those designs,
or even whatever happened to the people who made them,
I can't say. I can't say. The cyber truck continues
to be a divisive topic in general. Some folks kind
of dig the weird angular body, others absolutely hate it.
I'm kind of indifferent with it. I'm more interested in
a company's ability to hold itself to deadlines and schedules,
(17:34):
which I imagine is a lot easier when the person
in charge isn't as mercurial as Musk appears to be.
The state of California has passed a bill that effectively
will ban autonomous heavy duty vehicles that operate on public
roads if those vehicles don't have a human being ready
to take over in an instant. So essentially, this bill,
(17:57):
if passed into law, will ban autonomous trucking at least
any autonomous trucking that doesn't also have a human driver
in addition to the autonomous systems. It passed the state
Senate thirty six to two. Now it goes to California
Governor Gavin Newsom's desks. If he signs the bill, then
it will become law. However, Newsom has a history of
(18:19):
siding with tech companies. He's very tech company friendly, so
it's possible he'll choose to veto the measure. In fact,
all indications seem to suggest that's what he will do.
The bill is kind of at the center of an ongoing,
heated debate within California, So you've got people who represent
the interest of truckers, you know, like Teamster Unions who
(18:41):
argue that companies that are in the autonomous vehicle space,
who have been pushing for autonomous trucking are doing so
without having a proven safety record, and that it's largely
an attempt to appeal to shareholders, to appeal to investors
to say, hey, look, we're getting ready to jump into
(19:03):
full deployment now because it's been such a slow process
of having the technology evolve over time that this has
taken longer than these companies anticipated, and in order to
give their investors something to hold on to, they're saying,
all right, we're going to jump into operations. And so
that's why Teamster Unions say that they are behind the
(19:25):
bill that would ban this. They also, of course point
out that it could have a huge negative impact on
the trucking industry as far as the truckers themselves are concerned,
it could take away their livelihoods. So the bill calls
for more extensive studies on vehicle performance and safety, and
the California Department of Motor Vehicles would have to make
(19:46):
a determination as to how safe or unsafe the tech
was by January first, twenty twenty nine, or after five
years of testing, whichever comes first. The DMV is not
thrilled with that measure. They have argued that it would
have a chilling effect innovation. If Newsom does veto the
bill as expected, it would require a two thirds majority
in both the California Senate and the state Assembly to
(20:09):
override the veto and pass it into law. That hasn't
happened since nineteen seventy nine. But based on what I'm seeing,
the California Assembly voted in favor initially sixty nine to
four when they first passed this bill, and the Senate
approved it thirty six to two. So really the support
is there if they wanted to try and override a veto.
I just don't know if they would want to do that. Okay,
(20:32):
that's it for the news for Tuesday, September twelfth, twenty
twenty three. I hope you're all well, and I'll talk
to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. He
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