July 14, 2022 • 27 mins
Apple and Jony Ive's design company have chosen not to extend a contract, meaning for the first time in 30 years Apple will be without Ive's influence in design. Also, more than 500 women sue Uber over the violence they experienced from drivers.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
And how the tech are Yet It's time for the
tech news for Thursday, July two thousand twenty two. Happy
(00:25):
Best Steal day, everybody. Let's get to the news. A
huge story this week, at least in my mind, is
that famous designer Johnny I've will no longer be designing
for Apple, all right, so let's give a quick rundown
for those who are unfamiliar with I've. He started at
Apple in the early nine nineties. This was an Apple
(00:48):
that lacked Steve Jobs because jobs have essentially been pushed
out of the company in and he would not come
back until I've had studied design all his life. His
father was a silversmith and his grandfather was an engineer,
so it kind of ran in the family. And when
Steve Jobs returned to Apple in ven and subsequently was
(01:12):
put in charge of the company, he and I've formed
a type of partnership that would redefine Apple's look, and
it would bring the company from the verge of bankruptcy
into an unprecedented era of success. So I've worked on
tons of iconic Apple products, including the colorful iMac line.
(01:32):
You might not remember these. These were like the CRT
monitor Imax, so they look like old televisions, but they
had these very colorful shells on them, really vibrant ones,
and everyone just wanted one because they looked cool and friendly.
I've spent countless hours on design, looking at stuff like
(01:53):
individual materials and testing out those materials to make sure
that they would hold what his design called for properly
and create the aesthetic he was going after. He would
obsess over the curve of an iPhone or the way
an Apple watch band would look on someone's wrist. It
is not an exaggeration to say that a lot of
(02:13):
Apple's appeal came out of Ive's work and input. Now,
I don't want to overstate things here either. Obviously, there
are a lot of other factors with Apple that are important,
and I've led an entire department of designers who all
contributed to the success of the company. It wasn't just
one guy, but during the first decade of the two
(02:36):
thousand's jobs and I've would be two of the most
prominent figures at Apple, things, however, would change after Jobs
passed away in two thousand eleven. Tim Cook, who was
Steve Job's successor as CEO, has a very different approach
to leadership than Jobs did. Cook is a financial genius,
(02:57):
and he's well known for his ability to find new
ways to generate revenue while also limiting costs. But Cook
isn't really known for being innovative with products, nor is
he the salesman that Jobs was. That's just not who
Cook is. His strengths lie elsewhere, and while Cook would
lead Apple to unprecedented profits, the press and Apple fans
(03:20):
began to worry that Apple was kind of losing its mojo,
that it was falling behind in technical and design innovation.
I've gradually began to step back from his work. In
twenty nineteen, he actually left Apple and founded a design
company called Love From, along with a fellow former Apple
designer named Mark Newsson. But even then, Apple would be
(03:44):
Love From his chief client, and the two companies signed
a three year deal rumored to be valued at around
a hundred million dollars, where Love From would do a
lot of design work for Apple, in some cases exclusively
for Apple because the agreement meant that love From was
not supposed to work for any kind of company that
(04:04):
competed against Apple in certain categories. Now, reportedly, Apple and
love From have decided not to extend that three year contract.
The contract terms her up and they appear to have said,
you know what, We're gonna walk away. That means that
for the first time in thirty years, Apple will really
be moving forward without any of ives involvement in the
(04:27):
design of its products. So does this mean that Apple's
aesthetic is going to hold steady or are we actually
going to see a shift. Will some other genius step
forward and guide Apple's design in a new direction, or
will the team with an Apple do its best to
kind of eight ives preferences. For some folks, the severing
(04:48):
of this relationship is kind of a warning flag that
Apple is going to gradually lose its appeal as a
company that designs sexy and appealing technology that you just
immediately want to pay cup in your own hands when
you see it. That's how I think of a lot
of Apple's products, even though I don't own many of them.
When I see those presentations, invariably I'm like, man, I
(05:10):
want to get my hands on that and see what
it feels like. I think I will have to do
a full profile episode about Johnny. I've before too long,
so I'm not gonna go into any further detail here,
but i will say it is a pretty remarkable end
of an era. Now let's move on to Twitter. The
(05:31):
company officially sued Elon Musk in a Delaware court over
the issue of Musk trying to back out of his
deal to acquire Twitter. The filing is reportedly sixty two
pages long, and The Atlantic has a great rundown about
the lawsuit, including opinions on why Musk's arguments are aren't
likely to hold up in court. Uh namely that Musk
(05:53):
is arguing that a flood of bots on Twitter means
the platform is significantly overvalued, which Musk's team argue is
enough to allow Musk to back out of the deal.
The article has the title Elon Musk is a Nightmare client.
The piece also points out some ironic features in the lawsuit,
namely that the filing portrays Musk as a capricious and
(06:16):
petty person and someone that you probably wouldn't want to
be in charge of your company. But the whole purpose
of the lawsuit is to force Musk to go through
with this acquisition deal and to purchase Twitter. So it's
kind of like saying, this guy's a joke. He should
not be running a company, and that's why you can't
take his excuses for why he can't run our company seriously,
(06:39):
So make him run our company. It's a mad, mad,
mad mad mad world, y'all. And of course it gets
better and the filing, Twitter revealed that part of the
deal it made with Musk was that the company would
not impede Musk's ability to tweet. He could tweet all
he liked. However, he was not to disparage Twitter or
(07:00):
its representatives because that would be in violation of the agreement.
So it is possible that when Musk tweeted a poop
emoji at Twitter, that that would eventually come back and
haunt him and be used against him in a court
of law. This is the world we live in now,
where a poop emoji becomes evidence. This is where we
(07:23):
are at as a society. None of the science fiction
authors predicted this, So Musk tweeting out negative things about
Twitter and its representatives violates this agreement, which Twitter then
argues means that Musk has forfeited his right to terminate
the agreement, and it gets juicier from there, And at
least from an outsider's perspective, I would say that it
(07:44):
looks like Twitter has the upper hand going into this litigation.
But I am no expert, and Elon Musk has proven
to be a slippery character on numerous occasions, so I'm
not confident that he's out of serious trouble or as
in serious trouble. I honestly can't tell one way or
the other it is. It's a mystery to me, but
(08:05):
it's an entertaining one. Now, let's stay Muskie for a
couple of stories and talk about the SpaceX Rocket booster
mishap earlier this week. Actually meant to cover this on
Tuesday's episode because it happened on Monday. Then. It was
in Texas where a SpaceX Starship Booster rocket burst into
flames during a ground test firing. Now, this was part
(08:26):
of a regimen of fire tests with this booster, and
it's safe to say this particular test was a failure.
Musk himself acknowledged that the outcome was quote unquote not
good on Twitter, and must later said it appeared that
some unburned propellant from the raptor two engines of the Starship.
The starship has thirty three of these kinds of engines,
(08:47):
that that was the cause of the fire. As of
this recording, the teams are still assessing the causes and
the damage. The exterior structure of the booster appears to
be in pretty good shape, but I've yet to see
official word about the condition of the engines themselves now.
Originally SpaceX hoped to have a test orbital flight of
the Starship by the end of this month. That seems
(09:08):
unlikely now, but again, there's been no official word as
of this recording about when the company expects to conduct
the test. I think the takeaway here is that rocket
science is hard. I mean, it's not brain surgery. And
over at Tesla, the company is saying goodbye to its
top executive in its AI department, Andre Caparthi, who has
(09:29):
served as director for Tesla's autopilot vision team, has announced
he is leaving Tesla. He has been part of the
company for five years, and this comes as Tesla faces
scrutiny from the US government regarding the safety of the
autopilot feature in general, which has been cited as a
factor in some notable accidents, including some traffic accidents that
(09:50):
resulted in fatalities. It's also a time when Tesla as
a whole has been laying off workers. The company recently
closed at San Mateo office after laying off most of
the workforce there and transferring the remaining staff to other offices.
So is this a further indication that Tesla might be
in a bit of a sticky situation. I just don't know.
(10:12):
I mean, I'm not sure what Caparthi's motivations were for
leaving the company. It could just be that he wants
a break, or maybe he wants a new challenge in
his career. I don't want to read too much into it,
is what I'm saying. All Right, We've got more news
stories to cover today, but before we get to that,
let's take a quick break. We're back Earlier this week,
(10:40):
I talked about how a whistle blower leaked more than
a hundred twenty thousand internal documents from Uber to the press.
Those documents covered Uber activities between two thousand thirteen and
two thousand seventeen, and mostly documented stuff that we already knew,
just in much greater detail than we were aware of,
namely that Uber took to some pretty aggressive tactics in
(11:03):
order to expand into various markets, including but not limited
to being pretty loosey goosey with local laws in an
effort to one established business and to then change the
laws in Uber's favor. Now I have more news about Uber,
and it's grim. A group of more than five women
(11:24):
have brought a lawsuit against Uber, alleging that they had
been victims of violence from Uber drivers, ranging from sexual
harassment to kidnapping to rape. The list of accusations is
absolutely horrifying, and the women claimed that Uber did too
little to prevent sexual predators from working as drivers for
(11:44):
the company despite being aware of the issue. That's about
where we are right now. I'm sure we'll hear a
lot more about this as the case moves on. But yeah,
that is a terrible, terrible story, and I'll keep an
eye on and how it develops. Ring, the smart doorbell
and security camera company that's owned by Amazon, recently released
(12:07):
a transparency report in which the company revealed that in
one it had received three thousand, one hundred forty seven
legal demands from various law enforcement agencies to hand over
surveillance footage that had been gathered from the smart doorbell
cameras and security cameras, so essentially turning customer cameras into
(12:31):
law enforcements surveillance cameras. Now that number of requests is
up from around nineteen hundred demands back in, or an
increase of around sixty and out of those three thousand
seven demands, more than eighty five percent of them were
accompanied by a court issued order such as a search warrant. However,
(12:53):
Ring said that it turned over data as in footage,
and only around four out of every ten demands when
you average it all out. So while of these demands
had a court order attached to them, were the ones
that Ring actually handed information over. I'm not really sure
(13:14):
how this all shook out properly, but in addition to that,
Ring also received two thousand, seven seventy four preservation orders.
Now that's when a law enforcement agency asks Amazon to
hold onto data for up to six months while that
agency attempts to secure a warrant or other court order
(13:34):
that would be necessary to demand access to the footage. So,
in other words, this is an agency saying, hey, don't
delete this customer's data anytime soon, we might need access
to it. On top of that, Amazon shared footage with
police at least eleven times without any kind of warrant
or court order at all, something that the company had
(13:56):
previously indicated to customers wouldn't happen. The message to consumers
is that Amazon is not going to hand over footage
to police unless they have a court order to do so.
But it turns out that in cases of emergency, essentially
when someone somewhere determines that there's imminent danger, Amazon can
(14:17):
share information to police, and that has led some critics
to protest the practice. They say it sets a precedent
and it could allow for future mission creep, meaning once
you establish that there is an exception to the rules,
it can be easy to have that exception expand over time.
And since this is a massive invasion of privacy and
(14:41):
potentially a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution,
which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, that is a
significant problem. Yesterday, U S courts convicted former CIA employee
Joshua Schultz on nine charges relating to leaking classified information.
(15:01):
Who boy, this story is filled with a whole bunch
of awful stuff. So first, Schult used to work at
the CIA as a software engineer. In twenty fifteen, Schulton
filed a restraining order against one of his co workers
in the CIA. Filed this restraining order in state court.
The two people, Schulton this co worker had been in
(15:23):
what CNN would describe as a feud. They got sent
to different offices as a result. And then, according to
prosecutors in this case, Schultz got angry at his employer,
the CIA, when the agency started looking into bringing in
a contractor to design a tool that was similar to
one that Schultz himself was already working on, and that
(15:45):
this sent Schultz on a vindictive path. So, according to prosecutors,
Schult then stole several cyber tools belonging to the CIA
and then sent those tools to Wiki Leaks, the nonprofit
organization meant to serve as sort of a clearing house
for whistleblowers. Schult left the CIA in t sixteen. He
got arrested in t seventeen on charges of possessing child pornography.
(16:10):
Around that same time, Wiki Leaks began to publish what
would become known as the Vault seven leaks, the largest
leak of data in CIA's history. Prosecutors said that those
leaks originated from two programs that Schult was able to access,
which implies that the tools Shult handed over to Wiki
(16:30):
Leaks made the Vault seven leaks possible. While Schultz was
being investigated and prosecuted for the child pornography charges, he
then also was charged with leaking this classified information. He
had an initial trial that ended back in twenty but
it ended with a mistrial. The government chose to retry
the case, and that concluded yesterday on July two. That
(16:55):
one ended with Schult being convicted on those counts of
leaking classified information. He has yet to be sentenced, but
this incident has become known, as I said, as the
largest leak of CIA information in history. All right, let's
move on to something less grim, at least for anyone
who doesn't happen to be Google or YouTube. Tech Crunch
(17:18):
reports that the utes today are spending way more time
on TikTok than they are on YouTube, and I think
that comes as a surprise to nobody. VidCon, for example,
Vidcan is a big conference that focuses on online video
and traditionally, UH the big attraction of vidcan was the
(17:39):
attendance of YouTube content creators. Well, this past VidCon it
was very clear that the focus had switched from YouTube
to TikTok. Not that there weren't still YouTube creators there
there were, but that TikTok was largely the main attraction
at VIDCA this year. So that's a pretty strong example
(18:02):
of where the trend is going. I'll tech Crunch employeed
a research team from Q Studio. That's qu s t
u d i oh. That's a company that makes parental
control software. And according to Q studios data, gen Z
and jen Alpha users typically spend somewhere around nine minutes
on average per day watching content on TikTok and fifty
(18:26):
six minutes per on average per day watching content on YouTube.
So there would be about two and a half hours
of watching stuff online from just those two sources. But
considering how much television I soaked up when I was
a kid, I can't get judge about any of this anyway.
The data shows what I think a lot of folks
already knew at younger generations are gravitating more towards the
(18:47):
short form content of TikTok than moving on to what
you would find on YouTube and It's why a lot
of platforms, including YouTube itself, have promoted features that present
content in shorter formats, essentially trying to mimic what TikTok
is doing on YouTube. It's literally called YouTube shorts, and
(19:09):
the goal there is to serve as kind of a
means of discovery so that users will see shorts that
attract them. They watch the short and then they'll say,
you know what, I'm gonna go and find the video
that this came from, the longer form video and watch
that too. Meanwhile, according to Business Insider, Google's s VP
prob Hoker rock Hoven said at a conference, the younger
(19:32):
audiences are turning to TikTok and Instagram to perform searches
rather than using Google to do though now that doesn't
necessarily mean that kids are using TikTok to do research
for homework or anything like that, though maybe that's the case. Instead,
the example given was more like you're trying to figure
out where you want to go to grab lunch, and
(19:54):
that kids these days will look to TikTok and Instagram
to find out, you know, goods aggestions as opposed to
using Google Search. So anyway, that's something Google wants to
address it, wants to develop new tools that will appeal
to younger users so that they'll use Google for search. Meanwhile,
I'm sitting over here thinking I need to start a
TikTok account where I dress up in various quasi historical
(20:16):
outfits and do quick lessons on stuff like American history
and Shakespeare or whatever. I could be the cliffs Notes
of TikTok, except I'm sure that already exists, probably in
multiple channels, but maybe I should do it. Anyway, while
I think about that, let's take another quick break and
we'll be back with a couple more stories. Okay, we
(20:43):
got a couple of stories to close out this episode.
First up, The Register reports that a letter signed by
executives at some of the biggest tech companies in the world,
which include Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta, among others,
encourages state leaders to introduce computer science lessons for students
(21:03):
in elementary, middle and high school here in the United States.
So the letter calls for kids to be given the
opportunity to learn the basics of computer science early on,
including eventually how to code, with classes becoming more complex
and in depth at higher grade levels. I think This
is a great idea. Getting a grounding and computer science
(21:25):
is practical, and it also means that students will learn
to put other skills to use. Plus, it will mean
that students who move on to colleges and universities will
already have a fundamental understanding before they jump into computer
science classes. That is critical. Computer science has advanced so
much in such a relatively short time that it can
(21:45):
be pretty challenging for students who have little to no
background in the subject to make progress at the university level. Plus,
computer science encourages students to learn problem solving skills like
critical thinking skills, breaking problems down own in a way
where you can approach a solution that can be applied
outside the discipline of computer science. It's a really powerful
(22:08):
tool to have in your arsenal and it's something that
I wish I had had access to back when I
was a kid. You know, when I was going to
high school, the most advanced class we had in our
computer lab was data entry, right, that was that was
the peak. That's as far as you could go. I
actually ended up taking an additional course in the computer
(22:30):
lab that wasn't even offered officially. I had to get
special permission to do it rather than take some other elective.
And it turned out that I end up teaching the
class at least a portion of the class that were
on the IBM computers because the teacher of my computer
lab was more familiar with Apple computers, so that's what
(22:51):
she focused on. Uh. Turns out I didn't do a
whole lot other than like again, data entry and word processing.
So even though I was put in charge, I didn't
get to really advance my knowledge that much. And I
consider that real, you know, a real failure of the
school system, if I'm being honest, because it would have
(23:11):
been great to have had access to better educational tools
to get into computer science, even just a little bit,
because again in my case, it didn't happen at all.
Who is literally superficial applications of computers, nothing important about
the computers themselves. So the letter also stresses the importance
(23:34):
of fostering new generations of computer scientists because it will
be a critical component for the workplace in general. That's
clearly been the case for a while. It's also critical
for U S strategy to have experts and computer science.
You do not want the country to fall behind in
that regard. In fact, a lot of people have argued
that China is already well ahead of the United States
(23:56):
at this point, and that if we don't start addressing
this issue, then we will be hopelessly left behind. The
letter also calls leaders to make certain that such classes
are available to all students everywhere, including those belonging to
classically underserved communities. And I really hope that the letter
helps spur some action across the States. I think it
(24:17):
would be incredibly helpful if that did happen. Finally, Nintendo
has a new acquisition. The company has purchased a CG
production company called Dynamo Pictures, which Nintendo plans to rebrand
as Nintendo Pictures. The subsidiary will be tasked with creating
quote visual content utilizing Nintendo I p end quote. According
(24:40):
to a Nintendo press release, that visual content is likely
going to include work that will actually appear in video
games themselves. Dynamo Pictures has previously done motion capture work
on several large computer game and and video game titles
like Death Stranding is one of them, so a lot
of that work may be to reduced content that's actually
(25:01):
going to go into video games. However, I expect we'll
also see Nintendo Pictures work on stuff that's meant to
be on television or streaming or film. The acquisition is
not yet complete. It's still in the process. Nintendo said
in its released to two shareholders that it expects the
(25:23):
deal to close on October three of this year. But Yeah,
I'm really curious to see what comes out of this.
It would be interesting to see if Nintendo starts to
generate more UH shows and films and stuff that leverage
the I P. We know there's the Super Mario Brothers
movie coming out soon, which you know, the biggest story
(25:45):
about that is how everyone reacts to Chris Pratt doing
the voice for Mario. A lot of folks were not
super happy to hear that, although I haven't heard any
specific like recordings from any of the sessions, so I
don't know what kind of voice he's doing for the character,
or if he's doing a voice for the character, if
he's just being Chris Pratt, don't know, haven't paid attention,
(26:07):
haven't checked in. But if he is just being Chris Pratt,
I imagine that's going to upset a lot of folks
who are really hoping for the Itsamei Mario type character. Anyway,
I can't wait to find out more about Nintendo pictures
and what they'll be making in the future, so I
will be keeping an eye on that, and I'm sure
we'll talk about in future episodes of this show. And
(26:29):
with that, we are done with the news for Thursday,
July two thousand twenty two. If you have suggestions for
topics I should cover in future episodes of Tech Stuff,
you know, like if you really want to hear that
that full profile on Johnny I, for example, although I'm
pretty sure I'm gonna do that anyway, please reach out
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(26:52):
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(27:14):
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(27:40):
Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
And how the tech are Yet It's time for the
tech news for Thursday, July two thousand twenty two. Happy
(00:25):
Best Steal day, everybody. Let's get to the news. A
huge story this week, at least in my mind, is
that famous designer Johnny I've will no longer be designing
for Apple, all right, so let's give a quick rundown
for those who are unfamiliar with I've. He started at
Apple in the early nine nineties. This was an Apple
(00:48):
that lacked Steve Jobs because jobs have essentially been pushed
out of the company in and he would not come
back until I've had studied design all his life. His
father was a silversmith and his grandfather was an engineer,
so it kind of ran in the family. And when
Steve Jobs returned to Apple in ven and subsequently was
(01:12):
put in charge of the company, he and I've formed
a type of partnership that would redefine Apple's look, and
it would bring the company from the verge of bankruptcy
into an unprecedented era of success. So I've worked on
tons of iconic Apple products, including the colorful iMac line.
(01:32):
You might not remember these. These were like the CRT
monitor Imax, so they look like old televisions, but they
had these very colorful shells on them, really vibrant ones,
and everyone just wanted one because they looked cool and friendly.
I've spent countless hours on design, looking at stuff like
(01:53):
individual materials and testing out those materials to make sure
that they would hold what his design called for properly
and create the aesthetic he was going after. He would
obsess over the curve of an iPhone or the way
an Apple watch band would look on someone's wrist. It
is not an exaggeration to say that a lot of
(02:13):
Apple's appeal came out of Ive's work and input. Now,
I don't want to overstate things here either. Obviously, there
are a lot of other factors with Apple that are important,
and I've led an entire department of designers who all
contributed to the success of the company. It wasn't just
one guy, but during the first decade of the two
(02:36):
thousand's jobs and I've would be two of the most
prominent figures at Apple, things, however, would change after Jobs
passed away in two thousand eleven. Tim Cook, who was
Steve Job's successor as CEO, has a very different approach
to leadership than Jobs did. Cook is a financial genius,
(02:57):
and he's well known for his ability to find new
ways to generate revenue while also limiting costs. But Cook
isn't really known for being innovative with products, nor is
he the salesman that Jobs was. That's just not who
Cook is. His strengths lie elsewhere, and while Cook would
lead Apple to unprecedented profits, the press and Apple fans
(03:20):
began to worry that Apple was kind of losing its mojo,
that it was falling behind in technical and design innovation.
I've gradually began to step back from his work. In
twenty nineteen, he actually left Apple and founded a design
company called Love From, along with a fellow former Apple
designer named Mark Newsson. But even then, Apple would be
(03:44):
Love From his chief client, and the two companies signed
a three year deal rumored to be valued at around
a hundred million dollars, where Love From would do a
lot of design work for Apple, in some cases exclusively
for Apple because the agreement meant that love From was
not supposed to work for any kind of company that
(04:04):
competed against Apple in certain categories. Now, reportedly, Apple and
love From have decided not to extend that three year contract.
The contract terms her up and they appear to have said,
you know what, We're gonna walk away. That means that
for the first time in thirty years, Apple will really
be moving forward without any of ives involvement in the
(04:27):
design of its products. So does this mean that Apple's
aesthetic is going to hold steady or are we actually
going to see a shift. Will some other genius step
forward and guide Apple's design in a new direction, or
will the team with an Apple do its best to
kind of eight ives preferences. For some folks, the severing
(04:48):
of this relationship is kind of a warning flag that
Apple is going to gradually lose its appeal as a
company that designs sexy and appealing technology that you just
immediately want to pay cup in your own hands when
you see it. That's how I think of a lot
of Apple's products, even though I don't own many of them.
When I see those presentations, invariably I'm like, man, I
(05:10):
want to get my hands on that and see what
it feels like. I think I will have to do
a full profile episode about Johnny. I've before too long,
so I'm not gonna go into any further detail here,
but i will say it is a pretty remarkable end
of an era. Now let's move on to Twitter. The
(05:31):
company officially sued Elon Musk in a Delaware court over
the issue of Musk trying to back out of his
deal to acquire Twitter. The filing is reportedly sixty two
pages long, and The Atlantic has a great rundown about
the lawsuit, including opinions on why Musk's arguments are aren't
likely to hold up in court. Uh namely that Musk
(05:53):
is arguing that a flood of bots on Twitter means
the platform is significantly overvalued, which Musk's team argue is
enough to allow Musk to back out of the deal.
The article has the title Elon Musk is a Nightmare client.
The piece also points out some ironic features in the lawsuit,
namely that the filing portrays Musk as a capricious and
(06:16):
petty person and someone that you probably wouldn't want to
be in charge of your company. But the whole purpose
of the lawsuit is to force Musk to go through
with this acquisition deal and to purchase Twitter. So it's
kind of like saying, this guy's a joke. He should
not be running a company, and that's why you can't
take his excuses for why he can't run our company seriously,
(06:39):
So make him run our company. It's a mad, mad,
mad mad mad world, y'all. And of course it gets
better and the filing, Twitter revealed that part of the
deal it made with Musk was that the company would
not impede Musk's ability to tweet. He could tweet all
he liked. However, he was not to disparage Twitter or
(07:00):
its representatives because that would be in violation of the agreement.
So it is possible that when Musk tweeted a poop
emoji at Twitter, that that would eventually come back and
haunt him and be used against him in a court
of law. This is the world we live in now,
where a poop emoji becomes evidence. This is where we
(07:23):
are at as a society. None of the science fiction
authors predicted this, So Musk tweeting out negative things about
Twitter and its representatives violates this agreement, which Twitter then
argues means that Musk has forfeited his right to terminate
the agreement, and it gets juicier from there, And at
least from an outsider's perspective, I would say that it
(07:44):
looks like Twitter has the upper hand going into this litigation.
But I am no expert, and Elon Musk has proven
to be a slippery character on numerous occasions, so I'm
not confident that he's out of serious trouble or as
in serious trouble. I honestly can't tell one way or
the other it is. It's a mystery to me, but
(08:05):
it's an entertaining one. Now, let's stay Muskie for a
couple of stories and talk about the SpaceX Rocket booster
mishap earlier this week. Actually meant to cover this on
Tuesday's episode because it happened on Monday. Then. It was
in Texas where a SpaceX Starship Booster rocket burst into
flames during a ground test firing. Now, this was part
(08:26):
of a regimen of fire tests with this booster, and
it's safe to say this particular test was a failure.
Musk himself acknowledged that the outcome was quote unquote not
good on Twitter, and must later said it appeared that
some unburned propellant from the raptor two engines of the Starship.
The starship has thirty three of these kinds of engines,
(08:47):
that that was the cause of the fire. As of
this recording, the teams are still assessing the causes and
the damage. The exterior structure of the booster appears to
be in pretty good shape, but I've yet to see
official word about the condition of the engines themselves now.
Originally SpaceX hoped to have a test orbital flight of
the Starship by the end of this month. That seems
(09:08):
unlikely now, but again, there's been no official word as
of this recording about when the company expects to conduct
the test. I think the takeaway here is that rocket
science is hard. I mean, it's not brain surgery. And
over at Tesla, the company is saying goodbye to its
top executive in its AI department, Andre Caparthi, who has
(09:29):
served as director for Tesla's autopilot vision team, has announced
he is leaving Tesla. He has been part of the
company for five years, and this comes as Tesla faces
scrutiny from the US government regarding the safety of the
autopilot feature in general, which has been cited as a
factor in some notable accidents, including some traffic accidents that
(09:50):
resulted in fatalities. It's also a time when Tesla as
a whole has been laying off workers. The company recently
closed at San Mateo office after laying off most of
the workforce there and transferring the remaining staff to other offices.
So is this a further indication that Tesla might be
in a bit of a sticky situation. I just don't know.
(10:12):
I mean, I'm not sure what Caparthi's motivations were for
leaving the company. It could just be that he wants
a break, or maybe he wants a new challenge in
his career. I don't want to read too much into it,
is what I'm saying. All Right, We've got more news
stories to cover today, but before we get to that,
let's take a quick break. We're back Earlier this week,
(10:40):
I talked about how a whistle blower leaked more than
a hundred twenty thousand internal documents from Uber to the press.
Those documents covered Uber activities between two thousand thirteen and
two thousand seventeen, and mostly documented stuff that we already knew,
just in much greater detail than we were aware of,
namely that Uber took to some pretty aggressive tactics in
(11:03):
order to expand into various markets, including but not limited
to being pretty loosey goosey with local laws in an
effort to one established business and to then change the
laws in Uber's favor. Now I have more news about Uber,
and it's grim. A group of more than five women
(11:24):
have brought a lawsuit against Uber, alleging that they had
been victims of violence from Uber drivers, ranging from sexual
harassment to kidnapping to rape. The list of accusations is
absolutely horrifying, and the women claimed that Uber did too
little to prevent sexual predators from working as drivers for
(11:44):
the company despite being aware of the issue. That's about
where we are right now. I'm sure we'll hear a
lot more about this as the case moves on. But yeah,
that is a terrible, terrible story, and I'll keep an
eye on and how it develops. Ring, the smart doorbell
and security camera company that's owned by Amazon, recently released
(12:07):
a transparency report in which the company revealed that in
one it had received three thousand, one hundred forty seven
legal demands from various law enforcement agencies to hand over
surveillance footage that had been gathered from the smart doorbell
cameras and security cameras, so essentially turning customer cameras into
(12:31):
law enforcements surveillance cameras. Now that number of requests is
up from around nineteen hundred demands back in, or an
increase of around sixty and out of those three thousand
seven demands, more than eighty five percent of them were
accompanied by a court issued order such as a search warrant. However,
(12:53):
Ring said that it turned over data as in footage,
and only around four out of every ten demands when
you average it all out. So while of these demands
had a court order attached to them, were the ones
that Ring actually handed information over. I'm not really sure
(13:14):
how this all shook out properly, but in addition to that,
Ring also received two thousand, seven seventy four preservation orders.
Now that's when a law enforcement agency asks Amazon to
hold onto data for up to six months while that
agency attempts to secure a warrant or other court order
(13:34):
that would be necessary to demand access to the footage. So,
in other words, this is an agency saying, hey, don't
delete this customer's data anytime soon, we might need access
to it. On top of that, Amazon shared footage with
police at least eleven times without any kind of warrant
or court order at all, something that the company had
(13:56):
previously indicated to customers wouldn't happen. The message to consumers
is that Amazon is not going to hand over footage
to police unless they have a court order to do so.
But it turns out that in cases of emergency, essentially
when someone somewhere determines that there's imminent danger, Amazon can
(14:17):
share information to police, and that has led some critics
to protest the practice. They say it sets a precedent
and it could allow for future mission creep, meaning once
you establish that there is an exception to the rules,
it can be easy to have that exception expand over time.
And since this is a massive invasion of privacy and
(14:41):
potentially a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution,
which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, that is a
significant problem. Yesterday, U S courts convicted former CIA employee
Joshua Schultz on nine charges relating to leaking classified information.
(15:01):
Who boy, this story is filled with a whole bunch
of awful stuff. So first, Schult used to work at
the CIA as a software engineer. In twenty fifteen, Schulton
filed a restraining order against one of his co workers
in the CIA. Filed this restraining order in state court.
The two people, Schulton this co worker had been in
(15:23):
what CNN would describe as a feud. They got sent
to different offices as a result. And then, according to
prosecutors in this case, Schultz got angry at his employer,
the CIA, when the agency started looking into bringing in
a contractor to design a tool that was similar to
one that Schultz himself was already working on, and that
(15:45):
this sent Schultz on a vindictive path. So, according to prosecutors,
Schult then stole several cyber tools belonging to the CIA
and then sent those tools to Wiki Leaks, the nonprofit
organization meant to serve as sort of a clearing house
for whistleblowers. Schult left the CIA in t sixteen. He
got arrested in t seventeen on charges of possessing child pornography.
(16:10):
Around that same time, Wiki Leaks began to publish what
would become known as the Vault seven leaks, the largest
leak of data in CIA's history. Prosecutors said that those
leaks originated from two programs that Schult was able to access,
which implies that the tools Shult handed over to Wiki
(16:30):
Leaks made the Vault seven leaks possible. While Schultz was
being investigated and prosecuted for the child pornography charges, he
then also was charged with leaking this classified information. He
had an initial trial that ended back in twenty but
it ended with a mistrial. The government chose to retry
the case, and that concluded yesterday on July two. That
(16:55):
one ended with Schult being convicted on those counts of
leaking classified information. He has yet to be sentenced, but
this incident has become known, as I said, as the
largest leak of CIA information in history. All right, let's
move on to something less grim, at least for anyone
who doesn't happen to be Google or YouTube. Tech Crunch
(17:18):
reports that the utes today are spending way more time
on TikTok than they are on YouTube, and I think
that comes as a surprise to nobody. VidCon, for example,
Vidcan is a big conference that focuses on online video
and traditionally, UH the big attraction of vidcan was the
(17:39):
attendance of YouTube content creators. Well, this past VidCon it
was very clear that the focus had switched from YouTube
to TikTok. Not that there weren't still YouTube creators there
there were, but that TikTok was largely the main attraction
at VIDCA this year. So that's a pretty strong example
(18:02):
of where the trend is going. I'll tech Crunch employeed
a research team from Q Studio. That's qu s t
u d i oh. That's a company that makes parental
control software. And according to Q studios data, gen Z
and jen Alpha users typically spend somewhere around nine minutes
on average per day watching content on TikTok and fifty
(18:26):
six minutes per on average per day watching content on YouTube.
So there would be about two and a half hours
of watching stuff online from just those two sources. But
considering how much television I soaked up when I was
a kid, I can't get judge about any of this anyway.
The data shows what I think a lot of folks
already knew at younger generations are gravitating more towards the
(18:47):
short form content of TikTok than moving on to what
you would find on YouTube and It's why a lot
of platforms, including YouTube itself, have promoted features that present
content in shorter formats, essentially trying to mimic what TikTok
is doing on YouTube. It's literally called YouTube shorts, and
(19:09):
the goal there is to serve as kind of a
means of discovery so that users will see shorts that
attract them. They watch the short and then they'll say,
you know what, I'm gonna go and find the video
that this came from, the longer form video and watch
that too. Meanwhile, according to Business Insider, Google's s VP
prob Hoker rock Hoven said at a conference, the younger
(19:32):
audiences are turning to TikTok and Instagram to perform searches
rather than using Google to do though now that doesn't
necessarily mean that kids are using TikTok to do research
for homework or anything like that, though maybe that's the case. Instead,
the example given was more like you're trying to figure
out where you want to go to grab lunch, and
(19:54):
that kids these days will look to TikTok and Instagram
to find out, you know, goods aggestions as opposed to
using Google Search. So anyway, that's something Google wants to
address it, wants to develop new tools that will appeal
to younger users so that they'll use Google for search. Meanwhile,
I'm sitting over here thinking I need to start a
TikTok account where I dress up in various quasi historical
(20:16):
outfits and do quick lessons on stuff like American history
and Shakespeare or whatever. I could be the cliffs Notes
of TikTok, except I'm sure that already exists, probably in
multiple channels, but maybe I should do it. Anyway, while
I think about that, let's take another quick break and
we'll be back with a couple more stories. Okay, we
(20:43):
got a couple of stories to close out this episode.
First up, The Register reports that a letter signed by
executives at some of the biggest tech companies in the world,
which include Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta, among others,
encourages state leaders to introduce computer science lessons for students
(21:03):
in elementary, middle and high school here in the United States.
So the letter calls for kids to be given the
opportunity to learn the basics of computer science early on,
including eventually how to code, with classes becoming more complex
and in depth at higher grade levels. I think This
is a great idea. Getting a grounding and computer science
(21:25):
is practical, and it also means that students will learn
to put other skills to use. Plus, it will mean
that students who move on to colleges and universities will
already have a fundamental understanding before they jump into computer
science classes. That is critical. Computer science has advanced so
much in such a relatively short time that it can
(21:45):
be pretty challenging for students who have little to no
background in the subject to make progress at the university level. Plus,
computer science encourages students to learn problem solving skills like
critical thinking skills, breaking problems down own in a way
where you can approach a solution that can be applied
outside the discipline of computer science. It's a really powerful
(22:08):
tool to have in your arsenal and it's something that
I wish I had had access to back when I
was a kid. You know, when I was going to
high school, the most advanced class we had in our
computer lab was data entry, right, that was that was
the peak. That's as far as you could go. I
actually ended up taking an additional course in the computer
(22:30):
lab that wasn't even offered officially. I had to get
special permission to do it rather than take some other elective.
And it turned out that I end up teaching the
class at least a portion of the class that were
on the IBM computers because the teacher of my computer
lab was more familiar with Apple computers, so that's what
(22:51):
she focused on. Uh. Turns out I didn't do a
whole lot other than like again, data entry and word processing.
So even though I was put in charge, I didn't
get to really advance my knowledge that much. And I
consider that real, you know, a real failure of the
school system, if I'm being honest, because it would have
(23:11):
been great to have had access to better educational tools
to get into computer science, even just a little bit,
because again in my case, it didn't happen at all.
Who is literally superficial applications of computers, nothing important about
the computers themselves. So the letter also stresses the importance
(23:34):
of fostering new generations of computer scientists because it will
be a critical component for the workplace in general. That's
clearly been the case for a while. It's also critical
for U S strategy to have experts and computer science.
You do not want the country to fall behind in
that regard. In fact, a lot of people have argued
that China is already well ahead of the United States
(23:56):
at this point, and that if we don't start addressing
this issue, then we will be hopelessly left behind. The
letter also calls leaders to make certain that such classes
are available to all students everywhere, including those belonging to
classically underserved communities. And I really hope that the letter
helps spur some action across the States. I think it
(24:17):
would be incredibly helpful if that did happen. Finally, Nintendo
has a new acquisition. The company has purchased a CG
production company called Dynamo Pictures, which Nintendo plans to rebrand
as Nintendo Pictures. The subsidiary will be tasked with creating
quote visual content utilizing Nintendo I p end quote. According
(24:40):
to a Nintendo press release, that visual content is likely
going to include work that will actually appear in video
games themselves. Dynamo Pictures has previously done motion capture work
on several large computer game and and video game titles
like Death Stranding is one of them, so a lot
of that work may be to reduced content that's actually
(25:01):
going to go into video games. However, I expect we'll
also see Nintendo Pictures work on stuff that's meant to
be on television or streaming or film. The acquisition is
not yet complete. It's still in the process. Nintendo said
in its released to two shareholders that it expects the
(25:23):
deal to close on October three of this year. But Yeah,
I'm really curious to see what comes out of this.
It would be interesting to see if Nintendo starts to
generate more UH shows and films and stuff that leverage
the I P. We know there's the Super Mario Brothers
movie coming out soon, which you know, the biggest story
(25:45):
about that is how everyone reacts to Chris Pratt doing
the voice for Mario. A lot of folks were not
super happy to hear that, although I haven't heard any
specific like recordings from any of the sessions, so I
don't know what kind of voice he's doing for the character,
or if he's doing a voice for the character, if
he's just being Chris Pratt, don't know, haven't paid attention,
(26:07):
haven't checked in. But if he is just being Chris Pratt,
I imagine that's going to upset a lot of folks
who are really hoping for the Itsamei Mario type character. Anyway,
I can't wait to find out more about Nintendo pictures
and what they'll be making in the future, so I
will be keeping an eye on that, and I'm sure
we'll talk about in future episodes of this show. And
(26:29):
with that, we are done with the news for Thursday,
July two thousand twenty two. If you have suggestions for
topics I should cover in future episodes of Tech Stuff,
you know, like if you really want to hear that
that full profile on Johnny I, for example, although I'm
pretty sure I'm gonna do that anyway, please reach out
to me. There are a couple of ways you can
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(26:52):
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If you click on that, you can leave a voice
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(27:14):
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Another way to reach out to me is on Twitter.
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(27:40):
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