August 31, 2023 • 20 mins
Meta's Oversight Board recommended that the company suspend a Cambodian leader's account, but the company has declined to acquiesce to the request. Plus, X is rolling out some new features soon, Google is ending a subscription service and Sony is preparing to charge gamers more for PlayStation Plus.
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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 iHeartRadio. And how the tech
are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday
August thirty, first, twenty twenty three. Where does the time go? Well,
(00:28):
you might be familiar with the fact that Meta has
an oversight board, which it established in the wake of
banning former President Donald Trump from Facebook a few years ago.
So the board's purpose is to make recommendations and also
to review Meta's decisions to try and keep the company
in line with its stated policies. So essentially, it's to
(00:50):
make sure that Meta is obeying its own rules. But
the thing is, Meta is not actually under any obligation
to follow whatever the oversight board recommends. So the board
can make recommendations and urge Metta to make changes, but
Metta doesn't actually have to do any of that at all,
which might make you wonder what purpose does the board
(01:13):
actually serve apart from optics. I don't have an answer
to that anyway, The issue has cropped up again this
week because the oversight board advised Meta to suspend the
Facebook account belonging to Hun Sen, a politician, a leader
in Cambodia. Hun Sen has a pretty awful international reputation.
(01:35):
He's dedicated a lot of effort to squashing independent press
and critics and activists, as well as the fact that
despite him being a democratically elected official, he wants to
pass his position down to his son and make a
hereditary position, not an elected one anyway. Recently, Hunsen posted
(01:57):
a video that contained many threatenings statements, including the promise
to quote arrest a trader with sufficient evidence at midnight
end quote, according to The Washington Post, and so the
oversight board recommended to Meta that they suspend his Facebook
account instead. Meta Leadership has chosen to allow Hunsen to
(02:18):
keep his Facebook profile, although they did remove the video
in question after it had been up for half a year.
As for the justification of allowing Hunsen to keep his profile,
Meta said it's because that while Hunsen's video contains stuff
that clearly violates Facebook policies, the video itself wasn't posted
(02:39):
during a time of civil unrest, and apparently civil unrest
is a prerequisite for Meta to suspend the accounts that
belong to public figures. The board states that hun Sen's
post undermine democracy in Cambodia, and as such, Facebook shares
responsibility for elevating Hunsen's platform, and therefore, you know, they
(02:59):
should probably stop doing that because it's undermining the democratic process.
Perhaps the threat of seeing Facebook access restricted in Cambodia,
because that's something that Hunsen's administration was threatening, has also
played a part in the company's decisions to dismiss the
board's opinion on this particular matter. Also, like I said,
(03:23):
they left that video up for half a year. They
only took it down when the Oversight Board started to
bring their concerns forward to Meta officials, and it was
clearly violating Facebook's policies, but it stayed up for half
a year. Human rights advocates continue to criticize Meta for
failing to show concern for user safety as well as
(03:44):
the democratic process in general, and those, of course, are
charges that Meta representatives deny. That being said, Meta has
reported that the company has removed more than seven seven
hundred accounts on Facebook that they say have links to
a Chinese backed misinformation campaign. Further, according to Meta, this
campaign hits a broad spectrum of social platforms, Beyond just
(04:07):
the Meta ones like Facebook and Instagram, they include TikTok, Reddit, YouTube,
and Twitter slash x. According to Meta, the main goal
for this campaign was to control the narrative regarding China's
human rights record. Essentially, the campaign looked to redirect attention
away from some truly horrific human rights violations, which is
(04:29):
putting it lightly, and instead to proclaim China's actually, you know,
really valuing human rights. Actually. According to Meta, many of
the profiles started out posting about stuff that didn't have
anything to do with human rights or politics, and they
were posting a lot of the same videos and pictures
that were focusing on stuff like food and fashion, things
(04:50):
that were not triggering as far as you know, saying oh,
this is a misinformation campaign. But gradually the accounts began
to incorporate China messages and also heap criticism on the
United States government as well as some other Western governments.
And Meta has said that the people responsible for running
the campaign they appear to be spread across China, but
(05:12):
they're all pulling content from the same source, and that
it's all likely connected to Chinese law enforcement. This is
by no means the only coordinated state backed effort to
leverage social platforms in order to spread misinformation. Meta representatives
noted that similar campaigns have originated out of places like Russia, Iran,
(05:33):
and Turkey. The Verge reports that the Allen Institute for
AI has released a new tool called Satlus. This tool
can do something to satellite imagery that makes me think
of the old Hollywood trope of zoom in enhance. Like
if you've ever seen any of those movies where someone's
looking at camera footage and they want the operator to
(05:56):
magically zoom in on one little corner of the footage
and then enhance it so you can see who it was.
You know that is mostly bogus as far as it goes,
because you can't you can digitally punch in on an image.
That's entirely possible. You know that, because I'm sure you've
cropped videos and images before. But you can't really enhance
(06:17):
an image without inserting new information, right. You have to
add information there. You can't just magically get access to information.
It's not like the information was sitting there all along
and you just had to zoom to see it. You
have to add information to be able to quote unquote
enhance That kind of is counter to identifying someone because
(06:37):
you don't know if the information you're adding is accurate
or not. But that's kind of what satlust is doing.
It sharpens satellite imagery by using deep learning to best
fill in details to make those images less blurry and
higher resolution. As for practical applications, the institute is focusing
pun intended on getting information about, you know, tree cover
(07:00):
and renewable energy projects that are going on around the world.
That data can then be part of a larger picture
about climate change and conservation and renewable energy. So the
hope is that by collecting information on a global scale,
scientists and activists can have a more accurate picture of
what's actually going on around the world where we could
perhaps concentrate future efforts to have the biggest impact, and
(07:23):
also to gain an idea of just how well or
how poorly policymakers are progressing with various plans to combat
climate change. Are they actually following through on their promises
or are the results antithetical to the goal of ending
climate change? And it's nice to have a new piece
about AI that's not a totally negative one, Like it's
(07:47):
nice to have something about AI where you start to see, oh,
this could be potentially really useful. However, I should point
out that the researchers who are working on this tool
have already noted that, just like other generative AI tools,
is not immune to hallucinations. That's when generative AI ends
up making stuff up when it determines it doesn't have
(08:08):
enough information to provide a good answer. So in the
case of SATLUS, sometimes that manifests as the tool drawing
building details incorrectly, and that could possibly be due to
things like the fact that architectural styles are not uniform
around the world, so it may be drawing from its
quote unquote knowledge of architecture in one part of the
(08:28):
world and then just applying those principles to another to
try and complete a picture, when in fact that just
ends up making it inaccurate. So it's by far a
perfect tool, but it is an interesting application of generative
artificial intelligence. The United States Federal Communications Commission, or FCC,
has some bad news for Internet service providers that have
(08:49):
been complaining that it's just too darn hard to list
out every fee they charge their customers each month. And
the bad news the FCC has is well tough because
he gotta. Five trade groups representing some of the biggest
broadband providers in the United States petitioned the FCC to
drop this requirement because, according to them, listing out all
(09:13):
the fees creates quote unquote significant administrative burdens. I'm not
sure how supplying essentially a bulleted list of various fees
is an administrative burden, but charging customers those fees isn't.
I mean, obviously the companies have to know what the
fees are. Otherwise how could they charge customers, Like, how
(09:35):
could they do that? So shouldn't the customer know what
fees they are having to pay? So they've said to
the FCC, No, no, this would be too hard, don't
make us do this. But the FCC has not budged
and said that the rules will go into effect and
that the broadband companies will not be getting any exceptions
or exemptions or anything like that. One FCC representative said, quote,
(10:00):
every consumer needs transparent information when making decisions about what
internet service offering makes the most sense for their family
or household. No one wants to be hit with charges
they didn't ask for or they did not expect end
quote to which I say, you're doggone right. I mean,
I'm sure I'm not the only one who is just
(10:20):
sick of the experience where you think you're going to
pay one price for a product or a service, but
then you find out that there were all these other
extra fees that get added on at the very end
of the transaction and it inflates the cost significantly. It's
not just broadband that does this, obviously, I'm looking at you,
ticket Master, your convenience fees convenient for whom? Okay, who
(10:42):
to whom? Is that convenient? Anyway? Why would broad band
companies oppose listing out all these fees, Well, it's not
because it's an administrative burden. It's likely because that there
are some charges that the government man dates that these
companies pay, and one of the things that will have
(11:05):
to happen by detailing all these different fees is that
the companies are going to have to show when and
how they pass those charges on to customers. So instead
of it being that it's the company's burden to pay
these fees, it's really the customer's burden to pay the fees,
because the company just passes the charge straight on to them,
(11:26):
which might be a little off putting. Also, there are
other fees that these companies add on that are not
mandated by the government, and by showing those, the companies
might be worried that they're going to really upset their customers,
who are like, yeah, but why does this fee exist?
And there may not be a good reason other than
(11:48):
we want your money. So there are lots of reasons
why companies could be opposing this, but so far, the
FCC hasn't budged that. Being said, the FCC, while it
does technically have the authority to do this, the whole
thing is still under review, so it's entirely possible that
another department within the government will change things. Anyway, we
(12:09):
just have to wait and see. Okay, I have a
few more news stories before we wrap up, but first
let's take a quick break. We're back. So X, formerly
known as Twitter, has asked a judge to dismiss a
(12:29):
pending lawsuit against the company that accuses it of disproportionately
laying off older workers once Elon Musk took over. So
discriminating employees on the basis of age is absolutely against
the law, and the lawsuit says that's essentially what happened
during the massive layoffs at the company. So, according to
this lawsuit, X laid off sixty percent of workers who
(12:52):
were fifty years of age or older. If they were
over the age of sixty, the percentage was closer to
seventy five percent, and younger employees saw layoff rates at
around fifty four percent. So essentially, what the lawsuit is
saying is that if age were not a factor, you
should see this layoff percentage be pretty even across all
(13:13):
age groups, but it's not. It's higher for people who
were older. The judge has not dismissed the case. They
denied X's request to dismiss it. However, they did instruct
the plaintiff that the lawsuit needs to be amended and
have better evidence to support the claim that the company
(13:33):
intentionally was laying off older workers or targeting over workers
during the layoffs, because as of yet, the current lawsuit
does not lay that out clearly enough, according to the judge,
So we'll have to wait and see if this moves forward. Meanwhile,
X is rolling out some new features. First up, if
you're a paid user on the X platform, you'll be
(13:56):
able to hide your likes. That means that other users
will not be able to pop onto your profile and
click on the little likes tab and get a look
at which posts you have liked in the past. They
will be able to see if you've liked an individual post.
Right if you've happened to like a post and they
see that post, they can see that you liked it,
but they won't have that aggregated tab that they can
(14:18):
check out to see if you're liking lots of stuff
that maybe you'd prefer people not see. If you're going
around liking a lot of folks who have very controversial opinions,
you might not want folks to know that about you,
for example. Now, on top of that, Elon Musk posted
earlier today, In fact, in the wee hours of the morning,
he posted that quote, video and audio calls coming to
(14:41):
X works on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC. No phone
number needed. X is the effective global address book. That
set of factors is unique. End quote. Now, he did
not indicate when this feature might actually launch. We also
don't know if it's going to be platform wide or
if it's only going to be a to paid subscribers.
I'd be shocked if it's available to just the general
(15:05):
populace of X. And I'm also wondering how it's gonna
work because I'm hoping that this feature won't allow just
anyone to make video or phone calls to anybody else
who's on the platform. That seems like that's a terrible idea,
So I imagine it's going to rely on something like
both people have to follow one another first before you
(15:27):
can make a call, Like you couldn't just call someone
you know, like cold call them or whatever. Otherwise people,
especially like notable people, would have their phones blowing up
all the time from phone calls and video call requests,
and that just seems like it's a great way to
drive people off your platform. So as much grief as
I give Elan Musk and the companies he owns or runs,
(15:52):
I don't think there's any way this feature is going
out without some serious guardrails in place. I'll be shocked
if he lets it go out without any restrictions at all.
So we'll see Back In October of twenty twenty one,
Google introduced a new subscription service called pixel Pass, and
the idea was that you would subscribe to this service
and you would get certain features, including some discounts on
(16:14):
other Google services, but you would also get a Pixel phone.
The type of phone you got would depend upon the
level at which you subscribed, and then every two years
you would get an upgrade to your phone as long
as you were still subscribed to the service, so two
years later you would get a brand new, state of
the art Pixel phone. It has been twenty two months
(16:37):
since Google launched the program, which means were just two
months out from the early adopters of that program getting
their first phone upgrade, which they will not get because
Google has scrapped the program just as those who had
signed up were about to get their brand new phone.
Google has decided the program is not working. They're canceling it,
(16:58):
which is kind of a bummer. They will continue to
provide service throughout the rest of the term of the subscription,
They're just not going to ship out any new phones
to subscribers and they're not renewing any subscriptions. So the
phone upgrade was a feature of this plan. It wasn't
the only one, but still it is a big bummer
(17:18):
to have the rug pulled out for the subscribers who
were just about to get a brand new phone. So
Google has altered the deal pray they do not alter
it further. A US science organization called noir Lab, which
has the coolest name ever, it actually stands for the
National Optical Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, has said that hackers
have been targeting its telescopes and has brought down those
(17:42):
telescopes as well as the organization's website. The two big
telescopes that hackers have attacked are in Hawaii and Chile.
The organization says it's working with cybersecurity experts to return
the telescopes and the website to operational status as soon
as possible. That was on August twenty fourth. The most
recent reporting I could find doesn't have any information on
(18:04):
who might be behind these attacks or what their motivations
could be. That's not to say that the cybersecurity experts
don't have suspicions, or maybe that they you know, they
may already know who is responsible. They could just be
playing things close to the vest right now. We just
don't know. Yikes and now heads up, PlayStation owners, if
you subscribe to PlayStation Plus, expect your monthly bill to
(18:27):
go up starting September sixth unless you take action soon.
Sony is increasing the annual prices on each of the
three tiers of PlayStation Plus. So the base level was
sixty dollars per year, now it's going to be eighty
dollars per year. The Extra Plan went from one hundred bucks,
it'll go to one hundred thirty five bucks a year,
(18:49):
and the Premium plan is going from one hundred and
twenty dollars a year to one hundred and sixty dollars
a year. So, in other words, Tier one is increasing
by twenty bucks per year, Tier two by thirty five
five bucks per year, and Tier three forty bucks per year.
So not only is everything getting more expensive, but the
higher the tier, the more expensive it's getting. Now these
are the annual fee versions. If instead you're set up
(19:13):
to pay monthly or quarterly, there's no word yet on
whether those prices are going to change, but as it stands,
if you do pay for a full year, no matter
what the tier, it's still less expensive than subscribing monthly
or quarterly. You would be paying more per year if
you do it that way than if you do annually,
even with these price hikes. So the thing I would
(19:34):
alert you to is that you can actually stack years
onto your subscription. You can pre pay for years, so
if you go in and pre pay for a year
or two or three, you can actually extend your current
subscription at the current prices before those price hikes go
into effect. So just a little heads up for y'all.
(19:54):
All right, that's it for the news. I hope you
are 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, or wherever you listen
(20:16):
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 iHeartRadio. And how the tech
are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday
August thirty, first, twenty twenty three. Where does the time go? Well,
(00:28):
you might be familiar with the fact that Meta has
an oversight board, which it established in the wake of
banning former President Donald Trump from Facebook a few years ago.
So the board's purpose is to make recommendations and also
to review Meta's decisions to try and keep the company
in line with its stated policies. So essentially, it's to
(00:50):
make sure that Meta is obeying its own rules. But
the thing is, Meta is not actually under any obligation
to follow whatever the oversight board recommends. So the board
can make recommendations and urge Metta to make changes, but
Metta doesn't actually have to do any of that at all,
which might make you wonder what purpose does the board
(01:13):
actually serve apart from optics. I don't have an answer
to that anyway, The issue has cropped up again this
week because the oversight board advised Meta to suspend the
Facebook account belonging to Hun Sen, a politician, a leader
in Cambodia. Hun Sen has a pretty awful international reputation.
(01:35):
He's dedicated a lot of effort to squashing independent press
and critics and activists, as well as the fact that
despite him being a democratically elected official, he wants to
pass his position down to his son and make a
hereditary position, not an elected one anyway. Recently, Hunsen posted
(01:57):
a video that contained many threatenings statements, including the promise
to quote arrest a trader with sufficient evidence at midnight
end quote, according to The Washington Post, and so the
oversight board recommended to Meta that they suspend his Facebook
account instead. Meta Leadership has chosen to allow Hunsen to
(02:18):
keep his Facebook profile, although they did remove the video
in question after it had been up for half a year.
As for the justification of allowing Hunsen to keep his profile,
Meta said it's because that while Hunsen's video contains stuff
that clearly violates Facebook policies, the video itself wasn't posted
(02:39):
during a time of civil unrest, and apparently civil unrest
is a prerequisite for Meta to suspend the accounts that
belong to public figures. The board states that hun Sen's
post undermine democracy in Cambodia, and as such, Facebook shares
responsibility for elevating Hunsen's platform, and therefore, you know, they
(02:59):
should probably stop doing that because it's undermining the democratic process.
Perhaps the threat of seeing Facebook access restricted in Cambodia,
because that's something that Hunsen's administration was threatening, has also
played a part in the company's decisions to dismiss the
board's opinion on this particular matter. Also, like I said,
(03:23):
they left that video up for half a year. They
only took it down when the Oversight Board started to
bring their concerns forward to Meta officials, and it was
clearly violating Facebook's policies, but it stayed up for half
a year. Human rights advocates continue to criticize Meta for
failing to show concern for user safety as well as
(03:44):
the democratic process in general, and those, of course, are
charges that Meta representatives deny. That being said, Meta has
reported that the company has removed more than seven seven
hundred accounts on Facebook that they say have links to
a Chinese backed misinformation campaign. Further, according to Meta, this
campaign hits a broad spectrum of social platforms, Beyond just
(04:07):
the Meta ones like Facebook and Instagram, they include TikTok, Reddit, YouTube,
and Twitter slash x. According to Meta, the main goal
for this campaign was to control the narrative regarding China's
human rights record. Essentially, the campaign looked to redirect attention
away from some truly horrific human rights violations, which is
(04:29):
putting it lightly, and instead to proclaim China's actually, you know,
really valuing human rights. Actually. According to Meta, many of
the profiles started out posting about stuff that didn't have
anything to do with human rights or politics, and they
were posting a lot of the same videos and pictures
that were focusing on stuff like food and fashion, things
(04:50):
that were not triggering as far as you know, saying oh,
this is a misinformation campaign. But gradually the accounts began
to incorporate China messages and also heap criticism on the
United States government as well as some other Western governments.
And Meta has said that the people responsible for running
the campaign they appear to be spread across China, but
(05:12):
they're all pulling content from the same source, and that
it's all likely connected to Chinese law enforcement. This is
by no means the only coordinated state backed effort to
leverage social platforms in order to spread misinformation. Meta representatives
noted that similar campaigns have originated out of places like Russia, Iran,
(05:33):
and Turkey. The Verge reports that the Allen Institute for
AI has released a new tool called Satlus. This tool
can do something to satellite imagery that makes me think
of the old Hollywood trope of zoom in enhance. Like
if you've ever seen any of those movies where someone's
looking at camera footage and they want the operator to
(05:56):
magically zoom in on one little corner of the footage
and then enhance it so you can see who it was.
You know that is mostly bogus as far as it goes,
because you can't you can digitally punch in on an image.
That's entirely possible. You know that, because I'm sure you've
cropped videos and images before. But you can't really enhance
(06:17):
an image without inserting new information, right. You have to
add information there. You can't just magically get access to information.
It's not like the information was sitting there all along
and you just had to zoom to see it. You
have to add information to be able to quote unquote
enhance That kind of is counter to identifying someone because
(06:37):
you don't know if the information you're adding is accurate
or not. But that's kind of what satlust is doing.
It sharpens satellite imagery by using deep learning to best
fill in details to make those images less blurry and
higher resolution. As for practical applications, the institute is focusing
pun intended on getting information about, you know, tree cover
(07:00):
and renewable energy projects that are going on around the world.
That data can then be part of a larger picture
about climate change and conservation and renewable energy. So the
hope is that by collecting information on a global scale,
scientists and activists can have a more accurate picture of
what's actually going on around the world where we could
perhaps concentrate future efforts to have the biggest impact, and
(07:23):
also to gain an idea of just how well or
how poorly policymakers are progressing with various plans to combat
climate change. Are they actually following through on their promises
or are the results antithetical to the goal of ending
climate change? And it's nice to have a new piece
about AI that's not a totally negative one, Like it's
(07:47):
nice to have something about AI where you start to see, oh,
this could be potentially really useful. However, I should point
out that the researchers who are working on this tool
have already noted that, just like other generative AI tools,
is not immune to hallucinations. That's when generative AI ends
up making stuff up when it determines it doesn't have
(08:08):
enough information to provide a good answer. So in the
case of SATLUS, sometimes that manifests as the tool drawing
building details incorrectly, and that could possibly be due to
things like the fact that architectural styles are not uniform
around the world, so it may be drawing from its
quote unquote knowledge of architecture in one part of the
(08:28):
world and then just applying those principles to another to
try and complete a picture, when in fact that just
ends up making it inaccurate. So it's by far a
perfect tool, but it is an interesting application of generative
artificial intelligence. The United States Federal Communications Commission, or FCC,
has some bad news for Internet service providers that have
(08:49):
been complaining that it's just too darn hard to list
out every fee they charge their customers each month. And
the bad news the FCC has is well tough because
he gotta. Five trade groups representing some of the biggest
broadband providers in the United States petitioned the FCC to
drop this requirement because, according to them, listing out all
(09:13):
the fees creates quote unquote significant administrative burdens. I'm not
sure how supplying essentially a bulleted list of various fees
is an administrative burden, but charging customers those fees isn't.
I mean, obviously the companies have to know what the
fees are. Otherwise how could they charge customers, Like, how
(09:35):
could they do that? So shouldn't the customer know what
fees they are having to pay? So they've said to
the FCC, No, no, this would be too hard, don't
make us do this. But the FCC has not budged
and said that the rules will go into effect and
that the broadband companies will not be getting any exceptions
or exemptions or anything like that. One FCC representative said, quote,
(10:00):
every consumer needs transparent information when making decisions about what
internet service offering makes the most sense for their family
or household. No one wants to be hit with charges
they didn't ask for or they did not expect end
quote to which I say, you're doggone right. I mean,
I'm sure I'm not the only one who is just
(10:20):
sick of the experience where you think you're going to
pay one price for a product or a service, but
then you find out that there were all these other
extra fees that get added on at the very end
of the transaction and it inflates the cost significantly. It's
not just broadband that does this, obviously, I'm looking at you,
ticket Master, your convenience fees convenient for whom? Okay, who
(10:42):
to whom? Is that convenient? Anyway? Why would broad band
companies oppose listing out all these fees, Well, it's not
because it's an administrative burden. It's likely because that there
are some charges that the government man dates that these
companies pay, and one of the things that will have
(11:05):
to happen by detailing all these different fees is that
the companies are going to have to show when and
how they pass those charges on to customers. So instead
of it being that it's the company's burden to pay
these fees, it's really the customer's burden to pay the fees,
because the company just passes the charge straight on to them,
(11:26):
which might be a little off putting. Also, there are
other fees that these companies add on that are not
mandated by the government, and by showing those, the companies
might be worried that they're going to really upset their customers,
who are like, yeah, but why does this fee exist?
And there may not be a good reason other than
(11:48):
we want your money. So there are lots of reasons
why companies could be opposing this, but so far, the
FCC hasn't budged that. Being said, the FCC, while it
does technically have the authority to do this, the whole
thing is still under review, so it's entirely possible that
another department within the government will change things. Anyway, we
(12:09):
just have to wait and see. Okay, I have a
few more news stories before we wrap up, but first
let's take a quick break. We're back. So X, formerly
known as Twitter, has asked a judge to dismiss a
(12:29):
pending lawsuit against the company that accuses it of disproportionately
laying off older workers once Elon Musk took over. So
discriminating employees on the basis of age is absolutely against
the law, and the lawsuit says that's essentially what happened
during the massive layoffs at the company. So, according to
this lawsuit, X laid off sixty percent of workers who
(12:52):
were fifty years of age or older. If they were
over the age of sixty, the percentage was closer to
seventy five percent, and younger employees saw layoff rates at
around fifty four percent. So essentially, what the lawsuit is
saying is that if age were not a factor, you
should see this layoff percentage be pretty even across all
(13:13):
age groups, but it's not. It's higher for people who
were older. The judge has not dismissed the case. They
denied X's request to dismiss it. However, they did instruct
the plaintiff that the lawsuit needs to be amended and
have better evidence to support the claim that the company
(13:33):
intentionally was laying off older workers or targeting over workers
during the layoffs, because as of yet, the current lawsuit
does not lay that out clearly enough, according to the judge,
So we'll have to wait and see if this moves forward. Meanwhile,
X is rolling out some new features. First up, if
you're a paid user on the X platform, you'll be
(13:56):
able to hide your likes. That means that other users
will not be able to pop onto your profile and
click on the little likes tab and get a look
at which posts you have liked in the past. They
will be able to see if you've liked an individual post.
Right if you've happened to like a post and they
see that post, they can see that you liked it,
but they won't have that aggregated tab that they can
(14:18):
check out to see if you're liking lots of stuff
that maybe you'd prefer people not see. If you're going
around liking a lot of folks who have very controversial opinions,
you might not want folks to know that about you,
for example. Now, on top of that, Elon Musk posted
earlier today, In fact, in the wee hours of the morning,
he posted that quote, video and audio calls coming to
(14:41):
X works on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC. No phone
number needed. X is the effective global address book. That
set of factors is unique. End quote. Now, he did
not indicate when this feature might actually launch. We also
don't know if it's going to be platform wide or
if it's only going to be a to paid subscribers.
I'd be shocked if it's available to just the general
(15:05):
populace of X. And I'm also wondering how it's gonna
work because I'm hoping that this feature won't allow just
anyone to make video or phone calls to anybody else
who's on the platform. That seems like that's a terrible idea,
So I imagine it's going to rely on something like
both people have to follow one another first before you
(15:27):
can make a call, Like you couldn't just call someone
you know, like cold call them or whatever. Otherwise people,
especially like notable people, would have their phones blowing up
all the time from phone calls and video call requests,
and that just seems like it's a great way to
drive people off your platform. So as much grief as
I give Elan Musk and the companies he owns or runs,
(15:52):
I don't think there's any way this feature is going
out without some serious guardrails in place. I'll be shocked
if he lets it go out without any restrictions at all.
So we'll see Back In October of twenty twenty one,
Google introduced a new subscription service called pixel Pass, and
the idea was that you would subscribe to this service
and you would get certain features, including some discounts on
(16:14):
other Google services, but you would also get a Pixel phone.
The type of phone you got would depend upon the
level at which you subscribed, and then every two years
you would get an upgrade to your phone as long
as you were still subscribed to the service, so two
years later you would get a brand new, state of
the art Pixel phone. It has been twenty two months
(16:37):
since Google launched the program, which means were just two
months out from the early adopters of that program getting
their first phone upgrade, which they will not get because
Google has scrapped the program just as those who had
signed up were about to get their brand new phone.
Google has decided the program is not working. They're canceling it,
(16:58):
which is kind of a bummer. They will continue to
provide service throughout the rest of the term of the subscription,
They're just not going to ship out any new phones
to subscribers and they're not renewing any subscriptions. So the
phone upgrade was a feature of this plan. It wasn't
the only one, but still it is a big bummer
(17:18):
to have the rug pulled out for the subscribers who
were just about to get a brand new phone. So
Google has altered the deal pray they do not alter
it further. A US science organization called noir Lab, which
has the coolest name ever, it actually stands for the
National Optical Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, has said that hackers
have been targeting its telescopes and has brought down those
(17:42):
telescopes as well as the organization's website. The two big
telescopes that hackers have attacked are in Hawaii and Chile.
The organization says it's working with cybersecurity experts to return
the telescopes and the website to operational status as soon
as possible. That was on August twenty fourth. The most
recent reporting I could find doesn't have any information on
(18:04):
who might be behind these attacks or what their motivations
could be. That's not to say that the cybersecurity experts
don't have suspicions, or maybe that they you know, they
may already know who is responsible. They could just be
playing things close to the vest right now. We just
don't know. Yikes and now heads up, PlayStation owners, if
you subscribe to PlayStation Plus, expect your monthly bill to
(18:27):
go up starting September sixth unless you take action soon.
Sony is increasing the annual prices on each of the
three tiers of PlayStation Plus. So the base level was
sixty dollars per year, now it's going to be eighty
dollars per year. The Extra Plan went from one hundred bucks,
it'll go to one hundred thirty five bucks a year,
(18:49):
and the Premium plan is going from one hundred and
twenty dollars a year to one hundred and sixty dollars
a year. So, in other words, Tier one is increasing
by twenty bucks per year, Tier two by thirty five
five bucks per year, and Tier three forty bucks per year.
So not only is everything getting more expensive, but the
higher the tier, the more expensive it's getting. Now these
are the annual fee versions. If instead you're set up
(19:13):
to pay monthly or quarterly, there's no word yet on
whether those prices are going to change, but as it stands,
if you do pay for a full year, no matter
what the tier, it's still less expensive than subscribing monthly
or quarterly. You would be paying more per year if
you do it that way than if you do annually,
even with these price hikes. So the thing I would
(19:34):
alert you to is that you can actually stack years
onto your subscription. You can pre pay for years, so
if you go in and pre pay for a year
or two or three, you can actually extend your current
subscription at the current prices before those price hikes go
into effect. So just a little heads up for y'all.
(19:54):
All right, that's it for the news. I hope you
are all well, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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TechStuff News
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Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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