April 28, 2022 • 19 mins
Meta saw more users join its services, giving investors more confidence in the company. Amazon is in a tussle with the Australian government. And the UK plans to fine streaming services that display "harmful content."
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey 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 you. It's time for the
tech news for Thursday, April twenty eight, two thousand, twenty two,
(00:26):
and we're gonna start off with some news about Meta.
The company had its first quarter report and the results
gave new confidence to investors. Now you might remember that
we found out that by the end of last year,
Meta had seen a decline in users for the first time,
and that, coupled with a couple of other tough pills
(00:48):
to swallow, ended up being a big shadow across the company.
And those tough bills included stuff like Zuckerberg acknowledging that
TikTok was far more effective at a tracting young users
than than Meta's properties were, including stuff like Instagram and Facebook,
and that Meta had been spending billions of dollars on
(01:11):
its Metaverse plans, but those plans are not gonna come
to fruition for several years. I mean, Zuckerberg himself said
it will be many years before this becomes a revenue
generating part of the business. This is literally us building
it out, and that meant that for a while folks
were kind of seeing doom and gloom for the company
(01:33):
because again, so much of our focus is on the
short term. But now Meta reports that they saw an
uptick in users this past quarter. There was actually an
increase Now The Verge reports that the growth in users,
while definitely being there, is still the lowest growth rate
in the company's history, with the Facebook app growing by
(01:57):
four percent in the first quarter. That company also revealed
that ad revenue is likely still going to be fairly
soft for the next few months, largely because of how
Apple updated iOS so that users can opt out of
some tracking data that Meta had been relying upon in
order to deliver targeted ads. Targeted ads have super high
(02:21):
value to advertisers, so without that guarantee, then Facebook, you know,
they can still sell ads, but the targeted ads were
the ones that we're bringing in the most money, so
it means having to sell kind of a lower tier
advertising because of this issue with Apple. Interesting to me
(02:41):
that investors appear to be responding more to the uptick
in user numbers than in the announcements that revenue might
still be a bit slow. Also, Zuckerberg indicated that the
company is going to ease back on some of its
expenditures this year, probably because a lot of folks don't
really like thinking about long term investments and they prefer
(03:03):
to see numbers go up quarter over quarter. And Bloomberg
reports that the easing off is a is a relative thing.
Really that apparently the target spending for the year was
somewhere around us staggering nine five billion dollars and now
it's going to be somewhere closer between eighty seven and
ninety two billion dollars um, which I mean, again, that's
(03:28):
from the Bloomberg report, and that's just bonkers to me. Anyway,
it continues to astound me how the company's share value
can fluctuate dramatically over metrics that, at least to my eyes,
don't seem to indicate actual real success or meaningful growth,
like if it's not bringing in revenue, or if it's
not bringing in you know, a uh an equal amount
(03:52):
of revenue compared to the growth and users, I don't
see where the value is. But then I'm not a
finance person, and I fully admit that I likely just
don't have a good enough understanding of investment. This is
a me problem more than say, a meta problem. I
guess now I do have another meta story, and this
is a positive one. And I know I'm surprised too,
(04:13):
But some researchers with Meta's AI division collaborated with researchers
at the University of Illinois Urbana Champagne to tackle a
hard problem that's a pun you just don't know it yet,
and that problem is finding ways to make concrete that
end up cutting way back on carbon dioxide emissions. There's
(04:33):
a huge carbon footprint in concrete production. Actually did an
episode about concrete not too long ago and talked about
how the production of cement is a really carbon intensive process.
Concrete production contributes about eight percent of all carbon dioxide
emissions globally each year. So finding ways to make concrete,
(04:55):
which is undeniably useful stuff, I mean, it's important while
also cutting back on CEO two emissions would be a
huge important component in our plans to achieve a carbon
neutral status in the future. But a huge challenge, a
huge problem is that there are multiple variables that you
can tweak when you're producing concrete. You could break it
(05:17):
down and say that concrete is essentially made up of
four things. You know, it's like water, aggregate, cement, and
typically some other substances that allow for the creation of concrete,
which means that you can tweak those different factors, right
and uh in different measurements and determine all, right, well,
(05:38):
let's see if we put less cement in and more
of this other stuff in what happens. But because you've
got four variables, there are a lot of different ways
to play with that, and that is one of the
reasons why I can get really challenging, because you guys
spend a lot of time playing around with all these
different variables. So the researchers used AI to train a
(05:59):
model on one thousand different concrete formulas and then derive
what would be you know, likely to be the most
efficient approach that would still yield a strong and reliable concrete.
Because sometimes you can change this stuff up and you
will get concrete, but it takes too long to dry,
it's not as strong, and yeah, maybe it didn't create
(06:19):
as much CEO two, but it might not be useful.
So they fed all these formulas into the system, and
the system itself produced new formulas and the team picked
the five most promising ones to continue testing and tweaking,
and they modified the AI generated formulas slightly to improve them,
and ultimately the team created a new formula that could
(06:42):
replace up to half of the cement needed to produce
any given amount of concrete and instead use other materials
like fly ash and slag in its place. In addition,
the formula was supposed to exceed all strength metric requirements,
which it did, and that meant that the concrete produced
should be more than strong and resilient enough to serve
(07:04):
as concrete while that cement requirement is still reduced dramatically.
Meta then teamed up with a concrete company called Ozinga
to refine this formula even further and to move into
real world testing. Because it's one thing to say that
mathematically this is what it means. It's another thing to
actually find out in the real world. There's still more
(07:25):
work to be done, including finding out there's a way
to create this kind of concrete that drives a little faster,
because that would speed up construction efforts when you're making
use of this concrete. Otherwise, you have to wait for
it to to cure while uh, you know, before you
can start laying down more. Here's some elon musk Twitter
news that has nothing to do with him buying the platform.
(07:47):
So back in two thousand eighteen, the u S Security
is an exchange commission or SEC, charged Musk with fraud
after he tweeted that he had secured enough funding to
take Tesla private. Uh. The SECS allegations that Musk had
not actually secured such funding and that the announcement ended
up having a massive effect on Tesla's stock price, and
(08:10):
that Musk was essentially manipulating the stock market, which I
should add is a big no no. So there was
a lawsuit and ultimately Musk settled out of court, and
in the process he signed a document that required him
and Tesla to each pay twenty million dollars in civil finds.
Plus Musk had to step down as chairman of Tesla's
(08:32):
board of directors, and from that point forward he was
supposed to seek pre approval for any tweets he was
going to send out that related to his businesses before
he actually posted them. Well, recently, Musk has been trying
to get that settlement thrown out, but a federal judges
said no, Dice, it stands the judge argues that the
SECS allegations were fair and warranted, and that Musk has
(08:56):
no evidence that he actually secured the funding he said
he had, and that he signed this settlement voluntarily, and
he must therefore abide by its rules. The judge also wrote,
quote Musk may wish it were otherwise, but he remains
subject to the same enforcement authority and has the same
means to challenge the exercise of that authority as any
(09:19):
other citizen. End quote. Right to repair advocates in the
United States can celebrate a victory. Apple has now made
self service repair for iPhone twelve and thirteen models available
in the United States. That means that Apple will allow
people to order repair manuals, proprietary tools needed to access
Apple products, and even official Apple parts through the self
(09:43):
service repair store. Now that's not to say that your
average iPhone user is really going to be able to
pop open the hood and change the air filter on
their phone or whatever. You get what I mean. Making
repairs will require a certain level of knowledge, skill, and expertise,
so it's far more likely that independent electronics repair stores
will make use of this offering, giving iPhone users options
(10:07):
when it comes to fixing problems with their phones. Apple
later plans to roll out similar offerings for Mac computers,
and this is a pretty big step for Apple, which
for years has attempted to maintain a walled garden and
require users to go through Apple and Apple alone when
it comes to repairs. So good job Apple. We've got
(10:27):
a few more news items to get through. But before
we do that, let's take a quick break down under
Amazon has declined to acquiesce to the government's request to
take a look see at the company's product search system
(10:48):
and algorithms. So the government wants to see if Amazon
favors its own in house products over a third party
merchant products and other words, giving itself an unfair advantage
in the Amazon marketplace. So this is the same accusation
Amazon has faced in places like India and the United States.
(11:10):
Amazon has refused to share that information, or at least
declined to send it to the Australian government, and the
company denies that it has ever given preferential treatment to
its own products. That's not likely to fly for the
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for the a c c
c H. Now, one thing that is very much different
(11:34):
in Australia compared to some other markets, like specifically the
United States, is that Amazon is still a relatively young
player in that country, and it's in fact, it's not
the largest online market in Australia. In fact, according to
the a c c C, Amazon brought in just one
quarter of the sales that eBay saw in Australia last year. However,
(11:57):
the a c c C is concerned about any platform
that engages in what it views as anti competitive or
unfair practices, even if that platform isn't as dominant down
there as it is here. Now, the only other thing
I know about Amazon in Australia is that the company
has seen a lot of returns of boomerangs. But then
(12:19):
I'm led to understand that's what they're supposed to do.
Related to Amazon, let's talk about Twitch, because Amazon owns Twitch.
According to Bloomberg, Twitch is considering a couple of moves
that could dramatically impact streamers and the experience of watching
live streams on the platform. First is that it sounds
like Twitch wants to encourage streamers to run more ads
(12:42):
during live streams. Obviously, that would generate more revenue for
the platform, And another possible strategy is that Twitch will
change the amount of subscription revenue that streamers get to keep.
So right now, if you subscribe to a Twitch streamer,
let's say that you know, you've you chalk over six
(13:02):
bucks a month in order to follow a particular streamer.
The streamers keep se of the revenue generated from audience
subscriptions to their channel. But according to Bloomberg, Twitch is
considering dropping that down, so it's a fifty fifty split.
Fifty go to the streamer and the other fifty goes
to Twitch itself. That is probably not going to go
(13:22):
over so well with the streaming community at large, certainly
not for some of the more active streamers who really
depend upon Twitch for their livelihood. Now, whether this might
prompt an exodus from Twitch to other platforms like YouTube
remains to be seen. For some, like some of the
really big ones, they might be signed to exclusive contracts
that lock them into Twitch for a while. Um for
(13:45):
other ones, more moderate content creators, it may be just
a question they have to ask themselves. It also may
turn out that the company will reconsider these moves. They
haven't yet been implemented, so there's no you know, setting
stone Lan to go this way. Also in gaming, AXIOS
reports that far right extremism is growing in the gaming
(14:08):
space and that the systems present in games are not
up to the task of moderating players and addressing the problem.
Axis cites a couple of reports. One came from the
Extremism and Gaming Research Network and it published in December
two thousand one. UH. There was another report from two
thousand nineteen from the Anti Defamation League, and these reports
(14:31):
paint a pretty troubling picture. They show that more than
half of the people who have experienced harassment in online
multiplayer games believe that they were targeted because of things
like their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, and so on.
The two thousand twenty one report indicates that games are
sorely lacking when it comes to ways that they can
(14:52):
manage the problem. This sets them apart from platforms like Facebook, Twitter,
you know, other social network platforms that have spent a
lot of money trying to deal with this problem to
varying degrees of success, but the gaming space in general
hasn't done that yet. UH. There are also indications that
white supremacist ideology is on the rise within the online
(15:15):
gaming world in general, so it does paint a pretty
troubling picture. It doesn't mean that you know games are
bad themselves, but rather there may need to be a
shift and how companies end up moderating their players in
their online platforms. In Michigan, several parties led by Ford
(15:36):
and Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners have raised one million dollars in
capital funding to develop a connected roadway for the purposes
of autonomous cars. So the roadway will connect Detroit to
ann Arbor, Michigan, and it was previously announced in twenty twenty,
but the recent news marks the first time serious money
(15:57):
is being put towards this project. So the goal is
to create a dedicated roadway for self driving vehicles, and
the roadway will actually include hardware that will allow for
communication between the vehicle and the underlying infrastructure. And this
is something I'm really interested in. It's something that we've
been talking about for years now, and that's the most
(16:19):
self driving cars that we think about today. For the
most part, they are largely self contained systems. It's like
having your own PC, right and and not having it
connect to anything else. The PC is able to do
some incredible stuff, but it's restricted to its own abilities.
So the car alone is responsible for operating the vehicle,
(16:41):
monitoring the surrounding environment, avoiding collisions and all that kind
of stuff. However, if you're able to pair an autonomous
vehicle with a smart infrastructure, while the vehicles on the
road can communicate with the road itself, and then also
by extension other autonomous vehicles, which can allow for faster traffic,
(17:02):
less congestion, safer operations because like everyone knows what everyone
else is doing already, right, all the cars are aware
of all the other cars on that infrastructure and can
operate at a higher rate of speed with a much,
much much lower probability of something going wrong apart from
things like you know, like a flat tire. Stuff like
(17:24):
that still obviously an issue, but that cars would be
able to react very quickly and collectively, so you wouldn't
have things like pile ups. Now, Obviously, building out infrastructure
is time consuming, it's expensive, and it's challenging, and we
already have tons of roads here in the United States,
and building out, replacing or upgrading existing infrastructure, that's a
(17:48):
that's a huge endeavor. Anyone who has lived somewhere that
had massive road work being done on a local Highway
knows that it can take an excruciatingly long time for
that work to complete. Ill if this project in Michigan
ends up being a big success, it could serve as
a model for future projects leading to a more safe
(18:09):
and effective autonomous vehicle ecosystem. Finally, over in the UK,
the government is revising laws regarding public service broadcasting and
these laws will now also cover streaming services like Netflix,
Apple TV and more that are operating within the UK.
So the rules will include a restriction on broadcasting quote
(18:31):
unquote harmful content. Now I'm not entirely certain what constitutes
harmful content, like what is defined as harmful content, but
if a streaming service is found guilty of broadcasting harmful
content within the UK, it can be fined up to
five percent of its revenue. And it sounds to me
as though the process is a viewer watches a streaming service,
(18:56):
see something on that streaming service that the viewer believes
is harmful. The viewer then contact the UK's communications regulatory
agency known as the Office of Communications but better known
as OFFCOM, and presumably OFFCOM would then review that material
to determine if it does in fact constitute harmful content.
And then take action, but I'm not entirely certain. I'll
(19:17):
have to keep an eye on it. And that's the
news for Thursday, April two thousand twenty two. Hope you're
all well. If you have any questions or suggestions for me,
send me a message on Twitter. The handle for the
show is text Stuff H s W. And I'll talk
to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I
(19:40):
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.
Hey 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 you. It's time for the
tech news for Thursday, April twenty eight, two thousand, twenty two,
(00:26):
and we're gonna start off with some news about Meta.
The company had its first quarter report and the results
gave new confidence to investors. Now you might remember that
we found out that by the end of last year,
Meta had seen a decline in users for the first time,
and that, coupled with a couple of other tough pills
(00:48):
to swallow, ended up being a big shadow across the company.
And those tough bills included stuff like Zuckerberg acknowledging that
TikTok was far more effective at a tracting young users
than than Meta's properties were, including stuff like Instagram and Facebook,
and that Meta had been spending billions of dollars on
(01:11):
its Metaverse plans, but those plans are not gonna come
to fruition for several years. I mean, Zuckerberg himself said
it will be many years before this becomes a revenue
generating part of the business. This is literally us building
it out, and that meant that for a while folks
were kind of seeing doom and gloom for the company
(01:33):
because again, so much of our focus is on the
short term. But now Meta reports that they saw an
uptick in users this past quarter. There was actually an
increase Now The Verge reports that the growth in users,
while definitely being there, is still the lowest growth rate
in the company's history, with the Facebook app growing by
(01:57):
four percent in the first quarter. That company also revealed
that ad revenue is likely still going to be fairly
soft for the next few months, largely because of how
Apple updated iOS so that users can opt out of
some tracking data that Meta had been relying upon in
order to deliver targeted ads. Targeted ads have super high
(02:21):
value to advertisers, so without that guarantee, then Facebook, you know,
they can still sell ads, but the targeted ads were
the ones that we're bringing in the most money, so
it means having to sell kind of a lower tier
advertising because of this issue with Apple. Interesting to me
(02:41):
that investors appear to be responding more to the uptick
in user numbers than in the announcements that revenue might
still be a bit slow. Also, Zuckerberg indicated that the
company is going to ease back on some of its
expenditures this year, probably because a lot of folks don't
really like thinking about long term investments and they prefer
(03:03):
to see numbers go up quarter over quarter. And Bloomberg
reports that the easing off is a is a relative thing.
Really that apparently the target spending for the year was
somewhere around us staggering nine five billion dollars and now
it's going to be somewhere closer between eighty seven and
ninety two billion dollars um, which I mean, again, that's
(03:28):
from the Bloomberg report, and that's just bonkers to me. Anyway,
it continues to astound me how the company's share value
can fluctuate dramatically over metrics that, at least to my eyes,
don't seem to indicate actual real success or meaningful growth,
like if it's not bringing in revenue, or if it's
not bringing in you know, a uh an equal amount
(03:52):
of revenue compared to the growth and users, I don't
see where the value is. But then I'm not a
finance person, and I fully admit that I likely just
don't have a good enough understanding of investment. This is
a me problem more than say, a meta problem. I
guess now I do have another meta story, and this
is a positive one. And I know I'm surprised too,
(04:13):
But some researchers with Meta's AI division collaborated with researchers
at the University of Illinois Urbana Champagne to tackle a
hard problem that's a pun you just don't know it yet,
and that problem is finding ways to make concrete that
end up cutting way back on carbon dioxide emissions. There's
(04:33):
a huge carbon footprint in concrete production. Actually did an
episode about concrete not too long ago and talked about
how the production of cement is a really carbon intensive process.
Concrete production contributes about eight percent of all carbon dioxide
emissions globally each year. So finding ways to make concrete,
(04:55):
which is undeniably useful stuff, I mean, it's important while
also cutting back on CEO two emissions would be a
huge important component in our plans to achieve a carbon
neutral status in the future. But a huge challenge, a
huge problem is that there are multiple variables that you
can tweak when you're producing concrete. You could break it
(05:17):
down and say that concrete is essentially made up of
four things. You know, it's like water, aggregate, cement, and
typically some other substances that allow for the creation of concrete,
which means that you can tweak those different factors, right
and uh in different measurements and determine all, right, well,
(05:38):
let's see if we put less cement in and more
of this other stuff in what happens. But because you've
got four variables, there are a lot of different ways
to play with that, and that is one of the
reasons why I can get really challenging, because you guys
spend a lot of time playing around with all these
different variables. So the researchers used AI to train a
(05:59):
model on one thousand different concrete formulas and then derive
what would be you know, likely to be the most
efficient approach that would still yield a strong and reliable concrete.
Because sometimes you can change this stuff up and you
will get concrete, but it takes too long to dry,
it's not as strong, and yeah, maybe it didn't create
(06:19):
as much CEO two, but it might not be useful.
So they fed all these formulas into the system, and
the system itself produced new formulas and the team picked
the five most promising ones to continue testing and tweaking,
and they modified the AI generated formulas slightly to improve them,
and ultimately the team created a new formula that could
(06:42):
replace up to half of the cement needed to produce
any given amount of concrete and instead use other materials
like fly ash and slag in its place. In addition,
the formula was supposed to exceed all strength metric requirements,
which it did, and that meant that the concrete produced
should be more than strong and resilient enough to serve
(07:04):
as concrete while that cement requirement is still reduced dramatically.
Meta then teamed up with a concrete company called Ozinga
to refine this formula even further and to move into
real world testing. Because it's one thing to say that
mathematically this is what it means. It's another thing to
actually find out in the real world. There's still more
(07:25):
work to be done, including finding out there's a way
to create this kind of concrete that drives a little faster,
because that would speed up construction efforts when you're making
use of this concrete. Otherwise, you have to wait for
it to to cure while uh, you know, before you
can start laying down more. Here's some elon musk Twitter
news that has nothing to do with him buying the platform.
(07:47):
So back in two thousand eighteen, the u S Security
is an exchange commission or SEC, charged Musk with fraud
after he tweeted that he had secured enough funding to
take Tesla private. Uh. The SECS allegations that Musk had
not actually secured such funding and that the announcement ended
up having a massive effect on Tesla's stock price, and
(08:10):
that Musk was essentially manipulating the stock market, which I
should add is a big no no. So there was
a lawsuit and ultimately Musk settled out of court, and
in the process he signed a document that required him
and Tesla to each pay twenty million dollars in civil finds.
Plus Musk had to step down as chairman of Tesla's
(08:32):
board of directors, and from that point forward he was
supposed to seek pre approval for any tweets he was
going to send out that related to his businesses before
he actually posted them. Well, recently, Musk has been trying
to get that settlement thrown out, but a federal judges
said no, Dice, it stands the judge argues that the
SECS allegations were fair and warranted, and that Musk has
(08:56):
no evidence that he actually secured the funding he said
he had, and that he signed this settlement voluntarily, and
he must therefore abide by its rules. The judge also wrote,
quote Musk may wish it were otherwise, but he remains
subject to the same enforcement authority and has the same
means to challenge the exercise of that authority as any
(09:19):
other citizen. End quote. Right to repair advocates in the
United States can celebrate a victory. Apple has now made
self service repair for iPhone twelve and thirteen models available
in the United States. That means that Apple will allow
people to order repair manuals, proprietary tools needed to access
Apple products, and even official Apple parts through the self
(09:43):
service repair store. Now that's not to say that your
average iPhone user is really going to be able to
pop open the hood and change the air filter on
their phone or whatever. You get what I mean. Making
repairs will require a certain level of knowledge, skill, and expertise,
so it's far more likely that independent electronics repair stores
will make use of this offering, giving iPhone users options
(10:07):
when it comes to fixing problems with their phones. Apple
later plans to roll out similar offerings for Mac computers,
and this is a pretty big step for Apple, which
for years has attempted to maintain a walled garden and
require users to go through Apple and Apple alone when
it comes to repairs. So good job Apple. We've got
(10:27):
a few more news items to get through. But before
we do that, let's take a quick break down under
Amazon has declined to acquiesce to the government's request to
take a look see at the company's product search system
(10:48):
and algorithms. So the government wants to see if Amazon
favors its own in house products over a third party
merchant products and other words, giving itself an unfair advantage
in the Amazon marketplace. So this is the same accusation
Amazon has faced in places like India and the United States.
(11:10):
Amazon has refused to share that information, or at least
declined to send it to the Australian government, and the
company denies that it has ever given preferential treatment to
its own products. That's not likely to fly for the
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for the a c c
c H. Now, one thing that is very much different
(11:34):
in Australia compared to some other markets, like specifically the
United States, is that Amazon is still a relatively young
player in that country, and it's in fact, it's not
the largest online market in Australia. In fact, according to
the a c c C, Amazon brought in just one
quarter of the sales that eBay saw in Australia last year. However,
(11:57):
the a c c C is concerned about any platform
that engages in what it views as anti competitive or
unfair practices, even if that platform isn't as dominant down
there as it is here. Now, the only other thing
I know about Amazon in Australia is that the company
has seen a lot of returns of boomerangs. But then
(12:19):
I'm led to understand that's what they're supposed to do.
Related to Amazon, let's talk about Twitch, because Amazon owns Twitch.
According to Bloomberg, Twitch is considering a couple of moves
that could dramatically impact streamers and the experience of watching
live streams on the platform. First is that it sounds
like Twitch wants to encourage streamers to run more ads
(12:42):
during live streams. Obviously, that would generate more revenue for
the platform, And another possible strategy is that Twitch will
change the amount of subscription revenue that streamers get to keep.
So right now, if you subscribe to a Twitch streamer,
let's say that you know, you've you chalk over six
(13:02):
bucks a month in order to follow a particular streamer.
The streamers keep se of the revenue generated from audience
subscriptions to their channel. But according to Bloomberg, Twitch is
considering dropping that down, so it's a fifty fifty split.
Fifty go to the streamer and the other fifty goes
to Twitch itself. That is probably not going to go
(13:22):
over so well with the streaming community at large, certainly
not for some of the more active streamers who really
depend upon Twitch for their livelihood. Now, whether this might
prompt an exodus from Twitch to other platforms like YouTube
remains to be seen. For some, like some of the
really big ones, they might be signed to exclusive contracts
that lock them into Twitch for a while. Um for
(13:45):
other ones, more moderate content creators, it may be just
a question they have to ask themselves. It also may
turn out that the company will reconsider these moves. They
haven't yet been implemented, so there's no you know, setting
stone Lan to go this way. Also in gaming, AXIOS
reports that far right extremism is growing in the gaming
(14:08):
space and that the systems present in games are not
up to the task of moderating players and addressing the problem.
Axis cites a couple of reports. One came from the
Extremism and Gaming Research Network and it published in December
two thousand one. UH. There was another report from two
thousand nineteen from the Anti Defamation League, and these reports
(14:31):
paint a pretty troubling picture. They show that more than
half of the people who have experienced harassment in online
multiplayer games believe that they were targeted because of things
like their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, and so on.
The two thousand twenty one report indicates that games are
sorely lacking when it comes to ways that they can
(14:52):
manage the problem. This sets them apart from platforms like Facebook, Twitter,
you know, other social network platforms that have spent a
lot of money trying to deal with this problem to
varying degrees of success, but the gaming space in general
hasn't done that yet. UH. There are also indications that
white supremacist ideology is on the rise within the online
(15:15):
gaming world in general, so it does paint a pretty
troubling picture. It doesn't mean that you know games are
bad themselves, but rather there may need to be a
shift and how companies end up moderating their players in
their online platforms. In Michigan, several parties led by Ford
(15:36):
and Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners have raised one million dollars in
capital funding to develop a connected roadway for the purposes
of autonomous cars. So the roadway will connect Detroit to
ann Arbor, Michigan, and it was previously announced in twenty twenty,
but the recent news marks the first time serious money
(15:57):
is being put towards this project. So the goal is
to create a dedicated roadway for self driving vehicles, and
the roadway will actually include hardware that will allow for
communication between the vehicle and the underlying infrastructure. And this
is something I'm really interested in. It's something that we've
been talking about for years now, and that's the most
(16:19):
self driving cars that we think about today. For the
most part, they are largely self contained systems. It's like
having your own PC, right and and not having it
connect to anything else. The PC is able to do
some incredible stuff, but it's restricted to its own abilities.
So the car alone is responsible for operating the vehicle,
(16:41):
monitoring the surrounding environment, avoiding collisions and all that kind
of stuff. However, if you're able to pair an autonomous
vehicle with a smart infrastructure, while the vehicles on the
road can communicate with the road itself, and then also
by extension other autonomous vehicles, which can allow for faster traffic,
(17:02):
less congestion, safer operations because like everyone knows what everyone
else is doing already, right, all the cars are aware
of all the other cars on that infrastructure and can
operate at a higher rate of speed with a much,
much much lower probability of something going wrong apart from
things like you know, like a flat tire. Stuff like
(17:24):
that still obviously an issue, but that cars would be
able to react very quickly and collectively, so you wouldn't
have things like pile ups. Now, Obviously, building out infrastructure
is time consuming, it's expensive, and it's challenging, and we
already have tons of roads here in the United States,
and building out, replacing or upgrading existing infrastructure, that's a
(17:48):
that's a huge endeavor. Anyone who has lived somewhere that
had massive road work being done on a local Highway
knows that it can take an excruciatingly long time for
that work to complete. Ill if this project in Michigan
ends up being a big success, it could serve as
a model for future projects leading to a more safe
(18:09):
and effective autonomous vehicle ecosystem. Finally, over in the UK,
the government is revising laws regarding public service broadcasting and
these laws will now also cover streaming services like Netflix,
Apple TV and more that are operating within the UK.
So the rules will include a restriction on broadcasting quote
(18:31):
unquote harmful content. Now I'm not entirely certain what constitutes
harmful content, like what is defined as harmful content, but
if a streaming service is found guilty of broadcasting harmful
content within the UK, it can be fined up to
five percent of its revenue. And it sounds to me
as though the process is a viewer watches a streaming service,
(18:56):
see something on that streaming service that the viewer believes
is harmful. The viewer then contact the UK's communications regulatory
agency known as the Office of Communications but better known
as OFFCOM, and presumably OFFCOM would then review that material
to determine if it does in fact constitute harmful content.
And then take action, but I'm not entirely certain. I'll
(19:17):
have to keep an eye on it. And that's the
news for Thursday, April two thousand twenty two. Hope you're
all well. If you have any questions or suggestions for me,
send me a message on Twitter. The handle for the
show is text Stuff H s W. And I'll talk
to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I
(19:40):
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.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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