July 12, 2024 • 45 mins
Sony will stop producing rewritable Blu-rays and a DVD rental service went belly up. Are we looking at the end of physical media? Plus, AI causes more headaches, Goldman Sachs warns we might be in an AI bubble, and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jovin Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
the week ending July twelfth, two thy twenty four. There
(00:27):
was actually a ton of news this week. I guess
making up for last week, so I'm just covering like
half of it because there was so much, I had
to choose which stories I was going to include. As
it stands, this is going to be a long one,
so let's get to it. Last week, the German newspaper
Der Spiegel and a Russian independent news site called The
(00:49):
Insider revealed that Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service aka the SVR
has a program that they call Project Kailo. I don't
know if that's name after Kylo Renn from the Star
Wars films. Anyway, this project's aim is to spread misinformation
and propaganda in support of Russia's goals, particularly with regard
(01:10):
to the ongoing war with Ukraine. And I find it
interesting that a lot of media sites reference this as
a bombshell report, linking Russia to these efforts. I think
it's surprising, not because I don't think it's important. I
do think it's important. I just figured we were all
working under the assumption that this was in fact happening already.
(01:30):
I guess the appearance of confirmation is really the story
here anyway. The report says that the svr's playbook involves
establishing fake news websites and then flooding these websites with
misleading content, often boosted through the use of generative AI.
You can write a whole lot of stuff if you
offload it to AI, and if you're not really concerned
(01:52):
about the accuracy of it, I mean, if your goal
is to create misinformation, accuracy really isn't in your top concerns.
The agency also made heavy use of social networking and
media platforms to spread these messages, so establishing a place
to post everything and then a distribution method for getting
it out in front as many eyeballs as possible. So,
(02:14):
according to these newspapers, the agency went to the trouble
of actually hiring real world people to pose as protesters
in various Western countries in an effort to amplify messaging,
and then beyond that, they helped distribute video footage of
these protests in order to get a wider release of
(02:36):
that messaging. This is interesting because here in the United States,
actually not too far from the state where I live,
there was a notable white supremacist march that took place
in Nashville, Tennessee. And I'm curious as to whether or
not that march was amplified by efforts like this, where
(02:59):
people were specific brought in to boost the numbers and
make them larger. And then obviously that video footage of
that that particular march got pretty wide circulation. And I
mean it may not be at all related to the
Russian efforts. I want to make that clear. This could
be completely independent of that, but it does sort of
(03:20):
fall in line with that same strategy. Also last week,
Cowlan McGee and I apologize for butchering the name, but
McGee wrote a piece for I News, which is an
English news site, and in that piece, McGee writes that
French officials identified Russian propaganda as pushing French citizens to
(03:41):
support far right candidates during their parliamentary elections. Those took
place just this past Sunday. Now, those efforts ultimately fell
a little short. The far right did win quite a
few seats, like one hundred and forty two seats in parliament,
but that puts them in third place, behind the Left
wing Party, which won one hundred eighty eight seats and
(04:02):
the Centrist Party, which won one hundred and sixty one seats. However,
no single party secured two hundred and eighty nine or
more seats, which means France's president now faces the tough
challenge of appointing a prime minister because with they don't
have the support of a single parliamentary party. Right, there's
(04:23):
no party that holds a majority, and if the prime
minister doesn't have the support of parliament, then the government
kind of stops working. So what I'm saying is that
Russia's campaign, assuming that it actually had an impact on
the French elections at all, was not a total failure. Yeah,
they didn't secure a majority, but if you're thinking it's
(04:43):
more in an effort to disrupt politics and to add
some instability to Western governments, then there was success here,
or at least it's in alignment with Russia's goals. Whether
or not the efforts moved the needle at all, that's
that's another question. McGee's piece in IEWS lists out numerous
(05:03):
examples of Russian attempts to misinform, from bought controlled social
accounts to fake news sites pushing lies to the public,
and obviously France is just one nation that's targeted by Russia.
The convergence of tools like AI and social networks, on
top of how easy it is to just launch a website,
has really created a perfect storm for the creation and
(05:25):
distribution of propaganda. So, as always, I recommend viewing media
through the lens of critical thinking. It's not a guarantee
that you still won't get misled. That can still happen,
but using critical thinking really helps cut down on the
frequency at which that can happen. Make sure you're paying
attention to the source of that information and what their
(05:46):
sources are, because if we're all looking at news that's
all drawing its information from a single source, and that
source is compromised, well then we can't trust any of
the news that was reported from it. We're in the
United States, the Department of Justice announced just this past
Tuesday that it had identified and disrupted a Russian operation
(06:07):
making use of bots and misinformation to sew discord here
in the states, which just as a point of reference, y'all,
we do not need outside help on that. We're really
good at sowing discord amongst ourselves. Anyway, the DOJ seized
two domains in around one thousand social accounts believed to
be part of this Russian operation. The associated accounts received
(06:29):
a ban on x formerly known as Twitter, and they
had a history of posting content with a pro Kremlin perspective.
Apart from using AI to undermine governments and societies, it
seems like there's not really enough of a use case
for artificial intelligence to justify the truly insane amount of
investment that's going into it. Now that's not just my opinion,
(06:51):
although it is my opinion. Goldman Sachs released a newsletter
warning that told businesses there there just might be this crazy,
uns sustainable bubble forming around AI. But to be clear,
I am applying my own point of view to what
Goldman Sachs found. They didn't use words like crazy, and
in fact, they were pretty light with the use of
(07:11):
the word bubble, although at least one Goldman sax rep
did refer to it as a potential bubble, not definitively
a bubble, but it could be so. The report revealed
that around a trillion dollars is on track to pour
into the generative AI space, and that includes stuff like
building out and outfitting data centers, you know, the purchase
(07:34):
of new hardware, research and development, all this kind of stuff.
Goldman Sachs says, there's also no killer application for AI
that kind of justifies this crazy expenditure. So, in other words,
the research newsletter says, companies are rushing into the AI
space without really a clear goal or any assurance that
(07:56):
the investment they're making is going to pay off down
the road. It could be that the companies that are
spending billions of dollars in the AI generative AI specifically
in that field, that they're setting huge piles of cash
on fire. Alah, the joker in that Dark Night movie.
Jim Cavello, the head of Goldman Sachs's Global equity research,
(08:17):
put it this way, quote, what one trillion dollar problem
will AI solve? Replacing low wage jobs with tremendously costly
technology is basically the polar opposite of the prior technology
transitions I've witnessed in my thirty years of closely following
the tech industry end quote. So what he's saying is
(08:39):
there's not a clear problem that AI is solving, especially
not one that amounts to a one trillion dollar problem,
and that the ways we are seeing AI being applied
right now are low cost things. And in fact, it
could mean that you're spending more money with AI than
you were with human beings, so you're actually costing yourself
(09:01):
more money and you're funding that whole process. So it
really sounds like shots fired across the ballot companies that
have been downsizing staff in favor of relying more on
generative AI, such as oh I don't know HowStuffWorks dot
Com my former employer. We'll have more about the issue
of AI displacing creatives later in this episode, but yeah,
(09:21):
I'm still obviously salty about that, even though I wasn't
directly affected, right, I had already moved on from how
stuff works, or really my part of the company moved
on from How Stuff Works. But I'm still upset that
site ended up laying off the editorial staff in favor
of AI generated articles. I think that was an enormous mistake.
(09:42):
I plan on doing an episode in the near future
about one of the many reasons I think that's a
massive mistake, because it's not just that very talented, dedicated
people lost their jobs over it. That's a big part
of it. I mean, there's an emotional attachment, don't get
me wrong. But I also think that there is a
technological mistake that's being made, and I'm not the only one.
(10:06):
It involves things like model collapse, as in large language
model collapse, but we'll talk about that in a future
episode not too long from now. Anyway, the report warns
that any returns on investment are likely to be many
years down the road because it's going to take time
to build the AI infrastructure that actually creates meaningful improvements
(10:30):
in stuff like business performance and costs. So in the
short term, it's far more likely that running AI operations
is actually going to cost more than going the alternative route.
And all of that obviously becomes dangerous for companies that
are currently investing heavily in the space. They might find
themselves either in need of a severe course correction or
they might have to convince stakeholders to you know, patiently
(10:53):
wait for things to pay off in the future. That's
kind of what Meta has been doing, particularly in the
Reality Labs division, and metaverse stuff. Zuckerberg has to keep saying,
this is going to cost us a lot of money
in the short term, but in the long term, we
believe it's the future of our business. I remain unconvinced
that that's going to be the case, but that's the
(11:14):
argument Zuckerberg has to make two investors pretty much every
earnings called because they have to grapple with the fact
that they're spending billions of dollars in this division and
they don't have a lot to show for it yet,
and the stuff they have shown has not really created
an amazing response among consumers or investors. I expect we're
(11:36):
going to see very similar stories play out in the
AI space. Speaking of AI displacing jobs, into It, a
company that specializes in tax preparation software announced a reorganization
this week and that's going to result in downsizing staff
by around ten percent of the company. Company reps say
this is part of the long term strategy in which
(11:57):
into It will hire at least that same number of
people that they're laying off this year. So they're saying,
like next year they're going to hire as many or
more people as what they are laying off right now.
That number is around one eight hundred staff and that
this long term plan also involves incorporating artificial intelligence in
(12:18):
into its offerings. No big surprise there that they're saying
AI is going to be a big part of their
ongoing strategy. That is kind of the messaging we're hearing
across all industries right now. So into Its CEO further
said that more than half of those one eight hundred
employees who are being let go were selected because they
(12:39):
failed to meet company expectations, which is a big old yikes.
Like when you know arguably around five percent or more
of your company isn't meeting expectations, that's to me, that's
a management problem. That means that managers are not doing
their job in making sure that employees have what they
(12:59):
need and understand what they need to do in order
to meet expectations. But I mean, what do I know.
I'm not an expert in business or anything like that.
It just it just seems that way to me. So
I do think for the record that AI will have
its place. I'm not totally against AI. I know I
come down hard on AI a lot on this show.
(13:22):
I do think there will be ways to integrate AI
into business strategies that will be overall beneficial and not
just beneficial to the bottom line, which is kind of
the cynical way of looking at it right now, but
to people who are actually working at those companies. I
do think there are ways to use AI to enhance
people's work so that they can focus on the things
(13:45):
that really matter, while AI handles little details that are
important but are not necessary for humans to handle personally.
I just think there's also a ton of company executives
out there who are rushing into integrating AI without fully
thinking about the consequences they're going to encounter and the
lives are going to impact. They're doing it quickly without
(14:09):
fully thinking it through, and that's what leads to really
big messes. Okay, speaking of a big mess, I just
made one by spelling my coffee. We're going to take
a quick break and I'll be right back. Okay, we're back.
(14:32):
Coffee spillage has been contained. Cleaning efforts are ongoing, but
let's get back into the episode. So, a hacker group
called sieged Sec. Sie ged Sec says it has breached
the systems of an organization called the Heritage Foundation and
stolen a large amount of data and subsequently released that
(14:55):
data online. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative political or
organization and think tank. It is credited with being responsible
for a broad platform of policy proposals, collectively referenced as
Project twenty twenty five. Now, to go into Project twenty
twenty five is well beyond the scope of this podcast. However,
(15:17):
I can recommend you check out the June twenty eighth,
twenty twenty four episode of Stuff they Don't Want You
to Know. It is titled Project twenty twenty five. Should
we be concerned anyway? The sieged sec hackers carried out
the attack in part to ensure more quote transparency to
the public regarding who exactly is supporting Heritage end quote.
(15:39):
So that quote comes from a hacker who uses the
handle vo viio. This hacker spoke with the new site
Cyberscoop about the breach. That breach is mostly apparently a
list of names of people who have been involved with
or contributed to the Heritage Foundation. This is all part
of a quickly developing story regarding Project twenty twenty five,
(16:03):
and there's a lot of information and misinformation out about
that as well. So again, use critical thinking when you're
looking into this stuff. I do think personally that it's
something to be concerned about, and that it is. There
are elements of it that are pretty darn scary if
(16:23):
you if you care about stuff like say LGBTQ rights,
it's very scary, or women's autonomy rights, that kind of stuff.
It gets pretty frightening. But I recommend everyone do their
research and learn about it, and you know, mind where
you're getting your information, so that you're you've got a
(16:43):
reasonable handle on what's going on, because it's always important
to keep that in mind when you're engaging with material,
particularly material that might be confirming any biases you happen
to have. I have to remind myself of that all
the time. Marco Risol of hackerdose dot com has an
article titled hackers may use Telegram video to gain full
(17:06):
control of your phone. That is a heck of a headline.
So first off, in case you are not familiar with Telegram,
that's a smartphone based messaging app. It's also cloud based
messaging and it offers end to end encryption. You can
do voice calls, video calls, text messages. It has become
(17:27):
a favored messaging app among those who value their privacy
and they don't want their communications to be snoopable. They
want to do end to end encryption. But an X
or Twitter user, depending on how you want to call
that service called. Today cyber News posted that a vulnerability
(17:47):
in the Android version of Telegram allows an on ramp
for malware. So the alleged exploit involves the target receiving
a link to a video that if the target tries
to launch, the video, prompts a pop up message, and
that message says that Telegram's native video player is unable
(18:07):
to play the media file in question, So don't worry,
because you will be prompted to go toward a site
that is claimed to be a third party video service
that then will play the video. So it's saying, oh,
Telegram can't play this, but just click this link, you'll
go to a site that will play the video. Except
it's all a ploy to trick the target into unknowingly
(18:29):
consenting to downloading malware. The malware infects the phone and
effectively hands control over to a remote operator who has
essentially full administrative access to the device. At that point,
they can access the camera on the phone, the microphones
call logs, they can see all the apps that are
saved to the phone, all that kind of stuff, all
(18:52):
of that allegedly becomes available to the hackers. That is,
if these claims are in fact true, and they might
not be so. The tweet included a video demonstration of
this exploit in action. However, the resolution of the video
was not great, and thus it was difficult to verify
that this is a legitimate video of an actual exploit.
(19:15):
Earlier this year, Telegram actually debunked a different vulnerability claim
that was made against it. So there's already precedent for
false claims against Telegram, and it could turn out that
this new allegation is also a hoax. But I would
suggest to anyone who's using Telegram, or really any messaging
service for that matter, to think twice before clicking on
(19:38):
links to stuff, particularly if it is in relation to
a message that has a clickbaity kind of vibe to it,
right Like, if you get a video that's appealing to
either your paranoia, right like it's a video saying, hey,
is this you and this video? Or if it's something
that's very it's like appealing to a salacious sign of
(20:00):
human nature. Anything like that that should raise red flags.
And you should be very cautious before following any links
because it's a tried and true method to trick people
into a trap. If you were an AT and T
cellular customer between May and November in twenty twenty two,
I have some bad news. There's a really good chance
(20:20):
that your phone number and some information about who you
texted and called has been leaked in a massive data breach.
So AT and T says that essentially all cellular customers
at that time period were involved in this data leak,
in which some third party was able to download the
information off of a cloud platform that AT and T uses.
(20:43):
So this is another case where a hackers target not
the company itself, not AT and T, but a business
to business operator that AT and T uses. You know,
it's a provider that has this cloud services platform, and
the hackers targeted that provider. AT and T says that
names were not included in this data leak. It was
(21:05):
just numbers and then metadata about the text messages and
phone calls those numbers were engaged in. However, AT and
T also says it can be rather trivial to match
a name with a phone number. There are a lot
of databases out there that have information about phone numbers
and who those numbers belong to. So all that info
(21:26):
may already be out in the wild, and just with
a little cross referencing, a hacker can figure out who
this number belongs to. Some of the call and texting
data related to some of the numbers was part of
this attack, as I've mentioned, So it's not the contents
of those phone calls or the texts. It's not like
the hackers can read what someone has texted to someone else. Instead,
(21:47):
it's a call log or a text log, so you
can see which numbers have communicated with one another. According
to AT and T spokesperson Alex Byers, this breach is
unrelated to a different incident that the company acknowledged back
in March. So AT and T has been the target
of two massive hacker attacks and data breaches. Not great,
(22:09):
Apple has assuaged the concerns of EU regulators, at least
for now, regarding the company's Tap to Pay iPhone payment system.
So regulators in the EU had accused Apple of jealously
guarding that Tap to pay system in order to maintain
a monopoly over payment processing through the iPhone, and if
(22:30):
Apple did not open that up to third parties, to
other like payment processing companies and such, Apple could face
a pretty sizable fine, which is putting it lightly. By
pretty sizable, I mean ten percent of the company's global revenue.
Apple is a three trillion dollar company, so that is
(22:51):
like billions of euros or billions of dollars worth of
money if Apple failed to comply to these regular later
demands or the company would have to cease operations in
the EU to avoid it. So the services that Apple
is opening things up like Apple has committed to doing
this include third parties that might have their own mobile
(23:14):
wallet features as well as their own payment processing services,
but it could also include things like using your mobile
phone to do stuff for all sorts of transactions, like
as a hotel key or as a ticket to an event,
or as a corporate badge to get into a building.
That kind of stuff. It all uses NFC or near
(23:34):
field communications technologies. So Apple appeers to have committed to this.
They have a deadline of July twenty fifth to open
up their system to other companies. If they do so,
there'll be no further problems. If they don't, then they
are facing the potential of a massive fine. Apple is
(23:55):
not the only tech company that has had to contend
with EU regulations recently. You know, the app formerly known
as Twitter has been called to task for breaching online
content rules under the EU's Digital Services Act or DSA.
So EU regulators investigated X for seven months and found
the company failed to comply with various rules requiring it
(24:18):
to make available a searchable advertising repository so that the
regulators can ensure that the advertising policies on the platform
are within EU's laws. Worst, the regulators accuse X of
denying them access to public data that they're supposed to
be able to review. In addition, the regulators found that
X's blue check mark system, which previously was all about
(24:40):
verifying an account, but now it just means that you've
paid for that service. They're now in opposition to industry practice, and,
as Reuter's reporter Thu Yung Chi puts it, quote, negatively
affect user's ability to make free and informed decisions about
the authenticity of the accounts they interact with. End quote.
(25:02):
X could face a fine of up to six percent
of its annual global revenue. That would definitely be a
huge blow to the company. I mean, it's a company
that has continued to struggle in an effort to keep
advertisers on board. Like revenue for Twitter, Slash, X has
been a real sticky subject over the last couple of years.
X will have a chance to defend itself. So this
(25:23):
is not a cut and dried decision yet. X can
come forward and attempt to either defend itself or make changes.
But the European Commission says that if the findings of
the investigation hold up to scrutiny, X will be fined
and forced to change should it continue to operate within
the EU. So yeah, tough news for X. Moving on
(25:46):
to a different Elon Musk led company, According to Bloomberg,
Tesla has had to make an adjustment to its schedule,
which doesn't surprise me even a little bit. So several
months ago, back in April, Elon Musk gave August eighth
as a date at which time Tesla would unveil its
Robotaxi business. Now, this was during the same earnings call
(26:07):
in which Musk also told everybody that Tesla would no
longer work toward releasing a low cost electric vehicle, which
was a big blow. But you know, the Robotaxi thing
was meant to kind of shift focus, I think, and
to reframe Tesla as being more than an electric vehicle company.
Like Musk has said that you should think of Tesla
as an AI and robotics company. Now Tesla says it
(26:31):
has had to delay the event and push it back
to October because it turns out building autonomous taxis is
actually really hard, which is something I think most people
already understood. I mean, we've heard plenty of stories about
how other robotaxi services have encountered issues, and goodness knows,
there's no shortage of issues with Tesla's own autonomous offerings.
(26:54):
I'm speaking specifically about autopilot and full self driving mode.
So I wish to throw no shade at the engineers
over at Tesla who've been working on this. I think
instead this is more of a case of Elon Musk
proposing an overly aggressive time table for a launch, something
he's done a few times in the past, possibly as
(27:15):
an effort to soften the blow of harder news, in
this case canceling a low cost EV that was something
that investors thought would really help push Tesla to the
next level, and it clearly is not gonna happen. So
it could be that you could argue the August eighth
thing was kind of a hail Mary pass to get
attention away from the low cost ev setback, and that
(27:38):
now we're just seeing that naturally that was too aggressive
a timetable, or it might be much more innocent than that.
I don't know. Well, we're going to take another quick break.
We will be back with some more tech news. Okay,
(28:04):
I'm back, so Kyle Barr of Gizmoto reports that analysts
are ringing the death knell for Apple Vision Pro sales.
That's Apple's mixed reality headset that they introduced earlier this year.
The analysts are saying that pretty much everyone who was
willing to fork over the cash for one of those
three five hundred dollars headsets now has one, and that
(28:28):
there just aren't other people who are willing to do that. So,
according to the analysts that bar sites, sales for the
rest of twenty twenty four are likely to be pretty
darn low that by August you're looking at a seventy
five percent drop off in sales. An analyst firm called
IDC reports that Apple has not yet sold one hundred
(28:50):
thousand units of the ding dang darn thing. Current estimations
say that's not really going to change for the rest
of this year, and in my opinion, the issue is twofold.
They are two main problems Apple faces with the Apple
Vision pro First off, it is undeniably really expensive, and
(29:10):
that is a big bar for entry, right like, not
a lot of people have thirty five hundred dollars to
drop on a tech toy. Let's be honest, it is
a toy right now. Because that brings us to problem
number two. There are a limited number of applications for
this technology as it stands right now. Now, I personally
(29:31):
have not had the chance to try out a headset.
From what I hear, it's a really impressive experience. The
problem is there's just not a whole lot you get
to do. The things it does are allegedly really incredible,
but they're also limited in number. Very few applications have
actually been developed for the platform itself. That actually makes
(29:51):
sense because they're such a small user base. Now I've
said this many times before, but if you are a developer,
you have to choose which platforms you're going to develop
four and from a financial standpoint, it only makes sense
to aim at platforms that are likely to see a
good return on investment. You want all that time and
effort that you're pouring into this development process to pay off.
(30:16):
So with that in mind, you want your work to
reach as many potential customers as possible, or a group
of customers who are more likely to spend money on
the thing you have made. That's not really a thing
if fewer than one hundred thousand people have even bought
into the platform. Apple is reportedly working on a lower
cost headset that would launch late next year. That could
(30:39):
potentially change things, but the cost needs to reach a
level where more curious people can actually afford it. So
even if you cut the price in half, that's really
not enough, right, Like, that's still like seventeen hundred dollars.
That's still a lot of money. So even cutting the
price in half is not likely to see a huge
rush of custom I mean, you'll probably see more than
(31:01):
you did with thirty five hundred, but I don't know.
But this might be enough to be a tipping point
for developers. We might see more developers willing to spend
the time and effort it takes to create things, specifically
for the Vision platform, and maybe then we'll see some
really innovative uses of augmented reality and virtual reality and
(31:23):
have those find their way to the headset. I would
actually love to see that happen, because as much as
I have dogged on Apple for the Vision pro, I
do think AR could be super cool if it's done correctly.
It's just really hard to do because typically it means
that people have to wear a bulky, power hungry headset
on their face, and that's a big ask, Like that's
(31:45):
asking a lot of folks to do that, and as
we've seen time and again, people are rarely willing to
do that unless it's for something very specific like gaming.
Right VR gaming is an exception, but most people, like
when it came to three D television, they weren't willing
to take that step. So it's going to take some
pretty compelling applications, I think, to win people over beyond
(32:09):
just you know, your pool of bleeding edge adopters. And
now for the cantankerous old coot section of our show,
I bring you my physical media is dying and I'm
mad about it. Rant I'm not the only one doing
the sort of ranting, by the way, Sharon Harding of
Ours Technica has a piece titled DVDs are dying right
(32:29):
as streaming has made them appealing again, and that piece
really goes into this so, as Harding points out, the
streaming landscape actually can make it harder if you are
a fan of specific stuff apart from original titles that
spawned out of these streaming platforms. It can be hard
to predict where stuff is going to end up. So
(32:50):
you might start watching, you know, a series on one
streaming platform and then it jumps ship to a different
streaming platform. If you're not a subscriber to this other service,
you're out of luck. This has happened to me on
multiple occasions. Worse yet, you can have a licensing agreement
expire and no one has the thing you wanted to watch.
(33:11):
So maybe you start a series, the licensing agreement expires,
the series disappears from that platform, no one else has
picked it up, and you're just left without being able
to watch it. That's really frustrating. Buying digital copies isn't
a guarantee to fix this, right, because there's always the
chance that the provider will stop supporting the service or
(33:32):
even go out of business. Then you're left without the
media that you have purchased, or rather the media that
you've paid to watch. I always think about that too,
like I have libraries of digital films that I like
to go to every now and again, but there's always
the chance that the company will just stop supporting that service,
and even though I have paid to access that media,
(33:53):
the service no longer will work and I won't be
able to watch the thing I paid for. So you
might turn to the solid of physical media like Blu
rays and DVDs, because then you can keep a copy
for yourself and no one is going to take that
away from you, except that physical media is dying out
too harding details how red Box, which is a DVD
(34:15):
rental service that operated red kiosks filled with DVDs across
the United States. Red Box is shutting down. It went
into bankruptcy initially went into chapter eleven. Now it's shifting
to chapter seven, which includes liquidation of all assets. I'm
sure Mike of Red Letter Media is distressed to really
hear about this one, because red Box is kind of
(34:36):
his go to for really trashy movies. The closure means
that twenty four thousand kiosks are shutting down, as will
the services that were operated by Redbox's parent company, Chicken Soup.
For the soul entertainment that includes services like Crackle and
Popcorn Flicks, they're also going bye by. So it's not
(34:57):
just the physical media. Some streaming media s business are
going way too. Meanwhile, big box stores are cutting back
on DVD sales and repurposing that floor space for other products.
Like Target, for example, is going to shift to a
strategy where they only offer DVDs seasonally and then the
rest of the time that space will be meant for
(35:18):
something else. Sony has announced it's going to stop producing
recordable Blu ray discs in the near future, and Harding
does a really great job of explaining the reasoning behind
why all these shifts are happening, Because the numbers don't
lie and physical media is far less profitable these days.
There's just fewer people buying physical media, but considering the
(35:39):
chaos that is streaming, this means consumers will have fewer
options when it comes to ensuring that they have access
to the media they love. Heck, over the last couple
of years, I've actually started collecting physical media again. I
had kind of shifted away from that for quite some time,
but I'm back to it now and it's largely because
of this issue. I even belong to a monthly horror
(36:00):
movie club where I get four discs per month. And
for folks like me, this trend is pretty sad and
also frustrating. It's also totally understandable. It's not like I
fault the companies for doing this. I don't expect companies
to continue to manufacture physical discs at a loss, but
the fact is we're seeing this move away from physical
(36:21):
media entirely while simultaneously dealing with the constantly shifting landscape
of streaming, and that stinks. Speaking of physical media, the
German Navy is looking to phase out a legacy technology
for its fleet of anti submarine frigates. See. These ships
currently rely on the storage system that saves data to
(36:41):
eight inch floppy discs. Yeah, floppy discs. I wager there's
some of y'all out there who have never even used
floppy discs. I grew up using five and a quarter
and then later three and a half inch floppies. There
are people older than me who used much larger floppy discs.
Apart from an escape room that I participated in recently.
(37:03):
I haven't touched a floppy disk in years. It's kind
of crazy to think that the German Navy is still
running equipment that relies on this legacy technology. Some would
call it an obsolete technology, but here we are moving
stuff to a new system. Isn't easy. Modernizing hardware requires
a lot of considerations because changing one thing can sometimes
(37:23):
break something else. According to the site Tom's Hardware, the
German Navy is looking at an emulator to provide the
same kind of storage and data retrieval services as the
floppy disk system did, and that means the Navy won't
have to retool their entire process. The emulator would serve
as a substitute for the floppy drive, but otherwise things
(37:44):
would largely operate the same way they have for years.
Kind of wild that we're into twenty twenty four and
this is finally being addressed. Hurricane Beryl packed a heck
of a wallop when it landed in Texas earlier this week.
The storm knocked out power for nearly two two million
Houston residents. Meanwhile, a massive heat wave created really dangerous
(38:05):
situations for folks living in the Houston area. Not only
did they have to deal with flooding and other damage
from the hurricane, but the temperatures and humidity meant that
going without power and access to air conditioning was like
a real health hazard, making matters more complicated than necessary
would be. Center Point Energy, a utility company in the
(38:25):
Houston area, Texas, famously is not part of the US
National Power Grid. Texas opted to go at lone wolf style,
which frequently does not work out so great for the
residents of Texas, but it seems to make business executives
and local politicians a whole lot of money anyway. Center
Point Energy doesn't have a dedicated app, so Houston citizens
(38:48):
began to turn to a different app in an effort
to get information about where power outages currently are in
the city. That app happens to belong to the fast
food chain WAA Burger. Waaburger's app includes a map that
shows all local Waterburger locations within the Houston area, and
there's an icon that indicates whether or not the store
(39:09):
is open. So by opening up the map and seeing
where stores are closed and where they're open, Houston citizens
could actually figure out which regions were still affected by
power allagies because the ones that have power allagies. Clearly
those restaurants aren't going to be open. So users shared
this discovery on x and subsequently Waaburger's app saw a
flurry of downloads. It went from being fortieth on iOS's
(39:33):
app store to sixteenth. Necessity is the Mother of Invention. Waaburger,
for its part, has responded by saying they never intended
their app to be used this way, and they really
hope that people are safe. Like they're not objecting to
the app being used this way, they're showing their concern
for the community. Researchers have created a urine processing system
(39:54):
meant for space suits, similar to this still suits in
the science fiction series Doom. The researchers have created a
system that includes a quote vacuum based external catheter leading
to a combined forward reverse osmosis unit end quote in
order to take an astronaut's urine, remove all the yucky bits,
and purify it into drinkable water. And it's said to
(40:16):
be eighty seven percent efficient, so I assume that means
it can reclaim about eighty seven percent of the water
content in urine. That means you can pee and in
about five minutes enjoy a refreshing beverage made from your pee.
I'm being a little cheeky about this because we all
need to remember all the water of our planet has
been here for millions of years, hundreds of millions of years.
(40:40):
For us, water is kind of like the force. It
binds us and penetrates us and moves through us. Sometimes
it moves through us in the middle of a Peter
Jackson movie. He really needs to make his films less
than four hours long. Anyway. I think most folks are
aware that water purification is a thing. We depend on
water purification already, right, like we process waste water so
(41:01):
that we can then purify it and make it drinkable
and usable. Again, it's just a little freaky to think
of it as a miniaturized system that's wearable and that
you could complete this purification process in less than ten minutes.
The system will undoubtedly be handy if we ever do
figure out a safe way to send astronauts on longer
space missions like to Mars and such. This kind of
(41:24):
thing will be necessary in order to be able to
process the water that is brought on board and to
maximize it to use it as long as is possible.
Because every bit of weight that you add to a
space mission requires more energy to get that thing off
the planet. So these considerations are challenging. You have to
(41:46):
have ways to be able to process this stuff, and
to do so while it's worked within a suit means
that you can do it even if someone has gone
out on a spacewalk mission. You know, when you're on
board a spacecraft or in the space station using the
onboard facilities whenever you need to use the bathroom that
has these sort of reclamation systems built into it already.
(42:10):
But if you're doing something that's just in the suit,
then typically what you're really relying upon is essentially a diaper.
So this kind of system opens up the capacity for
recapturing water from waste even when you're out on a
spacewalk and you're not inside a spacecraft. Okay, I've got
(42:31):
a couple of article recommendations for you all this week.
First up is Samuel Aksen's piece for Ours Technica. It
is titled shady company relaunches popular old tech blogs steals
writer's identities yuck. Okay, so apparently this web advertising company
has resurrected some dead blogs blogs that used to be
(42:53):
active on the Internet but haven't been for years, and
are using AI to pose as the people who originally
contributed to those blogs, and thus churning out garbage articles
with the bylines of people who aren't actually creating that work. Clearly,
this is unethical, Like, there's no question this is unethical.
(43:15):
If you were one of those writers and you started
to see junk getting pushed out with your name attached
to it, that would be bad because imagine that you're
applying for a job and your potential employer has researched
you and just found all these articles that are just terrible.
They're subpar, and they have your name attached to it,
but it wasn't written by you. That would be really awful.
(43:37):
As someone who used to write for a website, you know,
a website that notably dumped its editorial staff in favor
of AI generated pieces, I definitely have concerns about this
kind of thing. So yeah, I think it's well worth
a read. Next up, there's a piece by Sky Jacobs
of tech Spot. It is titled why you should be
Suspicious of that verified Amazon customer review. It examined something
(43:59):
I think a lot of people had already suspected that
those reviews you see on Amazon listings, even from supposed
trusted consumers, are sometimes just bought and paid for by
various merchants, meaning you can't trust the reviews, which strikes
right at the heart of one of Amazon's most valuable contributions.
In fact, I think customer reviews are part of what
helped Amazon navigate the dot com bubble crisis in the
(44:22):
early two thousands. Anyway, both of those articles are well
worth your time and you should check those out. That's
it for the news this week. I'll chat with you
next week, probably about large language model collapse and how
AI training itself on other AI ultimately leads to a
desolate landscape of garbage content that's fun to talk about.
(44:46):
We'll chat about that next week, as well as some
other stuff. And I hope you have a fantastic weekend,
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 to
(45:09):
your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jovin Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
the week ending July twelfth, two thy twenty four. There
(00:27):
was actually a ton of news this week. I guess
making up for last week, so I'm just covering like
half of it because there was so much, I had
to choose which stories I was going to include. As
it stands, this is going to be a long one,
so let's get to it. Last week, the German newspaper
Der Spiegel and a Russian independent news site called The
(00:49):
Insider revealed that Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service aka the SVR
has a program that they call Project Kailo. I don't
know if that's name after Kylo Renn from the Star
Wars films. Anyway, this project's aim is to spread misinformation
and propaganda in support of Russia's goals, particularly with regard
(01:10):
to the ongoing war with Ukraine. And I find it
interesting that a lot of media sites reference this as
a bombshell report, linking Russia to these efforts. I think
it's surprising, not because I don't think it's important. I
do think it's important. I just figured we were all
working under the assumption that this was in fact happening already.
(01:30):
I guess the appearance of confirmation is really the story
here anyway. The report says that the svr's playbook involves
establishing fake news websites and then flooding these websites with
misleading content, often boosted through the use of generative AI.
You can write a whole lot of stuff if you
offload it to AI, and if you're not really concerned
(01:52):
about the accuracy of it, I mean, if your goal
is to create misinformation, accuracy really isn't in your top concerns.
The agency also made heavy use of social networking and
media platforms to spread these messages, so establishing a place
to post everything and then a distribution method for getting
it out in front as many eyeballs as possible. So,
(02:14):
according to these newspapers, the agency went to the trouble
of actually hiring real world people to pose as protesters
in various Western countries in an effort to amplify messaging,
and then beyond that, they helped distribute video footage of
these protests in order to get a wider release of
(02:36):
that messaging. This is interesting because here in the United States,
actually not too far from the state where I live,
there was a notable white supremacist march that took place
in Nashville, Tennessee. And I'm curious as to whether or
not that march was amplified by efforts like this, where
(02:59):
people were specific brought in to boost the numbers and
make them larger. And then obviously that video footage of
that that particular march got pretty wide circulation. And I
mean it may not be at all related to the
Russian efforts. I want to make that clear. This could
be completely independent of that, but it does sort of
(03:20):
fall in line with that same strategy. Also last week,
Cowlan McGee and I apologize for butchering the name, but
McGee wrote a piece for I News, which is an
English news site, and in that piece, McGee writes that
French officials identified Russian propaganda as pushing French citizens to
(03:41):
support far right candidates during their parliamentary elections. Those took
place just this past Sunday. Now, those efforts ultimately fell
a little short. The far right did win quite a
few seats, like one hundred and forty two seats in parliament,
but that puts them in third place, behind the Left
wing Party, which won one hundred eighty eight seats and
(04:02):
the Centrist Party, which won one hundred and sixty one seats. However,
no single party secured two hundred and eighty nine or
more seats, which means France's president now faces the tough
challenge of appointing a prime minister because with they don't
have the support of a single parliamentary party. Right, there's
(04:23):
no party that holds a majority, and if the prime
minister doesn't have the support of parliament, then the government
kind of stops working. So what I'm saying is that
Russia's campaign, assuming that it actually had an impact on
the French elections at all, was not a total failure. Yeah,
they didn't secure a majority, but if you're thinking it's
(04:43):
more in an effort to disrupt politics and to add
some instability to Western governments, then there was success here,
or at least it's in alignment with Russia's goals. Whether
or not the efforts moved the needle at all, that's
that's another question. McGee's piece in IEWS lists out numerous
(05:03):
examples of Russian attempts to misinform, from bought controlled social
accounts to fake news sites pushing lies to the public,
and obviously France is just one nation that's targeted by Russia.
The convergence of tools like AI and social networks, on
top of how easy it is to just launch a website,
has really created a perfect storm for the creation and
(05:25):
distribution of propaganda. So, as always, I recommend viewing media
through the lens of critical thinking. It's not a guarantee
that you still won't get misled. That can still happen,
but using critical thinking really helps cut down on the
frequency at which that can happen. Make sure you're paying
attention to the source of that information and what their
(05:46):
sources are, because if we're all looking at news that's
all drawing its information from a single source, and that
source is compromised, well then we can't trust any of
the news that was reported from it. We're in the
United States, the Department of Justice announced just this past
Tuesday that it had identified and disrupted a Russian operation
(06:07):
making use of bots and misinformation to sew discord here
in the states, which just as a point of reference, y'all,
we do not need outside help on that. We're really
good at sowing discord amongst ourselves. Anyway, the DOJ seized
two domains in around one thousand social accounts believed to
be part of this Russian operation. The associated accounts received
(06:29):
a ban on x formerly known as Twitter, and they
had a history of posting content with a pro Kremlin perspective.
Apart from using AI to undermine governments and societies, it
seems like there's not really enough of a use case
for artificial intelligence to justify the truly insane amount of
investment that's going into it. Now that's not just my opinion,
(06:51):
although it is my opinion. Goldman Sachs released a newsletter
warning that told businesses there there just might be this crazy,
uns sustainable bubble forming around AI. But to be clear,
I am applying my own point of view to what
Goldman Sachs found. They didn't use words like crazy, and
in fact, they were pretty light with the use of
(07:11):
the word bubble, although at least one Goldman sax rep
did refer to it as a potential bubble, not definitively
a bubble, but it could be so. The report revealed
that around a trillion dollars is on track to pour
into the generative AI space, and that includes stuff like
building out and outfitting data centers, you know, the purchase
(07:34):
of new hardware, research and development, all this kind of stuff.
Goldman Sachs says, there's also no killer application for AI
that kind of justifies this crazy expenditure. So, in other words,
the research newsletter says, companies are rushing into the AI
space without really a clear goal or any assurance that
(07:56):
the investment they're making is going to pay off down
the road. It could be that the companies that are
spending billions of dollars in the AI generative AI specifically
in that field, that they're setting huge piles of cash
on fire. Alah, the joker in that Dark Night movie.
Jim Cavello, the head of Goldman Sachs's Global equity research,
(08:17):
put it this way, quote, what one trillion dollar problem
will AI solve? Replacing low wage jobs with tremendously costly
technology is basically the polar opposite of the prior technology
transitions I've witnessed in my thirty years of closely following
the tech industry end quote. So what he's saying is
(08:39):
there's not a clear problem that AI is solving, especially
not one that amounts to a one trillion dollar problem,
and that the ways we are seeing AI being applied
right now are low cost things. And in fact, it
could mean that you're spending more money with AI than
you were with human beings, so you're actually costing yourself
(09:01):
more money and you're funding that whole process. So it
really sounds like shots fired across the ballot companies that
have been downsizing staff in favor of relying more on
generative AI, such as oh I don't know HowStuffWorks dot
Com my former employer. We'll have more about the issue
of AI displacing creatives later in this episode, but yeah,
(09:21):
I'm still obviously salty about that, even though I wasn't
directly affected, right, I had already moved on from how
stuff works, or really my part of the company moved
on from How Stuff Works. But I'm still upset that
site ended up laying off the editorial staff in favor
of AI generated articles. I think that was an enormous mistake.
(09:42):
I plan on doing an episode in the near future
about one of the many reasons I think that's a
massive mistake, because it's not just that very talented, dedicated
people lost their jobs over it. That's a big part
of it. I mean, there's an emotional attachment, don't get
me wrong. But I also think that there is a
technological mistake that's being made, and I'm not the only one.
(10:06):
It involves things like model collapse, as in large language
model collapse, but we'll talk about that in a future
episode not too long from now. Anyway, the report warns
that any returns on investment are likely to be many
years down the road because it's going to take time
to build the AI infrastructure that actually creates meaningful improvements
(10:30):
in stuff like business performance and costs. So in the
short term, it's far more likely that running AI operations
is actually going to cost more than going the alternative route.
And all of that obviously becomes dangerous for companies that
are currently investing heavily in the space. They might find
themselves either in need of a severe course correction or
they might have to convince stakeholders to you know, patiently
(10:53):
wait for things to pay off in the future. That's
kind of what Meta has been doing, particularly in the
Reality Labs division, and metaverse stuff. Zuckerberg has to keep saying,
this is going to cost us a lot of money
in the short term, but in the long term, we
believe it's the future of our business. I remain unconvinced
that that's going to be the case, but that's the
(11:14):
argument Zuckerberg has to make two investors pretty much every
earnings called because they have to grapple with the fact
that they're spending billions of dollars in this division and
they don't have a lot to show for it yet,
and the stuff they have shown has not really created
an amazing response among consumers or investors. I expect we're
(11:36):
going to see very similar stories play out in the
AI space. Speaking of AI displacing jobs, into It, a
company that specializes in tax preparation software announced a reorganization
this week and that's going to result in downsizing staff
by around ten percent of the company. Company reps say
this is part of the long term strategy in which
(11:57):
into It will hire at least that same number of
people that they're laying off this year. So they're saying,
like next year they're going to hire as many or
more people as what they are laying off right now.
That number is around one eight hundred staff and that
this long term plan also involves incorporating artificial intelligence in
(12:18):
into its offerings. No big surprise there that they're saying
AI is going to be a big part of their
ongoing strategy. That is kind of the messaging we're hearing
across all industries right now. So into Its CEO further
said that more than half of those one eight hundred
employees who are being let go were selected because they
(12:39):
failed to meet company expectations, which is a big old yikes.
Like when you know arguably around five percent or more
of your company isn't meeting expectations, that's to me, that's
a management problem. That means that managers are not doing
their job in making sure that employees have what they
(12:59):
need and understand what they need to do in order
to meet expectations. But I mean, what do I know.
I'm not an expert in business or anything like that.
It just it just seems that way to me. So
I do think for the record that AI will have
its place. I'm not totally against AI. I know I
come down hard on AI a lot on this show.
(13:22):
I do think there will be ways to integrate AI
into business strategies that will be overall beneficial and not
just beneficial to the bottom line, which is kind of
the cynical way of looking at it right now, but
to people who are actually working at those companies. I
do think there are ways to use AI to enhance
people's work so that they can focus on the things
(13:45):
that really matter, while AI handles little details that are
important but are not necessary for humans to handle personally.
I just think there's also a ton of company executives
out there who are rushing into integrating AI without fully
thinking about the consequences they're going to encounter and the
lives are going to impact. They're doing it quickly without
(14:09):
fully thinking it through, and that's what leads to really
big messes. Okay, speaking of a big mess, I just
made one by spelling my coffee. We're going to take
a quick break and I'll be right back. Okay, we're back.
(14:32):
Coffee spillage has been contained. Cleaning efforts are ongoing, but
let's get back into the episode. So, a hacker group
called sieged Sec. Sie ged Sec says it has breached
the systems of an organization called the Heritage Foundation and
stolen a large amount of data and subsequently released that
(14:55):
data online. The Heritage Foundation is a conservative political or
organization and think tank. It is credited with being responsible
for a broad platform of policy proposals, collectively referenced as
Project twenty twenty five. Now, to go into Project twenty
twenty five is well beyond the scope of this podcast. However,
(15:17):
I can recommend you check out the June twenty eighth,
twenty twenty four episode of Stuff they Don't Want You
to Know. It is titled Project twenty twenty five. Should
we be concerned anyway? The sieged sec hackers carried out
the attack in part to ensure more quote transparency to
the public regarding who exactly is supporting Heritage end quote.
(15:39):
So that quote comes from a hacker who uses the
handle vo viio. This hacker spoke with the new site
Cyberscoop about the breach. That breach is mostly apparently a
list of names of people who have been involved with
or contributed to the Heritage Foundation. This is all part
of a quickly developing story regarding Project twenty twenty five,
(16:03):
and there's a lot of information and misinformation out about
that as well. So again, use critical thinking when you're
looking into this stuff. I do think personally that it's
something to be concerned about, and that it is. There
are elements of it that are pretty darn scary if
(16:23):
you if you care about stuff like say LGBTQ rights,
it's very scary, or women's autonomy rights, that kind of stuff.
It gets pretty frightening. But I recommend everyone do their
research and learn about it, and you know, mind where
you're getting your information, so that you're you've got a
(16:43):
reasonable handle on what's going on, because it's always important
to keep that in mind when you're engaging with material,
particularly material that might be confirming any biases you happen
to have. I have to remind myself of that all
the time. Marco Risol of hackerdose dot com has an
article titled hackers may use Telegram video to gain full
(17:06):
control of your phone. That is a heck of a headline.
So first off, in case you are not familiar with Telegram,
that's a smartphone based messaging app. It's also cloud based
messaging and it offers end to end encryption. You can
do voice calls, video calls, text messages. It has become
(17:27):
a favored messaging app among those who value their privacy
and they don't want their communications to be snoopable. They
want to do end to end encryption. But an X
or Twitter user, depending on how you want to call
that service called. Today cyber News posted that a vulnerability
(17:47):
in the Android version of Telegram allows an on ramp
for malware. So the alleged exploit involves the target receiving
a link to a video that if the target tries
to launch, the video, prompts a pop up message, and
that message says that Telegram's native video player is unable
(18:07):
to play the media file in question, So don't worry,
because you will be prompted to go toward a site
that is claimed to be a third party video service
that then will play the video. So it's saying, oh,
Telegram can't play this, but just click this link, you'll
go to a site that will play the video. Except
it's all a ploy to trick the target into unknowingly
(18:29):
consenting to downloading malware. The malware infects the phone and
effectively hands control over to a remote operator who has
essentially full administrative access to the device. At that point,
they can access the camera on the phone, the microphones
call logs, they can see all the apps that are
saved to the phone, all that kind of stuff, all
(18:52):
of that allegedly becomes available to the hackers. That is,
if these claims are in fact true, and they might
not be so. The tweet included a video demonstration of
this exploit in action. However, the resolution of the video
was not great, and thus it was difficult to verify
that this is a legitimate video of an actual exploit.
(19:15):
Earlier this year, Telegram actually debunked a different vulnerability claim
that was made against it. So there's already precedent for
false claims against Telegram, and it could turn out that
this new allegation is also a hoax. But I would
suggest to anyone who's using Telegram, or really any messaging
service for that matter, to think twice before clicking on
(19:38):
links to stuff, particularly if it is in relation to
a message that has a clickbaity kind of vibe to it,
right Like, if you get a video that's appealing to
either your paranoia, right like it's a video saying, hey,
is this you and this video? Or if it's something
that's very it's like appealing to a salacious sign of
(20:00):
human nature. Anything like that that should raise red flags.
And you should be very cautious before following any links
because it's a tried and true method to trick people
into a trap. If you were an AT and T
cellular customer between May and November in twenty twenty two,
I have some bad news. There's a really good chance
(20:20):
that your phone number and some information about who you
texted and called has been leaked in a massive data breach.
So AT and T says that essentially all cellular customers
at that time period were involved in this data leak,
in which some third party was able to download the
information off of a cloud platform that AT and T uses.
(20:43):
So this is another case where a hackers target not
the company itself, not AT and T, but a business
to business operator that AT and T uses. You know,
it's a provider that has this cloud services platform, and
the hackers targeted that provider. AT and T says that
names were not included in this data leak. It was
(21:05):
just numbers and then metadata about the text messages and
phone calls those numbers were engaged in. However, AT and
T also says it can be rather trivial to match
a name with a phone number. There are a lot
of databases out there that have information about phone numbers
and who those numbers belong to. So all that info
(21:26):
may already be out in the wild, and just with
a little cross referencing, a hacker can figure out who
this number belongs to. Some of the call and texting
data related to some of the numbers was part of
this attack, as I've mentioned, So it's not the contents
of those phone calls or the texts. It's not like
the hackers can read what someone has texted to someone else. Instead,
(21:47):
it's a call log or a text log, so you
can see which numbers have communicated with one another. According
to AT and T spokesperson Alex Byers, this breach is
unrelated to a different incident that the company acknowledged back
in March. So AT and T has been the target
of two massive hacker attacks and data breaches. Not great,
(22:09):
Apple has assuaged the concerns of EU regulators, at least
for now, regarding the company's Tap to Pay iPhone payment system.
So regulators in the EU had accused Apple of jealously
guarding that Tap to pay system in order to maintain
a monopoly over payment processing through the iPhone, and if
(22:30):
Apple did not open that up to third parties, to
other like payment processing companies and such, Apple could face
a pretty sizable fine, which is putting it lightly. By
pretty sizable, I mean ten percent of the company's global revenue.
Apple is a three trillion dollar company, so that is
(22:51):
like billions of euros or billions of dollars worth of
money if Apple failed to comply to these regular later
demands or the company would have to cease operations in
the EU to avoid it. So the services that Apple
is opening things up like Apple has committed to doing
this include third parties that might have their own mobile
(23:14):
wallet features as well as their own payment processing services,
but it could also include things like using your mobile
phone to do stuff for all sorts of transactions, like
as a hotel key or as a ticket to an event,
or as a corporate badge to get into a building.
That kind of stuff. It all uses NFC or near
(23:34):
field communications technologies. So Apple appeers to have committed to this.
They have a deadline of July twenty fifth to open
up their system to other companies. If they do so,
there'll be no further problems. If they don't, then they
are facing the potential of a massive fine. Apple is
(23:55):
not the only tech company that has had to contend
with EU regulations recently. You know, the app formerly known
as Twitter has been called to task for breaching online
content rules under the EU's Digital Services Act or DSA.
So EU regulators investigated X for seven months and found
the company failed to comply with various rules requiring it
(24:18):
to make available a searchable advertising repository so that the
regulators can ensure that the advertising policies on the platform
are within EU's laws. Worst, the regulators accuse X of
denying them access to public data that they're supposed to
be able to review. In addition, the regulators found that
X's blue check mark system, which previously was all about
(24:40):
verifying an account, but now it just means that you've
paid for that service. They're now in opposition to industry practice, and,
as Reuter's reporter Thu Yung Chi puts it, quote, negatively
affect user's ability to make free and informed decisions about
the authenticity of the accounts they interact with. End quote.
(25:02):
X could face a fine of up to six percent
of its annual global revenue. That would definitely be a
huge blow to the company. I mean, it's a company
that has continued to struggle in an effort to keep
advertisers on board. Like revenue for Twitter, Slash, X has
been a real sticky subject over the last couple of years.
X will have a chance to defend itself. So this
(25:23):
is not a cut and dried decision yet. X can
come forward and attempt to either defend itself or make changes.
But the European Commission says that if the findings of
the investigation hold up to scrutiny, X will be fined
and forced to change should it continue to operate within
the EU. So yeah, tough news for X. Moving on
(25:46):
to a different Elon Musk led company, According to Bloomberg,
Tesla has had to make an adjustment to its schedule,
which doesn't surprise me even a little bit. So several
months ago, back in April, Elon Musk gave August eighth
as a date at which time Tesla would unveil its
Robotaxi business. Now, this was during the same earnings call
(26:07):
in which Musk also told everybody that Tesla would no
longer work toward releasing a low cost electric vehicle, which
was a big blow. But you know, the Robotaxi thing
was meant to kind of shift focus, I think, and
to reframe Tesla as being more than an electric vehicle company.
Like Musk has said that you should think of Tesla
as an AI and robotics company. Now Tesla says it
(26:31):
has had to delay the event and push it back
to October because it turns out building autonomous taxis is
actually really hard, which is something I think most people
already understood. I mean, we've heard plenty of stories about
how other robotaxi services have encountered issues, and goodness knows,
there's no shortage of issues with Tesla's own autonomous offerings.
(26:54):
I'm speaking specifically about autopilot and full self driving mode.
So I wish to throw no shade at the engineers
over at Tesla who've been working on this. I think
instead this is more of a case of Elon Musk
proposing an overly aggressive time table for a launch, something
he's done a few times in the past, possibly as
(27:15):
an effort to soften the blow of harder news, in
this case canceling a low cost EV that was something
that investors thought would really help push Tesla to the
next level, and it clearly is not gonna happen. So
it could be that you could argue the August eighth
thing was kind of a hail Mary pass to get
attention away from the low cost ev setback, and that
(27:38):
now we're just seeing that naturally that was too aggressive
a timetable, or it might be much more innocent than that.
I don't know. Well, we're going to take another quick break.
We will be back with some more tech news. Okay,
(28:04):
I'm back, so Kyle Barr of Gizmoto reports that analysts
are ringing the death knell for Apple Vision Pro sales.
That's Apple's mixed reality headset that they introduced earlier this year.
The analysts are saying that pretty much everyone who was
willing to fork over the cash for one of those
three five hundred dollars headsets now has one, and that
(28:28):
there just aren't other people who are willing to do that. So,
according to the analysts that bar sites, sales for the
rest of twenty twenty four are likely to be pretty
darn low that by August you're looking at a seventy
five percent drop off in sales. An analyst firm called
IDC reports that Apple has not yet sold one hundred
(28:50):
thousand units of the ding dang darn thing. Current estimations
say that's not really going to change for the rest
of this year, and in my opinion, the issue is twofold.
They are two main problems Apple faces with the Apple
Vision pro First off, it is undeniably really expensive, and
(29:10):
that is a big bar for entry, right like, not
a lot of people have thirty five hundred dollars to
drop on a tech toy. Let's be honest, it is
a toy right now. Because that brings us to problem
number two. There are a limited number of applications for
this technology as it stands right now. Now, I personally
(29:31):
have not had the chance to try out a headset.
From what I hear, it's a really impressive experience. The
problem is there's just not a whole lot you get
to do. The things it does are allegedly really incredible,
but they're also limited in number. Very few applications have
actually been developed for the platform itself. That actually makes
(29:51):
sense because they're such a small user base. Now I've
said this many times before, but if you are a developer,
you have to choose which platforms you're going to develop
four and from a financial standpoint, it only makes sense
to aim at platforms that are likely to see a
good return on investment. You want all that time and
effort that you're pouring into this development process to pay off.
(30:16):
So with that in mind, you want your work to
reach as many potential customers as possible, or a group
of customers who are more likely to spend money on
the thing you have made. That's not really a thing
if fewer than one hundred thousand people have even bought
into the platform. Apple is reportedly working on a lower
cost headset that would launch late next year. That could
(30:39):
potentially change things, but the cost needs to reach a
level where more curious people can actually afford it. So
even if you cut the price in half, that's really
not enough, right, Like, that's still like seventeen hundred dollars.
That's still a lot of money. So even cutting the
price in half is not likely to see a huge
rush of custom I mean, you'll probably see more than
(31:01):
you did with thirty five hundred, but I don't know.
But this might be enough to be a tipping point
for developers. We might see more developers willing to spend
the time and effort it takes to create things, specifically
for the Vision platform, and maybe then we'll see some
really innovative uses of augmented reality and virtual reality and
(31:23):
have those find their way to the headset. I would
actually love to see that happen, because as much as
I have dogged on Apple for the Vision pro, I
do think AR could be super cool if it's done correctly.
It's just really hard to do because typically it means
that people have to wear a bulky, power hungry headset
on their face, and that's a big ask, Like that's
(31:45):
asking a lot of folks to do that, and as
we've seen time and again, people are rarely willing to
do that unless it's for something very specific like gaming.
Right VR gaming is an exception, but most people, like
when it came to three D television, they weren't willing
to take that step. So it's going to take some
pretty compelling applications, I think, to win people over beyond
(32:09):
just you know, your pool of bleeding edge adopters. And
now for the cantankerous old coot section of our show,
I bring you my physical media is dying and I'm
mad about it. Rant I'm not the only one doing
the sort of ranting, by the way, Sharon Harding of
Ours Technica has a piece titled DVDs are dying right
(32:29):
as streaming has made them appealing again, and that piece
really goes into this so, as Harding points out, the
streaming landscape actually can make it harder if you are
a fan of specific stuff apart from original titles that
spawned out of these streaming platforms. It can be hard
to predict where stuff is going to end up. So
(32:50):
you might start watching, you know, a series on one
streaming platform and then it jumps ship to a different
streaming platform. If you're not a subscriber to this other service,
you're out of luck. This has happened to me on
multiple occasions. Worse yet, you can have a licensing agreement
expire and no one has the thing you wanted to watch.
(33:11):
So maybe you start a series, the licensing agreement expires,
the series disappears from that platform, no one else has
picked it up, and you're just left without being able
to watch it. That's really frustrating. Buying digital copies isn't
a guarantee to fix this, right, because there's always the
chance that the provider will stop supporting the service or
(33:32):
even go out of business. Then you're left without the
media that you have purchased, or rather the media that
you've paid to watch. I always think about that too,
like I have libraries of digital films that I like
to go to every now and again, but there's always
the chance that the company will just stop supporting that service,
and even though I have paid to access that media,
(33:53):
the service no longer will work and I won't be
able to watch the thing I paid for. So you
might turn to the solid of physical media like Blu
rays and DVDs, because then you can keep a copy
for yourself and no one is going to take that
away from you, except that physical media is dying out
too harding details how red Box, which is a DVD
(34:15):
rental service that operated red kiosks filled with DVDs across
the United States. Red Box is shutting down. It went
into bankruptcy initially went into chapter eleven. Now it's shifting
to chapter seven, which includes liquidation of all assets. I'm
sure Mike of Red Letter Media is distressed to really
hear about this one, because red Box is kind of
(34:36):
his go to for really trashy movies. The closure means
that twenty four thousand kiosks are shutting down, as will
the services that were operated by Redbox's parent company, Chicken Soup.
For the soul entertainment that includes services like Crackle and
Popcorn Flicks, they're also going bye by. So it's not
(34:57):
just the physical media. Some streaming media s business are
going way too. Meanwhile, big box stores are cutting back
on DVD sales and repurposing that floor space for other products.
Like Target, for example, is going to shift to a
strategy where they only offer DVDs seasonally and then the
rest of the time that space will be meant for
(35:18):
something else. Sony has announced it's going to stop producing
recordable Blu ray discs in the near future, and Harding
does a really great job of explaining the reasoning behind
why all these shifts are happening, Because the numbers don't
lie and physical media is far less profitable these days.
There's just fewer people buying physical media, but considering the
(35:39):
chaos that is streaming, this means consumers will have fewer
options when it comes to ensuring that they have access
to the media they love. Heck, over the last couple
of years, I've actually started collecting physical media again. I
had kind of shifted away from that for quite some time,
but I'm back to it now and it's largely because
of this issue. I even belong to a monthly horror
(36:00):
movie club where I get four discs per month. And
for folks like me, this trend is pretty sad and
also frustrating. It's also totally understandable. It's not like I
fault the companies for doing this. I don't expect companies
to continue to manufacture physical discs at a loss, but
the fact is we're seeing this move away from physical
(36:21):
media entirely while simultaneously dealing with the constantly shifting landscape
of streaming, and that stinks. Speaking of physical media, the
German Navy is looking to phase out a legacy technology
for its fleet of anti submarine frigates. See. These ships
currently rely on the storage system that saves data to
(36:41):
eight inch floppy discs. Yeah, floppy discs. I wager there's
some of y'all out there who have never even used
floppy discs. I grew up using five and a quarter
and then later three and a half inch floppies. There
are people older than me who used much larger floppy discs.
Apart from an escape room that I participated in recently.
(37:03):
I haven't touched a floppy disk in years. It's kind
of crazy to think that the German Navy is still
running equipment that relies on this legacy technology. Some would
call it an obsolete technology, but here we are moving
stuff to a new system. Isn't easy. Modernizing hardware requires
a lot of considerations because changing one thing can sometimes
(37:23):
break something else. According to the site Tom's Hardware, the
German Navy is looking at an emulator to provide the
same kind of storage and data retrieval services as the
floppy disk system did, and that means the Navy won't
have to retool their entire process. The emulator would serve
as a substitute for the floppy drive, but otherwise things
(37:44):
would largely operate the same way they have for years.
Kind of wild that we're into twenty twenty four and
this is finally being addressed. Hurricane Beryl packed a heck
of a wallop when it landed in Texas earlier this week.
The storm knocked out power for nearly two two million
Houston residents. Meanwhile, a massive heat wave created really dangerous
(38:05):
situations for folks living in the Houston area. Not only
did they have to deal with flooding and other damage
from the hurricane, but the temperatures and humidity meant that
going without power and access to air conditioning was like
a real health hazard, making matters more complicated than necessary
would be. Center Point Energy, a utility company in the
(38:25):
Houston area, Texas, famously is not part of the US
National Power Grid. Texas opted to go at lone wolf style,
which frequently does not work out so great for the
residents of Texas, but it seems to make business executives
and local politicians a whole lot of money anyway. Center
Point Energy doesn't have a dedicated app, so Houston citizens
(38:48):
began to turn to a different app in an effort
to get information about where power outages currently are in
the city. That app happens to belong to the fast
food chain WAA Burger. Waaburger's app includes a map that
shows all local Waterburger locations within the Houston area, and
there's an icon that indicates whether or not the store
(39:09):
is open. So by opening up the map and seeing
where stores are closed and where they're open, Houston citizens
could actually figure out which regions were still affected by
power allagies because the ones that have power allagies. Clearly
those restaurants aren't going to be open. So users shared
this discovery on x and subsequently Waaburger's app saw a
flurry of downloads. It went from being fortieth on iOS's
(39:33):
app store to sixteenth. Necessity is the Mother of Invention. Waaburger,
for its part, has responded by saying they never intended
their app to be used this way, and they really
hope that people are safe. Like they're not objecting to
the app being used this way, they're showing their concern
for the community. Researchers have created a urine processing system
(39:54):
meant for space suits, similar to this still suits in
the science fiction series Doom. The researchers have created a
system that includes a quote vacuum based external catheter leading
to a combined forward reverse osmosis unit end quote in
order to take an astronaut's urine, remove all the yucky bits,
and purify it into drinkable water. And it's said to
(40:16):
be eighty seven percent efficient, so I assume that means
it can reclaim about eighty seven percent of the water
content in urine. That means you can pee and in
about five minutes enjoy a refreshing beverage made from your pee.
I'm being a little cheeky about this because we all
need to remember all the water of our planet has
been here for millions of years, hundreds of millions of years.
(40:40):
For us, water is kind of like the force. It
binds us and penetrates us and moves through us. Sometimes
it moves through us in the middle of a Peter
Jackson movie. He really needs to make his films less
than four hours long. Anyway. I think most folks are
aware that water purification is a thing. We depend on
water purification already, right, like we process waste water so
(41:01):
that we can then purify it and make it drinkable
and usable. Again, it's just a little freaky to think
of it as a miniaturized system that's wearable and that
you could complete this purification process in less than ten minutes.
The system will undoubtedly be handy if we ever do
figure out a safe way to send astronauts on longer
space missions like to Mars and such. This kind of
(41:24):
thing will be necessary in order to be able to
process the water that is brought on board and to
maximize it to use it as long as is possible.
Because every bit of weight that you add to a
space mission requires more energy to get that thing off
the planet. So these considerations are challenging. You have to
(41:46):
have ways to be able to process this stuff, and
to do so while it's worked within a suit means
that you can do it even if someone has gone
out on a spacewalk mission. You know, when you're on
board a spacecraft or in the space station using the
onboard facilities whenever you need to use the bathroom that
has these sort of reclamation systems built into it already.
(42:10):
But if you're doing something that's just in the suit,
then typically what you're really relying upon is essentially a diaper.
So this kind of system opens up the capacity for
recapturing water from waste even when you're out on a
spacewalk and you're not inside a spacecraft. Okay, I've got
(42:31):
a couple of article recommendations for you all this week.
First up is Samuel Aksen's piece for Ours Technica. It
is titled shady company relaunches popular old tech blogs steals
writer's identities yuck. Okay, so apparently this web advertising company
has resurrected some dead blogs blogs that used to be
(42:53):
active on the Internet but haven't been for years, and
are using AI to pose as the people who originally
contributed to those blogs, and thus churning out garbage articles
with the bylines of people who aren't actually creating that work. Clearly,
this is unethical, Like, there's no question this is unethical.
(43:15):
If you were one of those writers and you started
to see junk getting pushed out with your name attached
to it, that would be bad because imagine that you're
applying for a job and your potential employer has researched
you and just found all these articles that are just terrible.
They're subpar, and they have your name attached to it,
but it wasn't written by you. That would be really awful.
(43:37):
As someone who used to write for a website, you know,
a website that notably dumped its editorial staff in favor
of AI generated pieces, I definitely have concerns about this
kind of thing. So yeah, I think it's well worth
a read. Next up, there's a piece by Sky Jacobs
of tech Spot. It is titled why you should be
Suspicious of that verified Amazon customer review. It examined something
(43:59):
I think a lot of people had already suspected that
those reviews you see on Amazon listings, even from supposed
trusted consumers, are sometimes just bought and paid for by
various merchants, meaning you can't trust the reviews, which strikes
right at the heart of one of Amazon's most valuable contributions.
In fact, I think customer reviews are part of what
helped Amazon navigate the dot com bubble crisis in the
(44:22):
early two thousands. Anyway, both of those articles are well
worth your time and you should check those out. That's
it for the news this week. I'll chat with you
next week, probably about large language model collapse and how
AI training itself on other AI ultimately leads to a
desolate landscape of garbage content that's fun to talk about.
(44:46):
We'll chat about that next week, as well as some
other stuff. And I hope you have a fantastic weekend,
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 to
(45:09):
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TechStuff News
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Karah Preiss
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