November 2, 2023 • 40 mins
YouTube users with ad block software may find themselves blocked from watching videos on the platform unless they allow ads. Politicians around the world speak out against bias on Tiktok, but no one can agree which way the bias goes. Scarlett Johansson takes legal action against a company that used an AI-generated impression of her voice for an ad. Plus much more!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech are you.
It's time for the tech news for November two, twenty
twenty three, rapidly running out of days. In twenty twenty
(00:27):
three and yesterday, I did an episode about the history
of ad blockers, But one thing I didn't really cover
in great detail was YouTube and YouTube's battle against ad blocking. Well,
the platform has been rolling out an escalating response to
users who have been employing ad blockers on YouTube while
(00:51):
trying to watch YouTube videos. Gizmoto's Kevin Hurler has a
piece on this on Gizmoto titled YouTube's ad blocker crackdown
is getting harder to dodge, and he explains that earlier
in October, YouTube began to show a pop up notification
to ad blocker users, and the notification said that video
(01:12):
playback would not work until the user disabled ad block
or otherwise whitelisted YouTube. Now, initially, folks could just close
out the pop up and continue on their merry way.
A little bit later, YouTube beef this up. They then
had a little checkbox you had to click on to
notify YouTube that you were acknowledging you had been alerted
(01:35):
to this policy, that you should not be using ad blockers,
that this is against YouTube's terms of service, and then
you could go on your merry way. Now, YouTube will
just keep that pop up in place, and it'll block
all activity. You won't be able to do anything else
on YouTube until you actually take the steps to either
disable or pause ad blocking entirely, or to whitelist YouTube.
(02:01):
Hurler also points out that the Wall Street Journal has
tracked YouTube's ad revenue over the last three quarters and
that revenue has been on the decline. So we're not
saying that YouTube is losing money. It's not that. It's
just they're not making as much money as they had previously.
It's going down. That's a trend that most companies are
not super happy about. YouTube has been pushing for a
(02:25):
lot more folks to subscribe to YouTube premium. That's been
a campaign that's been going on for several months now,
and they have also introduced a lot of new types
of ads, including unskippable ads, longer ones too like it
used to be that an unskippable ad would last maybe
five or ten seconds, but now we have full thirty
second unskippable ads on say YouTube TV, for example. And
(02:47):
it has also started to remove some of the controls
that video creators had when it came to where they
would place ads against their content. I remember talking about
how some ASMR creators were very upset because at least initially,
it looked like they wouldn't have the opportunity to specify
that ads should only be pre roll, for example, a
(03:10):
not post roll, and that by removing that control, it
meant that an ASMR AD or an ASMR video rather
might have allowed an intrusive ad play after the video,
thus potentially undoing all the work that the ASMR video
was intended to do. Well. I suspect we're going to
continue to see shifts in strategy from YouTube because they're
(03:33):
going to continue to try and find the most lucrative
way to make as much money as possible. That's kind
of what businesses do. And I'm sure we'll also see
new approaches to ad blocking go on as well. And
so it goes. David Ingram and kat Tinbarge have a
really good piece over at Nbcnews dot Com. It's titled
(03:56):
critics renewed Calls for a TikTok band, claiming play has
an anti Israel bias. So the journalists walk a pretty
tight line in an attempt to be really objective in
this piece, and they explain that several politicians are saying
that TikTok is spreading propaganda to young people and favoring
(04:18):
a pro Palestinian stance over a pro Israeli stance that
with regard to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
But the reporters actually found that if you look at
the stats on TikTok in the United States over the
last month or so, the period of time covered by
(04:40):
the point when Hamas attacked Israel and then Israel's response
to that attack, not only are posts with a hashtag
such as stand with Palestine not outpacing ones that have
the hashtag stand with Israel, but also that those Israel
posts are actually outperforming the Palestine ones. So, in other words,
(05:02):
the stats seem to directly contradict the claims these politicians
are making. They're saying there's this anti Israel bias across TikTok.
The reporters are saying, well, based upon what we're seeing
at least over the last thirty days or so here
in the United States, there doesn't appear to be any
indication of bias. In fact, we're seeing a trend toward
(05:25):
the opposite if you're looking at those stats. The reporters
say that the claims appear to be based mostly on
anecdotal evidence, and also by taking sort of a longer
view across the entire history of TikTok. Like if you
look at all of TikTok's history and you're looking at
the trends of you know, stand with say, stand with
(05:47):
a Palestine or stand with Israel, then things get a
little less clear, right, because you're looking across the entire
history of the platform, but not the current events. And
we all also know that anecdotal evidence is really useless
with TikTok, right because TikTok's algorithm looks at what content
(06:08):
you are engaging with on the platform, and then TikTok
essentially draws the conclusion of, Oh, this is what this
person wants to see, so let me just give them
a whole bunch more of that. It reminds me of
a routine that Patton Oswalt used to do where he
talked about tvo, where he said he used TVO to
(06:29):
record a couple of Westerns that he wanted to watch,
and then TVO made the conclusion that he just really
liked content that had horses in it, and so he
got a whole bunch of horse content recorded on his behalf.
This is sort of what it's reminding me of, which
means that, you know, if you were to go on
TikTok and let's say you actually did see a pro
(06:49):
Palestinian video and you objected to that video for whatever reason,
and maybe you even leave a comment giving your different
point of view and what I am sure would be
a reasonable and polite way, then TikTok doesn't see that as, Oh,
this person ends up disagreeing with this content, I should
(07:11):
show other points of view instead, TikTok says, Oh, this
user has engaged with this content, I should show them
a whole bunch of the same sort of stuff. So
to you, the user, it seems like there's just this
flood of content presenting just one side of an issue,
and you might not see very many, if any, examples
(07:33):
of the other side. But that's a very different thing
than arguing that the entire platform has a bias. In fact,
the reporters even point out that in other nations governments
are actually arguing that the opposite is true, that TikTok
has a pro Israel and anti Palestinian bias. So there
(07:54):
are different governments making opposite conclusions about a supposed bias
within TikTok. And I think the truth of the matter
is this is really more to do with the sort
of brute force approach of TikTok's algorithm. That is probably,
in my opinion, what is fueling this, and that you know,
(08:16):
I'm not a huge fan of TikTok, right, I do
have some concerns about the potential link to China. That
is something that I worry about, although I also acknowledge
that as far as I can determine, there's not really
much evidence to point to actual cases of Chinese officials
using TikTok to you know, surveil national security matters or
(08:42):
anything like that. But the potential is there, and that's
what is I think a little concerning. But I don't
really know that it's you know, that this particular argument
has much merit. In fact, I think it doesn't have
much merit the argument that TikTok has some sort of
specific bias when it goes to the ongoing conflict between
Israel and Hamas. I think that in most cases it's
(09:06):
either a failing of critical thinking, or perhaps it's someone
who's trying to score political points by you bashing against TikTok,
or perhaps a combination of the two that's really to
blame here. Next up, Scarlett Johansson is the latest famous
person in a face off against artificial intelligence. The Verge
(09:27):
reports that Johansson's lawyer is taking legal action against a
software developer company. That company is called Convert Software or
Convert Software. The company creates an app that's called Lisa
AI nineties Yearbook an avatar and ran an advertisement about
this app, and it included an AI generated copy of
(09:49):
Johanson's voice. So it starts off with like a little
segment of a behind the scenes thing from her filming
of Black Widow, and then you get the a imitation
of Johansson giving information about this app. Apparently this was
all done without Johanson's knowledge or consent. And while the
ad did feature a little bit of text that said
(10:12):
the person in the app doesn't have anything to do
with the app itself. Her lawyer is saying, that doesn't
really cut the mustard, and we are definitely getting into
some tricky territory here. As I've talked about before, the
laws here in the United States aren't exactly up to
date with technological capabilities. There are very few protections in
place when it comes to impersonation. Now, there are limits,
(10:36):
like if you were to go so far as to
impersonate someone in an effort to slander them, for example,
that would be something that you could take legal action
against because it goes under slander. Or if you were
to impersonate someone and have that person apparently endorse a product,
not just voice an ad, but to actually say that
they had used and approved of that product. That could
(10:59):
get you in some big legal trouble too, because the
law states that in order to make an endorsement, you
have to have actually used the product or service in question,
and you have to give your real opinion about it,
and that otherwise the endorsement can be misleading and false advertising.
So obviously, if you're using an impersonation of a celebrity
(11:23):
to make an endorsement, that would be a huge problem.
But there doesn't seem to be, as far as I'm aware,
very much information legally about impersonating someone in an effort
to just do a regular ad, not an endorsement, but
a regular ad. So I don't know if there is
a legal basis to hold convert software accountable, but I
(11:45):
suspect that cases like this one and a few others
that have popped up over the last year or so
are going to lead to new legislation that will expressly
cover these situations in the future. All right, So who
do you go to? If you're employe lets you go
in order to automate your job and then hand your
job over to AI? What do you do? Well? May
(12:07):
I suggest that you use an AI powered career counselor
to get you out of the situation? Sounds a bit trippy.
So this actually has to do with LinkedIn. LinkedIn has
deployed an AI chat bot feature that's meant to serve
as a kind of career advisor. At the moment, the
feature is in limited run. Only the people who are
(12:30):
actually LinkedIn premium subscribers can use this feature right now.
And you don't just sit down with this AI chatbot
and then have a deep soul searching heart to heart
about where your career needs to go at the stage
in your life. Instead, the chatbot will activate when you
(12:51):
are attempting to evaluate a job offer or maybe a
job listing and you're trying to figure out am I
a good fit for this position? Neuel. You can ask
those specific types of questions and a little drop down menu,
and the chatbot will essentially do an analysis of your
resume and job experience that kind of thing, and then
(13:13):
also analyze the job listing in particular and give you
some guidance as to whether or not maybe you're a
good fit for the job, or maybe you're just pooling
yourself and you should go back to being a sign spinner.
No shade on sign spinners, by the way, folks got
to get that Dala dolla, and goodness knows, I'd be
(13:33):
the worst sign spinner in the history of the gig
if I were to give it a try. Also, real talk,
let's say I lose my job. I honestly do not
know what I would do for a living at this
point in my life. It is a sobering thought, and
I think a lot of people struggle when they find
themselves in a similar situation where maybe they've done a
specific job for a very long time, maybe there aren't
(13:56):
that many analogs out there where they could port their
skins over to something else. It's terrifying. So I think
a tool that can help someone prioritize their own time
when they're in a job search mode, I think that's
a great thing. I think that's a very good use
of technology to help people kind of narrow their focus. However,
(14:20):
several things need to be true in order for me
to be really one hundred percent in favor of this tool. First,
the tool needs to work right. It needs to actually
work well. Second, I would want to see this tool
rolled out to anyone who's a LinkedIn user, not just
those who are premium subscribers, because I mean, if you're
(14:41):
in a position where you need to find a new job,
you might also be in a position where you can't
really afford to pay for extras in order to get
that new job. And I would like to see the
people who need this the most have access to it
without having to sacrifice to pay for that access. Three,
(15:02):
I also hope this AI powered tool isn't prone to
unfair bias. So, for example, I would hope the tool
doesn't assume that a woman would just be a bad
fit for an engineer position because she is a she.
I would want all those things to be true in
order to really feel good about this tool, So hopefully
those are all true eventually. Okay, we've got a lot
(15:24):
more news to go, but before we get to that,
let's take a quick break. We're back. So the Attorney
General for New York is going after a group of
companies that are in the cryptocurrency space, and she's arguing
(15:47):
that these companies have defrauded customers out of more than
a billion dollars yikes, and they do have a connection
with some pretty infamous failures in the crypto space from
last year. So the companies that are part of this
entire investigation and legal action include the Digital Currency Group,
(16:11):
which is the parent company for another party in this
in this legal action, Genesis. That's a crypto lending company,
as well as a crypto exchange company called Gemini or
if you preferred Gemini, and Gemini is the one that
was co founded by the infamous Winkle Voss twins, you know,
(16:32):
who also played a part in the early days of Facebook,
and that's why it's called Gemini, right, Gemini are the
twins when you're talking about astrology, So very clever. But
the charges allege that these companies incurred massive losses and
then tried to hide that information from investors because they
(16:52):
wanted to keep the money flowing in. And if you're
telling investors we're losing lots of money, chances are they're
not going to be super willing to invest more into you. Now,
one key element of the case involves what was a
collaboration between Gemini, the crypto exchange, and Genesis, the crypto
(17:12):
lending company. The service was called Gemini Earn Earn, So basically,
the idea was that the investors who were using the
crypto exchange Gemini, could loan money out to the crypto
loaner company, Genesis. So Gemini customer says, all right, I
(17:35):
will give X amount of my cash out to Genesis
as a loan. Genesis in turn would loan that investor
money out to its own customers, and the idea was
that the customers would pay interest on the loan, Genesis
would pay interest on the loaned money from the investors,
(17:55):
and the money would trickle back up the chain and
everybody would make cash right, So the interest rates were
listed as high as eight percent. At certain points, you
get eight percent return on your investment. Not bad. And
according to the lawsuit, Gemini performed a risk analysis on
(18:17):
Genesis and then determined that it would actually be really
risky to loan money to Genesis, but Gemini did not
communicate the information to its customers to the investors on Gemini,
so they didn't tell the investors, hey, heads up, this
is a risky loan. Instead they said, yeah, dog, it's
(18:38):
totally safe and you can increase your wealth this way. Meanwhile,
Genesis totally fumbled the bag because it was loaning out
considerable amounts of money to entities that then went broke,
one of which being Alimator Research. So if that name
sounds familiar, that's because Alimator Research was one of the
(18:59):
two crypto companies that Sam Bankman Freed co founded, you know,
the other one being obviously the FTX Exchange, and Alimator
Research went bankrupt. So this huge amount of money that
was loan to Alamator Research was effectively lost. So this
lawsuit is saying that JEM and I became aware that
(19:21):
Genesis earned was not a good investment opportunity from a
risk standpoint, but then specifically did not tell their own
customers this information, which allowed the investors to continue to
funnel money into an operation that was really not likely
to create a return and in fact ended up being
a huge failure. So this is another story pointing out
(19:43):
how precarious a lot of the crypto community is. That's
not to say that all cryptocurrency companies or crypto companies
in general are in the same boat. I'm not saying
they're all just a guaranteed loss. That's not what I'm saying.
I am saying there are lots of examples of companies
that are in that space that tried to capitalize on
(20:05):
a boom period, Like they were really quick and rushing in,
and they made some big, risky decisions, and then when
that boom kind of ended, these companies found themselves out
of their depth and a lot of them ended up collapsing.
So just again a word of caution before you start
(20:25):
investing into cryptocurrency. I'm not a financial advisor. I cannot
give any sort of advice. Personally, I think that it
is not worth the risk in most cases. I'm still
not sold on cryptocurrency in general, I feel like it's
largely a technology that benefits a few at the expense
(20:48):
of many, similar to things like a pyramid scheme or
a Ponzi scheme. I'm not saying that all cryptocurrencies are
a Ponzi scheme either, just that there are some similarities,
and I haven't seen a lot of evidence for, you know,
like ones that are treated less as a commodity exchange
(21:08):
and more like an actual currency. It's just it's rare. Okay.
Reuter's reports that the company we Work could be filing
for bankruptcy as early as next week. So first of all,
to get this out of the way, we Work isn't
really a tech company really, but I cover it because
(21:29):
everyone treats it like it was a tech startup. It
was a darling among tech venture capitalysts when we Work
first launched, despite the fact that We Work's entire business
model was predicated upon an idea that wasn't remotely new
or innovative. It's it wasn't like we Work was breaking
(21:50):
the mold and coming up with something that had never
been tried before. It was actually a business idea that
traditionally had proven to be really challenging, and one had
pretty low profit margins. So we Work's business model, in
case you're not aware, is the company purchases or leases
office space in large, typically urban communities, and then it
(22:15):
will lease or sub lease those spaces to various individuals
and small companies so that they will have an office
location they can use, but they don't have to go
to the extent of actually, you know, purchasing or renting
dedicated office space that would require a much larger financial investment,
(22:36):
so they can save money by renting at a smaller
fee a section of office space in this communal office
location run by we Work. Now, that's it as far
as the business plan goes. But the WeWork story has
all sorts of bizarre twists and turns. Some of it
is your classic conflict of interest stuff because it was
(22:58):
discovered that the company's founder was acquiring a real estate
on his own and then using we Work to purchase
a lease from him for that property, which is certainly questionable.
Right Like if you run a company and then on
your own, you go out and buy something and then
(23:18):
you direct your company to purchase the thing you bought
at a huge profit for you personally, that there is
pretty darn questionable. But on top of that, his wife
was drafting some very weird corporate documents that seem to
have more in common with Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop company, which
you know, kind of makes more sense when you realize
(23:40):
the two women are actually related to each other. The
whole story is weird. There are entire documentaries about it,
and great YouTube videos as well. Maybe at one point,
we Work was seen as a being at like a
massive disruptor in office real estate, but now the company
finds itself on the verge of obsolescence tech stuff. We're
(24:00):
more of a general kind of business podcast. I would
probably do a full series of episodes about we Work
and really dive into the evolution and fall of that company,
but I think I'm going to leave that to other shows.
It just figured I should cover this because we Work
was treated as though it were a tech startup from
(24:23):
the very beginning, and now we're seeing the end of it.
Now let's talk about an actual tech company. So by
the end of today, you know, Thursday, November two, Apple
is expected to post a quarterly result that will indicate
(24:44):
a decline in revenue for the fourth consecutive quarter. So,
in other words, over the course of a year, Apple's
revenue has declined quarter by quarter at least compared to
the same time last year, right, and revenue decline is
not something that you really want to see. This is
(25:05):
all according to CNBC. Now, this is not to say
that Apple is in trouble. That's not the case. Again,
we're talking about decline in revenue, but we're not talking
about the company losing money. It's just not making as
much money as it did this time last year. The
company is still making boatloads of money every year. The
(25:25):
expectation for this quarter, which will know for sure by
the end of today, but the expectations that Apple's going
to report on making around eighty nine point two eight
billion dollars in sales. That's billion with a B. That
is an unimaginable amount of money to me. And that's
just one quarter of the year. However, even at eighty
(25:49):
nine point to eight billion dollars, that's still a one
percent drop from what the company made in sales this
time last year. Now, they're probably tons of reasons for
this decline, and a lot of those reasons, I would
argue are totally outside of Apple's direct control right, like
the state of the economy in general is an example.
(26:12):
Apple doesn't control that, and some people, I'm guessing, are
willing to stick with their current technology and use it
for maybe longer than they typically would because they're just
trying to be a little more careful with their own
personal budget. Then you also have Apple customers who might
feel that some of the more recent products Apple has
(26:33):
released just haven't been innovative enough or shown enough reasons
to upgrade from what you're currently using. So this would
be the people who say, oh, you know, Apple doesn't
end up creating really cool products the way it used to.
I don't necessarily disagree with that, I guess because part
(26:53):
of it is that it's been a while since Apple
has been able to introduce sort of a new product
category and do the same thing that it did with
things like it be three players with the iPod, smartphones
with the iPhone tablet, computers with the iPad, et cetera.
It's been a while since they've been able to do
something like that, and I think a lot of people
(27:14):
had this expectation that every few years, Apple was just
going to come out with a new product line that
would redefine a gadget and create a brand new way
for Apple to print money. But that's hard to do,
and it's also hard to like innovate in a way
where you're significantly improving the performance and quality of the
(27:37):
products you're making. So, you know, I don't fully blame
Apple for this. I do think it puts a lot
more pressure on the company to try and create those
innovative products. I think Apple's experimentation with augmented and mixed
reality kind of show that the company has been thinking
(27:57):
about that but just hasn't been able to nail the
execution in a way that I think is going to
have a huge impact on the market. We'll see. Maybe
I'm wrong. I've been wrong about lots of outher Apple stuff.
I didn't think the iPad was going to make it,
and I was completely wrong about that, So maybe I'm
totally wrong about mixed reality too. We'll have to see.
But I imagine that it's going to take another year
(28:20):
for investors to really get super excited about Apple again
in order to, you know, kind of reverse this trend.
I don't think investors are losing hope in Apple, because again,
the company is a juggernaut it makes so much money
that it's hard to say, oh, well, I'm going to
pull out Apple because their sales went down a little
(28:42):
bit this year compared to last year. But then again,
investors are finicky people at times, so who knows. Okay,
I got a few more stories to cover. But before
I do that, let's take another quick break. So we're back,
(29:06):
and there is a deal. It's actually been in development
for several years I think five years now that may
finally be close to closing in the not too distant future.
And I'm talking about the Walt Disney companies purchase of
the streaming platform Hulu. So Disney has been part of
(29:26):
Hulu for years, Like that's not new. But once upon
a time, Hulu was kind of a collaborative project. There
were a lot of different companies that were part of
Hulu early on, largely because these were companies that were
trying to oppose Netflix. The idea being that they didn't
want to lose control of who actually has access to
(29:51):
certain content. The studios thought, well, if we have our
own streaming platform, we can compete against Netflix. Netflix will
not be the only game in town. They will not
dominate the streaming landscape. So Hulu became a thing. These days, however,
the stakeholders really come down to Disney and then Comcast.
Comcast owns about a third, in fact a third of Hulu,
(30:16):
like thirty three percent of Hulu. So again, five years ago,
these two entities agreed that Disney would purchase Hulu in
total and pay out Comcast for its shares. They recently
came to an agreement about how much that will be.
At minimum, which is eight point six one billion dollars.
(30:39):
That's what Disney will have to pay to get full
ownership of Hulu. And again that's not for all of Hulu.
That's representing one third of Hulu now, I say at least,
because the amount actually will depend upon what Hulu's fair
market value was on September thirtieth, that's when this agreement
actually happened, although we're only really hearing details about it
(31:02):
now as we're getting close to earnings calls and such.
So the eight point six one was based on a
minimum valuation that of Hulu being twenty seven point five
billion dollars. But that agreement was made half a decade ago.
It was kind of just based off of projections, so
it's possible that on September thirtieth, Hulu's fair market value
(31:25):
was higher than twenty seven point five billion dollars, perhaps
even significantly higher. And if that's the case, Disney will
be beholden to make up the difference of that, you know,
thirty three percent of that. So like if instead of
twenty seven point five billion, uh an analysis says that
on September thirtieth of this year, Hulu is worth like
(31:46):
forty billion. Disney's going to have to pay the difference
there to in addition to that eight point six one
billion dollars to complete the transaction. So it's not paid
for and done, but it's up. It'll be interesting to
see what Disney does. You know, We've heard rumors that
Disney plans on integrating Hulu with the Disney Plus streaming platform,
(32:10):
which is the one reason why I haven't subscribed to Hulu.
I am a Disney Plus subscriber, and I thought, well,
maybe I'll just wait because if these two merge, I
may end up just you know, I'll probably have to
pay more because I can't imagine the price remaining the same,
but I may be able to access both on the
same platform. So we'll see Disney is going to hold
(32:32):
an earnings call next week, so there's a good chance
that I will have an update next week and I
can talk more about it then. The Guardian here this
is our technically our final story, but I do have
some recommendations afterwards. But The Guardian reports that the Pentagon
here in the United States has launched an online reporting
(32:54):
tool for folks who have information about unidentified anomalist phenomena
or UAPs. So UAP is the current acceptable term for
what we used to call UFOs right unidentified flying objects
now at the moment, this tool is not open to
the public. Right now, only folks who have quote direct
(33:18):
knowledge of US government programs or activities related to UAP
dating back to nineteen forty five end quote have access
to this particular tool, which is like an online form.
The Pentagon does plan to roll out a publicly accessible
version of this tool sometime in the future. I don't
(33:38):
have a timeline on that, but it is supposed to
be coming. You could not pay me enough to be
the person who has to filter through all the stuff
that's going to come through that public portal. I'm sure
they're going to be countless hoaxes there'll be people who
are just playing trolling, they'll be true believers who are
(34:00):
spouting off stuff about UAPs. The sheer volume of weirdness
that is going to hit that inbox is unfathomable to me.
This is all part of the US government's attempt to
make the whole UAP investigation stuff more transparent. So does
this mean, like various conspiracy theories have argued that the
(34:22):
US government has secretly been hiding evidence of aliens, that
maybe we've even found examples of alien technology and then
reverse engineered it in order to create amazing updates to
our tech. No, it does not mean that. In fact,
the government officials who have been part of this project
(34:44):
say I'm not aware of anyone doing anything even remotely
related to that. So if it's happening, I've never heard
of it. I suspect that no amount of transparency is
ever going to eliminate the various stories that circulate about
suspect did cover ups and conspiracies all meant to hide
the truth from the rest of US. I don't think
(35:06):
that that's at all likely. I don't think it's even possible.
But I don't think there's any way to ever stop
those stories, I still find it very difficult to believe
that any alien civilization has visited us, not because it
would be completely impossible, but when you start the factor
in the requirements that would be necessary for aliens to
(35:28):
get here, it becomes diminishingly likely that it's happened. And
by that I mean, let's take into consideration what has
to happen for aliens to find us. So, assuming that
the aliens are looking for signs of things like radio communications,
which would indicate that there's the presence of an intelligent
(35:50):
life somewhere, well, radio travels at the speed of light,
and let's say this alien civilization is three hundred light
years away from us. Well, we've only been really making
radio communications for a little more than a century, so
it would still take two hundred years for those very
weak radio signals to even be detectable to a civilization
(36:13):
that's three hundred light years away. Then you have to
actually travel that distance to get here on Earth. And
even if they had light speed travel, which as far
as we are aware, is impossible to do unless you
are some sort of life form that's pure energy, then
it's going to take you three hundred years at minimum,
to make that journey. So we're talking five hundred years
(36:37):
out from when we started transmitting in radio waves. That's
what I mean when I say I just don't think
it's likely that we've been visited by aliens. Now, could
an alien civilization capable of space travel, just by happenstance
come across Earth. I guess I don't know why they
(36:59):
would like just randomly joy writing across the universe and
then you make a little pitstop in a tiny little
solar system and you happen to land on a planet
that supports life like that just again seems unlikely, But
I digress. I'm sure that this tool is going to
get a lot of use, and my thoughts go out
(37:21):
to whomever it is that has to go through all
that information. Okay, before we wrap up, I do have
a couple of article suggestions for you all today. One
is from MIT News. David L. Chandler is the author
of this piece. It is titled Engineers develop an efficient
process to make fuel from carbon dioxide. So, as the
(37:42):
title indicates, the story is all about how some researchers
have used a variety of different strategies to make it
more practical to turn CO two into a stable fuel,
and you would be able to store this fuel for
an indefinite amount of time and use the fuel to
power stuff like you could use it to do things
like heat homes and things like that, or use it
in fuel cells typically, and you would also be tapping
(38:07):
into renewable energy sources to actually power the conversion processes. So,
in other words, you could find ways to turn the
CO two into fuel without having to place more demand
on carbon generating power plants. It's an interesting read. I
am curious as to what byproducts the fuel produces when
(38:28):
it's consumed, right, you know, like your typical fuel cell
uses hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity, and the byproducts
are heat and water vapor, and that's it. I don't
know what the byproducts are for the CO two based
fuel cells, and I should look at it up and
read into it, but I think the article itself is
(38:50):
worth a read. The other article recommendation I have is
from Rollingstone dot com. It is titled HBO bosses used
secret fake accounts to troll TV critics. This one's by
Cheyenne Roundtree, and again the title shows that some executives
over at HBO really wanted to make some TV critics
(39:10):
feel badly about their opinions about HBO programs, and this
happened a couple of years ago, and honestly, reading over
the messages that were part of this ridiculous campaign over
at HBO gave me real mean girls in high school vibes.
So check it out. That's it for the Tech News
(39:32):
for Thursday, November second, twenty twenty three. I hope you
are all well and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(39:54):
to your favorite shows
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech are you.
It's time for the tech news for November two, twenty
twenty three, rapidly running out of days. In twenty twenty
(00:27):
three and yesterday, I did an episode about the history
of ad blockers, But one thing I didn't really cover
in great detail was YouTube and YouTube's battle against ad blocking. Well,
the platform has been rolling out an escalating response to
users who have been employing ad blockers on YouTube while
(00:51):
trying to watch YouTube videos. Gizmoto's Kevin Hurler has a
piece on this on Gizmoto titled YouTube's ad blocker crackdown
is getting harder to dodge, and he explains that earlier
in October, YouTube began to show a pop up notification
to ad blocker users, and the notification said that video
(01:12):
playback would not work until the user disabled ad block
or otherwise whitelisted YouTube. Now, initially, folks could just close
out the pop up and continue on their merry way.
A little bit later, YouTube beef this up. They then
had a little checkbox you had to click on to
notify YouTube that you were acknowledging you had been alerted
(01:35):
to this policy, that you should not be using ad blockers,
that this is against YouTube's terms of service, and then
you could go on your merry way. Now, YouTube will
just keep that pop up in place, and it'll block
all activity. You won't be able to do anything else
on YouTube until you actually take the steps to either
disable or pause ad blocking entirely, or to whitelist YouTube.
(02:01):
Hurler also points out that the Wall Street Journal has
tracked YouTube's ad revenue over the last three quarters and
that revenue has been on the decline. So we're not
saying that YouTube is losing money. It's not that. It's
just they're not making as much money as they had previously.
It's going down. That's a trend that most companies are
not super happy about. YouTube has been pushing for a
(02:25):
lot more folks to subscribe to YouTube premium. That's been
a campaign that's been going on for several months now,
and they have also introduced a lot of new types
of ads, including unskippable ads, longer ones too like it
used to be that an unskippable ad would last maybe
five or ten seconds, but now we have full thirty
second unskippable ads on say YouTube TV, for example. And
(02:47):
it has also started to remove some of the controls
that video creators had when it came to where they
would place ads against their content. I remember talking about
how some ASMR creators were very upset because at least initially,
it looked like they wouldn't have the opportunity to specify
that ads should only be pre roll, for example, a
(03:10):
not post roll, and that by removing that control, it
meant that an ASMR AD or an ASMR video rather
might have allowed an intrusive ad play after the video,
thus potentially undoing all the work that the ASMR video
was intended to do. Well. I suspect we're going to
continue to see shifts in strategy from YouTube because they're
(03:33):
going to continue to try and find the most lucrative
way to make as much money as possible. That's kind
of what businesses do. And I'm sure we'll also see
new approaches to ad blocking go on as well. And
so it goes. David Ingram and kat Tinbarge have a
really good piece over at Nbcnews dot Com. It's titled
(03:56):
critics renewed Calls for a TikTok band, claiming play has
an anti Israel bias. So the journalists walk a pretty
tight line in an attempt to be really objective in
this piece, and they explain that several politicians are saying
that TikTok is spreading propaganda to young people and favoring
(04:18):
a pro Palestinian stance over a pro Israeli stance that
with regard to the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
But the reporters actually found that if you look at
the stats on TikTok in the United States over the
last month or so, the period of time covered by
(04:40):
the point when Hamas attacked Israel and then Israel's response
to that attack, not only are posts with a hashtag
such as stand with Palestine not outpacing ones that have
the hashtag stand with Israel, but also that those Israel
posts are actually outperforming the Palestine ones. So, in other words,
(05:02):
the stats seem to directly contradict the claims these politicians
are making. They're saying there's this anti Israel bias across TikTok.
The reporters are saying, well, based upon what we're seeing
at least over the last thirty days or so here
in the United States, there doesn't appear to be any
indication of bias. In fact, we're seeing a trend toward
(05:25):
the opposite if you're looking at those stats. The reporters
say that the claims appear to be based mostly on
anecdotal evidence, and also by taking sort of a longer
view across the entire history of TikTok. Like if you
look at all of TikTok's history and you're looking at
the trends of you know, stand with say, stand with
(05:47):
a Palestine or stand with Israel, then things get a
little less clear, right, because you're looking across the entire
history of the platform, but not the current events. And
we all also know that anecdotal evidence is really useless
with TikTok, right because TikTok's algorithm looks at what content
(06:08):
you are engaging with on the platform, and then TikTok
essentially draws the conclusion of, Oh, this is what this
person wants to see, so let me just give them
a whole bunch more of that. It reminds me of
a routine that Patton Oswalt used to do where he
talked about tvo, where he said he used TVO to
(06:29):
record a couple of Westerns that he wanted to watch,
and then TVO made the conclusion that he just really
liked content that had horses in it, and so he
got a whole bunch of horse content recorded on his behalf.
This is sort of what it's reminding me of, which
means that, you know, if you were to go on
TikTok and let's say you actually did see a pro
(06:49):
Palestinian video and you objected to that video for whatever reason,
and maybe you even leave a comment giving your different
point of view and what I am sure would be
a reasonable and polite way, then TikTok doesn't see that as, Oh,
this person ends up disagreeing with this content, I should
(07:11):
show other points of view instead, TikTok says, Oh, this
user has engaged with this content, I should show them
a whole bunch of the same sort of stuff. So
to you, the user, it seems like there's just this
flood of content presenting just one side of an issue,
and you might not see very many, if any, examples
(07:33):
of the other side. But that's a very different thing
than arguing that the entire platform has a bias. In fact,
the reporters even point out that in other nations governments
are actually arguing that the opposite is true, that TikTok
has a pro Israel and anti Palestinian bias. So there
(07:54):
are different governments making opposite conclusions about a supposed bias
within TikTok. And I think the truth of the matter
is this is really more to do with the sort
of brute force approach of TikTok's algorithm. That is probably,
in my opinion, what is fueling this, and that you know,
(08:16):
I'm not a huge fan of TikTok, right, I do
have some concerns about the potential link to China. That
is something that I worry about, although I also acknowledge
that as far as I can determine, there's not really
much evidence to point to actual cases of Chinese officials
using TikTok to you know, surveil national security matters or
(08:42):
anything like that. But the potential is there, and that's
what is I think a little concerning. But I don't
really know that it's you know, that this particular argument
has much merit. In fact, I think it doesn't have
much merit the argument that TikTok has some sort of
specific bias when it goes to the ongoing conflict between
Israel and Hamas. I think that in most cases it's
(09:06):
either a failing of critical thinking, or perhaps it's someone
who's trying to score political points by you bashing against TikTok,
or perhaps a combination of the two that's really to
blame here. Next up, Scarlett Johansson is the latest famous
person in a face off against artificial intelligence. The Verge
(09:27):
reports that Johansson's lawyer is taking legal action against a
software developer company. That company is called Convert Software or
Convert Software. The company creates an app that's called Lisa
AI nineties Yearbook an avatar and ran an advertisement about
this app, and it included an AI generated copy of
(09:49):
Johanson's voice. So it starts off with like a little
segment of a behind the scenes thing from her filming
of Black Widow, and then you get the a imitation
of Johansson giving information about this app. Apparently this was
all done without Johanson's knowledge or consent. And while the
ad did feature a little bit of text that said
(10:12):
the person in the app doesn't have anything to do
with the app itself. Her lawyer is saying, that doesn't
really cut the mustard, and we are definitely getting into
some tricky territory here. As I've talked about before, the
laws here in the United States aren't exactly up to
date with technological capabilities. There are very few protections in
place when it comes to impersonation. Now, there are limits,
(10:36):
like if you were to go so far as to
impersonate someone in an effort to slander them, for example,
that would be something that you could take legal action
against because it goes under slander. Or if you were
to impersonate someone and have that person apparently endorse a product,
not just voice an ad, but to actually say that
they had used and approved of that product. That could
(10:59):
get you in some big legal trouble too, because the
law states that in order to make an endorsement, you
have to have actually used the product or service in question,
and you have to give your real opinion about it,
and that otherwise the endorsement can be misleading and false advertising.
So obviously, if you're using an impersonation of a celebrity
(11:23):
to make an endorsement, that would be a huge problem.
But there doesn't seem to be, as far as I'm aware,
very much information legally about impersonating someone in an effort
to just do a regular ad, not an endorsement, but
a regular ad. So I don't know if there is
a legal basis to hold convert software accountable, but I
(11:45):
suspect that cases like this one and a few others
that have popped up over the last year or so
are going to lead to new legislation that will expressly
cover these situations in the future. All right, So who
do you go to? If you're employe lets you go
in order to automate your job and then hand your
job over to AI? What do you do? Well? May
(12:07):
I suggest that you use an AI powered career counselor
to get you out of the situation? Sounds a bit trippy.
So this actually has to do with LinkedIn. LinkedIn has
deployed an AI chat bot feature that's meant to serve
as a kind of career advisor. At the moment, the
feature is in limited run. Only the people who are
(12:30):
actually LinkedIn premium subscribers can use this feature right now.
And you don't just sit down with this AI chatbot
and then have a deep soul searching heart to heart
about where your career needs to go at the stage
in your life. Instead, the chatbot will activate when you
(12:51):
are attempting to evaluate a job offer or maybe a
job listing and you're trying to figure out am I
a good fit for this position? Neuel. You can ask
those specific types of questions and a little drop down menu,
and the chatbot will essentially do an analysis of your
resume and job experience that kind of thing, and then
(13:13):
also analyze the job listing in particular and give you
some guidance as to whether or not maybe you're a
good fit for the job, or maybe you're just pooling
yourself and you should go back to being a sign spinner.
No shade on sign spinners, by the way, folks got
to get that Dala dolla, and goodness knows, I'd be
(13:33):
the worst sign spinner in the history of the gig
if I were to give it a try. Also, real talk,
let's say I lose my job. I honestly do not
know what I would do for a living at this
point in my life. It is a sobering thought, and
I think a lot of people struggle when they find
themselves in a similar situation where maybe they've done a
specific job for a very long time, maybe there aren't
(13:56):
that many analogs out there where they could port their
skins over to something else. It's terrifying. So I think
a tool that can help someone prioritize their own time
when they're in a job search mode, I think that's
a great thing. I think that's a very good use
of technology to help people kind of narrow their focus. However,
(14:20):
several things need to be true in order for me
to be really one hundred percent in favor of this tool. First,
the tool needs to work right. It needs to actually
work well. Second, I would want to see this tool
rolled out to anyone who's a LinkedIn user, not just
those who are premium subscribers, because I mean, if you're
(14:41):
in a position where you need to find a new job,
you might also be in a position where you can't
really afford to pay for extras in order to get
that new job. And I would like to see the
people who need this the most have access to it
without having to sacrifice to pay for that access. Three,
(15:02):
I also hope this AI powered tool isn't prone to
unfair bias. So, for example, I would hope the tool
doesn't assume that a woman would just be a bad
fit for an engineer position because she is a she.
I would want all those things to be true in
order to really feel good about this tool, So hopefully
those are all true eventually. Okay, we've got a lot
(15:24):
more news to go, but before we get to that,
let's take a quick break. We're back. So the Attorney
General for New York is going after a group of
companies that are in the cryptocurrency space, and she's arguing
(15:47):
that these companies have defrauded customers out of more than
a billion dollars yikes, and they do have a connection
with some pretty infamous failures in the crypto space from
last year. So the companies that are part of this
entire investigation and legal action include the Digital Currency Group,
(16:11):
which is the parent company for another party in this
in this legal action, Genesis. That's a crypto lending company,
as well as a crypto exchange company called Gemini or
if you preferred Gemini, and Gemini is the one that
was co founded by the infamous Winkle Voss twins, you know,
(16:32):
who also played a part in the early days of Facebook,
and that's why it's called Gemini, right, Gemini are the
twins when you're talking about astrology, So very clever. But
the charges allege that these companies incurred massive losses and
then tried to hide that information from investors because they
(16:52):
wanted to keep the money flowing in. And if you're
telling investors we're losing lots of money, chances are they're
not going to be super willing to invest more into you. Now,
one key element of the case involves what was a
collaboration between Gemini, the crypto exchange, and Genesis, the crypto
(17:12):
lending company. The service was called Gemini Earn Earn, So basically,
the idea was that the investors who were using the
crypto exchange Gemini, could loan money out to the crypto
loaner company, Genesis. So Gemini customer says, all right, I
(17:35):
will give X amount of my cash out to Genesis
as a loan. Genesis in turn would loan that investor
money out to its own customers, and the idea was
that the customers would pay interest on the loan, Genesis
would pay interest on the loaned money from the investors,
(17:55):
and the money would trickle back up the chain and
everybody would make cash right, So the interest rates were
listed as high as eight percent. At certain points, you
get eight percent return on your investment. Not bad. And
according to the lawsuit, Gemini performed a risk analysis on
(18:17):
Genesis and then determined that it would actually be really
risky to loan money to Genesis, but Gemini did not
communicate the information to its customers to the investors on Gemini,
so they didn't tell the investors, hey, heads up, this
is a risky loan. Instead they said, yeah, dog, it's
(18:38):
totally safe and you can increase your wealth this way. Meanwhile,
Genesis totally fumbled the bag because it was loaning out
considerable amounts of money to entities that then went broke,
one of which being Alimator Research. So if that name
sounds familiar, that's because Alimator Research was one of the
(18:59):
two crypto companies that Sam Bankman Freed co founded, you know,
the other one being obviously the FTX Exchange, and Alimator
Research went bankrupt. So this huge amount of money that
was loan to Alamator Research was effectively lost. So this
lawsuit is saying that JEM and I became aware that
(19:21):
Genesis earned was not a good investment opportunity from a
risk standpoint, but then specifically did not tell their own
customers this information, which allowed the investors to continue to
funnel money into an operation that was really not likely
to create a return and in fact ended up being
a huge failure. So this is another story pointing out
(19:43):
how precarious a lot of the crypto community is. That's
not to say that all cryptocurrency companies or crypto companies
in general are in the same boat. I'm not saying
they're all just a guaranteed loss. That's not what I'm saying.
I am saying there are lots of examples of companies
that are in that space that tried to capitalize on
(20:05):
a boom period, Like they were really quick and rushing in,
and they made some big, risky decisions, and then when
that boom kind of ended, these companies found themselves out
of their depth and a lot of them ended up collapsing.
So just again a word of caution before you start
(20:25):
investing into cryptocurrency. I'm not a financial advisor. I cannot
give any sort of advice. Personally, I think that it
is not worth the risk in most cases. I'm still
not sold on cryptocurrency in general, I feel like it's
largely a technology that benefits a few at the expense
(20:48):
of many, similar to things like a pyramid scheme or
a Ponzi scheme. I'm not saying that all cryptocurrencies are
a Ponzi scheme either, just that there are some similarities,
and I haven't seen a lot of evidence for, you know,
like ones that are treated less as a commodity exchange
(21:08):
and more like an actual currency. It's just it's rare. Okay.
Reuter's reports that the company we Work could be filing
for bankruptcy as early as next week. So first of all,
to get this out of the way, we Work isn't
really a tech company really, but I cover it because
(21:29):
everyone treats it like it was a tech startup. It
was a darling among tech venture capitalysts when we Work
first launched, despite the fact that We Work's entire business
model was predicated upon an idea that wasn't remotely new
or innovative. It's it wasn't like we Work was breaking
(21:50):
the mold and coming up with something that had never
been tried before. It was actually a business idea that
traditionally had proven to be really challenging, and one had
pretty low profit margins. So we Work's business model, in
case you're not aware, is the company purchases or leases
office space in large, typically urban communities, and then it
(22:15):
will lease or sub lease those spaces to various individuals
and small companies so that they will have an office
location they can use, but they don't have to go
to the extent of actually, you know, purchasing or renting
dedicated office space that would require a much larger financial investment,
(22:36):
so they can save money by renting at a smaller
fee a section of office space in this communal office
location run by we Work. Now, that's it as far
as the business plan goes. But the WeWork story has
all sorts of bizarre twists and turns. Some of it
is your classic conflict of interest stuff because it was
(22:58):
discovered that the company's founder was acquiring a real estate
on his own and then using we Work to purchase
a lease from him for that property, which is certainly questionable.
Right Like if you run a company and then on
your own, you go out and buy something and then
(23:18):
you direct your company to purchase the thing you bought
at a huge profit for you personally, that there is
pretty darn questionable. But on top of that, his wife
was drafting some very weird corporate documents that seem to
have more in common with Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop company, which
you know, kind of makes more sense when you realize
(23:40):
the two women are actually related to each other. The
whole story is weird. There are entire documentaries about it,
and great YouTube videos as well. Maybe at one point,
we Work was seen as a being at like a
massive disruptor in office real estate, but now the company
finds itself on the verge of obsolescence tech stuff. We're
(24:00):
more of a general kind of business podcast. I would
probably do a full series of episodes about we Work
and really dive into the evolution and fall of that company,
but I think I'm going to leave that to other shows.
It just figured I should cover this because we Work
was treated as though it were a tech startup from
(24:23):
the very beginning, and now we're seeing the end of it.
Now let's talk about an actual tech company. So by
the end of today, you know, Thursday, November two, Apple
is expected to post a quarterly result that will indicate
(24:44):
a decline in revenue for the fourth consecutive quarter. So,
in other words, over the course of a year, Apple's
revenue has declined quarter by quarter at least compared to
the same time last year, right, and revenue decline is
not something that you really want to see. This is
(25:05):
all according to CNBC. Now, this is not to say
that Apple is in trouble. That's not the case. Again,
we're talking about decline in revenue, but we're not talking
about the company losing money. It's just not making as
much money as it did this time last year. The
company is still making boatloads of money every year. The
(25:25):
expectation for this quarter, which will know for sure by
the end of today, but the expectations that Apple's going
to report on making around eighty nine point two eight
billion dollars in sales. That's billion with a B. That
is an unimaginable amount of money to me. And that's
just one quarter of the year. However, even at eighty
(25:49):
nine point to eight billion dollars, that's still a one
percent drop from what the company made in sales this
time last year. Now, they're probably tons of reasons for
this decline, and a lot of those reasons, I would
argue are totally outside of Apple's direct control right, like
the state of the economy in general is an example.
(26:12):
Apple doesn't control that, and some people, I'm guessing, are
willing to stick with their current technology and use it
for maybe longer than they typically would because they're just
trying to be a little more careful with their own
personal budget. Then you also have Apple customers who might
feel that some of the more recent products Apple has
(26:33):
released just haven't been innovative enough or shown enough reasons
to upgrade from what you're currently using. So this would
be the people who say, oh, you know, Apple doesn't
end up creating really cool products the way it used to.
I don't necessarily disagree with that, I guess because part
(26:53):
of it is that it's been a while since Apple
has been able to introduce sort of a new product
category and do the same thing that it did with
things like it be three players with the iPod, smartphones
with the iPhone tablet, computers with the iPad, et cetera.
It's been a while since they've been able to do
something like that, and I think a lot of people
(27:14):
had this expectation that every few years, Apple was just
going to come out with a new product line that
would redefine a gadget and create a brand new way
for Apple to print money. But that's hard to do,
and it's also hard to like innovate in a way
where you're significantly improving the performance and quality of the
(27:37):
products you're making. So, you know, I don't fully blame
Apple for this. I do think it puts a lot
more pressure on the company to try and create those
innovative products. I think Apple's experimentation with augmented and mixed
reality kind of show that the company has been thinking
(27:57):
about that but just hasn't been able to nail the
execution in a way that I think is going to
have a huge impact on the market. We'll see. Maybe
I'm wrong. I've been wrong about lots of outher Apple stuff.
I didn't think the iPad was going to make it,
and I was completely wrong about that, So maybe I'm
totally wrong about mixed reality too. We'll have to see.
But I imagine that it's going to take another year
(28:20):
for investors to really get super excited about Apple again
in order to, you know, kind of reverse this trend.
I don't think investors are losing hope in Apple, because again,
the company is a juggernaut it makes so much money
that it's hard to say, oh, well, I'm going to
pull out Apple because their sales went down a little
(28:42):
bit this year compared to last year. But then again,
investors are finicky people at times, so who knows. Okay,
I got a few more stories to cover. But before
I do that, let's take another quick break. So we're back,
(29:06):
and there is a deal. It's actually been in development
for several years I think five years now that may
finally be close to closing in the not too distant future.
And I'm talking about the Walt Disney companies purchase of
the streaming platform Hulu. So Disney has been part of
(29:26):
Hulu for years, Like that's not new. But once upon
a time, Hulu was kind of a collaborative project. There
were a lot of different companies that were part of
Hulu early on, largely because these were companies that were
trying to oppose Netflix. The idea being that they didn't
want to lose control of who actually has access to
(29:51):
certain content. The studios thought, well, if we have our
own streaming platform, we can compete against Netflix. Netflix will
not be the only game in town. They will not
dominate the streaming landscape. So Hulu became a thing. These days, however,
the stakeholders really come down to Disney and then Comcast.
Comcast owns about a third, in fact a third of Hulu,
(30:16):
like thirty three percent of Hulu. So again, five years ago,
these two entities agreed that Disney would purchase Hulu in
total and pay out Comcast for its shares. They recently
came to an agreement about how much that will be.
At minimum, which is eight point six one billion dollars.
(30:39):
That's what Disney will have to pay to get full
ownership of Hulu. And again that's not for all of Hulu.
That's representing one third of Hulu now, I say at least,
because the amount actually will depend upon what Hulu's fair
market value was on September thirtieth, that's when this agreement
actually happened, although we're only really hearing details about it
(31:02):
now as we're getting close to earnings calls and such.
So the eight point six one was based on a
minimum valuation that of Hulu being twenty seven point five
billion dollars. But that agreement was made half a decade ago.
It was kind of just based off of projections, so
it's possible that on September thirtieth, Hulu's fair market value
(31:25):
was higher than twenty seven point five billion dollars, perhaps
even significantly higher. And if that's the case, Disney will
be beholden to make up the difference of that, you know,
thirty three percent of that. So like if instead of
twenty seven point five billion, uh an analysis says that
on September thirtieth of this year, Hulu is worth like
(31:46):
forty billion. Disney's going to have to pay the difference
there to in addition to that eight point six one
billion dollars to complete the transaction. So it's not paid
for and done, but it's up. It'll be interesting to
see what Disney does. You know, We've heard rumors that
Disney plans on integrating Hulu with the Disney Plus streaming platform,
(32:10):
which is the one reason why I haven't subscribed to Hulu.
I am a Disney Plus subscriber, and I thought, well,
maybe I'll just wait because if these two merge, I
may end up just you know, I'll probably have to
pay more because I can't imagine the price remaining the same,
but I may be able to access both on the
same platform. So we'll see Disney is going to hold
(32:32):
an earnings call next week, so there's a good chance
that I will have an update next week and I
can talk more about it then. The Guardian here this
is our technically our final story, but I do have
some recommendations afterwards. But The Guardian reports that the Pentagon
here in the United States has launched an online reporting
(32:54):
tool for folks who have information about unidentified anomalist phenomena
or UAPs. So UAP is the current acceptable term for
what we used to call UFOs right unidentified flying objects
now at the moment, this tool is not open to
the public. Right now, only folks who have quote direct
(33:18):
knowledge of US government programs or activities related to UAP
dating back to nineteen forty five end quote have access
to this particular tool, which is like an online form.
The Pentagon does plan to roll out a publicly accessible
version of this tool sometime in the future. I don't
(33:38):
have a timeline on that, but it is supposed to
be coming. You could not pay me enough to be
the person who has to filter through all the stuff
that's going to come through that public portal. I'm sure
they're going to be countless hoaxes there'll be people who
are just playing trolling, they'll be true believers who are
(34:00):
spouting off stuff about UAPs. The sheer volume of weirdness
that is going to hit that inbox is unfathomable to me.
This is all part of the US government's attempt to
make the whole UAP investigation stuff more transparent. So does
this mean, like various conspiracy theories have argued that the
(34:22):
US government has secretly been hiding evidence of aliens, that
maybe we've even found examples of alien technology and then
reverse engineered it in order to create amazing updates to
our tech. No, it does not mean that. In fact,
the government officials who have been part of this project
(34:44):
say I'm not aware of anyone doing anything even remotely
related to that. So if it's happening, I've never heard
of it. I suspect that no amount of transparency is
ever going to eliminate the various stories that circulate about
suspect did cover ups and conspiracies all meant to hide
the truth from the rest of US. I don't think
(35:06):
that that's at all likely. I don't think it's even possible.
But I don't think there's any way to ever stop
those stories, I still find it very difficult to believe
that any alien civilization has visited us, not because it
would be completely impossible, but when you start the factor
in the requirements that would be necessary for aliens to
(35:28):
get here, it becomes diminishingly likely that it's happened. And
by that I mean, let's take into consideration what has
to happen for aliens to find us. So, assuming that
the aliens are looking for signs of things like radio communications,
which would indicate that there's the presence of an intelligent
(35:50):
life somewhere, well, radio travels at the speed of light,
and let's say this alien civilization is three hundred light
years away from us. Well, we've only been really making
radio communications for a little more than a century, so
it would still take two hundred years for those very
weak radio signals to even be detectable to a civilization
(36:13):
that's three hundred light years away. Then you have to
actually travel that distance to get here on Earth. And
even if they had light speed travel, which as far
as we are aware, is impossible to do unless you
are some sort of life form that's pure energy, then
it's going to take you three hundred years at minimum,
to make that journey. So we're talking five hundred years
(36:37):
out from when we started transmitting in radio waves. That's
what I mean when I say I just don't think
it's likely that we've been visited by aliens. Now, could
an alien civilization capable of space travel, just by happenstance
come across Earth. I guess I don't know why they
(36:59):
would like just randomly joy writing across the universe and
then you make a little pitstop in a tiny little
solar system and you happen to land on a planet
that supports life like that just again seems unlikely, But
I digress. I'm sure that this tool is going to
get a lot of use, and my thoughts go out
(37:21):
to whomever it is that has to go through all
that information. Okay, before we wrap up, I do have
a couple of article suggestions for you all today. One
is from MIT News. David L. Chandler is the author
of this piece. It is titled Engineers develop an efficient
process to make fuel from carbon dioxide. So, as the
(37:42):
title indicates, the story is all about how some researchers
have used a variety of different strategies to make it
more practical to turn CO two into a stable fuel,
and you would be able to store this fuel for
an indefinite amount of time and use the fuel to
power stuff like you could use it to do things
like heat homes and things like that, or use it
in fuel cells typically, and you would also be tapping
(38:07):
into renewable energy sources to actually power the conversion processes. So,
in other words, you could find ways to turn the
CO two into fuel without having to place more demand
on carbon generating power plants. It's an interesting read. I
am curious as to what byproducts the fuel produces when
(38:28):
it's consumed, right, you know, like your typical fuel cell
uses hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity, and the byproducts
are heat and water vapor, and that's it. I don't
know what the byproducts are for the CO two based
fuel cells, and I should look at it up and
read into it, but I think the article itself is
(38:50):
worth a read. The other article recommendation I have is
from Rollingstone dot com. It is titled HBO bosses used
secret fake accounts to troll TV critics. This one's by
Cheyenne Roundtree, and again the title shows that some executives
over at HBO really wanted to make some TV critics
(39:10):
feel badly about their opinions about HBO programs, and this
happened a couple of years ago, and honestly, reading over
the messages that were part of this ridiculous campaign over
at HBO gave me real mean girls in high school vibes.
So check it out. That's it for the Tech News
(39:32):
for Thursday, November second, twenty twenty three. I hope you
are all well and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(39:54):
to your favorite shows
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.