Tech News: A Big Week for Big Tech

Uh Snap has their call today. By the time you hear this episode, that news may already be out there, but at the time I'm recording this, it hasn't yet happened. Meta has their earnings called tomorrow. Everyone's gonna really pay a lot of attention to that. And then Thursday is what I like to call a triple a day, and by that I mean Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet all have

their earnings call this Thursday. There's always increased scrutiny into these companies around the earnings calls, and I admit that can get a little frustrating if you're really just interested in the tech, But honestly, it's a really good indicator of how these companies are doing, like how the overall tech economy is doing, and what we can expect going forward because of that, so if investors are unhappy with the results, he can see stock prices take a hit

that in turn can affect a company's plans moving forward. For example, Meta has been under some serious fire from investors for a while now because of some obstacles that the company has faced as far as getting you know, more people on the platforms and increasing engagement. Also, Zuckerberg's continued commitment to building out the metaverse hasn't won him

a lot of fans in the investor community. Will probably also get a feel for how digital ad spending is going across the tech industry because a lot of these big tech companies that's where they really depend upon, you know, for the revenue, Like Alphabet, you know, the parent company for Google, and Meta both really depend on advertising for

the vast majority of the revenue they generate. Of course, these are also companies that have recently engaged in massive layoffs, which we'll talk about a bit more in this episode. And layoffs, obviously they have a terrible impact on the people who are directly affected. Uh, but the investment world often reacts positively because I mean it means the company has reduced its costs by eliminating workforce, which is a pretty clinical way to say. A lot of people found

themselves without jobs. So it doesn't mean that a slim down company is going to perform better, but at least in the short term, you end up seeing a bigger return on investment because costs drop. And once again I get all sour on the concept of capitalism. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't have a better alternative up my sleeve, so I'm just complaining about something I can't change. It just it really feels gross to me to have a system where investors are encouraged when people are losing

their jobs. But that's enough commentary from me. I'm sure on Thursday, I'll talk a little bit more about what happened, at least during Meta's call, but it probably won't be until next week before I can talk about Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet. Now, one thing I imagine Apple execs will not be addressing on Thursday is how the United States National Labor Relations Board or in l r B, has accused the company of engaging in practices meant to discourage

employees from organizing and unionizing. In fact, the n l r B says that various official Apple rules quote tend to interfere with restraint or coerce employees end quote from organizing. This was reported in Bloomberg and y'all. This is not great, but it's also not a surprise because tech companies in general, and big tech companies in particular, have a pretty well documented history of forming policies intended to protect the company above the rights of the employees. You hear it all

the time. That comes in the form of arbitration agreements. This is where employees have to agree to settle issues within the company by going through like HR as opposed to going outside the company to resolve sometimes really serious problems like things like sexual harassment or cases of discrimination. So the company is compelling employees to to sign an agreement that says you won't go to, say, a law firm, in order to pursue your case. You have to go

through the company. There's also the case of being compelled to sign non disclosure agreements, which frequently do way more to restrict an employee's freedom than anything else. Anyway, Apple is not unique to the situation. It's not like they're the bad guy and the only one doing this, but it is currently facing these accusations from the n l r B, and there are a couple of options the

company could take. One is that Apple could settle with the n l r B, presumably that settlement would require a commitment to change these various rules and policies, or Apple could end up facing a formal complaint from the n l RB. I'd say this is another recent example of how we're seeing a shift in philosophy when it comes to big companies and employee rights here in the United States, although whether this ultimately results in massive changes

throughout business remains to be seen. I'm somewhat pessimistic simply because for a very long time, companies essentially had the advantage in this area, and it's very hard to kind of fight that sort of inertia. While we wait for Alphabet's earnings call, we actually have a couple of Google stories to talk about out so again a reminder, Alphabet is the big umbrella company that is parent to Google

and YouTube and all that. Anyway, Google recently sent out an email to Google THI customers alerting them of a data breach now, Google Fi, in case you're not aware, is Google's cellular service company, so it's like a telecommunication service, and Google piggybacks on top of other companies infrastructure to provide these services, so it's not like Google has its

own cell towers out there. Instead, they essentially are leasing that from another company, companies like T Mobile, which had its own data breach recently, and it is possible that this data breach for Google Fi is a direct result of the T Mobile breach, but we don't have confirmation

on that. According to Google, hackers access to database that included information on customers, but the info was limited to stuff like phone numbers, account status so whether they're active or inactive, simcards, serial numbers, and details about the service plan that each customer subscribed to. Now, what was not included were names and other personal information. Also, Google says no passwords or payment data or text message content was

included in the data, so that's good. At least. Google did warn customers to be on the lookout for phishing scams, which the company stressed is a good idea anyway, but it's particularly good when you have a data breach like this, And according to tech Crunch, at least one Google THI

customer has reported being the victim of SIM swapping. That's when a hacker hijacks a SIM card to take control of a phone number, and that allows them to send and receive phone calls as if they were that phone, and as well as as be able to access voicemail, which is a big old yikes. Speaking of Google, as I mentioned earlier, the company recently laid off some employees like it has plans to lay off twelve thousand total, and one of those employees was christ In max o

Um or max co. I apologize christ and I do not know how to pronounce your last name, and that's my fault. But Kristen joined Google back in two thousand and eight and had served as the company's head of mental health and well being, and apparently her team was hit significantly by these layoffs. And I think that sends a pretty bleak message to Google employees who remain at Google, because I imagine hearing that the mental health and well

being department has been largely cleared out. It's not great news when you start thinking about what that implies, because it suggests that Google does not view mental health and well being of its employees as a critical component for

its business. And that's just not a good sign. I've worked for companies where I ultimately felt like the employees were unappreciated or taken advantage of, and it is the worst, right, even if you love what you do, if you feel like you're working for an organization that doesn't have an appreciation for its own employees, that's demoralizing and that could be enough to convince someone to leave, even if they love their work. Trust me, I know, because I did

that anyway. According to Insider, uh, some employees hit by the layoffs received kind of a terse impersonal email that essentially just told them that they no longer have a role at the company and that and at least some of the cases, a few employees said their managers didn't even know that this had happened, which suggests that the managers weren't consulted before these layoffs started to roll across

the company. So the impression I get from the article in Insider says that you know that these layoffs may have lacked forethought and consideration. Now, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but that's what it says to me. And again that could really hurt the company in the long run if it turns out that some of these layoffs were for people that really they needed in order

to keep certain projects going and to ensure success. But again, I don't know how I would go about telling twelve thousand people they don't work for me anymore, because I think singing telegrams would get too expensive. All right, We've got a lot more news to cover before we get to that. Let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back, and I got a little bit more Google news. One person who had some words of warning for Google is Paul Butchit or book Hite. I don't know how to

say his last name either. I'm I'm batting a thousand when it comes to names today, y'all. But anyway, Paul as I will call him lead development on Gmail, so's he's credited as the person who created Gmail. And he predicts that chat gpt will completely we're a place Google search within a year or two, as people start to lean on chat gpt to get their questions answered. Instead of going to search for the right length and then searching for their answer there, they'll just ask the question

to chat gpt. They'll get the answer and then they'll just skip Google entirely, and this in turn will destroy Google because Google depends so heavily on ads that are served within search results. Paul points out that even if Google deploys its own AI tool, which we know that Google has been developing, that's not a secret. The company has been very uh forthright on that, saying yes, they're working on AI, but it's not something that they're ready

to release yet because it could be potentially harmful. Well, Paul says, the effect would still be the same if Google launches its own version of this, because again, it bypasses search, which means it bypasses where you would normally serve up ads. But y'all, I want to just point out that it would do way more than just that. It would hurt way more than just Google, because think about what shows up in search results in the first place. It's it's a list of links to external websites. That's

where all this data lives. Right when you're asking a question from Google, the data lives on these websites, and you know, the goal is to have you click on the links so that you visit the website, and then chances are that website is generating revenue from ad results too. But if chat GPT disrupts web search to that extent,

it's not just gonna hit Google. It's going to hit all the sites that Google links out to, and that you know chat GPT is drawing information from these sites because it's not like chat gpt just magically knows the answers to questions. It's pulling data from sources in a way that's not entirely or even particularly transparent. So we don't actually know where chat gpt is pulling data from in any given moment. But think about it's for just a moment. If search essentially dies, then how do websites

attract users to their sites? Now? Subsites are kind of like landing pages. Folks might bookmark them, they might go to them regularly and not rely on search. Right, you might have certain news sites that you go to on a regular basis. Those cases, you know, they get a lot of traffic that's coming in just from folks jumping straight to the website. But a lot of sites depend

heavily on traffic from search engines. People are searching for specific terms, they come up with responses, they go to those websites, and that's where most of the traffic coming to those websites comes from, the search engines. So if the search engine goes down, that traffic disappears. Then eventually these sites start to go out of business because no one's visiting them, so they're not getting any ad revenue, so they you know, it costs money to keep those

sites up. It's eventually just gonna die. Now, ultimately that means that the information sources that chat GPT depends upon will start dying off, and that would mean that the tool would become less reliable or maybe more biased, depending upon what sites are sticking around. So, in other words, I don't think a future where chat GPT takes over for search is bad just for Google. I think it's bad for everyone, including chat GPT, in the long run.

So that's something to think about. I don't know that there's any way to avoid it, but I definitely see it as being a bad thing like that would require some careful work in order to either avoid or fix that problem. Okay, now let me paint a scenario for you.

This is a new story. Let's say that you're you are an AI company that specializes in creating synthetic human voices, including voices that could sound really close or maybe even identical to the voices of specific people, Like you could replicate a voice like famous people, and you've got this tool that can learn how to reproduce the sound and vocal quality of a real, specific human beings voice. Now would it shock you to learn that some people on the Internet would use this kind of tool to do

awful things? Oh? You wouldn't. Oh I So you've been on the internet before, you already you realize this would be a problem, right the gate right, Like, yeah, of course it's obvious. Well, that means you're ahead of eleven Labs. That's a company that makes a voice synthesis tool and launched a beta for its AI generated voice tool, and then even more recently than that has announced that it had detected a quote increased number of voice clothing misuse

cases end quote. So this is all reported in Vice, which has a very long art call detailing how members of four chan had enrolled in this beta and then use the tools to create synthesized AI replications of voices belonging to folks like the actress Emma Watson or podcaster Joe Rogan and others. And then, and I'm sure this is gonna shock you, they use these synthetic voices to

make them say all sorts of truly awful stuff. I'm talking like homophobic and transphobic comments, racial slurs, violent threats, all sorts of stuff like that. Again, this is only shocking for someone who maybe was born yesterday, but for anyone who actually is aware that four chan is a thing,

this is not surprising even a little bit. And considering we've already seen plenty of people use deep faked technology to create content without the consent of the folks who were replicated in those videos, you can only imagine the sort of stuff we could see in the future. And I think I'm gonna need to do a full episode

about this problem. I probably want to talk with someone who has either experienced this kind a violation of their identity themselves, or someone who has worked closely with people who have experienced it, because I honestly think it's really important to realize the the extent of the harm this

abuse causes. Uh, And I wanted to come from a genuine place, so I'll probably be on the lookout see if I can find someone who would be willing to talk about that, because it's a really despicable practice too, to replicate someone without their consent. It is a true violation. Anyway, eleven Labs has chosen to lock down the beta and revisit their approach to safeguards, which he has a good idea.

It sounds like they're going to require identification verification before you're allowed to replicate a specific voice, and to to show that you have the consent to do that. I think that's the bare minimum you you can do. And obviously you have to keep the tool underlock and key. You can't just release it because otherwise people would just exploit it. So interesting story, Uh, disturbing look at the future. But we knew this was coming, I mean because deep

fakes have been a thing for a while now. The Wall Street Journal reports that despite US export restrictions that should prevent certain Chinese companies and organizations from being able to purchase stuff like cutting edge computer chips, the China Academy of Engineering Physics seems to be able to do that without any real problem. Uh. This is one of the organizations that the United States has already put on

a blacklist for semi conductor companies and chip manufacturers. In fact, the US has told companies like Nvidia and Intel expressly do not sell hardware to the China Academy of Engineering Physics because the organization's work includes work in nuclear weapons research. So if that ban is in place, how is this organization acquiring the chips? But largely through resellers in China.

You have other entities in China buying up these these components and then reselling those two organizations like the China Academy of Engineering Physics. It is very hard. It's almost impossible to prevent all sophisticated chips from being shipped to China because some of these components were clearly originally part of like a larger system, like like a PC or

a gaming rig. The Wall Street General reports that the chips in question are typically a couple of years old, so they aren't the most powerful, most recent ones on the market. It's hard to imagine how companies can make certain that all retailers that they work with comply with these rules, none of them are shipping to China. Meanwhile, China has to purchase these chips because it lacks the manufacturing facilities to make the most sophisticated processors, particularly at scale.

China lags behind everybody else by a few generations, and so these black lists do slow down China's military use of such technology. But the article really does point out how hard it is to enforce a total ban. Okay, I've got a few more tech stories I want to talk about. Before I get to that, Let's take another

quick break. We're backed. Tech Dirt has an informative piece by Mike Masnick about how a paralegal named Katherine Twoson is pulling at the threads holding together Joshua Browner's story and image. So Browner, in case you don't know, is the CEO of a company called Do Not Pay. I have mentioned Do Not Pay a few times already this year.

Uh It's best known for being an AI focused company that aims to use artificial intelligence to help people do stuff ranging from canceling subscription services that they're not using anymore to fighting parking tickets and other legal related work. Well, Twoson decided to put some of Do Not Pays services to the test. She reported that her attempts to have the AI generate certain legal documents were largely a failure.

That in one case, it was pretty much like the service was just kind of filling in the blanks on a form letter kind of approach, and that in another she put uh in for a more complicated legal document and received a response that it would take a few

hours to process. She's suggests that maybe that indicates that there is little to know AI involvement in that process at all, That if it were a computer generated you wouldn't expect it to be something that takes a long time, and that perhaps it means that there are actual humans putting together those kind of requests, or at least having

a heavy involvement in editing an AI generated piece. In other words, that it seems to indicate the AI is not quite as sophisticated and effective as the company might otherwise indicate. She has also investigated some of Browder's claims, including one where he tweeted he would buy up ten dollars of medical debt for every retweet and follow that This particular tweet message got Tuson suspected the Browner had

not followed through on that promise at that point. Browder then produced a receipt showing a five hundred dollar donation, which bought up around fifty grand of medical debt because debt is sold for pennies on the dollar. But Twoson found this receipt somewhat suspicious and hypothesized that Browder had

not made the donation when he claimed he did. He claimed he had made it back in early December last year, but Twoson looked closer at the receipt and saw that the date on the receipt and that was next to the line item failed to be on the exact same line horizontally across the receipt. She said, oh, it's it's misaligned.

She even did her own donation to buy up medical debt and showed that her receipt everything was in perfect alignment, but his receipt showed a little misalignment, which suggested the possibility of a photoshop job to change the date. And then Tuson decided to look into it further by actually contacting the organization that sold the medical debt in the first place, and found that Browner's purchase happened four minutes after she brought into question his follow through. So she says, hey,

whatever happened to this guarantee? Four minutes later? He apparently makes this purchase and then subsequently says, yeah, I did it way back in December. So this piece really paints Browder in a critical light, suggesting that he is leaning perhaps a little too hard on publicity stunts and hype. We've been hearing these kinds of of thoughts about Browner for a while now, particularly in the wake of his offer to pay a million dollars to a lawyer who would use do not pays AI to argue a case

before the U. S. Supreme Court. So I guess the lesson here is to rely on critical thinking and investigation like Tucson did, and do your best to try and hear through the hype. Speaking of hype, Mercedes Benz announced last week that the company will introduce a level three autonomous driving feature in vehicles here in the United States later this year. So the various levels of autonomous driving come out of the Society of Automotive Engineers that kind

of defined the levels. They identified six levels from zero to five. So a level zero vehicle essentially has no autonomous features and is strictly manual. A Level five vehicle would be totally autonomous and would probably even lack manual trolls entirely. It would just be computer controlled and automated in every situation. Levels one and two include driver assist functions, but ultimately a human is driving the vehicle. Even if their feet can be off the pedals or they're not

actively steering, they are technically still driving. They're considered the driver. A level two vehicle can provide steering and break and acceleration support, but again ultimately a humans doing the driving. And it's this is the level that stuff like Tesla's autopilot and even its full self driving features fall into their level two. Once you hit level three, then you say the vehicle is doing the driving when the autonomous mode is active, even if someone is sitting in the

driver's seat. The vehicles doing the driving as long as the mode is in operation. Now, a level three does have a feature where the autonomous mode may request to hand off control to a human driver, so you do still need some one in that driver's seat who is ready at any time to take over control of the vehicle. That is one of the features of a level three. Level three. At even a level four autonomous vehicle can only operate in autonomous mode under specific conditions, so it's

not in every scenario. So conditions typically include things like weather, right, so if the vehicle is in really foggy weather or it's really storming, maybe you can't engage autonomous mode under those conditions. Or it could include things like geo fencing. In other words, the vehicle is only going to operate in autonomous mode within a certain driving range, and outside

of that it has to be manually driven. So in this specific case, the system is only going to be available to customers in Nevada here in the US because that's where it's legal, and other states have not created laws that uh that that match with this yet, so it will not operate outside of Nevada. And it's gonna include sensors as well that will ensure that the driver doesn't obstruct their face from view of the road, so you can't like hold a magazine up or a book

or something like that and block your face. If you do, then the car detects that and then switches back to human controlled mode. So it it does still have some uh some big limitations on it, which makes sense, right, you want to have it there for emergencies and for safety's sake. But very interesting to see a level three vehicle coming onto roads in the United States, even if

it's just in Nevada. Blows, the hardware store company has innovated a theft prevention system that they're calling Project Unlock that I think is actually kind of nifty. So theft is a big problem for stores in general like Lows and organized theft is cited as a real cost for stores like Lows for retail companies, and you have to figure out a way to prevent theft, but you also

want to avoid frustrating customers. So in other words, like locking everything away in special lockers where you have to go and hunt down a customer service rep to come in and unlock a case so that you can buy your your power drill or whatever it is. That's not a great customer experience. So what Lows has done is they've made special use of r F I D chips that keep the tool inert until they are activated at a point of sale. So the way this works is, let's say you go and you pick up a box

it's got a drill and an electric drill. You bring the box to a cash register, they scan the barcode on the box, You pay for your purchase, and at that point the point of sale system sends a signal to the specific r F I D chip that's inside your drill, and it's tied to the bar code that's on the box, and then the tool activates. So without this step, the tool will not work. You can charge up the battery, you can plug it in, it won't work because it is inactive until you have gone through

the point of sale. So the idea here is only legitimate purchases will be active in anything else that was just say, lifted off the store shelf will be a big old paper weight without that activation. Now, I'm not gonna say that this approach is full proof, because nothing ever is. Hackers will likely figure out a way to replicate the activation eventually, but you know, it might be enough of a hassle. It might be a high enough barrier to take a serious chunk out of organized theft

at stores that use Project Unlock. Also, you know how they say never read the comments. While the article where I was reading about this was on Fox Business, and I gotta say take that advice, because I did read some of the comments and I wish I had not h There was one person who had suggested that this could be a way for tool companies to create a

tools as a service subscription fee. In other words, if you don't pay a yearly fee, then they could turn off your power tools, which would be really tricky to do because you have to be within range of an r F I D transmitter that is specifically going to uh connect with the the chip that's in your tool, and you'd have to have it be specific because you

can't just do a blanket de activation. If someone had enrolled in that subscription service, then you would have to have it where their tools would not be affected, and it would mean you would have to send people out into the real world with transmitters zapping neighborhoods and rural homes and all this kind of stuff to de activate tools. It's just not a practical thing. So it's not something

that I think would ever actually happen. I understand the concern, Like, if you think, oh, there's a chip in this that could theoretically turn my tool into an inert piece of plastic and metal, obviously that would be concerning, But that's just not how this technology would work in the real world.

Bloomberg reports that Sony is cutting back on producing VR two headsets for the latest PlayStation due to low preorder figures, so pre sales have been slow for the VR two headsets, so apparently there's so much lower than the company anticipated they're scaling back on production in anticipation of very slow sales.

Part of this could be due to the fact that people in general are just being a bit more cautious with their money than they have in recent years due to economic factors, So in other words, it may have nothing to do with the perception of VR. It may have more to do with people just being careful about

their spending. However, another part could be an indication that VR is still occupying a fairly niche market, and you could think of that as being really bad news for stuff like the Metaverse, let alone an other VR A R or x R gear. Moving forward, according to Berg, it sounds like Sony is cutting back by half for the launch quarter, which again is later this year. So originally they had planned to produce around two million units for that first quarter at launch, but now it sounds

like it's going to be a million units. And further, Sony expects to only sell around one point five million headsets between the launch and March of next year. Now, I think it's still too early to say that VR is sinking, or even just saying that VR is just treading water. I think what we need to do is see if when the economy starts to recover, if people start to move more on VR hardware, and then we can get a better idea. Part of what we need

are more developers to create really compelling VR experiences. But that becomes like a chicken and egg problem because if you're a developer, you only want to pour your money and effort and energy and time into producing something that's going to have a return on investment, and if there aren't enough people out there who own VR headsets, it doesn't make sense to make that investment because you'll never make your money back, right, It's just a money losing experience.

So that's part of the problem is that like a lot of people say I don't want VR because there's nothing on VR that I want to do, and meanwhile developers are saying, well, we don't want to make anything for VR because no one owns a VR headset. And I'm being I'm using exaggerations here. Obviously there are people who own them, but very few in the grand scheme of things. So that's really where we are right now. It's a it's a problem that's been this way for

a few years. Uh. I personally don't really care for VR, but that's because I get real rpy when I put on a headset, Like within a few minutes, I start to not feel so good. But I would still like to see the technology evolve. I think that it has a really interesting place, but that's not going to happen unless the money is there. Finally, it seems like every year we wait to see if E three is going to be done for reals. Uh. And it is scheduled to take place in June this year after not happening

last year. But it sounds like it's gonna be a pretty rough go for E three. And that's because, according to I g N, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony are all reportedly skipping the event and instead opting to hold their own events individually whenever they feel like it instead. Now, this should not come as a big surprise because we've seen these companies do similar things before. I mean, Sony and Nintendo in particular have skipped E three in the past.

Sony hasn't been involved in E three since two thousand nineteen, and Nintendo instead chooses to hold Nintendo Direct events in its own uh online events throughout the year. So it's a pretty tough blow when the companies that are behind the major gaming platforms all choose to skip a video game conference, particularly when the three companies also own video game developers and publishers. So if the the developers and

publishers they own also skip E three, that's huge. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean E three is really most sincerely dead, because there are other video game developers and publishers that are not owned by Sony or Nintendo or Microsoft, and they might still attend, but it does make the event a tougher sell, both to industry professionals, to the media, and to the general public. So we'll have to keep our eyes open see how things go. Uh you know. E three has had to pull the plug a couple

of times in the past. It may very well be that we're we're at the end of the line for E three, at least as as a trade show. It may become more of a fan experience, although it has not been doing particularly well in that regard, at least from the actual perspective. Of a fan, like, it's frustrating to go to E three as a fan. It is not as much fun as you think it might be because you're spending the vast majority of your time waiting in a line to play a game for five minutes.

So not the best experience for a fan. So we'll have to see if E three makes some massive changes to kind of forge a future for the event. Otherwise, I think we we may finally be getting to the end. Of course, people have been saying that for like more than a decade, so maybe it'll be like Moore's long, it'll just stick around beyond comprehension. Okay, that's it for

this episode of tech Stuff. Hope you are well. If you would like to reach out to be and let me know of something I should cover in a future episode, please do so. You can do that on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff h s W. Or you can download the I Heart Radio app. It's free to download, it's free to use. It's got a

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