Tech News: Harder, Better, Faster, Bye Bye

lot of ways. Also, what I say here is from my own perspective. It doesn't reflect any sort of official I heart stance, mostly because I'm not important enough to even know if there is an official stance, let alone whatever it might be. So let's get to those announcements. One of them is that Spotify is launching a Hi Fi or high fidelity premium subscription service later this year. The service will give subscribers access to lossless streaming audio

quality and a quick word on that. Back when data throughput had a lot less behind it, it was really important to compress file sizes so that downloads wouldn't take sadar and long. But many of those compression strategies meant that this process would also give the boot to some of the files data stuff that was deemed unnecessary. When it came to audio, this meant that you would end up with lossy audio files like m P three's. These were ones that had shed some of the information and

thus some of the depth and vibrancy of the audio recording. Now, Spotify is not the first to go with a lossless audio streaming service. Deezer, Title and Amazon Music all have loss lists options for premium subscribers. Now, I honestly don't know how big this is in general. I don't have a good finger on the pulse of the average consumer.

My sense is that most people really like the convenience of streaming services and portable music options in general, and that they don't really care quite as much about the actual fidelity of the music they listen to. But I could be totally in the wrong here. That's just from my own, you know, feeling. I still like listening to music on high quality now and again, but that tends

to be on a home system using outdated media. At this point, most of the time, I'm actually just listening to stuff without worrying about the fidelity as much I'm a monster, I know. Spotify has also been making some really big moves and podcasting, and has been for a little while now. They have launched several podcasts that are exclusive to the platform, and they've brought on others and made them exclusive to Spotify. That exclusivity approach is a

tough one. You're trying to lure people over to using a specific platform with content that's unique to that platform, which is a different approach from how we do things over at my Heart, for example, our shows appear on all platforms, from my tunes to Spotify, to the I Heart app and everything. Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with launching an exclusive show for your platform, except that you

run into the danger of limiting that shows audience. We learned through the experience of Microsoft Mixer, for example, that it doesn't always work to try and bring over heavy hitters to create exclusive content and thus grow your audience that way. That doesn't always work out the best. If the creator of the show is getting paid truckloads of cash in return for their agreement, they might not really

care so much if their audience isn't as huge. But for smaller creators, exclusivity can sometimes mean that you never get your feet under you. Still, Spotify does have some truly heavy hitters in the space. The company has signed a deal with d C Comics and there will be numerous podcasts set in the d C Comic universe. The first of those will be Batman Unburied. And Spotify also signed a deal with the A G. Bio production company

founded by the Russo brothers. That's the pair behind Avengers Infinity War and Avengers in the Game, so they've got some serious star power behind them. It remains to be seen if that is going to pull uh significantly more users over onto that platform. Not long ago, Spotify acquired the podcast hosting platform Megaphone, which includes a feature called

streaming ad Insertion. Now, if you've ever listened to an old episode of Tech Stuff or Stuff you Should Know, or Stuff you missed in history class or something like that, you might have noticed that the ads that run on any show, whether it's from the Deep Archives or not, are their recent ads. So the episodes could be several years old, but the ads are new, and that's because

of tools like streaming ad Insertion. Essentially that let's podcasters designate specific tagged segments like time codes within a podcast, and ads can swap out dynamically in those spots. This gives podcasters the chance to leverage their whole back catalog for ad deals, not just the most recent episodes. So it also means you're not going to hear a five year old advertisement for a toothbrush or a mattress and

has a code that doesn't work anymore. Spotify is building out its ad capabilities for podcasters was something called the Spotify Audience Network. Details are a little scarce, but the company says that the service will help podcasters monetize their shows more effectively. The plan is to first roll out the service to Spotify's exclusive podcasts, and then sometime further down the line, they will roll it out to third

party podcasts that are on the Spotify platform. The company also announced new creator tools during its live event for musical artists. These tools are meant to help with discovery and making sales to new customers. The artists will be able to select which tracks they want to prioritize for discovery purposes, and Spotify will use a pop up notification called Marquis to get attention from users. Markie was actually

introduced last year in twenty twenties. Just now it's going to have some new features in it and get rolled out to a larger number of artists, and that means that we're gonna see a lot more artists potentially get discovered through this tool. I think that's really cool. I think discovery remains one of the toughest challenges for any content creator, regardless of what medium they're working within and

what platform they're using. Discovery is just tough. We know that more people than ever are creating awesome stuff and putting it up online, and it is really challenging to find the really good stuff among everything else that's being uploaded. So I'm all four tools that allow creators to get more eyeballs or ears as the case may be, on their work and in non Spotify news, because believe me, we actually have some. Google is lifting its ban on

political ads starting tomorrow. Google first put a ban on political advertising following the insurrection at the nation's capital on January six. Though Google only started the ban on January, that particular ban expires tomorrow, that being Wednesday, and it will mean that Google will accept political ads, including those that focus on specific people whether those are candidates or

an elected official, as well as ballot measures. So if you're in the United States, you might be groaning a little bit at the thought of all this, because as we just went through a truly tumultuous election, and the thought of having another round of political ads hit us so soon afterward is a bit disheartening. I would say. Facebook, for the record, also has a ban on political ads in place, and at least as of the time of

this recording, that ban is still in place. It will be interesting to see if Google's decision will affect Facebook or if this will just be a diverging path with Google accepting ads and Facebook continuing to ban them. By the time this episode goes out, we might know more than maybe that Facebook will have already changed its own path. I don't know. If you've got Netflix running on an Android device, you might have some new stuff to watch.

The company has a feature called Downloads for You, and the idea is that Netflix will select content based on your viewing habits, and it will pre download stuff you haven't watched yet for you, so you can watch it whenever, even if you don't have a current Internet connection. You know, like we used to have to do on airplanes. I vaguely remember flying on airplanes. Anyway, you get to choose the data limit for this feature if you even wanted

on at all. It's an opt in, so you can go and turn on this option if you do want it. You can choose to limit the data to one gigabyte, three gigabytes, or five gigabytes. Also, the service will only download content when it's over a WiFi connection, so you don't have to worry about it eating up all of

the data on your cellular plan. I don't think I would opt into this, but only because I tend to watch really really bad movies on Netflix so that I can talk about them with my buddies Eric and I as and I don't need Netflix judging me more than it already does, or providing me the next Shark Nado movie before I'm really emotionally prepared for it. We do know that this same service is coming to the iOS versions of Netflix later on. I'm curious to see how

many people actually use it. Again, this gets into discovery, the idea that Netflix is looking at the sort of stuff you tend to view, drawing conclusions, and then selecting stuff for you that it thinks you're going to like based on your previous behaviors. Another version of AI knowing

ourselves better than we do. A study funded by the Jane and Autos Erko Foundation and the Academy of Finland found that the more human robot appears, the more harshly we judge that robots actions, at least under a very specific hypothetical situation. So the team gave this hypothetical situation two people and had different versions of the scenario and ask them to kind of grade the morality of a person or robots to decision. And the problem was a

classic one, the trolley problem. You probably know this one generally. They it's presented as the Other's a trolley that's hurtling down a track and it's about to collide with a group of five people, and if it does, it will kill all five. You happen to be standing next to a rail switch, and if you throw the switch, the trolley will change to a new track of rails, and it will definitely kill one person who's on that track, but the five people on the other track will all

be spared. So would you do nothing and thus allow five people to die through your inaction, or would you throw the switch, thus dooming that one person on the other track to die. I mean effectively you're killing someone, right, I mean you're either killing someone by not acting at all, or killing five people by not acting at all, or you're actively killing someone by throwing a switch. It's almost like having a loaded gun and you pull the trigger

in that case. So my point is there's not necessarily a right answer to this question, or maybe not a single right answer. It all depends upon your perspective and whether you think that saving five people is worth dooming someone else to death, or if you think somehow by

not acting absolves you of the responsibility. Well, the study found that when people were presented with this scenario in which a human had to make the decision or a very utilitarian robot had to make the decision, the response to those decisions were essentially that both that human and that robot were making morally sound choices. However, the more human the robot was supposed to be, the more harshly

people judged it. The more they said, oh, that's not a moral choice, which is weird, right, because they would give a pass to the regular robot and they would give a pass to the human, but a human looking robot suddenly seemed like that was different somehow, even though it's the same situations. Now. This is just one study, mind you, but it does show how the field of robotics hinges not just on technology but also human psychology, and the field of human and robot interactions is one

I really find fascinating. And our last story is after twenty eight years, daft Punk has split up and retired. They were incredibly influential in the house and techno music genres. They were known for not just their music, but their live performances, which became increasingly rare over the years. I think Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger gets rediscovered every few years, which just shows how amazing their ability was to craft music.

They also created the incredible soundtrack to Tron Legacy, and I maintained that that score and Michael Shean's performance were really the two standouts of that movie. Their last album came out in so long daft Punk, thanks for all the tunes, And that wraps up the headlines for today, Tuesday, February one. We'll be back tomorrow with a full episode of tech Stuff. If you guys have suggestions, for things I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, give

me a shout let me know on Twitter. The handle we use is text stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.