Tech News: Microsoft Says Goodbye to Internet Explorer

missed it, here is the short version. An engineer at Google working in the Responsible AI division was suspended from his job after saying the AI might be sentient. The engineer, Blake Lemouan, shared a transcript of a few conversations that he and a colleague of his had with the conversation engine, during which the engine argued that it was conscious and

that it experienced emotions. Google suspended the engineer for violating a confidentiality policy, which undoubtedly helped fuel speculation about the model's alleged sentience. Now, several AI experts have weighed in on this, and the general consensus is that Lambda is nowhere close to being sentient or conscious. It's just good at what it's supposed to do, which is to generate

conversational dialogue. But as Gary Marcus, who is the founder of geometric intelligence, put it, what that really does is it just means Lambda is a very advanced version of auto complete. Lambda uses statistics to determine what to say next.

So imagine you had a truly enormous database that contains practically all the conversations that have ever been recorded, and you could see which responses were more prevalent to particular lines of conversation, weigh them against each other, and create an engine that could select the appropriate one at the appropriate time. So you use a very complicated version of

this general approach and you get something like lambda. It's a process that can construct sentences that seem natural because they are drawn from natural conversations, not you know, verbatim, but that's what is being used to model it. It's a very cool technology, but it's not sentient AI. As I mentioned yesterday, we humans have a tendency to ascribe human like traits to non human things, whether that be animals,

your car, or a chatbot. We imagine there's a mind at work, when in many cases no such mind exists. I still think this raises questions about what it will take for us to conclude that an AI has gained some form of consciousness, And I don't know what the answer is to that, But then I'm not an AI expert, and I imagine the folks who are really deep in this research have a much better grasp of what it would take for us to consider any evidence to be

close to conclusive. Google has agreed to a one eighteen million dollar settlement in a class action lawsuit brought against it by employees, namely women who worked for Google since two thousand thirteen. And these are women who say they were paid significantly less than their male counterparts who were working in the same kind of jobs. Specifically, on average, women were paid sixteen thousand, seven hundred ninety four dollars

less than men in similar positions. On average. That includes not just base compensation, but also stuff like bonuses and stock options. In addition, the lawsuit accused Google of placing women in lower level positions than men with similar experience, and that when employees were leaving the company, Google failed to pay out the full amount that was owed to those employees. This was a pretty big lawsuit. There were more than fifteen thousand women who had worked for Google

since twenty that were part of it. Four of the women will receive significant payouts. Kelly List will receive seventy dollars, three others will get fifty tho each, and the rest of those fifteen thousand plus women will get on average around five thousand dollars. The rest of the cash goes to, of course, you know, lawyers, legal fees, that kind of thing. So does this mean that we're going to see some

massive changes at Google. Well, this was a settlement, not a legal judgment, and Google has not admitted to any kind of wrongdoing. Rather, Google reps say that the company frequently reviews compensation and whenever it finds inequities, it makes quote unquote upward adjustments to remove those inequities. I certainly hope that Google Walks that walk, Google Talk a k A g Chat is finally right off to that there,

sunset alright, settle in. This gets confusing because, let's face it, Google is not great at introducing and then continuing to support its various products. The company as an incredibly long list of services that have long since gone away. And let's just pause and think for a moment about some of those services like Google Wave, Google Buzz, and Google Plus. So Google Talk g Chat was an instant messaging service

nested within Gmail. You could pop into your Gmail account and send messages to your various contacts through Talk rather than type out a full email. Well, Google would later introduce a similar service called Hangouts, and in Google pushed Gmail users from Talk to Hangouts. However, Talk itself technically still stuck around, not really as its own thing. People

weren't going to that independently that much. Instead, it was a platform that other apps depended upon, like Pigeon was one of those apps, p I, d G I N. But on the Google is finally pulling the plug on Talk. As for Hangouts, well, Hangout technically became Google Chat in so what will it be tomorrow? I don't even think

Google knows the answer to that. Speaking of legacy services getting the plug pulled on them, let's talk about Internet Explorer, once the king of all web browsers, Microsoft will finally end all support for Internet Explorer tomorrow, which is June two, twenty two if you're listening to this news episode in the future. For some reason, I E first debuted in and it was a major part of Microsoft strategy as

Windows was dominating the PC space. It was also a part of what would bring Microsoft under fire for anti competitive practices, as other organizations like Mozilla would argue that Microsoft was discouraging people from using any browser other than i E and that customers were being forced to buy two products even if they just wanted one, they had to get both Windows and Internet Explorer because they were

bundled together, they were inseparable. So these were some arguments being made, and ultimately the initial court demanded that Microsoft not just stop all this, but that the company be broken up by the government because it was representing an anti competitive force of monopoly, but that decision would later be overturned on appeal. Anyway, i E was a dominant browser for a few years, although Chrome would eventually overtake and pass Internet Explorer around two thousand twelve, and from

then on I E had a long slow decline. In twenty fift Microsoft introduced the Edge Browser, which was meant to be the successor to Internet Explorer, and Microsoft has been pulling support for i E through various platforms for the last couple of years, so this isn't like a massive surprise or anything, and tomorrow all support ends. I E is officially discontinued. I suspect some of you all listening have probably never even used Internet Explorer, And to you,

I say, you aren't missing much. I mean, I do remember a time when a certain web based interface that I had to use was only compatible with Internet Explorer, and how frustrating that was. It was the only reason I would keep Internet Explorer on my computer. There was a CMS content management system that I had to work on about a decade ago, and it would only properly

work with i E. That was frustrating. So yeah, there's some legacy systems that may still require i E because they never got updated to be more compatible with other browsers. But for the most part, you can say Internet Explorer is finally going to be dead as of tomorrow. Microsoft has entered into a labor neutrality agreement with the Communications Workers of America, That, in turn is the union that has been assisting Activision Blizzard employees in their various efforts

to unionize. All right, so quick refresher. Activision Blizz is a massive video game company, and it has had a

tumultuous couple of years for lots of reasons. I mean, there have been a largely negative reception to some of the high profile games the company has released recently, there have been serious and disturbing allegations regarding a toxic corporate culture that facilitates harassment and sexual discrimination, and the company has allegedly discouraged employees from organizing, essentially using union busting tactics.

And of course, Microsoft is on track to acquire Activision Blizzard, which would seriously boost Microsoft's already impressive presence in gaming. So Microsoft agreeing to remain a neutral party is an

important step for Activision Blizzard employees. Microsoft traditionally itself hasn't been super keen on unions, like a lot of other tech companies and companies in general really, but more recently, Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, said that the company would be supportive of potential unions, and this will mean that once Microsoft completes its acquisition employees that Activision Blizzards should theoretically encounter no resistance or discouragement if they should

wish to pursue organizing into a union. That's pretty encouraging news for those employees, although that acquisition still has to go through several more stages before it is official. Well, we've got some more news items to cover, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. We're back. MAC rumors reports that LG is working on the second generation mixed reality headset for Apple, which is probably news to a lot of folks because Apple has yet to

officially announced the first generation. Had said it's been a poorly kept secret for a few years now that Apple has been working on some sort of mixed reality hardware. However, we have never seen Apple acknowledged this publicly in any of its marketing events or conferences that it has held since those rumors started to circulate. Now that, in itself

isn't unusual. Apple has a reputation for secrecy, and longtime Apple fans know that the company has sat on plans for years before finally being ready to move on them. That doesn't stop leaks from occasionally happening, sometimes from within Apple itself, sometimes it's through one of Apple's manufacturing partners, but anyway, the rumor is that l G is going to provide micro O l E D displays for the second generation headset, and that l G also contributed components

to the first generation system. MAC Rumors says that, according to analyst Ming Chi Kuo, this second generation device will not hit the market until the second half of twenty twenty four. I'm sure several people were disappointed that Apple had made no mention of mixed reality during w w d C twenty twenty two, that's their Worldwide Developer Conference. But maybe we will finally get a glimpse of the mixed reality headset this fall, which is when Apple typically

holds its iPhone event. Most rumors say that the mixed reality headset was going to be ready for sale by the end of this year, you know, for the holiday season. So if we don't see it by September, it sounds to me like it's not going to be a thing at all. So we'll have to wait and see. Telegram founder Pavel Durov is throwing hands at Apple, saying that the company purposefully restricts web app features. So here's what

telegrams issue actually is. The messaging and chat service has an iOS app, but that app sometimes has issues because Telegram has kind of a hands off approach to moderation, it does not restrict content in public channels. That is bad form in the eyes of Apple. Apple wants content moderation. They want they want to ensure that the material being looked at on their phones meets Apple's high standards, even if it's not coming from Apple itself, So the Telegram

app isn't the fully featured Telegram. However, Telegram also has a web based version that users could go to instead. They could just navigate there via Safari, but then Apple restricts all iOS developers to use the Apple WebKit, which means the web based version of Telegram is lacking certain features like push notifications, although the latest version of iOS

will enable those. So in the UK, Apple faces more antitrust reviews, with various agencies and companies accusing Apple of purposefully restricting competitors from being able to provide alternatives to Apple's own services on iOS devices. That has been a major ongoing story for Apple, this battle with regulators, especially

in the European Union. Meanwhile, the EU is also moving to hold big tech companies more accountable for creating and enforcing policies quote regarding impermissible manipulative behaviors and practices on their services based on the latest evidence on the conducts and tactics, techniques and procedures t tps employed by malicious

actors end quote. So that includes stuff like misinformation campaigns that are pushed by legions of fake accounts, but it also includes more recent tactics things like deep fake images and deep fake videos. Should companies fail to adhere to this code, they could be liable for fines up to six percent of global turnover. And in this context you can think of turnover as more or less being global revenue.

So for the really big, big tech companies out there, six percent would be in the billions of dollars neighborhood, which is serious stuff. So there are major companies that have already kind of agreed to these kind of of

demands in the past, like Meta and Twitter. We'll have to see if that continues and what you know, what tactics the sites and services will employ to detect and remove this kind of content and the EU we've been seeing signs in the tech sector for a while now that companies are getting a bit concerned, from hiring freezes to layoffs two rescinded job offers. The trend appears to be a slow down in the tech industry as companies

deal with a slowing economy. Since many analysts treat the tech sector is kind of a canary in a coal mine. This has led to predictions of a larger slowed down and downsizing in general across different industries, and startups might find it harder to get off the ground as investors have a more difficult time borrowing money that they can then pour into moonshot opportunities. So things are probably going

to get worse before they get better. So I do have a couple of cool items to close out this episode. One is that researchers at M I T have developed a sensor that can tell the difference between bacterial and viral pneumonia. And you might think, well, what's the big deal there, Well, here's the problem. Pneumonia can be caused by either a bacterial infection or a viral infect action.

There's not just one pathway to pneumonia. And you can treat a bacterial infection with antibiotics, but antibiotics do not have an effect on viruses, So doctors need a way to differentiate the type of infection that caused pneumonia in order to prescribe an effective treatment for it. Otherwise you can only treat the symptoms. Plus you know you don't want to overuse antibiotics, because through overuse, bacteria can develop immunity to those kinds of medications. That makes future treatments

much more challenging. Anyway, the researchers created a nanoparticle sensor that looks for something really interesting rather than trying to seek out the pathogen itself, you know, that is, rather than looking for the root cause of the pneumonia, the sensors actually detect the body's response to the infection. The research team identified thirty nine different enzymes that react differently

to different kinds of infections. So by detecting what the body is doing in response to the infection, the sensors can help scientists determine the nature of the infection itself. And I think that's a really cool way to tackle the problem. So far, the team has seen successful results while testing on mice. Of course, there's a pretty big leap between a mouse and a person, at least for most people, so a lot more work is going to have to be done to see if this method will

translate to human patients. If it does, it could become a standard practice for treating pneumonia, as doctors determine if antibiotic or anti viral medication is best suited for the individual case. And finally, SpaceX is just a little bit closer to Mars. US regulators have sent SpaceX a message as long as the company can guarantee compliance with seventy five mitigating actions, the company's enormous starship rocket should receive

clearance to blast off toward Mars from these regulators. So the mitigating actions range from stuff like ensuring local wildlife habitats remain protected, to cleaning up after launches, to even avoiding launches on weekends and holidays because as locals and Texas would like to be able to access the beach that's close to the launch site, and that beach would be shut down on any launch day, so just launched

during the work week, you'll when people should be at work. Anyway, There's still more reviews to follow from other agencies, so this is not a signed deal. It's not carte blanche for SpaceX just yet. They're gonna have to pass safety tests and lots of other reviews before it can actually

go forward with test launches of the spacecraft. But it is one more step towards the company getting permission to head off to the Red Planet, and that's it for the news for Tuesday, June fourteenth, two thousand twenty two. If you have anything you would like to send me, you can do so either with the talkback feature on the I heart Radio app. Just go to tech Stuff use a little microphone icon you can leave up to a thirty second voice message to me, or, as always,

you can reach out on Twitter. The handle for the show is text stuff hs W and I will talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an i heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.