Tech News: Microsoft Scrambles to Save Activision Deal

jobs that previously had been outsourced to India. That AI is going to require a smaller human staff, and artificial intelligence will do a lot of work at a pace that's far faster than humans typically can match, and thus will be more economically viable for companies. Moreover, Mustok's point indicates the level of protection workers can expect based on

where they live. In the India, such protections are scarce, so it isn't a stretch to imagine a future where tech companies downsize to cut costs related to staffing and start to lean heavily on AI. But most Stock says other places such as France will take efforts to protect human employees, and so tech companies in France won't have the same options as those in India. Mustoc also clarified

his prediction. He said that coders will be an obsolete job in a few years, but that programmers will not be. He says, the programmers of the future will rely heavily on AI to actually write the code, but things like ideation or testing bugs, that kind of stuff that's still going to need human counterparts. So while certain aspects of programming could be eliminated, AI wouldn't be able to take

on all the roles that a programmer traditionally performs. Still, I imagine we're going to see a lot more disruption across multiple industries as companies experiment with AI. I imagine more than a few companies will give into the temptation to eliminate a large number of jobs in favor of artificial intelligence. And once again I sigh, because this kind of strategy is ultimately self defeating in the long run

in my opinion. By that, I mean, if AI ends up displacing lots of people and those people now find it difficult to land a job that pays a living wage, then you begin to drain the consumer base. And once the consumer base is gone, well, now there's no one

left to buy products and services. And once that happens, the businesses which were so good at cutting costs and maximizing profits while revenue perhaps remained steady, they're gonna see revenue drop because no one will be able to buy their stuff because no one has a job anymore, because the robots took them all. And before you know it, the robots are just making stuff for other robots, and the rest of us are going, what the heck do

we do now? Meanwhile, advocates for universal basic income will go bonkers. What a world. Reuter's reports that Microsoft is working to extend its acquisition agreement with Activision Blizzard. So the original agreement between these two companies set today as the deadline for completing the deal. But we have seen opposition from regulatory authorities that have introduced lots of hiccups

along the way. And last week a court dismissed the US Federal Trade Commission's request for an injunction to at

least temporarily block this deal. That request was denied, and that removed one impediment, But there's still a roadblock in place, and that's the UK's Competition in Market's Authority or CMA, which previously voted to block this acquisition, so that block is still in effect, and while Microsoft and Activision Blizzard attempt to persuade UK regulators that the deal will not decrease competition in the video game space and the c gaming space in particular, the deadline for the deal is

still in effect, and so according to Reuter's, Microsoft is trying to work out a deal with Activision Blizzard to extend this contract to give more time to clear those regulatory hurdles in the UK. So what are the possible outcomes here, Well, the one I think that is most likely is that Activision Blizzard will agree to an extension. Maybe the company will negotiate some additional terms in the process,

but I think that's what's going to happen. Another possibility is that Activision Blizzard walks away and just remains its own company. A third possibility is that Activision Blizzard, sensing that it has increased importance and value in the market, looks for a different suitor, one that we'll spend even more money to acquire it than Microsoft would. I think that last possibility is the least likely, but I'm also no expert on corporate maneuvers, so it's entirely possible I'm

missing something obvious. Anyway, the agreement to extend the contract will need to have or not happen by the end of today. A new law in Norway will take aim at Meta's main revenue strategy when it goes active in August, and that is personalized advertising. Meta famously leverages the gargantuan amount of information it collects from users as they interact on platforms like Instagram and Facebook and beyond. To learn

more about that, read up on Meta Pixel. That'll tell you about how Meta has a tool that can be imprinted in someone else's web page that delivers information to them, but also to Meta itself. Anyway, all this information is

gold to advertisers. They want to deliver just the right message to just the right audience to maximize effectiveness, and so for years now, Meta has been in the business of selling premier ad services to companies with the implication that the advertising campaigns are going to be far more effective than if you just put out messaging in front of a randomized crowd of people. If you want to sell backpacks and tents, well, Meta knows which people are keen to go outdoors and rough it do you want

to sell baby accessories and supplies? Well, Meta knows which users are new parents. But Norway has now passed a law making it illegal for Meta to practice targeted advertising, and should it utilize that strategy in Norway, it could face a daily fine of one hundred thousand dollars, so one hundred grand every day unless Meta changes its approach,

at least its approach in Norway. Now, some people are estimating already that while one hundred thousand dollars is really nothing to Meta, a multi billion dollar company, the amount that it makes while operating in Norway is likely less than one hundred thousand dollars a day. So that means that to operate in Norway, Meta would be doing so at all loss. And what's more, Norway is urging other

countries to form similar legislation. Now this really kind of dates back to in twenty twenty two, the Irish Data Protection Commission, which is a major regulator in the European Union, decided that Meta's approach to quote unquote behavioral advertising breaks EU law. Metta subsequently made some adjustments to the way it does business, but according to various people, including the

Irish regulators. Those changes failed to fix the problem and they did not bring META into compliance with the law, so Norwegian legislators, seeing a need for action, created this approach. I should also add Norway is not part of the European Union. They are part of the European Single Market, but not in the EU. They're not a member of the EU. It will be interesting to see how META response to this and if other countries in Europe follow

Norway's lead. Tesla's board of directors has decided to settle a lawsuit brought against it a retirement fund that represents police and firefighters. The group accused Tesla of paying themselves too much in Tesla stock and by Tesla, I mean specifically they're board of directors. So as a consequence, the directors are collectively returning seven hundred and thirty five million dollars worth of stock options. So the lawsuit had argued that these directors had voted to award themselves far more

stock options than a board typically would receive. And on that board are well Elon Musk is on it, his brother Kimball is on it. James Murdoch, the son of Rupert Murdoch, The media Mogul, he's on it. Joe Grebia, one of the co founders of Airbnb, he's on it. And finally JB. Strabel, who was previously Tesla's chief technology officer, is on the board. So Tesla reps said that the idea was to align the board of directors with the

needs and successes of the company. Right, because your compensation is a stock option, then your compensation increases in value if the company's stock price increases, So that was the logic, they said. Also, I should mention that Elon Musk is facing a separate legal challenge relating to his own compensation package at Tesla. That's a package that awards Musk fifty six billion with a B dollars, which I can't even

begin to comprehend that amount of money. No wonder must doesn't seem too fussed with the continuing descent of Twitter's value, and he's got Tesla just totally to fall back on. But Tesla also faces other challenges. This week, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, announced it was launching a new investigation into an old crash, a crash that happened in twenty eighteen that involved a Tesla Model three that may have been in advanced driver assists mode

at the time of the act. The NHTSA typically will engage in around one hundred crash investigations in a year for cases where emerging technology had played a part in the crash. While this accident happened five years ago, there have sadly been no shortage of accidents involving Tesla vehicles

in some form of self driving mode now. According to the Washington Post, since twenty nineteen, there have been seven hundred and thirty six accidents with seventeen fatalities that involved a Tesla either in autopilot or full self driving mode. The NHTSA numbers are actually lower than that. They identify two hundred and seventy three crashes and launched investigations into more of forty of those. Fourteen of those crashes resulted in fatalities. Okay, we're going to take a quick break.

When we come back, we've got some more tech news to talk about. We're back. Reddit is still feeling the consequences of the platform's change in its API policy. So quick reminder, Reddit, but in a new fee structure for developers who use the platform's API to develop third party apps, so developers have to pay Reddit based upon the number of times their apps reference Reddit, which can include stuff

like pulling information or posting information to Reddit. The decision pushed a lot of developers to shut down their apps. They explained they just couldn't afford to pay those fees because of the number of times their apps would reference Reddit and the popularity of those apps. So a ton of Reddit users got really mad because they depended on those apps to access Reddit. The platform's own mobile app doesn't have the best reputation among a lot of redditors anyway.

The latest brew haha the site is that Reddit has changed its chat system, and as a consequence of that, users can now only look at their chat histories from January first, twenty three up to the present day. Anything that was older, anything that was posted before January first of this year is gonzo. Understandably, this has upset a lot of people for various reasons. You know, some folks were holding on to older messages as a touchstone of a friend or loved one that they had no longer

been in touch with for whatever reason. Some were keeping information for the purposes of future work, and now all of that information is unavailable when you access your chat history. Now, this change didn't happen out of the blue. Reddit actually communicated it late last month in a change log, but that didn't get that much attention or coverage at that time, and Reddit didn't exactly take steps to reach out to

users and let them know it's coming. So in a way, this is a bit like that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy segment where Arthur Den explains that the plans for demolishing his house were technically on quote unquote public display, but they were stored in a disused lavatory that had

a sign on it reading Beware of the Leopard. Anyway, the good news is that, according to AndroidPolice dot Com, redditors can get their chat history by sending a data request to Reddit to get a download of all of your messages, which should include the ones that are no longer accessible in chat. So there is a way to still get that information, but you do have to reach out and submit a data request to Reddit in order

to get it. The New York Police Department announced it will test out a new emergency announcement system courtesy of drones, So if you had flying robots warning of imminent danger on your dystopian bingo card. Congratulations, you can mark that square off. The plan, the police say is to deploy the drones to high risk areas that emergency situations like

a severe weather event could impact. So recently, New York has had problems with flooding as heavy rains have moved through the city, and more flooding is expected this weekend, so that prompted the NYPD to announce the test of the system. While alerting locals to potential threats is important, there's another concern that these drones could pull double duty and serve as surveillance devices, and that's not nearly as cool.

And in fact, there are laws meant to protect citizens in New York from such surveillance, and that includes the requirement that the NYPD issue an impact statement on its website and open up the policy to public comment, and that that has to happen at least ninety days before the NYPD actually deploys the technology. Now, there are questions as to whether this particular use of drones would trigger

that policy. It's possible that NYPD doesn't need to go to those steps, because if this is just a case of the organization using existing tech in a new way as opposed to rolling out an entirely new system. They don't have to follow the same requirements anyway. Critics say there are plenty of other ways that law enforcement can reach out to citizens without throwing flying robots into the mix, and that the use of such text seems like it's trying to fix a problem with the wrong kind of tool.

Now in the department of driving Jonathan insane, we have our penultimate story of Chuck Schumer, the leader of the political majority in the US Senate, and Senator Mike Rownds, who have jointly proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. This amendment would require the Executive branch to share records relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAPs, and that the Executive branch would have to share the information

with Congress. So essentially, the way the story is being reported, at least in some circles, is that Chucky boy here wants to know about the aliens, or at least stuff made by non human intelligence, which could include aliens, but I guess it could also include stuff like I don't know,

robots or alternate dimension, Nicola Tesla's or something. Anyway, the amendment argues that the executive branch is quote hiding that information from both Congress and the public at large end quote, and Schumer's that the public has quote a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non human intelligence, and

unexplainable phenomena end quote. Now, y'all, you don't know this because I edited it out, but I followed that last sentence with a really, really long sigh because I think this is just gonna fuel countless French theories about alien civilizations and the like, when the truth of the matter is that UAP is just really a catch all category to describe situations in which someone saw something and where they were unable to identify what it was, and that's

pretty much it. So that something could be incredibly mundane.

And I'm not just talking about like the old weather balloons and swamp gas stuff that you hear, but even things like I don't know the reflection of the moon on the water, so UAP's that doesn't even necessarily imply any sort of vehicle or technology, and the cases where we are talking about technology that can include, you know, prototypes of things like spy planes or military drones, and that's the sort of stuff that countries don't like to publicize because you know, they plan on using that on

other countries, so they tend to keep quiet about it. But that doesn't mean that other people don't occasionally see that stuff, and of course they can't identify it because it, up to that point had been a secret vehicle. So it's really not necessary that any of this stuff was

of non human origin. I also think if we're talking non terrestrial, like if we're saying alien, I still think that that is incredibly unlikely, almost to the point of being impossible, because you have to keep in mind the vast distances in space and how long it takes even

light to travel those vast distances. That's a lot. And as long as we as a species have been able to make radio waves, which is, you know, a little more than a century, and most of those radio ways wouldn't have reached very far out into space before they got to a point where they weren't even really detectable. It's just not realistic that anyone would have even noticed we were here, let alone made the trip out here

to see what was up. Maybe it would involve technologies that we just can't even imagine yet that would break the laws of physics as we understand them, but that would probably require so much energy as to raise the question of why would you go to that kind of effort to see the chuckle heads who occupy this planet? It just it doesn't add up to me, Like it

doesn't make sense as a possibility. So I think this is really just gonna create more suspicion and conspiracy theories and fringe theories and that kind of stuff, and it's not gonna really amount to anything substantial, But I guess we'll see. Okay. The last bit I have for you is an article recommendation. So other board over Advice has posted an article titled Amazon told drivers not to worry about in van surveillance cameras now footage is leaking online.

It was written by Jewles Roscoe. It's a great article that reinforces something I mentioned in yesterday's tech Stuff episode that even if the technology itself is benign, I would argue surveillance equipment does not fall into that category. There are still people who will behave as people and they

will do the wrong thing on occasion. So in this case, it involves watching and at least in some cases, leaking or sharing in vehicle surveillance footage, which Amazon claimed was only meant to monitor drivers for the purposes of safety. So there you go. That's your article recommendation. And as always, I have no connection with Motherboard or Vice or Jewels Roscoe. I just thought it was a good article and it's worth your attention. That's it for the news for Tuesday,

July eighteenth, 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 to your favorite shows.