Tech News: South Korea Brings the Hammer Down on Apple

emergency situations all over there. If any of y'all are out that way, please stay safe and take care of yourselves and of each other. And really that goes out to everyone. A little kindness goes a long way. But yes, I'm I'm definitely thinking of all of you out there, hoping that you're staying safe. All right, let's get to the tech news for Tuesday, August thirty one, twenty one.

Here in America, there's a brewing battle between the US government and companies like Apple and Google over whether or not requiring app developers to use the Apple and Google in app purchasing systems for all in app purchases is anti competitive. Now, this gets a little muddled, so we're going to use an example to kind of clear things up.

So let's say that you are a developer, an app developer, and you create a SimCity like game, and in that game, players can you know, zone and build out virtual cities. And in this game, maybe you've built some in app purchases, and that way players can pay to access say certain types of resources or types of buildings, or they might be able to speed up construction or otherwise take you know, shortcuts in the game, which without these shortcuts would take

a really long time to play out. Well, right now, both Google and Apple take a cut that's anywhere between fifteen tot of all in app purchases for stuff like that is if it's a smaller developer, is if they are you know, considered to be a larger developer, and you have no other option but to go that route, Like, you have to play by those rules because both Apple and Google say that trying to work around that means

your app will not be allowed in those app stores. Also, this is different if your app is used to purchase real stuff out in the real world. So for example, let's say you run a taco restaurant and you develop an app so people can order tacos to pick up at your store. They just use the app, they say what they want, it goes to you, They pay for it and everything. They just come in and pick it up and go. Well, Apple and Google don't take a cut of those kinds of purchases. It's only for things

that are in app. Also, I would like some of your finest tacos. I don't know why you've been holding out on me for so long. Anyway, here in the United States, government offices and congress people are beginning to push back on this practice, saying it is any competitive and it traps developers and systems that they have no control over. While that's playing out here over in South Korea,

things have taken a more drastic turn. The South Korean government passed a bill that now bands Apple and Google from forcing developers to use this kind of in app purchasing system. They can use it if they want to, but they're not forced to according to this new band. So now companies like Epic Games, which makes the game Fortnite, could do the thing that got Epic in hot water with Apple in the first place, and that was that Epic gave players a way to buy in game Fortnite

currency without going through Apple's in app purchase system. Also, while it doesn't get much coverage, Google was equally miffed at Epic for the exact same reason. It will be interesting to see how Apple and Google respond to this. According to CNBC, the Apple App Store grows more than sixty four billion dollars in twenty twenty, a princely some now. Keep in mind, that's what the app store brought in. Not all of that money actually is going to Apple. Apple gets a chunk of it, but a lot of

that money is also going to various developers. However, it still represents a major source of revenue for Apple. Also, Apple doesn't actually report on how much the app store makes in particular in its quarterly earnings reports. Instead, the company lumps that into a category called Apple Services, and that includes other stuff as well. But however you slice it, the app store is one of the contributing factors to

Apple's colossal success as a modern tech company. I should add that the company also sees a lot of revenue from its physical products like iPhone and mac computers, so it's not like Apple's just turning into an app store, kind of like how a lot of people point to Valve and say Valve very rarely makes any games these days. Now it's more of an online game store. If other countries follow South Korea's lead, Apple and Google could see

important revenue streams diminish as a result. And now for a curious story about Apple that shows how serious the law he is is. Here in the United States, So more than a decade ago, Apple was in a long, ugly legal battle with the telecommunications company Nokia, the Finnish company.

Nokia was at the time the largest worldwide smartphone and mobile phone manufacturer, and at the heart of the legal battle were a series of patent disputes, and each company was claiming that the other company had violated one or more patents that they they held. So Nokia saying hey you violated X, Y and Z, and Apple saying hey you violate A, B and C. And it all was

going into all these different court cases. Now it recently came to light that in one of these court cases, and this case happened way back in two thousand eleven, the judge who was presiding over the case turned out to actually have held some stock in Apple. I don't know how much stock the judge held that has not yet been reported as of the recording of this podcast, but it was at least some stock. Typically, in cases like this, if a court judge has a conflict of interest,

they are required to recuse themselves from the case. They cannot over see the case because clearly they might otherwise find their judgments swayed by their own personal, you know, financial interest in one of the parties involved in the case. This judge did not recuse himself. Now it sounds to be like the judge might have held Apple stock and perhaps just forgotten about it. That could be the case if the judge had a pretty wide stock portfolio, right like,

the judge might not have been aware of it. Moreover, in that particular case, the end result actually favored Nokia more than it favored Apple. So even if the judge had been aware of the stock, I mean, he should have disclosed that, but it didn't seem to impact his decision upon the case. However, rules are rules, and these rules state that if a judge discovers a conflict of interest, then that judge is required to report on it, even

if the case happened a decade ago or longer. So on August, this particular judge filed a letter revealing the conflict, and now both Apple and Nokia have the opportunity to respond to this revelation by October. But here's some other interesting things to consider. Nokia's smartphone and cell phone business entered into a state of decline not long after these lawsuits, and Samsung overtook Nokia to become the the global leader in smartphone and mobile phone manufacturing UH, and of course,

Apple has grown in popularity year over year. Eventually, Microsoft swooped in and purchased Nokia's mobile phone divis Vision and had it for itself, and so these days Nokia doesn't even have its own mobile phone division. It's got a couple that are related to Nokia, but not like its own in house mobile phone manufacturing department. So Microsoft would then go on to sell off the Nokia assets after it became clear that Microsoft's own mobile phone efforts were

flailing against Android and iPhone handsets. Fox con took ownership of those assets. At that point. The Nokia brand, which did not go along with this whole Microsoft Fox Cotton transaction UH, is actually licensed to another company called hm D Global. So Nokia is not Nokia anymore. It's a it's a brand name that's held by a different company, and Nokia doesn't really have a a financial stake in

him D Global. So while this disclosure is interesting, it sounds to me like there's not really going to be any big brew haha to come out of it, because that's kind of all water under the bridge at this point. I'm not sure if anyone would hold any specific objections at this stage, and as far as I know, the judge doesn't stand to face any um, you know, any

any punishment for this. Uh. Like I said to me, it sounds like it came out of an oversight as opposed to a purposeful uh you know, obfuscation of a conflict of interest. Next, any of y'all who have listened to my show for years will know that I have had conflicting feelings when it comes to stuff like autonomous cars and smart infrastructure. I was really hot on it

for a while. Then I became a little more hesitant. Uh, not like resistant to it, but more more like someone who went in bright eyed and bushytailed and then thought, oh, the reality of this is different. For um the ideal. Now, on the one hand, if you assume everything works properly, technologies like autonomous cars and smart city infrastructure would drastically reduce the number of accidents that happened on the road, and that also means a big reduction in injuries and fatalities.

That would be incredible. And then of secondary importance, it could also reduce traffic congestions, so folks would spend less time sitting in a car in order to get to where they're going, and that also means fewer carbon emissions. And obviously we're moving more toward electric vehicles, but that's going to take some time. So the benefits of this technology are really you know, they're enticing, they they're compelling. However, I did say, we have to assume everything's working properly,

and that's where we are hit. You know, a really big sticking point. We're seeing that play out in the UK country that has deployed digital signs across hundreds of miles of roads that connect to a software platform and the signs are meant to display stuff like need limits or information about lane closures and that kind of thing.

It's part of the UK's smart Motorways initiative. Unfortunately, this past April that system crashed three times, the system that would send information to these digital signs across hundreds of miles of road, and that left the signs stuck in whatever their last message was, even if conditions were changing.

So staff working for this department in the UK are reportedly worried that future computer crashes could lead to motorists getting the wrong information and that this could ultimately contribute to serious car accidents. And that sounds like it's a reasonable fear, because one of the things that Smart Motorways project is doing is not just putting out digital signs.

They're actually removing the hard shoulder along the side of motorways, which is the place where you would normally pull over if your car were experiencing problems and that way you would be out of traffic. They are replacing those hard shoulders with an additional lane of traffic to be used just in normal day to day use. The digital signs are supposed to signal a large red X to indicate that a lane is occupied when a vehicle has to

be pulled over because it's no longer operational for whatever reason. Right, So you've got a breakdown or a flat tire or something, well you would come to a stop in this lane of traffic, and then these signs are supposed to say, hey, don't travel in this lane of traffic because there's a car that's stopped up ahead. Maybe the driver is even out of the car trying to fix their vehicle. Maybe they're,

you know, trying to change a tire or something. And if the system crashes during one of those incidents, which happened a lot by the way, I mean, I'm sure you've seen as you've traveled, like it's pretty common to see at least a couple of cars pulled over on the side of the road in different places where motorists

are having to deal with unexpected problems. Well, if the system crashes, then those signs don't update and you don't get those red exits, which means that you could have drivers traveling at full speed down that fourth lane of travel, and then you could have potentially cataclysmic collision. You could have fatalities as a result of this has gotten to the point where some of the staff have started giving

the system a new name. The system has the proprietary name d Knack d Y n A C. And some of the staff have called it die now, which is pretty grim stuff. So here's an example where a technological solution could potentially make a problem worse. Now. I'd argue this is also because the decision to add that fourth lane and not have a hard shoulder there really contributes

to the the problem at hand. So this is a combination of technological fails and I don't know, Hubris maybe so a lot of the staff are saying we need to have a backup, we need to have that hard shoulder and not to get rid of it, and I tend to agree with the staff on this one. We've got a few more stories to cover, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. We're back.

So Patreon is making some interesting moves lately. The company has acquired a New York based recruiting firm called Clear Talent, and from what Reuters is reporting, it sounds like Patreon's goal is to expand beyond being a platform that creative types can use in order to monetize their talents. If you're not familiar with Patreon, the general way it works is that creators of all different kinds will establish an account and then they generally offer one of two things

to their followers. Some creators will establish a monthly subscription fee, and you subscribe, you pay a certain subscription and sometimes this is and different tiers, with subscribers getting access to content that relates to those tears. So you might have like a five dollar per month charge and that provides you with access to a certain subset of content, and then if you were to upgrade to ten dollars a month,

you would get additional content and so on. Another way that creators can choose to go is to instead to have subscribers pay only when new content comes out, So instead of it being a flat fee every month, it's a let's say, let's say you're a video content creator. Every time a new video comes out, then a charge would go out to your followers. But otherwise, uh, if you went like several weeks without creating a new video, then no one would get charged. So there are different

ways of going about it. Anyway. Now, Patreon seems to be heading in a direction to try and become more of a one stop shop as far as content creators go, and it's supposed to give them other ways to manage their businesses. So it's almost like a small business toolkit in a way. UH that could include stuff like ways to sell merchandise and other add ons in addition to the money that creators earn uh from subscription models, and it could be a really good way for creatives to

manage their businesses. It's challenging to both be a creative content person and to oversee all the business elements of your endeavors. This does mean that creators will see some of that money go towards the platform rather than to themselves. That's just the nature of things. But on the flip side, they get heightened visibility because Patreon is a visible platform, and a lot of the hassle of managing your business

is removed from the operational standpoint. I think, based on the very little I know, that this could be a good move for all parties, but we're obviously gonna have to pay attention to make sure. In the past, we've covered how various online platforms have tried to tackle the huge problem of misinformation and disinformation campaigns. So Twitter tags labels on stuff and bands accounts that are repeat offenders.

Facebook takes down groups, although you could argue they don't take them down as quickly as new ones pop up. But one platform I have not talked about is Reddit. Last week, a number of sub credits And if you're not familiar with Reddit, uh, it's kind of like a user generated link farm in a way, but it's organized in various fields of interest, so you can think of subredits as sort of like channels of Reddit that focus

on specific interests or topics. Anyway, a bunch of subredits petition the administrators of Reddit to do something about the proliferation of disinformation about COVID nineteen that is running rampant

on the platform. The subredits claim that Reddit has done little to curtail disinformation campaigns about stuff like vaccines and masks in the spread of COVID nineteen, and thus is contributing to people getting a false view of how things work, which subsequently puts more people at risk of getting sick or worse. Reddit has effectively sequestered a subreddit that focused on these topics, so you could still access it if you were a member of it, but otherwise you wouldn't

come across it. But according to the subredits, it really hasn't done much else to stop the spread of false information on the platform. So in protest, large groups of subredits have switched to private membership, which means you can't just pop in there and brows the posts in that subredit,

or leave a message on there or anything like that. Effectively, to the outside world, these subredits are going dark, but they're not completely going dark, because anyone who actually is an existing member of those subredits can still access them. But clearly the admins of these subredits will be able to give the boot to anyone who tries to spread misinformation,

essentially saying that's not welcome in this community. Meanwhile, the same subreddits are continuing to appeal to Reddit and to go beyond Reddit by talking about this in other forums and to news media outlets in order to take a

more active stance against misinformation. The company's official stance is that red is a place where users can hash it out for themselves, and that sounds an awful lot like what Mark Zuckerberg said about Facebook, that it's not the platform's responsibility to take sides in this kind of thing. There is, however, a really big problem with this, because it's not just like a debate, and this is a problem that people have known about for centuries. And that's this.

It's way easier for lies to spread than it is to get the truth to take hold. Or, as Mark Twain did not put it, a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes. See, a lot of folks actually attribute that quote to Mark Twain. That's incredibly fitting because it wasn't Mark Twain who coined that phrase. In fact, the earliest variation of this saying that I have found came from seven from a sermon

delivered by a guy named Thomas Franklin. But that misinformation you know about Mark Twain allegedly saying this has traveled far and wide. In some other versions it's Winston Churchill who gets the credit rather than Mark Twain. But all of that just proves the point, right, It just proves the truth that these lies travel far and wide much

easier than the truth does. So if you give equal ground to truth and falsehoods, as if falsehoods have some sort of legitimacy to them, falsehoods run away with it because they don't require the burden of reality. So I am fully on the side of the sub credits in this case. In semi related news, Axios reports that Facebook will be tweaking its ranking algorithm. That's the algorithm that determines which posts you and to see when you log

into Facebook and you check out your news feed. Apparently this will include de emphasizing elements that lead to people figuring out how to you know, kind of gain the system, like a prediction of how likely someone is going to engage with specific content. So just as a quick refresher to remind yourselves how Facebook works. Facebook makes a lot of money. In fact, the vast majority of its revenue through advertising. So the more time you spend on Facebook,

the more ads you will encounter. That means that Facebook will make more money based off your visit. Because you're spending more time, you're seeing more ads, Facebook makes more money. One way to convince you to spend more time on Facebook is for Facebook to serve up stuff that gets a big reaction out of you, so that you comment on things or you share them. If these posts are actually ads and you are engaging with them, that's even

more valuable for Facebook. And you're also giving Facebook more information about yourself, which makes you easier to advertise to. Now a lot of the time this content that gets heavily engaged is pretty darn toxic stuff and frequently includes misinformation for the same reasons I was just mentioning in US. You know, the previous news item. So folks who wanted to spread certain messages, like a propaganda campaign, they could build that into their posting strategy to get more circulation

of their work. Well, now Facebook is going to take away some of that, making these types of campaigns a little less effective. Facebook is likely to show less news content in general, and less political content in particular. Uh. The company has run numerous tests with focus groups that showed that users really liked it when less of that stuff was popping up in our news feeds. Now, these changes are likely to roll out gradually, you know, kind

of over a long time frame. It's possible that we won't even notice the changes happening because they'll happen so gradually. But according to Axios, we should expect the Facebook of the future to be slightly less political, which I think is a good thing. There's a new rule in place to combat what the Chinese government says is an addiction among China's youth. And it's not drugs, it's video games. Yep,

they come a long way since pac Man. So the Chinese government has ordered online gaming companies to build in time restrictions to prevent kids in China from falling into

the deep void of video game addiction. According to the new rules, anyone under the age of eighteen will have their game time restricted to between eight pm and nine pm, so one hour a day, and the government issued a warning that the video game companies would need to put into place reliable verification processes to make sure kids weren't skirting the rule by like using adult ideas to log

into games to get around the age gating system. The government says it will increase inspections to these companies to make sure that they are up to code on this stuff. And while I'm skeptical that the companies are going to be able to get around kids who are determined to find ways to circumvent the rules, I can at least sympathize with this initiative. And that's because games are built

upon a reward system. You play a game, you achieve something, your brain releases a hormone that says, hey, good job you, and you feel nice, or maybe you get really close to achieving a goal. But the only you fall just short, and then your brain either says try again, you can do it, or if it's like my brain, it's as stupid game, stupid game, cheats. I hate it. I'll just play one more turn. Anyway, The whole addiction angle might be a bit extreme, but there is definitely an element

of truth to it. Whether this was leading to a downfall of Chinese society or not is another matter. I suppose and find the mark your calendars for October five, Windows users, because that's when Windows eleven releases, the newest version of the operating system. It will be a free upgrade for PCs that are running qualified versions of Windows ten and are rated to support Windows eleven. It will come standard on new pecs as the official Windows OS

moving forward. One thing that will not be included, at least not at launch, is support for Android apps. Microsoft says that support is coming, but did not give a precise date for when that will happen when Microsoft also has the system to determine when users will get to install OS on their machines, So apparently Microsoft is doing this on a gradual rollout, and they will prioritize newer systems, new or more powerful ones and older ones will be

further back in the queue. Honestly, that kind of makes sense. New oss tend to have bigger resource demands, some older systems might not be a great fit for that, and it sounds like this rollout will be pretty ratual in that some systems, like perhaps the oldest ones that can still support Windows eleven, will not get the update until possibly sometime in the middle of next year. Of course,

that's not necessarily a bad thing. I often remind myself that it's typically wise to wait a little bit before jumping on a new operating system or even a new piece of hardware, because invariably there's going to be issues and problems that pop up that need to get worked out, and often it's less of a headache to just sit back and wait a bit for all of that to play out, rather than to jump on board early and to go through all of those issues in real time.

I say this to you as much as I say it to myself, yet again, because recently I jumped on the Android twelve beta and ran into numerous little issues. Again, that was a beta, so it's to be expected. I mean, that's that's on me these days. I'm back on to Android eleven and happy as can be anyway. October, plan your part ease. Now you know those PC operating system release parties, they get wild Man. There's punch and that

wraps up the news for Tuesday, August again. Stay safe, stay well, and I will talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from i heeart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows