Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and how the tech are you. It is March twenty twenty two, and I would like to begin this episode of tech Stuff News with an apology. This goes out to all my Irish listeners out there, and just know that the following message is really for all my fellow Americans. Top of the podcast to yeah and happy St Patrick's day. Toy to toy to toy. All right, I got that all the way again, mice. Sincerest. Apologies. Also, you might hear a little bit of background noise in this episode might sound a little different. That's because I am actually in the office recording today. Had to be here for some other reasons. And uh, hey, there's folks here. It's like I haven't seen people in so long. It's kind of nice. But let's get to the news. Bleeping Computer reports that Russia is facing a cloud crunch in the near future. According to the Russian news outlet Commercant, the country could run out of cloud storage space within as little as two months now. This is largely because the major cloud storage providers are companies that have pulled out of Russia in the wake of that country's invasion of Ukraine. The news outlet also reported that at a meeting to discuss this issue, there was a proposal to convert domestic services within Russia over to cloud storage services, as well as potentially seizing the assets of companies that once operated within Russia that have since left. In other words, if say Amazon was operating a data center in Russia, that Russia might potentially sees those assets and use them for their own kind of an imminent domain thing. Other options include cutting off some media streaming services and then reallocating those assets to cloud storage, which wouldn't necessarily be a big popular move for Russian citizens. There's also the chance that Russia will turn to Chinese cloud services, but that's not a guarantee because well, it depends upon China's cooperation. Russia has recently been investing heavily in surveillance systems and facial recognition technology and smart city tech, and all of those rely upon a robust cloud storage foundation. So we'll have to see what Russia does because that clock is ticking. Also, since we mentioned China earlier. The US government has sent a message to China Telecom, which I'm sure you've gathered as a telecommunications company from China, and China Telecom currently provides services in America. Uh, but we'll have to stop that within sixty days due to this government order. An issue here is a concern that a telecommunications company potentially has access to a ton of information and represents a critical component for a country's infrastructure. And China and the US have had, uh, let's say, a tenuous relationship. And also the Chinese Communist government is notoriously hands on when it comes to you know, companies in China, whether those are native companies or companies operating within China. So there is a legit fear that a Chinese company could act like a spy or a general surveillance tool on the US and pass information along to the Chinese government. There's also a worry that should the relationship between US and China get worse, that a telecom company from China could end up causing massive problems in the US as communications infrastructure, you know, by cutting off operations or otherwise just inter hearing with day to day life. And we saw this happen previously. We saw a very similar approach with Huawei. That's a company that had provided a lot of networking components to telecom companies throughout the United States, and then the US government said get rid of all those and we're kind of in that process now. A lot of the smaller I s p s have a little bit more time to get rid of those those components and replace them with stuff from other companies. We've also seen similar pushback on TikTok, which of course is owned by a Chinese conglomerate called byte Dance. Anyway, China Telecom released a statement saying that the company plans to quote pursue all available options while continuing to serve our customers end quote. So we'll have to see where this goes. U S Senator Elizabeth Warren and US House Representative Mandare Jones have introduced legislation in their respective Houses of Congress, and it's called the Prohibiting Anti Competitive Mergers Act or HAMMA p A m A. And while this isn't explicitly about tech companies, Warren has said that she was really keeping those companies in mind in particular while drafting the legislation. Essentially, if this is signed into law, the act would ban any massive mergers that were worth more than five billion dollars or that would provide market shares beyond for employers or thirty three for sellers. So it's meant to encourage a more competitive marketplace and prevent companies from consolidating power. And it's also meant to beef up regulator powers when reviewing proposed mergers and to expand on reasons that regulators might prevent such mergers should they represent any kind of anti competitive practices. Not only that, but it would also allow for retroactive review and the reversal of acquisitions and mergers. So not only would this give regulators more authority moving forward, they could actually look back on pre existing deals and force companies to divest themselves of certain acquisitions. So immediately I think about companies like Google and Meta, with Meta positively leaping to mind because that company has a long history of acquiring other social platforms and services that we're seen as threats to Meta's claim on our free time. I mean, like that, that's pretty widely known that the reason why Meta, which at the time was you know, Facebook, purchased Instagram. It was because Instagram was taking up a lot of people's time and Facebook just couldn't compete, so rather than compete, they bought it. Now, this act has got a pretty broad reach, and it's one that I imagine is going to get a lot of resistance before it moves any further through the system. It's likely going to be an uphill battle to pass this bill in the Senate. And there's also no conservative co sponsors on either version of this bill, so no Republicans have co sponsored it. That's kind of an indication that we're probably gonna see some resistance here. If somehow this does pass into law, it would obviously change things dramatically, not just for tech but for all industry. It's just we probably see it very acutely in the tech space. For one thing, we would see stuff like Microsoft's planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard that would get nixed right away because that deal is valued at nearly sixty nine billion dollars. That's well over the five billion dollar threshold. But we'll have to wait and see where this goes from here. One other acquisition that the PAMA legislation would have prevented is Amazon's acquisition of MGM, the movie and television studio. That deal is worth more than eight billion Smackaroo's, so again above that five billion threshold. However, the FTC did not make a public response about the deal, like there was an a period open for that to happen, and the FTC took no action. Also, in the EU, the Antitrust Commission already approved the acquisition, So in the EU it got the green light, and it looks like Amazon now owns MGM. Now, this could be one of those deals that the proposed legislation would later reverse, right like, if that proposed PAMMA Act passes, then presumably even with this deal going through now, later on regulators could force Amazon to divest itself of MGM. But again, I would be surprised if that PAMMA bill actually does become law. The EU Commission said that there was very limited overlap between Amazon and MGM, so saying that the acquisition would not be anti competitive because it's not like they were actually reducing the number of companies that are in the same market. The acquisition will mean that Amazon gets a big boost in content, though not all the content ever created by MGM. That story gets super complicated because different parties have acquired different sections of MGMs library over the years. Uh, but it would include stuff like the James Bond franchise, which obviously very valuable. I might do a series about the history and evolution of MGM in the future. It's pretty complicated, but I've done similar episodes about Warner Brothers and some other studios, and MGM obviously is another important one. Anyway, this is a continuation of a trend of consolidation of media, and now Amazon Prime Video will have tons of MGM content on it, while Discovery and Warner Media are in the process emerging and bringing all their content together. So maybe you could argue that this specific example isn't inherently anti competitive, but the general trend I think perhaps is Okay, We've got a lot more stories to go through, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break now to talk about an acquisition that's on a smaller scale. Google is buying a company called Raxium, which produces micro l e d s for displays. L E d s are light emitting diodes, and the micro l e ED space is kind of positioned to compete against the predominant standard bearer, which is oh LED technology. Reportedly, Google's interest in micro l e d S is related to the development of augmented reality technology. Google has a long history dabbling in a R, the Google Glass project being a very early example of that. But presumably whatever Google has in mind is going to be more robust and a more immersive approach to a R in the future, and it appears that this micro led tech will play a part in that in some form of display most likely. And Apple has done similar things that actually acquired a different micro led company. In fact, I think that happened way back in As to when we might actually see products from Google that incorporate this technology, that's probably gonna take a while, And considering Google's track record with hardware, it might take even longer for folks to feel comfortable adopting it because Google has a long history of introducing products, only too in support for those products, like a year or two later. Uh. It's hard to get behind the idea of buying hardware from Google simply because there is this long history of Google saying that didn't work, let's just stop supporting it. And then you've got this very expensive paper weight that you know, over time can do less and less because of that lack of support. Over in Europe, a French cloud services company called O v A Cloud has filed a complaint alleging that Microsoft is in violation of antitrust measures in the EU. Now, according to the complaint, Microsoft charges a different rate for its Office suite of products if you use a different cloud platform then Microsoft's own Azure. So in other words, if you have a customer that wants to use say O v H Cloud for its cloud platform, but still needs to rely on Microsoft Office products for productivity software, then it would have to pay more for that office software suite than it would if they just went all in with Microsoft. Oh v H Cloud says this practice is anti competitive and it's meant to discourage customers from seeking out any alternatives from Microsoft. And on the one hand, you might say, you know, bundled services have kind of always been a thing and typically you pay less would you bundle things together. But on the other hand, you have to keep in mind that there are some companies that only provide a subset of those services, like a cloud platform. So you know, O v H Cloud doesn't necessarily have a productivity suite, so they can't compete on apples to apples with Microsoft, and so you might really love o v H clouds product, you might love their customer service. You might think that's the superior cloud platform. But you know, you probably also need a productivity suite. So you as a customer might be more inclined to just go all in with Microsoft because it's cheaper and easier. And that doesn't mean that Microsoft is providing a better experience. It's just, you know, it's it's giving you an incentive anyway. Ov H cloud has filed the complaint, but there's no word as of yet on what happens next or whether Microsoft has even received a formal notice of the complaint yet. Over in California, state lawmakers have proposed new legislation that would give parents the opportunity to sue social networking platforms for getting their kids addicted to social media. And this is a pretty complicated issue, and I can actually view it from a couple of different perspectives. So one perspective is that I could see someone saying it's really the responsibility of parents and schools to monitor kids and to teach them and to help them arm themselves with knowledge and prevent them from getting addicted in the first place, So why would we hold companies accountable for things that parents and school should be doing. And there's some merit to that argument, I would say. But another view that I can see, and I also find merit in, is that companies like say Meta, devote an awful lot of time coming up with ways to entice people to come to and then stay on their platforms. In fact, almost all of Meta's business hinges on attracting and retaining users for as much of their time as is possible. In other words, companies like Meta have built their business around creating addictive experiences. So from that perspective, Meta and other companies like it absolutely bear some of the responsibility for kids getting addicted to social media. So the reality is a complex one, and I think there's actually a plenty of accountability to go around. I don't think we can assign it all to just one party anyway. This proposed law would allow parents to file class action lawsuits against companies that provided services that their children subsequently became addicted to, and the fine would be about a thousand dollars per child UH or twenty five dollars per child in the case of civil penalty cases. Uh, the legislation does allow for some safe harbor protections if companies meet certain requirements that indicate they are taking quote basic steps to avoid addicting children in quote. So in other words, if a company could show that it's at least doing the bare minimum to try and prevent kids from being hooked on their services, then they should be in the clear. Also, UH, companies that generate less than one million dollars in revenue per year would be excluded, and that I find really interesting. I mean, I get the risk of big tech because I mean, we we've all heard the stories, like we've seen the internal documents from Meta, and you know, the fact is that companies like Meta really are a major issue, a major concern. However, to me, it's a little strange to say, if you happen to create experiences that are meant to be addictive to children, but you make less than a hundred million dollars a year, you're to it's okay that that doesn't sit well with me. But maybe I'm just interpreting this incorrectly. Three years after getting into the VR space, Facebook or I really should say, Meta says it's going to roll out parental supervision controls for VR experiences. Now, that's definitely important because we've already seen several reports about how abusive folks in VR environments can be amazingly awful to other people, and they could be a really traumatic experience. There's a legit concern for the health and safety of children and VR spaces like Meta's Horizon Worlds, where again we've already seen evidence of predatory behaviors, something you definitely don't want kids to be exposed to. Now, I should add that Meta has stated that the Quest It's it's main VR product, is intended for users who are a thirteen or older, but that doesn't mean younger kids aren't still using it. In fact, there's no real way to prevent that from happening, and heck, thirteen, I would argue, it's still pretty freaking young, and the potential harm that we're talking about can be significant. So I think that rolling out these parental controls is an important step. I also think it's well overdue. Uh. I have an issue with Meta in general because I feel like the company treats the general public like guinea pigs. It will roll out services on a really broad scale and then look to see if they're harmful or not, and then make changes. I feel like it's a little reckless to go that direction. I feel there needs to be maybe more QA and R and D work before you start rolling stuff out to actual human beings out there. But maybe I'm just being too conservative in that case. Anyway, the parental controls will include alerts whenever a kid has made a purchase within VR apps, and will also include a dashboard listing off all the apps that the kid has access to UH as well as how much time they're spending in those VR environments, and parents will presumably have some control over all of that. Meta is bringing similar control features and educational material to its other platforms as well, including Instagram. The company is pretty clearly been on the defensive since Francis Hogan brought forward concerning internal documents indicating Meta's research into its products effects on younger users, which seemed to indicate that, you know, they're fairly negative. And we've also been concerned obviously about the company's intention to build out products that are specifically targeting younger demographics. So I feel like this is Meta's approach to addressing those concerns. Hopefully, uh, those methods that Meta takes will be sufficient. But of course we've got more bad news for Meta, and in this case, it's that Congress is calling on Meta to answer for a failure that could harm kids. That failure centers on Facebook Marketplace, the platforms online commerce tool where users can buy and sell various stuff, and at the heart of the matter is the issue of recalled products. UH. The United States CA Gris says that Meta has failed to prevent the sale of recalled products it could be harmful and have been harmful to children, and said that the failure is a quote remarkable dereliction of duty by your company on behalf of your users end quote. And this is not the first time that Congress has sent a letter to Facebook urging the company to take action on this very subject. In fact, lawmakers have been saying this to Meta leadership for for a few years now, and according to those lawmakers, the company has appeared to do little, if anything about it. USA Today investigated the issue and found instances of several recalled products appearing on Facebook Marketplace, and these were products that were associated with the deaths of more than one hundred children collectively, which is truly awful to think about, and they're still occasionally being bought and sold on the Facebook marketplace platform. And this is despite the availability of tools text and image recognition that could identify those kinds of listings and at least allow Facebook to block them. So, in other words, it is entirely possible for Meta to log and subsequently remove these posts, and yet the company fails to do so. However, let's talk about the law for a second. So currently in the United States, it is illegal to sell recalled products, Like if there's been a toy that's been recalled because it turns out it's toxic and kids could get sick if they were playing with it. Um, it is illegal to sell that. However, Facebook isn't actually selling anything in Facebook Marketplace. It is an online platform. It's facilitating sales, so it gives people a place where they can post and shop for stuff. But Facebook itself isn't the merchant. So just as websites shouldn't be held responsible for the stuff that used or is post to those websites, Facebook shouldn't be held liable for illegal products sold on marketplace because again, it's not like Facebook's the vendor that says the law stands now, there are some lawmakers in the US who are looking to draft legislation that would require online stores to take greater steps to prevent illegal sales. In the future, I imagine that Facebook and lots of other online store companies will take a few steps to address issues like this before that goes much further, because generally speaking, we typically see businesses and industries tackle these issues themselves before regulations get involved. And wrapping up on our let's dump on meta segment, let's have a somewhat goofy news item. Instagram issued a twenty four hour ban on Kanye West because something he posted violated Instagram's policies. Now, the specific post wasn't singled out, however, general consists of says that was likely to do with a post Kanye made about Trevor Noah, the host of The Daily Show. Trevor Noah had made some humorous commentary about the ongoing drama between Kanye West, Kanye West's ex wife Kim Kardashian, and Kim Kardashian's boyfriend Pete Davidson, and y'all, I'm old and I'm out of touch, so I am not the best person to give a full rundown on all the drama that's gone on here. I'm aware of it, but I haven't really been following it. However, I do think that, based on my limited knowledge of Kanye West, this was a very Kanye thing to have happened. All right, We've got more news items to get through before we get to that. Let's take another quick break. We're back the site Fast Company has a really interesting article. It has the headline to fight Disinformation, Follow the Money and the Ads, and it was written by Rob Peggararro. It's about an organization called check my Ads and it was founded by Nandini Jummy and Claire Atkin. The focus of this organization is to defund disinformation, and the two co founders made the case that disinformation campaigns are funded. They make money, not by just posting on social networks like that's not really where money comes in to these organizations. If if that were hill they depended upon revenue, they would fade away because they don't make enough that way. Instead, it's attracting people to owned and operated websites that heavily feature advertising and you know web ads. That's the basic revenue plan we see across the web, and in many of these cases, companies that use certain ad exchanges, that is, a company that broker's ads right like it takes in orders from cli ants and then places those ads on websites well, certain add exchanges might end up running ads against content that their clients would rather not be associated with. Uh. There have been lots of cases with this. In fact, the Sleeping Giants organization, which is related in a way at least it's it's connected to check my Ads, has long been pointing out how ads for certain companies have appeared on let's say, controversial sites with the question of hey, are you okay with your ad being posted against this article, and that has often resulted in various companies pulling their ads from those companies and telling ad exchanges, hey, we don't want you to place our ads on sites like this one. So that's kind of what checked my Ads is all about, is like helping identify where these instances are happening in an effort to defund those websites and take away the money that allows these disinformation campaigns to exist in the first place. And the whole article is well worth a read. The co founders make a plead to business owners. They tell business owners, Hey, you guys need to be really good stewards of your brands. You need to be aware of where you're advertising is going, and uh, you need to take a more proactive approach to being sure that the sites where your ads are showing up a line with the vision of your company. So interesting article, I recommend you check it out. Hey, do you log into Netflix using someone else's account? Because I know that happens a lot. I've actually got friends who have casually mentioned that they use a log in that belongs to someone else in order to get on Netflix. Obviously, Netflix would really prefer people not do that. Netflix is always gonna want everyone to have their own subscription, and now what sounds like Netflix is looking at a way to actively discourage that behavior. Namely, Netflix is going to try and identify accounts that are shared across multiple users and then charge those accounts more for a Netflix subscription. So you if you are borrowing login information, you might find that that login password has mysteriously changed, because it might turn out that your parents, or your old college roommate or whomever doesn't want to have to pay more for their Netflix account just so you're freeloading butt can watch the next season of Love Island or whatever. I don't know. I don't even watch Netflix anymore. But at the moment, Netflix is just doing a limited test on this policy in Costa Rica, in Chile and Peru, and the company has also stated that it will let account holders allow the folks using the account sharing the account to quote transfer profile information either to a new account or an extra member sub account, thus keeping the viewing history my list in personalized recommendations end quote. Presumably Netflix will monitor the effects of this policy in the test countries before rolling it out or tweaking it, and then rolling it out worldwide. But this is just a heads up if you happen to rely on a shared account to access Netflix. Also, I imagine other streaming services are going to watch this closely, and I would not be shocked to see similar policies on other services follow suit. At long last, the James web Space telescope has taken the first fully focused image of a star in what was essentially a test to make sure that the telescope is working properly. And it is, and that's not a trivial thing. I mean, way back when the Hubble Space Telescope first came online, NASA was somewhat dismade to discover that a manufacturing error meant the telescope was out of focus and there was no way to fix it without sending people up there. So NASA sent up missions of astronauts to install some additional equipment on the Hubble and address those errors. That's something that's not possible with the James Webb Space Telescope because it's at a much further out orbit. It's beyond the Moon and we can't get there. So the test image was of a star that has a name that involves so many numbers. There's no point in me saying the name of the star here because honestly, it would sound like I was making a joke. You'd say, oh, he's just rattling off random numbers at this point. So it doesn't have an easy name like Bob. Anyway, the shutter speed on the imaging equipment was beyond slow. The exposure lasted thirty five minutes, So imagine for a moment that you have to sit perfectly still for thirty five minutes while you're taking your next selfie. But that long exposure time allows the telescope to collect as much light as it can in order to image incredibly faint objects out in space. The test is a great indication that the telescope will work as it was design. Mind though, it will still take several weeks of minor adjustments and tweaking to tune the telescope so that it can get down to some serious work. Cosmologically speaking, considering all the delays and challenges around this particular space telescope, it's pretty astounding to see it working like this, and it really stands as a triumph of science and engineering. Finally, I'll have to do a full episode about this next news item, but I just wanted to share a quick reference to it. So IBM in Video and various researchers published a paper with the wonderful title b AM or BAM a Case for enabling fine grain high throughput GPU orchestrated access to storage. And in this case, BAM doesn't refer to Emerald Legassi throwing garlic on something. It stands for a big accelerator memory and the goal is to remove something that can otherwise throttle the machine learning process, which is the connection between processors and storage. The BAM system proposes a design that connects GPUs or graphics processing units straight to s s d s or solid state drives, so the s s d s serve as memory and storage. And because GPUs typically emphasize parallel processing applications, they are well suited for machine learning applications. And keep in mind that machine learning is all about training computer systems to do something uh and it can really be like just about anything. For example, you might use very large data sets to train a computer system to look for signs when criminal organizations are attempting to launder money using cryptocurrency. That could be one use of machine learning. It doesn't have to be like that weighty. You could train a system to become better at natural language recognition and be able to interact with people more naturally. Historically, the path between processors and storage has created kind of a traffic jam in machine learning applications, so this proposed architecture could alleviate that. And like I said, I'll have to read up on this further and maybe do a full episode about it in the future. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, I welcome you to reach out and let me know about your ideas. The best way to do that is over on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah. 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.

Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and how the tech are you. It is March twenty twenty two, and I would like to begin this episode of tech Stuff News with an apology. This goes out to all my Irish listeners out there, and just know that the following message is really for all my fellow Americans. Top of the podcast to yeah and happy St Patrick's day. Toy to toy to toy. All right, I got that all the way again, mice. Sincerest. Apologies. Also, you might hear a little bit of background noise in this episode might sound a little different. That's because I am actually in the office recording today. Had to be here for some other reasons. And uh, hey, there's folks here. It's like I haven't seen people in so long. It's kind of nice. But let's get to the news. Bleeping Computer reports that Russia is facing a cloud crunch in the near future. According to the Russian news outlet Commercant, the country could run out of cloud storage space within as little as two months now. This is largely because the major cloud storage providers are companies that have pulled out of Russia in the wake of that country's invasion of Ukraine. The news outlet also reported that at a meeting to discuss this issue, there was a proposal to convert domestic services within Russia over to cloud storage services, as well as potentially seizing the assets of companies that once operated within Russia that have since left. In other words, if say Amazon was operating a data center in Russia, that Russia might potentially sees those assets and use them for their own kind of an imminent domain thing. Other options include cutting off some media streaming services and then reallocating those assets to cloud storage, which wouldn't necessarily be a big popular move for Russian citizens. There's also the chance that Russia will turn to Chinese cloud services, but that's not a guarantee because well, it depends upon China's cooperation. Russia has recently been investing heavily in surveillance systems and facial recognition technology and smart city tech, and all of those rely upon a robust cloud storage foundation. So we'll have to see what Russia does because that clock is ticking. Also, since we mentioned China earlier. The US government has sent a message to China Telecom, which I'm sure you've gathered as a telecommunications company from China, and China Telecom currently provides services in America. Uh, but we'll have to stop that within sixty days due to this government order. An issue here is a concern that a telecommunications company potentially has access to a ton of information and represents a critical component for a country's infrastructure. And China and the US have had, uh, let's say, a tenuous relationship. And also the Chinese Communist government is notoriously hands on when it comes to you know, companies in China, whether those are native companies or companies operating within China. So there is a legit fear that a Chinese company could act like a spy or a general surveillance tool on the US and pass information along to the Chinese government. There's also a worry that should the relationship between US and China get worse, that a telecom company from China could end up causing massive problems in the US as communications infrastructure, you know, by cutting off operations or otherwise just inter hearing with day to day life. And we saw this happen previously. We saw a very similar approach with Huawei. That's a company that had provided a lot of networking components to telecom companies throughout the United States, and then the US government said get rid of all those and we're kind of in that process now. A lot of the smaller I s p s have a little bit more time to get rid of those those components and replace them with stuff from other companies. We've also seen similar pushback on TikTok, which of course is owned by a Chinese conglomerate called byte Dance. Anyway, China Telecom released a statement saying that the company plans to quote pursue all available options while continuing to serve our customers end quote. So we'll have to see where this goes. U S Senator Elizabeth Warren and US House Representative Mandare Jones have introduced legislation in their respective Houses of Congress, and it's called the Prohibiting Anti Competitive Mergers Act or HAMMA p A m A. And while this isn't explicitly about tech companies, Warren has said that she was really keeping those companies in mind in particular while drafting the legislation. Essentially, if this is signed into law, the act would ban any massive mergers that were worth more than five billion dollars or that would provide market shares beyond for employers or thirty three for sellers. So it's meant to encourage a more competitive marketplace and prevent companies from consolidating power. And it's also meant to beef up regulator powers when reviewing proposed mergers and to expand on reasons that regulators might prevent such mergers should they represent any kind of anti competitive practices. Not only that, but it would also allow for retroactive review and the reversal of acquisitions and mergers. So not only would this give regulators more authority moving forward, they could actually look back on pre existing deals and force companies to divest themselves of certain acquisitions. So immediately I think about companies like Google and Meta, with Meta positively leaping to mind because that company has a long history of acquiring other social platforms and services that we're seen as threats to Meta's claim on our free time. I mean, like that, that's pretty widely known that the reason why Meta, which at the time was you know, Facebook, purchased Instagram. It was because Instagram was taking up a lot of people's time and Facebook just couldn't compete, so rather than compete, they bought it. Now, this act has got a pretty broad reach, and it's one that I imagine is going to get a lot of resistance before it moves any further through the system. It's likely going to be an uphill battle to pass this bill in the Senate. And there's also no conservative co sponsors on either version of this bill, so no Republicans have co sponsored it. That's kind of an indication that we're probably gonna see some resistance here. If somehow this does pass into law, it would obviously change things dramatically, not just for tech but for all industry. It's just we probably see it very acutely in the tech space. For one thing, we would see stuff like Microsoft's planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard that would get nixed right away because that deal is valued at nearly sixty nine billion dollars. That's well over the five billion dollar threshold. But we'll have to wait and see where this goes from here. One other acquisition that the PAMA legislation would have prevented is Amazon's acquisition of MGM, the movie and television studio. That deal is worth more than eight billion Smackaroo's, so again above that five billion threshold. However, the FTC did not make a public response about the deal, like there was an a period open for that to happen, and the FTC took no action. Also, in the EU, the Antitrust Commission already approved the acquisition, So in the EU it got the green light, and it looks like Amazon now owns MGM. Now, this could be one of those deals that the proposed legislation would later reverse, right like, if that proposed PAMMA Act passes, then presumably even with this deal going through now, later on regulators could force Amazon to divest itself of MGM. But again, I would be surprised if that PAMMA bill actually does become law. The EU Commission said that there was very limited overlap between Amazon and MGM, so saying that the acquisition would not be anti competitive because it's not like they were actually reducing the number of companies that are in the same market. The acquisition will mean that Amazon gets a big boost in content, though not all the content ever created by MGM. That story gets super complicated because different parties have acquired different sections of MGMs library over the years. Uh, but it would include stuff like the James Bond franchise, which obviously very valuable. I might do a series about the history and evolution of MGM in the future. It's pretty complicated, but I've done similar episodes about Warner Brothers and some other studios, and MGM obviously is another important one. Anyway, this is a continuation of a trend of consolidation of media, and now Amazon Prime Video will have tons of MGM content on it, while Discovery and Warner Media are in the process emerging and bringing all their content together. So maybe you could argue that this specific example isn't inherently anti competitive, but the general trend I think perhaps is Okay, We've got a lot more stories to go through, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break now to talk about an acquisition that's on a smaller scale. Google is buying a company called Raxium, which produces micro l e d s for displays. L E d s are light emitting diodes, and the micro l e ED space is kind of positioned to compete against the predominant standard bearer, which is oh LED technology. Reportedly, Google's interest in micro l e d S is related to the development of augmented reality technology. Google has a long history dabbling in a R, the Google Glass project being a very early example of that. But presumably whatever Google has in mind is going to be more robust and a more immersive approach to a R in the future, and it appears that this micro led tech will play a part in that in some form of display most likely. And Apple has done similar things that actually acquired a different micro led company. In fact, I think that happened way back in As to when we might actually see products from Google that incorporate this technology, that's probably gonna take a while, And considering Google's track record with hardware, it might take even longer for folks to feel comfortable adopting it because Google has a long history of introducing products, only too in support for those products, like a year or two later. Uh. It's hard to get behind the idea of buying hardware from Google simply because there is this long history of Google saying that didn't work, let's just stop supporting it. And then you've got this very expensive paper weight that you know, over time can do less and less because of that lack of support. Over in Europe, a French cloud services company called O v A Cloud has filed a complaint alleging that Microsoft is in violation of antitrust measures in the EU. Now, according to the complaint, Microsoft charges a different rate for its Office suite of products if you use a different cloud platform then Microsoft's own Azure. So in other words, if you have a customer that wants to use say O v H Cloud for its cloud platform, but still needs to rely on Microsoft Office products for productivity software, then it would have to pay more for that office software suite than it would if they just went all in with Microsoft. Oh v H Cloud says this practice is anti competitive and it's meant to discourage customers from seeking out any alternatives from Microsoft. And on the one hand, you might say, you know, bundled services have kind of always been a thing and typically you pay less would you bundle things together. But on the other hand, you have to keep in mind that there are some companies that only provide a subset of those services, like a cloud platform. So you know, O v H Cloud doesn't necessarily have a productivity suite, so they can't compete on apples to apples with Microsoft, and so you might really love o v H clouds product, you might love their customer service. You might think that's the superior cloud platform. But you know, you probably also need a productivity suite. So you as a customer might be more inclined to just go all in with Microsoft because it's cheaper and easier. And that doesn't mean that Microsoft is providing a better experience. It's just, you know, it's it's giving you an incentive anyway. Ov H cloud has filed the complaint, but there's no word as of yet on what happens next or whether Microsoft has even received a formal notice of the complaint yet. Over in California, state lawmakers have proposed new legislation that would give parents the opportunity to sue social networking platforms for getting their kids addicted to social media. And this is a pretty complicated issue, and I can actually view it from a couple of different perspectives. So one perspective is that I could see someone saying it's really the responsibility of parents and schools to monitor kids and to teach them and to help them arm themselves with knowledge and prevent them from getting addicted in the first place, So why would we hold companies accountable for things that parents and school should be doing. And there's some merit to that argument, I would say. But another view that I can see, and I also find merit in, is that companies like say Meta, devote an awful lot of time coming up with ways to entice people to come to and then stay on their platforms. In fact, almost all of Meta's business hinges on attracting and retaining users for as much of their time as is possible. In other words, companies like Meta have built their business around creating addictive experiences. So from that perspective, Meta and other companies like it absolutely bear some of the responsibility for kids getting addicted to social media. So the reality is a complex one, and I think there's actually a plenty of accountability to go around. I don't think we can assign it all to just one party anyway. This proposed law would allow parents to file class action lawsuits against companies that provided services that their children subsequently became addicted to, and the fine would be about a thousand dollars per child UH or twenty five dollars per child in the case of civil penalty cases. Uh, the legislation does allow for some safe harbor protections if companies meet certain requirements that indicate they are taking quote basic steps to avoid addicting children in quote. So in other words, if a company could show that it's at least doing the bare minimum to try and prevent kids from being hooked on their services, then they should be in the clear. Also, UH, companies that generate less than one million dollars in revenue per year would be excluded, and that I find really interesting. I mean, I get the risk of big tech because I mean, we we've all heard the stories, like we've seen the internal documents from Meta, and you know, the fact is that companies like Meta really are a major issue, a major concern. However, to me, it's a little strange to say, if you happen to create experiences that are meant to be addictive to children, but you make less than a hundred million dollars a year, you're to it's okay that that doesn't sit well with me. But maybe I'm just interpreting this incorrectly. Three years after getting into the VR space, Facebook or I really should say, Meta says it's going to roll out parental supervision controls for VR experiences. Now, that's definitely important because we've already seen several reports about how abusive folks in VR environments can be amazingly awful to other people, and they could be a really traumatic experience. There's a legit concern for the health and safety of children and VR spaces like Meta's Horizon Worlds, where again we've already seen evidence of predatory behaviors, something you definitely don't want kids to be exposed to. Now, I should add that Meta has stated that the Quest It's it's main VR product, is intended for users who are a thirteen or older, but that doesn't mean younger kids aren't still using it. In fact, there's no real way to prevent that from happening, and heck, thirteen, I would argue, it's still pretty freaking young, and the potential harm that we're talking about can be significant. So I think that rolling out these parental controls is an important step. I also think it's well overdue. Uh. I have an issue with Meta in general because I feel like the company treats the general public like guinea pigs. It will roll out services on a really broad scale and then look to see if they're harmful or not, and then make changes. I feel like it's a little reckless to go that direction. I feel there needs to be maybe more QA and R and D work before you start rolling stuff out to actual human beings out there. But maybe I'm just being too conservative in that case. Anyway, the parental controls will include alerts whenever a kid has made a purchase within VR apps, and will also include a dashboard listing off all the apps that the kid has access to UH as well as how much time they're spending in those VR environments, and parents will presumably have some control over all of that. Meta is bringing similar control features and educational material to its other platforms as well, including Instagram. The company is pretty clearly been on the defensive since Francis Hogan brought forward concerning internal documents indicating Meta's research into its products effects on younger users, which seemed to indicate that, you know, they're fairly negative. And we've also been concerned obviously about the company's intention to build out products that are specifically targeting younger demographics. So I feel like this is Meta's approach to addressing those concerns. Hopefully, uh, those methods that Meta takes will be sufficient. But of course we've got more bad news for Meta, and in this case, it's that Congress is calling on Meta to answer for a failure that could harm kids. That failure centers on Facebook Marketplace, the platforms online commerce tool where users can buy and sell various stuff, and at the heart of the matter is the issue of recalled products. UH. The United States CA Gris says that Meta has failed to prevent the sale of recalled products it could be harmful and have been harmful to children, and said that the failure is a quote remarkable dereliction of duty by your company on behalf of your users end quote. And this is not the first time that Congress has sent a letter to Facebook urging the company to take action on this very subject. In fact, lawmakers have been saying this to Meta leadership for for a few years now, and according to those lawmakers, the company has appeared to do little, if anything about it. USA Today investigated the issue and found instances of several recalled products appearing on Facebook Marketplace, and these were products that were associated with the deaths of more than one hundred children collectively, which is truly awful to think about, and they're still occasionally being bought and sold on the Facebook marketplace platform. And this is despite the availability of tools text and image recognition that could identify those kinds of listings and at least allow Facebook to block them. So, in other words, it is entirely possible for Meta to log and subsequently remove these posts, and yet the company fails to do so. However, let's talk about the law for a second. So currently in the United States, it is illegal to sell recalled products, Like if there's been a toy that's been recalled because it turns out it's toxic and kids could get sick if they were playing with it. Um, it is illegal to sell that. However, Facebook isn't actually selling anything in Facebook Marketplace. It is an online platform. It's facilitating sales, so it gives people a place where they can post and shop for stuff. But Facebook itself isn't the merchant. So just as websites shouldn't be held responsible for the stuff that used or is post to those websites, Facebook shouldn't be held liable for illegal products sold on marketplace because again, it's not like Facebook's the vendor that says the law stands now, there are some lawmakers in the US who are looking to draft legislation that would require online stores to take greater steps to prevent illegal sales. In the future, I imagine that Facebook and lots of other online store companies will take a few steps to address issues like this before that goes much further, because generally speaking, we typically see businesses and industries tackle these issues themselves before regulations get involved. And wrapping up on our let's dump on meta segment, let's have a somewhat goofy news item. Instagram issued a twenty four hour ban on Kanye West because something he posted violated Instagram's policies. Now, the specific post wasn't singled out, however, general consists of says that was likely to do with a post Kanye made about Trevor Noah, the host of The Daily Show. Trevor Noah had made some humorous commentary about the ongoing drama between Kanye West, Kanye West's ex wife Kim Kardashian, and Kim Kardashian's boyfriend Pete Davidson, and y'all, I'm old and I'm out of touch, so I am not the best person to give a full rundown on all the drama that's gone on here. I'm aware of it, but I haven't really been following it. However, I do think that, based on my limited knowledge of Kanye West, this was a very Kanye thing to have happened. All right, We've got more news items to get through before we get to that. Let's take another quick break. We're back the site Fast Company has a really interesting article. It has the headline to fight Disinformation, Follow the Money and the Ads, and it was written by Rob Peggararro. It's about an organization called check my Ads and it was founded by Nandini Jummy and Claire Atkin. The focus of this organization is to defund disinformation, and the two co founders made the case that disinformation campaigns are funded. They make money, not by just posting on social networks like that's not really where money comes in to these organizations. If if that were hill they depended upon revenue, they would fade away because they don't make enough that way. Instead, it's attracting people to owned and operated websites that heavily feature advertising and you know web ads. That's the basic revenue plan we see across the web, and in many of these cases, companies that use certain ad exchanges, that is, a company that broker's ads right like it takes in orders from cli ants and then places those ads on websites well, certain add exchanges might end up running ads against content that their clients would rather not be associated with. Uh. There have been lots of cases with this. In fact, the Sleeping Giants organization, which is related in a way at least it's it's connected to check my Ads, has long been pointing out how ads for certain companies have appeared on let's say, controversial sites with the question of hey, are you okay with your ad being posted against this article, and that has often resulted in various companies pulling their ads from those companies and telling ad exchanges, hey, we don't want you to place our ads on sites like this one. So that's kind of what checked my Ads is all about, is like helping identify where these instances are happening in an effort to defund those websites and take away the money that allows these disinformation campaigns to exist in the first place. And the whole article is well worth a read. The co founders make a plead to business owners. They tell business owners, Hey, you guys need to be really good stewards of your brands. You need to be aware of where you're advertising is going, and uh, you need to take a more proactive approach to being sure that the sites where your ads are showing up a line with the vision of your company. So interesting article, I recommend you check it out. Hey, do you log into Netflix using someone else's account? Because I know that happens a lot. I've actually got friends who have casually mentioned that they use a log in that belongs to someone else in order to get on Netflix. Obviously, Netflix would really prefer people not do that. Netflix is always gonna want everyone to have their own subscription, and now what sounds like Netflix is looking at a way to actively discourage that behavior. Namely, Netflix is going to try and identify accounts that are shared across multiple users and then charge those accounts more for a Netflix subscription. So you if you are borrowing login information, you might find that that login password has mysteriously changed, because it might turn out that your parents, or your old college roommate or whomever doesn't want to have to pay more for their Netflix account just so you're freeloading butt can watch the next season of Love Island or whatever. I don't know. I don't even watch Netflix anymore. But at the moment, Netflix is just doing a limited test on this policy in Costa Rica, in Chile and Peru, and the company has also stated that it will let account holders allow the folks using the account sharing the account to quote transfer profile information either to a new account or an extra member sub account, thus keeping the viewing history my list in personalized recommendations end quote. Presumably Netflix will monitor the effects of this policy in the test countries before rolling it out or tweaking it, and then rolling it out worldwide. But this is just a heads up if you happen to rely on a shared account to access Netflix. Also, I imagine other streaming services are going to watch this closely, and I would not be shocked to see similar policies on other services follow suit. At long last, the James web Space telescope has taken the first fully focused image of a star in what was essentially a test to make sure that the telescope is working properly. And it is, and that's not a trivial thing. I mean, way back when the Hubble Space Telescope first came online, NASA was somewhat dismade to discover that a manufacturing error meant the telescope was out of focus and there was no way to fix it without sending people up there. So NASA sent up missions of astronauts to install some additional equipment on the Hubble and address those errors. That's something that's not possible with the James Webb Space Telescope because it's at a much further out orbit. It's beyond the Moon and we can't get there. So the test image was of a star that has a name that involves so many numbers. There's no point in me saying the name of the star here because honestly, it would sound like I was making a joke. You'd say, oh, he's just rattling off random numbers at this point. So it doesn't have an easy name like Bob. Anyway, the shutter speed on the imaging equipment was beyond slow. The exposure lasted thirty five minutes, So imagine for a moment that you have to sit perfectly still for thirty five minutes while you're taking your next selfie. But that long exposure time allows the telescope to collect as much light as it can in order to image incredibly faint objects out in space. The test is a great indication that the telescope will work as it was design. Mind though, it will still take several weeks of minor adjustments and tweaking to tune the telescope so that it can get down to some serious work. Cosmologically speaking, considering all the delays and challenges around this particular space telescope, it's pretty astounding to see it working like this, and it really stands as a triumph of science and engineering. Finally, I'll have to do a full episode about this next news item, but I just wanted to share a quick reference to it. So IBM in Video and various researchers published a paper with the wonderful title b AM or BAM a Case for enabling fine grain high throughput GPU orchestrated access to storage. And in this case, BAM doesn't refer to Emerald Legassi throwing garlic on something. It stands for a big accelerator memory and the goal is to remove something that can otherwise throttle the machine learning process, which is the connection between processors and storage. The BAM system proposes a design that connects GPUs or graphics processing units straight to s s d s or solid state drives, so the s s d s serve as memory and storage. And because GPUs typically emphasize parallel processing applications, they are well suited for machine learning applications. And keep in mind that machine learning is all about training computer systems to do something uh and it can really be like just about anything. For example, you might use very large data sets to train a computer system to look for signs when criminal organizations are attempting to launder money using cryptocurrency. That could be one use of machine learning. It doesn't have to be like that weighty. You could train a system to become better at natural language recognition and be able to interact with people more naturally. Historically, the path between processors and storage has created kind of a traffic jam in machine learning applications, so this proposed architecture could alleviate that. And like I said, I'll have to read up on this further and maybe do a full episode about it in the future. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, I welcome you to reach out and let me know about your ideas. The best way to do that is over on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah. 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.