Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I 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? Is time for the tech news for Tuesday, January eleven, twenty twenty two. And one of the big stories from last year was about how companies like Google and Apple are being challenged around the world for having effectively a closed off ecosystem when it comes to in app payments. The too long, didn't read version of that is that Google and Apple typically require app developers to use their in house payment systems for all customer purchases within an app. So we're talking about like virtual purpose purchases. This isn't the same rules don't apply if you're talking about things like rye haling or ordering a pizza like a real pizza. Anyway, this was something that video game studio Epic challenged with their game Fortnite when they gave gamers an opportunity to kind of circumvent these rules, and that led to all these different lawsuits they got filed between Epic and and notably Apple, but Google was also involved. Anyway, now you can actually choose a different payment option within apps than just the you know, in house payment option if you happen to live in South Korea. That is, because South Korea passed a law that bans app stores from forcing apps to use the stores payment system. Apple claims to already be in compliance with the law in South Korea, while Google said it was working on it. And at the heart of this is the concept of anti competitive practices. After all, if you tell folks that your system is the only game in town, well that's that's not competitive by definition. And so we've seen courts and governments around the world pushback against that practice. Now whether we'll see other countries follow South Korea's lead remains to be seen, but we have been seeing some movement in various court cases that are in theory at least forcing these companies to change their practices. In other Apple news, Bloomberg's Mark German recently blogged that Apple seems uninterested in the whole metaverse concept, more specifically in the company meta as in former Facebook Meta their vision for what the metaverse will be. And I think that's really interesting since Apple may actually unveil a mixed reality headset sometime this year. That not so secret project at Apple has been rumored for a few years now, and yet the company really hasn't acknowledged it publicly, at least not as far as I'm aware. This might be the year that changes all of that. According to German, it sounds like Apple's strategy is to take a more augmented reality versus virtual reality approach. Augmented reality is when you have a headset that allows you or some other method doesn't have to be a headset, but you have a technology that allows you to actually see the world around you, like the real world. You can see it, and then the system overlays digital information on top of your real world view. So it doesn't have to be a headset. It could be something like a smart window or just an app on your phone that can display information over your view of the real world. Um but the way I typically think of it as like a pair of glasses that could give you, say, directions as you make your way to a secret location to meet up with your undercover contact or whatever. Hi Jeff. Anyway, it sounds like Apple isn't on board with the metaverse approach and views VR as something that should be done as a sometimes activity, you know, like cookie monster now knows that cookies are just as sometimes food instead of like treating VR as a way where we should all interface with each other and the world around us through this metaverse thing. Now, I'm kind of on board with that idea, because I suspect if the metaverse really does become a thing, and I'm still very skeptical of that, I'm skeptical that will become something more than just little pockets of islands operated by single companies like Facebook. If it ever does become a big thing, I suspect I'm going to be the equivalent of a hermit and not be a participant in that ecosystem. That's just my guess. Over in Europe, Google is trying to sway EU Parliament members to ease off a bit on language contained in a proposed law called the Digital Markets Act or d m A. According to Javier Espinosa of The Financial Times, Google has spent buckets of cash on advertisements and action groups to convince lawmakers that placing regulations and restrictions on Google would be a really bad thing, particularly for small business owners. And one of the big factors in this law is the practice of promoting Google's own businesses within search. So you know how Google will serve up AD results as the first couple of entries on the search results page. Well, the issue here is that Google, according to the EU, tends to promote its own businesses above other businesses and thus gives itself preferential treatment in a marketplace that it controls. So think of it like this. Imagine that you go to a grocery store. I'm in the southeast. We'll call it Kroger, but you know it could be a g B or all these or whatever. You go into the Kroger, and all the Kroger brand items have prominent placement in all the different aisles, Like that's front and center. That's what you see, and all the other stuff from other companies is kind of hidden further back on shelves. That's kind of what the EU says Google has been doing. And it's something that another big tech company, namely Amazon, has been accused of doing. And even Apple has been lumped in here with the way Apple prioritizes its own products on devices like the iPhone. So the d m A law would potentially make it illegal for Google and other big tech companies that merit the consideration of being a quote unquote gatekeeper, it would make that that practice illegal for them. Now. I don't know how effective Google's lobbying campaign has been, but based off the people that Espinosa quotes in his piece and in the Financial Times, it sounds to me as though lawmakers are not really swayed by Google's arguments. Over Here in the United States, Google is getting called out for an internal project called Project Vivian, which was active from two thousand eighteen to two thousand twenty. So what was the project about? Well, according to the National Labor Relations Board or in l r B, the project was all about convincing Google employees that organizing and unionizing is you know, it's such a hassle, they shouldn't do it, Okay, Like, come on, folks, come on, let's all go to the cafe, get some pretzels. Okay. So, according to the n l RB, Google's director of Employment Law, a guy named Michael phil said, Project Vivian was designed quote to engage employees more positively and convince them that unions suck end quote Huh yeah, that sounds legit. And n l r B judge has ruled that Google must hand over one eighty internal documents related to Project Vivian, which up to now, Google has shown no intention of sharing. That might change with this judge's ruling remains to be seen. So what does Google have to say about this project. Well, mother Board reports that a Google spokesperson said, quote, the underlying case here has nothing to do with unionization. It's about employees breaching clear security protocols to access confidential information and systems inappropriately. End quote. I personally remained skeptical of that. Google has fired employees for those on those grounds. At least that's what the company has said. Sometimes the employees say no, it's because we were speaking out against practices that we viewed as being harmful or unfair or dangerous, and we got punished as a result when we were trying to get support for our point of view. So this is a continuation of issues that that originate several years back. So we'll have to keep an eye out to see how this continues. Now, I have a question for you. Have you ever had to go through the process of a job performance review. If so, you've probably encountered some kind of ratings system that explains that you are performing at or above or below expectations, But why have you just got kind of an overall rank compared to your fellow employees and no details? Like does that even sound practical? I mean, if you are told that you stink as an employee, but there's no elaboration, then how would anyone expect for you to improve? How could you take action to be a better employee if you don't know where the problems are. That's kind of at the heart of a situation that's brewing over at Amazon. So a former employee named Pat mcgawe, who was a drone engineer at Amazon, quit the company last year. And why did he quit? Well, he was told he was one of the least effective members of his team. However, he says he wasn't given any actual useful information on what led managers to designate him as being one of the least effective members on this team. He is told he could either submit a thirty day plan to show how he would improve his performance, which again, it's pretty hard if you're not really told where your performance is lacking in the first place. Or he could leave the company with a severance package. So he took that option. Now he is scheduled to provide testimony in a lawmaking session in the state of Washington, that's where Amazon is headquartered. And this is all part of a bill that's kind of been in limbo for about a year. That bill, if it were signed into law, would require employers to provide their employees their personnel thoughts, their specific personnel files, something that Mega says that Amazon has refused to do for him. Uh. Now, of course this is not a law yet, and macgau's testimony is just part of the proceedings that will you know, in theory, convinced lawmakers whether or not the bill is merited merited or if they should just you know, abandon it. Now. If the bill does pass, it could mean we all see some pretty significant changes in HR practices in the state of Washington. As I understand it, Amazon has a mandate to managers where they have to designate a certain percentage of their direct reports as being least effective, right, you know, like the whole idea being Okay, Well, if you're looking at the performance of all your employees, some of them are going to be high performers, some of them are going to be typical, and some will be least effective, and Amazon apparently has specific percentages of people who have to fall into that, which seems like counterintuitive to me. If I had a big workforce underneath me and everybody is operating at essentially the same level, then that would mean that I would have to arbitrarily choose which employees fall into that percentage to merit being the least effective. I think that might be what's at the heart of this issue here. Well, we have some more stories to cover, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. We're back in Japan. The company Panasonic announced it will offer a four day work week schedule for its employees as part of an effort to motivate its workforce and to attract new talent. There's been a lot in the news lately of the talent shortage. You've got a lot of folks who are making the decision to leave their jobs and demand better working conditions and better compensation and benefits. And many studies show that a reduced work week can actually boost productivity. And this is kind of in line with Parkinson's law, which isn't really a law, just like Moore's law isn't really a law. Instead, Parkinson's law is more of a humorous observation. It was made by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in the nineteen fifties, and the observation says work will expand to fill the time allotted for work. So, in other words, let's say you've got a project and you've figured out reasonably that this project should take about three days to complete when assigned to a team of five people. Right, that's what you have determined. And you get two different teams of five people, and the two teams are of roughly equal ability, and they have access to the same resources in order to complete the task. And you give team number one the three days to do it, but you tell team number two they get a full week to do it. Now, according to Parkinson's law, team one will take the full three days, but they'll get the job done. Team two will do the same job, have the same level of output, like the same level of of satisfaction with that job, but it will have taken them the full five days to do it. Now. Again, this was meant to be a humorous observation, but here's the thing, it kind of plays out that way for real zs. The Washington Post reported that when Microsoft experimented with a four day work week. Also in Japan, productivity actually increased by so assuming that it was a work week of five days a week and they were reduced it down to four, that means a reduction in time at the office needed at improvement in productivity, and by that logic, it means if we never came into work at all, we would be incredibly productive. All right, that's just an absurd joke, but there really are plenty of cases in which a reduced work week prompted better performance. And in an era where attracting talent is going to become even more competitive, it might be a key strategy for some companies to start shifting to a four day work week. Now does that mean we're going to see that practice adopted in other countries besides Japan, I don't know. In fact, I was shocked to learn that workers in the United States actually put in more hours on an average week then your typical worker does in Japan. I always just assumed that, you know, the Japanese culture was so work centric that people in Japan were working much longer hours than people in America. But apparently, uh the Organization for Economic Cooperation found otherwise listing the United States as number eleven for most hours worked on average, and Japan ranked all the way down at twenty six. So that shows me video game company Take two Interactive, which is famous for publishing games like Borderlands, BioShock, and Grand Theft Auto, has a hankering for farming. And by that I mean the company has announced it intends to acquire the mobile game company Zinga in a deal that edges real darn close to thirteen billion dollars billion with a B. Now, the transaction would actually not just be a cash transaction. It would also include many, many, many shares of Take Two's common stock. Zinga, in case you're not aware, is famous for a bunch of uber popular social and mobile games like Farmville, that one being the infamous one, and Words with Friends, among others. So if this deal moves forward and it's not challenged by shareholders or various regulatory bodies, it should all be wrapped up by early twenty three. And honestly, I totally see how this makes sense. I mean, look at a game like Grand Theft Auto five. That video game came out in September of two thousand thirteen, and nearly a decade later, g t A Online, which is a part of g t A five, continues to be a big money maker for the company now. In that sense, the game is a lot like a lot of mobile games, which operate kind of like a game as a service. Some mobile games allow players to play the game in return for watching ads, so they generate revenue through ad views and they just continue to do that for as long as there's a player base. Some of them allow players to purchase the game outright, and that way they can play it without ads, but you know, they've actually ponied up cash to buy the game. Uh. And a lot of mobile games use various incentives to convince players to fork over money a little bit at a time in order for the players to access certain in game options like the ability to play one more turn or get access to certain in game materials. In other words, we've been seeing a convergence in how game publishers do business, using games to be an ongoing revenue generator rather than the model where you develop and release a title and you you know, the title cells as well as it sells, and then you move on to develop the next title, or even moving on to develop DLC connected to that original title. That model, you know, the revenue comes in blasts when you release a new game, but you don't have that long tail of revenue the way you do with these ongoing experiences like in mobile games, and we've seen more and more video and computer games kind of adopt that model. The deal would give Take to a much larger footprint in the mobile marketing space. I should add Take two does have mobile games in its portfolio, it's just that Zinga is really a giant name for mobile games, and presumably we would see more of Take two his properties get the mobile game treatment, and see a lot of related games coming out connected to things like Grand Theft, Auto and BioShock. This deal, assuming it moves forward, would be the largest video game acquisition deal in history. In fact, when Microsoft purchased Bethesda, the studio that's respond stable for the Elder Scrolls games, or as a lot of folks think of it, Skyrim UM and the Fallout games, that price tag was seven and a half billion dollars. And remember we're talking about Zinga being around thirteen billions. So yeah, this is a huge acquisition. One gadget that I think I talked about pretty early on last year was Razors Zefire mask, which they showed off at ce S twenty twenty one. Of course I didn't attend c e S one, but I remember seeing the mask being shown off, and I'm pretty sure I talked about it on tech stuff. Anyway, the mask looks a bit like the lower half of Darth Vader's mask, or maybe like one of the more futuristic Mortal Kombat Ninja masks. Uh. It has led lighting and it's got these little filtration events in it. Well. Originally, Razor was promoting the zeph Ear mask and the zeff ere Pro, which they unveiled at this past CS as masks that use filters that are of an IN grade in being the US standard for masks that filter out of tiny particles. So you know, they were saying it doesn't actually have an IN ninety five filter, but it has something that's comparable to an INN mask. However, now Razor appears to have walked that back. PC mag reports that Razor scrubbed references to in grade capabilities and its materials relating to the zef her Pro and switched over to the more vague descriptor of quote unquote air purification filters. The company released a tweet saying that quote the Razor Zephyr and those zef ere Pro are not medical devices, respirators, surgical masks, or personal protective equipped ppe and are not meant to be used in medical or clinical settings end quote. Now, Apparently an issue here is that while the mask has performed well in raisors internal tests and appears to show that it is equivalent to an IN nine mask, at least it appears to be, the technology has yet to be put through strenuous external tests. That is, experts need the chance to get their hands on the masks and determine if, in fact they actually meet the criteria to be considered in grade. So it doesn't necessarily mean that the masks aren't up to snuff. It just means that we can't be sure of it yet, and not being sure when it comes to equipment that you trust to provide protection against something like COVID, that's not really good enough. Now, my hope is that the external reviews will find that the zeph Your masks are effective and that they are in grade, and we can use that label and be confident in it. But we have to wait for the tests and the results of those tests to actually find out. I figure for the moment, it's good to look at them as like a really cool costume piece, um, and you know you're not planning on actually putting it to the test by wearing it in, say, like a crowded convention hall filled with people from all over the world, like I don't know, c E s. And instead when you go to something like that, First of all, I don't think you should go to something like that at all, But if you do have to go to it, use an in ninety five or K and mask like a real one and just save the the razor stuff for later. Okay, we've got a couple more stories before we conclude, and we're gonna take another quick break, all right. In some sad podcasting, Spotify has shut down its in house podcasting studio called Studio four. Now, first of all, you might wonder why was its in house studio called Studio four. Why did it have that name? Well, before Spotify had established its own podcasting studio, it had actually gone out and acquired other podcasting networks, namely Gimlet, The Wringer, and podcast. So those were the first three podcasting studios that Spotify owned, and then they made their own and called it Studio four, So it was really the fourth studio owned by Spotify. According to the Verge, folks at Studio for, we're perhaps feeling a little bit demoralized. Well before the company decided to give the studio the acts, uh, there were allegations that Spotify had lifted projects that were supposed to be Studio four podcasts but then assigned those to one of the other studios. So think of it like you're at a brainstorming meeting and you come up with a brilliant idea and you share it, and your boss says, that's a great idea, I'm gonna give it to Susie, and you're you're they're saying, but I'm I'm not Susie, and I'm the one who came up with the idea, and you're just shut out. That's kind of what the Studio for folks were saying was sort of happening to them. Also, it sounds like Studio four employees were frustrated that their work received little to no press or promotion, while some of the projects coming out of the other studios got a lot of attention. The affected employees are either going to be reassigned to other departments within Spotify or they're gonna get laid off. I'm hoping that everyone lands on their feet. Also, I remember reading that they were a little you know, upset and even just the name of the studio because it gives no sense of identity or direction, and they said it made them feel like they were leftovers, which is not a good feeling to have. I've been there myself, and that is not fun. So I'm sure that they will all find good spots to be in, whether it's at Spotify or somewhere else. My hope is that their talent will be well used in in an area that appreciates them. Uh. But yeah, that stinks. I hate to see it, even though I mean full disclosure. We can look at Spotify as being a competitor to I Heart Radio, particularly in the podcast space. But I don't want to see anyone like just lose their job or have their whole studio shut down. That's no, that's no bueno. Finally, in China, and Experimental Nuclear Fusion Facility has set a new record sustaining a fusion reaction for more than seventeen minutes Now, fusion is the process that stars go through as they produce energy, as the you know, classic song why does the Sunshine? Perhaps best known by the they Might Be Giants cover of that song. It originally appeared on a science album in the nineteen fifties, But they Might Be Giants really made it famous. That song says, quote, the Sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees end quote. Now there's some scientific errors in that song, which actually They Might Be Giants addressed in a a new version of the song called the Sun is a miasthma of incandescent plasma, So they got it covered. But anyway, what we're talking about here is the fusion process of taking hydrogen atoms in fusing them to make a helium adom, which is a reaction that also releases a tremendous amount of energy. Now in the Sun, this process continues because you've got intent heat and the incredible gravitational forces at play, and that sustains the reaction. Here on Earth, it's we can't really replicate that situation, right, We can't create a gravitational force akin to the core of the sun. So we have to use really powerful magnetic fields to control, contain, and create superheated plasma. There are lasers involved. It is awesome. Anyway, if we could get nuclear fusion to work in such a way that we are generating more energy than it required to initiate and maintain the reaction, we would be sitting pretty And that's because nuclear fusion doesn't have the same drawbacks as nuclear fission. That's how nuclear power plants that are producing energy that generates electricity, that's how they work. They work through fission, not fusion. They are splitting atoms, not fusing them. And with fusion, you're not dealing with dangerous rate acted materials like uranium. Uh, they're not dealing with dangerous radioactive wastes that have an incredibly long half life. Uh. You don't have to figure out where you're gonna store all that stuff, which gets around that political issue of where do we store nuclear waste. Nobody wants it anywhere close to them, so it becomes a real challenge and you could potentially harvest your quote unquote fuel from ocean water while generating plenty of energy for everyone, but we're not there yet. So far, the systems we built required more energy to produce and maintain a reaction than we get out of the reaction. But each of these experiments is a step toward really nailing it. The facility in China created a superheated plasma that reached around one six million degrees fahrenheit. For reference, the core of the Sun only gets up to about twenty seven million degrees fahrenheit, so it's positively chilly compared to the artificial sun that the Chinese facility created. Scientists plan to use the knowledge they gain from these experiments to make the next generation of experimental facilities work even better. Right now, engineers and scientists around the world are working together on a facility called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or either I t e ER. That project actually was first proposed way back in Construction didn't start until two thousand seven. Um it's still going on today. It's not fully built out, because I mean, these are like the most complicated technologies that we've ever worked on. I mean, it's it's like the Large Hadron collider was that before, and now either kind of takes that title. As as we speak. The planned first achievement of lasma has been projected to five so we're still a couple of years out from even producing plasma at Eider, and then the planned start of full operation would be a decade later. And this is still in the pathway of creating nuclear fusion as a way of practically generating electricity if we're really looking down a line, so even in we're not talking about a nuclear fusion plant that's producing electricity on a practical scale. Uh. In fact, there are already places that are looking at successors to Eider, and we ain't even got started doing science at Eider yet. Anyway, here's hoping all this work leads to a transformational solution for our energy requirements. It would be a huge, huge scientific achievement if we can nail nuclear fusion and make it practical here on Earth. Okay, that wraps up the news stories for Tuesday, January eleven, twenty you. I hope all of you are well. If you have any suggestions for topics I should tackle on tech Stuff in the future, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is text stuff h s W and I'll talk to you again. Really sick Y tech 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 tech Stuff, a production from I 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? Is time for the tech news for Tuesday, January eleven, twenty twenty two. And one of the big stories from last year was about how companies like Google and Apple are being challenged around the world for having effectively a closed off ecosystem when it comes to in app payments. The too long, didn't read version of that is that Google and Apple typically require app developers to use their in house payment systems for all customer purchases within an app. So we're talking about like virtual purpose purchases. This isn't the same rules don't apply if you're talking about things like rye haling or ordering a pizza like a real pizza. Anyway, this was something that video game studio Epic challenged with their game Fortnite when they gave gamers an opportunity to kind of circumvent these rules, and that led to all these different lawsuits they got filed between Epic and and notably Apple, but Google was also involved. Anyway, now you can actually choose a different payment option within apps than just the you know, in house payment option if you happen to live in South Korea. That is, because South Korea passed a law that bans app stores from forcing apps to use the stores payment system. Apple claims to already be in compliance with the law in South Korea, while Google said it was working on it. And at the heart of this is the concept of anti competitive practices. After all, if you tell folks that your system is the only game in town, well that's that's not competitive by definition. And so we've seen courts and governments around the world pushback against that practice. Now whether we'll see other countries follow South Korea's lead remains to be seen, but we have been seeing some movement in various court cases that are in theory at least forcing these companies to change their practices. In other Apple news, Bloomberg's Mark German recently blogged that Apple seems uninterested in the whole metaverse concept, more specifically in the company meta as in former Facebook Meta their vision for what the metaverse will be. And I think that's really interesting since Apple may actually unveil a mixed reality headset sometime this year. That not so secret project at Apple has been rumored for a few years now, and yet the company really hasn't acknowledged it publicly, at least not as far as I'm aware. This might be the year that changes all of that. According to German, it sounds like Apple's strategy is to take a more augmented reality versus virtual reality approach. Augmented reality is when you have a headset that allows you or some other method doesn't have to be a headset, but you have a technology that allows you to actually see the world around you, like the real world. You can see it, and then the system overlays digital information on top of your real world view. So it doesn't have to be a headset. It could be something like a smart window or just an app on your phone that can display information over your view of the real world. Um but the way I typically think of it as like a pair of glasses that could give you, say, directions as you make your way to a secret location to meet up with your undercover contact or whatever. Hi Jeff. Anyway, it sounds like Apple isn't on board with the metaverse approach and views VR as something that should be done as a sometimes activity, you know, like cookie monster now knows that cookies are just as sometimes food instead of like treating VR as a way where we should all interface with each other and the world around us through this metaverse thing. Now, I'm kind of on board with that idea, because I suspect if the metaverse really does become a thing, and I'm still very skeptical of that, I'm skeptical that will become something more than just little pockets of islands operated by single companies like Facebook. If it ever does become a big thing, I suspect I'm going to be the equivalent of a hermit and not be a participant in that ecosystem. That's just my guess. Over in Europe, Google is trying to sway EU Parliament members to ease off a bit on language contained in a proposed law called the Digital Markets Act or d m A. According to Javier Espinosa of The Financial Times, Google has spent buckets of cash on advertisements and action groups to convince lawmakers that placing regulations and restrictions on Google would be a really bad thing, particularly for small business owners. And one of the big factors in this law is the practice of promoting Google's own businesses within search. So you know how Google will serve up AD results as the first couple of entries on the search results page. Well, the issue here is that Google, according to the EU, tends to promote its own businesses above other businesses and thus gives itself preferential treatment in a marketplace that it controls. So think of it like this. Imagine that you go to a grocery store. I'm in the southeast. We'll call it Kroger, but you know it could be a g B or all these or whatever. You go into the Kroger, and all the Kroger brand items have prominent placement in all the different aisles, Like that's front and center. That's what you see, and all the other stuff from other companies is kind of hidden further back on shelves. That's kind of what the EU says Google has been doing. And it's something that another big tech company, namely Amazon, has been accused of doing. And even Apple has been lumped in here with the way Apple prioritizes its own products on devices like the iPhone. So the d m A law would potentially make it illegal for Google and other big tech companies that merit the consideration of being a quote unquote gatekeeper, it would make that that practice illegal for them. Now. I don't know how effective Google's lobbying campaign has been, but based off the people that Espinosa quotes in his piece and in the Financial Times, it sounds to me as though lawmakers are not really swayed by Google's arguments. Over Here in the United States, Google is getting called out for an internal project called Project Vivian, which was active from two thousand eighteen to two thousand twenty. So what was the project about? Well, according to the National Labor Relations Board or in l r B, the project was all about convincing Google employees that organizing and unionizing is you know, it's such a hassle, they shouldn't do it, Okay, Like, come on, folks, come on, let's all go to the cafe, get some pretzels. Okay. So, according to the n l RB, Google's director of Employment Law, a guy named Michael phil said, Project Vivian was designed quote to engage employees more positively and convince them that unions suck end quote Huh yeah, that sounds legit. And n l r B judge has ruled that Google must hand over one eighty internal documents related to Project Vivian, which up to now, Google has shown no intention of sharing. That might change with this judge's ruling remains to be seen. So what does Google have to say about this project. Well, mother Board reports that a Google spokesperson said, quote, the underlying case here has nothing to do with unionization. It's about employees breaching clear security protocols to access confidential information and systems inappropriately. End quote. I personally remained skeptical of that. Google has fired employees for those on those grounds. At least that's what the company has said. Sometimes the employees say no, it's because we were speaking out against practices that we viewed as being harmful or unfair or dangerous, and we got punished as a result when we were trying to get support for our point of view. So this is a continuation of issues that that originate several years back. So we'll have to keep an eye out to see how this continues. Now, I have a question for you. Have you ever had to go through the process of a job performance review. If so, you've probably encountered some kind of ratings system that explains that you are performing at or above or below expectations, But why have you just got kind of an overall rank compared to your fellow employees and no details? Like does that even sound practical? I mean, if you are told that you stink as an employee, but there's no elaboration, then how would anyone expect for you to improve? How could you take action to be a better employee if you don't know where the problems are. That's kind of at the heart of a situation that's brewing over at Amazon. So a former employee named Pat mcgawe, who was a drone engineer at Amazon, quit the company last year. And why did he quit? Well, he was told he was one of the least effective members of his team. However, he says he wasn't given any actual useful information on what led managers to designate him as being one of the least effective members on this team. He is told he could either submit a thirty day plan to show how he would improve his performance, which again, it's pretty hard if you're not really told where your performance is lacking in the first place. Or he could leave the company with a severance package. So he took that option. Now he is scheduled to provide testimony in a lawmaking session in the state of Washington, that's where Amazon is headquartered. And this is all part of a bill that's kind of been in limbo for about a year. That bill, if it were signed into law, would require employers to provide their employees their personnel thoughts, their specific personnel files, something that Mega says that Amazon has refused to do for him. Uh. Now, of course this is not a law yet, and macgau's testimony is just part of the proceedings that will you know, in theory, convinced lawmakers whether or not the bill is merited merited or if they should just you know, abandon it. Now. If the bill does pass, it could mean we all see some pretty significant changes in HR practices in the state of Washington. As I understand it, Amazon has a mandate to managers where they have to designate a certain percentage of their direct reports as being least effective, right, you know, like the whole idea being Okay, Well, if you're looking at the performance of all your employees, some of them are going to be high performers, some of them are going to be typical, and some will be least effective, and Amazon apparently has specific percentages of people who have to fall into that, which seems like counterintuitive to me. If I had a big workforce underneath me and everybody is operating at essentially the same level, then that would mean that I would have to arbitrarily choose which employees fall into that percentage to merit being the least effective. I think that might be what's at the heart of this issue here. Well, we have some more stories to cover, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. We're back in Japan. The company Panasonic announced it will offer a four day work week schedule for its employees as part of an effort to motivate its workforce and to attract new talent. There's been a lot in the news lately of the talent shortage. You've got a lot of folks who are making the decision to leave their jobs and demand better working conditions and better compensation and benefits. And many studies show that a reduced work week can actually boost productivity. And this is kind of in line with Parkinson's law, which isn't really a law, just like Moore's law isn't really a law. Instead, Parkinson's law is more of a humorous observation. It was made by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in the nineteen fifties, and the observation says work will expand to fill the time allotted for work. So, in other words, let's say you've got a project and you've figured out reasonably that this project should take about three days to complete when assigned to a team of five people. Right, that's what you have determined. And you get two different teams of five people, and the two teams are of roughly equal ability, and they have access to the same resources in order to complete the task. And you give team number one the three days to do it, but you tell team number two they get a full week to do it. Now, according to Parkinson's law, team one will take the full three days, but they'll get the job done. Team two will do the same job, have the same level of output, like the same level of of satisfaction with that job, but it will have taken them the full five days to do it. Now. Again, this was meant to be a humorous observation, but here's the thing, it kind of plays out that way for real zs. The Washington Post reported that when Microsoft experimented with a four day work week. Also in Japan, productivity actually increased by so assuming that it was a work week of five days a week and they were reduced it down to four, that means a reduction in time at the office needed at improvement in productivity, and by that logic, it means if we never came into work at all, we would be incredibly productive. All right, that's just an absurd joke, but there really are plenty of cases in which a reduced work week prompted better performance. And in an era where attracting talent is going to become even more competitive, it might be a key strategy for some companies to start shifting to a four day work week. Now does that mean we're going to see that practice adopted in other countries besides Japan, I don't know. In fact, I was shocked to learn that workers in the United States actually put in more hours on an average week then your typical worker does in Japan. I always just assumed that, you know, the Japanese culture was so work centric that people in Japan were working much longer hours than people in America. But apparently, uh the Organization for Economic Cooperation found otherwise listing the United States as number eleven for most hours worked on average, and Japan ranked all the way down at twenty six. So that shows me video game company Take two Interactive, which is famous for publishing games like Borderlands, BioShock, and Grand Theft Auto, has a hankering for farming. And by that I mean the company has announced it intends to acquire the mobile game company Zinga in a deal that edges real darn close to thirteen billion dollars billion with a B. Now, the transaction would actually not just be a cash transaction. It would also include many, many, many shares of Take Two's common stock. Zinga, in case you're not aware, is famous for a bunch of uber popular social and mobile games like Farmville, that one being the infamous one, and Words with Friends, among others. So if this deal moves forward and it's not challenged by shareholders or various regulatory bodies, it should all be wrapped up by early twenty three. And honestly, I totally see how this makes sense. I mean, look at a game like Grand Theft Auto five. That video game came out in September of two thousand thirteen, and nearly a decade later, g t A Online, which is a part of g t A five, continues to be a big money maker for the company now. In that sense, the game is a lot like a lot of mobile games, which operate kind of like a game as a service. Some mobile games allow players to play the game in return for watching ads, so they generate revenue through ad views and they just continue to do that for as long as there's a player base. Some of them allow players to purchase the game outright, and that way they can play it without ads, but you know, they've actually ponied up cash to buy the game. Uh. And a lot of mobile games use various incentives to convince players to fork over money a little bit at a time in order for the players to access certain in game options like the ability to play one more turn or get access to certain in game materials. In other words, we've been seeing a convergence in how game publishers do business, using games to be an ongoing revenue generator rather than the model where you develop and release a title and you you know, the title cells as well as it sells, and then you move on to develop the next title, or even moving on to develop DLC connected to that original title. That model, you know, the revenue comes in blasts when you release a new game, but you don't have that long tail of revenue the way you do with these ongoing experiences like in mobile games, and we've seen more and more video and computer games kind of adopt that model. The deal would give Take to a much larger footprint in the mobile marketing space. I should add Take two does have mobile games in its portfolio, it's just that Zinga is really a giant name for mobile games, and presumably we would see more of Take two his properties get the mobile game treatment, and see a lot of related games coming out connected to things like Grand Theft, Auto and BioShock. This deal, assuming it moves forward, would be the largest video game acquisition deal in history. In fact, when Microsoft purchased Bethesda, the studio that's respond stable for the Elder Scrolls games, or as a lot of folks think of it, Skyrim UM and the Fallout games, that price tag was seven and a half billion dollars. And remember we're talking about Zinga being around thirteen billions. So yeah, this is a huge acquisition. One gadget that I think I talked about pretty early on last year was Razors Zefire mask, which they showed off at ce S twenty twenty one. Of course I didn't attend c e S one, but I remember seeing the mask being shown off, and I'm pretty sure I talked about it on tech stuff. Anyway, the mask looks a bit like the lower half of Darth Vader's mask, or maybe like one of the more futuristic Mortal Kombat Ninja masks. Uh. It has led lighting and it's got these little filtration events in it. Well. Originally, Razor was promoting the zeph Ear mask and the zeff ere Pro, which they unveiled at this past CS as masks that use filters that are of an IN grade in being the US standard for masks that filter out of tiny particles. So you know, they were saying it doesn't actually have an IN ninety five filter, but it has something that's comparable to an INN mask. However, now Razor appears to have walked that back. PC mag reports that Razor scrubbed references to in grade capabilities and its materials relating to the zef her Pro and switched over to the more vague descriptor of quote unquote air purification filters. The company released a tweet saying that quote the Razor Zephyr and those zef ere Pro are not medical devices, respirators, surgical masks, or personal protective equipped ppe and are not meant to be used in medical or clinical settings end quote. Now, Apparently an issue here is that while the mask has performed well in raisors internal tests and appears to show that it is equivalent to an IN nine mask, at least it appears to be, the technology has yet to be put through strenuous external tests. That is, experts need the chance to get their hands on the masks and determine if, in fact they actually meet the criteria to be considered in grade. So it doesn't necessarily mean that the masks aren't up to snuff. It just means that we can't be sure of it yet, and not being sure when it comes to equipment that you trust to provide protection against something like COVID, that's not really good enough. Now, my hope is that the external reviews will find that the zeph Your masks are effective and that they are in grade, and we can use that label and be confident in it. But we have to wait for the tests and the results of those tests to actually find out. I figure for the moment, it's good to look at them as like a really cool costume piece, um, and you know you're not planning on actually putting it to the test by wearing it in, say, like a crowded convention hall filled with people from all over the world, like I don't know, c E s. And instead when you go to something like that, First of all, I don't think you should go to something like that at all, But if you do have to go to it, use an in ninety five or K and mask like a real one and just save the the razor stuff for later. Okay, we've got a couple more stories before we conclude, and we're gonna take another quick break, all right. In some sad podcasting, Spotify has shut down its in house podcasting studio called Studio four. Now, first of all, you might wonder why was its in house studio called Studio four. Why did it have that name? Well, before Spotify had established its own podcasting studio, it had actually gone out and acquired other podcasting networks, namely Gimlet, The Wringer, and podcast. So those were the first three podcasting studios that Spotify owned, and then they made their own and called it Studio four, So it was really the fourth studio owned by Spotify. According to the Verge, folks at Studio for, we're perhaps feeling a little bit demoralized. Well before the company decided to give the studio the acts, uh, there were allegations that Spotify had lifted projects that were supposed to be Studio four podcasts but then assigned those to one of the other studios. So think of it like you're at a brainstorming meeting and you come up with a brilliant idea and you share it, and your boss says, that's a great idea, I'm gonna give it to Susie, and you're you're they're saying, but I'm I'm not Susie, and I'm the one who came up with the idea, and you're just shut out. That's kind of what the Studio for folks were saying was sort of happening to them. Also, it sounds like Studio four employees were frustrated that their work received little to no press or promotion, while some of the projects coming out of the other studios got a lot of attention. The affected employees are either going to be reassigned to other departments within Spotify or they're gonna get laid off. I'm hoping that everyone lands on their feet. Also, I remember reading that they were a little you know, upset and even just the name of the studio because it gives no sense of identity or direction, and they said it made them feel like they were leftovers, which is not a good feeling to have. I've been there myself, and that is not fun. So I'm sure that they will all find good spots to be in, whether it's at Spotify or somewhere else. My hope is that their talent will be well used in in an area that appreciates them. Uh. But yeah, that stinks. I hate to see it, even though I mean full disclosure. We can look at Spotify as being a competitor to I Heart Radio, particularly in the podcast space. But I don't want to see anyone like just lose their job or have their whole studio shut down. That's no, that's no bueno. Finally, in China, and Experimental Nuclear Fusion Facility has set a new record sustaining a fusion reaction for more than seventeen minutes Now, fusion is the process that stars go through as they produce energy, as the you know, classic song why does the Sunshine? Perhaps best known by the they Might Be Giants cover of that song. It originally appeared on a science album in the nineteen fifties, But they Might Be Giants really made it famous. That song says, quote, the Sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees end quote. Now there's some scientific errors in that song, which actually They Might Be Giants addressed in a a new version of the song called the Sun is a miasthma of incandescent plasma, So they got it covered. But anyway, what we're talking about here is the fusion process of taking hydrogen atoms in fusing them to make a helium adom, which is a reaction that also releases a tremendous amount of energy. Now in the Sun, this process continues because you've got intent heat and the incredible gravitational forces at play, and that sustains the reaction. Here on Earth, it's we can't really replicate that situation, right, We can't create a gravitational force akin to the core of the sun. So we have to use really powerful magnetic fields to control, contain, and create superheated plasma. There are lasers involved. It is awesome. Anyway, if we could get nuclear fusion to work in such a way that we are generating more energy than it required to initiate and maintain the reaction, we would be sitting pretty And that's because nuclear fusion doesn't have the same drawbacks as nuclear fission. That's how nuclear power plants that are producing energy that generates electricity, that's how they work. They work through fission, not fusion. They are splitting atoms, not fusing them. And with fusion, you're not dealing with dangerous rate acted materials like uranium. Uh, they're not dealing with dangerous radioactive wastes that have an incredibly long half life. Uh. You don't have to figure out where you're gonna store all that stuff, which gets around that political issue of where do we store nuclear waste. Nobody wants it anywhere close to them, so it becomes a real challenge and you could potentially harvest your quote unquote fuel from ocean water while generating plenty of energy for everyone, but we're not there yet. So far, the systems we built required more energy to produce and maintain a reaction than we get out of the reaction. But each of these experiments is a step toward really nailing it. The facility in China created a superheated plasma that reached around one six million degrees fahrenheit. For reference, the core of the Sun only gets up to about twenty seven million degrees fahrenheit, so it's positively chilly compared to the artificial sun that the Chinese facility created. Scientists plan to use the knowledge they gain from these experiments to make the next generation of experimental facilities work even better. Right now, engineers and scientists around the world are working together on a facility called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or either I t e ER. That project actually was first proposed way back in Construction didn't start until two thousand seven. Um it's still going on today. It's not fully built out, because I mean, these are like the most complicated technologies that we've ever worked on. I mean, it's it's like the Large Hadron collider was that before, and now either kind of takes that title. As as we speak. The planned first achievement of lasma has been projected to five so we're still a couple of years out from even producing plasma at Eider, and then the planned start of full operation would be a decade later. And this is still in the pathway of creating nuclear fusion as a way of practically generating electricity if we're really looking down a line, so even in we're not talking about a nuclear fusion plant that's producing electricity on a practical scale. Uh. In fact, there are already places that are looking at successors to Eider, and we ain't even got started doing science at Eider yet. Anyway, here's hoping all this work leads to a transformational solution for our energy requirements. It would be a huge, huge scientific achievement if we can nail nuclear fusion and make it practical here on Earth. Okay, that wraps up the news stories for Tuesday, January eleven, twenty you. I hope all of you are well. If you have any suggestions for topics I should tackle on tech Stuff in the future, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is text stuff h s W and I'll talk to you again. Really sick Y tech 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.