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 iHeart Radio. And how the tech are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday, October twenty, twenty twenty two, and we've got a ton to get through, So let's start off with some Apple news. Last week, I talked about how lawmakers in the EU had approved legislation that will require all smartphone manufacturers that use a physical charger to adopt the USBC standard for sales in the European Union, and that this news particularly affects Apple, as the company has relied upon its own proprietary technology called Lightning up until now. Apple's Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing, Greg Joswiak, has is confirmed that Apple will comply with the new laws, though he did not comment on whether or not Apple will make a global switch to the USBC standard. So it is possible that the European market will get a us b C version of the iPhone starting in late and that the rest of the world we'll stick with iPhones that have a lightning part. We don't know yet, Josiak also argued that the lightning technology actually cuts down on E waste, which is a claim I find dubious at best. So the claim says that charging bricks, you know, the actual things that you plug into a wall outlet, they frequently have ports for both USB and lightning cables, and so by switching to USBC, folks will have no choice but to toss all their old lightning cables because those won't go to anything anymore, which you know, sure, but I don't know about you. I know that I have to replace my cables fairly regularly either they get wear and tear on them. I'm particularly bad about rolling my office chair over cables that honestly are just too long. I need to get shorter cables, or more likely I misplaced them during travel. And then I find that I need a cable to connect my thing to my other thing, like my phone to a charging brick or whatever. By consolidating all that into a single standard, a standard that works pretty darn well for that matter, then I'm more likely to have a backup cable than if I need to keep separate types for all my devices. Yes, there are different levels of USBC. There are like three amp and five amp versions, So there are differences, but for the most part, like you can just swap cables out, unless you're doing something like trying to power a computer or a display or something, in which case you need to make sure you have the five amp version. But otherwise, like, it's really makes it simple to to swap in and out of your cables, and I'm all for that kind of consolidation anyway, Jaws re act, you know, Apple's rep kind of made it clear that Apple is complying, but is tots not happy about doing it. At least it's going to comply in Europe. Here in the United States, there are a few lawmakers who are considering similar legislation that would standardize stuff like charging cables. But I am not particularly optimistic that such legislation will ultimately become law here. I don't I don't know. I just don't think it's likely. Maybe we'll see swapping over to Alphabet, which of course is the company that's the parent company of the stuff like Google, YouTube, etcetera. It's starting to really tighten its belt across all of its subsidiaries. Over the course of the last year, Alphabet had added more than thirty six thousand new employees to the company, which is a big old yaalza. That's a lot of hires. But those days of heavy hiring appeared to be at an end, or at least to be put on pause. In an investor called this Week, Alphabet's CEO Sundar Pichai assured investors that the company is taking a much more critical look at projects to determine which ones are really important and to direct resources to those as well as to make quote unquote course corrections. And I think this is important for Google. The company has frequently launched projects that saw like a lackluster response sometimes because you know, a lot of people feel like it's a boy who Cried wolf situation that Google has so frequently pulled the plug on products that there's a reluctance to get invested in a new one because you're worried that the company will stop supporting it within a year or two. That's kind of earned that reputation. So there really is a need to focus on specific projects to make sure that those are adding value to the company. I get that, But the company has also had to cut way back on a lot of employee travel and related expenses. At the same time, the advertising business is taking a pretty big hit that is not unusual in times of economic crisis or economic distress or recession, whatever you want to call it. I'll spare you an actual rant, but just in your head. Insert at this point in the episode, a rant where I yell about the fact that avoiding naming something like the reluctance to name whatever economic situation we're in, does not at all change the nature of that situation. It's still bad even if we refuse to name it something specific. Anyway. All this means that Alphabet's chief source of revenue the advertising business. That's where I remind you Google is not really a search company. It's an advertising company anyway, that's taken a big hit. It also means that other entities that depend upon ad revenue are hurting, So that would include folks like YouTube creators, for example. So this is a pretty big ripple effect. The Chi's call with investors does not signal like a massive catastrophe or anything like that, but you could say that this is another kind of red flag that we're in a period where tech companies in particular, and the people looking for work within the tech industry are encountering some pretty tough challenges. Okay, let's switch over to our favorite punching bag that is Meta Yesterday. Yesterday being Wednesday, October twenty two for any of y'all from the future who are listening back on old tech news episodes for some reason. Anyway, yesterday Mark Zuckerberg and his team held an earnings call that delivered some bad news to investors, who have more than responded in kind, as we will soon learn. So in that call, we learned that Meta's revenue dropped four percent compared to this time last year, that net income was down a whopping fifty two from this time last year, and that spending is up by nine So Meta is bringing in less money overall. That would be the revenue bit. It's bringing in way less of what we will generously refer to as profit. That would be the income bit. That's the drop off from a year ago. And this is all following on the heels of other bad news like the fact that EU regulators have forced Meta to divest itself of Giffee, the animated gift platform it had purchased in twenty So that's something that the company is going to have to do in the near future, and considering that there's also this growing skepticism around the concept of the metaverse, and that Mark Zuckerberg appears fully dedicated to pursuing his version, version his vision, I guess I could say of the metaverse, it has some folks, like some investors, extremely displeased with the company direction. This lack of confidence in in Meta and Meta strategy is reflected in the company's stock price, which dropped nearly twenty percent and after hours trading following this earnings call. That drop in stock price meant that Meta saw a rapid loss of around sixty five billion dollars in its market capitalization. Market Cap is essentially the what you get when you take the value of a share of stock in a company multiplied by the numbers of shares of that stock, and then it gives a kind of general indication of the company's value. Right you take like, if if you've got ten dollar stock and there are ten shares out there, you multiplied ten by ten, you get a hundred. That's how much market cap your little your little approach has. So Meta saw a drop of sixty billion dollars in its market cap because of that stock price drop. By the way, that doesn't have any real direct impact on how much cash the company may or may not have on hand at that moment. They can have an impact on a company if it wants to, you know, borrow money or whatever for an acquisition, then the market cap change can make a big difference. But it's really just to show that there's this drop in confidence in Meta in general. Zuckerberg said on the call that if Meta wasn't pursuing the development of a metaverse, it might be the case that no one else would have stepped up and no work would be done on it. And to that, I say, okay, so what. But you know, that's because I remain really skeptical that a metaverse approach is really the future of connectivity, commerce, entertainment, etcetera. I mean, maybe it is. Maybe that is the future, and and I'm just incapable of seeing it. Maybe I am being obstinate in my reluctance to buy into the metaverse vision, but it just it just seems unrealistic to me because of a lot of different factors. And I think a lot of investors feel in a similar way. Right They also feel feel uncertain. They certainly see how the metaverse project is requiring enormous UH costs in Meta, and that this is in fact impacting the company's performance. Maybe we're all wrong. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg is right on the money. That is possible. But whether we're right, or Zuckerberg's right, or there's no one who's right, Zuckerberg has indicated that we're likely to see future quarters with similar tough results moving forward, that Meta remains committed to this metaverse pursuit and will continue to spend money and perhaps in increasing quantities, in an effort to see it to fruition. Meanwhile, companies like TikTok continue to attract the younger users that Meta desperately wants to hook into its own ecosystem. So it may be that Meta's future is really just meant for a group of folks who are steadily aging out of the platform with no replenishment in sight. Okay, we've got a lot more tech news to go through, including some more from Meta, but first let's take this quick break. We're back. The Association for Computer Machineries Journal published a study that has some disturbing findings, namely that Facebook ads appear to target people not just on their interests, and their likes and their dislikes, and their browsing activity, and sometimes their app activity, unless it's an Apple iPhone, in which case I got kind of eliminated once Apple gave users the option to opt out of that, but also on things like their race, their gender, and their age, even if the user isn't sharing that info with the platform itself. The study says that Facebook is using image recognition software to draw conclusions about users and then serve up ads based on those conclusions. For example, the study found that white users were far less likely to encounter ads that feature black people in them. The researchers actually created ads for job listings to post on Facebook, and these job listings featured AI generated images of people. Some of the ads had white people in them, some had black people in them, and by tracking the ads, the research group saw that black users made up of the audience that saw ads that had black people in them. With ads that had white people in them, black users made up fifty of that audience. Ads with teenage girls featured in them went on to an audience that was fifty seven percent mail, and many of them over the age of fifty five, which creepy I mean, that's not a good look for a platform that's often associated with an aging user base. If it was an AD that featured an older woman inside the image, well, the audience for those ads ended up being women. So the researchers indicate that for some uses, this kind of targeting might feel like like it's a little suss, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, let's face it, you are more likely to respond to an AD if the person or person's appearing in the ad kind of look like you do right, like you. There's just this this tendency. You know, we want to see ourselves reflected in the things that we see. But when it comes to stuff like job listings and housing and education, the targeting can reinforce social problems. In fact, Facebook has been in trouble for that in the past. Back in there was a massive lawsuit that focused on this. Also, you know, we're looking at a system that's using machine learning and AI and machine learning by relying upon strategies that worked in the past, could end up perpetuating discriminatory practices that disproportionately hurt certain populations, namely people of color. The study also indicates that Facebook's approach could be antithetical to the desires of their clients, like the companies that are actually paying for the ads, because a lot of these companies want to project an image that values diversity. But if the diversity reflected in the ads means that those ads aren't being shown to all populations, that might mean that the ad isn't getting the effect that the base company wanted in the first place. Now, Meta reps say that Meta is dedicated to preventing discrimination on its platforms and that the company continues to develop its technologies with that goal in mind. Further, we should be hearing more about Meta's pushes to to fix these kinds of problems in the months ahead. But this is a good example of how machine learning and how AI can have a bias built into it, and how that bias can have a negative impact. Now that's not to say that all biases necessarily bad or that all bias has to be avoided, but there are definite areas where you could say, yeah, this is a problem, and this kind of constitutes that and some more Meta bad news. In Washington State here in the United States, a judge has issued a twenty four point seven million dollar fine for failing to comply with a state campaign finance disclosure law. So the court found Facebook guilty of violating the state's Fair Campaign Practices Act more than eight hundred times eight hundred twenty two times in fact, and this is not the first time this has happened. The company came up for the same sort of problem back in two thousand eighteen. So that law says that any platform that airs or displays political advertising has to maintain a publicly accessible database of who purchased the ads, including their names and addresses. Plus the information has to include whom the ads were targeting, how many views the ads received, how the ads were paid for, and that kind of stuff. So anyone who asks for this information has the right to it, and the platforms are compelled by law to comply and hand over that precious information. But Facebook has declined to acquiesce to that request for quite some time, has not followed the rules according to the the case, and it has argued that the law quote burdens political speech end quote. Though that's kind of a tough thing to argue considering that, you know, platforms like television, radio, and newspapers have all been complying with this law since it was passed in nine two. So I'm not sure that that's a really valid argument. Uh, there's no doubt that Facebook has access to the information that's required. The company has just repeatedly failed to hand that information over. The law allow the judge to find an entity up to ten thousand dollars per violation. And as I said, there were eight hundred twenty two violations, And you might say, huh, e d two times ten thousand does not equal twenty four point seven million dollars. That's that's way more than what you should expect. Well, that same law also allows a judge to triple the penalty per violation if the judge determines that the violations were intentional in nature. And since Facebook went through this same process back in two thousand eighteen, it's kind of hard to argue that the company wasn't intentionally violating that law. Thus we get the twenty four point seven million dollar fine that might be the largest campaign finance penalty ever issued here in the United States. Of course, compared to Facebook's revenues, which even in the downturn it's experiencing right now, or you know, measured in the billions of dollars. This is small change, but then no company really wants to just hand over twenty five million bucks, so it's not exactly a slap on the wrist either. It's you know, literally the largest penalty that the judge was allowed to pass by law. Now let's hop on over to Twitter to find out what's going on with Elon Musk's on again, off again, on again again acquisition deal. So as it stands, Musk has until the close of business tomorrow, Friday, October to finalize his acquisition of Twitter. If you recall, Musk initially agreed to buy Twitter at fifty four dollars twenty cents per share back in the spring of this year. Right now, that's actually just a hair over what Twitter is currently trading at. Like when I went to record, Twitter is trading at just under fifty four dollars per share, so it's really close to what that deal was proposed at. I suspect that the current share price reflects people anticipating that this deal is going to go through by the end of tomorrow, So even a small gain is a game. So I think that has driven up interest in the stock, and thus we see it really close to what Musk was um agreeing to buy it for. Of course, Musk famously attempted to back out of the deal, which then prompted a court case to force Musk to go through with the deal. Twitter brought that against Musk. Uh That court case is currently on hold unless the deal does not complete by the end of day tomorrow, in which case the case is back on. So Musk himself arrived at Twitter HQ yesterday. On Wednesday, he carried a bathroom sink as a kind of publicity stunt. Uh. I'm not sure what the message was, because typically we talked about kitchen sink deals, not bathroom sinc ones. According to Gizmoto, Musk said it was a visual pun on let that sink in. But you know, I don't know. Maybe he's just very particular about where he washes his hands. I don't know. Anyway. Musk also published an open letter to Twitter employees to address some fears and concerns people have had about this acquisition. For example, he denied that he plans to eliminate up to the workforce at the company. That was something that had been reported in the past by The Washington Post. Uh, there is an indication that he expects there to be some downsizing, and in fact had received previous advice from Jason callicannacas out of old people to require people to come into the office, because that's going to weed people out, like people will self select for leaving the company. But then that tends to be like your best people too, So that's not the best advice I've ever heard, But you know, it's it's very possible that Busk will attempt to downsize Twitter simply by being unpleasant, something that I am told he has a modicum of experience at doing. Anyway, Moscostle said has no intention to allow Twitter to become a quote free for all hell scape where anything can be said with no consequences end quote. That also conflicts a little bit earlier with reports that must believe Twitter should be kind of an unfettered platform for free speech. But to be fair, Musk has pretty much always maintained that this should actually fall within the legal parameters of the various countries within which Twitter operates. So, in other words, you can't say absolutely anything if the country where you are operating has limits on free speech, like you have to you have to operate within the boundaries of the law. Uh, he has at least made that concession. He has also indicated that he intends for Twitter to ease off on content moderation, which could allow for even more misinformation to proliferate across the platform, and that he would reverse the permanent bands of several prominent accounts, most notably that of Donald Trump, who has seen his own truth social platform struggle to find significant traction. Anyway, we'll have to wait until tomorrow to see if the deal actually does go through for real, which I mean, I'm there's like a seventy chance in my mind that's going to happen, or if Musk will pull some other maneuver in an attempt to get out of the deal. I'm not sure that there is an exit strategy that wouldn't also put the court case back on track to continue. So I think there's a more than decent chance that by the end of tomorrow, Twitter will be a privately held company owned by Elon Musk. CNBC another outlets report that Tesla, another Elon Musk company, is currently under investigation by the U. S Department of Justice. This is with regards to Tesla's driver assist systems, and whether or not the company misled consumers with exaggerated claims about those systems and their capabilities, namely that they essentially constituted self driving. Now, at the very least, there appears to be two distinct storylines coming out of Tesla. So on the marketing side, the company seems to indicate that Tesla vehicles, when they're in full self driving mode, are you know, to any practical consideration, an autonomous vehicle. They don't go quite that far to say it, but one video on Tesla's site that shows a man inside a Tesla vehicle goes on to say, quote, the person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself end quote. That is not the same thing as saying this car is autonomous, but it does seem to imply, Hey, the system can take full control of your vehicle safely and you can just sit back and relax. However, during actual operation, Tesla has messages that tell drivers they are required to keep their hands on the wheel even when using the driver assist features, and further the website. On Tesla's page, it actually says the systems quote do not make the vehicle autonomous end quote. So it does say on the web page, this doesn't make this an autonomous vehicle, even while they also show videos where they say the only reason we have a driver in the the driver's seat is for legal reasons. So it does sound a lot like double speak, right, like the cars aren't autonomous, but you know they can drive themselves anyway. Tesla's have been involved in numerous high profile accidents, some of them involving fatalities, So the d o J is investigating the company, presumably to see if there are any criminal implications here. It's possible that Tesla's seemingly contradictory messages may keep the company legally safe in that Tesla's lawyers can truthfully point out that Tesla has denied that its vehicles are autonomous. This is not the only legal investigation into Tesla by any means, and it might be a while before we hear any potential judicial action against the company, if in fact any any are pending. Okay, we've got some more news stories to get through before we get to that. Let's take another quick break. We're back from break. We still have one more you know, tangentially Elon Musk related story because we're gonna talk about SpaceX and specifically Starlink. So earlier this year, Starlink, which is the satellite Internet service provider arm of SpaceX, offered up a service for RV owners, and r V owners would pay a hundred thirty five bucks per month for Internet access through Starlink. However, it would only work for r vs that were stationary that were parked. In other words, However, later this year, in December, starlink is going to offer a plan that will allow RV owners to access the Internet even while driving the r V. Now, to do so will require the installation of a new kind of satellite dish, one that comes with a hefty two thousand five fee. If you were just getting the standard stationary access system in your r V, that one costs to install. So it's a pretty hefty upgrade. You know, it's almost two thousand dollars more expensive. The monthly cost for access will still be a hundred thirty five dollar subscription fee. Starlink has recently been targeting use cases for moving vehicles for private planes to ships at sea, and we can now add r vs on the road to that list. Earlier today, hackers got access to the New York Post's website and Twitter feed and use that access to publish some really awful headlines, mostly targeting specific politicians. Those headlines included racist, misogynists, and other disgusting language. The Post regained control of its accounts not too long after they had been seized, and was able to remove the offending material. This marks the second time during the current election season here in the United States that a publication found itself hacked. Fast Company was a target of such a hack in late September actually took its websites down for a full week to deal with that. Both Fast Company and The New York Post rely upon WordPress as a content management system, but as of this recording, there's been no further information about how the hackers got access to the New York Post website. Anyway, it's yet another fun example of how political events can drive terrible things in technology. Sigh. This past August, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan to meet with Morris Cheng, the founder of semiconductor company t s MC. And you might remember that t SMC is responsible for the production of much of the chips we rely upon in our electronics and most of the higher end chips. The US has recently passed legislation aimed at bootstrapping the semiconductor industry here in the United States, and so it aims to shift some of the dependence on Taiwan to US based facilities. And now, the Financial Times in Taiwan reports that during the visit back in August, Cheng told Pelosi that the United States efforts are quote doomed to fail end quote. Now that might be the case, but there are some other factors that may have influenced Chang when he made such a proclamation, assuming that the reporting is accurate. For example, Taiwan currently enjoys a not entirely stable independence from mainland China, and the Western world's reliance on semiconductors means that countries like the United States have a vested interest in keeping Taiwan free from Chinese interference. Therefore, if China were to make any kind of aggressive moves towards Taiwan, that would likely pull the US into what could become a dangerous conflict. So it's the threat of the US is involvement that keeps Taiwan temporarily safe. But if the West were to reduce its reliance on Taiwan when it comes to semi conductors, then this silicon shield around Taiwan will weaken. Therefore, Jang has an existential motivation to dismiss the US's efforts to become independent with semi conductors. Now that doesn't mean he's wrong. He might be right. We're very early in the United States effort to revitalize the semiconductor industry here in the States, and it could turn into a total fiasco. It is sure to have some bumpy spots along the road. That's just the nature of reality. We just don't know where that road ultimately is going to lead. We know the intended destination is greater independence when it comes to producing semiconductors. Now, considering Taiwan situation, I think it's safe to say we cannot assume Chang's projections on the matter are free from bias. They're certainly not free from personal interest. Well, it's almost Halloween, so how about some terrifying news. A video from the official Kestral Defense page on the Chinese micro blogging site way Bow shows a large drone dropping off a four legged robot similar to the kinds of robots you've seen from Boston Dynamics, only this robot also happens to have a machine gun. Ho ho ho, Sorry I'm mixing up my holidays here. Anyway, the video demonstrates that this technology is ready to go, at least according to the defense company behind it. The robot and the gun would be under human control, so this would be a remotely controlled robot, not an autonomous one. You would have an operator capable of maneuvering the robot and firing its weapon. And this tech could potentially be used in battlefield situations where you want to draw off robotic soldiers, say behind enemy lines to attack in a different direction, or you know, in other locations that are all intended to put pressure on the enemy on multiple fronts. This is exactly the kind of use the companies like Boston Dynamics recently pledged they would not pursue the weaponization of robotic platforms. Of course, the U. S Military is certainly hard at work of building these kinds of things itself, So this is something that looks like it's going to be on the horizon no matter what. And yes, this is terrifying because there's really a worry that robotic forces are going to reduce barriers that countries face before they engage at armed conflict. Right, it might remove certain concerns and make it more likely that will see more war. It's a lot easier to sell your invasion to your population if that population isn't, you know, seeing its own soldiers being put in harm's way. See also Russia. There's also an additional fear that we could see future technologies progress toward automation for navigation and combat. That's something that's particularly scary when you keep in mind that computer vision is by no means incapable of making mistakes. So not only is it already scary to think of a robot with a gun, it's even scarier to think it's a robot with a gun that might think that you're not on its side. Not great. Recently, in Video unveiled its forty series of graphics cards, the new flagship cards that set the company's standard for performance, but problems have already popped up with the r t X from Nvidio itself, as there have been a few reports of users discovering that a sixteen pen adapter used to connect the card to the computer's power supply can overheat, which can cause the adapter to melt or even catch fire. Now IGOR Labs has released an article that reveals that these adapters were poorly made in the first place, with substandard soldering that can lead to these issues. Igor Labs has alerted in Video to the problem, which was likely caused when the company relied on an assembly partner that took some shortcuts. Gamers who are eager to get in Video's new chips may want to hold off. There is the distinct possibility that in Video will hold a recall and and correct this issue before sending out new cards, so it might be better to just wait, or you might want to wait for a third party manufacturers to offer their own forty cards because in Video's business strategy is not just to manufacture the cards itself, but it also licenses the design and the tech out to other manufacturers, and if those manufacturers actually replace the adapter that in Vidia includes in its kits, then it might solve the problem as well, and thus you could end up with a graphics card that is safer than the official in Video version. I do think we're probably going to see a recall and replacement process before long. But as of the time I'm recording this, that has not yet been announced. Gamers who have been anticipating the release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare two and who got their hands on a physical copy of the game might be shocked to learn that there's no game on that physical disc. In fact, according to euro Gamer, there's just seventy two megabytes of data on those discs. Now, the game, it turns out, is closer to thirty five gigabytes in size on the PS five that can actually balloon up to one fifty gigs once you install a Day one patch and you have all the packs for the game installed. So seventy two megabytes a hundred and fifty gigabytes is a huge gap. What has going on, Well, it looks like the physical disc really just directs machines to download the digital copy anyway. So yes, you'll get a physical disc. That disc will have like the logo and the art and all that kind of stuff, but there's no game on the disc and all it will do is direct you toward a massive digital download. So if you live somewhere that has lousy internet connectivity, or maybe your data plan has a data cap to it, you might be shocked to learn that your physical copy doesn't actually, you know, let you experience the game. You still have to go through the same steps that you would have had to go through if you just purchased it digitally in the first place. And that leads to the question why even have a physical option that this is going to be the way it works. That reminds me of a time when you could find box copies of computer games and inside was just a code where you could download the digital copy. And I guess you bought the box so that you would have something to put up on a shelf. I mean maybe for collectors, but I don't know. It's it hits me the wrong way to have a disc for a game and the game is not on the disk. That just bugs me. Anyway. That's it for today's news episode of text Stuff. Hope you are all well. If you have suggestions or any questions or anything like that, you want to get in touch with me, there are a couple of ways of doing that. One is to download the I Heart radio app. It's free to download and use. You can navigate over to tech Stuff in the search field. There's a little microphone icon there if you click on that you can leave a voice message up to thirty seconds in length let me know if you would like me to use it in a future episode, or you can reach out on Twitter while Twitter is still around. I have no idea what's going to happen if Elon Musk closes the steal, so we'll see what happens. But the handle on Twitter is tech stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon. 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 iHeart Radio. And how the tech are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday, October twenty, twenty twenty two, and we've got a ton to get through, So let's start off with some Apple news. Last week, I talked about how lawmakers in the EU had approved legislation that will require all smartphone manufacturers that use a physical charger to adopt the USBC standard for sales in the European Union, and that this news particularly affects Apple, as the company has relied upon its own proprietary technology called Lightning up until now. Apple's Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing, Greg Joswiak, has is confirmed that Apple will comply with the new laws, though he did not comment on whether or not Apple will make a global switch to the USBC standard. So it is possible that the European market will get a us b C version of the iPhone starting in late and that the rest of the world we'll stick with iPhones that have a lightning part. We don't know yet, Josiak also argued that the lightning technology actually cuts down on E waste, which is a claim I find dubious at best. So the claim says that charging bricks, you know, the actual things that you plug into a wall outlet, they frequently have ports for both USB and lightning cables, and so by switching to USBC, folks will have no choice but to toss all their old lightning cables because those won't go to anything anymore, which you know, sure, but I don't know about you. I know that I have to replace my cables fairly regularly either they get wear and tear on them. I'm particularly bad about rolling my office chair over cables that honestly are just too long. I need to get shorter cables, or more likely I misplaced them during travel. And then I find that I need a cable to connect my thing to my other thing, like my phone to a charging brick or whatever. By consolidating all that into a single standard, a standard that works pretty darn well for that matter, then I'm more likely to have a backup cable than if I need to keep separate types for all my devices. Yes, there are different levels of USBC. There are like three amp and five amp versions, So there are differences, but for the most part, like you can just swap cables out, unless you're doing something like trying to power a computer or a display or something, in which case you need to make sure you have the five amp version. But otherwise, like, it's really makes it simple to to swap in and out of your cables, and I'm all for that kind of consolidation anyway, Jaws re act, you know, Apple's rep kind of made it clear that Apple is complying, but is tots not happy about doing it. At least it's going to comply in Europe. Here in the United States, there are a few lawmakers who are considering similar legislation that would standardize stuff like charging cables. But I am not particularly optimistic that such legislation will ultimately become law here. I don't I don't know. I just don't think it's likely. Maybe we'll see swapping over to Alphabet, which of course is the company that's the parent company of the stuff like Google, YouTube, etcetera. It's starting to really tighten its belt across all of its subsidiaries. Over the course of the last year, Alphabet had added more than thirty six thousand new employees to the company, which is a big old yaalza. That's a lot of hires. But those days of heavy hiring appeared to be at an end, or at least to be put on pause. In an investor called this Week, Alphabet's CEO Sundar Pichai assured investors that the company is taking a much more critical look at projects to determine which ones are really important and to direct resources to those as well as to make quote unquote course corrections. And I think this is important for Google. The company has frequently launched projects that saw like a lackluster response sometimes because you know, a lot of people feel like it's a boy who Cried wolf situation that Google has so frequently pulled the plug on products that there's a reluctance to get invested in a new one because you're worried that the company will stop supporting it within a year or two. That's kind of earned that reputation. So there really is a need to focus on specific projects to make sure that those are adding value to the company. I get that, But the company has also had to cut way back on a lot of employee travel and related expenses. At the same time, the advertising business is taking a pretty big hit that is not unusual in times of economic crisis or economic distress or recession, whatever you want to call it. I'll spare you an actual rant, but just in your head. Insert at this point in the episode, a rant where I yell about the fact that avoiding naming something like the reluctance to name whatever economic situation we're in, does not at all change the nature of that situation. It's still bad even if we refuse to name it something specific. Anyway. All this means that Alphabet's chief source of revenue the advertising business. That's where I remind you Google is not really a search company. It's an advertising company anyway, that's taken a big hit. It also means that other entities that depend upon ad revenue are hurting, So that would include folks like YouTube creators, for example. So this is a pretty big ripple effect. The Chi's call with investors does not signal like a massive catastrophe or anything like that, but you could say that this is another kind of red flag that we're in a period where tech companies in particular, and the people looking for work within the tech industry are encountering some pretty tough challenges. Okay, let's switch over to our favorite punching bag that is Meta Yesterday. Yesterday being Wednesday, October twenty two for any of y'all from the future who are listening back on old tech news episodes for some reason. Anyway, yesterday Mark Zuckerberg and his team held an earnings call that delivered some bad news to investors, who have more than responded in kind, as we will soon learn. So in that call, we learned that Meta's revenue dropped four percent compared to this time last year, that net income was down a whopping fifty two from this time last year, and that spending is up by nine So Meta is bringing in less money overall. That would be the revenue bit. It's bringing in way less of what we will generously refer to as profit. That would be the income bit. That's the drop off from a year ago. And this is all following on the heels of other bad news like the fact that EU regulators have forced Meta to divest itself of Giffee, the animated gift platform it had purchased in twenty So that's something that the company is going to have to do in the near future, and considering that there's also this growing skepticism around the concept of the metaverse, and that Mark Zuckerberg appears fully dedicated to pursuing his version, version his vision, I guess I could say of the metaverse, it has some folks, like some investors, extremely displeased with the company direction. This lack of confidence in in Meta and Meta strategy is reflected in the company's stock price, which dropped nearly twenty percent and after hours trading following this earnings call. That drop in stock price meant that Meta saw a rapid loss of around sixty five billion dollars in its market capitalization. Market Cap is essentially the what you get when you take the value of a share of stock in a company multiplied by the numbers of shares of that stock, and then it gives a kind of general indication of the company's value. Right you take like, if if you've got ten dollar stock and there are ten shares out there, you multiplied ten by ten, you get a hundred. That's how much market cap your little your little approach has. So Meta saw a drop of sixty billion dollars in its market cap because of that stock price drop. By the way, that doesn't have any real direct impact on how much cash the company may or may not have on hand at that moment. They can have an impact on a company if it wants to, you know, borrow money or whatever for an acquisition, then the market cap change can make a big difference. But it's really just to show that there's this drop in confidence in Meta in general. Zuckerberg said on the call that if Meta wasn't pursuing the development of a metaverse, it might be the case that no one else would have stepped up and no work would be done on it. And to that, I say, okay, so what. But you know, that's because I remain really skeptical that a metaverse approach is really the future of connectivity, commerce, entertainment, etcetera. I mean, maybe it is. Maybe that is the future, and and I'm just incapable of seeing it. Maybe I am being obstinate in my reluctance to buy into the metaverse vision, but it just it just seems unrealistic to me because of a lot of different factors. And I think a lot of investors feel in a similar way. Right They also feel feel uncertain. They certainly see how the metaverse project is requiring enormous UH costs in Meta, and that this is in fact impacting the company's performance. Maybe we're all wrong. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg is right on the money. That is possible. But whether we're right, or Zuckerberg's right, or there's no one who's right, Zuckerberg has indicated that we're likely to see future quarters with similar tough results moving forward, that Meta remains committed to this metaverse pursuit and will continue to spend money and perhaps in increasing quantities, in an effort to see it to fruition. Meanwhile, companies like TikTok continue to attract the younger users that Meta desperately wants to hook into its own ecosystem. So it may be that Meta's future is really just meant for a group of folks who are steadily aging out of the platform with no replenishment in sight. Okay, we've got a lot more tech news to go through, including some more from Meta, but first let's take this quick break. We're back. The Association for Computer Machineries Journal published a study that has some disturbing findings, namely that Facebook ads appear to target people not just on their interests, and their likes and their dislikes, and their browsing activity, and sometimes their app activity, unless it's an Apple iPhone, in which case I got kind of eliminated once Apple gave users the option to opt out of that, but also on things like their race, their gender, and their age, even if the user isn't sharing that info with the platform itself. The study says that Facebook is using image recognition software to draw conclusions about users and then serve up ads based on those conclusions. For example, the study found that white users were far less likely to encounter ads that feature black people in them. The researchers actually created ads for job listings to post on Facebook, and these job listings featured AI generated images of people. Some of the ads had white people in them, some had black people in them, and by tracking the ads, the research group saw that black users made up of the audience that saw ads that had black people in them. With ads that had white people in them, black users made up fifty of that audience. Ads with teenage girls featured in them went on to an audience that was fifty seven percent mail, and many of them over the age of fifty five, which creepy I mean, that's not a good look for a platform that's often associated with an aging user base. If it was an AD that featured an older woman inside the image, well, the audience for those ads ended up being women. So the researchers indicate that for some uses, this kind of targeting might feel like like it's a little suss, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, let's face it, you are more likely to respond to an AD if the person or person's appearing in the ad kind of look like you do right, like you. There's just this this tendency. You know, we want to see ourselves reflected in the things that we see. But when it comes to stuff like job listings and housing and education, the targeting can reinforce social problems. In fact, Facebook has been in trouble for that in the past. Back in there was a massive lawsuit that focused on this. Also, you know, we're looking at a system that's using machine learning and AI and machine learning by relying upon strategies that worked in the past, could end up perpetuating discriminatory practices that disproportionately hurt certain populations, namely people of color. The study also indicates that Facebook's approach could be antithetical to the desires of their clients, like the companies that are actually paying for the ads, because a lot of these companies want to project an image that values diversity. But if the diversity reflected in the ads means that those ads aren't being shown to all populations, that might mean that the ad isn't getting the effect that the base company wanted in the first place. Now, Meta reps say that Meta is dedicated to preventing discrimination on its platforms and that the company continues to develop its technologies with that goal in mind. Further, we should be hearing more about Meta's pushes to to fix these kinds of problems in the months ahead. But this is a good example of how machine learning and how AI can have a bias built into it, and how that bias can have a negative impact. Now that's not to say that all biases necessarily bad or that all bias has to be avoided, but there are definite areas where you could say, yeah, this is a problem, and this kind of constitutes that and some more Meta bad news. In Washington State here in the United States, a judge has issued a twenty four point seven million dollar fine for failing to comply with a state campaign finance disclosure law. So the court found Facebook guilty of violating the state's Fair Campaign Practices Act more than eight hundred times eight hundred twenty two times in fact, and this is not the first time this has happened. The company came up for the same sort of problem back in two thousand eighteen. So that law says that any platform that airs or displays political advertising has to maintain a publicly accessible database of who purchased the ads, including their names and addresses. Plus the information has to include whom the ads were targeting, how many views the ads received, how the ads were paid for, and that kind of stuff. So anyone who asks for this information has the right to it, and the platforms are compelled by law to comply and hand over that precious information. But Facebook has declined to acquiesce to that request for quite some time, has not followed the rules according to the the case, and it has argued that the law quote burdens political speech end quote. Though that's kind of a tough thing to argue considering that, you know, platforms like television, radio, and newspapers have all been complying with this law since it was passed in nine two. So I'm not sure that that's a really valid argument. Uh, there's no doubt that Facebook has access to the information that's required. The company has just repeatedly failed to hand that information over. The law allow the judge to find an entity up to ten thousand dollars per violation. And as I said, there were eight hundred twenty two violations, And you might say, huh, e d two times ten thousand does not equal twenty four point seven million dollars. That's that's way more than what you should expect. Well, that same law also allows a judge to triple the penalty per violation if the judge determines that the violations were intentional in nature. And since Facebook went through this same process back in two thousand eighteen, it's kind of hard to argue that the company wasn't intentionally violating that law. Thus we get the twenty four point seven million dollar fine that might be the largest campaign finance penalty ever issued here in the United States. Of course, compared to Facebook's revenues, which even in the downturn it's experiencing right now, or you know, measured in the billions of dollars. This is small change, but then no company really wants to just hand over twenty five million bucks, so it's not exactly a slap on the wrist either. It's you know, literally the largest penalty that the judge was allowed to pass by law. Now let's hop on over to Twitter to find out what's going on with Elon Musk's on again, off again, on again again acquisition deal. So as it stands, Musk has until the close of business tomorrow, Friday, October to finalize his acquisition of Twitter. If you recall, Musk initially agreed to buy Twitter at fifty four dollars twenty cents per share back in the spring of this year. Right now, that's actually just a hair over what Twitter is currently trading at. Like when I went to record, Twitter is trading at just under fifty four dollars per share, so it's really close to what that deal was proposed at. I suspect that the current share price reflects people anticipating that this deal is going to go through by the end of tomorrow, So even a small gain is a game. So I think that has driven up interest in the stock, and thus we see it really close to what Musk was um agreeing to buy it for. Of course, Musk famously attempted to back out of the deal, which then prompted a court case to force Musk to go through with the deal. Twitter brought that against Musk. Uh That court case is currently on hold unless the deal does not complete by the end of day tomorrow, in which case the case is back on. So Musk himself arrived at Twitter HQ yesterday. On Wednesday, he carried a bathroom sink as a kind of publicity stunt. Uh. I'm not sure what the message was, because typically we talked about kitchen sink deals, not bathroom sinc ones. According to Gizmoto, Musk said it was a visual pun on let that sink in. But you know, I don't know. Maybe he's just very particular about where he washes his hands. I don't know. Anyway. Musk also published an open letter to Twitter employees to address some fears and concerns people have had about this acquisition. For example, he denied that he plans to eliminate up to the workforce at the company. That was something that had been reported in the past by The Washington Post. Uh, there is an indication that he expects there to be some downsizing, and in fact had received previous advice from Jason callicannacas out of old people to require people to come into the office, because that's going to weed people out, like people will self select for leaving the company. But then that tends to be like your best people too, So that's not the best advice I've ever heard, But you know, it's it's very possible that Busk will attempt to downsize Twitter simply by being unpleasant, something that I am told he has a modicum of experience at doing. Anyway, Moscostle said has no intention to allow Twitter to become a quote free for all hell scape where anything can be said with no consequences end quote. That also conflicts a little bit earlier with reports that must believe Twitter should be kind of an unfettered platform for free speech. But to be fair, Musk has pretty much always maintained that this should actually fall within the legal parameters of the various countries within which Twitter operates. So, in other words, you can't say absolutely anything if the country where you are operating has limits on free speech, like you have to you have to operate within the boundaries of the law. Uh, he has at least made that concession. He has also indicated that he intends for Twitter to ease off on content moderation, which could allow for even more misinformation to proliferate across the platform, and that he would reverse the permanent bands of several prominent accounts, most notably that of Donald Trump, who has seen his own truth social platform struggle to find significant traction. Anyway, we'll have to wait until tomorrow to see if the deal actually does go through for real, which I mean, I'm there's like a seventy chance in my mind that's going to happen, or if Musk will pull some other maneuver in an attempt to get out of the deal. I'm not sure that there is an exit strategy that wouldn't also put the court case back on track to continue. So I think there's a more than decent chance that by the end of tomorrow, Twitter will be a privately held company owned by Elon Musk. CNBC another outlets report that Tesla, another Elon Musk company, is currently under investigation by the U. S Department of Justice. This is with regards to Tesla's driver assist systems, and whether or not the company misled consumers with exaggerated claims about those systems and their capabilities, namely that they essentially constituted self driving. Now, at the very least, there appears to be two distinct storylines coming out of Tesla. So on the marketing side, the company seems to indicate that Tesla vehicles, when they're in full self driving mode, are you know, to any practical consideration, an autonomous vehicle. They don't go quite that far to say it, but one video on Tesla's site that shows a man inside a Tesla vehicle goes on to say, quote, the person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself end quote. That is not the same thing as saying this car is autonomous, but it does seem to imply, Hey, the system can take full control of your vehicle safely and you can just sit back and relax. However, during actual operation, Tesla has messages that tell drivers they are required to keep their hands on the wheel even when using the driver assist features, and further the website. On Tesla's page, it actually says the systems quote do not make the vehicle autonomous end quote. So it does say on the web page, this doesn't make this an autonomous vehicle, even while they also show videos where they say the only reason we have a driver in the the driver's seat is for legal reasons. So it does sound a lot like double speak, right, like the cars aren't autonomous, but you know they can drive themselves anyway. Tesla's have been involved in numerous high profile accidents, some of them involving fatalities, So the d o J is investigating the company, presumably to see if there are any criminal implications here. It's possible that Tesla's seemingly contradictory messages may keep the company legally safe in that Tesla's lawyers can truthfully point out that Tesla has denied that its vehicles are autonomous. This is not the only legal investigation into Tesla by any means, and it might be a while before we hear any potential judicial action against the company, if in fact any any are pending. Okay, we've got some more news stories to get through before we get to that. Let's take another quick break. We're back from break. We still have one more you know, tangentially Elon Musk related story because we're gonna talk about SpaceX and specifically Starlink. So earlier this year, Starlink, which is the satellite Internet service provider arm of SpaceX, offered up a service for RV owners, and r V owners would pay a hundred thirty five bucks per month for Internet access through Starlink. However, it would only work for r vs that were stationary that were parked. In other words, However, later this year, in December, starlink is going to offer a plan that will allow RV owners to access the Internet even while driving the r V. Now, to do so will require the installation of a new kind of satellite dish, one that comes with a hefty two thousand five fee. If you were just getting the standard stationary access system in your r V, that one costs to install. So it's a pretty hefty upgrade. You know, it's almost two thousand dollars more expensive. The monthly cost for access will still be a hundred thirty five dollar subscription fee. Starlink has recently been targeting use cases for moving vehicles for private planes to ships at sea, and we can now add r vs on the road to that list. Earlier today, hackers got access to the New York Post's website and Twitter feed and use that access to publish some really awful headlines, mostly targeting specific politicians. Those headlines included racist, misogynists, and other disgusting language. The Post regained control of its accounts not too long after they had been seized, and was able to remove the offending material. This marks the second time during the current election season here in the United States that a publication found itself hacked. Fast Company was a target of such a hack in late September actually took its websites down for a full week to deal with that. Both Fast Company and The New York Post rely upon WordPress as a content management system, but as of this recording, there's been no further information about how the hackers got access to the New York Post website. Anyway, it's yet another fun example of how political events can drive terrible things in technology. Sigh. This past August, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan to meet with Morris Cheng, the founder of semiconductor company t s MC. And you might remember that t SMC is responsible for the production of much of the chips we rely upon in our electronics and most of the higher end chips. The US has recently passed legislation aimed at bootstrapping the semiconductor industry here in the United States, and so it aims to shift some of the dependence on Taiwan to US based facilities. And now, the Financial Times in Taiwan reports that during the visit back in August, Cheng told Pelosi that the United States efforts are quote doomed to fail end quote. Now that might be the case, but there are some other factors that may have influenced Chang when he made such a proclamation, assuming that the reporting is accurate. For example, Taiwan currently enjoys a not entirely stable independence from mainland China, and the Western world's reliance on semiconductors means that countries like the United States have a vested interest in keeping Taiwan free from Chinese interference. Therefore, if China were to make any kind of aggressive moves towards Taiwan, that would likely pull the US into what could become a dangerous conflict. So it's the threat of the US is involvement that keeps Taiwan temporarily safe. But if the West were to reduce its reliance on Taiwan when it comes to semi conductors, then this silicon shield around Taiwan will weaken. Therefore, Jang has an existential motivation to dismiss the US's efforts to become independent with semi conductors. Now that doesn't mean he's wrong. He might be right. We're very early in the United States effort to revitalize the semiconductor industry here in the States, and it could turn into a total fiasco. It is sure to have some bumpy spots along the road. That's just the nature of reality. We just don't know where that road ultimately is going to lead. We know the intended destination is greater independence when it comes to producing semiconductors. Now, considering Taiwan situation, I think it's safe to say we cannot assume Chang's projections on the matter are free from bias. They're certainly not free from personal interest. Well, it's almost Halloween, so how about some terrifying news. A video from the official Kestral Defense page on the Chinese micro blogging site way Bow shows a large drone dropping off a four legged robot similar to the kinds of robots you've seen from Boston Dynamics, only this robot also happens to have a machine gun. Ho ho ho, Sorry I'm mixing up my holidays here. Anyway, the video demonstrates that this technology is ready to go, at least according to the defense company behind it. The robot and the gun would be under human control, so this would be a remotely controlled robot, not an autonomous one. You would have an operator capable of maneuvering the robot and firing its weapon. And this tech could potentially be used in battlefield situations where you want to draw off robotic soldiers, say behind enemy lines to attack in a different direction, or you know, in other locations that are all intended to put pressure on the enemy on multiple fronts. This is exactly the kind of use the companies like Boston Dynamics recently pledged they would not pursue the weaponization of robotic platforms. Of course, the U. S Military is certainly hard at work of building these kinds of things itself, So this is something that looks like it's going to be on the horizon no matter what. And yes, this is terrifying because there's really a worry that robotic forces are going to reduce barriers that countries face before they engage at armed conflict. Right, it might remove certain concerns and make it more likely that will see more war. It's a lot easier to sell your invasion to your population if that population isn't, you know, seeing its own soldiers being put in harm's way. See also Russia. There's also an additional fear that we could see future technologies progress toward automation for navigation and combat. That's something that's particularly scary when you keep in mind that computer vision is by no means incapable of making mistakes. So not only is it already scary to think of a robot with a gun, it's even scarier to think it's a robot with a gun that might think that you're not on its side. Not great. Recently, in Video unveiled its forty series of graphics cards, the new flagship cards that set the company's standard for performance, but problems have already popped up with the r t X from Nvidio itself, as there have been a few reports of users discovering that a sixteen pen adapter used to connect the card to the computer's power supply can overheat, which can cause the adapter to melt or even catch fire. Now IGOR Labs has released an article that reveals that these adapters were poorly made in the first place, with substandard soldering that can lead to these issues. Igor Labs has alerted in Video to the problem, which was likely caused when the company relied on an assembly partner that took some shortcuts. Gamers who are eager to get in Video's new chips may want to hold off. There is the distinct possibility that in Video will hold a recall and and correct this issue before sending out new cards, so it might be better to just wait, or you might want to wait for a third party manufacturers to offer their own forty cards because in Video's business strategy is not just to manufacture the cards itself, but it also licenses the design and the tech out to other manufacturers, and if those manufacturers actually replace the adapter that in Vidia includes in its kits, then it might solve the problem as well, and thus you could end up with a graphics card that is safer than the official in Video version. I do think we're probably going to see a recall and replacement process before long. But as of the time I'm recording this, that has not yet been announced. Gamers who have been anticipating the release of Call of Duty Modern Warfare two and who got their hands on a physical copy of the game might be shocked to learn that there's no game on that physical disc. In fact, according to euro Gamer, there's just seventy two megabytes of data on those discs. Now, the game, it turns out, is closer to thirty five gigabytes in size on the PS five that can actually balloon up to one fifty gigs once you install a Day one patch and you have all the packs for the game installed. So seventy two megabytes a hundred and fifty gigabytes is a huge gap. What has going on, Well, it looks like the physical disc really just directs machines to download the digital copy anyway. So yes, you'll get a physical disc. That disc will have like the logo and the art and all that kind of stuff, but there's no game on the disc and all it will do is direct you toward a massive digital download. So if you live somewhere that has lousy internet connectivity, or maybe your data plan has a data cap to it, you might be shocked to learn that your physical copy doesn't actually, you know, let you experience the game. You still have to go through the same steps that you would have had to go through if you just purchased it digitally in the first place. And that leads to the question why even have a physical option that this is going to be the way it works. That reminds me of a time when you could find box copies of computer games and inside was just a code where you could download the digital copy. And I guess you bought the box so that you would have something to put up on a shelf. I mean maybe for collectors, but I don't know. It's it hits me the wrong way to have a disc for a game and the game is not on the disk. That just bugs me. Anyway. That's it for today's news episode of text Stuff. Hope you are all well. If you have suggestions or any questions or anything like that, you want to get in touch with me, there are a couple of ways of doing that. One is to download the I Heart radio app. It's free to download and use. You can navigate over to tech Stuff in the search field. There's a little microphone icon there if you click on that you can leave a voice message up to thirty seconds in length let me know if you would like me to use it in a future episode, or you can reach out on Twitter while Twitter is still around. I have no idea what's going to happen if Elon Musk closes the steal, so we'll see what happens. But the handle on Twitter is tech stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon. 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.