Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and a love all things tech, and let me cover a couple of things before we get to the news today. One of those is that I might sound a little different. That's because super producer Tari sent me a brand new microphone that is a serious upgrade from the one I had been using, So if it sounds a little different, that's why. Uh. Second, I will be on vacation next week, but I will be running some reruns about General Electric during the time I'm gone. Since we now know that g E is going to split up into three companies in the near future, I thought it would be a good thing to go back over the history of that company. So those will be publishing next week as well as well as a Smart Talks with IBM episode which should come out Thursday, and then I'll be back for part of the following week and then we go into US Thanksgiving. But that's all of the way. Now let's cover the tech news for Thursday, November eleven one. So I'm going to start off this News episode with a correction and an explanation about the story that I mentioned earlier this week. So on Tuesday, I talked about how Elon Musk had set up a Twitter poll about whether or not he should sell off ten percent of the stock he was holding in Tesla, and he framed it as a response to US lawmakers who said that, you know, stocks are unrealized gains that wouldn't be taxed, and that this was a way that the ultra rich billionaires like Elon Musk use in order so that they don't have to pay taxes on that. So essentially he was saying the US says, I'm trying to avoid paying taxes, should I sell ten percent of my stock? Because then you see, by selling the stock, he would have to pay taxes on the money he earned from that sale. Now, in the story, I believe I mentioned that it would be worth around twenty one billion dollars. Business Insider reports that Musk exercise two point one five million stock options for six dollars cents a share each. That means he actually purchased the stock at that price that set him back thirteen point four billion bucks. Then he sold off around four and a half million shares for a total of around five billion dollars, And you might say, hey, five billion dollars is significantly less than twenty one billion. But then Musk sold off less than his ten percent of holdings he had mentioned in Twitter. In fact, it was less than three percent that he sold off, So that is where part of that discrepancy comes in. But the big thing that Business Insider reported was that Musk had been planning to sell off that stock for months and that the poll was really more of a stunt than anything else. And honestly, if I had used a little bit of critical thinking, if I had taken my own advice, I might have come to a similar conclusion. But I fell short on that, which just goes to show that critical thinking is an active skill that you have to work at. Anyway. According to Business Insider, regulatory filings showed that Musk always planned on this course of action because those stock options that he exercised were set to expire next year and he had to act before they actually did expire. On top of that, he's going to face a pretty big tax bill coming up, like a ten billion dollar one, so liquidation was kind of a necessity. So might did he post the Twitter poll. If all this was already planned well, Speculation says that Musk might have done this in order to soften the news that the CEO of a company was selling off a large block of stocks in that company, because that's a message that could have a dramatic impact on the company's stock price. So instead of the media saying Musk suddenly dumps millions of shares of Tesla, the media says, Musk asks Twitter if he should sell stock. So the price of Tesla stock still took a hit, but by shifting accountability to Twitter rather than to himself, Musk can avoid the appearance that the CEO of a company has lost confidence in their own company, because that really that doesn't reflect reality anyway. So yeah, I was one of those stooges who pushed that narrative forward. Dang it critical thinking, why are you got to be so hard? I also mentioned on Tuesday that hackers accessed user information on the broker company robin Hood's internal systems, robin Hood allowing people to create accounts and then you know, get involved in in stock market trades and stuff. Initially, it's sounded as though the information that hackers accessed was limited to stuff like email addresses for the vast majority of those affected, UH, the names and physical addresses, and some similar information for a smaller number. So the vast the vast majority of users who were affected, it was supposedly just their email address. Now Motherboard has released screenshots showing the internal tools that the hackers used to get a closer look of at least a few accounts, maybe as few as ten UH, and they had access to stuff like bank transfer histories, which devices were authorized to access the account customers, support conversations with certain users, and that kind of thing. There's no word on whether the hackers actually used the tools to make changes to the accounts. Robin Hood says that did not happen, but it does look like they would have at least been able to if they had wanted to. Also, no word on whether the hackers purposefully targeted the small number of accounts that received a more extensive probing or whether that was just you know, random. In YouTube News, the platform is saying goodbye to a feature that's been around for years, and that is of the public dislike tally. The dislike button is sticking around, but the tally is going away. Anyone familiar with YouTube knows that the like and dislike options below a video or there. I mean, you often have creators saying, if you enjoyed this video, hit that little like button. Like that's pretty common, and the assumption goes that the likes factor into YouTube's recommendation algorithm and thus makes it more likely that the video will one get greater exposure to other users, and two that if you like a video, YouTube is going to probably serve you up stuff that's similar. Now, I say assumption because YouTube is pretty darn quiet about how it's recommendation engine actually works, and it's frequently tweaking the system. And for a just you could actually see the tally of likes and dislikes below the video. But now YouTube is going to hide the number of dislikes that a video actually receives. The dislike button is still going to be there, but you won't see how many times folks have clicked on this. Uh, this YouTube says is meant to prevent a kind of snowball effect that sometimes happens where folks will dislike a video and the number will go up, and then more people will pile on and it becomes kind of an avalanche of dislikes, and some folks join in on that activity even if they've never watched the video in the first place. I made this argument on Twitter that for a very long time, the Justin Bieber music video for Baby was the most disliked video on YouTube, and I am certain that a large number of people who hit dislike on that video had never bothered to watch it. They just kind of thought it was funny to pile on and dislike the video. I'm not saying the video is good, by the way, I'm just saying that I am convinced that it earned way more dislikes than people actually watched in that in that sense, So the ideas this will help prevent those kind of instance and you know, hopefully reduce the amount of abuse people have heaped onto creators using the dislike button. Now, the video creators will still be able to see dislike counts through their analytics, and the dislikes should help YouTube continue to tune recommendations more to the individual users so that you're not flooded with more videos that you don't like. And I actually do like that because I I recently, you know, this is a personal story, I watched some videos about camping. Not that I think I'm gonna go camping anytime soon, but for some reason I got on this camping kick, and now YouTube occasionally suggests hunting videos to me. And I've got nothing against hunting, at least as long as it's not trophy hunting. I think trophy hunting is cruel and horrifying and awful and unnecessary. But whether it's you know, subsistence hunting or not, I don't want to watch videos about it. That's not my bag. So knowing the dislike feature is really more so that viewers can shape their recommendations and less about mob mentality is cool. Whether or not it works remains to be seen. I'm sure there will still be campaigns against certain videos or creators that will commence tons of folks to dislike specific videos, even if they've never watched the video. But maybe it won't be as bad as it was before because you won't see how effective the attack is. There will be no number associated with dislikes. Also, let's take a moment to mourn the passing of an amazing internet meme joke, and that is of the neutral Response video, which is a clip from the show Futurama and in the clip, there's an alien from this planet that's just filled with people who have neutral tendencies, and the alien says, I have no strong feelings one way or the other. And the joke was that the number of likes and dislikes for that video have balanced out, like whenever anyone would like the video, someone else would come along and dislike it in order to keep them even so, the current tally is at five fifty four thousand each more or less. Well, once dislikes disappear, that collective joke will be over. So that's a little sad. It seems like the concept of the metaverse is gonna be a theme for a while. I think it's a little bit odd because the concept itself isn't really that new, and arguably you could even call stuff like Second Life a type of metaverse, and that's been around for ages. Anyway. The reason I even mentioned it is that the Soul Metropolitan Government, as in Soul Korea, has announced it will create its own metaverse with Blackjack and no way, I'm still thinking about Futurama quotes. No uh, I mean it's going to create a metaverse meant to allow quote citizens to conveniently meet with Avatar officials to deal with civil complaints and consultations end quote. So essentially, this would replace the need to physically travel to a municipal office for an in person appointment, which is not a bad thing considering it, you know, there's a pandemic going at all. It's interesting that they're going the avatar route. To me, I'm not sure how that is more beneficial oversay a video conference called directly with whomever it is you need to meet, Like, how is it better than that? But the city government is willing to invest around three billion dollars into the project, which is part of a larger city plan that aims to transform Soul by twenty and I guess one benefit is the metaverse proposal would also include the ability to virtually attend mass events like imagine a giant concert that kind of thing. You could virtually be there and you would be surrounded by other virtual people watching a virtual concert, so you could still be part of a group experience without actually having to leave house. Now, again, it's hard for me to see this as being better than just say, watching a live stream video of the concert. Uh. I know that virtual reality can be really immersive. I've experienced that myself. I get that, and probably there is some sort of psychological boost compared to just watching a live stream video on a classic screen. But I think part of me would still be thinking to myself, it's weird that I have to put on all this VR gear just to witness this. You know. Then again, I've also always been a little anxious in crowds. That has actually gotten way worse since the pandemic. So maybe it's just that this particular thing is not for me anyway. There's some aspects to VR metaverse stuff that I can totally get behind, like the idea of improved accessibility for folks who otherwise would have trouble attending physical events. I think that's great to give people who otherwise couldn't have that chance to do it. That is fantastic. However, you also have to acknowledge this has improved accessibility assuming you're able to afford the hardware you need in order to run VR properly. To me, that's still an accessibility barrier. We have a few more stories to cover, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Before the break, I talked a little bit about accessibility. Sticking with that that theme, of the United States government has sued the ride hailing company Uber, saying that the company has failed to ensure equitable fairs for passengers with disabilities. So Uber has this weight time fee, and it's the idea is that the weight time fee charges a passenger if they force a driver to wait a couple of minutes once they arrive at a destination UH to pick someone up. So, in other words, if I call an Uber and the Uber pulls up outside my house, but I'm still inside puttering around, trying to get stuff done, putting on shoes, whatever it may be, and I'm making the driver weight, then Uber charges me for the fact that I have inconvenience the driver, I have taken time away from the driver. That's time that they could potentially be earning on another fair. That's the idea behind the policy. Unfortunately, this policy would also adversely affect people with disabilities who need more time to get into a vehicle. If they are actually taking more time to get into the vehicle and the driver is sitting there for a few minutes, this policy would pop into effect and the passengers would be essentially monetarily penalized for the fact that they can't get into a car very fast, and that's just discrimination as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act. So that's why the United States government has sued Uber. Uber, by the way, has introduced a feature in its app that will waive weight time fees for passengers who are certified as being disabled. I'm not sure what that certification process actually is. I don't know how they determine that, but the Department of Justice is seeking damages from Uber to compensate passengers who had been affected by this policy, as well as just mandating that that policy cannot apply to people with disabilities because otherwise it does discriminate and the Americans with disabilities that makes that illegal. So interesting story. Sony has recently revealed that, due to ongoing supply chain issues, the company expects to produce fewer PlayStation five consoles than they had originally planned, by the tune of one million units. Now. Their fiscal year ends in March or at the beginning of March, I believe, and so I think the original plan was to produce sixteen million units. It's going to be closer to fifteen million, and the sales goal was for fourteen point eight million, which means there's not a whole lot of margin there. They have to pray much sell every single unit they make in order to meet the numbers that they had projected. The PS five launched almost exactly a year ago. The original launch date was November twelve, and it has been consistently challenging to find in stores. You know, actually had the chance to snag one a couple of weeks ago, but a dilly dallied and then that chance went bye bye. And you know, I'm sure a lot of you gamers out there have had similar experiences. And unfortunately, this means there will be fewer consoles produced than planned. That means it's still going to be difficult to find them in stores, which is a real blow, particularly since we're into the holiday gift buying season. Uh that, by the way, is sure to be impacted by various supply chain issues. A lot of people have found that just the stuff that they were planning on buying is taking way longer to get to them than they had originally thought. That's gonna keep going, right, I mean, the supply chain crunch is a real one, and it has created bottle throughout the entire system where you know, suddenly a facility gets flooded with products and then it has to figure out how does it deal with that to pass it further down the chain. This is a domino effect, a cascading effect that we see throughout the supply chain. So as a tech person, typically I would be expected to suggest certain like Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals that focus on stuff like TVs and electronics and sound systems, that kind of thing. This year, I humbly suggest that if you plan on buying holiday presents, patronize like local shop owners and artists and tradespeople instead, it will be a bigger benefit to your immediate community. And if enough of us actually do that, it will relieve some of the insane pressure that's on the supply side of the supply chain economy right now, and things can get to a better equilibrium. But only if enough of us actually kind of at least remove that part to the pressure on the system, Like the demand side is still super high, and that's just kind of exacerbating an already tough situation. Okay, let's go back to South Korea. I mentioned them earlier in the episode. Well, the country recently unveiled a traffic control system designed to handle urban air mobility vehicles or u a m s, which is a fancy way of saying flying machines what take passengers from one place to another place, or a flying taxi in other words. And these typically take the form factor of a really large multi rotor drone type thing, because it's not drones, more like a multi rotor helicopter in a way. So think of like like the drones you would see that are remote controlled, but much much bigger and sometimes with more rotors. The traffic control system would be a necessary component if flying taxis are to be, you know, a real thing, Like if they're to become an integral component in transportation, then you've got you've got to have some sort of system to be able to handle that. So the country is actually testing this to kind of work out the design flaws and to tweak things in order to set a foundation for a future with flying vehicles that are actually an actively carrying people to and fro. The test involved a vehicle made by a company called Volocopter, and according to the Korean Times, that particular vehicle is one that can either be piloted by a human or it can operate in an autonomous mode. Currently, South Korea requires a pilot to be present should any passengers be inside the vehicle, so you cannot, you know, use this like an autonomous taxi under South Korean law currently. I think that's a wise decision. The government says it's necessary both as a safety measure and also to help secure passenger confidence in the system. Makes sense to me. The Korean Times also reports that the expected cost or a customer to take a ride from the Incheon International Airport to Central Soul to be around nine dollars American the equivalent of ninety dollars when the pilot program No Pun Intended launches No Pun Intended, which is supposed to be in However, they say that that price should drop dramatically once the technology and the business matures, so within a decade they expect the cost to drop low enough so that it would be the equivalent of less than twenty dollars per trep. That to me is phenomenal. I think it's really optimistic, but I would love to see it happen, assuming, of course, that the system has proven to be safe and reliable. Finally, I've written and talked about brain computer interfaces quite a few times. I always find them fascinating. Creating technology that can detect and interpret brain waves and then produce some sort of meaningful output is really cool, particularly for people who have limited or no motor functions and who otherwise would find it challenging or even impossible to communicate well. Science Alert reported earlier this week on a research program called brain Gate that has developed an interface that allows a paralyzed subject, a man who volunteered to be part of this, to generate text on a screen just by imagining his own handwriting, so he can think about writing a word by hand, even though he lost all uh control of his limbs years ago, and that thought will then be interpreted by the system, and then the text will appear on a screen reflecting the letters he was imagining himself writing. Now, I've heard of other systems that use training sessions so that someone can learn how to control a cursor with their mind, and they can move the cursor around to kind of type things out on an on screen keyboard, very similar to how you would use an on screen touch keyboard. But this is the first time I've heard about something that can interpret the thoughts about writing a word and use that to display that same word on screen. Now, it's still a slow process. The subject in the research project could right around nine characters per minute, that's about eighteen words per minute, but they could do it with like accuracy before auto correct was brought in. And it still requires surgery to implant electrodes into the brain, so this is not like some hat you put on and you can use it. It is an invasive process, but for people who would otherwise find themselves unable to communicate, this technology is incredibly powerful. It's also fascinating to me that the brain can retain abilities related to fine motor movements even years after someone has lost that actual physical capability. So not only are we learning more about how to develop these systems, we're learning more about the resilience of the brain and how the brain operates. So those learnings will inform future implementations which will continue to improve. And my hope is that in the future will have systems that give people a lot more independence and autonomy and communication abilities and to dramatically improve their quality of life, even in the case where they have lost or maybe never even had abilities to to move around. I think that that is really phenomenal. All right, that wraps up the news episode for Thursday, November eleven, twenty one. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out. The best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W. I'm out next week. You'll get your g E episodes in place of me, and there will also be a Smart Talks with IBM episode on Thursday. But I will be back the following Monday, so catch you on the flip side. And if you are walking around Disney World, look for a bald guy who's probably staring on his phone because of Genie Plus. But that's a that's a topic for another podcast. All right, Bye bye, I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and a love all things tech, and let me cover a couple of things before we get to the news today. One of those is that I might sound a little different. That's because super producer Tari sent me a brand new microphone that is a serious upgrade from the one I had been using, So if it sounds a little different, that's why. Uh. Second, I will be on vacation next week, but I will be running some reruns about General Electric during the time I'm gone. Since we now know that g E is going to split up into three companies in the near future, I thought it would be a good thing to go back over the history of that company. So those will be publishing next week as well as well as a Smart Talks with IBM episode which should come out Thursday, and then I'll be back for part of the following week and then we go into US Thanksgiving. But that's all of the way. Now let's cover the tech news for Thursday, November eleven one. So I'm going to start off this News episode with a correction and an explanation about the story that I mentioned earlier this week. So on Tuesday, I talked about how Elon Musk had set up a Twitter poll about whether or not he should sell off ten percent of the stock he was holding in Tesla, and he framed it as a response to US lawmakers who said that, you know, stocks are unrealized gains that wouldn't be taxed, and that this was a way that the ultra rich billionaires like Elon Musk use in order so that they don't have to pay taxes on that. So essentially he was saying the US says, I'm trying to avoid paying taxes, should I sell ten percent of my stock? Because then you see, by selling the stock, he would have to pay taxes on the money he earned from that sale. Now, in the story, I believe I mentioned that it would be worth around twenty one billion dollars. Business Insider reports that Musk exercise two point one five million stock options for six dollars cents a share each. That means he actually purchased the stock at that price that set him back thirteen point four billion bucks. Then he sold off around four and a half million shares for a total of around five billion dollars, And you might say, hey, five billion dollars is significantly less than twenty one billion. But then Musk sold off less than his ten percent of holdings he had mentioned in Twitter. In fact, it was less than three percent that he sold off, So that is where part of that discrepancy comes in. But the big thing that Business Insider reported was that Musk had been planning to sell off that stock for months and that the poll was really more of a stunt than anything else. And honestly, if I had used a little bit of critical thinking, if I had taken my own advice, I might have come to a similar conclusion. But I fell short on that, which just goes to show that critical thinking is an active skill that you have to work at. Anyway. According to Business Insider, regulatory filings showed that Musk always planned on this course of action because those stock options that he exercised were set to expire next year and he had to act before they actually did expire. On top of that, he's going to face a pretty big tax bill coming up, like a ten billion dollar one, so liquidation was kind of a necessity. So might did he post the Twitter poll. If all this was already planned well, Speculation says that Musk might have done this in order to soften the news that the CEO of a company was selling off a large block of stocks in that company, because that's a message that could have a dramatic impact on the company's stock price. So instead of the media saying Musk suddenly dumps millions of shares of Tesla, the media says, Musk asks Twitter if he should sell stock. So the price of Tesla stock still took a hit, but by shifting accountability to Twitter rather than to himself, Musk can avoid the appearance that the CEO of a company has lost confidence in their own company, because that really that doesn't reflect reality anyway. So yeah, I was one of those stooges who pushed that narrative forward. Dang it critical thinking, why are you got to be so hard? I also mentioned on Tuesday that hackers accessed user information on the broker company robin Hood's internal systems, robin Hood allowing people to create accounts and then you know, get involved in in stock market trades and stuff. Initially, it's sounded as though the information that hackers accessed was limited to stuff like email addresses for the vast majority of those affected, UH, the names and physical addresses, and some similar information for a smaller number. So the vast the vast majority of users who were affected, it was supposedly just their email address. Now Motherboard has released screenshots showing the internal tools that the hackers used to get a closer look of at least a few accounts, maybe as few as ten UH, and they had access to stuff like bank transfer histories, which devices were authorized to access the account customers, support conversations with certain users, and that kind of thing. There's no word on whether the hackers actually used the tools to make changes to the accounts. Robin Hood says that did not happen, but it does look like they would have at least been able to if they had wanted to. Also, no word on whether the hackers purposefully targeted the small number of accounts that received a more extensive probing or whether that was just you know, random. In YouTube News, the platform is saying goodbye to a feature that's been around for years, and that is of the public dislike tally. The dislike button is sticking around, but the tally is going away. Anyone familiar with YouTube knows that the like and dislike options below a video or there. I mean, you often have creators saying, if you enjoyed this video, hit that little like button. Like that's pretty common, and the assumption goes that the likes factor into YouTube's recommendation algorithm and thus makes it more likely that the video will one get greater exposure to other users, and two that if you like a video, YouTube is going to probably serve you up stuff that's similar. Now, I say assumption because YouTube is pretty darn quiet about how it's recommendation engine actually works, and it's frequently tweaking the system. And for a just you could actually see the tally of likes and dislikes below the video. But now YouTube is going to hide the number of dislikes that a video actually receives. The dislike button is still going to be there, but you won't see how many times folks have clicked on this. Uh, this YouTube says is meant to prevent a kind of snowball effect that sometimes happens where folks will dislike a video and the number will go up, and then more people will pile on and it becomes kind of an avalanche of dislikes, and some folks join in on that activity even if they've never watched the video in the first place. I made this argument on Twitter that for a very long time, the Justin Bieber music video for Baby was the most disliked video on YouTube, and I am certain that a large number of people who hit dislike on that video had never bothered to watch it. They just kind of thought it was funny to pile on and dislike the video. I'm not saying the video is good, by the way, I'm just saying that I am convinced that it earned way more dislikes than people actually watched in that in that sense, So the ideas this will help prevent those kind of instance and you know, hopefully reduce the amount of abuse people have heaped onto creators using the dislike button. Now, the video creators will still be able to see dislike counts through their analytics, and the dislikes should help YouTube continue to tune recommendations more to the individual users so that you're not flooded with more videos that you don't like. And I actually do like that because I I recently, you know, this is a personal story, I watched some videos about camping. Not that I think I'm gonna go camping anytime soon, but for some reason I got on this camping kick, and now YouTube occasionally suggests hunting videos to me. And I've got nothing against hunting, at least as long as it's not trophy hunting. I think trophy hunting is cruel and horrifying and awful and unnecessary. But whether it's you know, subsistence hunting or not, I don't want to watch videos about it. That's not my bag. So knowing the dislike feature is really more so that viewers can shape their recommendations and less about mob mentality is cool. Whether or not it works remains to be seen. I'm sure there will still be campaigns against certain videos or creators that will commence tons of folks to dislike specific videos, even if they've never watched the video. But maybe it won't be as bad as it was before because you won't see how effective the attack is. There will be no number associated with dislikes. Also, let's take a moment to mourn the passing of an amazing internet meme joke, and that is of the neutral Response video, which is a clip from the show Futurama and in the clip, there's an alien from this planet that's just filled with people who have neutral tendencies, and the alien says, I have no strong feelings one way or the other. And the joke was that the number of likes and dislikes for that video have balanced out, like whenever anyone would like the video, someone else would come along and dislike it in order to keep them even so, the current tally is at five fifty four thousand each more or less. Well, once dislikes disappear, that collective joke will be over. So that's a little sad. It seems like the concept of the metaverse is gonna be a theme for a while. I think it's a little bit odd because the concept itself isn't really that new, and arguably you could even call stuff like Second Life a type of metaverse, and that's been around for ages. Anyway. The reason I even mentioned it is that the Soul Metropolitan Government, as in Soul Korea, has announced it will create its own metaverse with Blackjack and no way, I'm still thinking about Futurama quotes. No uh, I mean it's going to create a metaverse meant to allow quote citizens to conveniently meet with Avatar officials to deal with civil complaints and consultations end quote. So essentially, this would replace the need to physically travel to a municipal office for an in person appointment, which is not a bad thing considering it, you know, there's a pandemic going at all. It's interesting that they're going the avatar route. To me, I'm not sure how that is more beneficial oversay a video conference called directly with whomever it is you need to meet, Like, how is it better than that? But the city government is willing to invest around three billion dollars into the project, which is part of a larger city plan that aims to transform Soul by twenty and I guess one benefit is the metaverse proposal would also include the ability to virtually attend mass events like imagine a giant concert that kind of thing. You could virtually be there and you would be surrounded by other virtual people watching a virtual concert, so you could still be part of a group experience without actually having to leave house. Now, again, it's hard for me to see this as being better than just say, watching a live stream video of the concert. Uh. I know that virtual reality can be really immersive. I've experienced that myself. I get that, and probably there is some sort of psychological boost compared to just watching a live stream video on a classic screen. But I think part of me would still be thinking to myself, it's weird that I have to put on all this VR gear just to witness this. You know. Then again, I've also always been a little anxious in crowds. That has actually gotten way worse since the pandemic. So maybe it's just that this particular thing is not for me anyway. There's some aspects to VR metaverse stuff that I can totally get behind, like the idea of improved accessibility for folks who otherwise would have trouble attending physical events. I think that's great to give people who otherwise couldn't have that chance to do it. That is fantastic. However, you also have to acknowledge this has improved accessibility assuming you're able to afford the hardware you need in order to run VR properly. To me, that's still an accessibility barrier. We have a few more stories to cover, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Before the break, I talked a little bit about accessibility. Sticking with that that theme, of the United States government has sued the ride hailing company Uber, saying that the company has failed to ensure equitable fairs for passengers with disabilities. So Uber has this weight time fee, and it's the idea is that the weight time fee charges a passenger if they force a driver to wait a couple of minutes once they arrive at a destination UH to pick someone up. So, in other words, if I call an Uber and the Uber pulls up outside my house, but I'm still inside puttering around, trying to get stuff done, putting on shoes, whatever it may be, and I'm making the driver weight, then Uber charges me for the fact that I have inconvenience the driver, I have taken time away from the driver. That's time that they could potentially be earning on another fair. That's the idea behind the policy. Unfortunately, this policy would also adversely affect people with disabilities who need more time to get into a vehicle. If they are actually taking more time to get into the vehicle and the driver is sitting there for a few minutes, this policy would pop into effect and the passengers would be essentially monetarily penalized for the fact that they can't get into a car very fast, and that's just discrimination as defined by the Americans with Disabilities Act. So that's why the United States government has sued Uber. Uber, by the way, has introduced a feature in its app that will waive weight time fees for passengers who are certified as being disabled. I'm not sure what that certification process actually is. I don't know how they determine that, but the Department of Justice is seeking damages from Uber to compensate passengers who had been affected by this policy, as well as just mandating that that policy cannot apply to people with disabilities because otherwise it does discriminate and the Americans with disabilities that makes that illegal. So interesting story. Sony has recently revealed that, due to ongoing supply chain issues, the company expects to produce fewer PlayStation five consoles than they had originally planned, by the tune of one million units. Now. Their fiscal year ends in March or at the beginning of March, I believe, and so I think the original plan was to produce sixteen million units. It's going to be closer to fifteen million, and the sales goal was for fourteen point eight million, which means there's not a whole lot of margin there. They have to pray much sell every single unit they make in order to meet the numbers that they had projected. The PS five launched almost exactly a year ago. The original launch date was November twelve, and it has been consistently challenging to find in stores. You know, actually had the chance to snag one a couple of weeks ago, but a dilly dallied and then that chance went bye bye. And you know, I'm sure a lot of you gamers out there have had similar experiences. And unfortunately, this means there will be fewer consoles produced than planned. That means it's still going to be difficult to find them in stores, which is a real blow, particularly since we're into the holiday gift buying season. Uh that, by the way, is sure to be impacted by various supply chain issues. A lot of people have found that just the stuff that they were planning on buying is taking way longer to get to them than they had originally thought. That's gonna keep going, right, I mean, the supply chain crunch is a real one, and it has created bottle throughout the entire system where you know, suddenly a facility gets flooded with products and then it has to figure out how does it deal with that to pass it further down the chain. This is a domino effect, a cascading effect that we see throughout the supply chain. So as a tech person, typically I would be expected to suggest certain like Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals that focus on stuff like TVs and electronics and sound systems, that kind of thing. This year, I humbly suggest that if you plan on buying holiday presents, patronize like local shop owners and artists and tradespeople instead, it will be a bigger benefit to your immediate community. And if enough of us actually do that, it will relieve some of the insane pressure that's on the supply side of the supply chain economy right now, and things can get to a better equilibrium. But only if enough of us actually kind of at least remove that part to the pressure on the system, Like the demand side is still super high, and that's just kind of exacerbating an already tough situation. Okay, let's go back to South Korea. I mentioned them earlier in the episode. Well, the country recently unveiled a traffic control system designed to handle urban air mobility vehicles or u a m s, which is a fancy way of saying flying machines what take passengers from one place to another place, or a flying taxi in other words. And these typically take the form factor of a really large multi rotor drone type thing, because it's not drones, more like a multi rotor helicopter in a way. So think of like like the drones you would see that are remote controlled, but much much bigger and sometimes with more rotors. The traffic control system would be a necessary component if flying taxis are to be, you know, a real thing, Like if they're to become an integral component in transportation, then you've got you've got to have some sort of system to be able to handle that. So the country is actually testing this to kind of work out the design flaws and to tweak things in order to set a foundation for a future with flying vehicles that are actually an actively carrying people to and fro. The test involved a vehicle made by a company called Volocopter, and according to the Korean Times, that particular vehicle is one that can either be piloted by a human or it can operate in an autonomous mode. Currently, South Korea requires a pilot to be present should any passengers be inside the vehicle, so you cannot, you know, use this like an autonomous taxi under South Korean law currently. I think that's a wise decision. The government says it's necessary both as a safety measure and also to help secure passenger confidence in the system. Makes sense to me. The Korean Times also reports that the expected cost or a customer to take a ride from the Incheon International Airport to Central Soul to be around nine dollars American the equivalent of ninety dollars when the pilot program No Pun Intended launches No Pun Intended, which is supposed to be in However, they say that that price should drop dramatically once the technology and the business matures, so within a decade they expect the cost to drop low enough so that it would be the equivalent of less than twenty dollars per trep. That to me is phenomenal. I think it's really optimistic, but I would love to see it happen, assuming, of course, that the system has proven to be safe and reliable. Finally, I've written and talked about brain computer interfaces quite a few times. I always find them fascinating. Creating technology that can detect and interpret brain waves and then produce some sort of meaningful output is really cool, particularly for people who have limited or no motor functions and who otherwise would find it challenging or even impossible to communicate well. Science Alert reported earlier this week on a research program called brain Gate that has developed an interface that allows a paralyzed subject, a man who volunteered to be part of this, to generate text on a screen just by imagining his own handwriting, so he can think about writing a word by hand, even though he lost all uh control of his limbs years ago, and that thought will then be interpreted by the system, and then the text will appear on a screen reflecting the letters he was imagining himself writing. Now, I've heard of other systems that use training sessions so that someone can learn how to control a cursor with their mind, and they can move the cursor around to kind of type things out on an on screen keyboard, very similar to how you would use an on screen touch keyboard. But this is the first time I've heard about something that can interpret the thoughts about writing a word and use that to display that same word on screen. Now, it's still a slow process. The subject in the research project could right around nine characters per minute, that's about eighteen words per minute, but they could do it with like accuracy before auto correct was brought in. And it still requires surgery to implant electrodes into the brain, so this is not like some hat you put on and you can use it. It is an invasive process, but for people who would otherwise find themselves unable to communicate, this technology is incredibly powerful. It's also fascinating to me that the brain can retain abilities related to fine motor movements even years after someone has lost that actual physical capability. So not only are we learning more about how to develop these systems, we're learning more about the resilience of the brain and how the brain operates. So those learnings will inform future implementations which will continue to improve. And my hope is that in the future will have systems that give people a lot more independence and autonomy and communication abilities and to dramatically improve their quality of life, even in the case where they have lost or maybe never even had abilities to to move around. I think that that is really phenomenal. All right, that wraps up the news episode for Thursday, November eleven, twenty one. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out. The best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W. I'm out next week. You'll get your g E episodes in place of me, and there will also be a Smart Talks with IBM episode on Thursday. But I will be back the following Monday, so catch you on the flip side. And if you are walking around Disney World, look for a bald guy who's probably staring on his phone because of Genie Plus. But that's a that's a topic for another podcast. All right, Bye bye, I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.