Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio. And how the tech are Yet It's time for the tech news for Thursday, July two thousand twenty two. Happy Best Steal day, everybody. Let's get to the news. A huge story this week, at least in my mind, is that famous designer Johnny I've will no longer be designing for Apple, all right, so let's give a quick rundown for those who are unfamiliar with I've. He started at Apple in the early nine nineties. This was an Apple that lacked Steve Jobs because jobs have essentially been pushed out of the company in and he would not come back until I've had studied design all his life. His father was a silversmith and his grandfather was an engineer, so it kind of ran in the family. And when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in ven and subsequently was put in charge of the company, he and I've formed a type of partnership that would redefine Apple's look, and it would bring the company from the verge of bankruptcy into an unprecedented era of success. So I've worked on tons of iconic Apple products, including the colorful iMac line. You might not remember these. These were like the CRT monitor Imax, so they look like old televisions, but they had these very colorful shells on them, really vibrant ones, and everyone just wanted one because they looked cool and friendly. I've spent countless hours on design, looking at stuff like individual materials and testing out those materials to make sure that they would hold what his design called for properly and create the aesthetic he was going after. He would obsess over the curve of an iPhone or the way an Apple watch band would look on someone's wrist. It is not an exaggeration to say that a lot of Apple's appeal came out of Ive's work and input. Now, I don't want to overstate things here either. Obviously, there are a lot of other factors with Apple that are important, and I've led an entire department of designers who all contributed to the success of the company. It wasn't just one guy, but during the first decade of the two thousand's jobs and I've would be two of the most prominent figures at Apple, things, however, would change after Jobs passed away in two thousand eleven. Tim Cook, who was Steve Job's successor as CEO, has a very different approach to leadership than Jobs did. Cook is a financial genius, and he's well known for his ability to find new ways to generate revenue while also limiting costs. But Cook isn't really known for being innovative with products, nor is he the salesman that Jobs was. That's just not who Cook is. His strengths lie elsewhere, and while Cook would lead Apple to unprecedented profits, the press and Apple fans began to worry that Apple was kind of losing its mojo, that it was falling behind in technical and design innovation. I've gradually began to step back from his work. In twenty nineteen, he actually left Apple and founded a design company called Love From, along with a fellow former Apple designer named Mark Newsson. But even then, Apple would be Love From his chief client, and the two companies signed a three year deal rumored to be valued at around a hundred million dollars, where Love From would do a lot of design work for Apple, in some cases exclusively for Apple because the agreement meant that love From was not supposed to work for any kind of company that competed against Apple in certain categories. Now, reportedly, Apple and love From have decided not to extend that three year contract. The contract terms her up and they appear to have said, you know what, We're gonna walk away. That means that for the first time in thirty years, Apple will really be moving forward without any of ives involvement in the design of its products. So does this mean that Apple's aesthetic is going to hold steady or are we actually going to see a shift. Will some other genius step forward and guide Apple's design in a new direction, or will the team with an Apple do its best to kind of eight ives preferences. For some folks, the severing of this relationship is kind of a warning flag that Apple is going to gradually lose its appeal as a company that designs sexy and appealing technology that you just immediately want to pay cup in your own hands when you see it. That's how I think of a lot of Apple's products, even though I don't own many of them. When I see those presentations, invariably I'm like, man, I want to get my hands on that and see what it feels like. I think I will have to do a full profile episode about Johnny. I've before too long, so I'm not gonna go into any further detail here, but i will say it is a pretty remarkable end of an era. Now let's move on to Twitter. The company officially sued Elon Musk in a Delaware court over the issue of Musk trying to back out of his deal to acquire Twitter. The filing is reportedly sixty two pages long, and The Atlantic has a great rundown about the lawsuit, including opinions on why Musk's arguments are aren't likely to hold up in court. Uh namely that Musk is arguing that a flood of bots on Twitter means the platform is significantly overvalued, which Musk's team argue is enough to allow Musk to back out of the deal. The article has the title Elon Musk is a Nightmare client. The piece also points out some ironic features in the lawsuit, namely that the filing portrays Musk as a capricious and petty person and someone that you probably wouldn't want to be in charge of your company. But the whole purpose of the lawsuit is to force Musk to go through with this acquisition deal and to purchase Twitter. So it's kind of like saying, this guy's a joke. He should not be running a company, and that's why you can't take his excuses for why he can't run our company seriously, So make him run our company. It's a mad, mad, mad mad mad world, y'all. And of course it gets better and the filing, Twitter revealed that part of the deal it made with Musk was that the company would not impede Musk's ability to tweet. He could tweet all he liked. However, he was not to disparage Twitter or its representatives because that would be in violation of the agreement. So it is possible that when Musk tweeted a poop emoji at Twitter, that that would eventually come back and haunt him and be used against him in a court of law. This is the world we live in now, where a poop emoji becomes evidence. This is where we are at as a society. None of the science fiction authors predicted this, So Musk tweeting out negative things about Twitter and its representatives violates this agreement, which Twitter then argues means that Musk has forfeited his right to terminate the agreement, and it gets juicier from there, And at least from an outsider's perspective, I would say that it looks like Twitter has the upper hand going into this litigation. But I am no expert, and Elon Musk has proven to be a slippery character on numerous occasions, so I'm not confident that he's out of serious trouble or as in serious trouble. I honestly can't tell one way or the other it is. It's a mystery to me, but it's an entertaining one. Now, let's stay Muskie for a couple of stories and talk about the SpaceX Rocket booster mishap earlier this week. Actually meant to cover this on Tuesday's episode because it happened on Monday. Then. It was in Texas where a SpaceX Starship Booster rocket burst into flames during a ground test firing. Now, this was part of a regimen of fire tests with this booster, and it's safe to say this particular test was a failure. Musk himself acknowledged that the outcome was quote unquote not good on Twitter, and must later said it appeared that some unburned propellant from the raptor two engines of the Starship. The starship has thirty three of these kinds of engines, that that was the cause of the fire. As of this recording, the teams are still assessing the causes and the damage. The exterior structure of the booster appears to be in pretty good shape, but I've yet to see official word about the condition of the engines themselves now. Originally SpaceX hoped to have a test orbital flight of the Starship by the end of this month. That seems unlikely now, but again, there's been no official word as of this recording about when the company expects to conduct the test. I think the takeaway here is that rocket science is hard. I mean, it's not brain surgery. And over at Tesla, the company is saying goodbye to its top executive in its AI department, Andre Caparthi, who has served as director for Tesla's autopilot vision team, has announced he is leaving Tesla. He has been part of the company for five years, and this comes as Tesla faces scrutiny from the US government regarding the safety of the autopilot feature in general, which has been cited as a factor in some notable accidents, including some traffic accidents that resulted in fatalities. It's also a time when Tesla as a whole has been laying off workers. The company recently closed at San Mateo office after laying off most of the workforce there and transferring the remaining staff to other offices. So is this a further indication that Tesla might be in a bit of a sticky situation. I just don't know. I mean, I'm not sure what Caparthi's motivations were for leaving the company. It could just be that he wants a break, or maybe he wants a new challenge in his career. I don't want to read too much into it, is what I'm saying. All Right, We've got more news stories to cover today, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. We're back Earlier this week, I talked about how a whistle blower leaked more than a hundred twenty thousand internal documents from Uber to the press. Those documents covered Uber activities between two thousand thirteen and two thousand seventeen, and mostly documented stuff that we already knew, just in much greater detail than we were aware of, namely that Uber took to some pretty aggressive tactics in order to expand into various markets, including but not limited to being pretty loosey goosey with local laws in an effort to one established business and to then change the laws in Uber's favor. Now I have more news about Uber, and it's grim. A group of more than five women have brought a lawsuit against Uber, alleging that they had been victims of violence from Uber drivers, ranging from sexual harassment to kidnapping to rape. The list of accusations is absolutely horrifying, and the women claimed that Uber did too little to prevent sexual predators from working as drivers for the company despite being aware of the issue. That's about where we are right now. I'm sure we'll hear a lot more about this as the case moves on. But yeah, that is a terrible, terrible story, and I'll keep an eye on and how it develops. Ring, the smart doorbell and security camera company that's owned by Amazon, recently released a transparency report in which the company revealed that in one it had received three thousand, one hundred forty seven legal demands from various law enforcement agencies to hand over surveillance footage that had been gathered from the smart doorbell cameras and security cameras, so essentially turning customer cameras into law enforcements surveillance cameras. Now that number of requests is up from around nineteen hundred demands back in, or an increase of around sixty and out of those three thousand seven demands, more than eighty five percent of them were accompanied by a court issued order such as a search warrant. However, Ring said that it turned over data as in footage, and only around four out of every ten demands when you average it all out. So while of these demands had a court order attached to them, were the ones that Ring actually handed information over. I'm not really sure how this all shook out properly, but in addition to that, Ring also received two thousand, seven seventy four preservation orders. Now that's when a law enforcement agency asks Amazon to hold onto data for up to six months while that agency attempts to secure a warrant or other court order that would be necessary to demand access to the footage. So, in other words, this is an agency saying, hey, don't delete this customer's data anytime soon, we might need access to it. On top of that, Amazon shared footage with police at least eleven times without any kind of warrant or court order at all, something that the company had previously indicated to customers wouldn't happen. The message to consumers is that Amazon is not going to hand over footage to police unless they have a court order to do so. But it turns out that in cases of emergency, essentially when someone somewhere determines that there's imminent danger, Amazon can share information to police, and that has led some critics to protest the practice. They say it sets a precedent and it could allow for future mission creep, meaning once you establish that there is an exception to the rules, it can be easy to have that exception expand over time. And since this is a massive invasion of privacy and potentially a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, that is a significant problem. Yesterday, U S courts convicted former CIA employee Joshua Schultz on nine charges relating to leaking classified information. Who boy, this story is filled with a whole bunch of awful stuff. So first, Schult used to work at the CIA as a software engineer. In twenty fifteen, Schulton filed a restraining order against one of his co workers in the CIA. Filed this restraining order in state court. The two people, Schulton this co worker had been in what CNN would describe as a feud. They got sent to different offices as a result. And then, according to prosecutors in this case, Schultz got angry at his employer, the CIA, when the agency started looking into bringing in a contractor to design a tool that was similar to one that Schultz himself was already working on, and that this sent Schultz on a vindictive path. So, according to prosecutors, Schult then stole several cyber tools belonging to the CIA and then sent those tools to Wiki Leaks, the nonprofit organization meant to serve as sort of a clearing house for whistleblowers. Schult left the CIA in t sixteen. He got arrested in t seventeen on charges of possessing child pornography. Around that same time, Wiki Leaks began to publish what would become known as the Vault seven leaks, the largest leak of data in CIA's history. Prosecutors said that those leaks originated from two programs that Schult was able to access, which implies that the tools Shult handed over to Wiki Leaks made the Vault seven leaks possible. While Schultz was being investigated and prosecuted for the child pornography charges, he then also was charged with leaking this classified information. He had an initial trial that ended back in twenty but it ended with a mistrial. The government chose to retry the case, and that concluded yesterday on July two. That one ended with Schult being convicted on those counts of leaking classified information. He has yet to be sentenced, but this incident has become known, as I said, as the largest leak of CIA information in history. All right, let's move on to something less grim, at least for anyone who doesn't happen to be Google or YouTube. Tech Crunch reports that the utes today are spending way more time on TikTok than they are on YouTube, and I think that comes as a surprise to nobody. VidCon, for example, Vidcan is a big conference that focuses on online video and traditionally, UH the big attraction of vidcan was the attendance of YouTube content creators. Well, this past VidCon it was very clear that the focus had switched from YouTube to TikTok. Not that there weren't still YouTube creators there there were, but that TikTok was largely the main attraction at VIDCA this year. So that's a pretty strong example of where the trend is going. I'll tech Crunch employeed a research team from Q Studio. That's qu s t u d i oh. That's a company that makes parental control software. And according to Q studios data, gen Z and jen Alpha users typically spend somewhere around nine minutes on average per day watching content on TikTok and fifty six minutes per on average per day watching content on YouTube. So there would be about two and a half hours of watching stuff online from just those two sources. But considering how much television I soaked up when I was a kid, I can't get judge about any of this anyway. The data shows what I think a lot of folks already knew at younger generations are gravitating more towards the short form content of TikTok than moving on to what you would find on YouTube and It's why a lot of platforms, including YouTube itself, have promoted features that present content in shorter formats, essentially trying to mimic what TikTok is doing on YouTube. It's literally called YouTube shorts, and the goal there is to serve as kind of a means of discovery so that users will see shorts that attract them. They watch the short and then they'll say, you know what, I'm gonna go and find the video that this came from, the longer form video and watch that too. Meanwhile, according to Business Insider, Google's s VP prob Hoker rock Hoven said at a conference, the younger audiences are turning to TikTok and Instagram to perform searches rather than using Google to do though now that doesn't necessarily mean that kids are using TikTok to do research for homework or anything like that, though maybe that's the case. Instead, the example given was more like you're trying to figure out where you want to go to grab lunch, and that kids these days will look to TikTok and Instagram to find out, you know, goods aggestions as opposed to using Google Search. So anyway, that's something Google wants to address it, wants to develop new tools that will appeal to younger users so that they'll use Google for search. Meanwhile, I'm sitting over here thinking I need to start a TikTok account where I dress up in various quasi historical outfits and do quick lessons on stuff like American history and Shakespeare or whatever. I could be the cliffs Notes of TikTok, except I'm sure that already exists, probably in multiple channels, but maybe I should do it. Anyway, while I think about that, let's take another quick break and we'll be back with a couple more stories. Okay, we got a couple of stories to close out this episode. First up, The Register reports that a letter signed by executives at some of the biggest tech companies in the world, which include Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta, among others, encourages state leaders to introduce computer science lessons for students in elementary, middle and high school here in the United States. So the letter calls for kids to be given the opportunity to learn the basics of computer science early on, including eventually how to code, with classes becoming more complex and in depth at higher grade levels. I think This is a great idea. Getting a grounding and computer science is practical, and it also means that students will learn to put other skills to use. Plus, it will mean that students who move on to colleges and universities will already have a fundamental understanding before they jump into computer science classes. That is critical. Computer science has advanced so much in such a relatively short time that it can be pretty challenging for students who have little to no background in the subject to make progress at the university level. Plus, computer science encourages students to learn problem solving skills like critical thinking skills, breaking problems down own in a way where you can approach a solution that can be applied outside the discipline of computer science. It's a really powerful tool to have in your arsenal and it's something that I wish I had had access to back when I was a kid. You know, when I was going to high school, the most advanced class we had in our computer lab was data entry, right, that was that was the peak. That's as far as you could go. I actually ended up taking an additional course in the computer lab that wasn't even offered officially. I had to get special permission to do it rather than take some other elective. And it turned out that I end up teaching the class at least a portion of the class that were on the IBM computers because the teacher of my computer lab was more familiar with Apple computers, so that's what she focused on. Uh. Turns out I didn't do a whole lot other than like again, data entry and word processing. So even though I was put in charge, I didn't get to really advance my knowledge that much. And I consider that real, you know, a real failure of the school system, if I'm being honest, because it would have been great to have had access to better educational tools to get into computer science, even just a little bit, because again in my case, it didn't happen at all. Who is literally superficial applications of computers, nothing important about the computers themselves. So the letter also stresses the importance of fostering new generations of computer scientists because it will be a critical component for the workplace in general. That's clearly been the case for a while. It's also critical for U S strategy to have experts and computer science. You do not want the country to fall behind in that regard. In fact, a lot of people have argued that China is already well ahead of the United States at this point, and that if we don't start addressing this issue, then we will be hopelessly left behind. The letter also calls leaders to make certain that such classes are available to all students everywhere, including those belonging to classically underserved communities. And I really hope that the letter helps spur some action across the States. I think it would be incredibly helpful if that did happen. Finally, Nintendo has a new acquisition. The company has purchased a CG production company called Dynamo Pictures, which Nintendo plans to rebrand as Nintendo Pictures. The subsidiary will be tasked with creating quote visual content utilizing Nintendo I p end quote. According to a Nintendo press release, that visual content is likely going to include work that will actually appear in video games themselves. Dynamo Pictures has previously done motion capture work on several large computer game and and video game titles like Death Stranding is one of them, so a lot of that work may be to reduced content that's actually going to go into video games. However, I expect we'll also see Nintendo Pictures work on stuff that's meant to be on television or streaming or film. The acquisition is not yet complete. It's still in the process. Nintendo said in its released to two shareholders that it expects the deal to close on October three of this year. But Yeah, I'm really curious to see what comes out of this. It would be interesting to see if Nintendo starts to generate more UH shows and films and stuff that leverage the I P. We know there's the Super Mario Brothers movie coming out soon, which you know, the biggest story about that is how everyone reacts to Chris Pratt doing the voice for Mario. A lot of folks were not super happy to hear that, although I haven't heard any specific like recordings from any of the sessions, so I don't know what kind of voice he's doing for the character, or if he's doing a voice for the character, if he's just being Chris Pratt, don't know, haven't paid attention, haven't checked in. But if he is just being Chris Pratt, I imagine that's going to upset a lot of folks who are really hoping for the Itsamei Mario type character. Anyway, I can't wait to find out more about Nintendo pictures and what they'll be making in the future, so I will be keeping an eye on that, and I'm sure we'll talk about in future episodes of this show. And with that, we are done with the news for Thursday, July two thousand twenty two. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of Tech Stuff, you know, like if you really want to hear that that full profile on Johnny I, for example, although I'm pretty sure I'm gonna do that anyway, please reach out to me. There are a couple of ways you can do that. One is to download the I Heart Radio app, which is free to use. You can navigate over to the tech Stuff section of the I Heart Radio app, and on that section you're gonna see a little microphone icon. If you click on that, you can leave a voice message up to thirty seconds in length. If you like, you can let me know if I can use the audio in a future episode, um, because I am all about opt in, or if you prefer not to do that and I get it you maybe you're like listen ug Onto apps already, or I don't really want to talk on on your little microphone feature I totally understand. Another way to reach out to me is on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s 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. Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio. And how the tech are Yet It's time for the tech news for Thursday, July two thousand twenty two. Happy Best Steal day, everybody. Let's get to the news. A huge story this week, at least in my mind, is that famous designer Johnny I've will no longer be designing for Apple, all right, so let's give a quick rundown for those who are unfamiliar with I've. He started at Apple in the early nine nineties. This was an Apple that lacked Steve Jobs because jobs have essentially been pushed out of the company in and he would not come back until I've had studied design all his life. His father was a silversmith and his grandfather was an engineer, so it kind of ran in the family. And when Steve Jobs returned to Apple in ven and subsequently was put in charge of the company, he and I've formed a type of partnership that would redefine Apple's look, and it would bring the company from the verge of bankruptcy into an unprecedented era of success. So I've worked on tons of iconic Apple products, including the colorful iMac line. You might not remember these. These were like the CRT monitor Imax, so they look like old televisions, but they had these very colorful shells on them, really vibrant ones, and everyone just wanted one because they looked cool and friendly. I've spent countless hours on design, looking at stuff like individual materials and testing out those materials to make sure that they would hold what his design called for properly and create the aesthetic he was going after. He would obsess over the curve of an iPhone or the way an Apple watch band would look on someone's wrist. It is not an exaggeration to say that a lot of Apple's appeal came out of Ive's work and input. Now, I don't want to overstate things here either. Obviously, there are a lot of other factors with Apple that are important, and I've led an entire department of designers who all contributed to the success of the company. It wasn't just one guy, but during the first decade of the two thousand's jobs and I've would be two of the most prominent figures at Apple, things, however, would change after Jobs passed away in two thousand eleven. Tim Cook, who was Steve Job's successor as CEO, has a very different approach to leadership than Jobs did. Cook is a financial genius, and he's well known for his ability to find new ways to generate revenue while also limiting costs. But Cook isn't really known for being innovative with products, nor is he the salesman that Jobs was. That's just not who Cook is. His strengths lie elsewhere, and while Cook would lead Apple to unprecedented profits, the press and Apple fans began to worry that Apple was kind of losing its mojo, that it was falling behind in technical and design innovation. I've gradually began to step back from his work. In twenty nineteen, he actually left Apple and founded a design company called Love From, along with a fellow former Apple designer named Mark Newsson. But even then, Apple would be Love From his chief client, and the two companies signed a three year deal rumored to be valued at around a hundred million dollars, where Love From would do a lot of design work for Apple, in some cases exclusively for Apple because the agreement meant that love From was not supposed to work for any kind of company that competed against Apple in certain categories. Now, reportedly, Apple and love From have decided not to extend that three year contract. The contract terms her up and they appear to have said, you know what, We're gonna walk away. That means that for the first time in thirty years, Apple will really be moving forward without any of ives involvement in the design of its products. So does this mean that Apple's aesthetic is going to hold steady or are we actually going to see a shift. Will some other genius step forward and guide Apple's design in a new direction, or will the team with an Apple do its best to kind of eight ives preferences. For some folks, the severing of this relationship is kind of a warning flag that Apple is going to gradually lose its appeal as a company that designs sexy and appealing technology that you just immediately want to pay cup in your own hands when you see it. That's how I think of a lot of Apple's products, even though I don't own many of them. When I see those presentations, invariably I'm like, man, I want to get my hands on that and see what it feels like. I think I will have to do a full profile episode about Johnny. I've before too long, so I'm not gonna go into any further detail here, but i will say it is a pretty remarkable end of an era. Now let's move on to Twitter. The company officially sued Elon Musk in a Delaware court over the issue of Musk trying to back out of his deal to acquire Twitter. The filing is reportedly sixty two pages long, and The Atlantic has a great rundown about the lawsuit, including opinions on why Musk's arguments are aren't likely to hold up in court. Uh namely that Musk is arguing that a flood of bots on Twitter means the platform is significantly overvalued, which Musk's team argue is enough to allow Musk to back out of the deal. The article has the title Elon Musk is a Nightmare client. The piece also points out some ironic features in the lawsuit, namely that the filing portrays Musk as a capricious and petty person and someone that you probably wouldn't want to be in charge of your company. But the whole purpose of the lawsuit is to force Musk to go through with this acquisition deal and to purchase Twitter. So it's kind of like saying, this guy's a joke. He should not be running a company, and that's why you can't take his excuses for why he can't run our company seriously, So make him run our company. It's a mad, mad, mad mad mad world, y'all. And of course it gets better and the filing, Twitter revealed that part of the deal it made with Musk was that the company would not impede Musk's ability to tweet. He could tweet all he liked. However, he was not to disparage Twitter or its representatives because that would be in violation of the agreement. So it is possible that when Musk tweeted a poop emoji at Twitter, that that would eventually come back and haunt him and be used against him in a court of law. This is the world we live in now, where a poop emoji becomes evidence. This is where we are at as a society. None of the science fiction authors predicted this, So Musk tweeting out negative things about Twitter and its representatives violates this agreement, which Twitter then argues means that Musk has forfeited his right to terminate the agreement, and it gets juicier from there, And at least from an outsider's perspective, I would say that it looks like Twitter has the upper hand going into this litigation. But I am no expert, and Elon Musk has proven to be a slippery character on numerous occasions, so I'm not confident that he's out of serious trouble or as in serious trouble. I honestly can't tell one way or the other it is. It's a mystery to me, but it's an entertaining one. Now, let's stay Muskie for a couple of stories and talk about the SpaceX Rocket booster mishap earlier this week. Actually meant to cover this on Tuesday's episode because it happened on Monday. Then. It was in Texas where a SpaceX Starship Booster rocket burst into flames during a ground test firing. Now, this was part of a regimen of fire tests with this booster, and it's safe to say this particular test was a failure. Musk himself acknowledged that the outcome was quote unquote not good on Twitter, and must later said it appeared that some unburned propellant from the raptor two engines of the Starship. The starship has thirty three of these kinds of engines, that that was the cause of the fire. As of this recording, the teams are still assessing the causes and the damage. The exterior structure of the booster appears to be in pretty good shape, but I've yet to see official word about the condition of the engines themselves now. Originally SpaceX hoped to have a test orbital flight of the Starship by the end of this month. That seems unlikely now, but again, there's been no official word as of this recording about when the company expects to conduct the test. I think the takeaway here is that rocket science is hard. I mean, it's not brain surgery. And over at Tesla, the company is saying goodbye to its top executive in its AI department, Andre Caparthi, who has served as director for Tesla's autopilot vision team, has announced he is leaving Tesla. He has been part of the company for five years, and this comes as Tesla faces scrutiny from the US government regarding the safety of the autopilot feature in general, which has been cited as a factor in some notable accidents, including some traffic accidents that resulted in fatalities. It's also a time when Tesla as a whole has been laying off workers. The company recently closed at San Mateo office after laying off most of the workforce there and transferring the remaining staff to other offices. So is this a further indication that Tesla might be in a bit of a sticky situation. I just don't know. I mean, I'm not sure what Caparthi's motivations were for leaving the company. It could just be that he wants a break, or maybe he wants a new challenge in his career. I don't want to read too much into it, is what I'm saying. All Right, We've got more news stories to cover today, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. We're back Earlier this week, I talked about how a whistle blower leaked more than a hundred twenty thousand internal documents from Uber to the press. Those documents covered Uber activities between two thousand thirteen and two thousand seventeen, and mostly documented stuff that we already knew, just in much greater detail than we were aware of, namely that Uber took to some pretty aggressive tactics in order to expand into various markets, including but not limited to being pretty loosey goosey with local laws in an effort to one established business and to then change the laws in Uber's favor. Now I have more news about Uber, and it's grim. A group of more than five women have brought a lawsuit against Uber, alleging that they had been victims of violence from Uber drivers, ranging from sexual harassment to kidnapping to rape. The list of accusations is absolutely horrifying, and the women claimed that Uber did too little to prevent sexual predators from working as drivers for the company despite being aware of the issue. That's about where we are right now. I'm sure we'll hear a lot more about this as the case moves on. But yeah, that is a terrible, terrible story, and I'll keep an eye on and how it develops. Ring, the smart doorbell and security camera company that's owned by Amazon, recently released a transparency report in which the company revealed that in one it had received three thousand, one hundred forty seven legal demands from various law enforcement agencies to hand over surveillance footage that had been gathered from the smart doorbell cameras and security cameras, so essentially turning customer cameras into law enforcements surveillance cameras. Now that number of requests is up from around nineteen hundred demands back in, or an increase of around sixty and out of those three thousand seven demands, more than eighty five percent of them were accompanied by a court issued order such as a search warrant. However, Ring said that it turned over data as in footage, and only around four out of every ten demands when you average it all out. So while of these demands had a court order attached to them, were the ones that Ring actually handed information over. I'm not really sure how this all shook out properly, but in addition to that, Ring also received two thousand, seven seventy four preservation orders. Now that's when a law enforcement agency asks Amazon to hold onto data for up to six months while that agency attempts to secure a warrant or other court order that would be necessary to demand access to the footage. So, in other words, this is an agency saying, hey, don't delete this customer's data anytime soon, we might need access to it. On top of that, Amazon shared footage with police at least eleven times without any kind of warrant or court order at all, something that the company had previously indicated to customers wouldn't happen. The message to consumers is that Amazon is not going to hand over footage to police unless they have a court order to do so. But it turns out that in cases of emergency, essentially when someone somewhere determines that there's imminent danger, Amazon can share information to police, and that has led some critics to protest the practice. They say it sets a precedent and it could allow for future mission creep, meaning once you establish that there is an exception to the rules, it can be easy to have that exception expand over time. And since this is a massive invasion of privacy and potentially a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, that is a significant problem. Yesterday, U S courts convicted former CIA employee Joshua Schultz on nine charges relating to leaking classified information. Who boy, this story is filled with a whole bunch of awful stuff. So first, Schult used to work at the CIA as a software engineer. In twenty fifteen, Schulton filed a restraining order against one of his co workers in the CIA. Filed this restraining order in state court. The two people, Schulton this co worker had been in what CNN would describe as a feud. They got sent to different offices as a result. And then, according to prosecutors in this case, Schultz got angry at his employer, the CIA, when the agency started looking into bringing in a contractor to design a tool that was similar to one that Schultz himself was already working on, and that this sent Schultz on a vindictive path. So, according to prosecutors, Schult then stole several cyber tools belonging to the CIA and then sent those tools to Wiki Leaks, the nonprofit organization meant to serve as sort of a clearing house for whistleblowers. Schult left the CIA in t sixteen. He got arrested in t seventeen on charges of possessing child pornography. Around that same time, Wiki Leaks began to publish what would become known as the Vault seven leaks, the largest leak of data in CIA's history. Prosecutors said that those leaks originated from two programs that Schult was able to access, which implies that the tools Shult handed over to Wiki Leaks made the Vault seven leaks possible. While Schultz was being investigated and prosecuted for the child pornography charges, he then also was charged with leaking this classified information. He had an initial trial that ended back in twenty but it ended with a mistrial. The government chose to retry the case, and that concluded yesterday on July two. That one ended with Schult being convicted on those counts of leaking classified information. He has yet to be sentenced, but this incident has become known, as I said, as the largest leak of CIA information in history. All right, let's move on to something less grim, at least for anyone who doesn't happen to be Google or YouTube. Tech Crunch reports that the utes today are spending way more time on TikTok than they are on YouTube, and I think that comes as a surprise to nobody. VidCon, for example, Vidcan is a big conference that focuses on online video and traditionally, UH the big attraction of vidcan was the attendance of YouTube content creators. Well, this past VidCon it was very clear that the focus had switched from YouTube to TikTok. Not that there weren't still YouTube creators there there were, but that TikTok was largely the main attraction at VIDCA this year. So that's a pretty strong example of where the trend is going. I'll tech Crunch employeed a research team from Q Studio. That's qu s t u d i oh. That's a company that makes parental control software. And according to Q studios data, gen Z and jen Alpha users typically spend somewhere around nine minutes on average per day watching content on TikTok and fifty six minutes per on average per day watching content on YouTube. So there would be about two and a half hours of watching stuff online from just those two sources. But considering how much television I soaked up when I was a kid, I can't get judge about any of this anyway. The data shows what I think a lot of folks already knew at younger generations are gravitating more towards the short form content of TikTok than moving on to what you would find on YouTube and It's why a lot of platforms, including YouTube itself, have promoted features that present content in shorter formats, essentially trying to mimic what TikTok is doing on YouTube. It's literally called YouTube shorts, and the goal there is to serve as kind of a means of discovery so that users will see shorts that attract them. They watch the short and then they'll say, you know what, I'm gonna go and find the video that this came from, the longer form video and watch that too. Meanwhile, according to Business Insider, Google's s VP prob Hoker rock Hoven said at a conference, the younger audiences are turning to TikTok and Instagram to perform searches rather than using Google to do though now that doesn't necessarily mean that kids are using TikTok to do research for homework or anything like that, though maybe that's the case. Instead, the example given was more like you're trying to figure out where you want to go to grab lunch, and that kids these days will look to TikTok and Instagram to find out, you know, goods aggestions as opposed to using Google Search. So anyway, that's something Google wants to address it, wants to develop new tools that will appeal to younger users so that they'll use Google for search. Meanwhile, I'm sitting over here thinking I need to start a TikTok account where I dress up in various quasi historical outfits and do quick lessons on stuff like American history and Shakespeare or whatever. I could be the cliffs Notes of TikTok, except I'm sure that already exists, probably in multiple channels, but maybe I should do it. Anyway, while I think about that, let's take another quick break and we'll be back with a couple more stories. Okay, we got a couple of stories to close out this episode. First up, The Register reports that a letter signed by executives at some of the biggest tech companies in the world, which include Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta, among others, encourages state leaders to introduce computer science lessons for students in elementary, middle and high school here in the United States. So the letter calls for kids to be given the opportunity to learn the basics of computer science early on, including eventually how to code, with classes becoming more complex and in depth at higher grade levels. I think This is a great idea. Getting a grounding and computer science is practical, and it also means that students will learn to put other skills to use. Plus, it will mean that students who move on to colleges and universities will already have a fundamental understanding before they jump into computer science classes. That is critical. Computer science has advanced so much in such a relatively short time that it can be pretty challenging for students who have little to no background in the subject to make progress at the university level. Plus, computer science encourages students to learn problem solving skills like critical thinking skills, breaking problems down own in a way where you can approach a solution that can be applied outside the discipline of computer science. It's a really powerful tool to have in your arsenal and it's something that I wish I had had access to back when I was a kid. You know, when I was going to high school, the most advanced class we had in our computer lab was data entry, right, that was that was the peak. That's as far as you could go. I actually ended up taking an additional course in the computer lab that wasn't even offered officially. I had to get special permission to do it rather than take some other elective. And it turned out that I end up teaching the class at least a portion of the class that were on the IBM computers because the teacher of my computer lab was more familiar with Apple computers, so that's what she focused on. Uh. Turns out I didn't do a whole lot other than like again, data entry and word processing. So even though I was put in charge, I didn't get to really advance my knowledge that much. And I consider that real, you know, a real failure of the school system, if I'm being honest, because it would have been great to have had access to better educational tools to get into computer science, even just a little bit, because again in my case, it didn't happen at all. Who is literally superficial applications of computers, nothing important about the computers themselves. So the letter also stresses the importance of fostering new generations of computer scientists because it will be a critical component for the workplace in general. That's clearly been the case for a while. It's also critical for U S strategy to have experts and computer science. You do not want the country to fall behind in that regard. In fact, a lot of people have argued that China is already well ahead of the United States at this point, and that if we don't start addressing this issue, then we will be hopelessly left behind. The letter also calls leaders to make certain that such classes are available to all students everywhere, including those belonging to classically underserved communities. And I really hope that the letter helps spur some action across the States. I think it would be incredibly helpful if that did happen. Finally, Nintendo has a new acquisition. The company has purchased a CG production company called Dynamo Pictures, which Nintendo plans to rebrand as Nintendo Pictures. The subsidiary will be tasked with creating quote visual content utilizing Nintendo I p end quote. According to a Nintendo press release, that visual content is likely going to include work that will actually appear in video games themselves. Dynamo Pictures has previously done motion capture work on several large computer game and and video game titles like Death Stranding is one of them, so a lot of that work may be to reduced content that's actually going to go into video games. However, I expect we'll also see Nintendo Pictures work on stuff that's meant to be on television or streaming or film. The acquisition is not yet complete. It's still in the process. Nintendo said in its released to two shareholders that it expects the deal to close on October three of this year. But Yeah, I'm really curious to see what comes out of this. It would be interesting to see if Nintendo starts to generate more UH shows and films and stuff that leverage the I P. We know there's the Super Mario Brothers movie coming out soon, which you know, the biggest story about that is how everyone reacts to Chris Pratt doing the voice for Mario. A lot of folks were not super happy to hear that, although I haven't heard any specific like recordings from any of the sessions, so I don't know what kind of voice he's doing for the character, or if he's doing a voice for the character, if he's just being Chris Pratt, don't know, haven't paid attention, haven't checked in. But if he is just being Chris Pratt, I imagine that's going to upset a lot of folks who are really hoping for the Itsamei Mario type character. Anyway, I can't wait to find out more about Nintendo pictures and what they'll be making in the future, so I will be keeping an eye on that, and I'm sure we'll talk about in future episodes of this show. And with that, we are done with the news for Thursday, July two thousand twenty two. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of Tech Stuff, you know, like if you really want to hear that that full profile on Johnny I, for example, although I'm pretty sure I'm gonna do that anyway, please reach out to me. There are a couple of ways you can do that. One is to download the I Heart Radio app, which is free to use. You can navigate over to the tech Stuff section of the I Heart Radio app, and on that section you're gonna see a little microphone icon. 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