Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and how the tech are Yet it's time for the tech news for Thursday, April twenty first, two thousand, twenty two. Uh, this is gonna be like a down with Capitalism episode. And I realized that as an employee of a massive company that that, you know, there's some baggage there. But yeah, let's let's jump into it because I'm gonna be getting on a soapbox. Um, So for those of y'all who hate it when I do that, here's your preemptive warning. But first, let's talk about Netflix because one of the big stories yesterday in the tech space was about how Netflix had its company's quarterly earning report, and Netflix revealed that it had experienced a net loss of around two hundred thousand subscribers worldwide. So this is after taking into account all the new subscribers that had joined, there were still a net loss of two hundred thousand. Now, this was the first quarter where Netflix had ever reported a drop in subscribers over the last ten years, and boy, howdy did the bottom drop out? Like? It was actually kind of shocking to see the reaction to this news. Shares of Netflix closed at more than thirty down from what it had been trading at. And netflix Is stock had already taken a bit of a beating this year, you know, before yesterday, the drop in share price meant the company lost fifty billion dollars off its market cap. Market Cap is something you can figure out by multiplying the number of existing shares by the going market price for those shares. You multiply those two numbers together, you get the market up. And I've got a lot to say about that, but first let's just get to why Netflix saw numbers go down. The company said it was due to a combination of factors. One is that as regions have lifted mandates and more people have become vaccinated, a lot of folks are getting out of the house, and as such, they are canceling service subscriptions because you know, they were signing up for these things when they were stuck at home and didn't have anything else to do. Now, presumably another factor that contributes to this issue is inflation. Inflation has been a huge problem, particularly here in the United States, and thus people have had to kind of tighten their budgets across their households, right, They couldn't spend as much money like that. When your basic necessities start costing more, you've got to make these kind of determinations. And so a lot of folks were looking at entertainment as something where they could cut some corners. It doesn't help that Netflix has increased subscription fees a couple of times in the not too distant past. In October twenty twenty, the price of premium Netflix membership went up to seventeen dollars nine cents per month. Then last year it went up again to nineteen dollars and nine cents per month. So you know, it's increased a couple of times in recent memory, and that's another big issue. But another really big factor is obviously competition. You know, Netflix used to only have to really grapple with Hulu and Amazon Prime when it came to streaming video, but these days you've also got Paramount Plus, You've got Disney Plus, you've got Hbo Max, you've got Apple and lots more. So if the average household is like mine, folks end up making decisions on which services they want and which ones they're willing to skip out on. And trust me, I've got plenty of fomo like I, I I don't subscribe to Apple and I feel like I need to so I can watch Severance and Ted Lasso. I just haven't done it yet. Um, and I used to have Hulu and I cut that. So lots of households have to make these determinations. And if they say, you know, we haven't watched anything on Netflix in like six months, clearly they're gonna cut that. If they're looking at you know, we still want to keep, say Disney Plus or whatever. Now, Netflix has long leaned on its original programming to set it apart, particularly as various studios have chosen to move their own properties onto their own streaming services. So you've had companies say like, well, why would we give Netflix the power of having our content when we can have our own streaming service and just hosted there. We've seen that a lot, and uh, you know, making original contents really expensive. In fact, Netflix was famously spending billions of dollars making their original series and shows and films and such. So that's also an issue. And now we also have other entities like Apple that are producing award winning cont hint, So the competition is really serious in that case. Now, add to all of that the fact that Netflix was hitting a saturation point in some regions like the United States, it really meant that expansion within those regions would become unrealistic. You know, it's hard to convince more people to buy into it when you've pretty much hit everybody who is interested. There's also the fact that some households share login credentials with friends and family outside of that household, and Netflix estimates there's some one hundred million of those out there, So that's a hundred million potential accounts that Netflix could could get signed up on the service that instead are just piggybacking on existing accounts. So what exactly is Netflix planning to do about all this? Well, one thing they're looking to do is to roll out a lower cost, adds supported tier of service to attract new subscribers, similar to how services like Hulu use you know, tears that have add support to them. Another potential avenue they're looking at is to crack down on the account sharing issue. Now, Netflix has already rolled out a pilot program in some countries in Central and South America that give subscribers an option to sign up for a tier that has up to two additional profiles for folks who do not live within the household itself. So in other words, you spend a little bit more money, but you have these authorized tiers that you can hand out to people. Uh, you know, and and it's limited to like two. Uh, it's cheaper than if everyone got their own subscription, but it still means that Netflix gets some money. And meanwhile, those additional people can still get access to Netflix, which is better than having it cracked down to the point where anyone outside of a specific say I P address is excluded from being able to use that account. Obviously, it gets of issues there too, like if you travel a lot and you'd like to use Netflix to keep up with stuff, then you want to make sure that you're not going to run into an issue where Netflix says, hey, I noticed that. You know, there's a lot of log insto your account, but they're not all from the same place, and you know, then the company cracks down and you you want to work around that too. So these could be handy solutions, but they're ones that are going to take some time. In fact, Netflix says these measures might take more than a year in order to have a big impact on the business, and that has a lot of investors scrambling. And here's where I'm going to have a bit of an antique capitalist rant. Um So, I've complained many times about how modern capitalism holds shareholder return and by extension, company growth over all other metrics. This is something that really got its its start in the early eighties. It wasn't always this way, a uh, And in fact, some of the people who are most responsible for a renewed focus on shareholder value would later go on to say it's a mistake two hold shareholder value above everything else. Doesn't stop companies from doing it though. Um So, it's not. It's not enough to do a good job if you're a company. In fact, doing a good job at whatever you do ultimately isn't that important at all. What is important is growth, because growth equals increased value. Increased value means higher share prices of your stock, and that means that the stakeholders, your shareholders are happy because they're seeing a return on their investment. And since we're usually talking about companies that report quarterly results, those important numbers hit every three months, so they want to you know, shareholders want to see those numbers going up every report. So ideally you show growth across every three month period, and that's the measure of success for a company. If the company happens to stay true to its organizational mission and if it happens to perform at the top of its game, you know, that's nice too, it's just not required. And so for a company like Netflix when it has a setback, you end up seeing a lot of people jumping ship. And that's because those people they're they're focuses on quarter over a quarter gains. If those numbers go the wrong way, people start to bail. Now, on top of that, this focus on short term gains makes it very challenging for companies to make good plans for the long term. It's not impossible. There are companies that do it, but it is much harder because in the meantime, you really have to keep the shareholders happy on that quarter by quarter basis. If the shareholders aren't happy, they bounce, and now it becomes way harder for you to achieve those long term goals because if those stock prices start going down because people have lost confidence, you're not gonna have of the financial ability to execute the long term plans you have in mind. And if enough folks bounce, it can actually send a company into a spiral that's really hard to pull out of. And when we pull ourselves away from the stock market side of business and we just look at how this affects the companies and their customers, we just see tons of problems. Then there's also the issue that there's a limit to growth. It's very hard to grow once you hit saturation points, and we see this in all sorts of companies. Netflix hit in the United States because pretty much everyone who wanted Netflix and who could afford it subscribed, so there were no more worlds to conquer. Alexander wept. And we've also seen it in other companies like you know Facebook meta slash Facebook, but specifically Facebook, because Facebook expanded to a truly gargantuan user base, but now it's seeing those numbers on the decline. It's not able to attract new users, and a lot of older users have either slipped off the system or otherwise you know, are unable to be users, like maybe they've passed away or something. So we see this in other companies like Facebook or you know Meta, but specifically the Facebook platform. You know, Facebook expanded to a truly gargantuan user base, but now the company is seeing numbers on the decline for the Facebook platform. It's having trouble attracting younger users, and meanwhile older users are kind of slipping off the platform. So it hit a saturation point and it's having a real hard time growing. And that because that's such an important metric in a company's uh, you know health, at least according to shareholders, it's really put Meta in kind of a rough spot. We also have seen this with cable networks where a cable network. Letlet's say it's a company that has several channels. You know, once they get on a certain number of services, they really can't expand anymore. You're essentially in as many households as you possibly can be within that region. So the only way to grow is to expand to other regions, to focus on international growth. And you know, I saw that when when I worked for How Stuff Works, and How Stuff Works was part of Discovery Communications. That was a big part of discoveries strategy. Now we see discovery strategy also being on expanding through online services, you know, with the merger with the former Warner Media. So eventually you do hit a cap and you just stop growing. You just can't grow any bigger. It is unsustainable to continue to grow, and then what happens, you know, it's it's very hard for me not to look at this entire thing as a very long term pump and dump scheme, the idea that you're just pumping up a company up so they can grow bigger and bigger until it just can't grow anymore, and then you get the heck out and in the meantime, you just, you know, this company that might have been doing something really good and important is suddenly at in a trouble spot because of that. Um anyway, I'm done ranting about modern capitalism for now, anyway, And obviously this is an oversimplification of the issue. There are lots of companies out there that do not fall into this trap. It's just this is a trap I see way too many companies fall into. And in many cases they are companies that I actually really kind of like, or at least I like the services or products that they produce. So it's frustrating as a consumer to see that the focus goes towards the shareholders. Uh. And it would require a seismic shift in business philosophy for this to change, so I don't expect it to happen anytime soon. All Right, when we come back, we'll be talking about a lot of other tech news UH and some business stuff, because the two are very tightly intertwined. But first, let's take some time for our own business and listen to a couple of messages from sponsors. Okay, we're back. How about we talk about some big wins for companies that are connected to Elon Musk. You know, I make no secret that I'm not a big Musk fan, but there's no denying that a couple of his companies have really performed incredibly well recently. First up as Tesla, which reported an eighteen point seven billion dollars in revenue for the first quarter of twenty two, and three point three billion dollars of that was profit. That is incredible. Now, part of the revenue came from Tesla's practice of cell emissions credits to other automakers. UH. See. Certain governments like the EU and the United States require automakers to manufacture a certain percentage of clean vehicles in all the cars that they manufacture. Not every automaker actually manages to hit those regulations, so to balance it out, these automakers are allowed to buy emissions credits from other companies that do hit those requirements. So the idea here is that the automakers have an incentive to develop and produce cleaner technology because if they don't, they have to pay money in order to buy credits to offset their dirty, dirty cars. And so Tesla is allowed to sell emissions credits to these automakers because Tesla makes electric vehicles, their vehicles don't have emissions anyway. Tesla sold nearly six hundred eighty million dollars worth of emissions credits in the first quarter of twenty twenty two. That's more than twice what Tesla sold during the fourth quarter of one, so you know a good amount of money is coming in from these emissions credits sales. Obviously not a significant amount when you look at eighteen point seven billion dollars of revenue, but in years past it was those emissions credits that really helped Tesla when it was making these earnings calls, because they weren't making as much money off actual vehicle sales, but that is a different story right now anyway, um, anyway, the company has a lot of other battles to fight, including navigating the ongoing supply chain challenges, but so far Tesla has performed better in that regard than a lot of other companies have. So Tesla has shown a lot more flexibility than a lot of other other automakers have managed, and thus has really flourished quite a bit in the first quarter of twenty two. One other thing that must talked about during that earnings call was that Tesla is working on creating a robo taxi vehicle that won't have pedals or a steering wheel, and that the company is targeting a twenty four date for rollout. Now, I think that is incredibly ambitious. We all know that the Tesla full self driving mode isn't actually a full self driving mode, and that our current level of autonomous car technology has is probably somewhere around level three. There are five levels total, or six if you count zero, which is no autonomous system at all, uh and level three is conditional automation. That means that current autonomous vehicles really still need human oversight. They're only capable of autonomous operation in specific situations, such as within a narrowly defined region of operation, like you know, within these you know, twelve blocks or something like that, or under specific circumstances, like specific weather conditions like it has to be bright and sunny or it can't be you know, raining, or has to be a specific time of day, like it can't be after dusk. These are the sort of conditions that most autonomous cars have to operate under. It's some form of restrictive automation. For a driverless ROBOTAXI that has no means of human override to be a possibility, we would need to achieve level five autonomy, because even level four autonomy typically includes the option for humans to override the system and take control. Obviously, that would be impossible if there are no controls to take. Of course, the fact that this is a goal doesn't mean that Tesla will actually hit it, nor does it mean that whatever Tesla does produce, let's say it does produce a vehicle with no you know, steering wheel, no pedals, doesn't necessarily mean that that vehicle will actually qualify as a true level five autonomous vehicle. So in that second possibility, I would really caution anyone against getting into such a vehicle because it could potentially be really dangerous. We've already seen several instances in which driver assist features and Tesla vehicles have contributed to fatal accidents. Now, in several of those cases, you could argue that that was due to human driver's disregarding safety rules. But still, this is a pretty big swing that Tesla is taking. And it's been a while since I talked about the Boring Company. That is Elon Musk's business that's all about digging massive tunnels for the purposes of high speed transportation, as well as some other stuff, but the high speed transportation is typically what we really focus on. The Boring Company held a round of funding that brought in six seventy five million dollars and investments which brought the company's value up to five point six seven five billion dollars. This is another company with which I have some concerns, mainly because the goals and claims of the company seemed to be largely unsubstantiated by reality. However, let's talk about what the company's mission is before I get all skeptical. So, for the transportation side of the Boring company's business. The goal is to dig out tunnel networks that will allow for the construction of transportation infrastructure. That infrastructure will ideally create an alternative to street level traffic and help reduce or potentially even eliminate congestion, making it easier for you to get to your destination and create a more pleasant experience for you know, the surface dwellers. And when coupled with loop, which is the transportation infrastructure part, the ideas that passengers will zip around these tunnels and potentially up to a hundred fifty miles per hour. Uh now, this in itself was a step down from the original concept of the hyper loop, which was an enclosed train system that would pump out most of the air from the tunnels in order to reduce air resistance and be able to travel at very high speeds. The current loop proposal involves writing in Tesla vehicles through tunnels. Uh now. Standard Tesla can hold five people, although the versions that we've seen have maxed out at three passengers plus a human driver. And obviously, if you wanted to go all the way to five people where you have one human driver and four passengers, you have to have folks who don't mind being super cozy in the back seat. Also, so far, people have only been in vehicles that have reached a maximum of fifty miles per hour. And last I checked the LVCC loop that is in the Las Vegas Convention Center loop, where there's kind of a pilot program of this that one is restricted to a maximum of thirty five miles per hour. This has led a lot of critics to suggest that all Elon Musk is really doing is just adding more lanes of roads. It's just that these are lanes that are underground um and thus isn't really that revolutionary, nor is it expected to make that big of an impact on issues like traffic congestion. Now, arguably we won't know for sure until something more robust than the Las Vegas Convention Center system is in place in order for us to evaluate it. My guess is that we aren't going to see a massive improvement using this kind of system, and that maybe it would have been a better idea to use some more tried and true measure like building out a train system instead, which has a higher capacity and has a long history of being proven to work. But we're gonna have to wait and see. I would love to be proven wrong about this. I would love to see that this is really an effective means of getting people around using electric vehicles. I think that would be amazing for Las Vegas and for other cities that follow suit. Now, getting back to self driving cars for a second. Uh. In fact, part of the plan for the loop is to use self driving Tesla vehicles in the future. It's just that's not how it's working right now. But in the UK, the Department for Transport has determined that in the event of an autonomous car getting into an accident, the motorists inside the car will not be held liable for claims. Instead, the insurance company representing the motorists or that vehicle will be held liable. Moreover, the Department says that writers will be allowed to watch videos. They can watch TV on built in screens and self driving cars and there won't be any problem with that. However, they will still be against the law to use a mobile phone. And Okay, I'm not really sure why one activity is okay and the other one isn't. Also, I think it's gonna be a while before we have vehicles that are really dependable enough where this sort of measure will even be relevant. However, assuming we do get to that level of reliable autonomy, the benefits would be tremendous, from relieving traffic congestion to reducing the number of accidents and thus injuries and fatality. So I'm really hoping that we hit it UH soon. I remain a little cautious about it because it's just taking a lot more time because as we've as we've discovered the challenges are more subtle and varied than what a lot of people previously, including myself, previously considered. UH. I was really gung home on driverless cars for a really long time, and I still am for the concept. I'm just a little more cautious about the actual capabilities. I mentioned on Tuesday's episode that employees at the flagship Apple store in New York City are in the process of organizing a union, and it turns out that employees at an Apple store in my home city of Atlanta have beat him to the punch. Uh. The Atlanta employees filed a petition yesterday to hold a union election. So this means that the Atlanta employees already secured enough employee support to merit a vote on the subject, and should this upcoming vote pass, then these employees will be the first Apple Store workers to union eyes. Of course, there will be more steps to take after even a successful vote, including seeing if Apple will recognize the union. Should the majority of store employees vote in favor of unionizing UM. If Apple refuses to recognize the union, then the National Labor Relations Board has to get involved and things will go from there. But we'll have to wait and see because the vote hasn't even been held yet. Now. At the same time, some former Nintendo employees have filed a labor complaint against Nintendo, alleging that the company terminated their employment after they attempted to organize their coworkers. Furthermore, they claimed that Nintendo either used surveillance or implied that they were using surveillance to spy on employee union activities. Now the next step is that, again the US National Labor Relations Board or n LRB will have to investigate these claims to determine if Nintendo actually did engage in illegal labor violations. So it remains to be seen, but another example, at least allegedly of a company cracking down on employees attempts to organize the union busting activities are something we're hearing more and more of. But then we're also hearing more and more about workers trying to organize, so the labor revolution continues. I'm not the only person screaming at capitalism. In other news, over in the European Union, representatives have advanced proposals that will require all smartphone manufacturers to support the USBC standard for chargers. So that would mean that all smartphones would have to have USB C ports and be compatible with us b C charging cables. Now, one reason for this is to really cut back on e waste. So the idea here is that you would really only need to buy one charger for your phone, or maybe a couple if you have to have one in a different location or whatever. But you get my my meaning you just have to have the one. Then you could just keep using the same charge even when you change out the type of phone you use, So if you swap from Android to iPhone, you don't need a you know, new accessories because the charging cable will fit both. If this legislation were to pass, an Apple were to comply, So yeah, it would mean that Apple would have to manufacture phones with USBC ports rather than proprietary connectors. Apple has consistently argued that standardizing charging boards would inhibit innovation and that this would ultimately hurt customers in the long run. I think most regulators don't buy that argument. They just suspect that Apple would really like to hang on to proprietary connectors because it creates a market for proprietary accessories which Apple can provide. This proposal has been a long time in the making, and it's still has to go through a couple more rounds of votes for different committees before it gets put to a vote across the EU, and then there has to be time to actually implement the regulations. So there's still time for Apple to make a ace for its approach, and even if this legislation does pass, it will be a little bit before we see it filter into things like Apple's actual design. Okay, We've got a few more stories to cover before we conclude this episode, but first let's take another quick break. Okay, In Afghanistan, the Taliban have ordered that both the video social platform TikTok and the multiplayer shooter game Player Unknowns Battlegrounds will be banned in the country. They argue that both properties are a bad influence on Afghani youth. This follows a string of crackdowns on entertainment in the country. Currently, television in Afghanistan mainly broadcasts news or religious programming and pretty much nothing else. Based on the news stories I've read, it sounds like living under the rule of the tell Laban is pretty miserable, particularly for women, which you know, no big surprise there. Even though the Taliban promised that it wasn't going to return to its more hardline approach to governing, uh, that seems to have gone to the side now. And yeah, they've really cracked down on the sorts of media that people within the country can access, and my guess is that's just going to get more and more restrictive as time goes on. YouTube has removed the campaign channel for John Lee, who is running unopposed to lead Hong Kong. That election is going to be determined by a committee of around one thousand five people. That committee is nearly entirely made up of pro Beijing officials, So it's really it's hard to look at this as anything other than just our performance from China backed officials to show like a the appearance of a democratic process. But you know, again, John Lee is running unopposed. There's almost you know, it really does raise the question, why do you need a campaign channel you're not campaigning against anyone. But the US has also ordered sanctions against John Lee and several other Hong Kong officials, and those sanctions are there because those officials have been linked to restricting Hong Kong's autonomy and eliminating individual freedoms of the citizens of Hong Kong and restricting rights over the last several months. So YouTube has complied with those sanctions and thus shut down that campaign channel. Meta meanwhile, is going to allow John Lee to maintain a presence on Facebook. However, Meta has deactivated monetization on that account and says that they're not going to allow John Lee's account to make use of payment services in order to comply with the actions against John Lee. Net neutrality advocates in California are celebrating a legal victory now that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a move from I s p s to block California's enforcement of its own net neutrality law. All right, this requires a bit of explanation. So prior to two thousand eighteen, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC in the United States had established certain net neutrality protections that restricted what I s p s could do, and it required I s p s to comply with certain rules, rules that I sp s are not super keen on complying with. But during the Trump administration, the FCC pretty much gutted all those measures and reversed all of those decisions. California, their their state representatives, stepped up and created legislation that allowed the state of California to enforce similar rules as to what the FCC had in place before two eighteen, and I s p s really complained about it. They said that the fccs decision to drop net neutrality should apply across to the state level, because the FCC is federal and California obviously is a state. Now, the Ninth Circuit said, uh no, just because the federal agency abdicates authority over a matter doesn't mean that a state authority can't then step in. Um. In fact, if a federal agency says, you know, we don't have the authority to regulate this industry, then by extension, that agency also doesn't have the authority to prevent anyone else from regulating it because you can't say I'm not responsible for that, and at the same time say you can't be responsible for that because you're not the boss. You can't do that. So now California has a strong that neutrality law, and moreover, will be allowed to maintain that law even if we should see more big swings with the FCC, like if the FCC were to reinstate net neutrality regulations and then at the change of another administration reverse that decision again, California's law would still stay firm because it's a state law, not a federal law. Uh So this was a big win for net neutrality advocates. Finally, do you work for a company that has been urging you to come back to the office, and more importantly, does your boss follow the same rules that you're expected to follow? I ask because a research consortium called Future Forum found that non executive employees are almost twice as likely to work at the office five days a week as executives are. The survey found that just over one third of all those who were surveyed have returned to the office full time. Meanwhile, executives tend to pursue a more hybrid approach to work. Some of this might be due to business travel, which is definitely on the rise, but some of it seems to highlight a massive divide between employees and executives. That there is kind of a do as I say and not as I do philosophy at play here, which is obviously inherently unfair. Now, I have to say I am incredibly fortunate and that I work for a company where we maintain a great deal of flexibility. Uh. In fact, I was in the office earlier this week because I needed to go in, and the only other person in that office that day was my superproducer TORII. We were the only two people there. But we are seeing an increasing number of companies push for employees to return to offices full time. It's just a shame that the same doesn't seem to apply to the bosses. Huh So yeah, I guess in the end, what I'm advocating for is down with capitalism and eat the rich. Hey uh More. Seriously, though, I as I get older, I get ground here about the inherent unfairness in these systems and feel that the labor movement is is kind of a proof that a lot of other people feel the same way I do, and that hopefully the labor movement will result in things changing direction. I'm not expecting to see a one eight here. I'm not and I don't think that any massive changes aren't going to have other consequences that will have to deal with. But it would be nice to kind of see the narrative change a little bit in my mind. Um, and I say that as an executive producer. All right, that's it for this episode of Tech Stuff, And uh yeah, I keep on hoping that I can cover tech news that doesn't involve as much politics and business as well. I hear you. I also wish for that, but I gotta cover the news that happens. So that's where we are. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in Tech Stuff, whether it's a tech company, a specific technology, a person in tech, anything like that, or even just a concept in technology you would like to know more about, reach out let me know. The best way to do that right now is on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W, and I'll talk to you again. Really see tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I heart radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and how the tech are Yet it's time for the tech news for Thursday, April twenty first, two thousand, twenty two. Uh, this is gonna be like a down with Capitalism episode. And I realized that as an employee of a massive company that that, you know, there's some baggage there. But yeah, let's let's jump into it because I'm gonna be getting on a soapbox. Um, So for those of y'all who hate it when I do that, here's your preemptive warning. But first, let's talk about Netflix because one of the big stories yesterday in the tech space was about how Netflix had its company's quarterly earning report, and Netflix revealed that it had experienced a net loss of around two hundred thousand subscribers worldwide. So this is after taking into account all the new subscribers that had joined, there were still a net loss of two hundred thousand. Now, this was the first quarter where Netflix had ever reported a drop in subscribers over the last ten years, and boy, howdy did the bottom drop out? Like? It was actually kind of shocking to see the reaction to this news. Shares of Netflix closed at more than thirty down from what it had been trading at. And netflix Is stock had already taken a bit of a beating this year, you know, before yesterday, the drop in share price meant the company lost fifty billion dollars off its market cap. Market Cap is something you can figure out by multiplying the number of existing shares by the going market price for those shares. You multiply those two numbers together, you get the market up. And I've got a lot to say about that, but first let's just get to why Netflix saw numbers go down. The company said it was due to a combination of factors. One is that as regions have lifted mandates and more people have become vaccinated, a lot of folks are getting out of the house, and as such, they are canceling service subscriptions because you know, they were signing up for these things when they were stuck at home and didn't have anything else to do. Now, presumably another factor that contributes to this issue is inflation. Inflation has been a huge problem, particularly here in the United States, and thus people have had to kind of tighten their budgets across their households, right, They couldn't spend as much money like that. When your basic necessities start costing more, you've got to make these kind of determinations. And so a lot of folks were looking at entertainment as something where they could cut some corners. It doesn't help that Netflix has increased subscription fees a couple of times in the not too distant past. In October twenty twenty, the price of premium Netflix membership went up to seventeen dollars nine cents per month. Then last year it went up again to nineteen dollars and nine cents per month. So you know, it's increased a couple of times in recent memory, and that's another big issue. But another really big factor is obviously competition. You know, Netflix used to only have to really grapple with Hulu and Amazon Prime when it came to streaming video, but these days you've also got Paramount Plus, You've got Disney Plus, you've got Hbo Max, you've got Apple and lots more. So if the average household is like mine, folks end up making decisions on which services they want and which ones they're willing to skip out on. And trust me, I've got plenty of fomo like I, I I don't subscribe to Apple and I feel like I need to so I can watch Severance and Ted Lasso. I just haven't done it yet. Um, and I used to have Hulu and I cut that. So lots of households have to make these determinations. And if they say, you know, we haven't watched anything on Netflix in like six months, clearly they're gonna cut that. If they're looking at you know, we still want to keep, say Disney Plus or whatever. Now, Netflix has long leaned on its original programming to set it apart, particularly as various studios have chosen to move their own properties onto their own streaming services. So you've had companies say like, well, why would we give Netflix the power of having our content when we can have our own streaming service and just hosted there. We've seen that a lot, and uh, you know, making original contents really expensive. In fact, Netflix was famously spending billions of dollars making their original series and shows and films and such. So that's also an issue. And now we also have other entities like Apple that are producing award winning cont hint, So the competition is really serious in that case. Now, add to all of that the fact that Netflix was hitting a saturation point in some regions like the United States, it really meant that expansion within those regions would become unrealistic. You know, it's hard to convince more people to buy into it when you've pretty much hit everybody who is interested. There's also the fact that some households share login credentials with friends and family outside of that household, and Netflix estimates there's some one hundred million of those out there, So that's a hundred million potential accounts that Netflix could could get signed up on the service that instead are just piggybacking on existing accounts. So what exactly is Netflix planning to do about all this? Well, one thing they're looking to do is to roll out a lower cost, adds supported tier of service to attract new subscribers, similar to how services like Hulu use you know, tears that have add support to them. Another potential avenue they're looking at is to crack down on the account sharing issue. Now, Netflix has already rolled out a pilot program in some countries in Central and South America that give subscribers an option to sign up for a tier that has up to two additional profiles for folks who do not live within the household itself. So in other words, you spend a little bit more money, but you have these authorized tiers that you can hand out to people. Uh, you know, and and it's limited to like two. Uh, it's cheaper than if everyone got their own subscription, but it still means that Netflix gets some money. And meanwhile, those additional people can still get access to Netflix, which is better than having it cracked down to the point where anyone outside of a specific say I P address is excluded from being able to use that account. Obviously, it gets of issues there too, like if you travel a lot and you'd like to use Netflix to keep up with stuff, then you want to make sure that you're not going to run into an issue where Netflix says, hey, I noticed that. You know, there's a lot of log insto your account, but they're not all from the same place, and you know, then the company cracks down and you you want to work around that too. So these could be handy solutions, but they're ones that are going to take some time. In fact, Netflix says these measures might take more than a year in order to have a big impact on the business, and that has a lot of investors scrambling. And here's where I'm going to have a bit of an antique capitalist rant. Um So, I've complained many times about how modern capitalism holds shareholder return and by extension, company growth over all other metrics. This is something that really got its its start in the early eighties. It wasn't always this way, a uh, And in fact, some of the people who are most responsible for a renewed focus on shareholder value would later go on to say it's a mistake two hold shareholder value above everything else. Doesn't stop companies from doing it though. Um So, it's not. It's not enough to do a good job if you're a company. In fact, doing a good job at whatever you do ultimately isn't that important at all. What is important is growth, because growth equals increased value. Increased value means higher share prices of your stock, and that means that the stakeholders, your shareholders are happy because they're seeing a return on their investment. And since we're usually talking about companies that report quarterly results, those important numbers hit every three months, so they want to you know, shareholders want to see those numbers going up every report. So ideally you show growth across every three month period, and that's the measure of success for a company. If the company happens to stay true to its organizational mission and if it happens to perform at the top of its game, you know, that's nice too, it's just not required. And so for a company like Netflix when it has a setback, you end up seeing a lot of people jumping ship. And that's because those people they're they're focuses on quarter over a quarter gains. If those numbers go the wrong way, people start to bail. Now, on top of that, this focus on short term gains makes it very challenging for companies to make good plans for the long term. It's not impossible. There are companies that do it, but it is much harder because in the meantime, you really have to keep the shareholders happy on that quarter by quarter basis. If the shareholders aren't happy, they bounce, and now it becomes way harder for you to achieve those long term goals because if those stock prices start going down because people have lost confidence, you're not gonna have of the financial ability to execute the long term plans you have in mind. And if enough folks bounce, it can actually send a company into a spiral that's really hard to pull out of. And when we pull ourselves away from the stock market side of business and we just look at how this affects the companies and their customers, we just see tons of problems. Then there's also the issue that there's a limit to growth. It's very hard to grow once you hit saturation points, and we see this in all sorts of companies. Netflix hit in the United States because pretty much everyone who wanted Netflix and who could afford it subscribed, so there were no more worlds to conquer. Alexander wept. And we've also seen it in other companies like you know Facebook meta slash Facebook, but specifically Facebook, because Facebook expanded to a truly gargantuan user base, but now it's seeing those numbers on the decline. It's not able to attract new users, and a lot of older users have either slipped off the system or otherwise you know, are unable to be users, like maybe they've passed away or something. So we see this in other companies like Facebook or you know Meta, but specifically the Facebook platform. You know, Facebook expanded to a truly gargantuan user base, but now the company is seeing numbers on the decline for the Facebook platform. It's having trouble attracting younger users, and meanwhile older users are kind of slipping off the platform. So it hit a saturation point and it's having a real hard time growing. And that because that's such an important metric in a company's uh, you know health, at least according to shareholders, it's really put Meta in kind of a rough spot. We also have seen this with cable networks where a cable network. Letlet's say it's a company that has several channels. You know, once they get on a certain number of services, they really can't expand anymore. You're essentially in as many households as you possibly can be within that region. So the only way to grow is to expand to other regions, to focus on international growth. And you know, I saw that when when I worked for How Stuff Works, and How Stuff Works was part of Discovery Communications. That was a big part of discoveries strategy. Now we see discovery strategy also being on expanding through online services, you know, with the merger with the former Warner Media. So eventually you do hit a cap and you just stop growing. You just can't grow any bigger. It is unsustainable to continue to grow, and then what happens, you know, it's it's very hard for me not to look at this entire thing as a very long term pump and dump scheme, the idea that you're just pumping up a company up so they can grow bigger and bigger until it just can't grow anymore, and then you get the heck out and in the meantime, you just, you know, this company that might have been doing something really good and important is suddenly at in a trouble spot because of that. Um anyway, I'm done ranting about modern capitalism for now, anyway, And obviously this is an oversimplification of the issue. There are lots of companies out there that do not fall into this trap. It's just this is a trap I see way too many companies fall into. And in many cases they are companies that I actually really kind of like, or at least I like the services or products that they produce. So it's frustrating as a consumer to see that the focus goes towards the shareholders. Uh. And it would require a seismic shift in business philosophy for this to change, so I don't expect it to happen anytime soon. All Right, when we come back, we'll be talking about a lot of other tech news UH and some business stuff, because the two are very tightly intertwined. But first, let's take some time for our own business and listen to a couple of messages from sponsors. Okay, we're back. How about we talk about some big wins for companies that are connected to Elon Musk. You know, I make no secret that I'm not a big Musk fan, but there's no denying that a couple of his companies have really performed incredibly well recently. First up as Tesla, which reported an eighteen point seven billion dollars in revenue for the first quarter of twenty two, and three point three billion dollars of that was profit. That is incredible. Now, part of the revenue came from Tesla's practice of cell emissions credits to other automakers. UH. See. Certain governments like the EU and the United States require automakers to manufacture a certain percentage of clean vehicles in all the cars that they manufacture. Not every automaker actually manages to hit those regulations, so to balance it out, these automakers are allowed to buy emissions credits from other companies that do hit those requirements. So the idea here is that the automakers have an incentive to develop and produce cleaner technology because if they don't, they have to pay money in order to buy credits to offset their dirty, dirty cars. And so Tesla is allowed to sell emissions credits to these automakers because Tesla makes electric vehicles, their vehicles don't have emissions anyway. Tesla sold nearly six hundred eighty million dollars worth of emissions credits in the first quarter of twenty twenty two. That's more than twice what Tesla sold during the fourth quarter of one, so you know a good amount of money is coming in from these emissions credits sales. Obviously not a significant amount when you look at eighteen point seven billion dollars of revenue, but in years past it was those emissions credits that really helped Tesla when it was making these earnings calls, because they weren't making as much money off actual vehicle sales, but that is a different story right now anyway, um, anyway, the company has a lot of other battles to fight, including navigating the ongoing supply chain challenges, but so far Tesla has performed better in that regard than a lot of other companies have. So Tesla has shown a lot more flexibility than a lot of other other automakers have managed, and thus has really flourished quite a bit in the first quarter of twenty two. One other thing that must talked about during that earnings call was that Tesla is working on creating a robo taxi vehicle that won't have pedals or a steering wheel, and that the company is targeting a twenty four date for rollout. Now, I think that is incredibly ambitious. We all know that the Tesla full self driving mode isn't actually a full self driving mode, and that our current level of autonomous car technology has is probably somewhere around level three. There are five levels total, or six if you count zero, which is no autonomous system at all, uh and level three is conditional automation. That means that current autonomous vehicles really still need human oversight. They're only capable of autonomous operation in specific situations, such as within a narrowly defined region of operation, like you know, within these you know, twelve blocks or something like that, or under specific circumstances, like specific weather conditions like it has to be bright and sunny or it can't be you know, raining, or has to be a specific time of day, like it can't be after dusk. These are the sort of conditions that most autonomous cars have to operate under. It's some form of restrictive automation. For a driverless ROBOTAXI that has no means of human override to be a possibility, we would need to achieve level five autonomy, because even level four autonomy typically includes the option for humans to override the system and take control. Obviously, that would be impossible if there are no controls to take. Of course, the fact that this is a goal doesn't mean that Tesla will actually hit it, nor does it mean that whatever Tesla does produce, let's say it does produce a vehicle with no you know, steering wheel, no pedals, doesn't necessarily mean that that vehicle will actually qualify as a true level five autonomous vehicle. So in that second possibility, I would really caution anyone against getting into such a vehicle because it could potentially be really dangerous. We've already seen several instances in which driver assist features and Tesla vehicles have contributed to fatal accidents. Now, in several of those cases, you could argue that that was due to human driver's disregarding safety rules. But still, this is a pretty big swing that Tesla is taking. And it's been a while since I talked about the Boring Company. That is Elon Musk's business that's all about digging massive tunnels for the purposes of high speed transportation, as well as some other stuff, but the high speed transportation is typically what we really focus on. The Boring Company held a round of funding that brought in six seventy five million dollars and investments which brought the company's value up to five point six seven five billion dollars. This is another company with which I have some concerns, mainly because the goals and claims of the company seemed to be largely unsubstantiated by reality. However, let's talk about what the company's mission is before I get all skeptical. So, for the transportation side of the Boring company's business. The goal is to dig out tunnel networks that will allow for the construction of transportation infrastructure. That infrastructure will ideally create an alternative to street level traffic and help reduce or potentially even eliminate congestion, making it easier for you to get to your destination and create a more pleasant experience for you know, the surface dwellers. And when coupled with loop, which is the transportation infrastructure part, the ideas that passengers will zip around these tunnels and potentially up to a hundred fifty miles per hour. Uh now, this in itself was a step down from the original concept of the hyper loop, which was an enclosed train system that would pump out most of the air from the tunnels in order to reduce air resistance and be able to travel at very high speeds. The current loop proposal involves writing in Tesla vehicles through tunnels. Uh now. Standard Tesla can hold five people, although the versions that we've seen have maxed out at three passengers plus a human driver. And obviously, if you wanted to go all the way to five people where you have one human driver and four passengers, you have to have folks who don't mind being super cozy in the back seat. Also, so far, people have only been in vehicles that have reached a maximum of fifty miles per hour. And last I checked the LVCC loop that is in the Las Vegas Convention Center loop, where there's kind of a pilot program of this that one is restricted to a maximum of thirty five miles per hour. This has led a lot of critics to suggest that all Elon Musk is really doing is just adding more lanes of roads. It's just that these are lanes that are underground um and thus isn't really that revolutionary, nor is it expected to make that big of an impact on issues like traffic congestion. Now, arguably we won't know for sure until something more robust than the Las Vegas Convention Center system is in place in order for us to evaluate it. My guess is that we aren't going to see a massive improvement using this kind of system, and that maybe it would have been a better idea to use some more tried and true measure like building out a train system instead, which has a higher capacity and has a long history of being proven to work. But we're gonna have to wait and see. I would love to be proven wrong about this. I would love to see that this is really an effective means of getting people around using electric vehicles. I think that would be amazing for Las Vegas and for other cities that follow suit. Now, getting back to self driving cars for a second. Uh. In fact, part of the plan for the loop is to use self driving Tesla vehicles in the future. It's just that's not how it's working right now. But in the UK, the Department for Transport has determined that in the event of an autonomous car getting into an accident, the motorists inside the car will not be held liable for claims. Instead, the insurance company representing the motorists or that vehicle will be held liable. Moreover, the Department says that writers will be allowed to watch videos. They can watch TV on built in screens and self driving cars and there won't be any problem with that. However, they will still be against the law to use a mobile phone. And Okay, I'm not really sure why one activity is okay and the other one isn't. Also, I think it's gonna be a while before we have vehicles that are really dependable enough where this sort of measure will even be relevant. However, assuming we do get to that level of reliable autonomy, the benefits would be tremendous, from relieving traffic congestion to reducing the number of accidents and thus injuries and fatality. So I'm really hoping that we hit it UH soon. I remain a little cautious about it because it's just taking a lot more time because as we've as we've discovered the challenges are more subtle and varied than what a lot of people previously, including myself, previously considered. UH. I was really gung home on driverless cars for a really long time, and I still am for the concept. I'm just a little more cautious about the actual capabilities. I mentioned on Tuesday's episode that employees at the flagship Apple store in New York City are in the process of organizing a union, and it turns out that employees at an Apple store in my home city of Atlanta have beat him to the punch. Uh. The Atlanta employees filed a petition yesterday to hold a union election. So this means that the Atlanta employees already secured enough employee support to merit a vote on the subject, and should this upcoming vote pass, then these employees will be the first Apple Store workers to union eyes. Of course, there will be more steps to take after even a successful vote, including seeing if Apple will recognize the union. Should the majority of store employees vote in favor of unionizing UM. If Apple refuses to recognize the union, then the National Labor Relations Board has to get involved and things will go from there. But we'll have to wait and see because the vote hasn't even been held yet. Now. At the same time, some former Nintendo employees have filed a labor complaint against Nintendo, alleging that the company terminated their employment after they attempted to organize their coworkers. Furthermore, they claimed that Nintendo either used surveillance or implied that they were using surveillance to spy on employee union activities. Now the next step is that, again the US National Labor Relations Board or n LRB will have to investigate these claims to determine if Nintendo actually did engage in illegal labor violations. So it remains to be seen, but another example, at least allegedly of a company cracking down on employees attempts to organize the union busting activities are something we're hearing more and more of. But then we're also hearing more and more about workers trying to organize, so the labor revolution continues. I'm not the only person screaming at capitalism. In other news, over in the European Union, representatives have advanced proposals that will require all smartphone manufacturers to support the USBC standard for chargers. So that would mean that all smartphones would have to have USB C ports and be compatible with us b C charging cables. Now, one reason for this is to really cut back on e waste. So the idea here is that you would really only need to buy one charger for your phone, or maybe a couple if you have to have one in a different location or whatever. But you get my my meaning you just have to have the one. Then you could just keep using the same charge even when you change out the type of phone you use, So if you swap from Android to iPhone, you don't need a you know, new accessories because the charging cable will fit both. If this legislation were to pass, an Apple were to comply, So yeah, it would mean that Apple would have to manufacture phones with USBC ports rather than proprietary connectors. Apple has consistently argued that standardizing charging boards would inhibit innovation and that this would ultimately hurt customers in the long run. I think most regulators don't buy that argument. They just suspect that Apple would really like to hang on to proprietary connectors because it creates a market for proprietary accessories which Apple can provide. This proposal has been a long time in the making, and it's still has to go through a couple more rounds of votes for different committees before it gets put to a vote across the EU, and then there has to be time to actually implement the regulations. So there's still time for Apple to make a ace for its approach, and even if this legislation does pass, it will be a little bit before we see it filter into things like Apple's actual design. Okay, We've got a few more stories to cover before we conclude this episode, but first let's take another quick break. Okay, In Afghanistan, the Taliban have ordered that both the video social platform TikTok and the multiplayer shooter game Player Unknowns Battlegrounds will be banned in the country. They argue that both properties are a bad influence on Afghani youth. This follows a string of crackdowns on entertainment in the country. Currently, television in Afghanistan mainly broadcasts news or religious programming and pretty much nothing else. Based on the news stories I've read, it sounds like living under the rule of the tell Laban is pretty miserable, particularly for women, which you know, no big surprise there. Even though the Taliban promised that it wasn't going to return to its more hardline approach to governing, uh, that seems to have gone to the side now. And yeah, they've really cracked down on the sorts of media that people within the country can access, and my guess is that's just going to get more and more restrictive as time goes on. YouTube has removed the campaign channel for John Lee, who is running unopposed to lead Hong Kong. That election is going to be determined by a committee of around one thousand five people. That committee is nearly entirely made up of pro Beijing officials, So it's really it's hard to look at this as anything other than just our performance from China backed officials to show like a the appearance of a democratic process. But you know, again, John Lee is running unopposed. There's almost you know, it really does raise the question, why do you need a campaign channel you're not campaigning against anyone. But the US has also ordered sanctions against John Lee and several other Hong Kong officials, and those sanctions are there because those officials have been linked to restricting Hong Kong's autonomy and eliminating individual freedoms of the citizens of Hong Kong and restricting rights over the last several months. So YouTube has complied with those sanctions and thus shut down that campaign channel. Meta meanwhile, is going to allow John Lee to maintain a presence on Facebook. However, Meta has deactivated monetization on that account and says that they're not going to allow John Lee's account to make use of payment services in order to comply with the actions against John Lee. Net neutrality advocates in California are celebrating a legal victory now that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a move from I s p s to block California's enforcement of its own net neutrality law. All right, this requires a bit of explanation. So prior to two thousand eighteen, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC in the United States had established certain net neutrality protections that restricted what I s p s could do, and it required I s p s to comply with certain rules, rules that I sp s are not super keen on complying with. But during the Trump administration, the FCC pretty much gutted all those measures and reversed all of those decisions. California, their their state representatives, stepped up and created legislation that allowed the state of California to enforce similar rules as to what the FCC had in place before two eighteen, and I s p s really complained about it. They said that the fccs decision to drop net neutrality should apply across to the state level, because the FCC is federal and California obviously is a state. Now, the Ninth Circuit said, uh no, just because the federal agency abdicates authority over a matter doesn't mean that a state authority can't then step in. Um. In fact, if a federal agency says, you know, we don't have the authority to regulate this industry, then by extension, that agency also doesn't have the authority to prevent anyone else from regulating it because you can't say I'm not responsible for that, and at the same time say you can't be responsible for that because you're not the boss. You can't do that. So now California has a strong that neutrality law, and moreover, will be allowed to maintain that law even if we should see more big swings with the FCC, like if the FCC were to reinstate net neutrality regulations and then at the change of another administration reverse that decision again, California's law would still stay firm because it's a state law, not a federal law. Uh So this was a big win for net neutrality advocates. Finally, do you work for a company that has been urging you to come back to the office, and more importantly, does your boss follow the same rules that you're expected to follow? I ask because a research consortium called Future Forum found that non executive employees are almost twice as likely to work at the office five days a week as executives are. The survey found that just over one third of all those who were surveyed have returned to the office full time. Meanwhile, executives tend to pursue a more hybrid approach to work. Some of this might be due to business travel, which is definitely on the rise, but some of it seems to highlight a massive divide between employees and executives. That there is kind of a do as I say and not as I do philosophy at play here, which is obviously inherently unfair. Now, I have to say I am incredibly fortunate and that I work for a company where we maintain a great deal of flexibility. Uh. In fact, I was in the office earlier this week because I needed to go in, and the only other person in that office that day was my superproducer TORII. We were the only two people there. But we are seeing an increasing number of companies push for employees to return to offices full time. It's just a shame that the same doesn't seem to apply to the bosses. Huh So yeah, I guess in the end, what I'm advocating for is down with capitalism and eat the rich. Hey uh More. Seriously, though, I as I get older, I get ground here about the inherent unfairness in these systems and feel that the labor movement is is kind of a proof that a lot of other people feel the same way I do, and that hopefully the labor movement will result in things changing direction. I'm not expecting to see a one eight here. I'm not and I don't think that any massive changes aren't going to have other consequences that will have to deal with. But it would be nice to kind of see the narrative change a little bit in my mind. Um, and I say that as an executive producer. All right, that's it for this episode of Tech Stuff, And uh yeah, I keep on hoping that I can cover tech news that doesn't involve as much politics and business as well. I hear you. I also wish for that, but I gotta cover the news that happens. So that's where we are. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in Tech Stuff, whether it's a tech company, a specific technology, a person in tech, anything like that, or even just a concept in technology you would like to know more about, reach out let me know. The best way to do that right now is on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W, and I'll talk to you again. Really see 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.