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Tech News: The Death of G4TV (Again)

Published Oct 18, 2022, 7:56 PM

Less than a year after its relaunch, G4TV once again goes dark. Plus online entertainment company Rooster Teeth faces harsh criticism in the wake of a former employee's accusations. And Parler is getting a new owner.

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 you? It is time for the tech news for Tuesday, October two thousand twenty two. And boy, how a lot of stuff happened late last week and over the weekend. Let's start with G four TV. So I did some episodes about G four TV about a year ago, where I talked about the formation of the channel, you know it's origins and it's merger with tech TV under Comcast, and then the subsequent dissolution of the channel following years of decline, and that era happened between two thousand two and two thousand twelve. Then I talked about how the channel was being revived fived in twenty twenty one, coming back from extinction. So the Zomba five G four TV emerged on November six, and with the relaunch, we saw the reappearance of programs like x Play, which was a video game criticism show like a review show, as well as Attack of the Show, which is more of a geeky variety show, and some of the hosts from the glory days like Kevin Pereira and Adam Sessler returned and they were joined by newcomers to the channel like Fiona Nova and Gina Darling and others. But then less than a year later, the channel has once again gone silent. Comcast Spectator, which in itself is a subsidiary of Comcast, sent out a memo on October six, two thousand twenty two a lerning the team that due to low viewership, the channel was financially unstable, so that essentially meant that it probably cost more to produce the content on the channel than the channel was actually making. As a result, the plug has been pulled and the channel is once again dead. The memo goes on to say that Comcast Spectator HR will work with the affected staff of which they were around, to try and find other opportunities and discuss other options. This stinks because there were some really cool people working over there, you know, talented, hard working folks. I was honestly surprised that the new G four TV wasn't more of an online network as opposed to an attempt to to go the traditional TV channel route. Again, I doubt such a channel would be able to attract the same talent pool if it were online only like that would be hard to do because you typically don't see the same kind of investment for that sort of stuff. However, the costs of production would be much lower as well. A lot of folks online are kind of playing armchair analysts and drawing conclusions like that the television era in general is coming to a close, and that's why G four TV couldn't find a new audience, because the audience has moved away from the medium there getting their content online as opposed to on television. I would actually have to do some real research to find out how likely that is. I mean, I know anecdotally that I haven't watched any television programming in years, but that's just me. I could be an outlier. I don't know. I don't know how how popular TV is in general at this point because I'm so far removed from it. I'd have to actually look into it. But I just want to say that I hope the staff of G four TV finds new opportunities quickly and that they are all able to pursue their dreams, just under a different banner, because, like I said, this stinks. Uh I can't really blame Comcast Spectrum from for doing this, right, Like, if they were unable to find an audience, you can't really justify just running the channel just so it exists. If no one's seeking it out, then ultimately you could argue that the effort being put forward to create that content is wasted and that people could achieve better things by doing something else. So I can't really criticize the decision to end the channel. I just hate that it was a necessity because you know, I like some of the folks over there, and um, you know, I I think that this stuff they make is worthwhile. That being said, since I don't watch TV, I hadn't been watching g for TV, so I'm part of the problem, all right. Moving on, Also in the geek entertainment sphere is some pretty ugly news coming out of Rooster Teeth. Now, if you're not familiar with the name Rooster Teeth, it's a company that's known primarily for its podcasts and video series that orbit the video d games space. They're either directly about video games or are kind of tangentially related to video games, and it's all with an entertainment spin. The company got started with a web series called Red Versus Blue, which uses the Halo game engine as a kind of studio, actors treating their master Chief characters like digital puppets and recording voice over with it. That Little Colonel grew into a pretty impressive entertainment network, which ultimately branched out into making feature films, premier series, an anime inspired series, and more. I've actually had a couple of people from Rooster Teeth on this show as guests in the past, including Bernie Burns and Jack Potillo. Well, the news out of Rooster Teeth this week is pretty awful, and it started when news broke that the company, which ultimately is part of Warner Brothers Discovery, dissolved several positions, meaning they just eliminated these positions from existence. That included one of an online personality, a guy named Matt Bragg who posted that he was going to go part time on sort of a contract basis because of this. Now, that prompted some backlash in the community, which then got turned up to eleven in intensity when a former Rooster Teeth employee named Caden talked about her experiences at the company. Her accusations are numerous and disturbing. They range from going unpaid for nine months while doing some contract work for the company, to then being vastly underpaid and overworked as a producer and a director and editor, even to a point where she developed pneumonia and then, upon returning to work, was immediately put back under the same grueling schedule. She also said that she was targeted with a homophobic slur in the office, and that slur was used by on screen talent in an altered form so that they refer to her with this slur while being on camera, and in turn, the community got in on using that nickname, though presumably most folks didn't know what the significance of the word was. Side note, however, Caden herself, in a previous life, like fifteen years ago when she was a teenager, had uploaded videos that featured her and this was before her transition surgery and before her employment at Rooster Teeth, But it featured her using homophobic language, anti Semitic language, racist language. So that doesn't excuse the treatment she received at at Rooster Teeth. But you know, I feel like I need to talk about it because otherwise someone's going to bring it up and say, yeah, but Cayden said these terrible things when she was younger, and doesn't that make her a hypocrite? Really? I feel like Caden's arguments were that the company failed to act when she brought these concerns to HR. And that's the issue, right. It's not that Cayden was a perfect person, or that Kayden herself had not engaged in terrible UH language and and the expression of horrible racist and homophobic ideas herself. She had. That was bad that she had done that on her own channel, but rather that this indicated a systemic problem within Rooster Teeth and that HR did nothing to take action on that and to protect employees. That is still a massive problem. UH. Caden's behavior was also a massive problem, something that she has apologized for in the past, though you know, some people are are arguing that that apology wasn't sufficient. I'm not here to judge the sufficient nature of apologies because that's that's a fool's errand in my mind, But anyway, it doesn't change the fact that there were these systemic problems that Rooster Teeth. Now, Rooster Teeth issued a statement that a lot of people in the community have said, isn't nearly enough, saying that the company failed to really take accountability for the things that Caden accuses the company of doing. Largely this reliance on the exploitation of employees who are underpaid by industry standards, while meanwhile some some few people at the top are benefiting disproportionately from that labor. So it is really ugly. This is not the first time that Rooster Teeth has had to face some pretty tough scandals. There was a similar one when Mica Burton left the company and revealed she had been the target of racism and abuse, and the company failed to really do anything to help her. Then in scandal broke out again when it was made public that one of the on screen talent at Rooster Teeth had engaged in predatory behavior with the fan base. So this later this controversy implies that the company as a whole has failed to address those systemic problems within the culture of the organization, and many are comparing what's going on within Rooster Teeth two similar situations that companies like Activision, Blizzard and uby Soft and Uber. Meanwhile, as part of Warner Brothers Discovery, I imagine there's a very real worry at executive level level leadership at Rooster Teeth about what maybe in the future for Rooster Teeth. I mean, as possible they could get sold off, because we know that David Zaslov over at Warner Brothers Discovery and his team are looking to trim billions of dollars off the overall corporate budget, and uh, it may very well be that Rooster Teeth could be on the chopping block for that, whether it gets sold off or dissolved or whatever. Rooster Teeth canceled all of its live podcast recording sessions yesterday, likely because the company is working to create a response to these accusations and community reaction, and the host of that podcast would have been potentially been a real mess. Right if you had live interactive chat with a podcast recording, it would be setting the stage for accusations and criticism and abuse and tough questions and it just would have been a big mess. Whether this controversy is going to have a lasting effect on the company remains to be seen, but it definitely has exposed a very ugly side to Rooster Teeth's corporate culture, one that arguably has been exposed before in the past. But the company had had assured community members that steps would be taken to correct it. So, yeah, not a good situation. All right. When we come back, we've got a lot more news to get through, but first let's take this quick break. We're back. Yeah. Formerly known as Kanye West, is in the process of acquiring the beleaguered social network platform Parlor. Now you might remember that Parlor, which brands itself as a free speech platform, became kind of a gathering place primarily known for right wing conservatives leading up to the twenty twenty election, when there was a big spike in interest in Parlor. The service ran into some major turbulence, however, when Apple and Google dropped Parlor from app stores citing the company's lack of a suitable content moderation policy around the same time as the January six, two thousand twenty one insurrection. Amazon would then subsequently boot Parlor from its hosting service, and so Parlor had to find a new host and initially switched to a Russian based company called de dos Guard, but then switched to an American based company called sky Silk. The general reporting round Parlor has indicated that there's been a pretty substant hill decline in active users since the return from online exile in early one. Anyway, Yea apparently decided to purchase Parlor after he received a Twitter ban for posting anti Semitic comments. He had also been banned from Instagram. And I think it's interesting to point out that Yea has been hanging out with a conservative commentator and author named Candice Owens recently because Owens happens to be married to a man named George Farmer, and Farmer happens to be the CEO of Parlor. So that's led some folks and allegedly including some folks in Yea's own circles, to perhaps suggest that Owens has influenced Yea and kind of guided him into buying what is a flailing social media site, which will potentially see both her and her husband benefit from that sale. And I am not used to reporting this kind of drama, y'all. Anyway, when you consider that Elon Musk is still in the process of acquiring Twitter and that Donald Trump on to found Truth Social it's hard to get past the feeling that some highly opinionated, rich people think that the real solution to being moderated is to go and buy the platform or to make your own so interesting stuff there. Over in the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority or c m A, which is a regulatory body, has set a new precedent by ordering Meta to sell off Giffee or Jiffy if you prefer. That's the gif creation website that Meta acquired in twenty though, of course, in Meta was still known as Facebook. Actually, the c m A had already ordered Meta to do this. This is not a new decision. However, Meta appealed that decision. The matter went back for review, and now after reviewing that initial decision, the c m A says, now we're good, We're still going to make you sell it. So the CMA says that Meta's acquisition hurts competition in the space, potentially cutting off Giffee rivals from being able to leverage Facebook, or forcing those rivals to give up more user data to Facebook in return for being allowed to access the platform. Meta reps issued a statement reading quote, we are disappointed by the CMA's decision, but except today's ruling as the final word on the matter, we will work closely with the c m A on divesting Giffee end quote. So it looks like the dismantling of meta has begun, or maybe this is just the beginning and end of it all. We'll we'll have to wait and see. Researchers at the security firm z Scaler warned that there's a new data stealing malware propagating across Facebook. A phishing campaign called Ductail appears to be responsible, and according to a report on tech Radar that's titled a phishing campaign is spreading brand new malware targeting Facebook users. This malware quote cannot only steal Facebook adjacent data, but also other sensitive data stored in browsers, such as data related to cryptocurrency, wallet's a count information, and basic system data end quote. Ducktail has previously distributed malware through LinkedIn messages containing malicious links, and it sounds like this particular attack is really insidious and that it mostly works within computer memory, which helps it evade detection from anti virus programs. It also sounds like this started as a spear phishing campaign. UH. Spear phishing means that the perpetrators are targeting specific populations. It's not just throwing out a phishing attack in general, it's really focusing them. So in that case, it involved high level employees who had access to company Facebook business accounts. However, z scaler is now warning that this campaign has widened to target pretty much anyone. Z Scaler says that quote the malicious executable files are mostly in dot zep format and hosted on file sharing platforms, posing as cracked versions of office applications, games, subtitle files, porn related files, and others end quote. So once again, just a reminder, don't download files from questionable sources. You're playing Russian Roulette with your computer and potentially all of your data, including financial data. Business Insider reports that Microsoft has recently held layoffs, affecting quote less than one thousand employees end quote this week, and that the cuts were made across pretty much all of the company, including the Xbox division and Microsoft's strategic missions and technology departments. Business Insider also references an internal email that indicated the company is re prioritizing various projects, with some essentially being canceled or shelved. This kind of goes in line with what we've been hearing across the industry really, as large companies have put in hiring phrases and started holding layoffs. Uh. Microsoft has previously said that it anticipates it will not lay off more than one percent of its workforce globally, but the you know, this is part of that process, and I think we're going to see a lot more stories about various folks facing tough situations like this across the tech industry. So on a similar note, Engadget reports that some leaked documents from inside Amazon paint a really bleak picture for the company when it comes to retaining employees. The report says that attrition, which is a nice way to say the loss of employees that is both regretted and unregretted, which essentially means both the folks who quit and the folks that we fired or laid off collectively. They cost the company some eight billion dollars annually eight billion dollars billion with a B, all because of turnover, whether that's from layoffs and firings or folks quitting the company. The documents indicate that about twice as many people leave the company on their own as opposed to being laid off or fired. So that definitely does not paint a nice picture of what it's like to work for Amazon. Right, So you've got this massive issue of turnover. The vast majority of which involves people leaving the company quitting the company, and that you know, regretted attrition a people who are leaving on their own account was at a low of sixty nine point five percent and a high of any one three percent across all levels of employees. Yikes. And it goes on to add that only one out of three employees even sticks around for ninety days or more. That means if you get three Amazon employees who joined on you know, January one, two out of those three are going to be gone before the end of March. Like that crazy. That's an insane amount of turnover. And we've always known that turnover at Amazon has been a big problem. It's just that it hasn't really been quantified like this before these internal documents got out. At that rate, Amazon is really going to burn through all potential employee options in major cities within a couple of years. And then where is it going to be. I mean, that sounds like it's hyperbole, but other news outlets have actually said exactly the same thing that at the rate of Amazon's turnover, the employable public in the various cities where Amazon has major operations are going to be run through and then you've got no one left. So you've got to address these issues with retention. It also seems to at least imply that working conditions at Amazon are lousy, right otherwise you wouldn't have people quitting within three months of getting a job. So it's a costly problem that Amazon needs to solve. I really recommend reading the whole article. The article has the title exclusive Amazon's attrition costs eight billion annually according to leaked documents, and it gets worse. And again that's over at in Gadget. Okay, I've got a few more stories to go through before I get to those. Let's take another quick break. We're back. Not too long ago, I covered a story about how YouTube was experimenting with putting four K content behind a sort of paywall. So some users in various regions, but not all of them, but some some areas of the world reported that when they encountered videos on YouTube that were available to watch in four K, they first saw a prompt to upgrade to YouTube Premium in order to access the content in four A resolution. Now mac Rumors reports that the company has ended this experiment, removing the upgrade prompts and returning four K content to just being a normal option for users to choose from for videos that have that availability. The company has indicated that this experiment is officially over. They've said so in tweets people have sent in questions over Twitter and YouTube accounts of State stated that this experiment has ended. However, there hasn't really been any comment on what prompted the experiment to come to an end. Presumably the decision is not to lock four K behind a paywall. It is possible that user backlash convinced YouTube leaders that putting higher resolution content behind an upgrade requirement would not be an effective way to actually drive people to subscribe to YouTube premium. If their conclusion was people are just angry and it's not really making anyone subscribe, then obviously it doesn't make any sense to institute that strategy across the platform because it's not gonna work anyway, and it's just gonna take off your user base. So, um, I'm not sure what YouTube is going to try next to try and increase YouTube Premium subscriptions, but it apparently will not be locking content, you know, high resolution content behind the paywall. So that's good news if you like watching you know, four K content on YouTube and you don't want to have a YouTube premium subscription. German regulators have now levied a five million dollar fine on Telegram, the messaging app that originates out of the United Arab Emirates. It's a Dubai based company, and the regulators are saying that the reason for the fine, this five million dollar fine is that Telegram has failed to fulfill two requirements in order to operate a messaging service within Germany. Namely, Telegram has not created a legal way for reporting illegal content to German officials. So content within Germany that is considered illegal must be reported to the authorities, and Telegram has not proposed a way of doing that. And the other accusation is that Telegram has not named a German entity like a company or point of contact, who would be responsible for receiving official communications from the German authorities or from Telegram, kind of being a liaison between Telegram and the German government. Telegram does have the option to appeal the fine um and the company has recently named a German law firm as sort of a point of contact, so potentially one of the two problems has been resolved. Whether or not Telegram has formulated an official process for reporting illegal activity, I have not heard, so that may still be an issue. Finally, the European Space Agency plans to launch a demonstration satellite in twenty four that aims to push encryption into the quantum age, or at least play a part in it. So this plan involves putting a satellite, a communication satellite called Eagle one, into orbit, and this satellite is going to serve as part of a quantum key distribution system and will be used to help test different strategies centered around quantum encryption, which is important in the age of quantum computing. And I've covered quantum computing in the past, but just as a quick reminder, quantum computers, at least those that have enough processing capability as well as the right algorithms to go with it, can pose an enormous threat and existential threat to our modern methods of encryption. Um. So your standard computer would have to work thousands of years to decrypt a really sophisticated encrypted message today like that would just because the way classical computers work, it would take so long as to be unrealistic to ever be able to decrypt a truly well encrypted message, But a suitable quantum computer paired with the correct algorithm could do the same thing in a relative blink of an eye, because it's effectively solving all versions of the problem simultaneously. That's a drastic oversimplification of what's going on, but you can think of it in those terms. So while a classical computer would be working kind of step by step to try and solve a problem, the quantum computer is trying to solve all of the problem all the same time and quickly comes up with solutions that it assigns a probability to. So in other words, it's not like you get the solution, you get potential solutions with a a likelihood of them being correct. That's still way faster, way faster than using a classical computer, And that means that quantum computers could potentially decrypt pretty much everything that has ever been encrypted by computers, which means no more secrets, right. It means anything that has been encrypted could be uncovered. That includes things like financial transactions. The entire basis of data security would be completely undermined by this emergence of quantum computers and algorithms that can break encryption. So there is a need to establish a new encryption method that can withstand both classic and quantum computer attacks, and that is what this Eagle one satellite is meant to be part of a deployment of technology platforms upon which we can test different strategies to see which are viable. We've already seen stories of a proposed quantum encryption scheme that ended up being vulnerable to classical computer attacks. So this is an important and difficult area of research. So really interesting that this is looking at a launch. Uh, it really does show how how on the verge we are of this quantum computing age and how important it is to start setting the standards for encryption moving forward. Okay, that's it for the news that I have to cover today Tuesday, October two thousand twenty two. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. One way to do that is to download the I Heart radio app and you can navigate over to tech Stuff in the little search field and you'll see that there's a little microphone icon you can click on and you can leave a voice message up to thirty seconds in length. On there. If you would like me to use the message in an upcoming episode of tech Stuff, just let me know that as well. And uh, that's one way to get in touch with me. The other is to reach out on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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