Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and how the tech are you. It's time for the tech News for Tuesday, November one, two thousand twenty two, and we're gonna start off with some semi stale news. When I published the last news episode, which was on last Thursday, Elon Musk had yet to finalize his acquisition of Twitter, but that actually did happen later on that day last Thursday, and Musk changed his bio on Twitter to Chief Twit. He's changed it a couple of times since then. Since that moment, a lot has happened and continues to happen over at Twitter. Musk fired former CEO Paragugrival, former Chief Finance Chill officer Ned Siegel, policy head vi J. Gutty, and general counsel Sean Edgett to start. Musk subsequently named himself CEO, which makes Musk the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter. At the same time. He has also dissolved Twitter's board of directors and named himself sole director. So now Musk answers only to himself as both CEO and director, though I gotta be fair. Twitter is now a private company, so it has different needs from a publicly traded company, so a board of directors isn't necessarily performing the same function at Twitter as it would have when it was still a publicly traded company. The Washington Post, which previously reported that Musk planned to lay off as much as seventy of staff, which Musk later refuted, says now that up to the company could be laid off shortly, with a possible overall cut in the long term. In fact, according to several reports, the plan was to have some of those cuts take effect before today, because November one marks when several Twitter employees will receive grants of shares. But Elon Musk has straight up denied this news said that's not true. It was never the plan. He is also considering changing the verification process at Twitter right now. The way verification works is Twitter looks into accounts held by quote unquote notable people, and then in at least cases where Twitter agrees that they're notable, will go through the process to verify that the Twitter account actually belongs to the person claiming to be that person, right, like in my case, to make sure that it's me, not someone posing as me. That's why I put notable in in quotes kind of because my personal Twitter handle does have a verification check I've got that little blue check mark, and I do not and I qualify as notable, but there I am. Anyway, Musk is considering making this whole verification process a paid for feature wrapped into another subscription service, and that the service, which currently goes for about five bucks a month, would then be twenty dollars a month and you would have to pay that in order to maintain your verified status. We don't know much more about this, like would this mean that anyone with the financial means could get the verification tick? So it's not whether or not you're notable, it's whether or not you're willing to spend two bucks a year to get it. If so, would that mean that the tick even has any real value anymore? For those power users still on Twitter, are they going to cough up the cash to maintain their status? I mean, I can tell you that I'm not going to, But then I've used Twitter maybe four or five times over the last half a year, so it would be a waste of money for me to do that, no matter what, or could it mean that someone could actually pose as someone else, pay the money, get the verification tick, and then be seen as a legitimate voice for that person when in fact they have no connection. Is that a possibility? According to the Verge, which cited internal emails as a source, Currently, verified accounts like mine will have ninety days to subscribe to the new process or else lose that blue tick mark. Shucks, I guess it'll be gone for me. Musk also hinted that he's interested in bringing back the short form video platform Vine, which Twitter bought in two thousand twelve and then began to sunset in sixteen. It would take a few years before it was dead dead. Uh. Kind of interesting because you could argue that Vine in many ways presaged the arrival of platforms like TikTok, although Vine was a very short form video platfor form um and it took a lot of work to make a really good Vine. Reports say that Musk has given various teams within Twitter extremely tight deadlines to see these projects through, like the overhaul of the verification process and the resurrection of Vine, like a crazy aggressive deadline, at least in some cases, like by the end of this week kind of stuff. Musk has also really pushed hard on the Twitter staff already, and we know more about the folks who helped fund Musks take over a Twitter, which is causing other kinds of scandal. Uh. The people who helped Musk get the financing to to make this purchase include the former CEO of Twitter, the co founder, Jack Dorsey, investor Jason Kellicanis is another one, and a company that represents the interest of the Prince of Saudi Arabia is a major investor in this new Twitter. You might remember. The Prince of Saudi Arabia is the same guy who's been accused of ordering the assassination of journalist Jamal ka Shogi and is currently leading a country that has a horrifyingly long list of human rights crises to its name. The Saudi Arabian angle, in particular, has prompted U S Senator Chris Murphy to ask for a government review of Twitter's deal on the grounds of national security. So this story is not yet over. I expect we're going to see a pretty tumultuous time for Twitter in the near term. Let's switch gears, which is a pun. But you don't know it yet. We're gonna talk about Tesla. Okay, now you know. Anyway, Reuters reports that the Electric Vehicle Company hopes to go into mass production of its cyber truck by the end of next year. Elon musk Are initially unveiled the cyber truck back in twenty nineteen two. Well, well, let's say it was not too universal acclaim. Some folks found the design to be puzzling. Uh. The event also had some technical issues. For example, after proclaiming the armor glass windows on the truck to be virtually unbreakable, Franz von Holshausen through a metal ball the driver's side window to demonstrate this, except the metal ball shattered two of the windows. Musk said the reason for that was because earlier in the demonstration they showed how tough the doors on the truck were and they struck it with a sledgehammer, and that that subsequently weakened the windows and that's why they shattered with the metal ball. Anyway, it was one setback in that unveiling, but another was that a lot of folks found the angular design of the truck's body to be unusual and not in a cool way. Tesla stock dropped a bit in value after the unveiling, but according to the company, around a quarter of a million pre orders came in just five days later, so it seemed like it was finding its audience. The plan was to go into production by late one, but delays, not the least of which came courtesy of the pandemic, have pushed that back a few times now to late twenty three. Acquaint reuters, I'm curious if the folks who plopped down to Ben Franklin. Uh, that's a hundred bucks to y'all non Americans out there to reserve a cyber truck are still excited about the prospect of potentially owning one by the end of next year. At least a hundred bucks isn't really that much money when you compare it to the final selling price of the cyber truck that's likely going to range between forty dollars to seventy thousand dollars, depending upon the truck's configuration, as the truck will come in single, double, and triple motor versions. Now for a bunch of Meta news. On Monday, Meta's company Instagram dealt with a software bug that impacted thousands of users around the world, people reporting that Instagram suspended their accounts for no reason and others were just unable to access their accounts at all. Whatever the bug was, it took several hours for Meta to fix it. By the end of the day on Monday, reports from affected users had dwindled significantly, indicating that people were able to get back to watching reels and wondering why they don't see photos of their friends on there anymore. An activist group called Some of Us That's s U m of us published a report over the weekend titled stop the Steal two point oh. How Meta and TikTok are promoting a coup. This time, the focus was not on US elections, but rather the ones that happened this past Sunday in Brazil. In that contest, the incumbent President bolson Aro, a hard right conservative, faced off against a former president, Lula da Silva, a leftist candidate. The report alleges that Meta and TikTok both pushed forward false narratives promoted by boson Naro, namely that the election process wasn't to be trusted. If he lost, it would be indicative that the system doesn't work, that kind of thing, like if I win, everything's great, and if I lose, it's because the system is broken and corrupt. The group accused both Meta and TikTok with allowing baseless conspiracy theories to spread across their platforms, and that since these messages included calls for a military coup, that the platforms were taking a prominent role in the destabilization of Brazil. A campaign director with the group named Flora rebell oh Ar Dwine did not mince words. She said, at this point, it is safe to say that Meta has become Bolsonaro's official disinformation machine. Their report comes in on the heels of another one from the human rights group Global Witness, which submitted political ads in Brazil containing misinformation to both YouTube and Meta. They found that YouTube accepted every single ad. Facebook was a little better. They only accepted half of the ads. So I guess good for Facebook for performing better than YouTube, which just accepted falsehoods without question. Anyway, the election finally happened this past Sunday, and Lula da Silva squeaked out a win over Bolsonaro, and I mean squeaked out like a percentage point. It remains to be seen if the incumbent president will actually peacefully hand over power. One bit of news I missed last week was that Business Insider reported employees at Meta are facing some really tough conditions, maybe not quite as chaotic as Twitter staff are, but not that far behind either. Reportedly, managers are telling employees they need to up their output significantly if they want to make it through potential layoffs. One unnamed worker in the report said, quote, you have three months to prove your worth, put in two effort, or you can resign now if you don't like it. End quote. That sounds pretty harsh. Mark Zuckerberg has indicated recently that he thinks Meta staff is bloated, that there are more folks that are there than are needed to get the work done, and that the company is not being nearly as productive or efficient as it can be, which may well be true, but it sounds like employee morale is generally pretty low and lots of folks are trying to line up other options should they find themselves in the job market in the near future. When you take this news and stride with Zuckerberg being absolutely dedicated to his metaverse, vision even in the face of skepticism and resistance, it starts to look ugly because people begin asking if Meta is even on the right course, or if Zuckerberg is chasing after a vision that's never going to be the big hit he's banking on. One thing is clear, the company's reputation has taken a massive beating over the last couple of years. The stock price for Meta is down to around nine dollars per share, which sounds like a lot, don't get me wrong, But if you look at the high point over the last fifty two weeks, the high point for that stock was three hundred fifty three dollars per share. Now it's down to ninety four. The company has lost a ton in market capital as a shan and investors are clearly worried about where Meta is headed. Will layoffs help the company or is this a bigger issue that requires Mark Zuckerberg to reevaluate his position on the metaverse initiative? Smarter people than I have to answer that question. All Right, we're gonna go to a quick break, but we'll be back with more news. Right after this. We're back, we get some more Meta news, and you know it was the prolific poet Carly ray Jepson, who once said, Hey, I just met you and this is crazy, but here's my number, so call me maybe. Well, we know that c r J didn't need to say that to Meta, because, as it turns out, Meta has lots of people's phone numbers, even if they never signed up for an account on any of their platforms, they probably have your phone and your email, whether you've ever been on a Meta platform or not. So it turns out Meta has tons of phone numbers and emails all of people who have never had a Facebook or an Instagram account. And you might wonder how did that happen? Well, if someone you know has your contact information in their contacts and then they joined, say Facebook, and in the process they allow Facebook to access their contact list, boom, your information has gone from their contact list into Meta's database, even without your consent or participation. Isn't that awesome? It actually reminds me a lot of the Cambridge Analytica scandal from several years ago. If you recall that all got started when an app developer took advantage of a loophole and Facebook's API and created an app that people could download and use they would get paid for using it. It was a survey app, and what they would do when they when they downloaded it installed it is they would share of their access to their Facebook context, which gave the developer the chance to view all of the downloaders friends as if the developer were one of those friends, like they could see it as if they were the account, the primary account. Anyway, there's a decent chance your contact information is in this database, even if you've never touched Facebook or Instagram. Earlier this year, Meta actually created a tool that lets you check to see if your info is in that database, and it gives you the option to delete your information from that database and even block Meta from ever including it again. Curiously, Meta has not advertised this tool. They have not alerted people that it exists. In fact, a link to it is buried in a very long page about how the company handles non user information, which means, if you don't use Facebook, you would have to navigate to this page for people who don't use Facebook to learn about how your information may have been collected by the company, which sounds counterintuitive, right, How many people are gonna do that? You're onto something there? But anyway, if you would like to see if your info is in Meta's clutches, and if you want to delete it, you can do so by going to this U r L Facebook dot com slash Contacts slash removal that will let you check your phone number and your email address against the database, and if the info comes up because someone shared their contact list and you happen to be in it, you can have it deleted and scrubbed from Meta's databases. Again, they don't really let you know that this thing exists, but it does. Today, Google kills off yet another product. Hangouts is going to join other Google casualties like Wave and Google Plus and honestly countless others. There are entire websites that are dedicated to documenting all the projects Google either launched, are acquired, and then subsequently shut down. There is no shortage of them. Hangouts was sort of Google's attempt at unifying various messaging services across the company. You know, the company had launched a whole bunch of different ones under different divisions because Google didn't really structure messaging as a central pillar of product development. Instead, messaging would fall under the domain of different departments. So you've got a bunch of separate products that were all geared toward messaging, like Android had one, and Gmail had one, and Google Plus all had their own messaging systems. Hangouts started as the Google Plus entry and was ultimately an attempt to unify all these disparate strategies into a single product, and for a short while, Hangouts managed to do that, Like You managed to have all these other things folded into Hangouts, which unified Google strategy and arguably was a really good move. However, the problem was Hangouts was under the domain of Google Plus, and Google Plus was a massive failure. Despite an initial spike in interest as the service launched, it failed to get a sustainable user base going. So once Google Plus got struck that man, Hangouts was kind of without a parent anymore and it languished, and so you didn't really have this centralized position, the centralized strategy when it comes to messaging, and Google would then also capitulate to the demands of cell phone carriers because the cell phone carriers didn't like the idea of SMS being lumped in with other messaging services. They wanted an independent SMS app in order to maintain a hold on that type of messaging. They didn't want it to be lumped in with all the other kinds of messaging services. So the a placement for Hangouts today, at least in Gmail, is Google Chat. It is not as good as Hangouts was at its peak. It's definitely an inferior product. I use it all the time with my co host aerial Casting for our show Large Neugron Collider. We use Google Chat to stay in contact with each other, but it is not the same as Hangouts at its peak. Now Hangouts has not been good for ages. It really suffered once it lost its lifeline with Google. Plus. The simple fact is Google really fumbled the ball when it comes to messaging. It cannot hold a candle to Apple, which has made its own I message platform a bit of a status symbol, not just a bit is a status symbol, and in fact, it has a very quick way to identify those poor schlubs who are messaging with an Android phone rather than an iPhone by having that different color little bubble pop up. Now I say this as an Android user, I have no interest in switching to iPhone, but I do admit like iPhone has a lock on the status of messages and you can be looked down upon for using an Android phone from Apple users. And you know what, if I cared about what they thought, I bet that would hurt my feelings. And other Google news, the company will no longer require app developers in India to use Google's own billing system for in app purchases. We've seen this story unfold all around the world at different speeds and scales. More and more regions are pushing back against both Apple and Google for their policies that require app developers to only use the in house building systems of the respective platforms. And that's because those in house building systems guarantee a cut for the platforms themselves. So we're typically talking about a thirty percent cut. It can be lower, like as low as fifteen percent, but it's typically a thirty percent cut of every in app purchase goes to Apple or Google, depending on what platform you're on, um as sort of the cost of doing business. This is why Apple CEO Tim Cook has been so bullish on adopting a services strategy rather than focusing on hardware production the way Apple typically was thought of, because services provide a steady stream of revenue and all you really have to do is provide the platform right, and in many places we're starting to see governments labeled the policy as anti competitive and unfair. So we've seen lots of calls for the companies to allow developers to use whichever building service they want. They can go with the in house building service, or they could choose a third party building service. That's a move that both Apple and Google have repeatedly resisted around the world. In some cases, we've seen stories where a company has placed like Apple has placed restrictions so that a developer technically can choose a third party building system, but we'll have to spend even more money if they use the alternative then if they stick with the in house method. So in other words, apples like, oh, sure you can choose a third party, but now you're gonna have to pay us. That kind of approach, which obviously doesn't fly well in the face of regulators. India's Competition Commission ordered Google to make this change, allowing developers to choose whichever building system they wish, and now, at least in India they can. We may see such things roll out to other parts of the world. Like I said, the European Union has really been pushing on this, We've seen sub movement here in the United States. Um, it's not the same everywhere, but we are starting to see a growing movement to prevent companies like Apple and Google from dominating the space using you know, this in house approach. Over on the same Brain YouTube channel, Microsoft Xbox head Hauncho Phil Spencer said, quote, We're not taking Call of Duty from PlayStation that it's not our intent. Our intent is not to do that, and as long as there's a PlayStation out there to ship to, our intent is that will continue to ship Call of Duty on PlayStation, similar to what we've done with Minecraft since we owned that end quote. You might think why would Phil Spencer say this, Well, there's been this growing concern since Microsoft is pursuing an acquisition of the company Activision Blizzard, that Microsoft would then restrict the distribution of titles from Activision Blizzard to either just PCs and Xboxes or essentially anything other than Sony PlayStation because Sony is the biggest competitor in the video game space from Microsoft perspective. So by using that Minecraft example, Spencer is pointing out that Microsoft has really expanded access to Minecraft, and it really does seem these days like pretty much anything with a screen can run a Minecraft game. So Spwer is making a case that Microsoft plan to acquire Activision Blizzard does not represent a threat to the greater video game landscape, that a company like Sony could continue to expect Activision Blizzard titles having PlayStation versions. Why is he doing that? Well? Over in Europe, Microsoft is facing some potential government investigations into its acquisition deal, and those investigations could scuttle the whole deal or at the very least delay it. Neither outcome is something that Microsoft is particularly interested in seeing. So the chief concern appears to be that Microsoft consolidates and becomes an anti competitive video game company, preventing Sony from access to titles that are really popular with gamers and forcing gamers to buy Microsoft platforms if they want to access those games. And Microsoft is saying that's not on our plan at all, it doesn't make sense, will make way more money if we continue to make titles for the PlayStation. Uh. Microsoft supporters have claimed that Sony is fueling the fear in Europe, that it's Sony representatives who are talking to regulators and getting them concerned about this deal and effort to investigate and potentially derail it. Uh. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's the reporting that's going on over in Europe. As for what I think, well, I think Sony definitely has a bias here. I mean, Sony has an interest, a vested interest in seeing that this doesn't go through because they don't want to see Microsoft's influence grow in a competitive market in the video game space. Uh. So I don't think that the arguments are completely earnest and sincere. However, I also think that consolidation leads to bad outcomes in the long run, and that increased competition leads to the best outcomes for consumers. So it's complicated, especially in the video game space, like we're seeing more and more really big companies absolute really dominate that market, where you you're getting down to just less than you know, you could count the number of massive companies on one hand, and when you start to see that competition dwindle. Uh. The consumer typically is the person who suffers the most in the long run. So while I don't think Sony's argument is particularly genuine, I also am a little concerned about seeing fewer and fewer players in the video game space. And that's not even touching on all the the controversy coming out of Activision Blizzard in the various reports we've heard over the last year and a half. Really, Okay, we've got a couple more stories to go through before we get to those. Let's take another quick break. Before the break, we were talking about Microsoft. I mentioned that there's a suspicion and that Sony has been influencing regulators and the EU too kind of view the Activision Blizzard acquisition with a skeptical eye. But we also have some specific Sony news to cover. The company's latest earnings release call has some bad news in it with regard to video games. The company revealed that saw a drop in PlayStation Plus subscribers. So, for those of you all who are not in on the whole PlayStation lingo, PlayStation Plus is a monthly subscription service for PS four and PS five owners. That service gives those owners access to online play. So if you don't have this service, you can't play online games on the PS four and PS five. There are three separate tiers of subscriptions. The basic tier is called Essential, then you have Extra, then you have Premium, and Obviously, these are at three different price points, and as you would imagine, the more expensive you go, the more benefit as you get, mostly in the form of access to additional PS four and PS five titles. It's a lot like Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass service. The two are similar in many ways, and Microsoft has really been pushing hard on Xbox Game Pass, kind of positioning it in an attempt to make that model the future of gaming. And you can understand why because if you get people hooked in on subscriptions, you've got a guaranteed ongoing revenue source, right, Whereas if you're just focused on producing games, your next title might be a clunker and a big failure and you don't make that much money. You might lose money on it because you spent so much in production you weren't able to recapture that in sales. If you're switch your your bottle around where you're selling subscriptions as opposed to focusing on selling games, well yeah, you might release some clunkers, but you still have all the great titles that that subscription has access to, which keeps people coming back over and over again. So Sony is trying to do the same thing and in fact, both companies have been trying to do this for for years. But Sony is losing some traction because while the division still managed to increase revenue year over year, it did lose some subscribers, a few million subscribers, so at least it's not losing money, it's just losing people. The earnings report also revealed that Sony's sales of the PS five have remained flat year over year, which is not a surprise. You can really chalk that up to being the fault of the supply chain. Ever since its launch, PS five has kind of trickled into stores here and there, and ear gamers just scoop up units as quickly as they hit store shelves. The supply chain issues Sony has faced since the pandemic began have not improved significantly. Sony has subsequently adjusted its profits forecast for this year. They reduced it from two hundred fifty five billion in down to two hundred twenty five billion year, so reducing it by thirty billion yen that's about oh two million dollars. I think anyway, the company will find ways to increase production on the PS five eventually, at least I hope so because if it does, I suspect that will go a very long way towards turning things around. With a larger PS five user base out there, you're going to find more developers who will focus on producing games meant just for the PS five, because right now a lot of developers are kind of straddling console generations because there just aren't enough PS five users out there to justify a fully committed production of a current generation game. So instead we're seeing companies make games that could be played on either the PS four or PS five, which means they're they're pulling their punches, they're holding back. They haven't really focused on making games that take full advantage of current console generations capabilities. And again, it makes sense. If your user base is small, you can't pour the same amount of money and effort into making games for it because you'll never get a return on that investment. So this is kind of a chicken and egg problem here. Until there are more PS five units out there, then there's no real incentive for developers to really go all in on creating current generation games. This, by the way, also applies to Microsoft, not just to Sony. It's just this was specifically about the Sony's Earnings Call. Finally, researchers at the University of Florida have discovered a potentially catastrophic vulnerability in LDAR systems that are used by several companies as they're working towards creating autonomous vehicles. Namely, the researchers found that by using a well aimed and precisely timed laser, a person could create blind spots in ALDAR system and that would mean that an autonomous vehicle could potentially be unable to detect obstacle, including pedestrians, that are masked by this blind spot. So it's not that different to having someone shine a very bright light in your eyes. You can't make out anything that could be behind that light. Same sort of thing. Now, the research makes it sound like these pieces that you would need to create this kind of system are pretty cheap and easy to get, so it would not be hard to put together something that would be capable of fooling light our systems or masking light our systems. But the actual attack sounds like it would require a certain level of sophistication and skill because you would need to accurately track the vehicle, aim and time the firing of the laser in order to mask the light are properly, but it is possible the researchers were able to do it, and if they're able to do it, then a bad actor would be able to do this. So it is a vulnerability, and so the researchers are urging companies that produce and use these kinds of light our systems to factor that in and to build in protections against such attacks, effectively patching the vulnerability. In fact, the scientists who worked on this project even suggested upgrades that would protect vehicles and their passengers from such attacks in the future, which is great, right, It's not just pointing out a problem, but saying here's the solution to that problem, so that we're not just automatically striking this from being a possible technology in the future. Rather, it's being aware of the limitations and taking steps to overcome those limitations before it becomes like a potential target where we could have a tragedy occur as a result of failing to address this vulnerability. All right, that's the news for Tuesday, November one, two thousand twenty two. Hope you're all well. If you'd like to get in touch with me. Well, there there's currently two ways. We'll see how long the second way lasts. The first one is, of course, to download the I Heart Radio app. It's free to download, it's free to use. There's a little microphone icon if you navigate over to tech Stuff. You just put tech Stuff in the search bar, it'll pop on up. You see that microphone icon that lets you record a voice message up to thirty seconds and link for us. Let me know what you would like. Uh. If you would like me to play the audio from your your request, you just let me know. I'm not gonna do it without your permission, So if you don't, don't worry about it. Just tell me what you would like me to talk about. The other way, as of now, anyway is Twitter. I keep making that joke, but one of these days it's gonna be real. But yeah, it's Twitter for now, and the handle for the show is tech Stuff hs w uh. As of now, services still something I'm on. I realized that more and more people are kind of migrating away from it for various reasons. There are a lot of different reasons to be concerned about it, and then I'm concerned about it too, obviously, But I still check it, so if you do still use Twitter, and no judgment. By the way, if you want to use Twitter, I don't. I think that's fine. That's your right you do it. I don't judge you at all. I think it's fine. But if you still use it, leave me a message on there, let me know what you would like me to talk about in the future, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and how the tech are you. It's time for the tech News for Tuesday, November one, two thousand twenty two, and we're gonna start off with some semi stale news. When I published the last news episode, which was on last Thursday, Elon Musk had yet to finalize his acquisition of Twitter, but that actually did happen later on that day last Thursday, and Musk changed his bio on Twitter to Chief Twit. He's changed it a couple of times since then. Since that moment, a lot has happened and continues to happen over at Twitter. Musk fired former CEO Paragugrival, former Chief Finance Chill officer Ned Siegel, policy head vi J. Gutty, and general counsel Sean Edgett to start. Musk subsequently named himself CEO, which makes Musk the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter. At the same time. He has also dissolved Twitter's board of directors and named himself sole director. So now Musk answers only to himself as both CEO and director, though I gotta be fair. Twitter is now a private company, so it has different needs from a publicly traded company, so a board of directors isn't necessarily performing the same function at Twitter as it would have when it was still a publicly traded company. The Washington Post, which previously reported that Musk planned to lay off as much as seventy of staff, which Musk later refuted, says now that up to the company could be laid off shortly, with a possible overall cut in the long term. In fact, according to several reports, the plan was to have some of those cuts take effect before today, because November one marks when several Twitter employees will receive grants of shares. But Elon Musk has straight up denied this news said that's not true. It was never the plan. He is also considering changing the verification process at Twitter right now. The way verification works is Twitter looks into accounts held by quote unquote notable people, and then in at least cases where Twitter agrees that they're notable, will go through the process to verify that the Twitter account actually belongs to the person claiming to be that person, right, like in my case, to make sure that it's me, not someone posing as me. That's why I put notable in in quotes kind of because my personal Twitter handle does have a verification check I've got that little blue check mark, and I do not and I qualify as notable, but there I am. Anyway, Musk is considering making this whole verification process a paid for feature wrapped into another subscription service, and that the service, which currently goes for about five bucks a month, would then be twenty dollars a month and you would have to pay that in order to maintain your verified status. We don't know much more about this, like would this mean that anyone with the financial means could get the verification tick? So it's not whether or not you're notable, it's whether or not you're willing to spend two bucks a year to get it. If so, would that mean that the tick even has any real value anymore? For those power users still on Twitter, are they going to cough up the cash to maintain their status? I mean, I can tell you that I'm not going to, But then I've used Twitter maybe four or five times over the last half a year, so it would be a waste of money for me to do that, no matter what, or could it mean that someone could actually pose as someone else, pay the money, get the verification tick, and then be seen as a legitimate voice for that person when in fact they have no connection. Is that a possibility? According to the Verge, which cited internal emails as a source, Currently, verified accounts like mine will have ninety days to subscribe to the new process or else lose that blue tick mark. Shucks, I guess it'll be gone for me. Musk also hinted that he's interested in bringing back the short form video platform Vine, which Twitter bought in two thousand twelve and then began to sunset in sixteen. It would take a few years before it was dead dead. Uh. Kind of interesting because you could argue that Vine in many ways presaged the arrival of platforms like TikTok, although Vine was a very short form video platfor form um and it took a lot of work to make a really good Vine. Reports say that Musk has given various teams within Twitter extremely tight deadlines to see these projects through, like the overhaul of the verification process and the resurrection of Vine, like a crazy aggressive deadline, at least in some cases, like by the end of this week kind of stuff. Musk has also really pushed hard on the Twitter staff already, and we know more about the folks who helped fund Musks take over a Twitter, which is causing other kinds of scandal. Uh. The people who helped Musk get the financing to to make this purchase include the former CEO of Twitter, the co founder, Jack Dorsey, investor Jason Kellicanis is another one, and a company that represents the interest of the Prince of Saudi Arabia is a major investor in this new Twitter. You might remember. The Prince of Saudi Arabia is the same guy who's been accused of ordering the assassination of journalist Jamal ka Shogi and is currently leading a country that has a horrifyingly long list of human rights crises to its name. The Saudi Arabian angle, in particular, has prompted U S Senator Chris Murphy to ask for a government review of Twitter's deal on the grounds of national security. So this story is not yet over. I expect we're going to see a pretty tumultuous time for Twitter in the near term. Let's switch gears, which is a pun. But you don't know it yet. We're gonna talk about Tesla. Okay, now you know. Anyway, Reuters reports that the Electric Vehicle Company hopes to go into mass production of its cyber truck by the end of next year. Elon musk Are initially unveiled the cyber truck back in twenty nineteen two. Well, well, let's say it was not too universal acclaim. Some folks found the design to be puzzling. Uh. The event also had some technical issues. For example, after proclaiming the armor glass windows on the truck to be virtually unbreakable, Franz von Holshausen through a metal ball the driver's side window to demonstrate this, except the metal ball shattered two of the windows. Musk said the reason for that was because earlier in the demonstration they showed how tough the doors on the truck were and they struck it with a sledgehammer, and that that subsequently weakened the windows and that's why they shattered with the metal ball. Anyway, it was one setback in that unveiling, but another was that a lot of folks found the angular design of the truck's body to be unusual and not in a cool way. Tesla stock dropped a bit in value after the unveiling, but according to the company, around a quarter of a million pre orders came in just five days later, so it seemed like it was finding its audience. The plan was to go into production by late one, but delays, not the least of which came courtesy of the pandemic, have pushed that back a few times now to late twenty three. Acquaint reuters, I'm curious if the folks who plopped down to Ben Franklin. Uh, that's a hundred bucks to y'all non Americans out there to reserve a cyber truck are still excited about the prospect of potentially owning one by the end of next year. At least a hundred bucks isn't really that much money when you compare it to the final selling price of the cyber truck that's likely going to range between forty dollars to seventy thousand dollars, depending upon the truck's configuration, as the truck will come in single, double, and triple motor versions. Now for a bunch of Meta news. On Monday, Meta's company Instagram dealt with a software bug that impacted thousands of users around the world, people reporting that Instagram suspended their accounts for no reason and others were just unable to access their accounts at all. Whatever the bug was, it took several hours for Meta to fix it. By the end of the day on Monday, reports from affected users had dwindled significantly, indicating that people were able to get back to watching reels and wondering why they don't see photos of their friends on there anymore. An activist group called Some of Us That's s U m of us published a report over the weekend titled stop the Steal two point oh. How Meta and TikTok are promoting a coup. This time, the focus was not on US elections, but rather the ones that happened this past Sunday in Brazil. In that contest, the incumbent President bolson Aro, a hard right conservative, faced off against a former president, Lula da Silva, a leftist candidate. The report alleges that Meta and TikTok both pushed forward false narratives promoted by boson Naro, namely that the election process wasn't to be trusted. If he lost, it would be indicative that the system doesn't work, that kind of thing, like if I win, everything's great, and if I lose, it's because the system is broken and corrupt. The group accused both Meta and TikTok with allowing baseless conspiracy theories to spread across their platforms, and that since these messages included calls for a military coup, that the platforms were taking a prominent role in the destabilization of Brazil. A campaign director with the group named Flora rebell oh Ar Dwine did not mince words. She said, at this point, it is safe to say that Meta has become Bolsonaro's official disinformation machine. Their report comes in on the heels of another one from the human rights group Global Witness, which submitted political ads in Brazil containing misinformation to both YouTube and Meta. They found that YouTube accepted every single ad. Facebook was a little better. They only accepted half of the ads. So I guess good for Facebook for performing better than YouTube, which just accepted falsehoods without question. Anyway, the election finally happened this past Sunday, and Lula da Silva squeaked out a win over Bolsonaro, and I mean squeaked out like a percentage point. It remains to be seen if the incumbent president will actually peacefully hand over power. One bit of news I missed last week was that Business Insider reported employees at Meta are facing some really tough conditions, maybe not quite as chaotic as Twitter staff are, but not that far behind either. Reportedly, managers are telling employees they need to up their output significantly if they want to make it through potential layoffs. One unnamed worker in the report said, quote, you have three months to prove your worth, put in two effort, or you can resign now if you don't like it. End quote. That sounds pretty harsh. Mark Zuckerberg has indicated recently that he thinks Meta staff is bloated, that there are more folks that are there than are needed to get the work done, and that the company is not being nearly as productive or efficient as it can be, which may well be true, but it sounds like employee morale is generally pretty low and lots of folks are trying to line up other options should they find themselves in the job market in the near future. When you take this news and stride with Zuckerberg being absolutely dedicated to his metaverse, vision even in the face of skepticism and resistance, it starts to look ugly because people begin asking if Meta is even on the right course, or if Zuckerberg is chasing after a vision that's never going to be the big hit he's banking on. One thing is clear, the company's reputation has taken a massive beating over the last couple of years. The stock price for Meta is down to around nine dollars per share, which sounds like a lot, don't get me wrong, But if you look at the high point over the last fifty two weeks, the high point for that stock was three hundred fifty three dollars per share. Now it's down to ninety four. The company has lost a ton in market capital as a shan and investors are clearly worried about where Meta is headed. Will layoffs help the company or is this a bigger issue that requires Mark Zuckerberg to reevaluate his position on the metaverse initiative? Smarter people than I have to answer that question. All Right, we're gonna go to a quick break, but we'll be back with more news. Right after this. We're back, we get some more Meta news, and you know it was the prolific poet Carly ray Jepson, who once said, Hey, I just met you and this is crazy, but here's my number, so call me maybe. Well, we know that c r J didn't need to say that to Meta, because, as it turns out, Meta has lots of people's phone numbers, even if they never signed up for an account on any of their platforms, they probably have your phone and your email, whether you've ever been on a Meta platform or not. So it turns out Meta has tons of phone numbers and emails all of people who have never had a Facebook or an Instagram account. And you might wonder how did that happen? Well, if someone you know has your contact information in their contacts and then they joined, say Facebook, and in the process they allow Facebook to access their contact list, boom, your information has gone from their contact list into Meta's database, even without your consent or participation. Isn't that awesome? It actually reminds me a lot of the Cambridge Analytica scandal from several years ago. If you recall that all got started when an app developer took advantage of a loophole and Facebook's API and created an app that people could download and use they would get paid for using it. It was a survey app, and what they would do when they when they downloaded it installed it is they would share of their access to their Facebook context, which gave the developer the chance to view all of the downloaders friends as if the developer were one of those friends, like they could see it as if they were the account, the primary account. Anyway, there's a decent chance your contact information is in this database, even if you've never touched Facebook or Instagram. Earlier this year, Meta actually created a tool that lets you check to see if your info is in that database, and it gives you the option to delete your information from that database and even block Meta from ever including it again. Curiously, Meta has not advertised this tool. They have not alerted people that it exists. In fact, a link to it is buried in a very long page about how the company handles non user information, which means, if you don't use Facebook, you would have to navigate to this page for people who don't use Facebook to learn about how your information may have been collected by the company, which sounds counterintuitive, right, How many people are gonna do that? You're onto something there? But anyway, if you would like to see if your info is in Meta's clutches, and if you want to delete it, you can do so by going to this U r L Facebook dot com slash Contacts slash removal that will let you check your phone number and your email address against the database, and if the info comes up because someone shared their contact list and you happen to be in it, you can have it deleted and scrubbed from Meta's databases. Again, they don't really let you know that this thing exists, but it does. Today, Google kills off yet another product. Hangouts is going to join other Google casualties like Wave and Google Plus and honestly countless others. There are entire websites that are dedicated to documenting all the projects Google either launched, are acquired, and then subsequently shut down. There is no shortage of them. Hangouts was sort of Google's attempt at unifying various messaging services across the company. You know, the company had launched a whole bunch of different ones under different divisions because Google didn't really structure messaging as a central pillar of product development. Instead, messaging would fall under the domain of different departments. So you've got a bunch of separate products that were all geared toward messaging, like Android had one, and Gmail had one, and Google Plus all had their own messaging systems. Hangouts started as the Google Plus entry and was ultimately an attempt to unify all these disparate strategies into a single product, and for a short while, Hangouts managed to do that, Like You managed to have all these other things folded into Hangouts, which unified Google strategy and arguably was a really good move. However, the problem was Hangouts was under the domain of Google Plus, and Google Plus was a massive failure. Despite an initial spike in interest as the service launched, it failed to get a sustainable user base going. So once Google Plus got struck that man, Hangouts was kind of without a parent anymore and it languished, and so you didn't really have this centralized position, the centralized strategy when it comes to messaging, and Google would then also capitulate to the demands of cell phone carriers because the cell phone carriers didn't like the idea of SMS being lumped in with other messaging services. They wanted an independent SMS app in order to maintain a hold on that type of messaging. They didn't want it to be lumped in with all the other kinds of messaging services. So the a placement for Hangouts today, at least in Gmail, is Google Chat. It is not as good as Hangouts was at its peak. It's definitely an inferior product. I use it all the time with my co host aerial Casting for our show Large Neugron Collider. We use Google Chat to stay in contact with each other, but it is not the same as Hangouts at its peak. Now Hangouts has not been good for ages. It really suffered once it lost its lifeline with Google. Plus. The simple fact is Google really fumbled the ball when it comes to messaging. It cannot hold a candle to Apple, which has made its own I message platform a bit of a status symbol, not just a bit is a status symbol, and in fact, it has a very quick way to identify those poor schlubs who are messaging with an Android phone rather than an iPhone by having that different color little bubble pop up. Now I say this as an Android user, I have no interest in switching to iPhone, but I do admit like iPhone has a lock on the status of messages and you can be looked down upon for using an Android phone from Apple users. And you know what, if I cared about what they thought, I bet that would hurt my feelings. And other Google news, the company will no longer require app developers in India to use Google's own billing system for in app purchases. We've seen this story unfold all around the world at different speeds and scales. More and more regions are pushing back against both Apple and Google for their policies that require app developers to only use the in house building systems of the respective platforms. And that's because those in house building systems guarantee a cut for the platforms themselves. So we're typically talking about a thirty percent cut. It can be lower, like as low as fifteen percent, but it's typically a thirty percent cut of every in app purchase goes to Apple or Google, depending on what platform you're on, um as sort of the cost of doing business. This is why Apple CEO Tim Cook has been so bullish on adopting a services strategy rather than focusing on hardware production the way Apple typically was thought of, because services provide a steady stream of revenue and all you really have to do is provide the platform right, and in many places we're starting to see governments labeled the policy as anti competitive and unfair. So we've seen lots of calls for the companies to allow developers to use whichever building service they want. They can go with the in house building service, or they could choose a third party building service. That's a move that both Apple and Google have repeatedly resisted around the world. In some cases, we've seen stories where a company has placed like Apple has placed restrictions so that a developer technically can choose a third party building system, but we'll have to spend even more money if they use the alternative then if they stick with the in house method. So in other words, apples like, oh, sure you can choose a third party, but now you're gonna have to pay us. That kind of approach, which obviously doesn't fly well in the face of regulators. India's Competition Commission ordered Google to make this change, allowing developers to choose whichever building system they wish, and now, at least in India they can. We may see such things roll out to other parts of the world. Like I said, the European Union has really been pushing on this, We've seen sub movement here in the United States. Um, it's not the same everywhere, but we are starting to see a growing movement to prevent companies like Apple and Google from dominating the space using you know, this in house approach. Over on the same Brain YouTube channel, Microsoft Xbox head Hauncho Phil Spencer said, quote, We're not taking Call of Duty from PlayStation that it's not our intent. Our intent is not to do that, and as long as there's a PlayStation out there to ship to, our intent is that will continue to ship Call of Duty on PlayStation, similar to what we've done with Minecraft since we owned that end quote. You might think why would Phil Spencer say this, Well, there's been this growing concern since Microsoft is pursuing an acquisition of the company Activision Blizzard, that Microsoft would then restrict the distribution of titles from Activision Blizzard to either just PCs and Xboxes or essentially anything other than Sony PlayStation because Sony is the biggest competitor in the video game space from Microsoft perspective. So by using that Minecraft example, Spencer is pointing out that Microsoft has really expanded access to Minecraft, and it really does seem these days like pretty much anything with a screen can run a Minecraft game. So Spwer is making a case that Microsoft plan to acquire Activision Blizzard does not represent a threat to the greater video game landscape, that a company like Sony could continue to expect Activision Blizzard titles having PlayStation versions. Why is he doing that? Well? Over in Europe, Microsoft is facing some potential government investigations into its acquisition deal, and those investigations could scuttle the whole deal or at the very least delay it. Neither outcome is something that Microsoft is particularly interested in seeing. So the chief concern appears to be that Microsoft consolidates and becomes an anti competitive video game company, preventing Sony from access to titles that are really popular with gamers and forcing gamers to buy Microsoft platforms if they want to access those games. And Microsoft is saying that's not on our plan at all, it doesn't make sense, will make way more money if we continue to make titles for the PlayStation. Uh. Microsoft supporters have claimed that Sony is fueling the fear in Europe, that it's Sony representatives who are talking to regulators and getting them concerned about this deal and effort to investigate and potentially derail it. Uh. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's the reporting that's going on over in Europe. As for what I think, well, I think Sony definitely has a bias here. I mean, Sony has an interest, a vested interest in seeing that this doesn't go through because they don't want to see Microsoft's influence grow in a competitive market in the video game space. Uh. So I don't think that the arguments are completely earnest and sincere. However, I also think that consolidation leads to bad outcomes in the long run, and that increased competition leads to the best outcomes for consumers. So it's complicated, especially in the video game space, like we're seeing more and more really big companies absolute really dominate that market, where you you're getting down to just less than you know, you could count the number of massive companies on one hand, and when you start to see that competition dwindle. Uh. The consumer typically is the person who suffers the most in the long run. So while I don't think Sony's argument is particularly genuine, I also am a little concerned about seeing fewer and fewer players in the video game space. And that's not even touching on all the the controversy coming out of Activision Blizzard in the various reports we've heard over the last year and a half. Really, Okay, we've got a couple more stories to go through before we get to those. Let's take another quick break. Before the break, we were talking about Microsoft. I mentioned that there's a suspicion and that Sony has been influencing regulators and the EU too kind of view the Activision Blizzard acquisition with a skeptical eye. But we also have some specific Sony news to cover. The company's latest earnings release call has some bad news in it with regard to video games. The company revealed that saw a drop in PlayStation Plus subscribers. So, for those of you all who are not in on the whole PlayStation lingo, PlayStation Plus is a monthly subscription service for PS four and PS five owners. That service gives those owners access to online play. So if you don't have this service, you can't play online games on the PS four and PS five. There are three separate tiers of subscriptions. The basic tier is called Essential, then you have Extra, then you have Premium, and Obviously, these are at three different price points, and as you would imagine, the more expensive you go, the more benefit as you get, mostly in the form of access to additional PS four and PS five titles. It's a lot like Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass service. The two are similar in many ways, and Microsoft has really been pushing hard on Xbox Game Pass, kind of positioning it in an attempt to make that model the future of gaming. And you can understand why because if you get people hooked in on subscriptions, you've got a guaranteed ongoing revenue source, right, Whereas if you're just focused on producing games, your next title might be a clunker and a big failure and you don't make that much money. You might lose money on it because you spent so much in production you weren't able to recapture that in sales. If you're switch your your bottle around where you're selling subscriptions as opposed to focusing on selling games, well yeah, you might release some clunkers, but you still have all the great titles that that subscription has access to, which keeps people coming back over and over again. So Sony is trying to do the same thing and in fact, both companies have been trying to do this for for years. But Sony is losing some traction because while the division still managed to increase revenue year over year, it did lose some subscribers, a few million subscribers, so at least it's not losing money, it's just losing people. The earnings report also revealed that Sony's sales of the PS five have remained flat year over year, which is not a surprise. You can really chalk that up to being the fault of the supply chain. Ever since its launch, PS five has kind of trickled into stores here and there, and ear gamers just scoop up units as quickly as they hit store shelves. The supply chain issues Sony has faced since the pandemic began have not improved significantly. Sony has subsequently adjusted its profits forecast for this year. They reduced it from two hundred fifty five billion in down to two hundred twenty five billion year, so reducing it by thirty billion yen that's about oh two million dollars. I think anyway, the company will find ways to increase production on the PS five eventually, at least I hope so because if it does, I suspect that will go a very long way towards turning things around. With a larger PS five user base out there, you're going to find more developers who will focus on producing games meant just for the PS five, because right now a lot of developers are kind of straddling console generations because there just aren't enough PS five users out there to justify a fully committed production of a current generation game. So instead we're seeing companies make games that could be played on either the PS four or PS five, which means they're they're pulling their punches, they're holding back. They haven't really focused on making games that take full advantage of current console generations capabilities. And again, it makes sense. If your user base is small, you can't pour the same amount of money and effort into making games for it because you'll never get a return on that investment. So this is kind of a chicken and egg problem here. Until there are more PS five units out there, then there's no real incentive for developers to really go all in on creating current generation games. This, by the way, also applies to Microsoft, not just to Sony. It's just this was specifically about the Sony's Earnings Call. Finally, researchers at the University of Florida have discovered a potentially catastrophic vulnerability in LDAR systems that are used by several companies as they're working towards creating autonomous vehicles. Namely, the researchers found that by using a well aimed and precisely timed laser, a person could create blind spots in ALDAR system and that would mean that an autonomous vehicle could potentially be unable to detect obstacle, including pedestrians, that are masked by this blind spot. So it's not that different to having someone shine a very bright light in your eyes. You can't make out anything that could be behind that light. Same sort of thing. Now, the research makes it sound like these pieces that you would need to create this kind of system are pretty cheap and easy to get, so it would not be hard to put together something that would be capable of fooling light our systems or masking light our systems. But the actual attack sounds like it would require a certain level of sophistication and skill because you would need to accurately track the vehicle, aim and time the firing of the laser in order to mask the light are properly, but it is possible the researchers were able to do it, and if they're able to do it, then a bad actor would be able to do this. So it is a vulnerability, and so the researchers are urging companies that produce and use these kinds of light our systems to factor that in and to build in protections against such attacks, effectively patching the vulnerability. In fact, the scientists who worked on this project even suggested upgrades that would protect vehicles and their passengers from such attacks in the future, which is great, right, It's not just pointing out a problem, but saying here's the solution to that problem, so that we're not just automatically striking this from being a possible technology in the future. Rather, it's being aware of the limitations and taking steps to overcome those limitations before it becomes like a potential target where we could have a tragedy occur as a result of failing to address this vulnerability. All right, that's the news for Tuesday, November one, two thousand twenty two. Hope you're all well. If you'd like to get in touch with me. Well, there there's currently two ways. We'll see how long the second way lasts. The first one is, of course, to download the I Heart Radio app. It's free to download, it's free to use. There's a little microphone icon if you navigate over to tech Stuff. You just put tech Stuff in the search bar, it'll pop on up. You see that microphone icon that lets you record a voice message up to thirty seconds and link for us. Let me know what you would like. Uh. If you would like me to play the audio from your your request, you just let me know. I'm not gonna do it without your permission, So if you don't, don't worry about it. Just tell me what you would like me to talk about. The other way, as of now, anyway is Twitter. I keep making that joke, but one of these days it's gonna be real. But yeah, it's Twitter for now, and the handle for the show is tech Stuff hs w uh. As of now, services still something I'm on. I realized that more and more people are kind of migrating away from it for various reasons. There are a lot of different reasons to be concerned about it, and then I'm concerned about it too, obviously, But I still check it, so if you do still use Twitter, and no judgment. By the way, if you want to use Twitter, I don't. I think that's fine. That's your right you do it. I don't judge you at all. I think it's fine. But if you still use it, leave me a message on there, let me know what you would like me to talk about in the future, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah. Text 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.