Tech News Weekly Episode 219 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show. 

Jason Howell (00:00:00):
Coming up next on Tech News Weekly. It's me, Jason Howell. My co-host Mikah Sargent. And we've got a lot of stuff to talk about this week. I mean, this have been some really big news. And so we've got interviews on Google's FLoC and how it's replacing it with Topics, but is that actually better for privacy? We'll find out also irs.gov is gonna be requiring facial scanning for online access that has people very concerned. Amazon has a high school class on business, and we're wondering how critical it really is of its own business practices. I'm guessing not very much. And finally, the broadening Gulf between Android and iOS updates, all that more coming up next on Tech News Weekly.

... (00:00:44):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Jason Howell (00:01:04):
This is Tech News Weekly episode 219 recorded Thursday, January 27th, 2022.

Mikah Sargent (00:01:10):
This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by Nureva. Traditional audio conferencing systems can entail lots of components. Installation can take days and you might not get the mic coverage you need. That's complex expensive, but Nova audio is easy to install and manage no technicians required and you get true full room coverage. That's easy, economical, learn more@nureva.com

Jason Howell (00:01:37):
And by a Kronos. Have you dreamed of bringing your it skills to your favorite sport franchise? Make that dream a reality. Learn more about the Arons hashtag team up program for service providers at go.arons.com/twi three.

Mikah Sargent (00:01:55):
And by Barracuda every 11 seconds, there's a new ransomware attack. Costing companies, millions of dollars Barracuda says don't pay the ransom, build your ransomware protection plan. Now go to barracuda.com/t N w. Hello, and welcome to Tech News Weekly. The show where every week we talk to and about the people making and be breaking the tech news. I am one of your hosts, Mikah Sargent,

Jason Howell (00:02:23):
And I'm the other guy, Jason Hal. It's good to see you, Micah. Thank you so much for covering for me. While I was snowboarding, practically seven days out of that entire week. It was amazing.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:33):
I am glad you got the most out of that vacation. Yeah, it was very impress impressed that you spent pretty much all of the time on the mountain. What have slept there if you could have.

Jason Howell (00:02:41):
Yeah, yeah. Right. Well, maybe not so much, but is still amazing. Well, the way we did it, so

Mikah Sargent (00:02:46):
Thank you. Awesome. yeah, let's get right into the show today. You may or may not have heard about Google maybe, or maybe not making some changes to the way it does or does not track you online. There's a lot to get into here with Google's FLoC and joining us today is, Issie Lapowsky of protocol.com. Welcome to the show.

Issie Lapowsky (00:03:12):
Thanks for having me.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:13):
Yeah. We're glad to have you here. So the, the kind of starter question that I have you is, if you could please start by explaining what FLoC is. This is something that Google had announced a while ago. And I think that we could all use a bit of a refresher on FLoC before we get into what's changing.

Issie Lapowsky (00:03:33):
Right? It's such a simple question. I wish it had a simple answer <laugh> but FLoC is basically part of Google's plan for killing off the third party cookie, which it announced in response to the idea that, you know, cookies are kind of creepy. They allow third parties to track all of the things that you do across the web on an individual basis. So Google said, you know what, we're gonna change it. And we're going to replace cookies with something called FLoC short for, or federated learning of cohorts, which is really just the most catchy name. And what, what FLoC does essentially or plan to do essentially is rather than allowing a cookie to track you on an individual basis, your browser would more or less monitor your behavior and filter you into a cohort based on, based on that behavior and other, other users in that cohort would have demonstrated similar behavior.

Issie Lapowsky (00:04:26):
So publishers would then see your cohort ID. They wouldn't know what it stood for but they would be able to target understanding that this cohort has some kind of similarity right now, Google said, this is a lot better than the cookie. This is, you know, a lot more privacy protective because you don't know which individual's doing what these cohorts are large enough, that everybody kind of blends in with the crowd, but privacy advocates said not. So if I have, you know, any sort of other identifying information about your browser, maybe because you logged in with a single sign on type of tool, or maybe on Facebook, and I have a lot of information about your interest, I can use these cohort IDs to sort of infer things about your interests and infer things about furthermore, the other people in your cohort, even if I've never met them before. Right? So there was a lot of concern. Floc was not as private as Google was making it out to be on the flip side. The ad industry was not thrilled with FLoC either because they said, Hey, wait a minute, Google, you're still gonna have access to all of this data. You still own the browser. You can still see everything and you are our competitor. So a lot of folks in the ad industry went trying to antitrust and competition regulators saying Google's trying to hoard all the data for itself and cutting us out.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:49):
Yeah that's so that was one of the things that kind of Stu stood out there, which you, whenever you were explaining FLoC, is that the browsers still doing all of that tracking. And so they get to see everything that's still happening. It's just what everybody else gets access to afterwards is obscured. That's correct.

Issie Lapowsky (00:06:07):
Right. And so over the course of all of this backlash to FLoC, Google did make a series of commitments around, you know, we will also use the data that we are providing to other, you know, third party ad tech firms. We'll, we'll also use that same data in our ad systems. The concern is okay, but Google's a lot bigger than just an ad system. Yeah. That's a huge part of its business, but it's got a lot of other stuff going on and all of that data is still absorbed by the, you know, mono that is Google

Mikah Sargent (00:06:38):
Understood. Understood. So we, you know, we, we kind of talked about the reaction at the time to FLoC with the, the privacy advocates on one hand, and then the ad tech folks on the other hand, kind of both being unhappy in response to this Google said, okay, not FLoC, but let's introduce something new. Can you talk about that new thing and how this is supposed to be different from what FLoC was

Issie Lapowsky (00:07:06):
Right. So Google killed off FLoC this week, which was kind of a long time coming. You could see that they were kind of changing their mind on it for, for a while. They were placed it with something called topics. Topics is an API that will essentially look at your browsing behavior on an individual level. And it will filter that into topics that you're interested in. And these topics will be picked from, you know, a few hundred topics. Things like, you know, fitness, you know, very broad ideas. And then the topics API will relay to publishers what topics you're interested in, so they can serve ads based on those topics. Those topics will change out every few weeks. So they won't be static and they'll, they'll basically lose, you know, importance over time. But they will allow average advertisers to target you in a way that's based on your broader your broader web browsing behavior.

Issie Lapowsky (00:08:07):
And so once again, this rings alarm bells for privacy folks because they say, you know, contextual advertising is great, sending me a sports related ad because I'm on ESPN, calm, all good, but there's no reason why some complete other website that has nothing to do with sports. And that maybe I haven't even gone to before should know anything about my interest in sports. So that's really their concern. Meanwhile, Google is saying, Hey, look, this is a lot better because whereas FLoC was just kind of a generating these cohorts based on interests that were, you know, potentially sensitive in nature topics is going to be really stripped down. It's going to be a human curated list of topics. So we don't get into a lot of that sensitive stuff. And it's better than what we have right now, which is cookies. So that's Google's argument. The privacy argument is a little bit different, but at at least some privacy folks say this is better than FLoC.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:09):
Interesting. So there are some privacy advocates who are happier with topics than they are, or with the original FLoC. I mean, because on the face of it, it's FLoC says, we are going to look at your browsing history and, or we're gonna look at your browsing activity. And then we're going to search you into groups based on your browsing history or browsing activity. And then topic says, we're gonna look at your browsing activity, and then we're gonna search you into groups based on your pressing activity. The phase of it, they don't TA sound too different, but privacy advocates are happier because of the human curation involved. Is that what kind of sets it apart that it's, it's these groups that are chosen based on an actual human being and it does Google, how does Google choose who that human being is? I, I know this is kind of a, a spur of the moment question, but I'm so curious about kind of that how, how this is supposed to be better

Issie Lapowsky (00:10:04):
That's that's right. It, well, it's not one person deciding what these topics are. There is already a list. I believe it's 350 topics. I presume there are teams and teams and teams working on that list. And and, and so privacy advocates say at least topics makes it harder to do something called browser fingerprinting, which is when you haven't, you know, I don't have exactly all of your information, but I can cobble together enough information to know it's your browser when I'm seeing your browser clicking on a certain website. Right. There's another thing that we haven't talked about that I should have brought up in, in the first explanation of topics, which is that Google has introduced some controls for users. So if you check your topics and you don't like that, it has a topic related to, I don't know your interest in fashion or whatever it might be.

Issie Lapowsky (00:10:53):
You can take that out now. That's, that's nice. And it, and user controls are, are better than not having user controls, but what's best is to offer privacy in the first place. So a lot of the folks that I talked to said, you know, it would be better if people were opting in to having their topics inferred rather than Google having this be the default state, you know, if I'm a really determined privacy Hawk, I can go into my settings every three weeks and delete my topics that I don't want to be in there. Right? Like that's kind of an impractical use case that most people who use the Chrome browser, which is most people are not gonna take advantage of.

Mikah Sargent (00:11:35):
Right. And that kind of becomes the argument. I think for a lot, lot of both privacy advocates and just tech folks in general is sure we put in all of these, these practices and these methods of, of trying to help people take control of their privacy. But a lot of times folks don't know what that means, how to go about doing that. You know, I can remember article after article online showing you here's what Facebook thinks about you. You can go to this page and learn what it thinks you do and are, and you can delete what you don't want. And I remember having to go and make a correction in Twitter because I kept to serve me foreign language options all the time. And I'm like, I don't speak another language. And it was because of something that I happened to click on. So it, it's, it's interesting to see kind of how, for the most part folks aren't too enthused about this new wave of things. But one, one thing that I, I am curious about Google and wanting to, to sort of rid everyone of the third party cookie, what is the big, what is the big argument for why the third party cookie is a bad idea? Why are we trying to look for something new instead of the third party cookie, you know, sort of a clarification on that?

Issie Lapowsky (00:12:56):
Yeah. I think there's just an awakening about privacy. Why should a company I've never heard about and most people have never heard of all of these ad tech firms be able to know exactly what I'm doing as I'm doing it all across the web and be able to share that information with other publish. And it just becomes like this endless data spill that you don't know where to to even begin to try to claw that back. And Google knows that I think the public is getting hip to that. I think regulators are, are moving on that. So I think it's sort of like in the ether that Google yeah. Knows it has a big role to play here.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:34):
Absolutely. Okay. My final question for you is just as a person who has, has paid attention to this in general and is looking at these different privacy concerns, do you think there's a solution that will make everyone happy? And if not, if you, if you could sort of read the crystal ball as it were, do you have any idea where you think Google might lean? Are they gonna try to more satisfy privacy advocates and privacy concerns, or are they gonna lean more towards satisfying ad networks, ad tech folks? Because an example, you know, apple mostly was okay with upsetting ad tech folks for the sake of user privacy. Google, you know, came out with FLoC in the beginning, saw the issues there, and then came out with this idea. Are we gonna see more iterations on this? And do you think Google will fall more toward one way or the other?

Issie Lapowsky (00:14:27):
It's hard to say. I mean, what I, what I think we can know for sure is that Google is going to protect the ad sponsored internet at all costs. That is how it's made it's, I don't know, billions trillions. So that's where Google's loyalty lies, right? And obviously it has a lot of wiggle room to to impact the data that third parties can get. Even as it continues to collect data, but more and more, it is facing a lot of scrutiny and pressure from antitrust regulators. And they're kind of at odds with the privacy folks saying, well, wait a minute, Google you're, you're gonna make the world more private, but in doing so, you're gonna entrench your own market position. I don't know about that. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> and so, you know, I think that at Google is kind of in a, in a tough spot right now, is there a solution that is gonna satisfy everybody? Absolutely not because you know, an entire gigantic industry is on the line here. And the only thing that folks on the other side of that industry, the privacy advocates will be satisfied with is the end of targeted advertising. And so I don't think you find a middle ground that really makes everyone happy.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:36):
Understood SIE. I wanna thank you so much for joining us today. If folks wanna follow you online and check out all your great work, where can they go to do so

Issie Lapowsky (00:15:45):
They should go to protocol.com or you can follow me on Twitter at SIE. Lapovsky

Mikah Sargent (00:15:50):
Excellent. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.

Issie Lapowsky (00:15:52):
Thank you.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:55):
Alrighty folks, up next, a widely popular facial recognition platform has had a bit of a, what, what do we call that a bit of a, a time broiled in a snafu <laugh> yeah, I mean, I don't know, had to confess. They've had to confess, there we go. A little walkabout. We'll get to that in just a moment, but I wanna tell you that this episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by Neva complicated and costly. That has been the state of audio conferencing for larger spaces for a long time. Choosing a traditional system might entail difficult design software and selecting from a dizzying array of separate mics, speakers, DSPs, and more installation usually requires outside technicians and is often highly invasive and well expensive. It could take your room offline for days. The industry was definitely primed for the same type of leap, and that had transformed and simplified other sectors.

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Jason Howell (00:18:15):
All right, they're coming for our faces. Get ready. This isn't the only time that that's happened and by they, by the way, I mean the IRS and by coming for our faces, I don't actually mean they're gonna take your face, but it is gonna be scanned and it is gonna be stored in an online database. And usually that means at some point, there could be a really big, you know, amount of trouble down the line. Those, those databases aren't 100%, you know, perfectly, you know, you know, sanctioned off from anyone who wants to get access to it. So that's the big concern here and joining us to talk about this new requirement for us, citizens who are managing Hack's online is Tonya Riley from CyberScoop. Welcome to the show, Tanya,

Tonya Riley (00:18:55):
Thanks Jason for having me.

Jason Howell (00:18:57):
Yeah. You bet. Thanks for coming on to talk about this. This is a crazy story. I feel like in the past seven days, this just morphed and transformed and so I'm really happy to have you on to talk about it. So it has developed pretty swiftly over this past week, like I said, so maybe set the stage a little bit. What was the initial acknowledgement? How did that come about who exactly does this apply to? What are the specifics there?

Tonya Riley (00:19:22):
Mm-Hmm <affirmative> so I, I think one of the reason reasons this story got crazy so quickly is that there wasn't a highly publicized announcement from the IRS. So the first kind of rumblings we got about it was when journalists Brian Krebs decided to walk through the system itself and set up his own credentials. And as we've seen before with other stories about ID me there were a lot of issues getting set up in a lot of wait times. And, you know, anytime, as you said, anytime, we're talking about the IRS taking our facial biometrics, there's gonna be a lot of interest. So that kind of created a little bit of a, an information gap and the IRS did eventually come out and say, you know, so this will apply to us citizens starting in summer 20, 22. You don't have to sign up through ID right now, but thing is you know, by the summary you'll have to, and this is for just an account on the IRS's website. So that's where you would check your tax records, check your child income tax records. But it is not necessarily where you need to file your taxes. So you don't have to have ID need just to file taxes. So is maybe one relief for some people <laugh>

Jason Howell (00:20:35):
Yeah, yeah. That's, that's at least a little bit of relief, right? Like, you know, and some people aren't even, you know, accustomed to, or even using the site for anything anyway. So I suppose there is that, but a lot of people do. And, and so, and something like this, especially now, you know, the past few years in particular facial recognition news is usually like pretty like there there's just so much attention to our privacy. You know, kind of the last story, we talked a lot about privacy as well, and people are more adept, more more aware about the value of, of maintaining their privacy online and the risks associated with this. So when you, you know, take facial recognition systems that already have their inherent flaws, and then you put it into a government, you know, kind of requirement for access of something that we all, at least as us citizens, you know, have to pay close attention to are taxes and all that stuff. It's kind of a, a recipe for potential, you know, disaster down the line. There was some confusion along the, well, there's a lot of confusion, but one thing in particular is the type of face matching that's going on here. And you wrote about this, the one to one versus one to many, how, like, what are the differences between these two systems? How does it impact the integrity of the process? And what's going, what's gonna be applied here with id.me,

Tonya Riley (00:21:55):
Right? So most privacy and technology experts will tell you that these are both forms of facial recognition. A lot of times companies will use the term face matching as kind of innovation of that. But so a one-to-one face matching is when it's basically what your iPhone does when you're using your face ID, it's trying to match your face with a known image of your face. So it's just you to you. One to many is when it's taking an image of your face and matching, trying to match it against a whole database. So, right. That's the kind of technology we see with police and what immigrations and customs uses. It's what the DMV uses. So we see like this one to many where, like, it's not just you and your face, it's you, and a whole bunch of people.

Tonya Riley (00:22:43):
One of the key differences here, and, you know, privacy advocates will say both of these types of technology comes with dangers, but I think that makes one to many, a little different is you're introducing a lot more risk of inaccuracy. And we've seen that time and time again in government study, there are issues with it being less accurate on darker skin tones issues, if the photo just isn't good quality. And that's one of the reasons, you know, services Amazon's recognition have gotten into a lot of heat in recent years and why there's been a push to make sure that law enforcement is not using these technologies. You know, you go from like, okay, I can't open my iPhone to like a false arrest or I can't get my unemployment benefits. It's a very different kind of situation.

Jason Howell (00:23:29):
Yeah. And you, and you mentioned unemployment benefits. You're, you're mentioning something that specifically happened last June. There were complaints that the, that the facial recognition verification used by id.me, which, which I guess the, you know, one of my questions there is, okay, so they've been using this already, but anyways to, to get back on track actually resulted in people being locked out of their unemployment benefits because they were being improperly identified. So, you know, it's already happened in that scenario. You can only imagine that it's going to happen. And I mean, with any technology, right, there's a certain percentage of, of failure that's just inherent in, in the way technology works. But when it's something as critical as like taxes or unemployment that has really powerful and, and effect like impactful well, it just, it, it affects people's lives at the end of the day. It's, it's something that they have to pay attention to. Are they addressing that in, at all in, in the last week, as we've kind of gone through the, the motions around this story, are they addressing the I don't know, the integrity of the system?

Tonya Riley (00:24:36):
Yeah. So I have not seen the IRS specifically address this complaint, or what would happen if, you know, the system was rolled out and it wasn't working for people, what the alternatives would be. The company has taken a lot of steps to address this. You know, their kind of overall argument is that, and to your point, there's inaccuracies with every technology, their argument is that we're still doing this better than what the government had been doing. We're still helping reduce more fraud. And it's really hard to get good data in terms of how many people are being rejected, how long the wait times actually are the company will, you know, the most recent statistic they real they released was that it was like an eight minute wait time to, and I guess I'll backtrack and explain the technology. So basically if the matching process doesn't work, they'll escalate you to a human, to kind of like check your documents and check your face.

Tonya Riley (00:25:31):
And that would be the next step. But as we've seen in some of these reports as it's been used in the states for unemployment, that waiting for our human assistance can take hours, it can take a day. You know, there are some people that reported, you know, it's been over a year and just because of a things turned out with verification, they still haven't gotten benefits. So you know, it all kind of boils down to like, what are the averages like, you know, is this technology better than not using it? And I think it's just really hard to say because a, we don't have a good data on this and B the government kind of rushed to using it.

Jason Howell (00:26:09):
Yeah. Yeah. And I also wanna touch on something that you mentioned briefly, because I think it's also important. There's, there's an inherent kind of level of discrimination the potential of discrimination when talking about facial recognition systems. And again, you know, this is, this is something that's been in. So in the news and in the politic of, of the us so long and especially intensely of the last few years, how could that come into play with a system like this as, you know, relate as it relates to our taxes and access to our taxes?

Tonya Riley (00:26:42):
Yeah, I mean, and again, it's, it's really hard to say when we don't know what the accuracy levels are for the system, but as with anyone, many facial recognition technology, like there's a high risk that is gonna be disproportionately and accurate on people of color sometimes on women. And I think the other kind of inequity issue that we need to talk about that isn't just tech, you know, how the technology works is we're talking about verifying yourself with a front facing camera or having a certain level of technical knowhow. And for a lot of Americans, particularly older Americans, they don't have that or lower income Americans. Right. I was one of panel recently about unemployment benefits and modernizing the technology. And one of the panelists said something to the effect of, you know, maybe ID me will work for 80% of the population, but it's that other 20% that we still need to reach with, you know, human interaction or fo like just a phone call. So there are a lot of inequity issues out there, even out side of the, the AI element of it.

Jason Howell (00:27:46):
Yeah. Yeah, no question. What about ID dot me's privacy policy? What do we know about kind of how they retain this data and try and protect it just as much as they possibly can before the inevitable moment that something like this gets tapped into what, what have they specify it there?

Tonya Riley (00:28:05):
Right. so in terms of retention, we know that up to seven years or seven whole years after you close out an account with the company, they have to retain the data. And that actually is a federal requirement. So even if you're like, okay, I don't want my account tomorrow. They'll still have the data for seven years. They have said to reporters, including myself, that this da, they're the only ones that keep this data, they don't share it with, you know, Amazon or some of these third parties in terms of who has access to within the company. I don't really know. But I think the bigger problem here is that their privacy policy is pretty of pay. And, you know, that's true of most tech companies. I don't think the average person can go into most privacy policies and understand what they're talking about.

Tonya Riley (00:28:54):
But there are a lot of blanket statements in there that some experts have raised issues with. You know, it says, well, we won't share anything unless you consent. But then it says, well, if we think, you know, there might be some risk of harm, then we're gonna share it anyway. And in terms of working with law enforcement, there's a lot of gray area there, which is concerning when you're working with an agency like the IRS, which is in the past shared information with us. Right. yeah. So there's a lot of, kind of in between like contradictions that would take someone with more legal knowledge than me to sort out

Jason Howell (00:29:28):
<Laugh> yeah, yeah. Understood. Understood. Well, this is a, a complicated scenario, of course, and I'm sure we're, you know, only seeing the beginning of this, be really curious to see if the pushback in, in, you know, moves us towards any sort of change in plan. I don't know that I feel very optimistic about that, but I'm curious to see where it all lands. So Tony Riley, thank you so much for hopping on with us today and talking about this cyber scoop.com is where you can go to read Tony's article, write up about this really great article. If people wanna follow you online, where can they find you?

Tonya Riley (00:30:00):
Well, first, thanks for having me. And you can find me on Twitter at Tanya Joe Riley or just go to my cyber scoop profile and click from there. But if you have any stories you wanna reach out about, please do.

Jason Howell (00:30:14):
Excellent. Excellent. All right. Thank you so much, Tonya. Have a great day. We appreciate your time.

Tonya Riley (00:30:19):
Thank you. Bye

Jason Howell (00:30:20):
Both. Bye. Take care. All right, coming up. Well what do they actually teach at Amazon high school? Well, it's, it's a course anyways, that Mike was gonna talk about it. This is, this is a direction that I, I don't know that I necessarily had on my Amazon bingo card, but here we are, they do everything don't they? So we're gonna talk about that up next. But first this episode, Tech News Weekly is brought to you by Arons with the Arons hashtag team up program. You're gonna get sports branding to promote your services, access to sports teams, social media channels, access to sports facilities for business events. It's a whole lot of sports and a whole lot more in the world of elite sports. Every advantage matters. That's why so many global sporting giants actually rely on extensive data collection and analysis to find their edge over the competition.

Jason Howell (00:31:11):
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Mikah Sargent (00:33:21):
Can you hear the school bell ringing? I certainly can. But it's just Jeff Bezos's voice saying work harder

Jason Howell (00:33:29):
Work worst school ever. Worst school ever.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:32):
<Laugh> oh, so this is, this is a really interesting story over on vice, and it is about a high school in San Bernard, Bernardino, California where they are offering a program. It's called the Amazon logistics and business management pathway. This program has a series of courses that are meant to help students get started in a rear in logistics Amazon, according to vice donated $50,000 to the San be Bernardino, California high school Kaun, or I, I dunno if it's Caho it might be Caho high school. And it was used, they, you know, they got receipts and things through a, a freedom of information act request used to purchase books and all sorts of materials for the class. What's interesting is that the classroom where the pathways program is taking place is painted up in Amazon colors, yellow and orange, and has Amazon's leadership principles written on the walls, customers session bias for action and deliver results.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:44):
Now that's the important part to understand there. It's also important to understand that for the most part as I was reading through this, the courses are standard courses for setting someone up in a, in a position to be an e-commerce or logistics. It is not a hundred percent devoted to you going to work at Amazon, but one of the goals of the courses is as follows work towards sustainability, by coaching and advising logistics lead pathway to future on how to establish and develop an effective industry partnership with Amazon. So there's one of the things that kind of pops up interesting that, that is focused directly on Amazon. As part of the course, you are required to do an internship at one of the at, at, at a logistics or e-commerce company in the area. But what's interesting is that San be Bernardino happens to be one of the largest locations for Amazon, it says since 2012, Amazon has opened 14 Amazon fulfillment centers and two air hubs in San Bernardino county and its neighboring Riverside county together known as the inland empire.

Mikah Sargent (00:36:12):
So Amazon's inland empire is in San Bernard, Bernardino, California. So on the face of it, one could say that you can go work somewhere you like as part of the requirements, you have to get a, a, a, a gig at one of these e-commerce companies. It's pretty much gonna be that they're gonna go to Amazon because that's gonna be the easiest thing. There are certain requirements including reading and understanding the Amazon effect doing an Amazon case study as they learn about how Amazon does its business. And other kind of concerning things. If we are looking at the perspective of Amazon kind of guiding this this curriculum now, as the article points out, there are lots of different places where companies do sponsor programs at schools. And so this isn't the first of its kind in terms of, of a course that is sponsored by a company.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:18):
In fact, it's kind of like an old school method. But what the concern was here is not just the way that Amazon has worked in heavy focus on how Amazon does things in its studies, but also the fact that you're surrounding the student by the Amazon principles and the colors, and everyone is very aware that Amazon donated to make it possible for the course to exist. So on impressionable youth, there is this sort of like inundation of Amazon, Amazon, Amazon, and they already live in a place the inland empire where Amazon trucks are everywhere. Amazon's airplanes are in the area, all sorts of stuff going on there. Excuse me this isn't the only Amazon partnership that exists Cajon high school's partnership. There's also Amazon future engineers partnership, where Amazon works with high schools and middle schools to help students prepare for careers in stem science, technology, engineering, and math.

Mikah Sargent (00:38:33):
And with that program, you can tour Amazon fulfillment centers. You can chat with Amazon professionals and everyone is, or teachers are eligible for a $30,000 teaching award. And then they also, Amazon did announce a partnership with the girl Scouts of America to who provide for, you know, a increase in, in underrepresented groups in stem. And the way that they're doing that is by giving girl scout and brownie troops tours of Amazon fulfillment centers centers. So it's really interesting vice has a link or excuse me, an embed in the article that shows the entire the entire set of papers that they got about this so that you can see kind of what the course involves what you would be doing. And it they're mostly 11th and 12th graders in the course. And I was reading too that a lot of college students in the area end up going and picking up shifts at Amazon because they can, you know, pay for, for college by doing deliveries in Southern California.

Mikah Sargent (00:39:51):
And so it's just, I think the big thing about this, cuz on its face a big business that has a lot of money that does logistics. It'd be the same thing to me as in my hometown. The big gigantic hospital that's in my hometown. They help fund courses at the technical college for teaching people how to be like EMTs and nurses and, and phlebotomists and stuff like that in that way. It's the same. I think what sets this apart is how much Amazon absolutely rules this area. And again, as there's one college professor, I think, who they talked to the way that these impressionable youths are being inundated. It's a, yeah, let me get this quote. It says they're the, the students are surrounded by these messages that are even above the subliminal levels.

Mikah Sargent (00:40:54):
You know, you walk into a classroom and you're surrounded by Amazon's leadership principles. So yeah, it's like, it's not even just subliminal messaging, it's above the subliminal level. That makes it pretty wild. So it's just it's it does concern me. There's another quote too. It saddens me that schools are in this situation that they quite willingly would take this. My, and then in the case of this particular classroom, make it into a shrine to Amazon. I think that's where people are kind of having trouble with this is that it's so much more than just a, a class that can teach you how to get into the logistics business or the e-commerce business, but is becoming kind of this praise to mother Amazon kind of situation here. I'm curious about your thoughts. You have school aged children, mine are all in college. So I, I don't have the, the perspective here. Would you have concerns if your, you know, if your kid said, Hey, I want to do this Amazon course, or just in general, does this kind of inundation affect you about bug you?

Jason Howell (00:42:03):
Yeah, I mean, I, I'm kind of going back and forth. I, I realize I have mixed thoughts on it. Mixed feelings on it, cuz you know, like Google and other companies, like you said, do the, this as well. Google offers, you know, just like a partnership with Anaheim UN high school district working with them for like career certificates and data analytics, it support other things and that's a Google relationship with a high school. So on its face, I don't have a problem. I, I guess I, I feel like I don't have a problem with, of a company coming in and saying, Hey, we've got a lot of money. We're also really good at logistics and let's, let's be real Amazon, you know, as far as enterprise is concerned is about the, the, the shining example of pulling off logistics. You know, they're, they're really good at it.

Jason Howell (00:42:48):
So who would, so if you really care about logistics and you know, want to learn business through that lens, you, I mean, there, there probably aren't a whole lot better, you know, sources to, to pull that information from putting aside the, the very, the troubling aspects of how Amazon runs its business and, you know, puts, puts other businesses out of business and has union busting kind of qualities, you know, within the company. I mean, there, there are troubling aspects too. So I find myself kind of mixed on it. I mean, I guess if my, you know, my children aren't of the age to, to do something like this yet, right. They're still kind of in elementary school, but I think if they were a little bit older and something like this was offered at their school, I wouldn't immediately say no. Because it's Amazon on, you know, offering it.

Jason Howell (00:43:36):
I think I would be, I would definitely enter into it with them through a critical lens mm-hmm <affirmative> and talk through some of these things with them and say, Hey, you know, just keep in mind, like you're going into a classroom that is filled with am. And that's, that's another part of the lesson, right? As a huge corporation, an enterprise, this is a, a decision that the company is making that in effect in some ways could be seen as like indoctrinating the youth into, you know, a affinity with the brand. It's the, it's also the same thing that a lot of the social networks do, you know, like Google prime example, right? Like they've got YouTube kids, my kids have been using YouTube kids and that gives them to some sort of familiarity with YouTube as a product and by extension Google. But, but apparently there's some benefit there because I chose to still allow them to do that.

Jason Howell (00:44:26):
You know, there's still good stuff on YouTube kids, but am, you know, is Google indoctrinating them and making them lifelong Google users? I don't know. I think it's really complex. I, I, I, I'm not immediately saying, oh my goodness, Amazon did this. Amazon should, you know, not do this because I think there is some value and some benefit there, but I think it needs to be really seen through a critical lens. And I don't know that, like, I, I just don't know. Like, I don't know, as a matter of fact, if Amazon in this coursework is critical about its own practices, I I'm guessing it's probably not, but I think that's the whole, that's the whole few, right? Like that's the whole story. And if the kids are getting that as well, then I think there's some real benefit to that. I

Mikah Sargent (00:45:13):
Dunno. That's helpful. Yeah. No, I, I agree. I, I, from what I can read, they just, when it comes to those kinds of conversations, they just focus on sort of historically cuz there is a course about unions and, and handling unions and what collective bargaining and all that kind of thing. But it just sort of these, how do they is what union is. Yeah. It's not, it doesn't go into depth about like how we've attempted to stall unions or why unions are a good thing or bad thing. It's just like, here's the, the bare facts. Yeah,

Jason Howell (00:45:49):
Like is, is the course taught through the lens of at is Amazon. This is how we do things or is the course taught through the lenses as Amazon. We are successful. Here are things that we realize you, you need to know about business, the business of logistics. And if it's, this is Amazon, this is how we do things. Then I think you also have to share and they aren't gonna wanna do it, but you also have to share bad decisions that they've made and, and why and what they've learned and everything. And I like, I just, I don't have a whole lot of faith that they're doing that, but I don't know that for sure. Maybe they do. I don't

Mikah Sargent (00:46:23):
Know. Yeah. I mean, from what the, they, they also quoted a, a college professor of business who said that the course is incredible. I think the, the quote was very, very pro-business. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So I don't think that there's from what I'm reading, there's no there's no education outside of like how to be the best business person you can be in logistics. So anyway, yeah. In any case, it is a really interesting story that everybody should go check out and particularly read the in embed that has kind of all the documents about the, the class mm-hmm <affirmative>. All right. With that, it is time for another break before we head into Jason's story of the week. And I get to tell you about Barracuda, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly, every 11 seconds.

Mikah Sargent (00:47:23):
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Jason Howell (00:49:25):
Well, I have a story of the week and then I look to Tech News Weekly, or, sorry, sorry, not Tech News Weekly. That's what we do tech me and saw just real quick mention that meta has rebranded Oculus quest to meta quests. And so yes, you basically take the, the most well known VR brand that exists and you wipe it out and you replace it with meta. And I don't know, that's a good or a bad idea, but seems kind

Mikah Sargent (00:49:51):
Idea to me it's goofy

Jason Howell (00:49:52):
About it anyways. That's not my story of the week though. My story of the week has to do with phone updates, which as an Android user is a continual frustration. And I'm curious to get your take on this, but there's editorial on vice that's titled Google is forcing me to dump my perfectly good phone. It's written by Aaron Gordon. Definitely a good read should check it out. I think it it's a really good really good insight into a frustration that many Android users have, have shared. And Aaron bought the pixel three just three years ago. He bought a brand new, you know, that's, Google's flagship, it's only three years old. He says the phone's in great shape. The battery's still strong. And Aaron is unlike probably you and me, Micah. Like we are very used to always having the latest version of whatever phone or device that we're using.

Jason Howell (00:50:45):
It's just kind of built in know it's built into our career. Not, not only that, but it's just, that's kind of our habit. And I think a lot of, of a lot of TWI, you know, fans of TWI probably fall into the same bucket. They just love technology so much. They wanna be on the latest and greatest. It's just part of their routine, right? But not everybody's like that. I think the majority of people probably aren't the majority of people buy it as if it's like an appliance. Like I buy this and I'm gonna use it until it doesn't work for me anymore. I'm gonna move on. And Erin knows one of those people but Google's support window for the pixel three is ending. In fact, it just ended. I think there was just one final update that happened maybe earlier this month and this is no surprise.

Jason Howell (00:51:23):
Google has said, you know, Q1 2022 pixel three, get its last update on this device. It offers that three year update window. And so, so we're there. So it's not like this is a surprise, but we've got the pixel six, which is Google's latest and greatest. Google promised an additional two years of security updates on the six. So you get the three years of regular updates and then additional two. So that's five total years. So that's better if you're on the six, but if you have some of these older phones, your updates end, right? Your, your software, your security support is done. So even if the hardware itself is, is, is perfectly fine and operating like normal, you're stuck in this position of like, okay, well then do I give up a protecting my sec, my security and my privacy as best as I can through these security updates in order to keep this phone or do I, or am I kind of put into this position where I have to plunk down money to buy a new device, even though this thing's just gonna end up on a landfill, you know, it's just, it's, it's really confusing and, and kind of irresponsible Google's response to this editorial, cuz it's definitely picked up some speed.

Jason Howell (00:52:34):
They said, we find that three years of security and OS updates still provides users with a great experience for their device. A great experience, even though it's not greater than the pixel six is additional two years of support, which would be five instead of three, but still great apparently. <Laugh> which is just infuriated, cuz it's, it's just not Google. It's dismissive. Yeah. Yeah. It's dismissive and it's been, and, but there is a reason behind this, cuz it's easy to look at this and think like, oh well they just don't wanna support it. And while that might be true, there is kind of an underlying reason is that the pixel phones just taking pixel phones, as the example are running Qualcomms snap, dragon chip. And so, and, and now what we know about the pixel six of course, is that Google, you know, has created their tensor chip.

Jason Howell (00:53:23):
That's their internal chip. And so they are the ones they, they control kind of like their, their whole destiny with that device. Well, the three does have the Qualcomm chip. That means that Qualcomm itself is part of the equation. And actually historically speaking, you know, Qualcomm at a certain point stops supporting its older chips. So that then puts the pressure on the OEM to actually, you know, to, to decide like, do we continue to support this beyond Qualcomm support? And if so, we're gonna have to throw some of E of our extra resources at it in order to make that happen. And that's not impossible. Other manufacturers do this, Samsung in fact has done this with its phones. Some of its phones are, are, you know, are running its own ex and OS chip. But here in the us, they're usually launched with the Qualcomm chip and Samsung has has extended support life on those devices.

Jason Howell (00:54:16):
Other manufacturers have done it as well. I, so I think in, in the case of this, I think it comes back to how you communicate to your customers, what they're worth to you. And when you're in Google's position, like if, if it takes extra extra resources to get, you know, the, the, the previous, like the three, the four and the five, cause you've got three, let's say you've got three devices or three families of devices left to support in the old school way. And it takes extra resources to do that so that you are telling your customers, Hey, by the way, you know, we've made this change for the future, but we wanna make it right for you because we care about you. Then you do that. You throw the resources at it, other companies do it. And I don't understand why Google doesn't just do it.

Jason Howell (00:54:59):
I realize it's easy for me to say spend more money, but oh, sorry. I probably just fired off a bunch smart speakers. I didn't even think that was unintentional. That was unintentional. But so it's easy for me to say that, but I just kind of feel like when you're in the position that Google is in, it's really trying to, to kind of make an impact with this hardware division. And I don't know, it's just lame like three years is not long enough. I'm sorry. It's just not, what do you think about this? Cause you're on the other side, you're on the apple side where it's like the shining example.

Mikah Sargent (00:55:33):
<Laugh> well, and I will say too though the other problem is right now with folks having the issues that we've seen with this latest Google pixel, I lucked out did not have any of those issues. But I hear every week on windows weekly about how both Paul throt and Mary Jo Foley are constantly having issues with their pixels. I know you didn't have too many issues, but it was enough that like there have been articles written about it and all that kind of stuff. And so if the company wants to continue to do this hardware, that's supposed to be, you know, the pure and best form of, of its own Android operating system. I really feel like they need to pull out all the stops as much as possible. And I agree that three years is not enough time.

Mikah Sargent (00:56:22):
Yes, we up update our phones all the time. But I've got, you know my, my grandma who's on a really old iPhone. Who's getting security updates for it. My mom is on an older iPhone. Who's still getting security updates for it. And for the most part, all of their, you know, phones still work as they expect them to. And so, yeah, I, I agree at the same time, I also do feel a little bit for Google here, given the difference in the, the, the chip set that now going forward, they can make this a reality. And they're saying, you know, this is, this is something we can do now because we have control over it. Right. The average person, isn't gonna care about that though. So, no, it's a, like I can hear it and then I can have some level of understanding and a level of empathy and go, oh, you know, for me, that makes sense.

Mikah Sargent (00:57:17):
Suddenly I understand, I get it. I realize that that does make it an issue and why it's harder for you to be able to, to do that. But for the average person, who's, you know, rocking their phone, who now is concerned about what may or may not be, depending on who you talk to a less secure platform on the whole Hmm. You know, not getting the latest security updates can be a real issue. And you do wanna make sure that you have those, those updates and that any of the, the bugs and leaks and all that kind of stuff, aren't going to be a, a concern for you. So, yeah, I am like just straight down the middle on this, because I feel for, I understand Google and its decision in one way, but I also ultimately am pro consumer and like you know, the person who has the device should get to have their device for as long as possible if they want to. And so, yeah, the, yeah, I'm of both minds about this one, for sure. Yeah.

Jason Howell (00:58:26):
Yeah. And I, I, I, I guess I, yes, I understand where Google is coming from too, you know, it's, it's not it's, it's far easier for me to say, Hey, why don't you just do this? And then it is for Google, you know, with the teams behind the scenes, trying to, trying to make their current hardware, just let alone make the previous hardware, you know, have a longer life than they originally intended. I just, I think at the end of the day, what it is is I want Google to, to, to like live up to what I feel like it's, it's it's potential is. And I feel like Google has the potential to be the kind of company that looks at this, recognizes it and says, you know what? Like we're gonna make this better for you. And, and I, you know, not just from like a doing good perspective, but also from a taking care of their customers at a time when customer trust in the Google brand continues to fall. And I think this is just one of those things that if they did that, I don't know how much work it takes to do that. But if they did that, that gets them, that, that turn, that changes the mind of at least some people to say, oh, KU kudos are worth

Mikah Sargent (00:59:37):
More than their, yeah. Kudos are worth more than they, I think are, are valuing them. And if they could get some of those kudos, it would be good. I I'm with you when apple does something that is, that makes that's a, a mistake that's, you know, not right. Not only am among my people, sort of the, the, the whaling wall for it. I kind of am the one who I'm the stand in for the analog. But also it's a disappointment to me because it's like, that's not the company that I see when I think about that company. That's not the group of people creating things that I think are great, and the experience that I appreciate and enjoy and wanna share with others. And so when you are doing that, you're, you're not living up to what I expect of you. So I'm disappointed. And then the people around me are disappointed, which makes me more disappointed. So I totally get that, that feeling for sure. I understand where you're working with that.

Jason Howell (01:00:33):
So anyways, good article, check it out. Vice.Com. You can find it. Google's forcing me to dump my perfectly good phone and I'm sure you'll probably identify with it to one degree or another. I, no matter which, you know, phone is your daily driver, this is just a conversation that never goes away. I've been doing all about Android for almost 11 years now. And this is, you know, this is a conversation that just literally never goes away. And I wish that it would. I wish that we'd get to a point where we'd be satisfied, but we're not quite there yet. But that's it for this week's episode of two news weekly, we publish every Thursday at twit TV slash TNW. You can subscribe to the show in audio and video formats real quick. I just noticed that our survey for 2022 went live. This is this is the 2022 TWI survey.

Jason Howell (01:01:18):
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Mikah Sargent (01:02:07):
Yes. Thank you so much for heading to that link and filling that stuff out. It won't take you very long. I in, in testing the survey, I took it about eight times and it didn't take me very long to take it about eight times. It doesn't so long. Yeah. And it's a pretty easy thing to do. If you would like to get all of our shows ad free, well, you can do that. What you can do that yes, you can do that. You just check out club TWI for seven bucks a month, check out what all you get. You get every single one of TWI shows ad free, super awesome. You head there, you get, you have a like customized link or a feed for all the different shows. You also get access to the TWI plus bonus feed that has extra content.

Mikah Sargent (01:02:46):
You won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show, but also the AMAs. There've been lots of AMAs. There's one coming up with Georgia Dow that'll make its way into that TWI plus bonus feed know ants, populating that thing with stuff all the time and then access to the discord server. If you aren't sure what discord is, don't worry if you've ever used Microsoft teams or slack or one of those kinds of communication platforms, you'll hop in a discord and be ready to rock. It's just a place to chat with your fellow club, twit members, but also those of us here@twifunplacetohangouttwi.tv slash club tweet for all of that seven bucks a month, super easy to check out. And then we also heard that some folks wanted to subscribe to their favorite shows individually. Weren't concerned about all that extra stuff.

Mikah Sargent (01:03:31):
You can do that in apple podcasts, you just look up Tech News Weekly and you find the audio feed, and then you can subscribe for 2 99 when you do so you'll get the ad free version of the audio feed. So 2 99 a month for that, if you'd like to in apple podcasts, if you wanna tweet at me, I'm at Mikah Sargent I'm at Mica Sergeant on many social media networks or head to chihuahua.coffee, C H I H a a.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. You can check out my other show iOS today on Tuesdays, which I do with Rosemary orchard. And as I've said soon, hopefully in the next couple of months, I'll return to the tech guy show on Saturdays with Leo LePort Jason Howell. What about you?

Jason Howell (01:04:15):
Well, you can find me on Twitter at Jason Howell. Of course, I'm here doing shows, you know, all about is my other kind of regular show. Next week, Leo is out. So Mike and I are gonna be filling in on some of his shows. I'm gonna be on security now, and this week in Google. And then you've got MacBreak Weekly

Mikah Sargent (01:04:33):
Macbreak Weekly and Windows Weekly

Jason Howell (01:04:35):
There you go. So you get more of us next week. So look forward to that. Big, thanks to everybody at the studio, helping us do this show, John Ashley Burke, John Lenina, everybody there. We couldn't do it without you. And we couldn't do it without you. Yes. Watcher or listener. We appreciate you. And we thank you for watching. We'll see you next time on Tech News Weekly. Bye everybody. Goodbye.

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