I ate my second McRib! I reheated it in the oven. It was STILL delicious. I’m in the saddle with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: trolls prompt Elon Musk to sell stock, supply chain shortages may hinder Christmas gadget sales, and the US sues Uber. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern by tuning into WWNC on the iHeartRadio app.

ELON MUSK SELLS STOCK, BUT NOT BECAUSE OF TROLLS

Last weekend, Elon Musk polled the Twitterverse asking if he should sell some of his stock options as a way of protesting the tax increases for the rich in President Biden’s infrastructure plans. Musk asked his 63 million Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of his stock, and Twitter responded in the majority of him selling the shares and thusly paying taxes on the gains. This week, Elon Musk sold $1.1 billion worth of his Tesla stock in a planned exercise. So, this sale wasn’t prompted by Twitter, which means he still needs to sell 10% of his stock.

GADGETS MAY NOT BE 2021’s GO-TO GIFTS

Things aren’t looking so merry for the electronics market. COVID-19 is still making its impact felt as global supply chains have created backlogs at the world’s largest shipping ports. This time of year, cheap, easy-to-acquire (and easy-to-break) gadgets are usually the quick go-to for last minute shoppers. Not this year, unfortunately. The cheapest gadgets are expected to take longer to ship and you may miss placing it under the tree. Large companies like Apple are encouraging consumers to buy their cheapest products now, citing month or longer lead times. Meanwhile, the most expensive gear is readily available. Uh, huh. The income challenged among us may be in for an expensive holiday.

US SUES UBER FOR DISCRIMINATION

“[Uber] must ensure equal access for all people, including those with disabilities,” said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice. The US government is suing Uber for not complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The DOJ is claiming that Uber has charged disabled people with higher wait time fees for taking more time to get into vehicles. Uber has said the fees were not intended to target disabled passengers and that they’ve been refunding rides to disabled riders. (They shouldn’t have charged them.) Uber disputes the allegations of non-compliance, but this isn’t the first time they’ve had a run-in with regulations and disabled passengers. They were ordered to pay a blind woman $1.1 million this past spring for discriminating against her.

I got my McRib! And…it was delicious. This week has been another busy one for tech. I’m in the saddle with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: crypto scammers make off with millions of Squid Games fans’ money, Facebook stops using facial recognition data in posts, and a girl sells $4 million in NFT art. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern by tuning into WWNC on the iHeartRadio app.

TIME’S NEW ARTIST IN RESIDENCE IS A 12-YEAR OLD

TIME Magazine’s first Artist-in-Residence is a 12-year old named Nyla Hayes. TIMEPieces is a new program started by TIME magazine to help artists advance their careers through the use of Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs. Nyla got started in NFTs by her uncle and began selling her own art featuring characters with long necks called Long Neckies. Since selling her art as, NFTs Nyla has earned more than $4 million. I’m in the wrong business. You can learn more about NFTs by following TIME’s TIMEPieces feed.

FACEBOOK STOPS USING FACIAL RECOGNITION IN POSTS

Earlier this week, Facebook; uhhh, meta…uhh, Facebook? Facebook says it will stop using software that automatically recognizes and identifies people in social media posts. The move comes after the whistleblower, after the name change, and after other technology companies began drawing down the use of the technology. Facebook has been coming under increased scrutiny with investors and critiques arguing for criminal charges to be brought against the company. Facebook won’t stop working on facial recognition technology, but instead it may begin appearing in Occulus and other meta verse tech.

SQUID SCAMMERS, SCAM MILLIONS FROM CRYPTO BUYERS

Following the hype of Netflix’s most popular movie, Squid Games, scammers have stolen approximately $2.1 million from would-be crypto investors. The scammers listed a new crypto, titled SQUID, saying that the currency could be used as in-game money for a new video game based upon the movie. Gizmodo pointed out numerous red flags alluding to the currency being a scam. The site was filled with spelling errors and you could buy but not sell. The currency peaked at $2,861 before the scammers cashed out, wiping out everyone’s value.

Kids have a knack for messing up a weekend. After, a busy week I’m in the saddle with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: Tesla joins the trillion dollar club, Intel pushes for supercomputer supremacy, and Apple rattles app developers with new privacy tool. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern by tuning into WWNC on the iHeartRadio app.

TESLA JOINS THE WORLD’S MOST EXCLUSIVE CLUB

Yesterday, Hertz announced a $4 billion deal to purchase 100,000 Tesla vehicles for its rental fleet. (Hertz screwed me on a rental yesterday) The deal announcement pushed Tesla’s shares past $1,000 to push it to a $1 trillion market value. That’s TRILLION with a ‘T’. Tesla joins Apple, El Goog, Microsoft, and Amazon as the only trillion dollar valued companies in the world. After the announcement, Elon Musk went on a Twitter rampage urging non-billionaires to speak out against President Joe Biden’s multi-trillion dollar infrastructure plan which is funded by taxing billionaires as he saw his stake in Tesla increase to $230 billion. The Hertz order is the largest ever electric vehicle order by a rental car company.

APPLE’S PRIVACY REPORT APP HITS BETA

Coming soon in iOS15, Apple will be shipping a Privacy Report app which prevents certain websites and apps from tracking users across websites. The app will report which apps and websites are using cookie data to serve you advertisements and allow users to block the activity. The app has caused some consternation with app developers and Apple has blocked Google and Snapchat from launching App Store updates. Furthermore, Facebook and Snapchat have both reported Apple’s new privacy controls have made them miss revenue targets. Apple has been telegraphing the move for increased privacy for a couple of years now. Services that make money primarily off of ads will have to adapt in new ways. Meanwhile, Amazon is applauding the moves.

INTEL WILL SHIP NEW SUPERCOMPUTER WITH MORE FLOPS

Get ready to FLOP! Intel is building a new supercomputer with the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory for AI called the Aurora. The Aurora will be using its latest processor designs to create a $500 million computer that can perform 2 exaFLOPS or 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 (2 quintillion) – calculations per second. If the project is successful, the Aurora (my daughter’s name), will be the world’s fastest supercomputer. This machine will best 2021’s fastest, the Japanese made Fugaku supercomputer which tops out at 442 petaFLOPS. 2 exaFLOPS are 2,000 petaFLOPS for those counting at home. I don’t know why we’re still geeking out about supercomputers, we all know the future is quantum.

Whoa! It’s been a week. I made it back home alive after Mark’s visit to DC. It’s another Thursday, and I’m back in the saddle with Mark Starling, Seth, John, and the First News 570 crew. This week’s top tech stories: US takes BitCoin mining lead after Chinese ban, William Shatner blasts off and boldly goes where others have gone before, and Twitter embeds ads in tweet replies. You can listen to Mark and I point and laugh while talking about the wild and crazy technology world every Thursday morning, LIVE at 6:43am Eastern.

US TAKES LEAD AS CHINA BANS ALL BITCOIN TRANSACTIONS

China might be besting us in AI and chip development right now, but the US has taken the lead in BitCoin mining. In June, the Chinese government instructed banks to no longer process BitCoin transactions. Chinese mining fell from 3/4 of the world mining compute to effectively zero now that the ban has taken effect. This has led to Chinese BitCoin miners moving to Texas. The Chinese ban has caused a ripple effect. BTC is now trading below $30,000 per coin way down from its last year high of $65k. The new leaders in mining are the US, Kazakstan, and Russia. I’m not sure that’s the company we want to keep, but the Chinese rejection of BTC reflects attitudes of many non-speculators around the world. The Chinese declaring all BitCoin transactions illegal is probably a precursor to their promotion of the e-Yuan as a new digital currency. The ban has also encouraged some outrageous behavior, the CEO of Chinese mining company Poolin hopped on a flight to Texas and exclaimed, “we decided to move out once and for all. We’ll never come back again.”

SCRUFFY NERF HERDER OLDEST MAN IN SPACE

Yesterday, William Shatner, the man better known as James Tiberius Kirk, became the oldest person to travel in space. He blasted off in a Blue Origin craft for an 11-minute trip with four other passengers. Kirk’s capsule traveled passed the Karman Line the internationally recognized boundary for crossing into space. Richard Branson’s space plane, Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Elon Musk’s Inspiration4 missions are ushering in the beginnings of commercial space travel and I’m here for it. Congratulations, Scruffy Nerfherder!

TWITTER IS EMBEDDING ADS IN TWEET REPLIES

In a new money grab for eyeballs, Twitter is experimenting with a new way to position advertising. Twitter will be embedding ads in tweet responses after the 2nd, 3rd, or 8th responses. I know y’all know how I feel about these free services. I’m already annoyed by them, but hey, what are you going to do. Twitter is already an agitating application, what’s to stop them now. The new ad placement will be featured to a test community on iOS and Android users.

Starting today, we’re trying something different and testing a new ad format in Tweet conversations. If you’re a part of this test (which is global; on iOS & Android only), you’ll see ads after the first, third or eighth reply under a Tweet. 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/kvIGeYt2vp

— bruce.falck() 🦗 (@boo) October 13, 2021