Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 05/08 – The Big Discord Username Shift

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

What to expect from Google IO. The big discord username switch. Sam Altman’s side hustle is launching a thing. But also a look at the regulatory issues his OpenAI is facing in Europe. And what if I told you an Ikea chair can short out your monitor. It’s weird, but it can. Sponsors: ZocDoc.com/techmeme Grammarly.com/go Links: Google Plans to Make Search More ‘Personal’ with AI Chat and Video Clips (WSJ) Discord’s username change is causing discord (The Verge) Sam Altman’s Worldcoin rolls out app as token launch looms (The Block) OpenAI’s regulatory troubles are only just beginning (The Verge) Popular IKEA Chair Turns Computer Monitor Off, Baffling Everyone (Motherboard) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMame Right Home from Monday, May 8th, 2023. I'm Brian McCullough today. What to expect from Google I.O. this week, the big Discord username switch. Sam Altman's side hustle is launching a thing, but also a look at the regulatory issues his open AI is facing in Europe. And what if I told you an IKEA chair can short out your monitor? It's weird, but it can. Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Putting it on your radar that Google I.O. is this Wednesday. I think I covered it the day after last year, but this year I'm going to cover it day of because I expect there to be so many announcements, especially around AI, that we can't get behind on the news cycle.

So make a note now that the show on Wednesday will post quite late that day, several hours late. Among the things we can expect, according to the Wall Street Journal, is an almost complete rehaul of how Google presents search. Quote, for years, Alphabet's Google has made minimal tweaks to the look and feel of search, which powers an advertising business that made more than $162 billion in revenue last year. But that is changing with the fast rise of AI chatbots and short video apps such as TikTok, both of which have captured the attention of younger users. Google plans to make its search engine more visual, snackable, personal, and human, with a focus on serving young people globally, according to documents seen by the journal. It plans to incorporate

more human voices as part of the shift, supporting content creators in the same way it has historically done with websites, the documents say. At its annual I.O. Developer Conference this coming week, the search giant is expected to debut new features that allow users to carry out conversations with an artificial intelligence program, a project codenamed Magi, said other people familiar with the matter. Broadly, Google plans to place greater emphasis on responding to queries that can't be easily answered by traditional web results, according to internal reference documents outlining the company's strategy for making changes to the search engine this year. Google's search visitors may be more frequently prompted to ask follow-up questions or swipe through visuals such as TikTok videos

in response to their queries. The company has already moved to integrate some online forum posts and short videos in search results, but it plans to emphasize such material even more in the future, according to the internal documents and people familiar with the matter. Google executives have stressed to employees that the number of active websites has plateaued in recent. years, said people familiar with the discussions. Internet users are increasingly turning to other apps to find information on everything from popular local restaurants to advice on how to be more productive. More than answers will help you when there's no right answer, Google Executive said in the documents, end quote. Discord says it will let high visibility users secure their

usernames to minimize the risk of impersonation, as some users are criticizing its plans to change how usernames work on that platform. Quoting the Verge. Starting in the next couple of weeks, millions of Discord users will be forced to say goodbye to their old four-digit appended names. Discord is requiring everyone to take up a new common platform-wide handle. For Discord, it's a move toward mainstream social network conventions. For some users, though, it's a change to the basics of what Discord is, a shift that's as much about culture as technology. Discord has historically handled usernames with a numeric suffix system. Instead of requiring a completely unique handle, it allowed duplicate names by adding

a four-digit code known as a discriminator. Think the Verge number one, two, three, four. But earlier this week, it announced it was changing course and moving toward unique identifiers that resemble Twitter-style at handles. Co-founder and CTO Stanislav Vizniewski acknowledged the change would be tough for some people, but he said the discriminators had proven too confusing. He noted that over 40% of users don't know their discriminator number, which leads to almost half of all friend requests failing to connect people to the right person, largely due to mistyped numbers. During the change, Discord users will have to navigate a process that's fraught with uncertainty and cutthroat competition. Users will need to wait for an in-app prompt for when it's their turn to select a new username, which will eventually

roll out to all users over the course of several months. The company will assign priority to users based on their Discord registration dates, so people who have had their name for quite a while will have a better chance to get a desired name. This raises a lot of obvious fears and thorny questions. Depending on who gets to set their usernames first, is there anything stopping people from taking over a particularly popular creator's distinctive name? Should Discord prevent this by holding usernames for well-known creators even if they're not first in line? This is a problem for a lot of social networks, but unlike with some fledgling service attracting new users, all these people are already on Discord. In some cases, they're probably even paid subscribers. In a statement to the

verge, Discord said it would be trying to navigate the change gracefully for its best-known users. We created processes for high-visibility users to secure usernames that will allow them to operate on our platform with minimal risk of impersonation, said Kellyn Sloan, Director of Product Communications. Users with a standing business relationship with Discord who manage certain partner, verified or creator servers will be able to pick a username before other users in order to reduce the risk of impersonation for their accounts, end quote. It's his day job OpenAI that gets all the headlines these days. But remember, Sam Altman has that weird side hustle of scanning people's eyeballs.

WorldCoin is launching World App, a self-custodial mobile app to manage World ID and other coins in over 80 countries ahead of its forthcoming token launch. Quoting the block. World Coin, the eyeball scanning crypto project co-created by OpenAI's Sam Altman, Today announced the launch of a self-custodial mobile app. The so-called World App gives users a way to manage their World ID, a tool for proving personhood online, alongside a range of cryptocurrencies, including BTC, ETH, DAI, USDC, and WorldC's hotly anticipated token once it launches.

Developed by Tools for Humanity, WorldCoin's lead software contributor, the launch of the app comes a few months after the unveiling of World ID, the identity protocol that underpins the World Coin Project. Momentum appears to be building toward the launch of World Coin's token, which it has said previously will go live in the first half of this year. Users can claim their share of the coin by getting scanned by a World Coin orb. Even in testing, the app has accrued 1.5 million users and logs 60,000 transactions on a typical day, the company said. Users can deposit and withdraw funds using bank accounts or local payment tools and can send money to phone contacts or crypto addresses.

It's already the fastest growing wallet in the world. Today, every 14 seconds, a person signs up to app, said Tiago Sada, head of product, engineering, and design at Tools for Humanity. The World App, which had been in testing in a small number of locations, is now available for download in over 80 countries. It employs a minimalist design, quote, with only the essential functionalities of the World Coin and Ethereum ecosystems, according to the announcement. TFH has also tried to simplify the product by offering gas-free transactions, which it can do,

by covering the gas fees. The company said the app is engineered to maximize inclusivity. It is available on iOS and Android, is around 18 megabytes in size, is localized to multiple languages and can be supported by phones over 10 years old. A who's who of crypto firms, projects, and tools power the apps back end, including uniswap for exchange tokens, ENS usernames that can be used to direct transfers, and ramp and moon pay for on and off ramps. The beta version ran on Polygon, but the full version will be based on an Ethereum rollup, per the announcement. World coin is valued at $3 billion after reportedly raising $100 million from Kosoaventures

and A16Z in March of 2022. The block revealed in February that the company is seeking another round of funding at the same valuation, end quote. Meanwhile, back at the main gig. We've mentioned before that OpenAI might be in for some serious regulatory issues in Europe. And this weekend, the Verge had an in-depth look at the regulatory risks for OpenAI under GDPR. including questions surrounding future data scraping and handling right-to-be-forgotten requests. Earlier this year, OpenAI's popular and controversial chat-GPT chatbot hit a big legal snag. An effective ban in Italy, the Italian Data Protection Authority, or GPDP, accused OpenAI of violating EU data protection rules,

and the company agreed to restrict access to the service in Italy while it attempted to fix the problem. On April 28, ChatGPT returned to the country with OpenAI lightly addressing GPDD. concerns without making major changes to its service an apparent victory. The GPD has said it welcomes the changes chat cheptie made. However, the firm's legal issues and those of companies building similar chatbots are likely just beginning. Regulators in several countries are investigating how these AI tools collect and produce information, citing a range of concerns from companies' collection of unlicensed training data to chatbot's tendency to spew misinformation. In the EU, they're applying the general data protection regulation, or GDPR, one of the world's strongest legal privacy

frameworks, the effects of which will likely reach far outside Europe. Meanwhile, lawmakers in the block are putting together a law that will address AI specifically, likely ushering in a new era of regulation for systems like ChatGPT. Italy was the first country to make a regulatory move. On March 31st, it highlighted four ways it believed OpenAI was breaking GDPR, allowing ChatGPT to provide inaccurate or misleading information, failing to notify users of its data collection practices, failing to meet any of the six possible legal justifications for processing personal data, and failing to adequately prevent children under 13 years old using the service. It ordered OpenAI to immediately stop using personal information collected from Italian citizens

in its training data for ChatGPT. No other country has taken such action, but since March, at least three EU nations, Germany, France, and Spain have launched their own investigations into ChatGPT. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Canada is evaluating privacy concerns under its Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, or PIPA, the European Data Protection Board, which has even established a dedicated task force to help coordinate investigations. And if these agencies demand changes from OpenAI, they could affect how the service runs for users across the globe. Regulators' concerns can be broadly split into two categories, where ChatCHEPT's training data comes from, and how OpenAI is delivering information to its users. AtGPT uses either OpenAI's GPT3.5 and GPT4 large language models which are trained on vast quantities of human-produced text. OpenAI is cagey about exactly what training text is used, but it says it draws on, quote, a variety of licensed, created, and publicly available data sources, which may include publicly available personal information, end quote.

This potentially poses huge problems under GDPR. The law was enacted in 2018 and covers every service that collects or processes data from EU citizens, no matter where the organization responsible is based. GDPR rules require companies to have explicit consent before collecting personal data, to have legal justification for why it's being collected, and to be transparent about how it's being used and stored. European regulators claim that the secrecy around OpenAI's training data means there's no way to confirm if the personal information swept into it was initially given with user consent. And the GPDP specifically argued that OpenAI had no legal basis for collecting it in the first place. OpenAI and others have gotten away with little

scrutiny so far, but this claim adds big question marks to future data scraping efforts. Then there's GDPR's right to be forgotten, which lets users demand that companies correct their personal information or remove it entirely. OpenAI preemptively updated its privacy policy to facilitate those requests, but there's been debate about whether it's technically possible to handle them, given how complex it can be to separate specific data once it's turned into these large language models. OpenAI also gathers information directly from users. Like any internet platform, it collects a range of standard user data, e.g. name, contact info, card details, etc. But more significantly, it records interactions users have with chat GPT. As stated in an FAQ,

this data can be reviewed by OpenAI's employees and is used to train future versions of its model. Given the intimate questions people ask chat GPT, using the bot as a therapist or a doctor, this means the company is scooping up all sorts of sensitive data. At least some of this data may have been collected from minors, as while OpenAI's policy states that it, quote, does not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. There's no strict age verification gate. That doesn't play well with EU rules, which ban collecting data from people under 13, and in some countries require parental consent for minors under 16. And on the output side, the GPDP claimed that ChatGPT's lack of age filters exposes minors to, quote, absolutely unsuitable responses with

respect to their degree of development and self-awareness, unquote. And finally today, here's the weirdest story I've seen come across my transom in a while. So, this software developer in Germany upgraded his setup to a 4K monitor. Problem was, it kept going on the fritz, like it would just turn off when he sat down to use it. He did what you do, he checked the cable connections, set the most recent firmware, etc. But he noticed the only correlating factor was the monitor seemed to short out when he got up or sat down to work. Out of frustration, he switched out the chair he was using and the problem magically went away. So, according to a Mastodon thread that went viral, the cause was his

fancy IKEA chair, a high-backed model with fabric webbing. It's one of the highest-end chairs IKEA makes. And picking up the story now from motherboard, quote, Fortunately for him, he was not the only person who had issues with the Marcus chair or with office chairs in general. A German language computer forum included a post with a similar issue, with commenters noting that either the cushion or the lift on the chair could generate enough static electricity that it could affect some monitor models. One poster revealed that they had to attach a copper wire to ground the chair. Now, to be clear, issues of electrostatic discharge are not particularly uncommon with computers, especially with monitors. It's long been recommended by repair experts to ground yourself when taking apart a machine to prevent yourself from shorting an important part.

Monitors, especially of the cathode ray tube variety, are especially prone to electrostatic discharge issues requiring periodic degossing to help prevent scrambled colors. And nor is this issue limited to the Marcus Chair, and it's long been known. Back in the 1990s, Douglas C. Smith, then an employee of AT&T Bell Labs, published a paper discussing how electrostatic discharges can become problematic in certain settings. And this issue with ESD can show in other ways. For example, I sometimes run into an issue with my headphone set, where if it's plugged into my laptop, noise cancellation is turned on and I'm not touching a metal surface. It makes a loud buzzing noise. It's forgotten about today, but we are often navigating around a lot of static

electricity just to use our computers. I asked the developer in question about his setup some more, and he noted that he was on a laminate floor, using a wooden table with aluminum legs, and was using a plastic mat to protect the floor. Doing some more research, he noticed something interesting. He was able to reliably cause the screen to go black without his feet touching the ground, first rubbing his back against the fabric webbing on the chair,

then shifting his weight forward on the seat. I suspect that leaning forward triggers an ESD by the gas suspension, he noted. Is your chair causing problems with your monitor? It might be a good idea to invest in an antistatic chair mat that can help dissipate any static pulled up by friction. But if worse comes to worse, you might want to check the chair, end quote. Super busy day. No time to even look up song lyrics for you. I'm actually meeting up with someone right after I release this that listens to this show every day.

So on the off chance that you're listening to this on the train out to the slope right now, Ash, talk to you in a second and talk to the rest of you tomorrow.