Tech Brew Ride Home - Wed. 10/18 – For Elon, The War On Bots Never Ends

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Elon has a fresh idea for fighting bots and maybe making some money. The IRS is finally moving ahead of cheap online tax filing. What are the odds Netflix can muscle its way into the gaming industry. And should I release this podcast in different languages? Sponsors: Earnin App Links: X will start charging new users in two countries $1 per year (The Verge) Xbox chief says Activision Blizzard games aren’t coming to Xbox Game Pass until 2024 (The Verge) IRS Will Offer Free (But Limited) Direct E-Filing Next Year (PCMag) Microsoft is preparing to bring on Amazon as a customer of its 365 cloud tools in a $1 billion megadeal, according to an internal document (Insider) Amazon says it has 10,000 Rivian electric vans in its delivery fleet (Reuters) ‘Wait, Netflix Has Games?’ Streaming Giant Plans New Videogames Based on Its Hit Shows (WSJ) Tongue Twisted: Adams Taps AI to Make City Robocalls in Languages He Doesn’t Speak (The City) 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 Tech meme right home for Wednesday, October 18th, 2023. I'm Brian McCullough today. Elon has a fresh idea for fighting bots and maybe even making some money. The IRS is finally moving ahead with free online tax filing. What are the odds

Netflix can muscle its way into the gaming industry? And should I release this podcast in different languages? Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Nay, Twitter is apparently testing not a bot, a feature requiring new unverified users to sign up for a $1 annual subscription just to be able to post and interact on X. This is being trialed in New Zealand and the Philippines for now, quoting the verge. The subscription, part of a so-called not a bot program, is beginning in those two countries and is designed to, quote, bolster our already significant efforts to reduce spam manipulation of our platform and bot activity, X said Tuesday in an unsigned post. on its help center. In addition, new web users in New Zealand and the Philippines will have to verify

their account with a phone number, the post says. Fortune first reported that Musk was going to charge users $1 a year shortly before X's announcement went live. X's post doesn't explain why the new $1 subscription is only for new users joining via the web and not the mobile app, or why not a bot is only being rolled out in two countries. A guess would be that X has seen more bot activity from those regions than others, and that it's much easier to create a bunch of fake accounts via the website. New users who opt out of subscribing will only be able to take read-only actions, such as viewing posts and watching videos, according to the company. Confusingly, the not-a-bought terms and conditions indicate that people will be able to also subscribe from X's iOS and

Android apps, even though the main post on X's Help Center only specifies web. This new program is in addition to X's main subscription of $8 a month. Musk has been clear for from the beginning of his Twitter takeover that he thinks charging will impede bot armies, though. It's estimated that a very, very small percentage of users are paying. Meanwhile, he has been bragging about how time spent on X has never been higher, end quote. Now that the merger has happened, when can we see the new regime for Activision Blizzard Games? Well, Phil Spencer says Activision Blizzard Games will not come to Xbox Game Pass until 2024, as the regulatory process took so long, he says, before the acquisition could actually close.

Quoting the verge again, the regulatory process took so long that we weren't able to get in and work with the Activision Blizzard on that back catalog work. Now that the deal is closed, we're starting that work, but there is work. I think the Activision Twitter handle did put something out that talked about 2024, and I think that's accurate. I would love it if there was some kind of secret celebration drop that's coming in the next couple weeks. There's not, said Spativision. Spencer, Microsoft's gaming CEO. Activision Blizzard posted on X, formerly Twitter, ahead of the Microsoft deal closing, that Modern Warfare 3 and Diablo 4 both wouldn't be coming to Xbox Game Pass this year.

But it wasn't clear about the status of older Activision Blizzard games until Phil Spencer's clarification today. I know there will be some disappointment about that, admits Spencer. This acquisition is definitely long term. So the fact that we're not hitting day one with a bunch of games dropping into GamePass is a little bit of a downer. but I'm very excited about the future and I just want to be straight with people that that's where we are, end quote. Many Xbox fans had expected Microsoft to drop older versions of Call of Duty on Xbox Game Pass almost immediately. Windows Central reported last week that it expected to, quote, see a ton of new games hit Xbox Game Pass the very minute the deal is finalized, but that never materialized.

Some of the expectation for Xbox Game Pass editions was based on the way Microsoft dropped 20 Bethesda games into GamePass just two days after its acquisition. was just closed. Microsoft also went out of its way to fix classic Xbox 360 Call of Duty titles in July just ahead of the original Activision Blizzard deal deadline. Players had been complaining for years about not being able to matchmake in games like Call of Duty Black Ops and the original Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, and this suddenly got fixed by Microsoft over the summer, end quote. The IRS plans to offer a free, mobile-friendly, interview-based, direct e-filing option for 13 U.S. states as soon as 2024 for taxpayers with simpler tax situations. Quoting PCMag. This step by the IRS, following decades of successful lobbying by tax prep vendors,

to stop the government from competing with them online, happened after Congress told the agency to change course. Last year's Inflation Reduction Act not only provided numerous tax credits for energy efficiency expenditures, but also directed the IRS to study offering direct online filing. The IRS is starting small limiting direct file to taxpayers in Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and New York. Its statement says their tax departments decided to work with the IRS to integrate their state taxes into the direct file pilot. Although people in zero-income tax, Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming, may also be able to try it out. The Washington Post reported that the IRS will send invitations to

selected eligible taxpayers around mid-February, citing an IRS briefing. Later on, quote, more and more eligible taxpayers will be able to access the service to file their 2023 tax returns, it says. This 1.0 version of direct file, which the IRS describes as a, quote, mobile-friendly interview-based service that will be available in English and Spanish, will also only cover simpler tax situations. The IRS announcement says it expects this app to include W-2 wage income, interest income of $1,500 at most. unemployment compensation, and Social Security and Railroad Retirement income, meaning gig workers and other Schedule C types, myself included, will have to sit this one out. Direct File's support for credits and deductions will stick to the basics too, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, Credits for other deductions, the standard deduction, and deductions for student loan interest, and educator expenses.

Direct File, however, won't come with an income limit like the IRS's free file program, which lets people use commercial tax prep software at no cost if their adjusted gross income doesn't exceed $73,000. That program came out of a bargain pushed by Intuit and other tax prep vendors. Leave online filing to the private sector and will offer apps such as TurboTax for free to lower income taxpayers. But almost nobody uses free file. The latest edition of the IRS Databook shows that 3.3 million of the 160.6 million individual tax year 2022 returns or just over 2% came via that route. In 2019, ProPublica uncovered one possible reason for such low uptake. Intuit had altered pages on its site to cloak free file references from search engines, end quote.

A couple of interesting Amazon data points here that, if nothing else, showed the scale of their operation. First, according to internal documents, Amazon has committed more than $1 billion over five years to secure more than one million Microsoft 365 license seats, quoting Insider. Amazon uses a local on-premise version of Microsoft Office products, but plans to move to Microsoft 365's suite of cloud-based productivity tools, the person explained. They asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. Amazon is expected to start setting the new systems up in early November. That's around the time when Microsoft releases a new version of its 365 suite of applications with new AI capabilities. The full move for Amazon employees is expected to happen in early

24, the person said. Such a huge deal requires major planning and the allocation of cloud resources. Groups within Microsoft Office and security organizations are starting to scale up to meet demand, according to the person familiar. The move would be a radical one for Amazon and a major win for Microsoft. The two companies are bitter cross-town rivals and rarely work together or give each other business on a scale like this. A person familiar with Amazon's operations said the company stayed off the cloud versions of Microsoft 365 products because they didn't previously want to save anything on a competitor's cloud. Microsoft and Amazon declined to comment immediately when contacted by Insider on Tuesday, end quote. Then Reuters says that Amazon now has 10,000

Rivian electric delivery vehicles in the U.S. and Europe. That's up from 5,000 back in just July of this year. Amazon aims to have more than 100,000 Rivian vans by 2030. Quote, Amazon's latest update comes after Rivian, which also makes R1T. T pickup trucks and R1S Sport Utility Vehicles in August raised its production forecast for the 2023 full year to 52,000 vehicles. Amazon, which holds a stake in Rivian, has completed 150 million deliveries with Rivian vans. The Seattle-based company is also working with Volvo to add heavy-duty electric trucks to its middle-mile delivery fleet. Volvo in 2022 said it would provide 20 EV trucks to Amazon, end quote. We've been speaking a lot lately about gaming and how basically all of

major independent studios have been acquired over the past few years. Gaming itself is in a bit of a recession with layoffs and turmoil of various flavors. So the whole industry is in a state of flux like we haven't seen for maybe decades. But in the background of all of this, potentially there's a new major force in gaming on the horizon. Netflix, which is pushing hard into gaming since they've hit a hard wall in terms of the subscriber money they can get for just video streaming. So will Netflix become a new gaming powerhouse. The journal takes a look, quote. Though Netflix has up to now focused on mobile games, which appeal to casual gamers and can be downloaded on a smartphone or tablet, it is taking steps to expand into higher-end games

that can be streamed from TVs or PCs. That approach would put it up against giants such as Sony and Microsoft, which just closed its $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard and would bring some significant technical challenges. Over the next several months, Netflix subscribers will be able to play games on their mobile devices based on hits such as Korean thriller Squid Game and Supernatural Comedy Wednesday, according to people familiar with the situation. Similarly, Netflix is discussing games based on extraction, its Sherlock Holmes series, and its Black Mirror series, the people said. Even as Netflix creates homegrown titles, it will continue to license the well-known games

from Blooms TD6 to Classic Solitaire that currently make up its catalog. It has discussed plans to release a game within the popular action. Adventure series Grand Theft Auto from Take 2 Interactive Software through a licensing deal, some of the people said. The strategy rips a page from the streaming giants playbook in Hollywood, where it built an audience based on reruns from other studios such as Friends, The Office, and Breaking Bad, while gearing up machinery to churn out originals like House of Cards and Stranger Things. Netflix faced scant competition in the early days of its ascent in streaming video. Gaming is different. It's a decades-old industry dominated by some of the world's biggest tech companies,

with global sales expected to reach $187.7 billion this year, according to research firm New Zoo. Netflix doesn't generate revenue from its games. Subscribers can download them from the app at no extra charge. For now, games are part of a strategy to keep fans coming back to the streaming service, even when their favorite shows are between seasons, helping to retain subscribers and attract new ones. Netflix, which reports quarterly results on Wednesday, added 5.9 million subscribers in the June quarter. Netflix games have been downloaded 70 and a half million times globally as of September 20th, up from 30.4 million last September, according to AppTracter Aptopia. That is a fraction of the hundreds of millions of downloads for game companies such as Roblox and Activision, the publisher

of the mega hit Candy Crush Saga. Fewer than 1% of Netflix's 238 million subscribers are playing Netflix games daily Aptopia estimates. Gaming is a draw for media companies and adjacent and industries because of how much time people spend playing. The New York Times has had success turning many of its subscribers into players of its casual games like Wordle and Spelling Bee. Netflix has to make a similar case with its own customers. Would a non-gamer play a Netflix game, said Judas Silver, an agent with United Talent Agency who works with game developers? That is the big question. It is also unlikely that video game enthusiasts would subscribe to Netflix just to access games. Many Netflix games can be purchased or downloaded for free through other platforms,

including exploding kittens and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredder's Revenge. Netflix will have to step up its investments to make console-quality games, says Jeffrey's analyst Andrew Urkowitz, who estimates the company has spent about a billion dollars on games so far. Netflix is looking to hire dozens of game executives and has posted a job for a director to oversee its first big budget game. Such AAA games can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make. The recruits will join a team of around 400 people, end quote. today some local news. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been using AI to make robocalls in languages raising ethical issues over making voters think he is fluent in many different languages, which

makes sense. You can see how voters might be swayed by thinking the mayor shares their background, especially in a multicultural, multi-ethnic city like this, quoting the city. This is deeply unethical, especially on the taxpayers' dime, surveillance technology oversight project executive director Albert Fox Khan said in a statement, using AI to convince New Yorkers that he speaks languages that he doesn't is deeply Orwellian. Yes, we need announcements in all of New Yorkers' native languages, but the deep fakes are just a creepy vanity project. Anika Marlin Hins, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, said the calls seemed strangely deceiving. Quote, it's wonderful to make things in as many languages as you can, she told the city,

but it's a whole other issue to pretend or insinuate that you are speaking all those languages yourself, and I see serious ethical concerns for a mayor who does not speak multiple languages, end quote. As I said at the start of the show, actually this is something I've been meaning to share with you for a while now. Good old 11 Labs now lets me produce this show in multiple languages. I'm not sure that I will, but if I did create a feed in a different language, which language should I consider doing first? I'm going to give you three examples right now. This is a clip from yesterday's show. It'll be Spanish, Chinese, and Hindi. Let me know what you think in terms of the quality. And again, let me know if you think that I should release a feed in a specific

language. Think of how wild it is that what you're about to hear is in my voice. Talk to you tomorrow. Apple announced this morning a new, what they're called asekable. Lapis Apple of $779.00 with USB-C to carry. Envio at the beginning of November and compatible with all the iPads with USBs. PINGA, PINGO, they said they said

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