The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Emotion Recognition in China, Russia’s “Sovereign Internet” Law & Other Tech News Nov 3, 2019

Episode Date: November 3, 2019

Emotion Recognition in China, Russia's “Sovereign Internet” Law & Other Tech News Nov 3, 2019

Hi folks, welcome to the Chris Foss Show podcast. How you doing guys? What's up, peaches? Hey, we got some interesting stuff to talk about. We're going to talk about tech news and stuff that's going on around the world. And we'll have some in-depth discussions about some interesting stories that may shape our future and the world, what may impact us that might come here someday. So let's get into some of the details.

We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. We're going to have all the tech news and all that good stuff going on. Be sure to tell your friends to subscribe to the show. We certainly appreciate you guys as well. So there's that. Wow, Mark Zuckerberg, Georgia. If you saw Georgia's speech, I think it was Georgia University or Georgia, one of those universities. I didn't go to college, so I don't follow any of that shit.

Clearly, if you've seen me read, write, or anything I do, you're like, he didn't go to college, did he? I graduated from trump university so thereby everything i know between that and betsy devos uh public school anyway uh enough joking aside no i really didn't go to trump i'm not that stupid but i don't know i don't know let. Let me not push it. Let's put it that way. Okay, so the Mark Zuckerberg rolling train of the shit show, just trying to make Facebook more hated than it already is. Facebook is, I don't know if he's paying attention, but Facebook is becoming the whipping post of everything everyone hates. And I'm just surprised people still use it what's funny is

people post on facebook about how much they hate facebook and how much facebook sucks but they post that on facebook which are like wait you're engendering the uh succession of their ability to stay in business and power by giving them more content so all right good good on you man whatever uh anyway uh facebook has now announced it will not fact check ads by uk political parties and candidates running in the december election you if you've heard boris johnson has arranged for i believe his fortunes has arranged for uh a new election to be called in the EU because they're still arguing over Brexit. What a shit show that is. And he said,

they're not going to fact check the ads. If you know, you've been staying in touch with the Chris Fosch show podcast, listening in, of course, because you're so smart. We've been talking about this. We've been talking about how Mark just seems to not give a shit about

political ads. And he's just letting it be bygones be bygones. And of course, Jack, the CEO of Twitter, has come out and stated that they're not going to do anymore. So now the pressure is mounted on Mark and Facebook to do it. In fact, I saw Kara Swisher the other day. I think she's on CWBC, CNBC. CWBC? Not sure where i got that one from um i think that's an old mortgage website countrywide business center i don't know cwb i don't know somebody can look it up and tell me if there's anything good there i don't know whatever

uh so anyway um you know he's he's she says he's gonna flip and you know, he's, he's, she says he's going to flip and, you know, she knows him. She's interviewed him a lot of times. The problem is usually he doesn't flip till it gets really fricking shitty. Uh, so, uh, he doesn't flip early. He flips late. So I don't know. I guess he's got to throw a couple more elections for, uh, for, uh, the Russians before they can decide what to do. So there's that. What else do we have in the news here? Looks like we've got a couple phones going off. The claims of New York Times, Siva V,

I'll just say that because I can't pronounce his last name, vetting political ads effectively and consistently at a global scale is impossible. Congress should just restrict ad targeting to the level of an electoral district. I don't know if they should restrict ad targeting. They should just restrict political ads. Just say we're just not going to do them because the problem is they spread so many conspiracies, stupidity, and everything else. Look, you know, here's the thing. We shouldn't be picking our candidates on, and I'm going to go off on a riff here.

We shouldn't be picking our candidates based upon ads, spin ads and lies and all this sort of stuff. You should have to stand at a podium, let us talk to you, let us pepper you with questions, and you have to answer them. And that's when we make a decision as to what to buy for. Not because you're like, George Bush eats babies and sticks them in microwaves. We should stop all that bullshit, all that manipulation of emotion and craziness. Most of these crazy political ads,

you don't even see the candidate talking. A lot of them are run by PACs, super PACs, that put these ads out so the candidates nod in them and there's not that, this is approved by XYZ and so they can run these hit ads that do crazy conspiracy and crazy nut job talking stuff. We need to get rid of all this craziness in the world that is just making our world sicker than crap.

So anyway, that's my thing and I'm sticking to it. Let's see, what else do we have on the thing? And of course, then there's debate over Facebook's political ads policy. Basically, people can post stuff that's out there like fossil fuel based products, but people agree or disagree on climate change, so everyone can post ads on that. Where do you go from there? But I do think political ads, we need to pick better leaders. That's basically one of the biggest problems we have. I think if we focus on that, we can deal with it. And we need to pick better leaders that are going to unite this country and unite the parties and unite everyone and do what's good for the good of the country for a change. And I think the only way we're going to do that is to get rid of the spin. And we just need to

focus on the content of the substance of a person. It's like, look, you don't get to put out hit ads. You get to basically stand on a podium, let us answer your questions. You've got to put up hit ads you get to basically stand on the podium let us answer your questions you've got to put up with doing a reddit ama for 10 hours or something you know stuff like that all right so moving on cnbc is reporting that brian chesky uh says airbnb uh will ban party houses after five people died in a shooting at a halloween party in a california home rented through airbnb i think this is a very smart idea. This is one of the problems that people have had. Recently, when I was living in Vegas, I saw a lot of people or a lot of the government, of course, they were, it was kind of interesting the way they played it.

They were working on behalf, of course, the hotels that don't like the competition of Airbnb because they need their hotel rooms filled. But one of the things they were, people were complaining about was these party houses being popped up in airbnb places around neighborhoods and ruining neighborhood uh people who live there's experience so um you know i think it's a valid argument and certainly it's something they should probably do because you know party houses i mean what what year is it anyway i guess maybe i'm too old when i younger, I used to have party houses up until I was 35, but I was single with no kids, so I couldn't.

So there's that. Anyway, guys, what else do we have here? New York Times is reporting Trump has integrated Twitter into the very Fabricus administration. He has more than 11,000 tweets. Well, it's good to know he's, you know, most people would be working too hard being president and, i don't

know doing stuff then uh tweeting so there's that 11 000 tweets wow and then he golfs most of the time so i'm not sure what else is going on in the white house uh oh that's a tv watching executive time evidently as well uh according to nd tv gadgets 360 but you do have to i mean falling back to their story you do have to really wonder if this is going to change the landscape of the president do we have to put up a presence here on out who tweet in sicily and and crazy conspiracy or can we get another president and we can just go back to someone who just shuts up and does their fucking job and leaves us alone. Um,

you know, we don't have to get exposed to the, what's going on in their fucking head. Although I don't know. I mean, Jack has a good point from Twitter that, uh, it is kind of good to see the crazy because then we can see the crazy. I mean,

we didn't certainly, certainly didn't know how fucking off the rails Nixon was getting when Nixon's generals are like, Hey, I like calling the Pentagon going, Hey, if he decides to nuke cambodia um yeah just stand down whatever order the president says and call us please uh they actually had to do that that's crazy huh so back to ndtv uh they uh have announced global smartphone shipments grew in quarter three, uh, 2% year over year, according to strategy analytics. Well, canalysis estimates a 1% increase bucking a two-year

downward trend, uh, still though one to 2%. I mean, that's really not that great. Um, you know, phones have become a commodity. We just recently reviewed the AT&T Samsung galaxy, what is it, the Pixel 4 XL. A spectacular little phone. Great camera. We really love the camera in it and the night watch and the portrait with the bokeh. And a great phone overall. Two things that made me switch back to my Note were lack of fingerprint. Sorry, I just, I use fingerprint so much for everything.

It does have this really cool facial recognition software that will unlock the phone for you, but it doesn't work well in the middle of the night, darkness. You know, I have international clients around the world. I'm constantly doing deals. So, you know, I have to check my mail sometimes. You know, if I wake up in the morning to hit the restroom or I wake up in the middle of the night to hit the restroom, you know, I check the phone. Sometimes I roll over. I'll hear a bunch of beeps coming in.

I'll be like, oh, something's going on. And I'll check the phone. In the dark, it doesn't work too well, especially if you have a goatee like me that doesn't, you know. I'm sure my face looks kind of dark because I let my beard grow out usually a couple days before I shave it. This is more information than you want to know, isn't it? So there's that. So I love the phone, but between the fingerprinting thing, and there's lots of apps I have to open for my bank,

and even Starbucks opens my fingerprint. I miss the fingerprint thing, and the battery life really sucks. I don't know what's burning that battery down. I tried tweaking all sorts of things, and my friends have too, and a lot of their views bash the battery life really sucks i don't know what's burning that battery down i tried tweaking all sorts of things and my friends have too and a lot of reviews bashed the battery life but yeah that's what it is uh let's get a discussion on this this is kind of an interesting thing we're going to talk about here this is from uh reported by cnbc russia's soviet internet law which is aims to enable disconnecting the country's internet for the rest of the world went into effect on Friday.

That was November 1st. This is kind of an interesting thing that's going on because this is the closest copy play to what the Chinese have. And so it basically tightens the laws of Moscow's control over the country's Internet infrastructure and aims to provide a way for Russia to disconnect its networks from the rest of the world. A lot of people think this might be technically impossible.

They're calling it the online iron curtain, I guess. And basically it could disconnect their internet from the entire world. So if they ever wanted to do a blackout, you saw that sort of stuff, I believe, in Egypt during the revolutions in Egypt where they would turn off their internet, etc., etc. It's kind of interesting. But I guess one of the problems they have is they can't really copy the Chinese system.

The Chinese system was built for the Chinese system. And the difference is with Russia having several decades of running free internet and having Internet providers and free all these people who work in service with the Internet, it's really hard for them to push a button to cut everybody off. So they have issues. They tried to ban encrypted messaging service Telegram, but that's been largely unsuccessful. You know, they're trying to do whatever they can to keep these revolts from rising up. If you remember the Arab Spring that came out of initially the Wiki links disclosures, et cetera, et cetera. And I don't know.

It's going to be kind of interesting how that goes out. More and more countries are, of course, considering this thing and wanting to get it done. And I think it definitely impedes democracy. And of course, we should be looking into the world as a democracy-killing thing and should not be supporting it. But sadly, a lot of the companies that are providing this technology to these governments are american companies so therein lies the debacle or the the thing that we have do we make money selling people uh blocking for uh the internet so we can they can discourage democratization of their ideals and uh the people will, or do we make some buck off them and sell the countries down the road

to dictator overlords? Interesting dynamic and thing that we have to deal with in discussions. And of course, now that, I know I'm not being political here, it's really clear that our current occupants of the white house believe in you america first and you know let the world do whatever it wants which is kind of scary because

then the world does whatever they want and certainly we've seen the rise of power of china uh iran and russia and um us falling back from different places and not caring about stuff and then rising up. We're going to wake up to a world one day that's going to be largely controlled by China, Russia, and whatever. And China and Russia, if you're not paying attention, are already doing a lot of stuff to mine and control resources, natural resources in Africa. Jesus, they own a ton of stuff in Africa. Russia's providing mercenaries to different

Russian or different African governments to help them stay in power. So very interesting to see what's going on in the world. And if you study the Marshall Plan and you studied things that were going on from the 60s onward, or 50s onward actually, of how we're trying to spend democracy around the world, now that is all dying. So kind of interesting of how we're trying to spend democracy around the world. Now that is all dying. So kind of interesting in how that's going to play out, how it's going to affect our world. I know a lot of people, you know, here's the thing.

I know a lot of people go, Chris, I don't really have to give a shit about this. You know, I got four tires. You know, I got a change in my car. I got four kids to chase around, a wife and job, and, you know, try and get them in college, blah, blah, blah. But this, a lot of this stuff is big stuff that can move our world. What would you think if this eventually became so popular the U.S. government decided to do it?

You know, it's the slow boiling of the frog that you have to watch out for when you wake up one day and go, oh, shit, our goose is cooked. Or in this case, our frog's cooked. So let's move on to another story that's kind of along the same sort of vein. This is from FT.com, if you're familiar with the Financial Times. Emotion recognition is China's new surveillance craze. Now, you've probably seen the different recognized camera systems and software they have that's really big brother, creepy 1984, Georgia or well, uh, creepy where, uh, it, it P they can follow you around the city and judge you by a social credit status. They can see what you're doing. Uh, they can see what you're up to

and, uh, they can tell your age and identify you etc etc and then they watch you for what you do so if you go by let's say you go buy a few bottles of vodka on a friday night that affects your social score and they pick you up on the cameras they go oh bob's buying vodka bob's a partier probably travel maker probably maybe an alcoholic might be a subversive, better make sure he can't travel. That's what they do. It's not a joke, and it's scary as fuck. So this is a new system that they're installing in different cities, and what it's designed to do is it's supposed to be a crime prevention buzz phrase.

It's on everyone's lips in china their largest uh surveillance tech expo over there and uh what it's being done is rolled out to airports and subway stations it's going to identify criminal suspects and the uh and basically it's going to watch your facial and gait recognition your eye tracking and crowd analysis so it's going to determine you you know, what's going on. I imagine crowd analysis is going to be a thing where maybe if, you know, people are like they're starting to mob up, better send out the army to shut that down before it gets to a big mob.

And evidently they claim that they can rapidly identify criminal suspects by analyzing their mental state. Now, I don't know if you're watching eye movement facial recognition gate eye tracking crowd analysis if you take video of me at the airport i'm probably pissed off all the time because i just had to get felt up by tsa and and uh you know deal with the lines and all the crap and feeling stuck in a plane. Really, my eye movement's probably off the chart. Plus, I've drank about five coffees on the plane to stay awake. And God knows, in the old days, I'd drink a couple of vodkas before I got off the plane

just because I hated air travel. Now, there's nothing dangerous about me and what I'm doing in an airport or near an airplane. But definitely, if you're looking at my facial expressions my gait my eye tracking from all the coffee i drink um you know and me crazy looking around going i need to get home i'm so sick of traveling um yeah it's your i'm not a criminal i'm not gonna i don't have any ill purpose towards anything it's just i'm sick of this shit and i'm angry you know this is the way it is uh i don't know as i'm getting older i'm starting to get used to it the last couple times i've traveled i just started like just going i don't give a fuck but um i don't know maybe i'm just just getting older and more comfortable in my thing.

So there's that. But it's kind of interesting, too, that in October, the U.S. blocked eight Chinese artificial intelligence tech companies from buying U.S.-made products on the grounds of alleged human rights abuses. Where this is mostly being rolled out is in an area, I believe I'm pronouncing this correctly called Jin Chang and there it's kind of the testing ground for everything the Chinese government is doing to roll out across their thing creating this 1984 world so I'm sure that they're gonna incorporate it out

with some of their social technology and being like oh Chris is angry more of the time we got a lower his social score. You never know. It could turn into subversive and start breaking things or whatever subversives do. But we're going to make sure he doesn't do anything. You're kind of almost reaching that point of, what was that show with Tom Cruise, Minority Report, where you're like the brains or whatever can predict what you're going to do,

like before you even know you're going to do it. Like, we know Bob's going to kill someone, like, next year. He's not ready now, but we know he's definitely going to kill somebody. That's, you know, that's a problem. So there you go. What happens when they're wrong? So it's going to be interesting as to what's going on. The Chinese are putting all their money into these smart cities.

Inzhang. Inzhang. Inzhang. Inzhang. Inzhang. X-I-N-G. What day is it today? X-I-N-J-I-N-G.

Beijing. Guangdong. Guangdong. where do they come up these names and who Shandong I just I'm just gonna stop right there don't make fun of China Chris they're nice people I'm sure so anyway interesting things going on in the world with these emotional recognition systems how they're doing everything else if you want reach out and tell me what you think. You go to twitter.com forward slash Chris Voss. You go to facebook.com forward slash Chris Voss or any other place on the internet.

Pretty much for Chris Voss, chrisfoss.net and check it out. Google has released a patch for Chrome zero-day vulnerability being used in the wild that allows hackers to escape sandbox protections via malicious websites, according to Hacker News. So you want to make sure you update your web browser software. I'm kind of had this weird habit where I like to go in and check my Chrome browser, see what update I have. And, oh, I just went and checked it you can take and go in your Chrome browser if you use it and you can go to help which is in your right hand corner and hit about Chrome and when you do about Chrome it will

take and check to see the latest and usually it's really weird it it usually has something to launch like I just did so there you go anyway I'm going to relaunch this right now and download the thing so make sure you get that update as well you'll just want the latest updates on all your stuff because that way hopefully it won't get hacked anyway guys that's my story

I'm sticking to it be sure to stay in touch for all the tech news that we have and all the different things we're talking about we're hopefully going to be at SEMA or have some great SEMA interviews this week coming up. So be sure to watch for those, the SEMA show.

And of course, we're getting ready for CES 2020. Holy crap, 2020? No, stop it. Don't. What are you going to do? Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.