Tech News Weekly 328 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.

00:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Coming up on tech news weekly. Amanda Silverling is here as she joins me to talk about an update to the TikTok ban. How are TikTok creators responding and where do things stand now that the house has passed that TikTok ban? Then I bring my story of the week. It's all about change healthcare, which is responsible for processing payments and health records for many a person within the United States, and after it's been hacked, there's still a lot going on that has brought the healthcare industry to a standstill. We have two great interviews this week. First with Amelia David of the Verge, who helps us break down and understand the EU AI Act, and Zach Bowden of Windows Central stops by to talk about a device from Microsoft that, despite Microsoft kind of bringing to a close some people out there are still trying to keep kicking. It is the Surface Duo. All of that coming up on tech news weekly. This is tech news weekly, episode 328, with Amanda Silverling and Micah Sargent, recorded Thursday March 14th 2024, unraveling the EU's AI Act.

01:29
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02:31
Get started with Bitwarden's free trial of a teams or enterprise plan, or get started for free across all devices as an individual user at bitwardencom slash twit. That's bitwardencom slash twit. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where, every week, we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news. I am your host, micah Sargent, and, given that it is the second Thursday of the month, we are joined by the awesome, the wonderful, the Whipsmart, amanda Silberling of Tech Crunch. Welcome back to the show, amanda.

03:09 - Amanda Silberling (Host)
Hello and happy second Thursday of the month, happy holiday that we all observe.

03:14 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
What we do observe Pi Day. It is indeed 314 today, and so I, in honor of Pi Day, have a delicious treat from the patron saint of pies, marie Callender, here, and this is a chicken pot pie that is entirely frozen and that I'm using to kind of keep me cool while we do the show. So that's going to go back in my cool spot and we will continue on. Happy Pi Day, everyone, thanks. As you know, when we have a lovely guest on the show as we this is the first month of having the four Thursdays that are, in most months, booked we have our guest bring a story of the week to talk about, and so, amanda, I'd love it if you kicked things off. I think we've got a update on what's going on in the social landscape.

04:21 - Amanda Silberling (Host)
Yeah, so all eyes are on TikTok this week. Tiktok has been consuming my mind and my entire week, and it writing a lot about TikTok. But I wanted to point to a story that I wrote about how creators on TikTok are thinking about the ban, and I think it's interesting to see the different responses, where you have some creators that are really ardently like literally working with TikTok to lobby. Last year, when the CEO, shochu, first testified before Congress, there were creators that TikTok like flew out to lobby for them and talk about how TikTok helps them start a business and how TikTok is now like what they financially depend upon, or how TikTok has helped them communicate and learn things from people that they would never otherwise have met. And then, on the other hand, some creators I talked to were like hey, I'm not an expert on national security, I don't know if this is actually like a threat from the Chinese government or not, and it's interesting to see that unfold on the platform itself.

05:35 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, I mean this has been. You know, we knew about this a long time ago. This has sort of been tried before and was not successful at the time. And I talked last week to Abra Elhiti of CNET, kind of as this was moving through in the first place. And one of the things we talked about was the interesting timing, because right now we have it's an election year and we know that President Biden's campaign is in part taking place on TikTok and regardless of who is truly responsible for how this all shakes out, the person or people in charge are going to be held accountable for the changes that take place during that time. And so that alone I find fascinating and I've seen, anecdotally, other people say that as well that like, why are we focusing on this at all right now, in the middle of an election year, and when there are much larger, more pressing issues at play? And there's one other thing that I want to say too. The last time we talked about the TikTok ban, way back whenever it was kind of first going through, that was the first time in a while that I had heard from so many of our listeners who were just absolutely anti-TikTok, upset, frustrated, bamboozled, bothered, etc. That we were talking about it as if it wasn't something that should just be a foregone conclusion. This time I only heard from like one person, so it's interesting to see that shift. I don't you know again, that's anecdotally, but TikTok's been here for a while and the US government has yet to provide any proof that there's Shisty things going on behind the scenes. Tiktok continues to Prove and insist and make clear that US users data is not stored in China, and so it's all very confusing, perplexing as to what is at the heart of this, because I think it's to me there's a difference between Just on on security now.

08:04
On Tuesday, at a show that we do on the twit network, steve Gibson was talking about something that China is Doing at the moment. They're underway through a process that it's something I think it's called minus a or eliminate a or something like that, and it's the a stands for America and it's not to eliminate America. It's to eliminate American hardware in its, in its, like, most precious systems. So the idea is that you wouldn't have any America, potential American influence, interference in Infrastructure and government, and all that within China, and Many countries are doing that. Russia is the same way, not wanting to make sure that it's all Russian technology. China wanted to make sure it's as much Chinese technology as possible, the US trying to reduce its dependence on, on having, you know, chinese hardware and one in one way, the security cameras within Special zones like the Pentagon, etc. Etc. All having American made Security cameras as opposed to where they once were manufactured in China.

09:20
And to me, all of that makes sense. Right, I get that, but for a social media platform that again has yet to have anything proved out that it's nefarious and that is just a place where people are posting videos, I just I'm having trouble seeing why this is happening and why this is such a big thing. And yeah, I mean from the creator perspective. I mean I'm curious From what you, you know, you've done the research there. Like, are people worried about the loss of their income and, you know, their ability to connect with their people and what? Is there any push currently to try to find other Platforms or are they still very much locked in for now, trying to see tiktok continue on?

10:14 - Amanda Silberling (Host)
I Find this interesting because I think that, regardless of anything going on with the tiktok band, the number one advice that I hear creators give to each other is diversify your platforms, diversify your revenue streams, like If you're. If you have a hundred thousand followers on tiktok and like a thousand on Instagram, then you should be concerned right now. I mean, I don't know if the band's gonna go through, but it must be very scary if your whole audience is on a platform that you're not sure you're gonna have access to this time next year. And I think it's just a good lesson for creators generally that you need to be invested in multiple platforms and have multiple revenue streams, because you never know when something like this is gonna happen, even like we saw that with vine.

11:06 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah.

11:06 - Amanda Silberling (Host)
I'm just kind of disappeared, and there were a lot of people that had huge audiences on tiktok, people that had huge audiences on vine but then struggled to move that audience to other platforms.

11:15 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
So I think that creators should just always be thinking about how to make themselves as like, as resistant to any not resistant, but as Immune to any random government dealings as they can, and that's that's kind of that's kind of frustrating right, because I I look, plenty of people have plenty of feelings about the creator economy and the influencer Personality and everything that's that is that that entails, right, and there are legitimate critiques of that. But I think sometimes what's lost in those critiques and in the way that we could, we can, potentially look down on those folks, is how that person, in so many cases that that's that I should say Persona in so many cases, is doing the job of like 12 people. They are themselves the talents, they are themselves their promoter, they are themselves their you know CFO. There's like they have to play every single role and then, on top of that, to suddenly be faced with the complete loss of their income or even like a huge you know cut to their income. And In in every case, these are po, these are folks who are self-employed that by that I mean the folks that are, you know, completely dependent on the platform, self-employed folks, and there's already a bunch of like tax hurdles that are involved in that. Who knows how unemployment works whenever you're in that kind Like. That's just so stressful in general. And so in that way, I feel for the people who are, you know, looking at this right now, who are maybe going to be faced with the idea that the government itself is coming for their job and Like that's scary, because there's there's only so much that one can do if it were to go through. Now we know that tick tock Did put out a sort of pop-up, a little Interstitial, saying hey, call your legislator, the tick tock might be banned.

13:42
I think that's really fascinating, given how I think that is potentially a huge mobilization, but it the problem with that is that it does kind of prove the point in a way for those legislators who are going See, see what it can do. What if they decided to make a pop-up that said don't vote this year because voting is bad? How many people? You know what I mean, and I think that that almost kind of exacerbated the situation. So it's a really frustrating thing, I'm sure, for everybody involved when it comes to and by I mean like literally everyone involved the people who just like to watch Tick-tock, the people who are Making their living on tick-tock, the people who run tick-tock, the government who are involved in the legislation and voting on it everybody's frustrated. And when I'm frustrated and where I would imagine you may be frustrated too I won't speak for you, though, so you can let me know is.

14:44
Let's picture a world in a world where tick-tock is banned.

14:51
Just because it's banned, just because the government says to Apple, you may not put this app in the app store, and says to Google Play, you may not put this app in the Google Play Store, does not mean that there won't be means of accessing TikTok through some other method.

15:15
And I can already foresee the the problem that comes along with that, because if my youngest brother has any indication, sometimes people will just find a tutorial and they'll follow through with the tutorial and Not consider the implications therein. He jail, broke his iPhone many moons ago and had, you know, somebody basically able to see what he was doing on his iPhone, gaining access to his passwords and all of that kind of stuff. Because you, you don't have those same protections in place. And so if the government is concerned About the potential security implications of TikTok itself, just imagine what it's like if it is in a completely unregulated, unknown space and everybody's installing it. I think I said last week, is it not better to have the devil you know than the devil you don't? And I say that with like a lowercase d for devil and almost in quotes, because again, I don't think it's been proven that TikTok is a devil in the first place.

16:33 - Amanda Silberling (Host)
Yeah, I mean it's interesting because there is no evidence of the Chinese government accessing American TikTok data, but there is evidence of bite dance, the parent company of TikTok, accessing American TikTok data. And Then the question is like so from that conclusion, can we jump to the Chinese government has access to American data. And then, if we take that a step further, I think one, there's the question of so if they do have that data, what are they gonna do with it? Are they actually going to be able to carry out like an Influenced campaign on TikTok? Like Like Ted Cruz tried to ask Show to the CEO when he was testifying in Congress, like what happened in Tiananmen Square, and he answered the question? You can go on TikTok.

17:24
There are videos about things that the Chinese government doesn't want people talking about because it's not a Chinese app. But I, at the same time, like there is a lot we don't know and I understand the skepticism, but I think it does feel like political theater. Especially there's the age-old issue of but what about the data brokers and how? Like every time there is legislation about internet security, there are like a bunch of tech people on Twitter like when are they gonna pass legislation that Makes data brokers less able to just do whatever they want with our data, like they could sell it to Chinese companies if they wanted to. And then, like you don't need to ban TikTok to like that's not gonna prevent Chinese companies from getting our data. If that is really what this is about for these legislators.

18:19 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yeah, you know, we obviously are going to continue keeping an eye on this as the legislation continues through our law making body, but it is, it's all playing out, you know, in front of us and I think it'll be, in Whatever way it shakes out, a very fascinating thing. We will come back shortly with my story of the week, but I do want to take a quick break to tell you about Ecamm, who are bringing you this episode of tech news weekly. Ecamm is the leading live streaming and video production studio built For the Mac. Now, whether you are a beginner or an expert, ecamm is here to elevate your video production from streaming and recording to podcasting and presenting ecamm live as your all-in-one video tool. Perfect for simplifying your workflow, ecamm live includes support from multiple cameras and screen sharing, plus the live camera switcher let's you direct your show in real time.

19:23
I just recently, right before the the turn of the year, had a Special couple of episodes of a Dungeons and Dragons podcast that Amanda Silverling actually participated in, and she can attest to the fact that we used ecamm as the kind of live streaming, live production platform they all received in, but all my players received invites. They, you know, clicked on it, they appeared and I was able to do all sorts of stuff, including one Very cool feature where one of my players had a green screen behind them and I was able to pipe that video in and Locally on my machine, key out that green screen Right there on my device and have whatever background the person wanted up here behind them. It was really cool and ecamm made it very easy to do, plus getting that high quality audio and video from my remote guests so you can stand out from the crowd with high quality video. You can add logos, titles, lower thirds graphics, share your screen, drop in video clips, bring on interview guests as I did, use a green screen, and so much more. You can join the thousands of worldwide entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, podcasters, educators, musicians and other Mac users who rely on ecamm live daily. And if that live part is scaring you, thinking, oh, this is just for live streaming, don't want to scare you. I literally use this tool every week to record my show hands-on Mac, which is a show that is not streamed live. It is a great video recording tool whenever you're switching between different scenes, cameras, etc. So get one month free like, why not go try it if you have a Mac and you haven't tried this yet, just try it. Get one month free when you subscribe to any of ecamm's plans. Visit ecammcom, slash twit and use the promo code twit TWIT at check out. Thank you so much to ecamm for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech news weekly and thank you so much for being such a powerful tool that I've used now for so long. We appreciate you All.

21:28
Right back from the break and I want to talk about kind of a scary story. To be honest, on February 21st, a, a company called change health care, a health company, was hacked, and Change health care on its own may not be a company you've heard of before, but it turns out that that company is, because it is a sort of subset of United Health Group Inc. It is the backbone of many a health record and payment system for the health industry in the United States, and so what happened was, as many of you are now familiar, a ransomware attack took place where the the hackers are able to infiltrate a network and then encrypt all of the data on the network and lock it out and then say you need to pay us or we will not give you access to the encrypted data, and it brings everything to a standstill. Now this was perpetrated by a Group called black cat. The black cat hacker group has claimed responsibility for it and all reports suggest that that is indeed the group that was responsible.

22:59
But what is, I think, most Important here, most egregious, is the fact that, due to the nature of change, health care and its the fact that it has its paws and so many cookie jars and is Again sort of the backbone of a lot of the US's health care system, it has brought the health care system in many places to a standstill. One in this is, according to Steve Gibson from security now, who did a lot of research on this, one in three US health records is Tied to change health care in some way, and at the same time that it does health records it also Does health payments. So it is kind of like a clearing house between health insurance claims and health insurance payouts, and that has resulted in the complete standstill of many a cancer clinic in the United States and is particularly affected many of the smaller Organizations in the United States. So a community health center in Texas and Arkansas, for example, had to move to paper claims for a period of time, which of course costs money because you're running up the payments for the, the postage, and if you're printing things out, there are some physicians who are not being paid, so instead they are kind of forgoing paychecks until it's all sorted out, in order to continue to provide health care to people, hugely important. There are lots of Health organizations that provide medication to patients who are unable to purchase medication right now, and I think this kind of speaks to we Talk about.

25:00
How you know, in the US, especially the free market, capitalistic nature has in some ways, led to a blossoming of Success. You know, the US being one of the wealthiest countries and the. You know our GDP and this and that and the other, blah, blah, blah great reasons why capitalism maybe is a good thing, right. However, capitalism often does lead to the acquisition of companies by larger companies, and when that happens, as happened in this case, then you have one source of Truth and one target for attack, and when that company is targeted and attacked, then all of those companies that once existed underneath are also affected, which results in something like this, where you have 1 third of the health industry in the US coming to a standstill and people not getting their medication.

26:14
The company was acquired by United Health I think it was back in 2021 and when it was acquired it of course went through the process of it had to you know that had to be approved and there were monopoly concerns that were brought up, but a judge ended up saying, eh, it's fine, and allowed that acquisition to proceed. This is according to Bloomberg that reported on this story, and so change health care was able to be acquired by United Health and has existed under that company since then. Now United Health has provided some means of Trying to make money available. Many health insurance companies that are kind of tied up in this have tried to make money available, and there's lots of especially in these smaller clinics just sort of you know, handshake deals saying We'll, we'll come back to you later, we'll get that. But I also found it kind of interesting that there are health insurance companies that are trying to pay out those claims and they can't do anything with the money. So the money is just kind of sitting there because it needs to move through change health is health's network.

27:36
You'd think that this would be an opportunity for competitors to kind of come in and scoop up some of the you know, some of the business. But according to the Bloomberg piece, the. The fact is it takes a very long time to change any kind of system, and so there hasn't been that much movement. But yeah, overall I just think with this story it is. It's kind of scary when you don't necessarily realize how much of the information that you have, that is, yours, is kind of held by one group, and that one third of the health records in the US are vulnerable, if not already kind of scooped up by these bad actors, by the Black Cat group, and if they might very well be out there right now. And if your health provider is using a health record system that is underneath the subset of change healthcare, that is underneath the umbrella of United Health Group, your health records may very well be part of this, this scoop of several terabytes of data.

29:00
Now, according to the report and this is, I think, the most interesting aspect of this hackers, the Black Cat group, reportedly received a $22 million Bitcoin payment and what we think is going on is that United Health and you know, change healthcare, I guess decided to make the payment for the ransomware payment and that they were hoping that it would mean that things would be unlocked, that they'd get the data back.

29:42
But as far as we know, that has not happened and that $22 million we don't know for sure. I should be clear that the $22 million Bitcoin payment came from United Health. That is just kind of it happened around the same time that this ransomware thing happened, and so it's, you know, kind of scary that this has happened and that United Health is not saying whether or not they paid the ransom. They're not talking about what data specifically has been compromised. But Mandiant, which is a subsidiary of Alphabet, or Google as it was once known, is the group that is kind of looking into what's happened here, what's going on and what we know going forward. But yeah, I don't know. To me, this is just one more reminder that, like, everything we have is just very close to chaos. I hate to be that dark about it, but yeah, I mean, what are your thoughts on this, amanda?

30:48 - Amanda Silberling (Host)
Maybe it's just because we just finished talking about TikTok, but I'm like huh, it's almost as though there are security threats that exist, like within the country, yeah, and that there are issues for people that use technology that are not TikTok. And what if there were comprehensive privacy legislation instead of like let's ban TikTok, amen. But also I think that anti-trust oversight might be a good thing, yeah yeah, absolutely that is I was going to say.

31:24 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
If there's one thing in fact, when I read the, I'm just going to read it directly from this from the Bloomberg piece quote after a two-week trial in Washington, a federal judge disagreed and allowed the acquisition to proceed. To be clear, the disagreement was saying I do not agree that this is an anti-trust concern that the US Department of Justice put forth. The federal judge said no, not anti-trust concern, and so the acquisition was allowed to proceed. After two weeks I read that sentence and I went of course because, yeah, it's like this is why we have these things in place. This is well one reason why we have this in place, and maybe it is a good idea to pay more attention to how bringing it all under one stinking roof can cause issues like this.

32:11
It's sometimes as annoying that it is human nature to need to be confronted with things going very wrong for us to learn our lessons, but such is the way of things. Thank you, operant conditioning. With that, I think we will say we will bid adieu to Amanda Silverling for this week. Amanda, if folks want to follow you online and keep up with all the great work you're doing and check out that upcoming story we hope about AI and how it doesn't know letters. Where can they go to do that?

32:48 - Amanda Silberling (Host)
I am unfortunately still on Twitter at A Silbreitz. In the little lower third I am on blue sky at Amandaomglol. I really got to get some like unified branding here. But I have an internet culture podcast called Wow with True and I think it's good. It is good I make it.

33:15 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
It is good you should all go listen to it. I can confirm that it is indeed good. Thank you, amanda, so much, and we will see you again in a month.

33:25 - Amanda Silberling (Host)
Bye, Happy Pi Day. Happy Pi Day Woo Alrighty folks.

33:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Up. Next. I've got my first of two interviews this about the European Union's AI Act, but I want to take a super quick break to encourage you all to consider joining ClubTwit at twittv slash club twit. When you join the club, you gain access to some pretty great benefits. First and foremost, you get access to every single Twitch show with no ads. In fact, you can get access to all of our videos with no ads. In fact, you won't even hear what I'm saying right now in the ClubTwit version of the show, because this is an ad and so that keeps you just with the content none of the ads. You also gain access to the Twitch Plus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show, special ClubTwit events get published there. And access to the members only Discord server A fun place to go to chat with your fellow ClubTwit members and also those of us here at Twitch. It is a very active Discord. It's a lot of fun and you should consider joining.

34:26
Along with all of that, you gain access to the video versions of our ClubTwit exclusive shows. There's the untitled Linux show, which is all about Linux. There's Hands On Mac from yours truly, that covers Apple tips and tricks. There's Hands On Windows from Paul Therot that covers Windows tips and tricks. And there's Home Theater Geeks from Scott Wilkinson that talks all things Home Theater, as well as my show, which I co-host with Rosemary Orchard, ios Today. That is a fantastic video podcast. So if you want the video versions of those shows, you will need to join ClubTwit.

35:03
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35:49
All right, let's get back to the show so that we can do this interview. I happened to see the EU is doing the most right now. The EU is making sure that there are regulations in place for just about everything regarding tech and, honestly, I've gotten mad respect for the EU because the EU don't play, and in part of what the group the block is working on at the moment, it is focused on AI. Joining us to talk about the act that was just passed is Amelia David of the Verge. Welcome to the show.

36:36
Hi Hi, it's so great to have you here. So I was hoping that you could start by telling us a little bit about what the EU Act is, how long the block is kind of been working through the approval process and if we know when it will be kind of fully enacted.

36:52 - Emilia David (Guest)
Yeah, so the EU has been working on the AI Act since around 2021, middle of 2021, and over that time, the Act has gone through several changes and it's basically going to put a bunch of guidelines around how companies like OpenAI, meta and Google can basically do business with their AI models in Europe, and that means they have to make sure that it's safe and prove that it's safe, and it will also go down they call it downstream for other companies that are going to be using AI, they have to also show that they are using it safely. So that's essentially what the EU AI Act is. It's one of the biggest, one of the first, although technically, china did AI regulations first, but it's the biggest and most sweeping AI regulation that we have right now.

38:08 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Wow, yeah, it is again very impressive. So let's talk about how the Act has changed since it was first introduced back in 2021, and maybe you can tell us a little bit about why its introduction is interesting as well, given when it came, versus when we saw all of the generative AI start to pop up.

38:34 - Emilia David (Guest)
Yeah, so it really started taking shape just around the time generative AI started really blowing up. To be fair, the EU has been talking about regulating some sort of artificial intelligence or machine learning for a little bit, but it is one of the bigger regional blocks to really talk about protecting consumers and data and things like that. And what's really interesting here is before it was approved or provisionally approved, the EU has very convoluted voting systems for their laws. So before yesterday when they voted on the EU AI Act, it was originally going to be a lot stricter than what we see now. So there was going to be outright banning on using artificial intelligence for biometric purposes, so basically facial recognition and profiling so it was originally completely banned. In this new version, or the version that all the countries in the EU agreed, it will have some sort of carve out for law enforcement, so only law enforcement will be able to use facial recognition technology, for example. So it isn't completely banned.

40:16
And there were a lot of other compromises too. It used to be more strict on what's called general purpose AI. Essentially, what that is are the foundation models or large language models like GPT-4, gemini and Lama-2. And they were supposed to be more strict on how these models were going to be used in the EU. They've softened that a little bit, essentially asking companies to like can you send us the model and we'll evaluate it, rather than saying you can't do this, this and this. So it's a lot more permissive than when it first started. It's still regulation, it's policy, yeah, but it's not as strict.

41:15 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Over time it's got a little less strict. Now, in fact, that's kind of my next question for you, because even though so from 2021 until now, there were a lot of changes made, it's been approved, but France, for example, still has some problems with the legislation. Can you tell us a little bit about what the ongoing criticism is of the legislation?

41:38 - Emilia David (Guest)
Okay, to be clear, even though this has been passed, it's not going into force until like 2026, maybe. So there's still, you know, time to either adjust or fix something with it. But France has been one of the more vocal critics of the AI Act. One of the biggest open source AI startups is Mistral. It's a company that was started in France, is still based in France and it's becoming really popular among software developers and researchers and AI engineers, and it's just started doing partnerships with Microsoft, for example. So France really wants to keep that momentum going.

42:39
They think this is a good thing for their economy a homegrown AI company in the way that open AI is a homegrown US company and for the French government, specifically Emmanuel Macron. He has said that the AI Act would restrict innovation within Europe. So they were the ones who really pushed for a lot more of the loosening up of the rules. They want a lot more loosened up, but in the end, the French minister that's in the EU had voted for it. But there is still time to maybe soften it up a little bit more.

43:23 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Got it and you briefly mentioned a little bit about the open source stuff. I'm curious what are some of the areas where the Act falls short, at least in regard to, maybe criticisms? But also, I think just some of this feels it feels objective, it does not feel subjective. I mean because there are some places where we've seen criticism for a long time when it comes to generative AI systems and the Act is maybe showing its age a little bit, which is wild to say because of how quickly generative AI moves right. So, yeah, what are some areas where it kind of falls short?

44:05 - Emilia David (Guest)
One of the things that people were talking about, like you said, was open source. The open source community actually openly lobbied the EU to be friendly is a good term to use, but they really wanted to let EU leaders know that any restrictive Act was bad for the open source community. They feel that any regulation means it's very difficult for open source companies, which are usually smaller and sometimes just like more research projects than anything, would be overregulated and they can't pay any fines, for example. But that also meant that there isn't a lot of fences around what open source developers could do, especially if they have a very large, powerful model. So that is still an issue and in fact, the open source foundation model security and things like that are also now being looked at by the US government. So the EU AI Act doesn't have a lot of strength around that.

45:22
The other thing that is notably missing in the Act is more guidelines around data, which is weird because the EU is known for very strong data protections, but they don't say anything about training data in copyright. They basically say or the law basically says that you should follow existing rules around data protection, and that would be the GDPR. It doesn't really jive with what AI tends to do with data. So it's still missing, like it's not talking about the.

46:07
Yes, the EU AI Act isn't talking about data privacy, but it's also not talking about how can these companies be using data, especially copyrighted data, which apparently trains a lot of AI models. They just say follow the rules, even if the GDPR doesn't say anything about that either, because it is older. So, and a lot of these more powerful models, like general purpose AI models, have kind of gotten past a lot of the issues that the EU AI Act is trying to do, because they're much better now. So also, they already have the data from before and the AI Act doesn't say anything about, like do you retroactively take that out? There's still. You can definitely tell that it took years to make this and that there have been a lot of negotiations around it.

47:06 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Absolutely. Yeah, it sounds like it. Now, the last thing I'm kind of curious about as was the case with the EU's GDPR, which, of course, kind of seems to have led other countries to create their own data protection policies or inspire in some way their data protection policies, do you think that other countries are going to use the EU's AI Act as a model, as a framework, as a bit of inspiration for creating AI legislation? Or have you heard, like in the US and in other places, criticism of this act suggesting that maybe it's not the right way for those countries to go?

47:44 - Emilia David (Guest)
Well, we haven't seen a GDPR in the US, right, we've only seen one state like try to do it California. So in this it's probably going to be the same thing. It will be a model for other countries to look at, but it will not be a template. And I say that specifically because different countries, different regions, have a different idea what regulation would mean for them or what innovation could mean for them, especially here in the US.

48:25
There is well, number one most of the biggest AI developers are based in the US and the US does not want to let go of that innovation advancement. So whatever regulation the US does come up with, it will be very specific to the US, and we've already heard a lot of US policymakers, for example, talk about the EU AI Act and say it is interesting to note that it is happening, but we will not be following that. We will be doing it our own way. So it's going to be a model they're going to look at. Oh, this is what they did. This is what they said is important. It's not as important to us, so we'll take that off. Yeah, that's it. In the same vein, we don't have a lot of data protection laws in other countries In the same vein as the GDPR. We're probably not going to see the same exact looking regulation with AI.

49:34 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
That makes sense. Amelia, I want to thank you so much for your time today for honestly crawling through this legislation and helping us to understand it and break it apart. It's all very complicated and obviously when you're trying to regulate something as big and as multifaceted and as quickly changing as AI, there's a lot that has to be involved, so sincerely appreciate that you have taken the time to do that. Of course, folks can head over to thevergecom to check out your work, but is there anywhere else they could go to follow along to keep up with what you're doing?

50:09 - Emilia David (Guest)
Sure, if you want to see me try to make sense of the EU, I am over on Twitter at Mia David, that's M-I-Y-A. David. That's also the same on Blue Sky and I am on threads and that would be C-R-I-M-E-D-Y on threads.

50:32 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it. Bye, bye, bye, all righty folks. Up next we have got a conversation about a good old device that's just barely hanging on by a thread, so stay tuned for that. All right, so have you heard the one about the folding phone and how you know it's all but disappeared. Well, that is what Zach Bowden of Windows Central is here to talk about. Welcome to the show, zach. Thanks for having me. Yeah, pleasure to have you here. So you know what. I hate to say it, but I do think that our listeners might need a reminder. Can you start by telling us about the Surface Duo phone?

51:18 - Zac Bowden (Guest)
Yes. Well, the Surface Duo is a smartphone that Microsoft put together about almost four years ago now and it was a unique device at the time. One, because it was A, a foldable, but two, it was a foldable with two screens and Microsoft tried to sort of make this device for a couple of years before they actually announced it. They tried to build it with Windows. Never happened with Windows. By the time it was announced it was actually an Android device and it launched to I think it's meant to say mixed reviews.

51:47
People weren't too keen on the software. It was Microsoft's first time building an Android phone and they really just weren't good at building Android software yet. But other than that, it had a sort of measly camera and, yeah, it was just people. The reviewers were not too keen on it. People bought it and lots of people returned it because of all the bugs it had at launch. Then, a year later, they did a Surface Duo 2, which kind of fixed some of the things they had a better camera, had slightly better software, but unfortunately the damage the first-gen Surface Duo did really didn't help with the second-gen. So that product line quite quickly died. But it was a really unique look at Microsoft's vision for foldable phones, this one being a dual-screen one.

52:27 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Now, when you say that it quite quickly died, I'm curious to hear what's the current state of the Surface Duo. I mean, is there a Microsoft support page I can go where it says we've killed it and then have, Like, does it still get updates? Or is it just not? Not it's end of life there?

52:45 - Zac Bowden (Guest)
So the first surface duo that the first generation device is out of support officially. It Exited support sometime last year. The surface duo to is still supported and will be until October later this year, but it's only getting security updates. Microsoft, to my knowledge, has no intention of delivering any more major OS updates to the surface duo to. Unfortunately, that device only received one major Android OS release, which is a abysmal in this day and age compared to other flagship Android devices now, in your piece, you actually mentioned that you're a pretty big fan of the surface duo, and so you kind of talked about it.

53:23 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
But why, what do you think made Microsoft kind of leave it behind and To this day? What do you think is good about it and what's not so good about the device? Why does it still have these kind of you know supporters and fans? And say hey, it's, it's, it's pretty cool.

53:41 - Zac Bowden (Guest)
Yeah well, so my, the reason why I love the surface duo is because I Generally think the dual-screen aspect, the that sort of form factor, is better than a foldable phone. I currently daily drive the pixel fold and you know I do like this device as well. But in regards to productivity, I think Microsoft nailed it with the dual-screen aspect. I think when they first announced the device, they just they described it as having defined real estate, and that sort of rang home with me, because I Think Android's biggest problem right now is that a lot of the Android apps are mobile apps, just expand it onto a larger screen.

54:13
When it comes to foldables, and they don't look very good, what was nice about the surface duo is that it was two phone size screens, so you could have one app on one side, another one the other, and they both be running like a phone app.

54:24
They look like a phone up. They sort of format themselves like a phone app. There's no weird formatting going on with the expanded your eyes and stuff, and then with the 360-degree hinge you can fold it all the way around and it's now just a normal single-screen phone. There's nothing really special about it, whereas foldables these days of course they're like either really weirdly shaped or if you open up the big screen it has a crease down the middle. If there's all sorts of just weird issues with the foldables versus the dual-screen, I think the reason why it's no longer being made by Microsoft is because one not enough people bought it and two people Unless you use a service duo. I think a lot of people don't understand how having a gap between two screens is better than having a crease. I think a lot of people see the the sort of foldable screen guy that makes more sense because for watching video, of course, but when it comes to multitasking and using apps individually, I think the dual-screen aspect makes way more sense.

55:14 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
They should have hired you to Do that part because, honestly, you just now convinced me more than they ever did when they first announced it. Because I am, when it comes to Me, sitting at my desk, I've got multiple displays. I like to have two different places at least running different things. And yeah, that's the difference. It makes sense to have these two displays and that the apps can look like they should. Versus this, let's just try to fit it all on here, but you know there might be this little crease here that's gonna make it look a little. That makes sense. Makes sense. Now you did speak to two developers who are working to keep that surface duo dream alive. I was hoping you could start first by telling us about Windows on arm for surface duo.

56:02 - Zac Bowden (Guest)
Yeah, so, as I mentioned at the top of the top of the segment there, the, the duo was originally supposed to be a Windows device, but Microsoft. They tried and tried and obviously Windows phone died off. There was never not really an app platform there, so they event eventually sort of abandoned that vision. But a Talented developer by the name of Gustav Montz has decided to sort of bring that vision to life anyway and bring Windows 11 to the surface duo, and I've actually got it running on here. You may not be able to see it properly, but I've got outlook running on one side and I've got Photoshop the full version of Windows Photoshop running on the other side, and it's worked surprisingly well for a device that wasn't officially supposed to run Windows. So all of the drivers, to my knowledge, are custom built by Gustav. A lot of the firmware work he's done himself as well. He just released a new tool that makes it quite easy to flash the Windows 11 image onto the surface duo, and what this does is really turn the surface duo into a Pocket PC, a very tiny pocket PC.

56:55
Performance is shockingly good for what this is. It's a powered by a snapjoken 855, after all, and only, I think, 8 gigs, those six gigs of RAM, but if you keep your sort of Expectations in check, it does perform rather well. You can browse the web with it. You can do some light Photoshop editing here, as I have done, and what's really eye-opening about it is that I didn't realize how useful a full Windows PC in your pocket could be. You know it's good to be able to pull out the device and just be able to check a quick thumbnail that somebody's put together at work for you to check and see if it's okay Open.

57:26
Some Photoshop works just fine. I mean also works with the surface pen. So you can download things like one note and you can take notes in one note using the dual screens on here, which is pretty cool. The only things that don't really work right now are sound although I believe that that's coming and Also telephony. So Windows 11 itself just doesn't really support making phone calls using a cellular connection Because it's not Windows phone anymore. But you can still use Wi-Fi and stuff and browse the web and download apps and whatnot. It is Windows and arm, which means a ton apps will run in an emulated layer, but if you can find native Windows and arm apps, they run perfectly fine nice.

58:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
And then, of course, we've got to ask about. As you mentioned, it was intended to be a, an Android dev, or I guess it wasn't originally intended me, but ended up kind of swapping to just being an Android device and found a way to make Android run on the platform from from another developer. Tell us about that.

58:21 - Zac Bowden (Guest)
Yeah, so the surface do are officially is sort of stuck on Android 12l, but another talented and also ex Microsoft developer, ty Gwen, was able to put together a custom Android 14 one. So users who are using surface do, who kind of want to experiment with the later versions of Android, can flash this custom ROM and it will bring you up to date with the latest version of Android. I believe there is a plan to do an Android 15 rom when Android 15 releases later this year, but this is quite fascinating because it's a good look at how Microsoft had to sort of Strong arm Android into behaving on the surface. Do I, which also may explain why the version of Android Microsoft put together Was so buggy at first, because Android by default isn't very good at handling two screens side by side. So Microsoft had to do a lot of custom work in regards to windowing and UI to make that that those displays play nicely together.

59:10
Technically, android actually only sees one screen, is one big virtual screens spread across two physical screens, and so to build a custom Android ROM you sort of have to mimic that, otherwise Android doesn't see the gap down the middle, and one of the fascinating things that I did for his custom ROM was.

59:27
He sort of took a look at what Foldables like the Hari mate X were doing, which were these sort of inverted foldables where they folded the screen on the outside. And if you take a look at a surface duo, that's kind of the same thing you fold it all the way around, just with two screens instead of one continuous one, and so if you apply that logic to a custom ROM, you can kind of get Android to sort of behave itself slightly when moving between dual screen and single screen mode. There's still some additional work that needs to be done there on the developer side, but yeah, it does have support for basic postures and whatnot. It's a great sort of Hobby to take a look at if you want to experience sort of newer versions of Android, but you've only got a surface duo to do it with.

01:00:04 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Yes. So, speaking of hobby, I am curious kind of how viable do you think these options are for surface duo users, and who do you actually recommend makes use of these options, if we think about the people who have these devices, is it you know, if you're an early adopter then you're probably likely to figure this out, or does it need a little bit of technical know-how? And then, what are the potential security and privacy concerns of using these kind of custom ROMs and and all that jazz?

01:00:35 - Zac Bowden (Guest)
Yeah, I think it's. If you're actually daily driving your surface duo still, I probably wouldn't recommend trying this out. This is really only for those of you who have a sort of surf do on the side that you're no longer really using, because it's a fun sort of Thing to try out trying out Windows 11 on the device. As I said, it doesn't support phone calls, for example. So if you were trying to use the surface duo as a phone, that might be a bit tricky to get the hang. Of the Android ROM to my knowledge does support phone calls but it doesn't support things like 4g and 5g. So if you are again using your phone as a natural phone going out and about, you don't really want to be stuck with 3g or 4g speeds. So I wouldn't recommend daily driving them. This really is just for Experimentation and just trying out new things to sort of try and keep the device useful in your around-the-home sort of environment.

01:01:21 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Understood. Well, zach, I want to thank you so much for your time joining us today to talk about a Device that's still kicking, even if Microsoft maybe wants to put it in the past. We appreciate it now. Of course, folks can head over to windows central calm to check out your work, but is there anywhere else they should go to follow along with what you're up to?

01:01:41 - Zac Bowden (Guest)
You can follow me on Twitter, or I guess is X these days at Zach Bowden, that's ZAC BOW DEN wonderful Thanks, so much Thanks, and with that we have reached the end of this episode of tech news weekly.

01:01:57 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
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01:02:24
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