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John C. Morley: (00:09)
Hi everyone. I'm John C. Morley, the host of the JMOR Tech Talk Show and Inspirations for Your Life.
John C. Morley: (01:02)
Hey guys, it is John C. Morley, a serial entrepreneur. Welcome to the JMOR Tech Talk show. Can you believe, ladies and gentlemen, we are on the last Friday of February? Where'd the whole month of February go? Where'd December gone? Where'd the whole year go? 2022 that was, and now we're in 2023. You know we have a lot to share with you guys tonight, but what I want to say to you is thank you for making a choice to tune into the JMOR Tech Talk show every Friday at 5:30 PM Eastern. And maybe you watch us on the replay, which I really appreciate. And thank you so much for coming back. We have a lot to share with you tonight. So let's start because I think you'll love what we have to share with you.
First thing. All right, so meta is rolling out a new language model amid the big-tech AI push.
John C. Morley: (01:53)
So what's this all about? So Meta has rolled out this new platform with a large language model that's based on artificial intelligence, and it's aimed at the research community. So this is interesting to see, you know, what they're going to do. What are their plans for this? But I'd have to say that whenever meta does something, or we all know the name, it's Facebook. What are their real true plans? Like, what do they really want to, I guess, gauge with what they're doing? And so, meta Platforms Inc. released this new AI-aimed research we'll call Tool for the chief community executive. Mark Zuckerberg said I quote meta Platforms Inc in a post that you know. It is releasing a new large language model based on artificial intelligence aimed at the research community.
John C. Morley: (03:04)
So there's a battle right now to be with what's going on in the AI technology space. And there's a lot happening as well as what happened last year with the launch of Microsoft's backed Open AI Chat GPT and a lot of people from Alphabet Inc., Which is a division of Google to China's Badu Inc. To create their own offerings. Do they feel threatened? Maybe Meta will make its model available to the AI research community. They added. And AI has emerged as a bright spot for investment, but do we really know its future? Last year, the giant social media let go of 13% of its workforce or more than 11,000 employees, as it wrestled with soaring costs and a weak advertising market. We've known that Facebook meta has changed. Putting ads out there now is a lot different than the way it used to be.
John C. Morley: (04:18)
I don't see the same ROI. And the company is also considering more traditional cuts, including slashing some projects and some jobs, and they may truly have to focus on what's important to their bottom line. One of the things I think they should do is actually hire some people that actually work in the company and not outsourced because then they'd actually care about the customers and what's going on. I don't know. This is a big situation that's happening and there are lots of issues that are transpiring right now with Facebook. You know, paid ads and social media influencers must disclose sponsored ad posts and paid content, huh? So now you'll be able to know whether it's something that they truly are promoting, or is it something that they just believe in? That's going to be interesting.
John C. Morley: (05:33)
And we know there's lots coming up the pike with Microsoft. They're always working on things like the mini, slim VR and virtual reality simulations. But the question is, where are they going? The global VR healthcare market is projected to reach 30.40 billion by 2026. Let me say that number again. 30.40 billion, that's pretty high. The Indian market size is expected to reach 1.2 billion, but is it going to stay, or is it something that's just going to be around so people can make some bucks, and then people are going to just like, you know, have the mad dash for the exit? I think it comes down to whether we are designing technology to help people or whether we are designing technology to rip people off. Now that might sound like a harsh statement, but it's the truth, right? We all know a lot of these companies that put out operating systems, they rush to the market not mentioning any specific name, but you know who I'm talking about.
John C. Morley: (06:46)
And they don't really make sure it's sound before it gets to the market. They just figure it'll be taken in the wash. But I think that's a pretty bad approach if you will. So as these different companies are starting to evolve and other things are transpiring, I think we're going to find out that a lot's going to change in how AI creates posts and are these posts going to replicate human behavior. We already saw just a couple of weeks ago that one was actually kind of talking back to someone and making some comments that, let's say, were not appropriate.
John C. Morley: (07:46)
Meta's always looking for the next best thing. Unfortunately, I've yet to see consistency with meta. In the last five or six years, I've noticed that they've taken these changes or these turns, but no one seems to know what's going on. I mean, that's my take on it. And you might say, me, Hey John, you know, do they have a market? And it's hard for me to tell you if they have a market because we all know that AI is becoming popular, but we also know that it's being abused. Okay? And meta is LLMA, short form for Large Language Model Meta AI, okay? It is available under a non-commercial license to researchers and entities affiliated with the government, civil society, and academia, as they had quoted in their blog. But the company will make available the underlying code for users to tweak the model and use it for research-related use cases.
John C. Morley: (08:58)
The model, which Meta said requires quote unquote, far less computing power, is trained in 20 languages, focusing on those with Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. META's announcement appeared to be a step in testing their generative AI capabilities so they can implement them into their products in the future. Close quote said Gil Luria, a senior software analyst at DA Davidson. I think what they're doing right now is they're just trying to figure out what's going to stick, and they're trying to do that for little to no money. And I don't fault them for that, but I don't know if they're heading down the right path or just looking for something to make a quick buck. That's my big concern with where Meta's going with this AI system. All right, so here's something else about AI. You know, many you've heard of, you know, going to court and things like that. But how about this? How about the fact that Columbia Court moves to Metaverse to host a hearing? That is pretty cool. So a Columbian court just recently hosted its first trial in the Metaverse and now hopes to experiment again with virtual reality and authorities as they were told to routers. Close quote. In the two-hour hearing held by Columbia's Magdalena administrative Court participants, a traffic dispute appeared as avatars in a virtual courtroom at the magistrate Maria Quinone Trina avatar dressed in black legal ropes.
John C. Morley: (10:56)
The county is among the earliest worldwide to test real legal hearings in the Metaverse. So why? Here's a quote; it felt more real than a video call. Reuters was told recently describing the metaverse experiences as amazing on Zoom. She noted many people turn off their cameras, and you have no idea what they're doing. So I think people want to be immersive; they want to be part of an experience. And so by using Metaverse, and I'm sure they're not going to be the only ones that are going to offer something like this, there's going to be other providers, okay, that is going to do this.
John C. Morley: (11:55)
We create this illusion that technology is going to make things more efficient, but sometimes it's the opposite. Close quote. And that was a quote by Isabel Woodford in Mexico City. My question is if we're going to do these things online, is there going to be a standard that's withheld or not? I don't know. People are looking for other ways to communicate. We've seen lots of legal proceedings move to video meetings hosted by Zoom, Google, and many others. And some have started experimenting with Metaverse, but this is the first real official legal scenario that has gotten some press. And Columbia's court proceeding on February 15th, 2023, was streamed to YouTube, and it went off without too much of a glitch. Of course, some issues with camera movement and some distorted movements, which is to be expected. I think the issue comes down to how easy is it to use this and how does it work? Because you don't have a person literally on camera, you have an avatar. I think the big issue that we're going to have here is, is this going to do what we want? And if it is, great. If it's not, then I'd say there is a problem, a problem with what would be happening, why things would be happening a certain way. But the fact that a Columbia Court moves to Metaverse, I gotta tell you, that's pretty impressive.
John C. Morley: (14:57)
My question is, will other courts move to Metaverse? It's interesting. Virtual limits. Lawyers expect jurisdictional boundaries to still apply in a metaverse, but this is interesting because now we're holding somebody legally accountable on a virtual platform. It's another way people can interact. This could be the way that a lot of information is going back and forth, and the whole concept of a metaverse is to create the real world online through avatars and buildings. There are some companies online right now that actually rent space online. You have a virtual address. That's pretty cool. So if people do these things online, are people going to take them seriously?
John C. Morley: (16:33)
Strangely enough, they're starting to see, this is the part that really has me a little bit flustered because they're taking this stuff seriously, and with things like, you know, the US Justice Department, they might decide to jump on the bandwagon with this, but I'm not sure we're going to have to kind of see what happens with that. And man, we'll let you know. But I just thought it was very interesting that the Columbian court decided to do this.
All right, in other news, the US Justice Department accuses Google of evidence destruction in an antitrust case. Ouch. Wow. I mean, first of all, did Google do this or not? And I would have to say I would've thought that Google would've been above this. Okay, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they've got their hands so far down the cookie jar that they've gotta do something. The US Justice Department accuses Google of evidence destruction in the antitrust case. Quote, the US Justice Department lawyers say that Alphabet Inc's Google destroyed internal corporate communications and have asked a federal judge to sanction the company as part of the government's antitrust case over its search business. The Department of Justice DOJ asserted in a court filing unsealed in a Washington DC federal court recently that Google failed to timely suspend a policy, allowing the automatic permanent deletion of employee's chat locks. The government said Google falsely told the US in 2019 that it had suspended auto deletion and was preserving chat communications as required. Close quote. I think what's going on right now is everyone is getting very specific. Why though? The GOJ and 11 states sued Google, as you remember, back in October 2020, alleging at the time that the internet Titan had unlawfully monopolized a search market through a series of exclusionary agreements with other companies that have foreclosed competition for internet search. Close quote.
John C. Morley: (19:41)
But I think anytime that we have an exclusive, it becomes a problem. The quote feds say quoting; it's likely the discussions of the very conduct being challenged in court took place in non-EO messages or memos but an off-the-record chat that Google did not preserve. Close quote. Hmm. The government's motion asks Judge Amit Mehda to hold that Google violated evidence, and preservation rules, ordering a hearing to assess appropriate penalties and to order Google to provide details about its practice of allowing employees to send chat messages with the history feature turned off. Google's obviously been pushing back on this. And here is Google's quote, we strongly refute the do DOJs claims in a statement using refute to mean deny rather than disprove. Our teams have conscientiously worked for years to respond to inquiries and litigation. In fact, we produce over 4 million documents in this case alone and millions more to regulators around the world. They are a search engine, and that's not really a lot of skin off their back. I mean, they do things digitally, so of course, they should be able to produce documents, right? That's not anything unheard of. But when I heard the statement about them saying they allegedly destroyed evidence, I was concerned.
John C. Morley: (21:39)
The default setting for these chats is history off. The lawyer's claim, meaning messages are automatically deleted. Users must deliberately select the history on the setting to preserve messages. Google agreed to suspend its auto-deletion practices after a court order in 2019 but took no action. They say Google repeatedly quoted and misrepresented its document preservation policies, which conveyed the false impression that the company was preserving all custodial chats. Close quote, the memo had said. My question is, is Google the only one at fault? What about Yahoo? What about Bing? Right? What about Amazon? Are we picking on Google because they're the big kid on the block or because we believe they did something wrong? Google warns employees not to discuss sensitive matters via email but to use off-the-record chats. Instead, the company made a series of misleading statements, the DOJ lawyers alleging asking the court to consider sanctions for failure to make disclosures or to cooperate in discovery. Google's conduct meets the standard rule 37E electronic spoliation because the company knowingly destroyed the history of chat messages and directed sensitive conversations to chats with the knowledge that those messages would be not, I should say not would be, but would not be discoverable and misled the United States to conceal the company's chat destruction policy.
John C. Morley: (23:55)
This just seems like more cat-and-mouse games. You know, one day, we're talking about meta; one day, we're talking about Google. I think they're all guilty. I think none of them are innocent. And you might say, John, this is nuts. You might say that is it because Google brings in so much money, or did Google or these other companies really do something wrong?
John C. Morley: (24:55)
But we know what happened last year, right? The DOJ alleged Google unfairly kept internal documents away from antitrust investigators claiming the attorney-client privilege protects them. Google denied the allegation; the judge declined in April 2022 to sanction Google for conduct that occurred prior to the start of the litigation in 2020. So this is all part of an initial complaint. And my question is, if Google has nothing to hide, then why are they playing these games? I just want to know why they're playing the games. That’s all I want to know. I don't know. We're going to have to see what goes on there, ladies and gentlemen. It's definitely going to be interesting in other news dishes, networks, and internal systems. We're so broken, and employees haven't been able to work in over a day. The company is blaming system issues for the problems since just Thursday, Dish Network has been experiencing a major outage that's taken down the company's main websites, apps and customer support systems, and employees quote as told to the Verge. But it's not clear what's going on inside the company. The company's www.dish.com website is completely blank. Save for a notice, apologizing for any disruptions you may have while promising the teams are working hard to restore systems as soon as possible. The Boost Mobile and Boost Infinite Sites display a similar message. My question is, what's going on?
John C. Morley: (27:00)
What's going on? And I just went to the Dish Network website again right now, and this is exactly what I got. We apologize for any disruptions you may be having. We're experiencing an internal system issue, and our teams are working hard to restore systems as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience. I wonder what would happen if we called this Dish. We have a phone number for Dish. Yeah, let's call them up. I don't think they're going to answer the phone.
Dish Network Auto Reply: (27:43)
We are experiencing an internal issue that is impacting our customer service. Your service should not be interrupted during this time. Our teams are working hard to restore systems as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience.
John C. Morley: (27:57)
Okay, that message is really useful, and I could see how that could infuriate a lot of people because the Dishes system is down. So my question is, why did Dishes Network go down? Why Dish ended the year with 7.98 million wireless customers? The company also reported a Q4 churn rate of 4.57%, which is higher than its Q3 churn rate of 4.28% but lower than Q4 2021, when the company reported a churn rate of 4.95%. Dish drops another 210,000 wireless subscribers in the second quarter. When people ask why is this Dish losing so many channels? The answer was, and I quote as is typical, that the drop channels result from carriage disputes between Dish and Next Star over fees. My question is, how can they get away with this? And it's interesting that the day the website has problems is the day the earnings are supposed to be paid. I don't know, and something doesn't smell right here. I'm not sure I believe this because they say they're analyzing the root cause and any consequence of the outage while they will work to restore the effective systems as quickly as possible, as quoted by Carlson, one of theirs their employees. This is weird.
John C. Morley: (30:18)
And they also said that it had nothing to do with a cyber attack or a cybersecurity issue but wasn't able to offer additional details beyond that. But other people were saying the computer issues were the least of dishes problems. This week. The company revealed that it went below the 10 million paid subscriber mark for the first time in nearly 10 two decades. It continued shedding customers with its satellite and streaming TV products. The number of customers paying for Dish satellite TV fell to 7.42 million for the three months ending December 31st, 2022, down from 7.61 million customers reported during the previous quarter. Sling TV subscribers fell to 2.33 million, down from 2.41 million over the same time period. But the company stock jumped on the news. Dish added 8 million customers to its fledging wireless phone, and data startup revenue was reported at 4.04 billion helping its earnings for share climb to $1.49 for the quarter, about 99 cents higher than what Wall Street analysts had expected. Is this something that happened because of a glitch, or is Dish going out of business? I'm not entirely sure. But I'm concerned, and luckily I'm not a Dish subscriber. But why?
John C. Morley: (32:21)
We've already talked about something very interesting, ladies and gentlemen, and I want to bring this up with you. So I did this a while back, and I know several communities where it's in Florida, Jersey, New York, wherever. It's more people getting smart about cutting the cable. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, for a long time, people thought the only way they could get TV channels was by using their cable or the air, right? However, you can actually get TV channels with something as simple as a Roku device, and there are other boxes as well. So I think we're going to start seeing that a lot of these stations will be broadcasting to the internet, and then they will be streamed to people's TVs. I don't know, I think it's going to be a problem, but they're not telling us a lot. Why? I just feel that this outage was not an accident. The dish outage was not an accident. You might say, John, why do I say that? I mean, for the whole call center to go down. I mean, they have no backup. That's a problem, ladies and Gentlemen,
John C. Morley: (34:27)
One person I want to quote is a sales agent. And this is what he says. Quote, I work as a sales agent at Dish and today, upon entering the site, I was told not to log onto my computer and that everything had been down since the early AM hours. I soon realized it wasn't the phones that were down but everything, including our website, in the intranet. As of now, our entire system is still down. And I can only imagine that this was a cyber attack. It can't be a coincidence. It comes days after our fourth quarter earning report as well as the launch of our 5G. Some bad juju is coming our way. Another person posted; I want to share this quote; longtime customer is moving and wants to upgrade equipment. We have been a Dish customer for 15-plus years. We have an agent VIP 722K receiver. We're now moving and want to upgrade to the hopper. What is our best option? Call Dish and buy over the phone, use their website, or contact a local dealer, but there's no way to reach them. And you might be saying to me, John, you know this sounds a little strange. And the truth of the matter is, ladies and gentlemen, it's not strange. It's something that I believe was planned.
John C. Morley: (36:01)
I'm going to say right now. The Dish outage was planned. Now they claim that customer services were not interrupted, but they have a lot of problems on their plate. They launched a satellite designed to transmit HDTV channels. It fell short of its orbit on Friday, and it looked like several other things are starting to happen too. The number two satellite company, formerly known as EchoStar plummet, it's 36% since early November, closing Wednesday at $28 and 5 cents. Investors are wondering whether Dish Network can soar in a slowing economy as it grapples with delays in the rollout of HDTV channels and the loss of patent infringement cases from TiVo. I see the writing on the wall, but I don't have confidence that they're going to hang around forever. Another interesting quote from the federal court found, quote that the Dish Network DVRs used patented technologies that enable users to watch one program while copying another. This week, Dish asked an appeal court to rehear the case, alleging that an expert witness for TiVo had contradicted himself. TiVo said in a statement that this was expected, and we remain confident we'll prevail in this appeal. Close quote.
John C. Morley: (37:56)
I will tell you what I know. They have some licensing challenges, and all I know, ladies and gentlemen, is that it's going to be a little expensive. My question when people ask me, you know, when will Dish's website be back up? I don't know. I knew somebody that was applying for a job at this company a while back.
John C. Morley: (38:41)
And they put him through so many hurdles. Went in the morning at about 10 o'clock for an interview and literally spoke to like six or seven people. By the time they got to the seventh person, they had kept just pushing this. This took several hours; by the time they got to that sixth person, they had more people to talk to, but they decided that he wasn't a match. Now he was a great match, but the thing about Dish is that they're very picky about who they hire. From what I've seen, they've only been hiring people who just want to read and not ask questions. Now, you might say to me, John, why does that matter? They don't want people that are independent thinkers. Now, this doesn't come from any of their executives or anything like that. This comes from my talking to a few friends who attempted to work at Dish. I had one that actually did work at Dish. He worked there for a couple of weeks and was constantly pressured to get more sales. And he told me, John, they're not really interested in the quality of service we provide. Just a number of connections and boxes we can place.
John C. Morley: (40:11)
That's interesting. And so the only thing you can get right now is you can get some of the cash pages, but that's it. I am going to tell you that something else is going to transpire with this Dish. And I just want to know why Dish get shut down. And I think we're going to find out that this was intentional. In October, Dish pulled Disney's own channels from its satellite service and Sling TV after the companies failed to reach a deal. This is about a bigger picture that they're not sharing with us yet. On January 7th, Fox news provided information that Dish Network had lots of contract disputes. And I'll tell you that Fox Providence had been removed from Dish Network per the country dispute between station distributors mission Broadcasting and satellite TV providers. My question is, are we going to get the truth from Dish? You know, when will the truth come out about www.dish.com? And I think what we're going to find out is that this is an issue. And again, all I get on the website is we apologize for any disruptions you may be having. We're experiencing an internal system issue, and our teams are working hard to restore systems as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
John C. Morley: (42:42)
This is a very coy way of not wanting to answer questions. It is. And so people got annoyed with Dish on December 1st, 2022. Some next-door controlled stations go dark on Dish Network.