Driverless trucks may seem to be a thing of the future, but it's coming faster than we think, and it's being tested right in our backyard.
What does it mean for a truck to have no driver? How does it work? Is it safe?
Meta will soon be signing a very large check: a $16.7 billion check to be exact with money flowing to dozens of states, including $319 million to Ohio.
The tech giant also pledged to make substantial changes to the platform to protect kids. So what exactly will be different?
Are you looking to upgrade your old iPhone? It might be best to wait to save on deals. Apple typically releases its new models in September. This year it might include a foldable iPhone.
And what if earbuds could listen and hear?
We're discussing all of these topics on this week's edition of Tech Tuesday.
Guests:
- Abbi Failla, chief administrative officer, EASE
- Paresh Dave, senior writer, WIRED
- Russell Holly, director of commerce content, CNET
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. Driverless trucks may seem like a thing from the future, but it's coming faster than we think, and it's being tested right in our own backyard. What does it mean for a truck to have no driver? How does it work? Is it safe? These questions and more will be answered by Abbi Failla, Chief Administrative Officer and Chief of Staff to the CEO of Ease Logistics. Welcome to the show, Abbi.
Abbi Failla: Well, thank you for having me.
Juravich: So firstly, can you tell me about Ease Logistics, like what the company does? Because your website says you take an entirely different approach to freight. So tell me what that is.
Failla: Yeah, I think that's true. So, Ease Logistics is headquartered here in Columbus, Ohio. Actually founded about 13 years ago now by Peter Coratola, who's still our founder CEO in the mix every single day. We are a full-service 3PL, 4PL company, which means third-party logistics, fourth-party logistics. So we have a brokerage connecting shippers and truck drivers. We also have warehouses and a fleet of trucks that are housed up in Marysville, Ohio
Juravich: Okay, so you're moving things around the state around the country. Where are you moving around the countries?
Failla: Around the country, so we are United States, Canada, Mexico, but we're moving all sorts of things around the country.
Juravich: And you're moving things by truck, mostly.
Failla: By truck. Okay. Only by truck. Only
Juravich: Only by truck, okay, just making sure. All right, so we found out about your company from Ohio's Future of Mobility conference that happened recently. Can you tell me a little bit about that conference and your role in it?
Failla: Yeah, the Future of Mobility Conference happened last week or the week before, it was put on by the Beta District. It's our second annual conference. The Beta District is a wonderful organization that brings together educators, public and private companies, and it's all about technology in mobility. So whether it's over the road, in the air, it's bringing all of us together to understand how Ohio moves forward. I think when we look at innovation in mobility and in transportation. It takes all of those things, right? It takes our public sector, it takes our private sector, it takes public trust and it takes economic development so that we're all working together in the same direction.
Juravich: So what caught our eye related to that mobility conference? I mean, there was a lot of techie things in there, but what caught her eye specifically was this idea of autonomous trucks that Ease Logistics is working on. So this is trucks. Does it really mean no one is driving the truck? I mean tell me about this.
Failla: It sounds so scary, in this scenario today, yes, there's not even a cab in the trucks that we are testing right now, so there's no place for a driver to even sit.
Juravich: Yeah, that always fascinates me about driverless cars, because they still have the driver's seat. Right. Okay, so you're skipping that whole part. Okay. Tell me more.
Failla: Skipping that whole part for now, but I will say this is our third deployment in partnership with Drive Ohio and the Ohio Department of Transportation, and actually the Indiana Department of Transportation is part of this as well. And we really went crawl, walk, run. So our first two deployments over the last four years have been around platooning technology, so really connected vehicles, think leader follower. One truck is going and kind of planting those breadcrumbs along the way. The second truck is following behind. In both of those deployments, there were drivers in both vehicles who could take over at any time. We did that in Southeastern Ohio to really test the road readiness and the infrastructure and understand what that looks like.
And then our second deployment was along I-70 between Columbus and Indianapolis running back and forth. It's one of the most heavily trafficked corridors as far as trucking goes. So how do we make that corridor safer for our truck drivers, our passenger vehicles? How do we adjust to create less congestion on the road during those peak hours? And now we are in this run phase, which is really level four automation. The first two deployments were level two. So think what you have in your truck or what you have your normal cars every day. So automatic braking, lane keep assist, those sorts of things in trucks.
Level four is completely autonomous within a designed operational structure. We partnered with Enride, which is a phenomenal company. They're actually a Swedish company. And they have fully autonomous and electric, so we're getting some efficiencies there as well. Like I said, there's no cab, there is no steering wheel, but what we do have is a remote operator, which just means there's someone watching the vehicles at all times. And we're testing this in a very controlled environment between our two warehouses in Marysville, Ohio. There is a small piece of public roadway that the vehicles go on. But really looking at how does this impact our normal daily operations when we can grow and get this into day-to-day operations.
What are the best ways to use that? But, you know, autonomous trucking isn't linear. We're not gonna go from seeing drivers in the trucks today to all of a sudden there's no drivers. It's a very controlled environment so that we can gather the data and make sure that safety always comes first, that they are safe, and we understand how to start implementing this technology down the road.
Juravich: I wanna back up to something that you called platooning. So this is a concept and the term platoony is probably something most people hadn't heard of outside of the trucking industry. So can you explain that a little more? So the way I understand it is, is there is a truck that has a driver in it and like another truck is kind of connected to it, not physically, but remotely.
Failla: Yeah, absolutely. So it is remotely connected. It is picking up those digital breadcrumbs that the lead truck is leaving along the way and it's really just following behind. So in the deployment deployment we did last year with Kratos Defense. So the technology was Kratos defense technology. They outfitted it on one of our trucks and Kratos defense has been in the defense sector for a long time. They do a lot of autonomous vehicles for D.O.D. And this was one of their deployments in commercial vehicles.
When we think about it, our trucking industry and our commercial vehicles really is our first line of defense in this country. If trucks shut down, if the trucking industry and supply chain shuts down, economy shuts down. So we need to keep those things going. But it's bread crumbing along the way and it can change lanes. It can get on and off the freeway. It can follow at a pretty long distance. Cars can cut in between.
And the idea behind that is while we had drivers in both trucks, the second truck was really a safety driver who could take over that steering wheel at any time. When we were in platooning mode, it is falling behind. So think future state, if I can have one driver running two full truckloads and that driver in the second track is maybe off the clock. So they're resetting their hours in the trucking industry, a truck driver can only be behind the wheel for so many hours because of safety reasons. So if my second driver can reset his clock, he is now then resting, he or she is now than resting or they might be upskilling themselves, they can be booking future freight, they can account managers, they can doing more at the same time and now I can run across the country really without stopping, which today you're not able to do that.
Juravich: Okay. This is Tech Tuesday from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about driverless trucks with Abbie Fela, Chief Administrative Officer and Chief of Staff to the CEO of Ease Logistics. So I wanted to ask about testing out these driverless trucks on that road in Marysville that you said is like your test track. So you have someone, you know, back at headquarters, I guess, watching and monitoring. But is it a private road or are there other cars on the road?
Failla: So it there are other cars on the road now that not many this is a this is a road that really is not interstate 70 this is not interstate seventy this isn't even industrial parkway in marysville this is uh a road, that goes to warehouses that are back there so it's called innovation park um one of the reasons why marysvile did innovation park it sits right at the beta district or in the in the heart of the beta districts and it really was for companies to come in and test new technologies of all sorts So it's interacting with our vehicles that are coming up and down that road every day, or it's interact with other passenger vehicles that are come in and out of that area every day. But if you're just driving along in Marysville, you're not gonna see these trucks on the road, although they look super cool. They're like little bubbles. I think they look very space-like.
Juravich: Yeah, that's what I was wondering, if there's no cab in it, does the front of the truck look different?
Failla: Flat. Yeah, the entire truck looks different.
Juravich: Oh, wow. Okay. So there's no so where's the engine? Is the engine still in the front? Is there like a hood?
Failla: Yeah, well, you know, there's a there's a frunk, so I don't even.
Juravich: I don't even know what that word is, okay. OK.
Failla: They call it a front trunk. Oh, OK. So you kind of lift open the front, and that's where all of their technology sits. There's all sorts of LIDAR sensors and different sensors around the truck. So it can read what it's doing on the roadway. We spent months by we, I mean, N-Ride spent months mapping this short distance. It's, I believe, just about a quarter mile from one dock door to the other dock door. So it's not a very long distance. But it is interacting with other vehicles and other trucks. It is pulling into docks. It is. Really testing how we can utilize this technology.
Juravich: So I think I would trust the driverless truck, but what I don't trust is other drivers around the driver less truck, right? And so I feel like that's the X factor here. So how close are we to the driver-less truck being able to react to, you know, bad drivers on Interstate 70? Yeah.
Failla: Um, I mean, it can react to bad drivers. It can only do so much, right? Like it still is going to take some time to stop. It will react quicker than a human behind a wheel, right. Oh, will it? Okay. Yeah. Tell me about this technology in general. I mean think about it when you're driving from the time a human eye sees something on the road, right, a car cutting over a deer running across the street, a cone that popped out a little bit, it takes now, I believe this is fact, but. It takes about six seconds for a human mind to then press the brake. When we're thinking about autonomous technology, it instantly sees that, and it's a fraction of the time to react in a truck.
So when it comes to reaction time, much quicker than humans have the ability to react. But we can't account for bad drivers just being bad drivers or those people who want to test the technology. I will say it is not smart to. Try to test the technology and cut it off and see what it's doing. It's still a truck. It has a weight to it and it's gonna take some time to stop. So yeah, and I think just public perception and public trust, which is one of the reasons these tests that we're doing, these beta tests through Drive Ohio are really important. Like we need the data to make sure that the public is understanding and educated and understands how the technology works.
So a lot of this is just. For us to gather feedback when it comes to regulations and public perception, and also first responders. We need our state highway patrol, our first responders, to understand how to interact with these vehicles. So that's been really important to us. Yeah, I trust the technology. There's someone behind the scenes watching it at all times. So if they need to take over, they can. But, yeah, we're a watch-
Juravich: Is it one is one person watching more than one truck?
Failla: Yeah, so there's two levels of kind of safety drivers behind the scenes. One is local on-site operator. So that person, if they needed to actually go physically remote control, move the truck, if they need to go interact with the truck. They're on-site in our Marysville office to get out there. There's also a remote and that's called a local operator. There's a remote operator who sits down in Texas with N-Ride, who's watching multiple trucks behind the scene and just making sure that there's nothing that needs needs to be fixed. OK.
Juravich: Okay, and I cut you off like you were about to say how far away we are from seeing these on the road all the time So what yeah, what's that?
Failla: I think we are far away. I think if you go.
Juravich: Are you going to put a number of years on it?
Failla: I'm not gonna put a number of years a number
Juravich: A number of months on?
Failla: I mean it's years, not months. Okay. I think years not months I think you will see that if you were down in the Sun Belt in the south a lot of people who are a lot Of companies who are testing this technology are testing it in the sun belt states down south So there is autonomous trucks running in very confined Routes down in southern half of the United States right now. We want to test these things in, Ohio because Trucks run through, Ohio. I ODOT says there's about six million truck trips per day in Ohio. That's a lot. Which is a lot, and that just means a trip can be multi-point stop. It could be going through. They have a certain formula where they come up with that, but it's a lotta trucks.
They estimate there's 25,000 trucks a day on our most busy highways, and we don't just need the technology to work in perfect weather, right? It's gonna rain. It's going to snow. There's going to be fog. We want to make sure that this technology works in all sorts of weather conditions. So it's really important for us to be testing that here. So long answer to your question, if you go down in the southern states, you might see it more readily. In Ohio, you will not see autonomous trucks on the road anytime soon. Right now it is in testing environments and very defined constraints and locations only.
Juravich: Talk to me about driver shortages. We hear about truck driver shortages, we hear about exhaustion, we hear About distraction, reaction times. I mean, talk to me about like, are these gonna put truck drivers out of business or is it just, it's an addition?
Failla: In addition, right, so there, I think over the next decade, let's call it, we're estimating that there's going to be about a 24% increase in freight tonnage in the United States. So that's a lot. Currently, there's just over 11 billion tons of freight moved in the US every single day. That's about 75% of the total freight in the U.S. Moved over the road every, not every day, every year. And we're expecting that to go up over the next decade. We have about 200,000 open truck driving positions in the United States every single year. Now I will say that's about, we're estimating about 80,000 net new positions over the next decade, that 200,00 is for a lot of reasons, right? People are taking on new careers, they are retiring, they are doing something different and just exiting the market.
So we do have a, I don't want to say a driver shortage, but we do have concern that as we go forward over the next decade, we have an increase of freight. We're going to have an an increase in the amount of freight that needs to move, and we have to come up with a solution for that. So how does this technology enhance what's going on right now and give us an alternative solution? So for example, if I am running, you know, 10 trips up and down 33 every single day. Can I use this sort of technology to run those trips overnight, take trucks off of the road during rush hour and busy times, and that monotonous up and down the same road every single day multiple times? Can I do that with an autonomous truck and let our truck drivers do things that are a little bit longer, require more skill, and continue to do the things that need human interaction?
And I will say, I want to share a really cool story with. Enride, one of the things that they did with their remote operators is they hire CDL drivers, so people who have been in the cab before, and they have a great success story of a woman who was a driver for many years and just for personal reasons couldn't be in the cab anymore, couldn't behind the wheel. So they took her out of a truck and gave her her next career, which was watching these autonomous trucks behind the scenes. And so she has the experience of being an over the road driver. She understands how trucks work. And she understands situations for trucks, but now she can sit behind a screen, she can be home every night with her family, she doesn't have the wear and tear personally to sit in that truck every single day, but she's advancing her career and learning a new skillset. So I think we'll see more things like that happening, which hopefully also entices a younger generation to get into trucking as well, because there's really cool stuff happening.
Juravich: Yeah, just to end on, are you going to face state or federal regulations as we see have more and more driverless cars, driverless trucks, you know, like, are you going end up having to deal with, you know, lawmakers wanting to step in and regulate you?
Failla: Yes, both of those state and federal and that's one of the reasons we we are doing these is because right now this technology is regulated state by state so I can't cross state lines with this technology without permission from the state next door that we're crossing into and Ease wants to be part of that conversation so undoubtedly there will be federal regulation there will be state regulation around all of this technology but Ease want to be a part of And. Make sure that when that regulation comes, it makes sense for the operators to actually put it into use every single day. What we don't want is regulation happening without a voice of the industry there. So it's really important for us that as at the state and federal level, we're understanding regulation and policy around this, that EASE has a voice and a seat at the table. And that's really why we got into doing this.
Juravich: We have been talking about driverless trucks and logistics with Abbi Failla, Chief Administrative Officer and Chief of Staff to the CEO of Ease Logistics. Thank you for your time today, Abbie. Thank you having me. It was fun. And coming up, we're going to talk about Meta's multi-billion dollar settlement. That's when Tech Tuesday from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides
Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology and the future of our environment. Meta will soon be signing a very large check, a nearly 18 billion dollar check, to be exact, with money flowing to dozens of states, including 319 million to Ohio. This comes after Metta's settlement in a federal trial over alleged failures of Metta to protect young users. Aside from the large tech check, the tech giant also pledged to make substantial changes to the platform to protect kids. So what exactly will be different? Here to tell us more about it is Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired. Welcome to All Sides.
Paresh Dave: Hi there, Amy.
Juravich: So first of all, to give us some background, I mean, Metta is involved in a lot of lawsuits all the time, it feels like. Who filed this particular suit against Metta where the settlement was reached?
Dave: This was filed by attorneys general, so it ended up being 29 attorneys general that were taking Mehta to trial with four of those states sort of leading the charge and bringing the most number of allegations. What ended up happening is that the settlement was reached with almost every attorney general, a couple held out, most notably Florida.
Juravich: Okay, so the 29 states all kind of banded together and said the lawsuit was claiming and it was it was related to meta not protecting children, right? That was at the heart of the lawsuit.
Dave: Correct. One of the allegations was that Metta was collecting data on children under the age of 13 years old without the permission that was required under federal law. And then there was a set of allegations to mention bought by four states that met engaged in deceptive practices, notably unfair and decepted practices, notably that it was designing its technology in a way that, you know, deliberately led to harm for. Adolescence.
Juravich: Prior to the lawsuit though, I mean, Metta would say they did have safety measures. What safety measures were there to protect young users?
Dave: Well, there weren't a lot initially, you know, the meta has been adding more over time And in one of the days of the trial before things got settled You know, one of metas product designers was kind of walking through the timeline of how new safety features were added in 2016 up until sort of 2023 when this lawsuit started heating up. And there were things like making sure people take a break, making sure that people don't have access overnight, don't get notifications in the middle of the night, and then sort of wake up and feel a need to check that at 3 a.m. Or whatever. But a lot of these features during that time period prior to the lawsuit were opt-in, meaning that. Users, particularly teens, didn't have to turn them on necessarily. They weren't forced on them, and that led to very, very minimal uptake of some of these features.
Juravich: So talk to me about the fact that Metta chose to settle. Was the trial not going well for them? Like where did the settlement come from? Because they seem to, you know, want to stay in court.
Dave: It started before that. So there were two trials earlier this year, both in state courts, one in a California state court in Los Angeles, one in the state court of New Mexico. Both of those resulted in losses for Metta and between judges and juries, the penalties or the damages that Metta was ordered to pay added up almost to a billion dollars between the two cases. So things were already not looking good for META here in this federal trial that just settled, there was a advisory jury. And even during jury selection, pretty much everyone who was eligible for the jury discussed how they had concerns about the role METTA played in protecting teens and. Potentially not doing enough. So it looks like this jury was about to go the same way.
Even before one of Metta's executives, Instagram, had Adam Messeri started testifying, settlement talks were reportedly underway. But things sort of heated up and came to a conclusion in the settlement talks in the middle of Adam Messeris' testimony. He was expected to return to the stand. And in the one day that he did testify, or the couple hours he did testify, he was admitting to the fact that he wasn't aware of some of the things his team was up to, and perhaps was not involved in these discussions around safety features as he should have been.
Juravich: So, basically, they saw the writing on the wall. If they lost two smaller cases in two state courts and had to spend a billion dollars, if they lost this, it was going to be a big amount of money. So, they decided to settle for it, and so they could control, I guess, the amount of the money a bit. So, let's talk to me about the money, because I read, you know, at first it said 16.7 billion, and then another article said it could be up to 18 billion over a 10-year period. What is the number?
Dave: It's both. The 18 comes from including a settlement that was reached separately with Texas for a billion dollars. But also the main thing here is for Metta, this isn't just about money. It's also about leveling the playing field with some of its peers. So the way Metta structured this settlement is 70% of the money is guaranteed, but The remainder is contingent on Attorneys General. Reaching in similar deals that limit, you know, what teens can do on the services of TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and Meta basically doesn't want to be singled out.
Juravich: So you're basically saying attorney generals, you have to, attorneys general, sorry, you have to sue these other companies too, not just us.
Dave: Yeah, not necessarily sue, you know, it could be a it could be a voluntary settlement. Yeah, pretty litigation. But yes that we don't want us to be in a situation where teens feel like they can't effectively use Instagram because there's all these limits and restrictions. And so instead they spend all their time on TikTok because they can do whatever in the middle of the night, in the school day on TikTok. And so TikTok becomes popular. It's a matter that is not obviously an ideal situation for their business. So they have incentivized the states to go out and reach these deals with other companies.
Juravich: So is $18 billion a lot of money for Metta?
Dave: Absolutely not. I mean, they make that back in short order. They are recording a 10 billion dollar charge on their finances in this current quarter, and that will make this current quarter look bad. But this money is being paid out over 10 years. It is absolutely not any sort of major financial hit to Metta. And that is one of the the criticisms here is that this doesn't come anywhere close to accounting for the harms involved uh And meta had said that it risks a trillion dollars potentially in fines, which would have kind of hurt the company a little bit more But the states, or several states, or most of the states and the states that reached the settlement have maintained that the goal was to bring about changes in Metta's platforms. It's pretty much Florida, which was the holdout on the settlement that has said that they want more money than was agreed to here.
Juravich: This is Tech Tuesday From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the multi-billion dollar meta settlement, and we're talking with Paresh Devey, a senior writer at Wired. So included in the settlement, in addition to wanting, you know, those other companies to be held account to, meta said they're going to provide safety precautions. They're gonna put them on the platform. Did they actually spell out what it's gonna be and how long it will be until we see them?
Dave: They didn't spell out how long it'll be until we see them, but there is an independent monitor that is brought in as part of this settlement and presumably will be hiring a team to make sure that Metta is adhering to the settlement and moving promptly and that, you know, they actually deliver the results that the states want or Metta will be dragged back into court and the judge won't be happy with that. But yeah, some of the actual things that are changing here are those features that I mentioned earlier about trying to limit the amount of time that teenagers spend on the platform. Those are going to become on by default.
So much more people will be using them. It's all part of this suite of features. Meta calls teen accounts and Meta will have to be investing even more in age assurance features, as the industry calls them, to kind of guesstimate a user's age. Because oftentimes, people will fudge their birthday and not put in the correct birth year. And so. Meta will have to use a variety of signals, such as when users are logging in, who they're talking to. To kind of guesstimate their age. If they are a teen, put them into this experience. If they want to prove they're not a teen they'll have to upload an ID or take like a video selfie that is used with age estimation software. And then they also won't be able to see certain types of content as part of this teen accounts experience.
Juravich: That the idea of verifying yourself by taking a selfie is just such a, it's so interesting to me. That's such a 20, 26 thing. It just, it reminds me of like, you know, holding up a newspaper to prove what day of the week it is or something like that. But because you're right, you kids lie about their age, but sometimes parents even lie about the kid's age because I mean, I found in some of the safety features for my kids' devices, they couldn't like. Search up a certain thing because of the age restriction I put on it. And I wanted the age restrictions, but I still wanted them to be able to like, if they had a question, I wanted to be to tell them, oh, look it up yourself. Like, it's bizarre. Like the age restricted are bizarre. I don't know if you would agree with me.
Dave: It's challenging because we know every time one of these things, kinds of ones, one of these kinds of features rolls out, we see a lot of cases of users unhappy that their ages gets wrong. Like adults suddenly being told they're a teenager when they're not, and having to go through these checks or lose.
Juravich: I'm young, I just look young, I have great skin for my age, yeah.
Dave: Yeah, exactly and a lot of people sort of feeling that they can no longer access the content they want to and one of the things that meta is doing is that to access certain features to unlock time limits to be able to Use Instagram more unfettered but not completely unfetter you do need your parent to sort of control your account or not control your count but have access to your account in some way that they can grant you those permissions. And so Metta is shifting some onus to parents in this. And you can imagine situations where people may have parents who are not supportive at all of their teenagers' social media use. And so those teenagers are able to seek out other sort of guardians or caregivers who can do that for them. But you can see how that also becomes a slippery slope where anyone could be a parent and kind of unlock those features.
Juravich: Okay, well, back to the money. Ohio is going to receive $319 million over the 10-year period. I guess, does each state get a certain amount of money? I mean, did Ohio get a good shake here? I don't know.
Dave: Yes, I mean, the idea was to have it proportional to the number of users affected in these states and, you know, I think I haven't seen any complaints from states yet about how they were allocated money in this settlement.
Juravich: And then is this, people are referring to this settlement with meta like as a big tobacco moment. So I mean, can you see a lot of the parallels between the settlements with the big tobacco companies and then each state got some money and then they use the money to stop kids from smoking. So is that, is Ohio supposed to use this money to protect kids on social media?
Dave: A couple of things. I mean, from the evidence standpoint, at least the evidence that we were able to see in the few days of trial, certainly, I mean there was increasing evidence that Metta was aware of the harms that it was causing to teenagers. I mean certainly in the Facebook files that the leak of several hundreds, thousands of Facebook internal documents a few years ago, ample evidence that Metta knew about these harms wasn't doing enough similar to the tobacco situation. Uh and yeah in terms of actually spending the money very similarly uh states have said they plan to invest this into uh you know mental health services for teens uh trying to run PSAs potentially um warning teens and parents about the dangers of social media uh so very much a similar use uh of the of the money to try to uh deal with some of the harms that has been caused by. 15 years of social media and teenagers using it.
Juravich: Well, to end on, Australia has a social media ban for kids under the age of 16. It started months ago. Is this settlement the start of maybe a social media ban in the US? Will we ever get there where the United States is bans teens from these platforms?
Dave: It's very much possible states are pursuing that path. The challenge may be the First Amendment. Is it a restriction on free expression, free speech of, you know, people under 16 if they are not able to use social media? We've seen the Supreme Court rule that having age verification technologies on pornography to make sure minors are not viewing pornography is legal because pornography is just such an extreme type of content in the view of the Supreme Court. Will the Supreme court by similar restrictions for general social media content that, you know, cute animal videos, it's sort of questionable. And so that is expected to be a major hurdle here, but that isn't going to stop states from pursuing that path.
Juravich: Can individual states could ban social media for teens if the federal government's not willing to do it?
Dave: That seems like the path that we are headed down and you can imagine a situation in which social media platforms may want to just apply the same rules across the country, which we've seen with certain state laws. And so, you know, a state ban de facto becomes a nationwide ban or if they choose to go the path of the pornography companies, they pull out and, you out. Services entirely from a state because they don't want to get in trouble for accidentally offering services to someone under 16.
Juravich: We haven't. Yeah, but but go ahead. Yeah.
Dave: Yeah, but it's also worth sort of saying that there is initial evidence that the ban in Australia is not working well so far, or not working as intended.
Juravich: Yeah. Okay. Well, that'll probably be another Tech Tuesday segment. We'll have to talk specifically about how it's going in Australia. We have been talking about the multi-billion dollar settlement from Metta with Paresh Dave, a senior writer at Wired. Thank you so much for your time today.
Dave: Lovely to be here.
Juravich: And coming up, we're gonna talk about what might happen when Apple releases its new products. Will we get a foldable iPhone? That is when Tech Tuesday from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
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Tech Tuesday from All Sides with Amy Juravich, a show where we share stories about science, technology, and the future of our environment. Are you looking to upgrade your old iPhone? It might be best to wait to save on deals. Apple typically releases its new models in September, and this year it might include a foldable iPhone. And then what if earbuds could listen and hear? And a company created a digital camera that is under film disguise. We are talking about iPhone upgrades, AI earbuds, and retro cameras today with Russell Holly, Director of Commerce Content at CNET. Welcome back, Russell.
Russell Holly: Thank you.
Juravich: So we're gonna preview a little bit of what Apple's doing. So Apple usually releases its new models in September. Everyone's waiting for the iPhone 18 and then we're waiting to find out whether it's foldable or not. So what does this mean for people looking to buy a new phone right now? Are we supposed to wait a couple of weeks to see what happens or should we rush out and get an iPhone 17 right now or are they cheaper right now.
Holly: Yeah, it's really interesting. There's a ton of stuff that we don't know, and that's a little different from an Apple event. Apple events are typically quite easy to predict. The announcement we know will happen on September 9th. Historically, Apple has made whatever they announced available to pre-order the Friday after, but Apple also historically doesn't do events on September 11th, which is when this would be taking place so that a pre-ordered date might move. We also know that when there is a preorder event from Apple, that those products are typically available the following Friday, especially when it comes to iPhones, you make that pre-order and then you can either go pick it up yourself or have it delivered or go into a different store to pick up those phones, you know, on that like third Friday of the month.
But there's so much talk about the folding iPhone this year and it's seeming like a real possibility that it would be announced, that that changes a lot of the, you know kind of math as far as when you would decide to trade your existing phone to help pay for the new one.
Juravich: Well, is the iPhone 18 supposed to be the foldable one or is the fold able one gonna be a 19? IPhone loves its numbers.
Holly: Yes, the greatest, you know, bit of guesswork that has been done so far is that the iPhone 18 and the, you, know, the pro version of that would be very similar to what is available right now physically, and that those would not be folding versions of the phone. Those would be that same what we call a candy bar style phone that has existed, and this would be an additional thing in very much the same way that when Apple did the iPhone X a few years ago, that it was the first kind of ultra thin, you know, all the way edge display thing that Apple had done. It was a separate product that was announced at a separate time. It was available months later.
So even if we get the announcement of a folding iPhone, it may not even be something that is available until January or March. There's just not enough information for that. And because of that, it makes it really hard for the folks who know that the best way to get the most money for your existing phone is actually to trade it before Apple makes the announcement. So historically, this would be the week that I'm saying, go on to services like Swappa or whatever your preferred trade service is. Because those are when you know the the current version of the phone is going to be the most valuable and it will slightly drop in value when that new announcement happens because now everyone is trying to trade in their phone. So, you know, it's really difficult to say.
The other thing to keep in mind is that we have no idea what Apple's prices are going to be. Apple earlier this year raised prices on a ton of its things, including the Apple TV, which had a price increase of almost 50%. But none of those price changes hit the iPhone. It has been noted in a couple of different earnings calls from Apple since then that price increases for the iPhone is likely before the end of the year. So it is entirely possible that the phones that get announced on the 18th are going to include a fair bit of sticker shock to go with them because of the increasing price of the hardware that goes into these phones.
Juravich: And the RAM shortages are continuing to affect the price of all tech items. So is that what we're talking about here, that it costs more to make these things and Apple's having to increase the prices a lot to afford the storage?
Holly: That's exactly right. And Apple has one of the strongest controls on its parts and suppliers than just about any other company on the planet. And so for it to need to increase those prices to such a significant amount, as we saw with Apple TV and a few other products, it really is difficult to predict what the next iPhone is going to cost. We really will have to wait until next weekend and brace for impact, I guess.
Juravich: Yeah, and we talk on Tuesdays, obviously, this is Tech Tuesday, and this announcement is on Wednesday. So when we talk of the 8th, do you think stuff will have been leaked more, or are we going to have the same hypothetical conversation, and then we're going to wait all the way I could actually know anything.
Holly: So that's another thing that's kind of interesting about this year is we do typically see leaks in the week leading up to the event. However, we live in this really fun AI future where it's very difficult to prove that a leak is authentic. So I'm quite a bit less trustworthy of that sort of thing this year than I would have been in years past.
Juravich: The fake leak that oh man, I didn't even think about a fake leak. Okay Duly noted we will speculate again next week. This is tech Tuesday from all sides on 89 7 NPR news We're talking about iPhone upgrades with Russell Holly director of commerce content for CNET Let's move on to our next topic, which is some new Earbuds almost everyone carries around wireless earbuds, but most people don't carry around a microphone or any recording equipment So what if earbuds could listen and hear? And if you missed something someone said, you could just go back and read the transcript of your conversation. This sounds like something out of a Bond movie, Russell. What are we doing here with these new earbuds?
Holly: Yeah, so in many ways, this is the kind of natural progression of the earbuds that could live translate from one language to another. There have been a couple of different versions of these earbuds that use some form of either local AI or machine learning to, you can put one earbud in your ear and another earbud in someone else's ear. And as you talk, the translation happens in their earbud and then vice versa, so that you can have a conversation with someone despite not knowing their language. And in many cases, those translations are reasonably close. There aren't any that are 100% reliable for those sorts of things because it's the same thing when you go into Google Translate and you give it something in a language and then you have it feed it back and a whole bunch of nonsense is added. So they're not perfect. But they do a very good job relative to trying desperately to figure it out on your own with a piece of paper.
The kind of next step for that has always been constantly listening and being able to identify sentence fragments and things like that that could end up being interesting. Over the last year and a half, all of the different video chat services, Zoom and Hangouts and all of those things, all now have AI powered live transcription. Where you can have, you know, text that shows up that adequately translates everything that's going on here. This is kind of a combination of those two ideas. It's called plod one, and these are earbuds that are constantly taking notes for you as though you are in a meeting with someone and has those notes, you kind of organize in a way that you can reference later. You know, when I was outside of the coffee shop, who was I talking to? You know that like being able to ask those kinds of questions and get a response based on information that the earbuds were collecting as you were wearing.
Juravich: That would be so helpful for when I meet someone new and they tell me their name and their name immediately falls out of my head the second they say it. Because then I can go back and be like, what was their name?
Holly: Nope, that's exactly right. Or, you know, a conversation that I, you know, I wander around my house on a regular basis and I will say things out loud to myself like, hey, I got to remember to do this thing and then, you know, the moment I leave that room it's gone.
Juravich: Wow, okay.
Holly: So there are ways in which I can see these being very useful.
Juravich: All right. So these are for the forgetful people. Okay. So is it legal, though, to record a phone call or a conversation? Like, are we allowed to do this?
Holly: It very much depends on region and that's where I think these are interesting in that there's very little that thought as a company is doing to either inform or disclose that this is happening. You kind of have to know what these earbuds are in order to know that you're being recorded as you talk to someone which is not great. The person who wears them have to disclose that they are recording which is something that they have to self-disclose. There are a number of across the US, not to mention several countries in Europe, where third-party recording is not allowed. Even if there is consent on the other side of that conversation, you have to be constantly asking for that consent and then proving it in a way that is legally defendable. You have to really careful if you're going to use these on an ongoing basis rather than just putting them in for very specific purposes.
Juravich: Hmm, interesting. Okay, yeah. So Ohio is like a one-sided state that you don't need two-party consent to record. I know that just from journalism reasons. So in Ohio, you wouldn't have to tell someone that you're recording them with these Plaid 1 headphones. But in some states I know you have to have two- party consent to report anything. So you legally would have to tell them. And I don't know that the average consumer would even know that.
Holly: No, and not only that, but there's a lot of questions about what happens if you are in public using these. If I am standing in a Starbucks and there's someone having a conversation behind me, I don't, in many cases, have the right to record that, but there is a very real chance that they're standing quite close to me that that would show up in my notes without me even asking it to do that.
Juravich: And so the notes are on like an app that's associated with the headphones, is that right?
Holly: That's exactly right. Okay. Yeah, it shows up on your phone and it has a way to search and do these things that kind of contextualize the information that has been gathered over time.
Juravich: Okay, so I got really excited about it helping me remember someone's name and remember to do things, but now I'm getting a little nervous about this recording people thing, so.
Holly: Useful in very specific situations, but it very much falls to the user to be the responsible one to figure out where they can be used. Also, they are not inexpensive. They are going to be a little over $300. They're available for pre-order now and they're going to start shipping in the fall, but they are they are NOT inexpensive. The processing part of that also costs money.
Juravich: Yeah. Well, we only have three minutes left. I don't want to run out of time. We have a third topic, which is a retro photography has been a trend for a while, but what about a modern twist on classic tech? This is a digital camera that's basically disguised to look like a film camera. It actually looks really nice. It's called the Camp Snap 2. Can you tell me about it and who the customer of this is?
Holly: Yeah, so Camp Snap is great if you want an old school look and feel to a camera that has just a few more features than that camera that you might pick up at a thrift store or that you might renovate on your own. It's got ways to implement filters and pictures that you take and not like Instagramy filters, but like a good sepia tone or, you know, kind of lighting. And all of it is done on the camera. You have to take a memory card out in order to access the information. There is no app, there are no services, and it's a $75 camera. So, you know, not terribly expensive for what it is that you're getting, and for folks who want to have a physical camera in their hand, but don't necessarily want to work with film, this is a really nice option to play with.
Juravich: So it's a digital point and shoot camera, but no screen on the back. So you're taking pictures and you can't see them until you deal with the little memory card.
Holly: You've got the classic viewfinder system. You can take a look through the viewfinder and frame the shot the way that you see fit, but there isn't like a big screen on the back. And that helps keep the cost down.
Juravich: Okay, and there's no film associated, even though it looks like a camera I had whenever I was younger, like a little more attractive, but it does look like a camera I remember from the early 2000s, right?
Holly: It's very stylized. Yeah, it's clear that the manufacturers had a very specific vision in mind for what this camera should look like, and you'd be hard pressed to see it and not assume that it's a film camera.
Juravich: Okay, so there is no film though. We're not developing photos, but we're uploading them digitally. You said there's not an app, so how do we get the photos off the thing?
Holly: Good old fashioned memory card that you can either plug into your laptop or use an adapter to connect to your phone.
Juravich: Oh, wow. All right. Well, so that's called the camp snap to do you do you know how much it is?
Holly: They are 75.
Juravich: That's really, that's really reasonable. All right, we have been talking about digital cameras and making everything old new again, of course, with Russell Holly, director of commerce content at CNET. Thanks for joining us, Russell.
Holly: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: And you're listening to you all sides in Tech Tuesday on 89.7 NPR News, I'm Amy Juravich. Thanks for joining us.