TNW 428: Live Nation Settles With the DOJ - Live Nation's Antitrust Settlement Disappointment

Coming up on Tech News Weekly, Dan Maureen joins us again and very excited to talk first and foremost about the Grammarly lawsuit, plus where do you think Stan in that live nation settlement, as if actually a settlement at all, then Abraar al-Hiti of CNET drops by to tell us about her time at MWC in Barcelona, before I round things out about how China is in love with OpenClaw.

All that coming up on Tech News Weekly.

Podcasts you love.

From people you trust.

This is Twenth.

This is Tech News Weekly, episode 428 with Dan Maureen and me, Micah Sargent, recorded Thursday March 12, 2026, live nation settles with the DOJ.

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 we are typically joined by Jake Ward on this day, but Jake is traveling, so we wish him well on his travels.

Joining us today is someone who has quickly become the person I call on when I really need somebody to fill in because I do a great job every time they're here.

It's Dan Maureen, welcome back to the show Dan.

It's good to be here Micah.

I am among the most available.

That is one of my key qualities availability.

I think it's capability followed closely by availability.

Follow closely by availability.

Sure.

This of course is Tech News Weekly and we kick the show off by talking about our stories of the week.

And if you thought Dan Maureen was going to bring you a story about Apple, you would be wrong.

Oh, for once I show up and I'm not doing a story about Apple.

Amazing. It is however a story about AI because we can't escape AI.

It's everywhere.

And it's a story about the law because we can't escape the law.

Believe me, as much as we try.

This is the story about Grammarly.

You might know Grammarly is that lovely program that corrects your grammar and spelling

and does all sorts of useful stuff to make sure that when you write stuff and send an email or post it

or send it to your boss, it looks like a human wrote it except a robot.

I'll actually hope you write it.

Recently, Grammar has come under some fire because they introduced a new feature at the end of last year

which they called expert review.

And what this tool promised to do was essentially look at your writing and tell you the opinion of notable writers and journalists

about your writing and how you might approve it, how they would suggest.

Were they perched on your shoulder looking at what you've written?

What they might say.

The only problem.

That's the pitch.

Essentially, you're typing something and it's like, hey, what would Stephen King say about what you wrote?

Or what would Neil deGrasse Tyson say about his face and all your sending to your boss?

Why are you asking Neil deGrasse about an email you're sending to your boss?

Can't answer that question.

Now, this seems like, I'm not even going to say it seems like a good idea because it seems like a weird idea, right?

It's a weird idea.

It's not a thing that I would go out there and really pitch.

But, Grammar really, I guess, decided this was a thing that they really felt was compelling to their users.

Only problem. Well, what have many problems?

Perhaps the largest of these problems.

They did not get the permission from any of these people to do this.

Moreover, it also included lots of famous people who are dead to give suggestions.

I don't know that William Shakespeare was thrown in there, but there are certainly people in there who are no longer around Carl Sagan.

It was another good example.

But there are also a bunch of people who are journalists on the internet.

So, Nile Patel from the verge was in there as were a couple other verge editors like David Tears and Sean Hollister as well as this.

No one was ready for this. I mean, there are people from all over.

I mean, Casey Newton who does platformer, Joanna Stern from the Wall Street Journal, Jason Shryer and Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, like all of these people.

And it's kind of bizarre because to build on that aspect of it, I was reading the verge had one of the first stories to talk about this.

And they were talking about the fact that their editor was one of the people in the expert review.

And they said, and the advice they gave me was a thing that specifically, you know, I've worked with my editor for a long time.

This is a thing he would never say. He would never tell me to do this.

Which is weird, right? It's extra weird because then it just feels like you're slapping these people's names on kind of generic writing advice that doesn't really relate in any way to it.

And I can see, you know, oftentimes when these features or tech features get announced, you can try to kind of draw the dotted line in your head, right?

You're like, oh, you know what they thought? They thought we've got an LLM. We can train it on a bunch of writing from these online sources.

And we can essentially use that to analyze all the writings from this particular person.

That's not exactly something that LLMs are always great at. I mean, it seems like something they should be great like good at because it's very much pattern recognition.

But I think what we're discovering here is there are some shortcomings to just how good it is at analyzing those models.

And like everything else, LMs tend to sort of flatten the effect of all these things because they're taking kind of, you know, statistical likelihood.

So they also, you know, they point out a lot of other stuff because this is sort of artifacts from these things being trained on existing texts like they're outdated job titles from some of these people, right?

Places they used to work that they don't work anymore probably because they were trained on text from when they worked at that particular place.

So, you know, the Verge asked a superhuman, which is the parent company, apparently, about this at the time. And they said, oh, well, this doesn't, this doesn't claim endorsement or direct participation.

These people, it's just influenced by them.

That turned out to just continually create. So this kept going. We are now at the point. So the latest developments of this is a superhuman is taking down this feature and apologize.

Initially, they said, oh, you can write an email if you want to opt out. If you're a person, this is not how life should be.

This is not how this works. That's not how you can't just do this.

Yeah. So shockingly, they have been sued.

There's a class action lawsuit making its way through the Southern District of New York, brought among others by Julia Anguin, who founded to the markup and is a, you know, writer and editor of long time standing.

And basically to go in saying, we did not allow you to do this. And as Anguin's lawyers have argued, this is kind of cut and dry because generally, you're not allowed to use people's names for commercial purposes.

Like, even if you're not claiming they endorsed it, you have a right to your, your identity, your personhood. And that cannot be used to sell somebody else's product.

You can't slap someone's name on that product, even if you're like, it's not an endorsement, right? Like, I could put all sorts of names on my books, right?

If I just wanted to do this, oh, it's not an endorsement. I just, I just happened to put their names on my books. What a coincidence, right? Stephen King. I was plastered that over my book cover.

Did he endorse the book? No. No, I didn't say that. I just put his name there. So yeah, I think this is going to go pretty badly for superhuman. I'm not a lawyer, obviously.

But my, my read of that seems like this is a classic Silicon Valley move, right? It's the, it's the, to take the, the Jeff Goldblum line from Jurassic Park.

They were so busy thinking about whether or not they could do this thing that they didn't stop to think about whether or not they should do this thing. And the answer was, no, you should not do this thing.

But yeah, it's another of the examples of, especially I think right now with the bubble around AI and LLM in particular, the temptation to see how many other things can we throw this out? What good, what good things can we create?

Or what features can we monetize based on what AI or LLMs can do? And let's not think about the consequences. Let's just throw it in there so we can say, look at this cool thing that AI let us do on our product.

It's a, it's a classic move fast and break things only what you may have broken is your business model.

I, I think what bothers me the most about this is the idea that, like, I want, I would love, I want to be in sort of the deposition because I just truly, I want to understand why they thought this was a good idea.

Why they thought this was okay and here from them legitimately, like, what did you talk about when you decide, when you convinced yourselves that it would be okay to take living people and sort of slap their virtual name on, that's just, it doesn't make sense to me.

And like, I genuinely wonder, did they can, when this happened, did they go, we know we'll get pushback, here's our plan for pushback, or did they go, we think everybody's going to be so honest.

Yeah, they're going to be honored by this. And no, there's no world in which, like, if I heard that my name was, look, Grammily is a helpful tool for people. I believe it's been a sponsor on the network in the past.

It is not a tool that I use, having been a copy editor for many years, I can only imagine what, like, I would be annoyed if my writing and my sort of way of doing things was used to push, you know, I completely understand the lawsuit and everything that's involved there.

I wonder how much of an impact, though, any of this is going to have on superhuman, because I'm thinking now about how it doesn't, like, I don't see every day people making use of this feature in the first place.

People who use Grammily all the time because their work required them to, you know, install it and make use of it so that the emails are what they should be.

I don't see them making use of this anyway. So when it goes away, I don't think that it's going to make a much of a difference.

No, I agree. I think, you know, again, if I want to look at the root of what is driving this kind of thing, you know, I always tend to be a person who boils it down to kind of the failures fundamentally of our system, right, of the idea that Grammily, as you said, useful tool, but because of the pressures of, you know, capitalism, they need to feel like they're growing.

They're expanding, right, it's not enough to just be good at grammar checking what other things can we put into our product so that we can grow and accumulate more, more users and more customers.

And sometimes oftentimes that leads to bad decisions because, you know, you're trying to figure out what other things can we shove in and you start to deviate a bit from your core competency, right, in the case of Grammily like, hey, we're a really good grammar checker.

Nobody looked at it and said, but what if I could get Cormick McCarthy telling me how to write my email to my boss like nobody asked for that.

So, you know, I get the temptation to have these exciting new tools and try to figure out how you can apply them to the business that you're doing.

But yeah, it does feel to me like there is a, a dearth of people stopping and thinking about consequences and about what, what is actually going to happen and how these things can be received.

I mean, and that is at the root, unfortunately, also of all the AI and LLM issues as well, right, I mean, how many of these things do we, do we know, do we know we're trained on pirated materials.

There's any number of cases in which they have evidence suggesting that, you know, the likes of meta and anthropic, you know, settled that case, right, like, but there are like depositions with evidence that they're like, yeah, we downloaded this giant trove of pirated ebooks and we used it to train our model and everyone's like, you can't do that.

Nobody, and in some of these cases, they, you know, even worse, they did say like, well, we shouldn't do like nobody should talk about this, but we're doing it, right.

Like in those cases, people are, no, they know it was wrong, but there's a lot of cases where people are like, oh, this is a cool thing.

Where can I get a bunch of text on the internet? Let me just scrape every single like, you know, article written in the last 10 years or something.

So I think, unfortunately, it is a technology that really lends itself to, you know, ask for forgiveness instead of permission.

Yeah, maybe not always the best approach.

No, I mean, yeah, this lesson needs to be learned and it needed to be learned a long time ago, it continues to not be learned.

So lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit.

Frank can happen.

All right, we need to take a quick break before we come back with my story of the week joined joining us today, Dan Moran of six colors calm.

Let me tell you about our first sponsor of this week's episode of tech news weekly.

It is bit warden bringing you this episode.

So bit warden is the trusted leader in password, pasky and secrets management.

Bit warden consistently ranked number one in user satisfaction by G2 and software reviews with more than 10 million users across 180 countries and more than 50,000 businesses.

Whether you're protecting one account or thousands bit warden keeps you secure all year long with consistent updates with the new bit warden access intelligence organizations can detect week reused or exposed credentials.

And immediately guide remediation replacing risky passwords with strong unique ones this closes a major security gap credentials remain a top cause of breaches.

As you know, but with access intelligence, they become visible.

They become prioritized and corrected before exploitation can occur also bit warden light is here bit warden light delivers a lightweight self hosted.

Yes, self hosted password manager built for home labs personal project and environments that want quick setup with minimal overhead.

Bit warden is now enhanced with real time vault health alerts and password coaching features that help users identify week reused or exposed credentials and take immediate action to strengthen their security.

Bit warden now supports direct import from chrome edge brave opera and Vivaldi browsers direct import copies or imports credentials from the browser into the encrypted vault.

And this is great. It's without requiring a separate plain text export. So this is going to make things easier, but also more secure because it helps reduce exposure with that manual export where you might forget to delete.

G2 winter 2025 reports bit warden continues to hold strong as number one in every enterprise category for six straight quarters bit warden setup is easy supports importing from most password management solutions, the bit warden open source code is regularly audited by third party experts and most importantly.

The warden meets sock to type to GPR HIPAA CCPA compliance and ISO 27001 to 002 certification so get started today with bit wardens free trial of a teams or enterprise plan or get started for free across all devices as an individual user at bit warden dot com slash twit that's bit warden dot com slash twit and of course we think bit warden for sponsoring this week's episode of tech news weekly.

All right back from the break we kicked off the show by talking about grammarly now it's time to talk about ticket master this week the Department of Justice announced a settlement with live nation ticket master that on paper was supposed to signal progress in one of the biggest antitrust cases in the entertainment industry.

But as Lauren final reports for the verge the reaction from industry insiders from lawmakers and from consumer advocates has been anything but celebratory instead of the structural break up many it hoped for the deal offers what critics describe as a collection of half measures a 5% fee cap a pledge to open ticket masters back end to competitors.

Which almost sounds like ticket masters just mooning the industry and the devastation. It is absolutely in the divestiture of booking agreements at just just 13 amphitheaters the settlement landed right in the middle of an ongoing jury trial cutting short testimony that was expected to lay bare how live nation allegedly wielded its monopoly power and now many are asking a simple question.

Who actually asked for this.

So let's talk about what's going on here I mean we have heard about this this ongoing ticket master live nation thing for some time and I remember it I remember I think it was even Jason Howell who was getting tickets for his daughter for a Taylor Swift concert.

And at the same time told me like all of the complaints that he had about it and then shortly after that we heard that some lawmaker also experienced this and got so mad that it was time to take a look at things which in on one hand love that we're paying attention to this on the other hand really annoyed that the wave that this has to happen is from a lawmaker taking notice surprise surprise but.

But that gave people hope because we've heard for a long time that ticket master live nation basically has figured out a way to make venues and ticketing all its thing and there are so many kind of behind the scenes deals that we've heard about that go on that make it so that ticket prices have to be very high but then also there's all the issues with people purchasing tickets and risk I mean there's just a lot of.

There's just a lot that goes on here but this deal you know might sound like meaningful reform on the face of it but when you start to really dig in it doesn't make a lot of sense because as I mentioned there are 5% cap on ticket master service fees at live nation owned or operated amphitheaters a pledge to give artists more transparency on their own ticket sales and a requirement that ticket master open its back in technology to competitors but stakeholders are going.

One one in fact said the theme today in this in the discussions I've had with partner organizations and members has been this who asked for this like using multiple ticketing systems for an event.

Oh wait let me read this again he added that several provisions of the settlement either proposed solutions his members likely won't care to take advantage of like using multiple ticketing systems for an event or are so scaled down that they're hardly meaningful.

At trial witnesses had described ticket master software and flattering terms the CEO of the competitor seat geek called it quote something out of the 1980s and Kevin Erickson the director of the artist out of advocacy group future of music coalition said they just argue that ticket masters tech stack is held together with duct tape and so why is giving people access to ticket masters tech stack a remedy.

Basically ticket master got read for filth but the problem is that the settlement does not match what the community and everyone else is saying is wrong here right I love to hear what are your thoughts on this in general yeah and did you expect that more would come out of this.

I mean I hope I always hope that I hope usually goes unanswered you know the process feels so a peak I think is one of the frustrations of consumers is you you know I don't buy a lot of tickets to live events but I have run into that thing where you buy it you're like oh these tickets I mean they're pricey but they're not bad and then you go through all the steps and all the fees then get added on you're like wait a second I thought this was only $100 now it's $150 what happened.

So you know I think the challenge here is that a lot of this is you know is an antitrust problem and therefore they it's because live nation controls so much of the market not only for ticket sales but for venues right like they are they own venues and this is a this is part of the challenge I was just reading some good analysis from Ashley Carmen over at Bloomberg about this whole story as well and how we hope to find out a little bit more as this progress through the trial but since now it's been settled.

We're unlikely to know although the states several states have not signed on to this settlement I guess so there are still some outstanding legal issues that will need to be you know wrapped up with the the DOJ for its part is seems to be satisfied so we'll see what happens there.

One of the things that she point out which was really interesting was the breakdown of the costs that were testified to by one of the lawyers for live nation who said essentially you know with something like a seventy eight dollar face value seventy four dollars goes to the artist and four dollars to the promoter venue collects fifteen dollar fee ticket master gets five dollar fee the credit card company requires a two dollar transaction fee.

You know certainly live nations taking its fair share but a lot of the bulk of it basically goes to the artist and there's the big argument that well you know it's hard to argue against the artists getting paid for this especially because you know for talking about music in particular this is an industry where streaming has depressed how much artist get paid for their music being listened to online so live concerts are one of the ways they can make that money back.

And so that's a challenging aspect to it as well when you're trying to sort of think about it and you know there is a there is an argument as a larger case that you know if the tickets get too expensive the market will react to people won't buy tickets because it's too expensive to go to these things that doesn't seem to be happening a lot of cases right so the argument will be well is the market really suffering from this if people are still buying expensive tickets to go see Taylor Swift because there's not really a competition to that right you can't if you're not going to go see Taylor Swift you're going to be like well maybe I

won't see Taylor Swift but we'll go to see Bruce Springsteen no there's no there's no substitute right for artists if you like an artist you're going to go see that artist so I think the disappointing part of it is though they are trying to do things like cap these fees it does feel a little bit like week T compared to having more options for third party vendors to be engaged in this process and obviously over the years live nation and taking master they've they've bought up all the competition right like it has become consolidate

this feels like a textbook antitrust situation where one party controls a huge part of this infrastructure and it's hard to see how this remedy is actually going to fix that problem yeah yeah I I just

you know the Department of Justice even says that live nation owns operates are exclusively books at least 40 of the top 50 and 60 of the top 100 amp for theaters in the United States huge so 13

of those across the US is not as many as people would want and here's the thing the company isn't actually selling any of those venues it's agreeing to let other promoters book into them so some of the three agreements yeah exactly yeah they appear to be in areas where also weather constraints shorten the season or make for uncomfortable summer viewing so perhaps not even a concession it seems like this of course what I'm saying what I'm about to say is just me

you know speculating or not even speculating but just making an observation that it kind of feels like the DOJ and live nation sat down together and said now how can we make this work for the bus or even more for live nation and I you know not to not to delve too much into the realm of political analysis but we recently had the antitrust DOJ case against Google too right which also wrapped up with kind of lack luster remedies against the the antitrust argument there

and it's hard not to kind of look at these various connect these dots and think about well is there a is there a political angle when it comes to dealing with the business you know and monopolies as a concern in a administration that is you know evidently very business friendly

you know I think I think there is a part of that you have to kind of at least consider and as a result it doesn't shock me that this DOJ was willing to make a deal here and accept those settlements as being sufficient to remedy the antitrust complaints which I yeah I don't know that I agree but it doesn't surprise me

yeah I'm not surprised I'm disappointed just disappointed that's right DOJ you heard air from us we're not surprised but you're your tech news weekly dads are just disappoint we're just disappointed in you

now I want to point out of course the settlement arrived mid trial so the public is not going to get will probably not get that full accounting of live nations behavior or alleged behavior

um and that's kind of one of the big complaints uh it was Erickson who said by leapfrogging passed the airing of the evidence to the remedies makes it especially difficult to judge whether the sentence matches the crime um the jury had just been hearing from the COO of AEG which of course is a major live nation rival and the plaintiffs witness lists still included more venues uh live nation executives and yes for those of you who are for some reason a fan of this

also included kid rock uh proceeding states may still continue their case but the federal settlement side steps the kind of public reckoning that we thought was going to come through and make a difference so um yeah it's not great

it's not great at all ticket prices are not really going to go down anytime soon so if you were hoping to snag some cheap cheap tickets to that musical act you want it's still going to be pricey

yeah well Dan Lauren I want to thank you for your capability and your reliability and your availability all of those things mean a lot uh if people would like to follow along with the work that you're doing where are the places they should go to do so I'm like a like a midsize rental sedan I'm capable I'm reliable I'm available there you go um you can find all of my writing about tech over six colors dot com which predominantly covers apple relayed stuff

uh you can hear my podcast including the rebound which you can search for on apple podcast and clockwise which I host with mica every week uh over on relay uh relay dot FM slash clockwise and for all of my other work including my novels which you should go by uh you can go to de moron dot com and get a full list what a novel idea what a novel idea thank you Dan thanks

already folks let's take a quick break before we come back with a familiar face in just a moment but first let me tell you

about our next sponsor of tech news weekly this episode brought to you by delete me love delete me ever wonder how much of your personal data is out there on the internet for anyone to see

I certainly have it's more than you think your name your contact information sure you expected that social security number did you expect that

home address even information about your family members all being compiled by data brokers and sold online anyone on the web can buy your private details

this can lead to identity theft fishing attempts doxing harassment but now you can protect your privacy with delete me

as a tech insider and show host obviously I'm aware of how little privacy we have and how much of

the personal information we have is out there that can compromise my safety my security

and so that is why I personally recommend and use delete me because it has helped me to solve this problem and keep me protected

it's really nice to be able to go through and see each month just how much of my data is being removed from the web

delete me as a subscription service and that's important because it removes your personal information from hundreds of data brokers

but I'll talk about how it continues to do so and how that's important you can sign up and provide delete me with exactly what information you want deleted

and then you let their experts take it from there so yes there are people who are going out and making sure that your data is removed from online

delete me sends you regular personalized privacy reports showing what information they found where they found it and what they removed

and delete me is not just a one time service that subscription thing very important because delete me is always working for you

constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the internet to put it simply

delete me does all the hard work of wiping your and your family's personal information from data broker websites

so take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for delete me at a special discount for our listeners

today yet 20% off your delete me plan when you go to join delete me dot com slash twit and use promo code twit at checkout

the only way to get 20% off is to go to join delete me dot com slash twit and enter code twit at checkout

that's join delete me dot com slash twit code twit t w i t and we thank delete me for sponsoring this week's episode

of tech news weekly all right we are back from the break and I am excited to say that even though we missed her last week

joining us today is a bra alhiti of scene welcome back of bra thank you so much it's a good thing I wasn't here

last week because then we have something to talk about this week yay yes so you got to tell us first and

foremost where you were and you know what I I think some people at least will want to hear especially

people who are regular guests what was it like being in Barcelona yes I was in Barcelona for mobile

world congress it was my second time being there and second time is a bit more a little easier to navigate

than the first time or it's all just a whirlwind and you're running around the show floor and realizing

just how many boots there are but this year was created it was just as busy but I kind of learned

how to manage my time a little better and joy being in Barcelona a little bit more and it's great

it's it's a great environment just to be around so many people who are so excited about not just tech

but mobile tech and and and the the world part of mobile world congress is so true I think you

know you see some of that at CES but I think when you're you know obviously in a different location

you're gonna have a different variety of people where Europe might be closer to them than the US

might be and so you just get a whole different mix of people so it's really fun to see all that

that is yeah that's pretty cool um I can imagine that being part of the the experience now

yeah um tell us how does mobile world congress compare to CES in terms of perhaps what we'll do too

what the what the mwc folks sort of pitch mobile world congress as and then also how does it

compare in terms of actually being there and what it turns out being yes so the nice thing about

mobile world congress is that it's a little bit more focused I think those of us who go to CES

and mwc is still overwhelming they're both overwhelming but you go to CES and there's so many

types of tech there's such a variety of categories that you tap into there's a little bit of

that with mwc but it's really more mobile technology focus so whether you're talking about

hardware or satellite technology or you know accessories or um you know cellular providers

all of those things that's a little bit more um it's it's a little bit more focused on

on a particular niche rather than feeling like oh my gosh like you know you still have robots of

course because it's tech congress but still it's a little bit more like honed in which is which is

really nice so in terms of the pitches and also just in terms of navigating um the show floor

there's you know similar to CES there's um you know different pavilions for different countries

but um but you see a lot of the same big players there um you know samsung's going to be there

google is going to be there apple was not there but apple still you know made waves with

their own announcements uh love that for them and for those of us who are running around covering

all of it yeah um so let's then dig into the magic uh tell us sort of what you saw what stuck out to

you uh it looks like i look at the scene at recap yeah and there was quite a bit of stuff um tell us

yeah let's let's just go down the list of what you saw and liked and thought was interesting yeah

well um one of the things that i saw actually technically for the second time was the motor oil

razor fold um i saw this first at ces and then got a little bit more hands on time during mwc and

this is coming out in the summer um they're excited about this just because it's always cool to see

another player in the in the phone in the foldable phone space um so uh it has a larger external

and internal display than the galaxy z fold seven or the pixel ten pro fold um also kind of like

that slimmer design so uh really great to see that then i think the the phone that really stole the

spotlight though was the the honor robot phone with a little little uh camera and on a gimbal that

that comes out and uh it was very very flashy um physically the flashiest phone there um but uh

the honor magic v6 was there too so lots lots of unique phone concepts and that was kind of my

takeaway from this was people talk a lot about how phones are boring but there are some really

interesting phones out there it's whether you are willing to leave your iphone behind and try

something a little bit different uh and those options exist maybe not as much in the us as they do

in in some parts of the world but we have we have a good amount of options here um and then one other

phone that that caught my attention um so tech now had a few uh speaking of phones that we don't

really have here um they had a few concepts that were really cool i think the thing that really

stole the spotlight and really dominated our socials was this modular phone where the phone itself

is 4.9 millimeter thick but what you do is you can attach battery packs you can attach a larger camera

you can attach microphones um all these all these magnetic accessories um to kind of build up your

phone as you want it so that if you want you just have a thin little thing that's easy to toss in

your pocket but if you really want to build it up you can attach all these components which is

really cool um so i think those are kind of the most interesting phone concepts uh and devices um

and then the thing that i tried for the first time uh was the android xr glasses smart glasses um

these are we have been introduced for a while now we we saw them at google io last year too but it

was my first time actually trying them on and i am not a smart glasses person i don't think they're

uh really necessary interesting i didn't plan on glasses are just fine but then i tried these on

and i was like you know what maybe you don't knock it till you try it and once i tried it um

it was really cool to see like you know google maps in in the lens and not obstructing my view

because i think one of the things that really bugs me is when you're in a new place and you're

walking around and you want to navigate but you also want to just want to like see where you are

right you want to see your surroundings okay but you are these smart glasses and then you can

have that google maps navigation and still be able to take everything in which is really cool um

being able to look at something and say play a song from that album or look at a picture and say

guide me here or the really cool thing is translation so somebody speaks to you in a different

language and then you see that text and you hear that translation in an AI version of their voice

at the same time um dystopian cool all of that so now i'm apparently a smart glasses believer it takes

us two seconds and that's it uh so um yeah and then i'll uh i think one other thing that um that

stood out to me was i saw this exhibit for um airport technology so um what the airport of the

future could potentially look like so obviously robots uh like a robot concierge could be an option

or an entertainment robot as you wait for your delayed flight which sounds super fun and not

aggravating um and there's also um smart luggage tags where you can um you know essentially

connect it to this app for a luggage tag called bag ID and then it'll show a digital tag

uh and refresh for your flight so you're not using paper tags all the time you can use it you

could track it with apple find my um or samsung smart things um and then the last airport thing that

I thought was cool was um a little autonomous uh cart called uh alba ride which uh is launching at

dalsport worth airport this year um and it's a little autonomous uh single single rider uh seat that

will get you to your gate um and uh good for good for mobility uh get increasing accessibility and

getting people to their gates faster and easier hopefully okay airport tech yeah you know

yet it was it was a big focus for them this year for some reason they were advertising like crazy

every corner we went yeah um what would you say perhaps is sort of in your specific favorite tech

space like what about sort of theme wise that you saw there but then also

so when you were on the plane leaving uh what stuck with you yeah I think there's something very

similar to last year which is the thin foldable phone craze so um I am I'm really fascinated by

companies kind of um experimenting more I think you can only pitch AI so much and realize how

little people care uh then once you do something like make a phone super thin or make it fold or even

with samsung make a display that um you know blocks out the view from the side um and only certain

portions of the screen the privacy display on the s25 ultra is amazing these kinds of things where

it's like hardware matters and so to see that kind of innovation was really cool and it really does

echo a lot of the trends that we saw last year and that are continuing this year and we're continuing

at mobile world congress so I think it's an exciting time to um be in the market for a new phone

and and have some fun with it yeah now when you looked or I mean because I would imagine you're seeing

people you know walking around with tech um and then also seeing sort of the groupings right of where

people are are going I'm kind of curious for the people who are there uh that are covering all of

this are they still carrying iPhones and samsung phones or do you see people kind of

quote unquote putting their money where their mouth is in terms of yeah actually making use of

of some of these other options that are there it's funny that you ask that because it's actually

something I kind of called out in my in my wrapper piece is that people are faunting over these

phones but guess what they're recording with they're recording with an iPhone or you know the

you know as 25 ultra whatever they have in their hands um we are creatures of habit and I think

even me personally right like I I'm good with one screen I'm good with a phone that doesn't

fold I like testing those phones I like using those phones but when it comes to just something I need

every day um innovation is really exciting but it's not always needed um for your everyday tasks so

I think I saw a lot of that um you know and I think when you do look at people from certain parts

of the world where they have a little bit more variety you see like oh they they like to experiment

a little bit more than we do in the west um so there was definitely a divide there um but I wonder

if that'll change I wonder if if there will someday be this wave maybe once apple you know

decides to experiment more with their hardware that we'll see more people kind of shift to

having some more fun with that yeah I think some more fun some more whimsy would be nice yeah

just in general yeah now the the lesson that I am curious about is how much pet tech did you see

while you were there was there lots of pet tech a little bit of pet tech will my dog start carrying

around a watch that I can call her or him on yeah I so my colleague Patrick Holland definitely

looked at the pet phone I believe it's called um with he wants to know if he can talk to his cats

right um so um there was a good amount of it there I personally didn't end up checking out a

lot of it because I'm a boring person with no pets um I know it's disappointing I got to work on

that but um but that is always I mean I feel like that's such a growing trend at any tech conference

right is how people love their pets how do we tap into this um and make that process of caring for

your pet easier and uh and yeah what if you could just keep in touch with them and and so yeah

I'm glad I had some colleagues who are uh more uh more fun than I am look into that kind of stuff

oh yeah there's there'll be a link in the show notes to an article about the pet cam and pet

phone yeah I have used in the past I had a it was a webcam that was a dog treat dispenser fun

well you you would think and I think if you have a big dog probably a lot of fun

my dogs immediately became terrified of it uh because it like it it it goes

as the hopper sort of brings a treat down into this little thing and then it goes

soup because there's this little arm inside that shoots the treat out into the, you know, into

the space. Right. And so between those two sounds plus things flying at them. Right. I could

understand. That's right. Yeah. So any time I turned, turned it on to try to see them while

I was gone, they would be as far away from this. Maybe we could all use a little less tech,

I think, is the takeaway here. Yeah. That is the takeaway. That is the takeaway.

All right. Abrar, anything else that you want to mention before we say goodbye or did we,

did we cover what mattered at MWC? I think so. I think that that pretty much covers the

gist of it. And I'm glad I got to talk to you about it. It's, it's a good time. And yeah,

it's just really cool to see what, what different people care about in different parts of the

world and, and what we have in common. Nice. Thank you so much, Abrar. We appreciate it.

Thank you. I appreciate it. Take care. Alrighty, folks. We're going to take a break before we come

back with one more story of the week. I want to tell you about Zscaler bringing you this

episode of tech news weekly Zscaler is the world's largest cloud security platform.

The potential rewards of AI, frankly, too great to ignore. But unfortunately, so are the risks.

Laws of sensitive data and attacks against enterprise managed AI. Generative AI increases

opportunities for threat actors because it helps them rapidly create fishing lures,

right malicious code, and also automate data extraction. There were 1.3 million instances

of social security numbers leaked to AI applications, chat GPT and Microsoft co-pilot,

saw nearly 3.2 million data violations. So it's time to rethink your organization's

safe use of public and private AI. Check out what SEVA, the director of security and

infrastructure at Zura, says about using Zscaler to prevent AI attacks.

With Zscaler being in line in a security protection strategy, helps us monitor all the traffic.

So even if a bad actor were to use AI because we have tight security framework around our endpoint

helps us proactively prevent that activity from happening. AI is tremendous in terms of its

opportunities, but it also brings in challenges. We're confident that Zscaler is going to help us

ensure that we're not slowed down by security challenges, but continue to take advantage of all the

advancements. With Zscaler zero trust plus AI, you can safely adopt Gen AI and private AI to

boost productivity across the business. Their zero trust architecture plus AI helps you reduce

the risks of AI related data loss and protects against AI attacks to guarantee greater productivity

and compliance. Learn more at zscaler.com slash security. That's zscaler.com slash security.

And we thank Zscaler for sponsoring this week's episode of tech news weekly.

All right, back from the break, this week, MIT technology review had an interesting report on

why we call it pretty fascinating phenomenon that's unfolding in China, the explosive

popularity of open claw, which if you've watched any of the Twitch you will be familiar with

open claw by now. It is an open source AI agent that's become so wildly popular, it spawned an

entire cottage industry of hustlers, tinkerers, and impromptu consultants that are caching in on

the craze. The AI tool has become the country's latest tech obsession. And for savvy early adopters

with even a little technical know how it has turned into a genuine business opportunity. But

beneath the gold rush energy, there are real questions about security, about practicality,

and whether the hype is outpacing the technology itself. So let's talk first and foremost about

open claw in China. First, you should know that open claw has been given the nickname lobster

in China. It's a reference, of course, to its logo. And raising a lobster has become the phrase

of the moment. One the 36 year old software engineer in Shenzhen says, have you raised a lobster

yet? Has that like that question? Have you raised a lobster yet? Has been inescapable over the past

month? The engineer has been building open source tools on top of the open claw ecosystem since

January, including one that visualizes the agent's progress as an animated desktop worker,

and another that lets users voice chat with it. You've probably heard about Leo's use of the tool,

and then also heard about the security implications on security now. Now, this is another thing

that's important to understand. Who are the people who are making use of it? Who is raising

lobsters right now? There are lawyers, doctors who have little technical background, but are

curious about learning new things. So it's not just developers, but in China, they're cross

disciplinary gatherings where people meet to talk about raising lobster and seems to be perhaps

more AI curiosity in China than we even have here in the US. The scale of community engagement

is something worth pointing out. Just last weekend, the developer we were talking about attended

three open claw events in Shenzhen. These are separate events, and each had more than 500 people.

The largest on March 7th pulled in more than 1,000 attendees. So many that people were

standing shoulder to shoulder with many unable to find a seat. One of the tech influencers who was

there did a live stream showing open claws capabilities and ended up getting 20,000 views.

But it's not just big tech in China. We can't forget about big government in China. China's

major tech companies are writing the wave. Tencent held a public event offering free installation

support for open claw. That, of course, drew long lines, elderly users, children. Companies are

promoting their own models, APIs and cloud services that work with the lobster as well as their

own open claw like agents. Perhaps more telling though, again, government response. The one district

in Shenzhen released policies to support open claw related ventures, offering free computing credits

and also cash rewards for standout projects. Other cities have begun rolling out some more measures.

Henry Lee, who's a software engineer in Beijing, captures just how deep this seems to go,

saying, it was not until my father, who is 77, asked me to help install a lobster for him that I

realized this thing is truly viral. And it's become a bit of a gold rush. Open claw requires a level

of technical knowledge that most people don't have. You've got to type commands into a terminal.

You got to navigate developer platforms. Running in running it is also an issue. If you've got older

or budget laptops, it's going to be a struggle installing it on a daily use computer without

doing that data partitioning. It's dealing with privacy and security risks. And so that gap that's

become apparent here that exists between demand, but also technical capability has then created

this new service economy. There's a 27 year old software engineer in Beijing who started selling a

basic installation service for just about $14. Within weeks, he'd scaled into a full-fledged

operation with tiered packages of basic installation, custom configuration packages, ongoing tutoring,

quickly became overwhelmed with customers and pulled in around $830 at a single weekend.

On Chinese e-commerce platforms, if you search OpenClaw, hundreds of listings, excuse me,

for installation guides, technical support packages. And there are also hardware sellers who are

caching in. One Shenzhen-based seller who sells refurbished Macs was among the first to offer

Mac minis and MacBooks with OpenClaw pre-installed. It runs continuously in the background, obviously.

It's got hard drive access. And so people are after that dedicated device rather than risking

their personal data on their everyday machines. Apparently, Lee says that orders have increased

eightfold in just two weeks. We'll talk in a moment about the people who are not buying into OpenClaw.

Perhaps some of you as well. But first, I want to tell you about our final sponsor of today's

episode. And that is Pebble bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. I've got a quick

question for you, appropriate given our international topics today. Are you hiring in another country

right now? Because once you do, things can get complicated pretty quick. But that is where Pebble

can help because Pebble will help you send offers to anyone in the world in minutes and get them

onboarded fast. Pebble, AI-powered, as you might imagine, global human resources platform built for

founders, HR leaders, operators who are hiring and supporting teams around the world. Now Pebble

will help you hire, pay, and manage talent in more than 185 countries with fast onboarding that

can be done in minutes instead of juggling separate tools for contracts and payroll and benefits

and compliance. Pebble is going to bring everything together with built-in guidance and local

expertise to support you, especially helpful if you're managing teams internationally or planning

to grow. The fastest growing companies in the world use Pebble to stay organized and reduce risk

and founders use it to scale faster without having to become HR or compliance experts.

Rated number one in compliance on G2, the customer testimonials speak for themselves. For example,

Page needed global talent to align with its bold mission as a digital diagnostics company

revolutionizing cancer pathology with AI. Page's VP of Finance and Operations said, quote,

over the past year, we've doubled if not tripled our global headcount. That growth has been

largely thanks to our partnership with Pebble. Bottom line, it simplifies global people operations so

that you can spend more time growing the business and supporting your team. Pebble's new standard

discounted price at $399 USD per month per employee helps you contain costs. Go to highpebble.ai to

get a free estimate. That's h-i-p-e-b-l.ai for a free estimate. And we thank Pebble for sponsoring

this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. Now, before the break, I was talking about how

open-claw, or as it's lovingly known, in China, lobster is gaining a lot of popularity among a

lot of people in China. But there are people not buying into the hype. Tian Yu Feng, a PhD,

or probably Fung, a PhD candidate studying the history of technology at Harvard,

notes that this kind of behavior isn't entirely new. The Chinese internet users that, you know,

we've sort of looked at in the past, have long paid for one-off IT support services,

like installing Adobe software, or learning how to jailbreak kindles. But here, the stakes are,

of course, higher. There's one tech worker who offers a little bit of skepticism saying,

the hype in first tier cities can be a little overblown. The agent is still a proof of concept,

and I doubt it would be of any life changing used to the average person for now. In fact,

using open-claw safely and getting meaningful results requires a level of technical fluency

and independent judgment that most new users simply just don't have yet. On March 10th, China

Cybersecurity Regulator, CNSERT issued a formal warning about open-claw security and data risks,

saying the tool heightens user's exposure to data breaches, despite those concerns,

the enthusiasm does not appear to be slowing. The one person who is now flush

with money from his open-claw side business has bigger ambitions, wants to use the momentum

and the capital to build out a venture with AI tools at the center. So not just this, but other

tools as well. With open-claw and other AI agents, I want to see if I can run a one-person company.

I'm giving myself one year. Frankly, a sentiment that seems to capture the broader energy of this

moment in China, genuine technological excitement, that hustle of entrepreneurs and the, of course,

optimism that we've seen with AI in particular. But goodness, given the security implications of

open-claw, I just worry about its installation on so many people's devices, particularly those who

do not know what they're doing. And so please, if you're thinking about installing this,

please be mindful of the security risks and really read up on that before going down this path.

Folks, that's going to bring us to the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. As always,

I want to thank you so much for being here. If you would like to subscribe to the show and

you're not, please head to twitch.tv slash TNW. That is where you can go. We publish a show every

Thursday. If you'd like to check out our shows without any ads, that was weird, but that's how we're

doing it. Well, join our club. Twitch.tv slash club. When you join the club, $10 a month, $120

a year, you can also scan that QR code in the top corner there. Twitch.tv slash club. Twitch,

you will gain access to every single one of our shows ad-free, just the content. You also gain

access to our awesome feeds. We have a feed that has behind the scenes before the show, after the show.

We have a feed that has our live coverage of Tech News events, the Nvidia event is coming up,

and that will be included as part of your club subscription. And access to the feed that has

our shows, our special shows for the club, like my crafting corner, Stacy's book club,

a photo time, a coffee time. I think we just recently had a chat with Johnny Jet, but that might

be coming up. In any case, those are all available in that feed. If that's not enough, I understand.

I'm also offering you an invite to our club, by way of our Discord. When you join the club,

you will gain access to the club to it Discord. A fun place to go to chat with a fellow club

Twitch members and those of us here at Twitch. So be sure to check it out. Twitch.tv slash club

Twitch is where you go to sign up. If you'd like to check out my other shows or follow me online,

head to, I'm at Mike Assargent on many social media network where you can head to chihuahua.coffeech.

I atuate.coffee. And of course, be sure to check out my other shows, including iOS today and hands

on Apple, which we'll publish today, and hands on Tech, the show that publishes every Sunday here

on the network. Thank you so much for being here. Always appreciate chatting with you all,

or at least seeing your chats in the Discord. And I'll be back next week with another episode of

Tech News Weekly. Bye bye everybody.

Ever seen a musical so good you didn't want it to end? Like you could live inside it forever.

Then you're going to love Schmigadun. Get your one-way ticket to Broadway musical Paradise.

Have you ever felt trapped at a musical like you literally couldn't escape? Then you'll

hate to miss Schmigadun because you'll never want to leave and you can't. But the important thing is

you'll never want to. Get tickets at www.schmigadunbrogway.com.

Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same

premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities,

so do like I did, and have one of your assistance assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today.

I'm told it's super easy to do at www.mitmobile.com slash switch.

Up front payment of $45 for three month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required.

Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available,

taxes and fees extra, feeful terms at www.mitmobile.com