Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, domin executive producer with I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech and this is the tech
Speaker 1: news for Tuesday, December one. Let's get to it. Last week,
Speaker 1: security experts revealed the discovery of a zero day vulnerability
Speaker 1: in Apache log for j. Now, that is a Java
Speaker 1: based utility that, as the name suggests, it logs data,
Speaker 1: and tons of apps and organizations use it to help
Speaker 1: log data. I mean, data, as we all know, is
Speaker 1: worth a lot of money, but it's only worth money
Speaker 1: if you can do stuff with it, and tools such
Speaker 1: as log for j are meant to record and organized
Speaker 1: data in ways that make it useful. But the vulnerability
Speaker 1: is a doozy. It allows for remote code execution, which
Speaker 1: is security talk. That means if you exploit that vulnerability,
Speaker 1: you can use it to infiltrate someone else's machine and
Speaker 1: get that machine to execute code of your choice and
Speaker 1: thus potentially infected with malware that you have, you know,
Speaker 1: delivered to it. So this is kind of like an
Speaker 1: open gateway for hackers who can use it to infect
Speaker 1: target systems. With something really nasty. Services that rely on
Speaker 1: log for j includes some really big ones out there.
Speaker 1: Um there's a Java version of Minecraft that uses it.
Speaker 1: For example, platforms like Twitter use it. Major services like
Speaker 1: cloud Flare, which does stuff like a distributed denial of
Speaker 1: service mitigation strategies for companies they use it. So this
Speaker 1: is a major problem. It's been called the worst security
Speaker 1: vulnerability in years, like in a decade, and it's going
Speaker 1: to require companies to patch servers quickly to mitigate the
Speaker 1: damage that's already being done. Because here's the thing. The
Speaker 1: world at large wasn't really made aware of this vulnerability
Speaker 1: until Thursday, December nine one, but the bad guys surely
Speaker 1: knew about it before then and had been working on
Speaker 1: ways to infiltrate different target servers. Now. The fix, as
Speaker 1: fixes go, is relatively simple, but the scale at which
Speaker 1: it must be rolled out means that even a simple
Speaker 1: task can be a huge endeavor. Meanwhile, the thing keeping
Speaker 1: I t Pros up at night is that the next
Speaker 1: several weeks will be spent trying to determine which servers
Speaker 1: may have been compromised and by whom. CNN reports that
Speaker 1: Chinese hackers potentially backed by the Chinese government are using
Speaker 1: this vulnerability to penetrate target computer systems. Right now, the
Speaker 1: US Occupational Safety and Health Administration a k a OSHA
Speaker 1: has launched an investigation into Apple, and at the heart
Speaker 1: of the matter is an accusation from a former Apple
Speaker 1: employee who says that the company retaliated against her after
Speaker 1: she filed labor complaints against Apple and participated in public
Speaker 1: criticism of the company. So now OSHA is going to
Speaker 1: investigate Apple to see if those accusations hold water. This
Speaker 1: is another component to the ongoing movement within Apple, one
Speaker 1: in which a growing number of employees and former employees
Speaker 1: have come forward to share stories about a seemingly toxic
Speaker 1: work culture. I might need to do an episode about
Speaker 1: this before too long. I have a theory that the
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs era at Apple kind of set up a
Speaker 1: culture that could be pretty brutal at times. Jobs himself
Speaker 1: had a famous reputation for being a really, really harsh taskmaster,
Speaker 1: and in fact, people would sometimes refer who getting fired
Speaker 1: at Apple as getting jobs because he was known for
Speaker 1: having angry outbursts in which he would fire people. And
Speaker 1: my guess is that that contributed to a culture that
Speaker 1: was not particularly healthy, but during the Job's era, no
Speaker 1: one was comfortable speaking out about it. Now, years after
Speaker 1: Jobs has passed away, it looks to me like the
Speaker 1: company culture is slowly kind of falling out from that era.
Speaker 1: And now employees, particularly employees who who may not have
Speaker 1: even worked during the Jobs era, but who have uh
Speaker 1: let's say, more empowered ideas of what being an employee
Speaker 1: is are starting to bring these issues to light, and
Speaker 1: the company is kind of flailing in its responses now.
Speaker 1: I think that the employees coming forward is a good thing.
Speaker 1: I think anytime we see organizations being held accountable for
Speaker 1: the work conditions that are at that organization, that's a
Speaker 1: good thing. Um. I think it's unfortunate that Apple has
Speaker 1: appeared two engaged in retaliatory practices. If that, in fact
Speaker 1: is what OSHA discovers, the company could end up facing
Speaker 1: some pretty serious fines. You know, in the old days
Speaker 1: of the web, it was not unusual to see people
Speaker 1: rush out to register domain names in an attempt to
Speaker 1: squat on them and then sell them off later. The
Speaker 1: whole idea being if I can get that domain name,
Speaker 1: then in the future, this company that exists is going
Speaker 1: to want that they're gonna have to pay me to
Speaker 1: get off their land, essentially, so you might run out
Speaker 1: and buy something like Levi's dot com, hoping that the
Speaker 1: Levi's Genes company would ultimately come up to you and say, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: clear off, here's you know, ten thousand bucks, give us
Speaker 1: the name. However, squatting is certainly not what thea My
Speaker 1: Bauman was doing when she created an Instagram account with
Speaker 1: the handle Metaverse. She was not trying to jump ahead
Speaker 1: of meta slash Facebook or anything unless she's able to
Speaker 1: see well into the future, because she has held that
Speaker 1: metaverse Instagram account for a decade, at least she did
Speaker 1: until November two of this year. That's when Instagram blocked
Speaker 1: her account, and all she got was an explanation that
Speaker 1: she was quote pretending to be someone else in the quote.
Speaker 1: By the way, that was not like a targeted message
Speaker 1: to her. That was an automated message that was here's
Speaker 1: why your account has been blocked. And that's still pretty
Speaker 1: rich because she had held that account for a decade.
Speaker 1: But meta slash Facebook has big plans to create a metaverse,
Speaker 1: and that you know company happens to own Instagram. So
Speaker 1: I think this was less of a you're pretending to
Speaker 1: be someone else, so now we're punishing you, and more
Speaker 1: of a we own this and we're going to engage
Speaker 1: in a little imminent domain virtual land grab here. That
Speaker 1: handle belongs to us now. And in a way I
Speaker 1: get it. I mean, I get that the company wants
Speaker 1: to own and control the handle for something that they're
Speaker 1: really planning on being a big thing, like the future
Speaker 1: of the company. However, it is more than a little
Speaker 1: bit of a low zypr move to issue a statement
Speaker 1: to a ten year old account that that account is
Speaker 1: violating rules because they're pretending to be someone else, because
Speaker 1: there was no someone else to pretend to be ten
Speaker 1: years ago. I mean, clearly this is not the case.
Speaker 1: Balman had used the account to promote her art and
Speaker 1: her business, which changed over the years, but that's what
Speaker 1: she kept using it for. She had never made any
Speaker 1: sort of claim that she was actually a Facebook plan
Speaker 1: from the future, so it's a pretty crappy move on
Speaker 1: Meta's part. In fact, if she had been using the
Speaker 1: account for ten years, like if she literally made it
Speaker 1: ten years ago, that would mean she created the Instagram
Speaker 1: account before Facebook had even bought Instagram. That happened in
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve. Anyway, my hope is that the company
Speaker 1: will make good with Bauman at some point, at least
Speaker 1: give her access to all the stuff that she has
Speaker 1: posted over that time period. I mean, I get that
Speaker 1: you want to control the metaverse handle, but this approach
Speaker 1: was so clumsy and inaccurate that it's infuriating. One of
Speaker 1: the stories I've covered this year has been the right
Speaker 1: to repair movement, in which advocates are pushing lawmakers to
Speaker 1: create rules that would require companies to make it possible
Speaker 1: for you know, people to repair their own stuff, or
Speaker 1: to bring their stuff to any repair shop that they want,
Speaker 1: instead of being forced down a company operated or company
Speaker 1: licensed business. And we've seen this with all kinds of technology,
Speaker 1: from consumer electronics like smartphones and laptops to farming tractors.
Speaker 1: John Dear is infamous for this stuff. Well, now Microsoft
Speaker 1: is adding features that make repairs on surface laptops a
Speaker 1: little more accessible. Microsoft is partnering with I fix it
Speaker 1: dot com, and Microsoft is going to offer its service
Speaker 1: tools for sale through I fix it. And uh, it's
Speaker 1: not quite at the point where the end user is
Speaker 1: going to be able to go out and get these
Speaker 1: specialty tools, So if you're not like running a repair
Speaker 1: shop or whatever, you're not going to run out and
Speaker 1: grab these so that you just have them in your
Speaker 1: tool chest at home. However, it does mean that people
Speaker 1: who are independent repair shop owners will be able to
Speaker 1: get the official tools for themselves. So it's a small
Speaker 1: step toward breaking out that siloed approach to repairs. And
Speaker 1: if you're wondering why companies even do this in the
Speaker 1: first place, the answer is money. A company can only
Speaker 1: sell you a specific lap top once, right, they sell
Speaker 1: it to you, you bought it, that's it. They can
Speaker 1: sell another one to you down the line, but the
Speaker 1: transaction of that one computer that's over. Well, if the
Speaker 1: company can guarantee that the it is the only entity
Speaker 1: that can offer maintenance and repairs, or that it will
Speaker 1: only extend that capability to repair shops that will pay
Speaker 1: a hefty licensing fee back to the company for that privilege,
Speaker 1: well then that means the company can keep making money
Speaker 1: off of a single sale indefinitely for as long as
Speaker 1: you know, you continue to use it and bringing them
Speaker 1: for maintenance and repairs. All right, we have some more
Speaker 1: stories for this episode, but before we get to that.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break. We're back, all right. The
Speaker 1: company Chronos that's k r o n Os announced that
Speaker 1: it was hit with a ransomware attack from hackers, and specifically,
Speaker 1: the hackers tar getted the Chronos private cloud and that
Speaker 1: houses a suite of HR tools that other companies use.
Speaker 1: So Chronos is a company that provides HR services to clients.
Speaker 1: So other companies that have chosen to outsource their HR functions.
Speaker 1: That's bad news for Chronos customers because there's an outage
Speaker 1: now and some of them have found it impossible to
Speaker 1: perform HR functions like issuing payroll. That means employees that
Speaker 1: those companies will not get paid on time, and that's
Speaker 1: always a hardship. It's particularly tough during the holidays. U
Speaker 1: k G, the parent company of Chronos, hasn't revealed many
Speaker 1: details about the ransomware attacks, such as what group was
Speaker 1: behind the attack, nor do we know anything about the
Speaker 1: company's plan to respond to the attack and whether or
Speaker 1: not they intend to pay off the ransom Once again,
Speaker 1: paying ransomware that tends to be the worst idea because
Speaker 1: it justifies the ransomware attacks in the first place. If
Speaker 1: the attacks weren't profitable hackers wouldn't use them, right, but
Speaker 1: paying off hackers pretty much ensures that future attacks will follow.
Speaker 1: That being said, it is hard to advocate a stiff
Speaker 1: upper lip approach when so many small businesses are in
Speaker 1: a holding pattern when it comes to stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: doing their payroll. Uh, that's a real issue. In fact,
Speaker 1: I would argue that's exactly why the hackers targeted something
Speaker 1: like Chronos, because especially with the timing, it means that
Speaker 1: the company is under tremendous pressure because there are all
Speaker 1: these people and organizations that depend upon those services that
Speaker 1: it's it's what you know, puts the squeeze on the
Speaker 1: company to try and convince them to pay the ransom. So,
Speaker 1: you know, it's super tough situation. And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what I would do if I were
Speaker 1: in the position of having to make decisions at Chronos. Okay,
Speaker 1: imagine for a moment that you have a piece of
Speaker 1: technology that has a convenience feature and it's one that
Speaker 1: you depend upon on occasion, and then one day the
Speaker 1: feature stops working and then you find out you can
Speaker 1: regain the use of that feature, but only if you
Speaker 1: pay a subscription fee. That's kind of what some Toyota
Speaker 1: vehicle owners are starting to experience recently. It's part of
Speaker 1: the Remote Connect suite of features, and the Remote Connect
Speaker 1: includes a bunch of convenience features like remote locks and
Speaker 1: preheating a vehicle remotely, or remote starting a vehicle. And
Speaker 1: it's that last one, the remote start, that has stopped
Speaker 1: working for some Toyota owners. And there's reasons why. I
Speaker 1: want to say that this is super tricky alright, So
Speaker 1: Toyota owners who have a two thousand, eighteen or newer
Speaker 1: vehicle can opt to have remote start as part of
Speaker 1: the remote Connect features. It's lumped in with some other
Speaker 1: features that you can get with certain Toyota vehicles. However,
Speaker 1: those features are also part of a three year trial,
Speaker 1: so you have free use of those for three years.
Speaker 1: But then once you've owned the car for three years
Speaker 1: or longer, that trial comes to an end and the
Speaker 1: remote start feature stops working, along with all the other
Speaker 1: remote Connect features that are part of that suite. But
Speaker 1: here's the weird thing. See, a lot of remote Connect
Speaker 1: features involve Toyota sending information to the car, right, so
Speaker 1: these are features that depend upon Toyota's back end so
Speaker 1: you can see why there's a subscription fee, right, you
Speaker 1: have to pay the company to maintain and operate these
Speaker 1: back end features. But remote start doesn't require that. It's
Speaker 1: all local. It's our f base radio frequency base. That
Speaker 1: means it's just radio waves that are coming from the
Speaker 1: key fob going to the car, sending a message to
Speaker 1: remote start the vehicle. There is no interfacing with Toyota's
Speaker 1: back end system at all. So in other words, the
Speaker 1: capability is actually built into the car, it's built into
Speaker 1: the key fob. But Toyota is disabling that feature remotely
Speaker 1: unless owners subscribe to the Remote Connect service. That's eight
Speaker 1: bucks a month or eighty dollars a year. Now, one
Speaker 1: silver lining here is that if you own a Toyota
Speaker 1: from before two thousand eighteen that still has remote Start,
Speaker 1: you aren't affected. Now, this is an altruism on Toyota's part.
Speaker 1: It's rather you know, self preservation and practicality. Because those
Speaker 1: cars depend upon three G receivers that's how they receive
Speaker 1: information from Toyota. They go in through the cellular network.
Speaker 1: But cellular companies are dismantling their three G networks. That
Speaker 1: means those cars will no longer be able to be
Speaker 1: part of the remote connect ecosystem at all because they
Speaker 1: won't be able to receive messages from Toyota itself. Those
Speaker 1: messages will be sent via LTE or later, so the
Speaker 1: cars will not be able to get that info. That
Speaker 1: means it would be a terrible pr move for Toyota
Speaker 1: to disable a feature and then force people to subscribe
Speaker 1: to a service that they otherwise wouldn't be able to use.
Speaker 1: In other words, it would just be, hey, pay us
Speaker 1: money so you can unlock this loc really available technology feature.
Speaker 1: That would be not great. Plus, Toyota couldn't really do
Speaker 1: it because they wouldn't be able to send the message
Speaker 1: to disable the feature or enable the feature remotely anyway.
Speaker 1: You would have to bring it in to a dealership
Speaker 1: or something to get that stuff fixed. Speaking of Toyota,
Speaker 1: the company has partnered with another company called pony dot Ai.
Speaker 1: That's a Chinese company working on autonomous car technology. Well,
Speaker 1: the state of California recently suspended pony aiyes license really,
Speaker 1: they provoked a permit, so by that I mean California
Speaker 1: has told pony dot Ai that it will no longer
Speaker 1: be allowed to conduct fully autonomous testing on California roads
Speaker 1: and highways. Now, the reason for that decision is because
Speaker 1: of an accident. So a vehicle operating under a pony
Speaker 1: dot ai autonomous system created a single vehicle accident. It
Speaker 1: veered into a road center divider. Now, no one was
Speaker 1: injured in the accident. There were no other vehicles involved,
Speaker 1: so as far as accidents go, this was kind of
Speaker 1: a best case scenario, but it did mean that California
Speaker 1: regulators were concerned enough to revoke pony dot ais permit. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, pony dot Ai will still be able
Speaker 1: to test vehicles. They just will have to include a
Speaker 1: safety driver behind the wheel on all tests so that
Speaker 1: a human operator could potentially take control should the car
Speaker 1: prove to be unsafe, for make errors, or be headed
Speaker 1: toward an accident. Now, I've spoken before about how creating
Speaker 1: a truly fully autonomous vehicle, one that could operate in
Speaker 1: all conditions that human drivers can operate in, that is
Speaker 1: an enormous challenge and it's probably gonna take many more
Speaker 1: years to see something approach that. And what we see
Speaker 1: today are cars that range from having very good driver
Speaker 1: assist features too limited impressive but limited self driving capabilities
Speaker 1: that only really apply under specific conditions. Meanwhile, pony dot
Speaker 1: Ai has received approval from Beijing to operate an autonomous
Speaker 1: taxi service, and they were actually in the process of
Speaker 1: trying to get that same approval from California. Presumably this
Speaker 1: incident will put a little bit of a roadblock in
Speaker 1: the way for that particular you know goal. Finally, let's
Speaker 1: talk about Nike in the metaverse. Okay, So Nike recently
Speaker 1: acquired a company called r T f KT Studios. So
Speaker 1: what does that studio do? Well, mostly it creates stuff
Speaker 1: like n f T s that is, non fungible tokens,
Speaker 1: which I have frequently referred to as a kind of
Speaker 1: receipt for something but not a thing itself. Like someone
Speaker 1: could put up a digital image and sell it as
Speaker 1: an n f T and if you bought that n
Speaker 1: f T, you'd have a digital token showing your ownership
Speaker 1: of that image. But you know, the digital image is
Speaker 1: still a file, it's still data, which means it's still
Speaker 1: something that could be copied and distributed, and yeah, you
Speaker 1: would have a receipt saying you owned it, or rather
Speaker 1: you owned a specific incarnation of it, like maybe it
Speaker 1: was a limited edition run like one of five hundred,
Speaker 1: and you've got a little digital certificate saying which one
Speaker 1: you own? Sure, but that doesn't really mean anything. It's
Speaker 1: like owning a star anyway. R T f KT also
Speaker 1: makes virtual stuff that could potentially be used in a
Speaker 1: metaverse of some sorts. So you know, they make stuff
Speaker 1: like avatars representations of people you know that are virtual, uh,
Speaker 1: digital versions of real world goods. That's another one, and
Speaker 1: I think that's probably where Nike steps in. I mean,
Speaker 1: I assume Nike is trying to get ahead of the
Speaker 1: metaverse game by creating virtual tokens that represents stuff like shoes,
Speaker 1: so that your virtual avatar in the future can sport
Speaker 1: virtual Nikes as a virtual status symbol. And all of
Speaker 1: this makes me just want to run off into the
Speaker 1: woods for the foreseeable future. Anyway, it looks like this
Speaker 1: is another sign of a company trying to get ahead
Speaker 1: of the metaverse trend. Now my own hope, and this
Speaker 1: is nothing against Nike, because I actually owned some Nikes
Speaker 1: and I really like them and everything. But my hope
Speaker 1: is that the whole metaverse push ends up fizzling out
Speaker 1: kind of the way VR has had a real go
Speaker 1: of it, because It just seems to me to be
Speaker 1: a way to digitally enhance all the stuff about humans
Speaker 1: and capitalism that I think are kind of gross and awful.
Speaker 1: But hey, I'm well on my way into turning into
Speaker 1: a grumpy old luddite. So don't listen to me. Form
Speaker 1: your own opinions. Look into it and decide what you
Speaker 1: think is good or not good. Don't just take my
Speaker 1: own grouchy approach. Uh. I just I gotta go outside
Speaker 1: and yell at a passing cloud. And that wraps up
Speaker 1: the news for Tuesday, December fourteen, twenty one. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics I should cover in Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: in the future, please reach out to me. The best
Speaker 1: way to do that is on Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: the show is text Stuff h W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I
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