Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the week ending on Friday, August thirtieth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: I feel like the entire world is at dragon Con.
Speaker 1: I realize that that's just because I live in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: That's where dragon CON's a big science fiction fantasy convention
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar, And it seems like all of
Speaker 1: my friends, like all the people I know, are currently
Speaker 1: at dragon Con. So I'm getting a little fomo here.
Speaker 1: But I realized a lot of y'all out there also
Speaker 1: aren't there, So let us get lost in the warm
Speaker 1: embrace of tech news. First up, there's an update on
Speaker 1: the Telegram CEO Pavel Durov story. So on Wednesday, I
Speaker 1: published an episode about Telegram, the messaging service, and how
Speaker 1: French authorities recently detained the CEO, Pavel Durov, after his
Speaker 1: private plane landed at an airport outside of Paris. Since then,
Speaker 1: a court has indicted Durov on charges that he has
Speaker 1: been complicit in numerous criminal activities that have been happening
Speaker 1: or facilitated by the Telegram messaging service. So essentially, the
Speaker 1: legal argument here is that Telegram has mostly hands off
Speaker 1: policy when it comes to content moderation. They're very lax,
Speaker 1: they don't do very much content moderation at all, and
Speaker 1: that this means Telegram is effectively allowing crimes ranging from
Speaker 1: terrorist acts to the spread of child sexual abuse material
Speaker 1: see SAM material. I guess that's repetitive. It's like ATM machine. Moreover,
Speaker 1: Telegram has a history of denying cooperation with law enforcement
Speaker 1: officials who are conducting legal investigations into criminal activity, you know,
Speaker 1: essentially like I've got a legal order for a wiretap
Speaker 1: and this organization is not being compliant with it. So,
Speaker 1: according to the charges, it's not just that Telegram failed
Speaker 1: to cooperate with law enforcement, but that legally received requests
Speaker 1: were just outright ignored, and that this amounts to the
Speaker 1: same thing as assisting criminal activity, thus being complicit. And
Speaker 1: France also has a law that states that services that
Speaker 1: provide quote unquote cryptology solutions first have to make legal
Speaker 1: declarations to France's cybersecurity agency in order to do so.
Speaker 1: Legally within France. Now, Telegram does offer end to end
Speaker 1: encryption services, but it's only for one on one communications.
Speaker 1: Telegram also allows one to many kind of like Twitter
Speaker 1: and also chat rooms, so those do not have encryption options,
Speaker 1: and even for one on one communication, encryption is not
Speaker 1: on by default, you have to turn it on manually.
Speaker 1: Durov has already posted the five million euro bail money
Speaker 1: that he was hit with, but he has also received
Speaker 1: orders not to leave France until this matter has been concluded.
Speaker 1: His brother Nikolai, who is also a co founder of Telegram,
Speaker 1: also has a warrant out for his arrest in France.
Speaker 1: I've got a lot of news relating to Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and his various companies. I mean a lot, Like a
Speaker 1: lot happened this week, I think just by coincidence. But
Speaker 1: let's get through it. First. Up, we have a feud
Speaker 1: brewing between a Brazilian Supreme Court judge and Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: which I mean, that's a weird sentence, but Musk has
Speaker 1: said that this judge, Alexandra de Mores, and I apologize
Speaker 1: for butchering pronunciation, but that this judge has threatened to
Speaker 1: incarcerate one of X's legal teams stationed in Brazil. If
Speaker 1: X did not block some accounts on X that we're
Speaker 1: operating within Brazil, those accounts, according to this judge, were
Speaker 1: spreading misinformation and hate speech. Murkying up the waters is
Speaker 1: the fact that Elon Musk appeared to be very cozy
Speaker 1: with kind of a hard right leaning leader of Brazil
Speaker 1: who is no longer the leader of Brazil, and that
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court judge is kind of an opposition to
Speaker 1: that particular political stance. So there's like some political tension
Speaker 1: going on here beyond this claim that these accounts are
Speaker 1: spreading misinformation. Now, Musk ended up replying to this request
Speaker 1: of Hey, you need to shut this stuff down or
Speaker 1: I'm going to arrest your lawyers here in Brazil. He
Speaker 1: responded by shutting down X's offices in Brazil. He just
Speaker 1: closed those offices outright. However, X is still providing service
Speaker 1: in Brazil, it just doesn't maintain any offices there. However,
Speaker 1: that creates a new legal issue for the company because
Speaker 1: in Brazil, if you are providing a messaging company a
Speaker 1: messaging service within the nation, you have to have a
Speaker 1: presence in Brazil as well. There has to be someone
Speaker 1: who's held accountable in the country, and by shutting down
Speaker 1: the offices, Musk no longer has that person. So Maraz
Speaker 1: could order X to be shut down in Brazil entirely.
Speaker 1: And he also ordered that the bank accounts for Starlink
Speaker 1: business in Brazil to be frozen. So Starlink is the
Speaker 1: satellite internet service provider business. It's a branch of SpaceX,
Speaker 1: which of course is another of Elon Musk's companies. And
Speaker 1: y'all you know I am not a fan of Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't make that a secret, but it
Speaker 1: does seem like a pretty drastic case of overreach if
Speaker 1: you ask me, because X and Starlink are not part
Speaker 1: of the same company. They may have the same obnoxious
Speaker 1: dude behind them, but they aren't the same company. And
Speaker 1: to shut down the assets of one company in order
Speaker 1: to force a different company to follow your your legal rulings,
Speaker 1: that strikes me as being very wrong. I also think
Speaker 1: it's important to remember Elon Musk technically he's not the
Speaker 1: CEO of X anymore. He hasn't been the CEO of
Speaker 1: X for ages. It's Yakarino who's the CEO. But everyone
Speaker 1: essentially assumes he's ultimately the one calling the shots over
Speaker 1: at X, even if Yakarino is nominally CEO. I hate
Speaker 1: to even use that phrase. I'm sure Yakarino does a
Speaker 1: lot of work. I have no idea what her day
Speaker 1: to day has to be like, nor do I understand
Speaker 1: what it must be like to work at a company
Speaker 1: where everyone just assumes that you are a figurehead. And
Speaker 1: I honestly don't know the extent to which that accusation
Speaker 1: could be true. It's a crazy world, Elon Musk's world
Speaker 1: in particular. Well, if the judge orders X to get
Speaker 1: shut down in Brazil, presumably the way that would work
Speaker 1: is he would order Brazilian telecommunications companies to just block
Speaker 1: all traffic to X within the country, because clearly the
Speaker 1: judge can't force X to shut down operations in Brazil.
Speaker 1: I don't even know how X would do that to
Speaker 1: begin with, but he could force the various telecommunications companies
Speaker 1: to block traffic to X. However, people in Brazil could
Speaker 1: potentially still get to X by using a VPN service
Speaker 1: that was based outside of the country. Anyway, X and
Speaker 1: Starlink have both accused the judge of breaking Brazilian law
Speaker 1: and say they will escalate legal proceedings within the country.
Speaker 1: I have no idea how that works, because at least
Speaker 1: here in the United States, once you get up to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court level, there's nowhere else to go. That's
Speaker 1: that's the top. But it definitely seems to me like
Speaker 1: the judge is going a little judge dread over there.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure there's a lot more complex issues at
Speaker 1: play in this story. Maybe I'll do a full episode
Speaker 1: about it in the future, because I think it does
Speaker 1: require a nuanced approach to kind of understand everything that's
Speaker 1: going on. I'm sure it's not a black and white
Speaker 1: situation for either side, But I don't know that freezing
Speaker 1: of assets for starlink, it just strikes me as like,
Speaker 1: how could there be a legal basis for that. I
Speaker 1: guess if you argue that there was like a single
Speaker 1: parent company and all these other companies were underneath that,
Speaker 1: maybe then, but I don't think that's how the corporate
Speaker 1: structure works between SpaceX and X apart from the fact
Speaker 1: that they share Elon Musk's you know, obsession with the
Speaker 1: letter X. Meanwhile, over here in the United States, X,
Speaker 1: formerly known as Twitter, was kind of a caught out
Speaker 1: when it marked links to an NPR news story as
Speaker 1: being unsafe. So, yeah, X will not block accounts in
Speaker 1: Brazil because that's a free speech issue, but here in
Speaker 1: the US, it will label NPR stories as being unsafe.
Speaker 1: So if you try to find out what the deal
Speaker 1: is between Donald Trump's staff, campaign staff and an employee
Speaker 1: of Arlington National Cemetery by following a link to an
Speaker 1: NPR story on the matter, then you're told, hey, you
Speaker 1: don't want to do that. This is taking you to
Speaker 1: a bad place. The unsafe marker is typically something that
Speaker 1: pops up if the link is to a site that's
Speaker 1: known to host like militious software or sometimes things like
Speaker 1: outright misinformation. Now, NPR might occasionally play some truly terrible
Speaker 1: jazz on the radio, but I wouldn't go so far
Speaker 1: as to call it malicious. The warning was in the
Speaker 1: form of a pop up as well. It wasn't just
Speaker 1: like a little label. If you clicked on the link,
Speaker 1: you would get a pop up and it would say
Speaker 1: that this link might be unsafe, and then there'd be
Speaker 1: some text, and underneath that would be a big old
Speaker 1: blue button that if you clicked on, it would just
Speaker 1: take you right back to X, so it would, you know,
Speaker 1: derail you from going to NPR. Beneath that big old
Speaker 1: blue button is a smaller line of text with a
Speaker 1: hyperlink that would let you continue on to read the
Speaker 1: news story. So that is kind of crazy right now.
Speaker 1: This could just be a simple mistake, but Musk has
Speaker 1: already shown contempt for NPR because previously he labeled NPR
Speaker 1: as a state affiliated media outlet. Typically that label indicates
Speaker 1: a media company that is controlled by a governmental body,
Speaker 1: like it's a propaganda arm. In other words, that is
Speaker 1: not what NPR is. NBR receives a little bit of
Speaker 1: federal funding, but only a tiny little bit. Most of
Speaker 1: its funding does not come from federal sources, so and
Speaker 1: there is no federal oversight or control of what goes
Speaker 1: out over NPR. So this was a very misleading label
Speaker 1: that Musk applied to NPR. Following that NPR chose to
Speaker 1: leave X. So, you know, Musk has also over the
Speaker 1: last few years been promoting more right leaning ideologies and
Speaker 1: personalities on X, so I think it would be very
Speaker 1: easy to view this and see it as a purposeful
Speaker 1: attempt to discourage X users from going to NPR to
Speaker 1: read up about this incident that happened at Arlington National Cemetery. However,
Speaker 1: X state that the labeling was actually a false positive,
Speaker 1: that this was not intentional, it was an honest mistake.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's true, Like, it's easy for me to believe
Speaker 1: that it was an intentional move to try and dissuade
Speaker 1: people from reading up about what happened at Arlington National Cemetery.
Speaker 1: But it's also very much true that over the last
Speaker 1: year X has has eliminated so many people from the
Speaker 1: company payroll that mistakes like this could easily happen simply
Speaker 1: because they don't have the people to make sure it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. So either version could be true. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we've got stories about X and Starlink. What about Tesla, Well,
Speaker 1: there's more bad news on that, So Tesla, of course
Speaker 1: yet another elon Musk company, and Christian Agatti of autoevolution
Speaker 1: dot Com has an article titled third documented Tesla cybertruck
Speaker 1: fire in less than a month raises questions woof so
Speaker 1: a gad points out that in the marketing push for
Speaker 1: cyber truck, Tesla was really stressing how the cyber truck
Speaker 1: is a resilient vehicle right now. Granted, in the midst
Speaker 1: of trying to say the cyber truck could withstand tons
Speaker 1: of abuse, they accidentally broke some of the cyber truck's
Speaker 1: windows while trying to show how tough they are. That
Speaker 1: was a whoopsie, but anyway, the most recent of these
Speaker 1: fires happened after an accident in which a cyber truck
Speaker 1: driver hit a fire hydrant. My guess is that then
Speaker 1: caused the battery inside the cyber truck to experience a
Speaker 1: short where there was damage to the battery, and that
Speaker 1: that created a short circuit that led to overheating and
Speaker 1: then fire. That's my guess. I don't know for sure
Speaker 1: that that is what happened. There has yet to have
Speaker 1: been an investigation, or at least results of an investigation
Speaker 1: shared publicly, so maybe it turns out something else caused
Speaker 1: the fire. This happened in Harlingen, Texas. Don't know if
Speaker 1: that's how you say it. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: places in Texas where I think it's pronounced one way.
Speaker 1: I am totally wrong. Earlier in the month, however, news
Speaker 1: broke about a different incident that happened in Bayton area,
Speaker 1: which is also in Texas, and In that one, a
Speaker 1: cyber truck ran into like a concrete ditch trench or
Speaker 1: something and caught fire. Tragically, there was a fatality, although
Speaker 1: last I saw, they had not yet determined what actually
Speaker 1: caused the death, whether it was a medical emergency, the
Speaker 1: accident itself, or the fire. The third fire incident that
Speaker 1: was one where Agady reported that a colleague of his
Speaker 1: had actually found a burnt cyber truck listed on an
Speaker 1: online auction site, and the description indicated that the vehicle
Speaker 1: had been in a wreck and in fact subsequently caught fire,
Speaker 1: and that this happened in Houston, Texas. So three accidents
Speaker 1: resulting in fires, all three happening in Texas in the
Speaker 1: span of a month. Now, I think it's too early
Speaker 1: to draw any firm conclusions as to whether this means
Speaker 1: the cyber truck actually is a flawed vehicle in that regard,
Speaker 1: you know, like if the panels protecting the electric battery
Speaker 1: aren't sufficient or whatever. I just don't know that that's
Speaker 1: the case. It could be, but I think we need
Speaker 1: to have an actual investigation to determine that. So I
Speaker 1: think that's probably going to happen. I mean, with three
Speaker 1: fires in a month, it seems to me like it's
Speaker 1: at least warranted to take a look and see if
Speaker 1: there are any common factors here at play. Maybe there aren't.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is just coincidence and it all happened around
Speaker 1: the same state and within the same month. That's possible,
Speaker 1: so we need to investigate to find out. Okay, we
Speaker 1: got lots more news to get through. Let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break to thank our sponsors. We're back, and now
Speaker 1: we're not done with Elon Musk news items just yet.
Speaker 1: So over at SpaceX, there was a different kind of setback. Now,
Speaker 1: while I'm talking about space and SpaceX, I should also
Speaker 1: give a quick update and mention that we have this
Speaker 1: ongoing issue of the two astronauts who went up on
Speaker 1: the Boeing star Liner that then docked with the International
Speaker 1: Space Station for a couple of months. Now. NASA was
Speaker 1: hoping to find a way where they could return the
Speaker 1: astronauts to Earth aboard the star Liner spacecraft. That was
Speaker 1: something that Boeing was saying would be within acceptable risk parameters,
Speaker 1: but NASA engineers ultimately disagreed with that. So the official
Speaker 1: decision is that the Starliner is going to return to
Speaker 1: Earth empty and the two astronauts will return home early
Speaker 1: next year aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. Now, the SpaceX
Speaker 1: story I wanted to touch on for this week is
Speaker 1: that on Wednesday of this week, a Falcon nine first
Speaker 1: stage booster had a big ol' whoopsie when it returned
Speaker 1: to land on an ocean platform. Now, as I'm sure
Speaker 1: you're all aware, one of the big draws for SpaceX's
Speaker 1: launch vehicles is that they are reusable. This cuts way
Speaker 1: down on the cost of launch, which is a huge
Speaker 1: limiting factor for space The first stage booster landed on
Speaker 1: this ocean platform, but then shortly thereafter it fell over
Speaker 1: and it burst into flames. Fortunately, there were no reports
Speaker 1: of any injuries or anything like that. There were no
Speaker 1: reports of any public damage from this particular incident. However,
Speaker 1: the FAA has grounded the Falcon nine launch vehicles. SpaceX
Speaker 1: can investigate the incident and then share its findings and
Speaker 1: then after any corrective actions have been ordered as a
Speaker 1: result of that investigation. That means no SpaceX launches until
Speaker 1: the FAA lifts that order. And that also means there
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a launch I think today actually
Speaker 1: that was going to deliver more Starlink satellites into orbit,
Speaker 1: and that has since been delayed. Actually, the booster that
Speaker 1: burst into flames, that was part of a mission of
Speaker 1: sending more Starlink satellites into orbit as well. But the
Speaker 1: second one that was supposed to happen now has been
Speaker 1: postponed indefinitely until the ban has been lifted once they
Speaker 1: figure out exactly what happened with this accident. No telling
Speaker 1: yet if this is going to impact other upcoming launches.
Speaker 1: There are a couple that are coming up before too long,
Speaker 1: But it may be that this whole thing is resolved
Speaker 1: relatively quickly. We'll just have to keep an eye out.
Speaker 1: The hits keep on coming though. From us. In Memphis, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: the Southern Environmental Law Center alleges that Musk's AI company,
Speaker 1: which of course is called Xai, is using natural gas
Speaker 1: burning turbines to power the AI facilities. We all know
Speaker 1: that these AI data centers require a huge amount of
Speaker 1: electricity in order to work. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that companies that are using these kinds of power sources
Speaker 1: that like natural gas burning turbines, one of the things
Speaker 1: they're supposed to do is file a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: paperwork to get the right permits to actually operate that
Speaker 1: kind of machinery, and according to the Southern Environmental Law Center,
Speaker 1: they say that there's no record that Xai actually followed
Speaker 1: that process in Tennessee. So in an open letter, the
Speaker 1: organization claims that Xai has twenty gas turbines operating without
Speaker 1: first applying for those permits and has called upon the
Speaker 1: local health department to investigate Xai to determine if, in fact,
Speaker 1: that is what is going on now. I can't say
Speaker 1: I would be surprised to hear that a Musk backed
Speaker 1: company jumped into a situation like that without proper paperwork,
Speaker 1: but I have to be fair. That is my bias talking,
Speaker 1: Like just because Musk has proven that, you know, he's
Speaker 1: done that kind of thing before, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: that's what's happened this time. It could all be totally
Speaker 1: a misunderstanding, like maybe the paperwork has been filed and
Speaker 1: they just didn't find record of it. But they are
Speaker 1: calling for an investigation to find out if the company
Speaker 1: in fact followed the right process in order to operate
Speaker 1: this way, because the concern here is that the operation
Speaker 1: of these twenty gas turbines could contribute to pollution in
Speaker 1: the Memphis area. Meanwhile, the Center for Countering Digital Hate
Speaker 1: released the results of a study focusing on the GROCK
Speaker 1: AI assistant that's the AI assistant connected to YEP, formerly
Speaker 1: known as Twitter. YadA YadA, YadA so. This study concluded
Speaker 1: that GROC lacks sufficient guardrails to prevent people from using
Speaker 1: it to generate misleading images of real public personas, including politicians.
Speaker 1: The study said that the tool was able to create
Speaker 1: a convincing fake image of Donald Trump appearing to be
Speaker 1: very sick in a hospital bed, and another of Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris appearing to do drugs. The researcher said they tried
Speaker 1: various methods to generate these images that range from just
Speaker 1: blatantly giving a text prompt asking for what they wanted
Speaker 1: to see, to taking a more circumspect route where they
Speaker 1: used descriptive language to get the same effect, to get
Speaker 1: the same results they wanted without actually triggering any preventative
Speaker 1: safety features that otherwise would stop that kind of request
Speaker 1: from working. I find this particularly frustrating, not just because
Speaker 1: of the disinformation aspect, which is clearly bad enough alone,
Speaker 1: but also because Elon Musk like again, I don't like
Speaker 1: the guy, but he has repeatedly sounded the alarm about
Speaker 1: the dangers of AI, and I agree AI is potentially
Speaker 1: very dangerous if it's implemented poorly. And he has argued
Speaker 1: that AI needs to be developed and deployed responsibly. I
Speaker 1: agree with that too. I think that AI does need
Speaker 1: to be developed and deployed responsibly, and that there should
Speaker 1: be plentiful safety measures in place to prevent AI from
Speaker 1: causing harm. I agree with that. All of these things
Speaker 1: I agree with, And yet here is an AI tool
Speaker 1: on one of Elon Musk's own platforms that clearly fails
Speaker 1: to follow any of those directives. But then you could
Speaker 1: also make the same argument that the AI found in
Speaker 1: Tesla vehicles has at least appeared to be less reliable
Speaker 1: than the company tends to market to potential customers. So
Speaker 1: there's that as well. There's also been a recent change
Speaker 1: to Grock, the AI assistant on it, apparently in response
Speaker 1: to a complaint letter sent to the company from the
Speaker 1: offices of five different Secretaries of State, so those states
Speaker 1: would be Minnesota, New Mexico, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The
Speaker 1: offices were complaining that Groc was giving incorrect information in
Speaker 1: response to prompts asking about ballot deadlines in those states.
Speaker 1: So essentially this is related to election information, and GROC
Speaker 1: apparently was just giving incorrect responses when people were asking
Speaker 1: these basic questions about ballots. So now rather than just
Speaker 1: giving an incorrect answer, GROC will respond to those kinds
Speaker 1: of requests by urging the visitor to go to vote
Speaker 1: dot gov for the actual answer, So that I think
Speaker 1: is a market improvement. Tom David S. Pumpkins Hanks has
Speaker 1: a message for all of y'all out there, and that
Speaker 1: message is to not trust drug advertisements that seem to
Speaker 1: have Tom Hanks voicing the ad copy. So specifically, on Instagram,
Speaker 1: Hanks posted quote, there are multiple ads over the internet
Speaker 1: falsely using my name, likeness, and voice promoting miracle cures
Speaker 1: and wonder drugs. These ads have been created without my consent,
Speaker 1: fraudulently and through AI. I have nothing to do with
Speaker 1: these posts, or the productions and treatments, or the spokespeople
Speaker 1: touting these cures. I have Type two diabetes and I
Speaker 1: only work with my board certified doctor regarding my treatment.
Speaker 1: Do not be fooled, Do not be swindled, Do not
Speaker 1: lose your hard earned money. End quote. Now, if all
Speaker 1: this sounds a little familiar, that might be because of
Speaker 1: something that happened around the same time last year, where
Speaker 1: there was this ad video going around with an AI
Speaker 1: generated deep fake version of Tom Hanks prom voting a
Speaker 1: dental plan Lisa needs braces dental plan. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Speaker 1: Some episodes of The Simpsons are kind of hardwired into
Speaker 1: my brain and I just go into like a feedback loop.
Speaker 1: I have to admit that when I was thinking about
Speaker 1: how deep fakes were going to spread beyond the creation
Speaker 1: of pornographic images and video, which is its own thing
Speaker 1: and it's horrifying and terrible, when I was thinking about
Speaker 1: how it was going to branch out beyond that, I
Speaker 1: had not clocked Tom Hanks as being one of the
Speaker 1: first high profile victims. But here we are. Bloomberg reported
Speaker 1: that Apple is cutting one hundred positions in its digital
Speaker 1: services department, and that the affected employees will have two
Speaker 1: months to find another position within the company or else
Speaker 1: be struck from the roster entirely. So apparently the main
Speaker 1: group affected is the books team, which, as Samuel Aksin
Speaker 1: of Ours Technica has pointed out, has no subscription service
Speaker 1: attached to that particular product. So it sounds like Apple
Speaker 1: really wants to redirect energy towards services that more directly
Speaker 1: impact revenue. Which I mean, you can understand that from
Speaker 1: a business perspective, right, Like, why would you focus on
Speaker 1: things that don't impact revenue? Maybe they impact the value
Speaker 1: or the perception of value, which you could argue is
Speaker 1: a reasonable reason to keep it going. But yeah, most
Speaker 1: companies are going to say revenue is way more important.
Speaker 1: So it appears that Apple is one of those. I
Speaker 1: hope anyone who has been affected by this will find
Speaker 1: a new position with a great team as soon as
Speaker 1: is possible. It's been a pretty long time since I've
Speaker 1: talked about Uber getting hit with fines, but this next
Speaker 1: story is quite a doozy. In fact, according to ngadget's
Speaker 1: Sarah Fielding, it would be the largest fine Uber has
Speaker 1: ever faced, a whopping two hundred and ninety million Euro penalty.
Speaker 1: That's the equivalent of around three hundred and twenty four
Speaker 1: million dollars. So what the heck happened? Well, this has
Speaker 1: to do with the EU and GDPR. GDPR that's the
Speaker 1: set of rules that are meant to protect EU citizens'
Speaker 1: personal data. So one thing that companies are not supposed
Speaker 1: to do under these rules is to send the personal
Speaker 1: information belonging to EU citizens outside the EU itself unless
Speaker 1: you're using appropriate measures to make sure you're protecting their information.
Speaker 1: This is a thing that a lot of platforms have
Speaker 1: run into where they were found to be transmitting information
Speaker 1: to servers in the United States, but the information belonged
Speaker 1: to EU citizens, and without those protections in place, these
Speaker 1: companies can't guarantee the safety of that information. Because GDPR
Speaker 1: is so focused on the safety of personal information, that's
Speaker 1: a problem. So the Dutch Data Protection Authority or Dutch
Speaker 1: DPA says that Uber really failed to protect information for
Speaker 1: Uber drivers and that included stuff like their taxi licenses,
Speaker 1: their identity documents and lots more other information. That Uber
Speaker 1: transmitted this info overseas to Uber data servers in the
Speaker 1: United States while not using any approved transferred tools that
Speaker 1: are meant to ensure the safety of those data transfers.
Speaker 1: The Dutch DPA said this failure to provide adequate protection
Speaker 1: is a violation and that Uber subsequently has to pay up.
Speaker 1: And it's notable here that as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: no unauthorized individuals ever got access to this information. This
Speaker 1: isn't like a data breach or something, so it's not that,
Speaker 1: you know, Uber failed to protect the info and someone
Speaker 1: got hold of it. It's that Uber was not following
Speaker 1: the approved process to make sure data was handled appropriately,
Speaker 1: so arguably that personal information could have been intercepted or
Speaker 1: exploited by other parties. And Uber reps have said that
Speaker 1: the company will of course appeal the fine, so we'll
Speaker 1: have to see where this develops from here. Okay, I've
Speaker 1: got some more news stories to talk about. Before we
Speaker 1: get to those, let's take another quick break. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: wrap up some of our tech news this week over
Speaker 1: on blue Sky, which, in case you're not familiar with
Speaker 1: blue Sky, it's an alternative to Twitter, slash x, along
Speaker 1: with other similar tools like Mastodon or threads. So blue
Speaker 1: Sky has added some new anti toxicity features and I
Speaker 1: think the features are interesting. I'm not sure that it's
Speaker 1: the best approach, but they are interesting. It's hard to
Speaker 1: determine how to best implement anti toxicity measures on a
Speaker 1: platform that allows people to just join up. I mean,
Speaker 1: as platforms get larger, they become more difficult to moderate,
Speaker 1: assuming that you have a platform that's interested in moderation
Speaker 1: in the first place. So yeah, I see also Telegram.
Speaker 1: But the big one that I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: was that users are able now to remove their original
Speaker 1: post if someone else quotes that post. So in other words,
Speaker 1: let's say, let's say that you post something that says like,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed the Barbie movie, which is awesome. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the Barbie movie. But let's say that I'm
Speaker 1: not me. Let's say that I am the Evil Mirror
Speaker 1: Universe version of me, and I've decided, because you have
Speaker 1: claimed that you enjoyed the Barbie movie, you are deserving
Speaker 1: of criticism and trolling and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So I then quote your post, and I then put
Speaker 1: some really nasty commentary underneath about how I think you're
Speaker 1: a dumb dumb for liking a perfectly good movie. And
Speaker 1: now you can actually take action on this, so before
Speaker 1: you might just end up being flooded with like toxic notifications,
Speaker 1: let's say that Evil Mirror Universe me has a lot
Speaker 1: more notoriety and a lot more followers on Blue Sky.
Speaker 1: So I post this negative takedown of your post and
Speaker 1: everyone dogpiles on top of you. Now on Blue Sky,
Speaker 1: you could go in and remove the quoted tweet from
Speaker 1: my post. So you know, if my post is centered
Speaker 1: around your earlier post, and you remove your earlier post
Speaker 1: from mine, then all it's left is the commentary. If
Speaker 1: that commentary is not specific, people don't even know who
Speaker 1: I'm referring to as I rant about someone daring to
Speaker 1: like the Barbie movie. So that is effective now, granted,
Speaker 1: if in my narrative, if in my common Harry I
Speaker 1: have also identified you, then removing your post from the
Speaker 1: quotation doesn't really help that much because people can still
Speaker 1: see who I'm talking about. Maybe they don't get a
Speaker 1: link to your profile or whatever, but there's limited utility here.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that that's generally a positive step.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's the most effective one, but it
Speaker 1: is meant to prevent instances of dog piling. So that
Speaker 1: if someone takes your post and then, out of context,
Speaker 1: tries to argue that you're a terrible person or whatever,
Speaker 1: you can just remove the quotation part out of that post.
Speaker 1: Now you can't touch anything else that's in that post, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if in my description, I really drag you. You can't
Speaker 1: go in and change my description, like you can't change
Speaker 1: the commentary I have added. You can just remove the
Speaker 1: quoted part, which I think makes sense, Like you shouldn't
Speaker 1: have the ability to be able to change what someone's
Speaker 1: post reads, because then it's just chaos. But I think
Speaker 1: it is a good step. I just think it's tough,
Speaker 1: like this is a hard problem to fix. Another similar
Speaker 1: feature on blue Sky is that you can actually hide
Speaker 1: replies to your posts. So let's say you post something
Speaker 1: and no one's quoting you, but they are replying to you,
Speaker 1: and some of them are being real nasty. You can
Speaker 1: actually hide those replies, and you can choose to hide
Speaker 1: it just from yourself, which is like blocking or muting someone,
Speaker 1: or you can choose to hide that reply from everybody
Speaker 1: so no one can see that this person is just
Speaker 1: being nasty towards you. So when someone's being hateful, you
Speaker 1: can hide so that no one sees it. Or maybe
Speaker 1: you just shield yourself and you let it stand for
Speaker 1: everybody else. Blue Sky says it will continue to introduce
Speaker 1: features to make the platform a more safe and welcoming place.
Speaker 1: This I think is in stark contrast to X like
Speaker 1: over at X. You don't really see a Musk and
Speaker 1: company putting in measures to make X a safer and
Speaker 1: more welcoming place. You do occasionally see stories like the
Speaker 1: one I mentioned about NPR, where it appears that whenever
Speaker 1: they do enter into content moderation, it's to suppress any
Speaker 1: any kind of viewpoint that doesn't go into alignment with
Speaker 1: what Musk believes. That at least that's the appearance. Whether
Speaker 1: that's what's really going on or not, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Like I said, it could really be that there was
Speaker 1: just an error in a false positive, But yeah, Blue
Speaker 1: Sky strikes me as taking kind of like a maybe
Speaker 1: not a total one to eighty approach from X, but
Speaker 1: a substantial deviation from that approach. The Motion Picture Association
Speaker 1: announced this week that through partnering with authorities in Vietnam,
Speaker 1: they have shut down an online media piracy ring that
Speaker 1: had accumulated billions of visits between them from January twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three up to June twenty twenty four. So sort
Speaker 1: of the hub of this, like the central crux was
Speaker 1: F Movies, and under F Movies, there were several piracy
Speaker 1: sites that were in operation. They included any Wave Flicks
Speaker 1: Tours my Flixer and others like that. So the MPa
Speaker 1: referred to f Movies as the mothership of piracy and
Speaker 1: that the takedown had a cascading effect across these various
Speaker 1: piracy sites which have been hosting media illegally for years
Speaker 1: and distributing it to whomever goes there. Various media companies
Speaker 1: and organizations that represent media companies have spent decades fighting
Speaker 1: online piracy, often in ways that end up being outlandishly disproportionate.
Speaker 1: Like you might remember, I mean I remember because I
Speaker 1: remember the nineties when the RIAA really began to shake
Speaker 1: down like service pro like Verizon to hand over the
Speaker 1: identities of customers that the RIAA suspected were guilty of piracy.
Speaker 1: There are people who were hit with truly ridiculous, astronomic
Speaker 1: fines for piracy. And then there's the various issue of
Speaker 1: media organizations arguing that piracy equates to loss of revenue,
Speaker 1: like if you watch a movie illegally, if you download
Speaker 1: a music track illegally, that means we lost revenue. A
Speaker 1: lot of entities, including the United States Government Accountability Office,
Speaker 1: say that argument doesn't hold water. At best, it is misleading.
Speaker 1: At worst, it is wrong, and that's because it's impossible
Speaker 1: to determine if someone who pirated a piece of media
Speaker 1: otherwise would have purchased that piece of media legally. Let's
Speaker 1: say that piracy was impossible somehow, Like we're in a
Speaker 1: world where it's just impossible to pirate stuff. Someone who
Speaker 1: would have pirated things, you can't say that they will,
Speaker 1: though otherwise go out and buy it. Maybe they just
Speaker 1: go without. You can't make the argument that a downloaded
Speaker 1: piece of media equates to loss of revenue, So a
Speaker 1: lost sale isn't the same thing as stolen money. Like
Speaker 1: if I walk up to a movie theater and I
Speaker 1: look at the list of films that are available, and
Speaker 1: I ultimately decide, eh, I don't feel like watching any
Speaker 1: of these, and I walk off. I didn't steal from
Speaker 1: any of the movie companies. So yeah, I think piracy
Speaker 1: is bad. Just to be clear, I do think piracy
Speaker 1: is bad. I do not think you should do it.
Speaker 1: Don't be a pirate. However, I think media companies that
Speaker 1: take the nuclear option based on unsupportable arguments are bad too.
Speaker 1: No one's in the right in that particular situation. But
Speaker 1: you can read more about this particular story about the
Speaker 1: Motion Picture Association and f movies both On Technica and
Speaker 1: The Verge. Both sites have some great articles about this
Speaker 1: recent Hollywood war against online piracy. I recommend you go
Speaker 1: check those out now. For other recommended reading this week,
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of different pieces I want to
Speaker 1: talk about. First up is a paper that was published
Speaker 1: in Nature, the science journal Nature. This paper is by
Speaker 1: Valentine Hoffmann, Pratyusha rha Kaluri, Dan Jorowski, and Sharise King.
Speaker 1: It is titled AI generates covertly racist decisions about people
Speaker 1: based on their dialect. So, as you might suspect, this
Speaker 1: paper investigates the issue of bias found within AI models,
Speaker 1: but this time with regard to dialect as opposed to say,
Speaker 1: physical features. I think it's a really important piece, particularly
Speaker 1: since we live in a world in which code switching
Speaker 1: is a really important mechanism for navigating different cultural groups
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, and if they are switched
Speaker 1: into one particular culture, it's entirely possible that an AI
Speaker 1: model is going to make some very racist conclusions based
Speaker 1: on that anyway. Next up would be a piece by
Speaker 1: Heather Knight and Kate Conger of The New York Times
Speaker 1: titled Elon Musk's X is leaving San Francisco. City officials
Speaker 1: say good riddance. So this story covers how X, which
Speaker 1: has long had its HQ in San Francisco, California, is
Speaker 1: now moving to other parts of California, like it's going
Speaker 1: to rely on offices that are in other cities in California,
Speaker 1: but the HQ itself is relocating to Texas, And how
Speaker 1: some people who are in various positions in San Francisco
Speaker 1: government aren't exactly wringing their hands at x's departure. Then finally,
Speaker 1: there's a concerning article in The Texas Observer by Francesca
Speaker 1: du Nunzio titled Texas State Police gear up for massive
Speaker 1: expansion of surveillance tech. It serves as a reminder that
Speaker 1: it's very important to hold law enforcement agencies accountable and
Speaker 1: to investigate whether their reliance on certain technologies is merited,
Speaker 1: particularly since some of those technologies have proven to have
Speaker 1: flaws that can lead to disproportionate harm being done to
Speaker 1: vulnerable populations. Specifically, I'm thinking about things like facial recognition
Speaker 1: technologies and how that often can disproportionately affect innocent people
Speaker 1: from the black community. We've seen that happen numerous times,
Speaker 1: So any surveillance state stuff always makes me nervous. It's
Speaker 1: also wild that Texas identity is so strange to me
Speaker 1: because there's kind of ingrained in Texas is this idea
Speaker 1: of independence and being able to stand on your own,
Speaker 1: to hike yourself up by your bootstraps, and that you know,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the narrative around Texas government is
Speaker 1: about being self sufficient. I mean the state of Texas.
Speaker 1: Their power grid is independent of the national power grid
Speaker 1: in the United States, for example. So you've got this
Speaker 1: idea of individualism and self sufficiency, and on the flip side,
Speaker 1: you've got this growing surveillance state in law enforcement, and
Speaker 1: the two don't really gel together to me, apart from
Speaker 1: a slow moved more toward authoritarianism, which I think is
Speaker 1: pretty concerning you. But the tech enabling that is really
Speaker 1: the feature of that particular article, So check that out.
Speaker 1: I hope all of you have a great weekend here
Speaker 1: in the United States, the holiday weekend. I hope you
Speaker 1: have a great holiday if you're here in the US.
Speaker 1: If you're not in the US, I hope you just
Speaker 1: have a great weekend period. And I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite show still