Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? Sime for the Tech
Speaker 1: News for Thursday, November two thousand twenty two, And on
Speaker 1: Tuesday I mentioned that folks were expecting Meta to hold
Speaker 1: a round of layoffs, and then yesterday that happened. All told,
Speaker 1: the company handed walking papers over to of its staff.
Speaker 1: That's more than eleven thousand people. CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent
Speaker 1: out a memo calling the layoffs a last resort, though
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure he knows what last resort means,
Speaker 1: because I suspect we haven't actually seen the last resort
Speaker 1: from Meta. Zuckerberg also said he wanted to take accountability
Speaker 1: for the decision and that he was a special lee.
Speaker 1: Sorry to those impacted. So this is the same CEO
Speaker 1: who back in June said there were people at Meta
Speaker 1: who probably didn't need to be there, implying the company
Speaker 1: had more staff than what was needed and that individual
Speaker 1: productivity was down because of that. Zuckerberg further explained that
Speaker 1: closer to the beginning of the pandemic, there was a
Speaker 1: rush to spend more time online, and all of that
Speaker 1: makes sense, but then he goes on to say that
Speaker 1: he and his team all thought that that move to
Speaker 1: be online more frequently would be a permanent thing that
Speaker 1: people wouldn't ease off once local restrictions lifted and people
Speaker 1: started feeling safe outside their homes. And who boy, were
Speaker 1: they wrong about that one anyway, because the prediction was
Speaker 1: that things were going to be all online all the time,
Speaker 1: which honestly makes me think of the metaverse concept. Meadow
Speaker 1: went on a hiring spree. According to the company's earnings
Speaker 1: report in the third quarter, employee head count was almost
Speaker 1: larger than it was this time last year. So when
Speaker 1: you look at it that way, a thirteent reduction in
Speaker 1: workforce still has met a significantly larger from a headcount
Speaker 1: perspective than it was at the end of Now I'm
Speaker 1: being pretty judge of Zuckerberg and his executive team, but
Speaker 1: if I really want to be fair, Meta did need
Speaker 1: to make some moves to correct course. I'm not entirely
Speaker 1: convinced it has actually done that, because Zuckerberg still seems
Speaker 1: determined to bring his vision of the Metaverse to realization.
Speaker 1: That's gonna take a lot more time, a lot more money.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a really tough road to travel, and
Speaker 1: even if the company gets there, I'm not yet convinced
Speaker 1: that enough people actually want to use the metaverse to
Speaker 1: make it all worthwhile. But then, Meta is a company
Speaker 1: that is facing an existential crisis, has struggled to attract
Speaker 1: younger users, and with its current user base steadily aging,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a ticking time bomb situation. So
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm saying is I don't really believe
Speaker 1: in Zuckerberg's mission. So with that in mind, I do
Speaker 1: hold him accountable because it was the pursuit of that
Speaker 1: mission that has really contributed heavily to Meta needing to
Speaker 1: cut costs and scale down in the first place. All
Speaker 1: that being said, you should keep in mind I am
Speaker 1: by no means an expert in this stuff. This is
Speaker 1: really just my opinion, and it's possible, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: probably even likely that I'm totally off base. Maybe we'll
Speaker 1: all be wearing headsets and spending countless hours working and
Speaker 1: playing in the metaverse in a few years. The well, look,
Speaker 1: I managed to put the Twitter stuff in the second
Speaker 1: position for today's news episode instead of leading with it.
Speaker 1: That's progress, I guess. Twitter launched its new blue check
Speaker 1: mark verification strategy yesterday and after holding off because hey,
Speaker 1: folks pointed out that having a verification system that doesn't
Speaker 1: actually do any verification right before you hold an election
Speaker 1: could be a bad idea. Of course, I live in
Speaker 1: the state where we're going to have to have a
Speaker 1: runoff election later on in December, so I look forward
Speaker 1: to this broken approach having a massive impact on my
Speaker 1: local politics in a month. And yes, it is my
Speaker 1: opinion that the verification system as it now exists is
Speaker 1: largely worthless, or, as tech crunches Lance Ulanov put it,
Speaker 1: it's quote about to have as much value as a
Speaker 1: sticker someone hands a child for behaving at the dentist
Speaker 1: end quote. Okay, just in case you are not sure
Speaker 1: what I'm even ranting about here, Previously, Twitter head a
Speaker 1: system to check and make sure that the Twitter account
Speaker 1: claiming to represent a known entity. You know, it might
Speaker 1: be a celebrity, it might be a politician, it could
Speaker 1: be the the Twitter feed for an official brand. That
Speaker 1: kind of thing. They had to actually make sure that
Speaker 1: those accounts belonged to those entities, that this wasn't a
Speaker 1: case of someone impersonating a notable figure. If Twitter researchers
Speaker 1: determine the YEP that account is legitimate, then they would
Speaker 1: award a blue check mark to that account to show
Speaker 1: everyone that this was the real deal. It gave users
Speaker 1: the confidence to know that they were following an official
Speaker 1: account that really represented who they thought they were following.
Speaker 1: For reasons I still don't understand, I got one of
Speaker 1: those blue check marks on my personal Twitter handle back
Speaker 1: when I was still using Twitter. Technically I still have it,
Speaker 1: but my accounts all protected now and I don't use
Speaker 1: it anymore anyway. The news system is subscription based. If
Speaker 1: you pay eight bucks a month, you have access to
Speaker 1: Twitter Blue, and that includes the little blue checkmark. Twitter
Speaker 1: briefly rolled out a gray badge that says official to
Speaker 1: Twitter accounts. Uh. These were sort of like taking the
Speaker 1: place of the old blue check marks for previously verified accounts,
Speaker 1: at least for some of them originally. Ell It's reported
Speaker 1: that the new official verification was kind of rolling out gradually.
Speaker 1: I mean. Tech Crunch even pointed out that President Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's personal account had the older blue check mark, but
Speaker 1: not the official badge. But an hour after official badges
Speaker 1: began to appear, they began to disappear. Meanwhile, we've already
Speaker 1: seen folks exploit the new verification system to apparent sidate
Speaker 1: high profile individuals and companies. For example, so In created
Speaker 1: an account that was called Nintendo of Us you know
Speaker 1: of us as a Nintendo America. That account has subsequently
Speaker 1: been banned, but before it was banned and had the
Speaker 1: verification check mark on there and uh it. The tweet
Speaker 1: that they posted showed an image of Mario making a
Speaker 1: famous rude hand gesture, not something Nintendo would be particularly
Speaker 1: pleased to see. As Jason Schreier observed, quote, can't imagine
Speaker 1: why all the advertisers are pulling out of Twitter L
Speaker 1: m Ao end quote. Considering that Twitter took a huge
Speaker 1: chunk out of its content ration team during the recent layoffs,
Speaker 1: I imagine things have got to be really busy over
Speaker 1: there as folks attempt to exploit the verification system. Behind
Speaker 1: the scenes at Twitter, Elon Musk has made more changes
Speaker 1: to the work environment, having now slashed headcount by around
Speaker 1: Musk has eliminated Twitter's work from home policy and it's
Speaker 1: days of rest policy, so the work from home policies
Speaker 1: self explanatory. It's no surprise that Musk has shut that
Speaker 1: down because he's had a similar stance in his other companies,
Speaker 1: so stands the reason he would do the same at Twitter.
Speaker 1: So in playce will have to come into the office.
Speaker 1: They are no longer allowed to work remotely. The days
Speaker 1: of rest policy was a benefit that would give employees
Speaker 1: a little time off between major projects so that they
Speaker 1: could recharge their batteries and avoid burnout. But now there
Speaker 1: are half the people to do all the work. Not
Speaker 1: to mention that Musk has added some projects with really
Speaker 1: aggressive deadlines, so time off really isn't something Musk is
Speaker 1: interested in. My guess is there are a lot of
Speaker 1: folks over at Twitter we're dealing with a ton more
Speaker 1: stress than they had to endure in recent years. So
Speaker 1: my heart goes out to y'all. Things are looking grim
Speaker 1: right now in the cryptocurrency world as numerous digital coins
Speaker 1: take a tumble in value yet again. Bitcoin is currently
Speaker 1: valued at around sixteen thousand, four hundred sixty bucks per coin,
Speaker 1: and y'all, yeah, that's a lot of money. Sixteen grand,
Speaker 1: almost sixteen and a half per bitcoin. That's expensive, but
Speaker 1: when you think back a couple of years ago when
Speaker 1: the currency hit around sixty thousand per coin, it is
Speaker 1: a huge drop. Bitcoin had hit a low of fifteen thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred fifty bucks yesterday, so it actually dip below
Speaker 1: sixteen thousand for the first time in ages. That was
Speaker 1: likely because of the next bit of news that we
Speaker 1: have to cover, cryptocurrency exchange f t X is in
Speaker 1: the middle of a real crisis. This require is a
Speaker 1: little bit of background. So an entrepreneur named Sam Bankman
Speaker 1: Freed a k A s b F that's what he
Speaker 1: goes by. UH and Gary Wong co founded the f
Speaker 1: t X exchange back in twenty nineteen, and an exchange
Speaker 1: is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies for
Speaker 1: other assets, which could include a different cryptocurrency or a
Speaker 1: fiat currency. Similarly, you could buy into a cryptocurrency exchanging
Speaker 1: fiat currency for a digital coin. That kind of thing.
Speaker 1: That's what an exchange does. It handles that transaction well. Binance,
Speaker 1: which is another cryptocurrency exchange and a huge competitor to
Speaker 1: f t X, had a stake in f t X,
Speaker 1: but last year Binance essentially converted its steak into f
Speaker 1: t T, and f t T is the native cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: on the f t X exchange, so you could buy
Speaker 1: into f t T and then convert the f t
Speaker 1: T into other stuff like bitcoin or whatever. As cryptome
Speaker 1: markets have encountered rough waters, SPF, through his trading firm,
Speaker 1: Alameda Research, began to save or at least attempt to
Speaker 1: save struggling crypto firms that were on the verge of
Speaker 1: collapse and that may have overextended SPF. Then you flash
Speaker 1: forward to this week when Binance CEO and sometimes are
Speaker 1: nemesis to SPF, Chong Peng Shao said that the company
Speaker 1: was going to cash out of its stock of f
Speaker 1: t T. Now, this would mean that the typically low
Speaker 1: trading market for ft T would suddenly get flooded by
Speaker 1: Binances vault of FTT currency once they unloaded their share,
Speaker 1: that in turn would drive down the value of f
Speaker 1: t T. Right, if you flood a market with currency,
Speaker 1: then the currency becomes devalued. So then you had a
Speaker 1: bunch of folks wanting to cash out of their FTT
Speaker 1: because they don't want to see their currency lose tons
Speaker 1: of value. That that's investment for them, and it essentially
Speaker 1: became a run on the bank, and suddenly fd X
Speaker 1: found itself in a liquidity crunch. Finance at one point
Speaker 1: indicate it would actually acquire fd X, which would at
Speaker 1: least help settle things down, but it would be a
Speaker 1: real power move because SPF and Chong Peng had been
Speaker 1: feuding extensively in the past. But then Binance backdown of
Speaker 1: the agreement, which was, you know, never formalized, so no
Speaker 1: problem there, and said that fd x is financial situation
Speaker 1: was way worse than first suspected. Now SBF and f
Speaker 1: d X are searching for another lifeline, and meanwhile the
Speaker 1: crypto market in general is taking another hit. Seeing a
Speaker 1: major exchange in trouble tends to have a ripple effect
Speaker 1: on people's confidence in the overall market, so crypto continues
Speaker 1: to have a rough time of it as it has
Speaker 1: for a while now. Market Watch reports that TikTok has
Speaker 1: secret scores assigned to influencers. These scores reflect how well
Speaker 1: content creators are at from products or showing enthusiasm for sponsors,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, So it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: secret system to evaluate how likely a given content creator
Speaker 1: is to play ball and to do it well. I
Speaker 1: suppose presumably creators who have higher scores will get more opportunities,
Speaker 1: perhaps with more prestigious brands. I'd like to think that
Speaker 1: the score indicates just how influential are you, oh, influencer,
Speaker 1: but it does look at things like diligence and cooperation,
Speaker 1: which is just their way of saying how frequently will
Speaker 1: they post and do they put up a fuss about it.
Speaker 1: The scoring system apparently doesn't really apply here in the
Speaker 1: United States because TikTok is really looking to leverage the
Speaker 1: social network into a shopping experience, and those efforts have
Speaker 1: not really taken off here in the US. It has
Speaker 1: in other parts of the world, so in places like
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia, the system appears to be fully deployed. According
Speaker 1: to market Watch, TikTok has been holding discussions in the
Speaker 1: UK about using the scores to partner with creators, and
Speaker 1: I want to be clear, I don't necessarily think this
Speaker 1: is a bad system. Uh. Some brands might have a
Speaker 1: particular influencer in mind when they want to engage in
Speaker 1: a in a TikTok campaign, but others might not have
Speaker 1: any idea of who they would want to represent. Their brand,
Speaker 1: and having a scoring system could be a quick way
Speaker 1: to at least get eyeballs in front of particular influencers
Speaker 1: to get an idea who's a good match. It is
Speaker 1: a little creepy because TikTok's parent company, byte Dance, is
Speaker 1: in China, and China has been developing a social credit
Speaker 1: score policy that potentially could see citizens receive social scores
Speaker 1: that could impact everything from job prospects to travel bands. Now,
Speaker 1: so far, the social credit program has really applied to businesses,
Speaker 1: not individuals, and various regions in China have rolled out
Speaker 1: their own version of this, so it's not like there's
Speaker 1: a unified national program in place. So I don't want
Speaker 1: to pay a dystopian picture the way often we will
Speaker 1: often hear when we talk about the social credit score.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, it's possible that that could change in
Speaker 1: the future. Okay, we have more to talk about, but
Speaker 1: before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So Variety, which mentally is an outlet that
Speaker 1: I do not reference often on this show, reported that,
Speaker 1: according to a YouTube representative, eighty million people are now
Speaker 1: subscribed to YouTube's music and premium services and that's up
Speaker 1: from fifty million last year. Subscribers are able to watch
Speaker 1: videos ad free, though obviously any baked in ads like
Speaker 1: a host red sponsorship within a video will still be there.
Speaker 1: They can also do stuff like play videos in the
Speaker 1: background and download for offline viewing, so you know there's
Speaker 1: some neat things there. The background video means that you
Speaker 1: could say, launch a video on your phone and then
Speaker 1: set your phone screen to sleep mode and still be
Speaker 1: able to listen to the video, which comes in handy
Speaker 1: for me because I like listening to a S m
Speaker 1: R as it go to sleep, and I would prefer
Speaker 1: the screen not stay lit up so that way it's
Speaker 1: not distracting me before I can not off. Anyway, While
Speaker 1: a thirty million subscriber increases great the amount of revenue
Speaker 1: those subscriptions generate, which is somewhere around eleven billion per
Speaker 1: year according to Android Headlines, it's still less than half
Speaker 1: of what the company's reported revenue is. It's understandable why
Speaker 1: YouTube would push for folks to subscribe. A subscription is
Speaker 1: reliable revenue month over month. The advertising market fluctuates, particularly
Speaker 1: in times of economic uncertainty, as companies start to curb
Speaker 1: spending Plus, YouTube doesn't have to worry so much about
Speaker 1: pairing ads with a video that the advertiser would object
Speaker 1: to if you're subscribed, right, so they don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about the kinds of situations that have happened in
Speaker 1: the past. You know, there's nothing like a brand getting
Speaker 1: word that one of their ads has gone up on
Speaker 1: a video that, for example, includes hate speech or some
Speaker 1: other objectionable content that causes a big problem. So if
Speaker 1: you can push people over to subscribe and then rely
Speaker 1: less and less on ads, then you remove that impediment. Anyway,
Speaker 1: It'll be interesting to see if YouTube can continue to
Speaker 1: convince people to subscribe for a service when they can
Speaker 1: watch the content for free otherwise. I mean, eighty million subscribers,
Speaker 1: that's a lot, but YouTube has more than two billion
Speaker 1: active users, so it's it's not even a blink of
Speaker 1: the eye for the overall number. Also, I feel like,
Speaker 1: in the interest of full disclosure, I should say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I am a subscriber to YouTube stuff. I subscribed actually
Speaker 1: to an earlier Google product that ultimately, surprise, surprise, got
Speaker 1: shut down and Google kind of rolled my subscription over
Speaker 1: to YouTube, and I liked it. So I just stuck
Speaker 1: with it. Last month, Australian health insurance company Meta Bank
Speaker 1: was hit with a cyber attack that included a massive
Speaker 1: data breach. Now a hacker or a group of hackers
Speaker 1: are demanding extortion payments or else they're going to release
Speaker 1: private medical information belonging to Meta banks clients. The hacker
Speaker 1: demands that Meta Bank handover a dollar for every customer affected,
Speaker 1: and that would be nine point seven million dollars. And
Speaker 1: the hacker has already released what it calls a naughty list,
Speaker 1: which is beyond messed up. When you hear about the
Speaker 1: kinds of folks that are on this list, it's a
Speaker 1: it's able list, to say the least. The list includes
Speaker 1: names of customers who, according to the hacker, have sought
Speaker 1: treatments that range from mental health sessions, to drug addiction services,
Speaker 1: to HIV treatment to abortions. Meta Bank so far has
Speaker 1: refused to pay the hacker, which I'm sure was a
Speaker 1: really difficult decision based upon the nature of this information,
Speaker 1: but in my opinion, it is also the right decision
Speaker 1: to make. Paying cybercriminals simply reinforces that their activities are profitable,
Speaker 1: and it also doesn't guarantee that you'll actually see an
Speaker 1: end to the problems. You might pay and still be tormented.
Speaker 1: But Meta Bank has had to reach out to customers
Speaker 1: to apologize for the issue. And it is a difficult
Speaker 1: fact that innocent people are facing the prospect of public
Speaker 1: shaming for stuff that frankly is no one's business. I
Speaker 1: agree with Australia's Home Affairs Minister Claire O'Neill, who is
Speaker 1: called the hackers quote scummy criminals end quote sounds legit
Speaker 1: to me. If you're on Cloud nine, you better get off.
Speaker 1: In this context, Cloud nine refers to a malicious Google
Speaker 1: Chrome extension that does a lot of nasty stuff like
Speaker 1: key logging. That's when a program that is on your
Speaker 1: computer and it records or logs every key stroke you make.
Speaker 1: Hackers use key loggers to get information like log in credentials,
Speaker 1: credit card numbers, bank account information, etcetera. It's really really
Speaker 1: bad news. Cloud nine can also access your copy and
Speaker 1: paste data. So maybe you don't type in your password,
Speaker 1: maybe you copy it over from like a password vault. Well,
Speaker 1: this tool nullifies that approach as well, or at least
Speaker 1: makes it just as risky. It can also direct your
Speaker 1: computer to mine for cryptocurrencies, so an infected system could
Speaker 1: join a larger bought net dedicated to mining for bitcoin
Speaker 1: or whatever, or you know, more likely some lower value
Speaker 1: crypto because bitcoin still requires some pretty hefty equipment and
Speaker 1: it can allow hackers to remotely execute code on your machine.
Speaker 1: So they could potentially use Cloud nine to run some
Speaker 1: other form of malicious software on an infected machine. So
Speaker 1: that's bad news. Now here is the good news. According
Speaker 1: to zimperium z Labs, which published a report about this extension,
Speaker 1: you cannot find Cloud nine in the official Chrome extension store. Instead,
Speaker 1: folks who are trying to infect computers are using other means,
Speaker 1: such as disguising Cloud nine as a supposed update to
Speaker 1: Adobe Flash and then including the link to this quote
Speaker 1: unquote update on sites that claim to have some form
Speaker 1: of content on them that you might want to see.
Speaker 1: So a person looking for this particular type of content,
Speaker 1: which now is not exclusively the domain of adult video,
Speaker 1: but frequently falls in that category, they end up seeing
Speaker 1: a little window and says, hey, you can't view this
Speaker 1: because you're Flash players out of date, So just to
Speaker 1: click here and download this update and we'll get you
Speaker 1: all set. Except it's not really an update to a
Speaker 1: video player. It is this malicious browser extension, which, once installed,
Speaker 1: starts logging all those key strokes. Now, this is a
Speaker 1: big reason why folks need to be careful before they
Speaker 1: install stuff outside of official stores. Like even in official
Speaker 1: stores can be tricky. Occasionally stuff will slip in without
Speaker 1: the powers that be noticing, but definitely if you're going
Speaker 1: outside official stores, which is something Chrome allows, it's called
Speaker 1: sideloading Chrome. Essentially, what Google is saying is we we
Speaker 1: expect you're an adult and you can make your own decisions,
Speaker 1: so just make good ones or else you're gonna regret it,
Speaker 1: whereas Apple says, we don't think you're adults, so we
Speaker 1: don't let you make decisions. It's putting words into Apple's mouth,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of how it comes across to me.
Speaker 1: Sometimes either way, you have to be really careful, and
Speaker 1: if you're not, then you can end up with something
Speaker 1: like Cloud nine installed on your browser and then next
Speaker 1: thing you know, you've got this enormous headache on your
Speaker 1: hands or I guess not on your hands. It's in
Speaker 1: your head about the fact that you've got this um
Speaker 1: browser that's logging all your key strokes. So yeah, just
Speaker 1: make sure you're being super careful when you're using your computer,
Speaker 1: make sure you know what you're getting into when you're
Speaker 1: side loading. And it's just good to be aware that
Speaker 1: these kind of tools are out there because it might
Speaker 1: make you think twice before you download something and install
Speaker 1: it without really looking into it further. IBM s Asprey
Speaker 1: is ready to take Flight, which is a a pun
Speaker 1: that doesn't really work because it's not an aircraft. Asprey
Speaker 1: in this case is at one of IBMS quantum processors.
Speaker 1: The company has been using bird names for their quantum
Speaker 1: processors for a while. I think the one that came
Speaker 1: out before this one was called Eagle and Osprey is
Speaker 1: a quantum processor that has four hundred thirty three cubits
Speaker 1: q U b I T, so the cubit for quantum
Speaker 1: computers is the basic unit of information. With a traditional computer,
Speaker 1: your basic unit of information is the bit, the binary digit,
Speaker 1: which can by be either a zero or a one.
Speaker 1: It cannot be both. It's one or the other, so
Speaker 1: it's off or on that kind of thing. But a cubit,
Speaker 1: because of superposition, can essentially be both zero and one
Speaker 1: at the same time and technically all values in between.
Speaker 1: This is because of a quantum effect, and it's not
Speaker 1: something you you observe in classical systems, but it's possible
Speaker 1: in a quantum system. So if you have enough cubits
Speaker 1: and you have the right kind of algorithm designed to
Speaker 1: run on a quantum machine, you can potentially solve extremely
Speaker 1: difficult computational problems from a classical computing perspective. That is,
Speaker 1: and it's only a subset of very difficult computational problems.
Speaker 1: It's not every computational problem, but for a subset. For example,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to try and decrypt something and you
Speaker 1: didn't know the two extremely large prime numbers that were
Speaker 1: used to multiply together and get a certain product, well,
Speaker 1: a quantum computer could, in theory solve that problem much much,
Speaker 1: much more quickly than a classical computer for a really
Speaker 1: large number. Classical computer might take more time than the
Speaker 1: universe has been around, whereas with a quantum computer you
Speaker 1: might be talking about, I don't know, a few minutes,
Speaker 1: depending upon again how sophisticated that quantum computer is. We
Speaker 1: are not at that level yet. That's where we're headed towards,
Speaker 1: but we're not there now. Four three cubits is a
Speaker 1: brand new record. That's an enormous number of cubits. When
Speaker 1: I first started talking about quantum systems, when I when
Speaker 1: I first learned that they were even a thing, we
Speaker 1: were working our way towards building a system that had
Speaker 1: just forty cubits. So we've already gone ten times that
Speaker 1: number since I started talking about quantum computers a few
Speaker 1: years ago. And i VM expects to release a quantum
Speaker 1: processor with one thousand cubits on it next year. That's
Speaker 1: a level of of doubling that that is astonishing. That
Speaker 1: actually outpaces Moore's law, which is pretty incredible. Now, we
Speaker 1: still have a lot of other things that have to
Speaker 1: fall into place before quantum computer has become the new
Speaker 1: UH defining factor for how we encrypt things moving forward,
Speaker 1: because obviously one of the things that we worry about
Speaker 1: with quantum computers is that encryption, the current methods of
Speaker 1: encryption that we rely upon, will be nullified, and that
Speaker 1: everything from that point forward could be decrypted assuming it
Speaker 1: was using this traditional form of encryption. But to do that,
Speaker 1: you have to have not just a most powerful computer
Speaker 1: system that can do it, but you also have to
Speaker 1: have the algorithm, and you have to have a way
Speaker 1: of reducing error rate so that you're not uncertain of
Speaker 1: the answer. And we haven't gotten there yet, but this
Speaker 1: is an incredible achievement and I'm really excited to see
Speaker 1: what happens next. Speaking of what happens next, let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. Okay, we're back and interesting full disclosure
Speaker 1: of y'all, I was at a training session for most
Speaker 1: of the day today, and so this bit of news
Speaker 1: has actually coming out since I started writing the episode,
Speaker 1: which was early, early, early in the morning. And so
Speaker 1: we've got some updates that I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: which means, unfortunately that I have to talk about Twitter
Speaker 1: some more, which I didn't plan on doing. But there
Speaker 1: are some updates. One thing is that as of right
Speaker 1: now over on Twitter, any any account that was made
Speaker 1: after Wednesday, November nine, will not be able to subscribe
Speaker 1: to Twitter Blue for now, because there was this rash
Speaker 1: of new accounts that we're seeking verification and then impersonating
Speaker 1: notable people and brands, and so Twitter had to do
Speaker 1: something about that, and the reaction was all right, well,
Speaker 1: it's locked down any any new accounts from being able
Speaker 1: to do this right all the Gate. So the question
Speaker 1: is when will those accounts be allowed to seek Twitter
Speaker 1: Blue verification. We don't know yet. I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: at Twitter knows yet. I think that this is all
Speaker 1: very reactionary, understandably so, because that flood of impersonations obviously
Speaker 1: posed a real threat to Twitter's revenue, as advertisers do
Speaker 1: not want to see fake accounts claiming to be them
Speaker 1: with a little check Martin next to them doing things
Speaker 1: like posting a picture of Mario flipping off everybody on Twitter.
Speaker 1: So yeah, not a surprise that this has happened. It
Speaker 1: does really paint a picture of how quickly things are
Speaker 1: developing at Twitter, how chaotic things must be over there. Also,
Speaker 1: I know, I'm pretty sure every single one of you
Speaker 1: out there, I feel certain, I'll say this, every single
Speaker 1: one of you out there would have predicted that this
Speaker 1: would have happened, right that if you have a verification
Speaker 1: system that the only barrier of entry is having eight
Speaker 1: dollars a month to spend to have it, you were
Speaker 1: ultimately going to see a lot of people, a lot
Speaker 1: of troublemakers take advantage of that, whether it was going
Speaker 1: to be a ton or you know, just a few
Speaker 1: thousand or whatever it may be. You knew that was
Speaker 1: going to happen, right like I knew that was going
Speaker 1: to happen. It's shocking to me that Elon Musk didn't
Speaker 1: think that was going to happen, or perhaps didn't care
Speaker 1: or didn't understand what the consequences of that would be
Speaker 1: on Twitter's reputation and ability to attract advertisers. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this is at best a temporary solution to heading off
Speaker 1: future rushes to to create impersonation accounts, And uh, I
Speaker 1: think that's wise, But I honestly you think that the
Speaker 1: whole eight dollar verification thing was a bad idea to
Speaker 1: start with. It may very will be that we'll see
Speaker 1: them reverse that decision that the Twitter Blue subscription will
Speaker 1: no longer include the check mark, or maybe it will
Speaker 1: include some other kind of badge to differentiate a Twitter
Speaker 1: Blue subscriber from a normal Twitter user. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: check mark not a great idea because it just set
Speaker 1: the stage for that kind of abuse. So that's update
Speaker 1: number one. In update number two, the US Treasury Department
Speaker 1: Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has UH posted a filing that
Speaker 1: shows that Twitter has applied to become a money service business. Now,
Speaker 1: those of you all who know Elon Musk's history know
Speaker 1: that he was part of x which would eventually become PayPal,
Speaker 1: and also that he has talked in the past about
Speaker 1: aspirations to turn Twitter into a kind of catch all
Speaker 1: service where there would be multiple things you could do
Speaker 1: on it, not just send out a tweet, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about what you had for breakfast, like we used
Speaker 1: to do in the old days, but to perhaps transfer
Speaker 1: funds using Twitter. There's also been some speculation that this
Speaker 1: might mean that Twitter will have some form of of
Speaker 1: relationship with cryptocurrency, but honestly, I don't know if that
Speaker 1: is actually the case. We do know, obviously, Elon Musk
Speaker 1: has been interested in cryptocurrency. There was a while where
Speaker 1: Tesla would accept bitcoin for payment for for a new
Speaker 1: Tesla vehicle. Elon Musk famously promoted doge coin um, which
Speaker 1: did not did not last very long. Like it it,
Speaker 1: It pumped the doge coin value briefly, but doge coin
Speaker 1: has since been back down to just a few sense
Speaker 1: per coin. And uh, yeah, I don't know if this
Speaker 1: means we're going to see Twitter get more involved in
Speaker 1: the crypto world or not. I wouldn't be shocked if
Speaker 1: that were the case. But certainly this is an example
Speaker 1: of Twitter getting interested in becoming more of a um
Speaker 1: a payment services platform, and this is the first step
Speaker 1: to doing it, but obviously a lot more steps have
Speaker 1: to happen before it actually comes to fruition. Next, Twitter
Speaker 1: chief information security officer Leah Kissner leaves Twitter, so Casey
Speaker 1: Newton was the first to report this. Uh. Kissner said
Speaker 1: that this was a hard decision, so it appears to
Speaker 1: be their decision to leave Twitter, not the company's, but
Speaker 1: did not elaborate, did not explain why that decision was
Speaker 1: arrived at I mean, obviously things are again really chaotic
Speaker 1: at Twitter, and that many of the departments have been
Speaker 1: decimated by the layoffs, and I would not be surprised
Speaker 1: to learn that cybersecurity was one of those. It does
Speaker 1: sound like a lot of a lot of divisions within
Speaker 1: Twitter are are working under skeleton crew type situations at
Speaker 1: this point. But yes, seeing Kissner depart is not, uh,
Speaker 1: not something that I find very encouraging. Um it is
Speaker 1: scary because cybersecurity is a very serious matter, and obviously
Speaker 1: social media in general has been a target for different
Speaker 1: agencies out there attempting to spread misinformation and disinformation, to
Speaker 1: so discontent, to spread messages of hate, and to see
Speaker 1: someone who had seignori in a cybersecurity department leave like
Speaker 1: that is troubling. Hopefully Twitter is able to account for
Speaker 1: this and be able to adapt, And I also really
Speaker 1: hope that Kissner is able to find a new opportunity,
Speaker 1: a new place to fit in. They indicated that they
Speaker 1: don't have anything lined up right now. In fact, they said,
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to figuring out what's next, starting with
Speaker 1: my reviews for US next Security. So that, um, that's
Speaker 1: that's incredible, Like that, it's a it's such a big
Speaker 1: deal for anyone to leave without having another backup plan.
Speaker 1: That was always something that when I was in my
Speaker 1: earlier career, I just felt I couldn't leave something unless
Speaker 1: I had another thing lined up. So it's got to
Speaker 1: be pretty a pretty big reason to leave a high ranking,
Speaker 1: you know, position within a company and not have something
Speaker 1: else right behind it. Uh, chances are Kisseners going to
Speaker 1: find other opportunities pretty quickly. Cybersecurity is obviously important for
Speaker 1: all companies that are in the digital age, so probably
Speaker 1: going to be okay in the long run. But yeah,
Speaker 1: another concerning bit of news for Twitter. What else is
Speaker 1: do now? Twitter, of course, is not the only company
Speaker 1: that's going through rough times. We talked about Meta being
Speaker 1: in that same situation. Really, all the big tech companies
Speaker 1: are looking at making cuts and finding costs savings pretty
Speaker 1: much across the board, and Amazon is no stranger to this. Reportedly,
Speaker 1: Amazon is considering making some cuts in their division that
Speaker 1: involves their voice assistant tool, whose name I won't say
Speaker 1: in case you happen to be listening on one of
Speaker 1: those devices, but uh, it's it's a woman's name that
Speaker 1: starts with A and it ends with A and it
Speaker 1: has lex in the middle. Anyway, Apparently that division has
Speaker 1: had an operating loss of more than five billion dollars
Speaker 1: in recent years, according to the Wall Street Journal, which
Speaker 1: that's a lot of that's a lot of money. Obviously.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to me because the voice assistant feature was
Speaker 1: one that just a few years ago was really being
Speaker 1: promoted across multiple companies Amazon, Google, Apple as being a
Speaker 1: game changing technology, a new way to interact with our
Speaker 1: devices that removes the barriers that would otherwise exist. Being
Speaker 1: able to speak to a computer system and have it
Speaker 1: understand what you want and to do whatever it is
Speaker 1: you were asking of it. That was a big deal,
Speaker 1: Like that's like Star Trek kind of stuff. But if
Speaker 1: it's not driving revenue, it becomes harder and harder to justify,
Speaker 1: especially in times of economic uncertainty. So, uh, here's hoping
Speaker 1: that there won't be too many people affected by layoffs
Speaker 1: if there are going to be massive cuts across Amazon,
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, I'll be really interested to see how
Speaker 1: we go from here, Like what else are we going
Speaker 1: to see from voice assistants or will we will those
Speaker 1: fade away and they just won't have really made a
Speaker 1: huge impact. I know I use a voice assistant pretty regularly,
Speaker 1: but I do it to do like three different things,
Speaker 1: and it's the same three things pretty much every day,
Speaker 1: and that's it. So arguably I'm not really making good
Speaker 1: use of the voice assistant feature. And maybe I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even notice if it were gone, except then I'd have
Speaker 1: to figure out how to turn my lights on and off.
Speaker 1: Used to be a time where I knew how to
Speaker 1: do that. I guess there's that switch on the wall. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Last little bit of news that I have this is
Speaker 1: another update that came out while I was in training.
Speaker 1: The bit of news is that Kaspersky is going to
Speaker 1: have to stop the operation of its VPN product within Russia. Now,
Speaker 1: Kaspersky itself is a Russian company. It's known for making
Speaker 1: security software UH, anti virus, that kind of stuff, as
Speaker 1: well as VPNs or virtual private networks, and UH, Russia
Speaker 1: had already cracked down on most VPNs last year. Uh
Speaker 1: those would be companies that were or VPNs that were
Speaker 1: from companies that were not themselves located out of Russia,
Speaker 1: So things like Nord VPN, Express VPN, Proton VPN, you've
Speaker 1: probably heard of some of these. Those were kind of
Speaker 1: band last year, and a big reason for that is
Speaker 1: that Russia was trying to force these companies to make
Speaker 1: sure that the Russian government would be able to censor
Speaker 1: information across these VPNs, which isn't really what the VPNs
Speaker 1: are for. Uh So Russia is trying to control the
Speaker 1: narrative right there, trying to control the info that their
Speaker 1: citizens can easily access. Not quite to the same level
Speaker 1: that we see in China, but there is some pretty
Speaker 1: heavy censorship going on on the government level in Russia
Speaker 1: regarding Internet information and UM. Yeah, and also they wanted
Speaker 1: to be able to see who was seeing what again,
Speaker 1: that's the VPNs are supposed to be the cure for that.
Speaker 1: You're supposed to use a VPN so that people who
Speaker 1: are snooping on you don't know what sights you're going to.
Speaker 1: It can be absolutely of critical importance in in work right,
Speaker 1: you might be working for a company where you need
Speaker 1: to log into a VPN first before you access company
Speaker 1: assets because the company wants to protect those assets from
Speaker 1: many snoops. They don't want anyone to be able to
Speaker 1: figure out uh proprietary secrets. For example, the Russian government
Speaker 1: does not really like secrets that aren't there's so there
Speaker 1: was a real push for this. Well, now Kaspersky itself,
Speaker 1: a Russian company, has decided to end the VPN service
Speaker 1: within Russia because I guess it has found that it's
Speaker 1: really difficult to provide VPN services and also meet the
Speaker 1: expectations of the Russian government. That these two things are
Speaker 1: antithetical to one another, they counteract each other, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where we're at there. It's pretty severe. Uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know how many VPN services are legally available bowl
Speaker 1: in Russia at this point. I'm sure that there are
Speaker 1: no shortage of people who are accessing them illegally, but
Speaker 1: that obviously brings with it some risk. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: That's the last little update that I came across before
Speaker 1: I was ready to send us off to super producer Tari.
Speaker 1: So I hope you are all well. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for listening. If you would like to reach out
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