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 Inning
Speaker 1: on Friday May thirty first, twenty twenty four, and let's
Speaker 1: start off with some news about TikTok. The Independent reports
Speaker 1: that part of TikTok's Project Texas plan. Project Texas was
Speaker 1: the company's attempt to reassure American politicians that TikTok isn't
Speaker 1: a data funnel that leads directly to China, was to
Speaker 1: give the US government a remarkable amount of control and oversight. So,
Speaker 1: for one thing, it would have let federal officials elect
Speaker 1: some of the board members for TikTok. The government would
Speaker 1: be given access to TikTok's source code to look for
Speaker 1: evidence of backdoor access and that sort of thing. And
Speaker 1: apparently there even would have been a kill switch feature
Speaker 1: built into TikTok should someone determine that it was serving
Speaker 1: as some sort of insidious tool belonging to a foreign adversary.
Speaker 1: But the White House rejected this plan and said it
Speaker 1: would not be sufficient to address national security concerns. Now,
Speaker 1: I have only read the reporting around this plan. I
Speaker 1: have not actually read the full details of the plan itself,
Speaker 1: so I don't really have any more insight into this.
Speaker 1: But we all know what actually happened instead of it right.
Speaker 1: Congress passed a law that, if it holds up to
Speaker 1: TikTok's legal challenges, will ultimately force TikTok to either separate
Speaker 1: entirely from its Chinese parent company, byte Dance, or face
Speaker 1: a nationwide ban in the United States. This brings me
Speaker 1: to the next TikTok story. Reuter's reports that TikTok has
Speaker 1: secretly been working on creating a recommendation algorithm that would
Speaker 1: be completely independent from the one that Byteedance uses for
Speaker 1: the sister app du Jin, which is the you know,
Speaker 1: the Chinese variant of TikTok, or you could argue TikTok's
Speaker 1: the American variant of Douyin. The implication is that this
Speaker 1: is a potential preparation in the event that TikTok is
Speaker 1: forced to separate from the mothership. Reuter's sites unnamed sources
Speaker 1: who say the project is massive and could take a
Speaker 1: year or so to complete. These sources claim that TikTok
Speaker 1: executives have talked about the project in all hands meetings
Speaker 1: and such, but TikTok representatives have disputed Reuter's report and
Speaker 1: said it was quote misleading and factually inaccurate in the quote,
Speaker 1: and that the divestiture from Byteedance is quote simply not possible.
Speaker 1: End the quote where the truth lies. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I have no doubt that divesting TikTok would be really challenging.
Speaker 1: I do not think it would be impossible. It might
Speaker 1: be very difficult, and it might also mean that the
Speaker 1: effort to do so would cost so much in resources
Speaker 1: that economically it's not viable. So maybe you know, from
Speaker 1: an economic standpoint, you could say, yeah, it's not possible,
Speaker 1: But I don't think that it's technologically impossible. And it
Speaker 1: is also within the realm of possibility that TikTok representatives
Speaker 1: are just saying this, because if they were to admit
Speaker 1: otherwise that the company is working on this independent algorithm,
Speaker 1: that could potentially give the US government a bit more
Speaker 1: leverage to say, well, you're already making preparations, so there's
Speaker 1: no problem here. But as I mentioned earlier, TikTok is
Speaker 1: already suing to challenge this law, and this matter is
Speaker 1: far from settled. So my guess is the US recommendation algorithm,
Speaker 1: if in fact that really does exist and Royer sources
Speaker 1: are truthful, I think that that's the contingency plan. I
Speaker 1: think that's TikTok having a worst case scenario for the company,
Speaker 1: the worst case being that it actually is forced to
Speaker 1: divest itself or for byte Dance rather to divest itself
Speaker 1: of TikTok. A security firm called black Lotus Labs has
Speaker 1: a report that might explain a massive technological failing that
Speaker 1: happened last year. So back in October of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: more than half a million customers of the internet service
Speaker 1: provider Windstream lost service. So what was the problem. Well,
Speaker 1: the customers found that their routers had become bricked, though
Speaker 1: they didn't actually necessarily know that's what had happened. Some
Speaker 1: of them did, but most people were probably just thinking,
Speaker 1: my Internet don't work no more. But it meant that
Speaker 1: like six hundred thousand customers or so were without Internet
Speaker 1: service and that's not good. And eventually Windstream would send
Speaker 1: out replacement routers once it finally kind of got to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that, yeah, it's the routers that failed, and
Speaker 1: there was nothing on the fault of the customers As
Speaker 1: far as anyone can tell. These failures happened over the
Speaker 1: course of three days. So what can make so many
Speaker 1: routers fail in such a short time. Well, according to
Speaker 1: Black Lotus Labs, it was malware. Now I should add that,
Speaker 1: as Dan Gooden of Ours Technica reports, Black Lotus Labs
Speaker 1: did not specifically name Windstream in their report. Instead, the
Speaker 1: firms spelled out the parameters of this malware attack and
Speaker 1: the effects it had, and Goodin makes the case that
Speaker 1: it's a pretty darn good match for what seems to
Speaker 1: have happened over at Windstream, and I would agree with that. Now,
Speaker 1: I would argue that the most concerning elements of this
Speaker 1: report are the things we still do not know. We
Speaker 1: do not know who carried out the attack. We do
Speaker 1: not know why they did this attack. We also don't
Speaker 1: know how the attacker was able to get initial access
Speaker 1: to these routers in the first place. Like they used
Speaker 1: a specific kind of malware in order to overwrite the
Speaker 1: firmware on the router. We know that, like we know
Speaker 1: what kind of malware they used, but how they got
Speaker 1: that entry point in to the routers in the first place.
Speaker 1: That is still an unknown variable. It could be that
Speaker 1: there's a vulnerability that's in these routers that the cybersecurity
Speaker 1: community doesn't know about yet but the attacker does, or
Speaker 1: it could be something else. We also don't know if
Speaker 1: the attack was you know, backed by a nation state.
Speaker 1: Was this a state back hacking attack? No clue, And
Speaker 1: because we know so little about the actual attack, like
Speaker 1: who carried it out and how it was done, we
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of good advice on how to
Speaker 1: avoid this kind of thing in the future and how
Speaker 1: to protect ourselves against future attacks, apart from just you know,
Speaker 1: the general words of wisdom, like you know, when you
Speaker 1: get a router or a modem or whatever, change the
Speaker 1: default password, change it to something that only you know
Speaker 1: and it's a strong password, or you know, reboot your
Speaker 1: router on occasion in order to try and protect yourself
Speaker 1: against attacks, that kind of thing, which I mean, those
Speaker 1: are good rules to follow, but it's not very reassuring,
Speaker 1: like it's not specific to this particular case. Blake Montgomery
Speaker 1: reports in the Guardian the US authorities shut down a
Speaker 1: botnet and not just any botnet, but the world's largest
Speaker 1: buttonnet ever. So a botnet, for those of you unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with the term, is a network of comprised computers. I mean,
Speaker 1: the name kind of gives it away, a network of bots.
Speaker 1: So typically a hacker uses malware or phishing attacks in
Speaker 1: order to establish some kind of backdoor access to a
Speaker 1: network of computers. So these are computers belonging to people
Speaker 1: and companies and such and organizations that the hacker then
Speaker 1: is able to at least take some partial control over.
Speaker 1: And then typically the hacker puts these computers to work
Speaker 1: to do something. This can include anything from using this
Speaker 1: network of zombie computers zombie computers. That's another kind of
Speaker 1: term for a botnet, a zombie army. You might use
Speaker 1: those to blast some web server with Internet traffic in
Speaker 1: an attempt to overwhelm it. Now that's a distributed denial
Speaker 1: of service attack. Or you might put this network of
Speaker 1: computers to work in the cryptocurrency minds. But in this
Speaker 1: particular case, this compromised network was used to do several
Speaker 1: different things, but the big one was an alleged COVID
Speaker 1: insurance fraud scam that amounted to around six billion dollars
Speaker 1: in fraud. The takedown operation, which was code named Endgame
Speaker 1: because I guess cybersecurity folks like to feel cool and
Speaker 1: presumably really enjoy the Avengers movies. It relied upon joint
Speaker 1: cooperation of authorities in the United States, the United Kingdom, Ukraine,
Speaker 1: the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, and France. The US Department of
Speaker 1: Justice arrested Yunhi Wang, who is a Chinese national, and
Speaker 1: accused Wang of essentially spearheading the botnet operations. Wang did
Speaker 1: not do it on his own, but was allegedly a
Speaker 1: large part of this, and if Wang in fact has
Speaker 1: found guilty, he could face up to sixty five years
Speaker 1: in prison. He's thirty five years old now, so that's
Speaker 1: a big old wolf. The United States National Security Agency,
Speaker 1: or NSA, says it's a good idea for smartphone owners
Speaker 1: to completely power it down their devices at least once
Speaker 1: a week. The agency says that doing this can help
Speaker 1: mitigate issues like spearfishing, but it's not a guarantee that
Speaker 1: you'll be free and clear of all risks. It just helps.
Speaker 1: So essentially, just the turning your device off and on
Speaker 1: again on a regular basis should be considered a best practice,
Speaker 1: and the NSSA should know because they are experts at
Speaker 1: spying on people. If you'd like more information on that,
Speaker 1: look up stories about prism or main way that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. But to be less cheeky, I agree that
Speaker 1: regularly doing a full power down and then power up
Speaker 1: of your device is probably a good idea for lots
Speaker 1: of different reasons, not least of which is that it
Speaker 1: could provide an extra bit of security against threats. All right,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more tech news stories to cover,
Speaker 1: but before we get to that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsors. We're back and now for
Speaker 1: a couple of stories about using technology to spread propaganda
Speaker 1: and misinformation. First up, META says that it identified and
Speaker 1: subsequently removed six influenced campaigns. This is coming from an
Speaker 1: article I saw on the Verge by Nick Barclay. Meta
Speaker 1: says that a couple of these campaigns were using AI
Speaker 1: in an attempt to push certain political viewpoints and to
Speaker 1: make it seem as if that particular point view had
Speaker 1: a larger amount of support than it really did. Meta
Speaker 1: disclosed that the campaigns originated out of places such as Croatia, China, Bangladesh,
Speaker 1: Israel and Iran. Apparently, the Israeli campaign made use of
Speaker 1: AI to create comments to try and boost engagement and
Speaker 1: the spread of messaging, and the Chinese campaign allegedly used
Speaker 1: AI to generate images as part of that campaign. Now,
Speaker 1: according to Meta, these attempts weren't particularly sophisticated or hard
Speaker 1: to identify. But obviously folks expect that AI will get
Speaker 1: better at creating this kind of stuff that people will
Speaker 1: not be as readily available to detect. It'll be easier
Speaker 1: for the stuff to kind of pass casual glance and
Speaker 1: considering discourse on some social platforms, I expect it is
Speaker 1: not going to take a whole lot of work to
Speaker 1: craft something that fits right in, because goodness knows, I've
Speaker 1: seen some garbage on social networks. On a similar note,
Speaker 1: the New York Times reports that open Aye has said
Speaker 1: it identified five online campaigns that were making use of
Speaker 1: AI to boost messaging. These campaigns originated in places like Russia, China, Iran,
Speaker 1: and Israel. There's no word on whether or not any
Speaker 1: of these are the same ones that Meta mentioned. This week,
Speaker 1: The Register had a rather snarky article about this that
Speaker 1: talks about how these campaigns were relatively low stakes because
Speaker 1: they hadn't seen much penetration. They were largely you know,
Speaker 1: unseen by actual human people. Instead, they mostly consisted mainly
Speaker 1: of bots posting stuff that other bots had created, or
Speaker 1: maybe the same stuff that those same bots had created.
Speaker 1: At any rate, it sounds like the actual impact of
Speaker 1: these campaigns was minimal. And again some of that has
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that the efforts of using
Speaker 1: AI are not terribly sophisticated yet. But I do stress
Speaker 1: the word yet, because there's every reason to expect these
Speaker 1: attacks will get more sophisticated over time, and the real
Speaker 1: concern is whether open AI will be as effective at
Speaker 1: detecting and disrupting such campaigns when they inevitably surface. And
Speaker 1: now in the AI is Coming for Creatives category, I
Speaker 1: submit for your approval a story written by Winston Show
Speaker 1: for The Hollywood Reporter about a company called Fable Studio.
Speaker 1: This company is launching an AI powered platform called Showrunner,
Speaker 1: which the studio claims will be able to create AI
Speaker 1: generated television series. So it sounds to me like the
Speaker 1: idea is you give AI some guidelines on what you want,
Speaker 1: and then the AI creates an animated episode and voice
Speaker 1: acted episode that consists of scenes that are based off
Speaker 1: your prompts. So imagine that you're sitting there and you're thinking, man,
Speaker 1: I really wish they hadn't canceled Firefly. And then imagine
Speaker 1: you're thinking, hey, wait a minute, I can create new
Speaker 1: episodes of Firefly using this tool and wash lives in
Speaker 1: my version. Spoiler alert if you haven't seen Serenity. So
Speaker 1: the actors might not look quite right, because again, the
Speaker 1: tool can only make animated characters at the moment, it
Speaker 1: can't do video AI generation. They might not sound right.
Speaker 1: And sure, it probably won't come across like a real
Speaker 1: Firefly episode and sound like something that Joss Whedon wrote,
Speaker 1: but you could technically do it. If you're also thinking, hey,
Speaker 1: this kind of sounds like the sort of stuff that
Speaker 1: the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild
Speaker 1: were really worried about, you would be right on the money.
Speaker 1: Fable Studio is launching a closed beta test of the
Speaker 1: platform in the near future that will likely last the
Speaker 1: rest of this year before it is able to launch
Speaker 1: the service for reals's I will not be joining the
Speaker 1: waitlist for this test. I have serious ethical objections to
Speaker 1: AI generated entertainment, and they are far too numerous to
Speaker 1: get into here. Now. I say that, but our next
Speaker 1: story actually goes into one of the big reasons why so.
Speaker 1: Jesus Diaz, a fast company, reports that Instagram is training
Speaker 1: AI models using user data on the platform, and worse,
Speaker 1: most users have no way to opt out of it.
Speaker 1: So if you're an artist of any type and you
Speaker 1: use Instagram to showcase your work, whether that's dance or
Speaker 1: visual arts or photography, whatever it might be, your work
Speaker 1: is being used to train up Meta's AI generative models.
Speaker 1: The only people who even have the option to opt
Speaker 1: out of this are citizens of the European Union, where
Speaker 1: the rules of General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR provide
Speaker 1: some protection. But as Das reports, Meta has taken some
Speaker 1: rather extraordinary steps to obfuscate the option to opt out.
Speaker 1: First up is the initial message alerting users in the
Speaker 1: EU to the practice. In the first place, there's this
Speaker 1: big old blue clothes button, and if you hit clothes,
Speaker 1: essentially that serves as a I'm cool with this, you know,
Speaker 1: it's essentially sending the opt in message, so your opt
Speaker 1: out option is gone. Within the message itself is a
Speaker 1: phrase that says quote this means you have the right
Speaker 1: to object to how your information is used for these
Speaker 1: purposes end quote, and the right to object phrase within
Speaker 1: that is a link to the actual opt out feature. Now,
Speaker 1: as you might imagine, this is much smaller than the
Speaker 1: blue close button. Now, if you did click the right
Speaker 1: to object phrase, it takes you to a rather intimidating
Speaker 1: looking form that I would argue appears to be designed
Speaker 1: to discourage users from taking the time to opt out.
Speaker 1: That is my opinion. I am just saying. My opinion
Speaker 1: is this was a calculated move to discourage people from
Speaker 1: opting out. And what's more, Das rightly points out that
Speaker 1: GDPR makes it illegal for Meta to deny anyone their
Speaker 1: request to opt out of data capture and usage practices.
Speaker 1: You don't have to give a reason, you don't have
Speaker 1: to justify it. You just have to say I opt
Speaker 1: out and that's it. So Meta has made this more
Speaker 1: complicated than it needs to be. However, the form makes
Speaker 1: it seem like you have to make a case to
Speaker 1: opt out and then Meta has the right to deny
Speaker 1: your request. They do not have that right. So if
Speaker 1: you do live in the EU and you want to
Speaker 1: opt out of this and you see that message pop up.
Speaker 1: I suggest that when Meta asks you to explain why
Speaker 1: you want to opt out, you write in something like
Speaker 1: GDPR says, I don't have to give you a reason,
Speaker 1: you jark face, or something to that effect. I feel
Speaker 1: like Meta is really playing it fast and loose in
Speaker 1: the EU with this approach, as I believe certain regulators,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking specifically of ones who happen to live
Speaker 1: in Ireland might argue that the UX design that Meta
Speaker 1: has employed is purposefully attempting to trick users into opting
Speaker 1: in without necessarily wanting to, And if I had to
Speaker 1: lay money on it, I would say that they're going
Speaker 1: to face some lawsuits about this in the future. The
Speaker 1: US Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, has given Amazon the
Speaker 1: clearance to operate delivery drones outside of the direct view
Speaker 1: of a ground spotter. So previously, the FAA required Amazon
Speaker 1: to employ ground spotters to make sure that drones weren't
Speaker 1: putting people in property at risk while zooming around delivering
Speaker 1: you know, socks and Taylor Swift albums and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Without that requirement, Amazon will now have the
Speaker 1: chance to expand operations beyond a few test markets and
Speaker 1: potentially make it a viable means of delivering packages to
Speaker 1: more customers. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean the air is
Speaker 1: soon going to be buzzing with drones in the near future,
Speaker 1: because the company has made some staffing cuts to the
Speaker 1: Prime Air division in the recent past, and Amazon announced
Speaker 1: just a few weeks ago it would be ending drone
Speaker 1: operations in California entirely. So it might be a while
Speaker 1: before you start seeing these suckers dropping off impulse purchases
Speaker 1: in your neck of the woods, But a major regulatory
Speaker 1: hurdle is now out of the way. Today mark's the
Speaker 1: last day of employment for Twitch's current Safety Advisory Council.
Speaker 1: This group of nine folks, which included industry experts and streamers,
Speaker 1: were responsible for advising Twitch on how to improve safety
Speaker 1: measures on the plot and to build trust among the
Speaker 1: community of creators and users alike. They were alerted at
Speaker 1: the beginning of this month that their services would no
Speaker 1: longer be required at the end of May. Instead, Twitch
Speaker 1: plans to create a new group consisting solely of Twitch ambassadors.
Speaker 1: As Hayden Field of CNBC puts it, the language around
Speaker 1: this decision is aligned with the general corporate speak that
Speaker 1: typically boils down to we're cutting costs and safety is
Speaker 1: a real hassle. That's me paraphrasing. By the way, Field
Speaker 1: is far more professional and responsible than i am. Field
Speaker 1: also points out that in twenty twenty three, Twitch sacked
Speaker 1: around fifty folks in their trust and safety team, so
Speaker 1: this move seems to be in alignment with that one
Speaker 1: from last year. Considering the numerous stories that have come
Speaker 1: out around how important security is and how risks and
Speaker 1: threats are growing each year, partly due to the use
Speaker 1: of AI, this to me seems like a short term
Speaker 1: decision that could potentially have disastrous long term consequences. But
Speaker 1: then Twitch has also made several policy chain over the
Speaker 1: last couple of years that have really blown up in
Speaker 1: the company's proverbial face, so maybe this is just the
Speaker 1: platform saying the council hasn't been a good fit. In gadgets,
Speaker 1: Will Shanklin reports that Spotify, after some resistance, has agreed
Speaker 1: to issue refunds to folks who purchased a car thing.
Speaker 1: That's the actual name for the product, the car Thing.
Speaker 1: Spotify launched this a couple of years ago. It's a
Speaker 1: device that attaches to your car's entertainment system, and it
Speaker 1: provides streaming media from Spotify to your vehicle. But the
Speaker 1: company announced last week that it was going to end
Speaker 1: support for the devices on December ninth of this year,
Speaker 1: at which point all those car things will become useless
Speaker 1: things because they'll be bricked. Those puppies cost ninety bucks
Speaker 1: a pop, and since the service is only a couple
Speaker 1: of years old, that cheesed a lot of people off. Reportedly,
Speaker 1: Spotify wasn't going to offer refunds at first, but the
Speaker 1: company subsequently didn't about face, and did so just before
Speaker 1: a class action lawsuit rolled in against them that was
Speaker 1: accusing them of unfair business practices. So whether the change
Speaker 1: of heart was in anticipation of that lawsuit or Spotify
Speaker 1: just arrived at the conclusion that maybe it was a
Speaker 1: bad idea to ignore customer complaints independently, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But if you bought one, you can reach out the
Speaker 1: customer service for a refund. You do have to provide
Speaker 1: proof of purchase, however, And finally, it's the end of
Speaker 1: an era. ICQ. The Venerable Instant Messenger service will shuffle
Speaker 1: off this mortal coil. On my birthday, which doesn't mean
Speaker 1: anything to you. But on June twenty sixth, the Russian
Speaker 1: company VK, which is where ICQ ultimately landed, is going
Speaker 1: to shut down the service, so anyone still using ICQ
Speaker 1: will have to shift to some other instant messenger client. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've never used the service, it was a bit peculiar.
Speaker 1: You didn't get to choose a handle or use your
Speaker 1: name or anything like that. Instead, the service would assign
Speaker 1: you a number, you know, nice and personal like, and
Speaker 1: it worked kind of like a phone number, and you
Speaker 1: could initiate chat sessions with other users. And I used
Speaker 1: it a lot back in my younger days, though honestly,
Speaker 1: I can't remember the last time I popped on. It's
Speaker 1: likely been at least two decades or more at this point. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if you had told me that ICQ would outlive Aol
Speaker 1: instant Messenger which shut down at the end of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: I would have thought you were bunkers. But that's how
Speaker 1: it turned out. Well, you had a good run ICQ.
Speaker 1: I'll give you one final uh oh. That's the sound
Speaker 1: that would play when you got a message on ICQ.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode, and the news for the
Speaker 1: week ending on May thirty first, twenty twenty four. I
Speaker 1: hope that you are all well, and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
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