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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.

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Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the

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Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for

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Speaker 1: the week ending on Friday, May third, twenty twenty four.

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Speaker 1: And kicking things off, we've got a devastating story involving

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Speaker 1: ransomware hackers and the largest health insurance company in the world,

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Speaker 1: at least as measured by revenue. We're talking about United Health,

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Speaker 1: and that company's CEO, Andrew Whitty, faced some pretty tough

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Speaker 1: questions from US senators this week due to hackers stealing

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Speaker 1: a quote unquote substantial amount of sensitive medical data belonging

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Speaker 1: to anywhere from one third to half of all Americans,

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Speaker 1: which is a big o' yaalza. Okay. So United Health

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Speaker 1: is obviously a huge player in health insurance, the hugest

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Speaker 1: you could argue. And on top of that, back in

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Speaker 1: early twenty twenty three, United Health acquired another health company.

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Speaker 1: It's a company that was called Change Healthcare. Now, this

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Speaker 1: company specialized in payment platforms for health services and in

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Speaker 1: fact handled payments for like fifty percent of all medical

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Speaker 1: payments in the United States, but apparently Change Healthcare's computer

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Speaker 1: systems weren't really hardened properly against hacker intrusions, and sure enough,

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Speaker 1: some folks from the infamous hacker group Alpha, which is

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Speaker 1: the same group that helped infiltrate MGM resorts last year,

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Speaker 1: they managed to use some stolen credentials to access a

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Speaker 1: Change Healthcare server in February of this year. And then

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Speaker 1: that we go from there. So they apparently took a

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Speaker 1: crap ton of data and whity claimed that the server

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Speaker 1: had been scheduled to be upgraded to bring it security

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Speaker 1: up to par, that this wasn't really United Health's fault,

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Speaker 1: This was an issue with Change Healthcare, you know, the

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Speaker 1: company that now was part of United Health, and that

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Speaker 1: this group of servers were meant to be upgraded so

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Speaker 1: that they would be brought on par with United Health

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Speaker 1: security practices. And you know that might be true, but

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Speaker 1: we all know you're only as secure as your weakest link,

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Speaker 1: which makes me wonder why United Health didn't hold off

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Speaker 1: on integrating the Change Healthcare servers into their overall system

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Speaker 1: until after these security upgrades took place. I mean, that

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Speaker 1: to me would make sense right, like, you don't want

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Speaker 1: to incorporate that and bring it under the umbrella of

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Speaker 1: everything else. Even if it only affected change healthcare systems,

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Speaker 1: that would have been enough. But to potentially get access

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Speaker 1: to other things is even worse. So this is not

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Speaker 1: as bad as what would follow. In my opinion, maybe

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Speaker 1: it is as bad. This is equally as bad, I'll say,

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Speaker 1: because United Health went ahead and paid the ransom twenty

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Speaker 1: two million dollars worth of cryptocurrency. Now, I know I'm

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Speaker 1: a broken record about this, but paying ransoms is a

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Speaker 1: bad idea. It reinforces that this kind of attack is profitable,

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Speaker 1: that it works if you pay them. That just sends

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Speaker 1: the message of hey, this is a way to get

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Speaker 1: stink and rich. This means that we're just going to

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Speaker 1: see more of these attacks in the future. It just

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Speaker 1: encourages future attacks. It doesn't help. And worse than that,

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Speaker 1: as United Health is now discovering, paying the ransom doesn't

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Speaker 1: necessarily mean that the attackers are going to play ball

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Speaker 1: and make good on their promises. So lawmakers grilled Witty

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Speaker 1: about the potential disruptions in American health care that can

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Speaker 1: result due to this attack, not to mention the implications

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Speaker 1: of all that data that was stolen. You know, you

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Speaker 1: got to remember this is the same governmental body that

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Speaker 1: recently came down hard on TikTok for potentially siphoning American

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Speaker 1: data to China. Now, when you think about the stuff

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Speaker 1: that's on TikTok, you're like, Okay, well that could be

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Speaker 1: like location data things like that. But most of the

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Speaker 1: content on TikTok and stuff like Prank's stunts and dances,

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Speaker 1: so at least on a surface level, it seems pretty harmless.

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Speaker 1: But now we're talking about a case where sensitive medical

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Speaker 1: data had been stolen, So you figure this has got

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Speaker 1: to be a much bigger deal, right, This is way

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Speaker 1: worse than potentially a siphon line of data to China.

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Speaker 1: You got to have your priorities. Something tells me that

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Speaker 1: Whitty is going to end up just being fine by

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Speaker 1: the end of the day. I mean, he's the CEO

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Speaker 1: of one of the largest companies in the world by revenue.

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Speaker 1: But hey, I'm willing for the Senate to prove me wrong. Now.

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Speaker 1: In the ongoing tale of consolidating media companies, Sony Pictures

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Speaker 1: Entertainment has made a move to acquire Paramount Global for

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Speaker 1: the princely sum of twenty six billion dollars cash. That's

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Speaker 1: billion with a B. Sony is doing this in partnership

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Speaker 1: with Apollo Global Management, which is a retirement solutions and

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Speaker 1: asset management company. Honestly, when I read a description like

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Speaker 1: that for what a company does, it's so vague. It

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Speaker 1: makes me think of a friend of mine who used

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Speaker 1: to say his family was in quote unquote waste management business,

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Speaker 1: and he would actually do the air quotes while saying it.

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Speaker 1: So a shout out to you, Frankie big House. Interestingly,

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Speaker 1: Paramount is already in acquisition talks with another media company

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Speaker 1: called sky Dance. As I understand it, the date for

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Speaker 1: that agreement, whether it goes forward or not, ends today.

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Speaker 1: Sky Dance, in the Grand Scheme of Things, is a

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Speaker 1: relatively upstart media company. It traces its history back to

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Speaker 1: two thousand and six. Sky Dance in Paramount and I

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Speaker 1: have been in partnership on and off for many years.

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Speaker 1: They've worked together quite a bit. But anyway, Paramountain has

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Speaker 1: been going through quite the shakeup recently. Earlier this week,

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Speaker 1: the media conglomerate said goodbye to its now former CEO,

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Speaker 1: Bob Bakish and replaced him with a triumvirate of executives

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Speaker 1: that includes George Cheeks, who's president and CEO of CBS,

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Speaker 1: Chris McCarthy who's the head of MTV and Showtime and

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Speaker 1: several other networks, and Brian Robbins, the studio chief of

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Speaker 1: Paramount Pictures. Now, the industry as a whole, of traditional

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Speaker 1: media has clearly really been struggling. You know. Cord cutters

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Speaker 1: have been ditching cable packages and streaming services are trying

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Speaker 1: to find a way to stand out from the crowd

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Speaker 1: while also creating a profitable business, which is really hard

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Speaker 1: in that space. I wouldn't necessarily call either Paramount or

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Speaker 1: Sony a sinking ship. I think that's overstating things. But

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Speaker 1: considering the volatility that's in the media landscape right now,

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Speaker 1: this feels kind of like a bunch of big boats

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Speaker 1: that are caught in very rough seas hoping that by

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Speaker 1: lashing themselves together they might weather the storm more effectively. Plus,

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Speaker 1: we can't let Disney own everything. Right over at Tesla,

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Speaker 1: Elon Musk has been making some brutal cuts in personnel.

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Speaker 1: As QZ dot COM's William Gavin puts it, the cuts

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Speaker 1: have affected quote almost every corner of the company, from

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Speaker 1: senior level executives to summer interns just weeks away from employment.

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Speaker 1: In the quote that's from an article that's titled not

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Speaker 1: even Tesla interns are saved from elon Musk's cost cutting.

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Speaker 1: The cuts are in line with Musk's announcement that the

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Speaker 1: company would downsize by around ten percent, and that in

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Speaker 1: itself reportedly is a much smaller cut, like half of

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Speaker 1: what Musk initially wanted to do. One department that was

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Speaker 1: absolutely eliminated by these cuts is Tesla's supercharger division. That

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Speaker 1: alone is a group that had five hundred people in it.

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Speaker 1: This is the department that created the standards for charging

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Speaker 1: Tesla's They secured build out for hundreds of charging stations.

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Speaker 1: They worked with other auto manufacturers to get them to

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Speaker 1: adopt Tesla's charging methodology as something kind of like an

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Speaker 1: industry standard. Not only did Tesla shut down that whole department,

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Speaker 1: it has also backed out of agreements to build charging

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Speaker 1: stations and crucial areas such as New York City. To

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Speaker 1: completely eliminate the supercharger group seems a bit perplexing. Tesla

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Speaker 1: arguably had a dominant position in charging technologies and could

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Speaker 1: have leveraged that moving forward. It could have been a

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Speaker 1: really big cornerstone of Tesla's business. So why make such

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Speaker 1: drastic cuts. Well, Tesla as a whole has seen a

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Speaker 1: pretty dramatic decline in sales numbers recently, and cynically. There's

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Speaker 1: also the matter of Elon Musk's pay package. That's a

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Speaker 1: forty seven billion dollar compensation package on the line, and

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Speaker 1: Musk could be looking at making these cuts until you know,

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Speaker 1: like Tesla is bleeding from a thousand cuts in an

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Speaker 1: effort to secure that MOO law shareholders will actually get

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Speaker 1: to vote on that later this year, and I can

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Speaker 1: kind of understand that motivation. He essentially lit a pile

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Speaker 1: of forty four billion dollars of cash on fire after

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Speaker 1: he bought Twitter and then did his best to reduce

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Speaker 1: its value to nothing, so he needs to refresh the

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Speaker 1: cash pile somehow. Plus judges keep having this nasty habit

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Speaker 1: of striking down his compensation package and denying him billions

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Speaker 1: of dollars. Anyway, I'm not going to spend any time

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Speaker 1: worrying about Elon Musk's financial future. I'm wishing all the

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Speaker 1: folks who are affected by these recent cuts the absolute

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Speaker 1: best of luck in finding gainful and satisfying employment elsewhere. Okay,

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Speaker 1: we've got several other news stories to get through before

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Speaker 1: we get to that. Let's take a quick break. We're back,

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Speaker 1: and you know. Tesla is not the only big tech

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Speaker 1: company cutting jobs this week. CNBC reports that Google is

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Speaker 1: laying off hundreds of core employees from around two hundred.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like and for some of these roles, Google

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Speaker 1: will shift responsibilities to new team members, except these team

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Speaker 1: members will be in places like Mexico and India. This

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Speaker 1: falls in line with earlier cuts across Alphabets companies. Just

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Speaker 1: a reminder, Alphabets, the holding company that sits above Google,

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Speaker 1: as well as other companies like YouTube and Google. Management

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Speaker 1: has messaged that quote announcements of this sort may leave

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Speaker 1: many of you feeling uncertain or frustrated end quote, which

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Speaker 1: is both an understatement and definitely true. But management has

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Speaker 1: also said these changes are supposed to be aligned with

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Speaker 1: the company's mission and goals. And I suppose if the

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Speaker 1: mission is to shift work to labor forces that work

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Speaker 1: for much lower salaries. This is true because labor is

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Speaker 1: far less expensive in Mexico and India than in the

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Speaker 1: United states, Google is giving affected employees the chance to

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Speaker 1: apply for other jobs within the company or to use

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Speaker 1: outplacement services. So you know, I guess that's something. Speaking

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Speaker 1: of Google, one of the company's massive anti trust lawsuits,

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Speaker 1: and yes there's more than one, is wrapping up with

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Speaker 1: closing arguments today. It's the second day of closing arguments.

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Speaker 1: It's the conclusion of this long trial. This particular lawsuit

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Speaker 1: revolves around Google Search and the various ways Google has

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Speaker 1: maneuvered to get Search featured as the default search engine

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Speaker 1: on as many platforms as is possible. So the US

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Speaker 1: Department of Justice argues that Google used its considerable advantage

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Speaker 1: to restrain other competitors from serving as actual competition, thus

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Speaker 1: a monopolistic move. One example is how Google secures contracts

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Speaker 1: with handset manufacturers to make Google Search the default search

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Speaker 1: engine on the device. Now, Google's counter argument is that

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Speaker 1: it's possible to change default settings, So this really isn't

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Speaker 1: the big deal everyone says it is. But then if

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Speaker 1: it's not a big deal, why would Google spend billions

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Speaker 1: of dollars to secure these agreements? And it does spend billions,

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Speaker 1: and The New York Times revealed that in twenty twenty

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Speaker 1: one alone, Google forked over around eighteen billion dollars to

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Speaker 1: Apple in return for being the default search engine on

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Speaker 1: iOS devices. That's a lot of money. And while Google

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Speaker 1: has claimed that the reason why other companies agreed to

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Speaker 1: have Google as the default is that Google Search is

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Speaker 1: the best search engine out there, they're saying, hey, we're

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Speaker 1: not being unfair, we just happened to make the best product.

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Speaker 1: The counter to this is that even if there were

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Speaker 1: a search engine out there that would be as good

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Speaker 1: as Google, the use of that alternative is unlikely because

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Speaker 1: Google is offering these massive deals, right, these huge billion

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Speaker 1: dollar deals to have Google as the default search engine.

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Speaker 1: So if you had one that was as good or

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Speaker 1: maybe even superior to Google Search, companies still wouldn't go

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Speaker 1: with that because it doesn't come along with billions of dollars. Now,

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Speaker 1: by the time you hear this episode, the arguments may

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Speaker 1: have concluded and the judge will decide if the accusations

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Speaker 1: have merit, and if that happens, then a separate case

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Speaker 1: will be launched to decide what repercussions are to follow.

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Speaker 1: So we will continue with this later on. Plus, hey,

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Speaker 1: we still have another anti trust lawsuit to talk about

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Speaker 1: in the future switching to telecommunications companies. The US Federal

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Speaker 1: Communications Commission, or FCC, has handed down large fines to

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Speaker 1: four big telecom companies, specifically Verizon, AT and T, Sprint

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Speaker 1: and T Mobile, the big four in the United States.

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Speaker 1: So why are these companies facing huge fines while they

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Speaker 1: are alleged to have illegally shared geolocation data of their users,

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Speaker 1: their customers, essentially to third parties without first getting the

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Speaker 1: consent of those customers. More specifically, the charges that the

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Speaker 1: carriers sold geolocation data to aggregator companies, and these aggregators

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Speaker 1: then turned around and sold the information to other third

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Speaker 1: party data brokers. And according to the FCC, the telecoms

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Speaker 1: were trying to pass the buck as far as gaining

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Speaker 1: consent from users is concerned. Their strategy was to essentially

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Speaker 1: shift that responsibility further downstream to the data aggregators, which

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Speaker 1: you know didn't get that consent. The individual fines ranged

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Speaker 1: from twelve million that's for Sprint they pay the least

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Speaker 1: up to eighty million, which is for TE Mobile. And

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Speaker 1: now we get into the actually crime does pay quite well.

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Speaker 1: In fact, part of our news stories. First up, we

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Speaker 1: have the crime of tax evasion and mail fraud. The

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Speaker 1: accused is Roger Vere. He has the charming nickname of

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Speaker 1: Bitcoin Jesus, and as that name implies, Ver holds quite

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Speaker 1: a lot of bitcoin. Back in twenty fourteen, Ver renounced

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Speaker 1: his US citizenship to become a citizen of Saint Kitts

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Speaker 1: and Nevis. However, at the time when he did this,

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Speaker 1: at least according to the indictment, he happened to hold

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Speaker 1: more than one hundred and thirty thousand bitcoins and yet

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Speaker 1: did not report this to the United States before ditching

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Speaker 1: the country for the Tropics. And the US government really

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Speaker 1: likes to take its share of tax and Ver's share

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Speaker 1: reportedly is somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty million dollars.

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Speaker 1: So Spanish authorities arrested Verre on behalf of the United

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Speaker 1: States last weekend while Ver was in Spain, and now

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Speaker 1: the US wants to extradite him back to the United

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Speaker 1: States and hold him accountable for skipping town without paying

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Speaker 1: the fees. First, Honestly, I think Ver's going to be

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Speaker 1: just fine. I mean, at least assuming he still has

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Speaker 1: that significant cash of bitcoins, because if you take it

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Speaker 1: by today's value. You're talking about more than seven billion

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Speaker 1: dollars worth of money or wealth if you prefer, then

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Speaker 1: so fifty million, while a not inconsiderable sum, is barely

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Speaker 1: a drop in the bucket compared to the overall wealth

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Speaker 1: this guy has. Here's another crime that seemed to pay well,

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Speaker 1: at least up to a point. Story. It's a story

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Speaker 1: about owner oxoy. He lives in Miami, Florida, and now

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Speaker 1: he has been sentenced for his crime of passing off

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Speaker 1: shoddy technology as genuine networking gear from the company Cisco.

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Speaker 1: So Cisco has a valuable brand, right like they have

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Speaker 1: a reputation for their work their products. So Oxoi was

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Speaker 1: arrested way back in twenty twenty two for running a

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Speaker 1: scam that had lasted for several years. He would buy

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Speaker 1: up cheap components from places like China, cram these components

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Speaker 1: into cases that look like legitimate Cisco hardware, and then

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Speaker 1: sell this junk off to various customers for way more

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Speaker 1: than what he paid, though presumably under the market price

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Speaker 1: for actual legitimate Cisco hardware. And he did this from

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Speaker 1: twenty fourteen to twenty twenty two. He made hundreds of

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Speaker 1: millions of dollars in the process. Among his clientele was

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Speaker 1: the US military, and that's really where he stuck his

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Speaker 1: nose in it, because once his crimes were discovered, the

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Speaker 1: US government really began to close in on him, though

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Speaker 1: they did take their time anyway. The whole drama has

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Speaker 1: now played out because Oxoy faces six and a half

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Speaker 1: years in prison, one hundred million dollars in fines to Cisco,

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Speaker 1: and an under termined amount that will be paid to

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Speaker 1: the various customers he hoodwinked with shoddy imitations of Cisco hardware.

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Speaker 1: But hey, he had a pretty good run on the

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Speaker 1: flip side of crime. Let's talk about how Microsoft has

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Speaker 1: made it clear that police departments are not to use

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Speaker 1: products relying on Azure Open Eye services for the purposes

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Speaker 1: of facial recognition technology. So essentially, Microsoft is saying it

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Speaker 1: doesn't want to be a party to that kind of

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Speaker 1: thing and added languages in its terms and services that

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Speaker 1: make it clear that police forces around the world are

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Speaker 1: not authorized to leverage AI technologies running on Azure services

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Speaker 1: for the purposes of facial recognition. That's interesting to me

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Speaker 1: in a couple of ways. We all probably know that

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Speaker 1: facial recognition technologies as a whole have a lot of problems,

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Speaker 1: including false positives for people who belong to certain ethnic groups,

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Speaker 1: typically non white ethnic groups, and that facial recognition technology

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Speaker 1: therefore contributes to a real social problem of authorities unfairly

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Speaker 1: and unjustifiably placing hard chips on these populations. But this

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Speaker 1: also means Microsoft is kind of tacitly implying that there's

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Speaker 1: a real weakness in a technology that the company is

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Speaker 1: simultaneously spending billions of dollars developing, which is kind of

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Speaker 1: like saying, hey, AI is the future, but uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: don't use it for real important stuff because bad things

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Speaker 1: can happen. It seems like mixed messages, is what I'm saying.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, you could argue this is the responsible thing

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Speaker 1: to do, or you could be more cynical and probably

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Speaker 1: more realistic and say that Microsoft adding this language and

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Speaker 1: is really just an effort for the company to follow

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Speaker 1: the old CYA strategy. You know, if the company says

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Speaker 1: police are not supposed to use this for facial recognition,

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Speaker 1: then it's not Microsoft's fault if and when some police

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Speaker 1: force does exactly that, because they can say we told

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Speaker 1: them not to and I've got some reading recommendations for

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Speaker 1: you all before I sign off. First up is Sharon

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Speaker 1: Harding's piece for Ours Technica titled all the Ways Streaming

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Speaker 1: Services are aggravating their sscribers this Week. Obviously, the piece

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Speaker 1: highlights some frustrating decisions that the operators of various streaming

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Speaker 1: services have made that seem designed to alienate their customers,

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Speaker 1: while more traditional forms of media continue to circle the

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Speaker 1: drain fun times. Secondly, I recommend the piece by Andrew

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Speaker 1: Griffin of The Independent. It is titled humans Now share

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Speaker 1: the Web equally with bots, report warrens amid fears of

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Speaker 1: the dead Internet now. I mentioned in a recent Tech

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Speaker 1: Stuff that a report from a cybersecurity firm says that

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Speaker 1: around forty nine point six percent of all traffic on

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Speaker 1: the Internet in twenty twenty three came from bots. So

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Speaker 1: this article explores what that actually means, including the so

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Speaker 1: called dead Internet theory, which I may have to do

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Speaker 1: a full episode on in the near future. And it

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Speaker 1: just is this idea about the Internet becoming this weird

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Speaker 1: place where bots are creating and trafficking and consuming all

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Speaker 1: the information across the system, and it becomes increasingly useless

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Speaker 1: for actual human people. That's it for me for this week.

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Speaker 1: I hope you are all well, and I'll talk to

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Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.

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Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.