Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech, and it is time
Speaker 1: for the tech news for Tuesday, September twenty one. First
Speaker 1: up today is when Apple holds its iPhone event. Now,
Speaker 1: as I record this, that event has not yet happened.
Speaker 1: It is scheduled to happen at one pm Eastern, and
Speaker 1: I'm recording this approximately ten am Eastern, so it's quite
Speaker 1: possible that it has already happened by the time you
Speaker 1: listen to this podcast. And in that case, if you
Speaker 1: could do me a solid and send me an email
Speaker 1: through some sort of subspace time warp to let me
Speaker 1: know what's going to be talked about, I would really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. And just check email. There's nothing there. You
Speaker 1: have all failed me. But the rumor is that the
Speaker 1: new iPhone is not going to look that much different
Speaker 1: from the previous generation, and that it will probably have
Speaker 1: a relatively modest set of upgrades. Now still undoubtedly going
Speaker 1: to be more powerful and have more features than earlier iPhones,
Speaker 1: but the general expectation is that it won't be a
Speaker 1: guard ganguin leap forward or departure. Other rumors suggest that
Speaker 1: we're gonna see an updated Apple Watch with perhaps a
Speaker 1: bigger screen and maybe some updates to the air Pod earbuds.
Speaker 1: Some real optimists out there are hoping that Apple will
Speaker 1: finally talk about its VR and a our products and development. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe that will happen. It would be one heck of
Speaker 1: a of a one more thing. But I suspect we
Speaker 1: are not going to get that at this event. I
Speaker 1: would love to be proven wrong. However, speaking of Apple,
Speaker 1: late last week, a federal judge granted an injunction against
Speaker 1: Apple on alf of Epic Games. So, for those of
Speaker 1: you not familiar with this story, here's the gist of it.
Speaker 1: Epic Games makes a game called Fortnite, and one way
Speaker 1: that Fortnite makes money is through in game purchases. Players
Speaker 1: spend real world money to get in game currency, which
Speaker 1: they can then use to purchase all sorts of stuff
Speaker 1: inside the game, like you know, character skins and emotes
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. Both Apple and Google have
Speaker 1: a policy that any app on their platform that has
Speaker 1: in app purchases is supposed to use the official app
Speaker 1: store transaction system that gives Apple or Google a cut,
Speaker 1: and it's typically around the mark. Epic cheekily encouraged players
Speaker 1: on iOS and Android devices to use a workaround to
Speaker 1: purchase currency in game directly from Epic bypassing those app
Speaker 1: transaction systems, and it would give Epic a share of
Speaker 1: those trans actions, cutting out you know, Apple and Google
Speaker 1: in the process. Apple and Epic have since been in
Speaker 1: a series of fights, both legal and public relations fights
Speaker 1: since that time. This recent injunction would allow developers to
Speaker 1: use those outside payment solutions for iOS apps. Now, that's
Speaker 1: obviously a big hit to Apple's revenue stream, although, as
Speaker 1: I've mentioned on this show before, Apple does not get
Speaker 1: so granular as to break out how much money the
Speaker 1: app store brings into the company. It gets lumped in
Speaker 1: with a bunch of other stuff. But that move in
Speaker 1: turn prompted a bit of a sell off of Apple stock,
Speaker 1: which dropped three point three and value. Now, that's less
Speaker 1: than five percent. It doesn't sound like very much, right,
Speaker 1: but we're talking about a company that's worth more than
Speaker 1: two trillion dollars, So that meant Apple lost about eighty
Speaker 1: five billion dollars in value due to that slip in
Speaker 1: stock price, and that blows my mind, like billion dollars
Speaker 1: is an unimaginable amount of money all by itself, let
Speaker 1: alone the fact that Apple is worth more than two trillion. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the battles will likely not end here, although I have
Speaker 1: been seeing more of a tendency for courts to push
Speaker 1: against companies like Google and Apple with the argument that
Speaker 1: the in app transaction policies are anti competitive. If you've
Speaker 1: been listening to my news episodes, you've also heard me
Speaker 1: talk about the n s O Group and Israeli company
Speaker 1: that makes iOS malware designed to infect the devices of
Speaker 1: highly targeted individuals through a zero click message vector I
Speaker 1: message vector. Now that means that the n s A
Speaker 1: Group sells this product to various government agencies, at least
Speaker 1: those that don't have an adversarial relationship with Israel, because
Speaker 1: so group has to do this under Israel's you know, permission,
Speaker 1: and those agencies can then send out an attack message
Speaker 1: via I message to a specific target. Then if the
Speaker 1: tar get does so much as open that message, it's
Speaker 1: game over. There's no need to convince them to open
Speaker 1: a file or click on a link. A flaw and
Speaker 1: Apple security allowed for that kind of attack. The Citizen
Speaker 1: Lab out of the University of Toronto has been keeping
Speaker 1: tabs on these types of attacks and managed to isolate
Speaker 1: the exploit in the malware to understand how this really works.
Speaker 1: The lad passed this information onto Apple, and Apple subsequently
Speaker 1: patched the vulnerability and pushed out the iOS fourteen point
Speaker 1: eight and iPad OS fourteen point eight updates in order
Speaker 1: to address this weakness. Now, generally speaking, most iOS users
Speaker 1: should be fine because these attacks really are targeted attacks.
Speaker 1: So unless there's a government that's out there that has
Speaker 1: an AX to grind with you, you're probably okay. But
Speaker 1: for diplomats, politicians, movement leaders like union leaders and and
Speaker 1: UH activist leaders journalist for them, it's a different story.
Speaker 1: It'll be interesting to see if Apple's update renders the
Speaker 1: NSO group's main product less valuable or if the hackers
Speaker 1: that the company are even more steps ahead and have
Speaker 1: you know, contingencies in place in case Apple did address
Speaker 1: this particular vulnerability. And in Apple adjacent news, Steve Wozniak,
Speaker 1: the co founder of Apple, who hasn't been part of
Speaker 1: the company for decades, is launching figuratively and hopefully one
Speaker 1: day literally a private space company called Privateer. We do
Speaker 1: not know much about it yet, though by the end
Speaker 1: of today that might change because he plans to announce
Speaker 1: further details at the AMOS that's a MS tech conference,
Speaker 1: and that is going on this week in Hawaii. The
Speaker 1: general rumor is that Privateer will focus on the problem
Speaker 1: of space junk. That's stuff that's whizzing around in orbit
Speaker 1: at super fast speeds. Usually it's stuff from you know,
Speaker 1: man made satellites and things that or rockets, launch vehicles,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing that have broken apart, and then
Speaker 1: service of potential obstacle in space. You know, when it's
Speaker 1: moving that fast, it can be catastrophic if that collides
Speaker 1: with something, and it can threaten stuff like satellites, space stations,
Speaker 1: and other spacecraft. Now, considering that lots of companies are
Speaker 1: looking to launch thousands of satellites up into orbit in
Speaker 1: the near future, it's probably a pretty decent motivation to
Speaker 1: get a company like this going. But I don't know
Speaker 1: enough details to give an opinion about whether or not
Speaker 1: the approach makes sense. However, I will allow that Wosniak
Speaker 1: is orders of magnitude smarter than I am. We'll just
Speaker 1: have to, you know, make a call once we get
Speaker 1: more details about this. Now, let us consider Google and
Speaker 1: how South Korea has hit Google with a fine of
Speaker 1: nearly a hundred seventy nine million dollars for what the
Speaker 1: government says are anti competitive practices. According to the Korea
Speaker 1: Fair Trade Commission, Google has used its dominant market position
Speaker 1: to pressure certain handset companies to prevent them from allowing
Speaker 1: anything other than the official Google Android operating system to
Speaker 1: work on their devices. So at the heart of the
Speaker 1: matter is that some companies would make Android derivatives, you know,
Speaker 1: operating systems for handsets that had Android as the foundation,
Speaker 1: but they had been tweaked so much as you effectively
Speaker 1: create a new operating system, you create a fork. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like the timeline stuff in the m c
Speaker 1: U if you watched Loki uh. And these forks can
Speaker 1: have proprietary features. They could even have, you know, different
Speaker 1: user interface approaches and could be different enough from vanilla
Speaker 1: Android to potentially cause issues. Now, according to the Fair
Speaker 1: Trade Commission, Google was making companies sign agreement saying they
Speaker 1: would knock that off and they would just go with
Speaker 1: pure Android, or else they would lose access to early
Speaker 1: builds of Android and such, or they might see their
Speaker 1: own app get buried in the Google App Store. Now,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, I definitely see how Google's approach
Speaker 1: can be anti competitive. That's not cool. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: as a consumer, I really hate having a ton of
Speaker 1: confusion in the market. I mean, years ago, I made
Speaker 1: sure that I would just buy Google flagship phones so
Speaker 1: that way I could be I could be certain that
Speaker 1: I was having a pure form of the Android operating
Speaker 1: system without all the stuff I saw as being superfluous
Speaker 1: from various handset manufacturers and telecommunications providers. Still, I feel
Speaker 1: like that choice should be left to the individual consumer,
Speaker 1: and if companies want to muddy the waters, then they can.
Speaker 1: I don't think they should, but they should be able to.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's super cool for Google to just
Speaker 1: muscle in and say, hey, don't do that or else.
Speaker 1: Amazon continues to build out its enormous database of biometric
Speaker 1: data with the Amazon One system. This is Amazon's palm
Speaker 1: scanning technology, which uses a scanner to look for unique
Speaker 1: details in a palm, including the arrangement and pattern of
Speaker 1: veins under your skin. This is all as a way
Speaker 1: to authenticate a person's identity. Amazon has been using the
Speaker 1: system in some of its physical storefronts, including a few
Speaker 1: Whole Foods locations. So the way it works as you
Speaker 1: establish an account and you scan your palm as part
Speaker 1: of that, and it associates your palm scan with your account.
Speaker 1: Then you can use your palm scan to act as
Speaker 1: a way to authorize payments. For example, so in one
Speaker 1: of these stores, you might be able to just walk in,
Speaker 1: pick up a product, you walk to a scanner, you
Speaker 1: hold your palm over the scanner, and boom, you've bought
Speaker 1: that whatever it is. Well, now Amazon has expanded this
Speaker 1: technology beyond just those you know, owned and operated storefronts
Speaker 1: and has offered it as a way to access the
Speaker 1: Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. Presumably you would create a
Speaker 1: similar account with the Amphitheater and as a part of
Speaker 1: that you would scan your palm. Then when you buy
Speaker 1: a ticket to an event, you could have that ticket
Speaker 1: associated with your identity. Then you just show up at
Speaker 1: the Amphitheater, you scan your palm, validates your ticket, and
Speaker 1: you're in your you can go into the the event.
Speaker 1: Now that could be kind of cool and that it
Speaker 1: could lead to stuff like a massive decrease in scalping,
Speaker 1: and I'm all for that. I love the idea of
Speaker 1: systems that allow people who really want to go to
Speaker 1: something get the chance to do it, rather than you know,
Speaker 1: some enterprising folks with a ton of money just buying
Speaker 1: up all the tickets and then selling those tickets for
Speaker 1: obscene markups. But then there are other things to think about.
Speaker 1: One of those is that we could tie tickets to
Speaker 1: specific mobile devices like our phones. We don't have to
Speaker 1: make it tied to you know, a palm print or
Speaker 1: other biometric data, and it's not really any less convenient
Speaker 1: because most of us never go anywhere without our phones.
Speaker 1: For another thing, you could argue that the whole scheme
Speaker 1: is really geared toward giving Amazon access to even more
Speaker 1: personal data, which could be used in ways that we
Speaker 1: don't anticipate in the future, and that we would essentially
Speaker 1: be signing that stuff over to a company for the
Speaker 1: sake of some convenience without really understanding or appreciating what
Speaker 1: might be done with that data in the future. That's
Speaker 1: usually not the best idea for the individual consumer. We
Speaker 1: have more news to cover, but before we get to that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, We're back and in news
Speaker 1: that hits a little close to home. The company Into It,
Speaker 1: best known for its tax preparation products, plans to acquire
Speaker 1: mail Chimp for twelve billion dollars. Mail Chimp is a
Speaker 1: local Atlanta startup that focuses on marketing primarily through email lists,
Speaker 1: so companies that want to create, say, email newsletters or
Speaker 1: marketing campaign can lean on mail Chip to put something
Speaker 1: together for them and to maintain those email lists and
Speaker 1: handle the distribution for the moment. Mail Chimp has an
Speaker 1: office space that's close to our own here in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: though it will soon relocate to a new office building
Speaker 1: buildings that are currently under construction and are not too
Speaker 1: far away from where we are right now. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the announcement caused some folks to engage in some head scratching,
Speaker 1: as it wasn't immediately apparent how mail Chump would factor
Speaker 1: into into its strategy, like how would the two companies
Speaker 1: meld together In a press release, Into It said together,
Speaker 1: Into It and mail Chip will work to deliver on
Speaker 1: the vision of an innovative end to end customer growth
Speaker 1: platform for small and mid market businesses, allowing them to
Speaker 1: get their business online market their business, manage customer relationships,
Speaker 1: benefit from insights and analytics, get paid, access capital, pay employees,
Speaker 1: optimize cash flow, be organized, and stay compliant with experts
Speaker 1: at their fingertips. That's the end of that quote. And sure,
Speaker 1: I guess like I'm sure that there are lots of
Speaker 1: plans on how these companies are going to integrate. Uh.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like a lot of other people, this was
Speaker 1: one of those moves that surprised me and puzzled me
Speaker 1: a little bit. But we'll just have to wait and
Speaker 1: see how this all shakes out. Now it's cryptocurrency time,
Speaker 1: So if you've listened to the show for any length
Speaker 1: of time, you know that I tend to be a
Speaker 1: little bit wary of cryptocurrency in general for lots of reasons.
Speaker 1: There are tons of reasons to be a little skeptical
Speaker 1: about cryptocurrencies, but one of those reasons is that people
Speaker 1: sometimes go to great links to inflate a cryptocurrencies value
Speaker 1: in order to make a ton of money in a
Speaker 1: very short time before hitting the eject button and leaving
Speaker 1: everyone else holding the bag. That appears to be what
Speaker 1: happened with light coin. Someone went to a great deal
Speaker 1: of trouble to fabricate a fake press release that announced
Speaker 1: retail goliath Walmart would soon accept the cryptocurrency like coin
Speaker 1: as payment for online transactions. The scammers were able to
Speaker 1: get this fake press release accepted by Globe Newswire. Globe
Speaker 1: Newswire distributes press releases and sends them out to various
Speaker 1: news outlets, but apparently doesn't do a whole lot of
Speaker 1: quality control or fact checking before they do that. Then
Speaker 1: the news outlets they get these press releases, and they
Speaker 1: typically want to get the scoop on major news. A
Speaker 1: lot of these news outlets will just run a press
Speaker 1: release verbatim, so there's not even an article written about it.
Speaker 1: They'll just push publish on the press release and boom,
Speaker 1: they've got some content up on their sites. So some
Speaker 1: of these news outlets ran with that story without actually
Speaker 1: checking with Walmart first to verify that it was in
Speaker 1: fact true. Well, that initial surge of information ended up
Speaker 1: pushing the value of l coin. It jumped from around
Speaker 1: a hundred seventy five dollars per coin, two more than
Speaker 1: or right around two or and twenty dollars per coin,
Speaker 1: so pretty significant increase in the cryptocurrency's value. But then
Speaker 1: a Walmart spokesperson said the whole thing was a hoax,
Speaker 1: and the value came back down to the amount it
Speaker 1: was around the time that the hoax was first you know, unveiled.
Speaker 1: Presumably this was all a pump and dump scheme that
Speaker 1: worked like Gangbusters for at least a short while. Such
Speaker 1: schemes typically have a pretty short shelf life, but if
Speaker 1: you're in the know, you can make a whole lot
Speaker 1: of money. Of course, you are engaging in some seriously
Speaker 1: shady practices, and this is the kind of stuff that
Speaker 1: turns the heat up on all cryptocurrencies as regulatory agencies
Speaker 1: start to look into them more closely. Well, from Walmart
Speaker 1: to Walgreens, let's keep the bad news train going. So,
Speaker 1: security experts criticize Walgreens for a lapse in data security.
Speaker 1: At the heart of the matter is personal data related
Speaker 1: to people who registered with Walgreens in order to get
Speaker 1: a COVID nineteen test. So in this process, you would
Speaker 1: register with Walgreens, you would create essentially an account, and
Speaker 1: you would get a unique thirty two digit I D
Speaker 1: number to associate with your account. Then a back end
Speaker 1: system on Walgreens you know network would automatically create a
Speaker 1: patient page, a web page specifically for you, with all
Speaker 1: of your personal information included on that web page, and
Speaker 1: the thirty two digit i D that you received would
Speaker 1: be part of the u r L for this specific
Speaker 1: web page. So as long as you have a link
Speaker 1: to that u r L, you can visit the page.
Speaker 1: And there was no authentication process. There was no like
Speaker 1: password or anything you needed to use before you saw it,
Speaker 1: You just needed the link. Well, that means someone could
Speaker 1: potentially create a means to test out various thirty two
Speaker 1: digit ideas just like generating them, you know, randomly or
Speaker 1: in sequence in a brute force attack, and then look
Speaker 1: to see which ones lead to valid u r l
Speaker 1: s and use that to scrape some pretty valuable personal
Speaker 1: information off the website. So you could, you know, essentially
Speaker 1: make wild guesses and try and find people's personal information. Now,
Speaker 1: thirty two digits is a big number, so the odds
Speaker 1: of you actually getting hits are pretty remote, but it's
Speaker 1: not outside the realm of possibility. But in addition, just
Speaker 1: having access to someone's browsing history would give you the
Speaker 1: link to their personal u r L and thus all
Speaker 1: their personal information. Because again there was no protection on that.
Speaker 1: Recode published an article about this titled how Walgreen's sloppy
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen test registration system exposed patient data. According to
Speaker 1: that piece, re Code alerted Walgreens of this problem. They
Speaker 1: also said that other security researchers had done the same,
Speaker 1: and then Recode gave the company some time to address
Speaker 1: the issue. When that didn't happen, they went ahead and
Speaker 1: published the article. So there you go. You know, there
Speaker 1: are certain things that we all know to be true,
Speaker 1: and one of those is that the rules most of
Speaker 1: us have to follow don't necessarily apply to everyone, particularly
Speaker 1: people who have a lot of money and or status.
Speaker 1: And that's true on Facebook at least. The Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal reports that Facebook has a system in place that
Speaker 1: essentially says people in this group are above the law.
Speaker 1: The system apparently includes around five point eight million Facebook users,
Speaker 1: and it includes people that Facebook deems as being influential,
Speaker 1: or newsworthy, or just a pr risk. In other words,
Speaker 1: if Facebook were to hold these people accountable, those people
Speaker 1: would make such a stink about it and would be
Speaker 1: able to get such publicity around it that it would
Speaker 1: create an enormous headache for Facebook. So I guess it's
Speaker 1: best to just let them do whatever they want and
Speaker 1: not be subject to the rules. So when users get
Speaker 1: added to this list, then moderators will find it more
Speaker 1: difficult to take any kind of action against those accounts.
Speaker 1: So let's say that I got added to this list.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'm not on it. I'm not nearly important enough.
Speaker 1: But let's say I was added to this list, and
Speaker 1: then I started posting stuff that was explicitly against Facebook policies,
Speaker 1: and someone rightfully flags my post and gets the attention
Speaker 1: of a moderator. Well, the moderator might find that their
Speaker 1: normal options, which might include everything from sequestering a post
Speaker 1: so that fewer people see it, or just blocking the
Speaker 1: post entirely, or deleting it, maybe even deactivating my account
Speaker 1: temporarily or permanently, they might find that those are not
Speaker 1: valid options. Uh andy, that they can actually choose it.
Speaker 1: That could be what happens in the case of someone
Speaker 1: in this list getting flagged. Now, not everyone inside Facebook
Speaker 1: is really a big fan of this particular system, which,
Speaker 1: according to the article, is called x check, And it
Speaker 1: does sound a little bit like it was taken out
Speaker 1: of animal Farm, in which we learned that all animals
Speaker 1: are equal, but some are more equal than others. I've
Speaker 1: got a few more stories, including a couple more Facebook pieces,
Speaker 1: but before we get to that, let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: We're back and uh, I lied. I only have one
Speaker 1: other Facebook piece, but here it is. So Also in
Speaker 1: Facebook News, the New York Times investigated how Facebook was
Speaker 1: sharing data relating to misinformation campaigns on the platform. So
Speaker 1: Facebook has been working with various researchers on this matter,
Speaker 1: and as part of that, Facebook has been giving researchers
Speaker 1: access to data about misinformation campaigns and how they affect people,
Speaker 1: like how do people interact with misinformation campaigns? How many
Speaker 1: people you know like it or share it or comment
Speaker 1: on it and such, and how does that affect the
Speaker 1: spread of misinformation? However, the New York Times discovered that
Speaker 1: Facebook was omitting half of all the user activity of
Speaker 1: Facebook in the United States in the data they shared,
Speaker 1: like fifty percent of the data that needed to go
Speaker 1: to researchers was just not there. And the belief was
Speaker 1: that Facebook was sharing all that data. So that meant
Speaker 1: researchers were working under the assumption that they had the
Speaker 1: big picture, the full picture when in fact, they only
Speaker 1: had half of it. Now, in the world of research,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty big problem because it means that any
Speaker 1: conclusions you have drawn are based off of incomplete data sets,
Speaker 1: and that those conclusions could be very much faulty. Uh.
Speaker 1: It appears as though this was an innocent oversight, at
Speaker 1: least that's the implication I get from reading about it,
Speaker 1: that this was not a deliberate attempt to create misinformation
Speaker 1: about misinformation. But you know, I can't say that for sure.
Speaker 1: It could be that this was at least partly deliberate
Speaker 1: the whole time. I don't think it was, but I
Speaker 1: can't I don't have evidence saying one versus the other.
Speaker 1: But when you do couple this problem with the issue
Speaker 1: that Facebook recently banned some security researcher accounts, you know,
Speaker 1: just a few months ago, and was saying that those
Speaker 1: accounts were effectively scraping data from Facebook and that's against
Speaker 1: the platforms policies. So as a result, the researchers found
Speaker 1: their accounts suspended. This all makes it seem as that
Speaker 1: the company is throwing roadblocks in the way of researchers
Speaker 1: who are looking into the platform's involvement with misinformation campaigns.
Speaker 1: Whether that's intentional or not, that isn't great. Uh, It
Speaker 1: at least seems like Facebook is protecting It's maybe not consciously,
Speaker 1: but that effectively that's what's happening. And I would say
Speaker 1: that the the stories point to a need for Facebook
Speaker 1: to get more proactive in making sure that people have
Speaker 1: access to the information they need in order to really
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of this particular subject matter. Now,
Speaker 1: let's head on over to Pinterest. So Christina Martinez, a
Speaker 1: woman who claims to essentially be a co founder of
Speaker 1: the popular site pinterest, is suing co founders Ben Silberman
Speaker 1: and Paul Schiarra for allegedly stealing ideas and engaging in
Speaker 1: unfair business practices, as well as a breach of implied contract. Now,
Speaker 1: Martinez was never an employee of pinterest, you know, she
Speaker 1: was never officially associated with the company. However, in the lawsuit,
Speaker 1: she says that she and the co founders had this
Speaker 1: implied agreement that she would be compensated for her ideas
Speaker 1: when they were first thinking about creating pinterest, and according
Speaker 1: to the lawsuit, Martinez consulted with the co founders and
Speaker 1: gave guidance towards the design and marketing of the site,
Speaker 1: including the idea of organizing the site into boards as
Speaker 1: a means of conceptualizing how pinterest is structured. They are
Speaker 1: essentially like virtual corkboards upon which people can pin stuff
Speaker 1: related to whatever the board's focuses, often with a heavy
Speaker 1: emphasis on things like interior design, something that Martinez has
Speaker 1: worked extensively in, and she says that the co founders
Speaker 1: had verbally indicated that they would compensate her for her contributions,
Speaker 1: but that that never happened, and after the company went
Speaker 1: public in twenty nineteen and Martinez still had not received
Speaker 1: any compensation, she says she realized those were empty promises
Speaker 1: and they were never going to follow through on it. Now,
Speaker 1: the company states it is going to fight the lawsuit
Speaker 1: and that the charges are without merit. And in semi
Speaker 1: related news, pinterest has been in some pretty hot water
Speaker 1: for the last year or so as women in the
Speaker 1: company have raised issues relating to pay disparities within Pinterest,
Speaker 1: pointing out that pinterest targets a largely female user base
Speaker 1: and yet apparently practices unfair compensation policies that show a
Speaker 1: gap between male and female employees. We will put a
Speaker 1: pen in this story for now, but we will come
Speaker 1: back to it as more develops. New York is the
Speaker 1: latest state to legislate a ban on the sale of
Speaker 1: all gas powered vehicles beginning in so all new vehicles
Speaker 1: have to be zero emissions vehicles. Nothing else will legally
Speaker 1: be allowed to be sold. Nothing new. That is, people
Speaker 1: will still be allowed to sell their used vehicles that
Speaker 1: run on internal combustion engines. It's not like if you've got,
Speaker 1: you know, a pre internal combustion car that you know,
Speaker 1: you're just stuck with it until it falls apart. However,
Speaker 1: if you want to sell new vehicles in the state
Speaker 1: of New York, they have to be zero emissions. This
Speaker 1: puts a lot of pressure on the various car companies
Speaker 1: out there to really get their their electric vehicle and
Speaker 1: zero emission vehicle strategies in gear, so to speak. That
Speaker 1: that pun was semi intentional. Um New York is not
Speaker 1: the first state to do this. California has done it already.
Speaker 1: There are other states that have similar bands in place.
Speaker 1: There are other places in the world that are talking
Speaker 1: about this as well. So there's a general move toward
Speaker 1: this uh forcing companies to migrate away from internal combustion
Speaker 1: and fossil fuel powered vehicles to move toward vehicles that
Speaker 1: are electric. And again I've said this many times. Moving
Speaker 1: to electric on its own is great. However, it does
Speaker 1: require that you look at the big picture and see
Speaker 1: where the electric is coming from. If it's coming from
Speaker 1: like a renewable source, a hydro electric sources, where you
Speaker 1: know you've got a dawn that's just generating electricity through turbines,
Speaker 1: that's great, that's not creating carbon emissions. But if you're
Speaker 1: getting your electricity from, say a coal powered power plant,
Speaker 1: then while your car is not directly generating carbon emissions,
Speaker 1: the charging of your car is contributing to carbon emissions.
Speaker 1: So we always have to remember to keep looking outward.
Speaker 1: There are ripples in these kind of strategies, and we
Speaker 1: have to keep looking outward to make sure that we're
Speaker 1: addressing each piece of that bigger picture, or else we're
Speaker 1: really just shifting problems from one part to another. And
Speaker 1: now for a final couple of weird news items. One
Speaker 1: is that a company called Situs Studio X. I think
Speaker 1: I'm saying that correctly. It's s I d U S. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this company has generated an AI created influencer called z
Speaker 1: r o z Y, and the whole purpose of Rosie,
Speaker 1: who appears to be a young woman, is to serve
Speaker 1: as an influencer and brand ambassador for you know, whichever
Speaker 1: companies decided to use Rosie's services. Rosie will be forever
Speaker 1: presumably because Forever twenty one was already taken, and will
Speaker 1: post to various social platforms as part of marketing campaigns.
Speaker 1: So I guess you could argue the only thing separating
Speaker 1: Rosie from some other influencers out there is that Rosie
Speaker 1: isn't quote unquote real, but rather a computer generated entity.
Speaker 1: But heck, some influencers appear to be nothing more than
Speaker 1: a persona that's crafted to market and sell stuff. So
Speaker 1: you can say, well, what's the difference If an influencer
Speaker 1: is just doing the same thing as this computer generated model,
Speaker 1: then you know, to the outward facing audience, like to
Speaker 1: the audience, it's the same. But according to said Studio X,
Speaker 1: the really big difference is that brands will never have
Speaker 1: to worry about Rosie going off script. Rosie is not
Speaker 1: going to engage in some sort of online feud with
Speaker 1: other influencers. Rosie won't get pulled into a scandal. Rosie
Speaker 1: is not going to post inflammatory statements about disadvantaged or
Speaker 1: vulnerable groups. We've seen tons of stories over the last
Speaker 1: few years of various folks who have become really influential
Speaker 1: online and how they've sometimes engaged in behavior was at
Speaker 1: best problematic. Rosie will not do that. Now, the question remains,
Speaker 1: will people follow Rosie? Will they find Rosie to be
Speaker 1: influential and interesting? Will folks care to follow an artificial
Speaker 1: person to see what they post? On the sponsor side,
Speaker 1: the company says that it's already received a hundred offers
Speaker 1: then is processing them. But we just don't know if
Speaker 1: a lot of people are going to eagerly follow the
Speaker 1: fictional exploits of a computer generated person. Then again, there
Speaker 1: are entire real world concerts that feature c g I
Speaker 1: characters per forming in front of a crowd. So stranger
Speaker 1: things have happened. And finally, a company called Colossal wants
Speaker 1: to use the gene editing technology known as Crisper c
Speaker 1: r I spr to clone wooly mammoths, and to do
Speaker 1: it by cloning those kind of being a little generous. Rather,
Speaker 1: they really want to take genetic information from wooly mammoth
Speaker 1: remains and then use that genetic information to edit the
Speaker 1: gene sequences of elephants to introduce genetic sequences that will
Speaker 1: allow elephants to take on certain genetic aspects of wooly mammoths,
Speaker 1: like the ability to adapt to extreme cold weather environments.
Speaker 1: So this isn't so much a Jurassic Park situation as
Speaker 1: it is an Island of Dr Moreau situation, except as
Speaker 1: far as I know, Colossal is not planning on making
Speaker 1: elephants more human like in the process. The company does
Speaker 1: say that it's dream goal is the restoration of the
Speaker 1: wooly mammoth, though I would argue that really this is
Speaker 1: more of a soft reboot of wooly mammoths as opposed
Speaker 1: to restoration. According to Ben Lamb, the chief executive of
Speaker 1: the company, the real purpose for Colossal is to serve
Speaker 1: in the field of genetic preservation that creating these types
Speaker 1: of creatures, we can then preserve the genetic info and
Speaker 1: the populations of various endangered and threatened species. It gives
Speaker 1: species and evolutionary speed boost to allow them to potentially
Speaker 1: roam new regions when their traditional homes are under threat
Speaker 1: due to like human encroachment or climate change, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Lamb argues that the company will protect bio
Speaker 1: diversity this way and bring more attention to the crisis
Speaker 1: of biodiversity collapse, which is a real thing for multiple species,
Speaker 1: you know, not just animals but also plants, Like this
Speaker 1: is a big crisis. However, there are other people there
Speaker 1: who are arguing that the money being spent to do
Speaker 1: this could be better spent toward protecting existing species rather
Speaker 1: than trying to get a simulacrum of an extinct species
Speaker 1: up and about. Again, I don't know where I come
Speaker 1: down on this. I kind of would rather see us
Speaker 1: protect the stuff that's already out there and perhaps build
Speaker 1: out you know, kind of genetic repositories so that we
Speaker 1: do have the capability of potentially helping species that are
Speaker 1: on the verge of extinction make a recovery. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: a little it's a little squeaky to me simply because
Speaker 1: I don't, you know, we can't really understand what the
Speaker 1: consequences will be of trying to bring an extinct species back,
Speaker 1: like if we did it and then that species were
Speaker 1: to die out again because we did a bad job
Speaker 1: of it. I would say that the whole attempt was
Speaker 1: rather unethical in that case, right, Like it's tricky. I
Speaker 1: get the motivation. I just worry about the execution. Anyway.
Speaker 1: That's it for the news for Tuesday, September one. If
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for topics I should cover on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: reach out to me. The best way to do that
Speaker 1: is over on Twitter. The handle we use for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff HSW. Look forward to hearing from you,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
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