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 today we have
Speaker 1: the news for Thursday, February twenty one, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: start off with more about solar Winds. We've covered the
Speaker 1: Solar Winds hack on tech Stuff for a while now.
Speaker 1: This is the hack that primarily targeted the Solar Winds
Speaker 1: software product Ryan, which is a network management software that's
Speaker 1: used by thousands of companies, including many of the Fortune
Speaker 1: five hundred, as well as government agencies like the Department
Speaker 1: of Homeland Security. In the US, the United States Congress
Speaker 1: is holding sessions focusing on the hack and its scope
Speaker 1: and any next steps that we should be taking. To
Speaker 1: that end, Microsoft and a security company called fire I
Speaker 1: are calling upon Congress to draft legislation that would create
Speaker 1: a mandatory process for companies to follow after the discovery
Speaker 1: of a data breach. The idea here is that the
Speaker 1: longer a company stays quiet about a breach, the more
Speaker 1: harm that can be done by the attackers, particularly if
Speaker 1: it turns out that other companies have also been targeted
Speaker 1: by that same group and have yet to detect an intrusion. Moreover,
Speaker 1: the company has urged that there should be a way
Speaker 1: for victims to come forward with these issues, even those
Speaker 1: that could potentially involve national security concerns, without the threat
Speaker 1: of having legal action leveled against those companies. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, if a defense contractor detects a breach, it
Speaker 1: should be able to report it without worrying about being
Speaker 1: sued to eternity and back by the government, just as
Speaker 1: an example. As it stands at the moment, in the
Speaker 1: United States, the sort of thing is handled mostly on
Speaker 1: a state by state basis, with most states having their
Speaker 1: own rules in place to protect companies in the event
Speaker 1: that they need to report a security breach, but there
Speaker 1: is no existing federal legislation on the matter. On the whole,
Speaker 1: I think this is a pretty good idea and encourages
Speaker 1: companies and agencies to share information with one another, which
Speaker 1: could drastically improve the response time to problems like security breaches,
Speaker 1: that in turn could reduce the potential impact of those breaches. Now,
Speaker 1: these are still very early talks, and it's also important
Speaker 1: to remember that any legislation has to be crafted responsibly,
Speaker 1: or else it runs the risk of making a problem
Speaker 1: worse or at the very least more complicated. Hannah Beach
Speaker 1: and Paul Mosur wrote a piece for The New York
Speaker 1: Times titled A Digital Firewall in Myanmar Built with guns
Speaker 1: and wire cutters. If you have access to The New
Speaker 1: York Times, I recommend reading this piece. The reporters tell
Speaker 1: the story of how the military coup in Myanmar, which
Speaker 1: has overthrown a democratically elected administration forcibly, confronted telecoms and
Speaker 1: their employees in an effort to shut down communication systems
Speaker 1: within Myanmar, limiting the citizens access to information and their
Speaker 1: ability to organize. It's a primitive but effective way to
Speaker 1: limit the resource of the Internet, and the military in
Speaker 1: Myanmar appear to be determined to follow in the footsteps
Speaker 1: of China, which of course is famous for its own
Speaker 1: digital barriers to the outside Internet. Often we call it
Speaker 1: the Great Firewall of China. The situation in Myanmar is distressing,
Speaker 1: to say the least, and people like Tom Andrews of
Speaker 1: the United Nations have argued that there has to be
Speaker 1: an unequivocal global response to this coup, and countries like
Speaker 1: the UK, the United States, and Canada have already imposed
Speaker 1: sanctions on the coup leaders. Meanwhile, Myanmar citizens continue to
Speaker 1: organize protests, amassing in the streets and holding a general
Speaker 1: strike with a truly enormous display on February twenty two.
Speaker 1: This story is important all on its own, but it
Speaker 1: also stands as a reminder of how crucial the Internet is.
Speaker 1: If it's something that an oppressive regime has to shut
Speaker 1: down in order to secure control, then you know it's important.
Speaker 1: Something else that's important is understanding how influential for companies
Speaker 1: are when it comes to the World Wide Web. That's
Speaker 1: what the Big Tech Detective browser extension aims to do.
Speaker 1: The extension comes from the Economic Security Project, and it
Speaker 1: does something rather peculiar. Most browser extensions aim to make
Speaker 1: a browser more useful, but the Big Tech Detective kind
Speaker 1: of does the opposite. So what it does is block
Speaker 1: access to any web page that connects to any IP
Speaker 1: address that belongs to Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook or Google. Now
Speaker 1: that includes some of more sneaky tricksy stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: like trackers, which are the sort of things that monitor
Speaker 1: your browsing behavior and report back to another entity, usually
Speaker 1: so that these companies can market the most relevant ads
Speaker 1: to you. That's why if you ever spend a few
Speaker 1: minutes looking at I don't know websites about pet care,
Speaker 1: you'll start to see more ads for pet care products
Speaker 1: and services pop up on Facebook. But a web page
Speaker 1: my contact one of these big four companies for less
Speaker 1: intrusive reasons, such as to pull fonts from a Google database. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if the web page you're trying to
Speaker 1: look at is tracking you, or if it's just hosted
Speaker 1: on Amazon Web Services or whatever. If this extension sees
Speaker 1: that that web page is at all connected to Amazon, Google, Facebook,
Speaker 1: or Microsoft, it blocks you from seeing that web page.
Speaker 1: As Mitchell Clark of The Verge points out, this makes
Speaker 1: the web parractically useless, and that's kind of the point.
Speaker 1: It's an exercise to show people exactly how influential these
Speaker 1: four companies are when it comes to the web. Practically
Speaker 1: every page on the Web has some sort of connection
Speaker 1: to these four companies. Now it might be a light
Speaker 1: touch in some cases, or it might be a tight integration,
Speaker 1: but it really shows that those four companies wield significant
Speaker 1: influence on the web. And maybe that's not always a
Speaker 1: good thing. Oh and as you might suspect, to get
Speaker 1: the extension for a browser like Google Chrome, you have
Speaker 1: to sideloaded, meaning you're not going to find it on
Speaker 1: the actual Google Extensions website. In previous episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: we've looked at how Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have removed
Speaker 1: posts and band users for spreading misinformation. Well now we
Speaker 1: can add TikTok to that list, as a report this
Speaker 1: week from the company shows that TikTok removed more than
Speaker 1: three hundred forty thousand videos from its platform for breaking
Speaker 1: the rules regarding election misinformation, disinformation, and manipulation. The transparency
Speaker 1: report covers TikTok's activities over the second half of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: so in addition to those videos that were taken down,
Speaker 1: the company also removed more than four hundred forty thousand
Speaker 1: videos from its recommendation engine. That means that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: see that pop up as a potential hey, why don't
Speaker 1: you watch this video next kind of thing again. The
Speaker 1: purpose for the removal was that the videos had been
Speaker 1: flagged as containing misinformation, presumably not bad enough that TikTok
Speaker 1: would need to remove the video entirely, I guess, but
Speaker 1: it was no longer in recommendations, which really decreases their discovery.
Speaker 1: And TikTok also eradicated one point seven five million accounts,
Speaker 1: and TikTok says that it appears that they only existed
Speaker 1: for the purposes of elevating specific misinformation messaging. Weather We'll
Speaker 1: continue to see platforms like TikTok and it's older social
Speaker 1: networking siblings stay on top of restricting the speed and
Speaker 1: spread of misinformation that remains to be seen. Twitter has
Speaker 1: now added a warning to alert users to tweets that
Speaker 1: link out two sites that host stuff that was obtained illegally,
Speaker 1: like pirated content. The message reads, quote these materials may
Speaker 1: have been obtained through hacking end quote. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like saying, okay, but for reals, these stereo systems
Speaker 1: didn't actually fall off the back of a truck like
Speaker 1: that guy keeps saying they done dang stolem. In related news,
Speaker 1: people discovered that Twitter's methodology for identifying a bad link
Speaker 1: to hacked material is itself a bit shoddy. Tom Warren
Speaker 1: posted a link on Twitter to The Virgin's website. And
Speaker 1: The Verge is a respectable tech news side. I use
Speaker 1: them all the time. In fact I cite them in
Speaker 1: these episodes, and the warning showed up on that post.
Speaker 1: But as Warren explained, quote so there's a way to
Speaker 1: trick Twitter into displaying its hacked materials warning. This will
Speaker 1: be today's Twitter meme until they fix it. End quote.
Speaker 1: The trick, by the way, was to type out a
Speaker 1: legitimate u r L first, like www dot the Verge
Speaker 1: dot com, then a slash, then a hashtag followed by
Speaker 1: a U r L that would trip the warning message.
Speaker 1: So a U r L to a an actual site
Speaker 1: that had pirated material on it. The good u r
Speaker 1: L is what would show up in the tweet as
Speaker 1: the link, but Twitter would identify the bad u r
Speaker 1: L and use that to generate the warning message. So
Speaker 1: it's not the end of the world, but it's definitely
Speaker 1: enough fodder for people to have a bit of fun
Speaker 1: posting links to legitimate sources and sites but have them
Speaker 1: appear to be clearing houses for illegal spoils on the Internet.
Speaker 1: Sony announced that the company is working on virtual reality
Speaker 1: hardware for the PS five console, which can still be
Speaker 1: pretty hard to get your hands on these days. The
Speaker 1: PS four had proved to be a good platform for
Speaker 1: VR Unlike other or VR products, it didn't require users
Speaker 1: to invest a couple of grand in a gaming rig
Speaker 1: just to run the software and power the hardware. And
Speaker 1: this announcement seems to indicate that virtual reality is really
Speaker 1: establishing its place in gaming and home entertainment. Now. It's
Speaker 1: certainly not as widespread as we were led to believe
Speaker 1: it would be back in the nineteen nineties when virtual
Speaker 1: reality was first really firing in the imaginations of the
Speaker 1: general public. But I still take this as an encouraging
Speaker 1: move because I like the idea of VR. I want
Speaker 1: to see it continue to grow. I want to see
Speaker 1: new experiences and games crafted for the virtual reality ecosystem,
Speaker 1: and I think having something that connects directly to a
Speaker 1: console where you don't need to do any upgrades or
Speaker 1: anything like that in order to make it work just
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense. In sadder news, the US
Speaker 1: electronics chain Fries is going out of business. This in
Speaker 1: itself isn't a huge surprise. The company was already teetering
Speaker 1: before the pandemic in twent Like a lot of brick
Speaker 1: and mortar retail stores, Fries saw a lot of its
Speaker 1: business siphoned away by that behemous Amazon. But back in
Speaker 1: the day, Fries was one of those places where computer
Speaker 1: geeks could go in order to buy various components. You
Speaker 1: could stroll the aisles and select all the different pieces
Speaker 1: you needed to build a PC, and you could build
Speaker 1: it yourself for less than it would cost to buy
Speaker 1: a pre assembled one to your own specifications. But the
Speaker 1: process did require a bit of research if you wanted
Speaker 1: to avoid making embarrassing mistakes like I don't know, picking
Speaker 1: a motherboard and a CPU that aren't compatible with each other.
Speaker 1: But who would do that? Not this guy, let me
Speaker 1: tell you. Anyway, it looks like it's the end of
Speaker 1: Fries and that is a real shame. Although from what
Speaker 1: I understand, in more recent years, the experience of shopping
Speaker 1: Fries has taken a bit of a dip. And even
Speaker 1: in its heyday when I used to go to Fries,
Speaker 1: it was kind of a scavenger hunt to find all
Speaker 1: the stuff you needed. It wasn't necessarily laid out in
Speaker 1: a way that was user friendly. And finally, in California,
Speaker 1: a federal judge has denied the request made by telecom
Speaker 1: and cable companies to block the state from enforcing a
Speaker 1: net neutrality law. The law and makes it illegal for
Speaker 1: telecom companies to favor their own services over those provided
Speaker 1: by another party. So, in other words, a company like
Speaker 1: Comcast would not be allowed to throttle a service like
Speaker 1: Netflix in an effort to persuade customers to use Comcasts
Speaker 1: owned video on demand services instead. A few years ago,
Speaker 1: this was also the stance of the f c C
Speaker 1: in the United States, the federal level administration that oversees
Speaker 1: these kinds of matters, but those restrictions were phased out
Speaker 1: during the Trump administration. In the wake of that event,
Speaker 1: California passed its own state law regarding net neutrality. A
Speaker 1: collection of telecommunications and cable companies are suing the state
Speaker 1: over the matter, but the general consensus seems to be
Speaker 1: that that effort is destined to fail, and with the
Speaker 1: Biden administration now overseeing federal operations, the FCC as a
Speaker 1: whole might reinstitute some of the restrictions that the previous
Speaker 1: administration had ended. It might be a good time for
Speaker 1: net neutrality and a slightly tougher time for all those gigantic,
Speaker 1: almost monopolistic telecommunications companies that are dominating all realms of
Speaker 1: communications and media. I'm not crying over that, honestly. And
Speaker 1: that wraps up the news stories for this Thursday, February one.
Speaker 1: If you guys have suggestions for future topics I should
Speaker 1: cover on episodes of tech Stuff, let me know. Reach
Speaker 1: out to me on Twitter. The handle is stuff h
Speaker 1: s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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