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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech stuff. I'm your host

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Speaker 1: job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer for I Heart Radio.

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

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Speaker 1: tech news for April seven, twenty twenty two. Let's get

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Speaker 1: into it. Here in the United States, the White House,

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Speaker 1: which for those of you outside the US, isn't just

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Speaker 1: the reference for you know, the place where the president lives.

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Speaker 1: It's actually shorthand for the U S President and their advisors.

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Speaker 1: The White House has urged US lawmakers to expedite legislation

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Speaker 1: that will provide aid to the semiconductor industry here in

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Speaker 1: the States. Both the Senate and the House, the two

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Speaker 1: branches of Congress, have approved separate plans to provide subsidies

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Speaker 1: and other aid to give semiconductor production companies here in

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Speaker 1: America a boost. But the two plans take slightly different approaches,

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Speaker 1: and so before things can move any further, the two

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Speaker 1: branches of Congress have to reconcile those plans into a

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Speaker 1: single approach, which then can be voted upon and sent

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Speaker 1: up to the President to sign into law. The White

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Speaker 1: House indicated that this should be a top priority for

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Speaker 1: Congress as the ongoing semiconductor shortage continues to cause massive

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Speaker 1: economic harm. Brian de Se, the National Economic Council Director

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Speaker 1: at the White House, says that estimates suggest the semiconductor

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Speaker 1: shortage here in the US shaved off a full percentage

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Speaker 1: point off the nation's gross domestic product or g d P. Now,

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Speaker 1: one percent might not sound like a whole lot, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's just a single percentage point. But just

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Speaker 1: wait and in case it's been a while since you've

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Speaker 1: studied economics, the gross domestic product of a country is

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Speaker 1: the total value of goods produced and services prom bided

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Speaker 1: in a year. So you take all of that, all

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Speaker 1: the goods and services that are sold and uh provided

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Speaker 1: over a full year, you added all up, you got

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Speaker 1: your GDP. For the United States, the GDP and one

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Speaker 1: was twenty three trillion dollars. So a single percentage point

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Speaker 1: is equivalent to two hundred thirty billion dollars. That is

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Speaker 1: mind boggling to me. And if those estimates are accurate,

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Speaker 1: it really underlines how important it is to address this

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Speaker 1: semiconductor supply chain issue. The White House also stressed that

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Speaker 1: semiconductors are important, not just for consumer goods that range

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Speaker 1: from phones to vehicles, but they also play a crucial

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Speaker 1: role in the us is technological strategy, including national security.

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Speaker 1: The White House also pointed out how the US used

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Speaker 1: to be a major producer of semi conductors, being responsible

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Speaker 1: fort of all chips produced in the world back in

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Speaker 1: Today that number is down to twelve. Will Congress put

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Speaker 1: together a plan that will help turn all that around? Well,

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Speaker 1: we'll keep an eye on it and report as we

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Speaker 1: learn more. Earlier this year, we heard that meta slash

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Speaker 1: Facebook was pulling the plug on its DM cryptocurrency formerly

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Speaker 1: known as Libra. So d M was supposed to launch

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Speaker 1: a couple of years ago back in but a combination

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Speaker 1: of factors, largely dealing with concern from various government regulators,

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Speaker 1: and then you've had a whole bunch of partners in

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Speaker 1: the project bailing on it once they saw that governments

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Speaker 1: were potentially opposing this or going to highly regulated and

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Speaker 1: a lot of companies said you know what, no, I'm good,

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Speaker 1: I'm out, and they ended up killing off the project

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Speaker 1: as a result. However, the dream of a meta based

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Speaker 1: digital currency remains now. I don't think it should come

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Speaker 1: as a surprise that that's the case because Meta's long

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Speaker 1: term goal is to become the primary portal into whatever

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Speaker 1: the metaverse ends up being. Clearly, Meta has a vested

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Speaker 1: interest in dominating as much of that ecosystem as possible,

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Speaker 1: including the method of exchange that people will depend upon

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Speaker 1: in order to access virtual goods and services, or perhaps

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Speaker 1: even real goods and services that you order through the

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Speaker 1: virtual environment. Meta employees referred to the virtual currency proposal

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Speaker 1: as zuck Bucks, named after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Unlike

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Speaker 1: d M, which was to be a cryptocurrency built on

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Speaker 1: a special blockchain, and I say special because only partners

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Speaker 1: in the endeavor would have access to it, so like

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Speaker 1: the big companies behind it would have the the supervision

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Speaker 1: of the blockchain, but the rest of us peons wouldn't. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: the zuckbox are more likely to be a simple digital

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Speaker 1: currency or token with no blockchain backing. So if you're

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Speaker 1: an Xbox fan, and you've been an Xbox fan for

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Speaker 1: a while, you might remember that in the old days,

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Speaker 1: you would purchase Microsoft Points, which you could then redeem

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Speaker 1: to buy digital copies of games and other virtual goods

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Speaker 1: such as avatar options for your Xbox profile and If

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Speaker 1: you do remember those days, you probably also remember that

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Speaker 1: the number of points you could buy per given amount

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Speaker 1: of money was usually a quantity that would not align

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Speaker 1: precisely with the number of points you needed in order

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Speaker 1: to trade in for a game. For example, you might

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Speaker 1: be able to buy four hundred or eight hundred points.

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Speaker 1: Like let's say if you spend ten bucks, you get

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Speaker 1: four hundred points, and twenty bucks you get eight hundred points.

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Speaker 1: But you might see a game that is sold for

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Speaker 1: six hundred points, and you can't buy just six hundred.

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Speaker 1: It's either four hundred or eight hundred. This is the

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Speaker 1: classic hot dogs come and you know in ten and

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Speaker 1: hot dog buns come in eight kind of situation. Maybe

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Speaker 1: I have that backwards, but anyway, you got it, like

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Speaker 1: in order for the things to equal out, you have

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Speaker 1: to buy multiples, and folks did not like that system.

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Speaker 1: And to be clear, we have seen the same source

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Speaker 1: of stuff employed elsewhere. I mean, Disney did it with

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Speaker 1: Disney dollars. So it may very well be that zuckbucks

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Speaker 1: are kind of similar to those earlier examples. There'll be

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Speaker 1: tokens that you'll be able to purchase stuff in metaverse

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Speaker 1: or in platform or whatever. The Verge reports that this

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Speaker 1: does not mean that Meta has abandoned blockchain altogether. The

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Speaker 1: company is exploring how to interface with n f T s. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and just a quick reminder on what those are. N

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Speaker 1: f T stands for non fungible token and uh. It's

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Speaker 1: essentially a digital marker or certificate that indicates that you

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Speaker 1: have ownership over some digital asset. An example might be

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Speaker 1: an instance of a particular digital drawing. Your n f

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Speaker 1: T shows that you own that particular instance of the

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Speaker 1: digital drawing. I usually say it's kind of like having

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Speaker 1: a receipt, but you don't have the physical thing that

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Speaker 1: the receipt represents. Anyway, it's interesting to me that Facebook

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Speaker 1: is moving ahead with this as n f T s

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Speaker 1: I think peaked more than a year ago, and the

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Speaker 1: general feeling I get, and I know anecdotal evidence is worthless,

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Speaker 1: but the general feeling I get is that a lot

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Speaker 1: of folks have kind of soured on n f T s,

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Speaker 1: largely because there were such crazy speculation in the early days,

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Speaker 1: coupled with con artists who were running n f T scams,

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Speaker 1: and it really soured people on the whole thing. One

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Speaker 1: more quick Meta related item, mark Zuckerberg sat down for

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Speaker 1: an interview on the Tim Ferris Show recently and revealed

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Speaker 1: that some employees that Meta have a cute pet name

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Speaker 1: for him, the Eye of Soon. Now, I don't expect

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Speaker 1: all of y'all to be fully versed in the Lord

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Speaker 1: of the Rings mythology. I mean, I have a Lord

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Speaker 1: of the Rings tattoo on my left arm, but that's

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Speaker 1: just me. Anyway, Soon in the Middle Earth mythology is

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Speaker 1: the big bad who way before the Lord of the

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Speaker 1: Rings story. He was defeated in battle. His physical form

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Speaker 1: was destroyed, but he still existed, right, His physical form

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Speaker 1: was gone, but the essence of Suron remained and would

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Speaker 1: sometimes manifest as this enormous eye that can see across

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Speaker 1: all of Middle Earth. And if the eye falls on you,

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Speaker 1: then it means Sauron is watching you, and bad things

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Speaker 1: are likely to happen to you. So my interpretation of

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Speaker 1: this pet name is that employees that Meta really hope

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Speaker 1: that they can do all their work without catching Zuckerberg's attention,

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Speaker 1: and that if he should see what you're working on,

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Speaker 1: chances are your life is about to get a whole

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Speaker 1: lot more complicated. Now, granted, this is my interpretation, and

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Speaker 1: perhaps I'm well off the mark pun intended, but I

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Speaker 1: can't imagine a world where being called I have Sauron

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Speaker 1: is a good thing. The Wall Street Journal reports that

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Speaker 1: Google has pulled several laps, dozens of them in fact,

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Speaker 1: after researchers from UC Berkeley and University of Calgary showed

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Speaker 1: that the apps contain code that would pull personal information

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Speaker 1: from users, including stuff like the user's phone number, email address,

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Speaker 1: and precise location it was harvesting personal data this code

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Speaker 1: and the code came from a single source, according to

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Speaker 1: the researchers, a company called Measurement Systems, which may have

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Speaker 1: ties to a defense contractor company in Virginia, which is

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Speaker 1: something that Measurement Systems vehemently denies. Now obviously, the idea

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Speaker 1: that the company was purposefully introducing covert surveillance code in

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Speaker 1: what appeared to be innocent apps, ranging from weather apps

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Speaker 1: to QR scanner apps to even prayer apps that can

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Speaker 1: get a bit big brother ish. Apparently, the company told

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Speaker 1: developers that it was primarily interested in user data on

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Speaker 1: people from Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

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Speaker 1: As the researchers noted, the type of info collected could

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Speaker 1: end up putting people in danger. I mean, just imagine

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Speaker 1: a political activist or maybe a journalist who had is

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Speaker 1: one of these apps installed on their device. UH Measurement

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Speaker 1: Systems or perhaps one of his clients could potentially track

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Speaker 1: that person simply by looking up their phone number or

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Speaker 1: email address and then looking over their location history. Measurement

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Speaker 1: Systems issued a statement denying the Wall Street Journal piece,

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Speaker 1: claiming the company has no knowledge of this defense contractor

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Speaker 1: that was cited in the in the article, and whether

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Speaker 1: that's true or not, Google did take steps to pull

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Speaker 1: the associated apps out of its app store. We have

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Speaker 1: several more news items to go over, but before we

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Speaker 1: get to that, let's take a quick break. Apple Insider

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Speaker 1: reports that Apple is testing a feature with developers that

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Speaker 1: would allow those developers to administer price hikes on in

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Speaker 1: app subscriptions without first getting users permission to do so.

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Speaker 1: The standard Apple policy is that if an app developer

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Speaker 1: decides to raise sub ccription prices, the information is sent

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Speaker 1: out as a notification to users, who can then either

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Speaker 1: agree to the new price and then keep using the app,

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Speaker 1: or decline and allow their subscription to lapse. This new

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Speaker 1: approach alerts users, but it doesn't have an agree feature.

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Speaker 1: You're not being asked to agree to the price actor

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Speaker 1: you're being told that the price is going up, and

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Speaker 1: there's a large okay feature that just dismisses the alert,

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Speaker 1: and then there's a much smaller review your subscription or

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Speaker 1: something similar if you want to go and adjust your

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Speaker 1: subscription and cancel it. So in other words, this has

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Speaker 1: gone from an opt in approach where the user agrees

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Speaker 1: to pay the higher price, to an opt out approach

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Speaker 1: where the user has to purposefully navigate through the system

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Speaker 1: to cancel their subscription if they don't want to spend

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Speaker 1: that much per month. Disney Plus has already made use

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Speaker 1: of this feature, alerting users to increase prices without giving

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Speaker 1: an obvious way to decline and cancel the subscription, and

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Speaker 1: so far this feature has only been rolled out to

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Speaker 1: a few developers like Disney and obviously, switching from an

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Speaker 1: opt in model to an opt out model will likely

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Speaker 1: mean a big boost in user retention because fewer people

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Speaker 1: will actually go through the trouble to take the necessary

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Speaker 1: steps to cancel if it's more than just a single

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Speaker 1: button push, which gets pretty insidious in my opinion. Recently,

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Speaker 1: I talked about how Microsoft browser Edge scooched ahead of

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Speaker 1: Apple's Safari on the desktop browser market share, not in

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Speaker 1: mobile but desktops, and I mentioned that one reason that

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Speaker 1: may have contributed to that was that for a while,

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Speaker 1: Microsoft made it pretty darn hard to switch to a

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Speaker 1: different default browser than Edge if you were on the

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Speaker 1: Windows eleven machine. Microsoft then issued an update to Windows

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Speaker 1: eleven that's simplified the process, but the update is an

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Speaker 1: optional update. Now, the fact that it is optional and

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Speaker 1: not listed as something, you know, more urgent as upset

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Speaker 1: other browser companies. So the concern is that less savvy

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Speaker 1: users won't have the competency to seek out and install

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Speaker 1: an optional update, and that microsoft solution to the problem

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Speaker 1: wasn't really to address the underlying issue, but rather to

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Speaker 1: skirt criticisms that the company was behaving in an anti

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Speaker 1: competitive way. Folks who know Microsoft's history in general, especially

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Speaker 1: when it comes to web browsers, might get the feeling

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Speaker 1: that history is repeating itself. The company faced antitrust lawsuits

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Speaker 1: a few decades ago on a similar issue, and it

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Speaker 1: sounds like at least some folks are suggesting it may

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Speaker 1: soon again face similar anti trust lawsuits, including ones in

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Speaker 1: the EU. Meanwhile, IBM has been hit with a lawsuit

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Speaker 1: reports in an effort to boost the company's stock price

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Speaker 1: and executive bonuses. And this, I guess you could argue

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Speaker 1: this is tangential to tech, but I think it's important

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Speaker 1: that we recognize when companies do this. And here's what

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Speaker 1: the lawsuit says happened. IBM took revenue that came from

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Speaker 1: its non strategic businesses, primarily a mainframe business, and then

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Speaker 1: shifted that revenue so that instead, on paper, appeared to

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Speaker 1: come from business divisions that the company had identified as

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Speaker 1: being strategic are crucial. Those businesses are cloud analytics, mobile,

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Speaker 1: social media, and security, which collectively are called CAMS, c A,

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Speaker 1: M S S. Executive bonuses tied into CAMS revenue at

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Speaker 1: least until two thousand nineteen, but it did not tie

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Speaker 1: into non strategic businesses. And the whole idea was that

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Speaker 1: the strategic businesses were the ones that are critical for

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Speaker 1: IBMS growth and success. That, in other words, if the

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Speaker 1: company is doing well in those divisions, then it is

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Speaker 1: performing well according to the views of the stock market,

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Speaker 1: and that the company is succeeding. But if it were

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Speaker 1: just making money and other businesses that are not considered strategic,

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Speaker 1: like there's no way to easily grow that or develop

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Speaker 1: it into more sophisticated businesses, then that that's not really

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Speaker 1: a marker of success. This is because we frequently define

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Speaker 1: success as growth, not revenue. Right. Revenue is important, but

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Speaker 1: it's not as important as growing the business. So that's

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Speaker 1: what came down to. And the idea here is that

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Speaker 1: the CAMS businesses were not performing to the level that

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Speaker 1: IBM wanted, so they just quietly started shifting money around

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Speaker 1: so that this non strategic stuff would be put into

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Speaker 1: strategic businesses. Uh. And thus executives would end up raking

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Speaker 1: in huge bonuses and the stock market price would improve,

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Speaker 1: right it would. It would go up because the company

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Speaker 1: looks like it's doing great. But according to this lawsuit,

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Speaker 1: that was all a ruse um at least until two

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Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, when the company shifted its formula to depend

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Speaker 1: on total IBM revenue when it comes to executive bonuses.

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Speaker 1: So part of the lawsuit also says that IBM ended

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Speaker 1: up laying off thousands of account executives and shifting higher

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Speaker 1: level executives around in an effort to kind of obview

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Speaker 1: skate what had happened. Again, this is all according to

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Speaker 1: the lawsuit. Obviously, IBM will have its own, uh response

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Speaker 1: to this. We'll have to wait and see what happens,

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Speaker 1: and it may take a while before the whole story

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Speaker 1: comes out, and in fact, it may never come out.

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Speaker 1: This might be one of those matters where the parties

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Speaker 1: settle out of court and they do it on the

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Speaker 1: hush hush, and we never really learn more about it.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, it sounds pretty questionable to me. Twitter has

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Speaker 1: changed up how it treats embedded tweets, which has caused

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Speaker 1: a big stir in the online community. Let's break this

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Speaker 1: down really quickly. So you probably are aware that you

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Speaker 1: can embed a specific tweet into a web page and

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Speaker 1: news Outlet's do this all the time, right. They'll do

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Speaker 1: a story about something and then you'll scroll down through

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Speaker 1: the story and you'll see a bunch of embedded tweets

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Speaker 1: that relate to the story. I had this happened to

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Speaker 1: me with a goofy tweet I made once. I can't

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Speaker 1: remember what it was. I just remember, out of nowhere,

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Speaker 1: my notifications exploded because some some publication somewhere pulled one

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Speaker 1: of my tweets on context and put it up on

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Speaker 1: an article. Anyway, you probably also know it's possible to

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Speaker 1: delete a tweet, but until recently, embedded tweets were not

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Speaker 1: affected if the original tweet was deleted. So if I

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Speaker 1: posted something and someone embedded my tweet in their article,

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Speaker 1: and then I went on and deleted my tweet, the

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Speaker 1: embedded tweet would still be there. That's no longer the case.

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Speaker 1: Twitter has now changed it so that a JavaScript will

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Speaker 1: cover up the contents of a Twitter message that has

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Speaker 1: been deleted and and hide it. So now there's a

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Speaker 1: concern that the historical record can't be preserved because if

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Speaker 1: someone just goes in and starts deleting their their Twitter messages,

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Speaker 1: then it's going to disappear everywhere, not just on Twitter,

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Speaker 1: but anywhere where the tweet was embedded did so. It

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Speaker 1: will probably take a little bit to see how this

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Speaker 1: shakes out, but the early response has been uh very critical,

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Speaker 1: let's say. And finally, a hacker managed to compromise the

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Speaker 1: Vivo based YouTube accounts of several notable celebrities in music.

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Speaker 1: They included Justin Bieber, a little non sex The Weekend

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Speaker 1: and Harry Styles, among many others. The hacker then uploaded

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Speaker 1: videos arguing for the release of Paco Pans, a guy

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Speaker 1: who received a two year jail sentence because he scammed

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Speaker 1: people out of money after he lied that he had

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Speaker 1: terminal cancer. Vivo acknowledged that quote some videos were directly

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Speaker 1: uploaded to a small number of Vivo artists channels earlier

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Speaker 1: today by an unauthorized source. End quote now. The company

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Speaker 1: also stated it was reviewing its security practices to make

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Speaker 1: certain something like this does not happen again. And in

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Speaker 1: case you weren't aware, Vivo serves as a type of

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Speaker 1: go between that sits between musical artists or their label

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Speaker 1: and YouTube, and Vivo handles official music video uploads and

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Speaker 1: then those uploads can appear on an artist's own YouTube

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Speaker 1: channel as if they themselves had uploaded it directly to YouTube.

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Speaker 1: So it does look like these instances indicate that the

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Speaker 1: security breach was on Vivo side, not YouTube's. That's it

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Speaker 1: for the Tech News for Thursday, April seven, two thousand

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Speaker 1: twenty two. As always, if you have suggestions for topics

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Speaker 1: I should cover on tech stuff, reach out to me

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Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff

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Speaker 1: hs W and I'll talk to you again releas soon.

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Speaker 1: Tex Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more

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Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,

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