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 this is the
Speaker 1: tech news for Tuesday, May eleventh, twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 1: the top story is about last week's ransomware attack on
Speaker 1: Colonial Pipeline, a company that supplies fuel across the eastern
Speaker 1: half of the United States. In fact, according to Colonial,
Speaker 1: it's responsible for about of all fuel delivered to the
Speaker 1: Eastern seaboard yells Now. Details about the extent of the
Speaker 1: attack are a little bit scarce at the time I'm
Speaker 1: recording this, but essentially, hackers were able to lock up
Speaker 1: at least some of Colonial Pipelines computer systems, and the
Speaker 1: company shut down operations, probably as a measure to make
Speaker 1: sure that the mal air wasn't spreading to those operational systems.
Speaker 1: In case you're not familiar with the term, ransomware refers
Speaker 1: to malware that locks up computer systems, and there are
Speaker 1: a few different ways to do this. You might encrypt
Speaker 1: everything on a system so that no one can see
Speaker 1: any of their files or anything anymore, or you might
Speaker 1: just lock it down by getting some sort of administrative access. Typically,
Speaker 1: the attackers will leave messages explaining what their demands are
Speaker 1: and how to meet them, and they promised to return
Speaker 1: the system control over to the owner once those demands
Speaker 1: are met. These days, those demands typically involved paying a
Speaker 1: large sum of money using cryptocurrency like bitcoin, and paying
Speaker 1: off ransomware attackers tends to be a pretty bad idea
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. You don't want to pay
Speaker 1: that ransom One reason you don't want to do it
Speaker 1: is because there's no guarantee that the hackers are going
Speaker 1: to make good on their promise to return control. Another
Speaker 1: is that pay off attackers just encourages more attacks because
Speaker 1: it proves that the strategy works. It proves that it's profitable.
Speaker 1: So the shutdown means that colonial can't pump fuel the
Speaker 1: way it normally would, and so US President Joe Biden
Speaker 1: has signed a measure to allow for more fuel transport
Speaker 1: trucks on the highways to help compensate. As I write this,
Speaker 1: we don't have confirmation on the identity of the attackers,
Speaker 1: but according to a former US official and a few
Speaker 1: other unnamed sources in various news reports. The group responsible
Speaker 1: is likely one called Dark Side. It appears that dark
Speaker 1: Side is a relatively new hacker group, having formed perhaps
Speaker 1: in the last year. Circumstantial evidence suggests they are based
Speaker 1: somewhere in the former Soviet Block, as the group doesn't
Speaker 1: target infrastructure in that part of the world, so it's
Speaker 1: quite possible they are part of, you know, or located
Speaker 1: within the one of those countries. We've already seen fuel
Speaker 1: prices rise in several markets, including here in Atlanta, and
Speaker 1: if it takes a few more days to restore operations
Speaker 1: to colonial pipelines infrastructure, things could get worse. The attack
Speaker 1: marks the most extreme cyber attack against US infrastructure to date,
Speaker 1: and it really makes it clear how important cybersecurity is,
Speaker 1: and it also illustrates the companies have to be extremely
Speaker 1: thoughtful when implementing automation and connected systems. Automation can bring
Speaker 1: down costs and it can boost efficiency, and it also
Speaker 1: can mean that some of the more dangerous and dull
Speaker 1: jobs can go to machines rather than people, freeing the
Speaker 1: people up to do you know, more interesting work. But
Speaker 1: it also represents a potential attack point for hackers if
Speaker 1: it is not properly protected. So fuel prices might go up,
Speaker 1: particularly in the short term, but I do have some
Speaker 1: good news. According to Bloomberg, an e F electric cars
Speaker 1: should be cheaper to produce than cars that run on
Speaker 1: gas or diesel in the near future. We just gotta
Speaker 1: wait until about twenty seven for that to happen. Now,
Speaker 1: I should add that other organizations like UBS, which is
Speaker 1: an investment bank, are a bit more optimistic with their predictions.
Speaker 1: They suggest we might see price parody by four. This
Speaker 1: is really big. I think most people see the value
Speaker 1: of electric cars from an environmental standpoint, but more on
Speaker 1: that in a second. Using electricity rather than fossil fuels
Speaker 1: to get around has a lot of benefits, right, But
Speaker 1: so far, electric vehicles come at a pretty hefty premium.
Speaker 1: Sometimes governments might offer incentives like tax breaks and stuff
Speaker 1: to encourage people to buy an electric vehicle, and that
Speaker 1: can help offset the purchase price. But generally speaking, the
Speaker 1: only people who can afford an electric vehicle are in
Speaker 1: a position of relative privilege. And I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: a lot of folks who would love to switch to
Speaker 1: an e V, but they really just can't meet that
Speaker 1: sticker price. Now, the main reason we could see a
Speaker 1: drop in prices for electric vehicles is that the price
Speaker 1: of producing batteries is coming down, Plus companies are making
Speaker 1: dedicated production lines for e vs. The increase in efficiency
Speaker 1: and the drop in manufacturing costs translates to lower vehicle prices. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the UK plans to ban the sale of new fossil
Speaker 1: fuel vehicles starting in twenty thirty, with the EU following
Speaker 1: suit by and surely you've heard numerous ads from car
Speaker 1: companies about a growing line of e V options. It's
Speaker 1: the way of the future, which is also kind of
Speaker 1: funny because the electric car has been around about as
Speaker 1: long as the internal combustion automobile. It actually dates all
Speaker 1: the way back to the nineteenth century. Anyway, I did
Speaker 1: say that electric vehicles are more environmentally friendly, but that
Speaker 1: needs to come with an asterisk because there are some
Speaker 1: things that we also have to take into consideration. One
Speaker 1: would be that the electric components, like the battery can
Speaker 1: potentially really have some environmental costs to them, batteries in particular,
Speaker 1: and also how we handle those when it comes time
Speaker 1: to junk a car. That matters a lot too, because
Speaker 1: batteries have some stuff in them that you don't want
Speaker 1: to have leach out into the environment. Another is the
Speaker 1: source of electricity. While more of the world is switching
Speaker 1: over to renewable energy sources, if your area is serviced
Speaker 1: by fossil fuel power plants, then the electricity you depend
Speaker 1: upon is generated at a facility that's still dumping a
Speaker 1: ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, assuming that there
Speaker 1: are not carbon capture measures in place. That is, and
Speaker 1: most of these facilities don't have carbon capture in place
Speaker 1: because it's expensive to put those in and unless they
Speaker 1: are required to do it, facilities typically don't. So as always,
Speaker 1: it is important that we take a wide look at
Speaker 1: these issues to make sure that the solutions we put
Speaker 1: in place actually are solutions, and it's not just shifting
Speaker 1: pollution sources for on one spot to another but not
Speaker 1: making any kind of progress. Now, personally, I'm all in
Speaker 1: favor of evs taking the place of old fossil fuel vehicles,
Speaker 1: and when paired with stuff like renewable energy, I think
Speaker 1: it could be an enormous benefit, particularly in places where
Speaker 1: people drive a lot, like here in Atlanta or in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, that kind of thing. I also have another
Speaker 1: hacking story, but this one is from a totally different
Speaker 1: point of view. The United States Department of Defense has
Speaker 1: created a bug bounty program. Now, bug bounties are away
Speaker 1: for organizations to identify and then address vulnerabilities and exploits
Speaker 1: in their systems. Essentially, the organization says, hey, we built
Speaker 1: this thing. You shouldn't be able to get into it,
Speaker 1: but if you can, let us know how you did
Speaker 1: it so we can fix it and you'll get a reward.
Speaker 1: Some companies have been known to award really big bounties
Speaker 1: in return for being told about various exploits and bugs.
Speaker 1: With the d o E. The program involves all of
Speaker 1: its publicly facing systems, So in other words, this is
Speaker 1: all the stuff that someone should be able to interface
Speaker 1: with without having to get behind the scenes. Uh. It
Speaker 1: may be that if there is a vulnerability or bug
Speaker 1: that someone could exploit that and get behind the scenes
Speaker 1: access that would be of critical importance to know about.
Speaker 1: So this program is looking for ethical hackers to look
Speaker 1: for these issues. However, when it comes to rewards, it
Speaker 1: turns out the public sector is a little bit miserly
Speaker 1: with the payouts. When the d o D did a
Speaker 1: trial program of this back in it paid out a
Speaker 1: mere fourteen thousand dollars total to one thousand, four hundred
Speaker 1: ethical hackers. Now, I do not condone criminal activity in
Speaker 1: any sense, but I do think there might be a
Speaker 1: lot of people out there who say, huh, well, I
Speaker 1: could turn this bug I found in for ten bucks,
Speaker 1: or I could exploit it or sell my knowledge of
Speaker 1: it to someone else and potentially make way more money. Now,
Speaker 1: of course doing that would put you at a huge risk,
Speaker 1: but finding flaws is work. Sometimes it's a lot of work.
Speaker 1: Ten bucks is hardly compensation for that. So hopefully the
Speaker 1: bug bounty will maybe up the anti a little bit.
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of stories related to Amazon I
Speaker 1: want to cover. I've talked about the issue of fake
Speaker 1: reviews before. Vendors will pay an organization to generate five
Speaker 1: star reviews for their products and give Amazon customers a
Speaker 1: false expectation of quality and value. It's always good to
Speaker 1: dig through reviews a bit and to read them over
Speaker 1: and see if they come across, as you know, genuine
Speaker 1: or not. Earlier this month, a site called Safety Detectives
Speaker 1: discovered a database containing the information of more than two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand fake reviewers and their vendor contacts. So In
Speaker 1: other words, this database showed both who are the people
Speaker 1: who are creating fake five star reviews and which vendors
Speaker 1: are requesting fake reviews. Not cool, huh. Apparently this database
Speaker 1: was just sitting on a server and was completely unencrypted.
Speaker 1: It didn't even have password protection, so this database was
Speaker 1: freely accessible to anyone who had ability to get on
Speaker 1: that server, which is a big old yikes. The scammers
Speaker 1: thus were flying really freaking close to the sun, as
Speaker 1: the information in the database would provide someone else ample
Speaker 1: opportunities to turn them in or even commit identity fraud
Speaker 1: against the scammers. Criminals making crime on other criminals, y'all.
Speaker 1: Also in Amazon News, the company bowed to pressure from
Speaker 1: multiple fronts, including lawmakers and brands, to crack down on
Speaker 1: vendors offering counterfeit goods. The company first announced the development
Speaker 1: of anti counterfeit tools back in two thousand nineteen. Those
Speaker 1: tools got quite the workout, as over the course of
Speaker 1: the pandemic, more customers were turning to online shopping is
Speaker 1: a way to do pretty much everything while sitting at home.
Speaker 1: According to Amazon, the company blocked ten billion listings suspected
Speaker 1: of being counterfeits and phonies over the last year ten
Speaker 1: billion with a B. Apparently, a machine learning system is
Speaker 1: powering Amazon strategy. Now, these systems, if they're created properly,
Speaker 1: get better as they get used. They spot telltale signs
Speaker 1: of counterfeits, and that creates a flag that allows Amazon
Speaker 1: to block the listing before anyone can try and buy
Speaker 1: the bogus product. Typically, the way counterfeiters get stuff on
Speaker 1: Amazon in the first place is to use third party
Speaker 1: vendors who have virtual store fronts on Amazon. The company
Speaker 1: benefits from these relationships, and I think this approach to
Speaker 1: detecting counterfeiters is in many ways a measure to head
Speaker 1: off potential legislation. One proposed bill in the US is
Speaker 1: called In for Consumers Act, which would require third party
Speaker 1: vendors to include their name and address so that shoppers
Speaker 1: could see who they were and where they are, and
Speaker 1: they would also need to go through a verification process
Speaker 1: with Amazon. Now, I'm all for the verification process and accountability,
Speaker 1: but i also think this particular approach has some privacy
Speaker 1: and security risks associated with it. Anyway, it's an interesting
Speaker 1: use of technology to handle an age old scam. You know, hey, kid,
Speaker 1: you want to buy a watch? If you're still trying
Speaker 1: to get a PlayStation five, I've got some discouraging news.
Speaker 1: Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki has said that shortages and components
Speaker 1: have slowed down production, and that he anticipates the demand
Speaker 1: for the PS five will outpace the supply all the
Speaker 1: way into twenty two. The company has sold nearly eight
Speaker 1: million units so far and plans to produce nearly fifteen
Speaker 1: million more by next April. So it's not like there
Speaker 1: won't be any new consoles out there, but rather of that,
Speaker 1: depending on where you are and when you check, you
Speaker 1: might find it difficult to get your hands on one.
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of factors came into play here,
Speaker 1: from the pandemic to supply chain problems to semiconductor shortages. Personally,
Speaker 1: I'm still rocking the last gen consoles, and if I'm
Speaker 1: being totally honest, I haven't played anything on them in
Speaker 1: ages because I shifted mostly to PC games. But I
Speaker 1: do plan on getting the next gen consoles, you know, Maybee.
Speaker 1: Sticking with video games, video game developer and publisher Capcom
Speaker 1: has posted its fourth consecutive record breaking year in terms
Speaker 1: of profits. The company has been writing a string of
Speaker 1: big successes, having recently released the eagerly anticipated Resident Evil
Speaker 1: Village title. Now, I can't say anything about Resident Evil
Speaker 1: Village or Resident Evil eight because I haven't played it,
Speaker 1: but I will say it has already had an enormous
Speaker 1: impact on the cosplay community. As it turns out everyone
Speaker 1: wants to dress up as Lady Demotrusk, a tall vampire lady,
Speaker 1: and honestly, who could blame them? Games like the remaster
Speaker 1: of Residentieval three and the release of Monster Hunter Rise
Speaker 1: have been big smash successes for the company. I think
Speaker 1: Capcom's success is due to multiple factors that are all
Speaker 1: converging simultaneously. First, the company has been making some really
Speaker 1: compelling games. Second, Capcom's titles have started to really catch
Speaker 1: on in the West, not that Capcom was a newcomer
Speaker 1: to Western audiences, but rather that titles are starting to
Speaker 1: get more of a following here when in the past
Speaker 1: some of them were more of a niche interest in
Speaker 1: gaming in the West, and the pandemic also saw a
Speaker 1: big boost in people playing video games. Finally, Elon Musk
Speaker 1: hosted Saturday Night Live over the weekend, and during that
Speaker 1: appearance he referred to the cryptocurrency doge coin as a
Speaker 1: quote unquote hustle, and then the value of doge coin
Speaker 1: dropped more than thirty And this is a great time
Speaker 1: for us to talk about how stupid this whole thing is.
Speaker 1: Like all of it is dumb. So here goes grumpy Jonathan.
Speaker 1: Y'all get ready. Doge Coin is a joke cryptocurrency. It
Speaker 1: literally was started as a joke. It was created by
Speaker 1: Jackson Palmer and Billy Marcus. And it doesn't say it's
Speaker 1: a joke if you read the Wikipedia article, but it
Speaker 1: was totally a joke. It started with a supply of
Speaker 1: one hundred billion coins. It was the anti bitcoin. They
Speaker 1: were taking a totally different approach to Bitcoin on purpose. Today,
Speaker 1: doge coins are mined at a rate of around ten
Speaker 1: thousand new coins every minute, which means every single day
Speaker 1: another fourteen point for million doge coins hit circulation. That
Speaker 1: means doge coin miners mine more than five billion coins
Speaker 1: per year. This is fundamentally different from Bitcoin, which has
Speaker 1: a cap of twenty one million total bitcoins. That's it,
Speaker 1: that's all that will ever be mined. Over time, the
Speaker 1: number of coins mind per block on the bitcoin system
Speaker 1: goes down. So right now, if you were to successfully
Speaker 1: mine a block of of the transactions on the bitcoin chain,
Speaker 1: you would be rewarded with six point to five bitcoins
Speaker 1: per block. Every so often, once a certain number of
Speaker 1: bitcoins have been released into circulation, the system will have
Speaker 1: how many coins get released per block mind, So after
Speaker 1: a while it won't be six point to five, it
Speaker 1: will be three and some odd percentage, and then after
Speaker 1: that it will be one and a half or so.
Speaker 1: Eventually it will actually get to all the bitcoins ever released,
Speaker 1: although technically if you just kept having forever, you would
Speaker 1: never you would never get through all the bitcoin, right
Speaker 1: because you could always have it again. Um, except that
Speaker 1: bitcoin does have a limit of how many decimal points
Speaker 1: you can go down to. Anyway, at the rate is
Speaker 1: going right now, we would expect to see the final
Speaker 1: bitcoins inter circulation in twenty so that's the good ways away. However,
Speaker 1: like I said, dogecoin is totally different. It just keeps
Speaker 1: dumping more coins into circulation. So when Musk called it
Speaker 1: a hustle, that's kind of true. Now speculators were driving
Speaker 1: up the value of doge coin, but it requires getting
Speaker 1: more people excited about a resource that is never going
Speaker 1: to run out, it only just increases. That kind of
Speaker 1: thing is unsustainable, Like you can drive up the value
Speaker 1: of it by getting people excited and they're buying into it,
Speaker 1: and that increases the perceived value, which thus increases the
Speaker 1: actual value. And you can try and ride that train
Speaker 1: for as long as you want, but eventually that value
Speaker 1: was gonna take a drop because it's just not something
Speaker 1: you can continue to sustain. And definitely you constantly we
Speaker 1: have to bring more people in to be investing into
Speaker 1: the resource which is constantly growing. So yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a hustle. Also, Elon Musk is a hustler. He's someone
Speaker 1: who has helped drive that price up. He was one
Speaker 1: of the people investing in dogecoin and talking about it,
Speaker 1: and that was what was making the price go up,
Speaker 1: or helping make the price go up, because money is
Speaker 1: like a toy to people like him. It's kind of gross. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you want an investment that is a sound investment,
Speaker 1: And I am by no means an expert on this,
Speaker 1: but I would say it's probably better to look someplace
Speaker 1: else other than a cryptocurrency that might plunge in value
Speaker 1: after a sketch on Saturday Night Live. Because when you
Speaker 1: do have a resource whose value drops after an s
Speaker 1: n L sketch of all things, that's a real clear
Speaker 1: example of something that is not a stable resource. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I still find cryptocurrencies to be kind of are tating
Speaker 1: because they are totally just a digital asset that people
Speaker 1: are investing in. No one's really using it as currency
Speaker 1: non a regular basis, And it's just frustrating because it
Speaker 1: requires people to buy in to agree that has value.
Speaker 1: If they stopped doing that, it stops having value and
Speaker 1: ultimately the whole thing just crashes in on itself. The
Speaker 1: question is do people get out of it before it
Speaker 1: comes crashing down or are they, you know, covered by
Speaker 1: the collapse and themselves. I mean, it's it's mind boggling.
Speaker 1: But that's it for the news for today, Tuesday, May
Speaker 1: eleven one. If you have suggestions for topics I should
Speaker 1: cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle is tech stuff HSW and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. M. Tech Stuff is an I
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