Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from my 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 April first one. So it's April Fool's Day,
Speaker 1: which is something of a mixed bag if you're in
Speaker 1: the tech world. A lot of my fellow podcasters who
Speaker 1: cover the tech space have really grown weary of this day,
Speaker 1: some of them more than others. Some of them have
Speaker 1: turned into the Ebenezer Scrooge version of misers who hate
Speaker 1: April Fool's Day. But that's because traditionally it can be
Speaker 1: really challenging to determine what is an April Fool's goof
Speaker 1: and what is for real z s now. I blame
Speaker 1: this on two big things. One, the world seems to
Speaker 1: have grown more outrageously unbelievable over the last few years,
Speaker 1: which makes goofs seem more plausible, because, I mean, have
Speaker 1: you looked at the news. If you look at the
Speaker 1: news and then you hear a story about a giant robot,
Speaker 1: you know, crashing through St. Louis, you might think, yeah,
Speaker 1: that tracks I mean that's one for you. But secondly,
Speaker 1: a lot of would be jokesters turns out they're just
Speaker 1: not very good at writing jokes. Particularly they're not very
Speaker 1: good at writing satire, so it can be hard to
Speaker 1: tell that they were going for a joke. And anyway,
Speaker 1: you know, was sort of a pass for April Fools
Speaker 1: because the pandemic was such a huge crisis. It forced
Speaker 1: the tech world in general to kind of read the
Speaker 1: room and say, maybe now is not the best time
Speaker 1: for us to try and grab headlines through a pr
Speaker 1: stunt with a goofy April Fool's joke. As I record this,
Speaker 1: it's actually March thirty one. Yes, the Dave ron Swanson
Speaker 1: gets all his meetings, So I don't actually know how
Speaker 1: much Tom Foolery and Shenanigan's we should expect or what
Speaker 1: you have already seen by the time you hear this.
Speaker 1: But just as a gentle reminder, it's always a good
Speaker 1: idea to employ critical thinking, whether it's April Fool's Day
Speaker 1: or not. Also, just in case over the next few weeks,
Speaker 1: when folks share stories, whether tech or otherwise, maybe they're
Speaker 1: sharing it on Twitter or Facebook and those stories sound
Speaker 1: really ridiculous, take a quick look at what the publication
Speaker 1: date is for that article, assuming that it's posted to it,
Speaker 1: just to make sure they aren't in fact attempts at
Speaker 1: April fool's jokes. I've seen that happen numerous times. For example,
Speaker 1: Xwagen did not, in fact really rebrand itself as volts
Speaker 1: Wagon in honor of its electric vehicle initiative. That was
Speaker 1: an April fool's joke. It leaked early, the company doubled
Speaker 1: down on it, and then later on said, yeah, this
Speaker 1: was an April fool's joke, but we kind of got caught,
Speaker 1: so we it's really went whole hog. That's not a
Speaker 1: good look either. That's kind of like people see that
Speaker 1: and they do the captain piccard face palm meme. All right,
Speaker 1: let's move on to some real news. But this is
Speaker 1: real news that still has fake stuff in it. Earlier
Speaker 1: this week, a bunch of Twitter accounts purported to belong
Speaker 1: to Amazon employees began to post pro company anti union tweets.
Speaker 1: This coincides with a vote that Amazon warehouse workers in
Speaker 1: Alabama are holding about whether or not to unionize. The
Speaker 1: tweets attempted to position unions as being cost lee and
Speaker 1: unnecessary and bloated and ineffective. But the effort to do
Speaker 1: this was terribly transparent and not effective at all. Critics
Speaker 1: noticed right away that many of these accounts had been
Speaker 1: created really recently and had few, if any tweets that
Speaker 1: predated the anti union messaging. That doesn't make it seem genuine. Moreover,
Speaker 1: after some Twitter accounts got called out, someone went in
Speaker 1: and changed details of some of those accounts. Karen Weiss
Speaker 1: pointed out that an account that had allegedly belonged to
Speaker 1: an Amazon worker named Leo now magically belonged to a
Speaker 1: different alleged Amazon worker named Sierra, and so on. Generally speaking,
Speaker 1: the effort was held up to ridicule in the online world,
Speaker 1: with a lot of people suggesting that this was an
Speaker 1: attempt to astro turf. So astro turfing refers to a
Speaker 1: strategy in which uh an entity you usually like a
Speaker 1: big company or a brand, sets up accounts to make
Speaker 1: it seem like there is some sort of grassroots support
Speaker 1: that is in favor of that brand or company. It's
Speaker 1: like creating little bought accounts to act like they're your
Speaker 1: fans in order to try and drum up wider support
Speaker 1: among you know, real people, So in other words, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like creating a sock puppet account. The strategy
Speaker 1: doesn't typically work very well because people are smart. They
Speaker 1: can usually sniff this kind of stuff out. And I
Speaker 1: should add that Twitter has begun banning these accounts, and
Speaker 1: that at least as of this recording, there is no
Speaker 1: firm evidence pointing at who was actually creating these accounts
Speaker 1: in the first place. It could be that they came
Speaker 1: from Amazon. It could be that they came from some
Speaker 1: other tech company that's concerned about unionization. They're worried that
Speaker 1: this might lead to broader movements in the tech sector.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of companies that are very closely
Speaker 1: watching what happens with Amazon because they're thinking, what if
Speaker 1: we're next. By the way, I'm more on the side
Speaker 1: of the people who work for those companies, not the
Speaker 1: executives running those companies. But it could also just be
Speaker 1: mischief makers. I don't know the answer to who is
Speaker 1: behind all of this as I record this episode, except
Speaker 1: for one specific case. One of the fake accounts was
Speaker 1: one called Amazon FC Darla. F C stands for Fulfillment Center,
Speaker 1: essentially the warehouses that Amazon uses a Chicago based comedian
Speaker 1: named Robbie Appleton has confessed that he made that particular
Speaker 1: account and that he was using the account to post
Speaker 1: anti union messages as kind of a form of satire
Speaker 1: and general prankishness. There's no telling if all the other
Speaker 1: accounts sprouted up from similar reasons or were part of
Speaker 1: some coordinated effort. Moving on, a study out of Trinity
Speaker 1: College says that Android and iOS devices both send a
Speaker 1: out of data back to Google and Apple respectively, even
Speaker 1: when those devices are in idle mode, which is not
Speaker 1: a big surprise, But the study also claims that Android
Speaker 1: sends about twenty times more data to Google than iOS
Speaker 1: sends to Apple. Now does this mean that Google is
Speaker 1: tracking its users more than Apple is, Well, not necessarily,
Speaker 1: but the study does point out that the technology we
Speaker 1: have today frequently is phoning home while that technology is on.
Speaker 1: That's just how stuff works now, particularly for tech with
Speaker 1: evolving operating systems or firmware, a device phoning back to
Speaker 1: home base is a way to indicate whether or not
Speaker 1: that device is actually up to date with the latest
Speaker 1: OS patches. That can be critical for device and information security.
Speaker 1: You know, we know that if you don't update to
Speaker 1: your systems. You're leaving yourself potentially vulnerable to intrusion attacks.
Speaker 1: It's also crucial just for general devices operations. If you
Speaker 1: don't keep updating your operating system, pretty soon you won't
Speaker 1: be able to run the latest apps on it because
Speaker 1: they won't be compatible with the OS. This does, however,
Speaker 1: create concerns for user privacy, and it also raises questions
Speaker 1: as to how the companies are actually leveraging the data
Speaker 1: that's being collected and sent back. I should also point
Speaker 1: out that both Google and Apple dispute the study, and
Speaker 1: they say that the methodology that was used was inherently flawed.
Speaker 1: Google claims the report was off quote by an order
Speaker 1: of magnitude end quote, which is pretty darn significant if
Speaker 1: that is in fact true. And the researcher who conducted
Speaker 1: the study also wasn't really comparing apples to Okay, that
Speaker 1: phrase is a little more complicated when I'm talking about Apple,
Speaker 1: the company. He wasn't comparing oranges to oranges. He used
Speaker 1: a jailbroken iPhone that was running an older version of iOS,
Speaker 1: one that actually isn't really used by people so much
Speaker 1: these days. But he used a more recent Android phone
Speaker 1: running a version of Android that came out last year.
Speaker 1: So in other words, if you were to do the
Speaker 1: exact same study right now, using up to date iPhone
Speaker 1: OS and Android running it's most recent Android OS, you
Speaker 1: might see a different result. One thing that would not change, however,
Speaker 1: is that both phones would be regularly checking in back
Speaker 1: with home base. That would still happen. That approach looks
Speaker 1: like it's just here to stay. The question is what
Speaker 1: data is being sent, how much of it can be
Speaker 1: linked back to the specific user, and what privacy protections
Speaker 1: are in place, and do users even have a say
Speaker 1: about whether or not that data should be collected in
Speaker 1: the first place. Next yesterday, That is March thirty one
Speaker 1: for you guys. It's technically today for me, but you
Speaker 1: know I'm playing along anyway. Microsoft officially pulled the plug
Speaker 1: on the standalone Cortana Virtual assistant app for the Android
Speaker 1: and iOS platforms. This was not a surprise. Microsoft had
Speaker 1: announced it was going to do this way back in
Speaker 1: the summer of last year, which I think was fourteen
Speaker 1: years ago, and honestly, the company has been winding down
Speaker 1: Cortana for a while now. I think the main problem
Speaker 1: Microsoft had was that it was trying to piggyback a
Speaker 1: virtual assistant on top of platforms that already have native
Speaker 1: versions of that kind of technology. Google has Google Assistant,
Speaker 1: and of course Apple has the famous serie. It's hard
Speaker 1: to get smartphone users to install a new thing that
Speaker 1: does something their phones already do right out of the box.
Speaker 1: Microsoft gave up on its own Windows phone platform a
Speaker 1: few years ago, with support for Windows ten mobile office
Speaker 1: apps fading away earlier this year. But this doesn't mean
Speaker 1: Cortana is going away completely. Instead, Microsoft has been incorporating
Speaker 1: Cortana functionality into office products, so Outlook, we're Excel, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So those Outlook users out there have probably already encountered this.
Speaker 1: I know I have pretty much every day I see
Speaker 1: I got an email from Cortana giving me a summary
Speaker 1: of what my schedule is for that day. This reminds
Speaker 1: me of how Google will frequently introduce a new product
Speaker 1: that will receive, you know, like half hearted support from
Speaker 1: the company, and then it will get phased out. But
Speaker 1: some elements of whatever that was will eventually find their
Speaker 1: way into other Google services that have a bit more
Speaker 1: staying power. I'm expecting that that's what we're seeing now.
Speaker 1: With Cortana and Microsoft speaking of pulling the plug over
Speaker 1: in Arizona the States, and it pulled a piece of
Speaker 1: proposed legislation that would have changed the rules for companies
Speaker 1: like Google and Apple when it comes to the way
Speaker 1: they get revenue from their respective app stores. Now you
Speaker 1: might remember the fight between Apple and Epic Games that
Speaker 1: revolves around this very issue. Basically, Apple and Google take
Speaker 1: a thirty percent cut of revenue from from in app
Speaker 1: transactions on their respective platforms for certain types of apps.
Speaker 1: It is you can't do it for apps where you're
Speaker 1: buying physical stuff, so it doesn't apply to things like
Speaker 1: ride haling or food delivery or Amazon shopping. In those cases,
Speaker 1: Apple and Google don't take a thirty percent cut. But
Speaker 1: if your app include stuff where you can unlock more
Speaker 1: features by paying a little extra, that's where this comes
Speaker 1: into play. So a lot of companies would like to
Speaker 1: see that go away, or for there to be acceptable
Speaker 1: alternatives than through the official Android and iOS channels. The
Speaker 1: bill in Arizona aim to allow for alternative app marketplaces
Speaker 1: and transaction strategies, which would mean that companies that make
Speaker 1: the apps would be able to keep more or even
Speaker 1: all of the revenue using these alternatives instead of forking
Speaker 1: of whatever they make to Apple and Google. Up until
Speaker 1: this week, it looked like that bill had a really
Speaker 1: good out of getting passed in the Arizona Senate, but
Speaker 1: then the state Senate withdrew the bill. Apparently intense lobbying
Speaker 1: paid for by big tech companies like Google and Apple
Speaker 1: helped change some minds within the state government, and it
Speaker 1: looked like the bill no longer was going to have
Speaker 1: the support it needed in order to pass. So instead
Speaker 1: of bringing the bill up just to get killed on
Speaker 1: the Senate floor, the decision was made to table it
Speaker 1: for at least the near future. It's not likely to
Speaker 1: come up again for consideration this year, but it's not
Speaker 1: all dead. I guess it's only mostly dead. A few
Speaker 1: other states have also been considering similar bills, but so
Speaker 1: far none of those have passed. According to Microsoft News,
Speaker 1: SpaceX is giving the Crew Dragon Capsule a new feature.
Speaker 1: As the name indicates, the Crew Dragon Capsule is space
Speaker 1: X is spacecraft designed to bring humans up into space.
Speaker 1: The new feature is a dome like window which will
Speaker 1: normally be covered by the spacecraft's nose cap, but the
Speaker 1: nose cap will then flip up to allow access to
Speaker 1: the dome, so you can see through it and people
Speaker 1: can get a really amazing view of outer space and
Speaker 1: Earth and stuff. This version of the Crew Dragon will
Speaker 1: not have the docking mechanism that allows the spacecraft to
Speaker 1: connect to the International Space Station. It has already done that,
Speaker 1: it's already taken people up to the I S S.
Speaker 1: But this version won't have that docking mechanism. Instead, this
Speaker 1: specific type of Crew Dragon will just be for space tourists,
Speaker 1: or I should restate that as this Crew Dragon capsule
Speaker 1: will be for incredibly rich people who have a questionable
Speaker 1: sense of self preservation. Maybe they just need to cast
Speaker 1: themselves into space, which, as I have said previously, is
Speaker 1: always trying to kill you, just so that they can
Speaker 1: feel something. Again. Now I'm being cheeky, but I do
Speaker 1: have to say that being able to look out into
Speaker 1: space and back at planet or through a large dome
Speaker 1: window sounds really really awesome and also really outside of
Speaker 1: my price range. But it's right in that sweet spot
Speaker 1: for billionaire Jared Isaacman, who is scheduled to take that
Speaker 1: kind of a trip in the Crew Dragon capsule on
Speaker 1: September along with three other non astronaut types whom Isaacman
Speaker 1: is sponsoring. He's essentially paying for their trip up. The
Speaker 1: other three crew members include a professor, an employee of
Speaker 1: Lockheed Martin, and a research hospital employee. Their stories are fantastic.
Speaker 1: The mission is called Inspiration four. There's no space between
Speaker 1: Inspiration and the number four. The capsule they will take
Speaker 1: is one that has docked with the space station in
Speaker 1: the past, so that capsule actually has to be refitted
Speaker 1: to replace that docking array with the glass dome and
Speaker 1: special nose cap next. In the world of battle Royal
Speaker 1: style video games, Player Unknowns Battlegrounds or pub G, occupies
Speaker 1: a special place. It was not the first game to
Speaker 1: introduce mechanics in which a large group of players compete
Speaker 1: against one another in a last player Standing style match,
Speaker 1: but it was the first truly monumental success story inside
Speaker 1: that genre. Then Fortnite followed suit, and the story got
Speaker 1: much more complicated anyway, There are many flavors of pub G,
Speaker 1: with one of them being called pub G Light, as
Speaker 1: the name indicates, developers optimized this version of pub G
Speaker 1: to run on less powerful devices that can't crank out
Speaker 1: the frames and graphics of the flagship version of pub G,
Speaker 1: but now this light version is coming to an end.
Speaker 1: Pub G Studio announced that it is ending support services
Speaker 1: on April twenty nine of this year, with all players
Speaker 1: support for pub G Light ending a month later. The
Speaker 1: company did not give a reason for this decision, though
Speaker 1: it did post a statement that said this decision to
Speaker 1: pull the plug came after much deliberation and that the
Speaker 1: company appreciates all those players who had played the light
Speaker 1: version of the game. Other versions of pub G will
Speaker 1: still continue as is, and I guess all those Light
Speaker 1: players will migrate over to Fortnite and sticking with games.
Speaker 1: Chinese police, working with the mega company Tencent, which owns
Speaker 1: a stake in several game companies, have busted up a
Speaker 1: group of people who are creating and selling cheats for
Speaker 1: various games like Overwatch. The group had set up an
Speaker 1: operation that they called Chicken Drumstick. They offered up a
Speaker 1: subscription based service which, according to the BBC, included plans
Speaker 1: that were for ten dollars a day ten bucks a
Speaker 1: day to cheat at a video game. I mean that's bonkers.
Speaker 1: I mean, assuming you stick with subscriptions for more than
Speaker 1: two months, that means you would have paid more for
Speaker 1: cheats than you paid for the game itself. The police
Speaker 1: seized assets that were worth around forty six million dollars,
Speaker 1: including some fancy schmancy cars. Apparently, and again, according to
Speaker 1: the BBC, the group had raked in more than seventy
Speaker 1: six million dollars using this approach. Now, e games are
Speaker 1: a really big business, and on the professional e game circuit,
Speaker 1: you can make some serious dough if you can reach
Speaker 1: the top ranks. I'm guessing cheats like aim bots and
Speaker 1: codes that reveal where other players are coming pretty handy
Speaker 1: once you start going up against the elite performers that
Speaker 1: are out there. Apparently. In twenty nineteen, a survey found
Speaker 1: that one third of all gamers admitted to having used
Speaker 1: a cheat in an online game at some point. To
Speaker 1: those thirty three percent, I just want to say, you dirty,
Speaker 1: dirty cheaters. Look, I admit I am not a very
Speaker 1: skilled gamer, but I have earned every single win I
Speaker 1: have ever received, and now I also suspect I haven't
Speaker 1: earned some of the losses handed to me. Actually, le
Speaker 1: I know that for a fact because I have been
Speaker 1: on the receiving end of an aim bought in pub
Speaker 1: g in the past. Which I figured out thanks to
Speaker 1: the deathcam feature in that game. Just don't cheat, y'all. Listen,
Speaker 1: it's just lame. My last story illustrates why it's important
Speaker 1: to lock your computer when you walk away from it.
Speaker 1: The Twitter account for US Strategic Command, that is, the
Speaker 1: US agency that is responsible for global strike operations, in
Speaker 1: other words, nuclear Deterrence a k a. America's nuclear arsenal
Speaker 1: sent out a very odd message earlier this week. It
Speaker 1: read and I quote semi colon l semi colon semi
Speaker 1: colon g M l x z S s a W.
Speaker 1: So was that some sort of coded message indicating an
Speaker 1: impending new clear launch or an incoming attack. Nope. About
Speaker 1: a half hour after that first message, that same Twitter
Speaker 1: account sent out a second message reading, quote, apologies for
Speaker 1: any confusion, Please disregard this post end quote. Presumably the
Speaker 1: this post meant the gibberish as opposed to the apology
Speaker 1: for the gibberish. But that kind of dismissal doesn't really
Speaker 1: fly when you're talking about agency that's connected to nuclear armaments.
Speaker 1: And so journalist Mikhail Thaln filed a Freedom of Information
Speaker 1: Act request to get to the bottom of it, and
Speaker 1: it turns out the person who manages the Twitter account
Speaker 1: for US Strategic Command had stepped away from their computer
Speaker 1: and a quote unquote small child had apparently tapped merrily
Speaker 1: away on the keyboard, inadvertently publishing the mysterious tweet whoops
Speaker 1: the daisy, Thank Heaven. We are just talking about a
Speaker 1: social media manager here, and not something directly connected to
Speaker 1: I don't know launch systems, but yes, this illustrates why
Speaker 1: it's very good to lock down your machine, even if
Speaker 1: you're only stepping away for a short while. You never
Speaker 1: know when a kid or a cat or whatever is
Speaker 1: going to post something and they're posing as you, and
Speaker 1: you know they are just waiting for that opportunity. I
Speaker 1: see them plotting. I know what you're up to, cat
Speaker 1: back off? All right. That is the news for April one,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. If you have suggestions for topics you
Speaker 1: would like for me to cover on tech Stuff, Maybe
Speaker 1: you've got a specific company or technology or person in mind.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a trend in tech that you really want
Speaker 1: to know more about. Reach out to me and let
Speaker 1: me know the best way to do that is over
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle we use as tech stuff H
Speaker 1: s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Y Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For
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