Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the week ending on August sixteenth, twenty twenty four. So
Speaker 1: for this first news item, I wanted to bring a
Speaker 1: guest onto the show to talk about it in further detail,
Speaker 1: joining tech Stuff to give us her expertise is friend
Speaker 1: of the show, Shannon Morse. She's a hacker, she's a YouTuber,
Speaker 1: she's a ren Fair enthusiast, and I'm proud to call
Speaker 1: her a friend. Shannon, Welcome back to tech Stuff.
Speaker 2: Hi, thank you so much for having me. You kind
Speaker 2: of surprised me when you said the ren Fair enthusiast. Yes,
Speaker 2: I am well.
Speaker 1: To be fair, so am I I worked ren Fair
Speaker 1: from nineteen ninety nine to twenty nineteen, so so cool.
Speaker 1: We're not alone in this. But I've brought you on
Speaker 1: not to chat about Renfair, although that would be a
Speaker 1: heck of a podcast, but to talk about next time.
Speaker 1: Next time we'll talk about that, talk about the tech
Speaker 1: of Renaissance era Europe. I thought we would talk about
Speaker 1: this hacking attack that has exposed billions of records for people,
Speaker 1: not just in the United States, but in Canada and
Speaker 1: other places as well. I wanted to hear from you
Speaker 1: sort of what happened, who was involved, and what are
Speaker 1: the implications of this attack.
Speaker 2: Well, let's go ahead and start with what exactly happened.
Speaker 2: So way back in April of twenty twenty four, so
Speaker 2: this year, there was this Twitter account that found a
Speaker 2: leak online and they were like, oh, this seems like
Speaker 2: it came from a cybercrime constituent that is called USDOD
Speaker 2: and nobody really knew what was going on. It wasn't
Speaker 2: until July twenty first, twenty twenty four, that about four
Speaker 2: terabytes of data was released on breach forums. And breach
Speaker 2: forums is basically this cybercrime community on the dark Web
Speaker 2: where they often leak private and personal information of regular people.
Speaker 2: This happens really often, and in this case they figured
Speaker 2: out and they claim that it was from a data
Speaker 2: broker called Nationalpublic Data dot com and this was later confirmed.
Speaker 2: So around mid August, just gosh, yesterday, people started confirming
Speaker 2: that this was from the data broker Nationalpublic Data dot com.
Speaker 2: The amount of data did amount to about two point
Speaker 2: nine billion records. The unfortunate part is a lot of
Speaker 2: journalistic media outlets are saying that it was the data
Speaker 2: of almost every American or two point nine billion people
Speaker 2: had their data leak, and that's not necessarily the case,
Speaker 2: so that was a little misconstruction. It's actually records, and
Speaker 2: there could be records on decease people, there could be
Speaker 2: multiple records on one person, there could be records on businesses,
Speaker 2: and all of these seem to be the case when
Speaker 2: it comes to these two point nine billion records. But
Speaker 2: this does include everything from names and addresses to in
Speaker 2: some cases, social security numbers and some other personal information.
Speaker 2: So it's a pretty serious issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when it comes to if you're just talking about
Speaker 1: data breaches that affect or potentially could affect the average person,
Speaker 1: this one seems pretty bad. From why do I understand?
Speaker 1: The data broker in question typically would do things like
Speaker 1: background checks for various companies.
Speaker 2: Yes, and that's kind of unfortunate because a lot of
Speaker 2: businesses probably used this company for background checks, and there's
Speaker 2: no real way of knowing, like when you first got
Speaker 2: employed with a company or if you signed up for
Speaker 2: a credit new credit card if they're using this business
Speaker 2: for background checks, So you really have no idea which
Speaker 2: data brokers have your data. And if National Public Data
Speaker 2: did have your data, well.
Speaker 1: Clearly the data was unencrypted, because otherwise it would be
Speaker 1: very difficult to make any use of this information. I
Speaker 1: don't want to just make an assumption or have my
Speaker 1: bias informed this, so I thought I would ask you directly, Shannon,
Speaker 1: in your opinion, is the storage of that sort of
Speaker 1: data in an unencrypted form? Is that what you would
Speaker 1: perhaps call bad security practices.
Speaker 2: I think we could both agree here, assuming that you're
Speaker 2: of the same opinion as I. Absolutely having any of
Speaker 2: that kind of data unencrypted or easily accessible on a
Speaker 2: storage format is really really bad, especially when it comes
Speaker 2: to a data broker. Unfortunately, data brokers are legal here
Speaker 2: in the United States, and we really have no safety
Speaker 2: proponents or no safety like regulations. Regulatory powers control what
Speaker 2: data brokers can and cannot do with that data. So
Speaker 2: they should have been taking care of that data in
Speaker 2: an encrypted format, especially if they want to make money
Speaker 2: off of it. Because now all this data has leaked,
Speaker 2: Chances are just from a business standpoint, this data broker
Speaker 2: will not make as much money using those background checks
Speaker 2: because people aren't going to trust.
Speaker 1: Them as much. Now, sure, there's going to be class
Speaker 1: action lawsuits and such directed against the company, I hope so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I imagine that that will have an impact into their
Speaker 1: revenue as well. Thank you for pointing out the lack
Speaker 1: of regulation and safety net here in the United States.
Speaker 1: Obviously in places like the EU, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of work done to try and try and get a
Speaker 1: handle on that because it is tricky. I think here
Speaker 1: in the US, all of our attention tends to go
Speaker 1: to the end points, like the social platforms where people
Speaker 1: are sharing info, but they ignore, like all the big
Speaker 1: companies in the background that are literally buying and selling
Speaker 1: that info all the time.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've seen this since the early Facebook days
Speaker 2: with Cambridge Analytica, if you remember that big data leak,
Speaker 2: Like it's very very similar scenario here where this background
Speaker 2: company that nobody really knows exists, has so much data
Speaker 2: and so many profiles, and they're building these profiles around us,
Speaker 2: and we have no say in the matter. They just
Speaker 2: do it without our knowledge, without our consent. And then
Speaker 2: we hear about one of these breaches and we're like, well,
Speaker 2: I've never done business with them, why do they have
Speaker 2: my information? Why did this happen to me? So unfortunately
Speaker 2: this is the case in the United States, and luckily
Speaker 2: we do have some options in terms of what we
Speaker 2: can do to protect ourselves. But it's not one hundred percent,
Speaker 2: and I don't know if it ever will be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, the suggestions I give to people include things like,
Speaker 1: when it comes to accounts you already use, if you
Speaker 1: haven't activated multi factor authentication, you should just do that
Speaker 1: as a matter of practice on everything that offers it.
Speaker 1: And if you're concerned about someone making use of say
Speaker 1: your social Security number and your address, like they have
Speaker 1: all the details they need for identity theft, you can
Speaker 1: put a freeze on your credit with the three major
Speaker 1: companies here in the United States. It's a pain in
Speaker 1: the butt to do it. It's a pain in the
Speaker 1: butt to thought if you freeze it, but it's less
Speaker 1: of a pain of a butt than someone taking out
Speaker 1: alone under your name. So, yeah, this is bad. It's
Speaker 1: bad for all of us because there was nothing that
Speaker 1: the average person could have done to protect themselves from
Speaker 1: this particular attack.
Speaker 2: And even though your data may not have been involved
Speaker 2: in this, and you can go to a website called
Speaker 2: have I Been Poned that's owned with a p dot
Speaker 2: com to see if your data was leaked in this
Speaker 2: one as well as other previous data breaches. You can
Speaker 2: see if your data was indeed leaked in any of those.
Speaker 2: That can help you kind of get a mindset of
Speaker 2: where is my data, who has my data currently? And
Speaker 2: then you can also, you know, like you said, do
Speaker 2: the credit freeze at Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. That's extremely
Speaker 2: important and one of the first steps you should take.
Speaker 2: I recommend that to anybody who is curious about like
Speaker 2: if their Social Security number has gotten out there, or
Speaker 2: any kind of personally identifiable information that would allow for
Speaker 2: any kind of identity theft. That's really important. And using
Speaker 2: kind of proper security hygiene online can certainly help as well,
Speaker 2: because you will run into phishing scams when people find
Speaker 2: out your email address and your name. You might run
Speaker 2: into spam texts or phishing texts or spammy calls. You
Speaker 2: might run into the same thing with people sending you
Speaker 2: spamming and phishing emails. So if you have these kind
Speaker 2: of issues, or if you see them starting to rise
Speaker 2: then looking into signing up for a password manager, which
Speaker 2: can make your life a lot easier when you're auditing
Speaker 2: how many accounts you have online and making sure that
Speaker 2: you're changing those passwords because you can stay up to
Speaker 2: date and just use like auto generation tools in password
Speaker 2: managers to make really really good, strong protective passwords that
Speaker 2: even you don't know, but the password manager does, so
Speaker 2: it's fine. You won't lose your entry into your profiles.
Speaker 2: Your password manager will help you using two factor authentication
Speaker 2: to protect your accounts, especially if passwords get leaked, because
Speaker 2: even if you are using a different password on every website,
Speaker 2: if one of your profiles get leaked, that profile could
Speaker 2: be hacked. So you might as well set up two
Speaker 2: factor authentication and make sure none of those accounts get hacked.
Speaker 2: And using proper security hygiene when it comes to public
Speaker 2: networks like VPNs and making sure you're not logging into
Speaker 2: accounts on public Wi Fi and using secure networks is
Speaker 2: a really really good proponent. When it comes to data brokers,
Speaker 2: it's extremely hard to manually opt out because there's hundreds
Speaker 2: of them, including Nationalpublic Data dot Com, But you can
Speaker 2: sign up for a data broker opt out tool like
Speaker 2: delete me. That's the one that I use, and I
Speaker 2: have paid for it as a customer long before they
Speaker 2: knew about my YouTube channel. They will go in and
Speaker 2: opt you out of having your data on the data brokers,
Speaker 2: and they do it quarterly because data brokers often will
Speaker 2: repurchase your data and put it back on their platforms,
Speaker 2: so people can continuously go to these data broker websites
Speaker 2: and research for your profile and find your address, your
Speaker 2: phone number, your name, the names of your kids. Like,
Speaker 2: it's pretty invasive what they can do. So I've been
Speaker 2: paying for data broker opt out services for almost a
Speaker 2: decade now and it's definitely helped with like clearing the
Speaker 2: kind of data that's out there that I have no
Speaker 2: control over and just kind of taking a step towards
Speaker 2: my security.
Speaker 1: That's great advice, and obviously like these are steps that
Speaker 1: hopefully one day will no longer be necessary, will have
Speaker 1: the protective measures in place that make the mood man
Speaker 1: I hope, So I do too. I got hope springs eternal, Shannon,
Speaker 1: that's I gotta hope or else I wither away. Well, yes, Shannon,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining the show and letting
Speaker 1: us know more. About this hack and what it means
Speaker 1: and what people can do. I think that helps alleviate
Speaker 1: a lot of anxiety when people start to hear about
Speaker 1: the steps they can take to best protect themselves. I
Speaker 1: want to thank Shannon again, and we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break. When we come back, we have more news
Speaker 1: to talk about. Mark Zuckerberg probably gets lots of requests
Speaker 1: being the head of Facebook and all. This week, nineteen
Speaker 1: of those requests came from members of the United States
Speaker 1: Congress who would very much like to hear why Meta
Speaker 1: has allowed ads for such spicy stuff as cocaine and
Speaker 1: ecstasy to appear on Facebook and Instagram. I mean, these
Speaker 1: substances aren't legal, so why is Meta allowing advertisers to
Speaker 1: run ads for them on these very popular platforms. An
Speaker 1: investigation from the Tech Transparency Project or TTP, prompted this inquiry.
Speaker 1: In the investigation, the TTP found more than four hundred
Speaker 1: examples of ads for drugs of varying degrees of legality
Speaker 1: on these platforms, and lawmakers would like Zuckerberg to explain
Speaker 1: how this could happen. In a letter to the CEO,
Speaker 1: the legislators wrote, quote, this was not user generated content
Speaker 1: on the dark Web or on private social media pages,
Speaker 1: but rather they were advertisements approved and monetized by Meta.
Speaker 1: Many of these ads contained blatant references to illegal drugs
Speaker 1: in their titles, descriptions, photos, and advertiser account names, which
Speaker 1: were easily found by the researchers and journalists at the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal and Tech Transparency Project using Meta's ad library. However,
Speaker 1: they appeared to have passed undetected or bid ignored by
Speaker 1: Meta's own internal processes. End quote. Now, according to the TTP,
Speaker 1: many of these ads prompted users to click over to
Speaker 1: a Telegram account to complete any shopping that they wished
Speaker 1: to do. Meta has until September sixth to respond. Now,
Speaker 1: I can't say that I'm terribly surprised by this story. Personally,
Speaker 1: I have encountered so many suspicious ads on Facebook that
Speaker 1: I suspect the quality control aspect of the Ads division
Speaker 1: is purposefully lax. Now, in my case, the ads weren't
Speaker 1: for illegal drugs, but rather they were ads that way
Speaker 1: that were fake. I mean they were posing as other companies,
Speaker 1: like some other entity, in an attempt to fool consumers
Speaker 1: into shopping for shoddy knockoffs. The big example I can
Speaker 1: think of off top of my head was the sam
Speaker 1: Ash music stores in the United States. They went out
Speaker 1: of business and closed down, and I saw ad after
Speaker 1: ad after ad pose that, but they weren't sam Ash.
Speaker 1: They were some other fly by night company trying to
Speaker 1: sell knockoffs or sometimes just boxes of literal trash rather
Speaker 1: than whatever item you thought you were going to get. Now.
Speaker 1: I have reported these ads to Facebook, and frequently I
Speaker 1: received the message that after review, Facebook determined there were
Speaker 1: no violations of its policies. Meanwhile, the actual legitimate companies
Speaker 1: like sam Ash would post warnings on their pages about
Speaker 1: scams like this. I suspect that unless lawmakers make it
Speaker 1: really hurt to engage in irresponsible ad partnerships, we're not
Speaker 1: going to see any significant change on this front. In
Speaker 1: the world of tech and politics, the Trump campaign has
Speaker 1: been hit with a spearfishing attack that compromised campaign assets.
Speaker 1: The Trump campaign identified hackers backed by Iran as the
Speaker 1: party responsible, and now Google's Threat Analysis Group or tag TAG,
Speaker 1: has released a statement saying that yes, they have observed
Speaker 1: that the hacker group APT forty two, which is linked
Speaker 1: to Iran, targeted both the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign.
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris's campaign, as well as President Biden's campaign when
Speaker 1: he was actively campaigning. Tag also stated that subsequent attacks
Speaker 1: have been unsuccessful, but there remains an ongoing attempt to
Speaker 1: compromise accounts belonging to people who are close to Trump
Speaker 1: and Harris slash Biden. The assumption moving forward is that
Speaker 1: all elections will face potential external interference from threat actors,
Speaker 1: both domestic and foreign. So, you know, that's fun. It's
Speaker 1: a reminder that democracy isn't something that can just fend
Speaker 1: for itself. Now, if you want to learn more about this,
Speaker 1: I recommend Kevin Perdy's article on ours Tetnica. It is
Speaker 1: titled Google's threat team confirms Iran targeting Trump, Biden, and
Speaker 1: Harris campaigns. More than a decade ago, New Zealand police officers,
Speaker 1: responding to a from the FBI rated the massive home
Speaker 1: of Kim dot com. Dot Com formerly known as Schmidtz,
Speaker 1: formed the company mega Upload, which allowed users to create
Speaker 1: cloud based storage for all sorts of stuff and then
Speaker 1: give other folks access to the files that were in
Speaker 1: that storage. So obviously a lot of people use the
Speaker 1: service to serve as kind of a trading ground for
Speaker 1: pirated material music, TV shows, films, games, software, and more
Speaker 1: all found a home on mega Upload, while the company
Speaker 1: is responsible for making that stuff. Seethed they saw dot
Speaker 1: Com profiting off of piracy, So the FBI called on
Speaker 1: New Zealand police back in twenty twelve to give dot
Speaker 1: Com a little visit, and they charged him with racketeering
Speaker 1: and wirefraud and money laundering on top of all that
Speaker 1: copyright infringement. And after more than a decade of legal wrangling,
Speaker 1: the US has now secured extradition of dot Com to
Speaker 1: fly to the US and stand trial. Now dot Com
Speaker 1: has denounced the whole thing. He referred to New Zealand
Speaker 1: as essentially a US colony. It's not, and dot Com
Speaker 1: still maintains he will not leave New Zealand and that
Speaker 1: his business was just to provide a service in which
Speaker 1: people could upload and share files, and therefore he bears
Speaker 1: no responsibility on the kinds of files that were uploaded
Speaker 1: and shared. This is a basic principle of the safe
Speaker 1: harbor defense. But dot Com has also been really vocal
Speaker 1: and let's say abrasive, and I think that may have
Speaker 1: hurt his case a little, or at least prodded authorities
Speaker 1: to really go after him. Now, whether all of this
Speaker 1: is going to lead to a trial and conviction or not,
Speaker 1: or if dot Com will successfully appeal the extradition order,
Speaker 1: we'll just have to wait and see. In the good
Speaker 1: times are hard times department. Telecommunications company Cisco Systems posted
Speaker 1: a ten point three billion with a B dollar profit
Speaker 1: in its last fiscal year, but it's also laying off
Speaker 1: folks seven percent of its workforce, which could be around
Speaker 1: five five hundred people. All told, The company said that
Speaker 1: the move is necessary so it can put full focus
Speaker 1: on quote key growth opportunities and drive more efficiency in
Speaker 1: our business end quote. As Stephen Counsel of SFGate reports,
Speaker 1: this is the second time this year that Cisco has
Speaker 1: held substantial layoffs. Golly. Back to politics, Donald Trump made
Speaker 1: headlines after claiming that the Harris campaign or someone on
Speaker 1: that campaign's behalf, had made use of AI to artificially
Speaker 1: boost crowd sizes at Harris events. In various images of
Speaker 1: those stops, and the images that Trump referenced all appear
Speaker 1: to be legit. Footage from numerous media outlets show that
Speaker 1: the crowds were actually quite large. However, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that there are no AI generated or enhanced images making
Speaker 1: the rounds out there. It's just the ones that Trump
Speaker 1: was citing were not AI generated. And it also means
Speaker 1: that people are calling into question the legitimacy of actual,
Speaker 1: real images and visit. So on the one hand, we
Speaker 1: do know there are AI generated images out there that
Speaker 1: are competing for our attention and posing as legit, and
Speaker 1: they are misinformation. On the other hand, we also know
Speaker 1: that people will now question legitimate sources and argue that
Speaker 1: they are in fact AI generated. So some refer to
Speaker 1: this as the liar's dividend. There's a great piece about this.
Speaker 1: It's again over at Ours Technicuts by Kyle Orland. It's
Speaker 1: titled the Many Many Signs that Kamala Harris's rally crowds
Speaker 1: aren't AI creations. We're going to take another quick break,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, I've got some more news.
Speaker 1: A story I missed a while back is that code
Speaker 1: testers came across some interesting stuff while looking at Apple Intelligence,
Speaker 1: which is Apple's AI project, and that interesting stuff appeared
Speaker 1: to be prompts meant to guide generative AI to avoid
Speaker 1: the pitfalls we've seen with other tools, stuff like ucinations
Speaker 1: or confabulations, you know, the tendency for generative AI to
Speaker 1: just make stuff up in the absence of real information.
Speaker 1: And that's potentially good news, assuming that these guidelines actually work.
Speaker 1: But I have another story this week that makes me worry.
Speaker 1: It's not about Apple. It's about a research firm out
Speaker 1: of Tokyo called Sakana AI. So the team had set
Speaker 1: its AI system to do autonomous scientific research, and they
Speaker 1: included a function that would essentially say times up on tasks.
Speaker 1: And what was surprising was the system attempted to rewrite
Speaker 1: its own code in order to give itself more time
Speaker 1: to complete tasks. So instead of trying to do things faster,
Speaker 1: they tried to change the deadline. Now, this is a
Speaker 1: very low level instance of a type of situation that
Speaker 1: has fueled countless science fiction cautionary tales. An AI system
Speaker 1: ignores or alters rules in order to fulfill its function.
Speaker 1: The cliche version of this is asking a global system
Speaker 1: that's running on AI to create world peace, and so
Speaker 1: the AI inevitably decides the only way to do that,
Speaker 1: the only way to prevent conflict is to kill off
Speaker 1: all those pesky humans who create it, meaning everybody. Of course,
Speaker 1: the Sikana AI example is not dangerous like that, but
Speaker 1: it does illustrate that AI experts have to be very
Speaker 1: careful in how they design systems so that the systems
Speaker 1: remain safe and reliable. It may not be enough to
Speaker 1: create rules if the AI can figure oh, well, here's
Speaker 1: the problem. These ding dang dearn rules need to go away.
Speaker 1: And I'm being a little flippant, but to learn more
Speaker 1: about this, I recommend BENJ. Edwards article research AI model
Speaker 1: unexpectedly modified its own code to extend runtime and that
Speaker 1: is on. You guessed it Ours Technica. I swear I
Speaker 1: use a lot of other sources. It's just Ours Technica
Speaker 1: really knocked it out of the park. This week, so
Speaker 1: Ahmed has a piece on tech spot titled Recruiters Overwhelmed
Speaker 1: as fifty seven percent of young applicants are using chat
Speaker 1: GPT for job resumes. In this piece, Omed mentions how
Speaker 1: hiring managers are flooded with more applications than ever before,
Speaker 1: many of which have clearly been written in part or
Speaker 1: entirely by AI. Further, the pieces written by the free
Speaker 1: version of tools like chat GPT contain many telltale signs
Speaker 1: of AI generation with less natural language and other quirks,
Speaker 1: while the paid for versions of these tools tend to
Speaker 1: blend a bit better with you stuff that was actually
Speaker 1: written by real human beings. And this presents a challenge
Speaker 1: to hiring managers who need to see what an applicant
Speaker 1: is actually capable of. Now, that could just mean bringing
Speaker 1: more people in for interviews, but those take up a
Speaker 1: lot of time to schedule and actually do so it's
Speaker 1: not terribly efficient. Moreover, this makes me concerned that folks
Speaker 1: who have little to know access to AI tools, specifically
Speaker 1: the types of tools that you have to pay for,
Speaker 1: they're ultimately going to be at a disadvantage. Maybe it
Speaker 1: will all shake out, but my fear is that people
Speaker 1: who are already in a position to at least afford
Speaker 1: an AI hype man are going to be the people
Speaker 1: who get these interview slots, while actual human beings who
Speaker 1: can't afford that type of SOLF report will be applying
Speaker 1: to job after job with diminishing hope of landing an interview.
Speaker 1: I am bumming myself out today. The SAG after a
Speaker 1: union which represents actors, has agreed to conditions in which
Speaker 1: companies can make use of AI duplicates of actor voices.
Speaker 1: This is specifically for use in advertisements, and it leverages
Speaker 1: a platform called Narrative, which doesn't have an E at
Speaker 1: the end, and actors can license their voices for use
Speaker 1: in commercials through Narrative. The agreement states that individual actors
Speaker 1: will have full say on which brands they're willing to
Speaker 1: work with and how much they can charge for use
Speaker 1: of their voice. In addition, if an actor decides they
Speaker 1: no longer want the robots to talk like them, they
Speaker 1: can sever their relationship with Narrative, and the platform is
Speaker 1: obligated to delete all their voice data, including the reference
Speaker 1: recordings that were used to make the digital duplicate in
Speaker 1: the first place. One thing that concerns me is the
Speaker 1: possibility of a company making use of an AI duplicated
Speaker 1: voice for ende dorsements. Here in the United States, we
Speaker 1: have strict rules about endorsing products and services. The person
Speaker 1: who's giving the endorsement is legally responsible for actually using
Speaker 1: the thing in question and being honest in their take
Speaker 1: on it. It's why I do very few endorsements, because
Speaker 1: i have very high standards on this and I'm legally
Speaker 1: obligated to do so. But with AI duplicates, a company
Speaker 1: could try and do that without the actual original actor's input.
Speaker 1: If the actor just says, yeah, you know, I'm cool
Speaker 1: with whatever brand using my voice, but then the brand
Speaker 1: ends up doing more than just an ad spot and
Speaker 1: does an endorsement, well, that could bring legal issues into
Speaker 1: play down the line. However, I have not read the
Speaker 1: full agreement yet, so it may be that this is
Speaker 1: already accounted for and the process could be really granular.
Speaker 1: So maybe I'm complaining about something that isn't even an issue.
Speaker 1: Just a quick up date on the ongoing issues with
Speaker 1: the Boeing Starliner crew, who are currently aboard the International
Speaker 1: Space Station. NASA has yet to decide how to proceed. Currently,
Speaker 1: the next scheduled docking with the ISS is supposed to
Speaker 1: happen on September twenty fourth with a SpaceX Dragon capsule,
Speaker 1: but that obviously cannot happen with the star Liner in
Speaker 1: the way. So the assumption that I'm mostly seeing online
Speaker 1: is that NASA is going to opt to have the
Speaker 1: Starliner return to Earth with no crew aboard the spacecraft,
Speaker 1: and the two astronauts who flew on the star Liner
Speaker 1: will have to wait a while before hitching a ride
Speaker 1: back home. Aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. NASA has previously
Speaker 1: indicated the agency would make a decision on how to
Speaker 1: move forward this week, but since then representatives have said
Speaker 1: the agency is going to take a bit more time
Speaker 1: to make that call since there is still some time
Speaker 1: to spare, but not a whole lot of it. It's
Speaker 1: still possible we'll see the astronauts return in the star
Speaker 1: liner itself. NASA is taking all factors into account and
Speaker 1: wants to be certain that any such attempts are well
Speaker 1: within acceptable risks. Before I sign off, I've got a
Speaker 1: couple of article suggestions for y'all. First up as another
Speaker 1: piece by BINGJ. Edwards. This one is titled deep Live
Speaker 1: Cam Goes Viral allowing anyone to become a digital dopple
Speaker 1: game and yes it's on Ours Technica. The article tells
Speaker 1: about tools that let folks use a simple image to
Speaker 1: create a kind of digital mask, sort of Mission Impossible
Speaker 1: style only for like webcam live streams, you know, not
Speaker 1: in the real world, but online. You can use a
Speaker 1: picture like the one case they used a picture of
Speaker 1: George Clooney and the guy ended up having a digital
Speaker 1: George Clooney face and it was pretty impressive. It was
Speaker 1: reactive in real time. Next is a piece from NPR's
Speaker 1: Dara Kurr titled Meta shutters tool used to fight disinformation
Speaker 1: despite outcry. Kerr writes about a tool called crowd Tangle,
Speaker 1: which researchers use to track disinformation online and how Meta
Speaker 1: is shutting this down despite the fact that here in
Speaker 1: the United States we're in an election year and you
Speaker 1: would think that tools meant to help track and detect
Speaker 1: disinformation would be particularly useful. So that's what has critics
Speaker 1: asking Meta to maybe keep it online a bit longer.
Speaker 1: That's it. I want to thank Shannon Morse again for
Speaker 1: jumping on the show. I always appreciate having her on.
Speaker 1: She is a delight. You can see more of her
Speaker 1: work over at YouTube, So go to YouTube and look
Speaker 1: for Shannon Morse. Highly recommend her content. She's really a
Speaker 1: lot of fun, incredibly knowledgeable, and is a great tech communicator.
Speaker 1: So check out her work, and like I said, check
Speaker 1: out our Stanka because they knocked it out of the
Speaker 1: park this week. I hope all of you are doing
Speaker 1: well and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.