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 iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? It is time for tech News for Tuesday,
Speaker 1: October thirty first, twenty twenty three. Happy Halloween, everybody, or
Speaker 1: a spooky sawyn if you prefer. Last week I mentioned
Speaker 1: we would not have a news episode today because of
Speaker 1: smart talks with IBM, But the joke was on me.
Speaker 1: Turns out there was a scheduling delay, and so now
Speaker 1: you get an episode from me after all. So let's
Speaker 1: dive into the spooky world of tech news, and you
Speaker 1: might hear me make some spooky sounds throughout the show
Speaker 1: that I assure you it's not that I'm hand It's
Speaker 1: just that the kidney stone I'm dealing with still isn't
Speaker 1: done yet. Anyway, the back half of twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: is hitting me hard, y'all. But never mind that you're
Speaker 1: not here to hear me grouse and moan about my health.
Speaker 1: You're here to hear me grouse and moan about tech.
Speaker 1: Let's get to it. First. Up this week, US President
Speaker 1: Joe Biden issued an executive order that deals with the
Speaker 1: big topic in tech of twenty twenty three, that of
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, and they had a particular focus on generative AI,
Speaker 1: which I'll just remind you. Generative AI is one subset
Speaker 1: of the overall discipline of artificial intelligence. And if you're
Speaker 1: not from America, or maybe you are from America but
Speaker 1: you've never really looked into it and you don't know
Speaker 1: what an executive order is, it is one of the
Speaker 1: president's powers of office. The president has the authority to
Speaker 1: issue directives without having to go through Congress or any
Speaker 1: other branch of the govern as long as those directives
Speaker 1: relate to how the federal government works. So the US
Speaker 1: president could issue an executive order to manage federal resources.
Speaker 1: But the president could not issue an executive order to
Speaker 1: force South Dakota to change its name to Frank or whatever,
Speaker 1: because that's not in the power of the federal government.
Speaker 1: This executive order in particular, creates requirements, mostly among federal
Speaker 1: agencies when it comes to entering into contracts with AI
Speaker 1: companies and AI services. So the order restricts those contracts
Speaker 1: to companies that comply with regulations, and those regulations include
Speaker 1: things like testing requirements for their AI models, transparency when
Speaker 1: it comes to developing the tools, and various restrictions on
Speaker 1: what generative AI is and is not allowed to do so.
Speaker 1: For example, if the generative AI can be convinced to
Speaker 1: design weapons, that's right out. You know, a federal agency
Speaker 1: is not allowed to enter into a contract with a
Speaker 1: company that does that. So these requirements don't hit the
Speaker 1: AI companies directly, right they're hitting the federal agencies. But
Speaker 1: if you assume that those companies want to do business
Speaker 1: with the federal government, which is a very lucrative business
Speaker 1: to get into, it thus creates an incentive for those
Speaker 1: AI companies to comply with the rules. Now, there are
Speaker 1: some aspects to the executive Order that more directly target
Speaker 1: AI companies. For example, should a company engage in training
Speaker 1: AI systems that could potentially create a threat to national security, well,
Speaker 1: those companies are going to need to send a little
Speaker 1: heads up to the federal government first, which is not
Speaker 1: a bad idea, though I would submit that sometimes we
Speaker 1: don't realize something is a threat until you know it's
Speaker 1: threatened US or worse. The order also recommends, but does
Speaker 1: not necessarily require, that generative AI companies use a label
Speaker 1: or a watermark for all AI created material, whether that's audio, video,
Speaker 1: or images or whatever. The order also places the onus
Speaker 1: of creating more structured regulations on various other agencies within
Speaker 1: the US government. And speaking of regulations, a couple of
Speaker 1: AI luminaries have recently spoken out against regulations. Business Insider
Speaker 1: reports that Jan Lucun, one of the leading researchers in
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, has argued that the various doomsday scenarios being
Speaker 1: bandied about regarding AI aren't really realistic. Rather, he says,
Speaker 1: spreading these stories is a tactic that's used by a
Speaker 1: few large companies that are working in AI today. And
Speaker 1: you might say, well, why would they do that, why
Speaker 1: would they say AI is a potential threat to humanity's existence. Well,
Speaker 1: these same companies are actually taking a very active role
Speaker 1: to work with governments around the world to develop AI
Speaker 1: regular not because the companies actually believe these regulations are
Speaker 1: going to prevent harm. Instead, they're trying to create regulations
Speaker 1: that will allow big established companies to be insulated against
Speaker 1: smaller startups because the smaller startups are going to find
Speaker 1: it hard or maybe even impossible to work within the
Speaker 1: framework of regulations. So, according to Lucun, this is a
Speaker 1: way to stifle competition and innovation. Sam Altman, the CEO
Speaker 1: of open Ai, comes to mind when you hear about
Speaker 1: this argument when it's put this way, because Altman has
Speaker 1: taken an active role to work with governments in the
Speaker 1: US and the UK and elsewhere in an effort to
Speaker 1: frame regulations around AI. Now. To take the other side,
Speaker 1: Altman would argue that his goal is to set up
Speaker 1: rules that make sense and that will protect people against
Speaker 1: bad AI design and bad AI implementations. But critics like
Speaker 1: Lacun say this is really more of a self serve motivation,
Speaker 1: and it prompts Altman to work so closely with governments
Speaker 1: in an effort to suppress potential competitors and give open
Speaker 1: aye an unfair market advantage. He is, not, by the way,
Speaker 1: the only AI bigwig to suggest that this is a thing.
Speaker 1: Andrew ng, who founded Google Brain and who teaches at
Speaker 1: Stanford University and in fact taught Sam Altman, has also
Speaker 1: argued that the push for regulations, particularly the push from
Speaker 1: large AI companies, suggests more of a move to squash
Speaker 1: competition and innovation than to actually create a safe environment.
Speaker 1: Now Ing told Financial Worldview that he believes regulations are important.
Speaker 1: He's not saying don't have regulations at all, but he
Speaker 1: is saying that bad regulations are worse than no regulations
Speaker 1: at all. So it goes bad regulations at the bottom,
Speaker 1: no regulations, and then good regulations. If things are left
Speaker 1: to the companies that are going to be regulated, then
Speaker 1: and we should expect nothing less than rules that are
Speaker 1: going to benefit them to the detriment of everyone else,
Speaker 1: whether that's a competitor or a consumer, which kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense to me. And in the war between artists
Speaker 1: and AI, a US district judge named William Oric has
Speaker 1: dismissed most of a lawsuit that three artists brought against
Speaker 1: the company's mid Journey, Deviant Art, and Stability AI. In fact,
Speaker 1: out of those three, only the part of the lawsuit
Speaker 1: directly involving Stability AI is still alive in the court system.
Speaker 1: The judge ruled that the accusations as laid out in
Speaker 1: the lawsuit were quote defective in numerous respects end quote
Speaker 1: regarding mid Journey and Deviant Art, and so those elements
Speaker 1: are now essentially dead in the water until they perhaps
Speaker 1: get reasserted in a updated filing. So at the center
Speaker 1: of this whole legal mess is a concern among artists
Speaker 1: that generative AI companies are making broad and unrestricted use
Speaker 1: of artist works without the artist's permission or compensation, and
Speaker 1: that as a result, these generative AI models are able
Speaker 1: to lift elements of artists' styles and essentially the AI
Speaker 1: can compete against the very artists whose work the model
Speaker 1: was used to train on in the first place. As
Speaker 1: for why Stability AI is still in the mix here,
Speaker 1: it mostly has to do with how mid Journey and
Speaker 1: dev and Art have used Stability AI's generative tool called
Speaker 1: Stable Diffusion, and the judge says, well, the artists weren't
Speaker 1: able to really show that those companies were using this
Speaker 1: knowingly in an effort to harm artists, or were doing
Speaker 1: it in a way that where they were disregarding the
Speaker 1: harm being done to artists, and that really just falls
Speaker 1: to Stability AI, which created the tool in the first place.
Speaker 1: The artists accusations showed that, at least according to a
Speaker 1: search tool meant to match artists against work that generative
Speaker 1: AI models have supposedly used during training, the Stability AI
Speaker 1: tool had made unauthorized use of art to train up
Speaker 1: Stable Diffusion. So out of the three artists, only one
Speaker 1: of them is still part of this lawsuit. The other
Speaker 1: two dropped out because they did not actually obtain a
Speaker 1: copyright for their works, so there was no legal protection
Speaker 1: to be violated in the first place. But one of
Speaker 1: the three did. She's still in the mix. So she said,
Speaker 1: my name has popped up in the search engine, showing
Speaker 1: that this model used my work to train itself. Now
Speaker 1: that in itself is not definitive proof, right, just because
Speaker 1: she shows up on the search engine. But the judge
Speaker 1: rule that it was sufficient to allow the case to
Speaker 1: continue through to the discovery phase. Now I should add
Speaker 1: this is not the only case brought against Stability AI
Speaker 1: and how it trains stable diffusion. Getty Images sued the
Speaker 1: company both in the UK and in the United States,
Speaker 1: arguing that Stability AI used stock images from Getty's enormous
Speaker 1: database to train its model, and that the company quote
Speaker 1: removed or altered end quote Getty's copyright management information in
Speaker 1: the process. Just yesterday, Stability's AI legal team asked a
Speaker 1: London judge to throw out the UK case. I've not
Speaker 1: heard how that has panned out. But also these cases
Speaker 1: have been going on for a while. While this is
Speaker 1: an update, you know, they date back to early twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three and even late twenty twenty two, so it's
Speaker 1: not like this just popped out of nowhere. This is
Speaker 1: an ongoing battle in legal systems around the world. Justice
Speaker 1: moves ever swiftly. Okay, we've got more stories to cover,
Speaker 1: and they don't even have to do with artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: So we're going to take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, I'll talk about some more tech news.
Speaker 1: We're back, and now I'm done talking about AI at
Speaker 1: least for the moment, which means it's time to talk
Speaker 1: about X. You know, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Speaker 1: Only one story though, so let's just get through it.
Speaker 1: And the big news this week is that X is
Speaker 1: going to offer restricted stock units or RSUs to its employees. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind X is a private company. At the moment,
Speaker 1: there is no publicly traded stock market that it's on,
Speaker 1: so you can't look to see what stocks are trading
Speaker 1: at right now. It's privately held. So in order to
Speaker 1: be able to issue restricted stock units to employees, first
Speaker 1: the company has to determine how much it's actually worth.
Speaker 1: And this gets a little more loosey goosey than you
Speaker 1: would find with a publicly traded company. Like with a
Speaker 1: publicly traded company, you take the number of shares that
Speaker 1: exist in that company, and you multiply that by the
Speaker 1: price per share, and you get a rough estimation of
Speaker 1: the valuation of that company. So X had to go
Speaker 1: through a different process, but in internal documents it had
Speaker 1: listed its valuation at around nineteen billion dollars. Now keep
Speaker 1: in mind, when Elon Musk agreed to purchase Twitter, he
Speaker 1: did so at a share price that would be set
Speaker 1: at fifty four dollars twenty cents per share, which meant
Speaker 1: that at the time of purchase, Twitter would be worth
Speaker 1: forty four billion dollars. So he spent forty four billion,
Speaker 1: and now the platform has a current valuation of nineteen
Speaker 1: billion dollars. That's a fifty six percent drop in valuation
Speaker 1: over the course of a year. Now keep in mind
Speaker 1: that's just one assessment. Other assessments are actually different. For example,
Speaker 1: Fidelity figure that the drop is closer to sixty five
Speaker 1: percent of value YELSA. Now I admit when I first
Speaker 1: read about this, I didn't see that there was a
Speaker 1: bright side, but tech Crunch's Amanda Silberling points out that
Speaker 1: sometimes a lower valuation isn't necessarily a bad thing for
Speaker 1: the company or its employees, because the employees stand to
Speaker 1: gain those stocks or stock options, and it could mean
Speaker 1: that they could get a lot more of them as
Speaker 1: part of their compensation package. This can also become a
Speaker 1: very powerful tool to recruit new talent into the company,
Speaker 1: and as long as the company does better and starts
Speaker 1: to improve in value, employees will see a huge gain
Speaker 1: as a result of having those stocks, assuming that they
Speaker 1: execute their stock options. Obviously, X still needs to regain
Speaker 1: a lot of lost ground, right A fifty six percent
Speaker 1: drop invaluation is not a great thing to communicate out
Speaker 1: to the world. Doing that is going to create much
Speaker 1: greater gains for the employees who exercise their stock options. However,
Speaker 1: so it could be a really good thing. And you know,
Speaker 1: never say never. I'm not going to say that X's
Speaker 1: is just death to be doomed. It just has to
Speaker 1: prove it can reverse the trend it's been on over
Speaker 1: the last year. Now. Personally, I think that would be
Speaker 1: a whole lot easier if Elon Musk took a big
Speaker 1: old step back from the driver's seat. I mean, sure,
Speaker 1: he put in a different CEO, so technically he's not
Speaker 1: the CEO of the company anymore. But the general impression
Speaker 1: I get in the tech world is that it's really
Speaker 1: still Elon Musk calling the shots over there. And maybe
Speaker 1: that's unrealistic. Maybe that's not the case, but it certainly
Speaker 1: seems to be that, at least from the outside, and
Speaker 1: I don't think that's been doing the company any favors.
Speaker 1: Another long ongoing story around the world is how various
Speaker 1: countries are beginning to treat apps and tech that is
Speaker 1: created out of countries like China. So in a recent example,
Speaker 1: the government of Canada decided yesterday to issue a ban
Speaker 1: on the messaging app we Chat on all government issued
Speaker 1: mobile devices. The Canadian government also included a Russian app
Speaker 1: in that ban as well, or really a Russian suite,
Speaker 1: the Kasperski antivirus program specifically. Now, this is out of
Speaker 1: a concern that the governments of China and Russia could
Speaker 1: potentially either directly or indirectly use those kinds of apps
Speaker 1: to spy on Canadian government officials and Canadian systems. The
Speaker 1: government did say that there was no evidence that any
Speaker 1: such thing had happened so far, so this would really
Speaker 1: be more of a proactive move, as the CIO for
Speaker 1: Canada has identified those two apps as having unacceptable risks
Speaker 1: associated with them. Chinese representatives condemned the move. They said
Speaker 1: that it was really done more as a political gesture
Speaker 1: without any real justifiable foundation, and Kasperski responded with surprise
Speaker 1: and disappointment, saying that the lack of evidence indicates that
Speaker 1: the ban is a response to a geopolitical perceived threat
Speaker 1: rather than a real one, and claims no one from
Speaker 1: Canada's government ever reached out to Kasperski to work things
Speaker 1: out before issuing the ban. Now, I will say that
Speaker 1: at least with Kasperski, it has a somewhat shady reputation
Speaker 1: in the cybersecurity community, not that their tools don't work,
Speaker 1: but that there is this fear of a potential connection
Speaker 1: between Kasperski and various Russian intelligence agencies. Kasperski has been
Speaker 1: rather compliant with Russian government on several things that have
Speaker 1: led to people saying it may not be a good
Speaker 1: idea to use Kaspersky products in things like government settings
Speaker 1: because of the potential that someone could use that for
Speaker 1: surveillance purposes. Canada is not the only country to have
Speaker 1: concerns about this product. The US issued a similar ban
Speaker 1: Back in twenty seventeen. Germany's Federal Office for Information Security
Speaker 1: issued a strong recommendation to its staff not to use
Speaker 1: Kasperski antivirus products out of concern, you know, regarding the
Speaker 1: company's potential connections to the Russian government. So this is
Speaker 1: not an unprecedented event. Now, for those of you who
Speaker 1: like those stories where the little guy stands up to
Speaker 1: the fat cat, I got one for you now. In
Speaker 1: this case, the little guy is a software firm in
Speaker 1: the UK called Threads Software Limited, and the fat cat
Speaker 1: is Meta, formerly known as Facebook. And yes, this all
Speaker 1: has to do with the name Threads, which Meta has
Speaker 1: used for its microblogging service, you know, the Twitter slash
Speaker 1: x killer platform that saw rapid adoption and then not
Speaker 1: long after that rapid disengagement or what I call oh
Speaker 1: I forgot I even installed that itis. The software company
Speaker 1: sent a letter to Meta and said that it will
Speaker 1: go to the courts and ask for an injunction against
Speaker 1: Meta if the company doesn't stop using the name Threads. Now.
Speaker 1: To be clear, Threads Software Limited or actually a precursor
Speaker 1: to that company called JPY Limited, applied for and received
Speaker 1: a trademark for the brand name Threads more than a
Speaker 1: decade ago, and that was well before Meta announced any
Speaker 1: intention of creating a microblogging competitor to Twitter. Now that
Speaker 1: being said, this is not the first threads product from Meta.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty nineteen, Meta, which at that time was
Speaker 1: still called Facebook, introduced a feature in Instagram and it
Speaker 1: was called Threads. I'm not sure if the thread Software
Speaker 1: Limited company actually pushed back against Meta when that happened.
Speaker 1: That's important because holding a trademark requires a company to
Speaker 1: defend that trademark. If Meta can show that that Threads
Speaker 1: Software Limited did not attempt to defend its trademark when
Speaker 1: Meta first introduced the Threads product in Instagram in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: then that could really weaken the case against Meta. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Maybe they did pushback. I couldn't find information
Speaker 1: on that when I was reading up on the story.
Speaker 1: If I'd done some more digging, I probably could have,
Speaker 1: but I was running out of time. Also, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of other products out there that have the
Speaker 1: name thread or threads, and they have not really seen
Speaker 1: a lot of pushback from this company. From what I
Speaker 1: can tell, which is another potential strike against them. Now,
Speaker 1: all that being said, Meta supposedly did reach out to
Speaker 1: thread Software Limited in an attempt to purchase the domain
Speaker 1: threads dot app, but the company gave Meta the cold
Speaker 1: shoulder for every single request. It does, however, indicate that
Speaker 1: Meta was aware that was going to use a brand
Speaker 1: name that was already in use. So it is a
Speaker 1: complicated thing. And who knows which way the courts will go.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of courts might already be I
Speaker 1: hate to use the word biased, maybe predisposed to laying
Speaker 1: judgments against Meta because Meta has not done itself any
Speaker 1: favors of the last decade. It has operated in a
Speaker 1: way that has almost dared governments and courts to take
Speaker 1: action against it, which could potentially spell over in decisions.
Speaker 1: We're all human beings, even judges and lawyers, So who knows.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's what's going on in that world. In India,
Speaker 1: Apple has sent an urgent alert to several politicians in
Speaker 1: the Indian Parliament. The alert warned the recipients that their
Speaker 1: respective iPhones were potentially targeted by a state sponsored attack,
Speaker 1: like an attack with a high level of sophistication and
Speaker 1: a high requirement for you know, resources, So something that
Speaker 1: would typically only happen from a hacker group that had
Speaker 1: the backing of some sort of government somewhere in the world. Now, notably,
Speaker 1: all the people who have come forward so far saying
Speaker 1: that they received this alert belong to the opposition party
Speaker 1: in India's parliament. Now, Apple has not identified which state
Speaker 1: may be behind these attacks, and in fact, Apple has
Speaker 1: also said it's possible the alerts could be a false alarm.
Speaker 1: They have not issued that many alerts around the world,
Speaker 1: and they said, you know, this could be something where
Speaker 1: we are being extra defensive, but there's no actual threat. There.
Speaker 1: At least a few of the people who receive the
Speaker 1: message suspect that India's conservative government is actually behind the operation,
Speaker 1: that this is an effort to maintain and extend control
Speaker 1: of the nation in general and to suppress opposition politicians.
Speaker 1: I've talked a lot about how India's government takes a
Speaker 1: really aggressive stance with tech companies when it comes to
Speaker 1: things like allowing people to use various platforms to criticize
Speaker 1: the government. So the implication that opposition leaders could be
Speaker 1: the target of the actual Indian government fits that narrative,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't necessarily mean it's true. It could be,
Speaker 1: but without evidence, you can't really draw a conclusion. Various
Speaker 1: representatives of the majority have argued that those who are
Speaker 1: contacted are overreacting, that they're jumping to conclusions that cannot
Speaker 1: be supported by evidence, and they're just reaching for reasons
Speaker 1: to be outraged at the government. So they're essentially saying
Speaker 1: we're being unfairly targeted by these criticisms. I'm sure more
Speaker 1: well unfold, but it'll be interesting to see how Apple
Speaker 1: navigates this because obviously it's a pretty thorny political situation,
Speaker 1: so we'll have to wait and see. Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: some more tech news items to cover before we conclude
Speaker 1: this episode, but first let's take another quick break. Are
Speaker 1: you ready for some football and by that I mean
Speaker 1: American football? And also were you ready for it last Sunday?
Speaker 1: And if you were, did you find yourself frustrated when
Speaker 1: using YouTube in order to watch football? All right, let
Speaker 1: me back up a bit. So YouTube secured a contract
Speaker 1: to carry the NFL Sunday ticket product that originally was
Speaker 1: with DirectTV. Now it's an add on to the YouTube
Speaker 1: TV service NFL Sunday Ticket gives subscribers the ability to
Speaker 1: tune into the various NFL games, the American football games
Speaker 1: of the National Football League that are playing on any
Speaker 1: given Sunday during football season, regardless of where you happen
Speaker 1: to live. It is a very expensive add on. It
Speaker 1: starts at three hundred and forty nine dollars per year,
Speaker 1: and remember football season doesn't go all year long. This
Speaker 1: is also on top of the YouTube TV subscription, which
Speaker 1: is more than seventy dollars per month, so that starts
Speaker 1: to add up real quick. You sports fans have to
Speaker 1: pay a whole bunch of moulah to watch your stuff.
Speaker 1: I feel like I shouldn't complain about all the different
Speaker 1: streaming services I subscribe to at this point, because yikes. Anyway,
Speaker 1: for the first seven weeks of this current season, YouTube's
Speaker 1: version of the NFL Sunday Tickets seem to be working
Speaker 1: just fine. But this past Sunday users encountered issues with
Speaker 1: lag and buffering times, and for some of the games,
Speaker 1: those issues lasted well into the second half of the game. Understandably,
Speaker 1: a lot of customers are upset. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: paying a premium price for a service, you expect premium
Speaker 1: quality in that service. And yeah, we all understand that
Speaker 1: technical errors can happen, and that systems can and do breakdown.
Speaker 1: That's just a fact of life. But when you're charging
Speaker 1: three three hundred and fifty dollars a season just to
Speaker 1: be able to let people see games on their television
Speaker 1: or computer screen, not even go to a game, but
Speaker 1: just see it at home, there is a certain expectation
Speaker 1: that the service is gonna work as advertised. YouTube posted
Speaker 1: a message indicating that the company was aware of the
Speaker 1: problem and was working on it, but as I was
Speaker 1: writing this episode, it didn't have any further details about
Speaker 1: what actually caused the problem that might be public by
Speaker 1: the time you hear this, but I hadn't seen it
Speaker 1: when I was actually putting the episode together. The game
Speaker 1: company Ubisoft is ending online service for ten of the
Speaker 1: company's titles. That includes Assassin's Creed two, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood,
Speaker 1: and Assassin's Creed Revelations, all three of which were very
Speaker 1: popular titles. This means that the online features for those
Speaker 1: and the seven other games that they announced are just
Speaker 1: not going to work anymore. Those services will no longer
Speaker 1: be active, and that includes stuff like online multiplayer obviously,
Speaker 1: as well as Ubisoft Connect rewards. Those are kind of
Speaker 1: like achievements on Xbox or trophies on PlayStation. Steam also
Speaker 1: has achievements like this. Fortunately, this is not a case
Speaker 1: where the online component means the games become totally unplayable.
Speaker 1: As far as I can tell, gamers should still be
Speaker 1: able to run these games on the hardware that can
Speaker 1: run them because these are older games and still be
Speaker 1: able to play the single player experience. They just won't
Speaker 1: be able to access those online features. But this is
Speaker 1: one of the big reasons I personally do not like
Speaker 1: game companies tying their single player games to some sort
Speaker 1: of online service. Usually it's an online service that's meant
Speaker 1: to verify that the gamer is using a legitimate copy
Speaker 1: of the game and not a pirated copy. And that's
Speaker 1: because if a company decommissions the online component, then the
Speaker 1: game can become unplayable, even if you still have equipment
Speaker 1: that could technically run the game. So I hate when
Speaker 1: game companies tie their titles to some online service that
Speaker 1: doesn't really add to the game itself. It only exists
Speaker 1: to verify the copy of the game, because if that
Speaker 1: service goes offline and they don't offer some sort of patch,
Speaker 1: then the game you purchased is just it's just dead code. Anyway,
Speaker 1: kind of sad to see that that support go away.
Speaker 1: It does make sense, like there is a limited amount
Speaker 1: of resources that a company has to put towards supporting games,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't really make sense to just continually support
Speaker 1: online components in perpetuity to a diminishing audience, right, That
Speaker 1: doesn't make good business sense, So I get it from
Speaker 1: that perspective. You might remember that a few weeks back,
Speaker 1: I talked about how NASA had retrieved a capsule from
Speaker 1: the Osiris REX mission. That's the mission that visited an
Speaker 1: asteroid called Binu, and the spacecraft up collecting soil and
Speaker 1: rock samples from Benu and then swung by Earth jettison
Speaker 1: this capsule, and the capsule landed here on Earth and
Speaker 1: NASA retrieved it. That's good news, but there's also some
Speaker 1: bad news. The bad news is, so far the scientists
Speaker 1: haven't been able to open the capsule. They have collected
Speaker 1: more than seventy grams worth of dust and rocks from
Speaker 1: the outside of the container. But because that dust and
Speaker 1: those rocks were on the outside of the container. That
Speaker 1: means that they've had contact with and thus contamination from
Speaker 1: our dirty, dirty Earth dirt. So you can't really make
Speaker 1: specific scientific conclusions about stuff from outer space if it's
Speaker 1: already been contaminated here on Earth. You don't know what
Speaker 1: elements were just present in the space stuff versus what
Speaker 1: was transferred through that contact. So the real treasure is
Speaker 1: inside the case where those samples have not been contaminated
Speaker 1: by Earth. So the goal is to preserve that status
Speaker 1: and retrieve the samples, then run tests, and that way
Speaker 1: you can at least be pretty sure that the conclusions
Speaker 1: you draw are are firm, that they're well grounded, because
Speaker 1: you know, if you were to say, find organic material
Speaker 1: inside the dust or rocks, then you could say, well,
Speaker 1: we took all the controls necessary to prevent contamination from Earth.
Speaker 1: We found this stuff here that's really interesting and it
Speaker 1: raises a lot more questions. You can't really do that
Speaker 1: if you're not able to maintain that integrity. Unfortunately, two
Speaker 1: of the fasteners on this capsule, they're more than thirty
Speaker 1: fasteners in total, but two of them are firmly shut
Speaker 1: and cannot be removed with the tools that NASA had
Speaker 1: previously approved for the retrieval operation, So that means that
Speaker 1: we have to wait while researchers work on the problem
Speaker 1: and figure out an alternative to accessing the material inside
Speaker 1: the capsule, one that will maintain that integrity. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that they won't come up with it. In fact,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they will come up with it, but it
Speaker 1: will delay things a little bit because they have to
Speaker 1: make sure that they're still keeping things as secure as
Speaker 1: they possibly can. So we do still expect to get
Speaker 1: into that capsule and to eventually be able to check
Speaker 1: out those space rocks. It's just going to take a
Speaker 1: little bit longer to come up with a way to
Speaker 1: do it that keeps them preserved properly. Now that's it
Speaker 1: for the stories, but I do have one press release
Speaker 1: and one article to recommend for y'all for further reading today.
Speaker 1: So on the press release side, the US Securities Exchange
Speaker 1: Commission stated that it has filed fraud charges against the
Speaker 1: company Solar Winds, as well as the company's chief information
Speaker 1: security officer. Now you might remember that Solar Winds is
Speaker 1: the company that was behind the Orion software that thousands
Speaker 1: of large companies and government agencies use and that hackers
Speaker 1: were able to compromise the Orian software and through updates
Speaker 1: that were pushed out by Solar Winds itself, they were
Speaker 1: subsequently able to infect target computer systems, thousands of them.
Speaker 1: It was one of the largest known cybersecurity breaches of
Speaker 1: all time, and it raised awareness of a type of
Speaker 1: malware strategy called a supply chain attack. Anyway, the fraud
Speaker 1: charges are complicated, and I'm sure it'll necessitate like a
Speaker 1: full episode on the topic to give a full update,
Speaker 1: but for the time being, I recommend y'all read up
Speaker 1: on that press release. You can find it at SEC
Speaker 1: dot gov and look for the press release about Solar Winds.
Speaker 1: As for an article recommendation, Lindsey Clark of The Register
Speaker 1: has a piece titled tech still cling to sexist stereotypes
Speaker 1: forgetting female pioneers who coded their path Now, I cannot
Speaker 1: say that this story surprises me, which makes me sad.
Speaker 1: I wish I could say it surprised me and still
Speaker 1: made me sad, but I wasn't surprised, and that was
Speaker 1: really sad. It's a reminder that the tech industry in general,
Speaker 1: and really the whole tech bro culture in particular, is
Speaker 1: often an unwelcome or downright hostile environment for women and
Speaker 1: really for anyone who doesn't identify as male, and it
Speaker 1: reminds us that we wouldn't be where we are today
Speaker 1: in the tech world without contributions of people who do
Speaker 1: not identify as male, of women, and of non binary
Speaker 1: people who have made incredible contributions to tech. Some of
Speaker 1: the greatest innovators in tech who built the foundations of
Speaker 1: computer science were women, Grace Hopper and even further back,
Speaker 1: a Lovelace, for goodness sakes, people who were true visionaries
Speaker 1: when it comes to technology. And yet we still have
Speaker 1: this environment that denigrates women and dismisses their contributions and achievements.
Speaker 1: It's unfortunate and sadly, again not surprising, but I do
Speaker 1: recommend reading that article again. That's in the Register. It's
Speaker 1: called tech Bros still cling to sexist stereotypes. You can
Speaker 1: check that out. That's it for today. I wish you
Speaker 1: all a happy Halloween. I hope you are you encounter
Speaker 1: endless treats and very few tricks, and I hope you're
Speaker 1: also all doing well. And I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Y tech stuff is an iHeart radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.