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

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

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. First of all, of

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Speaker 1: this episode sounds at all different. It's Tori's fault. I'm

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Speaker 1: in the studio today, but I'm using my normal microphone

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Speaker 1: for home recording. But it may mean that it sounds

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Speaker 1: a little different. Tarry, by the way, is also here.

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Speaker 1: She's um She's waving and blowing kisses to all of

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Speaker 1: you because she loves you so much. That might not

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Speaker 1: be true, but there are definitely some hand gestures. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: let's get to the tech news for Thursday, July twenty two,

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Speaker 1: two thousand, twenty one. Earlier today, you might have had

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Speaker 1: some problems using certain websites or web based services. For example,

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Speaker 1: Delta Airlines customers found they couldn't use online check in

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Speaker 1: for a while. Amazon customers were having trouble connecting to

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Speaker 1: that site. Gamers saw the PlayStation network and Steam were

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Speaker 1: down as well. So what the heck happened? Well, it

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Speaker 1: appears that fault lies with part of acamize system. Now

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Speaker 1: acam I is a c d N. Also, I could

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Speaker 1: be mispronouncing it. It's a K A m AI, but

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Speaker 1: it's a c d N that's a content delivery network.

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Speaker 1: So as that name implies a com I is in

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Speaker 1: the business of facilitating the movement of data across networks

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Speaker 1: to customers. C d n's address an issue that we

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Speaker 1: just can't otherwise get around, and that's the fact that

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Speaker 1: the further you are away from a computer like a server.

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Speaker 1: Let's say that you're trying to connect to a specific website. Well,

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Speaker 1: the further away you are from that that server, the

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Speaker 1: longer it's going to take for signals to pass between

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Speaker 1: you and that server. And if the service you're trying

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Speaker 1: to access is one that requires fast response, like maybe

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Speaker 1: it's a streaming video game or something, that could be

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Speaker 1: a problem. So if you want to access a specific

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Speaker 1: companies services and that company happens to be located in

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Speaker 1: Washington State, but you live in the state of Florida,

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Speaker 1: which is all the way on the opposite side of

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Speaker 1: you know, America, then you might have some delays. If

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Speaker 1: your computer and the company's servers had to communicate across

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Speaker 1: the entire country, you'd run into lag and that's where

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Speaker 1: c d ends come in. They are essentially huge server

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Speaker 1: farms located in specific geographic areas, and they function as

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Speaker 1: a faster way to deliver Internet content. They're kind of

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Speaker 1: like um mirrors of existing content. So instead of having

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Speaker 1: to transmit you know, that episode of Modern Love across

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Speaker 1: the entire United States, a c d N with the

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Speaker 1: Modern Love content can step in closer to home. C

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Speaker 1: d n s can also provide other services. They can

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Speaker 1: act as a layer of protection against malicious attacks from hackers,

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Speaker 1: liked DOS attacks, distributed denial of service attacks, and most

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Speaker 1: of the time everything's just working fine and people are

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Speaker 1: able to access services like Netflix or PlayStation games or

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Speaker 1: whatever without a problem. But sometimes stuff goes wrong, and

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Speaker 1: that's what happened today. Akama says that it was an

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Speaker 1: emerging issue with its Edge DNS service, but as I'm

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Speaker 1: recording this, it appears that the company's engineers have resolved

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Speaker 1: the problem. It's just a reminder that there's always a

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Speaker 1: point of failure in a given system, and sometimes that

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Speaker 1: point of failure can be one that affects a lot

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Speaker 1: of other systems. However, I have to take my hat

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Speaker 1: off to those engineers who fix the problem relatively quickly.

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Speaker 1: That's really impressive. You know, it really stinks when these

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Speaker 1: things happen, but it's it's incredible to see how quickly

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Speaker 1: people can respond and get things back on track, because

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's a big issue. Now. In an early episode,

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Speaker 1: I mentioned that President Biden here in the United States

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Speaker 1: issued an executive order that urged the Federal Trade Commission,

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Speaker 1: or FTC, to look into the issue of the right

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Speaker 1: to repair. Just in case you're not familiar with that term,

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Speaker 1: that refers to stripping away the layers that companies will

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Speaker 1: put in place that can discourage or outright prevent users

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Speaker 1: from making their own repairs or going to an independent

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Speaker 1: repair service, and instead they might put in layers that

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Speaker 1: force those users to go to a corporate approved service company.

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Speaker 1: And this can apply to everything from basic consumer electronics

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Speaker 1: all the way up to things like giant tractors for agriculture.

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Speaker 1: And this is a really big deal for people who

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Speaker 1: either don't want to be tied down to a specific

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Speaker 1: ecosystem or those who might not have easy access to

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Speaker 1: corporate approved services or both. The FTC now says that

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Speaker 1: the organization will step up law enforcement actions against companies

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Speaker 1: that are engaged in quote illegal repair restrictions end quote.

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Speaker 1: According to the site x d A. Now what constitutes

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Speaker 1: illegal repair restrictions, Well, if it's part of an anti

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Speaker 1: competitive strategy, it could violate the Sherman Act that deals

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Speaker 1: with the issues of monopolies and anti competitiveness. And there

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Speaker 1: are other laws that can play a role as well,

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Speaker 1: And I may have to do a full episode about

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Speaker 1: that at some point, because frankly, I am not that

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Speaker 1: well read up on these laws, because let's get real,

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Speaker 1: until really recently, no one was looking into enforcing those laws,

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Speaker 1: so they weren't really playing a part. But I think

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Speaker 1: that this is really encouraging. As the FDC points out,

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Speaker 1: the denial of the right to repair leads to a

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Speaker 1: lot of wastefulness, uh, And that can go from anything

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Speaker 1: from the amount of time it takes for you to

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Speaker 1: actually go to a company approved maintenance area to just

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Speaker 1: throwing something away and buying a new one because you

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Speaker 1: can't be bothered to take it to get repaired. None

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Speaker 1: of those are really good things, So I think this

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Speaker 1: might be a good move in general. In a different

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Speaker 1: earlier episode, I talked a bit about the backlash against

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Speaker 1: audacity that's the free to download audio recording and editing

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Speaker 1: software that folks like yours truly use when recording podcasts

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Speaker 1: from home. It's what I'm actually using right now instead

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Speaker 1: of using our studios recording system because Tari won't let

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Speaker 1: me do that anyway. Uh oh, look she's blowing more kisses.

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Speaker 1: She's just so loving to a all right, anyway. A

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Speaker 1: while back, there was this company called Muse or the

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Speaker 1: Muse Group now that acquired Audacity and then released a

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Speaker 1: version with some new privacy policies that raised a lot

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Speaker 1: of eyebrows because those policies included data collection, uh policies

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Speaker 1: and meaning data collected from users, and we're talking about

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Speaker 1: a lot of data that could potentially be used with

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Speaker 1: conjunction with with law enforcement. So it raised a lot

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Speaker 1: of big questions about privacy and legality, and it led

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Speaker 1: to a backlash in which some Audacity users were proposing

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Speaker 1: that they develop a forked version of Audacity, to go

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Speaker 1: back to an earlier version of Audacity and develop for

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Speaker 1: that as an independent program in order to avoid the

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Speaker 1: issues that they were seeing based on this updated privacy

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Speaker 1: policy from the quote unquote real Audacity. That is not

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Speaker 1: a great thing for the new owners to hear. I mean,

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Speaker 1: if customers are saying they're gonna go and make their

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Speaker 1: own version of your product just to avoid your policies,

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Speaker 1: that's tough. Now Audacity has a new new privacy policy

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Speaker 1: and it removes the sections that were causing the concern.

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Speaker 1: So in a message to users, Audacity said the following

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Speaker 1: quote phrasing has been adjusted to remove ambiguity or aid

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Speaker 1: in transparency, in particular that we do not collect any

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Speaker 1: additional information for law enforcement or any other purpose. We

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Speaker 1: have explained the purpose of the two networking features, error

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Speaker 1: reporting and update checking. We have removed the provision that

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Speaker 1: discourages children under thirteen years old from using Audacity. We

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Speaker 1: have taken steps to ensure that we never store a

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Speaker 1: full IP address we now truncated before hashing or discarded entirely,

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Speaker 1: and have reflected this change in the privacy policy document.

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Speaker 1: We have made some changes to how we process error

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Speaker 1: reports to ensure that we never store any potentially identifiable information. Further,

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Speaker 1: they explained that any version of Audacity from three point

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Speaker 1: zero point two or earlier has no networking capability at all,

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Speaker 1: meaning there's no way for the company to collect any

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Speaker 1: data from people who are using those versions of audacity.

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Speaker 1: Whether all this is going to be enough to calm

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Speaker 1: the critics remains to be seen, but it feels like

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Speaker 1: it's at least the right thing to do. We've got

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Speaker 1: some more news to report on, but before I get

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Speaker 1: to that, let's take a quick break. We're back. The

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Speaker 1: state of California has filed a lawsuit against the video

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Speaker 1: game developer and publisher Activision Blizzard, alleging that the company

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Speaker 1: has a culture of harassment that makes the company a

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Speaker 1: hostile work environment, particularly for women. In fact, the lawsuit

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Speaker 1: alleges that there is a quote pervasive frat boy end

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Speaker 1: quote culture there, and y'all, that phrasing definitely conjures up

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Speaker 1: some negative images in my mind. But then you have

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Speaker 1: to understand I went to college at the University of

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Speaker 1: Georgia in the mid to late nineties, and the frats

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Speaker 1: there were literally the worst. Like they made the news,

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Speaker 1: that's how bad they were. Anyway, The allegations include lots

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Speaker 1: of really despicable charges, everything from women being groped and

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Speaker 1: otherwise assaulted, to women receiving far less pay for doing

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Speaker 1: the same jobs as men, to one case where apparently

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Speaker 1: an executive reportedly delegated his work to a female direct

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Speaker 1: report so that he could play call of duty. Gross.

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Speaker 1: Now I should add that the company says these charges

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Speaker 1: are actually relating to the past, and that the Activision

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Speaker 1: Blizzard company of today does not reflect this image. In

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Speaker 1: other words, they're saying, yeah, things used to be bad,

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Speaker 1: but we have taken great strides to fix them, and

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Speaker 1: we take this seriously. In fact, the company representatives have

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Speaker 1: said that every charge is taken seriously and the company

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Speaker 1: has made substantive moves to really change corporate culture. Now,

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Speaker 1: I am sure that a more complete story will come

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Speaker 1: out in court, assuming that this actually goes that far,

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Speaker 1: and maybe we will hear whether or not the representatives

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Speaker 1: are accurate right whether or not this this toxic culture

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Speaker 1: still exists. It appears to at least have existed. But

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Speaker 1: the question is is that how things are now. I

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Speaker 1: honestly don't know what to believe. I don't know anyone

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Speaker 1: at that company, so I have no idea if it

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Speaker 1: has changed significantly or if it's still a hostile work environment.

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Speaker 1: But I will keep an eye on this story as

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Speaker 1: it develops. One technology that tends to come up and

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Speaker 1: conversation about the future is weather control. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: know that Cobra Commander was really obsessed with it. But

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Speaker 1: when we get to the realities of tech and the weather,

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Speaker 1: our understanding of how we can affect whether it gets

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Speaker 1: a little bit wibbly wobbly. For years, people have attempted

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Speaker 1: to seed clouds to induce rain over drought, and the

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Speaker 1: question then pops up does that actually work? Which is

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Speaker 1: actually kind of hard to say because it's difficult to

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Speaker 1: test these things because it either rains or it doesn't

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Speaker 1: rain after you seed the clouds. And if it does rain,

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Speaker 1: then can you be sure that it would not have

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Speaker 1: rained if you hadn't seeded the clouds? Like was the

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Speaker 1: cloud seeding the thing that actually made it rain or

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Speaker 1: was it going to rain anyway? Now, long term studies

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Speaker 1: suggest that cloud seating is effective, like there there have

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Speaker 1: been studies of snow packs over the course of several

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Speaker 1: years that suggests that there is greater precipitation in years

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Speaker 1: when cloud seeding was actually performed. But it's just, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's one of those things it's very hard to see.

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Speaker 1: In the short term. However, the United Arab Emirates is

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Speaker 1: using a slightly different approach to the typical cloud seeding approach.

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Speaker 1: The U A E is going to zap clouds with

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Speaker 1: electricity to see if that makes it rain. So they're

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Speaker 1: gonna be using drones to do this, and the idea

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Speaker 1: is to actually create an electric charge on droplets of

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Speaker 1: water that encourages the droplets to bind together. And as

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Speaker 1: these droplets bind together, they're gonna they're gonna grow larger,

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Speaker 1: They're gonna grow heavier and potentially heavy enough to fall

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Speaker 1: his rain. Assuming this all works, which actually sounds pretty

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Speaker 1: plausible to me at least, so I'll be very eager

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Speaker 1: to see how this turns out. Though I should say

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Speaker 1: I am a bit disappointed because I originally imagined that

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Speaker 1: these drones were gonna fly up there and threatened clouds

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Speaker 1: with electric shocks unless they would go ahead and rain

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Speaker 1: and to ns out, that's not how that works, so

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Speaker 1: that's a bummer. Finally, if you've listened to tech stuff

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Speaker 1: for a while, you have certainly heard me talk about

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Speaker 1: an electric vehicle company called Faraday Future, and not for

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Speaker 1: necessarily positive reasons. I first learned about this company when

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Speaker 1: I saw a concept model of an electric sports car

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Speaker 1: at C E s way back in t and that

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Speaker 1: concept looked super cool. It was one of those like,

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Speaker 1: you know, gasp moments when you're walking the floor. It

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Speaker 1: was extremely popular. Lots of people taking video and pictures

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Speaker 1: of that thing. The company was this upstart ev producer

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Speaker 1: that was taking shape in California and Nevada, and then

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Speaker 1: news about weird stuff relating to this company began to

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Speaker 1: pop up. The company founder had a different company back

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Speaker 1: in China, that's where he's from, and that company was

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Speaker 1: apparently in die or straits. It was starting to fail,

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Speaker 1: and the Chinese government was extremely eager to have this

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Speaker 1: founder come back to China and settle up with his creditors.

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Speaker 1: The founder was extremely eager to not do that thing,

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Speaker 1: because you know, answering for issues in China can sometimes

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Speaker 1: be a pretty serious thing. So he also allegedly spent

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Speaker 1: a lot of the company money as if it was

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Speaker 1: his own personal bank account. There were a lot of

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Speaker 1: at least perceived possible misuses of corporate funds. Things were

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Speaker 1: not really looking on the up and up, in other words,

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Speaker 1: so there were a lot of questions about whether Faraday

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Speaker 1: would ever be able to produce a consumer vehicle. Because

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Speaker 1: spoiler alert. So far it has not, and it all

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Speaker 1: got very dramatic. And now it's time to add another

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Speaker 1: bit of drama to this story because now Faraday Future

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Speaker 1: is a publicly traded company. The same organization SHAN that

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Speaker 1: was teetering on the brink of implosion is now publicly traded.

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Speaker 1: So you would be well justified in asking how the

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Speaker 1: heck could this happen? How could it go from almost

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Speaker 1: falling apart to becoming a publicly traded company. H And

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Speaker 1: by the way, that move of becoming publicly traded added

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Speaker 1: like a billion dollars to the company's coffers, so that

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Speaker 1: is incredibly significant. Well, it's because of a little thing

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Speaker 1: called a SPACK or sp A C. And by a

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Speaker 1: little thing, I mean a big thing. So a SPACK

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Speaker 1: is a special purpose acquisition company. And this is kind

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Speaker 1: of a work around for companies that want to go

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Speaker 1: public but would otherwise have trouble with an initial public

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Speaker 1: offering or i p O. And we've seen lots of

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Speaker 1: stories about companies that had to back off and rethink

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Speaker 1: their approach to an i p O, you know, like

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Speaker 1: Uber companies that at one point we're really bullish about

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Speaker 1: having an I P O. And then something happens and

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Speaker 1: it kind of throws a monkey wrench into the works. Well,

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Speaker 1: here's how a spack works. You get some investors and

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Speaker 1: they create a company that does nothing. It's it's like

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Speaker 1: like the old joke on Seinfeld. I mean, it literally

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Speaker 1: is a company that does nothing except exist to pool resources.

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Speaker 1: So the company that does nothing, you know, goes public

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Speaker 1: and then this newly publicly traded company uses the assets

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Speaker 1: that it has that otherwise are doing nothing to acquire

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Speaker 1: the target company, you know, the one that would not

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Speaker 1: be able to hold an I p O on its own.

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Speaker 1: So Faraday Future never would have gotten an i p

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Speaker 1: O off the ground, not not with the way the

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Speaker 1: company has been mismanaged and miss run for the last

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Speaker 1: several years. But by creating essentially a shell company that

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Speaker 1: then can be publicly traded and use that company to

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Speaker 1: purchase Faraday futures, that suddenly means that Faraday Future, by extension,

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Speaker 1: is publicly traded. Kind of seems like a like almost

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Speaker 1: like a bait and switch, but it's totally illegal. It's

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Speaker 1: something that can actually happen without any you know, legal

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Speaker 1: implications whatsoever. Now along the way through this process, as

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Speaker 1: this spack acquired Faraday Future and made it a publicly

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Speaker 1: traded company. The founder of Faraday Future effectively surrendered control.

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Speaker 1: So today things are very different from how they were

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Speaker 1: in years past. But does this mean that Faraday Future

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Speaker 1: is on track to actually produce electric vehicles after years

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Speaker 1: of languishing in a melodramatic mess of financial shenanigans. Well,

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Speaker 1: the plan is to get things up and running so

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Speaker 1: that the company can release an suv electric vehicle sometime

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Speaker 1: by the end of next year. We'll see if that happened.

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Speaker 1: I think some skepticism is warranted, but I would actually

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Speaker 1: love to see the company deliver upon that initial promise

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Speaker 1: I first encountered back in two thousand sixteen at c

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Speaker 1: E S. I don't want to see a company fail.

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Speaker 1: It's just, you know, my skepticism is up only because really,

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Speaker 1: if you look into the history of Faraday Future, and

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Speaker 1: I've got I've got an episode about it, a couple

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Speaker 1: of them, you start to see where there's enough history

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Speaker 1: of shenanigans going on there to make anyone feel a

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Speaker 1: little cautious. But that is it for this episode of

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Speaker 1: tech Stuff. That is the news for Thursday, July twenty

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Speaker 1: two one. I hope you are all well. If you

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Speaker 1: have any suggestions for topics I should cover in future

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Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. The

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Speaker 1: best way to do that is over on Twitter. The

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Speaker 1: handle we use for the show is tech Stuff hs

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Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. M

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

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Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,

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