Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a lot of all things tech. And this is
Speaker 1: the tech news for Thursday, September nine, twenty one. And
Speaker 1: before I jump into the news, I want to address
Speaker 1: something I said earlier this week about political groups using
Speaker 1: pressure to gain data from various companies, you know, companies
Speaker 1: like telecommunications companies or internet service providers or social media platforms, etcetera. Uh,
Speaker 1: specifically data about and belonging to other politicians. A lot
Speaker 1: of folks reached out to me and made some really
Speaker 1: good points, you know, kind of in opposition to what
Speaker 1: I was saying. I spent a lot of time thinking
Speaker 1: about my perspective and I tried to really critically analyze it,
Speaker 1: and just as a reminder, I said that generally I
Speaker 1: am against the idea of politicians doing this because I
Speaker 1: feel it can lead to a situation in which whatever
Speaker 1: political party happens to be in power can use that
Speaker 1: kind of leverage to disempower the other party, and that
Speaker 1: is fundamentally antithetical to the democratic process. However, I also
Speaker 1: have to acknowledge that if there is a criminal investigation
Speaker 1: and if there's a sufficient evidence to support a subpoena,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't just make a subpoena, you have
Speaker 1: to file for one and get a court appointed subpoena.
Speaker 1: If that is the case, then investigators should exercise that
Speaker 1: to look at data and see what it holds with
Speaker 1: regard to a crime, and that telecommunications companies and I
Speaker 1: s p s and whatnot should obey subpoenas if those
Speaker 1: subpoenas are legally valid. I'm still wary of this sort
Speaker 1: of approach snowballing beyond situations that appear to be justified,
Speaker 1: Like we were talking about the January six insurrection. That's
Speaker 1: a very high stakes, specific situation. But as we all know,
Speaker 1: justifications can get pretty loosey goosey as time goes on.
Speaker 1: So like once you start to chip away it's stuff
Speaker 1: you've got to be super careful or or you know,
Speaker 1: the whole damn breaks and you get flooded. But under
Speaker 1: very controlled circumstances, I think seeking out that information can
Speaker 1: be valid if if all those processes are followed. I
Speaker 1: just worry that we'll lose a grip on those controls.
Speaker 1: By the way, just full disclosure. It is not easy
Speaker 1: for me to amend my thoughts because, like a lot
Speaker 1: of folks, when I form an opinion, I'm loath to
Speaker 1: change it. But critical thinking says I need to resist
Speaker 1: that urge, and sometimes I actually managed to do that,
Speaker 1: probably not nearly as frequently as I should, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to get that all the way first. Now, let's
Speaker 1: go on to the news in Israel. Hacker using the
Speaker 1: handle Sung Council, and I apologize. I'm sure I've mispronounced
Speaker 1: that claims to have stolen personal information from seven million Israeli's. Now,
Speaker 1: if like me, you wondered how many people live in Israel,
Speaker 1: a quick search tells you it's a little more than
Speaker 1: nine million. It's like almost nine and a half million.
Speaker 1: But if this claim is true, then that means the
Speaker 1: hacker got access to the personal information of nearly everyone
Speaker 1: in Israel. The hacker says that they targeted a website
Speaker 1: called City for You. That's c I t Y the
Speaker 1: number for and the letter you, and Israel uses that
Speaker 1: as sort of a payment processing utility, so folks can
Speaker 1: pay stuff like fines or bills and their taxes through
Speaker 1: this site. The hacker has shared images of documents that
Speaker 1: they claimed to have stolen from this website and included
Speaker 1: documentation with like personal details like like I D Cards
Speaker 1: and tax bill. Is that kind of thing? The hacker
Speaker 1: says that they want to sell this data off to
Speaker 1: interest ad buyers on the black market. Uh. The National
Speaker 1: Cyber Directorate meanwhile, says that they don't think this is
Speaker 1: a legit claim. They say that they believe these documents
Speaker 1: that the hacker has released actually come from an older
Speaker 1: document leak, and that it's unlikely the hacker has actually
Speaker 1: stolen that much data. But that's all the information I
Speaker 1: have as of right now. Several news outlets report that
Speaker 1: Los Angeles police officers have been directed to ask people
Speaker 1: to hand over social media details and have been doing
Speaker 1: so for years, and that includes stuff like the handles
Speaker 1: that people use online, and that was whenever the police
Speaker 1: stopped anyone, even if that person wasn't a suspect of
Speaker 1: any sort of crime. So a cops stops someone in
Speaker 1: l A and then asks them to reveal their social
Speaker 1: media handles, which seems weird right, also a little invasive,
Speaker 1: and the only reason we even know about This officially
Speaker 1: is because a nonprofit New York University agency called the
Speaker 1: Brennan Center for Justice filed a request under California's Public
Speaker 1: Records Act and wanted to learn how the l a
Speaker 1: p D uses social media as a means to monitor
Speaker 1: and conduct surveillance on people. The l a p D
Speaker 1: declined to acquiesce to that request, so the agency brought
Speaker 1: the matter to the California Superior Court, at which point
Speaker 1: the l a p D said it's a fair cup
Speaker 1: and handed over the information, which included around six thousand
Speaker 1: pages of documentation. And this practice appears to have been
Speaker 1: in place for several years, like I mentioned, with cops
Speaker 1: regularly collecting social media information presumably for the purposes of surveillance,
Speaker 1: and again that was for everyone, whether or not they
Speaker 1: were suspected of being involved in a crime. The documentation
Speaker 1: also showed that the l a p D had been
Speaker 1: monitoring specific hashtags for activity on social media, such as
Speaker 1: black Lives Matter. Once again we see how the combination
Speaker 1: of our social interactions online and a surveillance state can
Speaker 1: converge into a pretty nasty horror show of a scenario. Anyway,
Speaker 1: fun times when it comes to talking about misinformation and
Speaker 1: disinformation online. I usually end up talking about Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and YouTube, but US Senator Elizabeth Warren has issue with
Speaker 1: Amazon's role in the matter as well. Warren says that
Speaker 1: her staff, while searching for materials about COVID nineteen and
Speaker 1: vaccines on Amazon, received results that included books dedicated to
Speaker 1: spreading falsehoods about those issues, and Warren wrote, quote, as
Speaker 1: cases of COVID nineteen continue to rise, Amazon is feeding
Speaker 1: misinformation loops through its search and best seller algorithms, potentially
Speaker 1: leading countless Americans to risk their health and the health
Speaker 1: of their neighbors based on misleading and inaccurate information that
Speaker 1: they discover on Amazon's website end quote. Warren's office is
Speaker 1: asking Amazon to view its recommendation algorithm and to weed
Speaker 1: out dangerous misinformation. The company has yet to reply as
Speaker 1: of the recording of this podcast. Microsoft, in a move
Speaker 1: that I think is pretty wise, has decided to postpone
Speaker 1: indefinitely a return to the Microsoft headquarters in Washington State.
Speaker 1: This postponement also applies to Microsoft's other offices around the
Speaker 1: United States, and the reason, of course, is the ongoing
Speaker 1: pandemic and the dangers of COVID nineteen Originally, the company
Speaker 1: had planned for employees to come back to the office
Speaker 1: by October four, but now there is no return date
Speaker 1: in place, which is probably for the best because things
Speaker 1: are changing so quickly, it really saves time having to
Speaker 1: push those return dates around. In fact, company executives have
Speaker 1: said that the uncertainty around COVID nineteen is precisely why
Speaker 1: they won't set a new target return date. Further, they
Speaker 1: said that when that time does come, when they do
Speaker 1: feel confident that they can go back to the office,
Speaker 1: employees will have a month long transition period to readjust
Speaker 1: for that reality. Now we've seen several tech companies shift
Speaker 1: their expected return dates. Google, Apple, Facebook, and others all
Speaker 1: planned to return earlier, you know, this year and into
Speaker 1: the fall, but now most of them have pushed that
Speaker 1: back to twenty twenty two. One other bit of Microsoft
Speaker 1: related news, the company has announced that it is updating
Speaker 1: it's Microsoft Teams product, which is a virtual meeting software solution,
Speaker 1: and the update will incorporate Teams features into car Play.
Speaker 1: That's the Apple standard that let's say Vehicles Entertainment System
Speaker 1: act as the user interface for an iOS device, So
Speaker 1: you pair your iPhone with your car's entertainment system. Then
Speaker 1: you can control your iPhone through the car system. Now,
Speaker 1: this means that if you do have an iOS device
Speaker 1: with Microsoft Teams installed on it, and if you're connected
Speaker 1: via car Play to your car, you'll be able to
Speaker 1: join in Microsoft Teams meetings from the comfort of your
Speaker 1: car seat, uh in a very sameless way. You can
Speaker 1: even use Siri to do it. This feature only supports
Speaker 1: audio mode, so folks will not see video of you
Speaker 1: as you do mad drifts around the street corners with
Speaker 1: the fam. Microsoft also announced several other updates Teams that
Speaker 1: do not involve vehicles, such as additional features the team's
Speaker 1: mobile app to make it easier to access chat and
Speaker 1: the Microsoft white Board. Today, Facebook and ray Ban introduced
Speaker 1: some smart glasses called ray Ban Stories. They cost two
Speaker 1: hundred and nine dollars eight princely some so what do
Speaker 1: they do? While? They've got to five megapixel cameras built
Speaker 1: into the frames, one at either corner on the outside
Speaker 1: the eyes. They have speakers built into the stems on
Speaker 1: the frames so you can listen to audio from a
Speaker 1: connected device. They've got a physical button that you can
Speaker 1: use to take photos or record videos, or you can
Speaker 1: use voice commands to activate the cameras. They do not
Speaker 1: have any sort of in lens display, so these glasses
Speaker 1: are not capable of providing any sort of augmented reality experience.
Speaker 1: Nor can you see the photos that you've just taken
Speaker 1: with the glasses themselves. To do that, you will need
Speaker 1: to use a connected phone and open up an app
Speaker 1: called Facebook View, which is kind of like a simple
Speaker 1: photo camera roll app. And these don't sound that different
Speaker 1: from the Snapchat glasses we saw a while back, but
Speaker 1: I do have to admit that these glasses look like
Speaker 1: you know, sunglasses. They don't look clunky or anything like that.
Speaker 1: So if you have a need for glasses that will
Speaker 1: let you take photos without using your hands, I guess
Speaker 1: these could fit the bill for a lot of us.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure there's a strong use case. Maybe if
Speaker 1: I were wearing these and going kayaking or something, I
Speaker 1: could use the glasses to take photos and I could
Speaker 1: leave my phone behind so I don't have to worry about,
Speaker 1: you know, dunking it in the water. Although the glasses
Speaker 1: are also not waterproof, They're not meant to get wet,
Speaker 1: but the glasses can hold up to around five those
Speaker 1: or are somewhere around ten to twelve thirty second video
Speaker 1: clips before you would need to offload them from the
Speaker 1: glasses into some other device, and they connect via WiFi
Speaker 1: to authorized devices and then they synchronize using that Facebook
Speaker 1: View app I was talking about. So from the description
Speaker 1: I read, it sounds like you could use them to
Speaker 1: take photos without being directly connected to some other device.
Speaker 1: That makes them different from some other gadgets that I've used,
Speaker 1: where they were kind of conduits for your smartphone. Uh.
Speaker 1: They sound interesting, but I don't think I'll be putting
Speaker 1: them on my holiday wish list. We've got some more
Speaker 1: stories to cover, but before we get to that, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. We're back and we're going to
Speaker 1: talk some more about Facebook and organization in the UK
Speaker 1: called Global Witnesses accusing Facebook of being negligent when it
Speaker 1: comes to making certain that's advertising platform is not using
Speaker 1: discriminatory targeting of advertising to users. Now, that's essentially to
Speaker 1: say that Facebook was not stopping companies from breaking equality
Speaker 1: laws by specifically targeting some subgroups while specifically excluding others,
Speaker 1: particularly in the job category. The group did an experiment
Speaker 1: to see what kind of advertisements might be shown to
Speaker 1: different types of people, and in that experiment they found
Speaker 1: that for certain categories of products or services, nearly all
Speaker 1: the ads would be shown to one gender or the other. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if it was an ad for a mechanic,
Speaker 1: it was almost a guarantee that that ad would only
Speaker 1: be displayed to a male Facebook user. If it were
Speaker 1: a nursery nurse, it would almost be guaranteed it would
Speaker 1: only be shown to a female Facebook user. In another experiment,
Speaker 1: the group sent two job ads to Facebook, with one
Speaker 1: of the ads saying Facebook should not show that ad
Speaker 1: to women, and the other saying that Facebook should not
Speaker 1: show that add to anyone older than Facebook did approve
Speaker 1: both of those ads. However, it also sent back a
Speaker 1: little message to the group to Global Witness, saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: you need to acknowledge that you promise you won't discriminate
Speaker 1: against these groups by taking this little box. However, if
Speaker 1: Facebook actually was only showing the ad to, you know,
Speaker 1: the people that were designated by Global Witness, then it
Speaker 1: sounds to me like you can't avoid discrimination. Like just
Speaker 1: the very nature of the fact that you have limited
Speaker 1: the ad so that you know certain groups can't see it.
Speaker 1: That seems at least that it's facilitating discrimination. Now, whether
Speaker 1: this escalates to UK government action remains to be seen. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the Australian government continues to make decisions that I think
Speaker 1: are ill advised. I talked about the Surveillance Bill earlier
Speaker 1: this week that would allow law enforcement to potentially alter
Speaker 1: a person's online posts without their consent. But now I
Speaker 1: want to talk about something else. A decision that was
Speaker 1: made by the Australian High Court that's kind of like
Speaker 1: the U. S. Supreme Court. That court found that Facebook
Speaker 1: users can be held liable for content posted by people
Speaker 1: who are commenting on their posts. So if you were
Speaker 1: to post something on Facebook, let's say it's even something
Speaker 1: that's just a goofy meme, it's totally harmless, and then
Speaker 1: someone else leaves a comment that includes like a threat
Speaker 1: or libelous content, then you could be held responsible for
Speaker 1: the post of that person because, according to the court,
Speaker 1: you're effectively a publisher from that moment forward. Your original
Speaker 1: post is a publication platform, so someone leaving a comment
Speaker 1: is being published through you, and as a publisher, you
Speaker 1: can be held liable for the stuff they post without
Speaker 1: your control. At least, if I'm understanding this, correctly. That's
Speaker 1: how it goes now. To be fair, this whole thing
Speaker 1: was really more about news media outlets and their Facebook
Speaker 1: pages posting content and then not modoring the moments that
Speaker 1: were left under that content. But the implications extend well
Speaker 1: beyond those companies, Like you could see how this could
Speaker 1: quickly become a true nightmare in other news, Twitter is
Speaker 1: starting a rollout of a new feature called Communities. I
Speaker 1: say it's new, but it sounds like this particular feature
Speaker 1: has actually languished in development at Twitter for half a decade.
Speaker 1: The ideas that you can create a community of users
Speaker 1: focused on a particular subject, like I don't know, the
Speaker 1: Marvel Cinematic Universe. Okay, you've got a Marvel Cinematic Universe
Speaker 1: Twitter community as so you can apply to Twitter to
Speaker 1: create the community. You can't just make it yourself, at
Speaker 1: least not right now. And then once it's created, folks
Speaker 1: can join that community, and then you can tweet to
Speaker 1: that community in particular, and you spare everyone else who
Speaker 1: follows you all of your endless theories about how Mephisto
Speaker 1: is most definitely going to end up being the one
Speaker 1: who is responsible for all the bad stuff going on
Speaker 1: in the m c U these days. Now, I actually
Speaker 1: applied to create a community around tech so that I
Speaker 1: can send tech related takes there and anyone who follows
Speaker 1: me just for my dad jokes or pictures of my dog,
Speaker 1: Tiblet can be spared. All the talk about the Hoosts
Speaker 1: and Watsons galore. I'm not sure if this feature is
Speaker 1: actually gonna drive more engagement on Twitter. That's something that
Speaker 1: the company has really been concerned with, because, you know,
Speaker 1: Twitter adoption has really leveled off, so in order for
Speaker 1: the company to show value, it needs to drive more engagement.
Speaker 1: Twitter has previously launched features that didn't catch on in
Speaker 1: the platform later abandoned them. So we'll have to see
Speaker 1: and I'll let you know if they approve my request
Speaker 1: to create that community. And finally, some quick stories to
Speaker 1: end out today's episode, The James Webb Space Telescope has
Speaker 1: a new launch date. If all goes well, the telescope
Speaker 1: should finally let slip the bonds of Earth on December.
Speaker 1: The telescope has had a long and sometimes rough journey
Speaker 1: over the years to get to this point. The launch
Speaker 1: has had several delays over that time, and the James
Speaker 1: Webb Space telescope is in many ways the spiritual successor
Speaker 1: to the Hubble telescope and has the potential to allow
Speaker 1: us to learn more about how our galaxy works. It's
Speaker 1: a super interesting piece of technology. And heck, I even
Speaker 1: have a tattoo because of this telescope. I even got
Speaker 1: that tattoo while on camera for an episode of the
Speaker 1: show Forward Thinking that I used to host. So there's
Speaker 1: a there's a video of me getting tattooed with a
Speaker 1: tattoo that's inspired by the James Webbs James web Space telescope. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I really hope it all works out and that we
Speaker 1: see the telescope triumphantly take its place in orbit. Later
Speaker 1: this year, in Iceland, an enormous facility called Orca has
Speaker 1: come online. And Orca's purpose is to capture carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: from the air and lock it into mineral form. So
Speaker 1: it's a carbon capture and sequestration facility. In other words. Now,
Speaker 1: before you start to think that we've got the climate
Speaker 1: issue solved thanks to this technology, let's talk limitations. This
Speaker 1: is the largest carbon capture facility in the world up
Speaker 1: to this point, and according to the companies that are
Speaker 1: behind it, it will be able to capture around four
Speaker 1: thousand tons of carbon dioxide out of the air each year.
Speaker 1: The US Environmental Protection Agency says that's approximately equal to
Speaker 1: the amount of carbon emissions generated by eight seventy cars
Speaker 1: running on internal combustion engines, presumably in a year. Well,
Speaker 1: that's fewer than a thousand cars. There are millions of
Speaker 1: cars out there, not to mention airplanes, coal plants, oil refineries,
Speaker 1: and other sources of carbon dioxide emissions. This is why
Speaker 1: it's good to remember that carbon capture, while it can
Speaker 1: be a critical component of mitigating the problems of climate change,
Speaker 1: is only part of that solution. We cannot look at
Speaker 1: carbon capture as absolving us of the responsibility to cut
Speaker 1: back on carbon emissions. Unfortunately, that's how the practice often
Speaker 1: gets marketed. I see a lot of companies saying, hey, look,
Speaker 1: we don't need to cut back. We'll just catch the
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide using this facility, and we'll just keep on
Speaker 1: doing stuff the way we always have. Maybe we'll even
Speaker 1: crank up the carbon emissions. Now, the truth of the
Speaker 1: matter is, we just can't do that. We cannot keep
Speaker 1: up with that kind of approach. Finally, the Stanford Computational
Speaker 1: imaging lab or at least a paper describing a really
Speaker 1: cool technology. Cool and a little creepy. They developed a
Speaker 1: new non line of sight imaging tech and that's kind
Speaker 1: of what it sounds like. It's technology that can take
Speaker 1: images of stuff that isn't in the actual line of
Speaker 1: sight of the imaging technology or you know, like the lens.
Speaker 1: And you may have heard about cameras that can quote
Speaker 1: unquote see around corners. Well, that's a subset of this
Speaker 1: type of technology, and the way it works is not
Speaker 1: that different from echolocation. A camera will include a light
Speaker 1: emitter and it shoots out light, perhaps outside of the
Speaker 1: visible spectrum, that goes out ahead of the camera. So
Speaker 1: let's say you're going down a hallway and the hallway
Speaker 1: has a ninety degree corner in it, so it turns
Speaker 1: off to the left and you're using this, uh this device,
Speaker 1: and some light is coming out of the end of
Speaker 1: the device. It hits the corner that you're facing, bounces
Speaker 1: off the corner, it goes off to the left side.
Speaker 1: Some of that light could encounter an object, let's say
Speaker 1: it's the Bobba duke, and then some of that light
Speaker 1: bounces off the Bobba duke, and it goes back around
Speaker 1: the corner and hits your sensor on your device, and
Speaker 1: the camera picks up this returning light and says, hey,
Speaker 1: there's something around that corner and you should probably definitely
Speaker 1: not go that way now. Again. It's it's a lot
Speaker 1: like you know echolocation or laser range finders or speed
Speaker 1: tracking devices. Well, the Stanford Group developed a tech that
Speaker 1: they call keyhole imaging because you could, in theory, set
Speaker 1: up a device to shine a laser beam through a
Speaker 1: keyhole or a crack in a wall to hit a
Speaker 1: single point on the opposite side of a closed door,
Speaker 1: So like on the wall opposite of the door. So
Speaker 1: just imagine you're kneeling at a door it's got a
Speaker 1: keyhole in it, one of those classic ones, and you
Speaker 1: stick this device and it's got its a little laser pointer,
Speaker 1: and it shoots the laser across the room and it
Speaker 1: hits the wall on the other side. Well, some of
Speaker 1: the photons and that laser beam are going to be
Speaker 1: bouncing off of all the different stuff that's in that room,
Speaker 1: and some of those bouncing photons will actually make their
Speaker 1: way back to a sensor paired with the laser and
Speaker 1: by measuring the time of travel for those photons, software
Speaker 1: can figure out if stuff is actually moving around on
Speaker 1: the other side of that door. Now I should add
Speaker 1: that moving around part is important. The researchers have noted
Speaker 1: that this method, which uses less surface area than the
Speaker 1: older non light on site imaging technologies, is really limited
Speaker 1: in the amount of information it can gather. If the
Speaker 1: room is static, if nothing is moving there, you really
Speaker 1: can't get a bead on what's inside the room. But
Speaker 1: if there is stuff moving around, with enough time, you
Speaker 1: can gather data to gain an idea of what it
Speaker 1: is that's moving around in there, as well as the
Speaker 1: trajectory of its pathway. So this tech could be useful
Speaker 1: in everything from military applications to integrations with car navigation
Speaker 1: and driver assist systems. And it's just kind of neat
Speaker 1: when you think that this tech, which sounds like it
Speaker 1: belongs in a Mission Impossible movie, could get all that
Speaker 1: information just by shining a laser light through a small
Speaker 1: hole in an otherwise sealed off room. And that's it
Speaker 1: for this episode of tech Stuff. If you have any
Speaker 1: stories you would want me to cover, or any technologies
Speaker 1: you would like me to cover in future episodes reach
Speaker 1: out to me. The best way to do that right now,
Speaker 1: before I get that community going anyway, is just to
Speaker 1: use the regular old Twitter handle for the show, which
Speaker 1: is text Stuff H s W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon Y. Text Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
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