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 I love all things tech. And this is the
Speaker 1: tech news episode for Thursday, January twenty twenty one. And
Speaker 1: you know, guys, I often start the news episodes with
Speaker 1: some heavy stuff, and today is no exception, except that
Speaker 1: this is more of a good news heavy story than
Speaker 1: a bad news one. So that's a nice change. Reuters
Speaker 1: reported on Wednesday, January, so yesterday, if you're listening to
Speaker 1: this episode, the day it comes out that police agencies
Speaker 1: in the United States, Canada, and six European countries completed
Speaker 1: an inter national operation to bring down a malware bought
Speaker 1: net network called Emo TET. Germany's federal police agency had
Speaker 1: named Emo TET as quote the most dangerous malware globally
Speaker 1: end quote, which is saying something considering some of the
Speaker 1: contenders that are out there. Emma TET is a type
Speaker 1: of malware called a trojan, which, like the trojan horse
Speaker 1: of legend, serves as a delivery mechanism for some other
Speaker 1: type of code, typically malicious code. So Emo TET is
Speaker 1: the nasty piece of software that creates the opportunity for
Speaker 1: other potentially nastier pieces of software to infiltrate a system.
Speaker 1: So it could help deliver code that encrypts everything on
Speaker 1: a computer, which would lead you towards ransomware. Or it
Speaker 1: could be used to allow hackers to install monitoring software
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on everything going on in a system,
Speaker 1: or even giving administrative level access to various computers and
Speaker 1: so on. The main way this malware spread was through
Speaker 1: email attachments, so it used the old, tried and true
Speaker 1: fishing technique, which is still around for a reason people
Speaker 1: still fall for it. It first appeared back in and
Speaker 1: it has gone through various cycles of activity and inactivity
Speaker 1: in the Emo tet activity on the Internet dropped in February,
Speaker 1: but it surged again in July. Now, according to authorities
Speaker 1: in the Ukraine, imotet was responsible for about two point
Speaker 1: five billion dollars in damages globally. The police takedown included
Speaker 1: a raid on a physical location within the Ukraine in
Speaker 1: which hackers had servers that were doing a lot of
Speaker 1: the heavy lifting for you know, maintaining and administering the
Speaker 1: botan net. The police released photos of bank cards and cash,
Speaker 1: which I find particularly wild, as I usually imagine most
Speaker 1: of the crime involving digital transfers of funds rather than
Speaker 1: you know, the physical manifestation of money. But I guess
Speaker 1: my imagination is far too limited. At the time I'm
Speaker 1: recording this, there were no reports about any arrests. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that arrests didn't happen. I just didn't have
Speaker 1: any news about them as I was recording this. Now,
Speaker 1: the takedown is certainly a disruption for this particular type
Speaker 1: of malware botan net operation, but we should keep in
Speaker 1: mind there are lots of other ones out there. There
Speaker 1: are hacker groups that are independent, and then there are
Speaker 1: some that are state sponsored. But this is definitely good
Speaker 1: news that one of the more dangerous networks appears to
Speaker 1: be offline. Now. Next, I wanted to follow up on
Speaker 1: a story I talked about briefly involving game Stop and
Speaker 1: their stocks. Now, if you listen to recent news episodes,
Speaker 1: you heard me talk about game Stop and use that
Speaker 1: as a way to explain the process of short selling.
Speaker 1: That's where an investor borrows stock that doesn't along to
Speaker 1: that investor and then sells that stock for market price
Speaker 1: and then hope that the price of the stock falls
Speaker 1: so that the investor can then buy back those borrowed
Speaker 1: shares and pocket the difference because the investor is obligated
Speaker 1: to return the borrowed shares. The goal is for you
Speaker 1: to buy back those borrowed shares when they're cheaper, and
Speaker 1: then you know, you get to keep whatever the difference
Speaker 1: was between the cell price and the buy price. Well,
Speaker 1: we knew that a subreddit called Wall Street Bets was
Speaker 1: driving the price of game Stop stock up after a
Speaker 1: company called Citron and another one called Melvin Capital had
Speaker 1: recommended that the stock be used as a short sell.
Speaker 1: In fact, those companies were short selling game Stop stock
Speaker 1: and they were anticipating that there was going to be
Speaker 1: a drop in stock price. Now, in my last piece
Speaker 1: on this, the price of game Stop stock is so
Speaker 1: hard to say that. By the way, anyway, that stock
Speaker 1: had climbed seventy in a day, it climbed another after that.
Speaker 1: In fact, over the course of two weeks, the stock
Speaker 1: price has increased dramatically, and that definitely puts the squeeze
Speaker 1: on anyone who's trying to short sell the stock, because
Speaker 1: now buying back those borrowed shares will cost more money
Speaker 1: than the investor would get from selling them at the
Speaker 1: earlier market price. It means that when that price goes up,
Speaker 1: you lose money. If you were quote unquote selling stock
Speaker 1: at ten dollars and then the stock goes to twenty
Speaker 1: and you have to buy back that stock, well now
Speaker 1: you're paying twice as much, right, So when stock prices
Speaker 1: go up, short selling becomes a loss for the investor.
Speaker 1: Now some investors will double down. They will start short
Speaker 1: selling even harder. They will start selling more stock that
Speaker 1: they don't own, with the hope that the new higher
Speaker 1: price of stock is going to take a turn and
Speaker 1: start dropping again, and thus they'll be able to cover
Speaker 1: their original short sell and perhaps make money in the
Speaker 1: long term by jumping on it again. But this activity
Speaker 1: of of buying and selling it ends up pushing the
Speaker 1: stock price even further hop so it becomes a vicious
Speaker 1: cycle that becomes known as a stock squeeze or a
Speaker 1: short squeeze. Really well, back in January twelve, game stop
Speaker 1: stocks we're selling at nineteen dollars and cents per share,
Speaker 1: and I mentioned that they've increased dramatically, So what does
Speaker 1: that actually mean well, by January the stock price was
Speaker 1: at three hundred fifty dollars per share. So now let's
Speaker 1: talk about market capitalization. Now, essentially, we take the number
Speaker 1: of shares that the company issues out and we multiply
Speaker 1: that number of shares by the share price to figure
Speaker 1: out what the market cap is. So for game Stop,
Speaker 1: as of the time I'm recording this, that market cap
Speaker 1: is at around twenty six bill in dollars. That is bonkers.
Speaker 1: And you might ask what has game Stop done to
Speaker 1: merit this jump and value, and the answer is nothing. Really,
Speaker 1: this price inflation is due to a lot of perception
Speaker 1: and market activity among stockholders and was exacerbated when the
Speaker 1: short sellers were trying to buy up more stock or
Speaker 1: sell more stock, short sell more stock in an effort
Speaker 1: to make up for the losses they were already experiencing,
Speaker 1: and the cycle was getting worse and worse. The stock
Speaker 1: market has actually halted trading on game Stop shares numerous
Speaker 1: times over the last week due to that high volatility
Speaker 1: in trading. That's a protective measure that's necessary because sometimes
Speaker 1: a really volatile stock can set off a kind of
Speaker 1: chain reaction in the market, and then you've got real
Speaker 1: chaos on your hands, and it's hard to see how
Speaker 1: this will all end well in the long run. It
Speaker 1: seems that eventually the market value for game Stop will
Speaker 1: have to readjust to better reflect the actual value of
Speaker 1: the company, and you would expect to see that the
Speaker 1: market share price fall as a result of that. And
Speaker 1: for those of you who don't know what game Stop
Speaker 1: is in the first place, it's a video game retail
Speaker 1: company as and this is a company best known for
Speaker 1: having brick and mortar stores in the real world where
Speaker 1: you can go and buy video games and video game systems,
Speaker 1: or even sell back your old copies of games to
Speaker 1: the game Stop. You would think that would the double
Speaker 1: wamy of the pandemic keeping most people at home and
Speaker 1: away from stores, and the general rise of digital downloads
Speaker 1: as opposed to buying physical copies, It would mean that
Speaker 1: a company like game Stop wouldn't be seeing such a
Speaker 1: huge surge and stock market price, which is why I
Speaker 1: get the feeling that eventually this will all have to
Speaker 1: settle down. At least I hope it settles rather than crashes. Now.
Speaker 1: I should also stress I am no market expert. Maybe
Speaker 1: this higher stock price will stick around and become stable.
Speaker 1: I doubt it, but I fully admit this is not
Speaker 1: my area of expertise by a long shot, or else
Speaker 1: I would probably be a millionaire by now. Now. One
Speaker 1: of the big stories in the second half of twenty
Speaker 1: was all about how former President Trump was pressuring Chinese
Speaker 1: company byte Dance to sell off its video streaming platform
Speaker 1: TikTok to an American company or companies or else face
Speaker 1: the apparently unenforceable threat that the service would be taken
Speaker 1: down in the United States. In fact, the reason that
Speaker 1: that sale has yet to take place is because the
Speaker 1: government really didn't follow through on the threats that was making.
Speaker 1: And I think I think a lot of people over
Speaker 1: at byte Dance slash TikTok are just saying, well, until
Speaker 1: they actually show us they really mean business, I guess
Speaker 1: we just keep doing what we're doing. Now. It remains
Speaker 1: to be seen what the Biden administration is going to
Speaker 1: do with regard to TikTok. It's possible they don't do
Speaker 1: anything at all. But meanwhile, over in India, things are
Speaker 1: definitely changing. The Indian government banned TikTok along with fifty
Speaker 1: eight other apps that are linked to China. Now that
Speaker 1: followed a military confrontation between India and China in the
Speaker 1: Galawan Valley back in the summer of twenty twenty, and
Speaker 1: this week by Dance announced it was shutting down nearly
Speaker 1: all of its operations in India and laying off almost
Speaker 1: every employee there as well. One unnamed source told the
Speaker 1: website in Tracker that as many as eighteen hundred people
Speaker 1: would lose their jobs and the company would retain around
Speaker 1: maybe two fifty employees in India. Some of the other
Speaker 1: apps affected by this band include the mobile version of
Speaker 1: Player Unknowns Battlegrounds and the messaging service we Chat. In
Speaker 1: terrifying news, The Guardian reports that a US government appointed
Speaker 1: panel that included tech executives have made the recommendation that
Speaker 1: the United States pursue the development of military AI applications,
Speaker 1: including weapons powered by artificial intelligence. Leading that panel was
Speaker 1: Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google. I guess it kind
Speaker 1: of is fitting to say that before he was CEO
Speaker 1: of Google, the company had kind of an unofficial motto
Speaker 1: of don't be evil, and that's not the motto anymore.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying the two are connected, but I'm not
Speaker 1: not saying the two are connected anyway. The logic of this,
Speaker 1: if you can call it, that, is that the AI would,
Speaker 1: if designed properly, make fewer mistakes than people. And you
Speaker 1: know that if designed properly, is an enormous qualification there.
Speaker 1: I mean, if we have seen stories about how image
Speaker 1: recognition software can sometimes get things really wrong at times
Speaker 1: that can go from embarrassing to outright offensive, you know
Speaker 1: that kind of opens up your eyes When that happens.
Speaker 1: You might be dealing with some harsh criticism, and maybe
Speaker 1: it might lead to a deeper discussion about topics like
Speaker 1: bias and transparency and artificial intelligence. But when we're talking
Speaker 1: military applications, it's obviously a more immediate issue of life
Speaker 1: or death type of scenarios. A former Deputy Secretary of
Speaker 1: Defense named Robert Work said that quote, it is a
Speaker 1: moral imperative to at least pursue this hypothesis end quote,
Speaker 1: which might come as news to the hundreds of computer
Speaker 1: scientists who have previously spoken out about this very concept.
Speaker 1: In fact, there is a coalition of organizations that have
Speaker 1: signed documents calling for a ban on any uses of
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence with regard to warfare. UH it often gets
Speaker 1: reduced to no killer robots, that kind of thing. The
Speaker 1: general concern is that applying AI to war will set
Speaker 1: off a type of arms race, and that further, any
Speaker 1: poorly made AI would be inherently dangerous. I mean, for
Speaker 1: that matter, a well designed AI would be dangerous, because
Speaker 1: I mean, that's its job. But it doesn't take much
Speaker 1: imagination to conjure up scenarios in which an AI system
Speaker 1: could make a call that a human being would never do,
Speaker 1: potentially setting off a catastrophic series of events. For example,
Speaker 1: just as a hypothesis, if an AI decided that losing
Speaker 1: an entire city was an acceptable loss, it might move
Speaker 1: forward with that decision that could lead to the deaths
Speaker 1: of millions of people. Now that's definitely on the bad
Speaker 1: end of the spectrum of possibilities. You could also argue
Speaker 1: it's possible that AI systems could prevail in situations where
Speaker 1: humans would fail, that an AI would act faster and
Speaker 1: with a better result than humans would, and that lives
Speaker 1: would be saved in that example. But it is a
Speaker 1: sobering thought, and in the end, the panel's recommendations, which
Speaker 1: will be finalized the spring, are not binding. It's not
Speaker 1: like whatever the panel finds the government will immediately implement,
Speaker 1: and I expect we're going to see a lot more
Speaker 1: people speaking out against the idea. And we've chatted a
Speaker 1: bit about the trend of employees at tech companies forming
Speaker 1: unions to help create more leverage when negotiating with executive leadership.
Speaker 1: A lot of the news episodes have talked about Google's
Speaker 1: ongoing battle with the Alphabet Workers Union or a w
Speaker 1: you another thing that's very hard to say. But meanwhile,
Speaker 1: over at Amazon, we're seeing something play out that seems
Speaker 1: pretty familiar to anyone who was following the stories around
Speaker 1: the United States elections last year. Amazon workers planning to
Speaker 1: unionize a warehouse in Alabama have to vote on whether
Speaker 1: or not that happens. It's a union election, and essentially
Speaker 1: now the people trying to form the union want to
Speaker 1: hold this vote through mail in ballots. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: in the middle of a pandemic, so going to a
Speaker 1: physical location in order to cast your vote is frowned upon,
Speaker 1: generally speaking. But Amazon is pushing back on this. They're
Speaker 1: attempting to force the workers to participate in an in
Speaker 1: person vote instead, perhaps due to the fact that it
Speaker 1: might be a way to discourage people from voting. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's my just hypothesizing. I don't have anything to
Speaker 1: back that up. It could be other reasons. Amazon says
Speaker 1: that the reason is because, at least according to company representatives,
Speaker 1: that the mail in process would take too long and
Speaker 1: that would require too many resources. Uh. The National Labor
Speaker 1: Relations Board had previously said that employees should be allowed
Speaker 1: to vote by mail in ballot. Amazon is appealing that decision.
Speaker 1: But assuming that the n l RB does not roll
Speaker 1: back that decision, and there should be a union election
Speaker 1: on February eight for that warehouse, and if the workers
Speaker 1: do vote to unionize, it would mark the first Amazon
Speaker 1: warehouse in the United States to do that. I'm sure
Speaker 1: much of the tech sector has its eyes on Alabama,
Speaker 1: as between Amazon and Google, we could end up seeing
Speaker 1: a general move toward unionization in the tech space. I've
Speaker 1: got a lot more to cover in today's episode, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. The Iranian government has
Speaker 1: issued a new social networking ban, this one targeting Signal,
Speaker 1: the messaging app. Now you might remember from recent episodes
Speaker 1: that Signal was having a bit of a growth spurt
Speaker 1: because people who had been using WhatsApp, which is owned
Speaker 1: by Facebook had started to abandon WhatsApp and they were
Speaker 1: turning to companies like Signal and Telegram instead. Well, Iran
Speaker 1: has already banned Telegram, and now Signal has followed suit.
Speaker 1: At the heart of the issue of people leaving WhatsApp
Speaker 1: is a recent announcement that Facebook would be gathering some
Speaker 1: meta data around how users were interacting with WhatsApp and
Speaker 1: then putting that metadata to use over on Facebook proper,
Speaker 1: and that raised a lot of privacy concerns that led
Speaker 1: to people kind of abandoning ship. Well, the Iranian government
Speaker 1: does doesn't seem too thrilled with Signals product, which includes
Speaker 1: encrypted communication services. As such, the government dropped all Signal
Speaker 1: traffic on the country's internal networks, and the government has
Speaker 1: also ordered Iranian app stores to drop Signal from their
Speaker 1: virtual shelves. As I said, Telegram had already been banned
Speaker 1: in Iran. It's still in use in Iran. You just
Speaker 1: can't download it legally there, but there are people who
Speaker 1: are still using it in order to communicate. And in fact,
Speaker 1: when it comes to social apps that allow for messaging,
Speaker 1: the only two big ones that have not yet been
Speaker 1: banned by Iran our WhatsApp, and Instagram, both of which
Speaker 1: are owned by Facebook. Maza A Lamardani, a researcher with
Speaker 1: article nineteen, speculates that this is probably because the Iranian
Speaker 1: government wants to put bands in place on social services
Speaker 1: before those services grow large enough for it to cause
Speaker 1: a noticeable uproar within the country. Generally speaking, the Iranian
Speaker 1: government tends to not like it if people can talk
Speaker 1: without them being able to see what they're talking about,
Speaker 1: as the Iranian government can fall a little bit on
Speaker 1: the paranoid side of the scale. NBC reports that a
Speaker 1: survey conducted by the National Association for Business Economics found
Speaker 1: that around eleven percent of respondents, which were mainly you know,
Speaker 1: business leaders, expected to see a future in which all
Speaker 1: employees would return to offices. So, in other words, eleven
Speaker 1: of those surveys said, yeah, I think we're going to
Speaker 1: get to a point where everyone will be back in
Speaker 1: the office, which means everybody else was saying, I'm not
Speaker 1: so sure about that. In fact, more than half of
Speaker 1: them said that they had already allowed for most or
Speaker 1: all staff to work remotely during the pandemic, and the
Speaker 1: general consensus is that at least for the short term,
Speaker 1: most companies are seeing a future in which a significant
Speaker 1: percentage of the workforce will continue to work from home
Speaker 1: rather than commute to an office, or they might move
Speaker 1: to a model and which people do come in for
Speaker 1: some days during the week and they work from home
Speaker 1: on other days, which is what I was doing before
Speaker 1: the pandemic switched me over to working from home almost
Speaker 1: entirely exclusively. I am not surprised by the results of
Speaker 1: this survey. I am curious how it will affect office
Speaker 1: spaces moving forward. Uh. For some companies, the office is
Speaker 1: a bit of prestige, right. It's something that can be
Speaker 1: used to impress partners and clients or potential higher ers.
Speaker 1: But an empty office doesn't give off quite the same vibe,
Speaker 1: and office space can be really expensive to maintain, particularly
Speaker 1: in fashionable parts of town. So I imagine some businesses
Speaker 1: will examine various scenarios, including some that see them downsizing
Speaker 1: the actual office space used in an effort to cut
Speaker 1: costs and conserve resources. You know, if they say, well,
Speaker 1: we've got a hundred people who work out of this office,
Speaker 1: but only twenty of them come in, there's no reason
Speaker 1: why we need to support a space that can hold
Speaker 1: a hundred people. Let's scale back now. Perhaps when enough
Speaker 1: people have been vaccinated, we'll start to see a change.
Speaker 1: So it may be that a lot of companies just
Speaker 1: say let's just tread water until the vaccinations roll out. However,
Speaker 1: we need to remember that COVID is not going away
Speaker 1: even after vaccinations, and that we're likely looking at a
Speaker 1: reality in which we will need to get vaccinated against
Speaker 1: COVID on a regular basis as the virus evolves. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, there's no real resetting back to the
Speaker 1: normal that existed pre COVID. Now. I don't know how
Speaker 1: this is all going to turn out, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: there will be a lot of negative consequences no matter
Speaker 1: how it unfolds. I also know that working from home
Speaker 1: isn't easy for everyone. In fact, on a personal note,
Speaker 1: it's changed me quite a bit. I used to be
Speaker 1: extremely extroverted, but now I actually get antsy if I
Speaker 1: happen to see a group of people, and even if
Speaker 1: I play a video game with a crowd and it
Speaker 1: it makes me feel anxious. But that's enough about me. However,
Speaker 1: related to that story is what's going on over in
Speaker 1: the San Francisco Bay Area. In California. Now that has
Speaker 1: long been the epicenter of the tech world, or at
Speaker 1: least the tech world in the United States, so you know,
Speaker 1: the US slice of the tech world. Anyway, there are
Speaker 1: a few things to know about San Francisco in general. One,
Speaker 1: the real estate market there is truly outrageous, like Jim
Speaker 1: and the Halla Graham's truly truly truly outrageous. For example,
Speaker 1: according to Town and Country, an empty lot measuring less
Speaker 1: than half an acre in size, meaning there's no house there,
Speaker 1: there's nothing there but an empty lot, that would set
Speaker 1: you back five point four million dollars in Palo Alto, California. Now,
Speaker 1: Palo Alto is closer to San Jose than it is
Speaker 1: to San Francisco, but it is in the general Bay area.
Speaker 1: The average rent in San Francisco for a one bedroom
Speaker 1: apartment in the city itself is about thirty dollars per month. Now,
Speaker 1: it's not the most expensive place in the world, but
Speaker 1: it is. You know, it's expensive to live there. And
Speaker 1: in a world where you can do your work from
Speaker 1: home and not commute to an office, it opens up
Speaker 1: the possibilities to you know, live somewhere else, somewhere that
Speaker 1: isn't nearly as expensive. Axios published an article citing that
Speaker 1: nearly nine thousand households have left the San Francisco area recently. Now,
Speaker 1: some of that might be due to COVID directly, but
Speaker 1: a lot of it seems to be more about the
Speaker 1: cost of living versus the actual living conditions of the area.
Speaker 1: The tech sector attracts a lot of talent to it,
Speaker 1: and in general, the tech sector pays talent pretty well,
Speaker 1: and that drove up the real estate prices in the
Speaker 1: Bay Area over a couple of decades. And that also
Speaker 1: pushed people who were not fortunate to have a high
Speaker 1: paying tech gig further out of the city. They had
Speaker 1: to commute much further to their jobs. So people working
Speaker 1: in industries that, you know, it wasn't like a high
Speaker 1: paying developer job or something, might have to commute more
Speaker 1: than an hour each way because they couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: live in the same region where they worked. Now we're
Speaker 1: starting to see some of the tech companies themselves consider
Speaker 1: a move away from the Bay Area, and some of
Speaker 1: the places that companies are looking at include Miami, Florida,
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. And it's really too early to see
Speaker 1: what the effect of all this is going to be.
Speaker 1: But it's certain that the disruptive sector known as tech
Speaker 1: is going to disrupt the Bay Area even more. Sticking
Speaker 1: with that Bay Area tech sector, let's talk a bit
Speaker 1: about Facebook, the media platform that is frequently part of
Speaker 1: the headlines. MSN reported on the amount of money that
Speaker 1: tech lobbyists spent in twenty twenty in the United States
Speaker 1: in an effort to influence politics. Here, Facebook, to no
Speaker 1: huge surprise, was the top spender in a lot of
Speaker 1: them now. According to the report, Facebook spent nearly twenty
Speaker 1: million dollars on lobbying, which represented an increase of nearly
Speaker 1: eighteen percent over how much it's spent in twenty nineteen. Google,
Speaker 1: by contrast, actually cut spending by thirty six percent in twenty,
Speaker 1: down to a measly seven and a half million dollars. Overall,
Speaker 1: the top five tech companies, which also includes Apple, Amazon,
Speaker 1: and Microsoft, spent less on lobbying efforts in twenty than
Speaker 1: they did in twenty nineteen. So Facebook is more of
Speaker 1: an exception in this case, since Facebook actually increased its spending,
Speaker 1: and out of those five companies I just mentioned, only
Speaker 1: Microsoft has recently been left out of antitrust investigations into
Speaker 1: whether or not those other companies represent a monopoly. The
Speaker 1: investigations conclude that, yeah, they kind of do. So hey,
Speaker 1: Microsoft dodged a bullet on that one. But then let's
Speaker 1: remember that Microsoft itself has been the subject of antitrust
Speaker 1: investigations in the past. With the change in administrations here
Speaker 1: in the United States, it will be interesting to see
Speaker 1: how things progress on this front. Will various state and
Speaker 1: federal agencies pushed to break up some of these companies,
Speaker 1: will the unionization efforts create complications for them? I have
Speaker 1: no clue, but I'll be keeping an eye out on
Speaker 1: this and of course reporting it to you guys. And
Speaker 1: another Facebook story, this one really a grim one, centers
Speaker 1: on material posted on Facebook that denies or distorts information
Speaker 1: about the Holocaust, like claiming that the Holocaust was a hoax.
Speaker 1: You know that never happened. The Anti Defamation League has
Speaker 1: long pressured Facebook to take a more active role in
Speaker 1: banning posts that claimed that the Holocaust was a hoax,
Speaker 1: and while the company had been urged by various groups
Speaker 1: and individuals to take action for years against that kind
Speaker 1: of material, it was only back in October of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty that the company actually said it was going to
Speaker 1: do it. In a blog post by Monica Bickert, who
Speaker 1: is the vice president of Content Policy at Facebook, the
Speaker 1: company laid out that the official hate speech policy for
Speaker 1: Facebook would now include any content that quote denies or
Speaker 1: distorts the Holocaust end quote. But now, several months later,
Speaker 1: in one the a d L found that such contents
Speaker 1: still pops up on face Book and stays there, including
Speaker 1: Facebook groups dedicated to claiming that the Holocaust was a hoax.
Speaker 1: The organization thus awarded Facebook the grade of D a
Speaker 1: failing grade, for its efforts to moderate such content. This
Speaker 1: kind of reinforces the idea that it is relatively easy
Speaker 1: to create an algorithm that's designed to boost content that
Speaker 1: shows signs of a lot of air quotes engagement, but
Speaker 1: it is a lot harder to find ways to moderate
Speaker 1: content to remove stuff like hate speech and misinformation. That
Speaker 1: is a huge problem because in the meantime, Facebook continues
Speaker 1: to be a misinformation distribution machine with incredible reach, and
Speaker 1: it was you know, had had an economic incentive to
Speaker 1: be like that, because again, engagement means spending more time
Speaker 1: on the platform. Spending more time on the platform means
Speaker 1: being served more ads and ads our health. Facebook makes
Speaker 1: the vast majority of its revenue, so it had an
Speaker 1: incentive to keep people there, And if people are staying
Speaker 1: there because of bad stuff, then there wasn't a whole
Speaker 1: lot of incentive to remove the bad stuff until public
Speaker 1: pressure reaches a point where it's undeniable. That's kind of
Speaker 1: where we are, and even now Facebook is still failing,
Speaker 1: at least according to the Anti Defamation League. Well, we
Speaker 1: have a couple more stories for this episode, but before
Speaker 1: I get to that, let's take another quick break. We're
Speaker 1: back and some of you listeners might not be aware
Speaker 1: that back in the old days, I wrote for a
Speaker 1: site called how Stuff Works dot com. That's how tech
Speaker 1: Stuff got started as a podcast offshoot of the website.
Speaker 1: Just like other shows like Stuff You Should Know and
Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class, if the show has
Speaker 1: the words stuff in the title, there's a chance, not
Speaker 1: a guarantee, but a chance that it branched off from
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Anyway, one of the articles I wrote
Speaker 1: for that site was about Project Loon, which was an
Speaker 1: effort from Google to create a network of high altitude
Speaker 1: balloons carrying equipment that would provide Internet connectivity as a
Speaker 1: sort of floating infrastructure, and it was an innovative approach
Speaker 1: to extending Internet connectivity to remote areas that otherwise might
Speaker 1: go without. So, for example, think of like a little
Speaker 1: town in Africa that's many, many many miles away from
Speaker 1: the nearest big city. It might not have any Internet connectivity,
Speaker 1: and it would be incredibly difficult and expensive to build
Speaker 1: out the infrastructure to connect it to that big city.
Speaker 1: But if you float the Internet above this this community,
Speaker 1: you could potentially provide it network connectivity. But we learned
Speaker 1: last week that Google is deflating the program, so to speak,
Speaker 1: ending the nine year long experiment. Now the technology worked.
Speaker 1: The balloons could send down signals that communities could tap into.
Speaker 1: The high altitudes were above really gusty winds, so it
Speaker 1: was possible to maintain a connection to specific regions. You
Speaker 1: knew what was going to happen with the balloons, so
Speaker 1: if you just had enough coverage, then you could maintain
Speaker 1: that connectivity. But the company could not find a way
Speaker 1: to make the business work from a revenue perspective. So
Speaker 1: in other words, it was just costing too much to
Speaker 1: deploy and maintain than could be balanced. Out through revenue,
Speaker 1: and so we see the loons sink back down to
Speaker 1: Earth and we're really seeing a different approach satellite services. Starlink,
Speaker 1: the project associated with Elon Musk, is such a service.
Speaker 1: The idea is to send up thousands of tiny satellites
Speaker 1: in a relatively low orbit that can act as kind
Speaker 1: of like a mesh networking system of their own. They
Speaker 1: would be at far too low and altitude to maintain
Speaker 1: a geosynchronous orbit, that is, an orbit where the satellite
Speaker 1: maintains its spot relative to the position on the Earth.
Speaker 1: So since the satellites wouldn't be in the exact same
Speaker 1: spot in the sky, you need a lot of them
Speaker 1: in order to keep coverage consistent. Otherwise you would lose
Speaker 1: your Internet connection every time the satellite moved out of range,
Speaker 1: and then you would have to wait for it to
Speaker 1: go all the way around the planet and swing back
Speaker 1: overhead again. The Starlink service is aiming to have more
Speaker 1: than forty thousand satellites in orbit in order to provide
Speaker 1: a global Internet connectivity service, which, hey, that's cool, but
Speaker 1: it does also represent another concern for scientists and astronauts
Speaker 1: who worry about stuff like space debris and it also
Speaker 1: represents a potential issue for astronomers, as reflections both of
Speaker 1: light and potentially of radio waves can make it harder
Speaker 1: to observe cosmological goings on down here on Earth. So
Speaker 1: scientists also point out that the efforts to blanket the sky,
Speaker 1: eyes and satellites comes not from some sort of altruistic
Speaker 1: desire to supply Internet to everybody. It's not like, look
Speaker 1: under your seat, you get an Internet, and you get
Speaker 1: an Internet now. It's rather because these companies are viewing
Speaker 1: this as a potentially profitable business. So in other words,
Speaker 1: they are arguing that the media should not frame these
Speaker 1: efforts as being noble. Necessarily on the business side of things,
Speaker 1: there are skeptics who wonder if this approach will ever
Speaker 1: be profitable. Getting stuff into space is expensive, after all,
Speaker 1: and while it's useful to have persistent Internet connectivity, there
Speaker 1: are some inherent downsides to using satellite technology. One big
Speaker 1: one is the problem with latency. Satellites. Even those in
Speaker 1: a low orbit are very far away, so it takes
Speaker 1: time for information to travel from the satellite to either
Speaker 1: the backbone of the Internet or you're in device, so
Speaker 1: you're kind of playing a game of phone tag. Let's
Speaker 1: say you've got a laptop that connects to a router
Speaker 1: that then connects up to the satellite link. So you
Speaker 1: are on a website, you click on a link, your
Speaker 1: command goes out through your satellite dish beams up to
Speaker 1: a satellite in orbit, which then has to relay that
Speaker 1: command back down on Earth at a receiving station, which
Speaker 1: then sends that signal out over the Internet to its destination,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever website you were trying to visit, And
Speaker 1: then that whole response has to take the same journey,
Speaker 1: but in reverse, and that tends to create a pretty
Speaker 1: noticeable delay between when you do something and when you
Speaker 1: see the results. So if companies can't make satellites work
Speaker 1: from a revenue perspective, they could go the same way
Speaker 1: that Project Loon went, but then we also have the
Speaker 1: added problem of a bunch of junk in low Earth orbit. Next,
Speaker 1: Carl Pay made a name for himself as one of
Speaker 1: the co founders for the Chinese consumer electronics company one
Speaker 1: plus back in mean and you might wonder what he's
Speaker 1: up to today, and the answer is nothing. That is,
Speaker 1: he founded nothing. I mean, he has founded a company
Speaker 1: that has the name nothing, which makes me think that
Speaker 1: if you were an employee of that company, you would
Speaker 1: automatically have a fun, quirky thing to say at cocktail parties.
Speaker 1: You know, if we still had cocktail parties, it would
Speaker 1: be the kind of joke that makes the other person
Speaker 1: kind of give a humorless smile and return before they
Speaker 1: silently wander off to see if maybe someone's laid out
Speaker 1: some new snacks on the table or something. And now
Speaker 1: you have an insight as to what it's like when
Speaker 1: I go to parties. Anyway, this company nothing will apparently
Speaker 1: be making something. Exactly what that something is is a mystery.
Speaker 1: For now. We know that the product or products they
Speaker 1: plan to introduce perhaps this year, fall into the general
Speaker 1: category of smart devices, but that's a pretty big category
Speaker 1: all on its own these days. I mean, it could
Speaker 1: be anything from a phone to a coffee maker, or
Speaker 1: a doorbell or toast or who knows. But the philosophy
Speaker 1: of the company is one that probably feels familiar to
Speaker 1: science fiction fans, the idea that technology should be so
Speaker 1: advanced that just kind of fades into the background of
Speaker 1: our environments and our reality, so using it should be
Speaker 1: just as intuitive as if it were nothing like. It's
Speaker 1: right up there with breathing or blinking. By the way,
Speaker 1: don't think about breathing or blinking, because then you're gonna
Speaker 1: start doing it manually and that will drive you crazy.
Speaker 1: We do know that the products will eventually be across
Speaker 1: numerous subcategories, and that the goal is to create a
Speaker 1: cohesive ecosystem within which these devices will operate. And we
Speaker 1: also know that the plan is to focus more on
Speaker 1: the hardware side of things than on the software side.
Speaker 1: But that's about all we know, which you know, I
Speaker 1: guess ain't nothing. Virgin hyper Loop, which is just one
Speaker 1: of the company's trying to make hyper loop or hyper
Speaker 1: loop like train systems a reality, released a concept video
Speaker 1: of what it might be like to go through a
Speaker 1: hyper loop terminal board a pod, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: the hyper loop version of a train car, and traveled
Speaker 1: to a destination. The video was about two and a
Speaker 1: half minutes long, and I have to admit it's kind
Speaker 1: of cool. The video shows a scenario which you're on
Speaker 1: a pod that gets up to more than six centred
Speaker 1: miles per hour as it travels through tunnels that have
Speaker 1: had nearly all the air removed from them, so that
Speaker 1: reduces air resistance to near zero. The video shows pods
Speaker 1: that have a sort of train truck or bogey on
Speaker 1: the top of the pods, so you know, uh, a
Speaker 1: structure that fits against a track, and the track is
Speaker 1: in the ceiling of the tunnel. Now that's a shift
Speaker 1: from the original hyper loop design, which suggested using air
Speaker 1: bearings kind of like an air hockey table, but with
Speaker 1: the pod push out compressed air to float above the
Speaker 1: floor of the tunnel. However, that particular approach was found
Speaker 1: to be impractical, so Virgin hyper loop is going with
Speaker 1: a more tried and true method of magnetic levitation. The
Speaker 1: whole thing looked really clean and sleek and futuristic, kind
Speaker 1: of like you're commuting inside of an Apple commercial or something.
Speaker 1: I'm still a little skeptical about hyper loop. I'm not
Speaker 1: skeptical about the technology, mind you, but the practicality of
Speaker 1: building out the systems and operating them profitably. If traveling
Speaker 1: by hyperloop costs the same or more as a plane ticket,
Speaker 1: that would be a big barrier. A study out of
Speaker 1: Ohio suggested that at least for a system in the
Speaker 1: Midwest that would connect Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Columbus. The ticket
Speaker 1: prices might be about the same as it would cost
Speaker 1: if you were to drive from one location to another,
Speaker 1: and that would be pretty incredible. But building out hyper
Speaker 1: loop infrastructure is going to be monumentally expensive and complicated
Speaker 1: because it involves not just construction and technology, but also
Speaker 1: getting the various clearances from federal, state, and local governments
Speaker 1: to do it. But hey, just because it's not easy
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's impossible. And my hope is that we
Speaker 1: will see hyper loop systems connecting various regional cities and
Speaker 1: that my skepticism ends up being misplaced. That's what I hope.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like that's going to work out, but
Speaker 1: I'm hoping I'm wrong because I would personally love for
Speaker 1: there to be a hyper loop connecting, say Atlanta with Orlando, Florida.
Speaker 1: In the official Google blog, we saw a post about
Speaker 1: how covid continues to dominate our world that's not news,
Speaker 1: and that it can be really challenging to navigate all
Speaker 1: the various information sources to find out important information like
Speaker 1: where you can actually go to get vaccinated. To that end,
Speaker 1: Google CEO said that the company is focusing on providing
Speaker 1: timely and accurate information about vaccines catered to a person's location,
Speaker 1: and he wrote that within a few weeks we should
Speaker 1: see that Google Maps in places like Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and Texas will allow you to search for locations that
Speaker 1: offer the vaccine, and that the results will also have
Speaker 1: accompanying information about whether you would need a referral or
Speaker 1: an appointment. Maybe it's a drive through location, all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, everything you need to know before you
Speaker 1: actually go. Now, as someone who had spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time researching this kind of information for my parents,
Speaker 1: who thankfully on their own, were able to get appointments,
Speaker 1: I definitely have an appreciation for tools that make this easier.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do this stuff for a living, and
Speaker 1: even for me, it was a little too complicated. And finally,
Speaker 1: Twitter is giving a gift to the world of academia
Speaker 1: and overdue gift, and that gift is free access to
Speaker 1: the full history of all public conversation on Twitter. Now. Previously,
Speaker 1: researchers who wanted to use that information had to pay
Speaker 1: a premium to get the full record. Now they can
Speaker 1: just apply to Twitter's research track for approval, and if
Speaker 1: they're accepted, they will be able to access the full
Speaker 1: history of all public tweets. Now, why would anyone want
Speaker 1: to do that? While they might want to research big
Speaker 1: trends and behaviors, you know, kind of track when certain
Speaker 1: things started to appear on Twitter, When did they peak,
Speaker 1: when did they settle off? How did that relate to
Speaker 1: things that were going in the real world. So a
Speaker 1: lot of things that might be related to sociology and psychology,
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And while it might sound scary
Speaker 1: to hear that suddenly someone's got access to everything that's
Speaker 1: ever been posted on Twitter, keep in mind that's not
Speaker 1: quite accurate. It only covers public tweets, so any protected
Speaker 1: tweets are not included in this. And it should also
Speaker 1: remind us that when we post something to a public forum,
Speaker 1: the important thing to remember is that it is public. So, hey,
Speaker 1: if you're having second thoughts about tweeting that joke that
Speaker 1: you thought was funny but other people might find it offensive,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe just don't do it. Now. That's advice
Speaker 1: for everyone, including myself. I've certainly been guilty of rattling
Speaker 1: off a tweet. At the time, I was like, ha, ha ha,
Speaker 1: aren't I so clever? And then like five minutes later,
Speaker 1: I realized, oh, you know, sometimes it's better to be
Speaker 1: quiet or kind than clever. In fact, frequently it's better
Speaker 1: to be quiet or kind than clever, something I'm working
Speaker 1: on personally, as being clever was a big part of
Speaker 1: my personal identity for a long time, but now I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's necessarily the best treat for me. Anyway.
Speaker 1: That's enough self reflection from Jonathan for this episode. If
Speaker 1: you guys have suggestions for topics that I should cover
Speaker 1: in episodes of tech Stuff, you should reach out to me.
Speaker 1: The best place to do that is on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show is tex Stuff hs W, and
Speaker 1: I will talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.