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 for Tuesday, June one, twenty twenty one. And
Speaker 1: one story that I haven't really covered on this podcast
Speaker 1: is that there is a global semiconductor shortage and that
Speaker 1: has a cascading effect on the computer and electronics industries
Speaker 1: and beyond. So let's dive into that really quickly. Now.
Speaker 1: It mostly comes down to a couple of big things
Speaker 1: that happened in twenty and one of those is, of course,
Speaker 1: the pandemic. The global shutdown of various industries disrupted supply chains,
Speaker 1: and that meant that shortages and raw materials became an
Speaker 1: issue really quickly. It just had this you know, ripple effect.
Speaker 1: And it's not like the whole world went on pause
Speaker 1: at the same time, and it certainly isn't like they
Speaker 1: all started up again in synchronization along with everyone else.
Speaker 1: So in a way, this kind of led to the
Speaker 1: supply chain version of a traffic jam, except instead of
Speaker 1: cars going through you know, stop and start traffic, because
Speaker 1: of some other event that happened Further down the road.
Speaker 1: You have various manufacturers who found themselves waiting on other
Speaker 1: elements in the supply chain, and thus they had to
Speaker 1: go idle because they didn't have the stuff they needed
Speaker 1: to do their part in the chain. Everything got knocked up.
Speaker 1: Related to that, the silicon used to create the vials
Speaker 1: to hold vaccines is the same stuff that's used in semiconductors.
Speaker 1: And you know, because the vaccines are understandably of very
Speaker 1: very high priority, it meant the semiconductor industry experienced a
Speaker 1: silicon shortage, and thus the price for silicon went up. Now,
Speaker 1: when the price for materials goes up, you get one
Speaker 1: of two outcomes. Either the companies that are making stuff
Speaker 1: out of that raw material have to increase prices or
Speaker 1: they experience a smaller profit margin. Either way, the squeeze
Speaker 1: is felt further up the chain. But the other big
Speaker 1: issue on top of that is that the demand for
Speaker 1: semiconductors grew a lot in by nearly seven per cent.
Speaker 1: More of our everyday tech relies on semiconductors, everything from
Speaker 1: you know, video game consoles to automobiles. Now, because of
Speaker 1: the shortage of semiconductors. Everything else down the line gets
Speaker 1: held up too, and this is likely to lead to
Speaker 1: massive losses in several industries. Automakers are probably going to
Speaker 1: be losing billions of dollars in the short term because
Speaker 1: semiconductors are important components for nearly every system inside a car,
Speaker 1: like there's more than fifty of them, and that includes
Speaker 1: everything from entertainment two breaks to steering. Pat Gelsinger, the
Speaker 1: new CEO of Intel, warrants that this could just be
Speaker 1: the start of a shortage and that we could see
Speaker 1: the effects of the shortage stretch on several years. Gelsinger
Speaker 1: has said that the semiconductor industry has reacted quickly to
Speaker 1: near term challenges, but that the long term effects are
Speaker 1: still a big concern. Meanwhile, on the consumer side, we're
Speaker 1: seeing the effects of this crisis. The laptop maker ACER
Speaker 1: has said that due to this semiconductor shortage, the company
Speaker 1: is only able to fill half of worldwide demand for
Speaker 1: laptop production on any given day. So what this means
Speaker 1: for all of us, you know, you and me is
Speaker 1: that the supply for all sorts of tech, from smartphones
Speaker 1: to computers to cars is going to be more limited
Speaker 1: than what we've come to expect, at least for the
Speaker 1: near term, and demand is likely to be high. So
Speaker 1: when you've got high demand and you've got limited supply,
Speaker 1: the next thing you typically see is prices go up.
Speaker 1: So get ready to spend more money to buy your
Speaker 1: tech over the next year or two until things shake
Speaker 1: out and while we get ready to pay out more money,
Speaker 1: the Guardian reports that the Silicon Six have actually paid
Speaker 1: out less than they claimed. The Silicon Six refers to
Speaker 1: six gargantuan tech companies. That would be Alphabet, which is
Speaker 1: Google's parent company, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Netflix which interestingly,
Speaker 1: uh is the first time I've seen Netflix added to
Speaker 1: this particular list. Totally makes sense though, and according to
Speaker 1: the Guardian, these six companies overstated their tax payments by
Speaker 1: nearly one hundred billion dollars over the last ten years.
Speaker 1: A report from the Fair Tax Foundation claims that these
Speaker 1: six companies paid ninety six billion dollars less in tax
Speaker 1: between two thousand and eleven and two thousand twenty than
Speaker 1: their annual reports indicate. Moreover, these six companies paid a
Speaker 1: tax rate that you or I would go bonkers over.
Speaker 1: According to Fair Tax Foundation, these companies paid out three
Speaker 1: point six percent of their total revenue in tax that's
Speaker 1: two d nineteen billion dollars of taxes. And yeah, that
Speaker 1: is an astounding amount of money, two hundred nineteen billion dollars.
Speaker 1: But let's compare that to the amount of revenue they generated,
Speaker 1: which was more than six trillion dollars trillion. That goes
Speaker 1: beyond a princely sum. Now let's be fair. That is
Speaker 1: revenue that is not profit, right, Like, profit is what
Speaker 1: you get after you remove all the costs from the
Speaker 1: money that you've brought in. So luckily the Guardian digs
Speaker 1: down into that a little bit as well. Over that decade,
Speaker 1: you know, the last ten years, Amazon collected around one
Speaker 1: point six trillion dollars in revenue but collected a mere
Speaker 1: sixty point five billion dollars in profits. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm being a little flippant because honestly, these numbers are
Speaker 1: so big I can't actually comprehend them. Like, from an
Speaker 1: abstract perspective, I kind of get it, but you know,
Speaker 1: if I try to dive any further down, it's just
Speaker 1: too big. But you see that the amount of profit
Speaker 1: compared to revenue is very, very tiny when you look
Speaker 1: at them in ratio right, not by sheer amount. Sixty
Speaker 1: billion dollars is a huge amount of money anyway. The
Speaker 1: Guardian reports that Amazon ended up paying well below what
Speaker 1: it should have been expected to pay, almost half as much.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's a shifting movement around the world to
Speaker 1: apply new tax laws that would limit companies from being
Speaker 1: able to to put profits over into tax havens. Whether
Speaker 1: that actually happens or not, whether countries around the world
Speaker 1: really act on this, Uh, that remains to be seen,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure there will be more than a few
Speaker 1: dollars spent on lobbying to oppose those measures. So we'll
Speaker 1: have to see how this develops further. Okay, but what
Speaker 1: if money is no object to you? What if you
Speaker 1: are swimming in the stuff you know, Scrooge McDuck style,
Speaker 1: How do you flaunt your wealth in a way that's
Speaker 1: both flashy and environmentally friendly. Well, my friend, maybe it's
Speaker 1: time you look into the silent Shadow, a luxury electric
Speaker 1: vehicle concept in the works over at Rolls Royce. Now,
Speaker 1: the brand Rolls Royce has long been associated with luxury
Speaker 1: and opulence, and the word shadow has significance for the
Speaker 1: company because back in nineteen Rolls Royce introduced the Silver
Speaker 1: Shadow luxury car. When it comes to the Silent Shadow, well,
Speaker 1: we don't really have that many details about the car.
Speaker 1: The company says that the plans are to have the
Speaker 1: vehicle ready for purchase within the decade, but we don't
Speaker 1: know any specs. We don't know what the projected prices,
Speaker 1: although you know, if you have to ask, you can't
Speaker 1: afford it. We don't know really any real details except that,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, Silent Shadow. The name tells us
Speaker 1: that we know it's going to be very, very quiet.
Speaker 1: But then again, Rolls Royce is known, at least in
Speaker 1: part for engineering cars that operate quietly, because the whole
Speaker 1: point of a Rolls Royce is that the experience of
Speaker 1: driving it, or for those who prefer to employ a driver,
Speaker 1: the experience of riding in a Rolls Royce is to
Speaker 1: enjoy luxury rather than that you know, chassis shaking, engine
Speaker 1: revving experience you get with like muscle cars. Rolls Royce
Speaker 1: isn't the only luxury car maker that's diving into electric vehicles,
Speaker 1: and as I've reported in previous episodes of Tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much a necessity because a lot of places
Speaker 1: around the world intend to phase out the sale of
Speaker 1: new fossil fuel powered vehicles over the next decade and
Speaker 1: a half. Earlier this year, I talked about how the
Speaker 1: electronics company l G was exiting the smartphone industry. The
Speaker 1: company had shown off a couple of interesting concepts at CES,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like they're never going to hit store shelves,
Speaker 1: So that magical expanding smartphone is just gonna be a
Speaker 1: thing of legend. I think we're not, at least we're
Speaker 1: not going to see it from l G now Korea.
Speaker 1: Biz Wire reports that l G is switching its former
Speaker 1: smart phone manufacturing facilities over to make home appliances instead.
Speaker 1: The company is also consolidating its operations in Brazil, expanding
Speaker 1: facilities in the city of Manouse. And I apologize for
Speaker 1: the terrible mispronunciation of that. I am certain I got
Speaker 1: it completely wrong. While LG pulled the plug on smartphones
Speaker 1: after finding the market too competitive, it was dominated by
Speaker 1: companies like Apple and Samsung, home appliances are a totally
Speaker 1: different story. One of the many consequences of the pandemic
Speaker 1: of twan. I guess I shouldn't give it a year.
Speaker 1: It's still going anyway. One of the big consequences was
Speaker 1: this increased demand in home appliances as people spent more
Speaker 1: time at home, and LG saw its sales skyrocket as
Speaker 1: a result. Now this move reflects that increased demand was
Speaker 1: really the driver for l g S decisions. However, it
Speaker 1: will remain to be seen if that demand will contin nue,
Speaker 1: right if the demands that were generated by the pandemic
Speaker 1: in are going to stick around even as we start
Speaker 1: to have a better handle on dealing with the consequences
Speaker 1: of that pandemic. So we don't really know if this
Speaker 1: is the start of a trend in home appliance sales
Speaker 1: or if it's more of a blip in the radar.
Speaker 1: C Net reports that some recently unsealed court documents show
Speaker 1: that Google purposefully obvious skated the location settings in its
Speaker 1: Android phone software so that it would be harder for
Speaker 1: users to find those settings and then turn them off.
Speaker 1: As we've seen when numerous tech companies, including one we're
Speaker 1: going to cover in a second, the real business of
Speaker 1: those companies aren't necessarily in hardware or social networking sites
Speaker 1: or whatever the surface level businesses. You know, Google's business
Speaker 1: isn't really search. It's in data. That's where the real
Speaker 1: money is collecting and then exploiting data in different ways,
Speaker 1: primarily when it comes to user data that comes in
Speaker 1: the form of the company's relationships with various advertisers. You know, obviously,
Speaker 1: the more information you can give an advertiser about their
Speaker 1: intended market, the more effectively that advertiser can serve up
Speaker 1: ads to that market. So it becomes this the cycle,
Speaker 1: this feedback loop between these companies and advertisers that in
Speaker 1: turn inform the business decisions of those companies like Google. So,
Speaker 1: according to this document, Google discovered that if the location
Speaker 1: settings on an Android phone were relatively easy to navigate to,
Speaker 1: a lot of people opted to turn off their location settings.
Speaker 1: How about that folks are not super jazzed about being
Speaker 1: tracked wewere and so google solution to this issue was
Speaker 1: not to shift business operations away from the benefits of
Speaker 1: harvesting location data. No, the answer apparently was to make
Speaker 1: those settings just way harder to find so that users
Speaker 1: would continue to generate those geo located zeros and ones
Speaker 1: for Google, so that Google could profit off of them
Speaker 1: without those users actually really being aware of it. On
Speaker 1: top of that, Google apparently reached out to various manufacturers
Speaker 1: that make Android products in an effort to convince them
Speaker 1: to hide the location settings away in deep various menus
Speaker 1: and clunky user interfaces like LG pushed geolocation settings to
Speaker 1: the second page of Settings and its phones, And anyone
Speaker 1: who's had any experience on the Internet knows that if
Speaker 1: you are below the fold, that is, if you have
Speaker 1: to scroll down in order to see the ticular entry,
Speaker 1: you lose like the vast majority of people who are
Speaker 1: looking at your stuff like this is clear in Google Search. Right,
Speaker 1: if you're not in those first few hits of a
Speaker 1: Google search, the traffic that comes to you thanks to
Speaker 1: Google Search is super low because you know, most people
Speaker 1: don't bother to school down any further. Sayings true with
Speaker 1: settings on phones. If it's not right there, a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't take the effort to go any further.
Speaker 1: This revelation comes on the heels of an investigation from
Speaker 1: three years ago by the Associated Press into Google, and
Speaker 1: that investigation found that Google was tracking location even if
Speaker 1: users opted out of the location history feature. So apparently,
Speaker 1: if you turned off location history on your Android device,
Speaker 1: it just meant that Google was going to keep on
Speaker 1: tracking you everywhere you go. They just wouldn't tell you
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, why should you care about all
Speaker 1: this anyway? Why why is this important? Well, location data
Speaker 1: isn't just about collecting information on where you go and
Speaker 1: when you go there. It's also about collecting the data
Speaker 1: of everybody else at the same time. Anyone who has,
Speaker 1: you know, a device that has geolocation connected to it,
Speaker 1: if you're in a space that has a lot of
Speaker 1: folks with phones in it. Well, now, as a data
Speaker 1: collection company, you can do all sorts of interesting things.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to give you an example. And this
Speaker 1: is actually something that's related to a Twitter thread I
Speaker 1: saw and I wish I could remember the person who
Speaker 1: posted it because it was very good. But I'll give
Speaker 1: you kind of an example. So let's say that you've
Speaker 1: got a good friend of yours you haven't seen in
Speaker 1: a long time, and you go to visit this friend
Speaker 1: for a few days. So you're staying at your friend's house. Now,
Speaker 1: your friend also has various devices, and you've got your smartphone,
Speaker 1: and location tracking tells Google where you are. And assuming
Speaker 1: Google also has at least some access to the data
Speaker 1: that's generated by your friends devices, Google also knows who
Speaker 1: you are with. They know that you're at this specific
Speaker 1: person's house, and they know things about that specific person too.
Speaker 1: Google knows all about your friends activities and what they
Speaker 1: like and where they like to go and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So now Google starts to integrate ads
Speaker 1: into your various experiences that aren't just targeting you, They're
Speaker 1: also targeting your friend. I mean, you like this person
Speaker 1: well enough to stay at their house for a few days.
Speaker 1: Maybe you like them well enough to shop for a
Speaker 1: birthday present for them, and Google happens to know when
Speaker 1: their birthday is because that's some of the data that
Speaker 1: these companies collect, like email, addresses, birthdays. A lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff these companies collect not through directly grabbing it
Speaker 1: off of your device, but by you know, cross referencing
Speaker 1: the databases that have your information in them from across
Speaker 1: all the different services you use. So if you've ever
Speaker 1: used a service where you've had to put in things
Speaker 1: like your name and address and phone number and your
Speaker 1: birthday and your email and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: all that data ends up getting mixed up with information
Speaker 1: that's gathered from sources like devices, and that's a really
Speaker 1: powerful thing. So now, because Google knows where you are
Speaker 1: and who you're with, and they know about that person's birthday,
Speaker 1: maybe they serve up ads about something that this friend
Speaker 1: of yours really likes, and the suggestion is, hey, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's my friend's birthday coming up. I should, you know,
Speaker 1: click on this ad and buy this stuff. So now
Speaker 1: you get this weird sensation that you're getting served ads
Speaker 1: that are very specifically targeted at you and the experiences
Speaker 1: that you've recently had. It feels like Google is listening
Speaker 1: in on you right, like it's just spying on you,
Speaker 1: and it's picking up stuff from say you're your phone's
Speaker 1: microphone or whatever. But no, Google doesn't have to do
Speaker 1: any of that. Google doesn't have to do any active
Speaker 1: spying on you. It doesn't have to listen to you.
Speaker 1: It's just collecting all the data from you and your
Speaker 1: friend just by being who you are and where you are,
Speaker 1: and then cross referencing that data with other data sets,
Speaker 1: and then analyzing that data and then acting on it.
Speaker 1: This is just one way where data collection can become
Speaker 1: intrusive and creepy. Now we're gonna take a quick break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I'll give another update about another
Speaker 1: company that's equally obsessed with your information. It rhymes with
Speaker 1: a space look. But first, let's take a quick break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back, And before the break, I was telling you
Speaker 1: about Google and geolocation data and how the company was
Speaker 1: apparently trying to hide the settings for geolocation away so
Speaker 1: that fewer people would turn it off. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the thing. These companies are often compelled by various legislations
Speaker 1: around the world to offer up that solution. But then
Speaker 1: the companies do their best to make that option, you know,
Speaker 1: harder to find so that fewer people actually use it
Speaker 1: because it's it's we've seen when people are given the option,
Speaker 1: they often like to opt out of these features. And
Speaker 1: when your entire business is dependent upon those features, that's
Speaker 1: where you see these companies coming up with these clever
Speaker 1: ways to try and get around the issue. So along
Speaker 1: that same vein, remember how Facebook put up a fuss
Speaker 1: about the new privacy settings that are included in the
Speaker 1: latest version of Apple's iOS. So one of the new
Speaker 1: features of the iPhone operating system, well really the iOS
Speaker 1: operating system, because it's for all sorts of devices, not
Speaker 1: just an iPhone anyway, one of the new features is
Speaker 1: that users will get a prompt asking if they will
Speaker 1: allow certain apps like Facebook, for example, to collect data
Speaker 1: about themselves outside of the app itself, So that includes
Speaker 1: data that comes from other apps that are on your phone. So,
Speaker 1: for example, Facebook, if you were to allow this option,
Speaker 1: would potentially be allowed to collect information about your shopping
Speaker 1: habits on other apps, or what restaurants you like to
Speaker 1: order from whenever you use delivery services and so on. Now,
Speaker 1: because of apples change in policy, users will get a
Speaker 1: message asking them to grant permission to allow apps like
Speaker 1: Facebook to do this. And Facebook really hates that. And
Speaker 1: the reason the company really hates it is pretty much
Speaker 1: the same reason that Google was burying location settings. Because
Speaker 1: data is money, and if you give people the option
Speaker 1: to share less data about themselves, they might actually take
Speaker 1: that option. And I mean, really, isn't that just stealing?
Speaker 1: I mean, when you get down to it, isn't it
Speaker 1: just ungrateful for users to not hand over all the
Speaker 1: information about who they are and what they do and
Speaker 1: who they know so that poor scrappy companies like Facebook
Speaker 1: can just make a buck off that info. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: obviously I'm being incredibly obnoxious and sarcastic here because I
Speaker 1: think Facebook is like literally the worst anyway. Now, a
Speaker 1: new study suggests that Apple's changes to privacy are in
Speaker 1: fact bad. The study says Apple is doing a bad
Speaker 1: thing by including these privacy options. It says that those
Speaker 1: policies only serve to help Apple, and they hurt all
Speaker 1: other companies, and thus these are anti competitive practice. Is
Speaker 1: that Apple has put in place, Apple saying if you
Speaker 1: want to operate on our system, you must follow these rules, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, we don't have to follow as Apple.
Speaker 1: As Apple, we it's cool for us to collect all
Speaker 1: the information, but you companies out there, you cannot do that,
Speaker 1: and that this hurts other companies. Also, Facebook totally funded
Speaker 1: that study. Now that might cause you to question the
Speaker 1: studies objective perspective, right, Like, the studies outcome is essentially
Speaker 1: in line with Facebook's complaints against Apple. So I think
Speaker 1: that's actually a pretty darn healthy attitude to have to
Speaker 1: question the objectivity of the results because the study itself
Speaker 1: was funded by the company that has a beef against Apple.
Speaker 1: But all that being said, does that mean it's possible
Speaker 1: that the paper actually has a point in that Apple
Speaker 1: is going to be fit while other companies do not.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it's very likely Apple is certainly no
Speaker 1: innocent lamb in this equation either. Right, You've got all
Speaker 1: these different companies that are leveraging data in different ways.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes it's subtle, but they're all
Speaker 1: profiting off of it. Now. I don't have a solution
Speaker 1: that addresses this whole issue unless it's just to give
Speaker 1: up on smartphones in general and go to like really
Speaker 1: simple cell phones and and just kind of opt out
Speaker 1: of the online experience. That's not really an option for
Speaker 1: most people, or at least not a you know, an
Speaker 1: attractive option. But the flip side is, unless there's some
Speaker 1: specific legislation in place that that directs how data can
Speaker 1: and cannot be used, I don't see really a way
Speaker 1: of fixing this. Um it's a mess. It's speaking of messes.
Speaker 1: In science fiction, autonomous killer robots are a common trope,
Speaker 1: from terminator to RoboCop to the classic chopping mall. The
Speaker 1: threat of AI powered killing machines is made apparent, and
Speaker 1: we've seen numerous experts in robotics and AI speak out
Speaker 1: against the development of these kinds of devices. They've pointed
Speaker 1: out that autonomous weapons would very likely lead to a
Speaker 1: new type of arms race, and that we would also
Speaker 1: see horrific uses of this technology. It does not take
Speaker 1: much imagination to conjure up a scenario in which a machine,
Speaker 1: all under its own power, mistakenly identifies a group of
Speaker 1: people as being targets and then attacks them. Or heck,
Speaker 1: it's not hard to imagine a machine that identifies a
Speaker 1: group quote unquote correctly, But the people behind the machine
Speaker 1: are committed to wiping out specific populations, and they're just
Speaker 1: using the machin jeans to carry out the awful, horrific work.
Speaker 1: And according to the u N, we are essentially in
Speaker 1: that terrifying era. A u N Security Council reports said
Speaker 1: that in March of twenty the Nation of Turkey deployed
Speaker 1: an STM cargo to military drone. This drone, apparently under
Speaker 1: autonomous command, attacked Libyan armed forces that were repositioning and
Speaker 1: withdrawing from an area. The report claims that the drone
Speaker 1: could identify an attack targets without first establishing any line
Speaker 1: of communication back to a human operator. The u N
Speaker 1: had previously warned against this sort of thing, advocating for
Speaker 1: a global ban on the production of autonomous weaponry. That
Speaker 1: was a move that was opposed by two major world powers,
Speaker 1: Russia and the United States. Now this was back in
Speaker 1: the U S. Isn't a very different place politically today.
Speaker 1: In however, I am not confident enough to say that
Speaker 1: the US would unilaterally condemn the development of these kinds
Speaker 1: of autonomous weapons. And I say that mostly because the
Speaker 1: Obama administration had its own serious burden to bear when
Speaker 1: it comes to the use of lethal military drones, though
Speaker 1: those were under the control of human operators. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: report has prompted more experts in the fields of AI
Speaker 1: and machine learning to speak out against the practice of
Speaker 1: developing and deploying autonomous weaponry. So it pretty much falls
Speaker 1: to governments to take action from here and perhaps give
Speaker 1: the U N the authority to to have a unilateral
Speaker 1: ban on the development and thus, you know, processes in
Speaker 1: place for any countries found to have violated that ban,
Speaker 1: because otherwise, without that kind of global operative approach, we're
Speaker 1: going to see countries say, well, we can't let there
Speaker 1: be an autonomous weapon gap. If we don't pursue it,
Speaker 1: we will be destroyed by these tools. Because our our
Speaker 1: our opponents will surely go down that pathway, so we
Speaker 1: have to and it becomes the sort of escalation that
Speaker 1: we've seen time and time again. Pretty concerning stuff. We've
Speaker 1: got another cyber attacks story to cover, this time targeting
Speaker 1: the food industry. A company called JBS Foods had to
Speaker 1: shut down operations over the weekend due to a cyber attack.
Speaker 1: JBS Foods is the world's largest producer of beef and
Speaker 1: poultry and the second largest producer of pork, which surprised
Speaker 1: me because I mean, I guess pigs have to be
Speaker 1: the biggest producer of pork. Uh huh jokes. Anyway, a
Speaker 1: cyber attack forced JBS Foods to shut down operations in
Speaker 1: multiple countries, including the UK, the United States, Australia, Canada,
Speaker 1: and more. The attack hit the I T systems of
Speaker 1: the company, and at the time of this recording, I
Speaker 1: don't have specific details about the nature of that cyber attack.
Speaker 1: If I had to guess, and again this is just
Speaker 1: a guess, I would say it's very likely another ransomware attacks,
Speaker 1: similar to what we saw with Colonial Pipeline earlier this year.
Speaker 1: If that is the case, then JBS Foods could, in
Speaker 1: theory be weighing the option about whether or not to
Speaker 1: pay off a ransom. If that is the case, I
Speaker 1: still maintain paying off ransoms is always a bad idea
Speaker 1: because it consistently fuels more attacks in the future. The
Speaker 1: more times hackers get paid off, the more they see
Speaker 1: that this is profitable, and they'll do it even more.
Speaker 1: The company is definitely working to restore functionality to its
Speaker 1: systems and JBS Foods as that it has no evidence
Speaker 1: that this attack compromised any data relating to employees, customers,
Speaker 1: or suppliers, but that processing transactions might take a while
Speaker 1: because the company has to restore functionality, So we'll keep
Speaker 1: an eye on this story. And finally, up in space,
Speaker 1: the International Space Station's robot arms suffered some damage recently,
Speaker 1: and at first I was kind of hoping to read
Speaker 1: about how the I s s got into a robot
Speaker 1: arm wrestling competition will Sylvester Stallone and that this was
Speaker 1: finally my eagerly anticipated sequel to the hit film Over
Speaker 1: the Top, And I think that this one could be
Speaker 1: called way over the Top. And now Stallone is like
Speaker 1: a space trucker who likes to arm wrestle. But I'm
Speaker 1: told that none of this is true, and I should
Speaker 1: just probably not talk about that anymore. But what is
Speaker 1: true is that the arm did get damaged, and the
Speaker 1: real reason it got damaged was because of space debris,
Speaker 1: which is a real issue and a growing one as
Speaker 1: we send more stuff up into space and we lack
Speaker 1: a coheri adhesive approach to getting that stuff down. Once
Speaker 1: it ends its its useful life cycle, it's going to
Speaker 1: get worse. And when this actually happened is hard to say,
Speaker 1: but NASA states that the Canada Arm two, which has
Speaker 1: been part of the I S S since two thousand one,
Speaker 1: has a puncture in its thermal blanket, so this is
Speaker 1: essentially like insulation around the arm, and that the boom
Speaker 1: underneath also suffered some damage. As to when this happened,
Speaker 1: I'm not actually sure, but the issue of space debris
Speaker 1: is one that has been growing over the years without
Speaker 1: much action on the part of terrestrial governments to create
Speaker 1: a foundation for rules and processes to mitigate that issue, or,
Speaker 1: as Jack right Nelson from the National University of Singapore
Speaker 1: Faculty of Law said to the Register quote, the whole
Speaker 1: in Canada Arm two is minuscule compared to the whole
Speaker 1: in the international legal regime concerning space debris. End quote.
Speaker 1: Couldn't have said it better myself, Mr Nelson. All right,
Speaker 1: that is it for the news for Tuesday, June one,
Speaker 1: twenty one. If you have any suggestions for topics I
Speaker 1: should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach
Speaker 1: out to me on Twitter the handle we use as
Speaker 1: tech stuff H s W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Y. Tech Stuff is an I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.