Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech news for Tuesday,
Speaker 1: April fourth, twenty twenty three, and we've got more AI
Speaker 1: news to get us started today. Big Surprise. The Handel's
Speaker 1: Black newspaper in Germany reports that the German government is
Speaker 1: debating blocking chat GPT in the country out of a
Speaker 1: concern for data security. This would follow a similar ban
Speaker 1: that has been issued in Italy. This doesn't have anything
Speaker 1: to do with how reliable the chatbot can be, or
Speaker 1: it's an ability to tell the difference between legitimate information
Speaker 1: and misinformation or satire or you know, otherwise unreliable sources. Instead,
Speaker 1: this has to do with how chat GPT handles privacy.
Speaker 1: Italian regulators said that open ai failed to follow EU
Speaker 1: rules regarding a measure that would prevent minors from being
Speaker 1: able to use the chatbot service. There should be some
Speaker 1: sort of age gate keeping methodology in there. On top
Speaker 1: of a concern about how open ai collects user data
Speaker 1: and then makes use of it, and of course, we
Speaker 1: know that last month a glitch revealed user chatbot conversation
Speaker 1: histories inadvertently, where people were suddenly able to see how
Speaker 1: other folks had been using chat GPT. Whether this will
Speaker 1: become a trend in the EU at large remains to
Speaker 1: be seen, and I suspect Microsoft, which is heavily invested
Speaker 1: in open AI in chat GPT, will start taking measures
Speaker 1: to create a version of the chatbot that is more
Speaker 1: in compliance with EU rules and regulations. It would shock
Speaker 1: me if that were not the case. Now it's not
Speaker 1: just countries clamping down on chat GPT, Samsung Semiconductor is
Speaker 1: tweaking its approach to the tool as well. So until recently,
Speaker 1: Samsung allowed engineers to kind of have unfettered use of
Speaker 1: chat GPT in an effort to assist in the fabrication process.
Speaker 1: So engineers were using chat GPT to do things like
Speaker 1: look for errors and source code, or to take notes
Speaker 1: from a meeting and convert it into graphics or even
Speaker 1: a presentation, that kind of stuff. But the use of
Speaker 1: chat GPT led to three prominent data leaks in the
Speaker 1: span of twenty days, which is a big concern. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't mean that chat GPT got all loose lipped
Speaker 1: about it and leaked the information to the outside world. Rather,
Speaker 1: this was an internal problem that engineers, in their eagerness
Speaker 1: to leverage the tool, made their you know, to make
Speaker 1: their jobs like you know, easy and efficient and error free,
Speaker 1: they began to share a bit more than what Samsung
Speaker 1: was comfortable with, including proprietary and top secret code and information,
Speaker 1: stuff that is really important to Samsung Semiconductor, and they
Speaker 1: don't want to share it with the outside world. And
Speaker 1: you might think, well, sure, but you're you're just sharing
Speaker 1: it with a chatbot. Was the chatbot going to do
Speaker 1: with that information? But then you also have to remember,
Speaker 1: wait a second, this chatbot comes from another company, right,
Speaker 1: It comes from a company that also happens to be
Speaker 1: tightly tied to Microsoft, And you start to worry about
Speaker 1: who might be able to access that data, Like could
Speaker 1: Microsoft see how people at Samsung Semiconductor were using chat GPT?
Speaker 1: If so, then Microsoft could see some of this top
Speaker 1: secret information, which would be a big no no. So
Speaker 1: now Samsung has cracked down a bit and limited the
Speaker 1: amount of information that employees are allowed to share when
Speaker 1: they use chat GPT. They can still use it, but
Speaker 1: they have strict limitations on it, and they're simultaneously developing
Speaker 1: their own version of the tool that they can administer themselves,
Speaker 1: So that way the creepy AI presence will be an
Speaker 1: in house creepy AI presence, not one that has ties
Speaker 1: to potential competitors. This is a fairly high profile case,
Speaker 1: right Samsung Semiconductor. That's a big company. But it makes
Speaker 1: me wonder if we're going to start seeing other companies
Speaker 1: have second thoughts about letting employees use AI enabled tools
Speaker 1: out of similar concerns. It is not difficult for me
Speaker 1: to imagine executives deciding that these nifty AI tools that
Speaker 1: are incorporated into say Microsoft office could pose as a
Speaker 1: potential risk to data security. It's possible that Microsoft and
Speaker 1: other companies, by jumping into the AI games so enthusiastically
Speaker 1: right now, they could be setting themselves up for a fall.
Speaker 1: If we see companies at large say, well, what happens
Speaker 1: if I use Microsoft to take notes from an important
Speaker 1: internal meeting and turn them into a presentation that we
Speaker 1: can show other departments. But still internally, what happens if
Speaker 1: Microsoft is able to actually access information because of this
Speaker 1: connection with the AI enabled tools in their productivity suite.
Speaker 1: As we've had more and more of our operations moved
Speaker 1: to the cloud, this has become a non trivial concern,
Speaker 1: and I imagine we're going to see companies start to
Speaker 1: really reconsider how they go about handling top secret proprietary information.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just see companies saying, all right, well,
Speaker 1: for this, we can't use any of those tools because
Speaker 1: the possibility even if it's you know, even if the
Speaker 1: companies are saying no, no, no, we're not doing that,
Speaker 1: the possibility of that being leaked might be too much.
Speaker 1: It actually is making me think a lot about TikTok, right, Like,
Speaker 1: the big argument against TikTok, or at least one of
Speaker 1: the big arguments, is that it could serve as a
Speaker 1: data siphon, pulling, you know, information that's important out of
Speaker 1: the US and siphoning it off to China, and that
Speaker 1: potentially that could impact national security. Well, I could see
Speaker 1: companies looking at AI enabled tools and saying similar things
Speaker 1: that how can we trust that the productivity stuff where
Speaker 1: we're using isn't just sending our data to Microsoft, for example,
Speaker 1: And that's a tough question. So I'll be curious to
Speaker 1: see if this becomes a bigger thing throughout this year
Speaker 1: and into next. Jeffrey Fowler of the Washington Post has
Speaker 1: an interesting piece about chat GPT and education. The piece
Speaker 1: is titled we tested a new chat GPT detector for teachers.
Speaker 1: It flagged an innocent student, and yeah, the headline gives
Speaker 1: you a strong idea about what the story is all about.
Speaker 1: So the deal is Fowler was testing software from a
Speaker 1: company called Turnatin. Turnatin, according to Fowler, provides more than
Speaker 1: two million teachers, a tool that's meant to detect instances
Speaker 1: of plagiarism. So if it turns out that there's a
Speaker 1: passage in a student's essay that was lifted directly from
Speaker 1: some other source, it's supposed to be able to flag that.
Speaker 1: But it's also supposed to be able to detect if
Speaker 1: a student has made use of a tool like chat
Speaker 1: GPT to generate all or part of a work. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: just like chat GPT itself, it seems as though this
Speaker 1: tool isn't totally reliable. Now. I've warned folks repeatedly that
Speaker 1: chat GPT's responses are really only as good as the
Speaker 1: source material it used to generate those responses, and often
Speaker 1: you have no way of knowing what that source material was.
Speaker 1: But I should also point out that the tools meant
Speaker 1: to detect chat GPT aren't perfect either. So in Fowler's experiment,
Speaker 1: a student submitted an essay that she wrote without the
Speaker 1: help of chat GPT or any other AI, and yet
Speaker 1: the software flagged her work as being AI augmented. Now
Speaker 1: this concerns me for lots of different reasons. So first off,
Speaker 1: understandably there are a lot of teachers who are concerned
Speaker 1: about chat GPT. If students use chat GPT without putting
Speaker 1: forth any real effort of their own, they won't really
Speaker 1: learn anything except how to use AI so that they
Speaker 1: can avoid thinking about stuff. Right, they might get really
Speaker 1: good at gaming the system, but that's all they learned.
Speaker 1: They don't learn to think critically. They don't learn to
Speaker 1: think analytically. They can't start to think laterally. Like there's
Speaker 1: when you really break it down. Education, at least it
Speaker 1: should be all about learning how to think and to
Speaker 1: think effectively and to think critically. So if they're just
Speaker 1: using chat GPT to do their work, you might as
Speaker 1: well not assign them anything at all, because the net
Speaker 1: effect is going to be much the same. If the
Speaker 1: students are not using chat GPT, but there's no way
Speaker 1: to verify whether they are or not. Well, you have
Speaker 1: a situation where teachers are suspicious of their students, and
Speaker 1: that's not good either, right for teachers to just constantly
Speaker 1: be wondering if their students are cheating because they have
Speaker 1: no way of verifying. And then it could be that
Speaker 1: the students are all legitimately submitting their own work, but
Speaker 1: you've got this suspicion there. That's not good. That's not
Speaker 1: conducive to a learning environment either. And then if you
Speaker 1: have a tool that's meant to detect chat GPT, but
Speaker 1: it's not a very good tool or it's not accurate
Speaker 1: enough to be fully reliable, then that means two things. One,
Speaker 1: it's going to miss some instances where students were essentially
Speaker 1: cheating and they're just gonna submit their stuff and it
Speaker 1: won't pick up on the chat GPTs thing at all,
Speaker 1: and the students will be coasting through without really learning
Speaker 1: anything and ultimately become terrible citizens or potentially become terrible citizens.
Speaker 1: I can't pretend like that's going to be the case
Speaker 1: every time, but you know, I get head up about
Speaker 1: this because both of my parents are teachers, or it
Speaker 1: will be a poorly made tool where it falsely accuses
Speaker 1: a student and says that their legitimate work was ai
Speaker 1: augmented when it wasn't. That's not good either, right, Like,
Speaker 1: this is just a bad kind of situation all around,
Speaker 1: And you know, the Pandora's box has been opened. There's
Speaker 1: no getting the evils of the world back in there.
Speaker 1: But figuring out the best way forward is going to
Speaker 1: be really important if we are to have good supportive
Speaker 1: education systems in place that give people the resources they
Speaker 1: need to become good people right to learn how to think,
Speaker 1: and to encourage that. We often get stuck in the
Speaker 1: weeds anyway with education. We can't see the forest for
Speaker 1: the trees because we're looking at the specific instance of
Speaker 1: learning as opposed to the overall approach to learning how
Speaker 1: to learn and learning how to think, and we end
Speaker 1: up getting really hyper focused on the specifics, right Like,
Speaker 1: I need to write this essay about how Shakespeare used
Speaker 1: the fool to speak truth to power, that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and I'm really focused on that as opposed to know,
Speaker 1: this is about more than that. This is about learning
Speaker 1: how to take in information and analyze it and create
Speaker 1: your own response to it, and use critical thinking in
Speaker 1: the whole process. All of these things, with chat GPT
Speaker 1: and the tools meant to detect chat GPT, they make
Speaker 1: me worry because I feel like we're going to get
Speaker 1: more and more hyper focused on particulars and lose sight
Speaker 1: of the overall goal of education. Maybe I should write
Speaker 1: a book about that. No one will read it, but
Speaker 1: at least I can get it out on my system
Speaker 1: and you won't have to hear it in tech stuff
Speaker 1: news episodes anymore. Okay, one other AI story before we
Speaker 1: go to Break. According to a cybersecurity firm called dark Trace,
Speaker 1: Generative AI may be partly responsible for a massive surge
Speaker 1: in novel social engineering attacks this year. Dark Trace calculates
Speaker 1: that in January and February of twenty twenty three, there
Speaker 1: was a one hundred thirty five percent jump in social
Speaker 1: engineering attacks. Social engineering is when you attempt to penetrate
Speaker 1: a security system, not by sitting down at a dark
Speaker 1: computer screen and typing in password guesses. Instead, you trick
Speaker 1: someone into handing over access to you. It's way easier
Speaker 1: than trying to break the tech side of a security system.
Speaker 1: You just have to convince someone that you know, you're
Speaker 1: just there to install an update on their machine, or
Speaker 1: maybe that their computer has been flagged as being compromised
Speaker 1: so you're there to clean it up, when in reality
Speaker 1: you're actually there to really compromise the machine. Social engineering
Speaker 1: is the tool of the con artist, and it's right
Speaker 1: up there with the skills practiced by snake oil salespeople,
Speaker 1: mentalists and stage magicians, and these tactics work. They've worked
Speaker 1: for all of human history. I've fallen for them in
Speaker 1: the past multiple times. There's no guarantee that I won't
Speaker 1: fall for it again in the future. All I can
Speaker 1: do is try to be as careful as I can,
Speaker 1: to use critical thinking and to avoid acting on impulse
Speaker 1: or emotion anyway. It sounds like scammers and bad actors
Speaker 1: in general are making use of generative AI to craft
Speaker 1: messages that are more likely to convince a target to
Speaker 1: follow through on some kind of action, such as opening
Speaker 1: up an attachment or clicking on a link that's going
Speaker 1: to download malware to their machine, or getting them to
Speaker 1: fill to form that will send important information to the attackers.
Speaker 1: And chat, GPT and other tools can create all new
Speaker 1: messages that are designed to get these kinds of reactions,
Speaker 1: stuff that attackers haven't necessarily thought of yet, And that
Speaker 1: also means that the targets will not have encountered those
Speaker 1: kinds of attacks in the past, so it makes those
Speaker 1: attacks more likely to succeed. Plus, chat GPT can avoid
Speaker 1: some of the tail tale alerts that otherwise we rely
Speaker 1: upon when we encounter these malicious emails. You know, stuff
Speaker 1: like grammar and spelling mistakes, which are typically a dead
Speaker 1: giveaway that it's an attack not a legitimate email. Well,
Speaker 1: chat GPT won't make those mistakes, so it'll get harder
Speaker 1: and harder to tell the scam emails from the legit ones.
Speaker 1: I expect we're going to see this continue unless somehow
Speaker 1: companies like open ai and Microsoft build into their AI
Speaker 1: tools some sort of method for detecting ill intent. But
Speaker 1: to me, that seems like that's a whole nasty bee's
Speaker 1: nest of its own that we don't want to get into.
Speaker 1: Right now. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break. When
Speaker 1: we come back, we've got some more news stories. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back, and Tarique the spy music. Okay, do you
Speaker 1: remember the NSO group that's the Israeli company behind tools
Speaker 1: like Pegasus that was a type of malware that could
Speaker 1: compromise iPhones just by sending an eye message to a
Speaker 1: targeted device. You just had to know their phone number
Speaker 1: and send an eye message using Pegasus, and it would,
Speaker 1: without the user's interaction at all, compromise the iPhone due
Speaker 1: to a vulnerability. Apple would subsequently patch that vulnerability, but
Speaker 1: it's what gave them the foot in the door in
Speaker 1: the first place, and this malware would target phones and
Speaker 1: turn them into or valence systems. Essentially, the attacker would
Speaker 1: be able to do stuff like turn on the microphone
Speaker 1: and even the camera on the iPhone to be able
Speaker 1: to survey what was going on in the surroundings. They
Speaker 1: could access data that was on the device itself. Really
Speaker 1: nasty stuff. Now worse than that NSO group allegedly counted
Speaker 1: among its customers some of the most notorious authoritarian leaders
Speaker 1: who use this tool to spy on all sorts of people.
Speaker 1: And while the NSO group was marketing this tool as
Speaker 1: a means for governments to keep tabs on terrorist organizations,
Speaker 1: the truth is that these authoritarian leaders were using a
Speaker 1: very liberal definition of terrorists to include pretty much anybody
Speaker 1: they didn't like, that included political rivals, that included activists,
Speaker 1: and included journalists. Anyway, it's this kind of thing that
Speaker 1: democratic societies tend to disapprove of, at least publicly. And
Speaker 1: you know, the ability to spy on people and abuse
Speaker 1: power and whatnot doesn't fly so well in democratic societies.
Speaker 1: And here in the United States, the Biden administration issued
Speaker 1: a ban on American companies from doing business with the
Speaker 1: NSO crew. But now the New York Times reports that
Speaker 1: someone disobeyed some federal agency, which one is not clear
Speaker 1: as I record this episode. Apparently worked outside the system
Speaker 1: to get access to an NSO group product called Landmark,
Speaker 1: which allows you to keep tabs on a person's physical
Speaker 1: location at all times. It's essentially a bug tracker that
Speaker 1: you just install on someone's device. Well, you know, the
Speaker 1: physical location of the infected device is what it really
Speaker 1: tracks it. But to infect the target's device, I am
Speaker 1: not sure what the mechanism is to do this. I
Speaker 1: don't know how it works, right, I haven't heard enough
Speaker 1: about Landmark to understand. If it's as insidious as Pegasus was.
Speaker 1: It won't even require the target to take any action
Speaker 1: at all. Which makes it really scary, and then you
Speaker 1: just monitor that device's location. Apparently, this unknown federal agency
Speaker 1: was using Landmark to keep tabs on targets in Mexico
Speaker 1: who I don't know and for what purpose I don't know.
Speaker 1: The agency went to some trouble to acquire this tool.
Speaker 1: They used a dummy corporation called Cleopatra Holdings, which turned
Speaker 1: out to be a fake company. It was supposedly headed
Speaker 1: up by a guy named Bill Malone, a fake CEO.
Speaker 1: But the real go between for this agency and the
Speaker 1: NSO was a company called Riva Networks, which is a
Speaker 1: defense contractor located in New Jersey. Reva Networks in turn
Speaker 1: did business with a company called Gideon Cyber Systems. This
Speaker 1: company is a holding company, meaning it doesn't actually do
Speaker 1: anything on its own, it's just there to hold assets,
Speaker 1: and Gideon cyber Systems is in turn owned by another
Speaker 1: company called novol Pina Capital. Novol Pina, it turns out,
Speaker 1: is a majority owner of the NSO group. So this
Speaker 1: circuitous series of connections is what allowed this federal agency
Speaker 1: to get hold of this forbidden product. The Biden administration
Speaker 1: says that it was unaware of this activity, So if
Speaker 1: that's true. That means this federal agency was directly going
Speaker 1: against the administration's wishes and was trying to hide their
Speaker 1: tracks in the process, So it means they essentially have
Speaker 1: gone rogue. Of course, it could be that this was
Speaker 1: a secret but sanctioned acquisition that the administration is saying
Speaker 1: they were unaware of it. But it's possible they were
Speaker 1: aware of it. We just don't know, and that all
Speaker 1: this skull duggery was in place just to obfuskate what
Speaker 1: was going on and to avoid detection. Only they were detected.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I will follow up on a story as
Speaker 1: more information becomes available. Jumping over to Twitter and tick removal.
Speaker 1: By that, I mean the check marks on verified Twitter accounts.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about blood sucking arachnids, So to my
Speaker 1: friend Shay, I apologize. I'm talking about checks, not ticks.
Speaker 1: Twitter has reportedly started removing the blue ticks on verified
Speaker 1: accounts that have yet to subscribe to Twitter. So we've
Speaker 1: been talking about this for a while. That one of
Speaker 1: Elon Must's directives was that that little check mark verification
Speaker 1: notice was no longer going to be a sign of
Speaker 1: a verified account. It was instead going to be a
Speaker 1: sign of a subscribed account. So if you want that
Speaker 1: check mark then and you're an individual, then you have
Speaker 1: to pay eight bucks a month to the Twitter Blue subscription,
Speaker 1: and that includes the blue check mark next to your name,
Speaker 1: which just means you're a subscriber. Organizations have to pay
Speaker 1: a lot more. They have to cough up a grand
Speaker 1: per month for the privilege of having that check mark there,
Speaker 1: And a lot of folks, including myself, have already said
Speaker 1: that we're not going to pay, and that the whole
Speaker 1: darned thing misses the point of verification in the first place.
Speaker 1: It's not verification at all anymore. And further, this really
Speaker 1: is nothing but an attempt for Elon Musk to generate
Speaker 1: revenue after having alienated a good chunk of advertisers, and
Speaker 1: Twitter had previously depended almost exclusively on advertising revenue for
Speaker 1: its revenue, and verification means nothing if you're just paying
Speaker 1: for it, like, it's not verification anymore. The whole point
Speaker 1: of verification was so that users would know that the
Speaker 1: account they were following legitimately belonged to whomever it claimed
Speaker 1: to be. So if you're following the account of a
Speaker 1: celebrity and there's a check mark there, You're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is really them. So a lot of people are saying, well,
Speaker 1: now on Twitter says it's not going to allow impersonation,
Speaker 1: But how is it really going to enforce that. How
Speaker 1: many people are going to go get that check mark
Speaker 1: and then change their user name so that it reflects
Speaker 1: a notable public figure. It's a huge mess anyway. One
Speaker 1: of the voices that has criticized this move the loudest
Speaker 1: belongs to The New York Times, the newspaper, the New
Speaker 1: York Times. So now Twitter has stripped the New York
Speaker 1: Times of its check mark. Now, to be clear, there
Speaker 1: will be a big group of heavy hitting Twitter accounts,
Speaker 1: ones that have lots and lots of followers, like the
Speaker 1: top accounts on Twitter, that are going to be able
Speaker 1: to keep their check mark without having to pay that
Speaker 1: monthly fee. For those, I guess the check mark will
Speaker 1: still mean that it's a verified source. You see how
Speaker 1: this all gets confusing and muddled. But I would have
Speaker 1: imagined that the New York Times would have been on
Speaker 1: that list. It is a prominent news source. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are other news sources that are on that list,
Speaker 1: like CNN and the Washington Post, but Twitter has pulled
Speaker 1: the mark off of The New York Times. Musk has
Speaker 1: also been in a rather public snit over The New
Speaker 1: York Times in the past few weeks. So it's very
Speaker 1: hard to avoid thinking that this is really a personal issue,
Speaker 1: not a business one. It feels like this is personal
Speaker 1: and I am biased. I have a lot of feelings
Speaker 1: about Elon Musk that are negative, and so like, I
Speaker 1: am inclined to think that this is a very petty
Speaker 1: personal move on Musk's part, But I have to say
Speaker 1: I don't know that for sure. It's it's how I feel,
Speaker 1: but I have to admit that's just an opinion, and
Speaker 1: I could be one hundred percent off the mark. It's
Speaker 1: just it's hard for me to hold back on that thought. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Lots of other news outlets still have their marks, including
Speaker 1: news outlets that have already said that they are also
Speaker 1: not going to pay the monthly fee, So that raises questions.
Speaker 1: I mean, why was the New York Times singled out
Speaker 1: when other news outlets that also said they weren't going
Speaker 1: to pay still have that check mark. One reason for
Speaker 1: this could be that, from what I understand, the process
Speaker 1: to remove those check marks is a manual one, so
Speaker 1: it's going to very gradually happen across the checked accounts
Speaker 1: that are on Twitter. So if that's the case, if
Speaker 1: people manually have to go and review each of these
Speaker 1: and then remove ones that are not from subscribers, then yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that kind of explains things, but it does make
Speaker 1: it seem like the New York Times was being held out.
Speaker 1: For an example here, I just know that as of
Speaker 1: this morning, I still had my check mark. I got
Speaker 1: the verified check mark years ago, but I know it's
Speaker 1: on borrowed time because I am not paying for it,
Speaker 1: and I imagine one day just notice that it's gone,
Speaker 1: and probably by that time it will have been gone
Speaker 1: for ages, because while I check tech Stuff's Twitter account
Speaker 1: pretty regularly, I very rarely go into my own these days.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it'll happen, and then maybe like a week
Speaker 1: or two later, I'll figure it out. Pour one out
Speaker 1: for Virgin Orbit, which had the backing of a billionaire,
Speaker 1: but turns out a billionaire support is still not enough
Speaker 1: to send payloads into space. All right. So Virgin Orbit
Speaker 1: was a company that was backed by Sir Richard Branson.
Speaker 1: Virgin Orbit's business was to send payloads into orbit by
Speaker 1: using rockets that would fly aboard specially outfitted commercial jets,
Speaker 1: essentially like a seven forty seven. Once the jet reached
Speaker 1: a high enough altitude, it would deploy the rocket, The
Speaker 1: rocket would ignite its engines, and then this would at
Speaker 1: least theoretically send the payload into orbit. And this approach
Speaker 1: accomplished a few things. For one, there was no need
Speaker 1: for a launch pad, right You didn't have to have
Speaker 1: a launch vehicle launch pad at Cape Kennedy. You just
Speaker 1: needed an airport capable of handling the commercial jet that
Speaker 1: was used as the mothership. That would free up Virgin
Speaker 1: Orbit to launch from places that don't have their own
Speaker 1: rocket launch facilities, like say the United Kingdom, and it
Speaker 1: would reduce the need for rocket fuel. You wouldn't need
Speaker 1: as much to get a payload into space. Of course,
Speaker 1: you were using a lot of jet fuel as well. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the business of Virgin one was already struggling when earlier
Speaker 1: this year a flight from the UK that was meant
Speaker 1: to launch a payload into orbit failed to be clear
Speaker 1: the launch of the rocket failed. The aircraft was fine,
Speaker 1: but the payload was unable to reach orbit, and investors
Speaker 1: who were already uncertain about this business began to abandon
Speaker 1: ship and I mentioned in an earlier news segment this
Speaker 1: year that Virgin Orbit would possibly have to declare bankruptcy,
Speaker 1: and that is in fact what has happened. The company
Speaker 1: has officially declared or filed for bankruptcy, and they're looking
Speaker 1: for a buyer reportedly, so there is a chance that
Speaker 1: Virgin Orbit will still live on, possibly under some other
Speaker 1: name and definitely under some other corporate governance if it happens,
Speaker 1: or it may end up being essentially liquidated as much
Speaker 1: as possible, and for the majority of the staff who
Speaker 1: worked there, it's already too late, because last week the
Speaker 1: company announced it was going to be laying off eighty
Speaker 1: five percent of its workforce. Youch now, layoffs aren't the
Speaker 1: only way that companies are trying to reduce costs right now.
Speaker 1: CNBC reports that Google is cutting down on amenities like
Speaker 1: fitness classes for employees. It's also going to expect Googlers
Speaker 1: to stick with their computers for longer, so employees will
Speaker 1: not be able to get laptop replacements as easily or
Speaker 1: frequently as they have in the past. Also, someone should
Speaker 1: tell Milton that he's best off if he's guarding that
Speaker 1: red swing line stapler with his life, because Google also
Speaker 1: won't be handing out staplers to employees either. Those things
Speaker 1: are going to be like gold when Google Society collapses
Speaker 1: and everyone turns into scavengers. So yeah, guard that red
Speaker 1: swing line. Milton. Also, we probably know when Google Society
Speaker 1: will collapse. My guesses it's going to happen on a Monday, because,
Speaker 1: as Google's memo to employees pointed out, the company quote
Speaker 1: baked too many muffins on a Monday end quote. Now,
Speaker 1: I gotta be fair, I'm giving that quote totally out
Speaker 1: of context just for the purposes of poking fun. But
Speaker 1: what the document was actually saying was that the company's
Speaker 1: expenses are too large. They're spending too much money, particularly
Speaker 1: in an office environment where employees are not coming in
Speaker 1: five days a week anymore. They said, the policies that
Speaker 1: we had in place were for when everyone is coming
Speaker 1: into the office every single day of the week, or
Speaker 1: at least every day of the work week, and now
Speaker 1: you're not doing that. So since you're not doing that anymore,
Speaker 1: then we have to cut back on these things. And
Speaker 1: that's why you're starting to see a lot of the
Speaker 1: employee programs and benefits go away. The question I have
Speaker 1: is how many of those benefits are going to return
Speaker 1: once the economy improves. I have a guess. That guess
Speaker 1: is pretty darned close to the figure of zero. The
Speaker 1: amenities Google had are the kind of things that you
Speaker 1: typically associate with startups, but they are also things that
Speaker 1: tend to get phased out when startups become massive corporations.
Speaker 1: Now Google has been a massive corporation for many years
Speaker 1: at this point, so the fact that that was hanging
Speaker 1: on to these amenities for so long was partly a
Speaker 1: sign of how competitive companies have to be in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: In order to attract talent, right, if you wanted the best,
Speaker 1: you need to have lots of bells and whistles on
Speaker 1: top of really good salaries in order to attract them
Speaker 1: to your company and make sure that the competition didn't
Speaker 1: get hold of them. But now we're in a world
Speaker 1: where there's a sudden excess of talent out there in
Speaker 1: the world because all the companies out there are laying
Speaker 1: off thousands of people. So it's way less critical to
Speaker 1: make sure that the folks who are still at your
Speaker 1: company are being catered to right now. They're terrified about
Speaker 1: losing their jobs. It doesn't really matter if you get
Speaker 1: rid of all the stuff that costs money but kept
Speaker 1: employees happy, because where are they going to go. Everyone's
Speaker 1: laying everybody off. It's pretty grim. Okay, we're going to
Speaker 1: take another quick break. When we come back, I've got
Speaker 1: a couple more news stories to talk about. All right.
Speaker 1: We have an update on a story that's been going
Speaker 1: on for many years now. So several years ago, from
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen to twenty sixteen, a guy named Owen Diaz
Speaker 1: worked as a contract employee for Tesla at its Fremont
Speaker 1: factory outside of San Francisco, and he brought charges against
Speaker 1: the company, saying that he was faced with racist attacks
Speaker 1: multiple times as he worked there, including from his supervisor,
Speaker 1: that there were people using racial slurs, and that it
Speaker 1: was a very adversarial workplace. And he brought a lawsuit
Speaker 1: against the company and he won. He was found to
Speaker 1: be in the right and that Tesla was guilty of
Speaker 1: allowing this environment to establish itself within the Fremont facility,
Speaker 1: and initially the jury awarded him a staggering one hundred
Speaker 1: thirty seven million dollars, mostly in punitive damages. However, the
Speaker 1: judge in that trial felt this fine was, you know,
Speaker 1: a tad much, and reduced it down to fifteen million dollars.
Speaker 1: Not quite one tenth, but you know, fifteen million dollars.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of money, but it's obviously nothing compared
Speaker 1: to one hundred thirty seven million dollars. Diaz decided to
Speaker 1: challenge that fifteen million dollar amount, and the matter went
Speaker 1: to a new trial for a jury to decide whether
Speaker 1: or not those damages reflected what he had experienced. Now,
Speaker 1: in this more recent trial, the matter of Tesla's guilt
Speaker 1: was not at issue because that had already been decided
Speaker 1: in the first trial. So we start from the position
Speaker 1: that Tesla was in fact guilty of the things Diaz
Speaker 1: accused the company of. So the only thing that was
Speaker 1: really at stake here was the amount of money Tesla
Speaker 1: was going to have to award mister Diaz. The trial
Speaker 1: lasted five days, and then the jury came back with
Speaker 1: a new figure of three million dollars, which as one
Speaker 1: fifth of fifteen million. So I'm sure Diaz is now
Speaker 1: really frustrated and disappointed in this result. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to pass any judgment here. I'm not going to speculate
Speaker 1: on what I would have done, because I'm fully aware
Speaker 1: I don't face racist depression. So it's impossible for me
Speaker 1: to say whether I would have accepted that initial fifteen
Speaker 1: million dollars that the judge had already knocked down, or
Speaker 1: if I would have gone out to seek more in damages.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I would have done. I don't
Speaker 1: know what mister Diaz has experienced or gone through. Mostly
Speaker 1: I came away from this story really, really, really sincerely
Speaker 1: hoping that Tesla has taken measures to make certain that
Speaker 1: employees never face that kind of environment again, and if
Speaker 1: any instances of racist activity arise in the future, that
Speaker 1: the company takes swift action to address it. To me,
Speaker 1: that's really important, more so than how much money is
Speaker 1: Tesla going to have to pay. I do feel for
Speaker 1: mister Diaz. I it's a is this is not the
Speaker 1: outcome that he wanted. I feel pretty comfortable saying that. Finally,
Speaker 1: Ride Wiseman, Christina Hammock, Koch, Victor Glover, Jeremy Hanson. These
Speaker 1: four people will crue NASA's artemists to mission. They will
Speaker 1: fly aboard and Orion spacecraft, and they will journey from
Speaker 1: Earth out to the Moon. They'll pass behind the Moon,
Speaker 1: and then they'll return home. So this mission is the
Speaker 1: predecessor to NASA's Artemists three, which will actually see astronauts
Speaker 1: set foot on the Moon's surface for the first time
Speaker 1: since nineteen seventy two. So while these particular astronauts will
Speaker 1: not touch down on lunar firma, they will journey further
Speaker 1: away from the Earth than any other human has in
Speaker 1: several decades. Of the four astronauts, three have previously been
Speaker 1: to space. Only Jeremy Hanson will be taking his first
Speaker 1: space flight with this mission. So Artemis one was an
Speaker 1: uncrewed mission, meaning there were no people aboard the Orion spacecraft.
Speaker 1: It was a test flight for NASA's Space Launch System
Speaker 1: or SLS, also known as the Big Honkin Rocket and
Speaker 1: the Orion spacecraft, So that was supposed to happen back
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. Originally, it finally really happened on November sixteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, so about six years later than the
Speaker 1: original plan for Artemis. That mission was a success. The
Speaker 1: Orion spacecraft, with no humans aboard, it entered Earth's orbit
Speaker 1: and stayed there for several days. Orion returned to Earth
Speaker 1: on December eleventh, twenty twenty two. It landed in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Ocean and the crew was able to retreat the spacecraft.
Speaker 1: So Artemis one is in the books. When can we
Speaker 1: expect Artemis two to launch? Well, right now, the plan
Speaker 1: is to aim for a November twenty twenty four launch, though,
Speaker 1: as we've already seen with lots of different space missions,
Speaker 1: there's no guarantee that will be able to make that date.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we will. That's the earliest NASA plans to be
Speaker 1: able to launch, so it may be significantly later than that,
Speaker 1: as we have seen it. It's difficult, you know. Keep
Speaker 1: in mind also that we're talking about you know, elections
Speaker 1: and stuff, so that can complicate things because as much
Speaker 1: as we don't like to bring politics into the space program,
Speaker 1: politics definitely affects the space program. Still in the not
Speaker 1: too distant future, we may once again have people staring
Speaker 1: at the far side of the Moon in person, which
Speaker 1: I have to admit is pretty darn cool. Okay, that
Speaker 1: wraps up this news episode of tech Stuff. Hope you
Speaker 1: are all well. If you'd like to reach out to me.
Speaker 1: You can do so on Twitter. The handle for the
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