Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey thereon
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeart Podcast Send How the tech
Speaker 1: are you? It is time for the tech News, ending
Speaker 1: on Friday, June twenty eighth, twenty twenty four. It's going
Speaker 1: to be a very short episode. There wasn't that much
Speaker 1: tech news. Most of the news in the United States
Speaker 1: has revolved around the election cycle, and thankfully I have
Speaker 1: nothing to contribute to that. So let's talk about some
Speaker 1: tech news. And first up in the haven't We been
Speaker 1: here before? Category, we have a story about Meta potentially
Speaker 1: blocking news content on Facebook in Australia. Now, if that
Speaker 1: does sound familiar to you, it's because this actually stems
Speaker 1: from a twenty twenty one law that would require company
Speaker 1: like Meta and Google to negotiate with news media companies
Speaker 1: in order to allow the inclusion of the news company's
Speaker 1: content on their digital platforms. The purpose of this law
Speaker 1: is to quote help support the sustainability of public interest
Speaker 1: journalism in Australia end quote, and the justification for the
Speaker 1: law appeared to be the assertion that platforms like Facebook
Speaker 1: can at least partly thank news media for the platform's popularity.
Speaker 1: That because people can find news on social media, they
Speaker 1: spend more time on social media platforms, and so therefore
Speaker 1: Meta owes some of its revenue that it generates from
Speaker 1: user engagement to the companies that are providing this content
Speaker 1: that's being posted to Meta, whether you know Meta's doing
Speaker 1: it or a user's doing it. Further, there's an argument
Speaker 1: to be made that if people are just you know,
Speaker 1: scanning a headline and maybe a synopsis of an article,
Speaker 1: they're not going to click through. They don't go to
Speaker 1: the website to read the article itself, which means the
Speaker 1: home website of that article doesn't receive a page impression
Speaker 1: and though therefore it doesn't receive any ad revenue. So
Speaker 1: the news media organizations are saying, you're benefiting from our
Speaker 1: content and people aren't clicking through, so we're not seeing
Speaker 1: any of that ad revenue, and that has been part
Speaker 1: of this whole argument. Initially, Meta blocked news sites on
Speaker 1: Facebook in Australia when this law was taking shape, but
Speaker 1: eventually Meta backed off of that and negotiated with individual
Speaker 1: Australian media sites, but those agreements expire this year and
Speaker 1: Meta has already said it's not going to renew those agreements,
Speaker 1: and in fact, it will take whatever steps are necessary
Speaker 1: up to and including banning news on the platform in
Speaker 1: Australia rather than continue to pay for that privilege. Meta
Speaker 1: reps have argued that news is not a major driver
Speaker 1: of user option or engagement, and that the absence of
Speaker 1: news isn't going to have a negative impact on Facebook's numbers. Essentially,
Speaker 1: and this Meta argues will contradict the point of view
Speaker 1: that news has made a significant contribution to revenue generation
Speaker 1: for Facebook. So if Facebook says now we didn't allow
Speaker 1: news and we still did business like gangbusters in Australia,
Speaker 1: you can't say that news is a driver for user
Speaker 1: engagement if we're still doing just fine without you. That's
Speaker 1: kind of Facebook's take on this. So the Australian government
Speaker 1: has to decide whether or not to actually enforce this
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one law, and there are a lot of
Speaker 1: people wondering if that's going to happen. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I have no insight into that, but it does sound
Speaker 1: like unless the government steps in, Facebook's just going to
Speaker 1: stop paying these negotiated fares that they have with all
Speaker 1: these different media outlets. There's a lot more going on here.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of conversation to be had about this
Speaker 1: law in general. There are plenty of people who argue
Speaker 1: that the law does little to help the smaller media outlets.
Speaker 1: It actually gives much more advantage to really large media
Speaker 1: outlets that are already like multi billion dollar conglomerates. But honestly,
Speaker 1: I would have to do so much more reading to
Speaker 1: really get into that and to be able to give
Speaker 1: my perspective on it. But is an interesting thing to
Speaker 1: read about, and it's not like Australia's the outlier. There
Speaker 1: are other places, such as Canada that have explored similar policies.
Speaker 1: Meta is rolling out a suite of AI tools called
Speaker 1: the AI Studio to certain Instagram users, So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like an early test market. I think, sort of
Speaker 1: like a closed beta. So AI Studio lets creators do
Speaker 1: lots of stuff, including they can make an AI chatbot
Speaker 1: version of themselves. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said quote, you
Speaker 1: might start seeing ais from your favorite creators and interest
Speaker 1: based ais in the coming weeks on Instagram. These will
Speaker 1: primarily show up in messaging for now and will be
Speaker 1: clearly labeled as AI end quote, so based on that,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, this is a text based chat bot,
Speaker 1: and essentially the chatbot is trying to impersonate an influencer,
Speaker 1: And I guess I can see how influencers who don't
Speaker 1: want to spend all day chatting with followers might want
Speaker 1: to use this in order to drive further engagement without
Speaker 1: actually having to do it themselves. But I honestly don't
Speaker 1: know how I would feel about having a robo Jonathan
Speaker 1: out there responding to people on my behalf. I'd be
Speaker 1: really concerned that it could say something I would personally
Speaker 1: object to, and that doesn't look good on me if
Speaker 1: the chatbot's doing that, and I don't want it to
Speaker 1: hurt anyone's feelings or to creep anyone out or anything
Speaker 1: like that. Instagram warns that some messages may be quote
Speaker 1: in acuate or inappropriate end quote, which does not raise
Speaker 1: my confidence levels very much. Now, on the flip side,
Speaker 1: I don't really see where the value proposition is for
Speaker 1: fans right for the community. I mean, if I knew
Speaker 1: that the entity I was chatting with was just an
Speaker 1: AI copy of I don't know, insert influencer here, would
Speaker 1: I even bother chatting with it. I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: the person, it's just a chat pot. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like finding out that a celebrity doesn't run their own
Speaker 1: twitter feed or whatever. You know, if you know that
Speaker 1: you're just interacting with a representative acting on behalf of
Speaker 1: a celebrity, it just doesn't have the same pizazz. But
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe some fans would just be thrilled
Speaker 1: that an AI copy of the person they follow is
Speaker 1: responding to them. I think that doesn't sound healthy to me,
Speaker 1: but I'm not an expert. Maybe maybe there's nothing at
Speaker 1: all wrong with that, but it just seems I don't know, icky,
Speaker 1: But I can see this actually working better for businesses.
Speaker 1: I can see that being much more effective. So let's
Speaker 1: say that you run like a small business and you
Speaker 1: have a strong Instagram presence, having a chatbot that's able
Speaker 1: to answer questions and stuff on your behalf, I could
Speaker 1: see that being really helpful. So that part, I totally
Speaker 1: get the bit where there's a chatbot that is posing
Speaker 1: as a person. That seems weird and creepy to me,
Speaker 1: even if it's labeled as such. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm just it's quite possible. I'm just too old.
Speaker 1: I did have a birthday this week. That's also in
Speaker 1: the Tech news. I had a birthday this week. It's
Speaker 1: also why this news is going to be a little shorter,
Speaker 1: because I got to get ready to head out of
Speaker 1: town to celebrate a belated birthday gathering. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't really grock with this. Hackers have taken aim at
Speaker 1: the US auto industry by targeting software used by many
Speaker 1: car dealerships. So the software in question comes from a
Speaker 1: company called seed DK Global, and a lot of dealerships
Speaker 1: here in the United States use CDK Globals software in
Speaker 1: order to handle transactions, so it's a fundamental component of
Speaker 1: their operations. And because this software has such wide distribution,
Speaker 1: it was a beautiful target for hackers. It was a
Speaker 1: way for them to infect many separate dealerships simultaneously, not
Speaker 1: by attacking the individual dealership like you didn't have to
Speaker 1: go one by one. Instead, you target software that a
Speaker 1: lot of these dealerships use, and that becomes your delivery
Speaker 1: system for your malware. You compromise the software and then
Speaker 1: you use that to push out updates that are really malware.
Speaker 1: They're not updates and boom, you got these compromised businesses,
Speaker 1: potentially thousands of them, all of them tied to the
Speaker 1: auto industry and automakers themselves. So this is not an
Speaker 1: unusual thing. We've seen it happen before. A couple of
Speaker 1: massive hacker attacks over the last half decade have used
Speaker 1: a method like this where the hackers, instead of targeting
Speaker 1: individual businesses, go after a vendor that makes a software
Speaker 1: package that's used by lots and lots of businesses. They
Speaker 1: secretly exploit, you know, they penetrate the vendors' systems, they
Speaker 1: exploit their software, they push out updates that include malware. Boom,
Speaker 1: They've got themselves a long list of exploited systems. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty terrifying approach. The hacker group that did this
Speaker 1: is called Black Suit, and according to cybersecurity researchers, it's
Speaker 1: a relatively young group, like a year old, and it's
Speaker 1: spun off a more established Russian linked hacker group called
Speaker 1: Royal Locker. And like many hacker groups, it is a
Speaker 1: ransomware operator. So they lock target data away, usually behind encryption.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll lock down entire systems, not just the data
Speaker 1: on those systems, and then they threaten to go nuclear
Speaker 1: and delete everything, or make it impossible for the target
Speaker 1: to access or possibly and or leak information on the
Speaker 1: black market unless the target hands over some ransom money.
Speaker 1: In this case, if in fact Black Suit is the
Speaker 1: party responsible, it all comes down between them and CDK
Speaker 1: at the moment. Dealerships in the meantime have had to
Speaker 1: resort to desperate measures like using pen and paper for transactions,
Speaker 1: though I understand CDK has started to restore functionality with
Speaker 1: at least some dealerships. All right, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break when we come back. I've got a few
Speaker 1: more news items before we wrap this up. We're back.
Speaker 1: So our next story is about Tim Griffin, Arkansas's Attorney General,
Speaker 1: Arkansas's estate here in the United States for those of
Speaker 1: you outside the US, and Tim Griffin has filed a
Speaker 1: lawsuit against the Chinese shopping app Temu. I believe that
Speaker 1: app is technically based in Ireland now, but all of
Speaker 1: its major operations are still in China. Griffin alleges that
Speaker 1: Timu is dangerous malware that's posing as a shopping app,
Speaker 1: and that Timu is really designed to quote gain unrestricted
Speaker 1: access to a user's phone operating system, including but not
Speaker 1: limited to a user's camera, specific location, contacts, text messages, documents,
Speaker 1: and other applications. End quote. Essentially that if you install
Speaker 1: Timu on your phone, you are giving Timu access to
Speaker 1: everything on your phone, ongoing access. So Griffin accuses Timu
Speaker 1: of ignoring the privacy settings that a user has in place.
Speaker 1: Like my phone, for example, I have it where if
Speaker 1: I launch an app that requires access to certain things
Speaker 1: on my phone, like my camera or my contacts, whatever,
Speaker 1: I'm given a pop up where I can allow or
Speaker 1: deny access to those things. Right, I can allow the
Speaker 1: app to have access to my contacts, or I can
Speaker 1: say no, don't bother my friends and family. I don't
Speaker 1: want that to happen. So what Griffin is saying is
Speaker 1: that Timu has designed their app in such a way
Speaker 1: that it gets you install it on your phone, and
Speaker 1: afterward it circumvents those permissions and you don't get a
Speaker 1: pop up, you don't get the chance to allow or deny.
Speaker 1: It just grabs hold of access to these things. And
Speaker 1: that's a heck of an accusation, and it's a really
Speaker 1: big claim to make. Griffin is relying heavily upon a
Speaker 1: report that was created by an organization called Grizzly Research.
Speaker 1: I am unfamiliar with that group. TIMU reps are saying
Speaker 1: that this report from Grizzly Research is all just misinformation
Speaker 1: and the accusation are unfounded. They accuse Grizzly Research of
Speaker 1: trying to essentially short sell Timu and that that's like,
Speaker 1: that's what Grizzly Research does, is that they make money
Speaker 1: by company's stock going down. Essentially is the implication. I
Speaker 1: don't know what the truth is, Honestly, I highly recommend
Speaker 1: you check out Ashley Bellinger's article about this on Ours Technica.
Speaker 1: It's titled shopping app Timu is dangerous malware spying on
Speaker 1: your texts lawsuit claims. I think it's well worth reading.
Speaker 1: Bellinger did a great job laying out all the facts
Speaker 1: and also does a great job not like applying opinion
Speaker 1: to it. It's very much a well, here's what's being claimed.
Speaker 1: Here is how TIMU is trying to refute those claims,
Speaker 1: and this is all we know at the moment. But
Speaker 1: it's a it's a very well done piece. I recommend
Speaker 1: reading it. YouTube is getting ready to launch more tiers
Speaker 1: of YouTube Premium, so right now, the company offers three
Speaker 1: tiers of service. There's a student version for seven dollars
Speaker 1: ninety nine cents a month, there's the individual tier, which
Speaker 1: is thirteen dollars ninety nine cents per month, and there's
Speaker 1: a family tier for twenty two dollars ninety nine cents
Speaker 1: per month. So that makes you wonder like, well, what
Speaker 1: other tiers are they going to offer and how will
Speaker 1: they be different from those three. YouTube has not shared
Speaker 1: this information yet. We expect to hear more about it
Speaker 1: in the weeks ahead. But these premium plans give you
Speaker 1: access to YouTube videos without all those ads. You can
Speaker 1: also do things like download videos to your local device.
Speaker 1: You can access YouTube music without ads. I've had YouTube
Speaker 1: Premium for several years now, although I never actually signed
Speaker 1: up for it. Instead, I was subscribed to a different
Speaker 1: Google service that, in true Google fashion, was later shut
Speaker 1: down by the company and they just ported my subscription
Speaker 1: over to YouTube instead, and I stuck with it because
Speaker 1: I like watching YouTube videos without having ads. But it
Speaker 1: comes at a cost. But honestly, I don't don't mind
Speaker 1: paying it. I'm at a position where that is something
Speaker 1: I can fit into my budget. I'm not suggesting that
Speaker 1: everyone just fork over the money each month. A lot
Speaker 1: of people are not in that position, and so I
Speaker 1: get it. But other features that are coming to YouTube
Speaker 1: Premium include some stuff like picture and picture capabilities with
Speaker 1: YouTube shorts and a conversational AI assistant, which at first
Speaker 1: I was not really jazzed about, but then I thought
Speaker 1: about it. I thought, maybe I need one of those
Speaker 1: something that can help me find, you know, like interesting
Speaker 1: video essays. I really love in depth, interesting entertaining video essays,
Speaker 1: but I want them that are coming from people who
Speaker 1: are not like hateful people. Sometimes there's something that's posing
Speaker 1: as a video essay and you get into it, like
Speaker 1: you get five or ten minutes in, you're like, oh wait,
Speaker 1: this is like propaganda for a hate group, and you
Speaker 1: know it's not necessarily evident at the beginning, and you
Speaker 1: start saying, I don't I don't want to be here.
Speaker 1: If the AI assistant can help me figure those things
Speaker 1: out from the get go without me having to watch
Speaker 1: some of it first, I'm all for that, because I
Speaker 1: do love watching really good content and I love avoiding
Speaker 1: the kind of content I find to be upsetting. NASA
Speaker 1: plans to bring down the International Space Station in a
Speaker 1: few years, and it's going to pay SpaceX to get
Speaker 1: the job done. Now, I'm tempted to turn this entire
Speaker 1: news item into a spoof of mafia cliches, something like
Speaker 1: you know, uh, this is a nice space station you
Speaker 1: got here? Is suit would be a shame as someone
Speaker 1: I don't know deorbited it. Well, A real story is
Speaker 1: that the International Space Station was always going to have
Speaker 1: a limited lifespan. The modules that make up the ISS
Speaker 1: were mostly designed to have around a fifteen year lifespan,
Speaker 1: longer if you did really good maintenance and repair on it.
Speaker 1: And the very first of the ISS modules to go
Speaker 1: into orbit is Zaria, and that actually went into orbit
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety eight, so it's been up there
Speaker 1: twenty five years. Reports say that there are cracks in
Speaker 1: some of those older modules, particularly the Russian ones, and
Speaker 1: that a lot of astronaut time is spent maintaining and
Speaker 1: repairing the station in order to make sure it remains
Speaker 1: safe to operate within. So it's growing close to time
Speaker 1: for us to say goodbye to the old station and
Speaker 1: make way for a new one. NASA's plan is to
Speaker 1: deorbit the station in twenty thirty. To do so, the
Speaker 1: agency has turned to SpaceX to design a deorbiting vehicle.
Speaker 1: It's a vehicle that's going to guide the ISS down
Speaker 1: so that it breaks apart and burns up over an
Speaker 1: ocean as opposed to say, a continent, and the price
Speaker 1: tag is eight hundred and forty three million dollars. As
Speaker 1: for the successor to the International Space Station, NASA is
Speaker 1: exploring the possibility of relying on commercial space stations, which
Speaker 1: would be operated by companies and consortiums, and that NASA
Speaker 1: would negotiate to have some space set aside for the
Speaker 1: agency to be able to conduct experiments aboard these commercially
Speaker 1: operated space stations. So we'll see how that goes. All right,
Speaker 1: that's it for this episode. I do have a reading
Speaker 1: recommendation on top of all that, I recommend Elizabeth Lopotto's
Speaker 1: piece in The Verge titled Perplexities Grand theft Ai. So
Speaker 1: Lopato reveals how a startup AI company is taking shots
Speaker 1: at Google and how the biggest losers might be journalists
Speaker 1: and subject matter experts. It's a story of ambition and
Speaker 1: in my opinion, a flagrant disregard of copyright laws, not Lopato.
Speaker 1: Lopato's work is solid. I mean it sounds like perplexity
Speaker 1: AI is playing fast and loose with copyright law, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you should check that out. That's it for this week.
Speaker 1: I hope you are all well. Wish me a happy birthday,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
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