Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from my 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 a heart radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And Happy New Year everybody.
Speaker 1: It's one and yet here we are stuck with the
Speaker 1: last few months of our retrospective on and to be fair,
Speaker 1: I'm still in twenty you know, just when we thought
Speaker 1: we were out, I pull us back in. But we're
Speaker 1: going to wrap up the big stories that involved tech
Speaker 1: in tw with this batch, I promise, And tomorrow you're
Speaker 1: gonna get a new episode of Tech Stuff. We're now
Speaker 1: going to go to five episodes a week now. I'll
Speaker 1: talk more about that at the end of this episode,
Speaker 1: but just know that this doesn't mean every episode will
Speaker 1: be kind of a deep dive like this one. We're
Speaker 1: going to put some variety in there, so I'll talk
Speaker 1: more about that later. Now. One bit of great news
Speaker 1: we got in August was that returning astronauts safely splashed
Speaker 1: down in a SpaceX Dragon capsule, which was the first
Speaker 1: time NASA had used the commercial space company spacecraft to
Speaker 1: bring astronauts to and from the International Space Station, which
Speaker 1: was pretty fantastic. In early August, we saw a once
Speaker 1: influential tech brand fade away. The brand was the US
Speaker 1: cell phone carrier Sprint. T Mobile, once a competitor of Sprint,
Speaker 1: had concluded a thirty billion dollar merger just a few
Speaker 1: months earlier. In August, T Mobile retired the Sprint brand.
Speaker 1: They folded it entirely into T Mobile's business. Before that,
Speaker 1: Sprint had been the fourth of the four large cell
Speaker 1: phone carriers in the United States, and it had been
Speaker 1: struggling up to the point of that acquisition, and several
Speaker 1: analysts actually suggested that if T Mobile had not swooped in,
Speaker 1: Sprint might well have been heading towards bankruptcy. If you
Speaker 1: listen to the previous two episodes in this series, you
Speaker 1: heard how President Trump was having an increasingly combative relationship
Speaker 1: with social networks, which had been up to that point
Speaker 1: pretty reliable ways for him to get his message out
Speaker 1: to followers for most of his presidency. Twitter had already
Speaker 1: started labeling some of the President's tweets with flags that
Speaker 1: indicated that they could contain volatile or incorrect information. Facebook
Speaker 1: finally followed suit, removing a Trump post that pushed to
Speaker 1: claim that children are nearly immune to COVID nineteen, and
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg had expressed some private concerns about Trump, and he
Speaker 1: was under intense pressure from media, from advertisers, from users,
Speaker 1: and from Facebook employees to have the company take a
Speaker 1: more active role in moderating posts. So this could have
Speaker 1: been a response to that intense pressure. Also in August,
Speaker 1: Anthony Lewandowski received a prison sentence. Now some of you
Speaker 1: may not know who Lewandowski is. He's an engineer who
Speaker 1: has focused primarily on autonomous card technology. He joined Google's
Speaker 1: efforts after running his own startups, and while he was
Speaker 1: at Google there were stories circulating that he made some
Speaker 1: ethically questionable business decisions. However, the real trouble began when
Speaker 1: Lewandowski left Google. He founded another startup company about autonomous
Speaker 1: trucking actually, and ultimately Uber acquired that company in but
Speaker 1: Google executives accused Lewandowski of having illegally downloaded and saved
Speaker 1: Google documents to a personal device before he left the company,
Speaker 1: and that Uber was then benefiting from technology that was
Speaker 1: owned by Google. Uber would eventually fire Lewandowski in seventeen
Speaker 1: over All of this and several legal cases would follow
Speaker 1: with Lewandowski eventually standing trial for the theft of trade
Speaker 1: c grits. Lewandowski pled guilty to one charge of such
Speaker 1: theft in August, and the judge sentenced him to eighteen
Speaker 1: months in prison while dismissing all the other counts. The
Speaker 1: judge actually kept on commenting on Lewandowski being a genius
Speaker 1: and having a need for Lewandowski's genius in the world.
Speaker 1: I have some opinions about that, but I'll leave it. Oh,
Speaker 1: and a fun tad bit about Lewandowski. He also established
Speaker 1: a religion called Way of the Future, which looks to
Speaker 1: the eventual design and ascension of an artificially intelligent deity. Essentially,
Speaker 1: the idea is that sooner or later, we're going to
Speaker 1: create an AI far more capable with dealing with problems
Speaker 1: than we puny mortals are, and we should prepare the
Speaker 1: way for such an entity. I have no idea how
Speaker 1: sincere Lewandowski is about this endeavor, or if this is
Speaker 1: an example of, let's say, a creative way to raise
Speaker 1: funds and attacks exempt environ nament. Because in the United States,
Speaker 1: religious uh well officially recognized religious organizations are tax exempt,
Speaker 1: the United States would gain access to Instagram's Reels feature
Speaker 1: in August. Reels that's r E e l S is
Speaker 1: essentially Facebook or Instagram's answer to TikTok, and it lets
Speaker 1: users record short videos to share an Instagram. From what
Speaker 1: I can tell, the most popular versions of these videos
Speaker 1: tend to either be cute little animal videos or young
Speaker 1: women doing the same five dances over and over. But
Speaker 1: I'm also old and grouchy, so I acknowledge that this
Speaker 1: is a technology that wasn't meant for me, and I
Speaker 1: am out of touch with today's youth, and also get
Speaker 1: off my lawn. More seriously, I would argue that this
Speaker 1: is another example of Facebook trying to fend off any
Speaker 1: attempts from any other company to pull eyeballs away from
Speaker 1: face Book and Instagram. TikTok is really popular, particularly with
Speaker 1: younger people, and every moment someone is looking at TikTok,
Speaker 1: they're not looking at Instagram or Facebook, and to Facebook,
Speaker 1: that's a big problem. Thus we get reels, and I
Speaker 1: think for some people reels will be really useful as
Speaker 1: they've already established a big following on Instagram, so they
Speaker 1: don't have to do all the work all over again
Speaker 1: on TikTok. But for other people, it will just seem
Speaker 1: like a lame copycat of an existing service. We saw
Speaker 1: Uber's delivery service grow to be larger than its rideshare
Speaker 1: service in August. Now that isn't that big of a
Speaker 1: surprise for a world that's affected by the pandemic. Fewer
Speaker 1: people were going out needing a ride to places, and
Speaker 1: lots of folks needed stuff to be delivered to them,
Speaker 1: so all of this tracks, but it marked a big
Speaker 1: shift in the company's momentum. Keep in mind, however, that
Speaker 1: Uber has never been profitable, not since it was first launched.
Speaker 1: Uber doesn't pull enough revenue to cover all its costs,
Speaker 1: which means the company needs regular cash injections from investors
Speaker 1: in order to keep going. Company executives say that Uber
Speaker 1: uses much of its earnings to invest in growth, and
Speaker 1: that's where the problem is. That Uber is is spending
Speaker 1: money in order to grow larger, and if they didn't,
Speaker 1: then the company would be profitable. Interestingly, way back in February,
Speaker 1: Uber executive said that they saw the potential to be
Speaker 1: profitable by the end of and then the rest of happened.
Speaker 1: But hey, you know, it's complicated and you can't predict
Speaker 1: the pandemic also around this time, and could grief. I
Speaker 1: can't believe this happened this year because it feels like
Speaker 1: it was a lifetime ago. President Trump issued an executive
Speaker 1: order that was demanding services like TikTok and we Chat,
Speaker 1: W E, C, H A T would receive bands from
Speaker 1: operating in the United States unless their respective parent companies,
Speaker 1: both of them Chinese companies, were to divest themselves of
Speaker 1: those properties. The initial order created a deadline of forty
Speaker 1: five days. Questions immediately popped up over whether the president
Speaker 1: actually had the authority to do this or to enforce it,
Speaker 1: and a lot of eyes were on TikTok and to
Speaker 1: a lesser extent, we Chat to see what would happen next.
Speaker 1: So let's go ahead and follow through with that story.
Speaker 1: The deadline got an extension, mostly due to the Trump
Speaker 1: administration not actually taking the steps necessary to do anything
Speaker 1: about TikTok after it remained with its parent company. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: TikTok pursued a court case to get a judgment on
Speaker 1: the legality of the order in the first place. A
Speaker 1: federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against the band, so
Speaker 1: that removed that threat and then in November, the US
Speaker 1: Commerce Department issued a statement that said it wouldn't enforce
Speaker 1: the executive order abiding by the judges injunction. And then
Speaker 1: in early December, a second federal judge issued another preliminary
Speaker 1: injunction against any bands on the service within the United States. Now,
Speaker 1: the matter is not yet settled. The President's efforts largely
Speaker 1: have been ineffective so far. It probably doesn't help that
Speaker 1: there's a story from back in June about TikTok users
Speaker 1: securing tickets to a Trump rally, and they subsequently did
Speaker 1: not go to that Trump rally, so that inflated the
Speaker 1: pre event attendance numbers made a look like the event
Speaker 1: was going to be a sellout, but then it was
Speaker 1: only modestly attended, and that was a big uh, kind
Speaker 1: of a big thumb, thumb to the nose toward the president.
Speaker 1: So a lot of folks speculated that at least part
Speaker 1: of the reason that Trump's actions against TikTok were the
Speaker 1: way they were was because of a personal vendetta. Now,
Speaker 1: whether that's true or not, his attempts to ban it
Speaker 1: in the US have so far failed to make any
Speaker 1: real ground. Even attempts to have American companies take over
Speaker 1: at least some ownership of TikTok have sort of stalled out.
Speaker 1: Early on, Microsoft was in the mix. We all thought
Speaker 1: that Microsoft might actually acquire the US branch of TikTok,
Speaker 1: but more recently it was a combo of Oracle and Walmart.
Speaker 1: The deadline for byte Dance b y t e Dance,
Speaker 1: TikTok's Chinese parent company to sell to those American companies
Speaker 1: was back on December four, which came and went without
Speaker 1: any such transaction. And of course later this month in January,
Speaker 1: will have a new president here in the United States
Speaker 1: and we may see a very different approach or maybe
Speaker 1: not not doing a predictions episode, so we'll see another
Speaker 1: big tech story. One I covered last year was the
Speaker 1: battle between Epic Games and Apple, and to be clear,
Speaker 1: Google was also in this fight, but pretty much all
Speaker 1: the media attention has been on Apple and Epic So
Speaker 1: what is going on? Well, first, we have to understand
Speaker 1: a major part of Apple's business plan. If there is
Speaker 1: any sort of monetary exchange, either to purchase an app
Speaker 1: from the app store or to make purchases within an app,
Speaker 1: and that last part is important. It has to all
Speaker 1: be within an app, then Apple will get a thirty
Speaker 1: percent cut of those transactions. And when I say in
Speaker 1: app purchases, I do mean that the experience or the
Speaker 1: result of the purchase is also within the app. If
Speaker 1: you make an app that allows you to order physical
Speaker 1: services or goods that are outside the app, like a
Speaker 1: ride hailing app right like Uber or lift, or Airbnb's
Speaker 1: booking app or delivery service app, those in app transactions
Speaker 1: are exempt from that cut. But if you are to say,
Speaker 1: create a game, and you create a game where players
Speaker 1: can buy something within the game itself, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: the change the way the game looks or plays that
Speaker 1: would qualify for that thirty percent cut. Well, Epic Games
Speaker 1: makes a lot of stuff, including the game Fortnite and
Speaker 1: Play by the Rules. It would mean that when gamers
Speaker 1: would purchase in game currency and Fortnite to spend on
Speaker 1: stuff like character skins, which are just cosmetic changes within
Speaker 1: the game, Apple would get a thirty cut of that transaction. Google,
Speaker 1: by the way, does something similar, so Epic decided to
Speaker 1: do a little sidestep. Epic created a way for gamers
Speaker 1: to buy in game currency outside of the Apple and
Speaker 1: Google apps themselves, but then they could use that currency
Speaker 1: within the apps, and they encouraged players to do that.
Speaker 1: They said, you can buy your currency within the app,
Speaker 1: or you can come out of the app and buy
Speaker 1: it there. And essentially they were saying, it's going to
Speaker 1: get more expensive within the app because the fact that
Speaker 1: these companies take a cut means we get less money.
Speaker 1: So we're losing money on the deal. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: to make it more expensive. It just makes more sense
Speaker 1: if you buy the currency this other way. That way
Speaker 1: you don't have to spend as much to get a
Speaker 1: certain amount of virtual currency. So that was the the scheme,
Speaker 1: and Apple did not take this attempt to bypass in
Speaker 1: app purchases kindly, and they quickly removed Fortnite from the
Speaker 1: app store. Moreover, the company threatened to cut Epic off
Speaker 1: from developing for iOS devices entirely, which would mean that
Speaker 1: not only would the game never receive another update, other
Speaker 1: stuff like a popular game engine used by lots of
Speaker 1: different game developers, not just Epic, would end up going
Speaker 1: unsupported because Epic oversees it. So Epic argue that this
Speaker 1: measure was overreach and it represented any competitive and monopolistic practices.
Speaker 1: The matter went to court with judges ultimately decided that
Speaker 1: while Apple has no obligation to return Fortnite to the
Speaker 1: App Store, so that that ban is still in place,
Speaker 1: Apple cannot go so far as to block all development
Speaker 1: on iOS from Epic. Now that battle continues today, with
Speaker 1: Epic leading a pr campaign to try and get influencers
Speaker 1: to buy into a boycott of Apple products. More legal
Speaker 1: battles are to come, and recently a judge denied Apple's
Speaker 1: request to place limits on how much Apple CEO Tim
Speaker 1: Cook will have to testify at the trial. They were
Speaker 1: trying to restrict it to a certain number of hours
Speaker 1: of testimony, and the judge said, no, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: Also distantly related to all this, Apple announced in November
Speaker 1: that it would cut that commission in half to for
Speaker 1: small app makers, which Apple defines as makers who have
Speaker 1: made less than one million dollars in net sales. Now,
Speaker 1: the step just a bit out of the United States,
Speaker 1: because I know these episodes have been almost almost exclusively
Speaker 1: US focused. In mid August, a cyber attack in Canada
Speaker 1: necessitated the government to shut down most government operated online accounts.
Speaker 1: Reports were circulating that at the peak of the attack,
Speaker 1: there were as many as three hundred thousand attempts to
Speaker 1: gain unauthorized access of government accounts. The attackers were using
Speaker 1: a method called credenti shoal stuffing, in which they had
Speaker 1: gained access to user names and passwords through other means
Speaker 1: such as fishing and you know, uh, social manipulation, and
Speaker 1: they were using those credentials on the various Canadian government
Speaker 1: sites and services. And it was a very bad time
Speaker 1: for this to happen, as many Canadian citizens were dependent
Speaker 1: upon government sites to get aid during the pandemic. And
Speaker 1: towards the end of August, Elon Musk showed off a
Speaker 1: brain computer interface. His team had implanted a prototype of
Speaker 1: the neuralink device that they've been working on, and the
Speaker 1: prototype was in a pig named Gertrude. The goal is
Speaker 1: to create a ship that can allow someone to interact
Speaker 1: with computer systems through thought alone, and would be useful
Speaker 1: for people who have a severe lack of mobility or
Speaker 1: other challenges. And of course, I think it's also a
Speaker 1: sign that certain people have a hope that they can
Speaker 1: find a way to boost human capabilities and intelligence through
Speaker 1: computer assistance in the future and have it be a
Speaker 1: two way streets, not just sending commands to a computer,
Speaker 1: but a computer sending useful information back to the human brain.
Speaker 1: Computer interfaces themselves are not new, but traditionally they are
Speaker 1: pretty large systems, and they take a lot of time
Speaker 1: to train both the person who's using it and the
Speaker 1: system itself to work together, and they require invasive brain surgery,
Speaker 1: and generally they are fairly uh modest in capabilities. Those
Speaker 1: capabilities can have enormous benefits to people who otherwise are immobile,
Speaker 1: but it's not like suddenly being able to access the
Speaker 1: Internet just through your brain. When we come back, we'll
Speaker 1: move into the fall of but first let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break. In September twenty twenty, we saw that Zoom
Speaker 1: was going through a zoom boom for reals, because their
Speaker 1: profit was up three thousand three And this is sort
Speaker 1: of the opposite of what had happened to Quimby. The
Speaker 1: use case for Zoom was a perfect fit for people
Speaker 1: who suddenly we're finding themselves working from home, and more
Speaker 1: than a few companies by this point in the year
Speaker 1: we're talking about how even in a post pandemic world,
Speaker 1: a lot of employees might still work from home in
Speaker 1: the future. I suspect Once all the dust settles from COVID,
Speaker 1: we're gonna see some new big challenges, not the least
Speaker 1: of which will be in the corporate real estate world,
Speaker 1: where companies will question whether or not they need to
Speaker 1: maintain expensive office space on their ledgers. Moving forward, one
Speaker 1: thing that may have changed since I recorded this episode
Speaker 1: is the outcome of a struggle between Australia's government and
Speaker 1: Facebook and Google. Not the heart of the matter is
Speaker 1: the Australian media and a determination to make Google and
Speaker 1: face but pay to make use of the original content
Speaker 1: created by Australian media. The proposed legislation, which is not
Speaker 1: yet passed as I record, this would create a negotiation
Speaker 1: space for the media companies and these platforms to come
Speaker 1: together to determine how much value the content represents. Facebook
Speaker 1: and Google have been resisting and objecting to this. They
Speaker 1: have said they're worried it would set a global precedent.
Speaker 1: The Australian government hasn't put up but with much goof
Speaker 1: from them. They have pointed out that these companies are
Speaker 1: raking in enormous amounts of revenue in Australia. For Google,
Speaker 1: it's in the billions of dollars, while local media outlets
Speaker 1: are starting to dry up, and the whole issue is
Speaker 1: a complicated one. Honestly, I would need a lot more
Speaker 1: of research to really get to the core of what
Speaker 1: is going on here and what the salient arguments are
Speaker 1: for either side. But perhaps by the time you hear this,
Speaker 1: the Australian government will have enact did this law, or
Speaker 1: amended it, or maybe even dismissed it. Samsung launched a
Speaker 1: foldable smartphone in September that retails for one thousand nine
Speaker 1: dollars a princely some Samsung has had a bit of
Speaker 1: a rocky past with foldable phones, having been burnt in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen after releasing review models to tech journalists, only
Speaker 1: to recall them a day later due to various issues
Speaker 1: with the phone's durability. But now Samsung has a few
Speaker 1: different folding phones in different formats on the market. Uber
Speaker 1: announced in September that by twenty the company would only
Speaker 1: offer rides in electric vehicles in the US and Europe.
Speaker 1: It was going to go electric only within a decade.
Speaker 1: That's kind of interesting now. The company further stated its
Speaker 1: goal was to be emissions free by twenty forty. The
Speaker 1: announcements timing was likely a response to a report that
Speaker 1: found that Uber vehicles are less climate efficient than the
Speaker 1: average vehicle on the road. So I think that this
Speaker 1: is a bold move by Uber and one that's important,
Speaker 1: and it's important to acknowledge the responsibility of the company
Speaker 1: to help reduce carbon emissions. But it's also in response
Speaker 1: to the fact that it turns out that Uber vehicles
Speaker 1: and presumably other ride sharing vehicles are generating a lot
Speaker 1: more carbon because those vehicles are in motion so much
Speaker 1: more than your average one. Here's a bit of news
Speaker 1: that I didn't hear about when it actually happened. In
Speaker 1: mid September twenty twenty, sales of vinyl record albums were
Speaker 1: greater than compact disc sales for the first time since
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. Now, granted, the purchase of physical media
Speaker 1: in general has been in decline for several years now.
Speaker 1: Most of us are accessing our music on streaming services
Speaker 1: rather than purchasing physical albums. But still, as someone who
Speaker 1: loves vinyl and occasionally collects a little bit of it,
Speaker 1: I have a very model collection. I don't I'm not
Speaker 1: one of those people who has like a garage stuffed
Speaker 1: with records, but This kind of gave me the warm fuzzies.
Speaker 1: The Mega Corporation soft Bank sold the British semiconductor chip
Speaker 1: company ARM two VideA for forty billion dollars in September.
Speaker 1: You can learn more about ARM and a couple of
Speaker 1: episodes are recorded back in so check the archives because
Speaker 1: it is a fascinating company and a great story. Nintendo
Speaker 1: announced it would discontinue the Nintendo three DS handheld console
Speaker 1: in September. I remember being at E three a decade
Speaker 1: ago and seeing the debut of the three DS. The
Speaker 1: three D S line was the successor to the older
Speaker 1: Nintendo d S systems and traces its lineage back to
Speaker 1: the old Game Boy days. The announcement meant that Nintendo
Speaker 1: would be focusing solely on the Nintendo Switch from a
Speaker 1: hardware standpoint, so that line of handheld consoles is no more.
Speaker 1: Sticking with game news, Microsoft and it was acquiring a
Speaker 1: company called Zeni Max for seven point five billion dollars,
Speaker 1: which might not mean much to most people, but Zenni
Speaker 1: Max is the parent company to Bethesda, a famous video
Speaker 1: game development studio. Bethesda is known for series like the
Speaker 1: recent Doom games, uh for the Fallout games and for
Speaker 1: the Elder Scrolls games. In recent years, the company has
Speaker 1: put out a few games that have received a mixed reception, or,
Speaker 1: as was the case with Fallout seventy six, a largely
Speaker 1: negative reaction. Now Bethesda joins other acquisitions like Bungee, the
Speaker 1: company that created the Halo franchise, by becoming part of
Speaker 1: the Microsoft family. Analysts saw this as a huge win
Speaker 1: for Microsoft, which would be able to bring Bethesda's catalog
Speaker 1: of games to the Game Pass service, which is an
Speaker 1: ongoing subscription service that gives gamers access to a wide
Speaker 1: range of games without having to purchase the individual titles.
Speaker 1: Moving on into October, now we're making some progress. We
Speaker 1: saw some new hardware from Google and Apple debut in October.
Speaker 1: Google introduced the Pixel five G smartphone, which seemed to
Speaker 1: indicate that Google was backing away from the super expensive
Speaker 1: luxury phone market. Well, you might spend a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: or more on a premium smartphone from other companies. Google's
Speaker 1: new Pixel five G flagship phone has the bargain budget
Speaker 1: price of SIS. Don't get me wrong, that is still expensive,
Speaker 1: but it's no longer priced in that high range of
Speaker 1: phones on the market. And as the name indicates, it's
Speaker 1: compatible with five G networks. And a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: after that, Apple held its virtual Event to announce four
Speaker 1: new iPhone models. So on the low end you have
Speaker 1: the iPhone twelve Mini, which, like the Pixel five G,
Speaker 1: starts at six. On the other end of the spectrum
Speaker 1: is the iPhone twelve Pro Max, which has a starting
Speaker 1: price of a thousand dollars and it goes up from
Speaker 1: there depending on which model you get. The phone has
Speaker 1: all the features that you've come to expect on an iPhone,
Speaker 1: including incredible cameras. The iPhone twelve Pro and Pro Max
Speaker 1: both have three cameras on the back of the phone.
Speaker 1: The other two models have two cameras on the back.
Speaker 1: Here in Atlanta, we learned that our local American football team,
Speaker 1: the Falcons, would be playing home games in the stadium
Speaker 1: that would be disinfected by drones, which is a weird
Speaker 1: sentence that I didn't think I would ever say. The
Speaker 1: stadium partnered with Lucid Drone Technologies to use drones designated
Speaker 1: D one to distribute disinfectant over the seats, handrails, and
Speaker 1: other parts of the stadium where the audience would sit
Speaker 1: or the fans. The drones have a sort of mister
Speaker 1: or sprinkler attachment on either side of the body that
Speaker 1: points downward, so it flies above these areas and sprays
Speaker 1: disinfectant downward. I am not sure how well this works.
Speaker 1: Anyone who knows me knows I get a bit head
Speaker 1: up about big public gatherings in this time, even under
Speaker 1: controlled circumstances. But I'm gonna let that drop. I realized
Speaker 1: I'm just one voice out there. Um. But be safe, guys,
Speaker 1: you know, just be safe. John McAfee, the guy who
Speaker 1: founded McFee anti virus software, was arrested in Spain in October.
Speaker 1: McAfee has quite the checkered past, having been involved in
Speaker 1: a murder investigation at one point, but he was arrested
Speaker 1: on the charge of tax evasion, same thing they got
Speaker 1: Capone for. The US government said McAfee willfully did not
Speaker 1: file tax returns for several years in the United States.
Speaker 1: Also interesting, at one point, McAfee had declared he was
Speaker 1: running for president for the sixteen election. Didn't really go anywhere,
Speaker 1: but he announced his his candidacy at one point. Anyway,
Speaker 1: He's still in Spain. He's in prison awaiting extradition hearings.
Speaker 1: While he's there. Um, he just has been further remanded
Speaker 1: into the custody of Spanish prisons after appealing that and
Speaker 1: losing that appeal. One interesting story from October was the
Speaker 1: discovery of pieces of a jet engine buried in Greenland's
Speaker 1: ice sheet. Now, to be clear, we knew there were
Speaker 1: pieces of a jet engine down there somewhere. This was
Speaker 1: not like discovering an ancient cave and oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: for some reason, there's an xbox in here. Aliens no
Speaker 1: no back in an airbus jet was flying over Greenland
Speaker 1: when one of its four engines suffered a catastrophic failure
Speaker 1: and part of the engine broke off. Now that jet
Speaker 1: managed to have a safe emergency landing in Canada. No
Speaker 1: one was hurt, but for years people were searching for
Speaker 1: these pieces of jet engine parts in Greenland in order
Speaker 1: to do a full investigation into what actually caused the failure.
Speaker 1: The prevailing hypothesis was that the engine had suffered some
Speaker 1: damage during maintenance operations on the ground. The pieces were
Speaker 1: found in late twenty twenty, and after close examination, it
Speaker 1: appears that maintenance was not the issue, but rather that
Speaker 1: the metal used to hold the jet engines fan in
Speaker 1: place was weak and it broke apart. And companies had
Speaker 1: already started to address this particular issue uh in the
Speaker 1: in the years between when it happened and when we
Speaker 1: found the pieces and made the investigation. But it prompted
Speaker 1: a new discussion about needing more rigorous standards and tests
Speaker 1: for jet engine manufacturing processes. Moving forward, Here's a terrible
Speaker 1: story in a year of terrible stories. Hackers were able
Speaker 1: to access confidential medical records of patients undergoing psychotherapy treatment
Speaker 1: in Finland. Their records included personal identification addresses, as well
Speaker 1: as some details about the patient's condition, though they did
Speaker 1: not include thorough notes or doctor patient discussions, but certainly
Speaker 1: enough information to potentially be harmful. The hackers sent emails
Speaker 1: in two various patients demanding that they be paid a
Speaker 1: ransom or else they would make the information public. And y'all,
Speaker 1: that is some seriously awful stuff going on right there,
Speaker 1: because getting help just on its own can be very hard,
Speaker 1: and it requires people to put a lot of trust
Speaker 1: into systems and health care professionals. So in action like
Speaker 1: this isn't just predatory, it's abusive and harmful to the
Speaker 1: people who had to overcome the stigma of seeking help
Speaker 1: for for mental health issues in the first place. Authorities
Speaker 1: recommended that patients not agree to the black tailor's terms
Speaker 1: and said that there was no guarantee that their data
Speaker 1: would remain private even if they did pay them. So
Speaker 1: if your data isn't guaranteed private either way, you don't
Speaker 1: go ahead and hand more money over it. Plus any
Speaker 1: payment would reinforce the idea that this the strategy works
Speaker 1: and it would encourage further attacks. Finland's National Bureau of
Speaker 1: Investigation has been looking into the company, which is called Vastamo,
Speaker 1: to determine if the company or its officers are accountable
Speaker 1: for the vulnerability, and in researching this I found the
Speaker 1: hack actually happened way back in though the extortion notices
Speaker 1: have been much more recent, with those in possession of
Speaker 1: the data publishing some of it on the dark web
Speaker 1: as proof that they have access. Here's the thing, we
Speaker 1: don't even necessarily know that the people who are doing
Speaker 1: the blackmailing are the same ones who did the infiltration
Speaker 1: in the first place. It could very well be that
Speaker 1: someone hacked into the system, got access to all that data,
Speaker 1: made it available, or sold it online and someone else
Speaker 1: has taken that and they're using it to do the blackmailing.
Speaker 1: We just don't know. October was also one month before
Speaker 1: the US elections, and at this point things were really
Speaker 1: moving at a frantic pace. You could not go a
Speaker 1: day without news reports about potential threats to the election system.
Speaker 1: There were stories of attempted ransomware attacks, there were states
Speaker 1: that were beefing up their cybersecurity protocols, and peace after
Speaker 1: peace about the mountain of misinformation campaigns running across various
Speaker 1: social platforms. No platform was immune to this. Twitter was
Speaker 1: faring a little better than Facebook in the public eye,
Speaker 1: simply because Twitter was taking a slightly more proactive approach
Speaker 1: to labeling tweets that contained misleading information in them, as
Speaker 1: well as taking steps to ban accounts uh that were
Speaker 1: body accounts or or run by members of extremist groups,
Speaker 1: White Supreme Assists, and that sort of thing. Facebook finally
Speaker 1: bowed under the pressure and began to ban q and
Speaker 1: on groups after the company had been resisting that push
Speaker 1: to do so for a couple of years. YouTube was
Speaker 1: still dragging its feet even more regarding taking action against
Speaker 1: groups that were actively pushing out disinformation campaigns and attempting
Speaker 1: to promote you know, racist agenda. So YouTube was was
Speaker 1: faring even worse than Facebook in this case. It was
Speaker 1: all really really ugly stuff and still remains that to
Speaker 1: this day. Like it's not like all this stuff has
Speaker 1: already been solved. Now, if you're in the United States,
Speaker 1: you're likely well aware of how all this would play
Speaker 1: out over the following months. But in case you're not,
Speaker 1: here's a very quick rundown. President Trump would lose his
Speaker 1: reelection bid, though it took time for that to be
Speaker 1: clear due to lots of complicated reasons. Mostly those boiled
Speaker 1: down to that there was a very large number of
Speaker 1: mail in ballots that need to be counted, and several
Speaker 1: states passed laws that prevented election officials from prepping those
Speaker 1: ballots at all to be counted ahead of election day itself.
Speaker 1: But that gets into a whole discussion about optics and
Speaker 1: politics that doesn't have that much to do with technology.
Speaker 1: Trump would then proclaim that he in fact won an
Speaker 1: election that he lost, and his legal team would travel
Speaker 1: the United States mounting baseless cases challenging the outcome of
Speaker 1: the election. The team would lose more than fifty of
Speaker 1: those legal cases. In the meantime, Trump would tweet out
Speaker 1: allegations saying that the various states had failed to protect
Speaker 1: the election process, while states and heads of various federal
Speaker 1: agencies said, in fact, due to the enormous amount of
Speaker 1: pressure caused by stuff like the pandemic and the fears
Speaker 1: of foreign interference, the process was actually safer than it
Speaker 1: had ever been in the history of elections. It is
Speaker 1: hard to put into words how dangerous it is that
Speaker 1: the president is the one under mining confidence in the
Speaker 1: democratic process. Well, the legal cases have nearly all fallen
Speaker 1: apart completely, the rhetoric continues down the path of misinformation. Okay,
Speaker 1: we are done with October, and I even covered that
Speaker 1: election fall out a bit, which so when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna round out and we're gonna leave that year
Speaker 1: behind us. But first let's take a quick break. So
Speaker 1: in early November, we had the elections. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: in California, voters past Proposition twenty two, which gave companies
Speaker 1: like Uber and Lift and exemption when it comes to
Speaker 1: calling their workers employees, which was a big win for
Speaker 1: those companies, not necessarily a big win for the workers.
Speaker 1: And before that vote, judges were deciding against companies like
Speaker 1: Uber and left, but with the passing of Prop. Twenty two,
Speaker 1: that was no longer an option because now it's law,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the interpretation of a law. We also
Speaker 1: learned that Uber had lost nearly six billion dollars in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and remember this was from a report in
Speaker 1: early November, so there was more to come. Again, Uber
Speaker 1: is a company that has never seen a profitable year,
Speaker 1: and it amazes me how companies like this can continue
Speaker 1: to exist for years after losing so much money year
Speaker 1: over year. I mean, I can lose money too, so
Speaker 1: someone invest a billion bucks into me. Twitter would permanently
Speaker 1: ban Steve Bannon, the former White House Chief strategist, from
Speaker 1: ever having an account on Twitter again, and the inciting
Speaker 1: action in this case was that Bannon had posted a
Speaker 1: tweet suggesting that Christopher Ray, the director of the FBI,
Speaker 1: and Dr Anthony Fauci should be beheaded, which, hey, turns out,
Speaker 1: that a truly despicable thing to do, though apparently not
Speaker 1: despicable enough for Facebook to do the same. Zuckerberg said
Speaker 1: it wasn't enough for a band. Steve Bannon was one
Speaker 1: of a few people supporting Trump's allegations that Trump actually
Speaker 1: won the election, despite the fact that you know he
Speaker 1: lost it. Meanwhile, Steve Bannon, under a criminal investigation, had
Speaker 1: bigger things to worry about, as his lawyers withdrew from
Speaker 1: the case, which means he got dumped by his own
Speaker 1: legal team. Tesla, the electric car company, introduced its own
Speaker 1: brand of tequila in November, and guys, seriously, I know
Speaker 1: is over for you guys as you listen to this,
Speaker 1: but as I write and record this, I am still
Speaker 1: in and I want out. Is it nice where you
Speaker 1: guys are? I mean, a car company rolling out a
Speaker 1: brand of hard alcohol is pretty dang taboo driving an alcohol.
Speaker 1: Don't mix, y'all. The tequila, which came in lightning shaped bottles,
Speaker 1: cost two fifty dollars a pop and sold out quickly.
Speaker 1: And seriously, I cannot express how messed up I find
Speaker 1: all of this. Now. Maybe it's just that I'm old fashioned,
Speaker 1: I am a bit or you know, ignorant, or however
Speaker 1: you want to put it. But I suppose you could
Speaker 1: argue that this is, in a way another nod to
Speaker 1: the future of self driving cars, in which the car
Speaker 1: can't come under the influence. But we're not there yet.
Speaker 1: Tesla in particular has had some high profile massive failures
Speaker 1: of its autopilot system being used as a self driving system,
Speaker 1: and I don't imagine we're gonna have a future anytime
Speaker 1: soon in which it will be legal to be drunk
Speaker 1: in a vehicle, just in case there is a scenario
Speaker 1: in which a human has to take over control. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Virgin hyper loop conducted its first test run with actual
Speaker 1: human beings inside the passenger compartment of a test capsule
Speaker 1: or train car if you prefer. For those not familiar
Speaker 1: with the hyperlop concept, this was another idea championed by
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. The original concept was to create a rail
Speaker 1: system inside a tunnel, and fans would pull most of
Speaker 1: the air out of the tunnel system and exhaust that
Speaker 1: into the general atmosphere outside. This would create a very
Speaker 1: low air pressure environment inside the tunnel itself, and it
Speaker 1: would also cut way down on air resistance. A train
Speaker 1: on the track would use air bearings, which is essentially
Speaker 1: the idea of blowing air straight down hard enough to
Speaker 1: create a space between the train and the track so
Speaker 1: the train floats above the track. Then it would use
Speaker 1: a linear electric motor as a means of propulsion essentially magnetism.
Speaker 1: By not making actual physical contact with the track and
Speaker 1: by removing most of the air out of the system,
Speaker 1: you very little resistance and so you would lose very
Speaker 1: little energy due to friction, which means you could get
Speaker 1: these things up to incredible speeds without having to spend
Speaker 1: energy to overcome those resistances. By train, you might be
Speaker 1: able to travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles in
Speaker 1: thirty five minutes, which is a trip that would take
Speaker 1: you more than six hours to drive. Typically, the hyper
Speaker 1: loop is a proposed alternative to stuff like short plane flights,
Speaker 1: So ideally you would use the hyper loop to take
Speaker 1: over routes where the process of going through an airport, clearing, security, boarding,
Speaker 1: and d boarding a plane actually takes more time than
Speaker 1: the flight time of the trip. But this approach also
Speaker 1: requires an enormous investment to build out the infrastructure, the
Speaker 1: rail systems and such. Not to mention, you have to
Speaker 1: do a ton of work with various federal, state, and
Speaker 1: local governments to coordinate all of this. But for now
Speaker 1: we're still in knee tech development phase. So Virgin hyper
Speaker 1: loop originally started out as hyperlop technologies, then later became
Speaker 1: hyper Loop one before partnering with Richard Branson's company Virgin Group.
Speaker 1: The whole story behind the company is interesting, and I've
Speaker 1: covered a little bit in previous episodes of Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of drama in there, so maybe I'll do
Speaker 1: a full like deep dive examination of Virgin hyper Loop.
Speaker 1: But the test we saw in November was the first
Speaker 1: to have actual human beings a board of test capsule
Speaker 1: traveling on a test track, and the test was a success.
Speaker 1: But there's still a ton that has to be done
Speaker 1: before hyperloop becomes a practical reality. Apple, fresh off its
Speaker 1: iPhone event in October, held a Mac focused event in
Speaker 1: November introducing new computers. I don't have much to say
Speaker 1: about that except that it was a genuine treat to
Speaker 1: see John Hodgeman, friend of the I Heart Network, pop
Speaker 1: up and reprise his role as the PC and to
Speaker 1: dismissively critique the new line of Mac computers. Ring The
Speaker 1: security Doorbell Company was in the news in November, and
Speaker 1: not because of the controversial partnerships the company has formed
Speaker 1: with various police departments. Nope, in this case, it's because
Speaker 1: they had to recall three fifty thousand doorbells after a
Speaker 1: few of them, you know, caught on fire, which, as
Speaker 1: I understand, it is not what you want a doorbell
Speaker 1: to do. Both the PS five and the Xbox Series
Speaker 1: X and Series S debuted late in The Xbox series
Speaker 1: consoles have a little bit of a problem in that
Speaker 1: there are very few compelling exclusive titles available for the systems.
Speaker 1: Yet the PS five has a problem in that there
Speaker 1: just aren't enough consoles and it's devilishly hard to get
Speaker 1: hold of one. And in the entire year Nintendo Switch
Speaker 1: has sold really, really well and it still could be
Speaker 1: hard to find one of those. We learned what former
Speaker 1: Yahoo CEO and Google executive Marrissa Meyer has been up to.
Speaker 1: In November of me she and another former Yahoo and
Speaker 1: Google executive named Henri Kae Torres founded a startup originally
Speaker 1: called Loumi Labs and then rebranded as Sunshine, and they
Speaker 1: launched their first product in November. It's an app called
Speaker 1: Sunshine Contacts, and it uses AI to help manage contact
Speaker 1: lists and communication. Now, on the surface, it all sounds
Speaker 1: like pretty basic stuff, but it really does come in handy.
Speaker 1: It helps consolidate duplicate entries in your contact list, and
Speaker 1: consolidate them together so that you have just a single
Speaker 1: entry for people. It helps keep communication histories at hand
Speaker 1: to facilitate communication. So there's a lot of stuff where
Speaker 1: it's a lot of like the busy work you would
Speaker 1: have to do on your own in order to keep
Speaker 1: up to date, and it handles it for you. Uh,
Speaker 1: not like stupendous, but arguably useful. Moving on into December,
Speaker 1: and yes, there were a lot of other tech stories
Speaker 1: that happened in November, but so many of them just
Speaker 1: tie back into misinformation and the election in particular, and
Speaker 1: then antitrust discussions about companies like Facebook. But I've already
Speaker 1: covered that in these episodes, so let's get back into
Speaker 1: December now. There was a big focus on new misinformation campaigns,
Speaker 1: ones that revolve around the vaccines for COVID nineteen. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of cool stuff about the vaccines. Are
Speaker 1: some of the vaccines and how they were developed, And
Speaker 1: I think that's gonna necessitate a dedicated episode to talk
Speaker 1: about stuff like the COVID vaccine in general and then
Speaker 1: the m r in A vaccines variants of the COVID
Speaker 1: vaccine in particular. But back to this story, misinformation remains
Speaker 1: a huge concern. As always, using critical thinking is key
Speaker 1: when you see information about well anything really, but vaccines
Speaker 1: for sure. In the short term, bottom line, vaccines are important.
Speaker 1: They are a necessary component to protecting more people from COVID.
Speaker 1: They are not part of some weird mind control conspiracy
Speaker 1: or anything like that, and if you can get one,
Speaker 1: you should. Most states here in the US are implementing
Speaker 1: a phased rollout for vaccines to make sure the most
Speaker 1: critical populations received them first, so my plans to get
Speaker 1: one as soon as I am eligible, as soon as
Speaker 1: the phase for general accessibility of the vaccine opens up.
Speaker 1: In December, after numerous delays, the video game Cyberpunk went
Speaker 1: on sale, and what followed was a series of pretty
Speaker 1: scathing reviews due to numerous bugs and glitches in the game,
Speaker 1: some of which made the game unplayable or they would
Speaker 1: crash the game without warning. It was bad enough that
Speaker 1: Sony pulled the game from their PlayStation store. Yikes. The
Speaker 1: story of the game's development and the rush to publication
Speaker 1: is one that I am going to cover in a
Speaker 1: future episode of tech Stuff. It's another one that makes
Speaker 1: me feel awful for the developers who clearly worked very
Speaker 1: hard on something that wasn't ready for public consumption, and
Speaker 1: now they're facing some of the nastiest criticisms I've seen
Speaker 1: in a long time. I think the story here is
Speaker 1: bigger than that, and it includes stuff like the expectations
Speaker 1: that we have free games, and the economic model used
Speaker 1: by game developers that puts them in a bind, and
Speaker 1: the publishers that lock in release dates, and then even
Speaker 1: after a couple of delays, they're like, well, no, we
Speaker 1: have to ship now because we've made the promises too frequently,
Speaker 1: even though the game's not ready. All of that it's
Speaker 1: complicated stuff, and we're gonna save it for a future episode.
Speaker 1: The company Airbnb became publicly traded in December. It had
Speaker 1: its I p O, and it sought stock price more
Speaker 1: than double on its debut on the stock market. That
Speaker 1: instantly made Airbnb more valuable than the established hotel chains
Speaker 1: Marriott and Hilton combined. Wow, And this is in a
Speaker 1: year when a lot of people will cut way back
Speaker 1: on travel, and Airbnb itself had held some pretty significant layoffs.
Speaker 1: We learned that Reddit is buying a TikTok competitor called
Speaker 1: dub smash. Uh. This is a fairly recent story, so
Speaker 1: I suspect I'll have more to say about it in
Speaker 1: a future update. I'll conclude this episode with a sobering
Speaker 1: story that is still unfolding. There is a software vendor
Speaker 1: called Solar Winds that has a lot of really big
Speaker 1: time customers among the major governmental agencies here in the
Speaker 1: United States. In December, we learned that hackers had exploited
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities in a particular Solar Winds product to gain access
Speaker 1: to information belonging to Solar Winds clients, including those government agencies.
Speaker 1: And further, the hackers appear to have ties to Russia,
Speaker 1: and these hacks represent a potentially catastrophic breach of national security.
Speaker 1: The Solar Winds p the the hackers targeted is called
Speaker 1: Oriyan and its purposes to manage various I T resources,
Speaker 1: and solar Winds has a lot of clients that use Orion,
Speaker 1: like more than thirty thousand of them. Well, evidence seems
Speaker 1: to suggest Russia is at the heart of all this.
Speaker 1: Trump has suggested, without presenting any evidence at all, that
Speaker 1: China is behind it. And well, there's not much I
Speaker 1: can say about this that would be objective and even handed,
Speaker 1: so I'll just keep it at that, But this is
Speaker 1: another story that I'm going to have to do a
Speaker 1: full breakdown on in a future episode. I even have
Speaker 1: a special guest in mind to bring on for that
Speaker 1: so that we can really dive into it. The hack
Speaker 1: hits not just the US government, but numerous big companies
Speaker 1: as well. The scope of the attack is enormous and
Speaker 1: the potential harm is hard to calculate. From what I understand,
Speaker 1: it might take years to secure systems that have been
Speaker 1: compromised in this attack. I suspect it's going to lead
Speaker 1: to some big changes in cybersecurity protocols and also in
Speaker 1: the vetting of third party software vendors, and I suspect
Speaker 1: Solar Winds is going to have some pretty rough meetings
Speaker 1: for the foreseeable future. And that wraps up the news.
Speaker 1: As of December twenty five, twenty twenty, which is when
Speaker 1: I am writing this sentence, I think we're going to
Speaker 1: see a lot more stories about antitrust investigations and pressure
Speaker 1: for big companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple to
Speaker 1: change or face government regulations. Heck, even in China, the
Speaker 1: government there is looking into antitrust issues with Ali Baba,
Speaker 1: Big tech might have a pretty rough a couple of
Speaker 1: other things before we go. However, moving forward, we're going
Speaker 1: to have Tech Stuff five days a week. Mondays and
Speaker 1: Wednesdays will be the normal Tech Stuff format with deep
Speaker 1: dives on various tech topics, But on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 1: I'm going to rundown more recent headlines and tech news
Speaker 1: to talk about what's just going on in the tech
Speaker 1: world and give a little context to those stories. So
Speaker 1: it'll be a bit different from our typical episodes. Actually,
Speaker 1: in some ways it may be a little more similar
Speaker 1: to this episode. Friday's will still be classic episodes of
Speaker 1: the show from deep within the archives and back when
Speaker 1: Tech mostly consisted of rocks, string and a somewhat sketchy
Speaker 1: business plan, which I guess is not all that different
Speaker 1: from today. I suppose YEA. Tech Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.