Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer here at iHeart Radio and a
Speaker 1: love all things tech. It is time for the tech
Speaker 1: news for Tuesday, October twelfth. One. Let's get into it.
Speaker 1: Last week was a tough one for Facebook, to put
Speaker 1: it lightly, with a whistleblower appearing before Congress and testifying
Speaker 1: that her former employer knowingly engaged in practices that were
Speaker 1: harmful to its users and two entire countries. As it
Speaker 1: would turn out, while Facebook went into damage control last week,
Speaker 1: some of the measures that were taken by PR spokespeople
Speaker 1: in an attempt to kind of deflect or to defend
Speaker 1: themselves ended up rubbing other current and former employees a
Speaker 1: Facebook the wrong way. One person who had already been
Speaker 1: critical of the company is Sophie Young. She used to
Speaker 1: work as a data scientist for Facebook. Well. She first
Speaker 1: came forward with concerns about Facebook last year, and she
Speaker 1: even published a full blog post that contained her concerns,
Speaker 1: like she wrote this very long farewell message to Facebook employees,
Speaker 1: and then she also posted it to her own website.
Speaker 1: Facebook then subsequently sent a takedown notice to the the
Speaker 1: administrator for the website itself, so it got taken down.
Speaker 1: It's pretty bad anyway. Jiang has now said she's willing
Speaker 1: to testify in front of Congress as well. She has
Speaker 1: said that she sent potentially incriminating documents regarding Facebook practices
Speaker 1: to a US law enforcement agency. Other people have also
Speaker 1: shown support for investigations into face Book, as well as
Speaker 1: condemning the company's tactics of trying to dismiss criticisms by
Speaker 1: questioning the credentials of the whistleblowers. My guess is that
Speaker 1: it's likely going to be another tough week for Facebook.
Speaker 1: Sticking with Facebook, I want to talk about Louis Barclay.
Speaker 1: Barclay is an app developer from the UK app and
Speaker 1: software developer, and he created a browser extension specifically to
Speaker 1: use on Facebook called Unfollow Everything, and you know, it
Speaker 1: does exactly what it says on the tin, as they
Speaker 1: say across the pond. A user activating unfollow Everything would
Speaker 1: see that they had unfollowed every single friend and every
Speaker 1: single page that they had previously followed on Facebook. So
Speaker 1: they would unfollow everything and you could still you know,
Speaker 1: connect to people on Facebook, but you unfollowed them, you
Speaker 1: would have to use other methods, And um, it is
Speaker 1: interesting because it would essentially mean that your news feed
Speaker 1: would be blank except for stuff that maybe you had posted.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming I don't know. I haven't actually seen pictures
Speaker 1: of what this looked like when it was an action,
Speaker 1: but it it's it confuses me a little, only in
Speaker 1: the sense of I don't know what it would look like.
Speaker 1: Would it just be your posts? Would it become the
Speaker 1: true narcissists Facebook? I don't know. His extension, however, got
Speaker 1: the attention of researchers in Switzerland who wanted to see
Speaker 1: what impact there might be on this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Would would there be an impact on happiness for users
Speaker 1: who were still on Facebook but no longer had a
Speaker 1: real news feed. They also wanted to see what kind
Speaker 1: of impact it might have on the amount of time
Speaker 1: that users typically would spend on the platform. And I
Speaker 1: honestly wonder really what that experience is like. Maybe it
Speaker 1: would be like Facebook would become essentially your photo album
Speaker 1: or maybe a journaling exercise. If you were posting and
Speaker 1: you were the only one posting there. Any ways, you
Speaker 1: can imagine Facebook was not happy about any of this.
Speaker 1: So the company booted Barclay off Facebook as well as
Speaker 1: Instagram and banned him from ever having an account with
Speaker 1: either of those now. The article I read on Business
Speaker 1: Insider didn't indicate whether Facebook has also banned him from WhatsApp,
Speaker 1: the messaging app, but Barkley did say that he had
Speaker 1: been on the platform for about fifteen years and you
Speaker 1: used it a lot to stay in touch with friends
Speaker 1: and family, so this has had an impact on him.
Speaker 1: Facebook says that Barclay's browser extension violates Facebook's terms of Service,
Speaker 1: which in parts says that users and developers are not
Speaker 1: not to do anything that would interfere with the intended
Speaker 1: operation of Facebook. And you know, Barklay said the tool
Speaker 1: had only been downloaded a few thousand times. The whole thing,
Speaker 1: to me is really interesting. I wonder how many people
Speaker 1: would actually use a tool like this, and whether they
Speaker 1: would continue to use it or if they would just
Speaker 1: you know, turn it off after a it. I get
Speaker 1: why Facebook is kind of going nuclear because the entire
Speaker 1: revenue model for Facebook depends upon ads being served up
Speaker 1: in the news feed and keeping folks on the platform
Speaker 1: for as long as possible to sell as many things
Speaker 1: as possible, right to serve up as many ads as
Speaker 1: possible and rack up the big bucks. But if there's
Speaker 1: no news feed, then people would likely spend way less
Speaker 1: time on the platform and Facebook would make way less money.
Speaker 1: Barclay is kind of without options here. He lives in
Speaker 1: the UK, and that means that if he took Facebook
Speaker 1: to court over the matter, and if he lost, he
Speaker 1: would be liable to pay Facebook's court costs. And you know,
Speaker 1: Facebook's a company with billions of dollars. Facebook could even
Speaker 1: if they fought this in a way where they weren't
Speaker 1: going to win, they could really drain Barclay's resources. And
Speaker 1: if they did win and they really drew this out
Speaker 1: so it was a very long court battle, it could
Speaker 1: bankrupt him. So he's kind of resigned himself to being
Speaker 1: Facebook free. He sounds like he's both a little sad
Speaker 1: about it, but also kind of relieved because he had
Speaker 1: said that he was trying to cut back for a
Speaker 1: while now and now he has no choice but to
Speaker 1: go cold turkey. We usually hear about successful hacker attacks.
Speaker 1: It is fairly rare when we hear about a hacker
Speaker 1: attack that was unsuccessful, that had been defeated, but we
Speaker 1: have a report like that. Now, Microsoft says that it's
Speaker 1: Azure Cloud service was able to mitigate a massive distributed
Speaker 1: denial of service ord DOS attack in late August of
Speaker 1: this year. Now, let's explain what that means. And we're
Speaker 1: gonna start first with a denial of service or DOS attack,
Speaker 1: because that's that's our basic unit here. That's an attack
Speaker 1: where someone tries to overwhelm a specific targeted server or
Speaker 1: system on the Internet, typically by sending tons of messages
Speaker 1: to that system. And I often use a specific analogy here.
Speaker 1: So imagine that you live in a house. The house
Speaker 1: has a front door with a doorbell, and part of
Speaker 1: the condition of you living in this house is that
Speaker 1: if someone rings that doorbell, you have to answer the door.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what else is going on. If the
Speaker 1: doorbell rings, you've got to go answer it. And so
Speaker 1: someone is starting to ring your doorbell and then run away.
Speaker 1: And even though you know that there is a very
Speaker 1: good chance that you're going to go to the door
Speaker 1: and open it and no one's gonna be there, you
Speaker 1: still have to answer it. You're not allowed to ignore it.
Speaker 1: It would be really hard to get anything else done.
Speaker 1: If someone was continuously ringing your doorbell and running away. Well,
Speaker 1: denial of service attack is kind of similar. The attacker
Speaker 1: is directing messages to a targeted server, and the server
Speaker 1: is trying to answer these messages. But those messages are
Speaker 1: coming in thick and fast, as you might say, and
Speaker 1: soon the server can't do anything at all. It's just
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by these incoming messages. It might even crash the server.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's often the goal. If it's not to
Speaker 1: just gum it up, it's to bring it down entirely. Well,
Speaker 1: a distributed denial of service attack is the same thing,
Speaker 1: but on a much bigger scale. Typically, hackers will first
Speaker 1: use malware to infect as many computers as they possibly
Speaker 1: can to get sort of backdoor access to these computers
Speaker 1: and have them join what's called a bot net or
Speaker 1: sometimes called a zombie network. So the infected computers are
Speaker 1: the zombie army, and the hacker can use this army
Speaker 1: to direct messages to this targeted server. Now, instead of
Speaker 1: one machine just trying to overwhelm a target, you could
Speaker 1: be talking tens of thousands, like seventy thousand computers. Is
Speaker 1: not unheard of for this sort of thing. For this reason,
Speaker 1: we often describe the magnitude of DIDOS attacks and how
Speaker 1: much data is being sent toward a target. In this case,
Speaker 1: it was a whopping two point for terra bytes per second.
Speaker 1: That's the largest DIDAS attack on record by volume. A
Speaker 1: terabyte is a trillion bytes, so a gigabyte is a
Speaker 1: billion bytes. Terabyte is a trillion bites. This was two
Speaker 1: point four terabytes per second. Microsoft says Azure detected the
Speaker 1: flood of traffic and was able to mitigate it to
Speaker 1: hold it back so that the targeted server didn't get overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: which is pretty impressive. Microsoft did not identify the target,
Speaker 1: but only said it was located in Europe. Amazon has
Speaker 1: become the latest company to back off of an official
Speaker 1: return to the office plan for their corporate employees. Like
Speaker 1: several other big tech companies, Amazon originally hoped to be
Speaker 1: back in the office this year, but had pushed back
Speaker 1: to a plan that would see corporate employees returned to
Speaker 1: at least three days a week in the office by
Speaker 1: January two. Now, the company has sent out another message
Speaker 1: saying employees will not have to return to the office
Speaker 1: in the new year. Rather, team leaders will make decisions
Speaker 1: on a team by team basis as to whether people
Speaker 1: need to return or not. Uh, some people will be
Speaker 1: able to work remotely indefinitely. In addition, employees will still
Speaker 1: be able to work for up to four weeks in
Speaker 1: any location within their home country, but they should spend
Speaker 1: the rest of the year somewhere that would allow them
Speaker 1: to attend, say, an in person meeting, given a day's notice.
Speaker 1: In the ongoing battle between Apple and Epic Games, Apple
Speaker 1: is now seeking an appeal to the court ruling that
Speaker 1: requires Apple to allow app developers and alternative payment option
Speaker 1: and not just go through Apple's own in app system.
Speaker 1: While seeking the appeal, Apple has asked for a stay
Speaker 1: on the injunction that would otherwise require them to follow
Speaker 1: the court order. So essentially, they're saying, until we've actually
Speaker 1: settled this matter for good, we don't want to have
Speaker 1: to change stuff. And from that perspective, it makes kind
Speaker 1: of sense, right if Apple were to change things and
Speaker 1: then subsequently when their court appeal reversing that change after implementing,
Speaker 1: it would be a messy thing at best. Apple claims
Speaker 1: that allowing developers to use their own payment systems could
Speaker 1: lead to incorporation of other stuff like external links and
Speaker 1: potentially bring risks to Apple users. We think of the children.
Speaker 1: So the argument here is that this could potentially lead
Speaker 1: to security risks, and it's hard to argue against that.
Speaker 1: But honestly, I don't think that's what Apple's main concern is.
Speaker 1: I think their main concern is that they take a
Speaker 1: fifteen to thirty cut out of in app purchases, and
Speaker 1: if you allow for alternative payment systems, you have to
Speaker 1: say goodbye to that kind of revenue. But then Apple
Speaker 1: has lots of security concerns to think about. Two like
Speaker 1: how a company is like n s, a group have
Speaker 1: targeted eye message to create zero click attacks that turned
Speaker 1: phones into spy devices. Apple did subsequently patch out certain vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: My point being that you know, there are security concerns
Speaker 1: that have nothing to do with the apps being developed
Speaker 1: by third parties. When you really dig into this case,
Speaker 1: no one looks super awesome in the full light. I
Speaker 1: think I'm more on the developer side on this one.
Speaker 1: I feel that Apple and Google to have a real
Speaker 1: stranglehold that can hurt developers. At the same time, there's
Speaker 1: some legit arguments to make for a streamlined, trustworthy payment system.
Speaker 1: We've got a few more stories to go through before
Speaker 1: we get to that. Let's take a quick break. So
Speaker 1: before the break, we were talking about Apple and Epic,
Speaker 1: and a large part of that court argument is about
Speaker 1: anti competitiveness and whether companies like Apple and Google are
Speaker 1: being anti competitive with demanding developers use their in app purchasing. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of anti competitive issues, we've got a different story
Speaker 1: that falls into that category. And Video has run into
Speaker 1: a speed bump in its quest to acquire the chip
Speaker 1: design company ARM. Now, if you listen to my episodes
Speaker 1: about ARM, that's a r M, you know that's a
Speaker 1: company that's based in the UK. And Video has a
Speaker 1: fifty four billion dollar acquisition deal to bring ARM into
Speaker 1: the company fold. But this move has raised some concerns,
Speaker 1: and some of those originate in the UK itself. ARM
Speaker 1: is an important company in the UK, and there have
Speaker 1: even been some questions raised as to whether an acquisition
Speaker 1: by a foreign company, because in Video is based out
Speaker 1: of the United States, could constitute a matter of national security.
Speaker 1: Then there are the questions about competitiveness. ARM creates chip
Speaker 1: designs and then issues licenses to manufacturing companies. So a
Speaker 1: chip manufacturing company makes a deal with ARM and gets
Speaker 1: the design for a specific type of processor and then
Speaker 1: they go and make it. Now, the fear is that
Speaker 1: if in Vidia, which also makes chips, acquires ARM, maybe
Speaker 1: in Video would say no more of doing that. Right,
Speaker 1: Maybe in Video would prevent ARM from licensing designs to
Speaker 1: in videos competitors. The EU plans and antitrust investigation to
Speaker 1: look into the matter further. And this does not mean
Speaker 1: that the acquisition is off the table, but it could
Speaker 1: take a bit longer than in Video was hoping for.
Speaker 1: Last year, many school systems in the United States shifted
Speaker 1: to a distance learning model due to the pandemic. However,
Speaker 1: that meant that, you know, kids needed access to computers
Speaker 1: in order to participate in class, and not everyone comes
Speaker 1: from a family where that's a possibility. There is a
Speaker 1: real digital divide in the United States, so numerous programs
Speaker 1: popped up to provide hardware to students. Now, a research
Speaker 1: paper from the Center for Democracy and Technology shows that
Speaker 1: a lot of these computers contained monitoring software on them
Speaker 1: that logged student activities on these computers. Essentially, many computers
Speaker 1: come loaded with spyware, and it gives schools the ability
Speaker 1: to see what students are doing on those computers. This
Speaker 1: opens up a pretty difficult series of topics. So the
Speaker 1: argument to support this initiative says that students are vulnerable
Speaker 1: and monitoring could allow school systems to detect a problem
Speaker 1: early on and potentially address it before it gets worse.
Speaker 1: For example, a student writing about you know, self harm
Speaker 1: might need counseling to help them, or someone who's engaging
Speaker 1: in some form of online bullying might similarly need someone
Speaker 1: to step in and intervene and help that person before
Speaker 1: that gets worse. On the other hand, the argument against
Speaker 1: this points out that this becomes a surveillance state and
Speaker 1: it places an unhealthy burden of responsibility on teachers who
Speaker 1: end up having to serve multiple roles in addition to
Speaker 1: making lesson plans and educating children. Plus, it disproportionately harms
Speaker 1: the less fortunate, like the less economically fortunate, because those
Speaker 1: are people who likely don't have any other computer to use,
Speaker 1: or smartphone or anything like that, so they rely even
Speaker 1: more on the school supplied devices than another students do,
Speaker 1: and thus they are disproportionately affected by this monitoring. The
Speaker 1: Guardian has a great rite up on this. It's called
Speaker 1: us Schools Gave Kids laptops during the pandemic, then they
Speaker 1: spied on them. It was written by Jessa Crispin. I
Speaker 1: think it's a good read if you want to learn
Speaker 1: more about what happened, why it happened, and whether or
Speaker 1: not it's a good idea and spoiler alert. Jess thinks
Speaker 1: it's a bad idea and I am inclined to agree.
Speaker 1: One news item from last week that I did not
Speaker 1: get to is that NASA has pushed back the launch
Speaker 1: of a test flight for the Boeing star Liner spacecraft.
Speaker 1: This would have been the second test flight for the
Speaker 1: Boeing star Liner, and the plan was to conduct it
Speaker 1: within this year, but now it's gonna happen next year
Speaker 1: at the earliest. The reason for the delay is that
Speaker 1: a component on the spacecraft and oxidizer isolation valve isn't
Speaker 1: functioning correctly, and this component is not exactly in an
Speaker 1: easy to access spot in the spacecraft, so it requires
Speaker 1: a lot of planning just to figure out how to
Speaker 1: address this and fixed the issue without causing more damage
Speaker 1: along the way. Boeing Starliner did have an earlier unscrewed
Speaker 1: test flight this year, but that one encountered problems with
Speaker 1: its onboard software, which prevented it from docking with the
Speaker 1: International Space Station. So for right now, the only U
Speaker 1: S space craft that can make the journey to the
Speaker 1: I S S is space X's Crew Dragon. Finally, Magic Leap,
Speaker 1: which was a company I thought might be headed towards insolvency,
Speaker 1: has turned things around, at least for the time being. Now.
Speaker 1: If you're not familiar with this company, it started creating
Speaker 1: Buzz several years ago as a pretty secretive business aimed
Speaker 1: at creating an incredible augmented reality headset, presumably meant for
Speaker 1: the consumer market. They released some promotional material that truly
Speaker 1: made it look magical, so the name seemed fitting. The
Speaker 1: company raised billions of dollars and investments like three billion dollars.
Speaker 1: But over the years things changed, and I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: some of the engineering challenges is were far more significant
Speaker 1: than they had first anticipated, and this in turn drove
Speaker 1: costs up. Ultimately, Magic Leap released a professional level headset
Speaker 1: called Magic Leap One Creator. A name like that suggests
Speaker 1: that this headset was intended for developers so that they
Speaker 1: could build useful or compelling augmented reality experiences that would
Speaker 1: rely on this headset. But it definitely wasn't priced at
Speaker 1: or targeted for a consumer user base. It was professional only.
Speaker 1: Magic Leap also laid off about half its workforce last year.
Speaker 1: One of the co founders, Ronnie abbo It's, left the
Speaker 1: company in July last year. But now the company has
Speaker 1: raised an additional half billion dollars, which pretty phenomenal that
Speaker 1: they were able to do that after all these issues.
Speaker 1: And they plan to release a new a R headset
Speaker 1: called the Magic Leap To next year. Some early headsets
Speaker 1: are reportedly already in circulation, and this new headset is
Speaker 1: light and it has a larger field of view than
Speaker 1: the previous model. But it is however, still being targeted
Speaker 1: at enterprise level customers. So this is not something you
Speaker 1: or I would purchase in order to you like, turn
Speaker 1: our homes into like a Willy Wonka Wonderland or something. Nope,
Speaker 1: these are meant for companies that might use it for
Speaker 1: design departments, or maybe they might use it for really
Speaker 1: technically complicated installations like the a R headset could show
Speaker 1: you exactly where you might need to solder something, or
Speaker 1: where you need to connect cables or lay certain electronics
Speaker 1: in a very compact space. I'm glad to see that
Speaker 1: magic leap, hasn't you know, leapt off a cliff? But
Speaker 1: I'm left wondering how long it will take before we
Speaker 1: eventually do see a good consumer targeted air headset. And
Speaker 1: that's it for the news for Tuesday, October twelve, twenty one.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more news later this week. If
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for things I should cover on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: reach out to me on Twitter. The handle is tech
Speaker 1: stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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