Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey therein
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer at iHeart Podcasts. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech news for the
Speaker 1: week ending July nineteenth, twenty twenty four. And the big
Speaker 1: story that I have this week is how a product
Speaker 1: update for software called Falcon Sensor led to worldwide operating
Speaker 1: system failures, which in turn necessitated that important businesses businesses
Speaker 1: like airlines, for example, had to shut down or at
Speaker 1: least delay operations while folks tried to fix the problem.
Speaker 1: The heart of the matter lies with a cybersecurity company
Speaker 1: called CrowdStrike. So CrowdStrike pushed out a content update to
Speaker 1: customers for the Falcon Sensor product. And Microsoft is such
Speaker 1: a customer, and this update went out to Windows virtual machines,
Speaker 1: many of which handle mission critical operations for big customers,
Speaker 1: including some major companies all over the world. The update
Speaker 1: caught the machines into a recovery boot loop, which means
Speaker 1: the machines never really loaded in. They would get to
Speaker 1: a certain point of booting up and then they would
Speaker 1: reboot and they would just keep doing this, and that's
Speaker 1: when the failures began. So here in the United States,
Speaker 1: Delta Airlines, American Airlines, and United Airlines all grounded their
Speaker 1: flights because their systems effectively went down. In other parts
Speaker 1: of the world, banks were affected, which severely slowed down
Speaker 1: operations there. One stock trader called it the mother of
Speaker 1: all global market outages. In the UK, Sky News went
Speaker 1: off the air they were unable to broadcast. In Australia,
Speaker 1: emergency call centers reported disruptions due to this issue, which
Speaker 1: is pretty darn scary. Everyone was plagued by the dreaded
Speaker 1: blue screen of death. George Kurt's CEO of CrowdStrike, took
Speaker 1: to x formerly known as Twitter, and posted quote, CrowdStrike
Speaker 1: is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found
Speaker 1: in a single content update for Windows hosts, Mac and
Speaker 1: Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security
Speaker 1: incident or cyber attack. The issue has been identified, isolated,
Speaker 1: and a fix has been deployed. End quote. Now, deploying
Speaker 1: a fix is great, However, it does not magically stop
Speaker 1: the already affected machines from being in that reboot loop cycle.
Speaker 1: So to do that it admins will actually have to
Speaker 1: stop the reboot cycle. They'll have to boot into essentially
Speaker 1: safe mode and then navigate to the CrowdStrike file directory
Speaker 1: and delete the appropriate file manually. And depending on the
Speaker 1: it situation for each business, that could be a fairly
Speaker 1: easy thing to do or a not so easy thing
Speaker 1: to do. It's definitely a time consuming thing to do,
Speaker 1: but in the meantime, a lot of companies are unable
Speaker 1: to function properly, some can't really function at all, and
Speaker 1: this mistake really points out how reliant the world is
Speaker 1: on a limited number of service providers, and I would
Speaker 1: argue it also reinforces to hackers the potential impact of
Speaker 1: targeting the supply chain because it lets you hit a
Speaker 1: huge number of targets simultaneously and disrupt them. Though again
Speaker 1: in this case, we're not talking about a hacker attack.
Speaker 1: This was just a mistake that CrowdStrike made that has
Speaker 1: affected a lot of people all around the world. And
Speaker 1: I bet there's going to be some uncomfortable meetings about
Speaker 1: it at CrowdStrike headquarters today, So yeah, yikes. Another obviously
Speaker 1: huge story this week was the assassination attempt on the
Speaker 1: life of former president and now GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: But this is not a politics or crime podcast, so
Speaker 1: why would I bring it up. Well, that's because the
Speaker 1: FBI took possess of the would be assassin's phone and
Speaker 1: within a couple of days announced that they had successfully
Speaker 1: accessed the phone's contents, which raised a lot of questions
Speaker 1: in the tech community, as there is this ongoing concern
Speaker 1: in tech about the extent to which your privacy and
Speaker 1: security can be insured by the hardware that you use.
Speaker 1: So if someone were to get hold of your device,
Speaker 1: would they be able to access it without your direct aid?
Speaker 1: And how did the FBI manage this? While the phone
Speaker 1: in question is a Samsung device and it was locked
Speaker 1: when the FBI received it. Bloomberg reported that the FBI
Speaker 1: initially couldn't crack the phone's security, but then they worked
Speaker 1: with an Israeli digital intelligence company called Celebrate to get access.
Speaker 1: Earlier this week, I saw online speculation that the at
Speaker 1: that time unnamed Israeli firm was actually the NSO Group.
Speaker 1: That's the group that's best known for producing the spyware
Speaker 1: on steroids product called Pegasus. But no, these are two
Speaker 1: separate cyber intelligence companies. According to Bloomberg, Celebrate used new
Speaker 1: software that's actually still in development, it's not offered as
Speaker 1: a product yet, and cracked the phone security and gave
Speaker 1: FBI access to it. A piece in nine to five,
Speaker 1: Mac points out that a data leak from within Celebrate
Speaker 1: revealed its software is currently unable to crack iPhone security
Speaker 1: at least on any devices running iOS seventeen point four
Speaker 1: or later. So this just shows a gap between their
Speaker 1: ability to crack security in iOS platforms versus Android platforms.
Speaker 1: And yeah, this is like an ongoing discussion in the
Speaker 1: tech community. Is you know which operating system provides better security?
Speaker 1: Can you expect to keep your stuff on lock even
Speaker 1: if it were to fall into the hands of, say
Speaker 1: the FBI. Like, there are a lot of conversations in
Speaker 1: tech that follow that, which is why I covered the story.
Speaker 1: On Thursday, open ai unveiled a slimmed down AI Large
Speaker 1: Language Model, So I guess a not so large language
Speaker 1: model or LM, and it's called fittingly enough GPT four
Speaker 1: to oh mini oh in this case is the lowercase
Speaker 1: letter O not the number zero or the numeral zero
Speaker 1: or however you want to call it. I'm not a mathematician. Further,
Speaker 1: this model is slated to take over from GPT three
Speaker 1: point five Turbo for the purposes of powering chat GPT,
Speaker 1: so it will be the language model behind the chatbot.
Speaker 1: It's currently available for consumer chat GPT users. It will
Speaker 1: later spread to enterprise customers next week. For now, it's
Speaker 1: similar to earlier large language models, but open ai says
Speaker 1: this one will eventually be able to analyze and interpret
Speaker 1: images as well as generate its own so not just text,
Speaker 1: plus it will also be able to analyze audio. It
Speaker 1: will not, however, have access to the latest breaking news.
Speaker 1: It will have a knowledge cutoff of October twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: So what's the benefit of moving to a smaller large
Speaker 1: language model. Well, the big one is cost. They are
Speaker 1: less expensive to operate and thus less expensive for customers.
Speaker 1: They're still fairly robust, though they aren't as capable of
Speaker 1: performing in depth analysis as their bigger siblings. They're good
Speaker 1: for smaller and more niche oriented tasks, so the sort
Speaker 1: of stuff you would probably encounter in your typical apps
Speaker 1: that tap into generative AI. Because your apps usually aren't
Speaker 1: do everything apps, they usually are keyed to a specific
Speaker 1: subset of features. So, for example, let's say you've made
Speaker 1: an app that is essentially a dynamic to do list. Well,
Speaker 1: you won't need access to a massive, large language model
Speaker 1: to handle any AI component of this implementation, right, because
Speaker 1: that would be overkill. Like, you don't need something that's
Speaker 1: great at everything, or even passable at everything. You need
Speaker 1: something that's good at, you know, a very small set
Speaker 1: of tasks. But on the flip side, if you did
Speaker 1: need some heavy lifting on the AI front, smaller models
Speaker 1: aren't necessarily going to be as good of a fit
Speaker 1: because they just won't be capable of performing that in
Speaker 1: depth analysis. You would end up spending more time and
Speaker 1: possibly more money to achieve the results you actually wanted,
Speaker 1: So there are trade offs. Plus, you are also still
Speaker 1: beholden to whatever material was used to train the model
Speaker 1: in the first place. That doesn't matter about the size.
Speaker 1: In fact, like whether it's a small model or a
Speaker 1: large model, the training material needs to be good. If
Speaker 1: the training material is garbage, that's what you're going to
Speaker 1: get on the other end, right, garbage in garbage out.
Speaker 1: I talked about this previously this week on tech Stuff
Speaker 1: about how bad training material leads to bad AI performance,
Speaker 1: and there's a real fear that AI models of the
Speaker 1: future are going to be training off of AI generated
Speaker 1: content from today, and that will lead to what is
Speaker 1: called model collapse. That's a real thing. Listen to earlier
Speaker 1: episodes this week to learn more about that. Ours Technica's
Speaker 1: Ashley Bellinger has an article titled Elon Musk's X may
Speaker 1: succeed in blocking California content moderation law on appeal and
Speaker 1: I would like to touch on this. The matter at
Speaker 1: hand concerns a law called AB five to eight seven
Speaker 1: in California, and it is concerned with the terms of
Speaker 1: service for social media companies. Specifically, the bill says that
Speaker 1: social media companies must make available their terms of service.
Speaker 1: They must define clearly what is and is not permitted
Speaker 1: under those terms, and then create a record of any
Speaker 1: and all cases in which users or their content are
Speaker 1: subjected to action from the company for violation of those terms,
Speaker 1: such as when a company deletes a post or bans
Speaker 1: a user, as well as a record of exactly what
Speaker 1: violation occurred. X's law team argue that the law violates
Speaker 1: the company's First Amendment rights to conduct content moderation. That's
Speaker 1: forcing them to make a comment on specific controversial subjects,
Speaker 1: and that is against the First Amendment, and you know,
Speaker 1: to definitively state why someone or something was banned, which
Speaker 1: also sends the message that stuff that is allowed to
Speaker 1: stay on the platform is permitted. This is actually a
Speaker 1: movement to create backlash against X, and the State of
Speaker 1: California is determined to just stir stuff up, so to speak,
Speaker 1: by making X essentially say, well, yeah, what this person
Speaker 1: said was awful, but it's not against our terms of service,
Speaker 1: or we don't like what this person said, so we
Speaker 1: banned them. Bellinger points out that the appeals court seems
Speaker 1: at least partly sympathetic to X, and I can understand
Speaker 1: why I might not agree with stuff going on over
Speaker 1: at X, and in fact, I disagree a lot with
Speaker 1: stuff going on over at X. But you do get
Speaker 1: into a pretty thorny issue when a company has to
Speaker 1: first define what is and isn't acceptable. As one judge
Speaker 1: pointed out, x's argument seems to be that the State
Speaker 1: of California is trying to compel X to express company
Speaker 1: views on these controversial subjects that range from stuff like
Speaker 1: hates each to foreign political interference, and that compelling someone
Speaker 1: to speak does seem like it is running a foul
Speaker 1: of first Amendment protections. So does this mean the appeals
Speaker 1: court will ultimately find in favor of X. Possibly, but
Speaker 1: it's not a done deal yet. Okay, I got a
Speaker 1: few more news stories to cover before we get to that.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break. We're back, so and less
Speaker 1: serious but still irritating news. Netflix is increasing the cost
Speaker 1: of subscribers who want an AD free experience on the
Speaker 1: streaming platform by getting rid of the existing lowest tier
Speaker 1: in that in that range, so the monthly fee for
Speaker 1: the lowest AD free tier, which limited users to viewing
Speaker 1: Netflix on just one device at a time, as well
Speaker 1: as viewing content and a maximum resolution of seven hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty P. That has been twelve dollars a month,
Speaker 1: But now that tier is being ended phased out, and
Speaker 1: current customers who are at that level will get shifted
Speaker 1: to a different tier, less expensive per month, but it
Speaker 1: is AD supported. If they want to move to an
Speaker 1: AD free version, they'll have to go up to fifteen
Speaker 1: dollars forty nine cents per month to do it. Now.
Speaker 1: This is technically a different tier, a different plan. It
Speaker 1: supports up to two devices and also a resolution of
Speaker 1: ten ADP plus. Customers at this tier are allowed to
Speaker 1: download content to a local device, So like if you're
Speaker 1: going on a plane or something and you're not going
Speaker 1: to have access to Wi Fi, you download the episode
Speaker 1: or whatever tier phone and you can watch it then. So,
Speaker 1: according to Sharon Harding of Ours Technica, Netflix's strategy is
Speaker 1: to get more people to move to this lowest lower tier,
Speaker 1: this AD supported tier, because ads are more lucrative as
Speaker 1: a revenue generator than subscriptions alone. So their hope is
Speaker 1: not to convince people to spend more per month and
Speaker 1: move to the new lowest AD free tier, but rather
Speaker 1: be content with the fact that they're also going to
Speaker 1: have to watch some ads, because that is a more
Speaker 1: lucrative revenue generation model. Of course, Netflix isn't the only
Speaker 1: streaming service that has recently bumped up prices. That's been
Speaker 1: true across the board. We've actually seen, you know, some
Speaker 1: streaming platforms bump up prices a couple of times in
Speaker 1: the span of a year. A heck, I just got
Speaker 1: an email earlier this week about how my Peacock subscription
Speaker 1: is getting more expensive and I'm wondering should I even
Speaker 1: bother keeping it? I mean, I only use it to
Speaker 1: watch like things super rarely, but I think this also
Speaker 1: has to be expected because obviously, early on in the
Speaker 1: streaming days, the game was all about getting as large
Speaker 1: a subscriber base as you possibly could, even if that
Speaker 1: meant you were losing money in the process. Like you
Speaker 1: had these very attractive Intrey offers, you had a lot
Speaker 1: of original material. But you can't operate like this forever.
Speaker 1: You know, you do have to find ways to make
Speaker 1: a profit or at least to keep shareholders happy, since
Speaker 1: that's really what it's all about these days, and that
Speaker 1: means you can't just give stuff away for very low
Speaker 1: amounts of money. You have to figure out a method
Speaker 1: to cover the costs of operation at the very least,
Speaker 1: and preferably make a profit. Just Weatherbed of The Verge
Speaker 1: has a piece about how Google is cleaning house on
Speaker 1: the app front. The company says it will be cracking
Speaker 1: down on apps that don't live up to Google's play
Speaker 1: Store standards. So for apps that have extremely limited functionality
Speaker 1: or content and thus are seen as low value apps,
Speaker 1: they could find themselves on the chopping block. So let's
Speaker 1: say it's an app and all it is is like
Speaker 1: a wallpaper. That's it. That's the whole app. This is
Speaker 1: one little thing of wallpaper. That's the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that Google says will not survive this change. Google already
Speaker 1: has policies in place for apps that are downright malicious
Speaker 1: or that introduce security vulnerabilities to hardware, which is a
Speaker 1: no brainer. But this new rule says, not only must
Speaker 1: your app be safe, it also has to be you know,
Speaker 1: kind of good. The new rule take effect at the
Speaker 1: end of August. There's a famous saying that is often
Speaker 1: attributed to Dustyyevsky, and it goes something like this, the
Speaker 1: degree of civilization in a society can be judged by
Speaker 1: entering its prisons. Now, before I go any further, I
Speaker 1: should add that Princeton University's Russian literature professor Ilyavinitsky has
Speaker 1: written extensively about how this quote is not in fact
Speaker 1: from Dustyevsky, and actually it's in conflict with what Dustyevsky's
Speaker 1: actually actual words on the subject of prisons have said.
Speaker 1: It's a great read, by the way, I love reading
Speaker 1: experts who are saying, yeah, everyone says this quote came
Speaker 1: from this place, but it really doesn't. But wherever the
Speaker 1: quote does come from, it has been repeated and reinforced
Speaker 1: by lots of others, including like Nelson Mandela, And while
Speaker 1: the origins of the quote are perhaps unknown and maybe
Speaker 1: even unknowable, I do think the intent behind the quote
Speaker 1: has merit no matter who it was that said at first.
Speaker 1: Which is a long way to go to introduce this
Speaker 1: next story, which is that the FCC has no now
Speaker 1: closed a loophole that existed here in the United States
Speaker 1: that allowed the various prison telephone service operators in this
Speaker 1: country to place really high telephone rates on prisoners who
Speaker 1: wanted to make calls, specifically intra state calls like within
Speaker 1: a state. And most prisoners, like their families, live in
Speaker 1: the same state that the prison that they're in is in,
Speaker 1: so most of the calls they want to make are
Speaker 1: within the state. And for a long time, those rates
Speaker 1: were pretty darn high. And like a fifteen minute phone
Speaker 1: call might cost a prisoner eleven dollars thirty five cents. Well,
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound like a lot maybe to you, But
Speaker 1: then you've got to remember these prisoners are making pennies
Speaker 1: on the dollar in prison. Like there's a whole conversation
Speaker 1: to be had about what ultimately amounts to slave labor
Speaker 1: and the prison system of the United States. But anyway,
Speaker 1: now that eleven dollars thirty five cents is going to
Speaker 1: be closer to ninety cents at least that's what it
Speaker 1: would be for very large prisons, like prisons that have
Speaker 1: at least one thousand inmates, if not more. This is
Speaker 1: significant because a previous challenge to the FCC's attempts to
Speaker 1: curb telephone rates in prisons was defeated when the companies
Speaker 1: that are actually providing these services argued that the FCC
Speaker 1: lacked the authority to impose price caps in the first place.
Speaker 1: But President Biden signed into law a bill that grants
Speaker 1: such powers to the FCC. So now the FCC is saying, well,
Speaker 1: Congress has granted us that authority. Now, so now you
Speaker 1: have to reiin in your prices, and we've already analyzed
Speaker 1: the numbers. We can prove that, based upon the information
Speaker 1: provided by you, you'll still make a profit and cover
Speaker 1: all costs of operations even with these lower price caps.
Speaker 1: So there, so that's a good story. I think that
Speaker 1: shows how if you don't have regulations, there's no check
Speaker 1: and balance system for most vulnerable populations, right like powerful populations,
Speaker 1: ones that have a lot of sway they can push back,
Speaker 1: and that's substantial. But when you're talking about prisoners, who
Speaker 1: are the most vulnerable in society arguably or at least
Speaker 1: among the most vulnerable populations in society, they have no
Speaker 1: political clout. So obviously any company that decides that they're
Speaker 1: going to price gouge, there's no checks and balances there.
Speaker 1: So now the FCC is saying, well, we've been grinded
Speaker 1: that authority. You can't do it anymore. We'll see where
Speaker 1: it goes from here. To round up for recommended reading
Speaker 1: this week, I've got a couple of space related pieces
Speaker 1: from ours Tetnica, both by Stephen Clark, and I think
Speaker 1: these are worth your time. So first up is his
Speaker 1: Rocket Report, which is a weekly roundup of space news,
Speaker 1: and it's incredible, Like he I don't know where he
Speaker 1: gets the time to do all this, because he does
Speaker 1: a great job. But you can learn about how a
Speaker 1: space startup recently lost at CEO due to inappropriate relationships
Speaker 1: with an employee of the company. You can learn about
Speaker 1: how SpaceX's Falcon nine rockets are temporarily grounded after a
Speaker 1: launch vehicle. The second stage of a launch vehicle failed
Speaker 1: to deliver twenty Starlink Internet satellites into their proper orbit
Speaker 1: last week. That being said, the Falcon nine actually remains
Speaker 1: the most reliable launch vehicle in history and it has
Speaker 1: a ninety nine point seven percent success rate. This was
Speaker 1: the first failure, so it's an amazing piece of technology
Speaker 1: and the FAA is likely to lift that grounded status
Speaker 1: within the next day or so. There are also lots
Speaker 1: more stories in that roundup, and next up is another
Speaker 1: piece by Stephen Clark in Ours Technica. It's titled NASA
Speaker 1: built a moon rover, but can't afford to get it
Speaker 1: to the launch pad, and it's the sad tale of Viper,
Speaker 1: a project that already saw four hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: dollars of investment, but sounds like the various delays in
Speaker 1: the project and the cost increases reached a point where
Speaker 1: NASA had to make a decision they had to either
Speaker 1: cut the project or they would have to cancel a
Speaker 1: bunch of other projects in order to find money in
Speaker 1: the budget to get it across the finish line. And
Speaker 1: last is a piece in The Guardian by Charlotte thal
Speaker 1: titled doom Scrolling Linked to existential Anxiety distrust suspicion, and
Speaker 1: despair study finds. I think Thal did a really good
Speaker 1: job pointing out that the study had some limitations and
Speaker 1: it does seem to confirm a lot of common sense
Speaker 1: ideas about the nature of doom scrolling, like it's going
Speaker 1: to just sort of be like, yeah, of course. But
Speaker 1: she also points out that due to the scope and
Speaker 1: nature of the study, it is perhaps viewed as a
Speaker 1: good reason to research the matter more thoroughly, rather than
Speaker 1: to draw conclusions from the study itself. In other words,
Speaker 1: be careful not to fall victim to confirmation bias. And
Speaker 1: that's it for the tech News for the week ending
Speaker 1: July nineteenth, twenty twenty four. I hope you are all well,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
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