Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Heth Aaron, Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Joathan
Speaker 1: Strickland of an executive producer with iHeart Radio and all
Speaker 1: of all things tech, and it's time for the tech
Speaker 1: news for Tuesday, October nineteen twenty one. Let's get to it.
Speaker 1: Members of the United States House Judiciary Committee released a
Speaker 1: statement saying they are considering a criminal investigation into Amazon.
Speaker 1: This relates to the report I mentioned last week in
Speaker 1: which Reuters revealed that internal documents from Amazon that Reuters
Speaker 1: had come into possession of showed that the company had
Speaker 1: copied products in India to create Amazon branded versions of
Speaker 1: those same products, and then used Amazon's search algorithm to
Speaker 1: promote Amazon owned versions over the competing brands, so essentially saying,
Speaker 1: Amazon said, this particular product is making a lot of money,
Speaker 1: let's make our own version, and then let's make sure
Speaker 1: that people see that over the industry leader. Reuters published
Speaker 1: that again, this was happening in India, not necessarily in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world, but the five committee members
Speaker 1: of the House Judiciary Committee that we're concerned about this.
Speaker 1: Reached out to Amazon CEO Andy Jesse over this matter,
Speaker 1: saying that these reports contradict sworn testimony that Amazon executives,
Speaker 1: including Jeff Bezos, gave to Congress in the past. Now,
Speaker 1: for its own part, Amazon reps say that the reporting
Speaker 1: that Reuters has published is inaccurate and that the executives
Speaker 1: who provided testimony before US Congress did so truthfully. But again,
Speaker 1: these documents that Reuters says it's received suggest that at
Speaker 1: least two top Amazon executives were aware of the practices
Speaker 1: in India, and they paint a pretty anti competitive picture. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: in India, a trade group is petitioning the Prime Minister
Speaker 1: of the country to sanction Amazon in light of the
Speaker 1: Reuters report. Facebook is changing how it charges for ads,
Speaker 1: and the news isn't great for advertisers. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: talk about how Facebook's ads work in a nutshell from
Speaker 1: the advertiser perspective. Usually I'm talking about this from the
Speaker 1: user point of view, but now we're looking at it
Speaker 1: from the other way. So let's say we've got an advertiser.
Speaker 1: In fact, let's say we're being super lucky and it's
Speaker 1: a legitimate business, because if you're not lucky, it's a
Speaker 1: scam company that's fleecing customers. I run into those all
Speaker 1: the time on Facebook. They all lead to companies in
Speaker 1: China that ship out cheap knockoffs are sometimes just junk
Speaker 1: two people, and the cost of returning it would be
Speaker 1: more than what you spent on the item. Anyway, that's
Speaker 1: neither here nor there. Facebook doesn't really care one way
Speaker 1: or the other if the company is legit or not,
Speaker 1: because it turns out all that money spends the same
Speaker 1: whether it comes from a legit source or an illegitimate one.
Speaker 1: You can still spend that money anyway. These advertisers set
Speaker 1: down a budget for Facebook and they submit an ad,
Speaker 1: so it costs money right up front to run an
Speaker 1: ad campaign, which makes sense, and the companies tell Facebook
Speaker 1: what actions would represent a successful ad delivery. Maybe the
Speaker 1: brand wants to count every engagement like they're saying, we
Speaker 1: want to see how many likes we can get and
Speaker 1: we're gonna pay X amount per like, Or maybe they
Speaker 1: only want to count the times that someone actually clicks
Speaker 1: through on an ad the click through rate, and Facebook
Speaker 1: runs the ad for a certain amount of time, like
Speaker 1: thirty days, and at the end of that campaign, Facebook
Speaker 1: talies up all the hits on that ad based on
Speaker 1: whatever criteria the client had selected at the beginning. Then
Speaker 1: Facebook gives the client a bill by delivering that many hits.
Speaker 1: So this can get pretty expensive if the ad is
Speaker 1: really effective, and if the company is asking for something
Speaker 1: that requires a particularly challenging user behavior like clicking through
Speaker 1: on an AD is typically a pretty big step compared
Speaker 1: to you know, just seeing the ad in your feed.
Speaker 1: So Facebook could charge a few dollars per click, and
Speaker 1: if tens of thousands of people actually click through on
Speaker 1: that ad, that bill can get pretty big. Well, here's
Speaker 1: where things take a turn for advertisers moving forward. Facebook
Speaker 1: has decided that it will now treat Instagram and Facebook
Speaker 1: accounts as separate accounts, even if the same user clicks
Speaker 1: on the same ad both in Instagram and in Facebook.
Speaker 1: So before Facebook would treat these as a single account,
Speaker 1: Like if you have a Facebook and an Instagram account,
Speaker 1: then you were to interact with the same ad on both.
Speaker 1: In the past, Facebook said well, that's just one user,
Speaker 1: so it only counts once. Now they're saying, no, it's
Speaker 1: going to count twice, because you know why not. On
Speaker 1: Facebook's point of view, this strikes a lot of people
Speaker 1: is weird because if you're serving the same ADD to
Speaker 1: the same person a couple of different times, it's not
Speaker 1: like you've just created a new customer each time, right.
Speaker 1: You can only become a new customer once. But now,
Speaker 1: if someone engages with an AD on Instagram and on Facebook,
Speaker 1: the company will treat that as if that one person
Speaker 1: is actually two people. So, in other words, add clients
Speaker 1: can potentially get charged twice for the same person seeing
Speaker 1: the same AD on two different platforms, both of which
Speaker 1: are owned by Facebook. Facebook says this will only happen
Speaker 1: if the user hasn't had their Facebook and Instagram accounts
Speaker 1: linked in the account center. Now you might wonder, what's
Speaker 1: the account center, Well, this is an optional way for
Speaker 1: users to connect their Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger accounts together
Speaker 1: from an ad perspective. Uh. By the way, it's a
Speaker 1: fully optional feature. It's up to the user to engage it,
Speaker 1: and that feature has not been fully deployed. Only a
Speaker 1: selection of Facebook users have even had the option to
Speaker 1: activate it, so by default, most folks do not have
Speaker 1: their accounts linked together, and even when this gets rolled
Speaker 1: out in full deployment, it still will mean that users
Speaker 1: will have to take the step to enable that option.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that Facebook is banking on the fact that
Speaker 1: most people won't bother to do this. Plus, there are
Speaker 1: plenty of folks who already don't like the idea of
Speaker 1: linking their activities together for the purposes of ads, which
Speaker 1: means that companies that are advertising on Facebook can look
Speaker 1: forward to paying twice per user for those who interact
Speaker 1: with an ad on more than one platform. I will
Speaker 1: not be shocked to see UH some opposition to this plan,
Speaker 1: but this is, you know, just the early days for it.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Facebook, over the past few years, the company
Speaker 1: has shifted UH to depend more upon AI algorithms in
Speaker 1: order to detect and potentially remove posts that contain harmful
Speaker 1: content or you know, stuff that just plane violates Facebook's policies,
Speaker 1: and that includes stuff like, you know, depictions of violence,
Speaker 1: hate speech, acts of cruelty, and so forth. But The
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook's AI just isn't really
Speaker 1: up to the task. Guy Rosen, who is the head
Speaker 1: of integrity at Facebook, says that as recently as this
Speaker 1: past spring, one in every two thousand and posts on
Speaker 1: Facebook still contained hate speech. Facebook started using AI because
Speaker 1: there's so much content that's posted to Facebook that it's
Speaker 1: not really feasible to rely upon human beings to police everything,
Speaker 1: and that makes sense. Unfortunately, the robot police in this
Speaker 1: case aren't really good at their jobs. One senior research
Speaker 1: scientists posted in two thousand nineteen that by his estimation,
Speaker 1: the AI was removing posts that represented about two percent
Speaker 1: of all the hate speech that was actually posted onto Facebook.
Speaker 1: Missing of posts that violate the ban on hate speech
Speaker 1: is pretty darn lousy by any metric, and when the
Speaker 1: AI can't draw a firm conclusion about whether or not
Speaker 1: a particular post violates Facebook's rules, the default response is
Speaker 1: just to reduce how frequently that post will pop up
Speaker 1: in other people's news feeds. You know, you kind of
Speaker 1: emphasize the algorithm, and so it's not muting the post,
Speaker 1: it's not removing the post or banning the user. It's
Speaker 1: just making sure that that particular post that may include
Speaker 1: hate speech doesn't spread quite as much on the platform. That's,
Speaker 1: you know, not good. Facebook reps claim that the company
Speaker 1: is working to improve the algorithms, but based upon the
Speaker 1: posts of other research scientists, it sounds like there isn't
Speaker 1: much cause to be optimistic that any improvement will be
Speaker 1: significant enough to make a serious dent in the spread
Speaker 1: of hate speech on the platform. Things to remember here
Speaker 1: that artificial intelligence is a difficult and complicated discipline. It
Speaker 1: is not always up to the tasks we assigned to it,
Speaker 1: and there are some pretty awful people out there who
Speaker 1: take advantage of this fact and they spread harmful posts
Speaker 1: on platforms like Facebook, knowing that you know, the company
Speaker 1: these own measures aren't really you know, up to the task.
Speaker 1: They have a really good chance of getting that message
Speaker 1: to spread, whether they specifically, you know, adhere to an
Speaker 1: ideology that they really believe in and they're trying to
Speaker 1: promote that, or they're just trying to cause chaos in
Speaker 1: the in the case of things like Russian misinformation trolls.
Speaker 1: So yeah, good things to remember. Speaking of Russia, the
Speaker 1: Russian government is pressuring companies like Facebook and Google to
Speaker 1: comply with orders to delete illegal content from their platforms.
Speaker 1: In Google's case, the government is threatening a fine of
Speaker 1: up to twent of Google's Russian turnover. By the way,
Speaker 1: I actually had to look up the word turnover because
Speaker 1: I think of turnovers as either a baked good or
Speaker 1: the number of employees who leave a business within a
Speaker 1: given amount of time, like that's what turnover is. But
Speaker 1: turnover in this case refers to the amount of any
Speaker 1: business brings in over an amount of time. I don't
Speaker 1: know why we use that instead of the word like revenue.
Speaker 1: But I mean, hey, that's the English language, right, Hey,
Speaker 1: English language. You're confusing. And I say that as a
Speaker 1: native speaker anyway. At least some of the content, this
Speaker 1: illegal content that Google refuses to remove is stuff that's
Speaker 1: critical of the Russian government. So in many ways, this
Speaker 1: is different from the pressure that these same platforms face
Speaker 1: when it comes to spreading hate speech, and it falls
Speaker 1: more in line with a government attempting to suppress any
Speaker 1: resistance to that government's authority. Now I should also add
Speaker 1: I don't know what all the illegal content is that
Speaker 1: Russia alleges Google has failed to remove. Some of that
Speaker 1: could fall into categories like hate speech or misinformation, things
Speaker 1: like that stuff that we would, you know, typically think
Speaker 1: should be removed in general, I don't know how much
Speaker 1: of that falls into those categories versus just plain old
Speaker 1: you know, government censorship that is, you know, designed to
Speaker 1: keep those in power to remain in power. But yeah,
Speaker 1: Google is facing some pretty massive fines in Russia. If
Speaker 1: they don't take those steps, we will have to see
Speaker 1: how that develops. I've got a lot more news to cover,
Speaker 1: but before we get to that, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: The green Ridge Generation power plant in New York State
Speaker 1: is the latest to come under the scrutiny of environmentalist groups,
Speaker 1: and this is because that particular facility has partnered with
Speaker 1: bitcoin mining operations. Now, the power plant had shut down,
Speaker 1: it was defunct, but it came back online in two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen and it houses more than fifteen thousand computer
Speaker 1: services that are engaged in bitcoin mining. Now. As a reminder,
Speaker 1: bitcoin is based off a proof of work mining model,
Speaker 1: and from a very high, high level, just to kind
Speaker 1: of cover this, this means that the system generates what
Speaker 1: amounts to be a number guessing game, and the system
Speaker 1: makes this number increasingly more difficult to guess as more
Speaker 1: computational power joins the system, because the goal is to
Speaker 1: keep the solution time period to about ten minutes, so
Speaker 1: it should take around ten minutes to guess the right answer. Well,
Speaker 1: as the value of bitcoin goes up, more people spend
Speaker 1: more money to put together computer networks that are just
Speaker 1: trying to get the correct answer right, because they're going
Speaker 1: to make a lot of cash in the form of bitcoin. Well,
Speaker 1: that means the system has to make the number harder
Speaker 1: to guess in order to keep that ten minute goal
Speaker 1: in place. And this cycle feeds on itself as long
Speaker 1: as the currency remains really valuable, and right now it's
Speaker 1: you know, around sixty dollars per coin. Meanwhile, all these
Speaker 1: computers need electricity to run, and if the expense of
Speaker 1: running the system is more than what you're getting from mining,
Speaker 1: then the whole thing falls apart. Right, you're spending more
Speaker 1: money than you make in mining. And when you've got
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand servers, you need a lot of electricity. So
Speaker 1: a lot of bitcoin mining operations have looked too defunct.
Speaker 1: Power plants like the green Ridge Generation power Plant had
Speaker 1: been in order to bring them back online, specifically to
Speaker 1: provide electricity for bitcoin mining operations and then perhaps selling
Speaker 1: any additional electricity to the local power grid. Now, bitcoin
Speaker 1: mining operations do this because it brings the cost of
Speaker 1: electricity way down. If the cost is is higher than
Speaker 1: that cuts into your profits, right, And eventually you might
Speaker 1: get to a point where maintaining all the equipment plus
Speaker 1: spending all the money on electricity is more than what
Speaker 1: you get out of mining, and you you've got to
Speaker 1: cut your business or else you'll you'll you know, your
Speaker 1: your costs are greater than your profits, or actually you
Speaker 1: don't have profits. Your costs are greater than your revenue.
Speaker 1: Now that means that these previously defunct fossil fuel power
Speaker 1: plants are coming back online, and thus they're generating more pollution.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin mining operations say that they make sure that they
Speaker 1: purchase carbon offsets in order to remain carbon neutral, but
Speaker 1: a lot of environmentalists have said that carbon offsets tend
Speaker 1: to encourage more reliance on fossil fuel and that this
Speaker 1: is harmful behavior. Essentially that companies use it as an
Speaker 1: excuse in order to not make the changes needed to
Speaker 1: get off the dependence on fossil fuels, and in the meantime,
Speaker 1: we just continue to dump more carbon and into the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: And sure, we might use carbon offsets to fund things
Speaker 1: that can remove carbon from the atmosphere, but that's further
Speaker 1: into the future, and the harm that those carbon emissions
Speaker 1: can do is more immediate. So, in other words, carbon
Speaker 1: offsets can be a solution for a long term as
Speaker 1: long as you also are backing off on carbon emissions.
Speaker 1: But that's not what we're seeing here, and so the
Speaker 1: environmentalists are calling upon New York politicians to deny an
Speaker 1: air permit for Green Ridge and to send an example
Speaker 1: both to the state of New York as well as
Speaker 1: the country overall. They have warned that not doing that
Speaker 1: will seriously undermine state and national efforts to cut carbon
Speaker 1: emissions drastically over the next few years. I'm inclined to
Speaker 1: agree with the activists on this one. And while bitcoin
Speaker 1: miners might argue that their operations bring revenue to the
Speaker 1: state and they create high paying jobs, I would counter
Speaker 1: that when you've got increased carbon emissions, that kind of
Speaker 1: negates those benefits in the long term. I mean, what
Speaker 1: good is money if all the shops end up being
Speaker 1: either underwater or on fire. South Korea has adjusted its
Speaker 1: targets for reducing carbon emissions by twenty thirty. Speaking of
Speaker 1: carbon emissions, previously the country had a goal of reducing
Speaker 1: carbon emissions by twenty six point three by thirty but
Speaker 1: now the country is upping that to a commitment to
Speaker 1: reducing it by forty percent by with the overall goal
Speaker 1: to become carbon neutral by twenty fifty. Now, this is
Speaker 1: a really significant change. South Korea is a country that
Speaker 1: depends heavily on coal power plants. They generate about of
Speaker 1: the electricity that the country relies upon, and it has
Speaker 1: a long way to go to get to those goals
Speaker 1: that it's set. But South Korea's government has created an
Speaker 1: aggressive plan that calls for a coal power generation to
Speaker 1: drop to twenty one eight percent by twenty thirty and
Speaker 1: renewables would go from the current six point two percent
Speaker 1: of power generation to thirty by It is a very
Speaker 1: aggressive green plan. It will be interesting to see if
Speaker 1: the country can follow through. The U s Department of
Speaker 1: Justice has leveled charges against Mark Faulkner, who was the
Speaker 1: chief technical pilot for Boeing. Now, the heart of the
Speaker 1: matter relates to the seven thirty seven Max aircraft. You
Speaker 1: might remember that there were two tragic crashes, one near Jakarta,
Speaker 1: Indonesia and another one in Ethiopia that involved seven thirty
Speaker 1: seven Max aircraft and the aircraft's Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System
Speaker 1: or m CAST, was at fault. Now, the m CAST
Speaker 1: is meant to stabilize flight and the seven thirty seven
Speaker 1: MAX has a design that means that the nose of
Speaker 1: the aircraft tends to go up during flight as you
Speaker 1: are are moving forward, and this can cause the plane
Speaker 1: to climb or even to reach a point where the
Speaker 1: aircraft could you know, suffer a massive stall. Engineers tweaked
Speaker 1: the MCAST system to counteract this tendency and thus force
Speaker 1: the nose back down to a level orientation. But the
Speaker 1: problem was that the system would start pushing the nose
Speaker 1: down prematurely, like during takeoff, it would mistakenly identify that
Speaker 1: the aircraft was in a dangerous angle of attack, that's
Speaker 1: the orientation of the aircraft in relation to the direction
Speaker 1: that it is traveling. Worst, Boeing had failed to include
Speaker 1: information about im casts in various training manuals. In fact,
Speaker 1: the whole point of the seven MAX was to decrease
Speaker 1: the amount of time that pilots would have to spend
Speaker 1: in training in order to fly the aircraft. So pilots
Speaker 1: had no idea how to shut off the system and
Speaker 1: they lost control the aircraft, thus leading to these tragic
Speaker 1: plane crashes. The d o J says that Wagner presented
Speaker 1: false and incomplete information to various airlines regarding mcasts, and
Speaker 1: again this was in order for Boeing to sell the
Speaker 1: aircraft with the essentially the advertising line of you won't
Speaker 1: have to bring your pilots off duty to complete hundreds
Speaker 1: of hours or dozens of hours of training in order
Speaker 1: to fly this aircraft. They're training and other aircraft will
Speaker 1: be sufficient and they'll just have to complete maybe a
Speaker 1: few hours and that's it, and then they're back in
Speaker 1: the air flying passengers around. So, in other words, it
Speaker 1: was it was being sold as a way to to
Speaker 1: save in a long run while also upgrading your your fleet.
Speaker 1: And now the d o J is saying that Forakner specifically,
Speaker 1: was leaving out critical information that could have saved lives.
Speaker 1: A grand jury has indicted Wargner, who faces multiple accounts
Speaker 1: of wire fraud. The United States Federal Communications Commission, or FCC,
Speaker 1: has already created rules for telecom companies in the United
Speaker 1: States regarding spam phone calls, and the major carriers have
Speaker 1: already reached an obligation to comply to those orders. Smaller
Speaker 1: carriers have a little bit longer. They have un til
Speaker 1: I think June and next year to implement those changes,
Speaker 1: and the goal is to cut down on spam calls.
Speaker 1: Now the FCC is looking to do the same thing
Speaker 1: with text messages. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosen Warsol says that
Speaker 1: the increase in robotexts aimed at tricking people into downloading
Speaker 1: nolware or sharing personal information has been on the rise,
Speaker 1: and the FCC and telecom companies have an obligation to respond.
Speaker 1: The f CC will propose rules for this response, which
Speaker 1: the public will be able to review and comment upon
Speaker 1: before they are implemented. This is just the normal operations
Speaker 1: for the f c C. You might remember that during
Speaker 1: the whole net neutrality battles, there were times where the
Speaker 1: f CC opened up things for public comment that became
Speaker 1: a whole mess depending upon which administration was in charge.
Speaker 1: There were cases where there were a bunch of uh
Speaker 1: comments that were suspected of being fake, that were intended
Speaker 1: to push one agenda over another. Anyway, the whole point
Speaker 1: of that process is to give the public an opportunity
Speaker 1: to to weigh in and to you know, argue what
Speaker 1: things matter most to them. So in this case, I
Speaker 1: hope that the public response by saying yes, I would
Speaker 1: like to have fewer spam text messages. At this point,
Speaker 1: I just want my phone to work whenever I needed
Speaker 1: to work, and I don't want people to be contacting me. Specifically,
Speaker 1: I don't want spam to be contacting me. We have
Speaker 1: a few more news stories to cover before we get
Speaker 1: into that. Let's take another quick break. The Sinclair Broadcast Group,
Speaker 1: which operates lots of television station across the United States,
Speaker 1: and which is also known for pushing conservative talking points
Speaker 1: through its numerous regional stations, you know, requiring local staff
Speaker 1: to repeat those particular talking points, it has been hit
Speaker 1: with a ransomware attack. Now, before I get into this story,
Speaker 1: I do want to say that while I do not
Speaker 1: agree with Sinclair's political philosophy, and I definitely don't agree
Speaker 1: with its policy of requiring staff to repeat those talking points,
Speaker 1: I also condemn ransomware attacks in general. Right, I don't
Speaker 1: think that that is the right way to go. Two
Speaker 1: wrongs do not make a right anyway. This attack happened
Speaker 1: this past Saturday and disrupted operations at numerous stations around
Speaker 1: the United States. It affected the station's ability to stream content,
Speaker 1: It disrupted services like email and even telephone service at
Speaker 1: some of these locations. In addition, the hackers appear to
Speaker 1: have access data on Sinclair's systems and locked Sinclair out
Speaker 1: of those systems at the time of this recording, it's
Speaker 1: not entirely clear what data that might be or how
Speaker 1: it will affect Sinclair moving forward. I've not seen any
Speaker 1: reports on how much the hackers have demanded in ransom.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's a ransomware attack, that's typically part
Speaker 1: of it that I haven't seen any any reference to
Speaker 1: the demands. Uh, nor have I found any information on
Speaker 1: which hacker group is responsible. At least as of the
Speaker 1: recording of this podcast, no group has claimed responsibility. Now,
Speaker 1: it might be tempting to assume that the hackers have
Speaker 1: an ideological beef with Sinclair, but it's also possible that
Speaker 1: this was just an attack of opportunity, unguided by any
Speaker 1: sort of ideological stance. But as always, my advice is
Speaker 1: never pay the ransom. It encourages future attacks. UH. This
Speaker 1: is easier said than done for a lot of organizations
Speaker 1: because it could be critical infrastructure that's affected by the attack,
Speaker 1: and if there's not an easy fix to reverse that,
Speaker 1: then what do you do? But paying that ransom it
Speaker 1: really just sends the message of Hey, your tactic worked
Speaker 1: and you made money off of it, so you should
Speaker 1: do it again. Not a great situation for the rest
Speaker 1: of us. Now, on the subject of ransomware, the FBI,
Speaker 1: along with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency or CAESA,
Speaker 1: as well as the National Security Agency or n s A,
Speaker 1: have issued a joint advisory about the black Matter ransomware
Speaker 1: gang and how that group works. So the goal is
Speaker 1: to alert various organizations, essentially big businesses, to the tactics
Speaker 1: that this group uses in an effort to bolster cybersecurity
Speaker 1: and prevent future attacks. Black Matter has traditionally offered bribes
Speaker 1: to employees who work for really big organizations, sometimes up
Speaker 1: to a hundred thousand dollars for these emloyees to share
Speaker 1: log in credentials. Essentially, they're saying, if you have a
Speaker 1: key to the vault, we will pay you a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to let us in. The group does have
Speaker 1: some restrictions, however. They apparently don't want to target nonprofit organizations.
Speaker 1: They don't want to target hospitals or healthcare companies in
Speaker 1: that space. Uh. They say that government organizations are off limits.
Speaker 1: Companies that are in the defense industry are off limits
Speaker 1: stuff like that, so they're really looking to target like
Speaker 1: big businesses that are outside of those industries. You know,
Speaker 1: like financial institutions could be totally on target. Uh, big
Speaker 1: telecommunications companies, that kind of stuff, like any of those
Speaker 1: other companies could be considered fair game. And their attack
Speaker 1: methods include good old standbys, such as using compromise log
Speaker 1: incredentials to gain unauthorized access to a system. That's why
Speaker 1: they will offer that like hundred thousand dollar payout in
Speaker 1: order to get access to what are considered to be
Speaker 1: really high value targets. This is the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that the average person can prevent. So first, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't give into the temptation to sell out a
Speaker 1: company for a hundred thousand dollars. That kind of stuff
Speaker 1: can be tracked. It's more likely to get you into
Speaker 1: serious trouble than that hundred grand is worth. I mean
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars. That's a lot of money, and
Speaker 1: I can see where the temptation would be. But uh
Speaker 1: not many people have any idea of how to hide
Speaker 1: a sudden flow of a hundred thousand dollars into their
Speaker 1: bank accounts. So really, for those who want to try
Speaker 1: and keep things safe, they need to set strong passwords.
Speaker 1: They need to keep those passwords safe. One thing you
Speaker 1: should not do, for example, is write your password down
Speaker 1: on a sticky note and attach that sticky note to
Speaker 1: your computer monitor. Not that I've personally seen that happen.
Speaker 1: The agencies revealed that the black Matter group also is
Speaker 1: something that a lot of other groups will not do.
Speaker 1: Instead of encrypt data backups, that's what a lot of
Speaker 1: ransomware groups will do, though, and cry crypt the backups
Speaker 1: so that the backups are not accessible, black Matter goes
Speaker 1: a step further. They will overwrite the data backup systems,
Speaker 1: so they will essentially erase all that backup data. That
Speaker 1: means that companies are left with encrypted systems and no backups.
Speaker 1: Whether those are backups are encrypted or otherwise. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty brutal attack, and obviously the best approach is to
Speaker 1: try and prevent an attack from happening in the first place.
Speaker 1: There are more details, and I would urge anyone out
Speaker 1: there who oversees large and critical networks to read the
Speaker 1: Joint Advisory. You can find it at the ces A website.
Speaker 1: It is alert A A to one DASH to nine
Speaker 1: one a catchy right, But seriously, if you are at
Speaker 1: all responsible for those sorts of networks, I highly recommend
Speaker 1: you read the advice ory. It could potentially save you
Speaker 1: and your organization a lot of trouble. Finally, as part
Speaker 1: of the Artemis program, which is the NASA program that
Speaker 1: includes sending astronauts back to the Moon for the first
Speaker 1: time since the early nineteen seventies, NASA plans to establish
Speaker 1: a communications network that it is currently calling Luna net Now.
Speaker 1: According to NASA, the goal is to have a system
Speaker 1: that will allow for communications on and around the Moon
Speaker 1: in a way that's similar to how WiFi works here
Speaker 1: on Earth. Now, I'm using vague language to describe this
Speaker 1: because what NASA has done involves setting the goals of
Speaker 1: what this system should be capable of doing, rather than
Speaker 1: laying out the design of the system itself. And this
Speaker 1: is because the agency has released a specification on what
Speaker 1: the system should be able to do, and it's looking
Speaker 1: to engage in technical discussions with various telecommunication and internet
Speaker 1: experts in an effort to design a system that will
Speaker 1: make those goals a reality. The system will need to
Speaker 1: take into account stuff that isn't necessarily as big a
Speaker 1: concern here on Earth, like solar flare activity. So it
Speaker 1: is possible for a particularly powerful solar flare to be
Speaker 1: strong enough to affect electrical systems here on Earth and
Speaker 1: to disrupt systems. It's it's like an electromagnetic pulse that
Speaker 1: can wipe out things like a power grid if it
Speaker 1: were really powerful and it hit Earth at just the
Speaker 1: right time. But our magneto sphere and Earth's atmosphere protect
Speaker 1: us quite a bit here on Earth. Out in space,
Speaker 1: it's a different story. You don't necessarily have that protection,
Speaker 1: So the system needs to be resilient. More importantly, the
Speaker 1: system should be able to alert astronauts of an impending
Speaker 1: solar flare ahead of time, and it gives them the
Speaker 1: chance to prepare for that faster than they would if
Speaker 1: the news first had to come from mission control on Earth,
Speaker 1: and any delay at all can be disaster risks in
Speaker 1: these sort of events. Assuming that lunar net all comes together,
Speaker 1: the astronauts of the future will be able to use
Speaker 1: the network to communicate with each other, just as some
Speaker 1: some of the folks water around the Moon and others
Speaker 1: remain in lunar orbit or beyond. It should also allow
Speaker 1: astronauts to conduct more extensive operations on the Moon's surface,
Speaker 1: using the network to aid in navigation so that they
Speaker 1: can range further from home base and still return easily. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, they don't get lost on the Moon's surface.
Speaker 1: There's not a whole lot of landmarks that you can
Speaker 1: look at besides things like craters and stuff. So the
Speaker 1: idea is that this communication system will allow for more
Speaker 1: robust and extensive lunar operations and that could help with
Speaker 1: science that could help with establishing moon bases and that
Speaker 1: sort of stuff in the future. So we will have
Speaker 1: to wait and see how this unfolds. I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool and um I look word to hearing about
Speaker 1: the Looney Communications Network. All right, that is it for
Speaker 1: the tech news I have for you today, Tuesday, October
Speaker 1: ninety one. If you have suggestions for topics I should
Speaker 1: cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a technology,
Speaker 1: a trend, a company, anything like that, let me know
Speaker 1: the best way to do that is to reach out
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Speaker 1: h s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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