WEBVTT - Tech News: Row Row Row your Roboat 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:14.800 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.400 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:20.639 and all of all things tech. And this is the 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:25.280 tech news for Tuesday, June eight, twent d twenty one. 0:00:26.320 --> 0:00:29.600 And if you were up in the wee hours of 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:31.800 the morning today, if you were in the US, or 0:00:31.960 --> 0:00:33.519 you know, if you're not in the United States, if 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:36.360 you were just you know, up, you might have noticed 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:40.560 that some popular websites were not up. They were down, 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:49.960 big big websites, including sites like Spotify, Twitch, Reddit, HBO, Max, Stripe, PayPal, 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:53.760 and then news organizations like The Guardian, The New York Times, 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:58.120 CNN and many more. Also, some government websites in the 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:00.400 UK were down. So what was going on? One? I mean, 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:03.960 when this kind of thing happens, clearly something major is 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:06.920 going down on the back end. The possibility that all 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:09.640 of these sites would suffer unrelated issues at the same 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:13.840 time is just too low, right, So what happened? Well, 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:18.080 apparently the root cause was a problem with a c 0:01:18.560 --> 0:01:24.760 d N provider called Fastly, But that naturally raises a question, 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:30.240 what in the blue blazes is a c d N. Well, 0:01:30.280 --> 0:01:36.840 that initialism stands for content delivery network, which kind of 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:39.840 gives you an idea of what it does, but it's 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:43.200 a little you know, misleading as well. So a c 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:47.240 d N is a collection of Internet servers that are 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:52.640 distributed across different regions that collectively work to deliver faster 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:56.080 Internet content to end users. It's kind of like an 0:01:56.240 --> 0:02:00.480 edge network strategy essentially, you can think of it. It It 0:02:00.520 --> 0:02:03.480 is almost like a dispersed team of experts who are 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:05.640 all working on the same problem, except, of course we're 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:10.360 talking about computer servers here. And interestingly, these servers don't 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:15.160 actually host any content themselves. They aren't like holding the 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:18.560 videos on HBO Max or anything like that, so they're 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:21.920 not the repository of information that we find from the 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:26.440 various sites we visit and services we use. Instead, these 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:31.320 servers will load content into a cash memory, so you 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:35.160 can think of this as like very temporary storage, and 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:38.320 then they can serve that up to end users. So 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:41.840 if you're trying to watch a movie on HBO Max, 0:02:42.520 --> 0:02:46.240 the host server for that content could be sending out 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:49.520 data to c d end servers, which in turn consent 0:02:49.800 --> 0:02:53.200 that to you, and that helps relieve the host server, 0:02:53.400 --> 0:02:56.120 the one that actually contains all the stuff for real zs. 0:02:56.600 --> 0:02:58.720 It saves them from having to handle all of that 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:02.400 load all by itself, and it helps ensure a faster 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:06.480 experience for the end user. But Fastly apparently had some 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:10.280 sort of massive malfunction that brought down the c d 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:14.360 N system, and that meant that the support that these 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:19.000 these different sites usually have was suddenly gone. As a result, 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:22.240 millions of people found that numerous websites and services were 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:26.120 totally unreachable, and in the case of stuff like Stripe 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:29.760 and PayPal, that could be a really big disruption for commerce. 0:03:30.160 --> 0:03:34.440 Plenty of small merchants depend upon these services, so this 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:38.040 was more serious than just not being able to watch 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:42.560 a twitch streamer or have a twitch stream or access 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:46.200 of Spotify playlist for an hour. Fastly was able to 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:50.120 resolve the problem after about an hour, with service appearing 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:53.960 to be restored by noon in UK time. So it's 0:03:54.040 --> 0:03:58.119 a really good thing that Fastly's response didn't move slowly. 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:02.320 Our next story for today's news makes me feel like 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:05.160 I kind of got into a time machine and then 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:08.160 somehow went back to the late nineties and early two 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:12.760 thousand's and that's because this story involves big music labels 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:17.360 suing the proverbial pants off of an Internet service provider 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:21.200 because of alleged piracy committed by that I s P 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:26.159 s customers. And y'all, we went through this two decades 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:29.720 ago and the music companies did not come out looking 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:33.800 real good back then, So what exactly is going on now? 0:04:34.600 --> 0:04:37.119 While back in two thousand eighteen, a group of music 0:04:37.160 --> 0:04:43.160 companies that include Sony Music, no surprise there, Universal, and 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:48.320 Warner filed a joint lawsuit against Cox Communications, and the 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:52.200 claim was that Cox did not do enough to curtail 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:56.680 piracy across its network as an I s P. The 0:04:56.720 --> 0:05:00.640 claim said that despite these companies direct in Cox to 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:04.640 specific I P addresses that were linked to music piracy, 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:07.360 the company didn't actually go so far as to ban 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:12.320 people from its service, and thus Cox was culpable for 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:16.720 the losses that these companies suffered due to piracy. And 0:05:16.800 --> 0:05:20.280 by the way, it is actually impossible to calculate the 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:23.800 losses from piracy because there's no way to establish if 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:28.360 someone would have purchased a piece of media legitimately if 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:33.400 they hadn't pirated it first. Because this isn't like physical media, right, 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:36.839 It's not like someone broke into a warehouse and stole 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:41.200 a palette of albums or something. They took a copy 0:05:41.200 --> 0:05:44.600 of a digital file which can be copied infinitely. And 0:05:44.680 --> 0:05:48.800 so unless you can actually prove that that person was 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:55.400 going to buy that digital media but didn't, then how 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:58.400 can you actually say the company was out any money? 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:02.080 I mean, if I don't buy an album, right Like, 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:04.719 if I just decide, oh, I don't want that, well, 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:10.520 it's not like I cost Sony Music money and that 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:13.680 that seems like a pretty reasonable argument, right I decide 0:06:13.720 --> 0:06:17.279 I don't want that album, I didn't rob anyone of 0:06:17.400 --> 0:06:20.520 that sale. So you can't actually establish how much money 0:06:20.600 --> 0:06:23.760 was lost as a result of piracy. There probably is 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:26.520 some amount lost, I mean, it's not like it's not 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:30.039 like it's a victimless crime. It's not that it's you know, 0:06:30.279 --> 0:06:33.599 you just can't actually put a value to that loss 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:35.599 because there's no way of knowing what it could be. 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:38.680 And yet the jury in this case back in two 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:43.240 thousand eighteen, actually they found uh in the favor of 0:06:43.279 --> 0:06:46.360 the music labels. In two thousand nineteen, not only did 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:50.480 they agree with the music labels, they agreed to an 0:06:50.480 --> 0:06:55.840 award of nearly one hundred thousand dollars per instance of piracy, 0:06:56.040 --> 0:06:59.000 and there were more than ten thousand instances of piracy, 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:04.440 which meant that Cox's court mandated fine is that the 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:10.480 billion dollar mark yaws a one billion dollars in fines 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:15.640 to pay to these music labels. Anyway, obviously, Cox appealed 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:18.920 that decision, and so that trial went to appeal, and 0:07:19.040 --> 0:07:23.920 earlier this year that appeals court upheld that first decision. 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:26.480 So they said, no, the court got it right. And 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:30.120 now groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation or e f F, 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:33.720 and the Center for Democracy and Technology and a couple 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:37.720 of others have issued their own court filing regarding this case. 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:43.280 These organizations point out that the court decision is incredibly harmful. 0:07:43.720 --> 0:07:46.440 If I s p s potentially face fines in the 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:50.680 billion dollar range, they are far more likely to boot 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:53.760 people off their service if they get a notice from 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:56.600 a music label. But it's never as simple as that. 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:01.160 For example, let's just take my house, right, I live 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:05.800 with my wife as long as you know she lets me, 0:08:06.200 --> 0:08:08.640 which so far has gone pretty well. Don't mess this 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:12.000 up for me anyway. My wife and I use a 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:14.880 household internet connection, right, It's not like we have two 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:18.720 separate internet networks, and she uses one and I used 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:21.160 the other. So if one of us were to run 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:24.080 a foul because we were, you know, being a dirty, 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:27.800 dirty pirate and I don't know, we were like trying 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:32.120 to steal the SpongeBob SquarePants musical soundtrack, our I s 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:34.600 P could get a notice from the copyright holder and 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.200 then give us the boot. But let's say that I 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:40.280 was just the one who did this, right, Like it 0:08:40.360 --> 0:08:43.400 was just me that wanted that soundtrack so darn badly. 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:46.640 My wife is completely innocent. She doesn't know about it, 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:49.240 she's never listened to it. She certainly wasn't aware that 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:52.000 I was stealing it. Well, clearly, if the I s 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:54.600 P boots us, that doesn't just affect me, It affects 0:08:54.600 --> 0:08:58.000 my wife, who is completely innocent of having pirated the music. 0:08:58.040 --> 0:09:01.680 About how a simple sponge say bikini bottom And the 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:04.440 e f F points this out. It says, this is 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:07.280 just the tip of the iceberg, and IP address could 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:10.320 mean that the I s P has to boot off 0:09:10.320 --> 0:09:14.360 an entire college, or a hospital, or a library, or 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:19.800 even municipality WiFi. I mean, the group rightly points out 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:23.000 that these damages aren't anywhere close to the realities of 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.960 any harm suffered, and that it punishes the innocent as 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:30.840 well as the guilty. So essentially, these groups are saying 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:33.160 that the court got it totally wrong, that the court 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:37.320 misinterpreted the law, and that allowing for an award that 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:40.920 is completely out of alignment of any actual damage suffered 0:09:41.679 --> 0:09:46.960 is also unjust, and that the consequences will be catastrophic 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:51.040 because I s p s will be far more trigger 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:55.080 happy to boot people off of their service if the 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:57.640 if the alternative means that these companies are going to 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:01.920 get you know, hit by bill in dollar fines, so 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:06.280 this is just a bad situation. They also make the 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.439 point that the internet access these days is really an 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:13.840 integral component in participating in modern society, and if you 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:17.200 cut someone off from that, that's a non trivial problem. 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:20.880 It's like saying, all right, well, because you you know, 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:24.920 stole a bottle of water at the local convenience store, 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:31.040 we're shutting waters off at your house. Like that's not cool. 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:35.199 And Cox has appealed the court's decision, so this is 0:10:35.240 --> 0:10:38.400 going to go to another appeals court. Uh And currently 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:40.600 the company, the I s P actually has a lot 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:44.240 of support behind it from various legal scholars and advocacy groups, 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:47.200 which is interesting. I s p s frequently get a 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:51.200 lot of flak because of anti competitive stuff that I 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:54.560 s p s tend to be at least tangentially involved in. 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:57.240 But in this case, you have a lot of people 0:10:57.360 --> 0:10:59.800 siding with the I s P and we'll have to 0:11:00.280 --> 0:11:06.160 where this goes next. Meanwhile, it's still a bumpy ride 0:11:06.200 --> 0:11:09.880 for bitcoin. Back in March, the cryptocurrency hit an all 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:14.080 time high value of nearly sixty five dollars per bitcoin. 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:19.200 Later that value plunged to nearly half of that, in 0:11:19.240 --> 0:11:21.880 fact lower than half of that at some points, hitting 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:25.400 close to thirty dollars, and after a brief recovery, the 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:31.120 value took another hit again earlier today. So what's going on, Well, 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:34.000 there are a few things that are happening all at 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:37.120 the same time, and it's really impossible to say which 0:11:37.160 --> 0:11:41.160 things are chiefly responsible for this. But one thing is 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:43.680 we could be seeing a bear market in which the 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:47.480 value will be on the decline until enough people start 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:51.760 buying into bitcoin again on a really large scale to 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:55.480 cause this to switch over to a bowl market again. 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:57.959 Bull market is where the value starts to climb because 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:01.400 more and more people are buying into it. But a 0:12:01.440 --> 0:12:05.440 different contributing factor could be that recently, the US government 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:09.400 managed to recover most of a ransom that Colonial Pipeline 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:13.440 paid to ransomware hackers earlier this year. Alright, so quick 0:12:13.480 --> 0:12:18.079 summary of that story. Colonial Pipeline supplies fuel to the 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:20.520 eastern half of the United States, and the company was 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:24.400 hit with a ransomware attack that shut down its pipeline, 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:27.680 or really the company shut down its own pipeline sort 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:29.599 of as a precautionary measure to make sure that the 0:12:29.640 --> 0:12:33.040 malware did not spread throughout the entire system. But this 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:38.240 caused a short term gas shortage and a massive spike 0:12:38.360 --> 0:12:41.480 in fuel prices in much of the US, and then 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:44.679 the shortage got way worse because some people decided to 0:12:44.760 --> 0:12:50.400 hoard gasoline, which is both selfish and stupid. Gasoline does 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:53.880 not keep forever, so if you hoard more than you need, 0:12:54.040 --> 0:12:57.000 there's a good chance that gasoline is going to essentially 0:12:57.160 --> 0:12:59.800 lose its potency before you get around using it. And 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:03.440 of course it's really dangerous to store gasoline unless you 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:06.080 have the proper storage containers, and a lot of people 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:09.120 were filling up all sorts of stuff with gasoline and 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:15.480 just creating massive potential disasters. Anyway, Colonial Pipeline actually got 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:18.360 things back in action fairly quickly, but it turned out 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:20.960 the reason they were able to do so was that 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:25.000 the company actually complied with the hackers demands and paid 0:13:25.040 --> 0:13:28.520 the ransom, which is something that most people, including me, 0:13:28.960 --> 0:13:33.240 say is a dumb, dumb idea because it reinforces that 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:36.599 strategy in the first place, and it makes future ransomware 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:41.680 attacks more likely. Bad move Colonial Pipeline. Now we hear 0:13:42.040 --> 0:13:45.120 that the US government was able to seize most of 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:47.840 that ransom that was paid to the hackers, which of 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.360 course had been paid in cryptocurrency. And these kind of 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:55.240 stories definitely are a bad look for cryptocurrency in general, 0:13:55.360 --> 0:14:00.840 which frequently gets associated with illegal and unseemly active ds. Now, 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:04.199 I want to point out that's not necessarily the fault 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:08.640 of the currencies. The idea behind cryptocurrency is that it 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:13.160 should be usable for any sort of transaction, not necessarily 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:17.840 illegal ones. But just like technologies such as peer to 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:23.280 peer networks, we see folks associate the technology with illegal 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:27.080 activity and these kind of stories don't help. And how 0:14:27.160 --> 0:14:30.320 did the US recover more than two million dollars in 0:14:30.440 --> 0:14:34.400 ransom Well, they apparently got access to the decryption key 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:38.400 for one of the ransomware attackers digital wallets, which is 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:41.320 kind of like handing someone the key to a vault. 0:14:41.920 --> 0:14:45.760 And hearing that a government managed to take money away 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:51.080 from someone using cryptocurrency probably has at least some percentage 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:56.000 of bitcoin enthusiasts upset. Anyway, that may have contributed to 0:14:56.040 --> 0:15:00.360 another slip in bitcoin value, which dipped below thirty dollars 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:03.400 this morning. Oh I should also mention that just a 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:08.960 few days ago, Elon Musk once again managed to weigh 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:12.080 in on this whole thing. He tweeted a breakup meme 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:15.040 suggesting that he has fallen out of love with bitcoin, 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:18.960 and the bitcoin value took a little hit at that point, 0:15:18.960 --> 0:15:21.560 to which of course lead to more complaints that Musk 0:15:21.760 --> 0:15:25.640 is manipulating markets. That's something he's been accused of multiple 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:28.720 times at this point. And what all this says to 0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:31.720 me is that people should just stop following Elon Musk 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:37.040 on social media. That guy. All right, we have a 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:39.480 few more stories to get through today, but first let's 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:50.360 take a quick break. Having just spoken about, you know, 0:15:50.440 --> 0:15:53.960 government turning the tables on tech, let's continue that for 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:58.080 a second and talk about the FBI's massive staying operation 0:15:58.280 --> 0:16:02.800 with regard to an encrypted mess saging service. So here's 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:06.040 the pitch. You got your criminal types right, you got 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:10.440 your Tony sopranos and whatnot. These folks need to communicate 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:13.960 with one another, but they also need those communications to 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:17.080 be secure or else the heat catches on right next thing, 0:16:17.120 --> 0:16:19.320 you know, you've got the FEDS on your case. So 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.480 you seek out services that allow you to communicate over 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:27.400 encrypted lines so that anyone who intercepts that communication will 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:30.440 just get absolute nonsense out of it. They'll be unable 0:16:30.440 --> 0:16:33.520 to tell what has been said between the two or 0:16:33.560 --> 0:16:36.720 more parties. But what if it turned out that the 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:40.000 FEDS were the ones who designed the communication tool in 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:43.440 the first place. Well that's what's happened here with various 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:46.400 law enforcement agencies around the world, not just the FBI. 0:16:47.080 --> 0:16:50.760 UH law enforcement in Australia and other places have played 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:54.240 a major part as well, and they all work together 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:57.120 in order to make this happen. It started out back 0:16:57.120 --> 0:17:01.080 in and it became known in turn only as Operation 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:06.440 Trojan Shield. So law enforcement created a what was said 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:09.760 to be a secure messaging app called a NOM a 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:13.879 n O M. The phones that a NOM we're on 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:18.040 couldn't make calls. They weren't enabled to make phone calls 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:21.000 or really do anything else other than use this app. 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:24.960 This a no mapp. They could only really communicate that way, 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:28.000 And the FEDS made sure that these phones would only 0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:31.280 be available through the black market, and that made them 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:36.000 look real legit shady, like this is this is illegal stuff, 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:37.720 and so the only way to get it is through 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:40.760 the black market, and thus it seems in a weird 0:17:40.840 --> 0:17:44.680 way legitimate. Right. So some Australian agents who were deep 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:48.760 undercover had phones with a NOM on it, and they 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:52.919 gave those phones out to high ranking profile members of 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:57.120 various crime groups and syndicates and families so like the 0:17:57.160 --> 0:18:00.960 mafia and outlaw biker gangs and stuff like that, and 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:04.840 gave them recommendations to use the app for communication. Those 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:09.160 recommendations filtered through the various organized crime groups with more 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:13.120 people switching over to it, believing that this would mass 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:16.120 their activities from government agencies. But in fact, the law 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:20.560 enforcement groups had backdoor access to that messaging the entire time, 0:18:20.560 --> 0:18:24.080 and they can monitor communications and set up a massive 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:29.399 sting operation. So law enforcement intercepted millions of messages between 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:34.199 folks like drug traffickers and weapons smugglers, Asian crime syndicates, 0:18:34.200 --> 0:18:37.440 outlaw biker groups, and more. And the public only learned 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:40.200 about this operation on Monday, when it was revealed that 0:18:40.280 --> 0:18:44.160 law enforcement had made hundreds of arrests, like around eight 0:18:44.240 --> 0:18:49.600 hundred of them all around the world. Yauza and now 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:52.760 for a story about Apple, actually a couple of them. 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:56.600 The company recently announced some privacy related features at the 0:18:56.680 --> 0:19:00.960 Worldwide Developers Conference or w w d C, and one 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:04.440 of those is called Private Relay, which sounds really interesting. 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:08.760 It prevents any entity from tracking your browser history that 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:12.480 includes your I s P and it includes Apple. So 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:16.480 in other words, you can browse using Private Relay and 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.399 there's no there's no one out there who's tracking which 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:25.359 sites you have visited during that browsing session. However, this announcement, 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:27.320 which I think is really cool. I think private Relay 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:29.800 is really interesting. I'm very curious how it actually works. 0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:33.199 But there is a qualifier, and that is this feature 0:19:33.240 --> 0:19:36.919 will not be available worldwide. Apple is not going to 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:42.760 make it available in Saudi Arabia, China, South Africa, Belarus, Egypt, 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:46.640 Kazakhstan and a few other countries. The company so far 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:49.960 has not actually commented on why these regions will not 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:53.880 have access to this particular feature, but I'm pretty sure 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:56.720 most of us can make at least some educated guesses, 0:19:57.119 --> 0:20:00.640 because in many of these countries, governments are not too 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:05.639 keen on citizens having unfettered and thus uncontrolled access to 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:10.760 the Internet for various reasons. In places like China, accessing 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:14.600 sites outside of the country itself typically requires you to 0:20:14.720 --> 0:20:19.159 make illegal use of VPNs to spoof where your location is, 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:22.439 and that way you can bypass the Great Firewall of China. 0:20:22.840 --> 0:20:27.639 But should China come after a VPN service, then the 0:20:27.760 --> 0:20:31.560 user data that that VPN service is steward of could 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:33.879 be at risk. So let's say that it's a VPN 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:37.840 that keeps at least a short term record of what 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:41.159 sites users have accessed. Well, if China goes after that 0:20:41.240 --> 0:20:44.560 VPN service, they could presumably get hold of that information 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:48.119 and thus ultimately come after citizens who are making use 0:20:48.160 --> 0:20:50.879 of that VPN service. Now, some VPN services are great 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:55.640 and that they wipe all that data very quickly regularly, 0:20:56.040 --> 0:20:59.199 so that there's nothing for anyone to get hold of. 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:03.600 There's no there's no uh, no footprints left behind or 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:06.399 anything like that. But not all VPNs are like that. 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:10.000 And if you've got, you know, the power of the 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:13.480 Chinese government coming after you, you might be compelled to 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:17.840 hand over user data. So a feature like private relay 0:21:18.040 --> 0:21:20.239 could serve as a protection against that. You can use 0:21:20.280 --> 0:21:24.280 private relay in conjunction with a VPN and leave no 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:29.280 trace behind and thus have better access to information. Well, 0:21:29.520 --> 0:21:32.119 I would hazard a guess that the Chinese government really 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:35.440 doesn't want Apple to include a feature that would allow 0:21:35.520 --> 0:21:40.480 citizens to potentially bypass national restrictions on Internet access. And 0:21:40.600 --> 0:21:45.200 China represents a truly huge market for any company. I mean, 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:47.960 that's more than a billion people live in the country, 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:51.920 so obviously it's an enormous market. So most companies are 0:21:52.000 --> 0:21:55.159 not so firm in their convictions about providing stuff like 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:58.280 privacy and security in order to give up on that 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:01.880 lucrative a market. Apple is by no means the only 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:04.840 company to make allowances for governments that a lot of 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:08.359 folks would refer to as oppressive. So while I am 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:11.160 singling out Apple here because that's what the story is about, 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:13.439 I do want to make it clear they ain't the 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:15.920 only ones who do this sort of thing. It's not 0:22:16.000 --> 0:22:20.440 like Apple is being particularly disingenuous. Uh, this is pretty 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:24.720 much across the board. Next, we have a story about 0:22:24.800 --> 0:22:28.080 a lawsuit aimed at Apple. This one claims that the 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:31.080 most recent versions of iOS have caused older phones to 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:35.600 encounter performance issues, namely around slower processing speeds and shorter 0:22:35.680 --> 0:22:38.880 battery life. Now, if this sounds familiar, it's because we've 0:22:38.920 --> 0:22:42.600 actually seen this happen a few times before. But the 0:22:42.720 --> 0:22:46.040 argument now is that as Apple releases new hardware and 0:22:46.119 --> 0:22:51.080 new versions of iOS, it is at least somewhat intentionally 0:22:51.240 --> 0:22:54.600 designing the OS to make older iPhones perform at a 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:59.600 substandard level as part of a planned obsolescence strategy, thus 0:22:59.680 --> 0:23:03.240 incuraging customers to upgrade to the latest version of the iPhone. 0:23:03.520 --> 0:23:08.200 The complaint actually includes this passage quote Apple benefits from 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:12.040 not having to tell existing and prospective iPhone users that 0:23:12.240 --> 0:23:16.240 updates touted to add desirable features and to fix security 0:23:16.280 --> 0:23:20.919 and other bugs have a significant countervailing downside in the 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:25.560 form of decreased processing speed and battery life end quote. So, 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:28.720 in other words, this complaint is saying Apples hyping up 0:23:28.760 --> 0:23:31.840 all the new features of the more recent versions of 0:23:31.840 --> 0:23:36.520 iOS in an effort to convince people to download those updates. 0:23:36.560 --> 0:23:40.320 But then the update allegedly nerves older iPhone models and 0:23:40.359 --> 0:23:43.560 thus pushes customers to have to buy new iPhones. So, 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:45.280 in other words, they're saying that this is this is 0:23:45.359 --> 0:23:48.439 unfair market practices essentially, is what this comes down to. 0:23:48.880 --> 0:23:50.280 So I'll have to keep an eye on this and 0:23:50.320 --> 0:23:54.280 see how this goes. Typically you see issues like this 0:23:54.320 --> 0:23:56.960 gets settled out of court. It's very rare that it 0:23:57.000 --> 0:24:02.159 actually goes the distance. In drone news, for the first time, 0:24:02.359 --> 0:24:06.439 an unmanned aerial vehicle served as the refueling aircraft for 0:24:06.480 --> 0:24:10.520 a piloted US jet fighter in mid air. The drone, 0:24:10.840 --> 0:24:14.679 manufactured by Boeing, connected via hose to the jet fighter 0:24:15.000 --> 0:24:18.320 as the two flew over the midwestern United States in 0:24:18.359 --> 0:24:21.159 a four and a half hour long test flight. So 0:24:21.240 --> 0:24:24.959 the drone flew ahead of the jet fighter and so 0:24:25.000 --> 0:24:27.600 it extended a hose behind it, and it was the 0:24:27.680 --> 0:24:31.280 jet fighter pilot's job to position the jet so that 0:24:31.359 --> 0:24:34.200 it could follow the drone at the proper distance and 0:24:34.359 --> 0:24:37.440 dock with the end of that hose, and then the 0:24:37.520 --> 0:24:42.119 refueling followed more than three gallons of fuel were transferred 0:24:42.160 --> 0:24:45.359 from the drone to the jet fighter. So the test 0:24:45.440 --> 0:24:48.040 was a success, and it could point to a future 0:24:48.280 --> 0:24:51.159 in which militaries are able to free up pilots from 0:24:51.240 --> 0:24:55.240 flying refueling missions. You know, they could shift that responsibility 0:24:55.280 --> 0:24:59.040 over to unmanned drones and the human pilots could be 0:24:59.119 --> 0:25:02.320 then go on to perform or mother tasks, presumably you know, 0:25:02.600 --> 0:25:07.240 ones that are are more oriented towards specific mission goals 0:25:07.320 --> 0:25:12.880 as opposed to support. So that is interesting. And finally, 0:25:12.920 --> 0:25:16.880 we've talked about autonomous cars and trucks and drones and stuff, 0:25:17.200 --> 0:25:20.920 but now it's time to talk about autonomous boats. Over 0:25:21.000 --> 0:25:24.879 in Amsterdam, the city is testing out autonomous boats in 0:25:24.920 --> 0:25:29.159 its various canal systems. The row boats, which is not 0:25:29.440 --> 0:25:32.040