Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech. And this is the tech
Speaker 1: news for Thursday, June tenth, two thousand twenty one. Let's
Speaker 1: get to it first. Some background. In two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: some hackers were able to access databases that were hosting
Speaker 1: a social app called rock You, and they got away
Speaker 1: with more than thirty million user passwords, which was considered
Speaker 1: to be a lot. And those passwords, by the way,
Speaker 1: we're in plain text. In other words, they were unencrypted.
Speaker 1: So once the hackers got them, they had, you know,
Speaker 1: passwords that were as valid for as long as people
Speaker 1: you know failed to change them. Well, now, where it
Speaker 1: is out that a data breach could mean anywhere from
Speaker 1: eight point four billion to potentially as many as eighty
Speaker 1: two billion passwords have been leaked billion. Now eight point
Speaker 1: four billion unique users or unique logins were identified of
Speaker 1: this batch, so that's already bad. But multiple passwords belonging
Speaker 1: to the same logan could be in that group. So
Speaker 1: that's why the eight two billion is on the upper level.
Speaker 1: So people are calling it rock You twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: in reference to that you know data breach from two
Speaker 1: thousand nine. I would like to suggest an alternative, rock
Speaker 1: you like a hurricane. But what's actually going on here?
Speaker 1: That's a good question. Someone, some hacker has posted a
Speaker 1: text file that is one hundred gigabytes in size. That
Speaker 1: is huge for a text file, and they've post did
Speaker 1: it on various hacker forums. This text file contains billions
Speaker 1: of user names and passwords for various sites and services.
Speaker 1: All the passwords are between six and twenty characters long.
Speaker 1: There's no telling how many of those passwords are currently
Speaker 1: valid versus inactive. In fact, I would not be surprised
Speaker 1: if a lot of those log ins were for services
Speaker 1: that don't even really exist anymore. But generally speaking, it's
Speaker 1: a good idea to check to see if you were
Speaker 1: potentially affected. One way you can do that is to
Speaker 1: search your email address against tools like have I Been Pooned?
Speaker 1: But another is to use a password vault program because
Speaker 1: a lot of those will monitor news about data breaches
Speaker 1: and they will proactively reach out to users and prompt
Speaker 1: them to change their passwords at various sites and services.
Speaker 1: It's also by the way, a very good idea to
Speaker 1: activate two factor authentication for those services that allow for that.
Speaker 1: If it allows for it, you should probably do it.
Speaker 1: These sorts of data breaches are the kind that are
Speaker 1: outside of our control as users, so we kind of
Speaker 1: have to take steps to protect ourselves. We also have
Speaker 1: to remember every time there's a big data breach like this,
Speaker 1: then those passwords, even if they're not active, even if
Speaker 1: they aren't currently associated with those accounts, they go into
Speaker 1: an ever increasingly huge dictionary of existing passwords. So if
Speaker 1: you're the type of person who creates a password and
Speaker 1: then over time cycles back to that password, let's say
Speaker 1: that you know you alternate between a few uh, that
Speaker 1: means that if you're part of this breach, then even
Speaker 1: a password you're not using right now but could use
Speaker 1: in the future, that could mean that you leave yourself vulnerable.
Speaker 1: So again, always a good idea to get like a
Speaker 1: password vault program. There's some that will generate very tough
Speaker 1: passwords on your behalf and store them for are you
Speaker 1: and you don't have to keep track of all that. Uh,
Speaker 1: it is a little bit more of a hassle, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously more than a hassle than just using the single
Speaker 1: password for everything. But obviously that is not safe and
Speaker 1: it means that everywhere you go you're potentially vulnerable. So
Speaker 1: I recommend getting a password vault and using it. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of good ones out there, uh so
Speaker 1: I recommend researching those and choose one that fits your needs.
Speaker 1: And speaking of hackers, the video game developer and publisher
Speaker 1: Electronic Arts or e A, got hacked, and I feel
Speaker 1: like a lot of people outside of the A don't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of sympathy for the company. But
Speaker 1: that's more because there are people with very strong negative
Speaker 1: opinions about e A. I think it is a shame.
Speaker 1: I don't like it when any company gets hacked. And apparently,
Speaker 1: in this case, the hackers were able to access some
Speaker 1: of e a's internal systems and they gained access to
Speaker 1: the source code for certain game as well as access
Speaker 1: to other internal tools. Now, according to e A, no
Speaker 1: user data was compromised as a result of this breach,
Speaker 1: so in theory at least users were not affected by this.
Speaker 1: The company also says it's are A taking steps to
Speaker 1: address the issue by changing things up so that the
Speaker 1: source code that the hackers access would be useless. In
Speaker 1: other words, that they wouldn't be able to exploit e
Speaker 1: A titles because e A is going to change those
Speaker 1: titles significantly enough where that source code will be you know,
Speaker 1: a moot thing. Now, unless the source code was for
Speaker 1: some pretty minor stuff, I imagine that last bit is
Speaker 1: going to be really challenging to pull off. It's not
Speaker 1: as easy as just waving your hand at it. The
Speaker 1: hackers claim to have stolen around seven hundred eighty gigabytes
Speaker 1: of data, though so far the hackers have largely just
Speaker 1: alluded to what they've stolen. They've shown some screenshots and stuff,
Speaker 1: but they haven't actually shared the information itself. They are
Speaker 1: advertising the data is being up for sale on various
Speaker 1: black market forums, so there's some crime right there. El
Speaker 1: Salvador recently announced that the country may soon accept bitcoin
Speaker 1: as legal tender and consider it parallel to the Salvadoran dollar,
Speaker 1: and in the sense that you know, this would be
Speaker 1: an accepted currency that you could use bitcoin anywhere within
Speaker 1: El Salvador and it would be accepted just as the
Speaker 1: actual currency of the country would. And the government of
Speaker 1: El Salvador says that this will aid people who are
Speaker 1: from El Salvador but who are living abroad to be
Speaker 1: able to send remittances back home. That it will remove
Speaker 1: some of the barriers that would exist otherwise when they
Speaker 1: want to transfer funds back to people in El Salvador.
Speaker 1: But the International Monetary Fund has expressed concern for this move,
Speaker 1: stating that cryptocurrencies in general and bitcoin in particular, represents
Speaker 1: some legal and economic concerns that have yet to be addressed. Uh,
Speaker 1: they didn't go into a whole lot of detail on that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a lot of different things that we
Speaker 1: could easily point to, like the fact that cryptocurrencies frequently
Speaker 1: get used in concert with illicit activities, not not exclusively,
Speaker 1: but it does have that association unfortunately. And also taxation
Speaker 1: becomes an issue, and that brings us to here in
Speaker 1: the United States, where the Internal Revenue Service where i
Speaker 1: r S, is seeking authority from Congress to oversea operations
Speaker 1: that relate to cryptocurrencies. So as it stands, there is
Speaker 1: no clear law that gives the i r S authority
Speaker 1: to do stuff like collect taxes on gains that are
Speaker 1: generated through cryptocurrency transactions. Um and Further, the i r
Speaker 1: S lacks the legal foundation to go after instances of
Speaker 1: fraud that involve cryptocurrencies. The decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies is
Speaker 1: one of the many features that attract people to it,
Speaker 1: and another is that a lot of transactions, while part
Speaker 1: of a publicly viewable ledger, are otherwise kind of off
Speaker 1: the radar. And it remains to be seen if Congress
Speaker 1: will grant the authority to the I r S in
Speaker 1: order to pursue, you know, more responsibility with regard to cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 1: And I imagine that this news is affecting the cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: market a bit, because everything seems to affect the cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: market a bit. I mean, if Elon Musk tweets about
Speaker 1: it, it it will really get going. Sticking with politics for
Speaker 1: a moment, a group of Democrat politicians in the United
Speaker 1: States have proposed a few different pieces of antitrust legislation
Speaker 1: that seems to be aimed specifically at really big tech companies,
Speaker 1: and particularly the Big Five of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Microsoft. While there are draft bills on the matter,
Speaker 1: and there are several of them, and they come from
Speaker 1: different people and they say slightly different things, you can
Speaker 1: kind of boil them all down own to trying to
Speaker 1: deal with two main concerns. Concern number one regards companies
Speaker 1: that can both operate a marketplace and sell their own
Speaker 1: goods and services through that marketplace, along with goods and
Speaker 1: services from other companies. So this would include corporations like
Speaker 1: Apple and Amazon. Both of them have their own products
Speaker 1: listed for sale in market places that they each control, respectively. Right,
Speaker 1: So Amazon's got its own shop obviously, and it has
Speaker 1: its own products in that shop side by side with
Speaker 1: products from other companies. That's kind of what they're talking about.
Speaker 1: That represents a conflict of interest, and it means that
Speaker 1: these companies could conceivably promote their own products over those
Speaker 1: from other entities. So if you've ever done a search
Speaker 1: for a product on Amazon and you notice that the
Speaker 1: first few results all seem to be Amazon branded products,
Speaker 1: then you get what I'm saying. This is a little
Speaker 1: different than stores that have a store brand. Usually in
Speaker 1: those stores, you don't see the store brand presented in
Speaker 1: a way that obscures or you know, eclipses the other brands.
Speaker 1: It's side by side, and the idea is that, well,
Speaker 1: it's not promoted over these others. It may be cheaper
Speaker 1: and thus more attractive. But it's not like the store
Speaker 1: is necessarily using tricks to promote one over the other.
Speaker 1: The concern here is that through technology, those are tricks
Speaker 1: that these companies are using, and it's there's a worry
Speaker 1: that creates an unfair market and sets all the other
Speaker 1: parties at a disadvantage over the main company. The other
Speaker 1: big concern is about acquisitions. So a lot of these
Speaker 1: big tech companies got that big not just through organic growth,
Speaker 1: but by gobbling up other companies along the way. Sometimes
Speaker 1: these acquisitions lead to less competition in a market, which
Speaker 1: is rarely good news for consumers, and we see this
Speaker 1: across numerous industries, from tech hardware to entertainment media and beyond.
Speaker 1: The draft bills generally are going to make it more
Speaker 1: difficult for a large company to pursue acquisitions. Now all
Speaker 1: the stuff is again just in draft form. It could
Speaker 1: change significantly before it ever goes to the floor for
Speaker 1: a vote, and of course there's no guarantee that any
Speaker 1: of these bills will even get that far, but it
Speaker 1: is interesting to see where things are going. Speaking of Amazon,
Speaker 1: the company could face a fine in excess of four
Speaker 1: hundred twenty five million dollars in the EU for violations
Speaker 1: of the g d p R. That's the General Data
Speaker 1: Privacy Regulation. The g d p R is a set
Speaker 1: of pretty strict rules that dictate how companies can collect
Speaker 1: and use information that's generated by citizens of the EU.
Speaker 1: And apparently Amazon's approach was not in line with those rules,
Speaker 1: and now the company will have to pay up. I
Speaker 1: recently did a couple of episodes about privacy and how
Speaker 1: tech companies collect and use our personal information, so I
Speaker 1: recommend you check out the episodes that published on Monday
Speaker 1: and Wednesday to learn more about that. And related to
Speaker 1: Amazon is Ring, a company Amazon purchased in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eighteen. Ring is famous for its smart doorbells, and
Speaker 1: it's also famous for being a part of massive surveillance
Speaker 1: systems utilized by police forces around the United States. Ring
Speaker 1: filed a report earlier this year that showed that in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, the company received more than eighteen hundred legal
Speaker 1: demands to share video footage with various agencies, which was
Speaker 1: more than double than the year before that. But what
Speaker 1: the report does not include is how many users actually
Speaker 1: had footage from their Ring systems shared with police. You know,
Speaker 1: that's eighteen hundred separate demands. Those demands could have included
Speaker 1: more than one video source, and RING didn't really say
Speaker 1: how many users had their their footage shared with police.
Speaker 1: Privacy advocacy groups and civil rights organizations have long protested
Speaker 1: how RING will work with law enforcement, including the fact
Speaker 1: that you know, you can have instances in which surveillance
Speaker 1: is being shared with police without the police first securing
Speaker 1: a warrant for that information, which does seem to to
Speaker 1: tread pretty close to unreasonable search and seizure, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, something that we should be protected against by
Speaker 1: the Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: over at Google, the company has recently made changes to
Speaker 1: down list search results from sites that focus on slander.
Speaker 1: That is, sites that are perpetrating slander. So if you've
Speaker 1: ever googled someone's name and you saw some results that
Speaker 1: seem to be targeting that person for whatever reason and
Speaker 1: slagging off on them, that's really what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: And some of these sites have been using very as
Speaker 1: tactics to kind of game the system and rise up
Speaker 1: the page rankings so they dominate the top search results
Speaker 1: for the those people, and now Google is going to
Speaker 1: actively remove that advantage. They're going to start down listing
Speaker 1: or pushing down the results for sites that appear to
Speaker 1: be dedicated to dragging other people down. But this is
Speaker 1: a really delicate thing. You know, over in the EU,
Speaker 1: there's this concept of the right to be forgotten, and
Speaker 1: that's caused Google a lot of grief. And some folks
Speaker 1: point out that if it is easy to get negative
Speaker 1: things removed from search results, that could be doing a
Speaker 1: public disservice in some cases. So for example, let's say
Speaker 1: you've got a high ranking public official and this person
Speaker 1: does something truly terrible. It is in the public's best
Speaker 1: interest to know about that thing, and having a means
Speaker 1: to squelch that kind of information would effectively be suppressing
Speaker 1: the truth. So I am interested to see how this progresses.
Speaker 1: I do think it's important to knock down the trolls,
Speaker 1: who are, you know, slagging off people in bad faith,
Speaker 1: usually as a way of either harming those people or
Speaker 1: profiting off of this, versus the cases where you have
Speaker 1: actual journalists who are attempting to document misbehavior. The Verge
Speaker 1: reports that Facebook is working on a smart watch that,
Speaker 1: should things go as planned, will debut next summer. The
Speaker 1: smart watch will have a display that incorporates two cameras,
Speaker 1: and that display will be detachable from the watch band.
Speaker 1: One of the two cameras will be forward facing, and
Speaker 1: users will rely on that one to make video calls
Speaker 1: and the like. The second cameras rear facing, and thus
Speaker 1: it's really only useful if you detach the smart watch
Speaker 1: display from the band, Otherwise you're just taking very dark
Speaker 1: pictures and videos of your wrist I imagine anyway, the
Speaker 1: rear facing camera will have a ten a DP resolution.
Speaker 1: Facebook is already reportedly working with other companies to develop
Speaker 1: tech that could house the smart watch display. Like you
Speaker 1: could plug the smart watch into other types of stuff,
Speaker 1: like maybe a backpack. Or imagine a robot that can
Speaker 1: accept this little smart watch in a in a slot
Speaker 1: in the robot and then it uses that smart watch
Speaker 1: to power some functions. I might just be dreaming here, anyway.
Speaker 1: The watch might also include a heart rate sensor, as
Speaker 1: well as other sensors. That, of course, has raised questions
Speaker 1: from people and organizations that are concerned about privacy because
Speaker 1: Facebook has well, let's just say it's known for being
Speaker 1: pretty darn hungry when it comes to personal information, and
Speaker 1: so if you've got yet another device feeding data points
Speaker 1: to Facebook, that's even more juicy information that the company
Speaker 1: can use to sell to advertisers and whatnot. But a
Speaker 1: year is a really long time in the tech industry,
Speaker 1: so we'll have to wait and see if this watch
Speaker 1: ever really comes out. If it doesn't, it will have
Speaker 1: been a very expensive lesson for Facebook, because the company
Speaker 1: has reportedly invested around a billion dollars in this endeavor already.
Speaker 1: And finally, Liz Hameron, the c v P of xboxes
Speaker 1: Gaming Experience and Platforms, laid out future plans to games
Speaker 1: Radar with regard to where Xbox is going next. Hameron
Speaker 1: says that the company will continue to develop new consoles
Speaker 1: and hardware, so that's not going away, but we shouldn't
Speaker 1: expect anything new for a while because the series X
Speaker 1: console is still a very young one. Also, I would
Speaker 1: like to propose that the name of whatever follows should
Speaker 1: be the next box, so I'll take my check, thank you.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, however, it appears that you know, Microsoft is
Speaker 1: really focusing on creating a way for gamers to access
Speaker 1: the company's services. That includes partnerships with various smart TV
Speaker 1: manufacturers so that future televisions have a version of Xbox
Speaker 1: Game Pass just built right into them. So that means
Speaker 1: all you would need is a compatible controller to connect
Speaker 1: to your TV, and then you could stream games from
Speaker 1: the cloud to your TV and you don't need a
Speaker 1: console at all. There's also talk of standalone games streaming devices,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of the little gaming sticks that you
Speaker 1: could plug right into a smart TV, possibly like through
Speaker 1: an HDMI connector, and then you link that device to
Speaker 1: your WiFi network at home and you stream games through that.
Speaker 1: So if your television doesn't come with Xbox Game Pass
Speaker 1: built into it, you could use this method to do it.
Speaker 1: In other words, Microsoft's really exploring ways to reach beyond
Speaker 1: the consoles themselves to let players get access to games
Speaker 1: content through the cloud. And this is really interesting to
Speaker 1: me because not that long ago Microsoft was really pushing
Speaker 1: consoles as being sort of a a nexus for cloud
Speaker 1: based services. You would buy a console, and then that
Speaker 1: console would be your gaming rig. It would be your
Speaker 1: your set top device where you could watch YouTube or
Speaker 1: Netflix or Hulu or whatever. Plus it could interact with
Speaker 1: live television broadcasts and cable. And now Microsoft is sort
Speaker 1: of taking an opposite approach, at least when it comes
Speaker 1: to the games themselves. Again, the company is not abandoning
Speaker 1: hardware or consoles or anything like that, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: that future consoles will continue to support that nexus approach
Speaker 1: to services, but this does show a change in strategy.
Speaker 1: I like to think of it as the Netflix approach,
Speaker 1: where your goal is to get your service on every
Speaker 1: possible platform you can, and you extend your reach that way.
Speaker 1: And that wraps up the news for Thursday, June two
Speaker 1: thousand twenty one. I hope you're all doing well and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
Speaker 1: an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
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