Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the week ending on Friday, April twelfth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: First up, Sam Bankman Freed aka SBF has filed an
Speaker 1: appeal for his recent conviction and sentencing, So quick recap.
Speaker 1: SBF was co founder of a couple of cryptocurrency firms,
Speaker 1: namely FTX, which was a cryptocurrency exchange, and Alimator Research,
Speaker 1: which was a crypto hedge fund. And a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, some folks noticed that something hinky seemed to
Speaker 1: be going on at FTX, and it turned out that
Speaker 1: the company was using customer funds to cover bets that
Speaker 1: had been made by Alimator Research. If you're one put
Speaker 1: a kind of like high level view of this. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the whole house of cards came crashing down and billions
Speaker 1: of dollars were lost or stolen. So SBF argued he
Speaker 1: was without blame, even as his various friends and peers
Speaker 1: and employees were pleading guilty to fraud charges and saying
Speaker 1: that SBF was totally to blame. So SBF ultimately was
Speaker 1: found guilty, he received a sentence for twenty five years
Speaker 1: for his crimes, and now he's appealing both the ruling
Speaker 1: and the sentencing. So will that appeal succeed? Now? Personally,
Speaker 1: I have my doubts. I am no legal expert, I'm
Speaker 1: not a lawyer or anything like that, but I doubt
Speaker 1: it simply because SBF didn't exactly conduct himself very well
Speaker 1: throughout the whole investigation and trial process to begin with,
Speaker 1: and allegedly engaged in acts of witness intimidation and witness tampering,
Speaker 1: among other things. That kind of stuff does not tend
Speaker 1: to go so well in the court system. But we'll
Speaker 1: just have to wait and see. US Senator Maria Cantwell
Speaker 1: recently said that the US government might give Byte Dance
Speaker 1: a little more time to divest itself of TikTok, or
Speaker 1: at the very least, she's in favor of such an extension.
Speaker 1: The original plan if the bill were to become law.
Speaker 1: More on that in just a moment, was that Byte
Speaker 1: Dance would have about six months to divest itself of TikTok.
Speaker 1: But now Contwell says she thinks the deadline of one
Speaker 1: year would better ensure success. Now, the cynical among us
Speaker 1: might also point out that extending the deadline into twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five would push things after elections here in the
Speaker 1: United States, and that maybe this is more about an
Speaker 1: attempt to avoid, you know, voters holding politicians accountable for
Speaker 1: their votes. But all this might be moot because while
Speaker 1: the US House of Representatives voted in favor of this measure,
Speaker 1: the US Senate, which is the other half of Congress
Speaker 1: here in the United States, has yet to take up
Speaker 1: the matter, and there's no guarantee that they will even
Speaker 1: vote on the bill, although Chuck Schumer has indicated that
Speaker 1: that's at least a possibility. If they do vote on
Speaker 1: the bill, there's no guarantee that the whole bill's going
Speaker 1: to pass into law. The public response to the House
Speaker 1: that might just be enough to convince senators that they
Speaker 1: would rather not touch this particular topic because it appears
Speaker 1: to have some prickly political consequences. Okay, I got a
Speaker 1: couple of Apples stories for y'all. First up, the company
Speaker 1: had a setback in UK courts today. Apple had petitioned
Speaker 1: the court to throw out a mass lawsuit brought against
Speaker 1: the company by more than fifteen hundred app developers. The
Speaker 1: court has denied Apple's request. The lawsuit will be allowed
Speaker 1: to go forward, and it alleges that Apple's policy to
Speaker 1: take a hefty percentage of transaction fees, up to thirty
Speaker 1: percent of transaction fees in some cases, is inherently unfair,
Speaker 1: and that Apple policies meant that the iOS store was
Speaker 1: really the only game in town. You couldn't have apps
Speaker 1: on like an Independence store, at least not in anywhere
Speaker 1: besides the European Union at this point. And it meant
Speaker 1: that in order to make your apps available to iOS
Speaker 1: users in the first place, you had to play by
Speaker 1: Apple's rules. It was the only game in town. There
Speaker 1: were no other alternatives. To be clear, Apple hasn't won
Speaker 1: or lost this court battle yet, It just failed to
Speaker 1: get the case dismissed. But considering the current regulatory attitude
Speaker 1: toward big tech, I imagine Apple is considering its various
Speaker 1: options right now. I personally would not be surprised if
Speaker 1: some sort of settlement follows in the future. If Apple
Speaker 1: is unable to get this case thrown out, Bloomberg apparently
Speaker 1: reports that Apple has a Mac computer refresh coming up
Speaker 1: that will introduce some pretty big changes for the line
Speaker 1: of computers. Now, I say Bloomberg apparently reports because I
Speaker 1: do not have a subscription to Bloomberg, so I'm actually
Speaker 1: pulling this information from an article in The Verge by
Speaker 1: Emma Roth, who goes on to actually cite that Bloomberg article.
Speaker 1: So this is like third hand once you hear it
Speaker 1: from me. Anyway, the new computers will have Apple's M
Speaker 1: four processor, and that hasn't even really gone into production yet,
Speaker 1: but the buzzword for M four is that these chips
Speaker 1: are optimized for processing AI Apple locations, because AI is
Speaker 1: the new black, y'all, and to be fair, AI processing
Speaker 1: does require an awful lot of oomph. It takes up
Speaker 1: tons of processing power in order to get AI to
Speaker 1: work properly. And Roth points out that Apple's sales in
Speaker 1: the macline have kind of slowed down in recent years,
Speaker 1: so maybe this is what the company is hoping will
Speaker 1: kind of inject new life in those sales. And I
Speaker 1: think I say this nearly every week, but I feel
Speaker 1: like part of the reason why Mac sales have declined
Speaker 1: is the same reason why sales for lots of high
Speaker 1: end products have declined in recent times. You had that
Speaker 1: whole economic uncertainty thing, you know, just hovering above us.
Speaker 1: You had rising interest rates, you had crazy inflation out there,
Speaker 1: and folks just decided that they would rather make do
Speaker 1: with what they have rather than shell out big bucks
Speaker 1: for new items, which I think is totally understandable. In fact,
Speaker 1: according to nerd wallet dot com, inflation in the United
Speaker 1: States for consumer prices, this isn't inflation in general, it's
Speaker 1: just consumer prices rows nearly twenty percent since January twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: So in those years, like, you're paying twenty percent more,
Speaker 1: almost twenty percent more for consumer goods, particularly high end goods.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty hard to convince people to push through
Speaker 1: barriers like that when you still also have iterative generational
Speaker 1: improvements in the tech itself, Like, unless the tech is
Speaker 1: unbelievably impressive, it's pretty hard to convince someone, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want to spend a lot of money for a
Speaker 1: computer that's a little bit better? And you know, when
Speaker 1: your business depends upon selling more hardware every year, which
Speaker 1: that's one big part of Apple's business. Although they're app's
Speaker 1: businesses kind of eclipse that, but it means you're in
Speaker 1: a tough spot, right, Like, how do you keep selling
Speaker 1: hardware when economic factors are disincentivizing customers from purchasing stuff.
Speaker 1: It's particularly tough for Apple because obviously Apple has long
Speaker 1: been associated as being sort of a premium brand. But
Speaker 1: we'll have to wait to learn more about the company's
Speaker 1: plans a little later this year. They're going to have
Speaker 1: their Worldwide Developer Conference in the summer and in the falls,
Speaker 1: typically when we get a big announcement about things like,
Speaker 1: you know, their iPhone strategy and stuff. So we'll probably
Speaker 1: learn more about these planned Mac refreshes as the year
Speaker 1: goes on. Michael Krider of PC World as an article
Speaker 1: titled ew co Pilot AI might auto launch with Windows
Speaker 1: eleven soon, And you may have gathered that Michael is
Speaker 1: not a big fan of this idea. I don't blame him.
Speaker 1: I'm not either, And he reports that Microsoft's Copilot AI,
Speaker 1: which is a generative AI tool, could auto start on
Speaker 1: Windows eleven machines in the not too distant future. So
Speaker 1: Michael is citing a report by MS power User that
Speaker 1: says Microsoft has the feature turned on in a recent
Speaker 1: Windows eleven Insider build. The Windows eleven Insider is kind
Speaker 1: of like a test kitchen for Microsoft features. They can
Speaker 1: roll it out and see how they do, and then
Speaker 1: tweak them or sometimes just can them entirely before potentially
Speaker 1: rolling them out to a broader public. So apparently the
Speaker 1: auto start feature will depend at least to some extent
Speaker 1: upon hardware. So if the user has a machine that
Speaker 1: has a display this smaller than twenty seven inches, it's
Speaker 1: not going to initiate an auto start. So that pretty
Speaker 1: much means that if you have a laptop, this is
Speaker 1: not going to be a factor, even if you're running
Speaker 1: Windows eleven. So that's something at least. And you can
Speaker 1: actually choose which programs do auto start by using the
Speaker 1: Windows Task Manager menu. You can go in there and
Speaker 1: set that, which reminds me, I need to do that
Speaker 1: on my personal machine because the number of programs that
Speaker 1: are auto launching at this point is starting to reach
Speaker 1: ludicrous levels and I just like close them out when
Speaker 1: they pop up, and I should just turn off the
Speaker 1: auto start thing in the first place. So memo to myself.
Speaker 1: Meta has introduced or will be introducing new protective measures
Speaker 1: for younger Instagram users. The company has created a default
Speaker 1: setting for users under the age of eighteen that's meant
Speaker 1: to detect and to blur out images that include nudity.
Speaker 1: Adults will also have the option of turning this feature on.
Speaker 1: It just won't be on by default for them, and
Speaker 1: it might be a nice change of pace for some
Speaker 1: of y'all out there. I would know not on Instagram,
Speaker 1: I don't have this problem. So the feature will give
Speaker 1: users actually the option to see the blurred image, like
Speaker 1: you can click see image and see the full unblurred version.
Speaker 1: But in order to do that, you have to make
Speaker 1: the conscious choice to do so, and Meta will also
Speaker 1: include warnings to let you know that you don't need
Speaker 1: to respond to such messages don't You shouldn't feel pressured
Speaker 1: to do so. The real concern here is sextortion, right,
Speaker 1: using these images to try and extort things out of
Speaker 1: the recipient, and Meta's taking a lot of efforts to
Speaker 1: try and push back against that. Obviously, the company has
Speaker 1: been under scrutiny and criticism for this kind of thing
Speaker 1: in the past about allowing it to happen, so this
Speaker 1: I think is a correction for that. To learn more
Speaker 1: about the measures that Meta is taking and the process
Speaker 1: it's using. You should check out the article Instagram to
Speaker 1: blur out nude images sent to teens and dms. It's
Speaker 1: by Todd Spangler and you can find that in variety
Speaker 1: of all places. All Right, we've got several more news
Speaker 1: stories to go through, but first let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsors. Okay, we're back. So Russian
Speaker 1: software companies are having a pretty rough go of it
Speaker 1: in recent years. Y'all. You got the Russian government, which
Speaker 1: can get pretty darn involved in companies within the country,
Speaker 1: and that has led to some issues there, including companies
Speaker 1: choosing to discontinue certain services within Russia itself for fear
Speaker 1: of running a foul of Russian law. But now you've
Speaker 1: also got the United States, which is reportedly preparing to
Speaker 1: ban US citizens and companies from using products from the
Speaker 1: Russian company Kaspersky Labs. Now that name might sound familiar
Speaker 1: to so a lot of y'all out there. Kaspersky Labs
Speaker 1: is a huge name in cybersecurity. They are really important
Speaker 1: in cybersecurity. But now US officials are concerned that Kasperski
Speaker 1: Labs software could weaken national security. And it's not that
Speaker 1: different from the fear that TikTok could be an information
Speaker 1: collection tool for the Chinese Communist Party in China. So
Speaker 1: already US policy forbids federal agencies from using Kasperski Lab products.
Speaker 1: You're not supposed to install any of those on any
Speaker 1: federal owned hardware, So this potential measure would actually have
Speaker 1: a much more broad scope and expand that to US
Speaker 1: companies and citizens in general. It's unclear how this would
Speaker 1: actually be enforced, or if it would be enforced at
Speaker 1: least in every case. I mean, if you're running a
Speaker 1: modest business that has no connection to national security and
Speaker 1: you rely on one or more Kaspersky Labs products, it
Speaker 1: might be a bit extreme to force you to disengage
Speaker 1: those products from your business practices and either find replacements
Speaker 1: or just do without. Anyway, According to CNN, the matter
Speaker 1: isn't fully fleshed out yet and it may change, so
Speaker 1: we should know that in a few days. Either way,
Speaker 1: it's time to throw another Google product on top of
Speaker 1: the pile of corpses of other former Google products that
Speaker 1: no longer exist, or at least it will be that
Speaker 1: time pretty soon. And that's because Google is discontinuing its
Speaker 1: Google one VPN service. So Google one is Google's consumer
Speaker 1: cloud storage service. Your standard Google account comes with I
Speaker 1: think fifteen gigabytes of storage across multiple services like Gmail
Speaker 1: and Google Docs. It shares that fifteen gigabytes across all
Speaker 1: those different products. Google One can expand this to like
Speaker 1: one hundred gigabytes or beyond, depending upon the tier of
Speaker 1: service you choose. One benefit of being a Google one
Speaker 1: customer at least has been the use of a VPN service,
Speaker 1: but apparently not many people are actually using the virtual
Speaker 1: private network that Google offered, so Google said that was
Speaker 1: one of the reasons the company was choosing to discontinue
Speaker 1: the feature. The other one is that it would allow
Speaker 1: people who had been supporting the VPN to get freed
Speaker 1: up to work on features that you know people are
Speaker 1: actively using. But for those few customers out there who
Speaker 1: did make use of the VPN by Google One service,
Speaker 1: they'll get prompts suggesting alternative third party solutions that they
Speaker 1: can use instead. Or if you have a Pixel seven
Speaker 1: or later, then you'll still be able to use Google's VPN,
Speaker 1: So I guess some folks will continue to have access
Speaker 1: to it. And now for some muskie news. First up,
Speaker 1: Ours Technica's John BROADCN has a fun piece titled Elon
Speaker 1: Musk's x botched, an attempt to replace Twitter dot com
Speaker 1: links with x dot com. So here's what happened. So,
Speaker 1: at least for folks who are using the iOS app
Speaker 1: version of Twitter, that's where these changes rolled out. The
Speaker 1: service would automatically find and replace instances of Twitter dot
Speaker 1: com and they would replace it with x dot com.
Speaker 1: But that find and replaced feature was really rudimentary when
Speaker 1: it first rolled out. It wouldn't search for just Twitter
Speaker 1: dot com. It would look for any URL that would
Speaker 1: then end in Twitter dot com. So, in an example
Speaker 1: that Broadkin gives in the article, you could create a
Speaker 1: URL like netfliit Twitter dot com, like netfli Twitter dot com,
Speaker 1: and the find and replaced feature would take the Twitter
Speaker 1: dot com part of that URL and change it to
Speaker 1: x dot com. So then your link would appear as
Speaker 1: Netflix dot com and it would look like it was
Speaker 1: an official Netflix dot com link. But if you clicked
Speaker 1: on it, you wouldn't go to Netflix dot com. You
Speaker 1: would go to netfliit Twitter dot com. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: it was possible for someone to create like a phishing
Speaker 1: site and spoof it to look like something else and
Speaker 1: use that to you know, farm things like usernames and
Speaker 1: passwords and stuff, or to pass along malware all sorts
Speaker 1: of different militia ways, or just you know, mischievous ways.
Speaker 1: In some cases, like you could just redirect people to
Speaker 1: something that they probably would rather not have seen. And
Speaker 1: this only works with URLs, where the final letter in
Speaker 1: the second level domain would be X, right, like Netflix.
Speaker 1: It works for that because that's how Netflix ends is
Speaker 1: with an X. Wouldn't work so great for like Facebook, right,
Speaker 1: it would be facebooks. So the issue was active long
Speaker 1: enough for a bunch of enterprising folks to register various
Speaker 1: domains for all sorts of shenanigans. But thankfully Twitter slash
Speaker 1: X has now corrected the utter replace feature so it
Speaker 1: doesn't do that anymore. But yeah, that was a big
Speaker 1: old whip scene. I'm Rita Khalid of The Verge reports
Speaker 1: that X is also taking away the ability for premium
Speaker 1: users to hide their shame I'm sorry, I mean hide
Speaker 1: their blue check marks. So you might remember that once
Speaker 1: upon a time, the check mark on Twitter marked a
Speaker 1: verified account, So these accounts typically belonged to people of
Speaker 1: some note for some reason I was also included. I
Speaker 1: don't know how I qualified, And it really was just
Speaker 1: to tell users that, yes, this Twitter account actually does
Speaker 1: belong to the legitimate person who claims it. It is verified.
Speaker 1: That is who you're talking to. It's not someone impersonating
Speaker 1: this figure. But then Musk turned the checkmark into a
Speaker 1: designation for people who paid to become premium members, and
Speaker 1: suddenly the social cachet of the check mark went up
Speaker 1: in smoke and it became kind of like an albatross.
Speaker 1: So some folks felt that having that check mark was
Speaker 1: a badge of dishonor and they would rather people not
Speaker 1: know that they had paid to become premium members or
Speaker 1: had been designated premium members because they just had enough followers.
Speaker 1: Because Elon Musk did turn some of those really popular
Speaker 1: Twitter accounts into premium accounts without them having subscribed. But
Speaker 1: now bad news. You know, it used to be that
Speaker 1: you could hide that check mark if you winto settings,
Speaker 1: but that's getting removed. Why is X removing the ability
Speaker 1: to hide those check marks. That's a mystery. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: an attempt to flex by saying, hey, look how many
Speaker 1: of our users are premium subscribers. You know, these are
Speaker 1: people who are willing to pay for services. So maybe
Speaker 1: some of you advertisers would really like to come back
Speaker 1: and tap into that market pretty please. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm just spitballing here. For certain accounts that have lots
Speaker 1: of followers, they get the premium upgrade for free, like
Speaker 1: I mentioned, So it's not exactly verification. I guess it's
Speaker 1: more like validation maybe, depending on whether you think the
Speaker 1: check mark is a good or bad thing. Now to
Speaker 1: talk about a different Muskie company, that of Tesla. Elon
Speaker 1: Musk announced last week to expect a Tesla robotaxi something
Speaker 1: or other announced on August eighth of this year. Now,
Speaker 1: the exact nature of this robotaxi product is still not
Speaker 1: really clear yet. I think most folks are assuming that
Speaker 1: Tesla's going to launch some sort of robot taxi service,
Speaker 1: and that might be the plan. But according to NBC News,
Speaker 1: as David Ingram, agencies in California, Arizona, and Nevada, which
Speaker 1: are three states that have specific permit requirements for robotaxi services,
Speaker 1: none of them have yet received any kind of notice
Speaker 1: from Tesla to initiate the permit process. Now it's possible
Speaker 1: whatever Musk has in mind isn't intended for any of
Speaker 1: those states, though if you're excluding California, that's a bit wild.
Speaker 1: Considering that state has such a huge population. It would
Speaker 1: be weird to purposefully cut that market out. So we
Speaker 1: have ourselves a bit of a mystery. What could this
Speaker 1: robotaxi announcement be if Tesla isn't actually applying for these
Speaker 1: permits now? The process for Nevada is apparently pretty straightforward
Speaker 1: and quick, so maybe that's still coming and it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: California's process is not so fast, and the state has
Speaker 1: put a lot of pressure on robotaxi services recently due
Speaker 1: to some notable accidents and glitches in the past. So
Speaker 1: could this just be another case of Elon Musk making
Speaker 1: a statement or promise without really having the goods to
Speaker 1: back it up. I don't know. I guess we'll find
Speaker 1: out in August. All right, before I sign off, I've
Speaker 1: got two pieces to recommend to you all today. First
Speaker 1: up is a piece by David Klepper of AP News
Speaker 1: titled A Congressman wants to understand AI. So he went
Speaker 1: back to a college classroom to learn And yes, it's
Speaker 1: about a US congressman who, in fact, in an effort
Speaker 1: to expand his understanding of AI, has enrolled in computer
Speaker 1: science classes in college. And I think that's a great approach.
Speaker 1: We often talk about how those who are in charge
Speaker 1: of creating laws are often out of touch when it
Speaker 1: comes to areas that tend to evolve very quickly, such
Speaker 1: as the case with tech, and next, I recommend the
Speaker 1: piece titled Welcome to the Golden Age of User Hostility
Speaker 1: by Charlie Warzel for The Atlantic. Warzel explores how technology
Speaker 1: and connectivity have transformed the consumer experience in ways that
Speaker 1: are often very much not good. And Warzel touches on
Speaker 1: many things, including the story about Roku changing its terms
Speaker 1: of service, which we covered recently in an episode about ULA's.
Speaker 1: But Warzel's piece goes beyond that kind of stuff, so
Speaker 1: I recommend you check that out. That's it for the
Speaker 1: news this week. I hope that you are all well,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
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