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 I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech. And this is the
Speaker 1: tech news for Tuesday, July twenty one. And uh, there's
Speaker 1: some some rough stuff in here. In fact, let's start
Speaker 1: with some more bad news for software company Solar Winds.
Speaker 1: You probably remember that late last year we had news
Speaker 1: break that hackers had infiltrated solar Winds products and managed
Speaker 1: to create a supply chain attack that affected thousands of
Speaker 1: computer systems, though it appears the hackers really focused on
Speaker 1: a much smaller number of very high profile targets, including
Speaker 1: US Department of Defense systems, and that the hackers appeared
Speaker 1: to be operating out of Russia. Well Over this past weekend,
Speaker 1: Solar Winds announced that hackers were apparently able to exploit
Speaker 1: previously unknown flaws in two of solar Winds products, and
Speaker 1: that these flaws are completely unrelated to the attacks from
Speaker 1: last year. So these would be called zero day vulnerabilities,
Speaker 1: meaning that no one was aware that these things existed
Speaker 1: when the products went live. This vulnerability is in the
Speaker 1: company's Serve You that's s E r V DASH, the
Speaker 1: letter You line of software products. Microsoft researchers apparently found
Speaker 1: the bug, but not before hackers had already learned of
Speaker 1: it themselves. As of this recording, that's pretty much all
Speaker 1: the information I have on this. Solar Winds stated that
Speaker 1: the company is quote unaware of the identity of the
Speaker 1: potentially affected customers end quote, which is not a great
Speaker 1: start either. Microsoft oft found evidence of quote limited targeted
Speaker 1: customer impact end quote, and according to Ours Technica, the
Speaker 1: vulnerability would allow hackers to gain privileged access after exploiting
Speaker 1: machines that were running Serve You Managed File Transfer and
Speaker 1: or Serve You Secure FTP. With this vulnerability, at that point,
Speaker 1: the hackers would be able to access files on the
Speaker 1: infected system. They might be able to delete data, They
Speaker 1: could install new programs. They can essentially perform the sort
Speaker 1: of tasks that any administrator level account could perform on
Speaker 1: the system. Solar Winds has already issued a quick patch
Speaker 1: to UH to be a temporary fix on this, while
Speaker 1: working on a more permanent solution. On a slightly less
Speaker 1: dramatic note, Twitter recently admitted that the company had mistakenly
Speaker 1: verified a quote small number end quote of fake accounts
Speaker 1: shortly after the company reinstated its verification program. This is
Speaker 1: all according to The Daily Dot, a data scientist with
Speaker 1: the truly amazing name Conspirator No. Tenno found six accounts
Speaker 1: with that verified check mark next to them. And someone
Speaker 1: created those six accounts back on June six, so they're
Speaker 1: pretty darn recent. And while all six were verified, none
Speaker 1: of them had posted so much as a single tweet,
Speaker 1: and two of them were apparently using stock photographs for
Speaker 1: their profile pictures. Twitter responded by copying up to the
Speaker 1: fact that somehow the verification applications for a small number
Speaker 1: of fake accounts had received approval, and the company has
Speaker 1: since banned five of those six accounts. The sixth apparently
Speaker 1: uh took itself down. Nortenno also pointed out that these
Speaker 1: six accounts had a few suspicious followers in common across them,
Speaker 1: to the tune of nearly one thousand accounts, and he
Speaker 1: says that it looks as though these were all part
Speaker 1: of a larger bot net that includes at least one thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred twelve accounts twelve twelve. I don't know if
Speaker 1: that there's any significance to that. Probably not. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's just a weird fact that it's a repeating number.
Speaker 1: Twitter's verification process is meant to allow notable people that's
Speaker 1: at least notable in Twitter's estimation, to authenticate that a
Speaker 1: Twitter feed that purporting to belong to them does in
Speaker 1: fact belong to them. That way, you're you know, busy
Speaker 1: tweeting at Neil Gaman, you can be certain that it's
Speaker 1: the real Neil Gaiman who's seeing your messages. I mean, heck,
Speaker 1: I actually have a blue check mark. I have a
Speaker 1: verified Twitter account, So clearly that whole notability thing is
Speaker 1: a pretty you know, Lucy goosey definition. Now, for the record,
Speaker 1: I applied a few years ago when we first launched
Speaker 1: the Forward Thinking video series, so it was for work purposes,
Speaker 1: and the check mark has just kind of stuck with
Speaker 1: me ever since. Not that I'm complaining about this now. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the fake accounts getting verified, that raises questions as to
Speaker 1: how did they do that, How did they sail through
Speaker 1: the verification process in the first place, particularly when there
Speaker 1: are actual, real life notable people out there who never
Speaker 1: received a verification from Twitter. We don't have the answers
Speaker 1: to that. Down in Cuba, we're seeing a pretty familiar
Speaker 1: playbook being followed by the Cuban government there in response
Speaker 1: to growing protests as citizens voice their anger and displeasure
Speaker 1: regarding some major issues in the country like food and
Speaker 1: medical shortages. Cuba is in the midst of a severe
Speaker 1: economic recession, which was exacerbated by COVID nineteen and the
Speaker 1: fact that the entire tourist industry was effectively shut down
Speaker 1: for a year. Citizens have taken to the streets to
Speaker 1: protest the government's response to this and issues with food
Speaker 1: shortages and the like, and the government's response, in part
Speaker 1: has been to shut down internet access, at least that
Speaker 1: appears to be the case, and thus citizens have seen
Speaker 1: their ability to communicate and organize with one another online
Speaker 1: cut off. Now in some areas, such as Havana, where
Speaker 1: the protests are particularly you know, large, the internet outages
Speaker 1: were more severe, which seems to support the argument that
Speaker 1: this was a government led project. And generally speaking, Communist
Speaker 1: countries like Cuba and China traditionally maintain tight controls over
Speaker 1: communication channels, and they use that control to limit what
Speaker 1: citizens can say or access in an effort to maintain
Speaker 1: authoritarian control. I'm not saying those are the only places
Speaker 1: where that happens, or that authoritarian control is limited to
Speaker 1: communist countries, just saying that that tends to be a
Speaker 1: pretty common practice. Speaking of China, that country is leaning
Speaker 1: heavily on facial recognition technology as it attempts to handle
Speaker 1: new Corona of virus outbreaks. According to tech Explore, China
Speaker 1: is pairing facial recognition technology with citizens coronavirus test results, So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you get tested for coronavirus, the government
Speaker 1: essentially gets access to those results, and your health status
Speaker 1: becomes part of your identity, and the facial recognition systems
Speaker 1: keep track of where you're going and who you happen
Speaker 1: to be around, which probably sounds a bit scary to
Speaker 1: most of you out there, including myself. Now. At the
Speaker 1: same time, China is facing a pretty difficult situation that
Speaker 1: it's in a tough position. The neighboring country of Myanmar
Speaker 1: is the site of some massive political unrest stemming from
Speaker 1: a coup that happened back in February, and some Myanmar
Speaker 1: nationals have fled to China in order to escape regional violence.
Speaker 1: Have of the new cases of coronavirus in this particular
Speaker 1: region of China seem to link back to Myanmar nationals,
Speaker 1: so AT raises safety concerns there. Apparently, the facial recognition
Speaker 1: systems also have thermal detectors built in, so those can
Speaker 1: spot people who might have elevated body temperatures, which is
Speaker 1: a possible sign of infection. Not exactly fool proof or
Speaker 1: anything like that. You should never, you know, depend solely
Speaker 1: upon a temperature check. But human rights advocates are rightly
Speaker 1: concerned that the trends we're seeing as far as surveillance
Speaker 1: and facial recognition go, are going to continue even beyond
Speaker 1: the pandemic, with China leaning on those technologies while targeting
Speaker 1: ethnic minority groups or people who criticize the government, something
Speaker 1: that the country has been known to do extensively in
Speaker 1: the past. Google is protesting a nearly six hundred million
Speaker 1: dollar fine that the company faces in France. At the
Speaker 1: heart of the matter is that the French courts have
Speaker 1: placed numerous injunctions on Google, requiring the company to pay
Speaker 1: publishers for their content. It something the court says that
Speaker 1: Google has largely disregarded. Now anyone who has worked in
Speaker 1: the publishing industry knows that advertising revenue has dropped significantly
Speaker 1: over the last couple of decades, making it harder to
Speaker 1: run a viable publishing business online. The European Union holds
Speaker 1: platforms like Google partly responsible for this, arguing that these
Speaker 1: platforms make it possible for people to access publications without
Speaker 1: actually visiting the home site of those publications, thus denying
Speaker 1: those companies ad revenue. If you can read the whole
Speaker 1: article through some sort of preview that's hosted on, say
Speaker 1: a Google site, and you never go to the home
Speaker 1: newspaper web page, well that that paper is generating work
Speaker 1: but not seeing any revenue for it, at least not
Speaker 1: for that instance. Google claims that it has been working
Speaker 1: in good faith to address these issues, with a guarantee
Speaker 1: that the company will eventually pay out around a billion
Speaker 1: dollars over the next three years to various publishers, as
Speaker 1: well as to collaborate on a licensing agreement that would
Speaker 1: provide revenue to newsrooms. The French court requires Google to
Speaker 1: pay the five million euro fine and to form a
Speaker 1: compensation plan with publishers within two months or face additional fines.
Speaker 1: This is similar to the stories out of Australia, with
Speaker 1: media companies based in Australia having issues with platforms like
Speaker 1: Facebook and Google, and it really points to the complicated
Speaker 1: nature of business information and platforms. Technode reports that Bite Dance,
Speaker 1: the Chinese company that's best known here in the United
Speaker 1: States as the parent company of TikTok, will be eliminating
Speaker 1: its nine nine six strategy that refers to a work
Speaker 1: week that consists of nine am to nine pm. That's
Speaker 1: the nine nine part, and the six part means that
Speaker 1: you're working Sunday through Friday, or six days a week. Yes,
Speaker 1: several Chinese companies operate with the strategy. Many of them
Speaker 1: use a big week and small week approach, that is
Speaker 1: where employees will alternate working either five days a week
Speaker 1: or six days a week, alternating every other Sunday. But
Speaker 1: this is coming to an end for byte Dance in August.
Speaker 1: While the decreased workload might be nice, it is likely
Speaker 1: to bring along with it a salary cut, perhaps as
Speaker 1: much as twin deeper cent, which my math tells me
Speaker 1: would be excessive. If you're cutting two work days out
Speaker 1: of a typical month, right that for two days out
Speaker 1: of the month, that's excessive. Anyway, Around a third of
Speaker 1: the company's workforce, when surveyed about this, said they would
Speaker 1: prefer to keep their base pay where it is and
Speaker 1: continue working longer hours, which, y'all, that just makes my
Speaker 1: heart ache. But if you're trying to make ends, me
Speaker 1: to cut and pay is a real unwelcome complication. It
Speaker 1: is a tough situation and I don't have any easy
Speaker 1: solutions here, but it really paints a pretty bleak picture,
Speaker 1: right this idea that, oh, I can't cut back on
Speaker 1: working twelve twelve hours a day, six days a week
Speaker 1: because I can't afford it. Ouch. On a much lighter note,
Speaker 1: over in the UK, we're seeing a creative approach to
Speaker 1: advertising at soccer games, or you know, in the UK
Speaker 1: football games, but I'm American, so I tend to call
Speaker 1: it soccer. But many football stadiums in England have digital
Speaker 1: signs that can display ads, which is something that's pretty
Speaker 1: common in modern sports facilities in many parts of the world.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting here is that people will see different
Speaker 1: ads depending upon where they are. Those attending a game
Speaker 1: in person we'll see ads displayed on those digital screens,
Speaker 1: but people watching the game on television might see a
Speaker 1: totally different ad, essentially superimposed or digitally replacing the ad
Speaker 1: that's quote unquote really there. Broadcast masters will be able
Speaker 1: to work with advertisers and swap out ads, creating a
Speaker 1: new source of revenue. So the sporting facility can make
Speaker 1: deals with say local businesses, and the broadcasters might go
Speaker 1: for larger regional businesses. Or you could imagine a deal
Speaker 1: that includes both the in stadium experience for the people
Speaker 1: who are there in person, as well as the televised audience,
Speaker 1: and you just pay a larger fee to get both.
Speaker 1: We've seen some other examples of this kind of digital advertising,
Speaker 1: sometimes with glitches that can affect a TV audience is
Speaker 1: viewing experience. Now, thankfully, if you're watching the game in person,
Speaker 1: you would never know about those glitches because so far
Speaker 1: they don't actually, you know, cross into reality yet. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we will see more incorporations of technologies like this,
Speaker 1: and when we see more augmented reality in the future
Speaker 1: being incorporated into sporting events, we'll see even more targeted advertising. Potentially,
Speaker 1: we can reach a point where every single person attend
Speaker 1: a game is seeing a different targeted ad through their
Speaker 1: own personalized a R system. What a world. I've got
Speaker 1: a few more stories to cover, but before I get
Speaker 1: to that, let's take a quick break. We were just
Speaker 1: in the UK before the break. Now we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a trip across the English Channel head over to the
Speaker 1: continent of Europe. UK is not included in this, but
Speaker 1: Intel recently announced that the company intends to invest as
Speaker 1: much as twenty billion dollars over the next several years
Speaker 1: to build out some chip manufacturing plants, potentially in Europe.
Speaker 1: The world is still in a semiconductor shortage, which is
Speaker 1: largely because of the coronavirus and how that completely disrupted
Speaker 1: the semiconductor supply chain over in the EU. The plan
Speaker 1: is to boost Europe's market share of semi conduct or
Speaker 1: manufacturing from ten percent where it is today to twenty
Speaker 1: percent by That's a pretty aggressive timeline, but the demand
Speaker 1: for semi conductors is definitely there because we're seeing industries
Speaker 1: from consumer electronics to the automotive industry struggling to find
Speaker 1: the chips that they need to produce finished products. So
Speaker 1: we're seeing shortages and lots of industries because of semiconductor shortages.
Speaker 1: Intel executives have been meeting with various government officials in
Speaker 1: Europe clearly feeling out where it might be most advantageous
Speaker 1: to establish manufacturing facilities. Now, this is a complicated process,
Speaker 1: one that often sees companies play regions against each other
Speaker 1: in an effort to get the best deal out of
Speaker 1: the situation. Sometimes that can get pretty ugly. We've seen
Speaker 1: it happen several times here in the United States. Complicating
Speaker 1: matters is that the cost of business in places like
Speaker 1: Europe and the United States is higher than places like, say, China.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's higher to the tune of around thirty more costly.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's partly because places like Europe and the
Speaker 1: United States have tighter regulations in place to provide at
Speaker 1: least some level of protection to employees, and places like
Speaker 1: China largely do not. Fun times. On a related note,
Speaker 1: the Verge reports that the PC market is easing back
Speaker 1: a little bit after having a pretty booming The market
Speaker 1: is still growing, but it is growing at a reduced pace,
Speaker 1: so it's growing more slowly than it was, and possible
Speaker 1: reasons for that include a slightly lower demand for PCs
Speaker 1: after the initial pandemic rush and the growing semiconductor chip
Speaker 1: shortage being part of a factor. There businesses might be
Speaker 1: back into purchasing computers with more businesses reopening after a
Speaker 1: year plus of being shut down, so that could change
Speaker 1: things a bit. But on the consumers side, it could
Speaker 1: be that things are slowing down because people have already
Speaker 1: done bought their ding Dan computers last year. However, we
Speaker 1: do have Windows eleven launching later this year, and that
Speaker 1: might end up driving more PC sales in the near future.
Speaker 1: Now again, I do want to stress this doesn't mean
Speaker 1: we're seeing the PC market suddenly get into trouble. The
Speaker 1: industry is still growing quarter over quarter, It's just doing
Speaker 1: so at a slower rate than what it was doing earlier.
Speaker 1: The company Amazon continues in its quest for world domination
Speaker 1: and now has its sites set on Santa Clause you
Speaker 1: heard it here first, Because like Santa, Amazon plans to
Speaker 1: know when you are sleeping and know when you're awake.
Speaker 1: But since I think Amazon is largely an a moral company,
Speaker 1: I suspect they don't actually care if you've been bad
Speaker 1: or good. So I mean, be good for goodness sake,
Speaker 1: just you know, as a favor to me. But I
Speaker 1: don't think Amazon cares one way or the other. Now
Speaker 1: Amazon has secured permission from the United States Federal Communications
Speaker 1: Commission or FCC, to make use of a sixty giga
Speaker 1: Hurts radar system in some future unannounced consumer device that
Speaker 1: would be able to sense gesture commands. And here's the
Speaker 1: bigge monitor sleeping habits through radar. Now, this is all
Speaker 1: from the Register, by the way, and the permission from
Speaker 1: the f c C was a necessity because the sixty
Speaker 1: giga Hurts frequency range is above what's typically allowed for
Speaker 1: consumer devices. Every nation has divided up the electro magnetic
Speaker 1: frequency spectrum to designate which slices of that spectrum can
Speaker 1: be used for different purposes, and that way you avoid
Speaker 1: having to competing technologies trying to make use of the
Speaker 1: same frequency space, which would create a lot of interference.
Speaker 1: So this case, the FCC was needed to be brought
Speaker 1: in on this because that that frequency range is typically
Speaker 1: not something that a consumer electronic product would be able
Speaker 1: to take advantage of. So Amazon had to get permission
Speaker 1: from the FCC, and the f c C granted that permission. Uh. Now,
Speaker 1: the Register reports that as of now, the the proposed
Speaker 1: device only has the vagueust of outlined purposes. It will
Speaker 1: be a non mobile device, so Presumably this would be
Speaker 1: something that you would just plug into a wall outlet
Speaker 1: in your home, and the intended purpose, according to Amazon,
Speaker 1: is to give people who might have difficulties with some
Speaker 1: physical activities away to interact with Amazon systems more effectively,
Speaker 1: that being like the gesture controls and stuff, to have
Speaker 1: a more finely tuned approach to that. So that's good
Speaker 1: in a way. I mean, it's a way to improve accessibility,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a good thing, but also that
Speaker 1: such a device would help for the purposes of quote
Speaker 1: sleep hygiene end quote. Now, if you think it's a
Speaker 1: little creepy to have a huge company keeping track of
Speaker 1: when you're asleep and when you're awake, then you're thinking
Speaker 1: a lot like yours truly right here, I think it's
Speaker 1: really creepy. However, there are a lot of sleep tracking
Speaker 1: devices out there, and many of them do phone home
Speaker 1: to keep track of stats like how many hours you've
Speaker 1: slept or how many times you tossed and turned or
Speaker 1: woke up overnight or whatever. So honestly, this isn't really
Speaker 1: new or unique to Amazon in that sense, like we
Speaker 1: do have other technologies that do this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But however, I think it's the thought that this thing
Speaker 1: is effectively watching you sleep that makes it seem creepy
Speaker 1: to me. But again, many of us, myself included, have
Speaker 1: used activity trackers that also act as sleep trackers, so
Speaker 1: I admit I'm being a little bit hypocritical here. It
Speaker 1: also has probably because Amazon's sheer size as a company
Speaker 1: is something I find intimidating, and to think of a
Speaker 1: really big company closely monitoring when people are asleep or
Speaker 1: when they're awake is unsettling. I imagine a lot of
Speaker 1: that information could go into all sorts of different algorithms,
Speaker 1: including recommendations. Like if I logged into Amazon and suddenly
Speaker 1: saw that all the recommendations were for pillows and white
Speaker 1: noise machines, I'd think, Okay, Amazon knows too much about me.
Speaker 1: It knows that I've been dealing with insomnia recently, right,
Speaker 1: Like that would just be creepy. Who knows what this
Speaker 1: will ultimately turn out to be, And we may not
Speaker 1: ever actually see this consumer product. That's another possibility. We
Speaker 1: just don't know enough yet. But uh, it does look
Speaker 1: like it's yet another step into the world of quantifying
Speaker 1: everything about ourselves and handing that data over to some
Speaker 1: other party, something that I think we should probably re
Speaker 1: examine sooner rather than later. And our last story is
Speaker 1: that a group of researchers with the National Institute of
Speaker 1: Information and Communications Technology or n i c T over
Speaker 1: in Japan have used a four core optical fiber system
Speaker 1: with a sophisticated multiplexing technology to send data across a
Speaker 1: physical cable at the incredible throughput of three hundred nineteen
Speaker 1: terabits per second across a distance of just over three
Speaker 1: thousand kilometers three thousand and one to be precise. That
Speaker 1: is a truly astonishing data throughput rate for that kind
Speaker 1: of distance. These days, we talk about really fast home
Speaker 1: internet connections having a throughput of around a gigabit per second,
Speaker 1: maybe more like maybe up to ten gigabits per second.
Speaker 1: That's what we think of as being screaming fast for
Speaker 1: consumer internet. But a gigabit is a billion bits per second.
Speaker 1: Three nineteen terabits is three nineteen trillion bits per second.
Speaker 1: To be clear. We've seen even greater throughput than this before,
Speaker 1: but only at extremely short distances. This marks a world
Speaker 1: record for transmitting that much data per second at that
Speaker 1: kind of distance. Now, this doesn't mean, we're right around
Speaker 1: the corner from all having terribit per second home connections,
Speaker 1: which would be nice, but it's not gonna happen. This
Speaker 1: technology is more likely to be used in applications that
Speaker 1: relate to backbone operations of the Internet, but it's an
Speaker 1: incredible technical achievement. Now. One day, I hope to maybe
Speaker 1: bring someone on the show to talk about fiber optics
Speaker 1: and what multiplexing really means and how it works, because
Speaker 1: that subject very quickly escalates beyond my own understanding of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can always research into it and and
Speaker 1: take copious notes and such, but really, I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that if I try to do an episode about this
Speaker 1: all by myself, I'm probably going to get something wrong
Speaker 1: because it is a pretty complicated topic. But I think
Speaker 1: I might have to get somebody on to really talk
Speaker 1: about it and get into the nitty gritty of how
Speaker 1: fiber optics work and also why it can be so
Speaker 1: hard to get access to fiber optics service depending on
Speaker 1: where you live. But that's something for a later episode.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: tech stuff, reach out and get in touch with me.
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is over on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is text Stuff h s W,
Speaker 1: which I don't think is verified, but I am 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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