Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Stricklund.
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 July twenty sixth, twenty twenty four and
Speaker 1: let's start off with a follow up on the CrowdStrike story. So,
Speaker 1: if somehow you missed that event, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike pushed
Speaker 1: out and update the customers on Windows based platforms that
Speaker 1: caused machines to go into a reboot loop. And this
Speaker 1: little oopsey caused massive outages all around the world and
Speaker 1: some companies like major airlines are still dealing with the fallout.
Speaker 1: This week, CrowdStrike posted a quote preliminary post incident review
Speaker 1: or pir are end quote giving a high level view
Speaker 1: of what happened while promising a more thorough investigation that
Speaker 1: will be shared down the line. So the post says
Speaker 1: that last Friday, quote CrowdStrike released a content configuration update
Speaker 1: for the Windows Sensor to gather telemetry on possible novel
Speaker 1: threat techniques. These updates are a regular part of the
Speaker 1: dynamic protection mechanisms of the Falcon platform. The problematic rapid
Speaker 1: response content configuration update resulted in a Windows system crash
Speaker 1: end quote. So the post goes on to say that
Speaker 1: this rapid response content feature is meant to quote respond
Speaker 1: to the changing threat landscape at operational speed end quote,
Speaker 1: and by necessity that means CrowdStrike has to be very
Speaker 1: quick to respond to emerging threats in order to protect customers.
Speaker 1: But this particular update had an undetected error in it,
Speaker 1: and in addition, the content validator you can think of
Speaker 1: it as kind of like a bouncer standing outside a nightclub.
Speaker 1: The validator is a system that's meant to look for
Speaker 1: mistakes before allowing updates to go through, but the validator
Speaker 1: itself had a bug that essentially meant it was looking
Speaker 1: the other way. So the post goes on to stress
Speaker 1: that CrowdStrike will be instituting new processes to validate code
Speaker 1: and to test it thoroughly for errors before pushing it
Speaker 1: out to customers in the future, because boy howdy, this
Speaker 1: outage was incredibly disruptive and yeah, uh, the CrowdStrike partners
Speaker 1: are mightily miffed about the outage, so not just the
Speaker 1: customers who were directly affected, but people who then had
Speaker 1: to step in and try to mitigate and repair systems
Speaker 1: that were affected by this. Countless people had to work
Speaker 1: extremely long hours in an effort to get things working again.
Speaker 1: But don't worry, CrowdStrike cares. That's why the company sent
Speaker 1: out a ten dollars voucher to some teammates and partners
Speaker 1: as a gesture of gratitude and sympathy. Now, as you
Speaker 1: might imagine, not everyone took this very well. Some folks
Speaker 1: interpreting crowdstrikes move as being insult added to injury that
Speaker 1: somehow a ten dollars gift vouchure for coffee and donuts
Speaker 1: would make up for having to provide seemingly endless support
Speaker 1: to countless customers who were affected by this outage. Some
Speaker 1: people maybe saw the gesture as being well intentioned and
Speaker 1: they didn't take umbrage to it, but unfortunately a lot
Speaker 1: of them also had trouble using the vouchure in the
Speaker 1: first place. The vouchuer was for uber eats, and uber
Speaker 1: Eats actually flagged it as fraud because so many people
Speaker 1: were trying to use the code. Interestingly, I saw something
Speaker 1: similar with ride haling services because someone I know was
Speaker 1: trying to make use of a promotional code, essentially to
Speaker 1: use a right hailing service so that they could go
Speaker 1: and help their company out during the outage. The company
Speaker 1: was saying, hey, if you need to get a ride,
Speaker 1: here's a code you can use that we really need
Speaker 1: your help. But then when they tried to use the code,
Speaker 1: they found that the code was flagged as being invalid,
Speaker 1: that too many people were using it. And this was
Speaker 1: not a small, unknown company that was extending this right
Speaker 1: hailing offer in return for more help. It was a major,
Speaker 1: major employer in the city of Atlanta. Anyway, it sounds
Speaker 1: to me like an effort to do something small but
Speaker 1: a little nice has backfired in crowdstrikes proverbial face. Okay,
Speaker 1: now let's move on to get into a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of AI news. This week, Meta unveiled the Lama three
Speaker 1: AI model and showed off generative AI capabilities, including support
Speaker 1: for eight languages and the ability to write code, with
Speaker 1: promises of multi modal capabilities in the future. So how
Speaker 1: does Lama three stack up against say, open AI's GPT
Speaker 1: model or other AI models for that matter. That's actually
Speaker 1: hard to say because it's very tricky to measure AI performance.
Speaker 1: There's not a whole lot of agreement over what constitutes
Speaker 1: a proper benchmark for AI capabilities. That are a lot
Speaker 1: of benchmarks that are being used, but they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: say that one model is superior to others. It might
Speaker 1: be that one model is better at specific sets of
Speaker 1: tasks than others, but doesn't perform as well in other regards.
Speaker 1: Meta's model did score smack dab between open ais GPT
Speaker 1: four oh and Claude three point five on a math
Speaker 1: benchmark for word problems. Meta clearly hopes that developers will
Speaker 1: rely on LAMA three more than on competing models running forward,
Speaker 1: And it sounds to me like the various AI models
Speaker 1: out there right now perform at fairly similar levels, Like
Speaker 1: there is some variation, but from the big ones out there,
Speaker 1: they tend to be kind of neck and neck. So
Speaker 1: I think for a lot of developers it'll mostly come
Speaker 1: down to which model works best from a financial standpoint,
Speaker 1: not necessarily just a technical one. But you know which
Speaker 1: one's going to be the cheapest to use. Brianna Herschbach
Speaker 1: of the Star Tribune has a piece titled X's AI
Speaker 1: chat bot groc spreads misinformation about Minnesota's ballots. Does the
Speaker 1: tech giant care well? I suspect the answer to the
Speaker 1: headline is that I'm sure there are some folks at
Speaker 1: X who very much care. But whether that's the sentiment
Speaker 1: held by the people in charge, I can't say, though
Speaker 1: I have my suspicions anyway. According to the article, Groc,
Speaker 1: the AI chat bot from X falsely claimed that it
Speaker 1: was too late for presidential ballots to change in nine states,
Speaker 1: including in Minnesota, that the candidates were already locked and loaded,
Speaker 1: and that anyone who had failed to get on the
Speaker 1: ballot already is out of luck. But quote, hey, there's
Speaker 1: always twenty twenty eight right end quote. Because of course
Speaker 1: Grock is sassy. And this is relevant obviously because here
Speaker 1: in the United States, current President Joe Biden has dropped
Speaker 1: out of the election rate and Kamala Harris, the vice president,
Speaker 1: is currently in line to get the Democratic nomination for
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party. So clearly, if we were at a
Speaker 1: point where it's too late to put people on the
Speaker 1: ballot to change the presidential ballots, then that would be
Speaker 1: a huge problem for the Democrats, because they're presumptive candidate
Speaker 1: would not be allowed to be added However, that's not
Speaker 1: the case. No state has passed the deadline for candidates
Speaker 1: to be added to the ballot, not in Minnesota, not
Speaker 1: any other state. We haven't reached that point. But now
Speaker 1: misinformation is spreading online about this because GROX said, Hey,
Speaker 1: it's too late, so tough luck, and it's just not true.
Speaker 1: I think most of us have a handle on how
Speaker 1: social platforms can facilitate the distribution and misinformation. But this
Speaker 1: is a case where X isn't just facility hating the
Speaker 1: spread of misinformation, it is generating the actual misinformation, Like
Speaker 1: the platform itself, or at least the AI chatbot that's
Speaker 1: created for that platform, is doing it. Folks at X
Speaker 1: have pointed out that GROC comes with a disclaimer that
Speaker 1: urges users to independently verify the information that's coming out
Speaker 1: of the chatbot. I don't see this as a get
Speaker 1: off jail free card. Actually, I see this as a
Speaker 1: condemnation of AI, specifically generative AI, because if you know
Speaker 1: that your tool is prone to or at least capable
Speaker 1: of generating falsehoods, maybe don't distribute the tool to customers. Like,
Speaker 1: what is the point of having an AI chatbot if
Speaker 1: the user can't trust what the chatbot says, why have
Speaker 1: a chatbot at all unless the chatbot's reliable. If you
Speaker 1: have to look up everything the chatbot tells you anyway,
Speaker 1: you might as well skip having the chatbot, just go
Speaker 1: straight to researching the question, right, because otherwise what are
Speaker 1: you doing? It seems in line, however, with Musk's approach
Speaker 1: in general. It reminds me of how Tesla has both
Speaker 1: autopilot and full self driving products and Tesla cars. Both
Speaker 1: of those, I would argue, give a false sense of
Speaker 1: what they're capable of based upon their names. Like I've
Speaker 1: often said, full self driving, which by the way, isn't
Speaker 1: full self driving. That's my opinion, But I feel like
Speaker 1: it is in line with that, And I'm sure this
Speaker 1: is just the tip of the iceberg as far as
Speaker 1: how AI is playing a part in the dissemination of
Speaker 1: information and misinformation during the election cycle. Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: a bunch more stories to go through before we start
Speaker 1: into those, let's take a quick break. We're back. So,
Speaker 1: in a rare event in US politics this week, week,
Speaker 1: the Senate unanimously passed a federal bill that would let
Speaker 1: victims of non consensual deep fakes of a sexually explicit
Speaker 1: nature sue the people who create and traffic in such material.
Speaker 1: This can include images, video, audio, et cetera. So deep
Speaker 1: fakes have been a problem for a while now, and
Speaker 1: it's a problem that disproportionately victimizes women. So this bill
Speaker 1: would make it possible for victims of deep fakes sexually
Speaker 1: explicit deep fakes to seek civil penalties against those who
Speaker 1: are making or sharing or receiving those deep fakes. The
Speaker 1: bill will still need to pass the House of Representatives
Speaker 1: before it can move on to the President's desk to
Speaker 1: get signed into law, and as of right now, that
Speaker 1: bill is in committee at the House of Representatives. Alexandra
Speaker 1: Occasio Cortes AOC. She's championing this and has made some
Speaker 1: very passionate arguments as to why the bill is needed
Speaker 1: because as of right now, there are very few avenues
Speaker 1: that victims of deep fis can pursue to get justice
Speaker 1: or any kind of action on their behalf. And that
Speaker 1: is pretty horrifying, because, I mean, this is like a
Speaker 1: consent issue, and deep fakes can cause not just incredible
Speaker 1: emotional and psychological trauma, which they can. That alone is
Speaker 1: enough to require some sort of of measure against them,
Speaker 1: but they can also impact a person's ability to make
Speaker 1: a living through no fault of their own, Like the
Speaker 1: person literally hasn't done anything, but an AI generated image
Speaker 1: or video has given them a terrible reputation and there
Speaker 1: has to be a system in place to seek justice
Speaker 1: for this. So I feel this is a very good
Speaker 1: step toward addressing a growing and disturbing problem. Moving on
Speaker 1: to other issues with AI. Sag AFTRA that's a union
Speaker 1: that presents typically actors and other performers in film, television,
Speaker 1: and video games. Well, the video game group of performers
Speaker 1: are now going on strike, so this includes voice performers
Speaker 1: as well as motion capture performers, and the reason they're
Speaker 1: going on strike is over the fact that the union
Speaker 1: has been unable to reach a satisfying agreement during contract
Speaker 1: negotiations with various video game companies. And these are like
Speaker 1: the big video game companies, so the contract agreement span
Speaker 1: a lot of territory. It's not just one thing, but
Speaker 1: one important element within all of that is over the
Speaker 1: role of AI, and specifically AI's ability to replicate voices
Speaker 1: and likenesses. And that makes a lot of sense to me. That.
Speaker 1: This would be a big sticking point because if I
Speaker 1: were hired for a gig because of my voice or
Speaker 1: my likeness, I don't want AI to copy me, because
Speaker 1: then that copy could be used in perpetuity without my
Speaker 1: participation or compensation. I would be taking one gig and
Speaker 1: essentially putting myself out of a job forever because that
Speaker 1: copy could get passed around, and who knows what stuff
Speaker 1: my AI mimic might be incorporated into. I could find
Speaker 1: a copy of myself in projects that I never would
Speaker 1: have agreed to work on. That's not really cool, right,
Speaker 1: Like if I were hired to voice something that I
Speaker 1: really believed in, I was like, Oh, this is a
Speaker 1: really cool story, and I believe in the developer, and
Speaker 1: I believe in the story they're trying to tell. I
Speaker 1: would love to be part of this, by the way,
Speaker 1: I would love to be part of stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That would be a lot of fun. Then, yeah, that's great,
Speaker 1: But what if they then used my voice to generate
Speaker 1: a copy of it and put it into something that
Speaker 1: I would find morally objectionable or it goes against my
Speaker 1: own personal beliefs. That's a real problem. Apparently, these AI
Speaker 1: points in the agreements have been contentious, with video game
Speaker 1: companies reluctant to promise that they're not going to use
Speaker 1: AI tools that could lead to the detriment of union members. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: striking members are still allowed to participate in appearances at
Speaker 1: San Diego Comic Con, which started earlier this week and
Speaker 1: goes through the weekend, and they can do so without
Speaker 1: penalty because usually a striking sag after member isn't supposed
Speaker 1: to promote any work that is covered by the strike,
Speaker 1: but in this case, the proximity of the strike to
Speaker 1: the Comic Con event called for an exception, so folks
Speaker 1: who were scheduled to appear can still do so. They
Speaker 1: can still talk about the projects they were hired to do,
Speaker 1: and that's really good news for fans. Potentially, it's also
Speaker 1: good news for union members who may be able to
Speaker 1: take the opportunity to speak about their concerns regarding AI
Speaker 1: and other aspects of the dispute. At the top of
Speaker 1: this episode, I talked about how Meta's Lama III performed
Speaker 1: well in certain benchmarks against other AS models well. Google's
Speaker 1: Deep Mind department similarly unveiled a couple of AI systems,
Speaker 1: one called Alpha Proof and another called alpha geometry two
Speaker 1: that performed really well on a very tough math test.
Speaker 1: According to Google, the AI models were able to achieve
Speaker 1: the equivalent of a silver metal performance by solving problems
Speaker 1: that were part of the most recent International Mathematical olympiad BENJ.
Speaker 1: Edwards of Ours Technica has a great piece about this.
Speaker 1: It's titled Google claims Math breakthrough with proof solving AI models.
Speaker 1: Benje also does a really good job of pointing out
Speaker 1: that measuring AI capabilities is tricky. It is not always straightforward.
Speaker 1: In fact, it rarely is straightforward. The achievement does mark
Speaker 1: advancements in AI's ability to parse and then solve complex
Speaker 1: mathematical problems, and that is pretty cool. But ben J.
Speaker 1: Edwards also quotes Sir Timothy Gowers about this. Sir Timothy
Speaker 1: Gowers took to AX and wrote, quote the program needed
Speaker 1: a lot longer than the human competitors, some of the
Speaker 1: problems over sixty hours end quote, and that if human
Speaker 1: competitors had been given the same luxury of time, they
Speaker 1: probably would have scored higher in this test as well.
Speaker 1: So what Gowers is saying is this is not an
Speaker 1: apples to apples comparison. You can't say, oh, this AI
Speaker 1: program is x times smarter than the average person when
Speaker 1: it comes to math, because you have to take into
Speaker 1: account all the different parameters and say, well, if the
Speaker 1: people who are really good at math were given the
Speaker 1: same amount of time to solve a problem, they might
Speaker 1: have done it as well or better than the AI
Speaker 1: model did. Gowers also pointed out that humans had to
Speaker 1: convert these problems into a language that the AI models
Speaker 1: could understand before they could tackle the problem in the
Speaker 1: first place. So again, the AI models weren't presented with
Speaker 1: the exact same problem, or the problem wasn't framed the
Speaker 1: exact same way for the AI versus the human competitors
Speaker 1: who actually participated in the Olympiad, and that if the
Speaker 1: AI had had to parse the problems the way that
Speaker 1: humans did, maybe the AI wouldn't have performed as well.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's complicated hopping over to open ai because yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not done with AI yet. Open ai announced this
Speaker 1: week that a prototype version of its search GPT product
Speaker 1: is now ready to go. This is open AI's artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence powered search tool. It is a clear shot across
Speaker 1: Google's bow, and according to open ai, the tool will
Speaker 1: provide quote fast and timely answers with clear and relevant
Speaker 1: sources end quote. I have signed up to join the
Speaker 1: wait list to try this out, but as of this recording,
Speaker 1: I have not yet personally been able to use this tool.
Speaker 1: I do have concerns similar to what I was saying earlier.
Speaker 1: I have these concerns with pretty much all AI enabled
Speaker 1: tools that are like And one of those concerns is
Speaker 1: that I worry AI enhanced search will mean fewer people
Speaker 1: will actually navigate to what the real sources of the
Speaker 1: information were. They'll just be satisfied with the AI summarized
Speaker 1: or synthesized results and that's it, Which means the pages
Speaker 1: that the AI is drawing from the source pages are
Speaker 1: going to get less traffic, and that means less revenue,
Speaker 1: which ultimately means the businesses that actually operate these pages
Speaker 1: could find themselves strapped for cash. And then what happens,
Speaker 1: you know, when the underlying infrastructure that the AI is
Speaker 1: dependent upon goes rotten. What happens then? Plus there's still
Speaker 1: the worry of mistakes, you know, like confabulations slash hallucinations
Speaker 1: with Generative AI. Google's version of this same sort of
Speaker 1: tool famously suggested that people include non toxic glue in
Speaker 1: their pizza ingredients in order to prevent cheese from sliding
Speaker 1: off their pizza. Clearly that is not good advice. So
Speaker 1: how reliable will search GPTB and how will folks know
Speaker 1: if the answers they get are actually good? I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess one way you could check is you could
Speaker 1: click through to the sources. But then again, why do
Speaker 1: you even need AI search at that point? Like, if
Speaker 1: you already have to double check to make sure the
Speaker 1: answer that AI gave you is relevant and accurate, what
Speaker 1: good is the AI? If you have to double check,
Speaker 1: then you might as well just get rid of the
Speaker 1: AI and go straight to the source in the first place.
Speaker 1: It's just like I was saying before, AI is just
Speaker 1: making things, giving an extra step. It's like turning to
Speaker 1: a random person next to you and saying, like, how
Speaker 1: do you repair a car? Like you have no idea
Speaker 1: they have any experience or knowledge in that realm, and
Speaker 1: if they give you advice, you don't know if it's trustworthy.
Speaker 1: You have to look it up. Well whatever open AI
Speaker 1: made this announcement, and after that, alphabet shares fell around
Speaker 1: three percent. So I guess like these questions are ones
Speaker 1: that don't necessarily run around the minds of investors. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna progressively go bonkers over here as the world
Speaker 1: continues to embrace AI and I keep asking, but wait,
Speaker 1: I have questions. I also have more news. But before
Speaker 1: we get to that, let's take another quick break. So
Speaker 1: before the break, I was talking about Google and speaking
Speaker 1: of alphabet slash Google. One of the other companies in
Speaker 1: that group of companies under alphabet is YouTube, and it
Speaker 1: could be facing some pretty tough issues in Russia. So
Speaker 1: the Russian government has indicated that YouTube could see that
Speaker 1: the agents will throttle YouTube traffic by forty percent on
Speaker 1: desktop computers this week, So slowing down YouTube traffic by
Speaker 1: forty percent, that could increase to a seventy percent slowed
Speaker 1: down by next week. And you might ask why why
Speaker 1: is the Russian government throttling traffic from YouTube in Russia? Well,
Speaker 1: it's because YouTube previously placed a block on some channels
Speaker 1: that were carrying Russian state media. Russian state media has
Speaker 1: a bit of a reputation for having, let us say,
Speaker 1: a biased view of the news, and that it often
Speaker 1: is just really seen as a mouthpiece for the Russian
Speaker 1: government itself, and thus is really a way of distributing propaganda.
Speaker 1: So presumably what has happened is YouTube determined that some
Speaker 1: Russian state media YouTube channels were in violation of YouTube's
Speaker 1: policies and so block them, And the Russian government's response
Speaker 1: is We're going to make all traffic to YouTube super
Speaker 1: duper slow, so that Russian users will get really frustrated
Speaker 1: about this unless you reinstate those channels. So essentially this
Speaker 1: is a threat. It's a standoff between YouTube and the
Speaker 1: Russian government. And I did not see any responses from
Speaker 1: YouTube about this as of the time I'm recording this episode.
Speaker 1: That may be different by the time you hear it,
Speaker 1: but yeah, right now, it is like a standoff, which
Speaker 1: is a big old yikes from me. Now, if you
Speaker 1: don't use Google, but you are used to seeing search
Speaker 1: results include stuff from Reddit threads, that could be changing.
Speaker 1: So Reddit has a content policy that forbid sites from
Speaker 1: crawling Reddit forums without first agreeing to follow Reddit's rules,
Speaker 1: and those rules cover a lot of ground. One of
Speaker 1: the big rules that Reddit has is that companies that
Speaker 1: want to crawl Reddit for the purposes of gathering data
Speaker 1: to train AI models have to pay for that privilege
Speaker 1: that you've got to fork over some cash if you're
Speaker 1: going to use Reddit to train up your AI. This
Speaker 1: is something that a lot of Reddit users are actually
Speaker 1: salty about because you know, a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: want their stuff to be used to train AI in
Speaker 1: the first place. They don't have any say in the matter,
Speaker 1: like Reddit gets to make that call. They don't, And
Speaker 1: some users are thinking that's not really fair that they
Speaker 1: should have more control over the content they create. Reddit
Speaker 1: says no, once you post it here, it's ours, like
Speaker 1: it was yours then you hit post and now it
Speaker 1: belongs to us. And users also are kind of salty
Speaker 1: because the compensation it's going to Reddit doesn't go to
Speaker 1: the people who are generating the content in the first place. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: these AI models are using Reddit content to train themselves,
Speaker 1: but the people who are making the content, they don't
Speaker 1: get any of the money. The money goes to Reddit,
Speaker 1: So it's going to the platform, but not the people
Speaker 1: who are creating the actual content that's training AI. So yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a couple of reasons why Reddit users are
Speaker 1: not happy about this. But anyway, this means that any
Speaker 1: company that has not agreed to these these rules that
Speaker 1: Reddit has posted, they are not allowed to crawl the site.
Speaker 1: Without crawling the site, you can't index it, and specific
Speaker 1: threads will not pop up in search results. If that
Speaker 1: is the case. Apparently, search engines not named Google have
Speaker 1: largely not yet forged these kinds of agreements with Reddit,
Speaker 1: So the result is that if you search for topics
Speaker 1: that are covered on Reddit forums or Reddit threads, you
Speaker 1: will get fewer results on non Google search engines. Some
Speaker 1: of them will return some Reddit results, but others won't.
Speaker 1: For a full breakdown on this issue, including some really
Speaker 1: great insight into the search engine landscape in general, i
Speaker 1: recommend reading Sharon Harding's excellent piece in Ours Technica's article
Speaker 1: titled non Google search engines blocked from showing recent Reddit results.
Speaker 1: Shila Chiang CNBC reports that Apple is no longer among
Speaker 1: the top five smartphone brands in China. Rather, Chinese companies
Speaker 1: domestic companies are taking up the top five spots, and
Speaker 1: Apple has fallen to hold fourteen percent of the market
Speaker 1: share in the country. The Chinese market has been a
Speaker 1: really important one for Apple. The company famously courted Chinese
Speaker 1: officials and business representatives while trying to establish an inroad
Speaker 1: into Chinese markets for the iPhone. Ironically, the iPhone was
Speaker 1: being manufactured in China for two years, but not sold
Speaker 1: in Chinese stores, at least not legally sold in China
Speaker 1: for those two years. Earlier this year, Apple CEO Tim
Speaker 1: Cook declared China an extremely competitive market in the smartphone space,
Speaker 1: which was I feel like it's coded language. The country's
Speaker 1: government has frequently favored domestic companies over products coming from
Speaker 1: Western companies. I've talked several times about how tech companies
Speaker 1: from the West have viewed China as a potential gold
Speaker 1: mine because the country does have a truly enormous population.
Speaker 1: But I personally think the price of doing business in
Speaker 1: China is really high. It's high enough to make it
Speaker 1: hard to say whether or not it's worth the effort. Also,
Speaker 1: it frequently means that you are implicated or complicit with
Speaker 1: ethically questionable state programs, which is more than putting it lightly.
Speaker 1: In what could have been a nightmare scenario, a security
Speaker 1: vendor called no B four that's all one word, No
Speaker 1: B and then the Numeral four hired a software engineer
Speaker 1: to fill a job in the company's AI division. The
Speaker 1: job hire purported to be a US based software engineer,
Speaker 1: but in fact was a hacker from North Korea. And
Speaker 1: this hacker had stolen some US credentials and used a
Speaker 1: stock photo and then altered it with AI to make
Speaker 1: a fake headshot in order to fool the company. They
Speaker 1: apparently looked enough like that headshot to fool hiring managers
Speaker 1: because they then went on multiple video conferencing calls as
Speaker 1: part of the hiring process. But yeah, this hacker managed
Speaker 1: to get through the entire interview process, multiple rounds, even
Speaker 1: got through a background check, and according to a company representative,
Speaker 1: quote we sent them their Mac workstation and the moment
Speaker 1: it was received, it immediately started to load malware end quote.
Speaker 1: We say. Fortunately, the company security software caught on right
Speaker 1: away and within short order, security kind of like sequestered
Speaker 1: off the hire's computer so that they could not cause
Speaker 1: further mischief, you know, to like company systems and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. They think that it's quite possible this hacker
Speaker 1: was a state backed operative that North Korea was actually
Speaker 1: you know, kind of sponsoring hackers like this to try
Speaker 1: and infiltrate various companies like security companies and then cause
Speaker 1: problems from there. There are few public details available about this,
Speaker 1: largely because Nobifore says there's an ongoing FBI investigation into
Speaker 1: the matter. But yeah, it sounds like hiring managers might
Speaker 1: need to be on the lookout for potential threat agents
Speaker 1: during the hiring process. Fun times. Around five hundred Microsoft
Speaker 1: employees working on the venerable World of Warcraft title have
Speaker 1: voted to join the hoard. By that, I mean they've
Speaker 1: voted in support of unionization. Microsoft is pledged to remain
Speaker 1: neutral in the proceedings. That was actually part of Microsoft's
Speaker 1: concessions during the long process in which the company was
Speaker 1: attempting to acquire Activision Blizzard, which it ultimately did. Activision Blizzard,
Speaker 1: by the way, is the company behind World of Warcraft.
Speaker 1: Blizzard has already recognized this union, which is a key step.
Speaker 1: It's one that means the union employees won't have to
Speaker 1: appeal to the US government in order to force Blizzard
Speaker 1: to acknowledge them. Sometimes that does happen. When a company
Speaker 1: refuses to recognize a union, the workers join a few
Speaker 1: other unionized groups within Microsoft's video game division. More than
Speaker 1: one seven hundred and fifty employees in that specific part
Speaker 1: of Microsoft are now in a union, and all I
Speaker 1: can say is solidarity. Not long ago, I talked about
Speaker 1: how SpaceX's Falcon nine was grounded following a launch vehicle's
Speaker 1: mid flight failure that resulted in the loss of a
Speaker 1: big group of Starlink satellites. But up to that point,
Speaker 1: the Falcon nine had a stellar, pun intended safety record,
Speaker 1: which is kind of unheard of in the space industry
Speaker 1: if we're being brutally honest, I mean, space is hard,
Speaker 1: so having a vehicle that has had the reliability of
Speaker 1: the Falcon nine is a rare thing, indeed. But the
Speaker 1: FAA has now ordered that the fleet, which was grounded
Speaker 1: to allow for an investigation, can now return to operation.
Speaker 1: The investigation still ongoing, but the FAA says the found
Speaker 1: no reason to block operations, so there were no public
Speaker 1: safety issues present as far as they could tell. So
Speaker 1: while they will continue to investigate the matter, the Falcon
Speaker 1: nine can return to service. And that's great news for
Speaker 1: the industry as a whole, for the United States in particular,
Speaker 1: because the Falcon nine is the launch vehicle that can
Speaker 1: take people to the International Space Station here in the
Speaker 1: United States. So yeah, SpaceX's launch vehicles have become absolutely
Speaker 1: critical for the space industry here in the United States.
Speaker 1: The company says it will be ready to return to
Speaker 1: operations as early as tomorrow, Saturday, July twenty seventh, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. Okay, that wraps up this episode of tech
Speaker 1: Stuff with the Tech News. I do have a couple
Speaker 1: of recommendations for y'all in order to read up on stuff.
Speaker 1: First up is Jordan Velenski's piece for cnn dot Com
Speaker 1: titled Grinder is limiting location services at the Olympics to
Speaker 1: protect LGBTQ plus athletes. So this is about how the
Speaker 1: Grinder app is proactively protecting athlete identities. This is important
Speaker 1: because some of those folks are coming from countries that
Speaker 1: have draconian laws that target people who belong to the
Speaker 1: LGBTQ plus community. So, in other words, you're not going
Speaker 1: to be able to open the app and change your
Speaker 1: location to the Olympic village and then go looking around
Speaker 1: for Olympic athletes who may be part of that LGBTQ
Speaker 1: plus community. It's not going to work, and that's for
Speaker 1: the protection of those athletes. I think that's a good idea,
Speaker 1: but the article goes into further detail, so check it out.
Speaker 1: Next up is an article by Alphonso Maruccia of tech Spot.
Speaker 1: It's titled spyware Maker gets hacked. Data reveals thousands of
Speaker 1: remotely controlled devices. So this article covers the case of
Speaker 1: a company called spy Tech Software, which is in a
Speaker 1: questionable business I would argue, and talks about how hackers
Speaker 1: got access to the company systems and what that all means.
Speaker 1: It is well worth a read. That's it for me
Speaker 1: this week. I hope all of you are well and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.