Speaker 1: Welcome to tex 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 episode for Thursday, January twenty one, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it. One of the gadgets that got
Speaker 1: a lot of attention at c e S was LGS
Speaker 1: rollable phone, and I've mentioned it on past episodes, but
Speaker 1: in brief, this is a phone that can extend its
Speaker 1: frame and grow to more of a tablet kind of size,
Speaker 1: and the screen rolls out to expand with the frame,
Speaker 1: kind of like a window shade being pulled down. It's
Speaker 1: all made possible by flexible oh LED screens and circuitry,
Speaker 1: and that's pretty cool. We've seen similar technology with rollable televisions,
Speaker 1: for example. So it's too bad that LG might be
Speaker 1: getting out of the phone business entirely. Now, I should
Speaker 1: stress this is something that might happen, but isn't guaranteed
Speaker 1: to happen. An internal memo in l G from the
Speaker 1: company's CEO had acknowledged that it's possible LG will need
Speaker 1: to extricate itself from making smartphones. This same CEO, Kuon
Speaker 1: Bong Yok, assumed the role of CEO in tw with
Speaker 1: a promise that he would return the smartphone division to
Speaker 1: profitability by twenty twenty one. You see, LGS smartphone division
Speaker 1: has been seeing losses year over year for more than
Speaker 1: five years in a row, with the company pouring five
Speaker 1: billion dollars worth of resources into the division. Quan's original
Speaker 1: plan was for the company to push phones with a
Speaker 1: real wow factor to them. I hate that term, but
Speaker 1: one of those phones was one called the Velvet. That's
Speaker 1: pretty weird. It's a phone that actually has a case,
Speaker 1: and the case contains a second screen, So the case
Speaker 1: is a folding case. When it's closed, the screen of
Speaker 1: the smartphone is largely not visible. You can still take
Speaker 1: phone calls with the case closed, but you can't really
Speaker 1: interact with the smartphone. So you open up the case
Speaker 1: kind of like a book, and that includes a second
Speaker 1: screen that's to the left of your phones screen, and
Speaker 1: it increases the amount of touch screen real estate that
Speaker 1: you have. That one is an odd one, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't really stand up to the oddness of the wing.
Speaker 1: This is a smartphone that has a swivel screen mounted
Speaker 1: on top of a second screen. So I see you
Speaker 1: like screens on your screens. You can have one of
Speaker 1: them in landscape and one in portrait. So you you
Speaker 1: twist the top screen and it goes horizontal and the
Speaker 1: bottom screen stays vertical, and it kind of looks like
Speaker 1: you're holding an upper case t in your hand. It
Speaker 1: allows you to do stuff like watch a video in
Speaker 1: landscape format so wide screen format, and maybe brows Twitter
Speaker 1: or or look up information about the movie you're watching
Speaker 1: in portrait format beneath it, so it's like a dual
Speaker 1: screen phone, just in a very interesting orientation. Um or Heck,
Speaker 1: the rollable phone is another great example of a phone
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be capturing this wow factor. But it
Speaker 1: might just be that LG cannot carve out a space
Speaker 1: in a very crowded market place with lots of other
Speaker 1: brands there. Samsung and Apple really dominate the high end
Speaker 1: market for smartphones, Huawei has a pretty good lock on
Speaker 1: budget smartphones, and there are a few other companies that
Speaker 1: also have a decent share in that market, and LG
Speaker 1: just couldn't command enough market share for the division to
Speaker 1: be profitable. On a personal note, one of my first
Speaker 1: smartphones was the LG Nexus five Android phone, and I
Speaker 1: think it probably makes sense from LGS perspective to get
Speaker 1: out of a market that is pretty saturated and focus
Speaker 1: on other businesses that are probably more profitable. But as
Speaker 1: a consumer, I'm sad if LG does decide to get
Speaker 1: out of smartphones because it will also mean fewer options
Speaker 1: for people who are shopping for their next phone. More
Speaker 1: options tends to be better for your consumer, and seeing
Speaker 1: a big player getting out of the market can often
Speaker 1: lead to fewer choices and fewer innovations in the space.
Speaker 1: Let's hope that doesn't happen. We don't know if LG
Speaker 1: actually is going to withdraw from the smartphone business, or
Speaker 1: if the leadership team you know, does decide to do that,
Speaker 1: how that's going to affect the employees, or what the
Speaker 1: timeline might be. We do know the LG is pledged
Speaker 1: to find diff positions for about sixty percent of those
Speaker 1: who will be affected, which sounds kind of ominous for
Speaker 1: the other forty percent, But as some reporters have pointed out,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of functional knowledge stored in that group
Speaker 1: of employees. So LG might want to hold on to
Speaker 1: as many of them as they possibly can, and hopefully
Speaker 1: we won't see massive layoffs in the future. Earlier this week,
Speaker 1: the world learned about the people former President Trump pardoned
Speaker 1: in his last few days in office. One of those
Speaker 1: people is Anthony Lewandowski. Longtime listeners of tech stuff may
Speaker 1: have heard me talk about this guy before. He is
Speaker 1: an engineer, one that even his harshest critics referred to
Speaker 1: as a brilliant engineer who focuses primarily upon technologies related
Speaker 1: to self driving cars. He was part of Google's self
Speaker 1: driving car initiative that would eventually evolve into Weymo, and
Speaker 1: while he was at Google, he had a bit of
Speaker 1: a reputation for some ethically questionable leadership decisions. He would
Speaker 1: leave Google to found his own company that centered on
Speaker 1: autonomous trucking, and Uber would acquire that company not too
Speaker 1: long afterward, bringing Lewandowski on board with Uber. Meanwhile, back
Speaker 1: at Google, company representatives suspected that Lewandowski had left Google
Speaker 1: with thousands of documents related to trade secrets and that
Speaker 1: he was potentially using those to build out Uber's own
Speaker 1: self driving initiatives. Google pursued legal action, Uber fired Lewandowski
Speaker 1: because Uber was legally required to defend Lewandowski due to
Speaker 1: the employee agreement he had signed, and the Uber then
Speaker 1: claimed that they were unaware of the theft, and ultimately
Speaker 1: Lewandowski would stand trial for the theft of trade secrets.
Speaker 1: He was found guilty and sentenced to eighteen months in prison.
Speaker 1: Trump pardoned Lewandowski, who never spent a day in prison
Speaker 1: because his sentence had been indefinitely delayed due to the
Speaker 1: COVID outbreak. And something else I always want to add
Speaker 1: when I'm talking about Lewandowski. He's also the founder of
Speaker 1: a religion that worships a future AI. In other words,
Speaker 1: it's a religion that anticipates the creation of an artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence system advanced enough to be seen as a deity,
Speaker 1: and it's called Way to the Future. Anyway, I'm sure
Speaker 1: we have not heard the last of Lewandowski. This next
Speaker 1: story is an odd one because of all the irony
Speaker 1: in it. In fact, this episode's got quite a bit
Speaker 1: of irony. We will not have an irony deficiency. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's see if I can get this straight. Google
Speaker 1: has placed one of its employees under investigation. That employee
Speaker 1: is Margaret Mitchell not the author of Gone with the Wind,
Speaker 1: but rather a member of Google's team that is dedicated
Speaker 1: to ethics and artificial intelligence. Now investigating an ethics specialist
Speaker 1: for wrongdoing certainly seems ironic, though the cynical among us
Speaker 1: might point out at the various ethics committees in political
Speaker 1: circles are you know, questionable, and we might make snide
Speaker 1: comments about those as well. But in this case things
Speaker 1: get even more thorny. Mitchell is suspected to be involved
Speaker 1: with the copying and sharing of thousands of internal files
Speaker 1: that were sent to external accounts. Axios ran a report
Speaker 1: stating that Mitchell was using automated search functions to crawl
Speaker 1: through her messages and pull out any instances of communication
Speaker 1: involving the discriminatory treatment of another former Googler, Timnant Gebrew.
Speaker 1: Gebru had worked with the AI team before she was fired.
Speaker 1: Gebrew has claimed that she was fired after she criticized
Speaker 1: Google's lack of diversity and general failure to address diversity
Speaker 1: problems properly, something that Google executives say, that's just not
Speaker 1: the case, that's not why we fired her, and so,
Speaker 1: at least at first glance, this appears to be a
Speaker 1: case where a Google employee concerned about the firing of
Speaker 1: a fellow Google employee began pulling evidence together to support
Speaker 1: the narrative that the fired employee was sacked in a
Speaker 1: discriminatory way, and now the company is investigating her for
Speaker 1: doing that. It's not exactly a good look for Google
Speaker 1: on the surface, though, of course, there could be a
Speaker 1: lot more going on here than what I'm aware of.
Speaker 1: Google employees continue to pressure the company to make some
Speaker 1: big changes, and the move to unionize is continuing as well.
Speaker 1: Is this another example of the company trying to lock
Speaker 1: down dissent or is their justification for the firing of Gebrew?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I promise I will continue to
Speaker 1: follow up on this story. Good news for Netflix shareholders.
Speaker 1: The company announced this week that it had more than
Speaker 1: two hundred million subscribers worldwide and that it is bringing
Speaker 1: in enough revenue to cover the expenses of the original
Speaker 1: slate of films and TV series that it produces each year. Previously,
Speaker 1: Netflix had to take out loans to cover those kind
Speaker 1: of costs, which measures in the billions of dollars per year.
Speaker 1: The projections suggest Netflix will break even by the end
Speaker 1: of one shareholders might have share buy backs to look
Speaker 1: forward to, as the company has suggested it might use
Speaker 1: the cash on hand to purchase shares. The company also
Speaker 1: plans to maintain a significant amount of debt, like between
Speaker 1: ten and fifteen billion dollars, so, in other words, not
Speaker 1: using its profits to pay all that debt off. That
Speaker 1: is a heck of a credit card statement. The announcement
Speaker 1: jolted Netflix's stock value, which climbed more than twelve percent
Speaker 1: after the announcement. Meanwhile, here in Georgia, some municipalities are
Speaker 1: suing Netflix, along with Hulu and a couple of other
Speaker 1: streaming services. And this isn't an effort to lump streaming
Speaker 1: services into the same sort of category as cable TV,
Speaker 1: something that is under more regulation than streaming services are.
Speaker 1: The law in question is the Georgia Consumer Choice for
Speaker 1: Television Act, which places a requirement on video services, and
Speaker 1: it's a franchise fee that all video services like cable
Speaker 1: TV are supposed to pay to local governments within Georgia,
Speaker 1: unless those services are part of a larger internet service bundle.
Speaker 1: This seemed to create a pretty big disparity. For example,
Speaker 1: the NBC streaming service Peacock plus could be bundled with
Speaker 1: parent company Comcasts I SP services and thus escape the
Speaker 1: franchise fee. That way, the same could happen with HBO
Speaker 1: Max and A T and T s I s P bundles,
Speaker 1: but Netflix, which isn't affiliated with an I s P,
Speaker 1: wouldn't have that opportunity, and since the law only exempts
Speaker 1: the bundles from franchise fees, Netflix would have to pay up,
Speaker 1: which would undoubtedly lead to higher subscription prices for viewers.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, the fees go to local governments
Speaker 1: and help fund various governmental functions and services. But companies
Speaker 1: like Netflix of object to this understandably, and they point
Speaker 1: out that streaming services are fundamentally different from cable TV
Speaker 1: services on multiple fronts. It's likely this will all have
Speaker 1: to be decided in court, and the outcome is far
Speaker 1: from guaranteed. As we've seen many times, it's hard to
Speaker 1: predict how courts will interpret laws when the case also
Speaker 1: involves technology that the court might not fully understand. Speaking
Speaker 1: of massive companies that generate tons of content, let's talk
Speaker 1: about Viacom CBS. For a while now, CBS all Access
Speaker 1: has been the go to streaming source for stuff like
Speaker 1: new Star Trek properties. But soon that service will sunset
Speaker 1: and from the ashes of CBS All Access will rise
Speaker 1: the phoenix of Paramount Plus. Now this isn't super new news.
Speaker 1: We knew this was coming back in but now we know.
Speaker 1: The date of Paramount Plus is launch March fourth here
Speaker 1: in the United States. That's also when Latin America will
Speaker 1: get the service. Australia will get it sometime in the
Speaker 1: middle of one, and Canada gets the name Paramount Plus
Speaker 1: on March four, but won't actually get all the Paramount
Speaker 1: content until some other time later in and I have
Speaker 1: not yet seen a date for that, so I'm sorry Canadians.
Speaker 1: The news service will include not only all the CBS
Speaker 1: content that was previously on All Access, but also stuff
Speaker 1: from MTV, Comedy Central, VH one, and b ET, among
Speaker 1: other channels. There will be new original content coming out
Speaker 1: on the streaming service beyond just you know, the Star
Speaker 1: Trek stuff. There's a series that will be based on
Speaker 1: The Godfather, for example, and that could be pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm actually a pretty big fan of the first two
Speaker 1: Godfather films, and the series behind the Music from VH
Speaker 1: one is going to make a comeback as well. I'm
Speaker 1: not certain how much the Paramount Plus service will cost yet.
Speaker 1: CBS All Access was five per month if you didn't
Speaker 1: mind having ads in your service, or you could pay
Speaker 1: for an ad free subscription per month, but I assume
Speaker 1: Paramount Plus will probably be a little more expensive, but
Speaker 1: there's no announced pricing schedule at the time of this recording. Well,
Speaker 1: we've got more to talk about in tech news, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break. One of the big
Speaker 1: tech news stories toward the last few months of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty was how the co founder of the massive company
Speaker 1: Ali Baba Jack Ma went missing, at least from the
Speaker 1: public eye. He gave a speech in October of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty that criticized government regulations just before an Ali Baba
Speaker 1: affiliate company called ant Group was scheduled to have its
Speaker 1: initial public offering. Side note here, I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: in the past I reported that it was Ali Baba
Speaker 1: that was holding its i p O, which was my mistake.
Speaker 1: That was incorrect. Ali Baba had already had its i
Speaker 1: p O long before this was a financial affiliate company
Speaker 1: aunt Group. Well, shortly after this critical speech, the Chinese government,
Speaker 1: specifically the regulators blocked that I p O for Ant
Speaker 1: group and regulators have really tightened the screws on the
Speaker 1: tech sector in China in general and Ali Baba in particular.
Speaker 1: Jack Ma disappeared from view and the rest of the
Speaker 1: world was left to speculate on what had happened to him.
Speaker 1: Was he laying low after seeing how the regulators had reacted,
Speaker 1: Was he actively being held and silenced by the Chinese government.
Speaker 1: All sorts of theories bounced around, although I think there
Speaker 1: was more of an agreement that the exile was likely
Speaker 1: self imposed as a matter of preservation. But then Tianmu News,
Speaker 1: a government operated newspaper, published an online piece that included
Speaker 1: a video of the billionaire giving a presentation to school
Speaker 1: teachers in a rural part of China as part of
Speaker 1: a philanthropic event. Ma himself is a former teacher and
Speaker 1: has dedicated a great deal of time and money towards
Speaker 1: supporting educational efforts in China. There was no acknowledgement that
Speaker 1: Ma had been absent from the spotlight for months, and
Speaker 1: considering the fact that the man has gained something of
Speaker 1: a reputation for some pretty flashy public displays, that in
Speaker 1: itself is pretty interesting. Ali Baba, which has already become
Speaker 1: a publicly traded company, as I mentioned, saw the value
Speaker 1: of its shares increase by nine on the stock exchanges
Speaker 1: in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Clearly, Ma's absence has had
Speaker 1: a somewhat chilling effect on the tech sector in China.
Speaker 1: As for what happens next, I suspect we will continue
Speaker 1: to see companies push against the boundaries placed around them
Speaker 1: by the Chinese Communist Party, which tends to try and
Speaker 1: suffocate any entity that rises to challenge its power in China.
Speaker 1: Private space industry company space X has a couple of
Speaker 1: new just is currently in the Gulf of Mexico. They
Speaker 1: are a pair of oil rigs, enormous structures designed to
Speaker 1: conduct deep water drilling, and these two were rated for
Speaker 1: operations for up to a depth of eight thousand five feet.
Speaker 1: Their dimensions measure to forty feet by two fifty five
Speaker 1: ft or about seventy three ms by seventy six ms.
Speaker 1: SpaceX's plan is to convert these oil rigs into floating
Speaker 1: offshore space ports. Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, had
Speaker 1: previously said the company planned to build that kind of
Speaker 1: facility in the near future, and the oil rigs appear
Speaker 1: to be the first step. It will take a lot
Speaker 1: of work to convert them into functional floating space ports,
Speaker 1: but hey, the hardest part of the job is already done,
Speaker 1: because that's naming them, am all right. The names of
Speaker 1: the two ports are Damos and Foibos, you know, the
Speaker 1: moons of Mars. It looks as though these rigs will
Speaker 1: become part of a truly massive operation in Texas that
Speaker 1: includ it's not just SpaceX facilities, but also that other
Speaker 1: big company that Musk is also involved with, that being Tesla.
Speaker 1: Texas has been a technological center for a while, but
Speaker 1: in recent months there's been more of a move to
Speaker 1: migrate the big tech companies over to Texas to take
Speaker 1: advantage of tax incentives and the like. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to see what these spaceports will look like once they
Speaker 1: are through with their makeovers. Wikipedia, the crowdsourced compendium of
Speaker 1: human knowledge, recently had its billionth edit in the month
Speaker 1: of January, you know, for the English language of Wikipedia,
Speaker 1: I should add, because there are different versions of it.
Speaker 1: It was for an entry for an album released by
Speaker 1: experimental musician alec Empire. It's called Death Breathing but now,
Speaker 1: or at least as of the time when I was
Speaker 1: recording this episode, that entry actually now automatically forwards to
Speaker 1: just alec Empire, So you know, yeah, it was the
Speaker 1: Billions edit. But we're not going to be precious about it,
Speaker 1: which I honestly actually find really refreshing, because ultimately it's
Speaker 1: an arbitrary number when you think about it. But Wikipedia
Speaker 1: first launched back in two thousand one and obviously has
Speaker 1: evolved a great deal since then. There have been various
Speaker 1: battles between groups of volunteers who edit the site. There
Speaker 1: have been changes in editorial policy, partly to reverse the
Speaker 1: trend of people vandalizing entries or posting unverified and sometimes
Speaker 1: unverifiable passages into different pages, particularly those that are part
Speaker 1: of emotionally charged debates like political parties or social movements
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing, and because editors can update
Speaker 1: pages over time. A lot of academic and professional organizations,
Speaker 1: like my old employer, how Stuff Works, had a blanket
Speaker 1: policy that Wikipedia was never to be used as a
Speaker 1: referenced source. You could go to Wikipedia to look at
Speaker 1: the list of references for that article and then follow
Speaker 1: down those pathways, but the Wikipedia entries themselves were off limits,
Speaker 1: mostly due to the fact that they could change in
Speaker 1: subtle or even not so subtle ways with no warning.
Speaker 1: So you might cite Wikipedia as a source, and then
Speaker 1: two weeks later the information you were citing is no
Speaker 1: longer in that entry. That's not great. Now. I've been
Speaker 1: pretty hard on Wikipedia in the past, but I do
Speaker 1: recognize its usefulness. I just continued to suggest people dig
Speaker 1: further than the Wikipedia article when researching information. So happy
Speaker 1: billionth edit Wikipedia. Back in a company called me we
Speaker 1: m e w E launched a new social networking platform,
Speaker 1: also called me we, and the sales pitch for this
Speaker 1: platform is that, unlike Facebook, me we does not have ads,
Speaker 1: nor does it use an algorithm to determine which posts
Speaker 1: you will or won't see. Everything will appear in a
Speaker 1: reverse chronological order on your feed, with the most recent
Speaker 1: posts of those you follow at the top of the feed,
Speaker 1: and then descending by order from there, you know, the
Speaker 1: way stuff like Twitter and Facebook used to work. It
Speaker 1: also claims to be more focused on privacy. Since there
Speaker 1: are no ads, the service isn't monitoring your every action
Speaker 1: in order to sell that data off to advertisers. Instead,
Speaker 1: they have a subscription model. There's a premium level that
Speaker 1: users can elect to subscribe to, or they can use
Speaker 1: the free service that has fewer bells and whistles. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason I'm bringing up me we this week is
Speaker 1: that the site has seen a recent surge in folks
Speaker 1: signing up. Two point five million new accounts were made
Speaker 1: in the last week. Now, by Facebook standards, that is nothing.
Speaker 1: Facebook has more than two and a half billion active
Speaker 1: users after all, But considering that back in October twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: me we had nine million users, a two and a
Speaker 1: half million surge in a week is really significant. And
Speaker 1: here's something that I wasn't planning on. I'm actually one
Speaker 1: of those two and a half million people. I somehow
Speaker 1: had missed hearing about me we for years, and then
Speaker 1: I just came across it by chance. Before I did
Speaker 1: this episodes, before I saw the article about how many
Speaker 1: people had signed up in the last week, I just thought, Hey,
Speaker 1: this seems like it's more in my style than Facebook.
Speaker 1: I have one friend on their right now, and it
Speaker 1: happens to be my co host for large nerdron Collider
Speaker 1: aeriel Casting. I quit Facebook several weeks ago, and while
Speaker 1: I don't have access to my friends like I did
Speaker 1: on the old f B. I do like the approach
Speaker 1: of me we. I just wish my friends were there.
Speaker 1: And apparently I'm not the only person that's going through this.
Speaker 1: As more people have become disenchanted with the advertising strategies
Speaker 1: of various platforms or how algorithms can elevate misinformation campaigns
Speaker 1: and lead to radicalization, we may see more people abandon
Speaker 1: those older platforms for alternatives. Now. Don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: there are going to be plenty of people sharing misinformation
Speaker 1: on me we as well, but because there's no algorithm
Speaker 1: to serve that information up to new PEP bowl, you
Speaker 1: as a user have to go out and seek the
Speaker 1: people or organizations that are creating the misinformation on your own.
Speaker 1: You have to follow them. It's not being served up
Speaker 1: to you on a platter, and that can make a
Speaker 1: huge difference, as we've already seen with the recent drop
Speaker 1: in misinformation campaigns online. Anyway, this isn't a commercial for
Speaker 1: me we. It's a social platform that most people aren't
Speaker 1: even using, but it has received some recent attention, so
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it's going to become the next big thing,
Speaker 1: but I do expect we're going to see a few
Speaker 1: social platforms try and position themselves as a more transparent
Speaker 1: and responsible alternative to the established networks we have out there.
Speaker 1: Whether they gain any traction or not remains to be seen,
Speaker 1: but we should remember that, you know, momentum and inertia
Speaker 1: are really powerful things. Back in twenty the company Cycraft
Speaker 1: see y c R a f T published a report
Speaker 1: revealing that Chinese hackers have been infiltrating high text systems
Speaker 1: in a project that the cybersecurity field has called Chimera.
Speaker 1: They were largely attacking Taiwanese tech companies at the time,
Speaker 1: uh and this type of attack was classified as an
Speaker 1: APT or advanced persistent threat, meaning the intrusions were meant
Speaker 1: to insert ways for the hackers to gain repeated access
Speaker 1: to systems and information, not just you know, inject malware
Speaker 1: or something, but kind of a continual espionage sort of thing.
Speaker 1: More recently, the NCC Group and fox I T have
Speaker 1: revealed that those intrusions have been more serious than earlier
Speaker 1: reports suggested, and include attacks on airlines and affiliated companies,
Speaker 1: presumably with the goal to scrape data from systems and
Speaker 1: keep track of persons of interest On behalf of the
Speaker 1: Chinese government, which sounds pretty terrifying, right. The hackers were
Speaker 1: looking for P and R S that stands for passenger
Speaker 1: name records, and according to security analysts, the way the
Speaker 1: hackers gained entry into the systems typically relied upon earlier
Speaker 1: data breaches. So in some of those data breaches, log
Speaker 1: and information was among the data that was compromised. So
Speaker 1: the hackers were using those leaked logins to try and
Speaker 1: gain access to various companies and systems, and then they
Speaker 1: branched out from there. They also relied on a penetration
Speaker 1: testing framework called Cobalt Strike, So in other words, the
Speaker 1: hackers were relying upon a tool that's usually used to
Speaker 1: train system administrators on how to detect and stop hacker intrusions. Hopefully,
Speaker 1: with the publication of these reports, the affected companies will
Speaker 1: be able to find and shut down hacker access to
Speaker 1: their systems. All right, let's go with some more irony,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna stay on hackers. So there's a cybersecurity
Speaker 1: firm called malware Bites. This company recently revealed it had
Speaker 1: discovered an intrusion from the same hackers that infiltrated the
Speaker 1: company Solar Winds last year. And what's more, this wasn't
Speaker 1: connected to the Solar Winds attack, at least not directly. Now,
Speaker 1: you might remember that with Solar Winds, hackers injected malware
Speaker 1: into a product called Orion, and when Solar Winds pushed
Speaker 1: out updates for Orion to all customers that were relying
Speaker 1: upon that product, the malware hitched a ride and infected
Speaker 1: thousands upon thousands of systems and companies and government organizations, etcetera.
Speaker 1: With malware Bites, the intrusion came thanks to a dormant
Speaker 1: Office three sixty five security app. Another irony right that
Speaker 1: the vulnerability came through a security app. Office three sixty five,
Speaker 1: by the way, is a product from Microsoft. Now we
Speaker 1: know that thanks to Solar Winds, the hackers had gained
Speaker 1: access to many of Microsoft's internal systems, and there's a
Speaker 1: chance that that may have led to the hackers finding
Speaker 1: the opportunity to take advantage of this otherwise unused Office
Speaker 1: three sixty five tool over at malware Bites. As for
Speaker 1: the Solar Winds hack, analysts say we're still in the
Speaker 1: very early stages of just assessing the scope of that
Speaker 1: attack and the number of systems that have been compromised,
Speaker 1: which means we're still a long way from actually resolving
Speaker 1: any problems. Well, we have a few more stories to
Speaker 1: cover before we get to that. Let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: On some online platforms, there is a strategy called shadow banning,
Speaker 1: and here's how it works. You got yourself a real
Speaker 1: ne'er do well on your platform. They're always stirring up trouble,
Speaker 1: causing strife, initiating flame wars, that kind of thing. Now,
Speaker 1: you could just ban this person, which would likely make
Speaker 1: your other users happy, but it would also be something
Speaker 1: that the band user would immediately notice. And maybe that
Speaker 1: user just goes and creates a different account on your
Speaker 1: service and just keeps up with the same old garbage,
Speaker 1: or maybe you shadow banned them. A shadow band means
Speaker 1: that to the affected user, the seem normal. They can
Speaker 1: still access the service, they can still post to it,
Speaker 1: only no one else on the service will actually see
Speaker 1: the stuff that this user posts. The messages just don't
Speaker 1: show up because the user has been shadow band. A
Speaker 1: group of researchers wanted to test Twitter's claim that they
Speaker 1: don't use shadow banning in their moderation strategies, but some
Speaker 1: users messages were not showing up for other people, and
Speaker 1: Twitter reps were saying that those instances were just examples
Speaker 1: of a bug, it was an unintended glitch, but the
Speaker 1: researchers wanted to investigate that claim, and through their analysis,
Speaker 1: they arrived at the conclusion that it is statistically unlikely
Speaker 1: that the invisible posts are only due to glitches, because
Speaker 1: the researchers found that the people who are affected by
Speaker 1: this shadow band glitch were likely to have other friends
Speaker 1: who similarly had the same problem, which suggests that rather
Speaker 1: than being random glitches, there is some sort of algorithm
Speaker 1: that's identifying accounts that the algorithm has decided are posting
Speaker 1: material that Twitter would rather not show up on its service,
Speaker 1: and then the algorithm starts to follow the path of
Speaker 1: who is this person following and who's following this person
Speaker 1: using the logic of hey, if this one account is
Speaker 1: posting really hinky stuff, then I bet the accounts that
Speaker 1: it follows and the accounts that follow it are likewise
Speaker 1: doing that. So you wouldn't expect to see that kind
Speaker 1: of activity. If this were just a random glitch, it
Speaker 1: would be very sporadic. They would be unconnected. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: accounts for the most part, so that's what the researchers
Speaker 1: are saying. It's not definitive proof, it's just evidence that
Speaker 1: supports that there might be some shadow banning actually going
Speaker 1: on at Twitter, despite the company's protestations. Otherwise, moving on,
Speaker 1: so in Video released its shield TV product way back
Speaker 1: in now. This is a digital media player running on
Speaker 1: an Android operating system, and it can stream games from
Speaker 1: a compatible PC to a television. So if you're a
Speaker 1: PC gamer but you would love to play certain titles
Speaker 1: on your big screen television, you can use the Nvidia
Speaker 1: Shield TV to do that. And now you can use
Speaker 1: PS five and Xbox Series X controllers with that system.
Speaker 1: In Video recently added support for the new controllers to
Speaker 1: their product. The pairing process sounds like it's pretty simple,
Speaker 1: and the Vidio shield TV product can also upscale videos
Speaker 1: up to four K resolution. That's not quite the same
Speaker 1: as running four K natively, but it's still pretty darn nice. Now.
Speaker 1: I've never had the chance to play on an in
Speaker 1: Video shield TV, though I did once get a chance
Speaker 1: to play the original in Vidio shield Portable before that
Speaker 1: was really an official thing. I think I was at
Speaker 1: a c E S and it was just kind of
Speaker 1: secretly being shown off. And I was there in the
Speaker 1: last day of the show, and the reps that the
Speaker 1: booth were like, yeah, sure, go ahead and play with it.
Speaker 1: I think it had largely been hands off for most
Speaker 1: of the show, which tells you it pays to stick
Speaker 1: around at c e s till the last day because
Speaker 1: people don't really care so much anymore for some reason.
Speaker 1: Sticking with games. Several game publishers, including Valve, which these
Speaker 1: days is better known as the company behind the Steam Store,
Speaker 1: are going to be coughing up some dough to pay
Speaker 1: fines in the EU. This comes after a nearly two
Speaker 1: year long legal battle, and at the heart of this
Speaker 1: issue is the practice of geo blocking. That is the
Speaker 1: practice of blocking access to some games in some areas
Speaker 1: of the EU while allowing access to those games in
Speaker 1: other EU countries. See the EU doesn't like that too much.
Speaker 1: The philosophy of the EU is one in which people, businesses,
Speaker 1: and services are free to move around within the Union
Speaker 1: as a whole. So having a service that's available in
Speaker 1: say France, but unavailable in Germany is antithetical to the
Speaker 1: euse philosophy. A competition and law makes it illegal for
Speaker 1: companies to engage in cross border sales across member nations
Speaker 1: in the EU. This isn't something unique to the video
Speaker 1: game industry. On a similar note, the EU wants services
Speaker 1: like streaming video companies to offer the same library of
Speaker 1: content across all members of the EU, treating it as
Speaker 1: a digital single market. And while there are complicated licensing
Speaker 1: agreements that come into play that make this harder to do.
Speaker 1: There's also the fact that within the EU, a citizen
Speaker 1: can choose to relocate to another member nation of the EU,
Speaker 1: and in that case, you would think that the person
Speaker 1: should still have access to whatever digital media they had
Speaker 1: already purchased in their original country. The game publishers all
Speaker 1: had a reduced fine due to the fact that they
Speaker 1: were more cooperative with the US approach to creating regulations.
Speaker 1: Valve had to pay the whole fine because it had
Speaker 1: somewhat resisted those efforts and disagreed that they were guilty
Speaker 1: of violating a law. So Valves find amount to to
Speaker 1: one point six million euro a princely some Oh and hey,
Speaker 1: remember when in early Animal Crossing, New Horizons swooped into
Speaker 1: the rescue for all those Nintendo Switch owners and helped
Speaker 1: us through the early days of isolation in the Quarantine era. Well,
Speaker 1: how about you recapture that feeling of joy and community
Speaker 1: with a little makeup. Color Pop is releasing a collection
Speaker 1: of makeup inspired by the popular game, which, as I
Speaker 1: understand it mostly involves hoarding turn ups until the market
Speaker 1: reaches critical mass, whereupon you unload them in a frenzy
Speaker 1: sort of like the movie Wall Street, but with cartoonish
Speaker 1: anthropomorphic animals. The collection launches on January, and the images
Speaker 1: I've seen have all been palettes of various makeup powders
Speaker 1: and different colors, and each palette is citing a different
Speaker 1: citizen of the game as the source of inspiration, which
Speaker 1: you know, is pretty adorable. I'm a favor of it.
Speaker 1: I don't don't think I'll be wearing any of it.
Speaker 1: I can't pull off eyeshadow, guys. And finally, scientists with
Speaker 1: the University of Bath and the University of Oxford are
Speaker 1: now using images captured by satellites to look for and
Speaker 1: track the movement of animals from space. Animals like elephants.
Speaker 1: So the scientists say that the satellites offer up a
Speaker 1: new way to count elephants. When paired with an algorithm
Speaker 1: that analyzes the images and looks for you know, elephant shapes,
Speaker 1: but like teeny tiny elephant shapes. Because these are satellite images.
Speaker 1: This is a much more efficient means of finding elephants
Speaker 1: than sending aircraft to just crisscross the skies in search
Speaker 1: of them, and it gives scientists a way to track
Speaker 1: elephant populations. The African elephant is considered a vulnerable species.
Speaker 1: There are somewhere between forty thousand and fifty thousand African
Speaker 1: elephants in the wild, and the team hopes that this
Speaker 1: approach can be used to count and keep track of
Speaker 1: other types of animals in the future with you know
Speaker 1: tweaks to the algorithm, though I personally hope they never
Speaker 1: use it to count sheep because otherwise the satellites might
Speaker 1: go into sleep mode. Dad da da dad da dad. Yeah. Okay,
Speaker 1: with that terrible dad joke, We're gonna wrap up this
Speaker 1: episode of Tech Stuff News Edition. We will be back
Speaker 1: next week with more news and in the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for topics I should tackle in normal
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a technology, a company
Speaker 1: in tech, a personality in tech, maybe just a trend
Speaker 1: in tech. Let me know. The best way to reach
Speaker 1: out to me is on Twitter. The handle is tech
Speaker 1: stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
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