Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: domind executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech are you.
Speaker 1: It's time for the tech news from March twenty third,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. Oh wow three two three two two three.
Speaker 1: Sorry got distracted. Okay, let's jump start this episode with
Speaker 1: more AI news stories. The story of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: So first up, Avraham Pilch of Tom's Hardware wrote an
Speaker 1: article titled google Bard plagiarized our article, then apologized when caught.
Speaker 1: So google Bard is Google's version of you know, the
Speaker 1: chat box features that are built on top of a
Speaker 1: large language model. It's similar in many ways to chat
Speaker 1: g PT that's incorporated into stuff like bing. Bard is
Speaker 1: currently in beta testing, so it's not openly rolled out
Speaker 1: to everyone. Pilch's article explains that he was testing Bard
Speaker 1: and asking it to compare two different processors against one
Speaker 1: another and to recommend which of the two processors would
Speaker 1: be fastest. And Bard generated a response, and Pilch saw
Speaker 1: that some facts looked awfully familiar, and it ended up
Speaker 1: being because the information that Bard was referencing originated in
Speaker 1: a benchmark test article that was also published on Tom's
Speaker 1: Hardware just a couple of days earlier. So Pilch asked
Speaker 1: Bard for the source of the data, where did you
Speaker 1: get this information. That's when Bard explained it had pulled
Speaker 1: the info from the Tom's Hardware article. And at that
Speaker 1: point Pilch essentially asked Bard if that perhaps constituted plagiarism,
Speaker 1: and Bard kind of said yeah. And this is just
Speaker 1: one of the concerns folks have about chat bot AI
Speaker 1: tools like Barred and chat gpt, that they could pull
Speaker 1: data from sources without giving credit, and that both denies
Speaker 1: the original creator of that content any recognition or ability
Speaker 1: to monetize their work, and it also makes it difficult
Speaker 1: to fact check the answers. You know, the information has
Speaker 1: to be coming from somewhere. These AI chat bots are
Speaker 1: assembling answers based off available information. They're not just inventing it,
Speaker 1: they're not just lying. In other words, but you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily know where they're pulling that information from, and that
Speaker 1: means not only that it may or may not be trustworthy,
Speaker 1: but also that someone somewhere is getting the short end
Speaker 1: of the stick. They generated that content, and yet you
Speaker 1: know they're not being compensated for that, right. So it
Speaker 1: reminds me of how content creators were really worried when
Speaker 1: Google would start to include short descriptions on a search
Speaker 1: result page that could potentially negate the need to click
Speaker 1: through to an actual page on that topic, thus denying
Speaker 1: those pages of views and ad revenue. Why would you
Speaker 1: write stuff for the web if that stuff ends up
Speaker 1: being appropriated by some AI chatbot and then regurgitated to
Speaker 1: users who never see your actual article, and thus the
Speaker 1: website never gets any visitors, and eventually the website stops
Speaker 1: employing you because they can't afford to do it. Like
Speaker 1: it just becomes this kind of self defeating cycle. But anyway,
Speaker 1: go check out the full article on Tom's hardware. Again,
Speaker 1: it's called Google bard plagiarize our article, then apologized when
Speaker 1: caught because I actually do believe in sending people to
Speaker 1: the proper sources. James Vincent of The Verge has a
Speaker 1: different warning relating to AI chat I can't actually give
Speaker 1: you the full title of the article because it ends
Speaker 1: with some profanity, but I'll give you most of the
Speaker 1: title of the article. It's called Google and Microsoft's chat
Speaker 1: bots are already citing one another in a misinformation insert
Speaker 1: profanity here. It's a kind of storm, I'll say. In
Speaker 1: the article, Vincent mentions a peculiar series of responses that
Speaker 1: when one asked Microsoft Bing if Google had shut down
Speaker 1: It's Bard chat bot, then Bing would say yes. Essentially,
Speaker 1: Bing would say yes, Bard has been shut down by Google.
Speaker 1: Now as evidence, Bing was citing a tweet in which
Speaker 1: someone said that they had asked Bard when Bard would
Speaker 1: get shut down, and Bard claimed it already had been.
Speaker 1: So where was Bard getting this information, because clearly that's
Speaker 1: not true, right, Bard was answering the person, so it
Speaker 1: could not have been shut down. Well, Bard was pulling
Speaker 1: its information from a joke that someone left in the
Speaker 1: comment section of a Hacker news piece, and then someone
Speaker 1: else had taken that joke and generated a chat GPT
Speaker 1: article around it, like they actually gave that chat gpt
Speaker 1: to write an article about Bard being shut down by Google. Again,
Speaker 1: this is all a joke at this point, but Bard
Speaker 1: cites this joke as if it's an actual news item.
Speaker 1: This tweet talks about how Bard said that it was
Speaker 1: already shut down, and then Being says yeah, Bard's been
Speaker 1: shut down because it's citing the tweet. So again, this
Speaker 1: really makes a very salient point about you know, this
Speaker 1: goofy little tweet ended up being used as if it
Speaker 1: were reliable hard news information, and that AI chatbots aren't
Speaker 1: capable of telling the truth from humor, or, lies or satire.
Speaker 1: That you could end up asking these chatbots a question.
Speaker 1: It is entirely possible that they might reference a site
Speaker 1: like The Onion, for example, and the Onion is a
Speaker 1: satire humor website, like it's meant to write articles that
Speaker 1: are not true for the purposes of humor, and the
Speaker 1: answer you get from AI would probably be interesting, but
Speaker 1: it would not be reliable. Goodness knows, there are already
Speaker 1: tons of sites out there that claim to be satire.
Speaker 1: Usually this claim is hidden in a little about page
Speaker 1: somewhere that makes it really hard to tell at first.
Speaker 1: Like I've seen so many, not as many these days
Speaker 1: as maybe five years ago, but man, I used to
Speaker 1: come across them all the time. And in reality, these
Speaker 1: websites only existed to publish fake news that would then
Speaker 1: go viral on various social platforms. So if you dug
Speaker 1: down deep enough you would find some disclaimer on the
Speaker 1: website somewhere saying this is meant for entertainment and satire.
Speaker 1: It wasn't satire, it was just lies because it wasn't
Speaker 1: humorous at all. It wasn't presented to be humor or
Speaker 1: to give any insight. It was just meant to go viral. Well,
Speaker 1: AI chatbots don't know necessarily that that kind of content
Speaker 1: isn't reliable and could present it as such. So yeah,
Speaker 1: another example of how chatbots can give us some misleading information.
Speaker 1: Not all uses of AI are bad, of course, you
Speaker 1: be soft. The video Game Company released a video showing
Speaker 1: off an AI tool called ghost Writer Write Her, not
Speaker 1: ghost writer as in the Biker with a Skull flaming
Speaker 1: Skull for ahead. So ghost Writer aims to make the
Speaker 1: tedious task of generating background chatter for NPCs in games
Speaker 1: and automated task. So if you've played any open world
Speaker 1: style games, you're probably familiar with hearing NPC's holding conversations
Speaker 1: around you, or maybe even commenting on your appearance as
Speaker 1: you move into view. Even if you haven't played a
Speaker 1: lot of games, chances are you've heard people reference the
Speaker 1: iconic line from Skyrim. I used to be an adventurer
Speaker 1: like you, then I took an arrow to the knee. Well,
Speaker 1: someone has to write all these little lines of NPC
Speaker 1: dialogue like that. Someone's job is to flesh out a
Speaker 1: world by writing all these possible lines that people could
Speaker 1: say in the background, some that players may never even
Speaker 1: consciously register. It's just chatter in the background. So it
Speaker 1: can get pretty dull, particularly if you're trying to work
Speaker 1: in enough variety to make the world feel like it's
Speaker 1: inhabited by actual people and you don't have everyone just
Speaker 1: saying rhubarb, rhubarb in the background. So what ghostwriter does
Speaker 1: is helped generate variations of dialogue options, so you can
Speaker 1: kind of put in a line and it will start
Speaker 1: to use tools to express the same thought but in
Speaker 1: different ways, and you can actually go through and edit
Speaker 1: the responses so that way, if there are any grammatical
Speaker 1: mistakes or anything like that, you can fix them. You
Speaker 1: can accept or reject suggestions, and over time, ghost writer
Speaker 1: gets better at learning what it is you're trying to do,
Speaker 1: and it starts to give you better suggestions the next
Speaker 1: time you use it to generate stuff. This gives writers
Speaker 1: the chance to flesh out their game much more quickly
Speaker 1: and dedicate more of their efforts and their brain power
Speaker 1: and creativity to writing the stuff that really matters and
Speaker 1: helps drive the game's narrative forward. I think it's pretty cool, though.
Speaker 1: I kind of want to have a game now where
Speaker 1: your character passes into a world that's just populated by
Speaker 1: NPCs from all sorts of different games. You know, kind
Speaker 1: of like if Central Casting had been in charge of
Speaker 1: everything and they just grabbed anyone they could and shove there,
Speaker 1: and it's all random INPCS. So you've got fantasy and
Speaker 1: you know, modern day crime in PCs, all sorts of stuff,
Speaker 1: all just intermingling and trying to have conversations, and you
Speaker 1: start to hear these iconic in PC lines from all
Speaker 1: the different famous games out there as you move through
Speaker 1: the area. Someone make that for me. Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: a lot more stories to cover before we get to those.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back. Let's shift
Speaker 1: to talk about TikTok So she Too, the CEO of TikTok,
Speaker 1: submitted testimony in advance of his appearance before Congress, which
Speaker 1: is happening as I record this episode. He's currently in
Speaker 1: front of Congress to answer questions about TikTok as the
Speaker 1: US government ramps up resistance to the app and the company.
Speaker 1: So in the testimony he submitted, Cho claims that the
Speaker 1: average US user of TikTok is quote an adult well
Speaker 1: passed college end quote. This was reported in Insider. The
Speaker 1: Insider piece also cites a sales presentation within TikTok that
Speaker 1: leaked in twenty twenty one and said that around seventeen
Speaker 1: percent of users were between the ages of thirteen and seventeen,
Speaker 1: and forty two percent were between eighteen to twenty four.
Speaker 1: And you might think, well, why does this even matter. Well,
Speaker 1: some of the arguments that politicians have made against TikTok
Speaker 1: focus on how the app can promote harmful messages, particularly
Speaker 1: to younger users, and that this can range from misinformation
Speaker 1: to glorifying self harm to encouraging people to participate in
Speaker 1: dangerous viral challenges. Now, I suppose if TikTok were to say,
Speaker 1: but the people who use our app are actually older
Speaker 1: than that, that it's not that many kids, it's mostly adults.
Speaker 1: That I suppose removes a tiny bit of the oath
Speaker 1: behind the argument that TikTok is bad for kids. But
Speaker 1: I mean if it is true, then that is super
Speaker 1: bad news for Meta because for the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: Meta has looked at platforms like TikTok and also to
Speaker 1: others like Snapchat as dangerous competition. That's where the young
Speaker 1: people were going to instead of to Meta. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: Meta's user base is aging, but there are fewer young
Speaker 1: people coming in, which is bad for long term success
Speaker 1: for the platform. But if it turns out that TikTok
Speaker 1: is not the place where young people are going, then
Speaker 1: who the heck is Meta gonna copy in order to
Speaker 1: try and get those users. Anyway, I'm certain Congress will
Speaker 1: have plenty of other concerns they want to addressed. In fact,
Speaker 1: I know they do because I dipped in just briefly
Speaker 1: to watch a little bit of the hearing. They really
Speaker 1: want to know more about things that honestly, TikTok has
Speaker 1: tried to address multiple times in the past, namely the
Speaker 1: company's relationship to its Chinese parent company Byte Dance and
Speaker 1: then bitte Dances, obligations to the Chinese government, and whether
Speaker 1: or not TikTok is actually keeping safe you know, private
Speaker 1: information and that kind of stuff, or if it's just
Speaker 1: acting as a data siphon for China. You know again,
Speaker 1: TikTok reps repeatedly have said that they have taken steps
Speaker 1: to prevent that kind of stuff from happening. But those
Speaker 1: excuses or reasons, however you want to look at it
Speaker 1: continued to raise skepticism in US government quarters. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a complicated thing, and I'm sure I'll talk more about
Speaker 1: this probably next week when we have heard all the
Speaker 1: outcomes of this hearing. ABC News reports that the US
Speaker 1: Securities in Exchange Commission, or SEC, is going after Justin Sun,
Speaker 1: a cryptocurrency company founder who the SEC claims was transferring
Speaker 1: large amounts of specific cryptocurrency tokens back and forth between
Speaker 1: two different wallets that he owned. So they were both
Speaker 1: his wallets, and he was just transferring large amounts back
Speaker 1: and forth again and again. So why would he do that?
Speaker 1: While according to the SEC, it was an effort to
Speaker 1: inflate the trading volume of the tokens, but to do
Speaker 1: so artificially. So, in other words, if someone from the
Speaker 1: outside's looking in says, oh wow, are these tokens are
Speaker 1: being traded back and forth a lot? This is actually
Speaker 1: being actively used as a currency that helps stabilize the
Speaker 1: value of the tokens because people have a confidence in
Speaker 1: that token for it to hold onto that value if
Speaker 1: in fact it's being actively used and not just hoarded
Speaker 1: or sold off. And it also gave sound the ability
Speaker 1: to try and offload stuff without it impacting the value
Speaker 1: of the tokens itself. So that's what the SEC was saying,
Speaker 1: that he was manipulating the system in order to profit
Speaker 1: off of it. He was fixing the game. In other words,
Speaker 1: there's another charge as well that enlisted the help of
Speaker 1: celebrities to endorse these various cryptocurrency tokens, but there was
Speaker 1: no attempt to divulge the fact that they were being
Speaker 1: paid to do this. So, in other words, the celebrities
Speaker 1: were coming across as if they had just personally researched
Speaker 1: this cryptocurrency and that they were engaged with it on
Speaker 1: their own and they were promoting it because they thought
Speaker 1: it was really cool, as opposed to, hey, i've partnered
Speaker 1: with such and such and they make this thing and
Speaker 1: you should check it out right. So there are very
Speaker 1: specific rules that are in place for endorsements. You have
Speaker 1: to divulge the relationship you have with a sponsor. If
Speaker 1: you are an endorser. You're being paid to endorse something,
Speaker 1: you have to make it clear to people. Otherwise it's
Speaker 1: considered a type of false advertising because it gives the
Speaker 1: appearance that you are independently excited about this product that
Speaker 1: you might not have even heard of had it not
Speaker 1: been for this relationship. So that's a big no no
Speaker 1: here in the US is not acknowledging that there was
Speaker 1: payment exchange for that endorsement. Some of the celebrities named
Speaker 1: in the operation have already agreed to hand back the
Speaker 1: money that they had been paid to endorse the crypto
Speaker 1: tokens in the first place. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: holdouts whom I expect will discover the government would very
Speaker 1: much like to have a talk with them. I haven't
Speaker 1: covered stories about tech companies cracking down on remote work
Speaker 1: for a while, largely because a lot of the big
Speaker 1: companies have essentially put in tough restrictions or have just
Speaker 1: outright denied work from home approaches, but platformers Zoe Schiffer
Speaker 1: reports that Apple is taking steps to keep tabs on
Speaker 1: employees to make sure they come in at least three
Speaker 1: times per week by monitoring their employee badge activity, so
Speaker 1: like a security padge when you tap in or in
Speaker 1: some cases out of a building. I don't know if
Speaker 1: Apple requires you to tap in and out. I remember
Speaker 1: back in the day Discovery did, which became a big
Speaker 1: deal because we when we would visit Discovery back when
Speaker 1: I was part of How Stuff Works. How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: got acquired by Discovery for a while, How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: still had security, but a less thorough security approach where
Speaker 1: let's say that I was arriving at the office with
Speaker 1: my arch nemesis Ben Bolin, I might tap in and
Speaker 1: then both of us just walk in. At Discovery, each
Speaker 1: person was required to tap in in sequence. Like it
Speaker 1: didn't matter if you all arrived at the building in
Speaker 1: a big group, you each had to tap in. I
Speaker 1: assume Apple is the same way. So now, according to Schiffer,
Speaker 1: Apple is tracking that data and if someone is not
Speaker 1: tapping in and out three times per week, they get
Speaker 1: a warning, and if they do it again, they get
Speaker 1: an escalating warning, which presumably ultimately leads to some form
Speaker 1: of reprisal. So that's fun. Nothing like being monitored at work.
Speaker 1: It's the best really helps drive up productivity. Now, I
Speaker 1: will say that my guess is that in the current
Speaker 1: work environment where you have so many big companies laying
Speaker 1: off thousands of employees. I mean, I think even indeed,
Speaker 1: a company that's meant to help people find the right
Speaker 1: kind of staff, they laid off a couple of thousand
Speaker 1: people recently, like fifteen percent of their staff. When that's
Speaker 1: the kind of lay of the land, I imagine there
Speaker 1: are a lot of employees who don't feel comfortable advocating
Speaker 1: for remote work solutions, and so they will do their
Speaker 1: best to conform with these kinds of policies where you
Speaker 1: have to come in a certain number of times per week.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's not a good luck. But again, the
Speaker 1: work environment being what it is, I don't know that
Speaker 1: people feel like they have a lot of alternatives. The
Speaker 1: United States Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, is really stepping
Speaker 1: up recently. The reason I say that is that the
Speaker 1: Verge reports that the FTC is saying subscriptions should be
Speaker 1: just as easy to cancel as they are to initiate. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of you have encountered the experience
Speaker 1: of needing to cancel a subscribe service. Maybe it's your ISP,
Speaker 1: maybe it's a phone plan, maybe it's a streaming subscription,
Speaker 1: or Heaven help you, it's a gym membership, and you've
Speaker 1: probably encountered a situation where you had to go through
Speaker 1: like a wild goose chase just to get out of
Speaker 1: this stupid subscription. I'm actually reminded of when Ryan Block
Speaker 1: tried to cancel his service with Comcast and he was
Speaker 1: put through a ridiculous routine which he recorded and then
Speaker 1: later shared online back in twenty fourteen, and just as
Speaker 1: a personal anecdote, when that story broke, I read about it.
Speaker 1: They didn't initially identify it as Ryan Block, so I
Speaker 1: read it and it's like, oh man, this poor this
Speaker 1: poor guy. He was really just run up the wall
Speaker 1: with the sales representative. I can't believe it. And then
Speaker 1: when I found out who it was, I laughed and
Speaker 1: laughed because I don't know Ryan personally, but I've known
Speaker 1: his wife for like a decade, So when I found
Speaker 1: out it was happening to someone you know that I
Speaker 1: kind of know, it got particularly absurd to me. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the FTC wants that kind of stuff to be buried
Speaker 1: in the past and for companies to adopt a click
Speaker 1: to cancel policy that makes getting out of a subscription
Speaker 1: way less of a hassle. It's supposed to be just
Speaker 1: as easy to end a subscription as it is to
Speaker 1: start one. And since I don't think companies are going
Speaker 1: to win to make it more challenging to sign up
Speaker 1: for a service. You know, the harder it is for
Speaker 1: you to join a service, the less likely you're going
Speaker 1: to do it. Like you might be convinced at first,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, that doesn't sound bad, I'm in. But
Speaker 1: if you start to see there's a curve, like a
Speaker 1: barrier to entry, you might bounce. Those people don't want that, Like,
Speaker 1: they want you to be as committed as you possibly
Speaker 1: can be to the point where you are actually hooked in.
Speaker 1: So they're not going to make signing up more complicated,
Speaker 1: but it does mean that they have to make it
Speaker 1: less complicated to cancel out of something. It would also
Speaker 1: mean that companies that use various incentives to try and
Speaker 1: keep customers on board would have to offer some sort
Speaker 1: of total opt out pathway for people who just don't
Speaker 1: have the time to listen to that kind of pitch.
Speaker 1: So again, if you ever tried to cancel out of
Speaker 1: a phone plan, you probably heard well, you know, if
Speaker 1: you decide to resign with us will give you blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah blah this new set of rules.
Speaker 1: Say no, no, no. You can just say right off
Speaker 1: the top, I'm not interested in hearing any other offers.
Speaker 1: I just want out. However, this particular set of rules
Speaker 1: would not apply to non commercial services, so stuff like
Speaker 1: charitable donations or political donations those would not necessarily get
Speaker 1: covered by these rules. The proposal received a three to
Speaker 1: one vote in the FTC. The one person who voted
Speaker 1: against it is the Loan Republican member of the FTC board.
Speaker 1: But it's still going to be open for public comment,
Speaker 1: so people can actually weigh in on what they think first,
Speaker 1: and that'll all happen before the FTC can adopt the rules,
Speaker 1: which they may end up changing before they adopt. Also,
Speaker 1: the FTC itself would not actually be taking action against
Speaker 1: companies that failed to comply with these rules. Instead, the
Speaker 1: rules would give regulators the ability to enforce them, So essentially,
Speaker 1: it's saying regulators who are already in charge of enforcing
Speaker 1: other rules for companies would just have new rules that
Speaker 1: they could continue to enforce. So pretty good news if
Speaker 1: you have ever suffered the experience of having to try
Speaker 1: and cancel out a something that was designed to make
Speaker 1: it very hard to do that. Okay, got a few
Speaker 1: more stories to go, but before we get to that,
Speaker 1: take another quick break. Before the break, we were talking
Speaker 1: about the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. Now let's talk
Speaker 1: about the FCC or Federal Communications Commission. It is taking
Speaker 1: aim against spam text messages the same way that the
Speaker 1: agency targeted robocalls a couple of years ago. So if
Speaker 1: you're in the US, you might remember that the FCC
Speaker 1: passed rules for telecom companies to shut down robo calls
Speaker 1: whenever possible. It actually led to one network getting shut
Speaker 1: out of the American telecommunications infrastructure where they weren't able
Speaker 1: to interface with any other telephone network because they were
Speaker 1: failing to shut those down. So that was a fair success.
Speaker 1: I mean, I still get robocalls, so I don't think
Speaker 1: it was a total success, but it definitely has cut
Speaker 1: back on that activity. Now they want to do the
Speaker 1: same thing but for spam text messages. So the new
Speaker 1: rule says that phone companies will have to block text
Speaker 1: messages originating from quote invalid, unallocated or underused end quote
Speaker 1: phone numbers. So if it's a phone number that has
Speaker 1: been associated with spam, then the phone company should just
Speaker 1: block those text messages as a rule of thumb. The
Speaker 1: vote passed unanimously within the FCC, So that makes sense
Speaker 1: because there have been a lot of reports of fraud
Speaker 1: connecting to spammy text messages that have been on the
Speaker 1: rise in recent years, and so there's a real need
Speaker 1: to protect the public from scam artists and people who
Speaker 1: are you know, trying to fish for data that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And you know, some people are really really
Speaker 1: vulnerable to that, particularly the older generation tend to be
Speaker 1: more susceptible to those kinds of attacks. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: glad to see this happening as well. I honestly remember
Speaker 1: a time where I would get a phone call that
Speaker 1: you know, obviously I wouldn't answer it. I would go
Speaker 1: online and try and search up the number to a
Speaker 1: reverse search, and there were a lot of resources out
Speaker 1: there that would track whether or not something was a
Speaker 1: spam call. For whatever reason, these days, I can't easily
Speaker 1: find those resources anymore. I don't know if they just stopped,
Speaker 1: or if maybe they're just buried in search results. I
Speaker 1: haven't really dug deep into it, but it got to
Speaker 1: a point where I was getting the stress that I
Speaker 1: couldn't easily see if something that was coming in with
Speaker 1: spam or not. So knowing that there are steps being
Speaker 1: taken to at least shut down the known perpetrators of spam,
Speaker 1: I find that refreshing, because goodness does I just want
Speaker 1: to for my device to be useful, and if I'm
Speaker 1: discouraged from using it because of all the robocalls and spam,
Speaker 1: then I just become a hermit, which, you know, some
Speaker 1: days it's an attractive thought. Okay. Sharon Harding at Ours
Speaker 1: Technica has a terrifying article titled journalists plug in unknown
Speaker 1: USB drive mailed to him it exploded in his face,
Speaker 1: and yeah, the headline is scary, but it actually kind
Speaker 1: of gets worse. So five journalists from Ecuador received USB
Speaker 1: drives in the mail sent from another part within Ecuador,
Speaker 1: so it was within the country that they received these.
Speaker 1: And one of these journalists, a guy named Lennon Artieda,
Speaker 1: inserted the drive into a computer. You know, he plugged
Speaker 1: the USB drive into a laptop or computer, and then
Speaker 1: the USB drive exploded. There's a little capsule sized amount
Speaker 1: of explosive in there that once it received voltage enough voltage,
Speaker 1: it detonated. Fortunately the injuries that Artada received were not serious,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure it was a terrifying experience. So in
Speaker 1: other cases, people received these drives, but they hooked them
Speaker 1: up through adapters that did not provide the voltage needed
Speaker 1: to detonate the device, and they discovered that, in fact,
Speaker 1: they were other explosive devices. As I said, it's been
Speaker 1: five people so far, at least according to the artist
Speaker 1: technic apiece. And you might wonder, well, why the heck
Speaker 1: are journalists in Ecuador receiving explosive devices? And details are
Speaker 1: really scarce on that, Like, there's a lot of speculation
Speaker 1: about what could be the root reason for this. It
Speaker 1: seems reasonable to conclude that this is an attempt to
Speaker 1: intimidate and silence journalists. But honestly, outside of Ecuador, there's
Speaker 1: not a whole love information about out who is responsible
Speaker 1: for this and what purpose it is? Like, what are
Speaker 1: they being silenced about? I am not sure neither is
Speaker 1: Harding at Ours Technica. But Harding does remind us that
Speaker 1: we should never plug in an unknown USB device to
Speaker 1: a computer. If you happen across a USB device. Don't
Speaker 1: attach that to a computer system. You never know what's
Speaker 1: on it. Now, normally I would say don't do it,
Speaker 1: because there could be malware on that USB drive and
Speaker 1: you might introduce that malware. You might inject it into
Speaker 1: your computer and overall into like a network system. Heck,
Speaker 1: that's how stucks Net infected centrifuges in nuclear facilities in Iran.
Speaker 1: Sucks that being some malware that presumably was developed by
Speaker 1: Israel and possibly the United States, probably some sort of
Speaker 1: combination there that then got introduced to otherwise gapped systems
Speaker 1: within Iran. Not easy to do unless you're able to
Speaker 1: hide it on say a USB drive and convince someone
Speaker 1: to connect that drive to the otherwise air gapped systems.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's one reason you would never want to
Speaker 1: plug a USB drive that you came from some unknown
Speaker 1: source into your computer. But another is that it might
Speaker 1: just explode. Finally, last night at Cape Canaveral, and aerospace
Speaker 1: startup called Reality Space became the first company to launch
Speaker 1: a three D printed rocket successfully. Now that's the good news.
Speaker 1: The bad news is that the rocket, designated a Terran one,
Speaker 1: failed during its second stage separation. So it wasn't able
Speaker 1: to achieve low Earth orbit. The three D printed components
Speaker 1: of this rocket made up about eighty five percent of
Speaker 1: the launch vehicle. So this isn't like someone just hit
Speaker 1: print on their laptop and then many, many hours later
Speaker 1: there was a fully built rocket standing there. But instead
Speaker 1: it was about lots of components that were printed three
Speaker 1: D printed, including metal components that were three D printed
Speaker 1: to build this rocket. This approach could really bring down
Speaker 1: launch costs. It ends up simplifying the design and manufacturing
Speaker 1: of rockets, which could really make it more cost effective
Speaker 1: to send stuff to space, which is pretty cool. And
Speaker 1: the fact that the rocket held together for the launch
Speaker 1: is by itself a great achievement. Sure, the second stage
Speaker 1: separation did not go off as planned, which is unfortunate,
Speaker 1: but as we have said many many times on this show,
Speaker 1: rocket science is really hard y'all. The company, meanwhile, has
Speaker 1: aspirations developing rockets that in the future are as much
Speaker 1: as ninety five percent printed, and it's just really exciting.
Speaker 1: It's really cool. I think it has the possibility of
Speaker 1: taking on some of the duties of launching smaller payloads
Speaker 1: into space at a much reduced cost, which comes with
Speaker 1: its own challenges. Obviously, you don't want to launch too
Speaker 1: much stuff because then you've got space junk just orbiting
Speaker 1: the planet and potentially creating obstacles that you have to
Speaker 1: plan around when you're doing future space missions. But also
Speaker 1: it might mean that we could really take advantage of
Speaker 1: some cool opportunities that otherwise would be too expensive for
Speaker 1: us to pursue, and that to me is really exciting.
Speaker 1: All Right, that's it for the news for Thursday, March
Speaker 1: twenty third, twenty twenty three. Hope you're all 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.