Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a lot of all things tech. And this is
Speaker 1: the Tech News for Thursday, September twenty one. And our
Speaker 1: first story is a big one. It's probably gonna take
Speaker 1: the whole first section because there's a lot to say,
Speaker 1: and then there's Jonathan's take on it as well, So
Speaker 1: let's get to it. The Wall Street Journal published an
Speaker 1: article this week revealing that their journalists got to see
Speaker 1: a report about Instagram that is concerning, to say the least,
Speaker 1: while also confirming a lot of commonly held suspicions. Now,
Speaker 1: I think most of us have at least a sense
Speaker 1: that social media can lead us to place unrealistic expectations
Speaker 1: on us in the lives we lead. A lot of
Speaker 1: people have written or talked about the tendency for folks
Speaker 1: to put forward an idealized version of themselves online, like
Speaker 1: it's not the real them, it's an idealized version of them.
Speaker 1: It makes their lives out to seem more dramatic, more exciting,
Speaker 1: and lush than they really are, and Instagram, but it's
Speaker 1: focus on pictures is particularly bad about this. A picture
Speaker 1: tells a thousand words, but you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: those words tend to be Look how awesome I am,
Speaker 1: or how awesome my house is, or how awesome this
Speaker 1: vacation spot is now. Facebook representatives, including Mark Zuckerberg himself,
Speaker 1: have frequently told the public and the United States Congress
Speaker 1: that the benefits of social media include a boost to
Speaker 1: mental health because they allow us to be part of
Speaker 1: communities and to connect with people that we care about.
Speaker 1: And that narrative might seem fairly convincing, particularly during COVID
Speaker 1: times when a lot of us have had few or
Speaker 1: possibly no opportunities to see people we used to hang
Speaker 1: out with, you know, before COVID. But the report that
Speaker 1: Wall Street saw confirmed suspicions that Instagram can have devastatingly
Speaker 1: harmful effects to mental health, particularly for teenage girls. And
Speaker 1: this report didn't come from some third party research group
Speaker 1: that you might suspect was applying confirmation bias to the investigation.
Speaker 1: By that, I mean if you have a group that
Speaker 1: has an agenda like they expect to find something bad,
Speaker 1: then they often will look for something bad, and they'll
Speaker 1: ignore anything that is contrary to that particular you know,
Speaker 1: sort of prejudice. But in this case, the investigation report
Speaker 1: came from inside Facebook itself. Researchers in the company studied
Speaker 1: the effects of Instagram on behavior and mental health and
Speaker 1: found that nearly a third of all teenage girls who
Speaker 1: are on Instagram traced serious issues with self image, confidence,
Speaker 1: and mental health to their participation with Instagram. So let's
Speaker 1: make some very rough estimates here, just again idea of
Speaker 1: how many people we could be talking about. So Instagram
Speaker 1: reportedly has around one billion users. That's billion with a B. Now,
Speaker 1: more than of those users are no older than twenty two.
Speaker 1: That's more than but let's just cut it at that
Speaker 1: gives us four million users who are twenty two or younger. Now,
Speaker 1: let's assume about half of those are women. Statistic, by
Speaker 1: the way, estimates that women make up more than it's
Speaker 1: more like fifty one. But we're doing kind of a
Speaker 1: pen on a napkin style estimation here. So that means
Speaker 1: two hundred million young women and girls are using Instagram. Now,
Speaker 1: let's say that of that number are older than teenagers. Okay,
Speaker 1: so one fifth of that number. This is just me
Speaker 1: saying this that one fifth of them are aged twenty
Speaker 1: or older. That's probably a generous estimate. It's probably fewer
Speaker 1: than that, but I'm just doing this for the purposes
Speaker 1: of illustrations. That would leave us with one sixty million
Speaker 1: teenage girls. And the report said that around thirty two
Speaker 1: of the girls that were you know, part of the
Speaker 1: study said they ended up experiencing a negative impact on
Speaker 1: their mental health that they attributed to their participation on Instagram.
Speaker 1: So that means more than if we apply this across
Speaker 1: the board and say that is representative, that would mean
Speaker 1: that more than fifty one million teenage girls could be
Speaker 1: struggling with mental health problems. They're the very least exacerbated
Speaker 1: by their time on Instagram. By the way, it gets worse.
Speaker 1: Those mental health issues can ripple into other dangerous and
Speaker 1: catastrophic consequences, everything from developing eating disorders or even leading
Speaker 1: to suicidal thoughts. Fifty one million teenage girls, and again
Speaker 1: that's a rough estimate, and I took some pretty conservative
Speaker 1: shortcuts getting there. Okay, so what's actually leading to the
Speaker 1: issues that we're seeing with mental health? One possible contributor,
Speaker 1: and again we're talking about possibilities. Here would be a
Speaker 1: tendency called social comparison, and that's exactly what sounds like.
Speaker 1: It's when you see the depiction of someone else's life
Speaker 1: and then you compare your own life to that person's life,
Speaker 1: and you come back with like a negative feeling about
Speaker 1: your own situation. So maybe it's an influencer who looks
Speaker 1: like they're in phenomenal shape. This happened to me. I'm
Speaker 1: not a teenage girl. I'm a middle aged man. But
Speaker 1: when I started on my fitness journey, which I totally
Speaker 1: have fallen off of because COVID and then a lack
Speaker 1: of resolve I'll say on my part. Anyway, when I
Speaker 1: was on that journey, I actually looked at some Instagram
Speaker 1: accounts that were about fitness, which meant that Instagram was
Speaker 1: serving up tons of different pictures of people who were
Speaker 1: insane shape. I mean Greek statues would be jealous of them, uh.
Speaker 1: And so I was inundated with images of people who
Speaker 1: were in much better shape than I was, some of
Speaker 1: which appeared to suggest that they got there in a
Speaker 1: very short amount of time. Obviously, this stuff can be
Speaker 1: rather than motivating, discouraging, right, Like if I'm seeing people
Speaker 1: who are like, yeah, you just must not be doing
Speaker 1: it right because I got to where I am in
Speaker 1: three weeks or something like that, some ludicrous explanation that
Speaker 1: can be very discouraging to me. Well, that's just one example.
Speaker 1: Or maybe the influencer is wearing designer clothing. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: hanging out in gorgeous locations. I mean, how many times
Speaker 1: have you opened Instagram and just browse stuff and saw
Speaker 1: incredibly hot people hanging out on yachts or by pools
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. In fact, I mentioned influencers. We
Speaker 1: do have an entire profession called influencer that is geared
Speaker 1: toward that kind of experience to project this pick sure
Speaker 1: of idealization, and their whole job is to influence you,
Speaker 1: to convince you that they're living out their best life
Speaker 1: and that they're being showered with amazing products and trips
Speaker 1: and stuff, and that your life could be better if
Speaker 1: it was more like their life. And then you've got
Speaker 1: the issue with people getting obsessed over numbers on Instagram,
Speaker 1: like how many followers they might have, or how many
Speaker 1: likes a post gets or how many comments of post receives.
Speaker 1: And again, if we look at influencers, we see them
Speaker 1: constantly trying to prompt engagement, often by including sort of
Speaker 1: some sort of question as a caption for a photo.
Speaker 1: So I happen to really like cool cosplay. Instagram profiles
Speaker 1: people who put in tons of work and make incredible costumes,
Speaker 1: so I get a mix of all sorts of cosplayers
Speaker 1: served up. Now, some of these cosplayers, will you know,
Speaker 1: end up posting provocative images, maybe something a bit steamy. Right.
Speaker 1: Then they'll include a caption that might say something like
Speaker 1: cheezburgers or hot dogs, which could possibly have nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the image itself, but that gets people commenting,
Speaker 1: because increased engagement is currency for influencers. Heck, I remember
Speaker 1: when some influencers were using the trick of spell out
Speaker 1: such and such in the comments letter by letter, meaning
Speaker 1: that you would post each letter in order as a
Speaker 1: separate post as a separate comment in order to prove something.
Speaker 1: I guess that was really just a trick to kind
Speaker 1: of get more comments, because if you get a high
Speaker 1: comment count as an influencer, your price tag starts to
Speaker 1: go up for brands. Right. Meanwhile, people who are comparing
Speaker 1: themselves against these sorts of influencers may start to feel
Speaker 1: really badly about themselves, like they're not popular, that something's
Speaker 1: wrong with them, and Instagram reinforces that experience again and again. Worse,
Speaker 1: Instagram has a vicious cycle built into it because so
Speaker 1: many young people use Instagram to interact with their peers.
Speaker 1: It's almost as if being on the platform is necessary
Speaker 1: just to take part in socialization with your peer group,
Speaker 1: and the experience, even when negative, can lead to compulsive
Speaker 1: use of the platform. It's like, you can't quit it
Speaker 1: because you need it. Now, I'm not just spouting off
Speaker 1: my own opinions here, although I'm doing a bit of
Speaker 1: that too. According to The Wall Street Journal, that internal
Speaker 1: report that Facebook researchers generated backs a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff up. The researchers generated that report back in the
Speaker 1: spring of twenty twenty. But wait, it gets worse because
Speaker 1: in the spring of this year, twenty twenty one, Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg said at a congressional hearing that essentially their research
Speaker 1: indicated that social platforms like Instagram have a benefit of
Speaker 1: positive effect on mental health, which is the exact opposite
Speaker 1: of what this internal report found. Now, again, it's an
Speaker 1: internal report. Facebook did not share this outside the company,
Speaker 1: so I don't think you can say that Facebook in general,
Speaker 1: like executives in general, were on a aware of it.
Speaker 1: Possibly Zuckerberg was unaware of it. I mean, maybe this
Speaker 1: is like a case with Independence Day where the president
Speaker 1: isn't told about the alien at area fifty one for
Speaker 1: the purposes of plausible deniability. Maybe that happened. I doubt it,
Speaker 1: but maybe Anyway. Congress people had already remarked on how
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg seemed evasive when answering questions, like he was trying
Speaker 1: to find ways to talk around things without actually addressing them,
Speaker 1: and that had already raised concerns even before the existence
Speaker 1: of this report was known. But this report confirms that
Speaker 1: those concerns were well narrated and to make matters even worse.
Speaker 1: Even knowing this, even knowing the potentially disastrous effect the
Speaker 1: experience of being on Instagram can have on young people,
Speaker 1: Facebook has been hard at work to develop an aversion
Speaker 1: for Instagram for kids under the age of thirteen. Now,
Speaker 1: let that settle in for a bit. You have a
Speaker 1: company knowing that its product can have harmful effects on
Speaker 1: young girls, they have a whole report about it, and
Speaker 1: they're working to make a product for even younger ones. Also,
Speaker 1: I should add that while the report focuses on young girls,
Speaker 1: those are not the only people have a negative impact
Speaker 1: from this stuff. I mean, I just mentioned that I
Speaker 1: experienced this on a certain scale, so it can affect
Speaker 1: people of all genders and ages. The teen girls appear
Speaker 1: to be, you know, as a as a population, slightly
Speaker 1: more vulnerable to this sort of influence, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they they're the only ones who end up feeling
Speaker 1: lesser than after spending time on Instagram. It happens to
Speaker 1: a lot of people. So then the question comes down
Speaker 1: to what is to be done about this? Now? I
Speaker 1: suspect that without intense external pressure, not much is going
Speaker 1: to change a Facebook and Instagram. Uh. Facebook really hasn't
Speaker 1: seemed to take any massive steps towards reducing the harm
Speaker 1: it causes unless public opinion, political pressure, or most effectively
Speaker 1: and most telling lee pressure from advertisers has forced it
Speaker 1: to do so. Facebook is a heck of an example
Speaker 1: of a capitalist organization gone to the extreme, in which
Speaker 1: the primary purpose of the organization is to return value
Speaker 1: to shareholders and everything else is secondary or maybe not
Speaker 1: even a consideration. That being said, democratic lawmakers here in
Speaker 1: the United States are starting to apply that kind of
Speaker 1: pressure right now. In fact, today they've been calling on
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg to give up on this idea of an Instagram
Speaker 1: app for kids. There's also talk of another massive investigation
Speaker 1: into the company, and armed with this internal report, I
Speaker 1: think Zuckerberg is destined for another very uncomfortable hearing in
Speaker 1: front of Congress. But for most of us, I think
Speaker 1: the study shows that parents really need to be aware
Speaker 1: of these influences and to take an active role in
Speaker 1: helping their children with stuff like self esteem and confidence,
Speaker 1: and an understanding that the representations we see of people
Speaker 1: online are often a fabrication and are not reflective of reality,
Speaker 1: nor are they reflective of a person's value. We need
Speaker 1: to educate everyone that the reason most of this content
Speaker 1: that falls into this kind of harmful tendency usually is
Speaker 1: meant to ultimately serve one of a couple of different
Speaker 1: purposes that are tightly related. Now, often it's all in
Speaker 1: the effort to sell you something. Now, it might be
Speaker 1: a specific branded product, or the thing on sale might
Speaker 1: actually be the brand of the person who's sharing the
Speaker 1: content themselves, or it could be to boost a person's status,
Speaker 1: essentially saying look and how amazing my life is because
Speaker 1: I'm the best. But either way, understanding that the images
Speaker 1: that you see are not necessarily showing you what's really
Speaker 1: going on, and also that the reason that these images
Speaker 1: exist is to push out a specific branding message, all
Speaker 1: of that is helpful. I mean, I see this everywhere obviously,
Speaker 1: like this this tendency, especially in relation to Instagram. It's everywhere,
Speaker 1: like there are plenty of pop up experiences that really
Speaker 1: only exist for the purposes of people to take selfies
Speaker 1: at them and to kind of generate this image of
Speaker 1: a fun experience. But the whole experience is just about
Speaker 1: taking those selfies. Like there's nothing, there's nothing more substantive
Speaker 1: to the experience that that's all it is. It's just
Speaker 1: surface level that in itself may not, you know, be
Speaker 1: harmful on the face of it, but it contributes to
Speaker 1: this tendency I'm talking about. Also, the report found that
Speaker 1: most other social platforms don't have nearly the same negative
Speaker 1: impact as Instagram. Stuff like TikTok tends to be focused
Speaker 1: more on performance than on appearance. Stuff on Snapchat tends
Speaker 1: to feature lots of ridiculous filters, and these things don't
Speaker 1: seem to contribute as much of a negative effect on
Speaker 1: mental health. So long long coverage of that one story.
Speaker 1: But I think this one is really important. I don't
Speaker 1: think it was quite enough for me to of a
Speaker 1: full episode dedicated to it unless I get an expert in,
Speaker 1: but I really wanted to talk about it because it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty damning that Facebook had its own internal report
Speaker 1: that said these things, and yet outwardly the company has
Speaker 1: behaved as if everything it does is fine, when that
Speaker 1: is patently not the case, and they know it, and
Speaker 1: that's the worst part. All Right, We're gonna go and
Speaker 1: take a break, and when we come back, we'll have
Speaker 1: some other unrelated tech news. On Tuesday's episode this week,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that Apple was about to hold its iPhone
Speaker 1: thirteen event, but at that point it had not yet
Speaker 1: done so as I was recording the show. Obviously it's
Speaker 1: happened since then, and some of you may know all
Speaker 1: about this, But really the big surprise at the event
Speaker 1: was that some of the stuff that was rumored to
Speaker 1: be featured, like a really big update to the Apple
Speaker 1: Watch and new air pods, uh, those actually weren't part
Speaker 1: of the show. I mean, there was a new Apple Watch,
Speaker 1: but the The big changes that had been rumored uh
Speaker 1: ended up being just a slightly larger screen and a
Speaker 1: couple of new features, but nothing like the redesign that
Speaker 1: folks were expecting. Uh, you know, nothing dramatic. The new
Speaker 1: watch looks fairly close to the previous ones. It's a
Speaker 1: little bigger with the screen, and the air pods with
Speaker 1: the rumored shorter stems were a no show at the event.
Speaker 1: There are also rumors about the iPhone itself, a big
Speaker 1: one being that Apple was going to build in some
Speaker 1: sort of satellite cell phone feature so that there would
Speaker 1: be a transmitter where you could actually make a satellite
Speaker 1: phone call if you had to. Now, you wouldn't normally
Speaker 1: use the satellite system. There are issues with latency. It
Speaker 1: tends to be a really expensive kind of thing to do.
Speaker 1: But according to these rumors, you would be able to
Speaker 1: make use of this feature if you happen to be
Speaker 1: in an area that had no cell service. So that way,
Speaker 1: if you need to make an emergency phone call but
Speaker 1: you weren't close to a cell tower or a WiFi hotspot,
Speaker 1: you can do it. But that ended up not being
Speaker 1: part of the announcements either. So what we did get
Speaker 1: were new iPhones with new A fifteen bionic chips powering them.
Speaker 1: That's a proprietary chip from Apple, a new dual camera system,
Speaker 1: and the two pro models support a one hurts refresh
Speaker 1: rate for the screen. Now that means that the screen
Speaker 1: refreshes on times per second. The iPad also got a facelift.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, the announcements were fairly modest in nature. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I wonder if it actually benefits Apple to keep holding
Speaker 1: these big marketing events unless there happens to be something
Speaker 1: that's going to really blow people's socks off, because the
Speaker 1: company set expectations ridiculously high with big reveals, you know,
Speaker 1: a decade ago or more, and now there's a tendency
Speaker 1: for folks to say, oh, that's it, even even if
Speaker 1: the stuff that Apple is showing is an improvement over
Speaker 1: previous models, because you know, it's not like a show
Speaker 1: stopper kind of thing. But hey, I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: two trillion dollar company and the folks running it are
Speaker 1: way smarter than I am, so I'm sure I'm just
Speaker 1: not seeing the big picture. In the past, I've talked
Speaker 1: about the N s O Group a few times on
Speaker 1: this show. That's the Israeli company famous for developing a
Speaker 1: malware tool that exploits security vulnerabilities and Apple's Eye message program.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, that's not the only company
Speaker 1: to take aim at I message and create exploits. An
Speaker 1: American company called Acuvant once upon a time did the
Speaker 1: same thing. Now use the past tense here because Acuvant
Speaker 1: subsequently found itself absorbed into a larger company called Optive,
Speaker 1: and reportedly Optive is out of the exploit development game,
Speaker 1: but Acuvant was very much in that game, using security
Speaker 1: experts to not just find vulnerabilities in various software platforms,
Speaker 1: but to develop exploits that leveraged those vulnerabilities, then selling
Speaker 1: those as products to various other entities, usually government agencies.
Speaker 1: So while I heap a lot of criticism on n
Speaker 1: s O Group, which you know, does a similar thing
Speaker 1: with the blessing and restrictions of the Israeli government, we
Speaker 1: are seeing the same sort of thing going on in
Speaker 1: other parts of the world, including here in the United States. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I bring all this up because the m I T
Speaker 1: Technology Review reports that the U. S. Department of Justice
Speaker 1: recently find three former U S intelligence and military personnel
Speaker 1: for working for the United Arab Emirates without US permission
Speaker 1: in what was called Project Raven. The operatives were using
Speaker 1: this exploit, they had purchased it from Acuvant, and then
Speaker 1: they were acting as mercenaries. They were deploying the exploit
Speaker 1: on behalf of the U A E. And reportedly the
Speaker 1: list of targets included American citizens and companies. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know that's a big no no working on behalf
Speaker 1: of a foreign government when you're a U. S citizen
Speaker 1: without you know, the consent of the United States government.
Speaker 1: The finds amounted to a little less than one point
Speaker 1: seven million dollars. I'm assuming that's collectively, but the m
Speaker 1: I T Technology Review Report was not specific, so to
Speaker 1: be clear, the focus here is on the three and
Speaker 1: that investigation, and there's not really any investigation into optave
Speaker 1: or the former equivant. So if you take it like that,
Speaker 1: you know, you could say, oh, well, the government says
Speaker 1: it's okay if for your companies to develop tools that
Speaker 1: specifically exploit some other company's product, you know, I message
Speaker 1: from Apple in this case, it's just not okay to
Speaker 1: take that same product and then work with a foreign government.
Speaker 1: Pretty weird world we live in anyway. I Message, as
Speaker 1: the Technology Review points out, is a very popular destination
Speaker 1: for malware because Apple includes it on every iPhone, so
Speaker 1: the install base is on every single iPhone that's out
Speaker 1: there and you can't uninstall it. Anyone using an iOS
Speaker 1: device with your phone number can send you a message
Speaker 1: on I Message, and I Message automatically accepts those incoming messages,
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if you don't recognize the number or not.
Speaker 1: So if you build in what's called a zero click exploit,
Speaker 1: that's an exploit that doesn't need someone to click on
Speaker 1: a link or open up a file or anything like that,
Speaker 1: it just infects malware as long as there's a hit. Well.
Speaker 1: That means you can have one of these compromise your
Speaker 1: phone just because you receive the message on I Message.
Speaker 1: Apple has patched the vulnerabilities and I Message a couple
Speaker 1: of times, including a patch called blast Door, but hackers
Speaker 1: are always looking for other cracks in the security around
Speaker 1: the app, and it's a constant seesaw battle between developers
Speaker 1: and hackers. In addition to that, one of those three
Speaker 1: people that have been fined by the US government for
Speaker 1: this thing is Daniel Garrick, who currently serves as the
Speaker 1: Chief Information Officer or c i O of Express VPN,
Speaker 1: now the v The end company says it was aware
Speaker 1: of Garrick's previous activities before they hired him, that he
Speaker 1: was completely transparent about that, and that might sound surprising,
Speaker 1: but then the company said that his experience was what
Speaker 1: made him valuable to the company. So VPNs, or virtual
Speaker 1: private networks, are a way for people to log into
Speaker 1: one system in order to access other systems privately. Uh Effectively,
Speaker 1: it masks your activities between you and whichever end server
Speaker 1: you're trying to access. The VPN is kind of like
Speaker 1: the man in the middle in this case, and they're
Speaker 1: you know, encrypting everything so that snoopers don't know what
Speaker 1: it is you're actually doing. Anyway, Express VPN's stance was
Speaker 1: that Garrick's experiences meant he understood security vulnerabilities because he
Speaker 1: had been searching for them and then exploiting them. So
Speaker 1: this could help the company build more effective tools to
Speaker 1: protect security and privacy, because who do you want on
Speaker 1: your team other than, you know, the person who knows
Speaker 1: how to break those thingsings And that definitely makes sense
Speaker 1: from that perspective. Now, the bit about him working as
Speaker 1: a mercenary for a foreign government seems a bit much
Speaker 1: to me, but I get the concept of wanting to
Speaker 1: find someone to put on your team who has experience
Speaker 1: of familiarity with exploits. A few weeks ago, I talked
Speaker 1: about how employees at Activision Blizzard had brought forth charges
Speaker 1: relating to a toxic work culture within the company and
Speaker 1: had been part of that company for years, including charges
Speaker 1: of sexual harassment and assault, as well as a tendency
Speaker 1: for the company to protect certain employees accused of perpetrating
Speaker 1: or encouraging some truly awful behavior. There are also charges
Speaker 1: of general gender discrimination, like women getting paid significantly less
Speaker 1: for doing the same job as their male counterparts. Now
Speaker 1: the company is in the news again because the Communications
Speaker 1: Workers of America or c w A alleges that Activision
Speaker 1: Blizzard intimidated employees in an to prevent unionization. In other words,
Speaker 1: they didn't want their employees to band together to form
Speaker 1: a union, so they set about hiring folks who would
Speaker 1: you know, prevent that from happening. As such, the labor
Speaker 1: organization has now brought a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard. According
Speaker 1: to the organizing director of the c W A Tom Smith. Quote,
Speaker 1: Activision Blizzards response to righteous worker activity was surveillance, intimidation
Speaker 1: and hiring notorious union busters end quote. So that righteous
Speaker 1: worker activity reference, Uh, that's actually two employees who were
Speaker 1: taking a stand against Activision Blizzard, protesting conditions about you know,
Speaker 1: the disparities and the sexual harassment and bringing those things
Speaker 1: into the spotlight. I should add there's an ongoing discussion
Speaker 1: within the gaming community over whether or not it's a
Speaker 1: good idea to boycott Activision Blizzard titles. You know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of Twitch streamers who have been talking
Speaker 1: about this, and some argue that this sends a message
Speaker 1: to the company, and it's a message that's hard to
Speaker 1: ignore because if enough people are boycotting the products, that
Speaker 1: hurts the bottom line. It has to be a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and the odds of getting that many people
Speaker 1: to participate are pretty low. But if you can do it,
Speaker 1: it sends a definite message. But then you have other
Speaker 1: people saying no, game developers who are working under these
Speaker 1: awful conditions are doing so partly because they really want
Speaker 1: their work to be seen and experienced and enjoyed, and
Speaker 1: that a boycott kind of pours salt on an already
Speaker 1: you know, painful wound. So it's a complicated situation. Speaking
Speaker 1: of complicated situations, I haven't talked about Tharoness for a while,
Speaker 1: but the trial of the former CEO of that doomed company,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Holmes, is now underway and Erica Cheung, who once
Speaker 1: worked for Tharaus, is testifying, and she actually has testified
Speaker 1: that she observed questionable processes in the company as Holmes
Speaker 1: continued to court investors to spend money on thairness, and
Speaker 1: also as she was engaging in a rather lavish and
Speaker 1: eccentric lifestyle. All right, so quick refresher on homes and thoroughness.
Speaker 1: Holmes attended Stanford University before dropping out to go on
Speaker 1: to found a biotech medical company that would evolve into Thoroughness. Now.
Speaker 1: The goal was to develop a blood scanning technology that
Speaker 1: could take a minuscule amount of blood as a sample
Speaker 1: and then run a battery of tests on it, potentially
Speaker 1: more than one hundred tests all from that tiny sample,
Speaker 1: and then print out definitive and easy to understand results
Speaker 1: based on those tests. So the ideal goal was to
Speaker 1: produce something around the size of a desktop printer that
Speaker 1: could do all of this, potentially even creating a consumer
Speaker 1: version that people could buy and have in their own homes.
Speaker 1: They could then run tests to understand whether that take
Speaker 1: in the back of their throat with something serious or not,
Speaker 1: or they could scan to see whether they might be
Speaker 1: a risk for developing some sort of serious condition down
Speaker 1: the line based upon their blood work. This was all
Speaker 1: supposed to democratize medicine, to disrupt the entire blood testing industry,
Speaker 1: and to empower patients so that they could have better,
Speaker 1: more informed conversations with their doctors. But there was a
Speaker 1: bit of a problem, and that problem was the tech
Speaker 1: was just not up to snuff, and some folks, including
Speaker 1: some people who served as advisors to Holmes while she
Speaker 1: was at Stanford, have expressed that they thought the tech
Speaker 1: might not ever work on such a small sample, that
Speaker 1: this is just asking too much from the tech and
Speaker 1: it puts too much faith on the powers of technology.
Speaker 1: That alone is somewhat understandable. I mean, I see a
Speaker 1: lot of people like putting a lot of hope in technology.
Speaker 1: But you can kind of get that because most of
Speaker 1: us carry a device in our pockets or our handbags,
Speaker 1: that is far more powerful than the most powerful personal
Speaker 1: computer from a decade ago, and we just carry it
Speaker 1: around with us wherever we go. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: what smartphone is. So if that became a reality, then
Speaker 1: what can't tech do. That's sort of the thought process.
Speaker 1: Chung's testimony included the revelation that Thereness staff had a
Speaker 1: six data point test that each each you know, blood
Speaker 1: test was supposed to pass in order to meet quality
Speaker 1: control standards. So, in other words, when you ran a
Speaker 1: test on the equipment, it should meet these six data points,
Speaker 1: and if it doesn't, then it's a failed test. But
Speaker 1: the staff were told to delete up to two of
Speaker 1: those six points if that would mean that the test
Speaker 1: would otherwise pass. So in other words, if you said, well,
Speaker 1: if we ignore these outliers, then everything's fine. So in
Speaker 1: other words, this could be seen as a form of
Speaker 1: cherry picking, looking for positives and then ignoring the negatives
Speaker 1: in order to boost your numbers. Chung quit her job
Speaker 1: after working for Thoroughness for six months, uh disillusioned that
Speaker 1: she was working for an organization that was, in her mind,
Speaker 1: at best unprofessional and at worst downright unethical. Chung was
Speaker 1: previously featured as a whistleblower in the book Bad Blood,
Speaker 1: which is probably the most thorough expose a on Thorodness,
Speaker 1: certainly the most famous. She was also featured on the
Speaker 1: HBO documentary The Inventor. Cross Examination of Chung began yesterday
Speaker 1: it will pick up again tomorrow on Friday. Well, I've
Speaker 1: got a couple more stories to cover, but before I
Speaker 1: do that, let's take another quick break and now we
Speaker 1: move over to the world of n f t s
Speaker 1: or non fungible tokens. These have been likened by some people,
Speaker 1: including myself, as a sort of digital receipt that shows
Speaker 1: that you quote unquote own some instance of something. Right, technically,
Speaker 1: what you own is a digital token that represents something else.
Speaker 1: That something else could be data in the form of
Speaker 1: like an illustration or a digital baseball card, or a
Speaker 1: tweet or something else. And the n f T market
Speaker 1: is built on top of blockchain technology, which means that
Speaker 1: the chain of ownership of an n f T is
Speaker 1: well established and distributed in a ledger. Uh There's so
Speaker 1: everyone who's part of the system can see when an
Speaker 1: n f T changes hands from one entity to another
Speaker 1: and verify that yes, ownership of this n f T
Speaker 1: has changed. So what can you do with n f
Speaker 1: T s. Well, you could collect them. You could try
Speaker 1: and do some speculative investing, So you could try and
Speaker 1: buy an n f T and hope that it improves
Speaker 1: in value and then sell it off for a profit.
Speaker 1: Or if you're an employee of open c that's s
Speaker 1: e A that was that's an n f T marketplace
Speaker 1: by the way, then you might engage in a little
Speaker 1: insider trading. Apparently an open Sea employee secretly purchased n
Speaker 1: f T s that the employee knew we're soon going
Speaker 1: to be featured on the front page of the open
Speaker 1: see website, and I guess the idea was that the
Speaker 1: n f T S value would increase due to the
Speaker 1: exposure of being on the front page of the website.
Speaker 1: Then the employee could sell off the n f T
Speaker 1: s at an inflated value for a tidy profit. Now,
Speaker 1: the company did not say who that employee was. A
Speaker 1: user on Twitter with the handle at zu w u
Speaker 1: t V or zooo TV accused the head of product
Speaker 1: for open c, a guy named Nate Chastain, of engaging
Speaker 1: in this behavior, but open Sea gave no real confirmation
Speaker 1: that that's the employee in question, at least not as
Speaker 1: I record this episode. However, a Chinese news platform reported
Speaker 1: that chas Stain's scheme brought in the equivalent of sixty
Speaker 1: seven thousand dollars of Ether cryptocurrency. But that's according to
Speaker 1: the current value of Ether, because cryptocurrency values tend to fluctuate,
Speaker 1: so on one day it might be you know, sixty
Speaker 1: four thousand, on another day it might be sixty eight thousands,
Speaker 1: so it can change pretty dramatically in short order. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to make these kind of calls.
Speaker 1: But yeah, not great. Not great to have any sort
Speaker 1: of insider trading. It's it's not the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that you can necessarily get away with quickly, because if
Speaker 1: people are paying attention to which digital wallet these n
Speaker 1: f t s are going to, then they can start
Speaker 1: to connect the dots. Even though like on the surface
Speaker 1: level it looks like it's anonymous, if you're really paying
Speaker 1: attention to stuff, you can start to draw some conclusions,
Speaker 1: and that is what happened in this case. Now, you
Speaker 1: might remember, if you've listened to previous news episodes of
Speaker 1: tech stuff, that General Motors has had to issue a
Speaker 1: global recall on the Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicle, and the
Speaker 1: problem stems from faulty batteries, which can develop a short
Speaker 1: circuit and that leads to the battery overheating and potentially
Speaker 1: catching on fire. Now, the company has started to advise
Speaker 1: some Bolt owners that they shouldn't park their cars within
Speaker 1: fifty feet of any other vehicles, which yauza, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, think about that in different parking situations, like
Speaker 1: parking decks or parking lots. I live in Atlanta, and
Speaker 1: if you're going anywhere in the city, it's going to
Speaker 1: be a real challenge to find a spot that's fifty
Speaker 1: feet from all other vehicles. But that illustrates how serious
Speaker 1: this issue is and how seriously Bolt owners need to
Speaker 1: take this now. To be clear, GM has given this
Speaker 1: advice in response to Bolt owners who have called into
Speaker 1: the company into like a helpline to ask what they
Speaker 1: should do when it comes to parking their vehicles. So
Speaker 1: this is not a proactive message that's going out to
Speaker 1: Bolt owners. It's more like a well, we would advise
Speaker 1: you not to park anywhere close to another car, just
Speaker 1: in case your car starts to catch on fire, like
Speaker 1: an answer to a question. Now, the recall is expected
Speaker 1: to cost GM somewhere in the neighborhood of one point
Speaker 1: eight billion dollars. As someone who is generally in favor
Speaker 1: of electric vehicles, I'm kind of sad to see the
Speaker 1: situation happen, not the recall. I'm not sad that they're
Speaker 1: recalling the faulty vehicles. That's absolutely necessary. Instead, I'm just
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, bummed that the defective batteries are
Speaker 1: there in the first place, because anything that could contribute
Speaker 1: to a reluctance to move toward an electric fleet is
Speaker 1: going to make that process more difficult. But the fact
Speaker 1: remains that we really do need to transition away from
Speaker 1: fossil fuel vehicles. Actually that that includes the entire chain,
Speaker 1: from the power production facilities like power plants, all the
Speaker 1: way down to the technology that we're relying upon day
Speaker 1: to day, like our vehicles. My last story today is
Speaker 1: a pretty cool one cern the Scientific Organization that I
Speaker 1: think might be best known in the United States either
Speaker 1: as the company that ended up or organization I should
Speaker 1: say that ended up giving birth to the Worldwide Web
Speaker 1: because of Tim berners Lee, who was working at started
Speaker 1: at the time, or more likely these days, it might
Speaker 1: be known as the organization in charge of the large
Speaker 1: Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator. Anyway, it's created a tool
Speaker 1: that's being used by the organization as well as the
Speaker 1: Institute of Global Health at the University of Geneva to
Speaker 1: use machine learning to determine what the most effective methods
Speaker 1: would be to prevent the spread of COVID nineteen in
Speaker 1: school settings. So we're seeing a lot of unfortunate and
Speaker 1: scary news about school systems being affected by COVID breakouts,
Speaker 1: and clearly students, teachers, and staff all want safe environments,
Speaker 1: but it can be difficult to know how to go
Speaker 1: about creating those environments, particularly when you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of variables involved, and you also have different levels of
Speaker 1: understanding about the behavior or the virus. Sometimes you get
Speaker 1: information that appears to contradict earlier information, so that can
Speaker 1: cause confusion. So the research with this tool has shown
Speaker 1: that a few things are most effective at really preventing
Speaker 1: the spread of COVID. Among those things are natural ventilation,
Speaker 1: so open windows are a good uh HEPPA filtration systems
Speaker 1: that's h g p A filtration systems in order to
Speaker 1: filter out contaminants in the air and face masks are
Speaker 1: all the most effective you know strategies when they're all
Speaker 1: used in combination with one another. On top of that
Speaker 1: are practices that improve it even more, like social distancing,
Speaker 1: so keeping everyone six ft apart or more, vaccinations clearly
Speaker 1: very very important, and contact tracing in the event of
Speaker 1: an actual case being detected, so that you can figure
Speaker 1: out who that person has been in close contact with.
Speaker 1: Since in most cases kids still can't get vaccinated yet,
Speaker 1: especially younger kids can't get vaccinated, these steps are really
Speaker 1: important because they can't benefit from the vaccination themselves. I mean,
Speaker 1: they can benefit from the fact that adults around them
Speaker 1: are vaccinated, but you know, the kids can't get vaccinated. Now,
Speaker 1: you might say that this all just confirms what we
Speaker 1: already thought, but that's an important part of science. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we find out that the thing we suspected to be
Speaker 1: true is true. That does happen. But there are other
Speaker 1: times where the science shows we don't have the full picture,
Speaker 1: or maybe we're asking the wrong questions. Because that's how
Speaker 1: science works and why it's not as simple as this
Speaker 1: is how it is and nothing more. Now. The reason
Speaker 1: I say all that is actually not the lecture you,
Speaker 1: because I know it comes across that way. But that's
Speaker 1: not why I say it. I say it because I
Speaker 1: need to remind myself of this very thing, because I
Speaker 1: know that I have been guilty of looking at a
Speaker 1: situation and drawing a conclusion and then acting on that
Speaker 1: conclusion without you know, actually investigating whether or not that
Speaker 1: conclusion was valid in the first place. That's not critical thinking,
Speaker 1: and I've been guilty of it. So I say this
Speaker 1: to try and hold myself more accountable. And yeah, responsibility
Speaker 1: tastes bad. Well that's the news for Thursday, Septe one.
Speaker 1: There was a ton of it, a lot of Jonathan
Speaker 1: on a soapbox. I make no apologies for it. I
Speaker 1: appreciate all you who listen all the way through, and
Speaker 1: I understand that you may not agree with my perspective.
Speaker 1: I completely respect that as long as you know you're
Speaker 1: respecting others. That's the most important part, making sure that
Speaker 1: we all do our own efforts to keep not just
Speaker 1: ourselves safe, but everyone else too, like we gotta look
Speaker 1: out for each other. Anyway, if you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: topics I should cover on future episodes of Tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: reach out to me the handle for the show. It's
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again. Really.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more
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