Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Be there
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the news for Thursday October
Speaker 1: twenty six, twenty twenty three, and let's start off with
Speaker 1: some news about hackers and vulnerability, shall we. Ours Technica
Speaker 1: has an article titled pro Russia hackers target inboxes with
Speaker 1: zero day in webmail app used by millions. The webmail
Speaker 1: app in question is round cubes webmail application. Many organizations,
Speaker 1: like a lot of universities, rely upon round cube and
Speaker 1: they reskin it as a different email service, but they
Speaker 1: use that for their staff and students. It's real least
Speaker 1: under the GNU or GANW General Public License. It's available
Speaker 1: for anyone to download, deploy, and distribute. But it turns
Speaker 1: out that until very recently it had a vulnerability in
Speaker 1: cross site scripting that gives hackers the chance to actually
Speaker 1: compromise email servers and user computers and then intercept communications
Speaker 1: sent across that machine's email. So the attack is pretty insidious.
Speaker 1: The hackers hide the attack inside an email. The only
Speaker 1: thing that the victim has to do in order for
Speaker 1: the attack to launch is to view the email. They
Speaker 1: don't have to click on any links. This isn't like
Speaker 1: a phishing attack, or at least not your traditional kind.
Speaker 1: Just opening the email will do it because it initiates
Speaker 1: a pretty diabolical sequence of events. So the hackers create
Speaker 1: an attack encoded in JavaScript, and that attack is triggered
Speaker 1: if the target computer detects and error. So you might think, well,
Speaker 1: if there's no error detected, then this attack goes untriggered. However,
Speaker 1: the tag itself in the email contains an error, so
Speaker 1: viewing the email creates the error report, which then initiates
Speaker 1: the actual attack included within the coding of that email,
Speaker 1: and the attack is invisible to the victim. It results
Speaker 1: in the hackers gaining access essentially to the victim's emails.
Speaker 1: The hacker group responsible for exploiting this vulnerability is called
Speaker 1: Winter Vivern. In the past, they've mostly focused on targeting
Speaker 1: government officials in the United States, particularly government officials who
Speaker 1: showed support for Ukraine, which again points to this being
Speaker 1: a Russian backed hacker attack. Fortunately, the security firm e
Speaker 1: Set detected the attacks a day after they had first
Speaker 1: started to launch and then immediately reached out to the
Speaker 1: developers over a Roundcube. So three days after the attacks began,
Speaker 1: Roundcube issued a patch. Now, the patch does require server
Speaker 1: admins to install it, or for end users who are
Speaker 1: using round Cube based webmail to run, make sure that
Speaker 1: the software running is a patched version of that software,
Speaker 1: or else you run the risk of becoming one of
Speaker 1: the targets. Over on the Apple side, Ours Technica has
Speaker 1: another article. Ours Technica is just a great site, y'all. Again,
Speaker 1: I have no connection to ours Technica. They just do
Speaker 1: great work anyway. They have another article titled hackers can
Speaker 1: force iOS and macOS browsers to divulge passwords and much
Speaker 1: more so. Unlike the first story, today, as far as
Speaker 1: we know, this particular exploit has not been used in
Speaker 1: the wild. Instead, some security researchers discovered it on iOS
Speaker 1: and macOS devices that are running on hardware that has
Speaker 1: Apple's A or M series CPUs in them, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't affect every Apple product, just Apple products that have
Speaker 1: a A or M series CPU. They have called their
Speaker 1: exploit eye Leakage, in a cute little nod to Apples
Speaker 1: naming conventions. Now, according to ours technica. This attack is
Speaker 1: not a simple one. It actually requires a fairly significant
Speaker 1: familiarity with an understanding of Apple hardware in order to
Speaker 1: pull it off. But the attack targets what is called
Speaker 1: a side channel, and you can kind of think of
Speaker 1: as a side channel as sort of you're looking not
Speaker 1: at the data itself, instead you're looking at evidence that
Speaker 1: data was there. So I'm talking about stuff like electromagnetic
Speaker 1: emanations things like that. You know, it's like seeing evidence
Speaker 1: that something has been there and then reverse engineering it.
Speaker 1: So it is really complicated stuff. But the researcher showed
Speaker 1: that through a process that's called speculative to execution, which
Speaker 1: has been at the root of a lot of exploits
Speaker 1: in the last few years, and by using a malicious website,
Speaker 1: the researchers could execute a JavaScript application that would then
Speaker 1: give them the ability to open a new window that
Speaker 1: was running on the target device and be able to
Speaker 1: access stuff as if they were the user. So, for example,
Speaker 1: let's say that I use this attack, I exploited your
Speaker 1: Apple device, and then it would open up a window
Speaker 1: on my screen where I could say, navigate to YouTube
Speaker 1: and look at your YouTube view history, or I could
Speaker 1: navigate to a login page, and if you had enabled
Speaker 1: auto complete or autofill passwords or whatever, I could get
Speaker 1: access to your account through that. Potentially I could even
Speaker 1: do things like figure out what your password was and
Speaker 1: then maybe change it so that then I control whatever
Speaker 1: account I was snooping on. So yeah, it's a pretty
Speaker 1: serious vulnerable ability here. But again it is a very
Speaker 1: sophisticated and difficult attack, So it's not something that is,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, readily active out in the wild.
Speaker 1: Apple has said that they are aware of the vulnerability,
Speaker 1: they're working on addressing it. And because there's no known
Speaker 1: actual live attacks using this method, because there's such a
Speaker 1: high learning curve as to how to use it. For
Speaker 1: the meantime, Apple users don't necessarily have anything to worry about. Obviously.
Speaker 1: You always have to worry about the types of websites
Speaker 1: you visit. That's just a given, like you should not
Speaker 1: just be going willy nilly to websites you don't know
Speaker 1: if you can manage that. But apart from that, it's
Speaker 1: not likely to be an active attack in Apple, as
Speaker 1: I said, is aware of it and attempting to mitigate
Speaker 1: the problem. I mentioned in an earlier news episode that
Speaker 1: hackers gained access to user data on twenty three and meters,
Speaker 1: the genetic testing service, and the company maintains that the
Speaker 1: hackers didn't get access on the corporate side, like they
Speaker 1: didn't get access into twenty three and me's systems through
Speaker 1: some sort of breach attack. Instead, they say that the
Speaker 1: hackers essentially they just used usernames and passwords from other
Speaker 1: data leaks and then tried them to access twenty three
Speaker 1: and meters and sometimes it worked, which again reminds us
Speaker 1: that we need to have unique passwords for every service
Speaker 1: we use, even though that's a pain in the tukis. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I mentioned in that news item that there were rumors
Speaker 1: the hackers were targeting specific ethnic groups, particularly Jewish people.
Speaker 1: Now NBC reports that some hackers have published a database
Speaker 1: on dark web forums that lists one person shy of
Speaker 1: one million people, so nine hundred nine, nine hundred ninety
Speaker 1: nine people who share an Ashkenazi heritage, so Ashkenazi Jews,
Speaker 1: and considering historical threats of anti Semitism in general, and
Speaker 1: that there's been a rise in those kinds of sentiments
Speaker 1: across the world recently, this is a pretty alarming incident.
Speaker 1: You know whether the hacker or hackers actually harbor antisemitic
Speaker 1: views themselves, or they just callously wish to profit off
Speaker 1: others who do have those feelings. I don't know the
Speaker 1: answer to that, but it is generally a very bad
Speaker 1: thing whenever anyone starts to make long lists of people
Speaker 1: who share a particular background. Also, I should add that
Speaker 1: I believe this to be true no matter what the background.
Speaker 1: I try to use critical thinking and compassion as by
Speaker 1: guiding principles in general, and as such I object to
Speaker 1: violence acted out against innocent people, innocent civilians, no matter
Speaker 1: what their ethnicity, nationality, or religion happens to be. I
Speaker 1: also know I am vastly under educated in things like
Speaker 1: Middle Eastern culture and politics, and that of Israel and Palestine,
Speaker 1: so I know I am not qualified to make any
Speaker 1: sort of judgment about what is going on beyond the
Speaker 1: need to end attacks against civilians, whether in Israel or
Speaker 1: Gaza or beyond that, I think is just true as
Speaker 1: a blanket statement. But beyond that, I admit I am
Speaker 1: too ignorant to weigh in on anything more substantive than that.
Speaker 1: But I think it's our darn good start to stop
Speaker 1: attacks on innocent civilians. All right, I need to preface
Speaker 1: this next story with a content warning. I'm about to
Speaker 1: talk about how people are using generative AI to create
Speaker 1: images depicting sexual violence against children, which is obviously a
Speaker 1: deeply disturbing topic, and I wanted to give you listeners
Speaker 1: the opportunity to skip ahead or to stop listening. I
Speaker 1: think it's something we can't ignore, but I also think
Speaker 1: that your mental health is important. So if you feel
Speaker 1: the need to just nope out of this next story,
Speaker 1: no judgment here, I totally understand. The Guardian posted a
Speaker 1: story about how the Internet Watch Foundation or IWF in
Speaker 1: the UK found almost three thousand instances of AI generated
Speaker 1: child abuse images, at least according to this group, So
Speaker 1: the organization says that such material is poised to quote
Speaker 1: overwhelm the Internet end quote. I don't know how true
Speaker 1: that is, but if in fact it is easy to
Speaker 1: produce such content, then it does stand to reason that
Speaker 1: we're going to encounter more of it in the future. So,
Speaker 1: according to the group, people who are using AI to
Speaker 1: make these terrible images are an indication that the AI
Speaker 1: models in question must have had real life images of
Speaker 1: abuse to use as training material. Because generative AI can't
Speaker 1: make stuff out of a vacuum. It has to be
Speaker 1: trained first, and that's also really disturbing. The organization also
Speaker 1: said that people were using this technology to take pictures
Speaker 1: of clothed children and then alter those pictures to try
Speaker 1: and show what those children might look like without clothing.
Speaker 1: So it's truly abhorrent stuff. And while the threat of
Speaker 1: a flood of AI generated abuse material is already horrifying,
Speaker 1: the IWF worries that this is going to make real
Speaker 1: world instances of abuse harder to detect and thus make
Speaker 1: it more difficult to rescue child victims from abusive situations.
Speaker 1: The IWF specifically identified a generative AI tool that's called
Speaker 1: stable Diffusion from the company stability AI as the tool
Speaker 1: that these folks were using to create the images. Stability
Speaker 1: AI had a representative that told The Guardian the company
Speaker 1: quote prohibits any missus for illegal or immoral purposes across
Speaker 1: our platforms, and our policies are clear that this includes
Speaker 1: ce sam end quote SEESAM, by the way, stands for
Speaker 1: child sexual abuse material. It is unclear to me if
Speaker 1: this means Stability AI has actually built in guardrails and
Speaker 1: those guardrails have somehow failed, or if the company is
Speaker 1: just attempting to distance itself from the ways its customers
Speaker 1: are using its products. Okay, We're going to now take
Speaker 1: a quick break to think our sponsors. We'll be back
Speaker 1: with some more tech news in a moment. We're back
Speaker 1: so here. In the United States, a collection of more
Speaker 1: than thirty attorneys general across the nation have filed a
Speaker 1: lawsuit against the company Meta aka the former Facebook. The
Speaker 1: attorneys general argue that the company has no implemented harmful features,
Speaker 1: including ones meant to addict users to staying with the
Speaker 1: product for as long as possible, and that the company
Speaker 1: has targeted young people, including children, in these efforts. The
Speaker 1: attorney's general argue that the company's practices have led to
Speaker 1: harm by promoting material by algorithm, and that some of
Speaker 1: this material contributes to mental health issues and other problems
Speaker 1: like eating disorders. The lawsuits argue that Meta has encouraged
Speaker 1: and profited off of hurting young people and contributing to
Speaker 1: a decline in mental health. Andy Stone, whom I think
Speaker 1: of as the mouth of Meta, said, we're disappointed that,
Speaker 1: instead of working productively with companies across the industry, to
Speaker 1: create clear, age appropriate standards for the many apps teens use.
Speaker 1: The Attorneys general have chosen this path, and I imagine
Speaker 1: Meta is very disappointed now, y'all. I have been extremely
Speaker 1: critical of Meta as well as platforms, and I do
Speaker 1: believe these companies profit off of misery in lots of
Speaker 1: different ways. I would suggest that the extent to which
Speaker 1: these companies actually cause misery is not fully known or understood.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that we can draw firm conclusions between
Speaker 1: correlation and causation here. So I've said this before. There's
Speaker 1: sometimes a tendency to say that people encounter problems with
Speaker 1: mental health after they spend increasingly long hours on social media. However,
Speaker 1: it could be that people who already have mental health
Speaker 1: issues are more prone to being active on social media
Speaker 1: for longer hours, rather than the other way around. I
Speaker 1: don't know where the truth lies. I'm sure it's somewhere
Speaker 1: in the middle. I doubt it's as easy as one
Speaker 1: extreme or the other. But my point is this is
Speaker 1: a really tricky issue. You know, clearly, we do have
Speaker 1: an obligation to protect you generations. That is important. We
Speaker 1: should be prioritizing the health and wellness of people in general.
Speaker 1: But we also need to make sure whatever measures we
Speaker 1: take to do that actually addresses the issue and not
Speaker 1: just a symptom. And I am not sure that we've
Speaker 1: identified the issue right. I mean, the symptom is clearly there.
Speaker 1: It is undeniable to say that metas algorithms have promoted
Speaker 1: things that are not healthy to various users. I've seen
Speaker 1: it myself. For me, I have seen when logging into Facebook,
Speaker 1: promotions of stuff that is clearly not healthy. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so that's obvious. But whether that's actually contributing to harm,
Speaker 1: that's harder to say. I'm not saying that it doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: but that we kind of need more information about it
Speaker 1: before we can make definitive conclusions. If it does mean
Speaker 1: that we cut back on the harmful stuff or the
Speaker 1: stuff that scams or are promoting things that are bad,
Speaker 1: I'm all for it. I would like to see less
Speaker 1: of that anyway. I just don't know that you can
Speaker 1: justify it as someone needs to protect the children. It's
Speaker 1: a complicated issue, and I normally keep article recommendations for
Speaker 1: the end of episodes, but in this case, I actually
Speaker 1: have one that is relevant to this story. I think
Speaker 1: it's by Caitlin Vogus of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Speaker 1: So clearly there is a particular perspective being brought here.
Speaker 1: And the article is titled Kids Online Safety Act will
Speaker 1: censor the News. So this piece is all about how
Speaker 1: a particular piece of legislation could have a chilling effect
Speaker 1: on speech in general, even in ways that go beyond
Speaker 1: the intended purpose of the law. And again, I think
Speaker 1: this is a really complicated issue. It's one that is
Speaker 1: highly charged emotionally because child safety is a factor, right,
Speaker 1: and that's obviously important, but it's also important to consider
Speaker 1: all the factors and consequences of our response to problems,
Speaker 1: because we may just exacerbate problems or create all new
Speaker 1: ones in the process. So, yeah, an important read. I think.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's the definitive answer either. I just
Speaker 1: think it's something that has to be brought into consideration.
Speaker 1: And I can't pretend that I have the answer. I
Speaker 1: certainly don't. I just think it's really important to consider
Speaker 1: different perspectives before you make any conclusion. Now we move
Speaker 1: on to X the service formerly known as Twitter. Just
Speaker 1: a couple of little stories to talk about today, So
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do my normal Twitter dump. So first up,
Speaker 1: X is rolling out new features on the platform that
Speaker 1: support audio and video calls, so before I started recording,
Speaker 1: I checked to see if the rollout had reached me,
Speaker 1: but no dice. However, I think this particular feature may
Speaker 1: only be applicable for people who are using the X
Speaker 1: app on their phones. I don't do that. I installed
Speaker 1: Twitter Ages ago and I never put it on when
Speaker 1: it became X, so I don't have the app. I
Speaker 1: only check the service if I use the web browser version.
Speaker 1: So I suspect that I wouldn't have access to this
Speaker 1: one way or the other because I think it only
Speaker 1: goes to people who have the app version. But other
Speaker 1: people report that upon opening their app they see a
Speaker 1: notification announcing the arrival of audio and video calls. These
Speaker 1: work within the Direct Messages system, so if you open
Speaker 1: a DM with a user, you can select a little
Speaker 1: phone icon to try and initiate a call with that person,
Speaker 1: but you can't just call anyone, which I think must
Speaker 1: be a huge relief to a lot of the folks
Speaker 1: who are still using X. So the feature first requires
Speaker 1: that users turn it on with a toggle in the
Speaker 1: settings for Twitter or X in this case, so you
Speaker 1: would be prompted to go into your settings and toggle
Speaker 1: on on the support for audio and video calls. Then
Speaker 1: you can also choose the types of users that you
Speaker 1: will engage in calls with, so that might just be
Speaker 1: people who are on your contact list, it might be
Speaker 1: people that you follow, or it might only be verified users,
Speaker 1: or some combination of the three. And I'm very relieved
Speaker 1: to hear that, because I'm sure there's no shortage of
Speaker 1: folks who still use that service who otherwise would be
Speaker 1: flooded with call requests whenever they open the app, and
Speaker 1: that would be miserable. According to the Verge, it is
Speaker 1: not yet clear if any x user will be able
Speaker 1: to access this feature once it is fully rolled out,
Speaker 1: or if this will be kept just for those who
Speaker 1: subscribe to the premium service. If I had to guess,
Speaker 1: I'd say it was the second category. I think Musk
Speaker 1: has been pushing really hard to create features for premium
Speaker 1: users to encourage more adoption of subscribers. Don't know how
Speaker 1: well it's going, but I suspect that's the case. Also,
Speaker 1: this is related to X. Slack has sunset its integration
Speaker 1: with that platform, so once upon a time, Slack users
Speaker 1: could incorporate Twitter and then later X into their workspace
Speaker 1: and be able to access features of Twitter through Slack,
Speaker 1: But due to changes in x's Application Programming Interface or API,
Speaker 1: Slack has chosen to end that support. The company has
Speaker 1: also announced it is retiring its status account on X,
Speaker 1: so it's closing out its own Twitter profile. So it
Speaker 1: sounds like Slack and X are kind of going their
Speaker 1: separate ways. In a previous News episode, I talked about
Speaker 1: how there's a growing concern among US lawmakers that algorithmically
Speaker 1: driven systems that set things like housing rental prices can
Speaker 1: lead to an anti competitive situation, one in which landlords
Speaker 1: are effectively engaging in collusion, even if they're doing so
Speaker 1: unknowingly by relying on this app to help them set
Speaker 1: rental prices. Essentially, software that's intended to help landlords factor
Speaker 1: in how much they should set their rent based upon
Speaker 1: the competitive market, when it's distributed across enough landlords in
Speaker 1: a region, transforms into a price fixing scheme. Again, that
Speaker 1: might be unintentional, but effectively that's what it's become. You
Speaker 1: get enough people using this tool, the tool starts to
Speaker 1: end up manipulating prices across the entire region, and next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, prices creep up, and you've got yourself in
Speaker 1: any competitive situation. So now the US Department of Justice
Speaker 1: has issued a notice of potential participation, which is a
Speaker 1: sort of preamble into a possible prosecution against the company
Speaker 1: that makes the software. It's called real Page, by the way,
Speaker 1: and the filing states quote. The government has a particularly
Speaker 1: substantial interest in addressing the proper application of Section one
Speaker 1: of the Sherman Act fifteen USC. Section one to the
Speaker 1: use of algorithms by competitors to help set pricing. Company's
Speaker 1: use of algorithms in price setting, often in an effort
Speaker 1: to increase pricing, has become more prevalent in the modern economy.
Speaker 1: As a result, the issues involved in this case are
Speaker 1: of increasing significance to the application of antitrust laws across
Speaker 1: the economy. End quote. Now, the DOJ plans to first
Speaker 1: observe how an ongoing civil case related to this matter
Speaker 1: plays out before it decides on making a move. So
Speaker 1: there's no guarantee yet that the US government will get
Speaker 1: more heavily involved in this matter, but it is a
Speaker 1: distinct possibility. Last year, General Motors and Honda announced a
Speaker 1: project to create an EV platform that would ultimately lead
Speaker 1: to cheaper electric vehicles in markets like the United States,
Speaker 1: North America in general, South America, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But now that project is on the rocks. The companies
Speaker 1: have pulled out of it and stated, quote, after extensive
Speaker 1: studies and analysis, we have come to a mutual decision
Speaker 1: to discontinue the program. Each company remains committed to affordability
Speaker 1: in the EV market end quote. So it appears that
Speaker 1: one of the major hurdles that faced the project has
Speaker 1: been in the field of battery production. GM developed a
Speaker 1: battery called Ultium, and this battery costs less to produce
Speaker 1: than other older types of EV batteries. However, GM ran
Speaker 1: into production bottlenecks all along the supply chain, and those
Speaker 1: bottlenecks meant that there were delays in manufacturing, which of
Speaker 1: course means that critically, there were delays in delivering vehicles
Speaker 1: to customers, and that's a huge problem. Meanwhile, vehicles that
Speaker 1: were built using older, more expensive batteries didn't have these
Speaker 1: same production issues. They've got a production line that is mature,
Speaker 1: so that wasn't interrupted. The cheaper one was the one
Speaker 1: that just could not get established, and for those of
Speaker 1: US EV models that are say, within our price range,
Speaker 1: this is a pretty disappointing setback. All Right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take another quick break. When we come back. I've got
Speaker 1: a few more news items I want to cover. We're back,
Speaker 1: So Sarah Kay brent Is, one of the co founders
Speaker 1: of Google, has a big old airship that now has
Speaker 1: the green light to go fly In Brinn founded a
Speaker 1: company a few years back named LTA Research. LTA stands
Speaker 1: for Lighter than Air, so the goal was to build
Speaker 1: lighter than air airships that could transport stuff like cargo
Speaker 1: and supplies, specifically for humanitarian aid missions. The first of
Speaker 1: the company's airships is called the Pathfinder one, and now
Speaker 1: it can start to have test flights. It has received
Speaker 1: clearance from the US Federal Aviation Administration or FAA, and
Speaker 1: the Pathfinder one is according to the I triple E
Speaker 1: I EEE or IE, as I used to say, it
Speaker 1: is the largest aircraft to fly since the Hindenberg. However,
Speaker 1: unlike that tragic dirigible, which famously caught fire and exploded,
Speaker 1: it does not rely upon hydrogen as a lifting gas. Instead,
Speaker 1: it relies on the non combustible gas helium to provide lift.
Speaker 1: So again, the Hennenberg relied on hydrogen, which is highly
Speaker 1: combustible and explosive. You know, you get hydrogen and oxygen
Speaker 1: in an environment and you add a flame and you
Speaker 1: get a big flash. Don't do it, by the way,
Speaker 1: it's very dangerous. Helium, however, doesn't do this, And the
Speaker 1: reason why hydrogen was used was not because people just
Speaker 1: thought it would be okay. It's because hydrogen is a
Speaker 1: better lifting gas. It's about eight percent more efficient to
Speaker 1: lift a weight using hydrogen than helium, at least according
Speaker 1: to one estimate I saw. It's capable of lifting more
Speaker 1: mass than helium is, so in order to lift the
Speaker 1: same structure with helium, you have to have much more
Speaker 1: helium right now. To get around this deficit in lifting capacity,
Speaker 1: LTA Research relied heavily on using very lightweight materials like
Speaker 1: polymer tubes, reinforce with carbon fiber, and titanium in an
Speaker 1: effort to build out frames and an airship that was
Speaker 1: liftable through helium. A single pilot is all that's needed
Speaker 1: to control this airship. The company does plan to use
Speaker 1: two pilots for their tests. The control systems have redundancy,
Speaker 1: which is good. You always want redundant systems for safety.
Speaker 1: The gondola attached to the airship was created by the
Speaker 1: Zeppelin Company. That's a throwback to the old dirigible days,
Speaker 1: right Zeppelin. The gondola can hold up to fourteen people,
Speaker 1: but LTA Research stresses that no passengers will actually be
Speaker 1: allowed on the test flights, only the pilots in order
Speaker 1: to maintain safety and to truly test the vehicle without
Speaker 1: putting people at risk unnecessarily. The airship measures one hundred
Speaker 1: twenty four meters in length. That is a monster. It
Speaker 1: will initially conduct tests while remaining anchored to a point
Speaker 1: on the ground on a mast, essentially, so they're not
Speaker 1: going to be free flying the tests, at least not initially.
Speaker 1: LTA Research already has an even larger airship in production,
Speaker 1: which is called the Pathfinder three. When complete, it will
Speaker 1: measure an incredible one hundred and eighty meters long. So
Speaker 1: the plan is to use these airships to deliver aid
Speaker 1: to remote locations that are difficult or impossible to access
Speaker 1: via land or sea. So I really like that it's
Speaker 1: not like meant to be some sort of billionaire pleasure
Speaker 1: craft where you can just casually fly across the region
Speaker 1: the country below you and enjoy, you know, expensive luxuries.
Speaker 1: That's not what this is intended to do. It's intended
Speaker 1: to get relief to places that otherwise would be very
Speaker 1: hard to reach. I don't know if this is the
Speaker 1: most efficient way to do that. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's a better alternative than other plans, which would include
Speaker 1: things like, you know, drones or whatever. But I like
Speaker 1: that that is the application for this technology. We'll have
Speaker 1: to wait and see if it turns out to be
Speaker 1: a practical one. It may not be, but I think
Speaker 1: it's cool to at least have the potential for darrigibles
Speaker 1: to take flight once again, more than just promotional purposes
Speaker 1: at sporting events. Tech Radar reports that Microsoft is very
Speaker 1: hurt when new Windows users launch Microsoft Edge only to
Speaker 1: download the installer for Google Chrome, which of course is
Speaker 1: a rival web browser to Edge, and Microsoft is so
Speaker 1: hurt they want to know why you did it. Apparently,
Speaker 1: using Edge to download the installer for Google Chrome now
Speaker 1: prompts a pop up that contains a poll asking you
Speaker 1: why are you doing this? So the reasons you can
Speaker 1: pick include I can't search Google easily, I can't access
Speaker 1: my Google documents, I don't have my favorites or passwords.
Speaker 1: Here too many ads and pop ups. I don't like
Speaker 1: the news feed, it's too slow. My websites don't work
Speaker 1: on Microsoft Edge, and my reason is not listed. I'm
Speaker 1: personally a little disappointed that they don't have It's not you,
Speaker 1: It's me, or I'm washing my hair. I think those
Speaker 1: should have made the cut. Christina Terek at tech Radar
Speaker 1: points out that using Edge does mean that the user
Speaker 1: often has to deal with a lot of like pop
Speaker 1: ups and suggestions that primarily direct people to other Microsoft products.
Speaker 1: Same thing's true of Windows. Heck, this morning, when I
Speaker 1: was launching my computer, I got a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: suggestions for Windows related stuff that just popped up unprompted.
Speaker 1: Fun times. She also points out that Edge's newsfeed doesn't
Speaker 1: have a really good reputation. A lot of people complain
Speaker 1: that the articles and elements included in the news feed
Speaker 1: are lower quality. They're not properly factual or useful. But Microsoft,
Speaker 1: you're coming across a little bit clingy, if you ask me.
Speaker 1: Joe rosignol Over at mac rumors dot Com wrote a
Speaker 1: piece yesterday about an upcoming Apple Online event which is
Speaker 1: scheduled for this coming Monday, and the rumor is that
Speaker 1: this event will at least in some part focus on
Speaker 1: high end gaming on Apple devices, including on Mac computers.
Speaker 1: So Apple, of course has had a very long history
Speaker 1: with gaming, sometimes in a positive way, other times in
Speaker 1: a negative way. Some of the earliest computer games I
Speaker 1: ever played were on an Apple to E computer, although
Speaker 1: technically I think my very first computer game was Hunt
Speaker 1: the Wumpus on the TI ninety nine for a home computer.
Speaker 1: And then there was a time where game developers largely
Speaker 1: ignored Apple platforms because Apple had a fairly small percentage
Speaker 1: of the overall market share for desktop computers and it
Speaker 1: just didn't make sense to pour the resources into creating
Speaker 1: games for a platform that had very few people using it.
Speaker 1: So there was a reputation for a while that Apple
Speaker 1: computers just were not good for gaming, not because they
Speaker 1: weren't powerful enough, but because game developers weren't making stuff
Speaker 1: for them. But if Rosignol is right, it seems as
Speaker 1: though Apple is now poised to really push Mac computers
Speaker 1: as a serious gaming platform, and that the Mac computer
Speaker 1: is the perfect machine to run triple A titles on
Speaker 1: high settings while incorporating features like ray tracing, for example,
Speaker 1: which deals with how a computer handles lighting in graphics.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I will report next week, which we'll actually
Speaker 1: be on Thursday. Next week. We will not have a
Speaker 1: news episode on Tuesday because we have another Smart Talks
Speaker 1: with IBM episode scheduled for that day, but on Thursday
Speaker 1: I will try and follow up with this and see
Speaker 1: whether or not Apple really did emphasize gaming in that
Speaker 1: presentation on this upcoming Monday. Now, I previously mentioned one
Speaker 1: article recommendation earlier in this episode. Before I conclude, I
Speaker 1: do have one other recommendation. This is a piece that
Speaker 1: is on BBC dot com. It's by Victoria Wollaston and
Speaker 1: it's titled the Surprisingly Subtle ways Microsoft word has changed
Speaker 1: the way we use language Now. I'm always fascinated at
Speaker 1: how we shape tech and how tech in turn shapes us.
Speaker 1: And sometimes these changes are not really happening consciously, Like
Speaker 1: it's not an intentional thing. It's just something that kind
Speaker 1: of happens through use and adoption, and it can lead
Speaker 1: to really unanticipated consequence. It's not necessarily bad ones, sometimes
Speaker 1: just interesting ones. So I think this article is a
Speaker 1: great example of detailing how that happened with Microsoft Word.
Speaker 1: So check it out. And that's it for the news
Speaker 1: for today, Thursday, October twenty sixth, twenty twenty three. I
Speaker 1: hope you are all well and I will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.