Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey thereon
Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you. It's time for the tech news for the
Speaker 1: week ending on Friday, February two, two thy twenty four
Speaker 1: and this week, tech leaders, including the CEOs of meta
Speaker 1: x formerly known as Twitter, Snap, Discord, and TikTok all
Speaker 1: met with the Senate Judiciary Committee here in the United States,
Speaker 1: and it was a pretty sobering experience. The committee brought
Speaker 1: forward families who had experienced tragedies in which children died
Speaker 1: after they encountered various harmful people or situations or material
Speaker 1: on these various platforms. The CEOs expressed their sympathy to
Speaker 1: the families. Mark Zuckerberg even gave a somewhat emotional apology,
Speaker 1: but the politicians found the response lackluster, as did many
Speaker 1: of the parents, who said that the apologies kind of
Speaker 1: rang hollow because there didn't seem to be any indication
Speaker 1: that these companies were going to do anything different. The companies,
Speaker 1: of course, said that they had been implementing various new
Speaker 1: policies to protect children. You know, Meta has recently done that,
Speaker 1: and so have some of the other platforms, But the
Speaker 1: senators demanded to know why Section two thirty, which is
Speaker 1: the US law that provides something of illegal shield platforms,
Speaker 1: should protect these companies from being sued by the families. Now,
Speaker 1: just as a reminder, these CEOs didn't draft section two thirty.
Speaker 1: In fact, section two thirty was drafted before any of
Speaker 1: these companies existed. The drafting was done by actual politicians,
Speaker 1: and Section two thirty is not a blanket, get out
Speaker 1: of court free card for platforms. So essentially, Section two
Speaker 1: thirty says that a platform cannot be held responsible for
Speaker 1: the material that's posted to that platform by users or
Speaker 1: other parties. So if a user posts something illegal onto
Speaker 1: a platform, that's the user's fault, not the platform's fault. Specifically,
Speaker 1: section two thirty says, quote no provider or user of
Speaker 1: an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher
Speaker 1: or speaker of any information provided by another information content
Speaker 1: provider end quote. But this protection itself has limits. If
Speaker 1: a platform is violating federal criminal law, then it can
Speaker 1: be held accountable. So if someone posts illegal material and
Speaker 1: the platform is alerted to this, it's the platform's responsibility
Speaker 1: to remove that material. This includes stuff like intellectual property violations. Right,
Speaker 1: so if you were to post something that you don't
Speaker 1: have ownership of and the platform allowed it to stay up,
Speaker 1: the platform could be held account. This is why YouTube
Speaker 1: is so aggressive when removing videos that get a copyright
Speaker 1: removal request, because it's safer to take something down that
Speaker 1: might be a copyright violation or it might not, rather
Speaker 1: than to just leave it up long enough to determine
Speaker 1: if it actually counts as a copyright violation. Anyway, politicians
Speaker 1: on both sides of the aisle have issues with Section
Speaker 1: two thirty, despite you know, not seeming to really understand
Speaker 1: what section two thirty is all about. Complicating matters is
Speaker 1: that these social platforms use algorithms to serve content up
Speaker 1: to users. So if it were just a case of
Speaker 1: users seeing the stuff that they personally followed, it might
Speaker 1: be a different story. But some legislators argue that because
Speaker 1: sites like Facebook or TikTok use an algorithm to determine
Speaker 1: what a user actually sees on their timeline, then those
Speaker 1: platforms are acting more like publishers because they are curating
Speaker 1: material effectively and honestly This is an argument that I
Speaker 1: at least think there's some merit to it. It's it's
Speaker 1: hard to argue against it. I guess you could say
Speaker 1: that these platforms don't actually know what their algorithms are
Speaker 1: going to recommend to users, because it's completely dependent upon
Speaker 1: what those users have interacted with and expressed interest in
Speaker 1: in the past. So it's not like the platforms are
Speaker 1: aware of what the algorithms are doing and the whole
Speaker 1: process is automated. But at the same time, the platform
Speaker 1: itself is determining what someone sees versus all the stuff
Speaker 1: that's actually available. So it's a tricky situation. Anyway, a
Speaker 1: lot of Senators weren't impressed with the CEOs and promised
Speaker 1: to pass laws that would weaken Section two thirty and
Speaker 1: place heavy requirements on the platforms to protect children. There
Speaker 1: are critics of some of these laws. There's actually multiple
Speaker 1: laws that are in various stages in the Senate and
Speaker 1: the House right now. There are critics who say that
Speaker 1: these laws compromise privacy and security, and they can infringe
Speaker 1: upon the First Amendment, and that many of them could
Speaker 1: be difficult, if not in possible, to enforce, and worse yet,
Speaker 1: they could potentially pose a danger to people in the
Speaker 1: LGBTQ community, because not everyone agrees as to what counts
Speaker 1: as being harmful forward children, and some see just the
Speaker 1: existence of say, transgender people as a danger, like just
Speaker 1: the fact that they exist, that's dangerous. So that in
Speaker 1: turn is a slippery slope. So, as I said, it's
Speaker 1: a complicated issue. Speaking of Zuckerberg, he gave some insight
Speaker 1: into Meta's AI strategy during an earnings call yesterday. He
Speaker 1: claimed that the amount of publicly shared information on the
Speaker 1: company's platforms represents a larger data set than what most
Speaker 1: AI companies use when training AI, which is kind of
Speaker 1: funny because you know, like Facebook, you Meta with Facebook
Speaker 1: and Instagram and stuff. They do not want anyone crawling
Speaker 1: their sites. They don't want any of that. That's they say,
Speaker 1: that's against their terms of service. You cannot create bots
Speaker 1: to crawl these sites to gather up information. They can
Speaker 1: do it, though, but no one else can. And so
Speaker 1: they're saying, hey, we have this huge repository of publicly
Speaker 1: shared pictures and videos and other stuff. It's way bigger
Speaker 1: than what anyone else has, So we could train up
Speaker 1: a very intelligent AI as a result of that, and
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg actually mentioned that general intelligence remains a goal of
Speaker 1: general intelligence in the form of AI. I don't mean
Speaker 1: that Zuckerberg is seeking general intelligence. They're too any jokes there.
Speaker 1: So general intelligence would be AI that would work in
Speaker 1: a way that's at least similar to how human intelligence works, right.
Speaker 1: That seems to be able to think for itself. It's
Speaker 1: a kind of strong AI. So this kind of work
Speaker 1: AI research and development, it's really expensive. And Zuckerberg's team
Speaker 1: hinted that Meta could increase spending by as much as
Speaker 1: nine billion dollars this year compared to last year, and
Speaker 1: that this could just be the beginning of additional expenditures
Speaker 1: and research into development, which sounds to me a lot
Speaker 1: like hol Zuckerberg warned that Meta would be spending increasing
Speaker 1: amounts to build out the metaverse. For the record, they
Speaker 1: gave the metaverse very brief mention in their earnings called document.
Speaker 1: They called it their metaverse efforts had put it under
Speaker 1: new business initiatives. I don't know how much momentum their
Speaker 1: metaverse efforts still have. Like to me, it feels like
Speaker 1: the whole metaverse craze has already significantly died down right,
Speaker 1: like that was the huge thing more than a year ago,
Speaker 1: and now people are not nearly as enthusiastic about it.
Speaker 1: But maybe I'm just not listening to the right corners.
Speaker 1: Maybe the Web three enthusiasts and the metaverse enthusiasts are
Speaker 1: still going whole hog and I'm just not seeing. One
Speaker 1: big news story that happened earlier this week is that
Speaker 1: Amazon called off its planned acquisition of the company I Robot,
Speaker 1: which is best known as the maker of the Roomba
Speaker 1: vacuum robot. This actually surprised me, but that's because I
Speaker 1: thought that this deal had already gone through. I thought
Speaker 1: Amazon had already acquired I Robot. I was just under
Speaker 1: the impression that they had already completed this. The two
Speaker 1: companies originally agreed to this deal back in the summer
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty two, so yeah, I just figured like
Speaker 1: within a year and a half that they had closed
Speaker 1: the deal. But no, they faced a lot of regulator opposition,
Speaker 1: including here in the United States, and ultimately Amazon said
Speaker 1: that they just didn't see a way forward. So Amazon said,
Speaker 1: you know what, We're going to pay the ninety five
Speaker 1: million dollar fee that's going to cost us to walk
Speaker 1: away from this deal, and they did, and that's really
Speaker 1: bad news for iRobot. So once upon a time, the
Speaker 1: Rumba was like the dominant product in robot vacuums. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was, to all intents and purposes, like the only
Speaker 1: name in the space. But it didn't last because obviously
Speaker 1: other companies were going to build competing products, and some
Speaker 1: of those products lost less, sometimes significantly less than the Rumba.
Speaker 1: They also weren't necessarily as good as the Rumba, but
Speaker 1: for a lot of consumers out there, cheaper is more
Speaker 1: important than performance, so I robots It's market share decline
Speaker 1: year over year as more and more of these products
Speaker 1: came out. The Amazon acquisition would have given I robot
Speaker 1: the financial security to really stay in business and to
Speaker 1: really invest in innovation. But with the deal falling through,
Speaker 1: there's a big question mark hanging over I Robot and
Speaker 1: whether or not it can even continue to function, at
Speaker 1: least in the long term. Already, the company has announced
Speaker 1: it will hold layoffs that will affect around three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty employees, and I Robots CEO Colin Engel is
Speaker 1: also stepping down, as he said that he and the
Speaker 1: board both felt that the company really needed a leader
Speaker 1: with quote unquote turnaround experience. I feel really badly for
Speaker 1: everyone affected by these layoffs, and I hope that I
Speaker 1: Robot make a recovery because the company has been responsible
Speaker 1: for numerous innovations in the robotic space, you know, the
Speaker 1: robotic vacuum space in particular, like there have been a
Speaker 1: lot of innovations that I Robot has driven that then
Speaker 1: got adopted by the larger industry, and without I Robot
Speaker 1: there to actually forge that path, we may see a
Speaker 1: real decrease in innovation in that space. After a Tesla
Speaker 1: shareholder brought a lawsuit against Tesla five years ago, a
Speaker 1: judge in the state of Delaware has ruled that Elon
Speaker 1: Musk is not, in fact entitled to a compensation package
Speaker 1: with a value of upwards of fifty five billion dollars.
Speaker 1: He's not going to get that, and like I said,
Speaker 1: it only took five years of languishing through the court system,
Speaker 1: because justice is swift here in the United States. So
Speaker 1: the lawsuit argued that the board of directors was misusing
Speaker 1: company funds by enriching Elon Musk when that money probably
Speaker 1: should have gone somewhere else. Either reinvesting in the company
Speaker 1: or distributed among shareholders whatever. The plaintiff argued that the
Speaker 1: directors were not really independent of Musk, Essentially they were
Speaker 1: his friends and cronies, and that he was using his
Speaker 1: connections as personal connections among some of the board members
Speaker 1: to get this incredibly favorable compensation deal, and that the
Speaker 1: lawsuit also argued that Musk himself was effectively creating his
Speaker 1: own compensation package, like Musk was the one who drew
Speaker 1: it up and then got the board to sign off
Speaker 1: on it, and gosh, I bet we all wish we
Speaker 1: could do that, right. Ap News also has a really
Speaker 1: helpful graphic to assist in understanding exactly how much money
Speaker 1: fifty five billion dollars is for one thing. It illustrates
Speaker 1: that you could spend a dollar for every second of
Speaker 1: every day and it would take you oney seven hundred
Speaker 1: and forty four years to spend all that cash. Crazy, right,
Speaker 1: No one needs that much money. Nobody needs that much money.
Speaker 1: He also said that you could give one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty three bucks to every single person in the United States, Like,
Speaker 1: that's just it's just way too much money for any
Speaker 1: one person to have. I don't care who you are anyway,
Speaker 1: Musk as is his custom, went to X to vent
Speaker 1: his spleen and said, never incorporate your company in the
Speaker 1: state of Delaware. I recommend incorporating Nevada or Texas if
Speaker 1: you prefer shareholders to decide matters. Ironically, it was a
Speaker 1: shareholder who helped decide this matter, because it was a
Speaker 1: shareholder who brought the lawsuit forward in the first place.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm not surprised he's upset. Fifty five billion
Speaker 1: dollars is like when you think you're gonna get it
Speaker 1: and it turns out you're not. And also when, like
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, you spent forty four billion
Speaker 1: dollars to buy a company that you are steadily running
Speaker 1: into the ground. I mean, this is a lot to
Speaker 1: take in, you know, speaking of a lot to take in,
Speaker 1: We've got more news to cover, but before we get
Speaker 1: to that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. So this week, Apple's Vision Pro mixed reality
Speaker 1: headset finally launched. As a reminder, this is the headset
Speaker 1: with a starting price point of three thy four hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety nine dollars and according to various sources, Apple
Speaker 1: has sold more than two hundred thousand units so far.
Speaker 1: I should point out that the company first made the
Speaker 1: headsets available for pre order back in January, and the
Speaker 1: majority of those sales were made in the first couple
Speaker 1: of days that pre orders were open. After that they
Speaker 1: trailed off significantly. But it's also two hundred thousand units.
Speaker 1: That's also more than what analysts predict Apple actually has
Speaker 1: available like manufactured, so some folks are going to be
Speaker 1: waiting a little bit longer to get their new, very
Speaker 1: expensive toy. Brian Heater of tech Crunch has some articles
Speaker 1: about his experiences using the vision Pro. I recommend checking
Speaker 1: those out. He mentions that he felt some motion sickness
Speaker 1: on that first day, but he also admitted he's using
Speaker 1: this device a lot because that's his job, right to
Speaker 1: really put it through the paces and then report back
Speaker 1: on it. You know, you might only be able to
Speaker 1: use it for two and a half hours because that's
Speaker 1: how long the battery lasts, and then you have to
Speaker 1: recharge it. But he's been using it over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. But he also makes a really good point.
Speaker 1: He says the average vision Pro owner is also likely
Speaker 1: to go ham at least initially upon purchasing their mixed
Speaker 1: reality headset, because if you've spent three four hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety nine bucks at minimum on something, you want to
Speaker 1: get your money's worth. Anyway, I still think Apple's product
Speaker 1: is really a niche one. Two hundred thousand units is
Speaker 1: a lot, right that we should not dismiss selling two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand of these things. But two hundred thousand units
Speaker 1: is a fraction of what you would see with say
Speaker 1: a new iPhone launch, for example. And while all the
Speaker 1: reviews I've read praise the headsets, pass through video quality
Speaker 1: and the image quality, I'm still not seeing a whole
Speaker 1: lot of conversation about like any real killer apps. Now.
Speaker 1: Maybe that will come in time, or maybe developers are
Speaker 1: going to hold back and wait for a larger user
Speaker 1: base before they invest the resources in developing apps for
Speaker 1: this thing. And if that's the case, we could really
Speaker 1: have a vicious cycle thing going on, sort of catch
Speaker 1: twenty two, where developers won't make apps until they are
Speaker 1: more users, but users aren't going to buy the product
Speaker 1: until there are more apps running on it. That's a possibility.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe I'm ultimately wrong, Maybe this will
Speaker 1: become the next like common household technology. But I don't
Speaker 1: think that's possible at that price point, but who knows.
Speaker 1: I've been wrong so many times before. The US Federal
Speaker 1: Communications Commission or FCC, would very much like Congress to
Speaker 1: make it illegal for anyone to use AI generated voices
Speaker 1: for the purposes of robocalls, pretty please. Apparently someone used
Speaker 1: an AI impersonation of Joe Biden's voice to make robocalls
Speaker 1: in the state of New Hampshire to tar voters, presumably
Speaker 1: to attempt to suppress the vote by telling people not
Speaker 1: to bother voting. This spurred the FCC into action. And
Speaker 1: we've all known for a while now that AI impersonations,
Speaker 1: you know, deep fakes and that sort of thing could
Speaker 1: play a big part in the creation and spread of misinformation.
Speaker 1: And that's the FCC's main concern and why the agency
Speaker 1: wants to make this practice illegal. They can't do that themselves, obviously,
Speaker 1: they're not a lawmaking body, but they can recommend that.
Speaker 1: To con Chris, the FCC proposes expanding the Telephone Consumer
Speaker 1: Protection Act, which originally was drafted in the nineties, and
Speaker 1: to expand that so it will protect against this AI
Speaker 1: generated voice robocall practice, and I'm all for it, because
Speaker 1: we're speeding down the road toward a pretty darn chaotic destination.
Speaker 1: Anything we can do to mitigate that would be really nice,
Speaker 1: in my opinion. Christopher Ray, the director of the US
Speaker 1: Federal Bureau of Investmentation, is warning anybody who will listen
Speaker 1: that the dangers of Chinese hackers and their ability to
Speaker 1: disrupt critical US infrastructure such as electrical grids, is reaching
Speaker 1: an alarming height. It has been no secret that for
Speaker 1: years now, state backed hackers have worked to infiltrate these systems.
Speaker 1: Like I remember reading articles from like a decade ago
Speaker 1: about discovering Chinese code embedded into US infrastructure systems, proving
Speaker 1: that there were these kind of markers where Chinese hackers
Speaker 1: had managed to get access to these things, and there
Speaker 1: have been fears that this work could lead to massive
Speaker 1: cyber attacks in the future. Let's say that there's some
Speaker 1: sort of event that ends up escalating and then China
Speaker 1: orders to kind of take advantage of all this infiltration.
Speaker 1: That's scary, Like you could have entire sections of the
Speaker 1: electrical grid shut down or overwhelmed and have it break.
Speaker 1: So what's new here? If all this stuff has been
Speaker 1: going on for a while. Why is Ray speaking of now, Well,
Speaker 1: there's not that much that's new. But Christopher Ray's statements
Speaker 1: were made largely in frustration over the fact that despite
Speaker 1: these things not actually being breaking news, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that we have known about this stuff, we haven't done
Speaker 1: enough about it. So he's calling for action. He's pointing
Speaker 1: out how Chinese backed hacker groups have already caused massive problems,
Speaker 1: like in the private sector. We've seen that over the
Speaker 1: last few years. Plus. We're in an election year here
Speaker 1: in the United States. It feels like we're always in
Speaker 1: an election year. This time like it just it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what year it is, it feels like it's an
Speaker 1: election year. But that becomes a huge incentive for a disruption.
Speaker 1: We have seen Chinese and Russian backed groups attempt to
Speaker 1: influence US politics through hacking and misinformation campaigns. So I
Speaker 1: guess we'll see if anyone listens to him and actually
Speaker 1: mounts a decent response to this warning. An Australian company
Speaker 1: called Morse Micro has demonstrated a Wi Fi protocol that
Speaker 1: they call Wi Fi Halo and it's HaLow. This uses
Speaker 1: lower frequency radio signals to transmit Wi Fi over greater distances.
Speaker 1: So these radio signals have longer wave links, lower frequencies
Speaker 1: than what you would typically see with like your usual
Speaker 1: Wi Fi transmitters, and the range they're getting is pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: We're talking like three kilometers or around one point eight miles,
Speaker 1: which is good, Like that's a good distance to be
Speaker 1: able to transmit Wi Fi signals. And they say their
Speaker 1: goal is to develop this technology so that it can
Speaker 1: facilitate communications for stuff like Internet of Things applications, because
Speaker 1: it wouldn't really be suitable for a high throughput application.
Speaker 1: These transmission speeds are down to around one megabit per second.
Speaker 1: You could have some grainy video for example, but that's
Speaker 1: probably the extent of it. But as a solution for IoT,
Speaker 1: you know, Internet of things, it could be a really
Speaker 1: helpful technology. You wouldn't need as great a density of
Speaker 1: transmitters because of this extended range. The longer radio waves
Speaker 1: also have far better penetration for solid surfaces like walls,
Speaker 1: so you know, with high frequency, low wavelength a small
Speaker 1: wavelength Wi Fi signals, walls are a big obstacle, right
Speaker 1: if you have those ultra high frequency Wi Fi solutions,
Speaker 1: they don't penetrate walls very well, so you lose signal
Speaker 1: as soon as there's any kind of barrier between you
Speaker 1: and the transmitter. But these it penetrates really well, so
Speaker 1: you can be inside a building and still have access
Speaker 1: to these signals. As a bonus, the technology has lower
Speaker 1: power requirements than higher frequency Wi Fi solutions, so it's
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting approach. But it remains to be seen
Speaker 1: if it will receive widespread adoption because there are already
Speaker 1: a lot of different protocols for wireless data transmissions out there,
Speaker 1: and some of them have even greater range than Halo does,
Speaker 1: but they also have lower throughput. Right they can only
Speaker 1: transmit data at a lower rate. But I figure the
Speaker 1: more the merrier if it means we can find an
Speaker 1: ideal balance between transmission rain and transmission speeds. Negotiations broke
Speaker 1: down between TikTok and the music label Universal Music Group,
Speaker 1: and the two parties were unable to agree on a
Speaker 1: new licensing agreement. The previous one expired earlier this week
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, so as a consequence, UMG demanded that TikTok
Speaker 1: remove any UMG published tracks from the platform. And there's
Speaker 1: some really big artists who are on the UMG label,
Speaker 1: including one one of the biggest in the world, Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1: I'm sure TikTok fans are going to shake it off,
Speaker 1: shake it off, but they're not going to do it
Speaker 1: with the help of her music because it's being removed
Speaker 1: from TikTok. UMG officials said that TikTok's proposed compensation rate
Speaker 1: was far below industry standards, and that the platform also
Speaker 1: has tons of AI generated recordings that infringe upon artists
Speaker 1: and music companies intellectual property. That's a big problem. It's
Speaker 1: one of those problems we've been talking about for a
Speaker 1: while now about how AI generated material can serve as
Speaker 1: not just a threat from a competition standpoint, but a
Speaker 1: threat in that it can be, you know, using an
Speaker 1: artist's work to generate new work without compensating the original artists.
Speaker 1: And that's a problem. So TikTok fired back, you know,
Speaker 1: UMG said, hey, you're not paying enough. You pay less
Speaker 1: than other platforms do. TikTok says UMG just wanted more
Speaker 1: money for the label itself, and that any argument that
Speaker 1: this is harming artists is disingenuous because UMG wasn't planning
Speaker 1: on sharing that money with artists anyway, it was just
Speaker 1: going to go to the company. Now, let me be clear,
Speaker 1: all companies are greedy, full stop. TikTok is greedy. UMG
Speaker 1: is also greedy. There are no good guys on the
Speaker 1: corporate side here. Maybe the artists you could argue are
Speaker 1: good guys. Wasn't it easier in your firefly catching days?
Speaker 1: That's a that's a shout out to all you swifties
Speaker 1: out there. So yeah, this is not an unusual thing
Speaker 1: to see happen, and I'm sure that a lot of
Speaker 1: TikTok users are frustrated by it. But it all comes
Speaker 1: down to the argument of who's who gets that money,
Speaker 1: and sad thing is it's almost never the artists, and
Speaker 1: that's the worst of it, right, It just comes down
Speaker 1: to which company ends up holding on to that money.
Speaker 1: The most we learned that Mercedes Benz suffered a big
Speaker 1: old it whoopsie this week. It's actually a whoopsie that
Speaker 1: happened something like four months ago and lasted that whole time.
Speaker 1: Like it was, it was essentially an ongoing issue. So
Speaker 1: at the heart of the matter is a gethub token.
Speaker 1: There was a developer at Mercedes who apparently accidentally published
Speaker 1: this token on some publicly viewable source, and that meant
Speaker 1: anyone who went to that source and saw it could
Speaker 1: potentially use that token to access all sorts of very
Speaker 1: secret proprietary data, including stuff like designs for vehicles and
Speaker 1: source code for software. The fact that this system didn't
Speaker 1: have multi factor authentication enabled really blows my mind. I mean,
Speaker 1: typically you would want this kind of critical information, like
Speaker 1: it's essentially your trade secrets, to be locked securely and
Speaker 1: have multi factor authentication there to protect it. And you know,
Speaker 1: token access is part of that strategy, but it shouldn't
Speaker 1: be the start and end of it anyway. Mercedes has
Speaker 1: not yet said if any third parties were able to
Speaker 1: access the various databases that the token would have granted
Speaker 1: access to. Apparently, like this database that you could access
Speaker 1: would have included keys to other repositories, including on Amazon
Speaker 1: Web Services and Microsoft Azure. So it's like, yeah, you've
Speaker 1: got the keys to this and only that, but inside
Speaker 1: there are all the other keys. Truly terrible stuff. There's
Speaker 1: some who wonder if Mercedes would even be able to
Speaker 1: detect if anyone outside the company had accessed the information
Speaker 1: in the first place. This is wild stuff. And if
Speaker 1: you're wondering how bad is this from a kind of
Speaker 1: a how important could that data be? Stance, I would
Speaker 1: put it at a solid nine out of ten, maybe
Speaker 1: even a ten, Like this is real bad. The only
Speaker 1: reason that it's not easily a ten le the gate
Speaker 1: is just that we don't know if anyone else accessed it.
Speaker 1: If they did, then that's a ten out of ten.
Speaker 1: Like it's as bad as it gets. Hopefully, for the
Speaker 1: company's sake, no one noticed the issue and exploited it.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of like the weakest form of security
Speaker 1: you could possibly have is just hoping that no one noticed.
Speaker 1: It's like security through obscurity, not a great, great strategy,
Speaker 1: really bad, And I bet that software developer is having
Speaker 1: a really stressful week, is my guess. My heart goes
Speaker 1: out because if it were truly an accident, that's just
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a terrible accident, but it's not like
Speaker 1: someone was being malicious or whatever. Okay, we've got a
Speaker 1: couple more stories to get through before I can do that.
Speaker 1: Let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor. We're back.
Speaker 1: Spotify podcast strategy has long included a reliance on exclusive
Speaker 1: shows that would only publish on the Spotify platform, and
Speaker 1: I should mention right now, I guess that Spotify clearly
Speaker 1: is a competitor to iHeart podcasts. We all work in
Speaker 1: the same space. But the days of Spotify's exclusivity appear
Speaker 1: to be coming to an end, at least for all
Speaker 1: but one of Spotify's shows. Anyway, the platform had actually
Speaker 1: gone down to just two exclusive shows. It had already
Speaker 1: opened up other shows for wider distribution, and the two
Speaker 1: shows that remained exclusive were The Joe Rogan Experience and
Speaker 1: another one called Call Her Daddy. But now Call Her
Speaker 1: Daddy can distribute on other audio platforms. Spotify is holding
Speaker 1: on to exclusive rights for the video version of the show,
Speaker 1: so it's not like going to be seeing that on YouTube.
Speaker 1: It's just going to be exclusive to Spotify, so that
Speaker 1: will remain on Spotify's platform, but the audio version will
Speaker 1: be available wherever you get your podcasts. So now the
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan Experience is the only exclusive audio podcast remaining
Speaker 1: on Spotify, and people are wondering how long that will
Speaker 1: stay true, you know, will the Joe Rogan Experience follow
Speaker 1: in the footsteps of these other shows and then shift
Speaker 1: to wider distribution, because once that contract comes up, then
Speaker 1: they're going to have to decide how are they're going
Speaker 1: to move forward with renewing it. Spotify has already spent
Speaker 1: tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars on these
Speaker 1: exclusive agreements, most of it to the Joe Rogan experience,
Speaker 1: Like the rumor is that the deal for his exclusive
Speaker 1: contract with Spotify was somewhere in the one hundred million
Speaker 1: dollar range. Holy cats. My guess is that Spotify has
Speaker 1: not seen a great return on investment for most of
Speaker 1: its exclusive shows, which explains why they shifted to wider distribution.
Speaker 1: And that makes sense, right, Like, if you're exclusive, then
Speaker 1: the very nature of exclusivity, you have limited the reach
Speaker 1: of your podcast because not everyone is going to use
Speaker 1: your platform. A lot of people might, but not everyone will.
Speaker 1: And we all know that for the majority of podcasts
Speaker 1: out there, the source of revenue for these podcasts is ads.
Speaker 1: I mean, we just had an ad break on this show.
Speaker 1: That's how we are able to pay for the production
Speaker 1: of these shows and to pay people who work on them.
Speaker 1: It's through ad revenue. So if you are limiting who
Speaker 1: can actually listen to your show, you're limiting how much
Speaker 1: ad revenue you can generate. So it makes sense to
Speaker 1: shift to wider distribution for these other shows, and it
Speaker 1: makes sense that they probably weren't making enough money to
Speaker 1: pay off those exclusivity agreements. The question is will the
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan Experience follow suit or will that be seen
Speaker 1: as such an important feather in the cap of Spotify
Speaker 1: that they will hold on to it to retain exclusivity.
Speaker 1: Here at iHeart Podcasts, we tend to favor wide distribution
Speaker 1: from the get go. We maybe looked at possible exclusive podcasts,
Speaker 1: but as far as I'm aware, we never did that
Speaker 1: because we want folks to find our shows wherever they
Speaker 1: happen to get their podcasts right, we don't want to
Speaker 1: dictate how people have to listen to our shows. We
Speaker 1: want them to be able to access it however they prefer.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like how Netflix became known for making
Speaker 1: sure that they developed an app for every single screen
Speaker 1: that's out there, with the exception of the Apple Vision
Speaker 1: pro because they specifically did not make an app for
Speaker 1: that anyway. Could it be that we will see Spotify
Speaker 1: totally abandon exclusivity at least for audio, or will the
Speaker 1: company continue to spend ass of truckloads of money to
Speaker 1: keep Joe Rogan. I do not know the answer to
Speaker 1: that last story. Here is that a hacker made use
Speaker 1: of ours Technica as part of a malware campaign in
Speaker 1: a way that was very clever and unfortunately also difficult
Speaker 1: to detect and stop. So here's how ours Technica's Dan
Speaker 1: Gooden explained what happened. Quote. A benign image of a
Speaker 1: pizza was uploaded to a third party website and was
Speaker 1: then linked with a URL pasted into the about page
Speaker 1: of a registered RS user. Buried in that URL was
Speaker 1: a string of characters that appeared to be random, but
Speaker 1: were actually a payload end quote. So the picture itself
Speaker 1: was nothing like. The picture could have been of anything.
Speaker 1: It didn't have to be of pizza, it could have
Speaker 1: been any kind of web asset. It was really just
Speaker 1: something that the hacker could use that they anchored this
Speaker 1: URL on in this about page of this RS Technica user,
Speaker 1: and the URL had this long string that would not
Speaker 1: impede the web page from loading, like you would still
Speaker 1: get the webpage to load without an error. But that URL,
Speaker 1: that string that was appended to the URL was actually
Speaker 1: a set of instructions for malware that was already on
Speaker 1: victimized machines. So, in other words, the payload on ours
Speaker 1: Technica did not contain malware itself. It contained a set
Speaker 1: of orders. So the way this works is step one,
Speaker 1: you infect a whole bunch of computers with malware through
Speaker 1: whatever means you have at your disposal. In this case,
Speaker 1: it was through infected USB drives, so you get people
Speaker 1: to connect USB drives to different computers. This injects malware
Speaker 1: into the computer system. That malware is then installed essentially
Speaker 1: into those target computer systems, and it's just a waiting
Speaker 1: further orders. Now Step two is you hide the orders
Speaker 1: for that malware at the end of an otherwise benign
Speaker 1: looking URL, and you find someplace on the web where
Speaker 1: you can plant this URL. Really, you're just looking for
Speaker 1: a host, and it doesn't matter which one you'd choose,
Speaker 1: So in this case it was this about page for
Speaker 1: a user on ours TECHNICAP Step three, the instructions dependent
Speaker 1: that URL are telling the infected machines what to do.
Speaker 1: They're actually seeking out those instructions. They receive the instructions
Speaker 1: and then they execute them. So the malware on these
Speaker 1: machines jumps into action and then step four profit. In
Speaker 1: the case of this particular instance, the malware was part
Speaker 1: of a cryptocurrency mining scheme, So chances are anyone visiting
Speaker 1: ours tetnco is actually fine because the first stage of
Speaker 1: the malware again had to be injected through these USB drives.
Speaker 1: So unless you had grabbed one of those USB drives
Speaker 1: and then thoughtlessly plug it into your computer and infected
Speaker 1: your computer with malware, you're fine because visiting the urs
Speaker 1: Technica site, even visiting that particular page, would not have
Speaker 1: delivered any malware to your machine. It was only the
Speaker 1: instructions for malware that already existed on machines. But this
Speaker 1: does illustrate how hackers can hide malware instructions in plain
Speaker 1: sight and it can be incredibly difficult to detect them.
Speaker 1: All Right, that's it for the news. I do have
Speaker 1: one recommended article to read if you have a subscription
Speaker 1: to the Wall Street Journal. Rolf Winkler has a piece
Speaker 1: titled twenty three and Me's Fall from six billion dollars
Speaker 1: to nearly zero dollars. It includes quotes from CEO and
Speaker 1: Wojiski regarding her strategy to recover from the massive dip
Speaker 1: the company has faced in the wake of a devastating
Speaker 1: data breach, and it's a really interesting read. I know
Speaker 1: not everyone has access to the Wall Street Journal, but
Speaker 1: if you do, that article is reading to just kind
Speaker 1: of get a handle on Woojiski. Who I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know. She's got so much money that I I
Speaker 1: don't think I can I can relate to her on
Speaker 1: any on any human level. It's just it's beyond me.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting to see kind of what do
Speaker 1: you do when your company has gone from an incredibly
Speaker 1: high valuation of like six billion dollars to almost nothing
Speaker 1: like the twenty three and meters stock price now is
Speaker 1: under a dollar. It is under threat of being delisted
Speaker 1: from the Nasdaq. It's a dire situation, so interesting article
Speaker 1: worth a read. In the meantime, I hope all of
Speaker 1: you are well and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeart Radio production. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast Guests,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.