Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and it is time
Speaker 1: for the news for Tuesday, February twenty one. Let's get
Speaker 1: to it, and we will begin with an update on
Speaker 1: the Solar Winds hack, a massive supply chain hack that's
Speaker 1: had a critically dangerous effect on numerous companies and governmental agencies,
Speaker 1: with the potential for a lot more damage further down
Speaker 1: the road. Solar Winds makes I T system management software,
Speaker 1: so you know, the type of stuff that network administrators
Speaker 1: might use to monitor and control really complicated computer networks.
Speaker 1: Hackers likely backed by Russia, compromised a piece of software
Speaker 1: called Ryan on the Solar Winds side of everything, and
Speaker 1: they inserted malware into the software code for the Orion product.
Speaker 1: So when solar Winds pushed out updates to Orion, Solar
Speaker 1: Winds customers who accepted those updates because solar Winds as
Speaker 1: a trusted partner, they unknowingly infected their own systems with
Speaker 1: a trojan type of malware. That attack hit thousands of
Speaker 1: customers but the hackers actually only followed up with a
Speaker 1: few dozen of them to further infiltrate and spy on
Speaker 1: targets that ranged from Microsoft to the United States Department
Speaker 1: of Homeland Security. Now, Microsoft says that after analyzing the
Speaker 1: code found in Orion, researchers reckon that maybe as many
Speaker 1: as a thousand or more developers had worked on that
Speaker 1: malicious code, which itself consisted of four thousand, thirty two
Speaker 1: lines of code. Now more than a thousand developers, that
Speaker 1: is a truly huge endeavor, something far beyond independent hacking groups.
Speaker 1: Microsoft president Brad Smith indicated that this sort of attack
Speaker 1: was new to the United States, but Russia had previously
Speaker 1: employed a similar approach in cyber attacks on systems located
Speaker 1: inside the Ukraine. If you want to learn more about
Speaker 1: the Solar Winds hack, I had a an episode with
Speaker 1: hacker extraordinaire Shannon Morrise she joined tech Stuff. The episode
Speaker 1: is titled the Solar Winds Hack. It published on February one,
Speaker 1: and Shannon and I explored the scope of the Solar
Speaker 1: Winds attack and what it all actually means. Spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: It's not good. And now let's switch to a collection
Speaker 1: of stories that I like to call eat the Rich.
Speaker 1: And we've got some more updates on that story of
Speaker 1: Wall Street Bets and the game Stop stock, this time
Speaker 1: looking at how the United States government is getting involved,
Speaker 1: so quick refresher. Some hedge funds decided to short sell
Speaker 1: shares a game Stop. That's when you borrow shares of stock,
Speaker 1: you sell them at whatever the current market value is
Speaker 1: for that stock. Then you buy back those borrowed shares
Speaker 1: so you can return them to the original owner. And
Speaker 1: what your hope is is that the price of the
Speaker 1: shares will drop so that you make money on the deal.
Speaker 1: So let's say you sell some borrowed stock for twenty
Speaker 1: bucks a pop, and you buy it back when it's
Speaker 1: at ten dollars a share. You just made ten dollars
Speaker 1: a share as you return the stock to the person
Speaker 1: you borrowed it from. But a group of independent investors
Speaker 1: day traders, communicating on forums like Reddit and a subreddit
Speaker 1: called Wall Street Bets, decided to foil this plan by
Speaker 1: buying up game Stop shares and encouraging others to do so.
Speaker 1: Now that pushed the price of the game Stop shares up,
Speaker 1: not down. Then you had hedge funds freaking out because
Speaker 1: they were going to be obligated to buy back those
Speaker 1: shares they have to in order to return them, and
Speaker 1: now they would have to pay more money than they
Speaker 1: made when they sold off those borrowed shares, and the
Speaker 1: Wall Street bets folks kept buying up more stock as
Speaker 1: soon as it would become available, which pushed the price
Speaker 1: even higher, creating a short squeeze. It hit a high
Speaker 1: of around four three dollars per share. Uh this was
Speaker 1: well above the twenty dollars a share that it was
Speaker 1: at before all this happened, and that share price has
Speaker 1: actually settled off quite a bit. Right now, as a
Speaker 1: record this it's around fifty two dollars per share, but
Speaker 1: that's still more than twice what it was when all
Speaker 1: this started. And the U S House of Representatives wants
Speaker 1: to talk to a few people about everything that's been
Speaker 1: going on. Among those people are Steve Hoffman, the CEO
Speaker 1: of Reddit, and Vlad Tinev, the co CEO of robin
Speaker 1: Hood that's an app that allows its customers, it's users
Speaker 1: to buy stocks through the app. And also they want
Speaker 1: to talk to Keith gil who has the online moniker
Speaker 1: of Roaring Kitty he's been invested heavily in game stuff
Speaker 1: since back in twenty nineteen, an he posted about it frequently.
Speaker 1: The Senate also wants to get involved. They want to
Speaker 1: determine if there was any manipulation of the stock market
Speaker 1: going on here. But on the surface, that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be the case, at least not for the price
Speaker 1: to go up. Sure, there were independent investors all working
Speaker 1: together to buy up shares of stock, but that in
Speaker 1: itself isn't manipulation. In fact, the Wall Street Bets Crew
Speaker 1: maintains that hedge funds that short cell companies frequently engage
Speaker 1: in activities that are specifically meant to devalue that company's
Speaker 1: share price. That seems to fall more under the manipulation umbrella.
Speaker 1: Also on the table or talks about robin Hood, which
Speaker 1: famously put a freeze on how many shares of game
Speaker 1: Stop users could actually purchase, and in some cases they
Speaker 1: just stopped anyone from being able to buy game Stop
Speaker 1: shares at all through robin Hood. The House will examine
Speaker 1: if robin Hood broke any federal regulations in the process
Speaker 1: of that. As numerous media outlets have shared a major
Speaker 1: hedge fund owns a significant stake in Robin Hood and
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Bets Crew has maintained that the app
Speaker 1: is kind of part of a system that rewards the
Speaker 1: wealthy at the expense of everybody else. The U S.
Speaker 1: Senate is also looking into the current state of the
Speaker 1: stock market in general, and the hearing in the House
Speaker 1: of Representatives should take place on February eighteenth, starting at
Speaker 1: noon Eastern time. They'll also be streaming it live just
Speaker 1: in case you know you're interested in tuning in. Researchers
Speaker 1: with the Duke University School of Business published a report
Speaker 1: that an elite group of companies are responsible for more
Speaker 1: than half of all the revenue generated from the ocean economy.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about around a hundred companies responsible for
Speaker 1: one point one trillion dollars in revenues, or about six
Speaker 1: of all revenue from ocean based economic activities. This is
Speaker 1: based off data that's actually a couple of years old,
Speaker 1: so it might even be more dramatic than that. In now,
Speaker 1: if you're like me, you might have had a pretty
Speaker 1: rough reaction to that news. I mean, that's an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of influence with a very small number of organizations.
Speaker 1: But luckily for me, the researchers provide a voice of
Speaker 1: cautious optimism about all this. One of the authors of
Speaker 1: the study has said, quote, one of our biggest challenges
Speaker 1: is to sustain healthy ocean ecosystems as economic use increases
Speaker 1: and climate impacts accelerate. This study confirms that a relatively
Speaker 1: small number of companies will be central to this challenge
Speaker 1: and have a real opportunity for leadership end quote. So
Speaker 1: with that perspective, you could argue that it's actually easier
Speaker 1: to convince a relatively small number of companies to make
Speaker 1: some big changes that could have enormous benefits for millions.
Speaker 1: Then it would be a lot easier to do that
Speaker 1: than to try and convince a ton of smaller companies
Speaker 1: that each have a smaller amount of influence and thus
Speaker 1: have a small stake in a very big pool, as
Speaker 1: it were. Companies in the study included oil and gas
Speaker 1: companies that conduct you know, offshore mining operations, seafood production
Speaker 1: and processing, shipping, cruise tourism, offshore wind companies, and more.
Speaker 1: The lion share of that one point one trillion dollars
Speaker 1: of revenue actually falls, into surprise, surprise, the oil and
Speaker 1: gas company slice of the pie. These companies had a
Speaker 1: combined revenue of eight hundred thirty billion dollars or of
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Yoza. Now, will these companies make the
Speaker 1: major changes to address sustainability challenges? Well, if shareholders demand
Speaker 1: it and pressure the companies to do so, or if
Speaker 1: the leadership of those companies takes these issues like ocean
Speaker 1: sustainability and climate change really seriously. Perhaps I withhold judgment
Speaker 1: only because I've seen a lot of companies act in
Speaker 1: short term self interest over long term viability. But I
Speaker 1: hope the attitude of the researchers us reflect reality. All right,
Speaker 1: how about instead of wealthy corporations, I talked about wealthy criminals,
Speaker 1: And yes there is some overlap in that ven diagram,
Speaker 1: but I am focusing on people who are engaged in
Speaker 1: illegal activities and then turning to stuff like cryptocurrency in
Speaker 1: an effort to launder money so that you know, they
Speaker 1: can actually use the money they stole. That's the whole
Speaker 1: purpose of money laundering. You take illegally obtained money, whether
Speaker 1: it was stolen or it came from illegal transactions, you know,
Speaker 1: like drug sales, that kind of stuff or whatever, and
Speaker 1: you take that money, you mix it with cash from
Speaker 1: an otherwise legitimate enterprise in order to hide the ill
Speaker 1: gotten gains. Now, this gets pretty tricky if you're talking
Speaker 1: about truly large amounts of money, because regulators noticed that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. If a humble business, let's say it's
Speaker 1: literally a launderer, were to brake in, you know, a
Speaker 1: hundred times more revenue than that normally would, that might
Speaker 1: raise some eyebrows. But anyway, an analysis company called chain
Speaker 1: Analysis published a report recently saying that fifty five percent
Speaker 1: of all the money laundering happening with cryptocurrency can be
Speaker 1: traced to just two D seventy block chain addresses. Beyond
Speaker 1: this core group of two D seventy blockchain addresses, you've
Speaker 1: got another fifteen hundred addresses or so that is responsible
Speaker 1: for sevent of all money laundering in the cryptocurrency world. Now,
Speaker 1: this kind of concentration of laundering could pose a big
Speaker 1: problem for the batties out there, because with a bottleneck
Speaker 1: and cryptocurrency processing, law enforcement agencies around the world can
Speaker 1: narrow their focus on some of the most active addresses
Speaker 1: to identify and go after groups of criminals, and if
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency exchanges detect that, they could be targeted for investigations,
Speaker 1: they might actually take more proactive steps to enforce anti
Speaker 1: money laundering policies against users and shut down criminal activity
Speaker 1: ahead of official legal action. One of the things you
Speaker 1: learned when you start looking into big money criminal enterprises
Speaker 1: is that crime does pay, but it can sometimes be
Speaker 1: really hard to cash out without getting caught. Over at
Speaker 1: the New York Times, journalist Cade Mets has written an
Speaker 1: incredible piece about a movement that has really taken hold
Speaker 1: in the tech space, particularly among leaders in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: The pieces titled Silicon Valleys Safe Space, and it's about
Speaker 1: a blog that was called slate Star codex. Gets explains
Speaker 1: that a psychiatrist named Scott Siskin who used the pseudonym
Speaker 1: Scott Alexander, created the blog and used it to write
Speaker 1: about a lot of big topics. As Gets says, quote,
Speaker 1: the blog explored everything from science and medicine to philosophy
Speaker 1: and politics to the rise of artificial intelligence end quote.
Speaker 1: Now I recommend reading the whole piece over on the
Speaker 1: New York Times. Uh They it's really well done, and
Speaker 1: I just want to give a kind of general overview
Speaker 1: without diving too much into the piece. Much of it
Speaker 1: focused on a school of thought that many of the
Speaker 1: leaders in Silicon Valley have been, you know, following or
Speaker 1: subscribed to. It's called rationalism, which sounds you know reasonable, right,
Speaker 1: I mean rationals in the name. Ideally, the philosophy examines
Speaker 1: issues with a sort of scientific approach. The goal is
Speaker 1: to gain an understanding of issues and solutions using a
Speaker 1: rational line of thinking. But there's a tone that starts
Speaker 1: to pop up in rationalism that I personally find rather troubling,
Speaker 1: and it's a tendency to overlook consequences of certain actions
Speaker 1: or policies. I detect a tendency for privileged people to
Speaker 1: ignore the effects of their rationalism on those who are
Speaker 1: not part of that privileged class. Free speech is frequently
Speaker 1: cited as a critical element of rationalism, but there also
Speaker 1: seems to be a fail eire to address a problem
Speaker 1: I see, which is that those who have the strongest
Speaker 1: platform from which to speak freely are those who already
Speaker 1: enjoy a great deal of privilege. In other words, if
Speaker 1: you aren't one of the lucky few who are privileged,
Speaker 1: then freedom of speech doesn't mean as much because you
Speaker 1: aren't given the same platform that allows you to, you know,
Speaker 1: get your message to be heard. You aren't elevated, and
Speaker 1: your volume isn't amplified the way the folks who do
Speaker 1: belong to that class experience. Now you can probably tell
Speaker 1: I'm not totally on board with rationalism. I respect a
Speaker 1: lot of what it's about in theory, but I also
Speaker 1: have fundamental problems with it in practice. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of why when I talk about critical thinking, I tend
Speaker 1: to pair it with compassion when I advocate it to
Speaker 1: you guys, my listeners. I find that compassion without critical
Speaker 1: thinking that's terrible at least some bad decisions that leads
Speaker 1: to magical reasoning. If you don't allow critical thinking and
Speaker 1: you just follow compassion, you're gonna make some bad choices.
Speaker 1: But I find that critical thinking without compassion leads to
Speaker 1: decisions that can have really negative consequences for a lot
Speaker 1: of people. And Gets does a pretty good job of
Speaker 1: handling this matter with a very objective point of view,
Speaker 1: particularly considering that Gets himself became the target of harassment
Speaker 1: as a result of this journalistic endeavor he pursued. So
Speaker 1: if you find my own perspective frustrating because of my
Speaker 1: own point of view, you should really read the original
Speaker 1: piece because there's a lot in there, including the way
Speaker 1: that various leaders have treated the concept of artificial intelligence,
Speaker 1: and our AI really does post some significant challenges from
Speaker 1: an ethical and existential point of view, So highly recommend
Speaker 1: you check it out. Okay, we have some more stories
Speaker 1: to get to, but first let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: We're back. The Anti Defamation League released a study last week.
Speaker 1: They found videos on YouTube that promote extremist views like
Speaker 1: you know, white supremacy are still not only found on YouTube,
Speaker 1: but also the site's algorithm is still recommending those videos. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you happen to have watched other extremist videos, so
Speaker 1: if you watch one, you're likely to be recommended others. Now,
Speaker 1: this falls into a general problem of algorithms that potentially
Speaker 1: could be exacerbating radicalization. The purpose of the algorithm ultimately
Speaker 1: is just to keep people on the platform for as
Speaker 1: long as possible, because more time on the platform means
Speaker 1: more advertising dollars going to that company, so you want
Speaker 1: to maximize the amount of time people are spending there.
Speaker 1: So if you click on a video on YouTube, the
Speaker 1: algorithm will take into account which video you chose and
Speaker 1: then pull up videos with related material In them and
Speaker 1: serve them up to you. Now. Many years ago, the
Speaker 1: comedian Patton Oswald had a bit about the DVR device
Speaker 1: TiVo and how he was having problems with it. According
Speaker 1: to the bit, he said he decided to watch some Westerns,
Speaker 1: and TiVo then interpreted that to mean that what Patton
Speaker 1: really liked were horses, and so suddenly TiVo was automatically
Speaker 1: recording programs that had anything to do with horses and
Speaker 1: presenting those two patent as, Hey, you liked you like
Speaker 1: that other horse thing, watch this horse thing. Well, that's
Speaker 1: kind of what YouTube's algorithm does. If you watch videos
Speaker 1: about people rescuing animals, you're going to get a lot
Speaker 1: more of those videos recommended to you. I know, because
Speaker 1: that's what dominates my YouTube recommendations. But when it comes
Speaker 1: to indoctrine Nation into extremist views, this algorithmic approach can
Speaker 1: be a huge problem. It's like YouTube is doing the
Speaker 1: recruitment on behalf of these extremist groups population recommendations with
Speaker 1: propaganda that persuades more people toward harmful extremist ideas. And
Speaker 1: also terms like extremism and radicalism are a little too vague.
Speaker 1: I think you can have an extreme view and it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily harmful, but we're generally talking about philosophies like
Speaker 1: white supremacy that is undeniably harmful. The study found that
Speaker 1: YouTube's algorithm was likely to serve up more videos designed
Speaker 1: to appeal to these sorts of world views if you
Speaker 1: had watched a video already. Now that being said, you
Speaker 1: are not likely to stumble across one of these videos
Speaker 1: and your recommendations without doing some of that work on
Speaker 1: your own. Google has really been working to limit hate
Speaker 1: speech on the YouTube platform. That is helping out a bit.
Speaker 1: In fact, according to Google, it's reduced the consumption of
Speaker 1: those types of videos by as much as eighty percent.
Speaker 1: But if you actually do seek out the videos, then
Speaker 1: you can find them, and you might find that YouTube's
Speaker 1: starts recommending more of them to you, and that remains
Speaker 1: a problem. I hope to do a more thorough episode
Speaker 1: on this general topic in the future, and I have
Speaker 1: a special guest in mind who might help me talk
Speaker 1: about it, So stay tuned for that. Parlor or parlay
Speaker 1: if you prefer, has returned, the social network ostensibly dedicated
Speaker 1: to free speech, but effectively the place of refuge for
Speaker 1: the far right of the political spectrum Online was homeless
Speaker 1: for a while. That was after Amazon Web Services booted
Speaker 1: the company from their servers. But now the site has
Speaker 1: a new host, a company called Epic E p i
Speaker 1: K that's also known as a harbor for other far
Speaker 1: right websites and services that have had a trouble, you know,
Speaker 1: finding a home elsewhere. While those who have existing Parlor
Speaker 1: accounts can access the site, the messages that once populated
Speaker 1: the forums before Amazon evicted them, those are not yet back,
Speaker 1: so those who are already members can go there. They
Speaker 1: can start you know, posting in forums again, but they
Speaker 1: can't access older threads. Parlor in general has had a
Speaker 1: lot of changes. Researchers were able to scrape tons of
Speaker 1: data off of Parlor before it was banished, and there
Speaker 1: is no shortage of critics who will say that the
Speaker 1: company has proven to be extremely careless with user information,
Speaker 1: so a lot of people say that Parlor is is
Speaker 1: kind of a doxing tool all by itself. The former CEO,
Speaker 1: John Matt's has said that Rebecca Mercer, who provided much
Speaker 1: of the funds to launch Parlor, fired him earlier this month,
Speaker 1: and Mark Mechler, best known for co founding the Tea
Speaker 1: Party is now serving as interim CEO while the company
Speaker 1: seeks out a permanent one. It's too early to say
Speaker 1: if users are going to return to the site in
Speaker 1: droves or if they will have migrated to other services.
Speaker 1: And I guess now it's time for me to talk
Speaker 1: about Clubhouse. And I'm sure most of you have heard
Speaker 1: about it, and a lot of you may have even
Speaker 1: used it. Me not so much, not cool like that.
Speaker 1: But Clubhouse is an app that launched last March. It's
Speaker 1: an app that was created by Paul Davison and Rowan
Speaker 1: Seth after they tried to make a podcasting app, and
Speaker 1: it's really blowing up now after lots of early influencers
Speaker 1: and celebrities embraced the platform. Now I'm still the ground
Speaker 1: old man who hasn't joined in. But the app creates
Speaker 1: audio chat rooms, which just makes me think of the
Speaker 1: old party lines you used to see advertised about all
Speaker 1: sorts of stuff back in the nineties. And you use
Speaker 1: the app to log into, you know, various chat rooms.
Speaker 1: You can bounce around if you want, and you're able
Speaker 1: to converse over voice with other users about all sorts
Speaker 1: of things. And some of those users include famous people
Speaker 1: like people like Lindsay Lohan and Elon Musk, and the
Speaker 1: topics of conversation could be really broad, with some rooms
Speaker 1: dedicated to celebrity gossip, some might be dedicated to quantum physics.
Speaker 1: It's pretty wild stuff. It's an invitation only platform, and
Speaker 1: I've never received an invite, which is not a complaint.
Speaker 1: It's probably for the best. I mean, I record so
Speaker 1: many podcasts a week. I suspect most people here as
Speaker 1: much from me as they would like, and in many cases,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's more than that. Also, there's no Android
Speaker 1: version of the app yet, but it is on the way,
Speaker 1: according to the company. However, since it is invite only,
Speaker 1: that means that clubhouse has a sort of air of
Speaker 1: exclusivity around it, which automatically makes it more attractive for
Speaker 1: some people. Plus, in the middle of a pandemic where
Speaker 1: most of us are stuck at home, it represents a
Speaker 1: way to chat with other people safely and about all
Speaker 1: sorts of interesting or mundane topics. Everyone wants to be
Speaker 1: in the club they can't get in. I guess I
Speaker 1: don't know at all. All sounds kind of stressful to me, Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think I mostly end up just being quiet there,
Speaker 1: believe it or not, So an invitation is wasted on me.
Speaker 1: If you have an invitation, give it to someone you
Speaker 1: think would get the most out of it. I guess
Speaker 1: that is what I'm saying. The fact you can just
Speaker 1: go in there and talk with folks has already led
Speaker 1: China to say, hey, we don't want that here, because
Speaker 1: the Chinese government cracks down hard on any form of
Speaker 1: communication that is outside of its own authority. And Clubhouse
Speaker 1: is also already at the center of other conversations about exclusion, harassment, misinformation,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of stuff that we see on
Speaker 1: all social networks. Really, I'm not think saying it's it
Speaker 1: should come as a surprise that it's over at Clubhouse too.
Speaker 1: It's it's an issue that has been a problematic for
Speaker 1: every platform. Now, there have been some pretty nasty stories
Speaker 1: about bullying over at Clubhouse, but I think every social
Speaker 1: platform faces these issues. It's really how they respond to
Speaker 1: those problems that's worth talking about. And Clubhouse is still
Speaker 1: in the process of formulating its strategy for that, like
Speaker 1: getting moderators and that kind of thing. I imagine all
Speaker 1: that is going to have to change soon. It's gonna
Speaker 1: have to be less loosey goosey, but I'm sure I'll
Speaker 1: also do a full episode about Clubhouse in the future,
Speaker 1: so it tuned for that as well. Several financial institutions
Speaker 1: are now joining initiatives in which they will share intellectual
Speaker 1: property in the form of patents, all in an effort
Speaker 1: to avoid patent trolls. This stems from a recent lawsuit
Speaker 1: in which a company called U S a A filed
Speaker 1: a patent infringement lawsuit against Wells Fargo, and one the case,
Speaker 1: they received a reward of more than three million dollars
Speaker 1: for a pair of cases. Actually, at the heart of
Speaker 1: the matter was an innovation in which bank customers can
Speaker 1: deposit checks by taking the photo of the check with
Speaker 1: their phone and then using their banking app to transfer
Speaker 1: money to their accounts, something that a lot of banks
Speaker 1: do these days. Now, the whole story behind that is
Speaker 1: actually pretty complicated. There was a company called in fact,
Speaker 1: there is a company called me Tech, which Wells Fargo
Speaker 1: uses for its mobile deposits, and USA A both holding
Speaker 1: patents related to mobile deposits. So you had Metech with
Speaker 1: some patents, U S a A with other patents. They
Speaker 1: got into a big legal battle, they sell it out
Speaker 1: of court, they retain the rights of their patents, and
Speaker 1: now usa A is going after other financial institutions. So
Speaker 1: the repercussions have encouraged a lot of financial institutions to
Speaker 1: enter into a sort of open source agreement to share
Speaker 1: i P in an effort to protect themselves against patent
Speaker 1: infringement cases. The biggest concern our patent assertion entities. These
Speaker 1: would be patentrols. These are companies that make money by
Speaker 1: acquiring patents and then they assert those patents against companies
Speaker 1: that are allegedly infringing those patents. Just a quick reminder,
Speaker 1: a patent protects an invention of some sort. That invention
Speaker 1: can actually be a process, not necessarily a thing. For
Speaker 1: the duration of the patent, the holder is the sole
Speaker 1: owner of that particular implementation of technology. If you want
Speaker 1: to use that tech that approach, you either have to
Speaker 1: figure out how to build something else that achieves the
Speaker 1: same end result but doesn't use the same process as
Speaker 1: the patented technology, or you have to strike up some
Speaker 1: sort of deal with the patent holder and thus license
Speaker 1: the technology. But patent trolls don't tend to offer licenses. First,
Speaker 1: They get litigious. They aim for big rewards or court settlements,
Speaker 1: and that tends to scare everybody else, and it gives
Speaker 1: the patent holder a lot of leverage when they do,
Speaker 1: you know, try to negotiate licensing agreements. Meanwhile, critics point
Speaker 1: out that these patent holders aren't doing anything useful with
Speaker 1: the patents at all. You know, they're not making anything,
Speaker 1: they're not using the patent. They're just relying on it
Speaker 1: as a cudgel. They're hoarding patents and waiting for the
Speaker 1: opportunity to go after someone who appears to be using
Speaker 1: the technology without authorization. And back in the day, the
Speaker 1: company I worked for, how Stuff Works, was targeted by
Speaker 1: a patentrol that claimed to hold a patent that covered
Speaker 1: all of podcasting. Now, that particular case never really went
Speaker 1: anywhere for lots of reasons, but that's a story for
Speaker 1: another day. Hey, when was the last time you answered
Speaker 1: a phone call from an unknown number? For me? That
Speaker 1: would probably be something along the lines of five years ago.
Speaker 1: And as it turns out, it's probably a good thing.
Speaker 1: And I'm not alone in my decision to let my
Speaker 1: phone just ring to voicemail. According to Hya, a cloud
Speaker 1: services company that caters to customers like a T and
Speaker 1: T and Samsung. Robo call scams are kind of at
Speaker 1: a peak. The company commissioned a survey, and that survey
Speaker 1: found that three out of four respondents say they were
Speaker 1: targeted by at least one phone scammer over the last year. Now,
Speaker 1: these are the types of phishing attempts that are looking
Speaker 1: for personally identifiable information like social Security numbers, bank accounts,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Maybe you're one of those people.
Speaker 1: You might get a call from someone claiming to represent
Speaker 1: the I R S and that you need to talk
Speaker 1: to them or face possible fines or worse. That's actually
Speaker 1: a pretty common one. And I know I've received a
Speaker 1: couple of robo call messages in that Vein the as,
Speaker 1: at least in the old days, they couldn't really detect
Speaker 1: when voicemail was picking up as opposed to a human,
Speaker 1: So I would get these prerecorded messages and it would
Speaker 1: always start, you know, like halfway through, because it was
Speaker 1: already going through my outgoing message. It didn't pause and
Speaker 1: wait for the beep. So, according to this survey, those
Speaker 1: who fall for the scam lose on average around a
Speaker 1: hundred eighty dollars, but some can lose a lot more
Speaker 1: than that. Meanwhile, because we're in that whole pandemic thing,
Speaker 1: people have been using voice communication a lot more recently,
Speaker 1: and so personal and business calls have nearly tripled in volume. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the survey respondents say that if it's an unknown number,
Speaker 1: they don't answer it, which makes it harder for a
Speaker 1: legitimate communication to go through. So if a company does
Speaker 1: need to make contact with a customer, it can be
Speaker 1: impossible to get that person to pick up. Of course,
Speaker 1: if they just leave a legitimate message, that can help
Speaker 1: a lot. Now, I don't know about you, but while
Speaker 1: I might get three or four, or sometimes six or
Speaker 1: seven calls in a day, it's very rare that any
Speaker 1: of those will actually leave a message. Now, you might
Speaker 1: wonder if anyone is actually working on this problem on
Speaker 1: behalf of consumers, And the short answer is yes. But
Speaker 1: the longer answer is it's a complicated problem. It's not
Speaker 1: super easy to solve. In the United States, phone companies
Speaker 1: are supposed to create a new approach to color i
Speaker 1: D by June this year and cut back on the
Speaker 1: practice of spoofing. That's when a caller can use a
Speaker 1: false color I d to try and make a connection.
Speaker 1: Like they're not using their own phone number, they have
Speaker 1: spoofed a different phone number that stands in its place.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever received a bunch of calls from
Speaker 1: a phone number that's similar to your own, you know,
Speaker 1: same area code, maybe the same first three digits of
Speaker 1: the actual number, then you've likely seen spoofing in action.
Speaker 1: That's a common tactic among robo callers. Now, I'll probably
Speaker 1: do a full episode about spoofing and what steps companies
Speaker 1: might take cut back on it, but that will be
Speaker 1: for the future, which is where you and I will
Speaker 1: spend the rest of our lives. Before we get to
Speaker 1: the future, though, we need to take another quick break.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of the dangers of relying on
Speaker 1: cloud based services. Now, sometimes the cloud providing those services
Speaker 1: can go down and then you're at a loss. And
Speaker 1: this is one of those scary things that c t
Speaker 1: o s have to consider. Do you keep all your
Speaker 1: systems on premises or on prem as the cool C
Speaker 1: suite folks say, or do you offload some or maybe
Speaker 1: all of those services to cloud based platforms and then
Speaker 1: you rely on other companies to provide a more robust
Speaker 1: and redundant system that you can rely upon. Now, ideally,
Speaker 1: cloud services should be just as if not more reliable,
Speaker 1: than on pre m systems, but sometimes stuff goes wrong.
Speaker 1: Last Friday, stuff went wrong for Notion. That's a company
Speaker 1: that provides cloud based project management services. The company offers
Speaker 1: up a suite of tools for all sorts of things
Speaker 1: from managing product development, to product launches, to marketing campaigns
Speaker 1: and beyond. Except on Friday, for several hours, the whole
Speaker 1: thing went down for everybody, which means four million users
Speaker 1: were not able to access it. So what was going on? Well,
Speaker 1: according to the company, there was a quote very unusual
Speaker 1: DNS issue that occurred at the registry operator level end.
Speaker 1: Quote that might be a little difficult to parse, so
Speaker 1: let's break it down. D n S stands for Domain
Speaker 1: Name system, which you can think of as sort of
Speaker 1: the directory for the Internet. It's the distributed decentralized record
Speaker 1: that explains what all those different machines connected to the
Speaker 1: inner net are and where they can be found. Notion site,
Speaker 1: which is Notion dot s O, has name dot Com
Speaker 1: as the registrars, so that's the company that registered the
Speaker 1: name to Notion. However, Name dot Com works with another
Speaker 1: company called hexo Net. Hexo Net manages all companies all
Speaker 1: websites that use the dot s O domain, and hexo
Speaker 1: net had received word that some nefarious Notion users were
Speaker 1: creating pages in Notion that were an effort to fish
Speaker 1: sensitive information off of unsuspecting targets, so they were essentially
Speaker 1: using Notion as a platform for a delivery system for
Speaker 1: phishing attacks. Hexo Net contacted name dot com about this,
Speaker 1: but Name dot Com was unable to confirm the reports
Speaker 1: with direct evidence. Hexo Net then placed a temporary freeze
Speaker 1: on notions domain in order to sort out the mess,
Speaker 1: which meant that all of Notion went offline for rebudy.
Speaker 1: Hex on Net lifted that freeze later on Friday, But
Speaker 1: the problems with phishing scams and Notion aren't new, and
Speaker 1: as of this recording, the company hasn't really laid out
Speaker 1: plans externally anyway on how they're going to push back
Speaker 1: against those fishing attacks, which could mean that this event
Speaker 1: could repeat itself in the future, which is not a
Speaker 1: strong way to sell a project management platform if you're
Speaker 1: saying it might be offline occasionally as these sort of
Speaker 1: things happen, and now la la Google has a lot
Speaker 1: to answer for in France. Okay, I'm sorry. I can't
Speaker 1: promise that's going to be the last of the accent,
Speaker 1: and I know it's terrible, but a French court has
Speaker 1: ordered Google to pay a fine of one point three
Speaker 1: million dollars or one point one million euros because the
Speaker 1: company's search engine gave misleading rankings about French hotels. And
Speaker 1: that's about the most French thing I think I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: You mess with French hospitality. You get the taroll by
Speaker 1: the orne. Okay, now now I'm really done. I know
Speaker 1: you've all just sort of cringed yourselves out of existence.
Speaker 1: I apologize. So that was a mixed metaphor I was giving.
Speaker 1: It was also a terrible pronunciation of French vocabulary. But
Speaker 1: apparently Google was using one source for ranking hotels in
Speaker 1: addition to a couple of secondary sources, but they didn't
Speaker 1: meet up to the high standards of French sensibilities and
Speaker 1: hotel owners complained to the government, which then investigated the
Speaker 1: matter and found Google to be deficient and how it
Speaker 1: was ranking results Gail Domage. So now Google has to
Speaker 1: pay this fine and presumably come about ranking these hotels
Speaker 1: in a totally different way. It's such a weird thing
Speaker 1: to to see and it's something that would only really
Speaker 1: happen in the European Union. On Monday of this week,
Speaker 1: the CEO of Jagua, the British car company, announced a
Speaker 1: new plan for Jaguars that's the way we Americans say
Speaker 1: it started. In twenty five, the company's cars will ditch
Speaker 1: the internal combustion engine. Yep. All the Jaguars of the
Speaker 1: future will all be electric, either with batteries or with
Speaker 1: hydrogen fuel cell technology. And a fuel cell is a
Speaker 1: lot like a battery and that it generates electricity through
Speaker 1: an electrochemical process, but unlike a battery, you have to
Speaker 1: actually refuel a fuel cell. You have to fill it up.
Speaker 1: Eventually it runs out of hydrogen and you've got to
Speaker 1: top it off. On the bright side, the emissions from
Speaker 1: a fuel cell vehicle are primarily heat and water, which
Speaker 1: is a nice change of pace from carbon spewing internal
Speaker 1: combustion engines. The Jaguar land Rover is to have six
Speaker 1: new battery electric vehicles by twenty six. Gone will be
Speaker 1: engines that require either gasoline or diesel, and the company
Speaker 1: itself plans to be carbon neutral by twenty thirty nine.
Speaker 1: It will also mean making some big changes at the
Speaker 1: company's various manufacturing facilities. Now, Jaguar says it's not gonna
Speaker 1: shut down their factory in Birmingham, England, but things are
Speaker 1: going to change substantially there after that facility finishes building
Speaker 1: out the models that they're making for this year, because
Speaker 1: they are not going to do that next year, but
Speaker 1: presumably that facility will be doing something else that supports
Speaker 1: Jaguar's new vision. Sticking with electric vehicles, Tesla is in
Speaker 1: the news again. You might remember last week when they
Speaker 1: talked about how China is ordering Tesla to shape up
Speaker 1: after quality control issues were found with the American built
Speaker 1: Tesla vehicles that were imported into China, whereas the Chinese
Speaker 1: built ones seem to be okay. Well. Now Germany is
Speaker 1: ordering Tesla to recall more than twelve thousand Model X
Speaker 1: cars because of a problem with loose trim. The country's
Speaker 1: motor vehicle regulatory agency, called the k b A, says
Speaker 1: that the molding on the trim can become loose. That
Speaker 1: means cars might have trim breakoff while they're in motion.
Speaker 1: That represents a has heard on the road, and the
Speaker 1: recall is for cars that were manufactured between and twenty six.
Speaker 1: Tesla had already recalled some nine thousand Model X vehicles
Speaker 1: in the US for a roof trim issue. No word
Speaker 1: if it's the exact same thing, and in January, the
Speaker 1: NHTSA urged Tesla to recall more than one thousand vehicles
Speaker 1: because of a problem with the touch screen interface that
Speaker 1: access the screen for the rear facing camera. It's also
Speaker 1: the way you control important stuff like if you want
Speaker 1: to defug the windshield, so it could pose as a
Speaker 1: safety hazard if that fails as well. According to The Verge,
Speaker 1: Microsoft is quietly testing its x Cloud service through a
Speaker 1: web browser. With x Cloud, people who have an Xbox
Speaker 1: Game Pass are able to access their games in that
Speaker 1: pass through a browser. Now playing a cloud based version
Speaker 1: of the game through the browser itself, that's sort of cool.
Speaker 1: You would need an Xbox controller connected to whatever device
Speaker 1: was running the web browser, and then you're off to
Speaker 1: the races, particularly if you're playing Fortza. That's a race
Speaker 1: card joke. The Verge reports that as it stands, it
Speaker 1: looks like the service is going to be limited to
Speaker 1: browsers that are built off of Chromium, so that includes
Speaker 1: Microsoft Edge and you know, Google Chrome. There are apps
Speaker 1: on Android that already allow Android users to access the
Speaker 1: x cloud services, but this would allow you to do
Speaker 1: it straight through a browser, not with a specific OS.
Speaker 1: The Independent reports that Facebook is working on a smart
Speaker 1: watch with the goal of launching it in two Now,
Speaker 1: as you might suspect, such a watch would lean heavily
Speaker 1: on integrated services from Facebook properties like Instagram, What's Happened,
Speaker 1: you know, Facebook, There's also evidence that it will have
Speaker 1: some fitness tracking capabilities and integration with some big fitness
Speaker 1: companies like Peloton. Now the design incorporates a cellular transceiver,
Speaker 1: so assuming that's in this smart watch, you would be
Speaker 1: able to use the watch to send and receive messages
Speaker 1: without necessarily having to pair it with a phone or
Speaker 1: anything like that. Now, considering Facebook's reputation with user privacy
Speaker 1: and leveraging user information to serve ads to those people,
Speaker 1: I would personally be a little bit reluctant to strap
Speaker 1: on a smart watch that's monitoring stuff like my heart
Speaker 1: rate and my sleeping patterns, because next thing you know,
Speaker 1: I'd be getting ads for exercise equipment and lavender scented
Speaker 1: masks and stuff. I mean, at least I would if
Speaker 1: I were still using Facebook. But you get what I mean.
Speaker 1: Can Facebook create a must have piece of technology? Well,
Speaker 1: the company has tried in the past. Things have not
Speaker 1: really worked out so well. The Facebook phone is one
Speaker 1: of the legendary flops in the tech world, and smart
Speaker 1: watches have frequently fallen short of expectations. So we'll have
Speaker 1: to wait and see. And that wraps up the news
Speaker 1: for Tuesday, February one. I hope you guys are doing well.
Speaker 1: You'll get another typical episode of tech Stuff tomorrow. I
Speaker 1: hope you guys are looking forward to That should be interesting. Uh.
Speaker 1: They will definitely keep you awake because it's gonna be
Speaker 1: about coffee makers. That's a that's a little teaser for
Speaker 1: what to expect. Well, if you have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: future topics of tech Stuff, you can let me know
Speaker 1: by contacting me on Twitter. The handle is text stuff
Speaker 1: h s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,