WEBVTT - Tech News: Questions For Facebook, No More Answers from Yahoo 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:12.520 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:16.200 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:19.160 I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and I love all 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:22.120 things tech, and it is time for the tech news 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:28.040 for Thursday, April eighth, twenty twenty one. Yes, that pause 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:32.080 is me looking at the calendar because every day is 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:35.279 the same to me, but the news keeps changing, so 0:00:35.320 --> 0:00:39.160 I guess that's something right. And you know, there are 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:43.599 spy films that start off with a villain sabotaging some 0:00:43.720 --> 0:00:49.239 sort of high security, high value target, like a nuclear 0:00:49.280 --> 0:00:53.239 power plant, for example, but it turns out that the 0:00:53.280 --> 0:00:56.440 same thing can be done by a gooey ocean critter. 0:00:57.080 --> 0:01:00.400 I'm talking about salps, which are a type of invertebrate. 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:05.080 They're called tunicates. They look kind of like jellyfish, but 0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:09.120 they are a different species. They use water jet propulsion 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:12.120 in order to get around, so they siphon in water 0:01:12.280 --> 0:01:15.880 and siphon it back out again and squirt ahead. Anyway, 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:18.319 a whole bunch of them have gummed up the water 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:22.559 intake valves for two nuclear reactors in South Korea, which 0:01:22.600 --> 0:01:26.240 is not you know great. The nuclear plants use water 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:28.880 to cool the reactors as part of the heat exchanges 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:31.759 that are at the heart of power generation, so those 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:37.440 reactors are currently offline. Salt numbers usually swell in early summer, 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:41.759 so we're actually seeing an early surge here. Now whether 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:44.480 that has anything to do with climate change is an 0:01:44.520 --> 0:01:47.760 unresolved question. It would be premature for us to draw 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:51.600 conclusions without a lot more data and looking at trends 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:57.200 over time. This could just be an abnormality but not 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:01.280 an indication of big changes. It's kind of like how 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:05.080 if you had an unusually cool day in late May 0:02:05.240 --> 0:02:08.920 here in Atlanta, you wouldn't say that's counter evidence to 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:12.160 climate change, that global warming is not a thing or whatever, 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:15.160 although no one really wants to use the term global 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:18.440 warming anymore. That's kind of reductive, But anyway, you wouldn't 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:24.120 say that because weather and climate are not interchangeable. The 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:26.840 story of the salps, I think is a little amusing 0:02:26.919 --> 0:02:30.480 because the thought that this little sack like critter could 0:02:30.480 --> 0:02:34.000 shut down a nuclear power plant sounds, you know, kind 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:37.280 of bizarre and funny, but it's obviously serious business, both 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:40.480 in terms of the impact on power generation and changes 0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:45.280 in wildlife. Routines. One story I did not report on 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:49.120 earlier this week was about how hackers have been scraping 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:53.960 information pertaining to more than half a billion Facebook accounts, 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:58.440 including Mark Zuckerberg's. As it turns out, someone collected the 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:02.120 data back in twenty nine teen, and it includes stuff 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:08.440 like names, occupations, location, marital status, or relationship status in 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:12.600 some cases, phone numbers. Facebook says that the hackers likely 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:18.000 used a contact import tool to scrap data from various profiles, 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:22.160 which means no one actually penetrated Facebook's systems and then 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:26.200 rooted around for information that way. Instead, they just pulled 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:29.760 it off Facebook directly. So prior to twenty nineteen, it 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:34.000 was possible to do kind of a reverse search of Facebook. 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:37.560 You could plug in a phone number and put that 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:41.640 into a contact importer, and it would then search Facebook 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:44.400 to see if there was a profile on Facebook that 0:03:44.480 --> 0:03:47.120 matched that phone number, which would then give you not 0:03:47.200 --> 0:03:50.040 just the personal information of the account, but it would 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.839 confirm the link between the phone number and that person. Right. 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:57.360 And if you automated this and you just went through, 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:00.880 you know, a robo dial list of phone numbers, you 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.560 could collect a huge amount of data. Now Facebook changed that, 0:04:05.040 --> 0:04:07.160 but the damage had already been done, the data was 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:09.360 already collected, and it's not much of a relief to 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:11.720 hear that the company has, you know, already done something 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:15.400 about it when the information is already out in the wild. 0:04:15.840 --> 0:04:18.760 It's one of those shutting the barn door things after 0:04:18.880 --> 0:04:21.880 the horse has already kind of bolted. You can check 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:24.479 to see if you were affected by going to have 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:31.200 I Been zucked? That's zu ckeed dot com, and you 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:34.919 can search against the database of all the stuff that 0:04:35.040 --> 0:04:37.359 was collected, so you can put in your phone number, 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:40.359 your email address, or whatever. I tried my information. I 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:44.039 was not in that twenty nineteen hack. But that was 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:47.440 just pure luck. It wasn't that I did anything, you know, 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.400 to prevent it from happening. I was just lucky that 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:54.640 I wasn't in part of that grab. Another bad Facebook 0:04:54.720 --> 0:04:58.480 story coming your way. The Insider has an article titled 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:02.920 Facebook did not higher black employees because they were not 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:08.880 a culture fit. Report says the article is well worth reading. 0:05:08.920 --> 0:05:11.680 I think the headline kind of gives away the idea 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:13.800 of what was going on, but we'll dive in. So 0:05:13.839 --> 0:05:17.880 the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received reports from a few 0:05:18.000 --> 0:05:22.280 black applicants who were seeking jobs with Facebook, and they 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:28.320 all reportedly had the qualifications necessary to do the posted jobs. 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:31.599 But they were all turned away, apparently after being told 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:34.760 they would not fit in with the corporate culture of Facebook. 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:37.520 And it's hard to view this as anything other than 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:42.800 grossly racist. A Washington Post article quoted an operating manager 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.039 over at Facebook who said he was told that the 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:48.400 people he recruited into the company needed to be a 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:53.000 culture fit, but quote, Unfortunately, not many people I knew 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:56.599 could pass that challenge because the culture here does not 0:05:56.680 --> 0:06:01.279 reflect the culture of black people end quote. Organizations like 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:05.000 the Society for Human Resource Management have pushed back against 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:09.280 companies that have culture fit requirements in their job postings. 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:13.000 They've argued that this effectively creates an excuse to hire 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:16.560 mostly white applicants and turn away people of color while 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:20.839 attempting to maintain a sort of plausible deniability that there's 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:25.279 any kind of racial discrimination going on. Facebook representatives have 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:27.960 said that their company has policies and placement to detect 0:06:28.040 --> 0:06:32.039 and eliminate discrimination. But this culture fit thing strikes me 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:35.279 as a way of kind of getting around that, maybe 0:06:35.320 --> 0:06:38.640 not a conscious way. It might not even have been 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:43.320 consciously malevolent or malicious, but it has the effect of 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:48.520 being discriminatory, and that's a problem. On Tuesday, the messaging 0:06:48.600 --> 0:06:51.760 app Signal rolled out a new beta in the UK 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:56.039 with a feature that, well, let's say it's caused a 0:06:56.040 --> 0:07:00.880 little bit of a fuss. Signal is an encrypted messaging service. 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:04.560 It offers end to end encryption between people using it. 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:07.120 That's one that a lot of users have flocked to 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:10.000 in order to switch to a messaging app that didn't 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:15.480 commoditize relationships. When Facebook's WhatsApp started, when it was revealed 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:18.680 that the app was going to be collecting data about usage, 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:21.840 maybe not even personal data, but enough data about usage 0:07:22.040 --> 0:07:27.560 that would ultimately go to Facebook proper and other Facebook properties, 0:07:28.040 --> 0:07:29.920 a lot of people said, you know what, peace out, 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:31.600 I'm going to go use something else, and a lot 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:35.120 of people went to Signal, and signal sales pitch is 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:38.600 that it lets you communicate privately and securely with your contacts. 0:07:38.960 --> 0:07:41.600 And there aren't really any bells and whistles thrown in, 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.680 except now there appears to be one a cryptocurrency called 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:50.480 mobile coin. Critics say that Signal is commercially exploiting its 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:56.920 user base, introducing a company controlled digital cryptocurrency, pumping up 0:07:56.960 --> 0:07:59.960 the value of that digital currency, then pushing it all 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:04.200 off onto users, and then pocketing profit from it. Stephen 0:08:04.280 --> 0:08:08.280 deal That's d I. E Hl wrote a great blog 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.800 post that critiques this move, and it laments the fact 0:08:12.120 --> 0:08:15.080 that Signal seems to have taken a drastic turn from 0:08:15.120 --> 0:08:20.040 its philosophical anchor point. It's called ET two Signal. I 0:08:20.120 --> 0:08:22.800 really recommend you read it. His perspective, which I find 0:08:22.800 --> 0:08:26.160 pretty compelling, is that there's this growing trend in tech 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:30.080 in general to rely on these digital tokens, whether they 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:34.760 are cryptocurrencies or NFTs. That trend sees a small group 0:08:34.800 --> 0:08:38.440 of people trade digital goods a few times, thus driving 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:42.439 up the perceived value of those digital goods. Then they 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:44.880 can cash out, you know, they can build up some wealth, 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:47.760 cash out, and then they have that wealth in some 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:53.280 other form. And meanwhile, those digital assets are in a 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:56.960 danger of having a total collapse in value, similar to 0:08:56.960 --> 0:08:59.720 what we have seen with Bitcoin in the past. Bitcoin's 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:02.360 writing high, but there have been times where we've seen 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:07.800 the value of bitcoin dip really low from pretty big high. 0:09:07.880 --> 0:09:10.400 So there's no guarantee that it's going to maintain that. 0:09:10.960 --> 0:09:14.640 While some might survive the ups and downs and stick around, 0:09:14.760 --> 0:09:19.000 and by some I mean cryptocurrencies and fts. There's never 0:09:19.080 --> 0:09:22.000 a guarantee that they will stick around. And the more 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:25.360 we see companies employ these kinds of strategies, the more 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:27.920 likely we're going to see governments take a closer look 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:30.839 at the whole thing and potentially try to pass legislation 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:34.080 to address it, particularly if people are at risk of 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:38.439 losing significant amounts of money due to these types of strategies. 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:41.040 And as we all know, it is not easy to 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:44.640 address the consequences of technologies once they are out in 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:48.800 the wild. It is way too easy to pass laws 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:52.120 that have their own unintended consequences. The laws might be 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:56.960 coming from a good place, but they can often not 0:09:57.320 --> 0:10:02.000 hit the actual problem and cause other problems as a results, 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:07.400 so not necessarily a great move. Oh and just to 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:12.000 link the Facebook privacy story with the signal story, is 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:14.480 another story that a lot of people are having fun 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:17.360 with right now, and that is that by using that 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:21.880 screat data, some folks found out that Mark Zuckerberg, whom 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:25.080 I mentioned earlier, his data was among that that was 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:29.200 found in that more than half a billion accounts list. 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:32.680 It turns out he's been using the Signal messaging app, 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:35.719 which is interesting because Facebook is the owner of WhatsApp 0:10:36.080 --> 0:10:39.440 that is a Signal competitor. But if you run the 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:43.840 company that owns a messaging app, why would you be 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:47.760 using a different messaging app than the one you actually 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:49.840 own as part of your company. Why would you use 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:54.000 a different one for your personal communication? Well, Signal has 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:58.000 d end encryption, and unlike WhatsApp, it's not coming through 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:00.560 user data, or at least it's not supposed to in 0:11:00.600 --> 0:11:04.000 an effort to sell ads to users. So perhaps Zuckerberg 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:07.199 prefers his messaging services to be a little less intrusive, 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:11.000 but wanting a different set of rules for everybody else, 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:16.760 I don't know, I'm just spitballing here. Amplify Media gave 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:20.480 Apple podcasts a thorough look recently and found out some 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:24.360 stuff that I didn't find all that surprising. Apple podcasts 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:27.480 recently hit a milestone of having more than two million 0:11:27.760 --> 0:11:32.120 different podcast titles on it, but amplify discovered that twenty 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:35.960 six percent of all those podcasts have only published a 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:41.080 single episode. Thirty seven percent had only published two or fewer. So, 0:11:41.120 --> 0:11:43.400 in other words, you know, we went from twenty six 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:47.200 to thirty seven percent having had published two or less, 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:51.000 and then forty four percent had only published three or fewer. 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:54.560 So once you hit the ten or more episodes, like 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:58.400 how many podcasts on Apple Podcasts have published more than 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:01.520 ten episodes, Well you're looking at just thirty six percent 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:05.440 of all the podcasts up on Apple Podcasts, which tells 0:12:05.520 --> 0:12:08.400 us that there are a ton of shows that have 0:12:08.520 --> 0:12:12.800 not hit ten episodes on there. This didn't shock me 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:16.080 because podcasting takes a lot of work and energy. I 0:12:16.120 --> 0:12:19.840 can name at least three shows I personally started recording 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:23.560 and stopped before I hit episode number four, And what 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:24.880 this tells me is that there are a lot of 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:27.560 people who are trying to podcast, but many of them 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:30.679 get discouraged for whatever reason and they give up on it. 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:34.960 Of course, some of those shows might not have been abandoned. 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:37.440 Some of them could have easily just been one offs 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:41.840 or very limited series. For example, Till Death Do Us Blart, 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:44.280 a show in which the hosts get together to watch 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:48.360 Paul Blart Mall Cop two every year, had to run 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:51.520 for four years straight before having more than three episodes, 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:54.480 and it currently has eight. If you also include the 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:59.360 trailer from twenty fifteen and a bonus episode from twenty twenty. Meanwhile, 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:03.760 Tech Stuff is currently close again on fourteen hundred episodes, 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:06.400 and that's if you're not counting classics. If you do 0:13:06.480 --> 0:13:09.600 count the classic episodes that we publish on Fridays, because 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:11.960 I mean, at that point you're talking about one thousand, 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:16.360 five hundred twenty nine episodes. This will be one five 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:20.400 hundred thirty one because I'm pretty sure the Wednesday episode 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:23.200 hasn't published as I record this, and I think out 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:26.360 of all of those, I'm only not in one of them. 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:30.160 I mean every single one except one of them. I 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:33.680 need to lie down for a moment. A recent court 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:37.199 filing in a criminal case illustrates how sometimes smart city 0:13:37.240 --> 0:13:41.400 implementations can be dangerously stupid. And let me be clear here, 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:45.040 I'm not saying it's dumb to update city infrastructure. I'm 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:48.079 saying it's dumb to do it poorly. In this case, 0:13:48.360 --> 0:13:51.640 the incident in question happened back in twenty nineteen. A 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:56.200 man named Wyatt Tranacheck attempted to sabotage the water cleaning 0:13:56.240 --> 0:14:01.040 system of Ellsworth County in Kansas. Travnicheck had been working 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:04.120 with the county, which had installed software in the county's 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.600 water cleaning system and it let employees log into that 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:11.320 cleaning system remotely, and the purpose was to let employees 0:14:11.360 --> 0:14:14.120 monitor systems without having to be on the physical premises. 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:17.880 But the software also allows employees to make changes to 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:21.760 that system, like shutting down various subsystems. So Travin to check, 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:26.160 after having left his job, logged into the system months later. 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:29.720 His access had never been revoked or limited in any way, 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:32.960 so he logged in and he started to shut stuff down, 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:37.400 allegedly with the intent to cause harm. He was found out, arrested, 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:39.720 and if he's found guilty, he could serve up to 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:43.280 twenty years in prison for this. Fortunately no one was 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:45.600 actually harmed in this case, but it really illustrates the 0:14:45.640 --> 0:14:49.040 need for proper security measures and critical systems that includes 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:52.600 everything from the power grid where we know foreign agents 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:56.920 have infiltrated various systems, to our water systems, to communication 0:14:56.960 --> 0:15:01.400 systems and beyond. Good security is hard. It requires work, 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:06.320 It requires maintenance, It requires updating passwords and changing logins. 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:11.960 It includes revoking access when someone no longer merits having access. 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:15.280 It's essentially all the stuff that we should be doing 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:17.840 in our private lives with our own systems. But a 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:21.320 lot of us don't do that because it's work, it's tedious, 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:23.520 and there are only so many hours in a day. 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:28.920 But if we insist on making these various systems accessible remotely, 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.120 we have to take those measures into account or else 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:35.480 we will suffer very serious consequences. This could have been 0:15:35.960 --> 0:15:39.840 a lot worse in the tell us something we didn't 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:44.160 already know category. The Broadband Technical Advisory Group reports that 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:48.400 broadband usage surged between thirty and forty percent in most 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:51.160 of the United States during the pandemic, with some areas 0:15:51.200 --> 0:15:54.560 getting up to sixty percent. Of a surge. Seems like 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:56.400 when a lot of folks are stuck at home, they 0:15:56.440 --> 0:15:58.680 turned to the Internet when it comes to things like 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:02.560 getting work done, or finding entertainment, or researching ways to 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:07.120 get vaccinated and so on. And also, while downstream data 0:16:07.320 --> 0:16:11.240 was way up, so was upstream activity. Again, no big surprise. 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:12.760 I'm sure a lot of you have been on your 0:16:12.800 --> 0:16:16.480 share of video meetings over the course of the last year. 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:19.480 And I mean working from home for me means that 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:22.800 I'm regularly uploading large audio files to my producer Tari, 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:26.360 and that adds up pretty quickly. While the infrastructure in 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:29.240 most cities handled the increased load without too much of 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:32.640 an issue, rural areas were a different story. Some of 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:36.320 those were relying on older networking devices that weren't able 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:38.400 to keep up with the demand as easily as the 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:42.800 stuff we have in metropolitan areas. And what this tells 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:45.440 me is that stuff like data caps sound like they're 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:48.760 more about getting cash out of customers and less about 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:51.840 guaranteeing a good Internet experience. If the US had a 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:55.600 surge and we didn't see home service slow to a 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:59.120 crawl across the country, seems pretty disingenuous to say that 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:03.200 data caps are necessity. Amazon's Twitch service has a new 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:06.159 policy in place that could see twitch streamers get banned 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:10.399 indefinitely for things that they do offline. That is, you 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:13.960 might have a perfectly acceptable streaming record, but you might 0:17:13.960 --> 0:17:17.439 do something really bad out there in the real world, 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:20.480 and if Amazon finds out about it, you might find 0:17:20.520 --> 0:17:23.320 that your stream has been shut down. Now I don't 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:25.840 object to this, by the way, but it is interesting 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:28.920 to me. Twitch streamers can achieve a great deal of fame. 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:32.439 They can attract a large and young audience, and if 0:17:32.480 --> 0:17:34.960 a streamer has been found to have engaged in some 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:39.280 seriously bad behaviors, like being involved in acts of deadly 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:44.240 violence or terrorist activities, or committing sexual assault. Twitch has 0:17:44.359 --> 0:17:47.800 rules now laid out to ban that user from streaming. 0:17:48.320 --> 0:17:50.840 According to Twitch, it will work with a law firm 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:54.360 when cases arise to determine if any claims that were 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:58.680 made against that streamer have validity to them, and that 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:01.560 all has to happen before or Twitch does anything else. 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:05.679 Only on confirmation that the streamer was actually involved in 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:10.400 these activities will Twitch then act on the account. According 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:12.399 to Twitch, a person who has been found to have 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:15.600 engaged in these offline activities poses as a potential threat 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:18.760 to the Twitch community in general, and that is unacceptable. 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:23.400 Other platforms like Facebook and YouTube also sometimes take offline 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:28.640 behavior into consideration when dealing with accounts, but it's more 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:32.440 common to see most platforms focus solely on the behavior 0:18:32.480 --> 0:18:38.120 and activities that happen on the platform itself and not elsewhere. Finally, 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:42.040 in the second McElroy family reference in this episode, let 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:44.600 us all bow our heads in a moment of silence 0:18:45.040 --> 0:18:49.720 for yaho Answers, the platform which allows people to ask 0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:55.400 questions ranging from the mundane to the unintelligible with answers 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:59.000 that frequently match or exceed the questions. Is going to 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:03.400 go away? On May fourth? Wiped clear off the internet 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:07.760 Star Wars Day. I mean, really, guys, that's low anyway. 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:10.200 Yaho Answers has been a part of the web since 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:12.080 two thousand and five, and it's been a part of 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:15.040 the podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me. There's the 0:19:15.080 --> 0:19:18.920 reference to our mackel Royce that had originally launched back 0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:22.879 in twenty ten. And sure there were really dumb questions 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:26.359 and even more dumb answers on yaho Answers, and sure 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:30.199 most of those questions you could probably find answered elsewhere. 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:33.880 And sure some people use Yahoo Answers not to ask 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:36.080 or answer questions, but to create a kind of rich 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:40.360 metafiction of weirdness. But without yah who Answers, we never 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:43.439 would have had the question how is Babby formed? And 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:48.000 countless people too scared to ask a question that they 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:50.240 really wanted to know the answer to and then potentially 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:53.280 look foolish, would be able to go to yah Who 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:56.680 Answers and ask it there, and sometimes they might even 0:19:56.720 --> 0:19:59.720 get a useful response. Now there are other sites that 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:02.880 do sort of what yah Who Answers was doing, though 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:07.480 usually not with the same level of surreal datastic activities. 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:11.280 As for Mbimbam, that's my brother, my brother and me. 0:20:11.400 --> 0:20:14.040 To y'all who have never listened to that show, I 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:16.680 suspect the show is going to be just fine. Yah 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:19.560 Who Answers served a specific role on that show, well 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:22.280 two of them really. One was to help buff up 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:25.040 listener questions because, of course, in the early days, the 0:20:25.040 --> 0:20:27.080 show was still building its audience and so it only 0:20:27.119 --> 0:20:30.120 had so many questions per episode. Yah Who Answers helped 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:33.080 fill that out. But the other was to sign off 0:20:33.160 --> 0:20:38.080 every episode with an unanswered and arguably unanswerable question from 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:40.879 Yah Who Answers. There may now need to be a 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:43.399 new way to close out shows, but I believe in 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:46.879 the mackelroys. As for yall Who Answers, I'm sad to 0:20:46.880 --> 0:20:51.280 see it go. It was bizarre and weird, sometimes disturbing, 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:54.560 but it also felt like a pretty accurate representation of 0:20:55.400 --> 0:20:59.760 the psyche on the Internet. So shine on you, Crazy Diamond, 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:05.000 And that's it for today's episode. That's all the news 0:21:05.400 --> 0:21:09.280 that I care to report for Thursday, April eight, twenty 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:12.399 twenty one. If you have suggestions, for things I should 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:15.159 tackle in episodes of tech Stuff let me know. The 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:17.240 best way to get in touch is on Twitter. The 0:21:17.280 --> 0:21:21.160 handle for the show is text stuff HSW and I'll 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:29.479 talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:35.040 iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:38.320 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.