July 13, 2021 • 25 mins
ByteDance employees are about to have less work. Google faces a big fine in France. And Amazon just got permission from the FCC to watch you sleep. Plus more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech. And this is the
tech news for Tuesday, July twenty one. And uh, there's
(00:27):
some some rough stuff in here. In fact, let's start
with some more bad news for software company Solar Winds.
You probably remember that late last year we had news
break that hackers had infiltrated solar Winds products and managed
to create a supply chain attack that affected thousands of
computer systems, though it appears the hackers really focused on
(00:50):
a much smaller number of very high profile targets, including
US Department of Defense systems, and that the hackers appeared
to be operating out of Russia. Well Over this past weekend,
Solar Winds announced that hackers were apparently able to exploit
previously unknown flaws in two of solar Winds products, and
(01:12):
that these flaws are completely unrelated to the attacks from
last year. So these would be called zero day vulnerabilities,
meaning that no one was aware that these things existed
when the products went live. This vulnerability is in the
company's Serve You that's s E r V DASH, the
(01:33):
letter You line of software products. Microsoft researchers apparently found
the bug, but not before hackers had already learned of
it themselves. As of this recording, that's pretty much all
the information I have on this. Solar Winds stated that
the company is quote unaware of the identity of the
(01:54):
potentially affected customers end quote, which is not a great
start either. Microsoft oft found evidence of quote limited targeted
customer impact end quote, and according to Ours Technica, the
vulnerability would allow hackers to gain privileged access after exploiting
machines that were running Serve You Managed File Transfer and
(02:17):
or Serve You Secure FTP. With this vulnerability, at that point,
the hackers would be able to access files on the
infected system. They might be able to delete data, They
could install new programs. They can essentially perform the sort
of tasks that any administrator level account could perform on
the system. Solar Winds has already issued a quick patch
(02:40):
to UH to be a temporary fix on this, while
working on a more permanent solution. On a slightly less
dramatic note, Twitter recently admitted that the company had mistakenly
verified a quote small number end quote of fake accounts
shortly after the company reinstated its verification program. This is
(03:01):
all according to The Daily Dot, a data scientist with
the truly amazing name Conspirator No. Tenno found six accounts
with that verified check mark next to them. And someone
created those six accounts back on June six, so they're
pretty darn recent. And while all six were verified, none
(03:23):
of them had posted so much as a single tweet,
and two of them were apparently using stock photographs for
their profile pictures. Twitter responded by copying up to the
fact that somehow the verification applications for a small number
of fake accounts had received approval, and the company has
since banned five of those six accounts. The sixth apparently
(03:47):
uh took itself down. Nortenno also pointed out that these
six accounts had a few suspicious followers in common across them,
to the tune of nearly one thousand accounts, and he
says that it looks as though these were all part
of a larger bot net that includes at least one thousand,
two hundred twelve accounts twelve twelve. I don't know if
(04:08):
that there's any significance to that. Probably not. I'm sure
it's just a weird fact that it's a repeating number.
Twitter's verification process is meant to allow notable people that's
at least notable in Twitter's estimation, to authenticate that a
Twitter feed that purporting to belong to them does in
fact belong to them. That way, you're you know, busy
(04:31):
tweeting at Neil Gaman, you can be certain that it's
the real Neil Gaiman who's seeing your messages. I mean, heck,
I actually have a blue check mark. I have a
verified Twitter account, So clearly that whole notability thing is
a pretty you know, Lucy goosey definition. Now, for the record,
I applied a few years ago when we first launched
the Forward Thinking video series, so it was for work purposes,
(04:55):
and the check mark has just kind of stuck with
me ever since. Not that I'm complaining about this now. Obviously,
the fake accounts getting verified, that raises questions as to
how did they do that, How did they sail through
the verification process in the first place, particularly when there
are actual, real life notable people out there who never
received a verification from Twitter. We don't have the answers
(05:18):
to that. Down in Cuba, we're seeing a pretty familiar
playbook being followed by the Cuban government there in response
to growing protests as citizens voice their anger and displeasure
regarding some major issues in the country like food and
medical shortages. Cuba is in the midst of a severe
(05:39):
economic recession, which was exacerbated by COVID nineteen and the
fact that the entire tourist industry was effectively shut down
for a year. Citizens have taken to the streets to
protest the government's response to this and issues with food
shortages and the like, and the government's response, in part
(06:00):
has been to shut down internet access, at least that
appears to be the case, and thus citizens have seen
their ability to communicate and organize with one another online
cut off. Now in some areas, such as Havana, where
the protests are particularly you know, large, the internet outages
were more severe, which seems to support the argument that
(06:21):
this was a government led project. And generally speaking, Communist
countries like Cuba and China traditionally maintain tight controls over
communication channels, and they use that control to limit what
citizens can say or access in an effort to maintain
authoritarian control. I'm not saying those are the only places
(06:42):
where that happens, or that authoritarian control is limited to
communist countries, just saying that that tends to be a
pretty common practice. Speaking of China, that country is leaning
heavily on facial recognition technology as it attempts to handle
new Corona of virus outbreaks. According to tech Explore, China
(07:03):
is pairing facial recognition technology with citizens coronavirus test results, So,
in other words, you get tested for coronavirus, the government
essentially gets access to those results, and your health status
becomes part of your identity, and the facial recognition systems
keep track of where you're going and who you happen
(07:24):
to be around, which probably sounds a bit scary to
most of you out there, including myself. Now. At the
same time, China is facing a pretty difficult situation that
it's in a tough position. The neighboring country of Myanmar
is the site of some massive political unrest stemming from
a coup that happened back in February, and some Myanmar
(07:46):
nationals have fled to China in order to escape regional violence.
Have of the new cases of coronavirus in this particular
region of China seem to link back to Myanmar nationals,
so AT raises safety concerns there. Apparently, the facial recognition
systems also have thermal detectors built in, so those can
(08:08):
spot people who might have elevated body temperatures, which is
a possible sign of infection. Not exactly fool proof or
anything like that. You should never, you know, depend solely
upon a temperature check. But human rights advocates are rightly
concerned that the trends we're seeing as far as surveillance
and facial recognition go, are going to continue even beyond
(08:31):
the pandemic, with China leaning on those technologies while targeting
ethnic minority groups or people who criticize the government, something
that the country has been known to do extensively in
the past. Google is protesting a nearly six hundred million
dollar fine that the company faces in France. At the
(08:51):
heart of the matter is that the French courts have
placed numerous injunctions on Google, requiring the company to pay
publishers for their content. It something the court says that
Google has largely disregarded. Now anyone who has worked in
the publishing industry knows that advertising revenue has dropped significantly
over the last couple of decades, making it harder to
(09:14):
run a viable publishing business online. The European Union holds
platforms like Google partly responsible for this, arguing that these
platforms make it possible for people to access publications without
actually visiting the home site of those publications, thus denying
those companies ad revenue. If you can read the whole
(09:35):
article through some sort of preview that's hosted on, say
a Google site, and you never go to the home
newspaper web page, well that that paper is generating work
but not seeing any revenue for it, at least not
for that instance. Google claims that it has been working
in good faith to address these issues, with a guarantee
(09:56):
that the company will eventually pay out around a billion
dollars over the next three years to various publishers, as
well as to collaborate on a licensing agreement that would
provide revenue to newsrooms. The French court requires Google to
pay the five million euro fine and to form a
compensation plan with publishers within two months or face additional fines.
(10:18):
This is similar to the stories out of Australia, with
media companies based in Australia having issues with platforms like
Facebook and Google, and it really points to the complicated
nature of business information and platforms. Technode reports that Bite Dance,
the Chinese company that's best known here in the United
(10:38):
States as the parent company of TikTok, will be eliminating
its nine nine six strategy that refers to a work
week that consists of nine am to nine pm. That's
the nine nine part, and the six part means that
you're working Sunday through Friday, or six days a week. Yes,
(10:58):
several Chinese companies operate with the strategy. Many of them
use a big week and small week approach, that is
where employees will alternate working either five days a week
or six days a week, alternating every other Sunday. But
this is coming to an end for byte Dance in August.
While the decreased workload might be nice, it is likely
(11:19):
to bring along with it a salary cut, perhaps as
much as twin deeper cent, which my math tells me
would be excessive. If you're cutting two work days out
of a typical month, right that for two days out
of the month, that's excessive. Anyway, Around a third of
the company's workforce, when surveyed about this, said they would
(11:42):
prefer to keep their base pay where it is and
continue working longer hours, which, y'all, that just makes my
heart ache. But if you're trying to make ends, me
to cut and pay is a real unwelcome complication. It
is a tough situation and I don't have any easy
solutions here, but it really paints a pretty bleak picture,
(12:03):
right this idea that, oh, I can't cut back on
working twelve twelve hours a day, six days a week
because I can't afford it. Ouch. On a much lighter note,
over in the UK, we're seeing a creative approach to
advertising at soccer games, or you know, in the UK
football games, but I'm American, so I tend to call
(12:24):
it soccer. But many football stadiums in England have digital
signs that can display ads, which is something that's pretty
common in modern sports facilities in many parts of the world.
But what's interesting here is that people will see different
ads depending upon where they are. Those attending a game
in person we'll see ads displayed on those digital screens,
(12:47):
but people watching the game on television might see a
totally different ad, essentially superimposed or digitally replacing the ad
that's quote unquote really there. Broadcast masters will be able
to work with advertisers and swap out ads, creating a
new source of revenue. So the sporting facility can make
deals with say local businesses, and the broadcasters might go
(13:11):
for larger regional businesses. Or you could imagine a deal
that includes both the in stadium experience for the people
who are there in person, as well as the televised audience,
and you just pay a larger fee to get both.
We've seen some other examples of this kind of digital advertising,
sometimes with glitches that can affect a TV audience is
(13:32):
viewing experience. Now, thankfully, if you're watching the game in person,
you would never know about those glitches because so far
they don't actually, you know, cross into reality yet. I'm
sure we will see more incorporations of technologies like this,
and when we see more augmented reality in the future
being incorporated into sporting events, we'll see even more targeted advertising. Potentially,
(13:56):
we can reach a point where every single person attend
a game is seeing a different targeted ad through their
own personalized a R system. What a world. I've got
a few more stories to cover, but before I get
to that, let's take a quick break. We were just
(14:22):
in the UK before the break. Now we're gonna take
a trip across the English Channel head over to the
continent of Europe. UK is not included in this, but
Intel recently announced that the company intends to invest as
much as twenty billion dollars over the next several years
to build out some chip manufacturing plants, potentially in Europe.
(14:45):
The world is still in a semiconductor shortage, which is
largely because of the coronavirus and how that completely disrupted
the semiconductor supply chain over in the EU. The plan
is to boost Europe's market share of semi conduct or
manufacturing from ten percent where it is today to twenty
percent by That's a pretty aggressive timeline, but the demand
(15:10):
for semi conductors is definitely there because we're seeing industries
from consumer electronics to the automotive industry struggling to find
the chips that they need to produce finished products. So
we're seeing shortages and lots of industries because of semiconductor shortages.
Intel executives have been meeting with various government officials in
Europe clearly feeling out where it might be most advantageous
(15:34):
to establish manufacturing facilities. Now, this is a complicated process,
one that often sees companies play regions against each other
in an effort to get the best deal out of
the situation. Sometimes that can get pretty ugly. We've seen
it happen several times here in the United States. Complicating
matters is that the cost of business in places like
(15:54):
Europe and the United States is higher than places like, say, China.
Sometimes it's higher to the tune of around thirty more costly.
Of course, that's partly because places like Europe and the
United States have tighter regulations in place to provide at
least some level of protection to employees, and places like
China largely do not. Fun times. On a related note,
(16:19):
the Verge reports that the PC market is easing back
a little bit after having a pretty booming The market
is still growing, but it is growing at a reduced pace,
so it's growing more slowly than it was, and possible
reasons for that include a slightly lower demand for PCs
(16:40):
after the initial pandemic rush and the growing semiconductor chip
shortage being part of a factor. There businesses might be
back into purchasing computers with more businesses reopening after a
year plus of being shut down, so that could change
things a bit. But on the consumers side, it could
(17:01):
be that things are slowing down because people have already
done bought their ding Dan computers last year. However, we
do have Windows eleven launching later this year, and that
might end up driving more PC sales in the near future.
Now again, I do want to stress this doesn't mean
we're seeing the PC market suddenly get into trouble. The
(17:22):
industry is still growing quarter over quarter, It's just doing
so at a slower rate than what it was doing earlier.
The company Amazon continues in its quest for world domination
and now has its sites set on Santa Clause you
heard it here first, Because like Santa, Amazon plans to
(17:43):
know when you are sleeping and know when you're awake.
But since I think Amazon is largely an a moral company,
I suspect they don't actually care if you've been bad
or good. So I mean, be good for goodness sake,
just you know, as a favor to me. But I
don't think Amazon cares one way or the other. Now
(18:03):
Amazon has secured permission from the United States Federal Communications
Commission or FCC, to make use of a sixty giga
Hurts radar system in some future unannounced consumer device that
would be able to sense gesture commands. And here's the
bigge monitor sleeping habits through radar. Now, this is all
(18:25):
from the Register, by the way, and the permission from
the f c C was a necessity because the sixty
giga Hurts frequency range is above what's typically allowed for
consumer devices. Every nation has divided up the electro magnetic
frequency spectrum to designate which slices of that spectrum can
(18:47):
be used for different purposes, and that way you avoid
having to competing technologies trying to make use of the
same frequency space, which would create a lot of interference.
So this case, the FCC was needed to be brought
in on this because that that frequency range is typically
(19:08):
not something that a consumer electronic product would be able
to take advantage of. So Amazon had to get permission
from the FCC, and the f c C granted that permission. Uh. Now,
the Register reports that as of now, the the proposed
device only has the vagueust of outlined purposes. It will
(19:30):
be a non mobile device, so Presumably this would be
something that you would just plug into a wall outlet
in your home, and the intended purpose, according to Amazon,
is to give people who might have difficulties with some
physical activities away to interact with Amazon systems more effectively,
that being like the gesture controls and stuff, to have
(19:50):
a more finely tuned approach to that. So that's good
in a way. I mean, it's a way to improve accessibility,
and I think that's a good thing, but also that
such a device would help for the purposes of quote
sleep hygiene end quote. Now, if you think it's a
little creepy to have a huge company keeping track of
(20:12):
when you're asleep and when you're awake, then you're thinking
a lot like yours truly right here, I think it's
really creepy. However, there are a lot of sleep tracking
devices out there, and many of them do phone home
to keep track of stats like how many hours you've
slept or how many times you tossed and turned or
woke up overnight or whatever. So honestly, this isn't really
(20:35):
new or unique to Amazon in that sense, like we
do have other technologies that do this kind of thing.
But however, I think it's the thought that this thing
is effectively watching you sleep that makes it seem creepy
to me. But again, many of us, myself included, have
used activity trackers that also act as sleep trackers, so
I admit I'm being a little bit hypocritical here. It
(20:59):
also has probably because Amazon's sheer size as a company
is something I find intimidating, and to think of a
really big company closely monitoring when people are asleep or
when they're awake is unsettling. I imagine a lot of
that information could go into all sorts of different algorithms,
including recommendations. Like if I logged into Amazon and suddenly
(21:22):
saw that all the recommendations were for pillows and white
noise machines, I'd think, Okay, Amazon knows too much about me.
It knows that I've been dealing with insomnia recently, right,
Like that would just be creepy. Who knows what this
will ultimately turn out to be, And we may not
ever actually see this consumer product. That's another possibility. We
(21:42):
just don't know enough yet. But uh, it does look
like it's yet another step into the world of quantifying
everything about ourselves and handing that data over to some
other party, something that I think we should probably re
examine sooner rather than later. And our last story is
that a group of researchers with the National Institute of
(22:05):
Information and Communications Technology or n i c T over
in Japan have used a four core optical fiber system
with a sophisticated multiplexing technology to send data across a
physical cable at the incredible throughput of three hundred nineteen
terabits per second across a distance of just over three
(22:27):
thousand kilometers three thousand and one to be precise. That
is a truly astonishing data throughput rate for that kind
of distance. These days, we talk about really fast home
internet connections having a throughput of around a gigabit per second,
maybe more like maybe up to ten gigabits per second.
(22:48):
That's what we think of as being screaming fast for
consumer internet. But a gigabit is a billion bits per second.
Three nineteen terabits is three nineteen trillion bits per second.
To be clear. We've seen even greater throughput than this before,
but only at extremely short distances. This marks a world
(23:10):
record for transmitting that much data per second at that
kind of distance. Now, this doesn't mean, we're right around
the corner from all having terribit per second home connections,
which would be nice, but it's not gonna happen. This
technology is more likely to be used in applications that
relate to backbone operations of the Internet, but it's an
(23:31):
incredible technical achievement. Now. One day, I hope to maybe
bring someone on the show to talk about fiber optics
and what multiplexing really means and how it works, because
that subject very quickly escalates beyond my own understanding of it.
I mean, I can always research into it and and
(23:52):
take copious notes and such, but really, I'm just saying
that if I try to do an episode about this
all by myself, I'm probably going to get something wrong
because it is a pretty complicated topic. But I think
I might have to get somebody on to really talk
about it and get into the nitty gritty of how
fiber optics work and also why it can be so
(24:15):
hard to get access to fiber optics service depending on
where you live. But that's something for a later episode.
If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
tech stuff, reach out and get in touch with me.
The best way to do that is over on Twitter.
The handle for the show is text Stuff h s W,
which I don't think is verified, but I am and
(24:40):
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows now
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech. And this is the
tech news for Tuesday, July twenty one. And uh, there's
(00:27):
some some rough stuff in here. In fact, let's start
with some more bad news for software company Solar Winds.
You probably remember that late last year we had news
break that hackers had infiltrated solar Winds products and managed
to create a supply chain attack that affected thousands of
computer systems, though it appears the hackers really focused on
(00:50):
a much smaller number of very high profile targets, including
US Department of Defense systems, and that the hackers appeared
to be operating out of Russia. Well Over this past weekend,
Solar Winds announced that hackers were apparently able to exploit
previously unknown flaws in two of solar Winds products, and
(01:12):
that these flaws are completely unrelated to the attacks from
last year. So these would be called zero day vulnerabilities,
meaning that no one was aware that these things existed
when the products went live. This vulnerability is in the
company's Serve You that's s E r V DASH, the
(01:33):
letter You line of software products. Microsoft researchers apparently found
the bug, but not before hackers had already learned of
it themselves. As of this recording, that's pretty much all
the information I have on this. Solar Winds stated that
the company is quote unaware of the identity of the
(01:54):
potentially affected customers end quote, which is not a great
start either. Microsoft oft found evidence of quote limited targeted
customer impact end quote, and according to Ours Technica, the
vulnerability would allow hackers to gain privileged access after exploiting
machines that were running Serve You Managed File Transfer and
(02:17):
or Serve You Secure FTP. With this vulnerability, at that point,
the hackers would be able to access files on the
infected system. They might be able to delete data, They
could install new programs. They can essentially perform the sort
of tasks that any administrator level account could perform on
the system. Solar Winds has already issued a quick patch
(02:40):
to UH to be a temporary fix on this, while
working on a more permanent solution. On a slightly less
dramatic note, Twitter recently admitted that the company had mistakenly
verified a quote small number end quote of fake accounts
shortly after the company reinstated its verification program. This is
(03:01):
all according to The Daily Dot, a data scientist with
the truly amazing name Conspirator No. Tenno found six accounts
with that verified check mark next to them. And someone
created those six accounts back on June six, so they're
pretty darn recent. And while all six were verified, none
(03:23):
of them had posted so much as a single tweet,
and two of them were apparently using stock photographs for
their profile pictures. Twitter responded by copying up to the
fact that somehow the verification applications for a small number
of fake accounts had received approval, and the company has
since banned five of those six accounts. The sixth apparently
(03:47):
uh took itself down. Nortenno also pointed out that these
six accounts had a few suspicious followers in common across them,
to the tune of nearly one thousand accounts, and he
says that it looks as though these were all part
of a larger bot net that includes at least one thousand,
two hundred twelve accounts twelve twelve. I don't know if
(04:08):
that there's any significance to that. Probably not. I'm sure
it's just a weird fact that it's a repeating number.
Twitter's verification process is meant to allow notable people that's
at least notable in Twitter's estimation, to authenticate that a
Twitter feed that purporting to belong to them does in
fact belong to them. That way, you're you know, busy
(04:31):
tweeting at Neil Gaman, you can be certain that it's
the real Neil Gaiman who's seeing your messages. I mean, heck,
I actually have a blue check mark. I have a
verified Twitter account, So clearly that whole notability thing is
a pretty you know, Lucy goosey definition. Now, for the record,
I applied a few years ago when we first launched
the Forward Thinking video series, so it was for work purposes,
(04:55):
and the check mark has just kind of stuck with
me ever since. Not that I'm complaining about this now. Obviously,
the fake accounts getting verified, that raises questions as to
how did they do that, How did they sail through
the verification process in the first place, particularly when there
are actual, real life notable people out there who never
received a verification from Twitter. We don't have the answers
(05:18):
to that. Down in Cuba, we're seeing a pretty familiar
playbook being followed by the Cuban government there in response
to growing protests as citizens voice their anger and displeasure
regarding some major issues in the country like food and
medical shortages. Cuba is in the midst of a severe
(05:39):
economic recession, which was exacerbated by COVID nineteen and the
fact that the entire tourist industry was effectively shut down
for a year. Citizens have taken to the streets to
protest the government's response to this and issues with food
shortages and the like, and the government's response, in part
(06:00):
has been to shut down internet access, at least that
appears to be the case, and thus citizens have seen
their ability to communicate and organize with one another online
cut off. Now in some areas, such as Havana, where
the protests are particularly you know, large, the internet outages
were more severe, which seems to support the argument that
(06:21):
this was a government led project. And generally speaking, Communist
countries like Cuba and China traditionally maintain tight controls over
communication channels, and they use that control to limit what
citizens can say or access in an effort to maintain
authoritarian control. I'm not saying those are the only places
(06:42):
where that happens, or that authoritarian control is limited to
communist countries, just saying that that tends to be a
pretty common practice. Speaking of China, that country is leaning
heavily on facial recognition technology as it attempts to handle
new Corona of virus outbreaks. According to tech Explore, China
(07:03):
is pairing facial recognition technology with citizens coronavirus test results, So,
in other words, you get tested for coronavirus, the government
essentially gets access to those results, and your health status
becomes part of your identity, and the facial recognition systems
keep track of where you're going and who you happen
(07:24):
to be around, which probably sounds a bit scary to
most of you out there, including myself. Now. At the
same time, China is facing a pretty difficult situation that
it's in a tough position. The neighboring country of Myanmar
is the site of some massive political unrest stemming from
a coup that happened back in February, and some Myanmar
(07:46):
nationals have fled to China in order to escape regional violence.
Have of the new cases of coronavirus in this particular
region of China seem to link back to Myanmar nationals,
so AT raises safety concerns there. Apparently, the facial recognition
systems also have thermal detectors built in, so those can
(08:08):
spot people who might have elevated body temperatures, which is
a possible sign of infection. Not exactly fool proof or
anything like that. You should never, you know, depend solely
upon a temperature check. But human rights advocates are rightly
concerned that the trends we're seeing as far as surveillance
and facial recognition go, are going to continue even beyond
(08:31):
the pandemic, with China leaning on those technologies while targeting
ethnic minority groups or people who criticize the government, something
that the country has been known to do extensively in
the past. Google is protesting a nearly six hundred million
dollar fine that the company faces in France. At the
(08:51):
heart of the matter is that the French courts have
placed numerous injunctions on Google, requiring the company to pay
publishers for their content. It something the court says that
Google has largely disregarded. Now anyone who has worked in
the publishing industry knows that advertising revenue has dropped significantly
over the last couple of decades, making it harder to
(09:14):
run a viable publishing business online. The European Union holds
platforms like Google partly responsible for this, arguing that these
platforms make it possible for people to access publications without
actually visiting the home site of those publications, thus denying
those companies ad revenue. If you can read the whole
(09:35):
article through some sort of preview that's hosted on, say
a Google site, and you never go to the home
newspaper web page, well that that paper is generating work
but not seeing any revenue for it, at least not
for that instance. Google claims that it has been working
in good faith to address these issues, with a guarantee
(09:56):
that the company will eventually pay out around a billion
dollars over the next three years to various publishers, as
well as to collaborate on a licensing agreement that would
provide revenue to newsrooms. The French court requires Google to
pay the five million euro fine and to form a
compensation plan with publishers within two months or face additional fines.
(10:18):
This is similar to the stories out of Australia, with
media companies based in Australia having issues with platforms like
Facebook and Google, and it really points to the complicated
nature of business information and platforms. Technode reports that Bite Dance,
the Chinese company that's best known here in the United
(10:38):
States as the parent company of TikTok, will be eliminating
its nine nine six strategy that refers to a work
week that consists of nine am to nine pm. That's
the nine nine part, and the six part means that
you're working Sunday through Friday, or six days a week. Yes,
(10:58):
several Chinese companies operate with the strategy. Many of them
use a big week and small week approach, that is
where employees will alternate working either five days a week
or six days a week, alternating every other Sunday. But
this is coming to an end for byte Dance in August.
While the decreased workload might be nice, it is likely
(11:19):
to bring along with it a salary cut, perhaps as
much as twin deeper cent, which my math tells me
would be excessive. If you're cutting two work days out
of a typical month, right that for two days out
of the month, that's excessive. Anyway, Around a third of
the company's workforce, when surveyed about this, said they would
(11:42):
prefer to keep their base pay where it is and
continue working longer hours, which, y'all, that just makes my
heart ache. But if you're trying to make ends, me
to cut and pay is a real unwelcome complication. It
is a tough situation and I don't have any easy
solutions here, but it really paints a pretty bleak picture,
(12:03):
right this idea that, oh, I can't cut back on
working twelve twelve hours a day, six days a week
because I can't afford it. Ouch. On a much lighter note,
over in the UK, we're seeing a creative approach to
advertising at soccer games, or you know, in the UK
football games, but I'm American, so I tend to call
(12:24):
it soccer. But many football stadiums in England have digital
signs that can display ads, which is something that's pretty
common in modern sports facilities in many parts of the world.
But what's interesting here is that people will see different
ads depending upon where they are. Those attending a game
in person we'll see ads displayed on those digital screens,
(12:47):
but people watching the game on television might see a
totally different ad, essentially superimposed or digitally replacing the ad
that's quote unquote really there. Broadcast masters will be able
to work with advertisers and swap out ads, creating a
new source of revenue. So the sporting facility can make
deals with say local businesses, and the broadcasters might go
(13:11):
for larger regional businesses. Or you could imagine a deal
that includes both the in stadium experience for the people
who are there in person, as well as the televised audience,
and you just pay a larger fee to get both.
We've seen some other examples of this kind of digital advertising,
sometimes with glitches that can affect a TV audience is
(13:32):
viewing experience. Now, thankfully, if you're watching the game in person,
you would never know about those glitches because so far
they don't actually, you know, cross into reality yet. I'm
sure we will see more incorporations of technologies like this,
and when we see more augmented reality in the future
being incorporated into sporting events, we'll see even more targeted advertising. Potentially,
(13:56):
we can reach a point where every single person attend
a game is seeing a different targeted ad through their
own personalized a R system. What a world. I've got
a few more stories to cover, but before I get
to that, let's take a quick break. We were just
(14:22):
in the UK before the break. Now we're gonna take
a trip across the English Channel head over to the
continent of Europe. UK is not included in this, but
Intel recently announced that the company intends to invest as
much as twenty billion dollars over the next several years
to build out some chip manufacturing plants, potentially in Europe.
(14:45):
The world is still in a semiconductor shortage, which is
largely because of the coronavirus and how that completely disrupted
the semiconductor supply chain over in the EU. The plan
is to boost Europe's market share of semi conduct or
manufacturing from ten percent where it is today to twenty
percent by That's a pretty aggressive timeline, but the demand
(15:10):
for semi conductors is definitely there because we're seeing industries
from consumer electronics to the automotive industry struggling to find
the chips that they need to produce finished products. So
we're seeing shortages and lots of industries because of semiconductor shortages.
Intel executives have been meeting with various government officials in
Europe clearly feeling out where it might be most advantageous
(15:34):
to establish manufacturing facilities. Now, this is a complicated process,
one that often sees companies play regions against each other
in an effort to get the best deal out of
the situation. Sometimes that can get pretty ugly. We've seen
it happen several times here in the United States. Complicating
matters is that the cost of business in places like
(15:54):
Europe and the United States is higher than places like, say, China.
Sometimes it's higher to the tune of around thirty more costly.
Of course, that's partly because places like Europe and the
United States have tighter regulations in place to provide at
least some level of protection to employees, and places like
China largely do not. Fun times. On a related note,
(16:19):
the Verge reports that the PC market is easing back
a little bit after having a pretty booming The market
is still growing, but it is growing at a reduced pace,
so it's growing more slowly than it was, and possible
reasons for that include a slightly lower demand for PCs
(16:40):
after the initial pandemic rush and the growing semiconductor chip
shortage being part of a factor. There businesses might be
back into purchasing computers with more businesses reopening after a
year plus of being shut down, so that could change
things a bit. But on the consumers side, it could
(17:01):
be that things are slowing down because people have already
done bought their ding Dan computers last year. However, we
do have Windows eleven launching later this year, and that
might end up driving more PC sales in the near future.
Now again, I do want to stress this doesn't mean
we're seeing the PC market suddenly get into trouble. The
(17:22):
industry is still growing quarter over quarter, It's just doing
so at a slower rate than what it was doing earlier.
The company Amazon continues in its quest for world domination
and now has its sites set on Santa Clause you
heard it here first, Because like Santa, Amazon plans to
(17:43):
know when you are sleeping and know when you're awake.
But since I think Amazon is largely an a moral company,
I suspect they don't actually care if you've been bad
or good. So I mean, be good for goodness sake,
just you know, as a favor to me. But I
don't think Amazon cares one way or the other. Now
(18:03):
Amazon has secured permission from the United States Federal Communications
Commission or FCC, to make use of a sixty giga
Hurts radar system in some future unannounced consumer device that
would be able to sense gesture commands. And here's the
bigge monitor sleeping habits through radar. Now, this is all
(18:25):
from the Register, by the way, and the permission from
the f c C was a necessity because the sixty
giga Hurts frequency range is above what's typically allowed for
consumer devices. Every nation has divided up the electro magnetic
frequency spectrum to designate which slices of that spectrum can
(18:47):
be used for different purposes, and that way you avoid
having to competing technologies trying to make use of the
same frequency space, which would create a lot of interference.
So this case, the FCC was needed to be brought
in on this because that that frequency range is typically
(19:08):
not something that a consumer electronic product would be able
to take advantage of. So Amazon had to get permission
from the FCC, and the f c C granted that permission. Uh. Now,
the Register reports that as of now, the the proposed
device only has the vagueust of outlined purposes. It will
(19:30):
be a non mobile device, so Presumably this would be
something that you would just plug into a wall outlet
in your home, and the intended purpose, according to Amazon,
is to give people who might have difficulties with some
physical activities away to interact with Amazon systems more effectively,
that being like the gesture controls and stuff, to have
(19:50):
a more finely tuned approach to that. So that's good
in a way. I mean, it's a way to improve accessibility,
and I think that's a good thing, but also that
such a device would help for the purposes of quote
sleep hygiene end quote. Now, if you think it's a
little creepy to have a huge company keeping track of
(20:12):
when you're asleep and when you're awake, then you're thinking
a lot like yours truly right here, I think it's
really creepy. However, there are a lot of sleep tracking
devices out there, and many of them do phone home
to keep track of stats like how many hours you've
slept or how many times you tossed and turned or
woke up overnight or whatever. So honestly, this isn't really
(20:35):
new or unique to Amazon in that sense, like we
do have other technologies that do this kind of thing.
But however, I think it's the thought that this thing
is effectively watching you sleep that makes it seem creepy
to me. But again, many of us, myself included, have
used activity trackers that also act as sleep trackers, so
I admit I'm being a little bit hypocritical here. It
(20:59):
also has probably because Amazon's sheer size as a company
is something I find intimidating, and to think of a
really big company closely monitoring when people are asleep or
when they're awake is unsettling. I imagine a lot of
that information could go into all sorts of different algorithms,
including recommendations. Like if I logged into Amazon and suddenly
(21:22):
saw that all the recommendations were for pillows and white
noise machines, I'd think, Okay, Amazon knows too much about me.
It knows that I've been dealing with insomnia recently, right,
Like that would just be creepy. Who knows what this
will ultimately turn out to be, And we may not
ever actually see this consumer product. That's another possibility. We
(21:42):
just don't know enough yet. But uh, it does look
like it's yet another step into the world of quantifying
everything about ourselves and handing that data over to some
other party, something that I think we should probably re
examine sooner rather than later. And our last story is
that a group of researchers with the National Institute of
(22:05):
Information and Communications Technology or n i c T over
in Japan have used a four core optical fiber system
with a sophisticated multiplexing technology to send data across a
physical cable at the incredible throughput of three hundred nineteen
terabits per second across a distance of just over three
(22:27):
thousand kilometers three thousand and one to be precise. That
is a truly astonishing data throughput rate for that kind
of distance. These days, we talk about really fast home
internet connections having a throughput of around a gigabit per second,
maybe more like maybe up to ten gigabits per second.
(22:48):
That's what we think of as being screaming fast for
consumer internet. But a gigabit is a billion bits per second.
Three nineteen terabits is three nineteen trillion bits per second.
To be clear. We've seen even greater throughput than this before,
but only at extremely short distances. This marks a world
(23:10):
record for transmitting that much data per second at that
kind of distance. Now, this doesn't mean, we're right around
the corner from all having terribit per second home connections,
which would be nice, but it's not gonna happen. This
technology is more likely to be used in applications that
relate to backbone operations of the Internet, but it's an
(23:31):
incredible technical achievement. Now. One day, I hope to maybe
bring someone on the show to talk about fiber optics
and what multiplexing really means and how it works, because
that subject very quickly escalates beyond my own understanding of it.
I mean, I can always research into it and and
(23:52):
take copious notes and such, but really, I'm just saying
that if I try to do an episode about this
all by myself, I'm probably going to get something wrong
because it is a pretty complicated topic. But I think
I might have to get somebody on to really talk
about it and get into the nitty gritty of how
fiber optics work and also why it can be so
(24:15):
hard to get access to fiber optics service depending on
where you live. But that's something for a later episode.
If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
tech stuff, reach out and get in touch with me.
The best way to do that is over on Twitter.
The handle for the show is text Stuff h s W,
which I don't think is verified, but I am and
(24:40):
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows now
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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