July 20, 2021 • 29 mins
Jeff Bezos takes a joyride on a rocket. Apple delays when employees will have to return to the office. And an illegal cryptocurrency mining operation turns out to be something completely different.
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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 it's another week
and another billionaire going to space. Earlier this month, Richard
(00:26):
Branson took a very short jaunt out to the edge
of space board Virgin Galactics space Ship two, which is
a single rocket engine vehicle that actually piggybacks on a mothership,
a larger air vehicle called White Night too, so then
it detaches from White Knight to ignites its rocket engine
(00:47):
and thus does not have to take off from the
surface of the Earth. Now this morning, as I was
writing this, I was writing it just as Amazon founder
Jeff Bezos had finished his similarly short trail in the
New Shepherd Blue Origin space vehicle, which is a capsule
that sits on top of a launch vehicle. He was
(01:10):
part of the first crew to ride that vehicle to space,
so the first people to actually be in a Blue
Origin space vehicle. He went along with his brother Mark
and an aviation legend, Wally Funk. She has now become
the oldest astronaut to go to space, and Oliver Damon,
(01:31):
the eighteen year old who took the spot of some
anonymous person who purchased a twenty eight million dollar ticket
to go to space but then had to back out
due to what we're called scheduling difficulties, which is pretty wild, right,
kind of wonder what's in your schedule where you're like, oh, man,
I can't go to space today. I gotta go buy
(01:52):
milk or whatever it is. Anyway, Damon is now the
youngest person to have gone to space. So in the
same little space capsule, they had the oldest astronaut and
the youngest astronaut to ever go to space. And Damon's father,
by the way, runs a private equity firm in the Netherlands.
So this is not the case of some like Ragamuffin
(02:14):
finding a golden ticket and a Wonka bar or something. No,
because space, it turns out it's not just trying to
kill you. It's also freaking expensive. Most of us will
never be able to afford to go. Now, you could
say that I've got a case of sour grapes, and
I admit it, You're right, I do have a case
(02:35):
of sour grapes. I'm absolutely grouchy about this. But moreover,
there has been a growing backlash against Branson, Bezos and
Elon Musk as well, because the billionaires were publicly racing
toward getting into space, and meanwhile we have these massive
problems that continue to balloon out of control back here
(02:58):
on the ground. This is led some to say, you know,
why are you seemingly running away? Even though they were
only up in space for like a minute and less
than a minute in some cases, it's not like it's
them saying peace out and flying off to some luxury
planet in the Solar System. But a lot of the
(03:18):
critics say, why not use some of that money, the
enormous amounts of money it took to send you to
space to address critical problems like, you know, the pandemic,
or income inequality, or poor working conditions or the exploitation
of the poor. Why spend all that money on an
endeavor that contributes to enormous amounts of carbon emissions. The
(03:40):
aviation industry in general is a really big source of
carbon emissions, and it means that a very small percentage
of people are responsible, either directly or indirectly, for a
large percentage of carbon emissions. These and other questions have
been asked many times over the past few days. They
also point out that these billionaires often have an association
(04:03):
with some of those problems. I mean, Amazon in particular
has been in the news quite a bit about things
like unfair working conditions with Elon Musk. His other company, Tesla,
has been in the news about pushing to open up
manufacturing facilities, even as the states that those facilities were
in we're ordering lockdowns. Like there have been some pretty
(04:27):
negative news reports about these companies that are are run
by these billionaires. Now, on the other hand, there is
a lot of good things to be said with regard
to human ingenuity and engineering and the countless hours that
thousands of people put into making this achievement a possibility.
(04:48):
We should not ignore that. And I think it is
possible to both be critical of the motivations and implications
of the billionaire space race and also still be able
to laud the achievements of people who made it all possible.
But you know, hearing rich people yell woo who on
a space joy ride does get my dander up. I
(05:12):
reckon anyway, I guess the ball is now in Elon
Musk's court, as he's the one billionaire of those three
who has not yet gone to space, though his car did.
Speaking of Elon Musk and space, SpaceX tested the enormous
booster rocket for its Starship spacecraft on Monday night. So
(05:34):
this is a booster rocket that were part of the
launch vehicle to get Starship into space. The booster is
called the Super Heavy and it has several rocket engines.
They're called raptor engines to be precise, and this particular
test involved igniting three of those engines in a test burn,
but the booster was tethered firmly to the ground. This
(05:56):
wasn't launching. The booster was really testing the engine is
making sure that everything was working in the future. Assuming
that everything goes well, a full launch of the Starship,
for example, if you were to try and send it
to Mars, could involve more than thirty engines during that process.
The company has already conducted a suborbital test of Starship
(06:19):
last May, and the plan was to carry out an
orbital test during this summer, but you know time is
starting to run out for that. If it happens, the
Starship will launch from Texas, it will reach an orbital
altitude and then it will descend to land near the
island of Kawaiti, you know as part of Hawaii. And
the ultimate plan for the starship program is again to
(06:42):
send astronauts to distant places like the Moon or Mars,
and that's why you need such powerful engines for a
full launch. We've still got a long way to go
before we ever try something like that, and more tests
will be needed to ensure that the tech is reliable
and safe. The spy where Pegasus is back in the
news this week, and in case you're not familiar with this,
(07:05):
Pegasus is a spyware project headed by an Israeli company
called the n s O Group. This company makes spyware
for smartphones and that gives a remote administrator access to
that device. That actually includes the ability to activate the
smartphones camera and microphone, so you can use it as
(07:26):
a surveillance tool. This is the sort of stuff that
hackers want in order to gain information about targets. It's
the same stuff that Nations used to keep an eye
on various people. And the NSL group has sold this
spyware technology as a weapon. Is classified as a weapon,
so they actually have to get the consent of the
Israeli government before they sell it to anyone, but they've
(07:48):
sold it to various countries in the Middle East, though
typically not two countries that have an outright antagonistic stance
against Israel, which makes sense. You wouldn't think that the
Israeli government would sign off on a sale of a
surveillance tool that's classified as a weapon two enemies of
the state. Critics have suggested that the ns A group
(08:09):
is effectively acting as sort of a vanguard for Israeli diplomacy,
the idea being that, you know, providing this powerful surveillance
tool to various governments gives Israel a foot in the
door for diplomatic negotiations moving forward, and critics have also
alleged that some of these countries, notably Saudi Arabia, have
(08:30):
used the Pegasus spyware, not to you know, identify crime
groups or terrorist groups, which is the stated purpose for
this surveillance technology, but rather to persecute human rights activists
or critics of the state and journalists. The NSO group
cut off Saudi Arabia's access to the tool following the
(08:51):
murder of Jamal ka Shogi, but later reinstated it upon
direction by the Israeli government, which raises some pretty ugly questions.
And this is all according to an article in the Guardian. Recently,
n S Group shut off Saudi access to the tool
again after Al Jazeera journalists came forward with Amnesty International
(09:14):
saying that they had been targeted by the spyware. Amnesty
International has published several extensive reports about this spyware and
how various governments have used and abused it. Uh The
organization has also released a tool kit to help people
determine if their devices have been compromised and have Pegasus
spyware on them. The organization also says that Pegasus is
(09:37):
much easier to detect on iPhones than it is on
Android phones, as the spyware leaves more traces on iPhones.
Amnesty also found that the spyware could transfer through a
zero click attack through I message, meaning it's a particularly
powerful attack. It doesn't require the target to you know,
click on a malicious link or download any software. It
(09:59):
can just be done through I message, which is pretty
pretty nasty stuff. While we're talking about Apple, the company
recently decided that it was going to delay a return
to office they originally were planning on doing it in September,
but a rise in COVID cases has made them change
their minds. The idea was that employees would be returning
(10:21):
to the office for three days a week and then
remotely work the other two days of the week. But
now Apple says it's going to hold off to at
least October. And to be clear, the return to the
office was not a comeback three days a week if
you feel like it. It was more like a you
will come back to the office for three days a week.
It was a mandate, and it was one that you know,
(10:44):
some Apple employees were protesting. They were saying that the
message they received was that they were going to be
forced to choose between their health and safety and that
of their families and their careers. Apple CEO Tim Cook
sent out a memo in June, and a memos said
that workers really did need to return to offices and
and get the hum of activity back in the hallways
(11:07):
of Apple. And just to be clear, while I'm specifically
talking about Apple here, it is not unique in this
at all. Google and Amazon have similar planned policies with returns.
In September. I believe both of those companies also planned
to do a three days in the office kind of approach.
We'll see if those companies also adjust their plans in
(11:29):
the wake of rising COVID cases. The delta variant is
really wreaking havoc in the United States. Um even vaccinated
people can catch it, and while their symptoms might be minor,
in fact they might be asymptomatic, there's still a concern
about the possibility of them passing that on to unvaccinated people,
which that could lead to actual disaster, you know, and death,
(11:53):
the bad things. I'm just coming out and saying it
that I think people dying from COVID is bad. I
know it's a controversial thing to say for some reason. Anyway,
it's really at this point that I want to express
how thankful I am for our leadership. At my heart,
I'm incredibly fortunate that I am. My co workers are
(12:13):
all given the freedom to continue working from home with
no mandate in the foreseeable future right now to return
to the office. Now, some of us do go into
the office occasionally. So for example, I will sometimes go
into the office to record interviews for my show The
Restless Ones. If you haven't heard The Restless Ones, you
should go check it out. Uh. And the reason why
(12:35):
I do that the all the interviews I do are remote,
but the office is internet connection is much more reliable
than my home internet connection and I don't want to,
you know, have a connection dropped during an interview, So
I go to the office for those occasions. Um, And
it's pretty rare that I see anyone else in that office.
Occasionally I do, like on a on a really busy day,
(12:56):
I might see as many as for other people. But
most days I'm the only one there. And considering that
at least one of my co workers has announced that
they were diagnosed with COVID not too long ago, this
is a pretty big deal to me. Now. To be clear,
my co worker announced this on a public forum, but
in respect for their privacy, I'm just gonna leave it
(13:17):
at that. I'm not gonna say who it was. If
you know, you know, if you don't know, it doesn't
really matter. The point is that because of my company's policy,
I feel pretty safe, and I feel a lot of
empathy for the people who are working for Apple and
Google and Amazon who might not have that same reassurance. Anyway,
(13:40):
we'll keep our eyes on these stories as they continue
to develop. Ideally, I would just like to see the
COVID numbers come down, people go back to the office
and everything be fine. That's just not the reality we're
working with right now. Next year, the three major cellular
service providers in the United States, those being Verizon, Team
of and A T and T, will all preload Android
(14:03):
Messages as the default texting app on all Android phones. Now.
This marks a shift to the RCS chat standard, which
Android Messages uses. Our RCS stands for Rich Communications Services,
and it's a replacement for the antiquated SMS, or Short
Messaging Service standard that we've relied on for years. We
(14:26):
typically think of SMSs text messages. So why are we upgrading? Well,
SMS has some pretty major drawbacks. It does not support
end to end encryption. For example, it doesn't support group messaging.
It doesn't support red receipts, so that means you never
know if someone actually saw the text message you sent them.
(14:47):
Though on the flip side, that also gives me plausible
deniability that you know, I ever even saw the text message,
because I'm notorious or not answering them anyway. RCS also
supports features like video and audio, something that SMS can't
really handle. But there's a big drawback, and that is
you have to make sure that the r r c
S implementations of each of these carriers are compatible with
(15:13):
one another. Otherwise you could end up with services that
would allow for communication within one carrier but not beyond it,
or within one handset manufacturer but not beyond that. So,
in other words, you could find yourself able to communicate
with anyone else who was on the same carrier or
was using the same phone that you were using, but
(15:34):
you couldn't do it with anyone else. Now, the carriers
in the US say that they are working to ensure compatibility,
and the fact that they're defaulting to Google's Android Messages
really falls in line with that. Now, the only major
player in the space that hasn't announced a move to
r CS is Apple. Apple's Eye Message is a different
kettle of fish, being far more feature rich and secure
(15:55):
than old SMS. It also supports end to end encryption,
but if you need a message someone who isn't on
an Apple device, then you have to fall back to
SMS messages. Android is rolling out into end encryption for
Android messages, and I message, like I said, hast end
encryption in place as well, but any messages that would
be sent between an Android device and an Apple device
(16:17):
would have to revert to SMS and thus be less secure,
so it represents a weak link. It's hard to imagine
Apple inviting rcs to occupy a space on the iPhone,
and similarly, Apple doesn't appear to be keen to allow
I message apps on the Android platform, so we're kind
of at a bit of an impass. Well, we have
(16:38):
a couple more stories to cover, but before I get
to that, let's take a quick break. We're back. A
T and T is reportedly in talks to offload and
add division that has been hemorrhaging money for a few
(16:59):
years and is not looking any better right now. And
this is all according to Axios. So back in two
thousand eighteen, A T and T acquired an ad exchange
company called app Nexus for one point six billion dollars
that's billion with a B, and it also purchased a
TV ad company called Clipped. Not sure how much that
(17:20):
acquisition was for, but it was significantly lower than one
point six billion. But the idea was to combine these
two things and create an automation solution for television advertising
and pair that with Warner Media. The media division within
A T and T, the ad division was renamed zander
(17:40):
x A N d R. Now, in my fanciful brain,
and automation solution for television advertising means that we would
get ads with robots selling us stuff, which at first
I'm totally into. But then I remember those terrifying Dura
cell commercials from decades ago where you had these plastic
robot people. Do you guys remember those? They were the
(18:00):
stuff of nightmares. Go to YouTube and search Dura sell
robot people. If you don't know what I'm talking about,
And I'm sorry, but halloweens around the corner. It's a
great costume anyway. No, that's not what this is about.
I was like totally off based on that. The plan
was to incorporate the automated ad division with Warner Media
(18:20):
and to have these two work together and to optimize
advertising and just generate revenue out the wazoo. Really, But
now A T and T is famously ditching Warner Media,
or rather spinning it off, and Warner Media is scheduled
to merge with Discovery Communications and become a new media
(18:42):
company again and without the media side of the business.
Then Zander's kind of a hammer, but there are no nails,
right There's it's a tool, but there's nothing to use
it with because now A T. T doesn't have the
media arm that would go hand in hand with the
advertising arm, so it's missing inventory side of the ad business.
(19:02):
So it has no real place with a T and T.
And apparently there have been some major mismanagement issues with
the division from the get go, with annual losses somewhere
in the fifty to ninety million dollar range. Again, this
is according to AXIOSS sources. At the moment, an Indian
company called in Mobi, which is another big AD technology company,
(19:24):
is in talks to potentially acquire the division, but it's
early days. We don't know if that's actually going to
move forward. An organization called Common Cause and a union
called the Communications Workers of America recently released a joint
report titled Broadband Gatekeepers. How i SP lobbying and political
influence shapes the Digital Divide. The report examines the telecommunications
(19:48):
industry in the United States, the political power that that
industry wields, and the consequences that create an uneven and
unfair broadband distribution here in the US. The report opens
by pointing out how the pandemic really highlighted the necessity
of having broadband access in the US just for being
able to carry out like simple daily functions. You really
(20:12):
benefited if you have access to a broadband connection all
the way to participating in the democratic process. The election
was a big deal. You know, it was going on
during a pandemic, and the internet access was playing a
big part in being able to participate in that process.
Also signing up for COVID vaccinations that is largely an
(20:33):
online process in a lot of places as well. So
having broadband access is pivotal to playing a part in
being a part of society in the United States. The
report lays out that the industry spends hundreds of thousands
of dollars every day to lobby politicians and an effort
to more or less maintain an advantageous position in regional marketplaces.
(20:58):
So the report pretty much spells out stuff that I
think most people know just through their own experience that
big companies frequently have a near monopoly on specific regions,
which means the average person is fortunate if they have
even a second option when it comes to choosing a
broadband service. And it also points out that a lot
of people, particularly people in vulnerable or poor populations, often
(21:22):
lack any broadband options at all, and so there are
these massive gaps in connectivity in the US. And the
report is essentially saying these companies are behaving as companies do, right.
These companies are capitalistic organizations. That's there, you know, raison d'tre,
and that as a result, if a company identifies a
(21:44):
particular region as being unprofitable, then there's no financial incentive
for that company to extend services out to that area.
That's kind of the gist of the reports saying that
without any other influence in here, these populations are going
to continue to be underserved compared to areas that are
(22:06):
deemed to be profitable by these companies. And again, like
it's it's kind of making the companies out to be
the bad guy, but to be fair, you could argue
that it's the system that enables this, that that facilitates
this kind of behavior, these kind of choices that it
would be antithetical to the corporate uh philosophy to do otherwise.
(22:31):
And the report also explains how the FCC went from
an organization that was laying out rules and regulations under
the Obama administration that would have really made broadband a utility.
In fact, that did happen, and that this would help
address things by creating mandates that the companies would have
to follow, thus removing that decision from the companies themselves.
(22:56):
But then all of that flipped when Trump became president
and the FCC leadership completely changed. Now, I would say
it pretty much confirms a lot of common beliefs about
the telecommunications industry, and I'll also point out it clearly
has its own bias that is evident upon reading just
the executive summary for this report. Now, I'm not saying
(23:18):
the report is wrong. I'm just saying that the report
does not attempt to present itself as being, you know,
objective and unbiased. But it's pretty upfront about that. It's
not like it's trying to be something it's not. Anyway,
if you are curious about why broadband access is the
way it is in the United States and you want
to know more about the links that companies will go
(23:40):
to in order to maintain the status quo, I recommend
reading the report. It's free to read at common Cause
dot org. And again, the title of that is broadband gatekeepers,
how I sp lobbying and political influence shapes the digital divide.
I might have to do a full episode about that
at some point. Finally, last week, a cryptocurrency mining operation
(24:05):
was rated by the Ukraine's Security Service, and the reason
for the raid was that this group was allegedly using
devices to mine cryptocurrency, specifically bitcoin, and in the process
they were stealing electricity from the power grid, so they're
taking electricity without paying for it. Obviously, one of the
(24:26):
things that is a barrier to entry and cryptocurrency mining
is that you have to have a super powerful computer
computer system, like multiple super powerful computers in order to
stand a chance at being successful at at mining cryptocurrency,
which means you have to consume a lot of electricity,
which means your operations are expensive unless you steal that electricity.
(24:50):
If the electricity is free, well then it's not as
big a deal and you've got more profit for yourself.
So this particular operation was very odd because it wasn't
full of super powerful mining rigs using various like parallel
processing components. It was using thousands of PS four consoles
(25:13):
PlayStation four. This raises some questions. I mean PS four
consoles are cool and all. I've got one myself. I
like it. But they're not exactly the most sophisticated computers
out there, and they are not optimized for mining cryptocurrency. Now,
you could argue that using free electricity would mean that
they don't have to be that good, but if they
(25:34):
never are successful, then there's not much point to it.
Right now, there was a time back with the PS three,
which had a totally different semiconductor processor architecture, where you
could network a ton of PS three's together and you
could create the equivalent of a supercomputer, which, by the way,
not necessarily is better at cryptocurrency mining. But that's a
(25:56):
very different thing than the PS four, which has a
less I guess ambition is processor architecture. It's more like
a typical computers processor. So what gives why would you
use PS four consoles to mine cryptocurrency because they surely
are not very effective. Well, new report suggests that the
consoles were not mining cryptocurrency at all. They were doing
(26:19):
something that I thought was far more ludicrous. They were
farming in game currency in a FIFA video game. And
here's where the ignorant American that that being me I'm
the ignorant American here is reminded that the FIFA video
game franchise is truly enormous. In fact, the Guinness Book
of World Records lists it as the best selling sports
(26:42):
video game franchise in the world. And um, for fellow
Americans who might not play FIFA might not be aware
of what it is. It's a soccer game. Wait, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry everybody else, it's a football game, but you
know it's that foreign football which we call soccer. Just
keep it on the down low, Americans. Anyway, the people
(27:03):
who are running the operation, apparently we're using these consoles
to farm in game items. In FIFA twenty ones Ultimate
Team Mode, Allegedly they had created these programs that would
allow bots to play in game games and just generate
tons of in game currency, which the group then could
(27:24):
sell on the black market to other players. And all
of this just blows my mind. I mean, I understand
that in game stuff can have real world value. It
has to, like otherwise, downloadable content wouldn't be a thing.
And I've purchased in game stuff on occasion for some titles,
but it always surprises me to hear about the scope
(27:45):
of these kinds of things and an operation that used
like three thousand, eight hundred PS four consoles to do
this is just hard for me to visualize. I might
have to do a full episode about this story in
the future to kind of talk about what got us
to this point, because it's more than just a group
of hackers exploiting a system. It's really also about the
(28:07):
system itself and how that system facilitated the scenario that
allowed this crime to even be a possibility. In a way,
it's similar to what I was talking about with the
I s p s and the broadband gatekeepers, right, because
there you have a capitalist system that kind of creates
(28:27):
the environment that enables this disparity to happen, and here
we have a video game monetization strategy that also facilitates
bad behavior. So I think that I may need to
do some episodes about kind of like the underlying business
strategies behind some big tech companies and how that, as
(28:51):
a consequence, leads to negative outcomes that don't necessarily depend
upon the tech. The tech is just a component here,
but it means that when we look at these things,
were like, oh, that's not totally cool anyway, that's for
a future episode. This episode is now concluded, so thank
(29:12):
you very much for listening. If you have suggestions for
topics you would like me to cover on future episodes
of tech Stuff, do what several of your fellow listeners
have done and reach out to me on Twitter. The
handle to use is tech stuff H s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
(29:37):
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.
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 it's another week
and another billionaire going to space. Earlier this month, Richard
(00:26):
Branson took a very short jaunt out to the edge
of space board Virgin Galactics space Ship two, which is
a single rocket engine vehicle that actually piggybacks on a mothership,
a larger air vehicle called White Night too, so then
it detaches from White Knight to ignites its rocket engine
(00:47):
and thus does not have to take off from the
surface of the Earth. Now this morning, as I was
writing this, I was writing it just as Amazon founder
Jeff Bezos had finished his similarly short trail in the
New Shepherd Blue Origin space vehicle, which is a capsule
that sits on top of a launch vehicle. He was
(01:10):
part of the first crew to ride that vehicle to space,
so the first people to actually be in a Blue
Origin space vehicle. He went along with his brother Mark
and an aviation legend, Wally Funk. She has now become
the oldest astronaut to go to space, and Oliver Damon,
(01:31):
the eighteen year old who took the spot of some
anonymous person who purchased a twenty eight million dollar ticket
to go to space but then had to back out
due to what we're called scheduling difficulties, which is pretty wild, right,
kind of wonder what's in your schedule where you're like, oh, man,
I can't go to space today. I gotta go buy
(01:52):
milk or whatever it is. Anyway, Damon is now the
youngest person to have gone to space. So in the
same little space capsule, they had the oldest astronaut and
the youngest astronaut to ever go to space. And Damon's father,
by the way, runs a private equity firm in the Netherlands.
So this is not the case of some like Ragamuffin
(02:14):
finding a golden ticket and a Wonka bar or something. No,
because space, it turns out it's not just trying to
kill you. It's also freaking expensive. Most of us will
never be able to afford to go. Now, you could
say that I've got a case of sour grapes, and
I admit it, You're right, I do have a case
(02:35):
of sour grapes. I'm absolutely grouchy about this. But moreover,
there has been a growing backlash against Branson, Bezos and
Elon Musk as well, because the billionaires were publicly racing
toward getting into space, and meanwhile we have these massive
problems that continue to balloon out of control back here
(02:58):
on the ground. This is led some to say, you know,
why are you seemingly running away? Even though they were
only up in space for like a minute and less
than a minute in some cases, it's not like it's
them saying peace out and flying off to some luxury
planet in the Solar System. But a lot of the
(03:18):
critics say, why not use some of that money, the
enormous amounts of money it took to send you to
space to address critical problems like, you know, the pandemic,
or income inequality, or poor working conditions or the exploitation
of the poor. Why spend all that money on an
endeavor that contributes to enormous amounts of carbon emissions. The
(03:40):
aviation industry in general is a really big source of
carbon emissions, and it means that a very small percentage
of people are responsible, either directly or indirectly, for a
large percentage of carbon emissions. These and other questions have
been asked many times over the past few days. They
also point out that these billionaires often have an association
(04:03):
with some of those problems. I mean, Amazon in particular
has been in the news quite a bit about things
like unfair working conditions with Elon Musk. His other company, Tesla,
has been in the news about pushing to open up
manufacturing facilities, even as the states that those facilities were
in we're ordering lockdowns. Like there have been some pretty
(04:27):
negative news reports about these companies that are are run
by these billionaires. Now, on the other hand, there is
a lot of good things to be said with regard
to human ingenuity and engineering and the countless hours that
thousands of people put into making this achievement a possibility.
(04:48):
We should not ignore that. And I think it is
possible to both be critical of the motivations and implications
of the billionaire space race and also still be able
to laud the achievements of people who made it all possible.
But you know, hearing rich people yell woo who on
a space joy ride does get my dander up. I
(05:12):
reckon anyway, I guess the ball is now in Elon
Musk's court, as he's the one billionaire of those three
who has not yet gone to space, though his car did.
Speaking of Elon Musk and space, SpaceX tested the enormous
booster rocket for its Starship spacecraft on Monday night. So
(05:34):
this is a booster rocket that were part of the
launch vehicle to get Starship into space. The booster is
called the Super Heavy and it has several rocket engines.
They're called raptor engines to be precise, and this particular
test involved igniting three of those engines in a test burn,
but the booster was tethered firmly to the ground. This
(05:56):
wasn't launching. The booster was really testing the engine is
making sure that everything was working in the future. Assuming
that everything goes well, a full launch of the Starship,
for example, if you were to try and send it
to Mars, could involve more than thirty engines during that process.
The company has already conducted a suborbital test of Starship
(06:19):
last May, and the plan was to carry out an
orbital test during this summer, but you know time is
starting to run out for that. If it happens, the
Starship will launch from Texas, it will reach an orbital
altitude and then it will descend to land near the
island of Kawaiti, you know as part of Hawaii. And
the ultimate plan for the starship program is again to
(06:42):
send astronauts to distant places like the Moon or Mars,
and that's why you need such powerful engines for a
full launch. We've still got a long way to go
before we ever try something like that, and more tests
will be needed to ensure that the tech is reliable
and safe. The spy where Pegasus is back in the
news this week, and in case you're not familiar with this,
(07:05):
Pegasus is a spyware project headed by an Israeli company
called the n s O Group. This company makes spyware
for smartphones and that gives a remote administrator access to
that device. That actually includes the ability to activate the
smartphones camera and microphone, so you can use it as
(07:26):
a surveillance tool. This is the sort of stuff that
hackers want in order to gain information about targets. It's
the same stuff that Nations used to keep an eye
on various people. And the NSL group has sold this
spyware technology as a weapon. Is classified as a weapon,
so they actually have to get the consent of the
Israeli government before they sell it to anyone, but they've
(07:48):
sold it to various countries in the Middle East, though
typically not two countries that have an outright antagonistic stance
against Israel, which makes sense. You wouldn't think that the
Israeli government would sign off on a sale of a
surveillance tool that's classified as a weapon two enemies of
the state. Critics have suggested that the ns A group
(08:09):
is effectively acting as sort of a vanguard for Israeli diplomacy,
the idea being that, you know, providing this powerful surveillance
tool to various governments gives Israel a foot in the
door for diplomatic negotiations moving forward, and critics have also
alleged that some of these countries, notably Saudi Arabia, have
(08:30):
used the Pegasus spyware, not to you know, identify crime
groups or terrorist groups, which is the stated purpose for
this surveillance technology, but rather to persecute human rights activists
or critics of the state and journalists. The NSO group
cut off Saudi Arabia's access to the tool following the
(08:51):
murder of Jamal ka Shogi, but later reinstated it upon
direction by the Israeli government, which raises some pretty ugly questions.
And this is all according to an article in the Guardian. Recently,
n S Group shut off Saudi access to the tool
again after Al Jazeera journalists came forward with Amnesty International
(09:14):
saying that they had been targeted by the spyware. Amnesty
International has published several extensive reports about this spyware and
how various governments have used and abused it. Uh The
organization has also released a tool kit to help people
determine if their devices have been compromised and have Pegasus
spyware on them. The organization also says that Pegasus is
(09:37):
much easier to detect on iPhones than it is on
Android phones, as the spyware leaves more traces on iPhones.
Amnesty also found that the spyware could transfer through a
zero click attack through I message, meaning it's a particularly
powerful attack. It doesn't require the target to you know,
click on a malicious link or download any software. It
(09:59):
can just be done through I message, which is pretty
pretty nasty stuff. While we're talking about Apple, the company
recently decided that it was going to delay a return
to office they originally were planning on doing it in September,
but a rise in COVID cases has made them change
their minds. The idea was that employees would be returning
(10:21):
to the office for three days a week and then
remotely work the other two days of the week. But
now Apple says it's going to hold off to at
least October. And to be clear, the return to the
office was not a comeback three days a week if
you feel like it. It was more like a you
will come back to the office for three days a week.
It was a mandate, and it was one that you know,
(10:44):
some Apple employees were protesting. They were saying that the
message they received was that they were going to be
forced to choose between their health and safety and that
of their families and their careers. Apple CEO Tim Cook
sent out a memo in June, and a memos said
that workers really did need to return to offices and
and get the hum of activity back in the hallways
(11:07):
of Apple. And just to be clear, while I'm specifically
talking about Apple here, it is not unique in this
at all. Google and Amazon have similar planned policies with returns.
In September. I believe both of those companies also planned
to do a three days in the office kind of approach.
We'll see if those companies also adjust their plans in
(11:29):
the wake of rising COVID cases. The delta variant is
really wreaking havoc in the United States. Um even vaccinated
people can catch it, and while their symptoms might be minor,
in fact they might be asymptomatic, there's still a concern
about the possibility of them passing that on to unvaccinated people,
which that could lead to actual disaster, you know, and death,
(11:53):
the bad things. I'm just coming out and saying it
that I think people dying from COVID is bad. I
know it's a controversial thing to say for some reason. Anyway,
it's really at this point that I want to express
how thankful I am for our leadership. At my heart,
I'm incredibly fortunate that I am. My co workers are
(12:13):
all given the freedom to continue working from home with
no mandate in the foreseeable future right now to return
to the office. Now, some of us do go into
the office occasionally. So for example, I will sometimes go
into the office to record interviews for my show The
Restless Ones. If you haven't heard The Restless Ones, you
should go check it out. Uh. And the reason why
(12:35):
I do that the all the interviews I do are remote,
but the office is internet connection is much more reliable
than my home internet connection and I don't want to,
you know, have a connection dropped during an interview, So
I go to the office for those occasions. Um, And
it's pretty rare that I see anyone else in that office.
Occasionally I do, like on a on a really busy day,
(12:56):
I might see as many as for other people. But
most days I'm the only one there. And considering that
at least one of my co workers has announced that
they were diagnosed with COVID not too long ago, this
is a pretty big deal to me. Now. To be clear,
my co worker announced this on a public forum, but
in respect for their privacy, I'm just gonna leave it
(13:17):
at that. I'm not gonna say who it was. If
you know, you know, if you don't know, it doesn't
really matter. The point is that because of my company's policy,
I feel pretty safe, and I feel a lot of
empathy for the people who are working for Apple and
Google and Amazon who might not have that same reassurance. Anyway,
(13:40):
we'll keep our eyes on these stories as they continue
to develop. Ideally, I would just like to see the
COVID numbers come down, people go back to the office
and everything be fine. That's just not the reality we're
working with right now. Next year, the three major cellular
service providers in the United States, those being Verizon, Team
of and A T and T, will all preload Android
(14:03):
Messages as the default texting app on all Android phones. Now.
This marks a shift to the RCS chat standard, which
Android Messages uses. Our RCS stands for Rich Communications Services,
and it's a replacement for the antiquated SMS, or Short
Messaging Service standard that we've relied on for years. We
(14:26):
typically think of SMSs text messages. So why are we upgrading? Well,
SMS has some pretty major drawbacks. It does not support
end to end encryption. For example, it doesn't support group messaging.
It doesn't support red receipts, so that means you never
know if someone actually saw the text message you sent them.
(14:47):
Though on the flip side, that also gives me plausible
deniability that you know, I ever even saw the text message,
because I'm notorious or not answering them anyway. RCS also
supports features like video and audio, something that SMS can't
really handle. But there's a big drawback, and that is
you have to make sure that the r r c
S implementations of each of these carriers are compatible with
(15:13):
one another. Otherwise you could end up with services that
would allow for communication within one carrier but not beyond it,
or within one handset manufacturer but not beyond that. So,
in other words, you could find yourself able to communicate
with anyone else who was on the same carrier or
was using the same phone that you were using, but
(15:34):
you couldn't do it with anyone else. Now, the carriers
in the US say that they are working to ensure compatibility,
and the fact that they're defaulting to Google's Android Messages
really falls in line with that. Now, the only major
player in the space that hasn't announced a move to
r CS is Apple. Apple's Eye Message is a different
kettle of fish, being far more feature rich and secure
(15:55):
than old SMS. It also supports end to end encryption,
but if you need a message someone who isn't on
an Apple device, then you have to fall back to
SMS messages. Android is rolling out into end encryption for
Android messages, and I message, like I said, hast end
encryption in place as well, but any messages that would
be sent between an Android device and an Apple device
(16:17):
would have to revert to SMS and thus be less secure,
so it represents a weak link. It's hard to imagine
Apple inviting rcs to occupy a space on the iPhone,
and similarly, Apple doesn't appear to be keen to allow
I message apps on the Android platform, so we're kind
of at a bit of an impass. Well, we have
(16:38):
a couple more stories to cover, but before I get
to that, let's take a quick break. We're back. A
T and T is reportedly in talks to offload and
add division that has been hemorrhaging money for a few
(16:59):
years and is not looking any better right now. And
this is all according to Axios. So back in two
thousand eighteen, A T and T acquired an ad exchange
company called app Nexus for one point six billion dollars
that's billion with a B, and it also purchased a
TV ad company called Clipped. Not sure how much that
(17:20):
acquisition was for, but it was significantly lower than one
point six billion. But the idea was to combine these
two things and create an automation solution for television advertising
and pair that with Warner Media. The media division within
A T and T, the ad division was renamed zander
(17:40):
x A N d R. Now, in my fanciful brain,
and automation solution for television advertising means that we would
get ads with robots selling us stuff, which at first
I'm totally into. But then I remember those terrifying Dura
cell commercials from decades ago where you had these plastic
robot people. Do you guys remember those? They were the
(18:00):
stuff of nightmares. Go to YouTube and search Dura sell
robot people. If you don't know what I'm talking about,
And I'm sorry, but halloweens around the corner. It's a
great costume anyway. No, that's not what this is about.
I was like totally off based on that. The plan
was to incorporate the automated ad division with Warner Media
(18:20):
and to have these two work together and to optimize
advertising and just generate revenue out the wazoo. Really, But
now A T and T is famously ditching Warner Media,
or rather spinning it off, and Warner Media is scheduled
to merge with Discovery Communications and become a new media
(18:42):
company again and without the media side of the business.
Then Zander's kind of a hammer, but there are no nails,
right There's it's a tool, but there's nothing to use
it with because now A T. T doesn't have the
media arm that would go hand in hand with the
advertising arm, so it's missing inventory side of the ad business.
(19:02):
So it has no real place with a T and T.
And apparently there have been some major mismanagement issues with
the division from the get go, with annual losses somewhere
in the fifty to ninety million dollar range. Again, this
is according to AXIOSS sources. At the moment, an Indian
company called in Mobi, which is another big AD technology company,
(19:24):
is in talks to potentially acquire the division, but it's
early days. We don't know if that's actually going to
move forward. An organization called Common Cause and a union
called the Communications Workers of America recently released a joint
report titled Broadband Gatekeepers. How i SP lobbying and political
influence shapes the Digital Divide. The report examines the telecommunications
(19:48):
industry in the United States, the political power that that
industry wields, and the consequences that create an uneven and
unfair broadband distribution here in the US. The report opens
by pointing out how the pandemic really highlighted the necessity
of having broadband access in the US just for being
able to carry out like simple daily functions. You really
(20:12):
benefited if you have access to a broadband connection all
the way to participating in the democratic process. The election
was a big deal. You know, it was going on
during a pandemic, and the internet access was playing a
big part in being able to participate in that process.
Also signing up for COVID vaccinations that is largely an
(20:33):
online process in a lot of places as well. So
having broadband access is pivotal to playing a part in
being a part of society in the United States. The
report lays out that the industry spends hundreds of thousands
of dollars every day to lobby politicians and an effort
to more or less maintain an advantageous position in regional marketplaces.
(20:58):
So the report pretty much spells out stuff that I
think most people know just through their own experience that
big companies frequently have a near monopoly on specific regions,
which means the average person is fortunate if they have
even a second option when it comes to choosing a
broadband service. And it also points out that a lot
of people, particularly people in vulnerable or poor populations, often
(21:22):
lack any broadband options at all, and so there are
these massive gaps in connectivity in the US. And the
report is essentially saying these companies are behaving as companies do, right.
These companies are capitalistic organizations. That's there, you know, raison d'tre,
and that as a result, if a company identifies a
(21:44):
particular region as being unprofitable, then there's no financial incentive
for that company to extend services out to that area.
That's kind of the gist of the reports saying that
without any other influence in here, these populations are going
to continue to be underserved compared to areas that are
(22:06):
deemed to be profitable by these companies. And again, like
it's it's kind of making the companies out to be
the bad guy, but to be fair, you could argue
that it's the system that enables this, that that facilitates
this kind of behavior, these kind of choices that it
would be antithetical to the corporate uh philosophy to do otherwise.
(22:31):
And the report also explains how the FCC went from
an organization that was laying out rules and regulations under
the Obama administration that would have really made broadband a utility.
In fact, that did happen, and that this would help
address things by creating mandates that the companies would have
to follow, thus removing that decision from the companies themselves.
(22:56):
But then all of that flipped when Trump became president
and the FCC leadership completely changed. Now, I would say
it pretty much confirms a lot of common beliefs about
the telecommunications industry, and I'll also point out it clearly
has its own bias that is evident upon reading just
the executive summary for this report. Now, I'm not saying
(23:18):
the report is wrong. I'm just saying that the report
does not attempt to present itself as being, you know,
objective and unbiased. But it's pretty upfront about that. It's
not like it's trying to be something it's not. Anyway,
if you are curious about why broadband access is the
way it is in the United States and you want
to know more about the links that companies will go
(23:40):
to in order to maintain the status quo, I recommend
reading the report. It's free to read at common Cause
dot org. And again, the title of that is broadband gatekeepers,
how I sp lobbying and political influence shapes the digital divide.
I might have to do a full episode about that
at some point. Finally, last week, a cryptocurrency mining operation
(24:05):
was rated by the Ukraine's Security Service, and the reason
for the raid was that this group was allegedly using
devices to mine cryptocurrency, specifically bitcoin, and in the process
they were stealing electricity from the power grid, so they're
taking electricity without paying for it. Obviously, one of the
(24:26):
things that is a barrier to entry and cryptocurrency mining
is that you have to have a super powerful computer
computer system, like multiple super powerful computers in order to
stand a chance at being successful at at mining cryptocurrency,
which means you have to consume a lot of electricity,
which means your operations are expensive unless you steal that electricity.
(24:50):
If the electricity is free, well then it's not as
big a deal and you've got more profit for yourself.
So this particular operation was very odd because it wasn't
full of super powerful mining rigs using various like parallel
processing components. It was using thousands of PS four consoles
(25:13):
PlayStation four. This raises some questions. I mean PS four
consoles are cool and all. I've got one myself. I
like it. But they're not exactly the most sophisticated computers
out there, and they are not optimized for mining cryptocurrency. Now,
you could argue that using free electricity would mean that
they don't have to be that good, but if they
(25:34):
never are successful, then there's not much point to it.
Right now, there was a time back with the PS three,
which had a totally different semiconductor processor architecture, where you
could network a ton of PS three's together and you
could create the equivalent of a supercomputer, which, by the way,
not necessarily is better at cryptocurrency mining. But that's a
(25:56):
very different thing than the PS four, which has a
less I guess ambition is processor architecture. It's more like
a typical computers processor. So what gives why would you
use PS four consoles to mine cryptocurrency because they surely
are not very effective. Well, new report suggests that the
consoles were not mining cryptocurrency at all. They were doing
(26:19):
something that I thought was far more ludicrous. They were
farming in game currency in a FIFA video game. And
here's where the ignorant American that that being me I'm
the ignorant American here is reminded that the FIFA video
game franchise is truly enormous. In fact, the Guinness Book
of World Records lists it as the best selling sports
(26:42):
video game franchise in the world. And um, for fellow
Americans who might not play FIFA might not be aware
of what it is. It's a soccer game. Wait, I'm sorry,
I'm sorry everybody else, it's a football game, but you
know it's that foreign football which we call soccer. Just
keep it on the down low, Americans. Anyway, the people
(27:03):
who are running the operation, apparently we're using these consoles
to farm in game items. In FIFA twenty ones Ultimate
Team Mode, Allegedly they had created these programs that would
allow bots to play in game games and just generate
tons of in game currency, which the group then could
(27:24):
sell on the black market to other players. And all
of this just blows my mind. I mean, I understand
that in game stuff can have real world value. It
has to, like otherwise, downloadable content wouldn't be a thing.
And I've purchased in game stuff on occasion for some titles,
but it always surprises me to hear about the scope
(27:45):
of these kinds of things and an operation that used
like three thousand, eight hundred PS four consoles to do
this is just hard for me to visualize. I might
have to do a full episode about this story in
the future to kind of talk about what got us
to this point, because it's more than just a group
of hackers exploiting a system. It's really also about the
(28:07):
system itself and how that system facilitated the scenario that
allowed this crime to even be a possibility. In a way,
it's similar to what I was talking about with the
I s p s and the broadband gatekeepers, right, because
there you have a capitalist system that kind of creates
(28:27):
the environment that enables this disparity to happen, and here
we have a video game monetization strategy that also facilitates
bad behavior. So I think that I may need to
do some episodes about kind of like the underlying business
strategies behind some big tech companies and how that, as
(28:51):
a consequence, leads to negative outcomes that don't necessarily depend
upon the tech. The tech is just a component here,
but it means that when we look at these things,
were like, oh, that's not totally cool anyway, that's for
a future episode. This episode is now concluded, so thank
(29:12):
you very much for listening. If you have suggestions for
topics you would like me to cover on future episodes
of tech Stuff, do what several of your fellow listeners
have done and reach out to me on Twitter. The
handle to use is tech stuff H s W and
I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is
(29:37):
an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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