September 22, 2022 • 20 mins
The makers of Grand Theft Auto are responding to a hacker who leaked dozens of videos of the next title in the series. Russia implies it might shoot down Starlink satellites. And Iran cracks down on the Internet in the wake of civil protests.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech stuff, a production from my 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 how the Tech Are you? It's time for the
Tech News for Thursday September, twenty two, two thousand twenty two. And,
(00:26):
just as a reminder, I will actually be on vacation
next week. We will have some reruns playing next week,
so we will have episodes up. Uh, and if you
haven't been listening for more than a couple of years,
it'll be new to you and I'll be recording new
intros and stuff for those episodes. But yes, I'll be
back in early October. Just taking a week off to
(00:49):
celebrate my anniversary. But let's get to the Tech News.
That's more than enough about me. Earlier this week I
talked about how hackers infiltrated Uber's corporate systems and accessed
an unknown amount of data, though they did post a
message to the company's Slack Channel, and I also mentioned
that another company, Rock Star Games, had also been hit
(01:11):
by a hacker, reportedly the same one, at least according
to the claims of the hacker themselves. UH, well, one
thing I did not mention is that that hacker, who
used the handle t pot Uber Hacker, over on G
T A forums, uploaded more than ninety videos showing gameplay
footage of a developer build of the next grand theft
(01:34):
auto game, A K A G T A six. The
previous installment of the game, G t a five, came
out nearly ten years ago, back in two thousand thirteen,
and fans have been eager to get a new entry
in the series for years. Rock Star in two K
Games were clearly not ready to show off anything about
(01:55):
the game yet. They had not made any details public,
but there had been lots of rumors circulating for a
while that the next entry would see a return to
vice city, that's the G T A stand in for
Miami Florida, and that at least one main character would
be a woman, which is kind of a departure for
the series, as of like most of the protagonists, in
(02:18):
fact really all the protagonists in the recent games, have
been mailed. The downloaded footage confirmed those rumors. Uh. It
also shows that you'll actually be playing as two different
characters throughout the story, and a kind of a Bonnie
and Clyde style criminal relationship. It also was very much
a developer build right, not anything close to a final product.
(02:43):
It included videos that had stuff like debugging data on
screen during Gameplay, and you think that those would be
enough indicators for people to chill the heck out before
they passed judgment on this. But no, there were lots
of reactions that mentioned things like the graphics quality. But, y'all,
that's just silly. This game is nowhere close to being finished,
(03:07):
so judging it on things like that is absolutely ridiculous. Reportedly,
one reason the game has taken sort of the scenic
route as far as development is concerned is that rock
star and two K are trying to avoid the issue
of crunch. That's where game developer companies pressure employees to
work grueling hours, often with no days off, in an
(03:30):
effort to get a title finished and out the door. Personally,
I think it's okay to wait a little longer for
a game if it means developers have a chance to
unwind in their off time and see their families and,
you know, do something other than debug code for sixteen
hours straight every day. Anyway, when the companies began issuing
(03:50):
D M C, a takedowns on posted videos of this
leaked footage, it became clear that the videos must be
legit because if you are going to issue a D
M C, a takedown, then presumably you have ownership of
the material in question. You can't do a D M C,
a takedown of something you don't own, or at least
(04:13):
it will get overturned, at least in theory, because you
don't have the right to actually take down anything if
you don't own it. So if the videos were fake,
then the companies wouldn't have had the authority to order
them taken down. So, in other words, by taking measures
against the spread of the videos, rock star in two
(04:33):
K effectively confirmed that the leaked material was legitimate. Rock
star had also already confirmed that it had been hit
by a data breach, likely caused by social engineering. That,
of course, is when someone convinces a person to hand
over access credentials to a system. Sometimes they trick them,
(04:57):
sometimes it's a person on the inside who gets ride
to do it, but yeah, social engineering is a very
popular way to get access to otherwise secure systems. It's
very rare that you see hackers doing the Hollywood thing
of trying to crack a password, because it's much easier
to just convince somebody who already has access to hand
(05:18):
it over. Anyway, rock star is currently working with the
FBI to investigate this hack. Uber is also doing that,
working with the FBI and the Department of Justice. So
there are strong powers bearing down on the the hacker Um.
So I don't know if the hackers at all concerned
about that. But yeah, the the investigations have begun. A
(05:41):
whistleblower has come forward saying that multiple US military agencies
have spent millions of dollars on a data mining tool
from team Simru. I'm not sure I'm saying that right.
It's see why, M are you? And this tool claims
to give a quote, super majority of all activity on
the Internet, end quote, which means that, at least in theory,
(06:03):
if you have access to this tool, you can get
a look at like nine of all the traffic crossing
the Internet, which is mind boggling to say the least.
I mean, just think about all the different devices connected
to and communicating over the Internet. Senator Ron Widen from Oregon,
whom you might remember, I talked about recently because he's
(06:24):
the senator who was criticizing US Customs for coercing people
into handing over access to their electronic devices, and then
U s customs was downloading that information into a massive
database that anyone in the customs agency could potentially access anyway.
That same senator is now asking some tough questions about
the military's use of this tool. And obviously any tool
(06:46):
that allows this level of scrutiny over Internet traffic stands
as a massive security and privacy threat to hundreds of
millions of people and, depending upon the scope and level
of focus that the tool allows, it could be truly terrifying. Now,
at worst, this could mean that all these military agencies
have access to truly enormous amounts of information on people
(07:10):
that could compromise their privacy down the road. So, even
if you're someone who says I've done nothing wrong, I'm
not worried about it, just imagine that's someone who has
access to the system also has an ax to grind
with you for whatever reason. Maybe it's a neighbor and
they didn't like the fact that you didn't mow the
lawn last night. You know, something crazy like that. This
(07:32):
these sort of things have happened. We saw it happened
with the N S A, where people were accessing massive
surveillance tools for their own personal use. That does happen.
So even if you assume these agencies aren't doing anything malicious,
which is a dangerous assumption to make in the first place,
there's still massive, massive problems with this kind of surveillance,
(07:55):
and that's Whiten's point. But even at the very least,
let's just let's say that everyone's being very careful and
responsible with all of this, what it suggests is that
the military has been looking for loopholes to get around
the few protections that the United States grants for privacy.
My my home country, is pretty darn awful about protecting
(08:16):
citizen privacy. According to widen, the whistleblower claimed that people
within these agencies had shared their concerns about the use
of these tools and they had filed complaints and concerns
all up and down the chain of command, but ultimately
nothing changed. And so the whistleblower came forward out of
concern that the military and the Department of Defense could
(08:38):
be violating constitutional rights by sidestepping judiciary oversight. It seems
as though the military and other agencies, like law enforcement
organizations are getting around barriers in a pretty suss way.
So the fourth amendment to the Constitution in the United
States gives citizens protection against unread noble search and seizure.
(09:01):
See also the story we did on US Customs on Tuesday.
And usually you can't just go and demand a company
like an Internet service provider to hand over information about
someone unless you have an order that's been issued by
a court system you've gotten a judge to sign off
on it. But if these agencies don't demand information but
(09:25):
instead just go out and buy it from data brokers
who will sell information to whomever is buying it, well
then they kind of got around that, didn't they? Because
they didn't demand anything, they just purchased access to this information,
which is a big old yuck. Anyway, whether we see
the government take action on this and close down these
(09:46):
loopholes remains to be seen. So I guess just remember
it's not just Santa clause that's watching you. The Iranian
government is cracking down on Internet access in the country
in the wake of protests that have been prom did
by the death of Massa Amini last week. Amini was
arrested and charged with wearing unsuitable attire, in violation of
(10:09):
Iran's modesty rules, and she died in police custody last week.
Her family is UH protesting the reasoning that Iranian authorities
have given, saying that the authorities are are lying about
Ameni's medical condition and that she died as a result
(10:29):
of their direct treatment of her. The tragedy appears to
have been the tipping point for social unrest in the nation. Now,
I want to add there are a lot of factors
that are contributing to social instability in Iran, and the
big picture is extremely complex, far more so than we
can go into in this podcast, but this incident was
(10:53):
sort of an inciting incident. The Iranian government has appeared
to order a near total black out of Internet communication,
with some people reporting that they were only able to
send texts on their phone to each other, but otherwise
had no real connectivity. Presumably this is all in an
effort to hamper any kind of organizational efforts that would
(11:14):
otherwise depend upon the Internet. It's the most extreme crackdown
on internet communications in Iran since November two thousand nineteen.
That's when Iranian citizens began to protest a whole bunch
of different issues, including government corruption increased fuel prices, than
the Iranian government in general. We have more news to cover,
(11:34):
but first let's take a quick break. We're back over
in Russia. A leader of the Russian Foreign Ministry named
Constantine Voran Stov or varant solve, I should say sorry
(11:55):
for my pronunciation. He said that if countries continue to
support Ukraine that Russia might retaliate against, quote unquote, quasi
civilian infrastructure. Now, the general interpretation of this statement is
that Russian leaders are threatening to shoot down Starlink satellites
that are in orbit above Ukraine. So earlier this year
(12:17):
the Digital Minister for Ukraine tweeted at Elon Musk essentially
asking for Starlink equipment to be sent to the country.
A joint project between the United States Agency for International
Development and SPACEX would send thousands of Starlink satellite dishes
to Eastern Europe and a small constellation of Starlink satellites
(12:38):
moved into position above Ukraine. UH, it's not entirely clear
how much of that is funded by SPACEX and private
funds and how much of that came from the US agency,
largely because the US agency scrubbed a lot of that
information off of its sites in the wake of this developing.
Maybe it was a way to try and dist the
(13:00):
United States support of Ukraine in a delicate situation, but
this became a critical part of Ukraine's strategy for fighting Russia,
using the communications in order to maintain a chain of command,
as well as to do things like guide drones to
attack Russian positions. Now fast forward about nine months and
(13:22):
Russia's campaign in Ukraine is not going to the countries favor,
Russia's favor, I should say. Vladimir Putin faces increasing resistance
in Russia as he instituted partial military mobilization. Now, if
you're like me, you might want to know what those
(13:42):
words actually mean, because if I read partial military mobilization,
it just sounds like you're moving military units, but not
all of them, just part of them. Now, in this case,
what that phrase actually means is that Russia is calling
up specific groups of people to serve in the armed forces.
So it's not that dissimilar to the draft here in
(14:05):
the United States, or you know, or the concept of
conscription in general. It just as a different phrasing. I
don't know why we use that. I find it confusing.
I think it just works better if we say conscription,
but maybe maybe I'm just a stickler for that kind
of thing. Anyway, as the situation gets more complicated for Putin,
the leader has begun making threats against any country that
(14:29):
might support Ukraine, and now has seemed to extend that
to not just countries but companies in their equipment. Russia
does have the capability to shoot down satellites in orbit.
In fact, the country demonstrated that last year when it
destroyed an old communication satellite in a test of the system,
in a move that drew sharp criticism from the scientific
(14:51):
community because it could have potentially threatened astronauts aboard the
International Space Station by creating lots of space junk traveling
at tens of thousands of miles per hour, and even
a small piece could spell chaos for other spacecraft. If
Russia did make such a move, it would no doubt
escalate tensions dramatically in the region. Okay, time to talk
(15:14):
about Meta and some recent issues that the company faces.
In Texas, a jury found Meta guilty of having infringed
upon patents belonging to an APP company called Voxer. Tom
cadis founded voxer back in two thousand six in an
effort to create better walkie talkie style technology, and he
launched an APP in two thousand eleven. Apparently Meta, which
(15:35):
back then was just plain old facebook, was interested in
either acquiring or partnering with Foxer, but for one reason
or another that project never solidified. But boxer's lawyers say
that Meta later incorporated technology that came from boxer into
facebook features without compensating the company, and that prompted the
court case, and that this court case was actually filed
(15:57):
two years ago because, like I said earlier this week,
justice in the US sure does move swiftly. Meta lawyers
argued that the company did not infringe upon the patents,
but a jury found otherwise, and the jury also decided
that Meta now owes foxer four point five million dollars.
Metal lawyers say they plan to appeal the decision, so
(16:19):
this ain't over yet. Meanwhile, there's a class action lawsuit
that might be taking shape against Meta. According to the
site Mac rumors, it is a proposed class action lawsuit
at the moment. So what is the issue? Well, the
lawsuit claims that Meta used some workarounds to sidestep apple's
APP Tracking Transparency Policy, a k a a t t,
(16:43):
but not a t and T, just a t t. now,
this is the policy that lets IOS users opt out
of APP tracking, which Meta had been relying upon to
fuel its advertising business. That data is incredibly valuable to
Meta and to Meta's advertising clients, so getting cut off
from that was a huge blow. The lawsuit claims that
(17:04):
Meta has built in browsers in its APPS, like facebook
and Instagram, that do all the data gathering that a
t t is supposed to prevent should users opt out
of it, and that users are not made aware of this.
They happens without their consent. There are allegations that medic
can even monitor text and puts like payment information, which
(17:26):
obviously presents security and privacy concerns. Good news for instagram
users out there. The company is reportedly working on a
filter that will automatically detect when someone sends you a
nude photo. That's actually a huge problem on the platform.
There are some folks who get unsolicited nudes frequently. I
imagine female presenting influencers get it an awful lot. The
(17:47):
tool will detect images containing nudity and will cover those images,
and it gives the recipient the option to either just
ignore the message so they don't ever have to look
at it, or, if they give in to curiosity, they
can actually choose to view it, but it becomes an
active choice. It's not something that just happens automatically. So
(18:08):
for folks who are flooded with this kind of material,
I imagine that would be a huge relief. It might
even mean they might check their messages more frequently because
they wouldn't have a fear of being confronted by the
nude form of total strangers. And this is also important
to note this tool is supposed to do all of
this automatically. No one at instagram will be able to
look at or have access to the images. I imagine
(18:31):
the AI that has been trained to recognize nudity has
a real tough time with all the other image recognition
ais when they get together for their virtual softball league.
TIKTOK will soon require all accounts connected to US politicians,
political parties and government agencies to go through a verification process.
In addition, the platform is banning all videos aimed at
campaign fundraising. This is a bit of a pushback against
(18:53):
the valid criticisms that tiktok has long allowed misinformation, including
political misinformation, to proliferate on the Plat form. Once TIKTOK
has verified a politically connected account, that account will not
be able to access advertising and gifting features, and any
videos that mentioned fundraising or that actively solicit donations will
be banned. Finally, over on twitch, you've got a lot
(19:14):
of twitch streamers who are threatening to strike against the platform,
possibly around Christmas week, because of the platform's stance on gambling.
That is there is none. Twitch has said that they
are evaluating their policies they'll come out with something more
coherent in the future, but we have already heard that
things like sports betting will not be included in that policy.
(19:36):
So that's pretty much guaranteed to take off everybody. The
people who are anti gambling are going to be upset
because they're gonna be some forms of gambling that will
be allowed. The people are pro gambling are going to
be upset because it'll feel like certain sectors of the
gambling community are being singled out and others are given
a free pass. So good job twitch. No one's happy.
(19:56):
All right. That's it for this episode. If you would
like to reach out to me remember I'll be out
for a whole week. It's good luck and I'll talk
to you again, Willie soon. Yes, 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
(20:20):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech stuff, a production from my 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 how the Tech Are you? It's time for the
Tech News for Thursday September, twenty two, two thousand twenty two. And,
(00:26):
just as a reminder, I will actually be on vacation
next week. We will have some reruns playing next week,
so we will have episodes up. Uh, and if you
haven't been listening for more than a couple of years,
it'll be new to you and I'll be recording new
intros and stuff for those episodes. But yes, I'll be
back in early October. Just taking a week off to
(00:49):
celebrate my anniversary. But let's get to the Tech News.
That's more than enough about me. Earlier this week I
talked about how hackers infiltrated Uber's corporate systems and accessed
an unknown amount of data, though they did post a
message to the company's Slack Channel, and I also mentioned
that another company, Rock Star Games, had also been hit
(01:11):
by a hacker, reportedly the same one, at least according
to the claims of the hacker themselves. UH, well, one
thing I did not mention is that that hacker, who
used the handle t pot Uber Hacker, over on G
T A forums, uploaded more than ninety videos showing gameplay
footage of a developer build of the next grand theft
(01:34):
auto game, A K A G T A six. The
previous installment of the game, G t a five, came
out nearly ten years ago, back in two thousand thirteen,
and fans have been eager to get a new entry
in the series for years. Rock Star in two K
Games were clearly not ready to show off anything about
(01:55):
the game yet. They had not made any details public,
but there had been lots of rumors circulating for a
while that the next entry would see a return to
vice city, that's the G T A stand in for
Miami Florida, and that at least one main character would
be a woman, which is kind of a departure for
the series, as of like most of the protagonists, in
(02:18):
fact really all the protagonists in the recent games, have
been mailed. The downloaded footage confirmed those rumors. Uh. It
also shows that you'll actually be playing as two different
characters throughout the story, and a kind of a Bonnie
and Clyde style criminal relationship. It also was very much
a developer build right, not anything close to a final product.
(02:43):
It included videos that had stuff like debugging data on
screen during Gameplay, and you think that those would be
enough indicators for people to chill the heck out before
they passed judgment on this. But no, there were lots
of reactions that mentioned things like the graphics quality. But, y'all,
that's just silly. This game is nowhere close to being finished,
(03:07):
so judging it on things like that is absolutely ridiculous. Reportedly,
one reason the game has taken sort of the scenic
route as far as development is concerned is that rock
star and two K are trying to avoid the issue
of crunch. That's where game developer companies pressure employees to
work grueling hours, often with no days off, in an
(03:30):
effort to get a title finished and out the door. Personally,
I think it's okay to wait a little longer for
a game if it means developers have a chance to
unwind in their off time and see their families and,
you know, do something other than debug code for sixteen
hours straight every day. Anyway, when the companies began issuing
(03:50):
D M C, a takedowns on posted videos of this
leaked footage, it became clear that the videos must be
legit because if you are going to issue a D
M C, a takedown, then presumably you have ownership of
the material in question. You can't do a D M C,
a takedown of something you don't own, or at least
(04:13):
it will get overturned, at least in theory, because you
don't have the right to actually take down anything if
you don't own it. So if the videos were fake,
then the companies wouldn't have had the authority to order
them taken down. So, in other words, by taking measures
against the spread of the videos, rock star in two
(04:33):
K effectively confirmed that the leaked material was legitimate. Rock
star had also already confirmed that it had been hit
by a data breach, likely caused by social engineering. That,
of course, is when someone convinces a person to hand
over access credentials to a system. Sometimes they trick them,
(04:57):
sometimes it's a person on the inside who gets ride
to do it, but yeah, social engineering is a very
popular way to get access to otherwise secure systems. It's
very rare that you see hackers doing the Hollywood thing
of trying to crack a password, because it's much easier
to just convince somebody who already has access to hand
(05:18):
it over. Anyway, rock star is currently working with the
FBI to investigate this hack. Uber is also doing that,
working with the FBI and the Department of Justice. So
there are strong powers bearing down on the the hacker Um.
So I don't know if the hackers at all concerned
about that. But yeah, the the investigations have begun. A
(05:41):
whistleblower has come forward saying that multiple US military agencies
have spent millions of dollars on a data mining tool
from team Simru. I'm not sure I'm saying that right.
It's see why, M are you? And this tool claims
to give a quote, super majority of all activity on
the Internet, end quote, which means that, at least in theory,
(06:03):
if you have access to this tool, you can get
a look at like nine of all the traffic crossing
the Internet, which is mind boggling to say the least.
I mean, just think about all the different devices connected
to and communicating over the Internet. Senator Ron Widen from Oregon,
whom you might remember, I talked about recently because he's
(06:24):
the senator who was criticizing US Customs for coercing people
into handing over access to their electronic devices, and then
U s customs was downloading that information into a massive
database that anyone in the customs agency could potentially access anyway.
That same senator is now asking some tough questions about
the military's use of this tool. And obviously any tool
(06:46):
that allows this level of scrutiny over Internet traffic stands
as a massive security and privacy threat to hundreds of
millions of people and, depending upon the scope and level
of focus that the tool allows, it could be truly terrifying. Now,
at worst, this could mean that all these military agencies
have access to truly enormous amounts of information on people
(07:10):
that could compromise their privacy down the road. So, even
if you're someone who says I've done nothing wrong, I'm
not worried about it, just imagine that's someone who has
access to the system also has an ax to grind
with you for whatever reason. Maybe it's a neighbor and
they didn't like the fact that you didn't mow the
lawn last night. You know, something crazy like that. This
(07:32):
these sort of things have happened. We saw it happened
with the N S A, where people were accessing massive
surveillance tools for their own personal use. That does happen.
So even if you assume these agencies aren't doing anything malicious,
which is a dangerous assumption to make in the first place,
there's still massive, massive problems with this kind of surveillance,
(07:55):
and that's Whiten's point. But even at the very least,
let's just let's say that everyone's being very careful and
responsible with all of this, what it suggests is that
the military has been looking for loopholes to get around
the few protections that the United States grants for privacy.
My my home country, is pretty darn awful about protecting
(08:16):
citizen privacy. According to widen, the whistleblower claimed that people
within these agencies had shared their concerns about the use
of these tools and they had filed complaints and concerns
all up and down the chain of command, but ultimately
nothing changed. And so the whistleblower came forward out of
concern that the military and the Department of Defense could
(08:38):
be violating constitutional rights by sidestepping judiciary oversight. It seems
as though the military and other agencies, like law enforcement
organizations are getting around barriers in a pretty suss way.
So the fourth amendment to the Constitution in the United
States gives citizens protection against unread noble search and seizure.
(09:01):
See also the story we did on US Customs on Tuesday.
And usually you can't just go and demand a company
like an Internet service provider to hand over information about
someone unless you have an order that's been issued by
a court system you've gotten a judge to sign off
on it. But if these agencies don't demand information but
(09:25):
instead just go out and buy it from data brokers
who will sell information to whomever is buying it, well
then they kind of got around that, didn't they? Because
they didn't demand anything, they just purchased access to this information,
which is a big old yuck. Anyway, whether we see
the government take action on this and close down these
(09:46):
loopholes remains to be seen. So I guess just remember
it's not just Santa clause that's watching you. The Iranian
government is cracking down on Internet access in the country
in the wake of protests that have been prom did
by the death of Massa Amini last week. Amini was
arrested and charged with wearing unsuitable attire, in violation of
(10:09):
Iran's modesty rules, and she died in police custody last week.
Her family is UH protesting the reasoning that Iranian authorities
have given, saying that the authorities are are lying about
Ameni's medical condition and that she died as a result
(10:29):
of their direct treatment of her. The tragedy appears to
have been the tipping point for social unrest in the nation. Now,
I want to add there are a lot of factors
that are contributing to social instability in Iran, and the
big picture is extremely complex, far more so than we
can go into in this podcast, but this incident was
(10:53):
sort of an inciting incident. The Iranian government has appeared
to order a near total black out of Internet communication,
with some people reporting that they were only able to
send texts on their phone to each other, but otherwise
had no real connectivity. Presumably this is all in an
effort to hamper any kind of organizational efforts that would
(11:14):
otherwise depend upon the Internet. It's the most extreme crackdown
on internet communications in Iran since November two thousand nineteen.
That's when Iranian citizens began to protest a whole bunch
of different issues, including government corruption increased fuel prices, than
the Iranian government in general. We have more news to cover,
(11:34):
but first let's take a quick break. We're back over
in Russia. A leader of the Russian Foreign Ministry named
Constantine Voran Stov or varant solve, I should say sorry
(11:55):
for my pronunciation. He said that if countries continue to
support Ukraine that Russia might retaliate against, quote unquote, quasi
civilian infrastructure. Now, the general interpretation of this statement is
that Russian leaders are threatening to shoot down Starlink satellites
that are in orbit above Ukraine. So earlier this year
(12:17):
the Digital Minister for Ukraine tweeted at Elon Musk essentially
asking for Starlink equipment to be sent to the country.
A joint project between the United States Agency for International
Development and SPACEX would send thousands of Starlink satellite dishes
to Eastern Europe and a small constellation of Starlink satellites
(12:38):
moved into position above Ukraine. UH, it's not entirely clear
how much of that is funded by SPACEX and private
funds and how much of that came from the US agency,
largely because the US agency scrubbed a lot of that
information off of its sites in the wake of this developing.
Maybe it was a way to try and dist the
(13:00):
United States support of Ukraine in a delicate situation, but
this became a critical part of Ukraine's strategy for fighting Russia,
using the communications in order to maintain a chain of command,
as well as to do things like guide drones to
attack Russian positions. Now fast forward about nine months and
(13:22):
Russia's campaign in Ukraine is not going to the countries favor,
Russia's favor, I should say. Vladimir Putin faces increasing resistance
in Russia as he instituted partial military mobilization. Now, if
you're like me, you might want to know what those
(13:42):
words actually mean, because if I read partial military mobilization,
it just sounds like you're moving military units, but not
all of them, just part of them. Now, in this case,
what that phrase actually means is that Russia is calling
up specific groups of people to serve in the armed forces.
So it's not that dissimilar to the draft here in
(14:05):
the United States, or you know, or the concept of
conscription in general. It just as a different phrasing. I
don't know why we use that. I find it confusing.
I think it just works better if we say conscription,
but maybe maybe I'm just a stickler for that kind
of thing. Anyway, as the situation gets more complicated for Putin,
the leader has begun making threats against any country that
(14:29):
might support Ukraine, and now has seemed to extend that
to not just countries but companies in their equipment. Russia
does have the capability to shoot down satellites in orbit.
In fact, the country demonstrated that last year when it
destroyed an old communication satellite in a test of the system,
in a move that drew sharp criticism from the scientific
(14:51):
community because it could have potentially threatened astronauts aboard the
International Space Station by creating lots of space junk traveling
at tens of thousands of miles per hour, and even
a small piece could spell chaos for other spacecraft. If
Russia did make such a move, it would no doubt
escalate tensions dramatically in the region. Okay, time to talk
(15:14):
about Meta and some recent issues that the company faces.
In Texas, a jury found Meta guilty of having infringed
upon patents belonging to an APP company called Voxer. Tom
cadis founded voxer back in two thousand six in an
effort to create better walkie talkie style technology, and he
launched an APP in two thousand eleven. Apparently Meta, which
(15:35):
back then was just plain old facebook, was interested in
either acquiring or partnering with Foxer, but for one reason
or another that project never solidified. But boxer's lawyers say
that Meta later incorporated technology that came from boxer into
facebook features without compensating the company, and that prompted the
court case, and that this court case was actually filed
(15:57):
two years ago because, like I said earlier this week,
justice in the US sure does move swiftly. Meta lawyers
argued that the company did not infringe upon the patents,
but a jury found otherwise, and the jury also decided
that Meta now owes foxer four point five million dollars.
Metal lawyers say they plan to appeal the decision, so
(16:19):
this ain't over yet. Meanwhile, there's a class action lawsuit
that might be taking shape against Meta. According to the
site Mac rumors, it is a proposed class action lawsuit
at the moment. So what is the issue? Well, the
lawsuit claims that Meta used some workarounds to sidestep apple's
APP Tracking Transparency Policy, a k a a t t,
(16:43):
but not a t and T, just a t t. now,
this is the policy that lets IOS users opt out
of APP tracking, which Meta had been relying upon to
fuel its advertising business. That data is incredibly valuable to
Meta and to Meta's advertising clients, so getting cut off
from that was a huge blow. The lawsuit claims that
(17:04):
Meta has built in browsers in its APPS, like facebook
and Instagram, that do all the data gathering that a
t t is supposed to prevent should users opt out
of it, and that users are not made aware of this.
They happens without their consent. There are allegations that medic
can even monitor text and puts like payment information, which
(17:26):
obviously presents security and privacy concerns. Good news for instagram
users out there. The company is reportedly working on a
filter that will automatically detect when someone sends you a
nude photo. That's actually a huge problem on the platform.
There are some folks who get unsolicited nudes frequently. I
imagine female presenting influencers get it an awful lot. The
(17:47):
tool will detect images containing nudity and will cover those images,
and it gives the recipient the option to either just
ignore the message so they don't ever have to look
at it, or, if they give in to curiosity, they
can actually choose to view it, but it becomes an
active choice. It's not something that just happens automatically. So
(18:08):
for folks who are flooded with this kind of material,
I imagine that would be a huge relief. It might
even mean they might check their messages more frequently because
they wouldn't have a fear of being confronted by the
nude form of total strangers. And this is also important
to note this tool is supposed to do all of
this automatically. No one at instagram will be able to
look at or have access to the images. I imagine
(18:31):
the AI that has been trained to recognize nudity has
a real tough time with all the other image recognition
ais when they get together for their virtual softball league.
TIKTOK will soon require all accounts connected to US politicians,
political parties and government agencies to go through a verification process.
In addition, the platform is banning all videos aimed at
campaign fundraising. This is a bit of a pushback against
(18:53):
the valid criticisms that tiktok has long allowed misinformation, including
political misinformation, to proliferate on the Plat form. Once TIKTOK
has verified a politically connected account, that account will not
be able to access advertising and gifting features, and any
videos that mentioned fundraising or that actively solicit donations will
be banned. Finally, over on twitch, you've got a lot
(19:14):
of twitch streamers who are threatening to strike against the platform,
possibly around Christmas week, because of the platform's stance on gambling.
That is there is none. Twitch has said that they
are evaluating their policies they'll come out with something more
coherent in the future, but we have already heard that
things like sports betting will not be included in that policy.
(19:36):
So that's pretty much guaranteed to take off everybody. The
people who are anti gambling are going to be upset
because they're gonna be some forms of gambling that will
be allowed. The people are pro gambling are going to
be upset because it'll feel like certain sectors of the
gambling community are being singled out and others are given
a free pass. So good job twitch. No one's happy.
(19:56):
All right. That's it for this episode. If you would
like to reach out to me remember I'll be out
for a whole week. It's good luck and I'll talk
to you again, Willie soon. Yes, 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
(20:20):
you listen to your favorite shows.
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