January 26, 2021 • 36 mins
We have updates on a ransomware attack in the UK, how the Department for Education ended up giving malware-infected laptops to students and a video game future that is strictly hands-off because you control everything with your mind. Plus more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech and this episode is
the news episode for Tuesday, January twenty six, twenty twenty one.
(00:28):
Let's jump right in and we will start with a
follow up from a story from a previous tech stuff
news episode. The hackers who targeted the Scottish Environmental Protection
Agency or SPA s e p A with ransomware followed
through on their threat to publish documents from sipa's databases
(00:51):
after the organization refused to pony up the ransom money.
Now as a reminder, these hackers stole about one point
two gigabytes worth of data from the organization about a
month ago. The CONTI ransomware Collective has claimed responsibility for
the attack. That's CEO in t I. Now, CIPA has
(01:11):
not confirmed that this match is what they are seeing.
The CONTI collective is so called because when the ransomware
infects the system, it changes all the affected files so
that they have the extension dot c O and t
I within the cybersecurity industry. It's known for being a
very active type of attack, with hackers making frequent updates
(01:34):
to the malware in an effort to stay ahead of
cybersecurity experts. It was first reported by cybersecurity analysts back
in December two thousand, nineteen as a type of ransomware,
but it really saw serious spikes in use by the
spring of the Hackers published more than four thousand documents
and databases from SIPA, including information that relates to the
(01:57):
organization's strategic operations and contracts with other entities. SIPA is
working with Scotland Yard to verify the various published files,
and then they're taking steps to contact any affected third parties.
This is a particularly difficult situation. The data in some
cases is sensitive and so there is an obligation to
(02:18):
handle it with security and privacy. SIPA maintains it will
not pay a ransom, which in my mind is still
the best option. While it can be disastrous to have
something like this happen, it doesn't help if you pay
off the attackers because that sends the message that the
attack works. If SIPA can stay the course, it shows
(02:39):
other organizations that while the outcomes of such activities as bad.
It's better than encouraging future attacks. It's not the end
of the world to have some of those files leaked,
even if it does mean that for the short term
things will be pretty challenging. Sticking with the UK, there
is a developing story that's pretty awful for an accountability standpoint,
(03:02):
so obviously had an enormous and almost entirely negative impact
on education all around the world. In the UK, the
Department for Education rushed to implement a program that would
send refurbished laptop computers to students in the UK as
part of an effort to support homeschooling during the pandemic,
(03:22):
which on the surface sounds like a pretty good idea,
but it has become clear that the Department for Education
failed to vet these refurbished laptops properly, as some of
them now proved to be infected with malware known as
the Gamma U trojan, sometimes also known as Andromeda. Teachers
in Bradford noticed the malware, and now there's an ongoing
(03:45):
investigation to see how many of the laptops that the
d f E sent out could have been infected. According
to Computer Weekly, a spokesperson for the Department for Education
says that all known cases were caught at the school
level when the machine were first booted up, which is
good news assuming that all known cases actually represents all
(04:06):
cases period. Gamuru belongs to a family of malware that
spreads through attachments in emails. A compromise computer becomes part
of the attack strategy, sending out more spam messages to
contacts with that computer, and then compromise attachments are part
of that spam, and then the malware spreads from there.
They will also copy itself onto stuff like USB drives.
(04:30):
It's not a new type of malware. I mean, it's
been around for almost a decade and it was the
focus of a worldwide takedown operation in TV and now
it looks like it's kind of back. Though it's also
possible that these instances are really a holdover from the
bad old days and not an indicator that hackers are
actively using this old malware to infect systems again. Cybersecurity
(04:55):
analysts say that the malware is attempting to contact servers
in Russia, so that's obviously a red flag warning. Nothing
like having a UK government agency issue laptops to students
that are collecting information for Russian hackers. At the very least,
this story shows that the Department for Education had a
(05:16):
massive failure when it comes to protecting the safety of
students in the UK, and they didn't do the due
diligence to make certain that the laptops they were using
were in fact safe. I'm sure I will follow up
on this story as it develops. Over in Italy, the
government there has issued an ultimatum to the video social
(05:37):
platform TikTok implement a policy that blocks any user if
TikTok is unable to verify that user's age. This follows
in the wake of a truly tragic story in which
a ten year old girl from Palermo passed away after
allegedly attempting to participate in a TikTok challenge, which is
a truly horrifying story. TikTok's states that it actually has
(06:01):
no evidence of the associated challenge on its platform, thus
disputing that this was a case in which a user
was trying to emulate other users. Italy's requirements on TikTok
will hold until February, when the government will presumably have
more permanent rules to put in place, and TikTok has
until Friday, January twenty nine to respond. If TikTok fails
(06:25):
to act, the Italian government can take further actions authorized
by the e use General Data Protection Regulation or g
d PR. That's a set of policies that put privacy
protections in place for EU citizens. Very complicated, obviously, because
the EU represents lots of different countries. It's the g
(06:45):
d PR that forces companies like Google, Facebook, tons of
companies to follow very different practices in the EU than
they would elsewhere, and it also creates a lot of
complications for global businesses. And just note that I'm not
saying that those complications are bad or that they're unmerited,
just that companies have to follow different sets of rules
(07:07):
depending upon where they are providing goods or services, and
that just makes things more complicated, particularly for Internet services.
TikTok has been the center of scrutiny and the EU
for other reasons as well, mostly involving user privacy and security,
So this is another case of that in Europe. Following
(07:27):
up on another story I covered earlier this month, Googlers
have announced a union alliance for workers in ten countries,
and it's called Alpha Global. The alliance consists of thirteen
different unions. Now, if you remember, here in the United States,
a group of around two hundred Google employees founded the
Alphabet Workers Union or a w U. Now more than
(07:52):
seven hundred US Google employees are part of the a
w U, But part of the challenge the employees wreck
nizes that Google, or rather the companies under Google's parent company, Alphabet,
are international in scope, so the goal is to have
the different unions that are representing employee interests in various
(08:13):
places around the world stay in touch and coordinate in
an effort to extend protections to all those who are
employed by the company. As it stands, the a WU
doesn't currently register as a legitimate union by the US
National Labor Relations Board that's a US federal government agency.
The n l RB can enforce US labor laws against
(08:36):
companies and can force the companies to negotiate with employees
over various labor matters, but since a w U is
not yet recognized by the n l RB, they don't
have that option. Part of the a w u's challenge
is that the group recognizes Google contract workers as eligible
for inclusion in the union, but typically these types of
(09:00):
unions only cover full time employees, not contractors. The new
coalition will form a steering committee to guide the strategy
and activities of the various unions. And while these are
early days and we don't yet know if these unions
will be able to send into motion real change at
the you know, Google's various companies, it does seem as
(09:21):
though there is a growing momentum behind unionization in big
tech companies, which could potentially lead to some massive changes
in the tech sphere, which long has operated under a
more fast and loose environment with very little oversight or
accountability to employees. In Russia, tens of thousands of people
took to the streets in cities across the country to
(09:44):
protest the arrest of Alexey Navalny, a Russian figure who
opposes Vladimir Putin. In August twenty Navalny was poisoned with
a nerve agent while traveling to Moscow and was hospitalized.
He was airlifted to Berlin to receive tree eatment. He
survived the attack and recovered in September. Of Russian authorities
(10:06):
refused to pursue any investigation into the poisoning. Navalny returned
to Russia earlier this month and was detained by police
under the charge that he was violating terms of an
earlier jail sentence. It should be noted that Navalny has
been part of numerous investigations into Putant's activities, including numerous
corruption investigations, so in other words, he's clearly dedicated to
(10:29):
opposing Putin. Upon his arrest, Navalny encouraged Russian citizens to protest,
and many Russians have used various social media platforms in
an effort to organize and spread word of the protests
and their message. Consequently, Russian authorities have tried very hard
to take those kinds of posts down and have demanded
(10:51):
that platforms like Facebook jump in and remove quote fake
posts about protests end quote, which I mean this is
pretty darn ironic, as there is a mountain of evidence
that number one, the protests in Russia are very real
and have incredible support, considering that you know, in some
places people are coming out to protest in public despite
(11:15):
not just the threat of police response, but that there
are temperatures in the neighborhood of minus fifty degrees celsius.
And number two, Russia itself has been behind numerous misinformation
campaigns in an effort to disrupt democracy all over the world,
including the United States. Russia has a specific regulation media
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department that is in charge of handling these sorts of things.
There are conflicting reports about whether or not various posts
supporting the protests have actually been removed. Russian government officials
claimed that a lot of that material has been scrubbed
from these various platforms because they leveraged YouTube and Instagram
and Facebook and told them to remove it. But then
(11:58):
Facebook and Google report that neither company has removed any
posts and that the content doesn't actually violate their terms
of service, so there's no reason to bring down those
those posts. Gizmodo reports that Andre Soldatov, an expert who
has written about the media regulators, feels as though the
government officials aren't really adept at handling situations that change
(12:22):
so quickly, and so we'll likely see less of an
effect as they attempt to deal with the protests online.
We have more news to cover, but before we get
to that, let's take a quick break. We're back last Friday,
(12:44):
January twenty second, Microsoft upset a lot of gamers with
an early morning announcement, but don't worry. We've got a
happy ending on this one, so just stick around now.
The original blog post was about how Microsoft planned to
adjust prices for its Xbox Live Gold service. For those unfamiliar,
this subscription service gives Xbox gamers access to online multiplayer
(13:09):
networking for games that support it. Plus they get two
pre selected free games available each month, so they you
can't pick which games you get for free. Microsoft says
this month, these two titles are free for you, so
you can download them. You can also get game discounts
for certain titles in the Xbox Store and that kind
of thing. It's what Xbox players have to pay if
(13:32):
they want to play online with other folks, making it
different from how Sony used to handle the PlayStation online
services back in the day. The blog post explained that
Microsoft was going to increase the subscription fee by one
dollar for a one month Gold membership, or by five
dollars for a three month membership, and so on. In addition,
(13:53):
the post encourage users to upgrade two Xbox Game Pass Ultimate,
which gives players access to dozens of different game titles
as part of their subscription. And again, this is a
subscription service. Gold users were told they could upgrade and
any remaining time on their Gold membership would be applied
to their Ultimate membership. The reaction to this announcement was
(14:17):
overwhelmingly negative. Now, I think the Ultimate Pass is actually
a pretty darn good product in general, but I also
think that trying to push gamers to adopt it is
not a great move, and before long, Microsoft got the message.
On Friday night, about fourteen hours after the original blog
post went live, Microsoft updated it to say that the
(14:39):
company would not be changing the price for Gold subscriptions.
After all, this is not the first time we've seen
the Xbox division walk back an announcement. When in the
company first unveiled the Xbox One, the original plan was
that the console would need a twenty four seven connection
to the Internet. This would open up new features for
(15:01):
the console, but it also promised to change how game
companies would incorporate digital rights management into titles, and it
threatened the resale market for games. Ultimately, Microsoft walked back
those decisions before launching the Xbox One, so it's kind
of like history repeating itself. Meanwhile, let's talk about game
(15:22):
stop for a second, because a sort of meta game
was going on with the company's stock last Friday, and
I think the story will also illustrate how bonkers stock
market activity can be. So there's a practice in trading
called the short cell, and it involves selling stock that
you don't actually own and then buying it back later
(15:44):
for a lower price. So here's how it works. From
a very high level. Let's say you are a trader,
as in someone who trades stock, not a trade tour,
and you're thinking that a certain stock such as game
Stop is going to take a eating in the near future.
The stock price is going to fall. Now, you don't
own shares in game Stop, but you borrow stock from
(16:08):
investors who do own shares in that company, and you
sell those shares at the current market value. Now you've
made a promise to those investors that at some point
in the future you will return to them their shares
of stock. But your goal is to wait for the
stock price to fall, and when it falls to whatever
your comfort level is, you buy back those borrowed shares
(16:32):
now to lower price. So if you are selling these
borrowed shares at ten dollars a pop and buying them
back at two dollars a pop, you made eight dollars
per share. In that process, that's selling short. But what
happens if the price goes up, Well, then you are
up a certain poopy creek without a certain paddle, because
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you will have to cover those shares for the folks
you borrowed them from. If you sold off these borrowed
shares at ten dollars but the stock price went up
to twenty dollars, you would have to pay an additional
ten dollars per share to buy back all of that
borrowed inventory and return it to the original investors. And
because stock prices can just keep going up, there's not
(17:18):
really any limit to how much money you can lose
if you try this and the stock price goes the
other way. Fun right, So game Stop announced that a
guy named Ryan Cohen was joining the board of directors,
and Cohen is the CEO of a company called Chewy.
A company called Citron Research, which looks for different companies
(17:39):
that appeared to be right for the short sell approach,
said hey, you know, we think game Stop stock is
gonna take a dive because of this announcement, so get
ready to sell short. But then some folks on a
Reddit sub reddit called our slash Wall Street bets had
been pushing to make the game Stop stock price go higher.
(18:00):
So how do you do that? Well, the stock price
depends in part on public perception of how a company
is doing, So if you really talk up a company,
you can push its stock price higher. It's literally psychology.
Now this can't go on forever. If this gets done
too much, you can end up with a bubble that
(18:22):
bursts somewhere down the road. But it certainly works in
the short term, and in this case it resulted in
what's called a short squeeze. People who are trying to
sell short saw the stock price was going up, not down,
so they started buying up shares of game Stop to
cover the ones they were already trying to sell short,
plus maybe buying extra in order to earn money through
(18:45):
the increased stock price to help cover the losses they
would have had otherwise from trying to sell short. But hey,
if more folks start buying up shares of stock, that
tends to push stock prices even higher. So more people
were getting in on it. They were jumping out of
short selling and jumping into buying, and the cycle continued.
(19:06):
The price rose nearly sevent before the stock exchange halted
all trading for game Stop stock. That happens if the
exchange detects that something really unusual is going on, so
it's kind of a safety precaution. Citron meanwhile, has backed
way the heck away from commenting on game Stop as
(19:27):
people are mightily miffed at being told to sell short.
As for what will happen long term for the company itself,
that's undetermined, but it does show how stock market activity
can be chaotic and sometimes more of a game than
video games can be. And sticking with games, let's do
(19:47):
a quick update on Cyberpunk twenty seven, Everyone's favorite game
to bully. The game has been the subject of a
lot of controversy from crunch Times that the at CD
prod Read the company that make it to a rushed
launch despite the fact that the game had been delayed
a couple of times. Two major problems with bugs in
(20:10):
the game, which were particularly egregious for people who are
playing it on PS four or the Xbox One. But
now we've got some more bad news. CD Project Read
pushed out an update for the game, the one point
one patch, in an effort to address some of the
many problems that gamers have experienced as they played through
(20:30):
this much anticipated title, But it seems as though this
fix has broken something else. Specifically, a quest called Down
on the Street now seems to be affected. In part
of this quest, the player receives a call that helps
move the story forward, only now for some players, the
(20:50):
call doesn't work properly, and so the players are unable
to progress any further in that mission. The publisher has
posted a work around, but that one is dependent upon
the player having an earlier save of the game in
order for stuff to work out properly. If you don't
have that earlier save, you kind of out of luck.
The company does plan an even bigger patch one point two,
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which will include a quote more significant update end quote.
No word on if it will address this new problem,
or if CD Project Read will push out some other
independent quick fix. The situation serves as a reminder that
developing games is really hard, and sometimes when you fix
one thing, you will break something else, which is why
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quality assurance is such an important part of the development process.
It's the job of the q A employee to try
and break stuff, or to make sure that stuff ain't
broken to begin with, and after every break fix new
stuff can break. It's the joy of coding. Oh and
how about we cover the story of Gabe Newell, president
of Valve, talking about controlling them their video games with
(21:57):
your brain stuff. Now, according to new Well, one of
the things that Valve is working on is a research
software project that involves BC eyes. Now that stands for
Brain computer Interfaces, and as the name suggests, it's a
technology that aims to allow people to interact directly with
computer systems using thought alone, kind of like telepathy for computers. Actually,
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in the ideal version of this technology, you would be
able to have stuff go in either direction, person to
computer or computer to person. You could create systems that
people could control through thought, and you could build out
extensions of human intelligence by having computers augment our natural abilities. Now,
that's the ideal version. That's something that we are far
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from being able to achieve right now, and honestly, we
don't know if we will ever achieve that dream of
making everyone computer smart. Like, just imagine having a literal
computer database that stores memories perally, so when you remember,
you're not recreating a memory, you're literally looking at the
(23:06):
actual memory as it was formed at that time. That
is kind of the science fiction version of this. Now,
there has already been a lot of work with various
devices that respond to brainwave activity, largely in the medical field,
and typically requires a great deal of training if you're
creating a b c I, both on the part of
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the system that is running on the b c I
side and the user who is trying to you know,
leverage that system. It's tricky to even pick up on
brain waves in the first place, because it's kind of
hard to get accurate read of what's going on in
our noodles due to our thick skulls. It's why some
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earlier b c I implementations actually required transcranial operations, meaning
that part of that interface had to be surgically implanted
into the U user, typically with a wire extending from
the implant sticking out of their skull and connecting to
the external system. This has mostly been done with patients
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who are paralyzed or otherwise cannot move and are unable
to communicate through other means, and so it is really
not common at all. Obviously, it's an extremely intrusive type
of surgery UH and typically is only used in extreme cases,
so that is probably a bridge too far even for
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the most hardcore of gamers, so any computer game system
with a b C I component would have to settle
for something that could pick up on brain activity through
the skull. There are a lot of technical hurdles to
get beyond in order to ever make this work beyond
a really basic implementation, but it's kind of cool. The
Valve is working on it. Perhaps in a few years
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will have game systems that don't include any sort of
handheld controller. You'll just think jump and then little Mario
will throw a fireball, then you'll rage quit. We have
a few more stories to cover in this episode, but
first let's take another quick break over this past weekend,
(25:22):
Connor McGregor, professional Fighter, faced off against Dustin Poire at
UFC two. He lost, by the way, but this story
isn't about McGregor getting knocked out in the second round. Instead,
it's about a failure of ESPN Plus, a subscription streaming
service that was streaming the event for the cool admission
(25:44):
price of sixty nine dollars and nine cents. And that's
on top of the regular subscription fee for ESPN Plus,
which is fifty nine dollars and nine cents per year. Anyway,
early on during UFC two five seven, ESPN Plus had
some technical difficulties and made it impossible for some customers
(26:05):
in the US to watch the event, and it largely
affected users in the Western United States. Disney, that's the
company that actually owns ESPN, was able to resolve those
issues before the headlining fights on the ticket took place,
so the really anticipated fights weren't affected. But to make
good on those glitches, the company is offering partial refunds
(26:28):
two affected users. Anyone who tried to watch the event
through a third party platform like you know, YouTube or
on Apple, they will have to go directly to those
third parties in order to get a refund, but Disney
is working with them to create a refund policy. Now,
this reminds me a lot of the w w E
(26:49):
s streaming platform ww E network. I used to be
a subscriber to w w E network, and without fail
during every major pay per view event, the service would
have some hiccups. Sometimes you would have buffering issues, sometimes
it would drop entirely. And that brings me to the
(27:09):
next story. The w w E is going to shut
down the w w E network here in the United
States and they're going to incorporate the services of w
w E Network with the NBC universal streaming service Peacock.
The integration will happen in the middle of March. The
w w E Network isn't just the streaming source for
(27:32):
big events like WrestleMania or The Royal Rumble, which I
maintain is really the best show of the year at
least most years. The w w E Network also serves
as a massive repository for the w w e s
deep library of wrestling videos. Ww E owns a ton
of libraries due to a series of acquisitions that the
(27:54):
company has held over the years. This gives w w
E the chance to reach a broader audience, as the
network subscriptions had plateaued some time ago, and Peacock will
get access to a mountain of content. The deal reportedly
was for a billion dollars, which is a stone cold
stunner if I've ever heard one. For folks in other countries,
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the w w E Network will live on as an
independent streaming service for the people here in the United States.
It means that things get a little less complicated in
that if you are a w w E fan, you
can subscribe to Peacock, and then you also get the
access to all the regular NBC Universal stuff over there
as well. For once, we're talking about streaming services consolidating,
(28:41):
not multiplying, which I think is a good thing for
the moment. I feel like we've got a few too
many services already, But I also don't want to see
them all morph into a single monopolistic entity. I think
there needs to be a few in order for competition
to exist. But at the moment, there's just there's there's
(29:02):
just too many. Man, I can't subscribe to anymore. Give
me a break. Netflix, one of the services I do
subscribe to, announced in a blog post that a new
change in the Android version of Netflix should create a
better experience for users. The challenge, the company said was
to create a better audio experience. So I don't know
(29:24):
if this has happened to you, it's definitely happened to me.
Have you ever watched the movie, whether on Netflix or otherwise.
It could be a DVD, it could be some other
streaming service, but you had real trouble because the dialogue
was really quiet, but the action scenes were super loud.
It makes the viewing experience a real pain, sometimes literally
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because you're constantly adjusting the volume so that you can
hear what's going on when people are talking and not
blow out your speakers the next time John McClane makes
something go boom. Well, for Android users, Netflix has moved
to a CODECK called x H E DASH A A C.
But the important thing for us to know here is
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that the CODEC uses dynamic range control. Now that automatically
boosts the volume of quiet parts and it lowers the
volume of loud parts. Essentially, it's pulling everyone closer to
a middle ground. It's reducing the dynamic range of the
softest sounds and the loudest sounds. It's kind of the
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same thing that the MP three compression format can do
with audio, and in general, with stuff like music, that's
a bad thing because you're reducing the dynamic uh qualities
of a piece of music, But in this case, it's
all to make that viewing experience more pleasant. The volume
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for stuff like dialogue should also be consistent between different videos,
which means you shouldn't have to make adjustments after you
finished binging one show and then switch to an other.
I've had that happened to where I was watching one
thing and had to turn the volume way up to
hear the dialogue switched to something else, and everybody seems
like they're shouting at me all the time. I think
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it's kind of a nifty approach to the problem. Now,
you've got a couple of short Tesla stories to include
in this episode. One is that the company is suing
a former Tesla engineer named Alex Katilov, accusing him of
actually stealing software from the company. The software is called
warped Drive, and it's a back end software for the
(31:33):
company itself. It does stuff like automates, you know, purchasing
processes and things like that. Apparently Kettlov wasted absolutely no
time in this effort. The company claims he was copying
sensitive files to a personal dropbox account within just three
days of starting at his job. I'll try to keep
(31:54):
up with the story as more develops, because this is
the very early days and we don't know a whole lot. Meanwhile,
John kraft Sick, the CEO of Weymo that's Google's self
driving car spinoff, through some shade at Tesla in an
interview with Manager magazine. In that interview, crafts Sick said
that Tesla will never achieve full autonomous car technology based
(32:18):
on its current strategy. Now, essentially, he is saying that
Tesla Autopilot is designed in such a way that it's
not heading toward a more robust form of autonomy, and
just as a refresher, generally we look at self driving
car capabilities in terms of levels, So a level zero
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would be a car that's fully under manual human control
there are no computer or machine assisted systems in that,
with a level five being a car that is autonomous
to the point that no human interaction is required under
any circumstance. In other words, the car should be able
to drive in any conditions that a human could drive in,
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and there will be no need or maybe even no
ability for a human to interact with the car apart
from saying, hey, you know, take me across town or whatever.
Tesla's offerings hover at around level two, which involves some automation,
but obviously there's still the requirement for a human to
(33:20):
be able to take control at any given moment, so
it's not really autonomous. And what way moos Ceo is
saying is that Tesla doesn't really have a pathway toward
autonomy while pursuing this particular type of technology. And our
final story today is also about a car. It's about
(33:41):
a British car called Bloodhound. Now, this unique vehicle exists
for only one purpose, and that is to crush the
world land speed record, which currently stands at seven d
sixty three miles per hour. But here's the problem. It's
real darn expee and back in, the whole project was
(34:03):
on the brink of collapse, having burned through let's see,
let me check my notes says here a metric ton
of money. But then businessman and car enthusiast Ian Warhurst
swooped into the rescue. He had recently sold his company, Millette,
and he must have been feeling, you know, that cash
(34:24):
from that sale just burning a hole in his pocket,
because then he decided to purchase Bloodhound and rescue it
from being sent to the equivalent of a chop shop
for parts. His goal was to find a sponsorship for
the car in order to fund the ongoing process, but
he would float operations until that was viable. However, despite
(34:46):
some progress among the engineering team, complete with some test
runs and a documentary about the car, that sponsorship money
never really came in. Then the pandemic hit and Obviously,
that made matters worse. Plus the UK was flailing about
as the Brexit deadlines were approaching, and Warhurst has had enough.
(35:06):
The engineering team behind the car estimates that they need
another eight million pounds as in the currency in order
to achieve their goals, which includes not just breaking that
previous record of seven hundred sixty three miles per hour,
but eventually getting the vehicle up to one thousand miles
per hour. That's well beyond the speed of sound, which
(35:29):
means this car will be generating a sonic boom if
it ever does go that fast, But it remains to
be seen if someone else will pull a Warhurst and
help shepherd the team to the finish line. That wraps
up the stories for today's episode. There was more to
talk about, including some stuff with Twitter, but we'll probably
(35:49):
save that for Thursday. Unless something really phenomenal happens between
now and then, we will have to wait and see.
In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for topics
that I should cover on our normal episodes of Tech Stuff,
let me know. The best way to get in touch
with me is over on Twitter and the handle is
text stuff HSW and I'll talk to you again, really soon.
(36:17):
Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more
podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech and this episode is
the news episode for Tuesday, January twenty six, twenty twenty one.
(00:28):
Let's jump right in and we will start with a
follow up from a story from a previous tech stuff
news episode. The hackers who targeted the Scottish Environmental Protection
Agency or SPA s e p A with ransomware followed
through on their threat to publish documents from sipa's databases
(00:51):
after the organization refused to pony up the ransom money.
Now as a reminder, these hackers stole about one point
two gigabytes worth of data from the organization about a
month ago. The CONTI ransomware Collective has claimed responsibility for
the attack. That's CEO in t I. Now, CIPA has
(01:11):
not confirmed that this match is what they are seeing.
The CONTI collective is so called because when the ransomware
infects the system, it changes all the affected files so
that they have the extension dot c O and t
I within the cybersecurity industry. It's known for being a
very active type of attack, with hackers making frequent updates
(01:34):
to the malware in an effort to stay ahead of
cybersecurity experts. It was first reported by cybersecurity analysts back
in December two thousand, nineteen as a type of ransomware,
but it really saw serious spikes in use by the
spring of the Hackers published more than four thousand documents
and databases from SIPA, including information that relates to the
(01:57):
organization's strategic operations and contracts with other entities. SIPA is
working with Scotland Yard to verify the various published files,
and then they're taking steps to contact any affected third parties.
This is a particularly difficult situation. The data in some
cases is sensitive and so there is an obligation to
(02:18):
handle it with security and privacy. SIPA maintains it will
not pay a ransom, which in my mind is still
the best option. While it can be disastrous to have
something like this happen, it doesn't help if you pay
off the attackers because that sends the message that the
attack works. If SIPA can stay the course, it shows
(02:39):
other organizations that while the outcomes of such activities as bad.
It's better than encouraging future attacks. It's not the end
of the world to have some of those files leaked,
even if it does mean that for the short term
things will be pretty challenging. Sticking with the UK, there
is a developing story that's pretty awful for an accountability standpoint,
(03:02):
so obviously had an enormous and almost entirely negative impact
on education all around the world. In the UK, the
Department for Education rushed to implement a program that would
send refurbished laptop computers to students in the UK as
part of an effort to support homeschooling during the pandemic,
(03:22):
which on the surface sounds like a pretty good idea,
but it has become clear that the Department for Education
failed to vet these refurbished laptops properly, as some of
them now proved to be infected with malware known as
the Gamma U trojan, sometimes also known as Andromeda. Teachers
in Bradford noticed the malware, and now there's an ongoing
(03:45):
investigation to see how many of the laptops that the
d f E sent out could have been infected. According
to Computer Weekly, a spokesperson for the Department for Education
says that all known cases were caught at the school
level when the machine were first booted up, which is
good news assuming that all known cases actually represents all
(04:06):
cases period. Gamuru belongs to a family of malware that
spreads through attachments in emails. A compromise computer becomes part
of the attack strategy, sending out more spam messages to
contacts with that computer, and then compromise attachments are part
of that spam, and then the malware spreads from there.
They will also copy itself onto stuff like USB drives.
(04:30):
It's not a new type of malware. I mean, it's
been around for almost a decade and it was the
focus of a worldwide takedown operation in TV and now
it looks like it's kind of back. Though it's also
possible that these instances are really a holdover from the
bad old days and not an indicator that hackers are
actively using this old malware to infect systems again. Cybersecurity
(04:55):
analysts say that the malware is attempting to contact servers
in Russia, so that's obviously a red flag warning. Nothing
like having a UK government agency issue laptops to students
that are collecting information for Russian hackers. At the very least,
this story shows that the Department for Education had a
(05:16):
massive failure when it comes to protecting the safety of
students in the UK, and they didn't do the due
diligence to make certain that the laptops they were using
were in fact safe. I'm sure I will follow up
on this story as it develops. Over in Italy, the
government there has issued an ultimatum to the video social
(05:37):
platform TikTok implement a policy that blocks any user if
TikTok is unable to verify that user's age. This follows
in the wake of a truly tragic story in which
a ten year old girl from Palermo passed away after
allegedly attempting to participate in a TikTok challenge, which is
a truly horrifying story. TikTok's states that it actually has
(06:01):
no evidence of the associated challenge on its platform, thus
disputing that this was a case in which a user
was trying to emulate other users. Italy's requirements on TikTok
will hold until February, when the government will presumably have
more permanent rules to put in place, and TikTok has
until Friday, January twenty nine to respond. If TikTok fails
(06:25):
to act, the Italian government can take further actions authorized
by the e use General Data Protection Regulation or g
d PR. That's a set of policies that put privacy
protections in place for EU citizens. Very complicated, obviously, because
the EU represents lots of different countries. It's the g
(06:45):
d PR that forces companies like Google, Facebook, tons of
companies to follow very different practices in the EU than
they would elsewhere, and it also creates a lot of
complications for global businesses. And just note that I'm not
saying that those complications are bad or that they're unmerited,
just that companies have to follow different sets of rules
(07:07):
depending upon where they are providing goods or services, and
that just makes things more complicated, particularly for Internet services.
TikTok has been the center of scrutiny and the EU
for other reasons as well, mostly involving user privacy and security,
So this is another case of that in Europe. Following
(07:27):
up on another story I covered earlier this month, Googlers
have announced a union alliance for workers in ten countries,
and it's called Alpha Global. The alliance consists of thirteen
different unions. Now, if you remember, here in the United States,
a group of around two hundred Google employees founded the
Alphabet Workers Union or a w U. Now more than
(07:52):
seven hundred US Google employees are part of the a
w U, But part of the challenge the employees wreck
nizes that Google, or rather the companies under Google's parent company, Alphabet,
are international in scope, so the goal is to have
the different unions that are representing employee interests in various
(08:13):
places around the world stay in touch and coordinate in
an effort to extend protections to all those who are
employed by the company. As it stands, the a WU
doesn't currently register as a legitimate union by the US
National Labor Relations Board that's a US federal government agency.
The n l RB can enforce US labor laws against
(08:36):
companies and can force the companies to negotiate with employees
over various labor matters, but since a w U is
not yet recognized by the n l RB, they don't
have that option. Part of the a w u's challenge
is that the group recognizes Google contract workers as eligible
for inclusion in the union, but typically these types of
(09:00):
unions only cover full time employees, not contractors. The new
coalition will form a steering committee to guide the strategy
and activities of the various unions. And while these are
early days and we don't yet know if these unions
will be able to send into motion real change at
the you know, Google's various companies, it does seem as
(09:21):
though there is a growing momentum behind unionization in big
tech companies, which could potentially lead to some massive changes
in the tech sphere, which long has operated under a
more fast and loose environment with very little oversight or
accountability to employees. In Russia, tens of thousands of people
took to the streets in cities across the country to
(09:44):
protest the arrest of Alexey Navalny, a Russian figure who
opposes Vladimir Putin. In August twenty Navalny was poisoned with
a nerve agent while traveling to Moscow and was hospitalized.
He was airlifted to Berlin to receive tree eatment. He
survived the attack and recovered in September. Of Russian authorities
(10:06):
refused to pursue any investigation into the poisoning. Navalny returned
to Russia earlier this month and was detained by police
under the charge that he was violating terms of an
earlier jail sentence. It should be noted that Navalny has
been part of numerous investigations into Putant's activities, including numerous
corruption investigations, so in other words, he's clearly dedicated to
(10:29):
opposing Putin. Upon his arrest, Navalny encouraged Russian citizens to protest,
and many Russians have used various social media platforms in
an effort to organize and spread word of the protests
and their message. Consequently, Russian authorities have tried very hard
to take those kinds of posts down and have demanded
(10:51):
that platforms like Facebook jump in and remove quote fake
posts about protests end quote, which I mean this is
pretty darn ironic, as there is a mountain of evidence
that number one, the protests in Russia are very real
and have incredible support, considering that you know, in some
places people are coming out to protest in public despite
(11:15):
not just the threat of police response, but that there
are temperatures in the neighborhood of minus fifty degrees celsius.
And number two, Russia itself has been behind numerous misinformation
campaigns in an effort to disrupt democracy all over the world,
including the United States. Russia has a specific regulation media
(11:36):
department that is in charge of handling these sorts of things.
There are conflicting reports about whether or not various posts
supporting the protests have actually been removed. Russian government officials
claimed that a lot of that material has been scrubbed
from these various platforms because they leveraged YouTube and Instagram
and Facebook and told them to remove it. But then
(11:58):
Facebook and Google report that neither company has removed any
posts and that the content doesn't actually violate their terms
of service, so there's no reason to bring down those
those posts. Gizmodo reports that Andre Soldatov, an expert who
has written about the media regulators, feels as though the
government officials aren't really adept at handling situations that change
(12:22):
so quickly, and so we'll likely see less of an
effect as they attempt to deal with the protests online.
We have more news to cover, but before we get
to that, let's take a quick break. We're back last Friday,
(12:44):
January twenty second, Microsoft upset a lot of gamers with
an early morning announcement, but don't worry. We've got a
happy ending on this one, so just stick around now.
The original blog post was about how Microsoft planned to
adjust prices for its Xbox Live Gold service. For those unfamiliar,
this subscription service gives Xbox gamers access to online multiplayer
(13:09):
networking for games that support it. Plus they get two
pre selected free games available each month, so they you
can't pick which games you get for free. Microsoft says
this month, these two titles are free for you, so
you can download them. You can also get game discounts
for certain titles in the Xbox Store and that kind
of thing. It's what Xbox players have to pay if
(13:32):
they want to play online with other folks, making it
different from how Sony used to handle the PlayStation online
services back in the day. The blog post explained that
Microsoft was going to increase the subscription fee by one
dollar for a one month Gold membership, or by five
dollars for a three month membership, and so on. In addition,
(13:53):
the post encourage users to upgrade two Xbox Game Pass Ultimate,
which gives players access to dozens of different game titles
as part of their subscription. And again, this is a
subscription service. Gold users were told they could upgrade and
any remaining time on their Gold membership would be applied
to their Ultimate membership. The reaction to this announcement was
(14:17):
overwhelmingly negative. Now, I think the Ultimate Pass is actually
a pretty darn good product in general, but I also
think that trying to push gamers to adopt it is
not a great move, and before long, Microsoft got the message.
On Friday night, about fourteen hours after the original blog
post went live, Microsoft updated it to say that the
(14:39):
company would not be changing the price for Gold subscriptions.
After all, this is not the first time we've seen
the Xbox division walk back an announcement. When in the
company first unveiled the Xbox One, the original plan was
that the console would need a twenty four seven connection
to the Internet. This would open up new features for
(15:01):
the console, but it also promised to change how game
companies would incorporate digital rights management into titles, and it
threatened the resale market for games. Ultimately, Microsoft walked back
those decisions before launching the Xbox One, so it's kind
of like history repeating itself. Meanwhile, let's talk about game
(15:22):
stop for a second, because a sort of meta game
was going on with the company's stock last Friday, and
I think the story will also illustrate how bonkers stock
market activity can be. So there's a practice in trading
called the short cell, and it involves selling stock that
you don't actually own and then buying it back later
(15:44):
for a lower price. So here's how it works. From
a very high level. Let's say you are a trader,
as in someone who trades stock, not a trade tour,
and you're thinking that a certain stock such as game
Stop is going to take a eating in the near future.
The stock price is going to fall. Now, you don't
own shares in game Stop, but you borrow stock from
(16:08):
investors who do own shares in that company, and you
sell those shares at the current market value. Now you've
made a promise to those investors that at some point
in the future you will return to them their shares
of stock. But your goal is to wait for the
stock price to fall, and when it falls to whatever
your comfort level is, you buy back those borrowed shares
(16:32):
now to lower price. So if you are selling these
borrowed shares at ten dollars a pop and buying them
back at two dollars a pop, you made eight dollars
per share. In that process, that's selling short. But what
happens if the price goes up, Well, then you are
up a certain poopy creek without a certain paddle, because
(16:54):
you will have to cover those shares for the folks
you borrowed them from. If you sold off these borrowed
shares at ten dollars but the stock price went up
to twenty dollars, you would have to pay an additional
ten dollars per share to buy back all of that
borrowed inventory and return it to the original investors. And
because stock prices can just keep going up, there's not
(17:18):
really any limit to how much money you can lose
if you try this and the stock price goes the
other way. Fun right, So game Stop announced that a
guy named Ryan Cohen was joining the board of directors,
and Cohen is the CEO of a company called Chewy.
A company called Citron Research, which looks for different companies
(17:39):
that appeared to be right for the short sell approach,
said hey, you know, we think game Stop stock is
gonna take a dive because of this announcement, so get
ready to sell short. But then some folks on a
Reddit sub reddit called our slash Wall Street bets had
been pushing to make the game Stop stock price go higher.
(18:00):
So how do you do that? Well, the stock price
depends in part on public perception of how a company
is doing, So if you really talk up a company,
you can push its stock price higher. It's literally psychology.
Now this can't go on forever. If this gets done
too much, you can end up with a bubble that
(18:22):
bursts somewhere down the road. But it certainly works in
the short term, and in this case it resulted in
what's called a short squeeze. People who are trying to
sell short saw the stock price was going up, not down,
so they started buying up shares of game Stop to
cover the ones they were already trying to sell short,
plus maybe buying extra in order to earn money through
(18:45):
the increased stock price to help cover the losses they
would have had otherwise from trying to sell short. But hey,
if more folks start buying up shares of stock, that
tends to push stock prices even higher. So more people
were getting in on it. They were jumping out of
short selling and jumping into buying, and the cycle continued.
(19:06):
The price rose nearly sevent before the stock exchange halted
all trading for game Stop stock. That happens if the
exchange detects that something really unusual is going on, so
it's kind of a safety precaution. Citron meanwhile, has backed
way the heck away from commenting on game Stop as
(19:27):
people are mightily miffed at being told to sell short.
As for what will happen long term for the company itself,
that's undetermined, but it does show how stock market activity
can be chaotic and sometimes more of a game than
video games can be. And sticking with games, let's do
(19:47):
a quick update on Cyberpunk twenty seven, Everyone's favorite game
to bully. The game has been the subject of a
lot of controversy from crunch Times that the at CD
prod Read the company that make it to a rushed
launch despite the fact that the game had been delayed
a couple of times. Two major problems with bugs in
(20:10):
the game, which were particularly egregious for people who are
playing it on PS four or the Xbox One. But
now we've got some more bad news. CD Project Read
pushed out an update for the game, the one point
one patch, in an effort to address some of the
many problems that gamers have experienced as they played through
(20:30):
this much anticipated title, But it seems as though this
fix has broken something else. Specifically, a quest called Down
on the Street now seems to be affected. In part
of this quest, the player receives a call that helps
move the story forward, only now for some players, the
(20:50):
call doesn't work properly, and so the players are unable
to progress any further in that mission. The publisher has
posted a work around, but that one is dependent upon
the player having an earlier save of the game in
order for stuff to work out properly. If you don't
have that earlier save, you kind of out of luck.
The company does plan an even bigger patch one point two,
(21:13):
which will include a quote more significant update end quote.
No word on if it will address this new problem,
or if CD Project Read will push out some other
independent quick fix. The situation serves as a reminder that
developing games is really hard, and sometimes when you fix
one thing, you will break something else, which is why
(21:33):
quality assurance is such an important part of the development process.
It's the job of the q A employee to try
and break stuff, or to make sure that stuff ain't
broken to begin with, and after every break fix new
stuff can break. It's the joy of coding. Oh and
how about we cover the story of Gabe Newell, president
of Valve, talking about controlling them their video games with
(21:57):
your brain stuff. Now, according to new Well, one of
the things that Valve is working on is a research
software project that involves BC eyes. Now that stands for
Brain computer Interfaces, and as the name suggests, it's a
technology that aims to allow people to interact directly with
computer systems using thought alone, kind of like telepathy for computers. Actually,
(22:23):
in the ideal version of this technology, you would be
able to have stuff go in either direction, person to
computer or computer to person. You could create systems that
people could control through thought, and you could build out
extensions of human intelligence by having computers augment our natural abilities. Now,
that's the ideal version. That's something that we are far
(22:46):
from being able to achieve right now, and honestly, we
don't know if we will ever achieve that dream of
making everyone computer smart. Like, just imagine having a literal
computer database that stores memories perally, so when you remember,
you're not recreating a memory, you're literally looking at the
(23:06):
actual memory as it was formed at that time. That
is kind of the science fiction version of this. Now,
there has already been a lot of work with various
devices that respond to brainwave activity, largely in the medical field,
and typically requires a great deal of training if you're
creating a b c I, both on the part of
(23:28):
the system that is running on the b c I
side and the user who is trying to you know,
leverage that system. It's tricky to even pick up on
brain waves in the first place, because it's kind of
hard to get accurate read of what's going on in
our noodles due to our thick skulls. It's why some
(23:49):
earlier b c I implementations actually required transcranial operations, meaning
that part of that interface had to be surgically implanted
into the U user, typically with a wire extending from
the implant sticking out of their skull and connecting to
the external system. This has mostly been done with patients
(24:10):
who are paralyzed or otherwise cannot move and are unable
to communicate through other means, and so it is really
not common at all. Obviously, it's an extremely intrusive type
of surgery UH and typically is only used in extreme cases,
so that is probably a bridge too far even for
(24:32):
the most hardcore of gamers, so any computer game system
with a b C I component would have to settle
for something that could pick up on brain activity through
the skull. There are a lot of technical hurdles to
get beyond in order to ever make this work beyond
a really basic implementation, but it's kind of cool. The
Valve is working on it. Perhaps in a few years
(24:56):
will have game systems that don't include any sort of
handheld controller. You'll just think jump and then little Mario
will throw a fireball, then you'll rage quit. We have
a few more stories to cover in this episode, but
first let's take another quick break over this past weekend,
(25:22):
Connor McGregor, professional Fighter, faced off against Dustin Poire at
UFC two. He lost, by the way, but this story
isn't about McGregor getting knocked out in the second round. Instead,
it's about a failure of ESPN Plus, a subscription streaming
service that was streaming the event for the cool admission
(25:44):
price of sixty nine dollars and nine cents. And that's
on top of the regular subscription fee for ESPN Plus,
which is fifty nine dollars and nine cents per year. Anyway,
early on during UFC two five seven, ESPN Plus had
some technical difficulties and made it impossible for some customers
(26:05):
in the US to watch the event, and it largely
affected users in the Western United States. Disney, that's the
company that actually owns ESPN, was able to resolve those
issues before the headlining fights on the ticket took place,
so the really anticipated fights weren't affected. But to make
good on those glitches, the company is offering partial refunds
(26:28):
two affected users. Anyone who tried to watch the event
through a third party platform like you know, YouTube or
on Apple, they will have to go directly to those
third parties in order to get a refund, but Disney
is working with them to create a refund policy. Now,
this reminds me a lot of the w w E
(26:49):
s streaming platform ww E network. I used to be
a subscriber to w w E network, and without fail
during every major pay per view event, the service would
have some hiccups. Sometimes you would have buffering issues, sometimes
it would drop entirely. And that brings me to the
(27:09):
next story. The w w E is going to shut
down the w w E network here in the United
States and they're going to incorporate the services of w
w E Network with the NBC universal streaming service Peacock.
The integration will happen in the middle of March. The
w w E Network isn't just the streaming source for
(27:32):
big events like WrestleMania or The Royal Rumble, which I
maintain is really the best show of the year at
least most years. The w w E Network also serves
as a massive repository for the w w e s
deep library of wrestling videos. Ww E owns a ton
of libraries due to a series of acquisitions that the
(27:54):
company has held over the years. This gives w w
E the chance to reach a broader audience, as the
network subscriptions had plateaued some time ago, and Peacock will
get access to a mountain of content. The deal reportedly
was for a billion dollars, which is a stone cold
stunner if I've ever heard one. For folks in other countries,
(28:17):
the w w E Network will live on as an
independent streaming service for the people here in the United States.
It means that things get a little less complicated in
that if you are a w w E fan, you
can subscribe to Peacock, and then you also get the
access to all the regular NBC Universal stuff over there
as well. For once, we're talking about streaming services consolidating,
(28:41):
not multiplying, which I think is a good thing for
the moment. I feel like we've got a few too
many services already, But I also don't want to see
them all morph into a single monopolistic entity. I think
there needs to be a few in order for competition
to exist. But at the moment, there's just there's there's
(29:02):
just too many. Man, I can't subscribe to anymore. Give
me a break. Netflix, one of the services I do
subscribe to, announced in a blog post that a new
change in the Android version of Netflix should create a
better experience for users. The challenge, the company said was
to create a better audio experience. So I don't know
(29:24):
if this has happened to you, it's definitely happened to me.
Have you ever watched the movie, whether on Netflix or otherwise.
It could be a DVD, it could be some other
streaming service, but you had real trouble because the dialogue
was really quiet, but the action scenes were super loud.
It makes the viewing experience a real pain, sometimes literally
(29:45):
because you're constantly adjusting the volume so that you can
hear what's going on when people are talking and not
blow out your speakers the next time John McClane makes
something go boom. Well, for Android users, Netflix has moved
to a CODECK called x H E DASH A A C.
But the important thing for us to know here is
(30:06):
that the CODEC uses dynamic range control. Now that automatically
boosts the volume of quiet parts and it lowers the
volume of loud parts. Essentially, it's pulling everyone closer to
a middle ground. It's reducing the dynamic range of the
softest sounds and the loudest sounds. It's kind of the
(30:28):
same thing that the MP three compression format can do
with audio, and in general, with stuff like music, that's
a bad thing because you're reducing the dynamic uh qualities
of a piece of music, But in this case, it's
all to make that viewing experience more pleasant. The volume
(30:49):
for stuff like dialogue should also be consistent between different videos,
which means you shouldn't have to make adjustments after you
finished binging one show and then switch to an other.
I've had that happened to where I was watching one
thing and had to turn the volume way up to
hear the dialogue switched to something else, and everybody seems
like they're shouting at me all the time. I think
(31:11):
it's kind of a nifty approach to the problem. Now,
you've got a couple of short Tesla stories to include
in this episode. One is that the company is suing
a former Tesla engineer named Alex Katilov, accusing him of
actually stealing software from the company. The software is called
warped Drive, and it's a back end software for the
(31:33):
company itself. It does stuff like automates, you know, purchasing
processes and things like that. Apparently Kettlov wasted absolutely no
time in this effort. The company claims he was copying
sensitive files to a personal dropbox account within just three
days of starting at his job. I'll try to keep
(31:54):
up with the story as more develops, because this is
the very early days and we don't know a whole lot. Meanwhile,
John kraft Sick, the CEO of Weymo that's Google's self
driving car spinoff, through some shade at Tesla in an
interview with Manager magazine. In that interview, crafts Sick said
that Tesla will never achieve full autonomous car technology based
(32:18):
on its current strategy. Now, essentially, he is saying that
Tesla Autopilot is designed in such a way that it's
not heading toward a more robust form of autonomy, and
just as a refresher, generally we look at self driving
car capabilities in terms of levels, So a level zero
(32:39):
would be a car that's fully under manual human control
there are no computer or machine assisted systems in that,
with a level five being a car that is autonomous
to the point that no human interaction is required under
any circumstance. In other words, the car should be able
to drive in any conditions that a human could drive in,
(33:00):
and there will be no need or maybe even no
ability for a human to interact with the car apart
from saying, hey, you know, take me across town or whatever.
Tesla's offerings hover at around level two, which involves some automation,
but obviously there's still the requirement for a human to
(33:20):
be able to take control at any given moment, so
it's not really autonomous. And what way moos Ceo is
saying is that Tesla doesn't really have a pathway toward
autonomy while pursuing this particular type of technology. And our
final story today is also about a car. It's about
(33:41):
a British car called Bloodhound. Now, this unique vehicle exists
for only one purpose, and that is to crush the
world land speed record, which currently stands at seven d
sixty three miles per hour. But here's the problem. It's
real darn expee and back in, the whole project was
(34:03):
on the brink of collapse, having burned through let's see,
let me check my notes says here a metric ton
of money. But then businessman and car enthusiast Ian Warhurst
swooped into the rescue. He had recently sold his company, Millette,
and he must have been feeling, you know, that cash
(34:24):
from that sale just burning a hole in his pocket,
because then he decided to purchase Bloodhound and rescue it
from being sent to the equivalent of a chop shop
for parts. His goal was to find a sponsorship for
the car in order to fund the ongoing process, but
he would float operations until that was viable. However, despite
(34:46):
some progress among the engineering team, complete with some test
runs and a documentary about the car, that sponsorship money
never really came in. Then the pandemic hit and Obviously,
that made matters worse. Plus the UK was flailing about
as the Brexit deadlines were approaching, and Warhurst has had enough.
(35:06):
The engineering team behind the car estimates that they need
another eight million pounds as in the currency in order
to achieve their goals, which includes not just breaking that
previous record of seven hundred sixty three miles per hour,
but eventually getting the vehicle up to one thousand miles
per hour. That's well beyond the speed of sound, which
(35:29):
means this car will be generating a sonic boom if
it ever does go that fast, But it remains to
be seen if someone else will pull a Warhurst and
help shepherd the team to the finish line. That wraps
up the stories for today's episode. There was more to
talk about, including some stuff with Twitter, but we'll probably
(35:49):
save that for Thursday. Unless something really phenomenal happens between
now and then, we will have to wait and see.
In the meantime, if you have any suggestions for topics
that I should cover on our normal episodes of Tech Stuff,
let me know. The best way to get in touch
with me is over on Twitter and the handle is
text stuff HSW and I'll talk to you again, really soon.
(36:17):
Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more
podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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