August 24, 2021 • 20 mins
We learn how a tech startup is trying to help the people of Kabul (and how the startup's founder is protecting her employees). Apple pushes back a return to the office. And a hacker generously returns the 600 million dollars they stole in cryptocurrency.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech. And this is the
tech news for Tuesday, August twenty four, twenty twenty one.
(00:26):
Let's get to it, because there's a lot to cover.
The crisis in Afghanistan is devastating, but there are some
interesting ways that tech and tech related companies are trying
to help the people of Afghanistan. For example, Airbnb, which
often gets lumped in with tech companies because of the
software that handles bookings and such, has announced it will
(00:49):
supply temporary housing to up to twenty thousand Afghan refugees.
That's a lot of people, but that's less than half
of those the US says it has evacuated for Afghanistan
so far, with thousands more attempting to flee the country.
Airbnb says it will fund the stays for those refugees,
giving them a safe place to live while they look
(01:11):
for more permanent housing. Airbnb CEO Brian Cheski called quote
the displacement and resettlement of Afghan refugees in the US
and elsewhere one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our
time end quote, which I think is a pretty darn
good summary. He also said he hopes that other leaders
of business will step up to try and help as well,
(01:34):
and I hope the same thing. In related news and
Afghan app called at t Sab, and my apologies for
butchering the pronunciation of that is trying to help the
people of Kabul stay safe. The app publishes real time
reports of conflict, including you know, reports of gunfire or explosions.
(01:56):
It also reports on traffic congestion as well, clearly very
important if there's an incident going on in the area,
and it's all in service of keeping the people of
the city informed and hopefully safe from harm. A ground
team in Cabool actually supplies the reports, so this isn't
some sort of automated service. It's rather one that's powered
(02:17):
by real humans that are on the scene. The team
posts the reports to a private WhatsApp group, and then
there's another team of fact checkers who review the reports
for accuracy. They remove any that are you know, unsubstantiated
in an effort to cut down on misinformation or perhaps
even disinformation. The app includes the ability to use location
(02:38):
data to send relevant alerts to people who could be
affected that way. Let's say that there's an incident in
your area, you would learn through it. You know about
it through the app through a notification, but for stuff
that would be happening, say across the other side of
the city, you wouldn't necessarily get that alert. Sarah Wa Hindi,
who founded the app, actually escape Cable for a second time,
(03:01):
I should add, and has worked to raise money from
within Afghanistan to support her efforts. She also recently took
steps to protect her employees in Afghanistan. She went to
delete all information about the female employees of the company
in order to protect them as the Taliban was advancing
across Afghanistan. The Taliban has extremist beliefs regarding women, such
(03:24):
as they have to remain at home unless they are
accompanied by a male relative. That's one of many incredibly
extreme rules the Taliban seeks to impose upon the population.
I'm sure I'll be reporting on more stories from Afghanistan
in future episodes, but for now, let's switch our focus elsewhere.
(03:45):
So from Afghanistan to Malaysia, it's time to talk about
the semiconductor shortage and COVID nineteen again. Now, we've been
in a shortage of semiconductors for several months now, with
practically retext sector affected as a result of this, from
personal computers to video game consoles, to automobiles and beyond.
(04:08):
We're seeing the shortage impact the supply chains of multiple
industries and this has a ripple effect on stuff like pricing.
For example, the auto market has seen skyrocketing prices, which
is in part a consequence of this shortage. Though it
does get a bit more complicated than that. So what
(04:28):
does Malaysia have to do with all of this, Well,
the country has become an important part of the supply
chain for semiconductors. UH. They are a large center in
semiconductor testing, so they do a lot of the testing
of the tech to make sure that it's actually working
so q a UH. They also are a big part
of packaging, so they're part of that process too. But
(04:52):
COVID cases have been on the rise in Malaysia and
the seven day average of reported daily infections has gone
above windy thousand cases, which is pretty astonishing. The Malaysian
government has already granted certain exemptions to the manufacturing industries
in the country in an effort to keep the economy going,
essentially saying, you know, we're supposed to lock down, but
(05:15):
we're dependent upon you for our economy, so you can
continue to operate. But that has also meant that some
of these factories have had to shut down completely for
weeks at a time due to infected employees coming into work.
There's a serious vaccination push within Malaysia at the moment,
and according to the Health Ministry, fifty seven percent of
the country's population has received at least one dose of vaccine.
(05:39):
We're likely to see the effects of these disruptions for
months to come across multiple product lines, and businesses are
likely to struggle with keeping production going as they encounter
component shortages. While the semiconductor shortage is a huge headache
for the automotive industry, one company in particular is dealing
with a different technical problem, and that company is GM,
(06:02):
which has announced a recall of the Chevrolet Bolt as
in all of them. Every single Bolt vehicle that has
been manufactured and sold, including the newest ones on the market,
are all part of this recall. The issue is one
that folks in the text space have seen before, which
is battery problems, as in, you know, lithium batteries that
(06:24):
catch fire on their own. The batteries and Chevy bolts
come from the company l G. It's LG KIM to
be specific, and GM says after an investigation, the company
discovered ten cases in which faulty batteries caught fire. GM
traced the issue to two separate manufacturing problems that together
(06:45):
created a short circuit. And just in case you've heard
that term but you don't actually know what it means,
I'll give you a quick explanation. So electricity flows through
conductors right like you have a conductive substance, electricity can
flow to it. Well. Circuits are essentially a pathway made
out of conductive elements, and electricity will follow down this
(07:07):
pathway and somewhere along the way, the electricity does some work.
So like the classic example is it lights a lightbulb
or whatever before it continues on the rest of the
pathway and ends at the other terminal. But if you
were to create a shortcut that bypassed the lightbulb and
went from one terminal to the other directly, electricity would
(07:28):
take that path. It would be the easiest path for
it to get to where it quote unquote wants to go.
And when you're talking about batteries, if you create a
shortcut for electrons to go from the negative terminal to
the positive terminal really quickly, well, the battery tends to
heat up because the electrochemical process that generates the electrons
in the first place, it ramps up faster and faster,
(07:50):
and this can lead to a fire or even an explosion.
That was the case with Samsung's Galaxy phone a few
years ago, and it appears to be a similar issue
with a Chevy Bolt. GM says that the recalls, which
cover more than one thousand vehicles, are likely to cost
the company nearly two billion dollars, and it also said
(08:13):
it plans to seek reimbursement from LG, which just makes
me think of a very advanced version of the joke
from Better Off Dead two billion dollars, I want my
two billion dollars. I don't know how many of you
out there have actually seen Better Off Dead and recognize
that reference, but never mind. Making dense batteries is a challenge,
(08:34):
like making batteries that can hold enough energy storage so
that they can do what we need them to do
that's already very hard to do, making them in mass quantities,
while ruling out defects is even harder. But these are
challenges that will need to overcome as the world creeps
towards electrification of vehicle fleets. Right if we start to
(08:55):
push more and more towards electric vehicles, which you know,
we should in an effort to remove transportation as a
big source of carbon emissions, while we obviously have to
make sure that the batteries that were depending upon are
reliable and safe. US President Joe Biden is reportedly hosting
a cybersecurity meeting in the near future, and big names
(09:18):
like Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
are among the guest list. The assumption is that this
group will be called to discuss recent high profile cybersecurity
issues such as the rise of ransomware and the emergence
of supply chain cyber attacks. And just to define some terms,
ransomware is a specific subset of malware that locks down
(09:42):
systems or otherwise makes data inaccessible to users unless they
pay a ransom to the hackers, typically in the form
of cryptocurrency. These attacks can center on individuals like you
could get targeted by a ransomware attack, but it's more
common to see hacker take aim at really big organizations
where they can have a really big payday, particularly ones
(10:05):
that rely heavily on digital information, such as healthcare organizations
where that is critical to their operation, or you know,
companies in the tech sector in general. A supply chain
attack is a an attack where hackers focus on the
company that supplies software to other companies. So imagine a
company that creates like administrative software that's used in corporate offices,
(10:31):
and you've got a lot of organizations, like big companies
that rely on this particular administrative product. That's what they
use to keep their records or whatever. So these hackers
in this case would go in and target that software company.
They would try to infiltrate that company systems and then
plant malware into the code of a software patch. And
(10:52):
then when the patch goes out to all the company's customers,
the customers, because they trust the software patch because it's
coming from a known source, it's coming from a vendor
they work with, they install that patch, and unknowingly they
introduced the malware into their own systems. This is the
sort of thing we suspected happened with solar winds, though
(11:13):
later reports made that a little more muddy and complicated.
The Verge published an article about this. But the companies
I see listed, which include the Southern Company, IBM, Google, JP,
Morgan Chase, and Amazon in addition to Google and Apple,
all these companies are are obviously big tech companies. They
(11:33):
or they are related to tech, or depend heavily on tech. Undoubtedly,
they all have departments that focus on cybersecurity, but none
of them are actual cyber security companies. And I'm curious
if the White House is also inviting security researchers from
one of or maybe more than one of the big
security research firms out there, in addition to these high
(11:55):
profile companies. I don't know. The White House hasn't really
commented on it. We have some more stories to cover,
but before we get to that, let's take a quick break.
We're back turning to Apple. Apple turnomer. The company recently
(12:18):
announced that employees will not be returning to the office
in October after all, and October was already delayed. The
original plan was to come back in September, but then
the company pushed that back to October, and CEO Tim
Cook famously posted a memo that talked up the benefits
of being at work in an office environment with the
(12:39):
announcement that employees would be expected to go into the
office at least three days a week. While Apple employees
objected to this, and an internal survey showed that the
majority of employees were not in favor of a return
to the office while the pandemic was still going on
well due to coronavirus numbers continuing to rise and the
dangers of the delta variant as well as other ants.
(13:00):
Now Apple employees won't be expected to return to the
office until January of next year. Now I'm thankful for that,
because I really think pushing to go back to the
office while the numbers are so bad is beyond irresponsible.
Other tech companies like Facebook and Amazon have made similar
decisions for a corporate employees, and that brings me to
(13:21):
another point that I need to stress this really does
only apply to corporate employees. The people who work in
the corporate offices of these companies. Amazon and Apple both
still have employees who have to go to work in
various like warehouses and stores and whatnot, so there is
a sharp divide here. Right. The corporate employees are allowed
(13:42):
to continue to work remotely, but other employees they're required
to go in and that's a pretty tough issue to
get into. I'm gonna save that for a full episode
because I do think it's something that we need to
talk about. In other Apple News, employees are organizing at
the company to voice concerns about the company these policies, processes,
and culture. As part of that strategy, the employees have
(14:04):
launched a website. That website is Apple to dot us.
That's Apple t oo dot us. They have issued a
statement about their plans, which I'll read part of right now. Quote.
For too long, Apple has evaded public scrutiny. The truth
is that for many Apple workers are reality faced disproportionately
(14:28):
by our black, Indigenous, and other colleagues from minoritized, racial, gender,
and historically marginalized groups of people. The culture of secrecy
creates an opaque, intimidating fortress. When we press for accountability
and redress to the persistent injustices we witness or experience
in our workplace, we are faced with a pattern of isolation, degradation,
(14:51):
and gas lighting. No more. We've exhausted all internal avenues
We've talked with our leadership, we've gone to the people team,
we've escalated through business conduct. Nothing has changed. It's time
to think different. A group of Apple workers have joined
together to organize and protect ourselves. We are asking fellow
(15:11):
Apple workers who want to see real change at Apple
to share their stories. End quote. This statement goes on
there's actually a lot more at the website, but you
can read the whole thing at Apple two dot us.
According to the Verge, the group of employees consisted of
around fifteen current and former Apple employees, so not not
a huge group. However, they are already getting support among
(15:35):
other current and former Apple employees who are posting their
stories and the site is publishing them as well. As
some of these stories are getting published in internal communications
channels like Slack channels and stuff at Apple. So we
will continue to follow this story as it develops. And
now for some stories about hacking and cryptocurrency. The Verge
(15:57):
reports that a hacker who stole around six hundred million
dollars worth a cryptocurrency from a company called the Polly
Network has returned the assets. And you might be saying, what,
and I mean, I know I was, well it turns
out that this particular hacker found an exploit and decided
to take the assets and then store those assets, those
stolen cryptocurrencies into a trusted account while the hacker then
(16:21):
communicated with Polly Network and Polly Network worked to patch
the vulnerability. Apparently, the hacker decided to do this because
they felt it was just a matter of time before
someone else spotted this vulnerability and then stole crypto. But
for real zes, this hacker a a white hat hacker type,
(16:42):
was really making a big statement, and so once Polly
fixed the problem, the hacker returned all those assets, and
the Polly network then invited the hacker to serve as
the chief security adviser for the company, which was kind
of cute, and the hacker even asked that some of
the hacker's own money taken from a half million dollar
bounty that Polly Network paid for the reporting of the
(17:04):
bug in the first place, that some of that might
should be distributed to the quote unquote survivors of the
escapade to make up for the inconvenience and stress of
having money stolen, even though it was just a temporary thing.
No word yet on whether Polly customers will stick with
the company in the wake of this experience, or if
they'll look to port their assets to some other organization. Meanwhile,
(17:26):
in Sweden, authorities are legally required to return bitcoins to
a convicted drug dealer because of the way things were
worded during the dealer's sentencing. See after being convicted of
the crime of dealing drugs, the court ruled that the
dealer should be stripped of his earnings as a drug dealer.
(17:46):
Those earnings were in bitcoin. He had earned thirty six
bitcoin as a drug dealer, and around the time when
he was arrested, those bitcoin were worth around a hundred
thirty seven thousand dollars. Now, apparently the sentencing framed this
in the form of standard Swedish currency rather than bitcoin,
saying all right, well, we need the the equivalent amount
(18:11):
in cash seized from this drug dealer. But by the
time the Swedish enforcement authority was ready to actually auction
off the cryptocurrency to get the equivalent cash, the value
of bitcoin had increased dramatically and the whole one seven
thousand dollars worth of fine only required three bitcoins to
(18:33):
cover it. And because the court didn't demand the bitcoin instead,
they demanded that cash equivalent of bitcoin at the time
of sentencing, which was around a hundred thirty seven thousand dollars.
That meant that the other thirty three bitcoin could not
be auctioned off because the court had already received the
amount of money and had demanded and those thirty three
(18:54):
bitcoin had to be returned to the drug dealer and
that is now worth around one point six million dollars.
Apparently crime does pay, and this is another example of
how courts around the world are really struggling to keep
up with how things change in the text space. Uh
(19:14):
and a lot of people have said, well, this just
shows that the sentencing needs to be more specific about
taking the bitcoin that was earned as opposed to the
cash equivalent of whatever the bitcoins value was at that time.
Lesson learned. Alright, that wraps up the big news stories
(19:35):
for Tuesday, August one. Will be back later in the
week with some more. If you have suggestions for topics
I should cover on Tech Stuff, reach out to me.
The easiest way to get in touch with me is
over on Twitter. The handle for the show is text
stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again
really soon. Text Stuff is an I heart radio production.
(20:03):
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 Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech. And this is the
tech news for Tuesday, August twenty four, twenty twenty one.
(00:26):
Let's get to it, because there's a lot to cover.
The crisis in Afghanistan is devastating, but there are some
interesting ways that tech and tech related companies are trying
to help the people of Afghanistan. For example, Airbnb, which
often gets lumped in with tech companies because of the
software that handles bookings and such, has announced it will
(00:49):
supply temporary housing to up to twenty thousand Afghan refugees.
That's a lot of people, but that's less than half
of those the US says it has evacuated for Afghanistan
so far, with thousands more attempting to flee the country.
Airbnb says it will fund the stays for those refugees,
giving them a safe place to live while they look
(01:11):
for more permanent housing. Airbnb CEO Brian Cheski called quote
the displacement and resettlement of Afghan refugees in the US
and elsewhere one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our
time end quote, which I think is a pretty darn
good summary. He also said he hopes that other leaders
of business will step up to try and help as well,
(01:34):
and I hope the same thing. In related news and
Afghan app called at t Sab, and my apologies for
butchering the pronunciation of that is trying to help the
people of Kabul stay safe. The app publishes real time
reports of conflict, including you know, reports of gunfire or explosions.
(01:56):
It also reports on traffic congestion as well, clearly very
important if there's an incident going on in the area,
and it's all in service of keeping the people of
the city informed and hopefully safe from harm. A ground
team in Cabool actually supplies the reports, so this isn't
some sort of automated service. It's rather one that's powered
(02:17):
by real humans that are on the scene. The team
posts the reports to a private WhatsApp group, and then
there's another team of fact checkers who review the reports
for accuracy. They remove any that are you know, unsubstantiated
in an effort to cut down on misinformation or perhaps
even disinformation. The app includes the ability to use location
(02:38):
data to send relevant alerts to people who could be
affected that way. Let's say that there's an incident in
your area, you would learn through it. You know about
it through the app through a notification, but for stuff
that would be happening, say across the other side of
the city, you wouldn't necessarily get that alert. Sarah Wa Hindi,
who founded the app, actually escape Cable for a second time,
(03:01):
I should add, and has worked to raise money from
within Afghanistan to support her efforts. She also recently took
steps to protect her employees in Afghanistan. She went to
delete all information about the female employees of the company
in order to protect them as the Taliban was advancing
across Afghanistan. The Taliban has extremist beliefs regarding women, such
(03:24):
as they have to remain at home unless they are
accompanied by a male relative. That's one of many incredibly
extreme rules the Taliban seeks to impose upon the population.
I'm sure I'll be reporting on more stories from Afghanistan
in future episodes, but for now, let's switch our focus elsewhere.
(03:45):
So from Afghanistan to Malaysia, it's time to talk about
the semiconductor shortage and COVID nineteen again. Now, we've been
in a shortage of semiconductors for several months now, with
practically retext sector affected as a result of this, from
personal computers to video game consoles, to automobiles and beyond.
(04:08):
We're seeing the shortage impact the supply chains of multiple
industries and this has a ripple effect on stuff like pricing.
For example, the auto market has seen skyrocketing prices, which
is in part a consequence of this shortage. Though it
does get a bit more complicated than that. So what
(04:28):
does Malaysia have to do with all of this, Well,
the country has become an important part of the supply
chain for semiconductors. UH. They are a large center in
semiconductor testing, so they do a lot of the testing
of the tech to make sure that it's actually working
so q a UH. They also are a big part
of packaging, so they're part of that process too. But
(04:52):
COVID cases have been on the rise in Malaysia and
the seven day average of reported daily infections has gone
above windy thousand cases, which is pretty astonishing. The Malaysian
government has already granted certain exemptions to the manufacturing industries
in the country in an effort to keep the economy going,
essentially saying, you know, we're supposed to lock down, but
(05:15):
we're dependent upon you for our economy, so you can
continue to operate. But that has also meant that some
of these factories have had to shut down completely for
weeks at a time due to infected employees coming into work.
There's a serious vaccination push within Malaysia at the moment,
and according to the Health Ministry, fifty seven percent of
the country's population has received at least one dose of vaccine.
(05:39):
We're likely to see the effects of these disruptions for
months to come across multiple product lines, and businesses are
likely to struggle with keeping production going as they encounter
component shortages. While the semiconductor shortage is a huge headache
for the automotive industry, one company in particular is dealing
with a different technical problem, and that company is GM,
(06:02):
which has announced a recall of the Chevrolet Bolt as
in all of them. Every single Bolt vehicle that has
been manufactured and sold, including the newest ones on the market,
are all part of this recall. The issue is one
that folks in the text space have seen before, which
is battery problems, as in, you know, lithium batteries that
(06:24):
catch fire on their own. The batteries and Chevy bolts
come from the company l G. It's LG KIM to
be specific, and GM says after an investigation, the company
discovered ten cases in which faulty batteries caught fire. GM
traced the issue to two separate manufacturing problems that together
(06:45):
created a short circuit. And just in case you've heard
that term but you don't actually know what it means,
I'll give you a quick explanation. So electricity flows through
conductors right like you have a conductive substance, electricity can
flow to it. Well. Circuits are essentially a pathway made
out of conductive elements, and electricity will follow down this
(07:07):
pathway and somewhere along the way, the electricity does some work.
So like the classic example is it lights a lightbulb
or whatever before it continues on the rest of the
pathway and ends at the other terminal. But if you
were to create a shortcut that bypassed the lightbulb and
went from one terminal to the other directly, electricity would
(07:28):
take that path. It would be the easiest path for
it to get to where it quote unquote wants to go.
And when you're talking about batteries, if you create a
shortcut for electrons to go from the negative terminal to
the positive terminal really quickly, well, the battery tends to
heat up because the electrochemical process that generates the electrons
in the first place, it ramps up faster and faster,
(07:50):
and this can lead to a fire or even an explosion.
That was the case with Samsung's Galaxy phone a few
years ago, and it appears to be a similar issue
with a Chevy Bolt. GM says that the recalls, which
cover more than one thousand vehicles, are likely to cost
the company nearly two billion dollars, and it also said
(08:13):
it plans to seek reimbursement from LG, which just makes
me think of a very advanced version of the joke
from Better Off Dead two billion dollars, I want my
two billion dollars. I don't know how many of you
out there have actually seen Better Off Dead and recognize
that reference, but never mind. Making dense batteries is a challenge,
(08:34):
like making batteries that can hold enough energy storage so
that they can do what we need them to do
that's already very hard to do, making them in mass quantities,
while ruling out defects is even harder. But these are
challenges that will need to overcome as the world creeps
towards electrification of vehicle fleets. Right if we start to
(08:55):
push more and more towards electric vehicles, which you know,
we should in an effort to remove transportation as a
big source of carbon emissions, while we obviously have to
make sure that the batteries that were depending upon are
reliable and safe. US President Joe Biden is reportedly hosting
a cybersecurity meeting in the near future, and big names
(09:18):
like Apple CEO Tim Cook and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella
are among the guest list. The assumption is that this
group will be called to discuss recent high profile cybersecurity
issues such as the rise of ransomware and the emergence
of supply chain cyber attacks. And just to define some terms,
ransomware is a specific subset of malware that locks down
(09:42):
systems or otherwise makes data inaccessible to users unless they
pay a ransom to the hackers, typically in the form
of cryptocurrency. These attacks can center on individuals like you
could get targeted by a ransomware attack, but it's more
common to see hacker take aim at really big organizations
where they can have a really big payday, particularly ones
(10:05):
that rely heavily on digital information, such as healthcare organizations
where that is critical to their operation, or you know,
companies in the tech sector in general. A supply chain
attack is a an attack where hackers focus on the
company that supplies software to other companies. So imagine a
company that creates like administrative software that's used in corporate offices,
(10:31):
and you've got a lot of organizations, like big companies
that rely on this particular administrative product. That's what they
use to keep their records or whatever. So these hackers
in this case would go in and target that software company.
They would try to infiltrate that company systems and then
plant malware into the code of a software patch. And
(10:52):
then when the patch goes out to all the company's customers,
the customers, because they trust the software patch because it's
coming from a known source, it's coming from a vendor
they work with, they install that patch, and unknowingly they
introduced the malware into their own systems. This is the
sort of thing we suspected happened with solar winds, though
(11:13):
later reports made that a little more muddy and complicated.
The Verge published an article about this. But the companies
I see listed, which include the Southern Company, IBM, Google, JP,
Morgan Chase, and Amazon in addition to Google and Apple,
all these companies are are obviously big tech companies. They
(11:33):
or they are related to tech, or depend heavily on tech. Undoubtedly,
they all have departments that focus on cybersecurity, but none
of them are actual cyber security companies. And I'm curious
if the White House is also inviting security researchers from
one of or maybe more than one of the big
security research firms out there, in addition to these high
(11:55):
profile companies. I don't know. The White House hasn't really
commented on it. We have some more stories to cover,
but before we get to that, let's take a quick break.
We're back turning to Apple. Apple turnomer. The company recently
(12:18):
announced that employees will not be returning to the office
in October after all, and October was already delayed. The
original plan was to come back in September, but then
the company pushed that back to October, and CEO Tim
Cook famously posted a memo that talked up the benefits
of being at work in an office environment with the
(12:39):
announcement that employees would be expected to go into the
office at least three days a week. While Apple employees
objected to this, and an internal survey showed that the
majority of employees were not in favor of a return
to the office while the pandemic was still going on
well due to coronavirus numbers continuing to rise and the
dangers of the delta variant as well as other ants.
(13:00):
Now Apple employees won't be expected to return to the
office until January of next year. Now I'm thankful for that,
because I really think pushing to go back to the
office while the numbers are so bad is beyond irresponsible.
Other tech companies like Facebook and Amazon have made similar
decisions for a corporate employees, and that brings me to
(13:21):
another point that I need to stress this really does
only apply to corporate employees. The people who work in
the corporate offices of these companies. Amazon and Apple both
still have employees who have to go to work in
various like warehouses and stores and whatnot, so there is
a sharp divide here. Right. The corporate employees are allowed
(13:42):
to continue to work remotely, but other employees they're required
to go in and that's a pretty tough issue to
get into. I'm gonna save that for a full episode
because I do think it's something that we need to
talk about. In other Apple News, employees are organizing at
the company to voice concerns about the company these policies, processes,
and culture. As part of that strategy, the employees have
(14:04):
launched a website. That website is Apple to dot us.
That's Apple t oo dot us. They have issued a
statement about their plans, which I'll read part of right now. Quote.
For too long, Apple has evaded public scrutiny. The truth
is that for many Apple workers are reality faced disproportionately
(14:28):
by our black, Indigenous, and other colleagues from minoritized, racial, gender,
and historically marginalized groups of people. The culture of secrecy
creates an opaque, intimidating fortress. When we press for accountability
and redress to the persistent injustices we witness or experience
in our workplace, we are faced with a pattern of isolation, degradation,
(14:51):
and gas lighting. No more. We've exhausted all internal avenues
We've talked with our leadership, we've gone to the people team,
we've escalated through business conduct. Nothing has changed. It's time
to think different. A group of Apple workers have joined
together to organize and protect ourselves. We are asking fellow
(15:11):
Apple workers who want to see real change at Apple
to share their stories. End quote. This statement goes on
there's actually a lot more at the website, but you
can read the whole thing at Apple two dot us.
According to the Verge, the group of employees consisted of
around fifteen current and former Apple employees, so not not
a huge group. However, they are already getting support among
(15:35):
other current and former Apple employees who are posting their
stories and the site is publishing them as well. As
some of these stories are getting published in internal communications
channels like Slack channels and stuff at Apple. So we
will continue to follow this story as it develops. And
now for some stories about hacking and cryptocurrency. The Verge
(15:57):
reports that a hacker who stole around six hundred million
dollars worth a cryptocurrency from a company called the Polly
Network has returned the assets. And you might be saying, what,
and I mean, I know I was, well it turns
out that this particular hacker found an exploit and decided
to take the assets and then store those assets, those
stolen cryptocurrencies into a trusted account while the hacker then
(16:21):
communicated with Polly Network and Polly Network worked to patch
the vulnerability. Apparently, the hacker decided to do this because
they felt it was just a matter of time before
someone else spotted this vulnerability and then stole crypto. But
for real zes, this hacker a a white hat hacker type,
(16:42):
was really making a big statement, and so once Polly
fixed the problem, the hacker returned all those assets, and
the Polly network then invited the hacker to serve as
the chief security adviser for the company, which was kind
of cute, and the hacker even asked that some of
the hacker's own money taken from a half million dollar
bounty that Polly Network paid for the reporting of the
(17:04):
bug in the first place, that some of that might
should be distributed to the quote unquote survivors of the
escapade to make up for the inconvenience and stress of
having money stolen, even though it was just a temporary thing.
No word yet on whether Polly customers will stick with
the company in the wake of this experience, or if
they'll look to port their assets to some other organization. Meanwhile,
(17:26):
in Sweden, authorities are legally required to return bitcoins to
a convicted drug dealer because of the way things were
worded during the dealer's sentencing. See after being convicted of
the crime of dealing drugs, the court ruled that the
dealer should be stripped of his earnings as a drug dealer.
(17:46):
Those earnings were in bitcoin. He had earned thirty six
bitcoin as a drug dealer, and around the time when
he was arrested, those bitcoin were worth around a hundred
thirty seven thousand dollars. Now, apparently the sentencing framed this
in the form of standard Swedish currency rather than bitcoin,
saying all right, well, we need the the equivalent amount
(18:11):
in cash seized from this drug dealer. But by the
time the Swedish enforcement authority was ready to actually auction
off the cryptocurrency to get the equivalent cash, the value
of bitcoin had increased dramatically and the whole one seven
thousand dollars worth of fine only required three bitcoins to
(18:33):
cover it. And because the court didn't demand the bitcoin instead,
they demanded that cash equivalent of bitcoin at the time
of sentencing, which was around a hundred thirty seven thousand dollars.
That meant that the other thirty three bitcoin could not
be auctioned off because the court had already received the
amount of money and had demanded and those thirty three
(18:54):
bitcoin had to be returned to the drug dealer and
that is now worth around one point six million dollars.
Apparently crime does pay, and this is another example of
how courts around the world are really struggling to keep
up with how things change in the text space. Uh
(19:14):
and a lot of people have said, well, this just
shows that the sentencing needs to be more specific about
taking the bitcoin that was earned as opposed to the
cash equivalent of whatever the bitcoins value was at that time.
Lesson learned. Alright, that wraps up the big news stories
(19:35):
for Tuesday, August one. Will be back later in the
week with some more. If you have suggestions for topics
I should cover on Tech Stuff, reach out to me.
The easiest way to get in touch with me is
over on Twitter. The handle for the show is text
stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again
really soon. Text Stuff is an I heart radio production.
(20:03):
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i
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