March 9, 2023 • 42 mins
Senators show concern about how the FBI collected geolocation data without going through normal procedures. Google pays out a large settlement relating to how the company handled location tracking. Plus we have stories about facial recognition tech, how Tesla is under scrutiny for accidents (and for steering wheels popping off of SUVs) and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and How the Tech
are you Today? We're going to cover the tech news
for Thursday, March nine, twenty twenty three. But before I
(00:26):
get to that, I just want to thank bridget Todd,
host of There Are No Girls on the Internet, or
taking over the show yesterday. I hope you enjoyed that episode.
You should definitely check out There Are No Girls on
the Internet. There are three seasons of episodes. Season four
is around the corner, and she does really great work
and talks with some really smart and passionate people, and
(00:52):
if you are one of those folks who gets really
riled up about issues in society in general and tech
in particular, you'll definitely want to tune into that. Okay,
let's get to the tech news, and we're going to
start off by following up on a story I talked
about earlier this week, the sad Tale of Silvergate Bank. So,
(01:13):
before twenty fourteen, this bank was primarily focused on serving
as a financial institution in the real estate market in
southern California, but then it hitched its wagon to the
cryptocurrency market and started to work with crypto clients. So
these markets need to connect to traditional financial institutions to
(01:34):
be useful beyond the insular ecosystem of the crypto world.
It wouldn't do you much good if you had all
of your money in bitcoin, if there were no way
to get your money out of bitcoin. Sure, you could
use bitcoin to purchase some stuff, but the vast majority
of transactions that you would need to make in your
day to day life would likely exist outside of the
(01:58):
cryptocurrency ecosystem. So you need financial institutions to facilitate movement
on and off that ecosystem. Plus companies dealing with crypto
they need banks too, and so Silvergate began to cater
to this world. But as we all know, last year
saw a series of disasters hit the crypto markets. Some
(02:20):
cryptocurrencies imploded, we talked about that earlier this week. Crypto
lenders and exchanges went under, and this ripple effect extended
out beyond the immediate cryptocurrency ecosystem into the classic financial
world in the form of Silvergate. The bank had operated
its own exchange known as Silvergate exchange Network, which the
(02:45):
company has already shut down. It held deposits for various
crypto companies, but in the wake of these crypto disasters
last year, particularly with FTX collapsing, customers withdrew an astonishing
eight point one billion dollars from their silver Gate accounts.
The company Silvergate had a billion dollar loss following this event,
(03:08):
and now it sounds like the actual situation at Silvergate
was even more dire than the PaperWorks seemed to indicate.
This has led the Silvergate Capitol Corporation to announce that
the bank is closing. It will return deposits to customers
and then shut down, and it credited quote recent industry
and regulatory developments end quote as the reason behind closing
(03:31):
up shop. And to be fair, the US government is
expected to look into Silvergate, possibly to see if there
were any hinky things going on between Silvergate and FTX.
But the fact of the matter is, even if nothing
untoward was happening, even if everything was on the up
and up, there was enough momentum and this collapse to
(03:55):
lead to Silvergate's downfall. Now this news is bad for
the entire crypto world. For one thing, the number of
regulated financial institutions that can serve as a bridge for
the crypto world has dropped by one, and there were
not that many to start with. For another, we might
see a rise in crypto companies being willing to make
(04:18):
use of poorly regulated or even unregulated organizations for banking.
And as we've already seen with crypto, a lack of
regulation may not really be the feature, it might really
be the bug. You know, we've had a lot of
crypto enthusiasts say that the lack of regulation is a
(04:38):
good thing, but twenty twenty two really showed that without
regulation there's a lot of potential for things to go sideways. Now,
if everyone's behaving properly, regulation wouldn't be necessary. But that's
kind of true in most cases, regardless of what industry
we're talking about, right, And we know that there are
a lot of folks in the crypto community who are
(04:58):
not having well. They are specifically looking for ways to
take advantage of others. They are opportunists who don't mind
speculating and ramping up and then rug pulling. It's clear
there are plenty of folks who fall into that camp. Now,
there's a third concern about Silvergate's collapse, which is that
(05:21):
as Silvergate was in the eyes of say, regulators and governments,
a quote unquote real financial institution, we're likely to see
governments take a closer look and a deeper concern in
the crypto market in general than we have already seen.
Because it's one thing for these ephemeral ecosystems to crash
(05:42):
in on themselves, right, that's a problem. People lose money,
real people lose real money in the process. So governments
are already concerned about that. But now we have an
example of an established quote unquote real world bank also
having to shut down as a result of the crypto
market involvement. And when the consequences of the crypto world
(06:04):
spill over into the traditional financial world, things can look
really scary for governments and regulators. So, if anything, I
imagine this is going to escalate efforts to regulate the
crypto market, and in the meantime, I suspect we're going
to see more volatility in the crypto world, which I mean,
(06:25):
that's nothing, right, That's like throwing a dart and then
drawing the dartboard around it, So you get a bullseye
to say that there's going to be volatility in the
crypto market. US Senator Ed Margie has promised to reintroduce
a proposed ban for the federal government making use of
facial recognition technology. Now, this comes in the wake of
(06:46):
the American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU, publishing a piece
that says the FBI and the Pentagon are both developing
facial recognition technology, and as we have mentioned dozens of
times on this show, this technology is inherently dangerous. Not
only have we seen multiple instances in which a bias
(07:07):
in the facial recognition model leads to misidentification, particularly for
people of color. This in turns makes these people of
color disproportionately affected by this technology's performance and leads to
all sorts of terrible outcomes. But also, as Ed Markey
points out, the use of such technology implies that all
(07:29):
of us are being treated as if we are already
suspects of a crime. From square one, everyone is being
surveiled as if they are under suspicion. Everyone is being
identified so that they can be tracked, so that when
they do something wrong, we can be taken in. So,
Marky argues that surveillance technology and facial recognition combined have
(07:50):
served as a threat to individual citizens privacy and security.
I find it really hard to find any fault in
that argument. I agree with it. And here in the US,
it's not just that the FBI wants to know who
you are, it's also that it wants to know where
you've been wired. Has a report that the FBI has
been found to circumvent the normal legal process, and in
(08:14):
fact has admitted to this. So normally the FBI would
have to secure some sort of permission in order to
get a look at someone's location data. Typically you're talking
about a warrant process where you have to go to
a court, submit your request, have a judge look it
over and approve it, and then you could go and
(08:35):
get hold of geolocation data. Instead, the FBI has admitted
that in the past it has purchased US location data
just like an advertising company would. In fact, Chris Ferray,
the director of the FBI, said that that's essentially what
the FBI did. It bought data from a broker, just
like it had been an advertising company. And privacy advocates
(09:00):
argue that all data being scooped up online is potentially harmful.
They've been saying this for years, and this is the
kind of thing that they're talking about as being one
of the worst case scenarios, right, not just that private
companies or even publicly traded companies have data about you,
but that you start to see governments take advantage of
loopholes and instead of going through due process in order
(09:24):
to gain permission and have everything be documented when it
comes to tracking people, it just sidesteps that and just
buys the information outright instead of going through what it
should be doing, because there aren't any specific rules or
regulations to stop that from happening. Now, there are some
rules in place that are meant to stop it, but
(09:45):
federally speaking, it's not really been the highest of priorities,
especially for US government agencies. Right. A lot of privacy
laws specifically exclude government agency when it comes to the
protection of private citizen data because here in the US
(10:07):
we tend to favor the law enforcement over the citizens
in some cases. So for the FBI to sidestep a
legal process in order to get desired data that kind
of stuff should concern everybody, regardless of how squeaky clean
you are. The processes are there for a reason, and
it's really to ensure that the government doesn't overstep and
violate a citizen's rights. So when a law enforcement agency
(10:31):
finds a loophole, that's a bad thing. The FBI admitted
this particular instance during a Senate hearing on Global Threats.
That's when Christopher Ray said that it was something that
the FBI had done in the past, but that to
his knowledge, the FBI was not currently doing it at
this very moment. The admission raised concern the Senate, But
(10:51):
the truth of the matter is that the US has
been really lousy when it comes to protecting citizen data.
So I don't know why anyone is surprised by this
or shocked by it. They should be concerned about it,
But to hear people express surprise that this has happened
seems disingenuous to me. But then again, it's also to
(11:12):
be fair, a lot of people who are in politics
in the United States are so out of touch when
it comes to technology, and especially when it comes to
things like data collection and data analysis. Maybe they're genuinely
surprised because of a large blind spot in their knowledge base.
(11:32):
Not that same hearing, FBI's director Ray told the Senate
that TikTok is a potential national security threat, which echoes
the concerns of lawmakers around the world. So Ray claimed
that TikTok could potentially give parent company byte Dance the
ability to quote control data and software on millions of
devices in the US and drive narratives to divide Americans.
(11:54):
End quote. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying Ray
said that specifically. That's how it was worded by Bloomberg.
They did not use quotations, so this is not Ray
saying it, but it's what Bloomberg said Ray said, I
honestly don't know about this claim. I don't even know
if Ray actually said that TikTok could potentially control software
(12:16):
on millions of devices. I haven't seen any security experts
suggest that TikTok has that ability, and I think that
would be a massive headline. I mean, if someone found
that a single app on a device had the capability
to potentially control other software to any real degree, that
would be huge news. And I don't know that Ray
said anything close to that. This could just be Bloomberg
(12:39):
mischaracterizing what Ray was saying. Anyway, I'm not surprised by
this take. Right It's a pretty popular view in the
government right now that TikTok is potentially a surveillance tool
for the Chinese state, and if it isn't right now,
it has that ability in the future. So this kind
(13:01):
of goes along with other things we've been hearing recently
in those circles. Okay, let's get back to geolocation data
tracking before we take our first break. Google has agreed
to pay out a nearly three hundred ninety two million
dollars settlement to end a massive lawsuit involving the state
attorneys general for forty out of the fifty US states.
(13:23):
So the core issue is that these state attorneys general
had argued Google had misled users when they chose to
turn off location data tracking because Google was still collecting
location information about these users. And yeah, that does seem
like there might be a bit of a disconnect, you know, like, oh,
you've turned off location tracking, but don't worry, we're still
(13:44):
keeping track of where you are. You know, you don't
seem to understand what location tracking means and what it
means to turn it off. So Google said that this
issue was related to quote, outdated product policies that we
changed years ago end quote. So they're not denying that
they did this, they're saying they don't do it anymore.
So according to Google, now when you turn off location tracking,
(14:04):
then it for reels would turn it off, at least
for Google anyway. The details of the settlement include requirements
that Google has to meet in order to institute some changes,
such as introducing more alerts whenever a user activates a feature,
whether an app or otherwise that would turn on or
off a location related data tracking component. So that's good,
(14:26):
all right, We're gonna take a quick break. When we
come back, We've got some more tech news to talk about.
We're back. Not that long ago, I talked about Anonymous,
the loosely organized activist group, and according to Taiwan News,
(14:49):
this group has claimed responsibility for hacking into a Chinese
weather balloon that flew over India twice. And then they
hacked into a Chinese website that actually related to a
study abroad program, and there they posted not a manifesto
but are really kind of rambling list of complaints and allegations,
(15:12):
as well as screenshots of the hacked control panel of
the weather balloon. Now, presumably Anonymous decided to target this
balloon after the recent discovery of surveillance balloons of Chinese
origin that flew over North America and eventually the US
shot him down. Anonymous but also throw in some other
reasons on this website, so it starts to almost feel
(15:35):
like a laundry list of unconnected complaints. So one of
the things that they cited was China's response to COVID
nineteen and how the government has treated that over the
last couple of years, So that was part of the
stuff that was included in there, but also there were
(15:56):
bits praising Taiwan. Taiwan and China have a contentious relationship,
to say the least, technically both sides lay claim to
the other. On the web page, Anonymous also railed against
some unrelated stuff that has nothing to do with China,
like Wikipedia and its policies. Anonymous said that women are
(16:17):
underrepresented in Wikipedia articles and that there might be an
issue with bias within Wikipedia, and that the articles occasionally
engage in outright trying to manipulate perspectives in points of view.
There's also some stuff about people who have been killed
by US police and various police incidents, so kind of
(16:42):
a related to Black Lives Matter. There were also parts
arguing that the Soviet Union which hasn't been a thing
for decades now, But how the USS are endangered human
lives and outright killed animals as part of the space race.
So again, it's like this mishmash hodgepodge of complaints that
(17:04):
don't necessarily have a centralized theme that appeared on this
web page. It almost seemed like, well, we've got the opportunity,
let's take it. I don't pretend to understand it, but
it's not a huge surprise, right, if you know anything
about Anonymous, it should not be surprising that it would
be a little disjointed, because Anonymous is such a loose organization,
(17:26):
and it's filled with people who have overlapping but not
necessarily identical motivations and priorities. So you could say, well, yeah,
it seems a bit a bit chaotic, but then so
is the very nature of Anonymous itself. That's part of
(17:47):
its its structure. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that the
German government is considering a ban on Huawei components in
its five G networks, along with components from some other
Chinese companies as well. Now, as I've talked about before,
the US instituted such a ban out of concern that
Huawei could essentially tap into, you know, the communications infrastructure
(18:11):
and then spy on communications within the US. The UK
has taken similar measures now. Huawei has repeatedly denied these
allegations and suspicions, saying that the company has never done
such a thing, that there aren't any backdoors or anything
built into the technology that would allow for it in
the first place. A spokesperson for China's embassy in Germany said,
(18:34):
whahwe follows EU and German laws and there's no reason
to suspect that the company would undermine those laws, and
that China is just very disappointed in Germany right now
and expected better. So this decision hasn't yet been finalized.
Its possible that Germany will not pursue this route. Even
if it does, it would probably take years to fully
(18:56):
decouple Germany's telecommunications infrastructure from Chinese components. But it does
show that there is this growing concern about how technology.
You know, more and more of our technology is ultimately
just meant to direct information somewhere, and that if you
could end up directing that information in a way that
(19:18):
benefits one country at the expense of others, that ends
up being a big concern. Whether or not that's actually
happening is still at question, but even just the potential
for it is enough to give companies pause. And to
be clear, I don't know if Huawei has actively participated
(19:40):
in surveillance on behalf of China, but I do know
that there is a very large concern for that. And
it doesn't help that the Chinese government has essentially given
a directive to citizens and companies that they are to
participate in information gathering activities would benefit China. So whether
(20:03):
it's happening or not, I can't say. I can just
say that there are enough pieces in place that I
can understand the concern. Toward the end of last year,
YouTube changed some rules that ended up having a massive
impact on YouTubers. If you follow any particular channels, you've
probably noticed this, either explicitly as people have actually addressed
(20:24):
this in their videos, or just through the process of
watching it and thinking, huh, something's changed here. So late
last year, YouTube started to really crack down on stuff
like profanity, and any video that included profanity within the
first fifteen seconds of the video starting was automatically made
(20:45):
ineligible for monetization. Didn't matter how severe it was. It
just meant that, you know, if you had a profanity
incident within those first fifteen seconds, boom monetization switched off
for that video. And if you were a YouTuber with
an intro like what the beep is up? This is
your beep, Homeboy, Beep Smith, Beep the beep like that, well,
(21:07):
then you'd be looking at all those videos that start
that way getting demonetized. Because this change wasn't just for
all videos moving forward, it was a retroactive change. YouTube
would scan the content of all videos posted, and if
any of them were detected to include profanity within the
verse fifteen seconds, boom shut off. And a video on
(21:29):
YouTube can have a really long life. You know. Typically
you see your biggest amount of engagement shortly after a
video publishes, but some videos have a really long tail,
especially if something relevant happens in the world that brings
back a video that was recorded a long time ago.
(21:50):
I'm reminded of a video I did years ago at
how Stuff Works about the Transatlantic accent. You know that
old timey radio voice. I did a video about at
and every few years it seems to bubble back up
and get popular again. So while it did pretty well
when it launched. In subsequent years, it would get tons
(22:11):
more views. Well, if I were depending upon monetization of
videos like that, I don't own those videos that belongs
to how stuff works. But if I did, and if
those videos violated a brand new rule from the platform,
well that would have an enormous impact on my ability
to make a living. Right, And because I don't control
(22:32):
the platform, I'm at the whim of that platform. This
is why it's risky to depend upon a third party
in order to reach your audience. If the platform makes
a change to its business model, you end up being affected.
I'm minded of When I talked to Bernie Burns, one
of the founders of Rooster Teeth, this was one of
his big concerns. He said, you don't want to put
all your eggs in the basket that belongs to someone else,
(22:55):
because if they change their mind on how stuff works,
you end up being hit by that. Well, now YouTube
is relaxing some of those rules. They're not getting rhythm,
but they are relaxing them a little bit. Videos that
include moderate profanity within the first fifteen seconds can get
some limited monetization. Videos that don't involve a ton of
(23:18):
profanity and they avoid it within the first seven seconds
are eligible for full monetization. And YouTube is also introducing
a review process to look into creators who have been
hit hard by this change in monetization, where like they
may have seen their income go close to zilch after
the results. The new adjustments went into effect this week,
(23:42):
so hopefully creators who are hit really hard we'll see
some relief. I will admit there's some channels I watch
where there were people who would occasionally use profanity, and
they now tend to beat that stuff out rather than
actually say the words, which they used to do. And
I think the reason for it is because they don't
(24:03):
want to see those monetization switches get hit and then
they take a massive revenue loss. Over at Meta, there's
been a leak. Meta introduced its own large language model
aka Lama, and they opened it up to a very
(24:23):
small group of people. It's like invitation only, case by
case basis and includes like academics and researchers, a few companies,
and they're essentially asking these folks to test the language model,
to provide feedback let Meta help improve it over time.
The company did not release it to the general public,
(24:45):
probably because like all other generative AI models, Meta's approach
is prone to doing stuff that isn't always appropriate. Generative
AI can sometimes spout out misinformation. They compare it speech,
It could call for violence, like it can generally behave
in ways that are not a good look for the
(25:07):
company that spawned it, particularly a large, public facing, publicly
traded company. So Meta did a limited release because this
model is still under development. It is not ready to
be deployed. It's still being built. But someone went and
leaked the model. Word popped up on four Chan, and
(25:29):
initially you started to see torrents and peer to peer
network sharing kind of spread this around, and eventually somebody
put it up on GitHub and people have included instructions
on how to download and access the language model. I'm
sure folks at Meta are stressed out about this, but
some people in the AI industry argue that the tool
(25:52):
is far more likely to improve quickly if it's in
a wide release as opposed to trusting a relatively small
base of researchers kind of the open source approach. And
that is true, but it also you know, you can
understand the concern on Meta's part, right, like if it
were to get out that a tool made by Meta
was used to generate AI created misinformation in order to
(26:17):
polarize people against one another. That wouldn't look good. Even
though you could argue that's not really Meta's fault because
they never intended that tool to get released out to
the public, you can understand where there'd be the resistance there.
I got a couple of Tesla stories today. Safety regulators
in the United States are once again scrutinizing Tesla in
(26:38):
the wake of reports that for a couple of suv
drivers there's this doozy of an issue that sometimes crops up,
namely that the steering wheel reportedly just plane comes off sometimes.
On Wednesday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or in HTSA,
released documents about investigation into the model Y Tesla suv
(27:04):
and how the steering wheel reportedly can detach from the
steering column. This, as I understand it, is considered a
bad thing. It's not that these steering wheels are just
inherently flimsy, but that in at least two cases, a
bolt that is meant to hold the steering wheel to
the column just wasn't there. It didn't get installed so
(27:28):
the wheel was just attached to the column through a
friction fit. But it's a steering wheel. That means you
turn the wheel and all that turning is like, you know,
wiggling something loose, and over time the wheel does come
loose and ultimately can come off, and that's really scary obviously. Now,
(27:50):
according to the NHTSA, both cases in which a steering
wheel came off happened while the vehicles were still relatively
low in mileage, so it doesn't take very long for
this to manifest. It is hard to say if this
issue has affected a large number of vehicles or if
these two cases that the NHTSA has reported our outliers.
(28:11):
It is possible that this is an issue that has
happened obviously more than once, but not throughout the entire
fleet of SUVs. That being said, if you do own
a model Y SUV and it's relatively new, you might
want to check to see if that bolt is actually
(28:32):
present to hold the steering wheel in place, which might
mean having to take it to a dealership. So just
good to know. The other big story about Tesla involves
a fatal accident back in February. A driver and passenger
in a twenty fourteen Tesla Model S crashed into a
firetruck that was parked along a highway, blocking one of
(28:55):
the lanes. It was acting as a barrier for firefighters
as they will responding to a different crash. The Models
crashed into the firetruck. It killed the Model s's driver,
it critically injured the passenger. Firefighters had to use special
tools to cut the Tesla open to get at the
people inside. Four firefighters had some injuries as well as
(29:16):
a result of this crash, and the NHTSA has launched
an investigation to see if the Model S was in
driver assist mode aka autopilot, or potentially even full self
driving mode. This is part of a larger NHTSA investigation
into accidents involving Tesla's that were in autopilot mode and
then crashed into a parked emergency vehicle on a highway. Apparently,
(29:39):
there have been at least fifteen cases of Tesla's doing
this while in driver assist mode. That obviously raises questions
about how Tesla detects or fails to detect parked emergency
vehicles along highways. News outlets have reached out to Tesla
for comment. But seeing as how Tesla has followed the
Twitter model that Musk set out, namely, it doesn't have
(30:00):
a public relations department, it might be hard to get
a quote. Okay, I got a couple more stories I
want to talk about Before I get to that, Let's
take another quick break. Okay, just before the break, I
(30:21):
was talking a little bit about Musk, and I got
more to say about the Muskie billionaire. He had a
pretty public situation blow up in his face this week
on Twitter. It got ugly. So at the center of
the issue is a well now former Twitter employee named
Holly thor Leafson. Holly was trying to get confirmation on
(30:43):
whether or not he had been fired, because it seemed
like he had, but no one was telling him for sure.
And you might think, Wow, things have got to be
screwy at Twitter if you don't even know if you've
been fired or not. But it gets worse than that.
You see, Holley is not your typical Twitter employee. Back
in twenty twenty one, he ran a creative agency called Ueno,
(31:08):
which Twitter subsequently acquired, and Holly joined Twitter as part
of this deal, and the scuttle butt in the industry,
because Holly's pretty quiet about this. He's indicated some of
this is true, but hasn't given particulars. But the scuttle
butt is that Holly's compensation essentially is pulling from a
very large pool of money that was part of this acquisition. Then,
(31:32):
instead of getting a lump sum for the acquisition of
this company he was brought on as an employee, is
being paid out on the money that would have been
for the acquisition. And if he were to be fired,
Twitter would owe him the rest of that money, unless
it was like a four cause reason, like if Hallie
had done embezzelment or something, then obviously he would not
(31:54):
be contractually obligated that money. But if he was fired
without cause, then he would be due this massive amount
of money that was part of the acquisition. Now let
me give you a little bit more information on this guy.
He has muscular dystrophy and he uses a wheelchair. He's
from Iceland and he has long campaign the land government
(32:15):
and the people for better wheelchair access throughout the country.
He even negotiated his Twitter compensation package so that he
actually pays more taxes to Iceland. As I said, he
pays more in taxes because he believes in the change
he's asking for and he's willing to help pay for it. Anyway,
(32:35):
Holly ended up tweeting to Elon Musk to ask for
clarification because he was frankly getting nowhere through other channels.
Though throughout the process of that back and forth, he
did get confirmation that he had been fired, and Musk,
in his trademarked way, responded poorly. So first he clearly
(32:56):
didn't know who how he was, and he asked what
work how he had been doing. So he responds with that,
and then Elon responded in a response that has subsequently
been deleted in little laughing emojis, as if saying ha,
as if this is anything worth even talking about how
he actually initially didn't even tell him what it was,
(33:16):
because he said, if I talk about it, then I'm
breaking confidentiality agreements. I need to see that those confidentiality
agreements are waved before I talk about what I've been
working on. And Elon then cavalierly waves those agreements. They
consider them put aside. So Hollie then said, and then
this goes back and forth a bit, and then the
(33:36):
next day after it came out, that how he said
he had in fact been fired. Elon must tweeted about
Hallie and said that quote, He's the worst. Sorry, and
he then later would delete that quote or that tweet.
But you know, just because something's been deleted doesn't mean
the internet forgets. The Internet never forgets. Musk also posted quote,
(33:59):
the reality is that this guy, who is independently wealthy,
did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he
had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was
simultaneously tweeting up a storm. Can't say I have a
lot of respect for that now, Halle. He has had
an incredible reputation in the tech field, like the people
(34:21):
who have worked with him have nothing but great things
to say about him. To say that he is highly
admired is putting it lightly, and Musk got considerable pushback
after doing his typical billionaire idiot approach into waiting into
something he doesn't know anything about, and so ultimately he
(34:41):
goes and has a conversation with Halle over the phone
to get a better understanding, and then he tweets a
non apology, essentially as an apology of I was misled.
I heard things that ended up not being true. So
it's not my fault that I said all these stupid
things on Twitter that I've deleted so can't see him anymore. Yeah,
(35:02):
my opinion of Musk is obviously low, and it always
has been, but it just keeps going down, and I
admit that that's my own bias. If you love Musk,
you know, I'm sure you have your reasons. I'm just
I can't communicate this without bringing my own personal opinion
into it. Anyway. What Musk also said was quote better
(35:23):
to talk to people than communicate via tweet end quote,
because he was backpedaling right. He was saying, Oh, turns
out I didn't really understand the situation. I was told
wrong things or things that were true but don't really matter,
like it was all non apology stuff, and then he
says better to talk to people than communicate via tweet.
(35:43):
This is insane, folks, because he's the fricking CEO of Twitter.
He spent billions of dollars to buy Twitter. Twitter is
a communications platform and he's saying it's not good for
communication Asians. What Elon must have just said is Twitter
(36:03):
is not a good choice for doing what Twitter is
supposed to do. This is if you're trying to lead
your company which is already in like dire straits and
trying to lead it to climb out of that, Saying
that it's not good for communicating with people is probably
a bad move anyway. He then said that Hollie is
(36:26):
reconsidering working with Twitter, that the whole firing thing was
a big misunderstanding. It shouldn't have happened. Uh. You know,
Holly has said that he suspects that this is because again,
if he were to be fired, he would be owed
this huge amount of money. He has essentially said, Hey,
I'm ready to walk away from Twitter. You owe me,
So are you gonna pay me? Are you gonna pay
(36:47):
the money though you owe me? That's actually a really
good question because Twitter is currently you know, under fire
for not paying all of its bills like rent and stuff.
So it's a it's not guarantee that Twitter would pay
what was actually contractually owed to this guy, because Twitter
has been not paying a lot of bills so far. Yeah. Terrible,
(37:12):
terrible situation. And once again elon eliminating public relations teams
means that this kind of stuff, when it happens, there's
no one there to step in and handle things, handle
communications in a way that doesn't escalate into a situation
that could have been avoided from the very beginning. But
(37:33):
elon being elon just meant that this got way worse anyway.
I think Holley seems like a really interesting dude, like
has has spent a ton of money to try and
improve his home country, especially for people who are in
a similar situation that he's in. So cheers to you, buddy,
(37:54):
because man, this was just like a redeeculous, drama filled
event that did not need to happen. Finally, this is
a pretty cool news story. It's some science news to
close out this show. Researchers in Australia have isolated an
enzyme found in bacteria that live in the soil. This
(38:17):
particular enzyme can convert hydrogen, the trace amounts of hydrogen
that are in the atmosphere into electricity. That's really cool. Now,
according to what I've read, this enzyme can take the
trace amounts of hydrogen and the atmosphere turn it into
an electrical current. The enzyme is called HUC, which I'm
(38:38):
just going to pronounce this hook And I'm already seeing
a lot of predictions that this enzyme could be the
cornerstone for future technologies that harvest electricity from the air itself.
A lot of headlines talk about making electricity from thin air.
That would be super cool. However, before we just start
(38:59):
imagining Tesla esque future in which we're pulling electricity from
the air itself, we should remember hydrogen does not make
up very much of our atmosphere. Like, when I say
not very much, I'm talking about like point zero zero
zero zero five percent of our atmosphere is hydrogen. And
(39:20):
when you have such tiny amounts present, there's just not
enough fuel there to generate electricity to do anything beyond
powering perhaps very very basic, very low power components. Even
a simple watch would require way more power than what
this enzyme could produce, not because the enzyme isn't impressive,
(39:42):
it is, but just because there's just not enough free
hydrogen in the air. Now. I've talked several times on
the show about how hydrogen tends to bond with other elements,
So getting pure hydrogen usually means you have to take
something that's made of hydrogen bonded with other stuff, and
then pour some energy into it to break those molecular bonds.
(40:03):
The classic example is using electrolysis, where you pass an
electric current through water and this helps break that molecular
bond between hydrogen and oxygen so that you get oxygen
and hydrogen gas. But you know, that's one way to
get hydrogen, but that's not useful for this enzyme, right,
Like the enzyme is meant to pull hydrogen out of
(40:24):
the air. There's just not enough there to do anything
super useful beyond like powering, like I said, extremely low
power features or functions. So I think it's really cool.
I think as the potential for some interesting applications, like
like maybe some very low power sensor type stuff. But
(40:46):
it's not anywhere remotely close to being able to harvest
significance amount of electricity from thin air. And I wanted
to say that because a lot of the headlines I'm
seeing essentially say pulling electricity from thin air. And maybe
in the article it goes into the qualifiers about that,
but if you're just reading headlines, you might walk away
(41:07):
with the assumption that, oh, we're gonna pull electricity out
of the air itself, all of our electrical concerns are gone,
Like we don't have to worry about our energy needs anymore.
Stop pouring money into things like renewables because we can
pull electricity from the air itself. That's not really the case.
So always, always, always use critical thinking when you're looking
(41:29):
at things like science news in particular, because a lot
of science communicators are really good at expressing passion about science,
but if they don't give you the full story, you
might walk away with an accurate perspective on what they're
actually trying to communicate. Okay, that's it for this episode.
(41:50):
Hope you are all well. If you have suggestions for
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(42:12):
can leave a voice message up to thirty seconds in link.
Let me know what you would like to hear, and
I will talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(42:33):
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and How the Tech
are you Today? We're going to cover the tech news
for Thursday, March nine, twenty twenty three. But before I
(00:26):
get to that, I just want to thank bridget Todd,
host of There Are No Girls on the Internet, or
taking over the show yesterday. I hope you enjoyed that episode.
You should definitely check out There Are No Girls on
the Internet. There are three seasons of episodes. Season four
is around the corner, and she does really great work
and talks with some really smart and passionate people, and
(00:52):
if you are one of those folks who gets really
riled up about issues in society in general and tech
in particular, you'll definitely want to tune into that. Okay,
let's get to the tech news, and we're going to
start off by following up on a story I talked
about earlier this week, the sad Tale of Silvergate Bank. So,
(01:13):
before twenty fourteen, this bank was primarily focused on serving
as a financial institution in the real estate market in
southern California, but then it hitched its wagon to the
cryptocurrency market and started to work with crypto clients. So
these markets need to connect to traditional financial institutions to
(01:34):
be useful beyond the insular ecosystem of the crypto world.
It wouldn't do you much good if you had all
of your money in bitcoin, if there were no way
to get your money out of bitcoin. Sure, you could
use bitcoin to purchase some stuff, but the vast majority
of transactions that you would need to make in your
day to day life would likely exist outside of the
(01:58):
cryptocurrency ecosystem. So you need financial institutions to facilitate movement
on and off that ecosystem. Plus companies dealing with crypto
they need banks too, and so Silvergate began to cater
to this world. But as we all know, last year
saw a series of disasters hit the crypto markets. Some
(02:20):
cryptocurrencies imploded, we talked about that earlier this week. Crypto
lenders and exchanges went under, and this ripple effect extended
out beyond the immediate cryptocurrency ecosystem into the classic financial
world in the form of Silvergate. The bank had operated
its own exchange known as Silvergate exchange Network, which the
(02:45):
company has already shut down. It held deposits for various
crypto companies, but in the wake of these crypto disasters
last year, particularly with FTX collapsing, customers withdrew an astonishing
eight point one billion dollars from their silver Gate accounts.
The company Silvergate had a billion dollar loss following this event,
(03:08):
and now it sounds like the actual situation at Silvergate
was even more dire than the PaperWorks seemed to indicate.
This has led the Silvergate Capitol Corporation to announce that
the bank is closing. It will return deposits to customers
and then shut down, and it credited quote recent industry
and regulatory developments end quote as the reason behind closing
(03:31):
up shop. And to be fair, the US government is
expected to look into Silvergate, possibly to see if there
were any hinky things going on between Silvergate and FTX.
But the fact of the matter is, even if nothing
untoward was happening, even if everything was on the up
and up, there was enough momentum and this collapse to
(03:55):
lead to Silvergate's downfall. Now this news is bad for
the entire crypto world. For one thing, the number of
regulated financial institutions that can serve as a bridge for
the crypto world has dropped by one, and there were
not that many to start with. For another, we might
see a rise in crypto companies being willing to make
(04:18):
use of poorly regulated or even unregulated organizations for banking.
And as we've already seen with crypto, a lack of
regulation may not really be the feature, it might really
be the bug. You know, we've had a lot of
crypto enthusiasts say that the lack of regulation is a
(04:38):
good thing, but twenty twenty two really showed that without
regulation there's a lot of potential for things to go sideways. Now,
if everyone's behaving properly, regulation wouldn't be necessary. But that's
kind of true in most cases, regardless of what industry
we're talking about, right, And we know that there are
a lot of folks in the crypto community who are
(04:58):
not having well. They are specifically looking for ways to
take advantage of others. They are opportunists who don't mind
speculating and ramping up and then rug pulling. It's clear
there are plenty of folks who fall into that camp. Now,
there's a third concern about Silvergate's collapse, which is that
(05:21):
as Silvergate was in the eyes of say, regulators and governments,
a quote unquote real financial institution, we're likely to see
governments take a closer look and a deeper concern in
the crypto market in general than we have already seen.
Because it's one thing for these ephemeral ecosystems to crash
(05:42):
in on themselves, right, that's a problem. People lose money,
real people lose real money in the process. So governments
are already concerned about that. But now we have an
example of an established quote unquote real world bank also
having to shut down as a result of the crypto
market involvement. And when the consequences of the crypto world
(06:04):
spill over into the traditional financial world, things can look
really scary for governments and regulators. So, if anything, I
imagine this is going to escalate efforts to regulate the
crypto market, and in the meantime, I suspect we're going
to see more volatility in the crypto world, which I mean,
(06:25):
that's nothing, right, That's like throwing a dart and then
drawing the dartboard around it, So you get a bullseye
to say that there's going to be volatility in the
crypto market. US Senator Ed Margie has promised to reintroduce
a proposed ban for the federal government making use of
facial recognition technology. Now, this comes in the wake of
(06:46):
the American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU, publishing a piece
that says the FBI and the Pentagon are both developing
facial recognition technology, and as we have mentioned dozens of
times on this show, this technology is inherently dangerous. Not
only have we seen multiple instances in which a bias
(07:07):
in the facial recognition model leads to misidentification, particularly for
people of color. This in turns makes these people of
color disproportionately affected by this technology's performance and leads to
all sorts of terrible outcomes. But also, as Ed Markey
points out, the use of such technology implies that all
(07:29):
of us are being treated as if we are already
suspects of a crime. From square one, everyone is being
surveiled as if they are under suspicion. Everyone is being
identified so that they can be tracked, so that when
they do something wrong, we can be taken in. So,
Marky argues that surveillance technology and facial recognition combined have
(07:50):
served as a threat to individual citizens privacy and security.
I find it really hard to find any fault in
that argument. I agree with it. And here in the US,
it's not just that the FBI wants to know who
you are, it's also that it wants to know where
you've been wired. Has a report that the FBI has
been found to circumvent the normal legal process, and in
(08:14):
fact has admitted to this. So normally the FBI would
have to secure some sort of permission in order to
get a look at someone's location data. Typically you're talking
about a warrant process where you have to go to
a court, submit your request, have a judge look it
over and approve it, and then you could go and
(08:35):
get hold of geolocation data. Instead, the FBI has admitted
that in the past it has purchased US location data
just like an advertising company would. In fact, Chris Ferray,
the director of the FBI, said that that's essentially what
the FBI did. It bought data from a broker, just
like it had been an advertising company. And privacy advocates
(09:00):
argue that all data being scooped up online is potentially harmful.
They've been saying this for years, and this is the
kind of thing that they're talking about as being one
of the worst case scenarios, right, not just that private
companies or even publicly traded companies have data about you,
but that you start to see governments take advantage of
loopholes and instead of going through due process in order
(09:24):
to gain permission and have everything be documented when it
comes to tracking people, it just sidesteps that and just
buys the information outright instead of going through what it
should be doing, because there aren't any specific rules or
regulations to stop that from happening. Now, there are some
rules in place that are meant to stop it, but
(09:45):
federally speaking, it's not really been the highest of priorities,
especially for US government agencies. Right. A lot of privacy
laws specifically exclude government agency when it comes to the
protection of private citizen data because here in the US
(10:07):
we tend to favor the law enforcement over the citizens
in some cases. So for the FBI to sidestep a
legal process in order to get desired data that kind
of stuff should concern everybody, regardless of how squeaky clean
you are. The processes are there for a reason, and
it's really to ensure that the government doesn't overstep and
violate a citizen's rights. So when a law enforcement agency
(10:31):
finds a loophole, that's a bad thing. The FBI admitted
this particular instance during a Senate hearing on Global Threats.
That's when Christopher Ray said that it was something that
the FBI had done in the past, but that to
his knowledge, the FBI was not currently doing it at
this very moment. The admission raised concern the Senate, But
(10:51):
the truth of the matter is that the US has
been really lousy when it comes to protecting citizen data.
So I don't know why anyone is surprised by this
or shocked by it. They should be concerned about it,
But to hear people express surprise that this has happened
seems disingenuous to me. But then again, it's also to
(11:12):
be fair, a lot of people who are in politics
in the United States are so out of touch when
it comes to technology, and especially when it comes to
things like data collection and data analysis. Maybe they're genuinely
surprised because of a large blind spot in their knowledge base.
(11:32):
Not that same hearing, FBI's director Ray told the Senate
that TikTok is a potential national security threat, which echoes
the concerns of lawmakers around the world. So Ray claimed
that TikTok could potentially give parent company byte Dance the
ability to quote control data and software on millions of
devices in the US and drive narratives to divide Americans.
(11:54):
End quote. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying Ray
said that specifically. That's how it was worded by Bloomberg.
They did not use quotations, so this is not Ray
saying it, but it's what Bloomberg said Ray said, I
honestly don't know about this claim. I don't even know
if Ray actually said that TikTok could potentially control software
(12:16):
on millions of devices. I haven't seen any security experts
suggest that TikTok has that ability, and I think that
would be a massive headline. I mean, if someone found
that a single app on a device had the capability
to potentially control other software to any real degree, that
would be huge news. And I don't know that Ray
said anything close to that. This could just be Bloomberg
(12:39):
mischaracterizing what Ray was saying. Anyway, I'm not surprised by
this take. Right It's a pretty popular view in the
government right now that TikTok is potentially a surveillance tool
for the Chinese state, and if it isn't right now,
it has that ability in the future. So this kind
(13:01):
of goes along with other things we've been hearing recently
in those circles. Okay, let's get back to geolocation data
tracking before we take our first break. Google has agreed
to pay out a nearly three hundred ninety two million
dollars settlement to end a massive lawsuit involving the state
attorneys general for forty out of the fifty US states.
(13:23):
So the core issue is that these state attorneys general
had argued Google had misled users when they chose to
turn off location data tracking because Google was still collecting
location information about these users. And yeah, that does seem
like there might be a bit of a disconnect, you know, like, oh,
you've turned off location tracking, but don't worry, we're still
(13:44):
keeping track of where you are. You know, you don't
seem to understand what location tracking means and what it
means to turn it off. So Google said that this
issue was related to quote, outdated product policies that we
changed years ago end quote. So they're not denying that
they did this, they're saying they don't do it anymore.
So according to Google, now when you turn off location tracking,
(14:04):
then it for reels would turn it off, at least
for Google anyway. The details of the settlement include requirements
that Google has to meet in order to institute some changes,
such as introducing more alerts whenever a user activates a feature,
whether an app or otherwise that would turn on or
off a location related data tracking component. So that's good,
(14:26):
all right, We're gonna take a quick break. When we
come back, We've got some more tech news to talk about.
We're back. Not that long ago, I talked about Anonymous,
the loosely organized activist group, and according to Taiwan News,
(14:49):
this group has claimed responsibility for hacking into a Chinese
weather balloon that flew over India twice. And then they
hacked into a Chinese website that actually related to a
study abroad program, and there they posted not a manifesto
but are really kind of rambling list of complaints and allegations,
(15:12):
as well as screenshots of the hacked control panel of
the weather balloon. Now, presumably Anonymous decided to target this
balloon after the recent discovery of surveillance balloons of Chinese
origin that flew over North America and eventually the US
shot him down. Anonymous but also throw in some other
reasons on this website, so it starts to almost feel
(15:35):
like a laundry list of unconnected complaints. So one of
the things that they cited was China's response to COVID
nineteen and how the government has treated that over the
last couple of years, So that was part of the
stuff that was included in there, but also there were
(15:56):
bits praising Taiwan. Taiwan and China have a contentious relationship,
to say the least, technically both sides lay claim to
the other. On the web page, Anonymous also railed against
some unrelated stuff that has nothing to do with China,
like Wikipedia and its policies. Anonymous said that women are
(16:17):
underrepresented in Wikipedia articles and that there might be an
issue with bias within Wikipedia, and that the articles occasionally
engage in outright trying to manipulate perspectives in points of view.
There's also some stuff about people who have been killed
by US police and various police incidents, so kind of
(16:42):
a related to Black Lives Matter. There were also parts
arguing that the Soviet Union which hasn't been a thing
for decades now, But how the USS are endangered human
lives and outright killed animals as part of the space race.
So again, it's like this mishmash hodgepodge of complaints that
(17:04):
don't necessarily have a centralized theme that appeared on this
web page. It almost seemed like, well, we've got the opportunity,
let's take it. I don't pretend to understand it, but
it's not a huge surprise, right, if you know anything
about Anonymous, it should not be surprising that it would
be a little disjointed, because Anonymous is such a loose organization,
(17:26):
and it's filled with people who have overlapping but not
necessarily identical motivations and priorities. So you could say, well, yeah,
it seems a bit a bit chaotic, but then so
is the very nature of Anonymous itself. That's part of
(17:47):
its its structure. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that the
German government is considering a ban on Huawei components in
its five G networks, along with components from some other
Chinese companies as well. Now, as I've talked about before,
the US instituted such a ban out of concern that
Huawei could essentially tap into, you know, the communications infrastructure
(18:11):
and then spy on communications within the US. The UK
has taken similar measures now. Huawei has repeatedly denied these
allegations and suspicions, saying that the company has never done
such a thing, that there aren't any backdoors or anything
built into the technology that would allow for it in
the first place. A spokesperson for China's embassy in Germany said,
(18:34):
whahwe follows EU and German laws and there's no reason
to suspect that the company would undermine those laws, and
that China is just very disappointed in Germany right now
and expected better. So this decision hasn't yet been finalized.
Its possible that Germany will not pursue this route. Even
if it does, it would probably take years to fully
(18:56):
decouple Germany's telecommunications infrastructure from Chinese components. But it does
show that there is this growing concern about how technology.
You know, more and more of our technology is ultimately
just meant to direct information somewhere, and that if you
could end up directing that information in a way that
(19:18):
benefits one country at the expense of others, that ends
up being a big concern. Whether or not that's actually
happening is still at question, but even just the potential
for it is enough to give companies pause. And to
be clear, I don't know if Huawei has actively participated
(19:40):
in surveillance on behalf of China, but I do know
that there is a very large concern for that. And
it doesn't help that the Chinese government has essentially given
a directive to citizens and companies that they are to
participate in information gathering activities would benefit China. So whether
(20:03):
it's happening or not, I can't say. I can just
say that there are enough pieces in place that I
can understand the concern. Toward the end of last year,
YouTube changed some rules that ended up having a massive
impact on YouTubers. If you follow any particular channels, you've
probably noticed this, either explicitly as people have actually addressed
(20:24):
this in their videos, or just through the process of
watching it and thinking, huh, something's changed here. So late
last year, YouTube started to really crack down on stuff
like profanity, and any video that included profanity within the
first fifteen seconds of the video starting was automatically made
(20:45):
ineligible for monetization. Didn't matter how severe it was. It
just meant that, you know, if you had a profanity
incident within those first fifteen seconds, boom monetization switched off
for that video. And if you were a YouTuber with
an intro like what the beep is up? This is
your beep, Homeboy, Beep Smith, Beep the beep like that, well,
(21:07):
then you'd be looking at all those videos that start
that way getting demonetized. Because this change wasn't just for
all videos moving forward, it was a retroactive change. YouTube
would scan the content of all videos posted, and if
any of them were detected to include profanity within the
verse fifteen seconds, boom shut off. And a video on
(21:29):
YouTube can have a really long life. You know. Typically
you see your biggest amount of engagement shortly after a
video publishes, but some videos have a really long tail,
especially if something relevant happens in the world that brings
back a video that was recorded a long time ago.
(21:50):
I'm reminded of a video I did years ago at
how Stuff Works about the Transatlantic accent. You know that
old timey radio voice. I did a video about at
and every few years it seems to bubble back up
and get popular again. So while it did pretty well
when it launched. In subsequent years, it would get tons
(22:11):
more views. Well, if I were depending upon monetization of
videos like that, I don't own those videos that belongs
to how stuff works. But if I did, and if
those videos violated a brand new rule from the platform,
well that would have an enormous impact on my ability
to make a living. Right, And because I don't control
(22:32):
the platform, I'm at the whim of that platform. This
is why it's risky to depend upon a third party
in order to reach your audience. If the platform makes
a change to its business model, you end up being affected.
I'm minded of When I talked to Bernie Burns, one
of the founders of Rooster Teeth, this was one of
his big concerns. He said, you don't want to put
all your eggs in the basket that belongs to someone else,
(22:55):
because if they change their mind on how stuff works,
you end up being hit by that. Well, now YouTube
is relaxing some of those rules. They're not getting rhythm,
but they are relaxing them a little bit. Videos that
include moderate profanity within the first fifteen seconds can get
some limited monetization. Videos that don't involve a ton of
(23:18):
profanity and they avoid it within the first seven seconds
are eligible for full monetization. And YouTube is also introducing
a review process to look into creators who have been
hit hard by this change in monetization, where like they
may have seen their income go close to zilch after
the results. The new adjustments went into effect this week,
(23:42):
so hopefully creators who are hit really hard we'll see
some relief. I will admit there's some channels I watch
where there were people who would occasionally use profanity, and
they now tend to beat that stuff out rather than
actually say the words, which they used to do. And
I think the reason for it is because they don't
(24:03):
want to see those monetization switches get hit and then
they take a massive revenue loss. Over at Meta, there's
been a leak. Meta introduced its own large language model
aka Lama, and they opened it up to a very
(24:23):
small group of people. It's like invitation only, case by
case basis and includes like academics and researchers, a few companies,
and they're essentially asking these folks to test the language model,
to provide feedback let Meta help improve it over time.
The company did not release it to the general public,
(24:45):
probably because like all other generative AI models, Meta's approach
is prone to doing stuff that isn't always appropriate. Generative
AI can sometimes spout out misinformation. They compare it speech,
It could call for violence, like it can generally behave
in ways that are not a good look for the
(25:07):
company that spawned it, particularly a large, public facing, publicly
traded company. So Meta did a limited release because this
model is still under development. It is not ready to
be deployed. It's still being built. But someone went and
leaked the model. Word popped up on four Chan, and
(25:29):
initially you started to see torrents and peer to peer
network sharing kind of spread this around, and eventually somebody
put it up on GitHub and people have included instructions
on how to download and access the language model. I'm
sure folks at Meta are stressed out about this, but
some people in the AI industry argue that the tool
(25:52):
is far more likely to improve quickly if it's in
a wide release as opposed to trusting a relatively small
base of researchers kind of the open source approach. And
that is true, but it also you know, you can
understand the concern on Meta's part, right, like if it
were to get out that a tool made by Meta
was used to generate AI created misinformation in order to
(26:17):
polarize people against one another. That wouldn't look good. Even
though you could argue that's not really Meta's fault because
they never intended that tool to get released out to
the public, you can understand where there'd be the resistance there.
I got a couple of Tesla stories today. Safety regulators
in the United States are once again scrutinizing Tesla in
(26:38):
the wake of reports that for a couple of suv
drivers there's this doozy of an issue that sometimes crops up,
namely that the steering wheel reportedly just plane comes off sometimes.
On Wednesday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or in HTSA,
released documents about investigation into the model Y Tesla suv
(27:04):
and how the steering wheel reportedly can detach from the
steering column. This, as I understand it, is considered a
bad thing. It's not that these steering wheels are just
inherently flimsy, but that in at least two cases, a
bolt that is meant to hold the steering wheel to
the column just wasn't there. It didn't get installed so
(27:28):
the wheel was just attached to the column through a
friction fit. But it's a steering wheel. That means you
turn the wheel and all that turning is like, you know,
wiggling something loose, and over time the wheel does come
loose and ultimately can come off, and that's really scary obviously. Now,
(27:50):
according to the NHTSA, both cases in which a steering
wheel came off happened while the vehicles were still relatively
low in mileage, so it doesn't take very long for
this to manifest. It is hard to say if this
issue has affected a large number of vehicles or if
these two cases that the NHTSA has reported our outliers.
(28:11):
It is possible that this is an issue that has
happened obviously more than once, but not throughout the entire
fleet of SUVs. That being said, if you do own
a model Y SUV and it's relatively new, you might
want to check to see if that bolt is actually
(28:32):
present to hold the steering wheel in place, which might
mean having to take it to a dealership. So just
good to know. The other big story about Tesla involves
a fatal accident back in February. A driver and passenger
in a twenty fourteen Tesla Model S crashed into a
firetruck that was parked along a highway, blocking one of
(28:55):
the lanes. It was acting as a barrier for firefighters
as they will responding to a different crash. The Models
crashed into the firetruck. It killed the Model s's driver,
it critically injured the passenger. Firefighters had to use special
tools to cut the Tesla open to get at the
people inside. Four firefighters had some injuries as well as
(29:16):
a result of this crash, and the NHTSA has launched
an investigation to see if the Model S was in
driver assist mode aka autopilot, or potentially even full self
driving mode. This is part of a larger NHTSA investigation
into accidents involving Tesla's that were in autopilot mode and
then crashed into a parked emergency vehicle on a highway. Apparently,
(29:39):
there have been at least fifteen cases of Tesla's doing
this while in driver assist mode. That obviously raises questions
about how Tesla detects or fails to detect parked emergency
vehicles along highways. News outlets have reached out to Tesla
for comment. But seeing as how Tesla has followed the
Twitter model that Musk set out, namely, it doesn't have
(30:00):
a public relations department, it might be hard to get
a quote. Okay, I got a couple more stories I
want to talk about Before I get to that, Let's
take another quick break. Okay, just before the break, I
(30:21):
was talking a little bit about Musk, and I got
more to say about the Muskie billionaire. He had a
pretty public situation blow up in his face this week
on Twitter. It got ugly. So at the center of
the issue is a well now former Twitter employee named
Holly thor Leafson. Holly was trying to get confirmation on
(30:43):
whether or not he had been fired, because it seemed
like he had, but no one was telling him for sure.
And you might think, Wow, things have got to be
screwy at Twitter if you don't even know if you've
been fired or not. But it gets worse than that.
You see, Holley is not your typical Twitter employee. Back
in twenty twenty one, he ran a creative agency called Ueno,
(31:08):
which Twitter subsequently acquired, and Holly joined Twitter as part
of this deal, and the scuttle butt in the industry,
because Holly's pretty quiet about this. He's indicated some of
this is true, but hasn't given particulars. But the scuttle
butt is that Holly's compensation essentially is pulling from a
very large pool of money that was part of this acquisition. Then,
(31:32):
instead of getting a lump sum for the acquisition of
this company he was brought on as an employee, is
being paid out on the money that would have been
for the acquisition. And if he were to be fired,
Twitter would owe him the rest of that money, unless
it was like a four cause reason, like if Hallie
had done embezzelment or something, then obviously he would not
(31:54):
be contractually obligated that money. But if he was fired
without cause, then he would be due this massive amount
of money that was part of the acquisition. Now let
me give you a little bit more information on this guy.
He has muscular dystrophy and he uses a wheelchair. He's
from Iceland and he has long campaign the land government
(32:15):
and the people for better wheelchair access throughout the country.
He even negotiated his Twitter compensation package so that he
actually pays more taxes to Iceland. As I said, he
pays more in taxes because he believes in the change
he's asking for and he's willing to help pay for it. Anyway,
(32:35):
Holly ended up tweeting to Elon Musk to ask for
clarification because he was frankly getting nowhere through other channels.
Though throughout the process of that back and forth, he
did get confirmation that he had been fired, and Musk,
in his trademarked way, responded poorly. So first he clearly
(32:56):
didn't know who how he was, and he asked what
work how he had been doing. So he responds with that,
and then Elon responded in a response that has subsequently
been deleted in little laughing emojis, as if saying ha,
as if this is anything worth even talking about how
he actually initially didn't even tell him what it was,
(33:16):
because he said, if I talk about it, then I'm
breaking confidentiality agreements. I need to see that those confidentiality
agreements are waved before I talk about what I've been
working on. And Elon then cavalierly waves those agreements. They
consider them put aside. So Hollie then said, and then
this goes back and forth a bit, and then the
(33:36):
next day after it came out, that how he said
he had in fact been fired. Elon must tweeted about
Hallie and said that quote, He's the worst. Sorry, and
he then later would delete that quote or that tweet.
But you know, just because something's been deleted doesn't mean
the internet forgets. The Internet never forgets. Musk also posted quote,
(33:59):
the reality is that this guy, who is independently wealthy,
did no actual work, claimed as his excuse that he
had a disability that prevented him from typing, yet was
simultaneously tweeting up a storm. Can't say I have a
lot of respect for that now, Halle. He has had
an incredible reputation in the tech field, like the people
(34:21):
who have worked with him have nothing but great things
to say about him. To say that he is highly
admired is putting it lightly, and Musk got considerable pushback
after doing his typical billionaire idiot approach into waiting into
something he doesn't know anything about, and so ultimately he
(34:41):
goes and has a conversation with Halle over the phone
to get a better understanding, and then he tweets a
non apology, essentially as an apology of I was misled.
I heard things that ended up not being true. So
it's not my fault that I said all these stupid
things on Twitter that I've deleted so can't see him anymore. Yeah,
(35:02):
my opinion of Musk is obviously low, and it always
has been, but it just keeps going down, and I
admit that that's my own bias. If you love Musk,
you know, I'm sure you have your reasons. I'm just
I can't communicate this without bringing my own personal opinion
into it. Anyway. What Musk also said was quote better
(35:23):
to talk to people than communicate via tweet end quote,
because he was backpedaling right. He was saying, Oh, turns
out I didn't really understand the situation. I was told
wrong things or things that were true but don't really matter,
like it was all non apology stuff, and then he
says better to talk to people than communicate via tweet.
(35:43):
This is insane, folks, because he's the fricking CEO of Twitter.
He spent billions of dollars to buy Twitter. Twitter is
a communications platform and he's saying it's not good for
communication Asians. What Elon must have just said is Twitter
(36:03):
is not a good choice for doing what Twitter is
supposed to do. This is if you're trying to lead
your company which is already in like dire straits and
trying to lead it to climb out of that, Saying
that it's not good for communicating with people is probably
a bad move anyway. He then said that Hollie is
(36:26):
reconsidering working with Twitter, that the whole firing thing was
a big misunderstanding. It shouldn't have happened. Uh. You know,
Holly has said that he suspects that this is because again,
if he were to be fired, he would be owed
this huge amount of money. He has essentially said, Hey,
I'm ready to walk away from Twitter. You owe me,
So are you gonna pay me? Are you gonna pay
(36:47):
the money though you owe me? That's actually a really
good question because Twitter is currently you know, under fire
for not paying all of its bills like rent and stuff.
So it's a it's not guarantee that Twitter would pay
what was actually contractually owed to this guy, because Twitter
has been not paying a lot of bills so far. Yeah. Terrible,
(37:12):
terrible situation. And once again elon eliminating public relations teams
means that this kind of stuff, when it happens, there's
no one there to step in and handle things, handle
communications in a way that doesn't escalate into a situation
that could have been avoided from the very beginning. But
(37:33):
elon being elon just meant that this got way worse anyway.
I think Holley seems like a really interesting dude, like
has has spent a ton of money to try and
improve his home country, especially for people who are in
a similar situation that he's in. So cheers to you, buddy,
(37:54):
because man, this was just like a redeeculous, drama filled
event that did not need to happen. Finally, this is
a pretty cool news story. It's some science news to
close out this show. Researchers in Australia have isolated an
enzyme found in bacteria that live in the soil. This
(38:17):
particular enzyme can convert hydrogen, the trace amounts of hydrogen
that are in the atmosphere into electricity. That's really cool. Now,
according to what I've read, this enzyme can take the
trace amounts of hydrogen and the atmosphere turn it into
an electrical current. The enzyme is called HUC, which I'm
(38:38):
just going to pronounce this hook And I'm already seeing
a lot of predictions that this enzyme could be the
cornerstone for future technologies that harvest electricity from the air itself.
A lot of headlines talk about making electricity from thin air.
That would be super cool. However, before we just start
(38:59):
imagining Tesla esque future in which we're pulling electricity from
the air itself, we should remember hydrogen does not make
up very much of our atmosphere. Like, when I say
not very much, I'm talking about like point zero zero
zero zero five percent of our atmosphere is hydrogen. And
(39:20):
when you have such tiny amounts present, there's just not
enough fuel there to generate electricity to do anything beyond
powering perhaps very very basic, very low power components. Even
a simple watch would require way more power than what
this enzyme could produce, not because the enzyme isn't impressive,
(39:42):
it is, but just because there's just not enough free
hydrogen in the air. Now. I've talked several times on
the show about how hydrogen tends to bond with other elements,
So getting pure hydrogen usually means you have to take
something that's made of hydrogen bonded with other stuff, and
then pour some energy into it to break those molecular bonds.
(40:03):
The classic example is using electrolysis, where you pass an
electric current through water and this helps break that molecular
bond between hydrogen and oxygen so that you get oxygen
and hydrogen gas. But you know, that's one way to
get hydrogen, but that's not useful for this enzyme, right,
Like the enzyme is meant to pull hydrogen out of
(40:24):
the air. There's just not enough there to do anything
super useful beyond like powering, like I said, extremely low
power features or functions. So I think it's really cool.
I think as the potential for some interesting applications, like
like maybe some very low power sensor type stuff. But
(40:46):
it's not anywhere remotely close to being able to harvest
significance amount of electricity from thin air. And I wanted
to say that because a lot of the headlines I'm
seeing essentially say pulling electricity from thin air. And maybe
in the article it goes into the qualifiers about that,
but if you're just reading headlines, you might walk away
(41:07):
with the assumption that, oh, we're gonna pull electricity out
of the air itself, all of our electrical concerns are gone,
Like we don't have to worry about our energy needs anymore.
Stop pouring money into things like renewables because we can
pull electricity from the air itself. That's not really the case.
So always, always, always use critical thinking when you're looking
(41:29):
at things like science news in particular, because a lot
of science communicators are really good at expressing passion about science,
but if they don't give you the full story, you
might walk away with an accurate perspective on what they're
actually trying to communicate. Okay, that's it for this episode.
(41:50):
Hope you are all well. If you have suggestions for
future topics of tech stuff, reach out to me on Twitter.
You can tweet me at tech stuff HSW or you
can download the iHeartRadio app free to download, free to use.
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(42:12):
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Let me know what you would like to hear, and
I will talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
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(42:33):
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