May 3, 2024 • 20 mins
Elon Musk starts making drastic cuts at Tesla -- is he trying to salvage his enormous compensation package? Plus, Microsoft tells the cops that they aren't allowed to use Asure services for facial recognition. And much more!
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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 iHeart Podcasts and how the
tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
the week ending on Friday, May third, twenty twenty four.
(00:26):
And kicking things off, we've got a devastating story involving
ransomware hackers and the largest health insurance company in the world,
at least as measured by revenue. We're talking about United Health,
and that company's CEO, Andrew Whitty, faced some pretty tough
questions from US senators this week due to hackers stealing
(00:48):
a quote unquote substantial amount of sensitive medical data belonging
to anywhere from one third to half of all Americans,
which is a big o' yaalza. Okay. So United Health
is obviously a huge player in health insurance, the hugest
(01:09):
you could argue. And on top of that, back in
early twenty twenty three, United Health acquired another health company.
It's a company that was called Change Healthcare. Now, this
company specialized in payment platforms for health services and in
fact handled payments for like fifty percent of all medical
(01:31):
payments in the United States, but apparently Change Healthcare's computer
systems weren't really hardened properly against hacker intrusions, and sure enough,
some folks from the infamous hacker group Alpha, which is
the same group that helped infiltrate MGM resorts last year,
they managed to use some stolen credentials to access a
(01:54):
Change Healthcare server in February of this year. And then
that we go from there. So they apparently took a
crap ton of data and whity claimed that the server
had been scheduled to be upgraded to bring it security
up to par, that this wasn't really United Health's fault,
This was an issue with Change Healthcare, you know, the
(02:16):
company that now was part of United Health, and that
this group of servers were meant to be upgraded so
that they would be brought on par with United Health
security practices. And you know that might be true, but
we all know you're only as secure as your weakest link,
(02:37):
which makes me wonder why United Health didn't hold off
on integrating the Change Healthcare servers into their overall system
until after these security upgrades took place. I mean, that
to me would make sense right, like, you don't want
to incorporate that and bring it under the umbrella of
everything else. Even if it only affected change healthcare systems,
(02:57):
that would have been enough. But to potentially get access
to other things is even worse. So this is not
as bad as what would follow. In my opinion, maybe
it is as bad. This is equally as bad, I'll say,
because United Health went ahead and paid the ransom twenty
two million dollars worth of cryptocurrency. Now, I know I'm
(03:18):
a broken record about this, but paying ransoms is a
bad idea. It reinforces that this kind of attack is profitable,
that it works if you pay them. That just sends
the message of hey, this is a way to get
stink and rich. This means that we're just going to
see more of these attacks in the future. It just
encourages future attacks. It doesn't help. And worse than that,
(03:41):
as United Health is now discovering, paying the ransom doesn't
necessarily mean that the attackers are going to play ball
and make good on their promises. So lawmakers grilled Witty
about the potential disruptions in American health care that can
result due to this attack, not to mention the implications
of all that data that was stolen. You know, you
got to remember this is the same governmental body that
(04:02):
recently came down hard on TikTok for potentially siphoning American
data to China. Now, when you think about the stuff
that's on TikTok, you're like, Okay, well that could be
like location data things like that. But most of the
content on TikTok and stuff like Prank's stunts and dances,
so at least on a surface level, it seems pretty harmless.
(04:23):
But now we're talking about a case where sensitive medical
data had been stolen, So you figure this has got
to be a much bigger deal, right, This is way
worse than potentially a siphon line of data to China.
You got to have your priorities. Something tells me that
Whitty is going to end up just being fine by
the end of the day. I mean, he's the CEO
(04:45):
of one of the largest companies in the world by revenue.
But hey, I'm willing for the Senate to prove me wrong. Now.
In the ongoing tale of consolidating media companies, Sony Pictures
Entertainment has made a move to acquire Paramount Global for
the princely sum of twenty six billion dollars cash. That's
(05:06):
billion with a B. Sony is doing this in partnership
with Apollo Global Management, which is a retirement solutions and
asset management company. Honestly, when I read a description like
that for what a company does, it's so vague. It
makes me think of a friend of mine who used
to say his family was in quote unquote waste management business,
and he would actually do the air quotes while saying it.
(05:28):
So a shout out to you, Frankie big House. Interestingly,
Paramount is already in acquisition talks with another media company
called sky Dance. As I understand it, the date for
that agreement, whether it goes forward or not, ends today.
Sky Dance, in the Grand Scheme of Things, is a
relatively upstart media company. It traces its history back to
(05:48):
two thousand and six. Sky Dance in Paramount and I
have been in partnership on and off for many years.
They've worked together quite a bit. But anyway, Paramountain has
been going through quite the shakeup recently. Earlier this week,
the media conglomerate said goodbye to its now former CEO,
Bob Bakish and replaced him with a triumvirate of executives
(06:09):
that includes George Cheeks, who's president and CEO of CBS,
Chris McCarthy who's the head of MTV and Showtime and
several other networks, and Brian Robbins, the studio chief of
Paramount Pictures. Now, the industry as a whole, of traditional
media has clearly really been struggling. You know. Cord cutters
have been ditching cable packages and streaming services are trying
(06:32):
to find a way to stand out from the crowd
while also creating a profitable business, which is really hard
in that space. I wouldn't necessarily call either Paramount or
Sony a sinking ship. I think that's overstating things. But
considering the volatility that's in the media landscape right now,
this feels kind of like a bunch of big boats
(06:52):
that are caught in very rough seas hoping that by
lashing themselves together they might weather the storm more effectively. Plus,
we can't let Disney own everything. Right over at Tesla,
Elon Musk has been making some brutal cuts in personnel.
As QZ dot COM's William Gavin puts it, the cuts
(07:12):
have affected quote almost every corner of the company, from
senior level executives to summer interns just weeks away from employment.
In the quote that's from an article that's titled not
even Tesla interns are saved from elon Musk's cost cutting.
The cuts are in line with Musk's announcement that the
company would downsize by around ten percent, and that in
(07:36):
itself reportedly is a much smaller cut, like half of
what Musk initially wanted to do. One department that was
absolutely eliminated by these cuts is Tesla's supercharger division. That
alone is a group that had five hundred people in it.
This is the department that created the standards for charging
Tesla's They secured build out for hundreds of charging stations.
(07:59):
They worked with other auto manufacturers to get them to
adopt Tesla's charging methodology as something kind of like an
industry standard. Not only did Tesla shut down that whole department,
it has also backed out of agreements to build charging
stations and crucial areas such as New York City. To
completely eliminate the supercharger group seems a bit perplexing. Tesla
(08:20):
arguably had a dominant position in charging technologies and could
have leveraged that moving forward. It could have been a
really big cornerstone of Tesla's business. So why make such
drastic cuts. Well, Tesla as a whole has seen a
pretty dramatic decline in sales numbers recently, and cynically. There's
also the matter of Elon Musk's pay package. That's a
(08:42):
forty seven billion dollar compensation package on the line, and
Musk could be looking at making these cuts until you know,
like Tesla is bleeding from a thousand cuts in an
effort to secure that MOO law shareholders will actually get
to vote on that later this year, and I can
kind of understand that motivation. He essentially lit a pile
of forty four billion dollars of cash on fire after
(09:05):
he bought Twitter and then did his best to reduce
its value to nothing, so he needs to refresh the
cash pile somehow. Plus judges keep having this nasty habit
of striking down his compensation package and denying him billions
of dollars. Anyway, I'm not going to spend any time
worrying about Elon Musk's financial future. I'm wishing all the
folks who are affected by these recent cuts the absolute
(09:27):
best of luck in finding gainful and satisfying employment elsewhere. Okay,
we've got several other news stories to get through before
we get to that. Let's take a quick break. We're back,
(09:48):
and you know. Tesla is not the only big tech
company cutting jobs this week. CNBC reports that Google is
laying off hundreds of core employees from around two hundred.
It sounds like and for some of these roles, Google
will shift responsibilities to new team members, except these team
members will be in places like Mexico and India. This
falls in line with earlier cuts across Alphabets companies. Just
(10:11):
a reminder, Alphabets, the holding company that sits above Google,
as well as other companies like YouTube and Google. Management
has messaged that quote announcements of this sort may leave
many of you feeling uncertain or frustrated end quote, which
is both an understatement and definitely true. But management has
also said these changes are supposed to be aligned with
(10:32):
the company's mission and goals. And I suppose if the
mission is to shift work to labor forces that work
for much lower salaries. This is true because labor is
far less expensive in Mexico and India than in the
United states, Google is giving affected employees the chance to
apply for other jobs within the company or to use
outplacement services. So you know, I guess that's something. Speaking
(10:54):
of Google, one of the company's massive anti trust lawsuits,
and yes there's more than one, is wrapping up with
closing arguments today. It's the second day of closing arguments.
It's the conclusion of this long trial. This particular lawsuit
revolves around Google Search and the various ways Google has
maneuvered to get Search featured as the default search engine
(11:16):
on as many platforms as is possible. So the US
Department of Justice argues that Google used its considerable advantage
to restrain other competitors from serving as actual competition, thus
a monopolistic move. One example is how Google secures contracts
with handset manufacturers to make Google Search the default search
(11:36):
engine on the device. Now, Google's counter argument is that
it's possible to change default settings, So this really isn't
the big deal everyone says it is. But then if
it's not a big deal, why would Google spend billions
of dollars to secure these agreements? And it does spend billions,
and The New York Times revealed that in twenty twenty
one alone, Google forked over around eighteen billion dollars to
(12:00):
Apple in return for being the default search engine on
iOS devices. That's a lot of money. And while Google
has claimed that the reason why other companies agreed to
have Google as the default is that Google Search is
the best search engine out there, they're saying, hey, we're
not being unfair, we just happened to make the best product.
The counter to this is that even if there were
(12:22):
a search engine out there that would be as good
as Google, the use of that alternative is unlikely because
Google is offering these massive deals, right, these huge billion
dollar deals to have Google as the default search engine.
So if you had one that was as good or
maybe even superior to Google Search, companies still wouldn't go
(12:42):
with that because it doesn't come along with billions of dollars. Now,
by the time you hear this episode, the arguments may
have concluded and the judge will decide if the accusations
have merit, and if that happens, then a separate case
will be launched to decide what repercussions are to follow.
So we will continue with this later on. Plus, hey,
we still have another anti trust lawsuit to talk about
(13:04):
in the future switching to telecommunications companies. The US Federal
Communications Commission, or FCC, has handed down large fines to
four big telecom companies, specifically Verizon, AT and T, Sprint
and T Mobile, the big four in the United States.
So why are these companies facing huge fines while they
(13:26):
are alleged to have illegally shared geolocation data of their users,
their customers, essentially to third parties without first getting the
consent of those customers. More specifically, the charges that the
carriers sold geolocation data to aggregator companies, and these aggregators
then turned around and sold the information to other third
(13:48):
party data brokers. And according to the FCC, the telecoms
were trying to pass the buck as far as gaining
consent from users is concerned. Their strategy was to essentially
shift that responsibility further downstream to the data aggregators, which
you know didn't get that consent. The individual fines ranged
from twelve million that's for Sprint they pay the least
(14:10):
up to eighty million, which is for TE Mobile. And
now we get into the actually crime does pay quite well.
In fact, part of our news stories. First up, we
have the crime of tax evasion and mail fraud. The
accused is Roger Vere. He has the charming nickname of
Bitcoin Jesus, and as that name implies, Ver holds quite
(14:33):
a lot of bitcoin. Back in twenty fourteen, Ver renounced
his US citizenship to become a citizen of Saint Kitts
and Nevis. However, at the time when he did this,
at least according to the indictment, he happened to hold
more than one hundred and thirty thousand bitcoins and yet
did not report this to the United States before ditching
(14:55):
the country for the Tropics. And the US government really
likes to take its share of tax and Ver's share
reportedly is somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty million dollars.
So Spanish authorities arrested Verre on behalf of the United
States last weekend while Ver was in Spain, and now
the US wants to extradite him back to the United
States and hold him accountable for skipping town without paying
(15:17):
the fees. First, Honestly, I think Ver's going to be
just fine. I mean, at least assuming he still has
that significant cash of bitcoins, because if you take it
by today's value. You're talking about more than seven billion
dollars worth of money or wealth if you prefer, then
so fifty million, while a not inconsiderable sum, is barely
a drop in the bucket compared to the overall wealth
(15:40):
this guy has. Here's another crime that seemed to pay well,
at least up to a point. Story. It's a story
about owner oxoy. He lives in Miami, Florida, and now
he has been sentenced for his crime of passing off
shoddy technology as genuine networking gear from the company Cisco.
(16:01):
So Cisco has a valuable brand, right like they have
a reputation for their work their products. So Oxoi was
arrested way back in twenty twenty two for running a
scam that had lasted for several years. He would buy
up cheap components from places like China, cram these components
into cases that look like legitimate Cisco hardware, and then
(16:23):
sell this junk off to various customers for way more
than what he paid, though presumably under the market price
for actual legitimate Cisco hardware. And he did this from
twenty fourteen to twenty twenty two. He made hundreds of
millions of dollars in the process. Among his clientele was
the US military, and that's really where he stuck his
(16:44):
nose in it, because once his crimes were discovered, the
US government really began to close in on him, though
they did take their time anyway. The whole drama has
now played out because Oxoy faces six and a half
years in prison, one hundred million dollars in fines to Cisco,
and an under termined amount that will be paid to
the various customers he hoodwinked with shoddy imitations of Cisco hardware.
(17:06):
But hey, he had a pretty good run on the
flip side of crime. Let's talk about how Microsoft has
made it clear that police departments are not to use
products relying on Azure Open Eye services for the purposes
of facial recognition technology. So essentially, Microsoft is saying it
doesn't want to be a party to that kind of
thing and added languages in its terms and services that
(17:27):
make it clear that police forces around the world are
not authorized to leverage AI technologies running on Azure services
for the purposes of facial recognition. That's interesting to me
in a couple of ways. We all probably know that
facial recognition technologies as a whole have a lot of problems,
including false positives for people who belong to certain ethnic groups,
(17:48):
typically non white ethnic groups, and that facial recognition technology
therefore contributes to a real social problem of authorities unfairly
and unjustifiably placing hard chips on these populations. But this
also means Microsoft is kind of tacitly implying that there's
a real weakness in a technology that the company is
(18:09):
simultaneously spending billions of dollars developing, which is kind of
like saying, hey, AI is the future, but uh, you know,
don't use it for real important stuff because bad things
can happen. It seems like mixed messages, is what I'm saying.
But anyway, you could argue this is the responsible thing
to do, or you could be more cynical and probably
(18:29):
more realistic and say that Microsoft adding this language and
is really just an effort for the company to follow
the old CYA strategy. You know, if the company says
police are not supposed to use this for facial recognition,
then it's not Microsoft's fault if and when some police
force does exactly that, because they can say we told
them not to and I've got some reading recommendations for
(18:52):
you all before I sign off. First up is Sharon
Harding's piece for Ours Technica titled all the Ways Streaming
Services are aggravating their sscribers this Week. Obviously, the piece
highlights some frustrating decisions that the operators of various streaming
services have made that seem designed to alienate their customers,
while more traditional forms of media continue to circle the
(19:12):
drain fun times. Secondly, I recommend the piece by Andrew
Griffin of The Independent. It is titled humans Now share
the Web equally with bots, report warrens amid fears of
the dead Internet now. I mentioned in a recent Tech
Stuff that a report from a cybersecurity firm says that
around forty nine point six percent of all traffic on
(19:34):
the Internet in twenty twenty three came from bots. So
this article explores what that actually means, including the so
called dead Internet theory, which I may have to do
a full episode on in the near future. And it
just is this idea about the Internet becoming this weird
place where bots are creating and trafficking and consuming all
the information across the system, and it becomes increasingly useless
(19:56):
for actual human people. That's it for me for this week.
I hope you are all well, and I'll talk to
you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(20:19):
or wherever you listen to 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 iHeart Podcasts and how the
tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
the week ending on Friday, May third, twenty twenty four.
(00:26):
And kicking things off, we've got a devastating story involving
ransomware hackers and the largest health insurance company in the world,
at least as measured by revenue. We're talking about United Health,
and that company's CEO, Andrew Whitty, faced some pretty tough
questions from US senators this week due to hackers stealing
(00:48):
a quote unquote substantial amount of sensitive medical data belonging
to anywhere from one third to half of all Americans,
which is a big o' yaalza. Okay. So United Health
is obviously a huge player in health insurance, the hugest
(01:09):
you could argue. And on top of that, back in
early twenty twenty three, United Health acquired another health company.
It's a company that was called Change Healthcare. Now, this
company specialized in payment platforms for health services and in
fact handled payments for like fifty percent of all medical
(01:31):
payments in the United States, but apparently Change Healthcare's computer
systems weren't really hardened properly against hacker intrusions, and sure enough,
some folks from the infamous hacker group Alpha, which is
the same group that helped infiltrate MGM resorts last year,
they managed to use some stolen credentials to access a
(01:54):
Change Healthcare server in February of this year. And then
that we go from there. So they apparently took a
crap ton of data and whity claimed that the server
had been scheduled to be upgraded to bring it security
up to par, that this wasn't really United Health's fault,
This was an issue with Change Healthcare, you know, the
(02:16):
company that now was part of United Health, and that
this group of servers were meant to be upgraded so
that they would be brought on par with United Health
security practices. And you know that might be true, but
we all know you're only as secure as your weakest link,
(02:37):
which makes me wonder why United Health didn't hold off
on integrating the Change Healthcare servers into their overall system
until after these security upgrades took place. I mean, that
to me would make sense right, like, you don't want
to incorporate that and bring it under the umbrella of
everything else. Even if it only affected change healthcare systems,
(02:57):
that would have been enough. But to potentially get access
to other things is even worse. So this is not
as bad as what would follow. In my opinion, maybe
it is as bad. This is equally as bad, I'll say,
because United Health went ahead and paid the ransom twenty
two million dollars worth of cryptocurrency. Now, I know I'm
(03:18):
a broken record about this, but paying ransoms is a
bad idea. It reinforces that this kind of attack is profitable,
that it works if you pay them. That just sends
the message of hey, this is a way to get
stink and rich. This means that we're just going to
see more of these attacks in the future. It just
encourages future attacks. It doesn't help. And worse than that,
(03:41):
as United Health is now discovering, paying the ransom doesn't
necessarily mean that the attackers are going to play ball
and make good on their promises. So lawmakers grilled Witty
about the potential disruptions in American health care that can
result due to this attack, not to mention the implications
of all that data that was stolen. You know, you
got to remember this is the same governmental body that
(04:02):
recently came down hard on TikTok for potentially siphoning American
data to China. Now, when you think about the stuff
that's on TikTok, you're like, Okay, well that could be
like location data things like that. But most of the
content on TikTok and stuff like Prank's stunts and dances,
so at least on a surface level, it seems pretty harmless.
(04:23):
But now we're talking about a case where sensitive medical
data had been stolen, So you figure this has got
to be a much bigger deal, right, This is way
worse than potentially a siphon line of data to China.
You got to have your priorities. Something tells me that
Whitty is going to end up just being fine by
the end of the day. I mean, he's the CEO
(04:45):
of one of the largest companies in the world by revenue.
But hey, I'm willing for the Senate to prove me wrong. Now.
In the ongoing tale of consolidating media companies, Sony Pictures
Entertainment has made a move to acquire Paramount Global for
the princely sum of twenty six billion dollars cash. That's
(05:06):
billion with a B. Sony is doing this in partnership
with Apollo Global Management, which is a retirement solutions and
asset management company. Honestly, when I read a description like
that for what a company does, it's so vague. It
makes me think of a friend of mine who used
to say his family was in quote unquote waste management business,
and he would actually do the air quotes while saying it.
(05:28):
So a shout out to you, Frankie big House. Interestingly,
Paramount is already in acquisition talks with another media company
called sky Dance. As I understand it, the date for
that agreement, whether it goes forward or not, ends today.
Sky Dance, in the Grand Scheme of Things, is a
relatively upstart media company. It traces its history back to
(05:48):
two thousand and six. Sky Dance in Paramount and I
have been in partnership on and off for many years.
They've worked together quite a bit. But anyway, Paramountain has
been going through quite the shakeup recently. Earlier this week,
the media conglomerate said goodbye to its now former CEO,
Bob Bakish and replaced him with a triumvirate of executives
(06:09):
that includes George Cheeks, who's president and CEO of CBS,
Chris McCarthy who's the head of MTV and Showtime and
several other networks, and Brian Robbins, the studio chief of
Paramount Pictures. Now, the industry as a whole, of traditional
media has clearly really been struggling. You know. Cord cutters
have been ditching cable packages and streaming services are trying
(06:32):
to find a way to stand out from the crowd
while also creating a profitable business, which is really hard
in that space. I wouldn't necessarily call either Paramount or
Sony a sinking ship. I think that's overstating things. But
considering the volatility that's in the media landscape right now,
this feels kind of like a bunch of big boats
(06:52):
that are caught in very rough seas hoping that by
lashing themselves together they might weather the storm more effectively. Plus,
we can't let Disney own everything. Right over at Tesla,
Elon Musk has been making some brutal cuts in personnel.
As QZ dot COM's William Gavin puts it, the cuts
(07:12):
have affected quote almost every corner of the company, from
senior level executives to summer interns just weeks away from employment.
In the quote that's from an article that's titled not
even Tesla interns are saved from elon Musk's cost cutting.
The cuts are in line with Musk's announcement that the
company would downsize by around ten percent, and that in
(07:36):
itself reportedly is a much smaller cut, like half of
what Musk initially wanted to do. One department that was
absolutely eliminated by these cuts is Tesla's supercharger division. That
alone is a group that had five hundred people in it.
This is the department that created the standards for charging
Tesla's They secured build out for hundreds of charging stations.
(07:59):
They worked with other auto manufacturers to get them to
adopt Tesla's charging methodology as something kind of like an
industry standard. Not only did Tesla shut down that whole department,
it has also backed out of agreements to build charging
stations and crucial areas such as New York City. To
completely eliminate the supercharger group seems a bit perplexing. Tesla
(08:20):
arguably had a dominant position in charging technologies and could
have leveraged that moving forward. It could have been a
really big cornerstone of Tesla's business. So why make such
drastic cuts. Well, Tesla as a whole has seen a
pretty dramatic decline in sales numbers recently, and cynically. There's
also the matter of Elon Musk's pay package. That's a
(08:42):
forty seven billion dollar compensation package on the line, and
Musk could be looking at making these cuts until you know,
like Tesla is bleeding from a thousand cuts in an
effort to secure that MOO law shareholders will actually get
to vote on that later this year, and I can
kind of understand that motivation. He essentially lit a pile
of forty four billion dollars of cash on fire after
(09:05):
he bought Twitter and then did his best to reduce
its value to nothing, so he needs to refresh the
cash pile somehow. Plus judges keep having this nasty habit
of striking down his compensation package and denying him billions
of dollars. Anyway, I'm not going to spend any time
worrying about Elon Musk's financial future. I'm wishing all the
folks who are affected by these recent cuts the absolute
(09:27):
best of luck in finding gainful and satisfying employment elsewhere. Okay,
we've got several other news stories to get through before
we get to that. Let's take a quick break. We're back,
(09:48):
and you know. Tesla is not the only big tech
company cutting jobs this week. CNBC reports that Google is
laying off hundreds of core employees from around two hundred.
It sounds like and for some of these roles, Google
will shift responsibilities to new team members, except these team
members will be in places like Mexico and India. This
falls in line with earlier cuts across Alphabets companies. Just
(10:11):
a reminder, Alphabets, the holding company that sits above Google,
as well as other companies like YouTube and Google. Management
has messaged that quote announcements of this sort may leave
many of you feeling uncertain or frustrated end quote, which
is both an understatement and definitely true. But management has
also said these changes are supposed to be aligned with
(10:32):
the company's mission and goals. And I suppose if the
mission is to shift work to labor forces that work
for much lower salaries. This is true because labor is
far less expensive in Mexico and India than in the
United states, Google is giving affected employees the chance to
apply for other jobs within the company or to use
outplacement services. So you know, I guess that's something. Speaking
(10:54):
of Google, one of the company's massive anti trust lawsuits,
and yes there's more than one, is wrapping up with
closing arguments today. It's the second day of closing arguments.
It's the conclusion of this long trial. This particular lawsuit
revolves around Google Search and the various ways Google has
maneuvered to get Search featured as the default search engine
(11:16):
on as many platforms as is possible. So the US
Department of Justice argues that Google used its considerable advantage
to restrain other competitors from serving as actual competition, thus
a monopolistic move. One example is how Google secures contracts
with handset manufacturers to make Google Search the default search
(11:36):
engine on the device. Now, Google's counter argument is that
it's possible to change default settings, So this really isn't
the big deal everyone says it is. But then if
it's not a big deal, why would Google spend billions
of dollars to secure these agreements? And it does spend billions,
and The New York Times revealed that in twenty twenty
one alone, Google forked over around eighteen billion dollars to
(12:00):
Apple in return for being the default search engine on
iOS devices. That's a lot of money. And while Google
has claimed that the reason why other companies agreed to
have Google as the default is that Google Search is
the best search engine out there, they're saying, hey, we're
not being unfair, we just happened to make the best product.
The counter to this is that even if there were
(12:22):
a search engine out there that would be as good
as Google, the use of that alternative is unlikely because
Google is offering these massive deals, right, these huge billion
dollar deals to have Google as the default search engine.
So if you had one that was as good or
maybe even superior to Google Search, companies still wouldn't go
(12:42):
with that because it doesn't come along with billions of dollars. Now,
by the time you hear this episode, the arguments may
have concluded and the judge will decide if the accusations
have merit, and if that happens, then a separate case
will be launched to decide what repercussions are to follow.
So we will continue with this later on. Plus, hey,
we still have another anti trust lawsuit to talk about
(13:04):
in the future switching to telecommunications companies. The US Federal
Communications Commission, or FCC, has handed down large fines to
four big telecom companies, specifically Verizon, AT and T, Sprint
and T Mobile, the big four in the United States.
So why are these companies facing huge fines while they
(13:26):
are alleged to have illegally shared geolocation data of their users,
their customers, essentially to third parties without first getting the
consent of those customers. More specifically, the charges that the
carriers sold geolocation data to aggregator companies, and these aggregators
then turned around and sold the information to other third
(13:48):
party data brokers. And according to the FCC, the telecoms
were trying to pass the buck as far as gaining
consent from users is concerned. Their strategy was to essentially
shift that responsibility further downstream to the data aggregators, which
you know didn't get that consent. The individual fines ranged
from twelve million that's for Sprint they pay the least
(14:10):
up to eighty million, which is for TE Mobile. And
now we get into the actually crime does pay quite well.
In fact, part of our news stories. First up, we
have the crime of tax evasion and mail fraud. The
accused is Roger Vere. He has the charming nickname of
Bitcoin Jesus, and as that name implies, Ver holds quite
(14:33):
a lot of bitcoin. Back in twenty fourteen, Ver renounced
his US citizenship to become a citizen of Saint Kitts
and Nevis. However, at the time when he did this,
at least according to the indictment, he happened to hold
more than one hundred and thirty thousand bitcoins and yet
did not report this to the United States before ditching
(14:55):
the country for the Tropics. And the US government really
likes to take its share of tax and Ver's share
reportedly is somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty million dollars.
So Spanish authorities arrested Verre on behalf of the United
States last weekend while Ver was in Spain, and now
the US wants to extradite him back to the United
States and hold him accountable for skipping town without paying
(15:17):
the fees. First, Honestly, I think Ver's going to be
just fine. I mean, at least assuming he still has
that significant cash of bitcoins, because if you take it
by today's value. You're talking about more than seven billion
dollars worth of money or wealth if you prefer, then
so fifty million, while a not inconsiderable sum, is barely
a drop in the bucket compared to the overall wealth
(15:40):
this guy has. Here's another crime that seemed to pay well,
at least up to a point. Story. It's a story
about owner oxoy. He lives in Miami, Florida, and now
he has been sentenced for his crime of passing off
shoddy technology as genuine networking gear from the company Cisco.
(16:01):
So Cisco has a valuable brand, right like they have
a reputation for their work their products. So Oxoi was
arrested way back in twenty twenty two for running a
scam that had lasted for several years. He would buy
up cheap components from places like China, cram these components
into cases that look like legitimate Cisco hardware, and then
(16:23):
sell this junk off to various customers for way more
than what he paid, though presumably under the market price
for actual legitimate Cisco hardware. And he did this from
twenty fourteen to twenty twenty two. He made hundreds of
millions of dollars in the process. Among his clientele was
the US military, and that's really where he stuck his
(16:44):
nose in it, because once his crimes were discovered, the
US government really began to close in on him, though
they did take their time anyway. The whole drama has
now played out because Oxoy faces six and a half
years in prison, one hundred million dollars in fines to Cisco,
and an under termined amount that will be paid to
the various customers he hoodwinked with shoddy imitations of Cisco hardware.
(17:06):
But hey, he had a pretty good run on the
flip side of crime. Let's talk about how Microsoft has
made it clear that police departments are not to use
products relying on Azure Open Eye services for the purposes
of facial recognition technology. So essentially, Microsoft is saying it
doesn't want to be a party to that kind of
thing and added languages in its terms and services that
(17:27):
make it clear that police forces around the world are
not authorized to leverage AI technologies running on Azure services
for the purposes of facial recognition. That's interesting to me
in a couple of ways. We all probably know that
facial recognition technologies as a whole have a lot of problems,
including false positives for people who belong to certain ethnic groups,
(17:48):
typically non white ethnic groups, and that facial recognition technology
therefore contributes to a real social problem of authorities unfairly
and unjustifiably placing hard chips on these populations. But this
also means Microsoft is kind of tacitly implying that there's
a real weakness in a technology that the company is
(18:09):
simultaneously spending billions of dollars developing, which is kind of
like saying, hey, AI is the future, but uh, you know,
don't use it for real important stuff because bad things
can happen. It seems like mixed messages, is what I'm saying.
But anyway, you could argue this is the responsible thing
to do, or you could be more cynical and probably
(18:29):
more realistic and say that Microsoft adding this language and
is really just an effort for the company to follow
the old CYA strategy. You know, if the company says
police are not supposed to use this for facial recognition,
then it's not Microsoft's fault if and when some police
force does exactly that, because they can say we told
them not to and I've got some reading recommendations for
(18:52):
you all before I sign off. First up is Sharon
Harding's piece for Ours Technica titled all the Ways Streaming
Services are aggravating their sscribers this Week. Obviously, the piece
highlights some frustrating decisions that the operators of various streaming
services have made that seem designed to alienate their customers,
while more traditional forms of media continue to circle the
(19:12):
drain fun times. Secondly, I recommend the piece by Andrew
Griffin of The Independent. It is titled humans Now share
the Web equally with bots, report warrens amid fears of
the dead Internet now. I mentioned in a recent Tech
Stuff that a report from a cybersecurity firm says that
around forty nine point six percent of all traffic on
(19:34):
the Internet in twenty twenty three came from bots. So
this article explores what that actually means, including the so
called dead Internet theory, which I may have to do
a full episode on in the near future. And it
just is this idea about the Internet becoming this weird
place where bots are creating and trafficking and consuming all
the information across the system, and it becomes increasingly useless
(19:56):
for actual human people. That's it for me for this week.
I hope you are all well, and I'll talk to
you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
(20:19):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Host
Jonathan Strickland
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