September 20, 2022 • 32 mins
An appeals court is preparing to hear arguments from Epic, Apple, the State of California and even the US Department of Justice in the ongoing battle between developers and Apple. Hackers gained access to Uber's systems and we're not sure how bad it was yet. And Nvidia is announcing new GPUs today!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech stuff, a production from I heart radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I heart radio,
and how the Tech Are you? It's time for the
Tech News for Tuesday, September. Two. The epic battle between
(00:27):
Apple and epic Games continues, and now the U S
Department of Justice is waiting in all right, so let's
recap the story so far. Apple has a policy that
any APP that allows in APP purchases must use apple's
own payment system, and that means that apple gets a
slice of the PIE, which, ironically, is not apple pie,
(00:49):
but instead key line pie epic games. The producers of
fortnite sidestepped this process by suggesting two players on I
os devices that they use a little work around that
would allow the players to purchase credits directly from epic
games and outside the Apple System, and then use those
(01:10):
in the IOS game. That would give epic the entire Pie,
slice of key line. Apple responded swiftly by removing fortnite
from the APP store and prevented anyone from download to
get further, although folks who had already had it were
just fine, and it kind of escalated from there. What
(01:32):
followed was a lawsuit in which epic argued that Apple's
approaches anti competitive, that locking developers into this ecosystem was
inherently unfair. And this is something, by the way, that
we're seeing play out in courts all over the world
right now, with different people coming forward, to different companies
coming forward to say apple's approaches inherently unfair. Now, the
(01:53):
initial courts decision was a bit of a muddled affair.
Neither epic nor apple was entirely happy about it, so
both sides appealed the decision. Now, interestingly, apple one more
than it lost, because the court decided that apple doesn't
constitute a monopoly, at least not in this case, and
(02:13):
that's kind of understandable in the sense that fortnite can
be played on just about any platform, possibly even your refrigerators.
So it's hard to point at this and have a
court understand that this potentially constitutes anti competitive behavior. However,
the court did rule that apple cannot prevent APPs from
offering links to alternative payment systems in their APPs, and
(02:36):
apple really didn't like that. They don't want that to
happen because the company has really been transforming into more
of a services oriented company after being a hardware focused
company for decades. This brings us to what's going on now.
An appeals court is preparing to hear arguments from all
sides about the original decision, and the Department of Justice
(02:58):
and the State of California have both secured a little
bit of time to present some arguments to the court. Now,
the D O J is not allowed to take sides
per se, but the agency hopes to prove that the
lower court's decisions about apple not being a monopoly were
shortsighted that apple had in fact violated antitrust laws such
(03:20):
as the Sherman Act. The D O J says that
the lower courts interpretation sets a disastrous precedent that weakens
antitrust law, particularly in the digital landscape, and that this
needs to be corrected so that the US government has
the ability to enforce antitrust laws and prevent any company
from becoming an unimpeachable monopoly. Complicating matters is that the
(03:43):
D O J is ramping up its own antitrust lawsuit
against Apple, so it will be important for the lawyers
to present their case in a way that doesn't come
across as biased. The State of California, meanwhile, is going
to present arguments on how the court should treat the
state's Consumer Protection Law, called the unfair competition law, within
the context of this lawsuit. The Washington Post reports that
(04:07):
US Customs has been maintaining a database filled with travelers
electronic data, some of which dates back fifteen years now.
It has long been an issue that people entering the US,
including US citizens returning to America, have sometimes been prompted
to hand over customs access to their electronic devices. Now
(04:29):
U S courts have, for some reason deemed this as
being acceptable. Honestly, I think this very much ranks as
unreasonable search and seizure, which is something the constitution is
supposed to protect us against. Anyway, there's no legal reason
anyone should have to hand over their log and credentials
to their devices, and finding out that customs has been
(04:50):
downloading and storing this information for more than a decade
is a huge red flag. What's worse, the Post reports
that essentially any employee of the agency can access any
of that data. So imagine for a moment that you
are returning to the United States and that you are
coerced into handing your phone over to customs agents and
(05:12):
you are further prompted to unlock your phone and then
they download everything that's on your phone, all without due cause.
You haven't done anything wrong, or at the very least
you haven't done anything to warrant this kind of a search.
And now they have all of the Dat on your phone,
all your contacts, all your calendar appointments, all of your
location history, your browsing history, your photos, your documents, everything
(05:37):
that was on that device has been downloaded and anyone
within the agency has the capability of potentially accessing it.
That is unthinkable, right? I mean it doesn't take much
imagination to come up with dozens of terrible scenarios where
this could become a problem. Like blackmail alone is a
terrible possibility. More than that, other agencies like the FBI
(06:02):
can request and get access to this kind of database
and it starts to sound a lot like a dystopian
authoritarian state. U S Senator Ron Widen sent a letter
to the agency last week raising concerns about this practice
and saying it amounts to unfair search and seizure on
American citizens. Whether anything will actually be done about this
policy or if some court case finally escalates the issue
(06:26):
so that the Supreme Court weighs in, hopefully to curtail
the practices again. Seems like a pretty clear cut violation
of the fourth amendment to the Constitution. All of that
remains to be seen. A couple of weeks ago, I
talked about how twitter had cleaned house by deleting a
bunch of body accounts. They're all pushing propaganda, and while
(06:46):
that in itself isn't that unusual, in this particular case
the propaganda promoted the United States and its policies in
places like Russia and China. Now we often hear about
coordinating the campaigns meant spread misinformation within the United States,
and often these campaigns originate out of countries like China
(07:07):
and Russia, but it's kind of odd to hear about
the opposite. And now the Pentagon has ordered a review
of information warfare operations that rely upon social network platforms
like twitter and Meta across all military branches. So the
Under Secretary for policy at the Department of Defense, the
guy named Colin Call, has told all the branches of
(07:29):
the military that have these kind of operations that they
have to provide a full report on the scope, scale
and techniques of those programs by next month, at least
according to The Washington Post. I think the concern here
is that it's really bad optics for the US to
engage in similar tactics that Russia and China are using
(07:51):
while at the same time the US government has slammed
social networks for allowing these kind of things to proliferate
here in the United States. Ends up looking more than
a little bit hypocritical. Now, maybe the military opts relying
on these approaches would argue that the narrative they are
pushing isn't misinformation. Sure, it puts the US and its
(08:12):
policies in a positive light, but maybe they argued, this
isn't lying, it's just it's just giving part of the
story that they otherwise don't get. However, I suspect folks
in Russia and China would say pretty much the same
thing about what's going on here and anyway, it'll be
interesting to see what comes of this. Now propaganda has
long been a well used and reliable tool around the
(08:36):
world to spread specific messages and points of view, so
I wonder if we're going to see the government create
kind of a framework within which it might be okay
to use that capability within the digital world. If not,
one makes the digital world different from, say, dropping physical
pamphlets from an aircraft onto areas in an effort to
(08:57):
spread similar messages? That's something the United States has done
frequently throughout its history, sending messages to citizens in places
where they can't get access to information in other ways.
We've made use of those tactics in the past. So
it kind of raises the question if that sort of
(09:17):
thing is wrong in the digital space, why? Like, what
is it that makes it different? These are complicated questions
and I don't pretend to have the answers. I do
find it fascinating, however. Something else that is, I hesitate
to use Laura, fascinating but certainly captivating, is an article
that I read in Rolling Stone magazine. It is titled
(09:39):
How many women were abused to make that Tesla, and
the article goes into detail about the work culture at Tesla,
the electric vehicle company, as well as Elon Musk's personal
history with, quote unquote, fratish behaviors from the article, and
also how seven women have brought lawsuits against Tesla alleging
(10:01):
sexual harassment the story even goes beyond Tesla and mentions
how spacex engineer Ashley Kozak wrote about similar issues over
at SPACEX, another Elon Musk company. I recommend this article.
I will warn you it has a lot of extremely
upsetting information and allegations in it, but if those allegations
(10:24):
are true, it really paints the corporate culture of Tesla
and other musk companies in a really terrible light, akin
to the kind of stories we heard coming out of
gaming companies like activision blizzard and before that UBI soft
and before that the stuff we heard coming out of Uber.
For many people out there, news that companies in the
(10:45):
tech sector have a particularly ugly problem with Misogyny and
sexual harassment is going to come as no surprise. Right
this is old news, in fact. I'm sure there are
listeners of this show who have either experienced or witnessed
something on those lines at companies in the tech sector.
But pieces like this indicate that companies really do need
(11:06):
to work harder at stamping out these kinds of culture
and that shareholders should demand more from the companies that
they invest in. I mean, it's a bad investment ultimately,
because sooner or later the cards come crashing down. You
would rather invest in a company that has a supportive
and healthy culture and not one that's predatory. I'm sure,
(11:29):
or at least I'm sure for listeners of this podcast.
They're probably people out there who really don't care as
long as they get a return on the investment, but
they wouldn't listen to this show. Right. Okay, we've got
some more news stories to get to. Before we get
to that, let's take a quick break. We're back over
(11:54):
in the European Union, courts upheld a ruling that says
Google must pay a truly annoyed or miss fine of
about four point one to billion dollars. Now, to be fair,
that's actually a reduction of the original find. The original
find from the first court case was closer to four
(12:15):
point three billion dollars. So Google got a deal, they
got a break. It's just four point one two billion.
Now all of this actually stems from a case that
was originally filed back in two thousand and fifteen, in
which the European Commission ruled that Google was engaged in
anti competitive practices with the android operating system, essentially saying
(12:40):
Google had actively taken advantage of its enormous installed base
in Europe. Something like of EU citizens have an android device,
and they forced every android device out there to have
apps like chrome and search pre installed on them, and
that this ended up giving Google and unfair advantage in
(13:04):
those areas, because competing search and browsers were, uh, not
pre installed. The original decision was handed down in two
thousand eighteen, so the case began in t the decision
in the fine came in because, you know, justice moved swiftly,
and yeah, that meant that the original case took like
(13:26):
three years to resolve, but Google then appealed the decision.
It took another four years for the appeal to work
its way through the system and for courts to find
that Google still guilty and still needs to pay a fine,
although it's slightly lower than what it was originally. And
that's where we are now. So does this mean that
Google is going to have to cough up more than
(13:46):
four billion bucks? Not necessarily. Google can appeal this decision
as well, which would push the matter up to the
highest court in the EU, where perhaps it could get
a front decision or maybe the fine would be further reduced.
Will have to wait and see. Mozilla, conducted a study
(14:07):
on Youtube and found that the platforms tools for telling
Youtube that you don't like a particular video or you
don't want to have similar content show up in your recommendations.
They don't work very well, those tools. And this is
interesting because I have noticed something similar in my own
use of Youtube, particularly recently. But you know, anecdotal evidence
(14:30):
isn't real evidence. So I never brought it up on
the show because I thought, well, this is just my experience.
What if it's an outlier? But in my case I
was watching a lot of video essays about different types
of things, including a ton about pop culture, and it
was really just, you know, critiques about different things like
movies or series, and really well thought out and well
(14:52):
researched arguments. But I noticed that some of the video
essays that were creeping into my recommendations weren't real video essays.
They were really just thinly veiled manifestos for right wing
talking points. Now, I am not a right wing person
by a long stretch. I'm sure this comes as no
surprise to anyone who's listening to me. This is not
(15:14):
me judging that point of view. Rather, it's just me
saying that's not my worldview or my philosophy, and in
most cases my opinions are almost the opposite of the
stuff that was showing up in these videos that were
posing as critiques on pop culture. So I started tagging
(15:35):
those videos as don't recommend this channel to me because
I didn't want to see them anymore. They weren't interesting
to me, I didn't agree with the point of view.
I just found them frustrating. But then I would get
nearly identical videos. Now it might be a different channel
and a different host, but the videos contained the same
talking points, the same tactics of presenting right wing ideology
(15:59):
discusised as a video essay on pop culture, and I
just felt like I was constantly trying to knock down
one recommendation and I would just get a different one
that was essentially the same thing the next day. Well,
according to Mozilla, my experience is by no means unique.
The organization used a tool to measure how effective youtube's
(16:21):
features are. The tool Mozilla used could track when viewers
were clicking on dislike, not interested, don't recommend channel and
remove from history to see how much of an effect
that had on the recommendations engine. Would it prevent similar
videos from popping up in the recommendations engine, or would
(16:41):
it not? And it found that hitting dislike would reduce
only twelve percent of bad recommendations in the future, meaning
that you would still get those kinds of videos. If
you clicked not interested, it was worse. It only prevented
eleven of similar material popping up and recommendations. If you
chose don't recommend channel, it was a little bit better,
(17:04):
but only up to forte so you're still less than
fifty of of reduction of those kinds of videos popping
up in your recommendations, and removing videos from history prevented
only of bad recommendations in the future. If you're wondering
how they came up with those numbers, they had a
control group that did not hit any of those dislike
(17:25):
features at all, and so what they were doing was
seeing how many similar videos were popping up in the
recommendations of someone who wasn't taking these measures versus people
who were, and that's how they got those reductions. Now,
Youtube reps say that the recommendation engine doesn't automatically prevent
all similar material from popping up, largely to avoid creating
(17:48):
echo chambers, and that makes sense. I can agree with that. Right,
you don't want tools to end up funneling people into
very narrow points of view and then attentially escalating that
and creating extremists. That makes sense, but at least in
my case, it wasn't like I was getting videos that
had well reasoned arguments made in good faith in an
(18:11):
attempt to convince me that the point of view represented
in the video was a valid one. Instead, I was
getting videos that were reinforcing concepts that I fundamentally disagree with,
and they weren't supporting those concepts. It's not like they
were creating an argument to support the ideology. It was
just a repetition of those talking points anyway. The study
(18:35):
seems to show that Youtube does not prioritize user feedback,
which could explain why some people have a frustrating experience
when they're on the platform, me included. Both Uber and
rock star have been hit by hackers, possibly the same one,
and in Uber's case, the company has issued multiple statements
(18:56):
in the wake of the attack. They said that the
attack gained access to Uber's systems by compromising an Uber
e x t contractors account. Uber was able to detect
this intrusion. That's being kind, because they left messages, but
uber responded by locking out the account and a few
(19:18):
other accounts that could have been compromised, but they didn't.
They weren't able to do this until after the attacker
had already gained access to numerous tools, which included them
gaining access to, and then posting within, the company's slack channel.
Hardly a low profile move. It's not the kind of
thing you do if you're trying to be super sneaky
(19:39):
and really embed yourself within a targets system. This is
something you do in order to make a point or
to needle a target or whatever. Now Uber is investigating
if there was any material impact to the company. So
they're looking into what, if any, information the attacker actually
(19:59):
accessed duringing this incident and maybe potentially downloaded. During the incident,
some of Uber's customer support features were disabled, but beyond that,
it sounds like the disruption wasn't that noticeable outside the company. Though, again,
until Uber has a better idea of what information the
attacker might have accessed and potentially copied, it's really hard
(20:21):
to judge how bad this attack was. I mean, the
attack itself was bad, because getting that level of access
is not great, but how damaging it was remains to
be seen. Uber is working with the Department of Justice
and the FBI in an investigation into this and, as
it stands, the chief suspect for the attack was the
(20:42):
hacking group lapsus L A. P S U dollar sign,
which has been on quite the run this year, having
been named responsible for hacks into companies like Cisco and
Microsoft and OCTA, among others. I mean these are companies
that are own for helping create a more secure environment
(21:05):
and they were targets of hacks by the same hacker group.
So yeah, they mean serious business. Okay, we've got a
few more news items to talk about, but before we
get into that, let's take one more quick break. All right, y'all,
(21:28):
by the time you hear this episode in video, will
have held an event to announce the next generation of
its gpus, or graphics processors. The code name for the
new processor architecture is love lace, which is after Ada lovelace,
the enchantress of numbers. So we expect that these new
processors are going to have a new kind of architecture
(21:52):
to make them more power efficient more powerful. That kind
of thing. Analysts expect that in video will announce a
new forty series of cards, like an r t x
forty eight. The current, you know, flagship gpus are the
R T X thirty eight and the thirty nine. So
we might be getting two different forty eighties and a
(22:14):
fort by by the rumor mill. By the time you
hear this, you'll know because the event will have happened.
You can just google it with ethereum. Shifting to proof
of steak and an increased availability for graphics cards in general.
Maybe this will mean that the most powerful cards in
the market will actually be something that gamers can more
(22:36):
easily get their hands on, if they have the cash.
That is. These cards frequently cost well over a thousand dollars.
Some of them creep up to around two thousand dollars.
So it's not the type of component for a budget Gamer,
because that's just the graphics card. That doesn't include any
of the rest of the computer. But maybe this will
(22:57):
also mean prices for the last generation of cards will
go down a little, because I would still love to
get my hands on a thirty eight. I. The computer
I use for gaming doesn't have anywhere close to the
of that thirty eight card. Anyway, I might do a
follow up on Thursday if the company reveals anything particularly
interesting the demand for university lester over in the UK
(23:22):
conducted a study in which researchers found that young children
are losing the equivalent of a full night's sleep each week.
So they're losing the equivalent of one night's sleep per
week because they're staying up to be on social media
on their various electronic devices. The study found that around
twelve point five of all ten year olds wake up
(23:45):
in the middle of the night in order to check notifications,
which is a big old yikes for me. You know,
one of the big reasons I got off social media
was because I found myself bowing to the whims of notifications,
and over the last couple of years I've really made
an effort to reduce the number of notifications I get,
whether it's personal or, much to my coworkers Chagrin, work related.
(24:09):
That's because I recognized that it was starting to harm
me to have notifications pop up all the time. It
was hurting my productivity, my creativity, my mental health. So
I made a real effort to reduce the notifications, which
means I'm a little more slow to respond to things
than some of my coworkers, but you know, it's better
(24:31):
to be a little slow rather than to just have
a complete mental breakdown and no longer be able to
respond at all. Now, young kids, they are not necessarily
going to be cognizant of the effects of these sort
of behaviors, of staying up and losing the equivalent of
a night's sleep each week. And younger children need more sleep.
(24:53):
They need it in order to recuperate. They need it
so that they can learn more effectively and grow in
a healthy way. So interrupting that process is not great. Now,
I am not a parent. It is not my business
to tell other people how to take care of their
kids because I don't have kids and uh, far be
(25:15):
it from me to give parenting advice. But maybe, if
you have kids, consider limiting screen time and maybe even
putting away devices at night so that those devices aren't
accessible until perhaps the next day. So just make that
a regular part of the routine. That's what I would suggest.
(25:35):
I realized that that may not be easy in a
lot of households, particularly if the kids are already accustomed
to always having their devices on them, but Um, yeah,
I mean, you know, you want your kid to grow
up healthy, so it's probably a good idea to to
limit that screen time. Probably a good idea for me
to do it to myself even more than I already have.
(25:56):
NASA will be testing the launch vehicle for the Artemis
one mission and tomorrow running a cryogenic demonstration. So in
this demonstration they aren't going to be firing up the engines,
there's not gonna be any sort of countdown or anything
like that. This test is to see if the team
has managed to fix the issues that led to a
(26:16):
hydrogen leak, which in turn forced NASA to delay the
launch earlier this month. So, as a reminder, the artemist
program is aimed at going back to the moon and
artemist one is to be an unscrewed mission, meaning there's
no crew aboard. I know when I say uncrewed it
sounds like I'm saying it's not a crude mission in
(26:37):
the sense of it's, you know, it's egalitarian and refined.
That's not what I mean, though. I'm sure everyone's on
their best behavior. But now, in this particular one, the
Orion capsule, which would normally hold astronauts, will instead be
carrying some mannequins as well as the snoopy doll, and
then it will fly off to do an orbit of
the moon before returning to Earth to touch down own
(27:00):
in the Pacific Ocean. But, as I mentioned, while the
original launch was planned for earlier this month, a hydrogen
leak to one of the four engines in the in
the launch vehicle, one of the fourth thrusters uh, forced
NASA to delay things. Engineers have since made repairs to
the system. They found a possible cause of the leak
(27:20):
as they discovered an indentation on part of the disconnect
line and they think maybe that was the problem and
they repaired that. So on Wednesday's test tomorrow, the launch
team will use a slower process to feed liquid hydrogen
to the engines to cool them down to operational levels,
(27:42):
and they'll do that in the hopes that this kinder,
gentler approach will let engines reach the proper temperature while
putting less strain on the system as a whole. If
that works out, NASA could plan a new artemis one
launch for as earliest September, with October second listed as
a backup date should whether or some other event delay things.
(28:04):
This is, of course, assuming that space force gives them
the go ahead to do this, because they do have
to get space forces permission to launch due to the
fact that this is out of the the original schedule,
but here's hoping it all works out. Finally, two years
ago the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program launched a spacecraft called
(28:25):
the Chong Five. The name Chang references a Chinese moon goddess,
and my apologies for my pronunciation, but that spacecraft included
an orbiter which would stay in lunar orbit around the Moon,
and it also had a lander that had a second
(28:46):
spacecraft called in a cinder connected to it. So this
disconnected from the orbiter. The lander then touched down on
the moon, with the ascender put perched on top of
the lander. The Lander collected samples from the Moon's surface
and then transported those samples to the ascender, which then
launched off the lander, blew up to meet the orbiter
(29:10):
and rendezvous with it. Transferred the sample to the orbiter
and then the ascender was de orbited it. It landed
back on the Moon's surface. It just said my job
is done and it detached, went back and landed on
the moon. The orbiter meanwhile left Lunar Orbit, returned to
Earth and brought the samples back. So China became the
(29:34):
third country in the world to retrieve samples from the
lunar surface, the first being America the second one being Russia.
Well now, two years later, Chinese scientists say that within
that sample was a very small crystal that contains helium three.
Now this is not totally unexpected, because scientists have long
(29:55):
hypothesized that there are large helium three deposits on the moon.
But you might wonder, well, why is this even important? Well,
helium three could potentially be the fuel used by future
fusion reactors. A huge advantage of helium three is that
the fusion process would not produce any radioactive particles, but
(30:17):
it would produce a lot of electricity energy. However, helium
three is pretty darn scarce here on earth, so it
could mean that the moon becomes a major source of
fuel for the future. All of that is still pretty
far off, because the tech for creating sustainable fusion reactions
(30:39):
remains elusive in general and for helium three in particular.
But if we were able to solve those issues, it
would mean that the moon would become a really valuable
resource for our energy needs here on earth. In fact,
it could become a battle ground as various nations try
to establish a presence on the moon for the purposes
(31:00):
of mining resources that could fuel stuff here on earth
or beyond. Sounds a lot like a hindland short story.
Those always turn out great. All right, that's the news
for Tuesday September two. Y'All, I should also report that
I will be on vacation next week and so I
(31:22):
will likely be putting up some reruns. Maybe I can
record a couple of updates if I have enough time
to do so, two older episodes. I'm going to do
a quick look and see if there are anything that
I can maybe do some short updates for and and
give you some new content. But yeah, I'll be gone
for a week and then I will return and I
(31:43):
will be re energized. Maybe it'll all depend on whether
we get hit by hurricanes while I'm on vacation. We'll see.
But if you have any suggestions to send me, then
there are a couple of ways of doing so. One
is to download the I heart radio APP, which is
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(32:05):
to thirty second message for me and let me know
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show is tech stuff, H S W and I'll talk
to you again really soon. Yeah, tech stuff is an
(32:27):
I heart radio production. For more podcasts from my heart radio,
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Welcome to tech stuff, a production from I heart radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I heart radio,
and how the Tech Are you? It's time for the
Tech News for Tuesday, September. Two. The epic battle between
(00:27):
Apple and epic Games continues, and now the U S
Department of Justice is waiting in all right, so let's
recap the story so far. Apple has a policy that
any APP that allows in APP purchases must use apple's
own payment system, and that means that apple gets a
slice of the PIE, which, ironically, is not apple pie,
(00:49):
but instead key line pie epic games. The producers of
fortnite sidestepped this process by suggesting two players on I
os devices that they use a little work around that
would allow the players to purchase credits directly from epic
games and outside the Apple System, and then use those
(01:10):
in the IOS game. That would give epic the entire Pie,
slice of key line. Apple responded swiftly by removing fortnite
from the APP store and prevented anyone from download to
get further, although folks who had already had it were
just fine, and it kind of escalated from there. What
(01:32):
followed was a lawsuit in which epic argued that Apple's
approaches anti competitive, that locking developers into this ecosystem was
inherently unfair. And this is something, by the way, that
we're seeing play out in courts all over the world
right now, with different people coming forward, to different companies
coming forward to say apple's approaches inherently unfair. Now, the
(01:53):
initial courts decision was a bit of a muddled affair.
Neither epic nor apple was entirely happy about it, so
both sides appealed the decision. Now, interestingly, apple one more
than it lost, because the court decided that apple doesn't
constitute a monopoly, at least not in this case, and
(02:13):
that's kind of understandable in the sense that fortnite can
be played on just about any platform, possibly even your refrigerators.
So it's hard to point at this and have a
court understand that this potentially constitutes anti competitive behavior. However,
the court did rule that apple cannot prevent APPs from
offering links to alternative payment systems in their APPs, and
(02:36):
apple really didn't like that. They don't want that to
happen because the company has really been transforming into more
of a services oriented company after being a hardware focused
company for decades. This brings us to what's going on now.
An appeals court is preparing to hear arguments from all
sides about the original decision, and the Department of Justice
(02:58):
and the State of California have both secured a little
bit of time to present some arguments to the court. Now,
the D O J is not allowed to take sides
per se, but the agency hopes to prove that the
lower court's decisions about apple not being a monopoly were
shortsighted that apple had in fact violated antitrust laws such
(03:20):
as the Sherman Act. The D O J says that
the lower courts interpretation sets a disastrous precedent that weakens
antitrust law, particularly in the digital landscape, and that this
needs to be corrected so that the US government has
the ability to enforce antitrust laws and prevent any company
from becoming an unimpeachable monopoly. Complicating matters is that the
(03:43):
D O J is ramping up its own antitrust lawsuit
against Apple, so it will be important for the lawyers
to present their case in a way that doesn't come
across as biased. The State of California, meanwhile, is going
to present arguments on how the court should treat the
state's Consumer Protection Law, called the unfair competition law, within
the context of this lawsuit. The Washington Post reports that
(04:07):
US Customs has been maintaining a database filled with travelers
electronic data, some of which dates back fifteen years now.
It has long been an issue that people entering the US,
including US citizens returning to America, have sometimes been prompted
to hand over customs access to their electronic devices. Now
(04:29):
U S courts have, for some reason deemed this as
being acceptable. Honestly, I think this very much ranks as
unreasonable search and seizure, which is something the constitution is
supposed to protect us against. Anyway, there's no legal reason
anyone should have to hand over their log and credentials
to their devices, and finding out that customs has been
(04:50):
downloading and storing this information for more than a decade
is a huge red flag. What's worse, the Post reports
that essentially any employee of the agency can access any
of that data. So imagine for a moment that you
are returning to the United States and that you are
coerced into handing your phone over to customs agents and
(05:12):
you are further prompted to unlock your phone and then
they download everything that's on your phone, all without due cause.
You haven't done anything wrong, or at the very least
you haven't done anything to warrant this kind of a search.
And now they have all of the Dat on your phone,
all your contacts, all your calendar appointments, all of your
location history, your browsing history, your photos, your documents, everything
(05:37):
that was on that device has been downloaded and anyone
within the agency has the capability of potentially accessing it.
That is unthinkable, right? I mean it doesn't take much
imagination to come up with dozens of terrible scenarios where
this could become a problem. Like blackmail alone is a
terrible possibility. More than that, other agencies like the FBI
(06:02):
can request and get access to this kind of database
and it starts to sound a lot like a dystopian
authoritarian state. U S Senator Ron Widen sent a letter
to the agency last week raising concerns about this practice
and saying it amounts to unfair search and seizure on
American citizens. Whether anything will actually be done about this
policy or if some court case finally escalates the issue
(06:26):
so that the Supreme Court weighs in, hopefully to curtail
the practices again. Seems like a pretty clear cut violation
of the fourth amendment to the Constitution. All of that
remains to be seen. A couple of weeks ago, I
talked about how twitter had cleaned house by deleting a
bunch of body accounts. They're all pushing propaganda, and while
(06:46):
that in itself isn't that unusual, in this particular case
the propaganda promoted the United States and its policies in
places like Russia and China. Now we often hear about
coordinating the campaigns meant spread misinformation within the United States,
and often these campaigns originate out of countries like China
(07:07):
and Russia, but it's kind of odd to hear about
the opposite. And now the Pentagon has ordered a review
of information warfare operations that rely upon social network platforms
like twitter and Meta across all military branches. So the
Under Secretary for policy at the Department of Defense, the
guy named Colin Call, has told all the branches of
(07:29):
the military that have these kind of operations that they
have to provide a full report on the scope, scale
and techniques of those programs by next month, at least
according to The Washington Post. I think the concern here
is that it's really bad optics for the US to
engage in similar tactics that Russia and China are using
(07:51):
while at the same time the US government has slammed
social networks for allowing these kind of things to proliferate
here in the United States. Ends up looking more than
a little bit hypocritical. Now, maybe the military opts relying
on these approaches would argue that the narrative they are
pushing isn't misinformation. Sure, it puts the US and its
(08:12):
policies in a positive light, but maybe they argued, this
isn't lying, it's just it's just giving part of the
story that they otherwise don't get. However, I suspect folks
in Russia and China would say pretty much the same
thing about what's going on here and anyway, it'll be
interesting to see what comes of this. Now propaganda has
long been a well used and reliable tool around the
(08:36):
world to spread specific messages and points of view, so
I wonder if we're going to see the government create
kind of a framework within which it might be okay
to use that capability within the digital world. If not,
one makes the digital world different from, say, dropping physical
pamphlets from an aircraft onto areas in an effort to
(08:57):
spread similar messages? That's something the United States has done
frequently throughout its history, sending messages to citizens in places
where they can't get access to information in other ways.
We've made use of those tactics in the past. So
it kind of raises the question if that sort of
(09:17):
thing is wrong in the digital space, why? Like, what
is it that makes it different? These are complicated questions
and I don't pretend to have the answers. I do
find it fascinating, however. Something else that is, I hesitate
to use Laura, fascinating but certainly captivating, is an article
that I read in Rolling Stone magazine. It is titled
(09:39):
How many women were abused to make that Tesla, and
the article goes into detail about the work culture at Tesla,
the electric vehicle company, as well as Elon Musk's personal
history with, quote unquote, fratish behaviors from the article, and
also how seven women have brought lawsuits against Tesla alleging
(10:01):
sexual harassment the story even goes beyond Tesla and mentions
how spacex engineer Ashley Kozak wrote about similar issues over
at SPACEX, another Elon Musk company. I recommend this article.
I will warn you it has a lot of extremely
upsetting information and allegations in it, but if those allegations
(10:24):
are true, it really paints the corporate culture of Tesla
and other musk companies in a really terrible light, akin
to the kind of stories we heard coming out of
gaming companies like activision blizzard and before that UBI soft
and before that the stuff we heard coming out of Uber.
For many people out there, news that companies in the
(10:45):
tech sector have a particularly ugly problem with Misogyny and
sexual harassment is going to come as no surprise. Right
this is old news, in fact. I'm sure there are
listeners of this show who have either experienced or witnessed
something on those lines at companies in the tech sector.
But pieces like this indicate that companies really do need
(11:06):
to work harder at stamping out these kinds of culture
and that shareholders should demand more from the companies that
they invest in. I mean, it's a bad investment ultimately,
because sooner or later the cards come crashing down. You
would rather invest in a company that has a supportive
and healthy culture and not one that's predatory. I'm sure,
(11:29):
or at least I'm sure for listeners of this podcast.
They're probably people out there who really don't care as
long as they get a return on the investment, but
they wouldn't listen to this show. Right. Okay, we've got
some more news stories to get to. Before we get
to that, let's take a quick break. We're back over
(11:54):
in the European Union, courts upheld a ruling that says
Google must pay a truly annoyed or miss fine of
about four point one to billion dollars. Now, to be fair,
that's actually a reduction of the original find. The original
find from the first court case was closer to four
(12:15):
point three billion dollars. So Google got a deal, they
got a break. It's just four point one two billion.
Now all of this actually stems from a case that
was originally filed back in two thousand and fifteen, in
which the European Commission ruled that Google was engaged in
anti competitive practices with the android operating system, essentially saying
(12:40):
Google had actively taken advantage of its enormous installed base
in Europe. Something like of EU citizens have an android device,
and they forced every android device out there to have
apps like chrome and search pre installed on them, and
that this ended up giving Google and unfair advantage in
(13:04):
those areas, because competing search and browsers were, uh, not
pre installed. The original decision was handed down in two
thousand eighteen, so the case began in t the decision
in the fine came in because, you know, justice moved swiftly,
and yeah, that meant that the original case took like
(13:26):
three years to resolve, but Google then appealed the decision.
It took another four years for the appeal to work
its way through the system and for courts to find
that Google still guilty and still needs to pay a fine,
although it's slightly lower than what it was originally. And
that's where we are now. So does this mean that
Google is going to have to cough up more than
(13:46):
four billion bucks? Not necessarily. Google can appeal this decision
as well, which would push the matter up to the
highest court in the EU, where perhaps it could get
a front decision or maybe the fine would be further reduced.
Will have to wait and see. Mozilla, conducted a study
(14:07):
on Youtube and found that the platforms tools for telling
Youtube that you don't like a particular video or you
don't want to have similar content show up in your recommendations.
They don't work very well, those tools. And this is
interesting because I have noticed something similar in my own
use of Youtube, particularly recently. But you know, anecdotal evidence
(14:30):
isn't real evidence. So I never brought it up on
the show because I thought, well, this is just my experience.
What if it's an outlier? But in my case I
was watching a lot of video essays about different types
of things, including a ton about pop culture, and it
was really just, you know, critiques about different things like
movies or series, and really well thought out and well
(14:52):
researched arguments. But I noticed that some of the video
essays that were creeping into my recommendations weren't real video essays.
They were really just thinly veiled manifestos for right wing
talking points. Now, I am not a right wing person
by a long stretch. I'm sure this comes as no
surprise to anyone who's listening to me. This is not
(15:14):
me judging that point of view. Rather, it's just me
saying that's not my worldview or my philosophy, and in
most cases my opinions are almost the opposite of the
stuff that was showing up in these videos that were
posing as critiques on pop culture. So I started tagging
(15:35):
those videos as don't recommend this channel to me because
I didn't want to see them anymore. They weren't interesting
to me, I didn't agree with the point of view.
I just found them frustrating. But then I would get
nearly identical videos. Now it might be a different channel
and a different host, but the videos contained the same
talking points, the same tactics of presenting right wing ideology
(15:59):
discusised as a video essay on pop culture, and I
just felt like I was constantly trying to knock down
one recommendation and I would just get a different one
that was essentially the same thing the next day. Well,
according to Mozilla, my experience is by no means unique.
The organization used a tool to measure how effective youtube's
(16:21):
features are. The tool Mozilla used could track when viewers
were clicking on dislike, not interested, don't recommend channel and
remove from history to see how much of an effect
that had on the recommendations engine. Would it prevent similar
videos from popping up in the recommendations engine, or would
(16:41):
it not? And it found that hitting dislike would reduce
only twelve percent of bad recommendations in the future, meaning
that you would still get those kinds of videos. If
you clicked not interested, it was worse. It only prevented
eleven of similar material popping up and recommendations. If you
chose don't recommend channel, it was a little bit better,
(17:04):
but only up to forte so you're still less than
fifty of of reduction of those kinds of videos popping
up in your recommendations, and removing videos from history prevented
only of bad recommendations in the future. If you're wondering
how they came up with those numbers, they had a
control group that did not hit any of those dislike
(17:25):
features at all, and so what they were doing was
seeing how many similar videos were popping up in the
recommendations of someone who wasn't taking these measures versus people
who were, and that's how they got those reductions. Now,
Youtube reps say that the recommendation engine doesn't automatically prevent
all similar material from popping up, largely to avoid creating
(17:48):
echo chambers, and that makes sense. I can agree with that. Right,
you don't want tools to end up funneling people into
very narrow points of view and then attentially escalating that
and creating extremists. That makes sense, but at least in
my case, it wasn't like I was getting videos that
had well reasoned arguments made in good faith in an
(18:11):
attempt to convince me that the point of view represented
in the video was a valid one. Instead, I was
getting videos that were reinforcing concepts that I fundamentally disagree with,
and they weren't supporting those concepts. It's not like they
were creating an argument to support the ideology. It was
just a repetition of those talking points anyway. The study
(18:35):
seems to show that Youtube does not prioritize user feedback,
which could explain why some people have a frustrating experience
when they're on the platform, me included. Both Uber and
rock star have been hit by hackers, possibly the same one,
and in Uber's case, the company has issued multiple statements
(18:56):
in the wake of the attack. They said that the
attack gained access to Uber's systems by compromising an Uber
e x t contractors account. Uber was able to detect
this intrusion. That's being kind, because they left messages, but
uber responded by locking out the account and a few
(19:18):
other accounts that could have been compromised, but they didn't.
They weren't able to do this until after the attacker
had already gained access to numerous tools, which included them
gaining access to, and then posting within, the company's slack channel.
Hardly a low profile move. It's not the kind of
thing you do if you're trying to be super sneaky
(19:39):
and really embed yourself within a targets system. This is
something you do in order to make a point or
to needle a target or whatever. Now Uber is investigating
if there was any material impact to the company. So
they're looking into what, if any, information the attacker actually
(19:59):
accessed duringing this incident and maybe potentially downloaded. During the incident,
some of Uber's customer support features were disabled, but beyond that,
it sounds like the disruption wasn't that noticeable outside the company. Though, again,
until Uber has a better idea of what information the
attacker might have accessed and potentially copied, it's really hard
(20:21):
to judge how bad this attack was. I mean, the
attack itself was bad, because getting that level of access
is not great, but how damaging it was remains to
be seen. Uber is working with the Department of Justice
and the FBI in an investigation into this and, as
it stands, the chief suspect for the attack was the
(20:42):
hacking group lapsus L A. P S U dollar sign,
which has been on quite the run this year, having
been named responsible for hacks into companies like Cisco and
Microsoft and OCTA, among others. I mean these are companies
that are own for helping create a more secure environment
(21:05):
and they were targets of hacks by the same hacker group.
So yeah, they mean serious business. Okay, we've got a
few more news items to talk about, but before we
get into that, let's take one more quick break. All right, y'all,
(21:28):
by the time you hear this episode in video, will
have held an event to announce the next generation of
its gpus, or graphics processors. The code name for the
new processor architecture is love lace, which is after Ada lovelace,
the enchantress of numbers. So we expect that these new
processors are going to have a new kind of architecture
(21:52):
to make them more power efficient more powerful. That kind
of thing. Analysts expect that in video will announce a
new forty series of cards, like an r t x
forty eight. The current, you know, flagship gpus are the
R T X thirty eight and the thirty nine. So
we might be getting two different forty eighties and a
(22:14):
fort by by the rumor mill. By the time you
hear this, you'll know because the event will have happened.
You can just google it with ethereum. Shifting to proof
of steak and an increased availability for graphics cards in general.
Maybe this will mean that the most powerful cards in
the market will actually be something that gamers can more
(22:36):
easily get their hands on, if they have the cash.
That is. These cards frequently cost well over a thousand dollars.
Some of them creep up to around two thousand dollars.
So it's not the type of component for a budget Gamer,
because that's just the graphics card. That doesn't include any
of the rest of the computer. But maybe this will
(22:57):
also mean prices for the last generation of cards will
go down a little, because I would still love to
get my hands on a thirty eight. I. The computer
I use for gaming doesn't have anywhere close to the
of that thirty eight card. Anyway, I might do a
follow up on Thursday if the company reveals anything particularly
interesting the demand for university lester over in the UK
(23:22):
conducted a study in which researchers found that young children
are losing the equivalent of a full night's sleep each week.
So they're losing the equivalent of one night's sleep per
week because they're staying up to be on social media
on their various electronic devices. The study found that around
twelve point five of all ten year olds wake up
(23:45):
in the middle of the night in order to check notifications,
which is a big old yikes for me. You know,
one of the big reasons I got off social media
was because I found myself bowing to the whims of notifications,
and over the last couple of years I've really made
an effort to reduce the number of notifications I get,
whether it's personal or, much to my coworkers Chagrin, work related.
(24:09):
That's because I recognized that it was starting to harm
me to have notifications pop up all the time. It
was hurting my productivity, my creativity, my mental health. So
I made a real effort to reduce the notifications, which
means I'm a little more slow to respond to things
than some of my coworkers, but you know, it's better
(24:31):
to be a little slow rather than to just have
a complete mental breakdown and no longer be able to
respond at all. Now, young kids, they are not necessarily
going to be cognizant of the effects of these sort
of behaviors, of staying up and losing the equivalent of
a night's sleep each week. And younger children need more sleep.
(24:53):
They need it in order to recuperate. They need it
so that they can learn more effectively and grow in
a healthy way. So interrupting that process is not great. Now,
I am not a parent. It is not my business
to tell other people how to take care of their
kids because I don't have kids and uh, far be
(25:15):
it from me to give parenting advice. But maybe, if
you have kids, consider limiting screen time and maybe even
putting away devices at night so that those devices aren't
accessible until perhaps the next day. So just make that
a regular part of the routine. That's what I would suggest.
(25:35):
I realized that that may not be easy in a
lot of households, particularly if the kids are already accustomed
to always having their devices on them, but Um, yeah,
I mean, you know, you want your kid to grow
up healthy, so it's probably a good idea to to
limit that screen time. Probably a good idea for me
to do it to myself even more than I already have.
(25:56):
NASA will be testing the launch vehicle for the Artemis
one mission and tomorrow running a cryogenic demonstration. So in
this demonstration they aren't going to be firing up the engines,
there's not gonna be any sort of countdown or anything
like that. This test is to see if the team
has managed to fix the issues that led to a
(26:16):
hydrogen leak, which in turn forced NASA to delay the
launch earlier this month. So, as a reminder, the artemist
program is aimed at going back to the moon and
artemist one is to be an unscrewed mission, meaning there's
no crew aboard. I know when I say uncrewed it
sounds like I'm saying it's not a crude mission in
(26:37):
the sense of it's, you know, it's egalitarian and refined.
That's not what I mean, though. I'm sure everyone's on
their best behavior. But now, in this particular one, the
Orion capsule, which would normally hold astronauts, will instead be
carrying some mannequins as well as the snoopy doll, and
then it will fly off to do an orbit of
the moon before returning to Earth to touch down own
(27:00):
in the Pacific Ocean. But, as I mentioned, while the
original launch was planned for earlier this month, a hydrogen
leak to one of the four engines in the in
the launch vehicle, one of the fourth thrusters uh, forced
NASA to delay things. Engineers have since made repairs to
the system. They found a possible cause of the leak
(27:20):
as they discovered an indentation on part of the disconnect
line and they think maybe that was the problem and
they repaired that. So on Wednesday's test tomorrow, the launch
team will use a slower process to feed liquid hydrogen
to the engines to cool them down to operational levels,
(27:42):
and they'll do that in the hopes that this kinder,
gentler approach will let engines reach the proper temperature while
putting less strain on the system as a whole. If
that works out, NASA could plan a new artemis one
launch for as earliest September, with October second listed as
a backup date should whether or some other event delay things.
(28:04):
This is, of course, assuming that space force gives them
the go ahead to do this, because they do have
to get space forces permission to launch due to the
fact that this is out of the the original schedule,
but here's hoping it all works out. Finally, two years
ago the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program launched a spacecraft called
(28:25):
the Chong Five. The name Chang references a Chinese moon goddess,
and my apologies for my pronunciation, but that spacecraft included
an orbiter which would stay in lunar orbit around the Moon,
and it also had a lander that had a second
(28:46):
spacecraft called in a cinder connected to it. So this
disconnected from the orbiter. The lander then touched down on
the moon, with the ascender put perched on top of
the lander. The Lander collected samples from the Moon's surface
and then transported those samples to the ascender, which then
launched off the lander, blew up to meet the orbiter
(29:10):
and rendezvous with it. Transferred the sample to the orbiter
and then the ascender was de orbited it. It landed
back on the Moon's surface. It just said my job
is done and it detached, went back and landed on
the moon. The orbiter meanwhile left Lunar Orbit, returned to
Earth and brought the samples back. So China became the
(29:34):
third country in the world to retrieve samples from the
lunar surface, the first being America the second one being Russia.
Well now, two years later, Chinese scientists say that within
that sample was a very small crystal that contains helium three.
Now this is not totally unexpected, because scientists have long
(29:55):
hypothesized that there are large helium three deposits on the moon.
But you might wonder, well, why is this even important? Well,
helium three could potentially be the fuel used by future
fusion reactors. A huge advantage of helium three is that
the fusion process would not produce any radioactive particles, but
(30:17):
it would produce a lot of electricity energy. However, helium
three is pretty darn scarce here on earth, so it
could mean that the moon becomes a major source of
fuel for the future. All of that is still pretty
far off, because the tech for creating sustainable fusion reactions
(30:39):
remains elusive in general and for helium three in particular.
But if we were able to solve those issues, it
would mean that the moon would become a really valuable
resource for our energy needs here on earth. In fact,
it could become a battle ground as various nations try
to establish a presence on the moon for the purposes
(31:00):
of mining resources that could fuel stuff here on earth
or beyond. Sounds a lot like a hindland short story.
Those always turn out great. All right, that's the news
for Tuesday September two. Y'All, I should also report that
I will be on vacation next week and so I
(31:22):
will likely be putting up some reruns. Maybe I can
record a couple of updates if I have enough time
to do so, two older episodes. I'm going to do
a quick look and see if there are anything that
I can maybe do some short updates for and and
give you some new content. But yeah, I'll be gone
for a week and then I will return and I
(31:43):
will be re energized. Maybe it'll all depend on whether
we get hit by hurricanes while I'm on vacation. We'll see.
But if you have any suggestions to send me, then
there are a couple of ways of doing so. One
is to download the I heart radio APP, which is
free to download and use. You can navigate over to
the tech stuff part of the APP. There's a little
microphone that you can click and you can leave up
(32:05):
to thirty second message for me and let me know
what you would like to hear on future episodes. Or
you can reach out on twitter. The handle for the
show is tech stuff, H S W and I'll talk
to you again really soon. Yeah, tech stuff is an
(32:27):
I heart radio production. For more podcasts from my heart radio,
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