July 27, 2021 • 26 mins
A company offering a VPN service has some explaining to do after Ukrainian officials seize some servers. Apple patches a zero-day vulnerability. And Alienware computers are just too powerful for six states.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech. And this is the
tech news for Tuesday, July twenty twenty one, and let's
(00:28):
just get right into it. Misinformation is in the news,
both you know, as a topic and literally as part
of the news, because that's the world we live in.
The New York Times is Max Fisher wrote a piece
earlier this week titled Disinformation for Higher A shadow industry
is quietly booming. And the contents of that piece will
(00:51):
likely come as no surprise to anyone who has kept
up with the ongoing mess that is misinformation and disinformation
campaigns and the platforms that facilitate the spread of those campaigns.
And it probably isn't a surprise that there are a
collection of companies that are kind of acting as guns
(01:11):
for hire to run and promote disinformation campaigns on behalf
of their clients. And it gives those clients kind of
a bit of distance from the cd and unethical campaigns themselves. Right,
If you want to have a smear campaign against say
a political rival. You'd rather not have that come back
(01:33):
to you if you're saying a lot of things that
are just legit not true. Anyway, we saw all of
this years ago with Cambridge Analytica. That was kind of
a an example of this, although they did other stuff too,
and that company was actually fairly clumsy when it all
comes down to it. I mean that that house of
(01:53):
cards came crashing in on itself. But on the flip side,
there's also money to be made in fighting disinformation. So
we're also seeing startups come up to fight disinformation while
others are actively promoting it. So startups like Active Fence
are fighting disinformation. So we've got two sides of an
(02:15):
information war, both of which have turned this fight into
a profitable business. There's probably something really smart I could
say here about the whole situation and maybe about capitalism,
but I'm just going to leave that to someone who's
better equipped than I to make that observation. But just
like typical right anyway, Active Fence recently announced that it
(02:38):
has raised one million dollars in investments and is developing
a suite of tools to help detect misinformation campaigns. UH.
The company is using artificial intelligence as a way to
kind of crawl across various social platforms and not just
examine posts, but to look for connections between different accounts
(02:59):
and different groups, and those connections can point to concerted
efforts to spread, you know, a specific message or undermine
some other message. As we continue to deal with misinformation
campaigns around the world that deal with everything from politics
to workers rights, to vaccinations and beyond, it becomes more
important to be able to weed out the bad stuff
(03:20):
and to give people more opportunities to understand when they're
actually being manipulated and by whom and for what purpose.
That's incredibly valuable information to have, assuming that you actually
take the effort to look into it and not just
allow information to confirm maybe preconceived biases or prejudices you
(03:41):
might have, or to comfort you into thinking that something
that is your fault is totally not your fault. Like
all those kind of earmarks for how misinformation can really
get its hooks in, Uh, it's hard to overcome. My
guess is we're gonna see a continued escalation between the
companies that are offering to handle disinformation campaigns and the
ones providing the tools to fight those campaigns and it'll
(04:05):
just keep getting messy. That's my, you know, incredibly obvious prediction. Alright,
switching gears, let's talk about cybersecurity and software vulnerabilities. So
for many years, Apple products were seen as sort of
being bulletproof, and there were a couple of really big
major reasons for this. There are lots of reasons, but
(04:25):
two really big ones, and one was that Apple notoriously
follows a walled garden strategy in which the company makes
not only the operating systems, but the actual hardware that
those OS is run upon. Now, if you do this correctly,
you can actually cut down on potential vulnerabilities. You know,
you don't have different companies making different pieces and thus
(04:48):
creating the potential for gaps insecurity as much. It can
still happen, but it gives you a leg up. The
second big factor was that Apple, for many years had
much lower percentage of the market share when it came
to operating systems. So if you were a batty and
you wanted to make malicious software and your goal was
(05:09):
to affect the largest number of people you could, you
would focus on Windows based devices, Windows based computers. Like
this is before the smartphone era, and that's because Windows
was on way more computer systems than mac OS was,
so it just made more sense you were going to
hit more targets if you aimed for Windows users. But
(05:30):
these factors do not make Apple immune to the problem
of malware. They're not, you know, completely uh bulletproof, as
I was saying. The Register actually reports that Apple recently
patched a zero day vulnerability in its various OS products,
including mac os and iOS, just yesterday on Monday, a
(05:51):
week earlier. The company issued updates to the various operating
systems to fix some other issues, and the patched vulnerability
was in a screen frame buffer. Uh. That's a feature that,
if it had been exploited by a hacker, could be
used to uh to to run malware, to execute malware.
The Register also reports that someone, though at the time
(06:15):
that I'm recording this, I don't know who, had been
exploiting that bug in some way. Uh. That could potentially
be the n s O group, that's the that's the
company that's behind the Pegasus spyware that I talked about
last week, the one out of Israel. At least one
security researcher has said that they knew about this particular
(06:35):
bug for several months, but did not report it that
they were working on their own kind of bigger report
that was going to incorporate this as part of it,
which is you know, a yikes. Anyway, this is one
of those things that really stinks for the end consumers
because bad actors can easily exploit vulnerabilities like these and
(06:55):
use some fairly simple attacks to get people to fall
prey to them. I mean, the the NSO groups. Pegasus
uses a zero click attack through messengers like I Message,
and that that's very hard to avoid. Gizmoto has an
article listing the various Windows ten features that are going
(07:18):
to go away when Windows eleven launches, or rather Windows
eleven isn't going to include them. If you keep running
Windows ten, you'll still have access to these features. You know,
each time Microsoft updates its flagship operating system, we get
some new features and we say goodbye to some of
the older ones, and it doesn't always end up feeling
(07:38):
like it was a fair trade. So what is heading
out this time? Well, Internet Explorer will finally be really
most sincerely dead, at least on Windows eleven. Microsoft hasn't
really supported i E in a while. They moved to
the Edge web Browser instead, but they kept it around
(07:59):
for folks who refused to use Edge. UH and Windows
ten still had Internet Explorer as an option, but that
will not be the case with Windows eleven. Another feature
going away is the synchronization feature called Timeline. So the
idea behind Timeline is that you could essentially link different
Windows based machines that you work on and have them
(08:20):
synchronize your activities across the machines. So let's say you've
got two Windows based computers in your house, and you're
on one of those computers and you open up a
word document in your one drive, and you work on
it for a while, and you say that you close out.
Then you move to your other computer. Later on in
the day, you open up Word and that document would
(08:42):
be in your recent documents list in Word, even though
it was a totally different computer, because Timeline was synchronizing
these activities across the two devices. That is going away
with Windows eleven. I'm sure there'll be some comparable feature,
but it's not Timeline. Another thing that's going away are
live tiles, which I forgot we're even a thing for
(09:03):
Windows tin. I've never used them. These are little tiles
that you could put on the Windows tin desktop. They
can display live information, so you could have a tile
that has like a news ticker, that kind of thing.
It looks like when Microsoft is going to go back
to widgets for Windows eleven, which really aren't that different
from live tiles, I suppose, and I guess maybe this
(09:24):
will be the Windows where widgets really pay off. I
don't spend a whole lot of time looking at my desktop,
so maybe I'm just not the right person for these
kinds of features because I typically have programs on full
screen all the time. I've got multiple monitors and each
one has got a full screen program on it, because
I find lots of open windows in the same view
(09:46):
to be too cluttery. But when Whendows eleven, I'm gonna
put the widgets back. I don't think I'll be using them,
but they'll be there. Windows eleven will also remove your
ability to place your taskbar on whichever edge of the
screen you want, and now the task bar will live
at the bottom of the screen and you'll like it.
And I actually do happen to like having the test
(10:07):
bar at the bottom of the screen. I get really
irritated whenever I accidentally relocate the taskbar to some other
part of the screen, which can sometimes happen if I'm
being sloppy with my key strokes, and then something I
can't find my start button because it's at a different
spot of the screen. So I'm totally okay with Windows
eleven anchoring it at the bottom. Windows eleven is also
(10:28):
apparently going to de emphasize Cortana. That's the virtual assistant
feature that's named after a character in the Halo video
game franchise. Cortana will still be incorporated into Windows eleven,
but won't occupy the same sort of screen real estate,
nor will there be a Cortana segment in the setup process.
And also Skype is going to get de emphasized as well.
(10:49):
Microsoft's really pushing Microsoft Teams to be the main communication
tool on Windows based machines. There are a few other changes,
but I recommend going over to gizmoto and reading up
on the rest if you're thinking about upgrading to Windows
eleven when it comes out later this year. We've got
a few more news stories to cover, but first let's
take a quick break. I got a hypothetical for you.
(11:20):
What happens if you run a company that's focused on
online privacy tools, you know, like virtual private networks or VPNs,
and you get caught out running unencrypted services, well you
go into damage control, and that's kind of what's happening
with the company wind describe. Wind Scribe offers virtual private
(11:41):
networks or VPN services, and the way VPNs work, just
from a really high level, is pretty simple. So you
use a VPN client to log into a remote server
that is kind of standing as proxy for you. Then
all of your Internet activity actually filters through this VPN
server before it comes to you. Anyone who's snooping on
(12:04):
your connection will only see that you are communicating with
this VPN server. They won't be able to see what
you're doing beyond that server. So let's say you're using
a VPN to get past some regional controls, or you're
trying to avoid having your Internet service provider know which
sites you're visiting. Maybe you're shopping for different I s
(12:24):
p s and you would just prefer if the I
s P you have doesn't know about that. These are
all basic things that you could do, and this can
be really important for protecting your security and your privacy. Now,
it can also be used to hide your activity if
you're up to no good. So there is a double
edged sword here. But all of this really hinges on
(12:46):
having the VPN servers protected with encryption as well as
a good policy with regard to record keeping. So in general,
it's it's considered best practice if the VPN is not
keeping activity log of its users, because if it is
keeping activity logs a compromise server, it could potentially reveal
all the stuff that the users were up to when
(13:09):
connecting to that specific server. Well, in the Ukraine, authorities
seized a couple of VPN servers belonging to wind Scribe,
and those servers proved to be poorly encrypted using an
outdated methodology that has long since proven to be insecure.
It's been deprecated. In other words, we don't use it
anymore because it's not reliable. The company has essentially copped
(13:32):
to that, saying yeah, that is what happened, and they
said that generally they encrypt servers that are considered to
be in like high risk security areas, but they failed
to do so appropriately in this case in the Ukraine,
which I would think of as being a high security
area considering the political issues that go on between the
(13:53):
Ukraine and say Russia, and this opened up the potential
for someone to compromise the system. And Ours Technica has
a really great piece about this. It's titled VPN servers
seized by Ukrainian authorities weren't Encrypted. That article goes into
a lot more detail about both the issue at hand
and wind scribes response. Also. Ours Technica wisely points out
(14:16):
that VPN services have really taken off over the last
few years, and there are a lot of different companies
that are offering them, So it really pays to do
your research to make sure that whichever service you're looking
into is following the best practices of the industry in
order to keep your activity the way Gandolf would want
you to. You know, is it secret? Is it safe?
(14:38):
If it's not, don't use it. The Verge has a
piece titled Vigilante app Citizen is paying users to live
stream crime scenes and emergencies, which to me just sounds
a lot like the plot to the film Nightcrawler starring
Jake Jillenhall. If you haven't seen that movie, it's intense.
It's not for everybody, but the movie follows Jake Jillenhall's character.
(15:02):
He's a man who finds out that he can make
some pretty decent money if he's the first on the
scene of like an awful accident or a grizzly crime,
and he shoots footage of it, and then of course
he gets more and more involved as it goes on.
I won't spoil any more of it in case you
want to watch it, but it is a pretty intense film. Well,
now there's an app for that. The company behind Citizen
(15:26):
is offering between two hundred to two hundred fifty dollars
a day for people to live stream quote unquote newsworthy
events in their local area, so creating kind of a
gig economy on on the ground instant reporting. The company
expects applicants to not just point a camera at like
a developing situation, but also to conduct interviews, like to
(15:50):
talk to witnesses and onlookers and the police. Now they're
not supposed to interfere with police procedures or to put
themselves in harm's way, but they are supposed to interview folks. Uh,
this is I feel like it's active asking a heck
of a lot from users. The skill set for being
a good interviewer is a really nuanced and deep skill set.
(16:14):
And I say this as someone who occasionally interviews folks
and I have for a few years, but I still
feel like I've got a good way to go but
to become a really great interviewer. And it just seems
disastrous to open this up to me. Apparently, the company
has folks in Los Angeles working ten hour shifts for
two fifty bucks a day, which you know is better
(16:35):
than minimum wage, but I imagine the work can get
pretty risky for numerous reasons. Also, I don't know how
the company works as far as paying people, Like if
you're wandering around your area and it just happens to
be a quiet day, do you still get paid. Also,
the Verge reports that there's some other disturbing things with this.
(16:56):
For instance, Citizen, the company is apparently testing a private
security force, complete with patrol cars. Now Here in the
United States, we're already in a situation in which a
large segment of the population is calling for police reform
or outright defunding the police, and it seems like creating
private security forces, particularly when you take into consideration that
(17:19):
Citizen used to go by the name Vigilante, can raise
all sorts of red flags. Uh, certainly something that I'll
be following closely because this concerns me. It feels like
it could very easily tip into mob justice territory, which
(17:40):
which which can be truly disastrous Here in the US.
During the previous presidential administration, the FCC launched the Rural
Digital Opportunity Fund, and the idea was that the FCC
would grant subsidies to companies that would extend broadband connectivity
to communities and agents in the US that lack broadband access.
(18:03):
In other words, like, we need to get these people connected,
and here's an incentive for companies to to do that.
They'll get these great subsidies in return, which is a
pretty good idea, except the r d o F was
riddled with flaws that made it relatively easy for companies
to land those subsidies and then you know, not actually
(18:25):
provide services to rural or underserved areas. Some companies instead
focused on building out services in places that actually already
had broadband access, and that has led the f c C,
which of course is now under new leadership because of
a change in presidential administrations, to reach out to the
companies that were granted subsidies and say, hey, buddy, either
(18:49):
do what you were supposed to do or we want
our money back. And I think that's pretty darn keene
as there are lots of folks out there who really
lack any real access to broadband connectivity, and yet internet
access is increasingly a critical component to being a citizen
in the United States and just getting stuff done, particularly
in a world that is still in the midst of
(19:10):
a pandemic. When you have news stories about school kids
who have to go and sit in a parking lot
because that's the only way they're able to get internet
access in order to participate in school, that is a
serious failing of society and it's one that needs to
be addressed. The digital divide is not a new thing.
(19:32):
It has been a thing for decades. It's just not
getting better, and we need to do better. Well, we
have a couple more stories to cover, but before I
get to that, let's take another quick break. The New
York Times reports that a Toyota executive has been meeting
(19:54):
with congressional leaders in d C in a move to
push back against the planned path to adopting an all
all electric vehicle approach. And we're seeing various places around
the world go after fairly aggressive strategies to phase out
internal combustion engine vehicles entirely, at least for new vehicles
that is, and just move to all electric vehicles for
(20:15):
new cars. So to be clear, this doesn't mean that
you know, existing internal combustion engine vehicles are going to
all have to go to the scrap heap. No one's
coming to take your Dodge charger or anything like that.
It just means that in the future, like not that
far out into the future, shopping for a new car
(20:36):
will be all about electric vehicles because internal combustion engines
will no longer be in production. Now, apparently Toyota would
really rather we hold off on doing that, as the
company executive is trying to argue for hybrids and hydrogen
fuel cell vehicles to also be part of this conversation
and they should also qualify as replacements for internal combustion
(20:58):
engine vehicles, and that an all electric vehicle approach is
just the wrong way to go. This could be because
Toyota might be lagging behind some other manufacturers when it
comes to, you know, the plans to switch to e
vs UH. I would say that including hybrids and fuel
cell vehicles in the conversation, is not necessarily a bad idea.
(21:20):
They can definitely help reduce greenhouse gas emissions if they
are engineered properly, and they could have a legit seat
at the table when it comes to transitioning away from
internal combustion engines. However, Toyota's approach is one that's not
likely to win any supporters from those who want to
see big changes in an effort to reduce the impact
of climate change. So, in other words, it might just
(21:43):
come across as the wrong move. Toyota has had some
pretty notable, highly public pr issues in recent past that
have to deal with politics, so we'll see if this
also adds to the fire. Intel, which was once the
king of the hill when it comes to computer processors,
(22:05):
has slipped a little bit in recent years, but according
to the company's Intel Accelerated Virtual Event, the company has
a plan to regain the top spot by and part
of that strategy is a drum roll, please, a new
way of naming processors. Now, a lot of chips reference
the you know, size of components on a processor in
(22:27):
the nanoscale, which is a number that just keeps getting
smaller in defiance of physics itself. But as I recently learned,
those numbers don't necessarily actually reflect the actual components sizes
on the chip. That's a matter for another podcast. I
think I'm gonna have to do a full podcast about
how misleading those numbers are because it surprised me, and
(22:48):
I've been covering this stuff for years, so I need
to do an episode about it. The new naming scheme will,
according to Intel, create quote, a more accurate view of
process nodes across the end of street end quote. So
what does that mean, I'm gonna pull a Teva from
Fiddler on the Roof. I don't know, but this might
help Intel move away from a nomenclature that is at
(23:10):
best confusing and at worst misleading, and it might give
the company the chance to show off what it's hardware
can do without someone saying, yeah, but that number of
a day is better than your number, and it comes
down to performance rather than naming conventions. In other words,
and on that front, Intel's chips have been holding up
pretty well. Actually, honestly, I'm just curious to see if
(23:33):
this strategy is going to pay off for Intel the
processor industry as a whole, has had a lot of
shake ups recently, in large part because the pandemic has
really disrupted business and caused massive delays for long term plans.
So we'll just have to see how this all develops.
And finally, speaking of electricity, Dell and its subsidiary alien Ware,
(23:54):
have a shocking problem, and that's the fact that several
of the new alien Ware products those are like high
performance gaming rigs that they exceed the power consumption regulations
for states like California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington,
(24:17):
which means people in those states cannot actually order those
particular models and have them shipped to them. The company's
website makes this clear for those specific models that if
you order one and you happen to have a shipping
address that's in one of those states, that order will
not go through. So while the computers might go fast
(24:37):
while they're sitting still, they ain't gonna be making their
way to those states, at least not directly, because the
power consumption levels are just too high. On the one hand,
this feels like it's just incredible access to me, right,
Like you have a computer that is so juiced up
for gaming that it's pulling way too much electricity, like
(24:59):
more than some of your other appliances in your home.
But on the other hand, I think this could be
a gold mine for advertising. I imagine it alien ware
the computer so fast it's illegal in six states. I mean, sure,
that's not entirely accurate, but I think it could move units.
And that's it for the Tech News for July one.
(25:23):
We will not have a tech News episode this Thursday.
We have a new episode of Smart Talks coming out,
but we'll have more news next week, and we'll have
other episodes of tech Stuff obviously throughout the week. So
if you have any suggestions for future topics I should
cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter.
The handle for the show is text Stuff H s
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
(25:52):
Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app
Apple Podcasts wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
and I love all things tech. And this is the
tech news for Tuesday, July twenty twenty one, and let's
(00:28):
just get right into it. Misinformation is in the news,
both you know, as a topic and literally as part
of the news, because that's the world we live in.
The New York Times is Max Fisher wrote a piece
earlier this week titled Disinformation for Higher A shadow industry
is quietly booming. And the contents of that piece will
(00:51):
likely come as no surprise to anyone who has kept
up with the ongoing mess that is misinformation and disinformation
campaigns and the platforms that facilitate the spread of those campaigns.
And it probably isn't a surprise that there are a
collection of companies that are kind of acting as guns
(01:11):
for hire to run and promote disinformation campaigns on behalf
of their clients. And it gives those clients kind of
a bit of distance from the cd and unethical campaigns themselves. Right,
If you want to have a smear campaign against say
a political rival. You'd rather not have that come back
(01:33):
to you if you're saying a lot of things that
are just legit not true. Anyway, we saw all of
this years ago with Cambridge Analytica. That was kind of
a an example of this, although they did other stuff too,
and that company was actually fairly clumsy when it all
comes down to it. I mean that that house of
(01:53):
cards came crashing in on itself. But on the flip side,
there's also money to be made in fighting disinformation. So
we're also seeing startups come up to fight disinformation while
others are actively promoting it. So startups like Active Fence
are fighting disinformation. So we've got two sides of an
(02:15):
information war, both of which have turned this fight into
a profitable business. There's probably something really smart I could
say here about the whole situation and maybe about capitalism,
but I'm just going to leave that to someone who's
better equipped than I to make that observation. But just
like typical right anyway, Active Fence recently announced that it
(02:38):
has raised one million dollars in investments and is developing
a suite of tools to help detect misinformation campaigns. UH.
The company is using artificial intelligence as a way to
kind of crawl across various social platforms and not just
examine posts, but to look for connections between different accounts
(02:59):
and different groups, and those connections can point to concerted
efforts to spread, you know, a specific message or undermine
some other message. As we continue to deal with misinformation
campaigns around the world that deal with everything from politics
to workers rights, to vaccinations and beyond, it becomes more
important to be able to weed out the bad stuff
(03:20):
and to give people more opportunities to understand when they're
actually being manipulated and by whom and for what purpose.
That's incredibly valuable information to have, assuming that you actually
take the effort to look into it and not just
allow information to confirm maybe preconceived biases or prejudices you
(03:41):
might have, or to comfort you into thinking that something
that is your fault is totally not your fault. Like
all those kind of earmarks for how misinformation can really
get its hooks in, Uh, it's hard to overcome. My
guess is we're gonna see a continued escalation between the
companies that are offering to handle disinformation campaigns and the
ones providing the tools to fight those campaigns and it'll
(04:05):
just keep getting messy. That's my, you know, incredibly obvious prediction. Alright,
switching gears, let's talk about cybersecurity and software vulnerabilities. So
for many years, Apple products were seen as sort of
being bulletproof, and there were a couple of really big
major reasons for this. There are lots of reasons, but
(04:25):
two really big ones, and one was that Apple notoriously
follows a walled garden strategy in which the company makes
not only the operating systems, but the actual hardware that
those OS is run upon. Now, if you do this correctly,
you can actually cut down on potential vulnerabilities. You know,
you don't have different companies making different pieces and thus
(04:48):
creating the potential for gaps insecurity as much. It can
still happen, but it gives you a leg up. The
second big factor was that Apple, for many years had
much lower percentage of the market share when it came
to operating systems. So if you were a batty and
you wanted to make malicious software and your goal was
(05:09):
to affect the largest number of people you could, you
would focus on Windows based devices, Windows based computers. Like
this is before the smartphone era, and that's because Windows
was on way more computer systems than mac OS was,
so it just made more sense you were going to
hit more targets if you aimed for Windows users. But
(05:30):
these factors do not make Apple immune to the problem
of malware. They're not, you know, completely uh bulletproof, as
I was saying. The Register actually reports that Apple recently
patched a zero day vulnerability in its various OS products,
including mac os and iOS, just yesterday on Monday, a
(05:51):
week earlier. The company issued updates to the various operating
systems to fix some other issues, and the patched vulnerability
was in a screen frame buffer. Uh. That's a feature that,
if it had been exploited by a hacker, could be
used to uh to to run malware, to execute malware.
The Register also reports that someone, though at the time
(06:15):
that I'm recording this, I don't know who, had been
exploiting that bug in some way. Uh. That could potentially
be the n s O group, that's the that's the
company that's behind the Pegasus spyware that I talked about
last week, the one out of Israel. At least one
security researcher has said that they knew about this particular
(06:35):
bug for several months, but did not report it that
they were working on their own kind of bigger report
that was going to incorporate this as part of it,
which is you know, a yikes. Anyway, this is one
of those things that really stinks for the end consumers
because bad actors can easily exploit vulnerabilities like these and
(06:55):
use some fairly simple attacks to get people to fall
prey to them. I mean, the the NSO groups. Pegasus
uses a zero click attack through messengers like I Message,
and that that's very hard to avoid. Gizmoto has an
article listing the various Windows ten features that are going
(07:18):
to go away when Windows eleven launches, or rather Windows
eleven isn't going to include them. If you keep running
Windows ten, you'll still have access to these features. You know,
each time Microsoft updates its flagship operating system, we get
some new features and we say goodbye to some of
the older ones, and it doesn't always end up feeling
(07:38):
like it was a fair trade. So what is heading
out this time? Well, Internet Explorer will finally be really
most sincerely dead, at least on Windows eleven. Microsoft hasn't
really supported i E in a while. They moved to
the Edge web Browser instead, but they kept it around
(07:59):
for folks who refused to use Edge. UH and Windows
ten still had Internet Explorer as an option, but that
will not be the case with Windows eleven. Another feature
going away is the synchronization feature called Timeline. So the
idea behind Timeline is that you could essentially link different
Windows based machines that you work on and have them
(08:20):
synchronize your activities across the machines. So let's say you've
got two Windows based computers in your house, and you're
on one of those computers and you open up a
word document in your one drive, and you work on
it for a while, and you say that you close out.
Then you move to your other computer. Later on in
the day, you open up Word and that document would
(08:42):
be in your recent documents list in Word, even though
it was a totally different computer, because Timeline was synchronizing
these activities across the two devices. That is going away
with Windows eleven. I'm sure there'll be some comparable feature,
but it's not Timeline. Another thing that's going away are
live tiles, which I forgot we're even a thing for
(09:03):
Windows tin. I've never used them. These are little tiles
that you could put on the Windows tin desktop. They
can display live information, so you could have a tile
that has like a news ticker, that kind of thing.
It looks like when Microsoft is going to go back
to widgets for Windows eleven, which really aren't that different
from live tiles, I suppose, and I guess maybe this
(09:24):
will be the Windows where widgets really pay off. I
don't spend a whole lot of time looking at my desktop,
so maybe I'm just not the right person for these
kinds of features because I typically have programs on full
screen all the time. I've got multiple monitors and each
one has got a full screen program on it, because
I find lots of open windows in the same view
(09:46):
to be too cluttery. But when Whendows eleven, I'm gonna
put the widgets back. I don't think I'll be using them,
but they'll be there. Windows eleven will also remove your
ability to place your taskbar on whichever edge of the
screen you want, and now the task bar will live
at the bottom of the screen and you'll like it.
And I actually do happen to like having the test
(10:07):
bar at the bottom of the screen. I get really
irritated whenever I accidentally relocate the taskbar to some other
part of the screen, which can sometimes happen if I'm
being sloppy with my key strokes, and then something I
can't find my start button because it's at a different
spot of the screen. So I'm totally okay with Windows
eleven anchoring it at the bottom. Windows eleven is also
(10:28):
apparently going to de emphasize Cortana. That's the virtual assistant
feature that's named after a character in the Halo video
game franchise. Cortana will still be incorporated into Windows eleven,
but won't occupy the same sort of screen real estate,
nor will there be a Cortana segment in the setup process.
And also Skype is going to get de emphasized as well.
(10:49):
Microsoft's really pushing Microsoft Teams to be the main communication
tool on Windows based machines. There are a few other changes,
but I recommend going over to gizmoto and reading up
on the rest if you're thinking about upgrading to Windows
eleven when it comes out later this year. We've got
a few more news stories to cover, but first let's
take a quick break. I got a hypothetical for you.
(11:20):
What happens if you run a company that's focused on
online privacy tools, you know, like virtual private networks or VPNs,
and you get caught out running unencrypted services, well you
go into damage control, and that's kind of what's happening
with the company wind describe. Wind Scribe offers virtual private
(11:41):
networks or VPN services, and the way VPNs work, just
from a really high level, is pretty simple. So you
use a VPN client to log into a remote server
that is kind of standing as proxy for you. Then
all of your Internet activity actually filters through this VPN
server before it comes to you. Anyone who's snooping on
(12:04):
your connection will only see that you are communicating with
this VPN server. They won't be able to see what
you're doing beyond that server. So let's say you're using
a VPN to get past some regional controls, or you're
trying to avoid having your Internet service provider know which
sites you're visiting. Maybe you're shopping for different I s
(12:24):
p s and you would just prefer if the I
s P you have doesn't know about that. These are
all basic things that you could do, and this can
be really important for protecting your security and your privacy. Now,
it can also be used to hide your activity if
you're up to no good. So there is a double
edged sword here. But all of this really hinges on
(12:46):
having the VPN servers protected with encryption as well as
a good policy with regard to record keeping. So in general,
it's it's considered best practice if the VPN is not
keeping activity log of its users, because if it is
keeping activity logs a compromise server, it could potentially reveal
all the stuff that the users were up to when
(13:09):
connecting to that specific server. Well, in the Ukraine, authorities
seized a couple of VPN servers belonging to wind Scribe,
and those servers proved to be poorly encrypted using an
outdated methodology that has long since proven to be insecure.
It's been deprecated. In other words, we don't use it
anymore because it's not reliable. The company has essentially copped
(13:32):
to that, saying yeah, that is what happened, and they
said that generally they encrypt servers that are considered to
be in like high risk security areas, but they failed
to do so appropriately in this case in the Ukraine,
which I would think of as being a high security
area considering the political issues that go on between the
(13:53):
Ukraine and say Russia, and this opened up the potential
for someone to compromise the system. And Ours Technica has
a really great piece about this. It's titled VPN servers
seized by Ukrainian authorities weren't Encrypted. That article goes into
a lot more detail about both the issue at hand
and wind scribes response. Also. Ours Technica wisely points out
(14:16):
that VPN services have really taken off over the last
few years, and there are a lot of different companies
that are offering them, So it really pays to do
your research to make sure that whichever service you're looking
into is following the best practices of the industry in
order to keep your activity the way Gandolf would want
you to. You know, is it secret? Is it safe?
(14:38):
If it's not, don't use it. The Verge has a
piece titled Vigilante app Citizen is paying users to live
stream crime scenes and emergencies, which to me just sounds
a lot like the plot to the film Nightcrawler starring
Jake Jillenhall. If you haven't seen that movie, it's intense.
It's not for everybody, but the movie follows Jake Jillenhall's character.
(15:02):
He's a man who finds out that he can make
some pretty decent money if he's the first on the
scene of like an awful accident or a grizzly crime,
and he shoots footage of it, and then of course
he gets more and more involved as it goes on.
I won't spoil any more of it in case you
want to watch it, but it is a pretty intense film. Well,
now there's an app for that. The company behind Citizen
(15:26):
is offering between two hundred to two hundred fifty dollars
a day for people to live stream quote unquote newsworthy
events in their local area, so creating kind of a
gig economy on on the ground instant reporting. The company
expects applicants to not just point a camera at like
a developing situation, but also to conduct interviews, like to
(15:50):
talk to witnesses and onlookers and the police. Now they're
not supposed to interfere with police procedures or to put
themselves in harm's way, but they are supposed to interview folks. Uh,
this is I feel like it's active asking a heck
of a lot from users. The skill set for being
a good interviewer is a really nuanced and deep skill set.
(16:14):
And I say this as someone who occasionally interviews folks
and I have for a few years, but I still
feel like I've got a good way to go but
to become a really great interviewer. And it just seems
disastrous to open this up to me. Apparently, the company
has folks in Los Angeles working ten hour shifts for
two fifty bucks a day, which you know is better
(16:35):
than minimum wage, but I imagine the work can get
pretty risky for numerous reasons. Also, I don't know how
the company works as far as paying people, Like if
you're wandering around your area and it just happens to
be a quiet day, do you still get paid. Also,
the Verge reports that there's some other disturbing things with this.
(16:56):
For instance, Citizen, the company is apparently testing a private
security force, complete with patrol cars. Now Here in the
United States, we're already in a situation in which a
large segment of the population is calling for police reform
or outright defunding the police, and it seems like creating
private security forces, particularly when you take into consideration that
(17:19):
Citizen used to go by the name Vigilante, can raise
all sorts of red flags. Uh, certainly something that I'll
be following closely because this concerns me. It feels like
it could very easily tip into mob justice territory, which
(17:40):
which which can be truly disastrous Here in the US.
During the previous presidential administration, the FCC launched the Rural
Digital Opportunity Fund, and the idea was that the FCC
would grant subsidies to companies that would extend broadband connectivity
to communities and agents in the US that lack broadband access.
(18:03):
In other words, like, we need to get these people connected,
and here's an incentive for companies to to do that.
They'll get these great subsidies in return, which is a
pretty good idea, except the r d o F was
riddled with flaws that made it relatively easy for companies
to land those subsidies and then you know, not actually
(18:25):
provide services to rural or underserved areas. Some companies instead
focused on building out services in places that actually already
had broadband access, and that has led the f c C,
which of course is now under new leadership because of
a change in presidential administrations, to reach out to the
companies that were granted subsidies and say, hey, buddy, either
(18:49):
do what you were supposed to do or we want
our money back. And I think that's pretty darn keene
as there are lots of folks out there who really
lack any real access to broadband connectivity, and yet internet
access is increasingly a critical component to being a citizen
in the United States and just getting stuff done, particularly
in a world that is still in the midst of
(19:10):
a pandemic. When you have news stories about school kids
who have to go and sit in a parking lot
because that's the only way they're able to get internet
access in order to participate in school, that is a
serious failing of society and it's one that needs to
be addressed. The digital divide is not a new thing.
(19:32):
It has been a thing for decades. It's just not
getting better, and we need to do better. Well, we
have a couple more stories to cover, but before I
get to that, let's take another quick break. The New
York Times reports that a Toyota executive has been meeting
(19:54):
with congressional leaders in d C in a move to
push back against the planned path to adopting an all
all electric vehicle approach. And we're seeing various places around
the world go after fairly aggressive strategies to phase out
internal combustion engine vehicles entirely, at least for new vehicles
that is, and just move to all electric vehicles for
(20:15):
new cars. So to be clear, this doesn't mean that
you know, existing internal combustion engine vehicles are going to
all have to go to the scrap heap. No one's
coming to take your Dodge charger or anything like that.
It just means that in the future, like not that
far out into the future, shopping for a new car
(20:36):
will be all about electric vehicles because internal combustion engines
will no longer be in production. Now, apparently Toyota would
really rather we hold off on doing that, as the
company executive is trying to argue for hybrids and hydrogen
fuel cell vehicles to also be part of this conversation
and they should also qualify as replacements for internal combustion
(20:58):
engine vehicles, and that an all electric vehicle approach is
just the wrong way to go. This could be because
Toyota might be lagging behind some other manufacturers when it
comes to, you know, the plans to switch to e
vs UH. I would say that including hybrids and fuel
cell vehicles in the conversation, is not necessarily a bad idea.
(21:20):
They can definitely help reduce greenhouse gas emissions if they
are engineered properly, and they could have a legit seat
at the table when it comes to transitioning away from
internal combustion engines. However, Toyota's approach is one that's not
likely to win any supporters from those who want to
see big changes in an effort to reduce the impact
of climate change. So, in other words, it might just
(21:43):
come across as the wrong move. Toyota has had some
pretty notable, highly public pr issues in recent past that
have to deal with politics, so we'll see if this
also adds to the fire. Intel, which was once the
king of the hill when it comes to computer processors,
(22:05):
has slipped a little bit in recent years, but according
to the company's Intel Accelerated Virtual Event, the company has
a plan to regain the top spot by and part
of that strategy is a drum roll, please, a new
way of naming processors. Now, a lot of chips reference
the you know, size of components on a processor in
(22:27):
the nanoscale, which is a number that just keeps getting
smaller in defiance of physics itself. But as I recently learned,
those numbers don't necessarily actually reflect the actual components sizes
on the chip. That's a matter for another podcast. I
think I'm gonna have to do a full podcast about
how misleading those numbers are because it surprised me, and
(22:48):
I've been covering this stuff for years, so I need
to do an episode about it. The new naming scheme will,
according to Intel, create quote, a more accurate view of
process nodes across the end of street end quote. So
what does that mean, I'm gonna pull a Teva from
Fiddler on the Roof. I don't know, but this might
help Intel move away from a nomenclature that is at
(23:10):
best confusing and at worst misleading, and it might give
the company the chance to show off what it's hardware
can do without someone saying, yeah, but that number of
a day is better than your number, and it comes
down to performance rather than naming conventions. In other words,
and on that front, Intel's chips have been holding up
pretty well. Actually, honestly, I'm just curious to see if
(23:33):
this strategy is going to pay off for Intel the
processor industry as a whole, has had a lot of
shake ups recently, in large part because the pandemic has
really disrupted business and caused massive delays for long term plans.
So we'll just have to see how this all develops.
And finally, speaking of electricity, Dell and its subsidiary alien Ware,
(23:54):
have a shocking problem, and that's the fact that several
of the new alien Ware products those are like high
performance gaming rigs that they exceed the power consumption regulations
for states like California, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington,
(24:17):
which means people in those states cannot actually order those
particular models and have them shipped to them. The company's
website makes this clear for those specific models that if
you order one and you happen to have a shipping
address that's in one of those states, that order will
not go through. So while the computers might go fast
(24:37):
while they're sitting still, they ain't gonna be making their
way to those states, at least not directly, because the
power consumption levels are just too high. On the one hand,
this feels like it's just incredible access to me, right,
Like you have a computer that is so juiced up
for gaming that it's pulling way too much electricity, like
(24:59):
more than some of your other appliances in your home.
But on the other hand, I think this could be
a gold mine for advertising. I imagine it alien ware
the computer so fast it's illegal in six states. I mean, sure,
that's not entirely accurate, but I think it could move units.
And that's it for the Tech News for July one.
(25:23):
We will not have a tech News episode this Thursday.
We have a new episode of Smart Talks coming out,
but we'll have more news next week, and we'll have
other episodes of tech Stuff obviously throughout the week. So
if you have any suggestions for future topics I should
cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter.
The handle for the show is text Stuff H s
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
(25:52):
Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app
Apple Podcasts wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.