Tech New: The Era of Killer Robots

and beyond. So let's dive into that really quickly. Now. It mostly comes down to a couple of big things that happened in twenty and one of those is, of course, the pandemic. The global shutdown of various industries disrupted supply chains, and that meant that shortages and raw materials became an issue really quickly. It just had this you know, ripple effect.

And it's not like the whole world went on pause at the same time, and it certainly isn't like they all started up again in synchronization along with everyone else. So in a way, this kind of led to the supply chain version of a traffic jam, except instead of cars going through you know, stop and start traffic, because of some other event that happened Further down the road.

You have various manufacturers who found themselves waiting on other elements in the supply chain, and thus they had to go idle because they didn't have the stuff they needed to do their part in the chain. Everything got knocked up. Related to that, the silicon used to create the vials to hold vaccines is the same stuff that's used in semiconductors. And you know, because the vaccines are understandably of very very high priority, it meant the semiconductor industry experienced a

silicon shortage, and thus the price for silicon went up. Now, when the price for materials goes up, you get one of two outcomes. Either the companies that are making stuff out of that raw material have to increase prices or they experience a smaller profit margin. Either way, the squeeze is felt further up the chain. But the other big issue on top of that is that the demand for semiconductors grew a lot in by nearly seven per cent.

More of our everyday tech relies on semiconductors, everything from you know, video game consoles to automobiles. Now, because of the shortage of semiconductors. Everything else down the line gets held up too, and this is likely to lead to massive losses in several industries. Automakers are probably going to be losing billions of dollars in the short term because semiconductors are important components for nearly every system inside a car, like there's more than fifty of them, and that includes

everything from entertainment two breaks to steering. Pat Gelsinger, the new CEO of Intel, warrants that this could just be the start of a shortage and that we could see the effects of the shortage stretch on several years. Gelsinger has said that the semiconductor industry has reacted quickly to near term challenges, but that the long term effects are still a big concern. Meanwhile, on the consumer side, we're

seeing the effects of this crisis. The laptop maker ACER has said that due to this semiconductor shortage, the company is only able to fill half of worldwide demand for laptop production on any given day. So what this means for all of us, you know, you and me is that the supply for all sorts of tech, from smartphones to computers to cars is going to be more limited than what we've come to expect, at least for the

near term, and demand is likely to be high. So when you've got high demand and you've got limited supply, the next thing you typically see is prices go up. So get ready to spend more money to buy your tech over the next year or two until things shake out and while we get ready to pay out more money, the Guardian reports that the Silicon Six have actually paid out less than they claimed. The Silicon Six refers to

six gargantuan tech companies. That would be Alphabet, which is Google's parent company, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Netflix which interestingly, uh is the first time I've seen Netflix added to this particular list. Totally makes sense though, and according to the Guardian, these six companies overstated their tax payments by nearly one hundred billion dollars over the last ten years.

A report from the Fair Tax Foundation claims that these six companies paid ninety six billion dollars less in tax between two thousand and eleven and two thousand twenty than their annual reports indicate. Moreover, these six companies paid a tax rate that you or I would go bonkers over. According to Fair Tax Foundation, these companies paid out three point six percent of their total revenue in tax that's

two d nineteen billion dollars of taxes. And yeah, that is an astounding amount of money, two hundred nineteen billion dollars. But let's compare that to the amount of revenue they generated, which was more than six trillion dollars trillion. That goes beyond a princely sum. Now let's be fair. That is revenue that is not profit, right, Like, profit is what you get after you remove all the costs from the money that you've brought in. So luckily the Guardian digs

down into that a little bit as well. Over that decade, you know, the last ten years, Amazon collected around one point six trillion dollars in revenue but collected a mere sixty point five billion dollars in profits. So I mean, I'm being a little flippant because honestly, these numbers are so big I can't actually comprehend them. Like, from an abstract perspective, I kind of get it, but you know, if I try to dive any further down, it's just

too big. But you see that the amount of profit compared to revenue is very, very tiny when you look at them in ratio right, not by sheer amount. Sixty billion dollars is a huge amount of money anyway. The Guardian reports that Amazon ended up paying well below what it should have been expected to pay, almost half as much. In fact, there's a shifting movement around the world to apply new tax laws that would limit companies from being

able to to put profits over into tax havens. Whether that actually happens or not, whether countries around the world really act on this, Uh, that remains to be seen, because I'm sure there will be more than a few dollars spent on lobbying to oppose those measures. So we'll have to see how this develops further. Okay, but what if money is no object to you? What if you are swimming in the stuff you know, Scrooge McDuck style, How do you flaunt your wealth in a way that's

both flashy and environmentally friendly. Well, my friend, maybe it's time you look into the silent Shadow, a luxury electric vehicle concept in the works over at Rolls Royce. Now, the brand Rolls Royce has long been associated with luxury and opulence, and the word shadow has significance for the company because back in nineteen Rolls Royce introduced the Silver Shadow luxury car. When it comes to the Silent Shadow, well, we don't really have that many details about the car.

The company says that the plans are to have the vehicle ready for purchase within the decade, but we don't know any specs. We don't know what the projected prices, although you know, if you have to ask, you can't afford it. We don't know really any real details except that, of course, you know, Silent Shadow. The name tells us that we know it's going to be very, very quiet.

But then again, Rolls Royce is known, at least in part for engineering cars that operate quietly, because the whole point of a Rolls Royce is that the experience of driving it, or for those who prefer to employ a driver, the experience of riding in a Rolls Royce is to enjoy luxury rather than that you know, chassis shaking, engine

revving experience you get with like muscle cars. Rolls Royce isn't the only luxury car maker that's diving into electric vehicles, and as I've reported in previous episodes of Tech Stuff, that's pretty much a necessity because a lot of places around the world intend to phase out the sale of new fossil fuel powered vehicles over the next decade and a half. Earlier this year, I talked about how the

electronics company l G was exiting the smartphone industry. The company had shown off a couple of interesting concepts at CES, but it sounds like they're never going to hit store shelves, So that magical expanding smartphone is just gonna be a thing of legend. I think we're not, at least we're not going to see it from l G now Korea. Biz Wire reports that l G is switching its former smart phone manufacturing facilities over to make home appliances instead.

The company is also consolidating its operations in Brazil, expanding facilities in the city of Manouse. And I apologize for the terrible mispronunciation of that. I am certain I got it completely wrong. While LG pulled the plug on smartphones after finding the market too competitive, it was dominated by companies like Apple and Samsung, home appliances are a totally different story. One of the many consequences of the pandemic of twan. I guess I shouldn't give it a year.

It's still going anyway. One of the big consequences was this increased demand in home appliances as people spent more time at home, and LG saw its sales skyrocket as a result. Now this move reflects that increased demand was really the driver for l g S decisions. However, it will remain to be seen if that demand will contin nue, right if the demands that were generated by the pandemic in are going to stick around even as we start to have a better handle on dealing with the consequences

of that pandemic. So we don't really know if this is the start of a trend in home appliance sales or if it's more of a blip in the radar. C Net reports that some recently unsealed court documents show that Google purposefully obvious skated the location settings in its Android phone software so that it would be harder for users to find those settings and then turn them off.

As we've seen when numerous tech companies, including one we're going to cover in a second, the real business of those companies aren't necessarily in hardware or social networking sites or whatever the surface level businesses. You know, Google's business isn't really search. It's in data. That's where the real money is collecting and then exploiting data in different ways, primarily when it comes to user data that comes in

the form of the company's relationships with various advertisers. You know, obviously, the more information you can give an advertiser about their intended market, the more effectively that advertiser can serve up ads to that market. So it becomes this the cycle, this feedback loop between these companies and advertisers that in

turn inform the business decisions of those companies like Google. So, according to this document, Google discovered that if the location settings on an Android phone were relatively easy to navigate to, a lot of people opted to turn off their location settings. How about that folks are not super jazzed about being tracked wewere and so google solution to this issue was not to shift business operations away from the benefits of

harvesting location data. No, the answer apparently was to make those settings just way harder to find so that users would continue to generate those geo located zeros and ones for Google, so that Google could profit off of them

without those users actually really being aware of it. On top of that, Google apparently reached out to various manufacturers that make Android products in an effort to convince them to hide the location settings away in deep various menus and clunky user interfaces like LG pushed geolocation settings to the second page of Settings and its phones, And anyone who's had any experience on the Internet knows that if you are below the fold, that is, if you have

to scroll down in order to see the ticular entry, you lose like the vast majority of people who are looking at your stuff like this is clear in Google Search. Right, if you're not in those first few hits of a Google search, the traffic that comes to you thanks to Google Search is super low because you know, most people don't bother to school down any further. Sayings true with settings on phones. If it's not right there, a lot of people don't take the effort to go any further.

This revelation comes on the heels of an investigation from three years ago by the Associated Press into Google, and that investigation found that Google was tracking location even if users opted out of the location history feature. So apparently, if you turned off location history on your Android device, it just meant that Google was going to keep on tracking you everywhere you go. They just wouldn't tell you about it. I mean, why should you care about all

this anyway? Why why is this important? Well, location data isn't just about collecting information on where you go and when you go there. It's also about collecting the data of everybody else at the same time. Anyone who has, you know, a device that has geolocation connected to it, if you're in a space that has a lot of folks with phones in it. Well, now, as a data collection company, you can do all sorts of interesting things.

So I'm going to give you an example. And this is actually something that's related to a Twitter thread I saw and I wish I could remember the person who posted it because it was very good. But I'll give you kind of an example. So let's say that you've got a good friend of yours you haven't seen in a long time, and you go to visit this friend for a few days. So you're staying at your friend's house. Now, your friend also has various devices, and you've got your smartphone,

and location tracking tells Google where you are. And assuming Google also has at least some access to the data that's generated by your friends devices, Google also knows who you are with. They know that you're at this specific person's house, and they know things about that specific person too. Google knows all about your friends activities and what they like and where they like to go and all that

kind of stuff. So now Google starts to integrate ads into your various experiences that aren't just targeting you, They're also targeting your friend. I mean, you like this person well enough to stay at their house for a few days. Maybe you like them well enough to shop for a birthday present for them, and Google happens to know when their birthday is because that's some of the data that

these companies collect, like email, addresses, birthdays. A lot of the stuff these companies collect not through directly grabbing it off of your device, but by you know, cross referencing the databases that have your information in them from across

all the different services you use. So if you've ever used a service where you've had to put in things like your name and address and phone number and your birthday and your email and all that kind of stuff, all that data ends up getting mixed up with information that's gathered from sources like devices, and that's a really

powerful thing. So now, because Google knows where you are and who you're with, and they know about that person's birthday, maybe they serve up ads about something that this friend of yours really likes, and the suggestion is, hey, it's it's it's my friend's birthday coming up. I should, you know, click on this ad and buy this stuff. So now you get this weird sensation that you're getting served ads that are very specifically targeted at you and the experiences

that you've recently had. It feels like Google is listening in on you right, like it's just spying on you, and it's picking up stuff from say you're your phone's microphone or whatever. But no, Google doesn't have to do any of that. Google doesn't have to do any active spying on you. It doesn't have to listen to you.

It's just collecting all the data from you and your friend just by being who you are and where you are, and then cross referencing that data with other data sets, and then analyzing that data and then acting on it. This is just one way where data collection can become intrusive and creepy. Now we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, I'll give another update about another company that's equally obsessed with your information. It rhymes with

a space look. But first, let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back, And before the break, I was telling you about Google and geolocation data and how the company was apparently trying to hide the settings for geolocation away so that fewer people would turn it off. I mean, that's the thing. These companies are often compelled by various legislations

around the world to offer up that solution. But then the companies do their best to make that option, you know, harder to find so that fewer people actually use it because it's it's we've seen when people are given the option, they often like to opt out of these features. And when your entire business is dependent upon those features, that's where you see these companies coming up with these clever

ways to try and get around the issue. So along that same vein, remember how Facebook put up a fuss about the new privacy settings that are included in the

latest version of Apple's iOS. So one of the new features of the iPhone operating system, well really the iOS operating system, because it's for all sorts of devices, not just an iPhone anyway, one of the new features is that users will get a prompt asking if they will allow certain apps like Facebook, for example, to collect data about themselves outside of the app itself, So that includes

data that comes from other apps that are on your phone. So, for example, Facebook, if you were to allow this option, would potentially be allowed to collect information about your shopping habits on other apps, or what restaurants you like to order from whenever you use delivery services and so on. Now, because of apples change in policy, users will get a message asking them to grant permission to allow apps like

Facebook to do this. And Facebook really hates that. And the reason the company really hates it is pretty much the same reason that Google was burying location settings. Because data is money, and if you give people the option to share less data about themselves, they might actually take that option. And I mean, really, isn't that just stealing?

I mean, when you get down to it, isn't it just ungrateful for users to not hand over all the information about who they are and what they do and who they know so that poor scrappy companies like Facebook can just make a buck off that info. Now, I'm obviously I'm being incredibly obnoxious and sarcastic here because I think Facebook is like literally the worst anyway. Now, a new study suggests that Apple's changes to privacy are in fact bad. The study says Apple is doing a bad

thing by including these privacy options. It says that those policies only serve to help Apple, and they hurt all other companies, and thus these are anti competitive practice. Is that Apple has put in place, Apple saying if you want to operate on our system, you must follow these rules, which, by the way, we don't have to follow as Apple. As Apple, we it's cool for us to collect all the information, but you companies out there, you cannot do that,

and that this hurts other companies. Also, Facebook totally funded that study. Now that might cause you to question the studies objective perspective, right, Like, the studies outcome is essentially in line with Facebook's complaints against Apple. So I think that's actually a pretty darn healthy attitude to have to question the objectivity of the results because the study itself was funded by the company that has a beef against Apple.

But all that being said, does that mean it's possible that the paper actually has a point in that Apple is going to be fit while other companies do not. I mean, maybe it's very likely Apple is certainly no innocent lamb in this equation either. Right, You've got all these different companies that are leveraging data in different ways. Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes it's subtle, but they're all

profiting off of it. Now. I don't have a solution that addresses this whole issue unless it's just to give up on smartphones in general and go to like really simple cell phones and and just kind of opt out of the online experience. That's not really an option for most people, or at least not a you know, an attractive option. But the flip side is, unless there's some specific legislation in place that that directs how data can and cannot be used, I don't see really a way

of fixing this. Um it's a mess. It's speaking of messes. In science fiction, autonomous killer robots are a common trope, from terminator to RoboCop to the classic chopping mall. The threat of AI powered killing machines is made apparent, and we've seen numerous experts in robotics and AI speak out against the development of these kinds of devices. They've pointed out that autonomous weapons would very likely lead to a new type of arms race, and that we would also

see horrific uses of this technology. It does not take much imagination to conjure up a scenario in which a machine, all under its own power, mistakenly identifies a group of people as being targets and then attacks them. Or heck, it's not hard to imagine a machine that identifies a group quote unquote correctly, But the people behind the machine are committed to wiping out specific populations, and they're just using the machin jeans to carry out the awful, horrific work.

And according to the u N, we are essentially in that terrifying era. A u N Security Council reports said that in March of twenty the Nation of Turkey deployed an STM cargo to military drone. This drone, apparently under autonomous command, attacked Libyan armed forces that were repositioning and withdrawing from an area. The report claims that the drone could identify an attack targets without first establishing any line

of communication back to a human operator. The u N had previously warned against this sort of thing, advocating for a global ban on the production of autonomous weaponry. That was a move that was opposed by two major world powers, Russia and the United States. Now this was back in the U S. Isn't a very different place politically today. In however, I am not confident enough to say that the US would unilaterally condemn the development of these kinds

of autonomous weapons. And I say that mostly because the Obama administration had its own serious burden to bear when it comes to the use of lethal military drones, though those were under the control of human operators. Anyway, the report has prompted more experts in the fields of AI and machine learning to speak out against the practice of

developing and deploying autonomous weaponry. So it pretty much falls to governments to take action from here and perhaps give the U N the authority to to have a unilateral ban on the development and thus, you know, processes in place for any countries found to have violated that ban, because otherwise, without that kind of global operative approach, we're going to see countries say, well, we can't let there be an autonomous weapon gap. If we don't pursue it,

we will be destroyed by these tools. Because our our our opponents will surely go down that pathway, so we have to and it becomes the sort of escalation that we've seen time and time again. Pretty concerning stuff. We've got another cyber attacks story to cover, this time targeting the food industry. A company called JBS Foods had to shut down operations over the weekend due to a cyber attack.

JBS Foods is the world's largest producer of beef and poultry and the second largest producer of pork, which surprised me because I mean, I guess pigs have to be the biggest producer of pork. Uh huh jokes. Anyway, a cyber attack forced JBS Foods to shut down operations in multiple countries, including the UK, the United States, Australia, Canada,

and more. The attack hit the I T systems of the company, and at the time of this recording, I don't have specific details about the nature of that cyber attack. If I had to guess, and again this is just a guess, I would say it's very likely another ransomware attacks, similar to what we saw with Colonial Pipeline earlier this year. If that is the case, then JBS Foods could, in theory be weighing the option about whether or not to

pay off a ransom. If that is the case, I still maintain paying off ransoms is always a bad idea because it consistently fuels more attacks in the future. The more times hackers get paid off, the more they see that this is profitable, and they'll do it even more.

The company is definitely working to restore functionality to its systems and JBS Foods as that it has no evidence that this attack compromised any data relating to employees, customers, or suppliers, but that processing transactions might take a while because the company has to restore functionality, So we'll keep

an eye on this story. And finally, up in space, the International Space Station's robot arms suffered some damage recently, and at first I was kind of hoping to read about how the I s s got into a robot arm wrestling competition will Sylvester Stallone and that this was finally my eagerly anticipated sequel to the hit film Over the Top, And I think that this one could be called way over the Top. And now Stallone is like

a space trucker who likes to arm wrestle. But I'm told that none of this is true, and I should just probably not talk about that anymore. But what is true is that the arm did get damaged, and the real reason it got damaged was because of space debris, which is a real issue and a growing one as we send more stuff up into space and we lack a coheri adhesive approach to getting that stuff down. Once it ends its its useful life cycle, it's going to

get worse. And when this actually happened is hard to say, but NASA states that the Canada Arm two, which has been part of the I S S since two thousand one, has a puncture in its thermal blanket, so this is essentially like insulation around the arm, and that the boom

underneath also suffered some damage. As to when this happened, I'm not actually sure, but the issue of space debris is one that has been growing over the years without much action on the part of terrestrial governments to create a foundation for rules and processes to mitigate that issue, or, as Jack right Nelson from the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law said to the Register quote, the whole in Canada Arm two is minuscule compared to the whole

in the international legal regime concerning space debris. End quote. Couldn't have said it better myself, Mr Nelson. All right, that is it for the news for Tuesday, June one, twenty one. If you have any suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me on Twitter the handle we use as tech stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y. Tech Stuff is an I Heart

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