Tech News – Tech and Global Politics

in two cities. And why did they do that. Well, it all comes down to Twitter applying a manipulated media label to an Indian politicians tweet. So back last February, you might remember Twitter announced that it would apply such labels to messages that were found to have, you know, altered images or messaging that spread misinformation. You might also remember that the company actually applied this policy a couple

of times to tweets sent by then US President Donald Trump. Well, in this case, the tweet was written by Sambit Patra, a member of the b j P party, which currently has a majority control of India's government. That tweet accused the opposition party, which is the Congress Party of having released a quote unquote toolkit in an effort to undermine the b j P Party's attempts to respond to the

coronavirus crisis. And you're probably aware that India is dealing with a monumental health crisis, one that has affected millions of people within that country, and that the government is sensitive to scrutiny with regard to how they've handled the issue or failed to handle it, as the case may be.

Patra's claim essentially says that the opposition party in India was actively trying to sabotage government efforts to deal with the crisis by creating this document, this toolkit strategy to defeat government efforts, and an independent fact checking organization in India called ault News investigated this claim and found that the document Pottery had said proved that the Congress Party had created this alleged toolkit was in fact printed on

forged letterhead and thus not a legitimate document. So Twitter then applied the manipulated media label to the tweet. The b JP party was not pleased with this and sent messages to Twitter demanding that they remove it, and then apparently they contacted the police to investigate. So the police paid a visit to the to Twitter offices, but they

found that no one was there. So why was that, Well, it's because of the aforementioned coronavirus crisis in India, so Twitter employees in India work from home, so that whole issue of the police showing up at the Twitter office is kind of fell flat. The police activity has prompted several journalists to suggest that perhaps this is an intimidation effort on the part of the Indian government and that

it sends a message to Twitter. And India is another country that has tried to grapple with the fact that tech companies like Twitter and Facebook have a broad reach and that these companies aren't always subject to the tight controls of government agencies the way state run communication channels are. And we all know that information is powerful stuff and that a lot of governments, including the one here in the United States, would prefer to keep you know, at

least a close hand on communication channels too. I don't know, let's say, guide the flow of information. India and Twitter have already had some battles about that earlier this year, with a previous example being the Indian government pressuring Twitter to ban accounts that belonged to farmers in India who

were protesting new legislation within the country. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Palestinian journalists reporting from the Gaza Strip say that they have been blocked from using WhatsApp, the messenger app. The political situation in the area is complicated, but essentially the journalists were covering the issues of Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip who had fled their homes while the area was under attack from military operations out of Israel.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire on May twenty, and shortly afterwards, seventeen journalists found their access to WhatsApp blocked.

The apparent reason behind this was that several of the journalists twelve out of the seventeen of them, belonged to a communal group within which the journalists would share for nation related to Hamas's operations in the area, and the journalists have said that this group was purely for the purposes of journalism in order for them to all stay aware of what was going on so that they could report on the news as accurately as possible. It wasn't

indicating necessarily a support for you know, Hamas. It was more about how do we report on this? And so the channel and and WhatsApp appealed to Facebook, that's the corporate owner of WhatsApp, and a few of the journalists found their access restored a couple of days later. Others were still waiting for it, but the contents of the channel itself were wiped clear, with all previous conversations and

images and contact information all deleted. This follows other events that raise additional questions about Israel's military response in the area. For example, earlier Israeli air attacks destroyed a building that had offices for Alja zero and the associated press inside

of it. Now, the Israeli government said that the same building housed Hamas military intelligence within it, and thus this was a strike to target enemy intelligence, but several press organizations suggested that this might have been in fact an attempt by the Israeli government to hinder the press's ability

to cover the war within the area. Similarly, journalists are questioning if Israel is pressuring companies like Twitter and Facebook to crack down on journalists who are covering the Palestinian side of the conflict. Once again, we see the struggle of large tech companies with a global presence that are attempting to operate in a world has deep political and

social and regional schisms. And it's a pretty far cry from the utopian ideal of the Internet, this idea that the Internet was going to open up communications so that it could freely travel across borders without any problems. The reality is much more complicated. Also, I feel like this should go without saying, but I do want to be clear. It is entirely possible to be critical of Israel's military

operations and also condemn anti semitism. That is not a contradiction, and anyone suggesting that criticizing the state use of military operations in Israel is automatically anti Semitic is setting up a false position. Now that being said, we have also seen a rise of anti semitism, which in itself is condemnable. As always, recommend people use critical thinking and compassion together

when they're considering things like world politics. Over at Ours Technica, writer Tim Deshant has written a piece about China and bitcoin mining. Bitcoin has been having a pretty bumpy ride lately. It reached nearly six thousand dollars per bitcoin value before plunging to around thirty two dollars per bitcoin and then entering a recovery period. So as I record this, it's now somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty seven thousand dollars

per bitcoin. So it does appear to be recovering right now, but that might change soon. As Deshaunt reports, China is going to quote crackdown on bitcoin mining and trading behavior and resolutely prevent the transfer of individual risks to the society end quote. And as it stands, bitcoin mining operations in China contribute an enormous amount to the overall bitcoin mining operations. So in case you're not familiar with how bitcoin mining works, I'll give you a very high level overview.

There's a network of computers that are all connected to the bitcoin system, and the system groups transactions of bitcoin transactions together in blocks of data, and when a block reaches capacity, when it's well, the system then essentially invites all the connected computers to the network to verify the transactions that are within that block of data. And this is done essentially by guessing a very large number. The first computer to guess successfully has verified the transactions and

has quote unquote mind a certain number of bitcoins. Uh, that number of bitcoins actually goes down in increments over time, so right now it's six point to five bitcoins per mind block. That block of data then joins the end of a chain of previously verified transaction blocks the block chain, and the goal is to aim for about ten minutes of time between opening up the opportunity to mind a

block and reaching the correct guess. But as more computers joined the system, and more computers try to solve this problem, and some computers having like super fast processors, and more likely you're talking about gri of computers or networks of computers all working together to try and solve this problem, then the system has to make the problems more difficult to solve in order to stick with that ten minute goal.

Otherwise the problems would be solved way too quickly. And so this has created a kind of escalating situation in which bitcoin miners would add increasingly powerful computer systems to the network in attempt to be the first, particularly as the value of bitcoin began to climb. And so it might cost you a few hundred thousand dollars to set up an actual mining operation, but if you can mind successfully, then you can pay all those costs off pretty quickly.

So we saw a rise in power hungry bitcoin mining operations, sucking up huge amounts of electricity and thus potentially contributing to carbon emissions as a result because they were placing a higher demand on power plants, and a lot of power plants still use fossil fuels, so the environmental impact is one reason that countries like China are cracking down on cryptocurrencies that rely on this type of proof of

work approach. That's what bitcoin does. But another reason is that criminals use cryptocurrency for all sorts of illegal activities, from trading in illegal goods to money laundering to circumventing tax laws. And there's also the fact that cryptocurrency exists outside the control of centralized organizations like governments and banks. Pretty much all country governments are a bit wary of stuff that they don't have control over, but China in

particular is way up on that list. The state in China is supreme and any entity, any organization, or currency that could threaten the state's position is treated seriously. So we could soon see a total ban on bitcoin mining in China, which will change the game a great deal, and it could mean that will see another drop in Bitcoin's value, as China represents a huge market all by itself. But we'll also see a change in which mining operations

are on the receiving end of more bitcoin. And then I'm sure Elon Musk will tweet something that will throw people into a tizzy, so we'll keep an eye on it. Speaking of Elon Musk, his electric vehicle company Tesla you may have heard of it is facing a big fine in Norway and apparently at the heart of the matter

is the rate at which Tesla's batteries can charge. So the company issued a software update for its cars back in twenty nineteen and allegedly that has throttled the charging rate for batteries that are in Tesla vehicles that had been manufactured between and twenty It also allegedly reduces the driving range that vehicles can have before they need a recharge.

The government has ordered Tesla to pay each affected customer the equivalent of sixteen thousand dollars US in order to settle the matter, and according to Norwegian press outlets, Tesla sold around ten thousand vehicles that were made in those years. Within Norway. So by doing some quick math, that would mean the company would need to pay out around a hundred sixty million dollars US in fines for this issue.

Tesla had the opportunity to respond to the charges, but apparently never filed such a response and so ended up being on that end of the judgment. Tesla has until May thirty to comply or to file an appeal. The company faces similar lawsuits here in the United States. The German lower chamber of Parliament has passed legislation that permits

driverless vehicles on public roadways by next year. Now, the country already allowed autonomous vehicles to test on public roads, but this step would mean that for the first time, driverless vehicles will have the legal right to operate on roads without their needing to be a safety driver behind

the wheel. Now, to qualify for this distinction, cars have to demonstrate that they fall into the fourth level of autonomy, as designated by the Society of Automobile Engineers or s a E. So yeah, just in case you weren't aware, the s a E identifies six levels of autonomy, starting at zero and ending at five. So at level zero, all operations of the vehicle are effectively under manual control. There are no real automated systems of you know, any means that would control the vehicle, so a human is

absolutely required to operate the vehicle. Level one would have minimal automation, so it might include stuff like adaptive cruise control or lane assist, and then each excessive levels seaves more operations that are handed over to automated systems, and by the time you get to level four, the vehicle should be able to operate by itself in most situations, and usually you would just consider what would be the

normal operating conditions within a given region. If you reach level five, then theoretically anyway, you've got a complete automation that can operate under any conditions, whether they are typical or otherwise. We do not have any vehicles that qualify as level five autonomy, and according to the s a E, A level for autonomous vehicle will only operate autonomously if

all limited conditions are met for such operations. So in other words, you would have a list of things that have to be met in order for the vehicle to qualify for level four, and if any of those boxes went unchecked, then it would not operate autonomously, you would have to have someone dray of the vehicle. So in Germany, this is going to include operating within specific geographic regions, so such vehicles in those regions will have geo fencing

features that govern their operation. That kind of approach could open up the possibility of robo taxis within a specific region or city, but you wouldn't see cross country trucking necessarily unless specific trucking routes fell under those geo fencing limitations. This legislation now has to pass through the upper chamber of Germany's Parliament before it will become law. We have a couple more stories to cover, but before we get

to that, let's take a quick break. Okay, we're gonna switch on over from global news to cyber security and the Bows Corporation, that is, the company that makes audio equipment, recently announced that it was the target of a ransomware attack back in March. Of Ransomware is a cyber attack that typically involves infecting a computer system with malware that

limits access to that system. It might encrypt data on those systems so that people can't see the stuff that was saved there, or it otherwise makes it difficult for an organization to continue operations. So with ransomware, you usually get a message indicating how you can pay off the attackers, who then will presumably lift those conditions preventing you from

getting stuff done. And generally speaking, it is a bad idea to pay off ransomware hackers, as it sends the message that ransomware is a viable way to make money. It encourages future attacks that's not great. Also, you're never guaranteed that the attackers are actually gonna lift those restrictions. They might not depending on how you pay them. You might just be out the money and then they're just

laughing at you. But anyway, not paying a ransom is easier to say than it is to do, as in the meantime you really have to, you know, get back to work, and depending upon the nature of the attack, you might not be able to wait around why your team is restoring operations through one method or another. Plus, you might have data on those systems that just doesn't

exist anywhere else anyway. In the case of Bows, the company states that the attack included a data breach, and according to Bose, the company immediately reached out to a quote small number end quote of affected individuals, as is required by law when a company discovers that a data breach included personal information that relates to, say, employees or

customers or third parties like corporate partners. In this case, the information included personal data about current and former Bows employees. That data included such stuff as social security numbers and compensation information. While Bose can't determine if the attack was

aiming at x filtrading that data. In other words, they aren't sure if that's what the hackers were trying to get at, the company does acknowledge that the hackers had some access to quote a limited set of folders end quote. Bose also says that the company was able to reestablish control of corporate systems by partnering with third party cybersecurity experts, and that the company never paid the ransom. Now, while we're on the subject of ransomware, pro Publica published an

interesting piece about it. A lot of alliteration there, so sorry to Mr pop Filter. The ransomware group dark Side, which was recently responsible for the hack that brought down Colonial pipeline and thus created a short term fuel crisis in the eastern half of the United States, had previously been using a scheme that involved relying on the same digital encryption keys for multiple victims, which is kind of the equivalent to using the same password for multiple services.

It's a bad idea if you want to achieve your goals. And cybersecurity researchers noticed this trend. A couple of them were quietly reaching out to victims of dark Side hacks in order to help them restore their services without having to pay the ransom. And they were doing it quietly because, well, if you let the bad guys know that you figured out how to counteract their attacks, the bad guys find

new ways to attack. Then a cybersecurity company called bit Defender also found this same vulnerability and released an announcement about it and about how the company had developed a process to counteract the attacks. Now, the intent, I assume was to let companies know, hey, we figured out a mistake that dark Side is making, so we can help

you if you've been attacked by them. Except the bad guys read press releases too, and dark Side responded by saying that it had taken note of that discovered vulnerability in its attack scheme, and they patched it. They even thanked bit Defender for the heads up, so a cybersecurity firm effectively alerted hackers to a weakness in their own attacks, which thus made the hackers better at hacking, which, um here, let me check my notes here. Uh yeah, it says

here that's the exact opposite of what you want to do. Then, not long after that, the hackers targeted Colonial Pipeline and we saw the consequences of that particular move. And oh we also know that Colonial actually gave in to the hackers demands and paid a ransom of more than four million dollars to dark Side, which again is a bad

freaking idea. Granted, the crisis we saw as a result of that attack wasn't great, and it was exacerbated by selfish and frankly stupid actions of a lot of folks in the Eastern United States who decided to try and hoard gasle But paying the hackers means that those hackers will keep on doing what they're doing as long as it's paying off. Anyway, this particular story got my dander up.

Continuing our cybersecurity news, Extreme Tech has a piece titled new Morpheus CPU design defeats hundreds of hackers in DARBA tests and this is pretty cool alright. So CPUs or central processing units have a design that you could call an architecture, and that architecture is dependent upon which chip manufacturer you're talking about. Essentially, it's, at least in theory, a a optimized way for data to be processed through

that chip. So a company like Intel has what they call a TikTok approach, So they'll create one architecture designed for a chip. Then in the next generation of chips, they keep that same design even as they reduce the size of components, so they are able to pack more components on a chip, but they're staying with the same general design as they had for the previous generation. Then they overhauled the architecture for the following generation of chips

after that. So it's all about find the ideal architecture for that size of components. Then you reduce the size of components, then you find the ideal architecture again, and you just keep going back and forth between those uh those processes. Well, sometimes these architectures have flaws or vulnerabilities in them, so it's in the hardware itself, and hackers who are familiar with architecture can design code that targets those vulnerabilities and could allow them to inject malware into

systems that rely on those types of chips. Enter the Morpheus. Now, this chips job was to hide critical information like vulnerabilities from hackers without impacting the ability of a developer to write code for the machine, which is a non trivial problem. The Morpheus is actually a simulated chip and it had very modest capabilities. This was not like a screamingly fast,

bleeding edge processor. But what it does do is it encrypts memory pointers every one hundred milliseconds, So in a fraction of a second, the CPU switches up the encryption scheme for these memory points and thus narrows the window that hackers would have to one figure out the architecture properly and to launch an attack that targets that architecture. So, if I were to make an analogy, I would say it's kind of like Hogwarts in the Harry Potter stories.

The staircases and halls of Hogwarts frequently change, which means you're route to get from point A to point B changes. Now, if Hogwarts were to change every one hundred milliseconds to us, that would just seem like it was in a constant state of change, and getting from one point to another would become incredibly challenging, if not impossible. That's wizard's chess

or cybersecurity. Now, keep in mind this approach specifically applies to counteracting hacker attempts to exploit underlying vulnerabilities in the processors themselves. It does not prevent attacks that target software vulnerabilities or attacks that rely on social engineering to get access to systems. This is just one facet of cybersecurity.

It's a really nifty one and effective. The report says that that hackers spent the equivalent of thousands of hours attempting to compromise the system, and we're unable to do it. Not the moment. This is more of a prototype or proof of concept because the simulated chips were seriously underpowered compared to today's technology. It would also mean that any chips that use this approach would effectively be giving up ten to fifteen percent of their performance in order to

carry out the encryption process in the background. Still, that's a small price to pay for better security, at least for some organizations and applications. In previous episodes, I reported on how Nvidio, which is known mainly for the production of graphics processing units or GPUs, is acquiring the semiconductor

company ARM, which is based in the UK. The Register reports that ARM now has a hiring freeze and effect, and that the well being allowance for the company that had been paying out to employees is now cut and apparently these decisions will hold until the acquisition is complete, which is supposed to happen sometime next April, and this means that the ARMED teams will not be allowed to

hire anyone new until then. Even if employees and existing positions leave the company, there is no allowance to backfill positions that are left empty by departures. And in addition, any positions that were going to be filled before the hiring freeze now have to remain empty. And it sounds like working at ARM for the next year is going to be a pretty tough experience with effectively a pay cut for employees, and then team managers are left without an option if they need to add more people to

their teams. Any exception has to get the approval of executive leadership. ARM issued a statement that said the company was ahead of its head count goals for the year, and so the freeze really is just to prevent the company from overextending itself and quote, remain within the cost targets for the business end. Quote. Acquisitions can be really scary for employees, and I should know. I used to work for consultants who would help oversee acquisitions, so I

saw it from that side. And then I worked for a company that was acquired several times within ten years. So as an employee, you just don't know how you're goal will be impacted or even if you will have a place at the company once the dust settles. So seeing these decisions with almost a year to go before

the acquisition completes has got to be rough for those employees. Also, we don't know for sure that the British government is going to sign off on this acquisition because there are concerns that a company from outside the UK acquiring ARM a company based within the UK could potentially represent national security risks, so we will stay tuned. And finally, numerous sources report that Netflix is looking to get into the video games business, possibly offering up a subscription based service

as early as next year. According to initial reports, it sounds like the service would be similar to what you see with Apple Arcade, which offers up a subscription based service for games that are similar to mobile games in general, but they don't have the stuff you tip quickly find in mobile games, stuff like in app purchases or advertising.

So in other words, it sounds like netflix Is offerings might be more in the mobile category of games, rather than say, a streaming service that offers up access to Triple A style video games, akin to the Microsoft's Xbox Pass or Google Stadia, which I guess the less said about that the better right now. But it's all still very early on and the company is actively looking to fill leadership positions that would define Netflix's gaming strategy moving forward,

so this is an area of development. We will keep our eyes on that as well. And that is the news for Tuesday, May one. As always, if you have suggestions for topics you would like me to cover on future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter. The handle we use is text stuff h s W and I'll talk to you again really soon, y. Text

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