Tech News: All News and No Fooling

some of them more than others. Some of them have turned into the Ebenezer Scrooge version of misers who hate April Fool's Day. But that's because traditionally it can be really challenging to determine what is an April Fool's goof and what is for real z s now. I blame this on two big things. One, the world seems to have grown more outrageously unbelievable over the last few years, which makes goofs seem more plausible, because, I mean, have

you looked at the news. If you look at the news and then you hear a story about a giant robot, you know, crashing through St. Louis, you might think, yeah, that tracks I mean that's one for you. But secondly, a lot of would be jokesters turns out they're just not very good at writing jokes. Particularly they're not very good at writing satire, so it can be hard to tell that they were going for a joke. And anyway, you know, was sort of a pass for April Fools

because the pandemic was such a huge crisis. It forced the tech world in general to kind of read the room and say, maybe now is not the best time for us to try and grab headlines through a pr stunt with a goofy April Fool's joke. As I record this, it's actually March thirty one. Yes, the Dave ron Swanson gets all his meetings, So I don't actually know how much Tom Foolery and Shenanigan's we should expect or what you have already seen by the time you hear this.

But just as a gentle reminder, it's always a good idea to employ critical thinking, whether it's April Fool's Day or not. Also, just in case over the next few weeks, when folks share stories, whether tech or otherwise, maybe they're sharing it on Twitter or Facebook and those stories sound really ridiculous, take a quick look at what the publication date is for that article, assuming that it's posted to it, just to make sure they aren't in fact attempts at

April fool's jokes. I've seen that happen numerous times. For example, Xwagen did not, in fact really rebrand itself as volts Wagon in honor of its electric vehicle initiative. That was an April fool's joke. It leaked early, the company doubled down on it, and then later on said, yeah, this was an April fool's joke, but we kind of got caught, so we it's really went whole hog. That's not a good look either. That's kind of like people see that

and they do the captain piccard face palm meme. All right, let's move on to some real news. But this is real news that still has fake stuff in it. Earlier this week, a bunch of Twitter accounts purported to belong to Amazon employees began to post pro company anti union tweets. This coincides with a vote that Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama are holding about whether or not to unionize. The tweets attempted to position unions as being cost lee and

unnecessary and bloated and ineffective. But the effort to do this was terribly transparent and not effective at all. Critics noticed right away that many of these accounts had been created really recently and had few, if any tweets that predated the anti union messaging. That doesn't make it seem genuine. Moreover, after some Twitter accounts got called out, someone went in

and changed details of some of those accounts. Karen Weiss pointed out that an account that had allegedly belonged to an Amazon worker named Leo now magically belonged to a different alleged Amazon worker named Sierra, and so on. Generally speaking, the effort was held up to ridicule in the online world, with a lot of people suggesting that this was an

attempt to astro turf. So astro turfing refers to a strategy in which uh an entity you usually like a big company or a brand, sets up accounts to make it seem like there is some sort of grassroots support that is in favor of that brand or company. It's like creating little bought accounts to act like they're your fans in order to try and drum up wider support among you know, real people, So in other words, it's kind of like creating a sock puppet account. The strategy

doesn't typically work very well because people are smart. They can usually sniff this kind of stuff out. And I should add that Twitter has begun banning these accounts, and that at least as of this recording, there is no firm evidence pointing at who was actually creating these accounts in the first place. It could be that they came from Amazon. It could be that they came from some

other tech company that's concerned about unionization. They're worried that this might lead to broader movements in the tech sector. There are a lot of companies that are very closely watching what happens with Amazon because they're thinking, what if we're next. By the way, I'm more on the side of the people who work for those companies, not the executives running those companies. But it could also just be

mischief makers. I don't know the answer to who is behind all of this as I record this episode, except for one specific case. One of the fake accounts was one called Amazon FC Darla. F C stands for Fulfillment Center, essentially the warehouses that Amazon uses a Chicago based comedian named Robbie Appleton has confessed that he made that particular account and that he was using the account to post anti union messages as kind of a form of satire

and general prankishness. There's no telling if all the other accounts sprouted up from similar reasons or were part of some coordinated effort. Moving on, a study out of Trinity College says that Android and iOS devices both send a out of data back to Google and Apple respectively, even when those devices are in idle mode, which is not a big surprise, But the study also claims that Android sends about twenty times more data to Google than iOS

sends to Apple. Now does this mean that Google is tracking its users more than Apple is, Well, not necessarily, but the study does point out that the technology we have today frequently is phoning home while that technology is on. That's just how stuff works now, particularly for tech with evolving operating systems or firmware, a device phoning back to home base is a way to indicate whether or not that device is actually up to date with the latest

OS patches. That can be critical for device and information security. You know, we know that if you don't update to your systems. You're leaving yourself potentially vulnerable to intrusion attacks. It's also crucial just for general devices operations. If you don't keep updating your operating system, pretty soon you won't be able to run the latest apps on it because

they won't be compatible with the OS. This does, however, create concerns for user privacy, and it also raises questions as to how the companies are actually leveraging the data that's being collected and sent back. I should also point out that both Google and Apple dispute the study, and they say that the methodology that was used was inherently flawed. Google claims the report was off quote by an order of magnitude end quote, which is pretty darn significant if

that is in fact true. And the researcher who conducted the study also wasn't really comparing apples to Okay, that phrase is a little more complicated when I'm talking about Apple, the company. He wasn't comparing oranges to oranges. He used a jailbroken iPhone that was running an older version of iOS, one that actually isn't really used by people so much these days. But he used a more recent Android phone running a version of Android that came out last year.

So in other words, if you were to do the exact same study right now, using up to date iPhone OS and Android running it's most recent Android OS, you might see a different result. One thing that would not change, however, is that both phones would be regularly checking in back with home base. That would still happen. That approach looks

like it's just here to stay. The question is what data is being sent, how much of it can be linked back to the specific user, and what privacy protections are in place, and do users even have a say about whether or not that data should be collected in the first place. Next yesterday, That is March thirty one for you guys. It's technically today for me, but you know I'm playing along anyway. Microsoft officially pulled the plug on the standalone Cortana Virtual assistant app for the Android

and iOS platforms. This was not a surprise. Microsoft had announced it was going to do this way back in the summer of last year, which I think was fourteen years ago, and honestly, the company has been winding down Cortana for a while now. I think the main problem Microsoft had was that it was trying to piggyback a virtual assistant on top of platforms that already have native versions of that kind of technology. Google has Google Assistant,

and of course Apple has the famous serie. It's hard to get smartphone users to install a new thing that does something their phones already do right out of the box. Microsoft gave up on its own Windows phone platform a few years ago, with support for Windows ten mobile office apps fading away earlier this year. But this doesn't mean Cortana is going away completely. Instead, Microsoft has been incorporating Cortana functionality into office products, so Outlook, we're Excel, etcetera.

So those Outlook users out there have probably already encountered this. I know I have pretty much every day I see I got an email from Cortana giving me a summary of what my schedule is for that day. This reminds me of how Google will frequently introduce a new product that will receive, you know, like half hearted support from the company, and then it will get phased out. But some elements of whatever that was will eventually find their way into other Google services that have a bit more

staying power. I'm expecting that that's what we're seeing now. With Cortana and Microsoft speaking of pulling the plug over in Arizona the States, and it pulled a piece of proposed legislation that would have changed the rules for companies like Google and Apple when it comes to the way they get revenue from their respective app stores. Now you might remember the fight between Apple and Epic Games that

revolves around this very issue. Basically, Apple and Google take a thirty percent cut of revenue from from in app transactions on their respective platforms for certain types of apps. It is you can't do it for apps where you're buying physical stuff, so it doesn't apply to things like ride haling or food delivery or Amazon shopping. In those cases,

Apple and Google don't take a thirty percent cut. But if your app include stuff where you can unlock more features by paying a little extra, that's where this comes into play. So a lot of companies would like to see that go away, or for there to be acceptable

alternatives than through the official Android and iOS channels. The bill in Arizona aim to allow for alternative app marketplaces and transaction strategies, which would mean that companies that make the apps would be able to keep more or even all of the revenue using these alternatives instead of forking of whatever they make to Apple and Google. Up until this week, it looked like that bill had a really good out of getting passed in the Arizona Senate, but

then the state Senate withdrew the bill. Apparently intense lobbying paid for by big tech companies like Google and Apple helped change some minds within the state government, and it looked like the bill no longer was going to have the support it needed in order to pass. So instead of bringing the bill up just to get killed on the Senate floor, the decision was made to table it for at least the near future. It's not likely to come up again for consideration this year, but it's not

all dead. I guess it's only mostly dead. A few other states have also been considering similar bills, but so far none of those have passed. According to Microsoft News, SpaceX is giving the Crew Dragon Capsule a new feature. As the name indicates, the Crew Dragon Capsule is space X is spacecraft designed to bring humans up into space.

The new feature is a dome like window which will normally be covered by the spacecraft's nose cap, but the nose cap will then flip up to allow access to the dome, so you can see through it and people can get a really amazing view of outer space and Earth and stuff. This version of the Crew Dragon will not have the docking mechanism that allows the spacecraft to connect to the International Space Station. It has already done that, it's already taken people up to the I S S.

But this version won't have that docking mechanism. Instead, this specific type of Crew Dragon will just be for space tourists, or I should restate that as this Crew Dragon capsule will be for incredibly rich people who have a questionable sense of self preservation. Maybe they just need to cast themselves into space, which, as I have said previously, is always trying to kill you, just so that they can

feel something. Again. Now I'm being cheeky, but I do have to say that being able to look out into space and back at planet or through a large dome window sounds really really awesome and also really outside of my price range. But it's right in that sweet spot for billionaire Jared Isaacman, who is scheduled to take that kind of a trip in the Crew Dragon capsule on September along with three other non astronaut types whom Isaacman

is sponsoring. He's essentially paying for their trip up. The other three crew members include a professor, an employee of Lockheed Martin, and a research hospital employee. Their stories are fantastic. The mission is called Inspiration four. There's no space between Inspiration and the number four. The capsule they will take is one that has docked with the space station in the past, so that capsule actually has to be refitted to replace that docking array with the glass dome and

special nose cap next. In the world of battle Royal style video games, Player Unknowns Battlegrounds or pub G, occupies a special place. It was not the first game to introduce mechanics in which a large group of players compete against one another in a last player Standing style match, but it was the first truly monumental success story inside

that genre. Then Fortnite followed suit, and the story got much more complicated anyway, There are many flavors of pub G, with one of them being called pub G Light, as the name indicates, developers optimized this version of pub G to run on less powerful devices that can't crank out the frames and graphics of the flagship version of pub G, but now this light version is coming to an end. Pub G Studio announced that it is ending support services on April twenty nine of this year, with all players

support for pub G Light ending a month later. The company did not give a reason for this decision, though it did post a statement that said this decision to pull the plug came after much deliberation and that the company appreciates all those players who had played the light version of the game. Other versions of pub G will still continue as is, and I guess all those Light players will migrate over to Fortnite and sticking with games.

Chinese police, working with the mega company Tencent, which owns a stake in several game companies, have busted up a group of people who are creating and selling cheats for various games like Overwatch. The group had set up an operation that they called Chicken Drumstick. They offered up a subscription based service which, according to the BBC, included plans that were for ten dollars a day ten bucks a day to cheat at a video game. I mean that's bonkers.

I mean, assuming you stick with subscriptions for more than two months, that means you would have paid more for cheats than you paid for the game itself. The police seized assets that were worth around forty six million dollars, including some fancy schmancy cars. Apparently, and again, according to the BBC, the group had raked in more than seventy

six million dollars using this approach. Now, e games are a really big business, and on the professional e game circuit, you can make some serious dough if you can reach the top ranks. I'm guessing cheats like aim bots and codes that reveal where other players are coming pretty handy once you start going up against the elite performers that are out there. Apparently. In twenty nineteen, a survey found that one third of all gamers admitted to having used

a cheat in an online game at some point. To those thirty three percent, I just want to say, you dirty, dirty cheaters. Look, I admit I am not a very skilled gamer, but I have earned every single win I have ever received, and now I also suspect I haven't earned some of the losses handed to me. Actually, le I know that for a fact because I have been on the receiving end of an aim bought in pub g in the past. Which I figured out thanks to

the deathcam feature in that game. Just don't cheat, y'all. Listen, it's just lame. My last story illustrates why it's important to lock your computer when you walk away from it. The Twitter account for US Strategic Command, that is, the US agency that is responsible for global strike operations, in other words, nuclear Deterrence a k a. America's nuclear arsenal

sent out a very odd message earlier this week. It read and I quote semi colon l semi colon semi colon g M l x z S s a W. So was that some sort of coded message indicating an impending new clear launch or an incoming attack. Nope. About a half hour after that first message, that same Twitter account sent out a second message reading, quote, apologies for any confusion, Please disregard this post end quote. Presumably the this post meant the gibberish as opposed to the apology

for the gibberish. But that kind of dismissal doesn't really fly when you're talking about agency that's connected to nuclear armaments. And so journalist Mikhail Thaln filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get to the bottom of it, and it turns out the person who manages the Twitter account for US Strategic Command had stepped away from their computer and a quote unquote small child had apparently tapped merrily away on the keyboard, inadvertently publishing the mysterious tweet whoops

the daisy, Thank Heaven. We are just talking about a social media manager here, and not something directly connected to I don't know launch systems, but yes, this illustrates why it's very good to lock down your machine, even if you're only stepping away for a short while. You never know when a kid or a cat or whatever is going to post something and they're posing as you, and you know they are just waiting for that opportunity. I see them plotting. I know what you're up to, cat

back off? All right. That is the news for April one, twenty twenty one. If you have suggestions for topics you would like for me to cover on tech Stuff, Maybe you've got a specific company or technology or person in mind. Maybe there's a trend in tech that you really want to know more about. Reach out to me and let me know the best way to do that is over on Twitter. The handle we use as tech stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.

Y Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.