Tech News: Mark Zuckerberg is on the Hot Seat

the studio using my own mic. But I'm in the studio, and so if it sounds a little different, that's why. But let's get to the news. Yesterday's episode was about the metaverse and what that means. The idea for that episode actually came from the first news item I want to cover today, which is that Facebook, the company, plans to announce a rebrand for the company itself. Now, this doesn't mean that Facebook, the social networking site is going

to change names. The company that owns Facebook the social network site, as well as Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Oculus, is going to get a new brand name. The Verge reports that we should expect an announcement about the new name no later than next week and possibly sooner than that, but that the brand name itself remains a secret kept only by a few top level executives, which is probably, you know, a good idea on Facebook's behalf, considering how

many leaks that company has sprung. Now, this hasn't stopped speculation about what that name might be, something that perhaps because Facebook is gearing up to create a metaverse platform, that the new name might relate to that. For example, Facebook might adopt the company name Horizon, which references a sort of proto metaverse that Facebook has in development. But you might ask, why is Facebook even making this change

in the first place. Well, in part it might be to indicate that the company is about more than just Facebook, the social network. But I think another big part of it is that the Facebook brand has more than a little tarnish on it right now, with various investigations into the company proceeding around the world and employees speaking out against the company. I'm sure that by this time next week I'll be reporting on whatever the new name is, along with you know, whatever else the company has to

announce around that time. Speaking of tarnish on Facebook, yesterday, the Attorney General for Washington, D C. Carl Racing announced that he was adding Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to a lawsuit that centers on the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Now, in case you aren't familiar with what that is, that scandal relates to this analytics marketing company called Cambridge Analytica that focused on providing support for political campaigns, particularly for for

right wing political campaigns. Investigative journalists discovered that Cambridge Analytica was apparently depending upon a loophole that was in Facebook's application programming interface. Once upon a time, UH, the company developed a survey tool. Actually, they adapted a survey tool that encouraged people to engage in the survey in return

for you know, like a monetary reward. But this loophole in the development part of the a p I allowed the app developer to see not only the personal information of whomever it was who took the survey, but also access the information of all of that person's contacts on Facebook, at least so far as those users had shared with the survey taker. So let me explain what that means.

Let's say that I decided to take this survey, so I go and I granted the permissions that it was requesting, and I go take the survey, and you and I happened to be friends. Well, normally Cambridge Analytica wouldn't be able to see your information just by default, especially if

you had anything set to friends only. But because you're friends with me, and because the app had these wide, widespread permissions that allowed it to access various pieces of information, it would mean that Cambridge Analytica would be able to see just as much of your information as you allowed me to see. Facebook subsequently patched that loophole, but the damage was already done. Meanwhile, Cambridge Analytica was also implicated

in various schemes to spread misinformation and to manipulate voters. Uh, there was this whole story about Cambridge Analytica targeting people who didn't support Cambridge analyticas clients, in other words, people who would have voted against the political candidates that Cambridge Analytica was trying to help, and then Cambridge Analytica was using methods to try and discourage those people from voting

at all. Now, all of this happened several years ago, actually leading up to the election in the United States. The lawsuit itself has its origins in the government charges that Facebook violated the terms of the Consumer Protection Procedures Act and it should be held accountable with the goal of finding Facebook for damages. This, by the way, is a civil case, not a criminal case. Facebook tried to get this lawsuit dismissed in twenty nineteen, but that effort failed.

The judge denied the request, and now Zuckerberg has been named as a defendant in the case. The company continues to deny the charges, so we'll have to wait and see where this goes next. Now. I promised that we are going to talk about stuff that isn't just Facebook in today's episode. However, news about Facebook keeps breaking even

as I was trying to put this episode together. Today, Facebook's oversight panel announced that it is looking into an alleged system in which Facebook gives a free pass to certain v I p UH Facebook accounts. So the implication is that Facebook ignores incidents in which these accounts violate

various policies. This investigation follows the series of Wall Street Journal reports that revealed the contents of some of the thousands of documents that the newspaper received from whistleblower Francis Hogan. The You Know Facebook has a system that they call cross check or sometimes x check. It's sometimes written as x x check, but I think they refer to it as cross check. And according to the Wall Street Journal, this system essentially covers for high profile accounts and and

doesn't count violations of Facebook policy against those accounts. So the Oversight bore It has stated that, you know, it has the responsibility to review Facebook's moderation policies. Like the whole purpose that the Oversight Board was put together was to hold Facebook accountable and to say, all right, what are your policies, Are they fair and are you actually

carrying them out equitably across the platform? And they're saying Facebook has failed to share all the information needed for the Oversight Board to make that assessment, which you know, that's a problem. So this seems fairly straight forward. We will have to wait and see what Facebook's response is

to it. However, security company Sofoss reports that scammers using social engineering have stolen more than a million dollars from victims, using a combination of dating apps and bogus cryptocurrency apps to do it, Apple apps, I should add, so first let's define what social engineering is. Essentially, this is when you try and pull a fast one on someone, you're tricking someone into trusting you and then you know, giving

you access to a system or information. So the classic example is someone contacts a person who works for a specific company and they pose as I T personnel and they say, I need to have access to your computer. I need to install, you know, a new program or something. But the whole point is just to gain access to the system. Well, in this case, the scammers were using popular dating apps like Tender and Bumble to set up

profiles that looked legit and then fish for victims. Once someone expressed interest, the scammers would kind of string the mark along for a little bit, trying to convince them to download a cryptocurrency app that looked legit but was actually a scam. Uh. In fact, these were apps that

made it through Apple's famous restrictive ecosyste for apps. By using a loophole, the scammers would convince their marks to invest money, even just small amounts of money into the app, supposedly buying into cryptocurrency, and as long as the target was investing money, everything was cool. But the moment someone tried to retrieve their money or otherwise shut down their account. The scammers would close off access to the money that had been quote unquote invested in the app and just

steal the money for themselves. Worse, the scammers use something called Apple's Enterprise or Corporate Signature designation that's intended to let app developers test out apps with a small group of test users in the development process. The whole idea is it gives developers a way of doing quality assurance testing of their apps before they submit the app to the Apple App Store for consideration. So these apps never went into the Apple App Store, they never had to

face that scrutiny. They were taking advantage of the fact

that Apple allows developers to test their work before submitting it. So, in other words, you know, they were just using a work around and convincing people to download apps not by going through the App Store, but downing them directly through this enterprise or corporate program, then tricking them into investing money into these you know, cryptocurrency schemes um so very clever work around one that's not necessarily easy to counteract.

This particular scheme originated out of Asia, but so FOS says that it has detected victims in places like Europe and the United States. So if you use dating apps, be on the look for any matches who are urging you to download cryptocurrency apps and make investments. So FoST has also called an Apple to alert users about this enterprise program and how a bad actor could potentially use that to convince folks to install apps that haven't actually

gone through Apple's review process. Like the fact that loophole exists, I mean it's needed, Like you need to have a way to test your your app before you submit it so that you can make sure you work out any bugs before Apple gets hold of it. But you need to also have a way to keep a lid on that so that people don't just create bogus apples apps and make it look like it's a legit thing and then convince people to download it without going through the

Apple Store. That that is the real issue. We have some more stories to cover, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Bloomberg reports that PayPal is looking into making a possible acquisition that of the social media company Pinterest. Bloomberg reports that PayPal reached out to Pinterest to see if the platform would consider a buyout with a reported offer of around seventy dollars per share

of pinterest stock. Now, some quick math tells us that this value pinterest at just under forty billion dollars, which is a princely sum, And currently pinterest stock is trading at just under sixty two dollars a share, so it's an offer that is above the market value of a share of pinterest. But however, you know, pinterest stock had reached as high as almost ninety dollars a share over the past year, but more recently it has been trading

around the sixty dollar range. And you might wonder why PayPal, which is most known as being a financial services company, would be interested in Pinterest known as a social media platform with a bulletin board like interface. But pinterest has been incorporating e commerce elements into its platform over the last couple of years, creating ways for users to shop

for items through pinterest itself. And since pinterest is all about, you know, creating boards with aesthetically pleasing and thematically relevant images, I mean a lot of Like interior design companies can use Pinterest to to highlight how various components can go together to make a particular aesthetic. Well, you can see how a shopping system integrated with a financial company like PayPal would be a really powerful tool in order to

market stuff to folks. Now, so far, neither pinterest nor PayPal has responded to journalist requests for common about this potential acquisition, So there's no way of knowing if pinterest is actually considering the offer. I mean, if you want to be really clear about it, there's no confirmation that an actual offer even happened. But I have no reason

to doubt Bloomberg's reporting on this. The Boring Company, as in, you know, the company that makes tunnels most often associated with hyper loop like projects UH and also associated with Elon Musk, has cleared one hurdle between it and the goal of building out an underground transportation system in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The altimate goal is to establish a system that includes fifty one separate stations, many of which would connect to casinos along the Las Vegas Strip, as well as other notable stops like Allegiance Stadium, the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Fremont Street Experience, the airport, and more. Now, the hurdle was the approval of the Clark County Commissioner's office to go ahead with this. The proposed system would span the border between Clark County and the city of Las

Vegas itself. Fun fact, the Las Vegas Strip is mostly in Clark County, it's not within the actual city limits of Las Vegas proper. The company will need to apply for permits before actually beginning construction on the system, and according to the boring company, the schedule would be really

super aggressive. Representatives say that the plan is to have up to ten stations completed and connected within the first six six months of the project breaking ground, which is really aggressive, and that the whole thing should be completed within three years. And that seems unbelievably optimistic to me.

But then what do I know. Well, one thing I do know is that the existing tunnel system in Las Vegas that was created by the boring company, the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop, has fallen well below the projected performance the company had claimed at the start of the project. So the loop connects the South Hall, the West Hall, and the Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center. These are three huge buildings that have exhibition spaces inside

of them. I know it best from my visits to c e s over the years, and getting from one to another can take a while. Like, if it's empty, it might take you fifteen minutes to walk from one to the next. If it's full, it might take you forty five minutes to walk from one to the next

because of the crowds. So if things are really busy and it's a congested event, an other way of getting between the different buildings is useful, especially if you've got like meetings back to back that are across the convention center from each other. So the idea was to build this underground tunnel loop system with two one way paths, you know, one going from one side of the convention

center together and the other one coming back. And the boring company originally predicted that this particular system would be able to move up to four thousand, four hundred people per hour. However, as it's in its current incarnation, it can move fewer than six hundred people per hour. That's if it's going at full capacity. Uh. And the experience that you know, Las Vegas got was much less futuristic

than what was originally proposed. The idea was that was going to be autonomous vehicles taking people from point A to point B. Instead, it's people driving Tesla vehicles through a tunnel and ferrying you from point A point be kind of like a very limited taxicab. Although the convention center version of this is operated free of charge for

for actual writers. The full Las Vegas system, well, if it ends up being just a larger version of what you're already seeing at the convention Center, it's not necessarily going to be a huge boon to Las Vegas. It's not really built in such a way to significantly reduced traffic in the Las Vegas area. There's actually a really good video about this by Daniel Cooper from Engadget called Elon Musk's Las Vegas Loop could have been Great. Highly

recommend you check it out. It's really informative on this subject. And I might have to do a full episode about this to talk about what was promised, what was delivered, how might that evolve into something more useful, and why it doesn't really resemble anything when we you know, we're talking about the hyper loop years ago, because this is

not a hyper loop style system. A group of companies including Lockeed Martin, Voyager Space, and nano Rax have announced their intent to design, build, and deploy a privately run space station by the year twenty seven. If you listen to my episodes about space stations, you know that the International Space Station is getting up there in years. Components that were meant to last just ten to fifteen years

are well past that now. The earliest modules that were launched we'll be closing in on thirty years old in just a couple of years. So NASA has encouraged the private sector to get involved in this space pun intended. I guess the proposed station that these companies are are going to build has the name star Lab, and it would be much much smaller than the I S S. It would accommodate only up to four astronauts at a time, and like the earliest space stations, this would be a

monolithic design. Now that means it would be a single launch that would carry the full space station up to orbit. It would not be modular like the International Space Station is. Like the I S S has grown over the years because we've added more modules to it over time, kind of like a giant tinker toy in space. This version star Lab would be a single thing that we launch

once up into low Earth orbit. Uh, and kind of like the BIGELO module that's connected to the I S S. The idea is that this space station that the habitable part anyway, will be an inflatable structure, which is part of the reason why you can launch it in one go. If it's inflatable, then you can have it deflated when you're on the ground and then wait till you're in space to inflate and expand it to its full size.

As for what the station will be used for, that could include everything from scientific research to industrial research, to space tourism, so you know, the typical stuff that we tend to hear about when we talk about private space exploration. The f d A has approved a particular use of virtual reality to treat people who have amblyopia. I hope I said that correctly. Uh. This refers to the condition

that most of us know as lazy eye. So with ambliopia, the brain begins to rely more on one eye than the other, and communication between the brain and the other eye breaks down a bit. The traditional way that we've treated ambleiopia is to use stuff like an eye patch over the good eye, the stronger eye, and this forces the brain to re establish connections with the other eye. Kind of it's kind of like strength training for your eye,

and it helps counteract the effects of amblopia. Well, the VR approach presents two similar images while you know, you watch video, so each eye is getting a slightly different image. The stronger eye gets a lower contrast version, so details are harder to make out for the stronger eye, and so the weaker eye needs to get a little more love from the brain for the images to make sense. Also, the VR uses some overlays on each image, and the

overlays block a little bit of the user's view. It's only by combining the view from each eye that you get a full image in the brain. So the brain can do this. We're not even conscious of it when it happens. The brain just handles it. But these are little elements that can be introduced virtually that ultimately make our brains work with a specific eye to have it, you know, get up to speed. So it's kind of

like the eye patch approach in a way. It forces the brain to rely more on the affected eye, the one with amblopia, but it does so while the user also is watching something that they would like to see, you know, instead of wearing an eyepatch. They're watching movies, and wearing an eyepatch can bring with it a bit of a social stigma. However, you know that is actually something that we should really address as a society. Anyway, this whole issue with able is um but you know,

you get my meaning. Like it's it's one of those ways where you can do this therapy that doesn't require you to wear an eye patch or use eye drops, or maybe you use it in conjunction with that, but it's one way to train up your your strength. I think it's cool that the FDA has approved this type of therapy and hopefully we'll see it rolled out to

a broader scale in the near future. Sony has received approval from the U S Patent Office for a patent that allows for a system in which participants and spectators of multiplayer video games could vote to ban players from the game. The patent calls for a few different implementations

of this idea. So, for example, imagine that you're watching a competitive multiplayer game and there's one player who is consistently performing below the skill level of everybody else in the game, and the participants or maybe the spectators might vote to inch that person, just removing them from play. But there's another implementation that suggests a scenario in which spectators could pay to vote someone out of a competitive

multiplayer game. Sony calls for a system that would require at least a sixty percent majority to actually vote to remove someone from a game. However, I think you could easily imagine a scenario where this would become inherently unfair. For example, let's say you've got a favorite streamer who plays online in competitive multiplayer games. So maybe you're watching them actively play live online and they're doing great, But then you also find out that some other really good

player has joined the game. They're on the opposite team, and so you and your fellow fans all banded together to pitch in some money and vote the other player off, because that way, your favorite has a better chance of winning because you've removed their most uh most difficult competition in the game. That doesn't sound fair, right, Well, you can probably imagine a lot of different ways that this particular system could potentially be abused. Now, this is just

a patent, it is not an actual implementation. Sony has not said it's actually going to make this become a reality. They might not do anything with the idea. They might have patented it just so that way, if anyone else tries to make something similar, Sony can say, hey, you can't do that unless you pay us first, because we patented it, so you have to license that idea from us. Or who knows, maybe in a year or so we'll see video games like a gladiator sport where the crowd

votes to get rid of unfavored players. That doesn't sound particularly fun to me, and I hope it doesn't happen. Finally, a group of museums in Vienna encountered a bit of a problem. They were uploading images of works of art to social media platforms, but some of these works of art had naked people in them. So ancient works, classical works, modern works sometimes you know, they depict nude figures and it's art, And I'm sure that doesn't come as a

shock to you. I'm certain you've encountered some of it in the past, and yet you live to tell the tale. But apparently this shocked various social media platforms, or at least it triggered their content moderation systems, and several museums found their social accounts banned or temporarily restricted or muted. So they did the only sensible thing. They got together and they created an only fans account. Yep, only fans, the platform perhaps best known as a site that hosts

creators who make adult content, you know, the sexy kind. Well, the Museums formed an account called Vienna laid Bear, saying it was an effort to counteract the quote unquote prudishness of the modern social network platforms, which frequently clamped down on socially risky material in an effort to appease stakeholders and the various financial institutions that facilitate payments to these networks. And I think this is kind of brilliant. It's a

great pr move for the Museums. It elevates only fans, and it highlights how these social network policies are often poorly constructed and executed. And now if someone sees that you visit only fans, you can say I only go there for the art. While that wraps up this episode of tech Stuff. If you have, you know, ideas for things I should talk about in future episodes of 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. Text Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Eight