Tech News: Russia Shuts Down Instagram

Over in China, there's been a concerning COVID nineteen outbreak, technically the largest in two years, and in response, various regional and city government officials have tightened restrictions in different areas of China in an effort to stop the spread of the virus, and that has subsequently had a huge impact on certain manufacturing facilities in Shinjin uh These include fox con, which is the company that supplies many component

it's for various apple products. But in addition, you have other companies like Intel, Volkswagen, and Toyota having major manufacturing facilities in the area that have had to scale back or even halt production. The Chinese government has created an allowance for companies if those companies are able to create a sort of bubble for their workers. And by bubble, I mean there really has to be a controlled, closed environment within which workers aren't just doing their jobs but

are actually living there as well. In other words, it's only a bubble if there's no way out of it. Though this does not necessarily mean that employees would be you know, confined to the same structure for both working and living. You know, they might have like a dormitory or something in addition to the factory. Still, that's a big yikes. Some companies like fox Con are attempting to shift operations to other manufacturing facilities inside China that are

not seeing the same eyes in COVID cases. And it's too early yet to say for sure to what extent these events are going to have on things like supply chain issues, but some analysts already are worried that we could see the effects of this lasting as long as six months before we're able to close the gap that would be created by you know, these these slowdowns and and stoppages. Some might argue that China's zero case policy

toward COVID is too extreme and should be amended. Uh, And it's kind of hard to push back on that. So on the one hand, obviously you don't want outbreaks. On the other, shutting everything down every time there's a rise in cases causes massive disruptions like these. However, as long as the illness poses a significant risk to people's lives, I personally find it very hard to say, you know, it's worth the risk. So this is a really tough call. And I'm not saying that I have all the answers.

I know I don't want people to get sick, but I also recognize the challenges that come about when you know you have these massive interruptions and supply chains. Speaking of fox Con, the company is rumored to have submitted a proposal to build a nine billion dollar manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia. This facility would make microchips and electronic components for other companies, you know, stuff like displays, that kind of thing. Again, for the fox cons customers are

not people like you and and me. That's it's big companies like Apple Now. Reportedly, the logic behind this move largely comes from the tenuous relationship between China and the United States. Most of fox CON's customers, like the aforementioned Apple, are from outside China. Of course, Saudi Arabia has its own tenuous relationship with the US. The country is associated with a multitude of human rights violations as well as crimes such as the murder of journalist Jamal Kashow Game.

There have been numerous dignitaries and activists who have repeatedly called upon the United States to impose sanctions against Saudi Arabia. To get into all of that would require really an entire series of podcasts, and I'm pretty sure by the end of that I would be a jaded, cynical husk of a host. But anyway, fox Con is reportedly looking at other potential sites as well, including the United Arab Emirates,

so it's not just Saudi Arabia. Russia has blocked Instagram, which, according to Adam Massari, the head of Instagram, means that eighty million people within Russia will be cut off from each other. I personally think that that statement goes a little far, because presumably Russians are using other means of staying in touch. Plus it ignores the use of tools like VPNs virtual private networks in order to get around

things like regional bands. But you know, it really does represent a pretty major move on the part of the Russian government meant. Now, the reason for the ban, Russian officials have said is that Meta quote made an unprecedented decision by allowing the posting of information containing calls for violence against Russian citizens on its social networks Facebook and Instagram. End quote. Now, in this case, those calls for violence refer mainly to posts that urge Ukrainians to defend themselves

against Russian soldiers. Meta reps have said that they made the determination that these messages should be protected under freedom of speech because they are framed within the context of self defense and fighting back against an invasion, as opposed to, you know, calling out attacks on a people for some

other reason. So the Russian government has been hard at work presenting the invasion in as positive a light as possible back in Russia, and my guess is that this became increasingly difficult as social networks sort of bypassed Ussian

propaganda channels. Also, um, I just want to say it's pretty darn hypocritical to hear Russian officials declare Meta a platform that facilitates and encourages extremism, because well, we all know that Russian operatives have long been at work leveraging social networking platforms in general and Facebook in particular in an effort to push radical extremist ideologies in other countries and to disrupt their, you know, political processes, particularly here

in the United States. So yeah, Meta is kind of awful in that way, but it always has been in Russia has depended upon it in the past, So you know, I guess, I guess there are no good guys in

that particular scenario. Now, one thing that Meta is doing that arguably isn't terrible is it is offering to educate influencers and politicians in Australia in advance of an upcome election this May, and the goal is to help folks stop the spread of misinformation on social networking platforms, which is a nice change of pace really, seeing as how misinformation can very quickly spread online, going straight through influential people and then going out to the rest of us.

So these influencers and politicians are are going through kind of a boot camp training session on how to spot and prevent misinformation. And this is on top of other measures designed to scrub the tarnish off of Facebook when

it comes to issues like potential election interference. The company also said it will require full disclosure of the names of organizations and folks who pay to run political advertising on the platform in Australia, so there won't be any allowance for like mystery money ads being run on there. They will all have to be you know, have some

name there to hold accountability for those ads. Candidates in the election will be required to activate two factor authentication in order to avoid the possibility of someone hacking a candidates profile or page. Also removes that whole plausible deniability thing where maybe someone posts something that ends up blowing up in their face that they can't say, oh, I was hacked if they're they've got like two factor authentication active.

I mean, technically, if you're really determined hacker and you get hold of someone's phone, two factor authentication is still something you could crack, but it's less likely. Company representatives say that Meta isn't taking any political side itself, so it's not favoring one side over the other. Instead, it's opening up these tools for all to use in an effort to assure a fair process. Hopefully we'll see similar strategies deployed around the world. Due to pressure from Google.

The Android app Advanced has shut down. You might not know what Vanced is. You might be wondering what the heck I'm talking about. I mean I I certainly didn't know what it was before today, But Vanced v A n C E D was an app that let users view YouTube videos without all those ads and without having to subscribe to YouTube to do it, so you could actually bypass ads using the Vanced app. Google sent Vanced a cease and desist letter and the company announced it

would shut down operations. So the current Vanced app will continue to work for the time being, at least for those who have already installed it. So it's not like Google went into everyone's phones and wiped the app. Clear, It's still on phones. However, it's just a matter of time before, you know, changes in operating systems and stuff eventually render that app inoperable, Like eventually they were going to be incompatibilities and the app just won't work anymore.

But for the time being, it still works. And on the one hand, I totally get it. I mean, YouTube, when you really boil it down, is an advertising platform, just like Google Search is really an advertising platform. Facebook is really an advertising platform, and when you offer folks away around advertising and one that does not involve paying into a subscription instead. That kind of undermines the whole business.

But on the other hand, it does sound like Vanced offered up a lot of features that YouTube just doesn't include, but sounded kind of nifty, like it would be really neat to see, you know, if YouTube had instead acquired Advanced and then incorporated some of those features, that would have been neat. And I wonder if Google would have come after Advanced if the app had not allowed users

to bypass ads. Uh maybe or maybe not. Google has been cracking down on apps and services that tap into you know, Google databases and libraries like YouTube's library of content without you know, getting actual permission to be able to do that, And uh yeah, it's entirely possible that Google still would have come after Vanced even without the add thing. But anyway, farewell, Vanced, I never knew. Ye. We have more news to cover, but first, let's take

a quick break. A restaurant group in Florida has filed a lawsuit against Google, alleging that the company has circumvented restaurants with an order online option that more often than not takes users to food delivery services rather than to

the restaurants owned and operated site. And here's where we get into some of the big issues with food delivery services, and one of those is that restaurants often see little if any profit when working with these food delivery services because the services take a hefty cut of any order, up to like thirty of the order in some cases, and so a lot of restaurants would obviously much preferred if you would just order directly from them and not

use these delivery services. The problem is most restaurants can't afford to employ a fleet of delivery drivers, so this limits customers to either dining in at those restaurants or going with take out, maybe even curbside pickup options, but obviously that's not as convenient or you know, in the case of areas that might have a high COVID out break, it might not be particularly safe, particularly when we're talking

about dining in. So if these allegations are true, and if Google has been steering visitors to food delivery services and away from the restaurants, clearly that could really hurt the restaurant in question. Google, however, disputes the claims and says that it works with restaurants to incorporate in house online ordering systems so that the restaurants system peers alongside

all the food delivery services. Google also said that clicking on the online order option really just takes users to a page where they can choose among the various online ordering services, which would presumably also include the restaurant's own options if it has one. Now, this gets a little bit more complicated because a lot of restaurants will rely on third party companies to handle online orders. And that's understandable.

I mean, it's hard enough just running a restaurant without also handling, you know, an online portal to your ordering system. So a lot of restaurants will end up partnering with a third party company that will handle the online order part. But those services might show up as something unfamiliar to

visitors when they're looking to order a meal. Right instead of it's saying, you know, you know, Joe's restaurant, it might have the name of the third party service that handles the online orders, and you might think, well, I don't even know what that is, and you skip it. Anyway. The Restaurant Group claims that Google's services amount to a bait and switch that harms restaurants, and Google meanwhile saying it's taking steps to make sure that restaurants are fairly represented.

Uh my big takeaway pun intended was that if there is an option to order directly from a restaurant, it's probably best to do that if you want the restaurant to you know, stick around, and in many cases it will likely be cheaper than ordering through a delivery service as well. Uh, this is a tough one. I mean, there's so much going on here because you also you have to feel for the gig economy workers who are

actually doing the driving and delivering. You know, it's not their fault that the service they work for is taking this big chunk out of the orders that are going to restaurants. So yeah, complicated stuff. Meanwhile, Google employees are reportedly unhappy with the company. That's according to an employee survey that Google conducts every year, and it indicates that more employees than last year feel they aren't being compensated

properly for their jobs. The company also scored poorly when it came to employees views on how well the company executes its mission. Now, the mission itself and the company's core values got very high marks. Employees feel good about those, So this kind of sounds to me like a lot of Google employees like the talk, but they feel like

the walk just ain't measuring up. This also comes at a time when the company is moving to bring employees back into the office for at least three days a week, and it's a tough message to Google management, right, I mean, retaining employees has become a bit of a challenge ever

since the pandemic hit. I'm sure we've all heard about the Great Retirement, in which there's this trend of folks who are choosing to resign and then live off savings rather than continue to work, and tech companies have had to offer more competitive pack pages in an effort to attract and keep talent because there's a smaller talent pool

and it's easy to for them to jump ship. It's actually starting to remind me a bit of the heyday of the dot com era, where you would see talent going from company to company just following the best compensation or benefits packages, and those days, those were usually tied to stocks, which ultimately proved to be a huge mistake because tons of dot com companies went under after the

bubble burst and those stocks became worthless. But according to CNBC, more than half of Google employees surveyed felt that their compensation wasn't competitive. At Google, slightly more than half of all employees still called the compensation quote fair and equitable

end quote. So I'm guessing some employees are miffed that various executives and leaders at Google recently received pay raises and bonuses, and the company itself is making serious bank its revenue is through the roof right, and and yet the head of compensation, Frank Wagner, said last December that Google would not be issuing a blanket raise to help

employees address issues with inflation. Not a great look, particularly as we appear to be at a turning point in America where stuff like employee organization and unions and group negotiations are really starting to gain traction switching gears. The Israeli government confirmed reports recently that it was the target of a massive distributed denial of service or di DOS attack. In case you're not familiar with that term, it refers to a kind of attack where hackers direct a bunch

of computers. I mean, we're potentially talking thousands or even tens of thousands of computers to send messages to a target or selection of targets in an attempt to overwhelm those targets and cause them to underperform or even crash. So the analogy I like to use is imagine that you are absolutely required to answer your doorbell. If your doorbell rings, you have no choice. You have to answer it. But you also have to do your taxes, So you

sit down, you start doing your taxes. The doorbell rings, so you stop your work. You head on over to the door and you open it, but there's no one there, so you close the door, you turn around, you start walking back so you can get back to doing your taxes, and the doorbell rings again, so you turn back around and you have to go to the door and open it and there's still no one there. Now repeat that millions of times, and you see how you would never

get any work done well. Adidas attack is kind of doing the same thing, only with electronic messages rather than a ding dong ditch approach. While there is no confirmation as of yet about who is behind the attack, the general suspicion falls on Iranian cyber Crime Group. This is

according to the Jerusalem Post. The attack affected numerous Israeli government websites as well as some media outlets in Israel, and the Israeli government has called for a state of emergency and launched an investigation to determine if the attack went beyond just a denial of service attack and is looking to see if perhaps the hackers access to any

you know data or stoleny data as well. Tesla's senior directory of public Policy, Rowan Patel, sent a letter to US Senators Ed Markey and Richard Blumenthal earlier this month. This was in response to inquiries that these senators had previously made regarding quote significant concerns end quote about Tesla's

autopilot and full service Drive or f s D features. Now, if you've been listening to tech stuff for a while, you have undoubtedly heard me complain about the naming conventions that Tesla uses, because I feel they give a false expectation about what they're those features can do, and to me, it does really feel like a bait and switch. I mean, I think if you call it full self driving, that kind of suggests that the car can fully drive itself.

I mean, I don't think I'm being unreasonable about that, But according to Patel, that's not really the intent. Because Patel actually refers to both autopilot and FSD as level two on the scale of autonomy. So the autonomy scale goes from zero to five. Zero is a vehicle that has no autonomous features whatsoever. Five would be a vehicle that is fully autonomous and capable of operating in any environment or in any situation where a human driver could

also operate. So level two, as you might imagine, is fairly low down on that scale, and again it raises the question, if it's just leveled two, why call it full self driving anyway. Patel's letters stated that these modes provide definitive safety benefits and cited metrics that appear to show that Tesla drivers who are using these types of features are far less likely to get into accidents than

other drivers who are driving other types of vehicles. Critics then complained that Tesla was using different data sets to show this, that the data for other drivers included all sorts of situations, from driving on neighborhood streets to cruising on highways, while Tesla was focusing really on highway operation

because that's where you can enable Autopilot and FSD. In addition, the Senators have reportedly not been terribly impressed with the letter, saying that Tesla is really just deflecting, so it doesn't seem like they are they are buying into Tesla's line. We've got a few more stories, but first, let's take a quick break. Have you ever looked at your bill from your Internet service provider and thought that's weird. Sure

are a lot of extra fees built into this thing. Well, Carl Bode recently wrote an article for tech Dirt titled big I s p s avoided twenty twenty law banning predatory modem rental fees by simply calling them something else. So that headline pretty much kind of spells out the story. So Bode rights about I s P companies. They got in trouble because they were charging an equipment rental fee to customers who you know, actually owned the equipment they

were using. They weren't actually renting anything from the I s p s. So it's pretty standard practice here in the United States for I s p s to lump in a modem slash router with your service, and for that the customer pays a rental fee. On a monthly basis, but customers can actually use their own modem and router and register that with their I s P. I mean, you can do that, you don't have to use the

one provided by the the I s P itself. But then they found many of them that they were still being charged a rental fee, and being charged to rent something that you're not renting is you know, not legal. And Congress finally kind of pushed back on I s p s about it by passing a law that expressly forbid that kind of practice. But then, as Boat explains, the I s p s found kind of a way to recontextualize those fees and pump them back into bills.

They just called them other stuff. And Bod's point is that this approach lets I s p s advertise a lower rate because the base rate that they're charging that can be really low and it can be very steady, so they can say, like, we we charge the lowest

rates you you have a base rate that is really competitive. However, then they get all these hidden fees that they throw in that boost the expense, and that's when your bill starts going up and up and up, and often these mysterious vs don't seem to, you know, correlate with anything other than lining the pockets of I s P shareholders and executives. Anyway, bodes piece is well worth a read. He gets pretty salty about it in the article, but it can't exactly blame him if you want to read

it again. That is on tech Dirt, and the article is called big I s P s avoided law banning predatory modem rental fees by simply calling them something else. Check it out now. It's not often that my tech news segment includes a bit about Snoop Dogg. Uh. Not too long ago, Snoop Dogg acquired the famous death Row Records music label, which published music from legends like Dr Dre and Tupac Shakur and of course the d O

double G himself. But now fans are becoming frustrated because a lot of music from many of death Rows artists has been disappearing from various streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music. And this, paired with Snoop's announcement that death Row will be an n f T label, has a lot of folks ticked off in f T s. If

you recall that stands for non fungible tokens. Essentially, they represent ownership of a piece of digital media or digital art Snoop Dogg has said that death Row is going to be a quote the first major in the metaverse end quote. I I assume he means major music label here.

But there's been a pretty serious backlash against n f t s from all but a core group of faithful followers, and generally speaking, people are not super happy when they lose access to stuff that they used to be able to get to, and this has led to quite a few folks to go on to Twitter and lament that they will have to go back to the Stone Age

and you know, listen to their old CD collection. Now I'm being a little bit facetious here, but you know, streaming music is also way more convenient than relying on physical media because you can listen to it anywhere as long as you have an Internet connection. You don't have to carry around, you know, a physical player of some sort. You just need you know, a connected device like a phone. So I do admit like losing access to streaming stuff

is a bit of a kick in the teeth. Interestingly, the Verge reports that CD sales actually increased in UM compared to that actually marks the first time we've seen CD sales go up since two thousand four. Since two thousand four, every single year sales declined until now. That's not to say that CDs are back baby, but rather the steady decline in sales had a little bit of

a bump last year. Now. Perhaps part of that reason is because people want to make sure they can listen to music and they don't have to worry if their favorite artist happens to disappear from a streaming service. Maybe part of it is that a lot of us were isolating at home, so it wasn't as important to us that we have music available via streaming, you know, and so we weren't going anywhere we could just listen to c d s instead. It's not like it was that inconvenient.

And then or, of course, is the appeal of owning a physical thing and not just access to something. I definitely feel like that's a big part of the attraction to Vinyl UM. I know there are a lot of audio files out there who just swear that Vinyl provides the superior experience. I'm not entirely sold on that, but I do collect Vinyl I casually collected. I have to stress it's very casual because I just don't have the room for a big collection. And also I can stop

at any time, just shut up. But um yeah, I think that that's a big part of it, is that owning something physical and not just owning access or having the opportunity to access something. Whether all this increase you know, of sales marks a general reverse of the trend or not remains to be seen. I think it's probably just a little bump and we'll see CD sales continue to decline after this year. But then if more music labels follow Death Rows example and go the n f T route,

we can actually see CD sales take off instead. I I know that, you know, I'd be more inclined to go the c D route rather than this whole n f T approach. Finally, over in Europe, the EU Parliament has drafted a legislation that, if adopted, will require some pretty big changes for major companies like Apple. Namely, the legislation focuses on batteries, and as the EU pushes towards a carbon neutral or perhaps even carbon negative future, it's clear that to get there will require a heavy reliance

on batteries. However, the EU has also acknowledged that batteries come with their own problems, and so this legislation aims to do tons of stuff, from requiring companies to provide evidence of carbon footprint involved in producing batteries, to practicing due diligence to make sure that the sourcing, processing and trading of materials used in producing batteries is done in

an ethical and responsible way. This is a really big deal because a lot of those materials come from countries that have of at the very least a spotty record on stuff like human rights. But as for that bit about how it would really affect companies like Apple, well, part of the legislation says that companies will have to make batteries and their products easily removable and replaceable. Apple,

like a lot of tech companies, doesn't tend to do that. Um. In fact, when you look at handsets, tablets, and even laptops, a lot of manufacturers do not make the batteries easily removable. I love it when a laptop has a battery that you can easily remove and potentially replace. I think that's great. Um. I have a laptop that I use all the time

that doesn't do that. I actually looked up how to replace the battery and it requires complete disassembly of the laptop, So it's not like something that most people, including myself, are going to try. So I don't mean to single out Apple here, because it is common throughout the industry. It's just that Apple has a particular the reputation for making their stuff difficult to you know, maintain and repair yourself.

But from what I can tell, this legislation would mean companies would have to change their designs to make batteries easier to remove, at the very least by independent operators like repair shops. And again, this is all in an effort to create rules around the production, use, and end of life treatment of batteries. So it's pretty important stuff and I'll be very curious to see how things evolve

if this legislation in fact is adopted. I wonder if we're gonna see companies like Apple market different models of their products in the EU that have these easily removable batteries versus everywhere else, or if they will adopt a more global approach. Um. I don't know it it's it's a it's a big deal though, so I just wanted to end on that. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please

reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y. Tech 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.