Tech News: Tech and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

into tech news. In the hours before open hostilities, Reuters reported that the US will likely begin with holding tech from Russia, ranging from products like computer systems to individual components like semiconductors and aircraft parts. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, the language is directed more at Vladimir Putin than at Russia as a whole, and Putant's tendency toward authoritarianism arguably

justifies that wording. The US Deputy Treasury Secretary said that, quote, We're going to cut him off from Western technology that's critical to a dancing his military, cut him off from Western financial resources that will be critical for feeding his economy and also to enriching himself. Uh. The he in this case being Putent and again this all came out before Russia's actual invasion. But yes, we should see various

sanctions around the world. I know the UK has also started to announce some and likely a lot of that is going to focus not just on finances but on tech as well. In addition to the explosions and gunfire happening in Ukraine. By the way, any listeners out in Ukraine, I really hope you and your loved ones are safe. But the country has also been under a pier attack. It appears that distributed denial of service attacks, also known

as the DOS attacks, have hampered Ukraine's internet infrastructure. In addition, it seems as though there's been a deployment of a type of malware designed to infect and then wipe out data on machines, and that this has been targeting some

computer systems in Ukrainian organizations. Now, just in case you're not familiar with the term di DOS attack, the basic ideas that you have a distributed network of machines, so a whole collection of computers that are distributed in an area could be all around the world actually, and you use these to target specific web servers and you overwhelm those servers with traffic such as a pin request or maybe even a pin request that goes back to an

address that doesn't exist, and the web server attempts to respond to all those requests because that's how you know, the Internet functions, is that if it didn't respond to these request USTs, then the Internet wouldn't work. It has to be able to respond to these things. So this is kind of equivalent to bringing a doorbell and then running away. I've used this analogy before. Imagine that you are required to answer your door every time the doorbell rings.

And someone rings your doorbell, so you get up, you walk to your front door, You open the door, no one's there. You close the door. Someone rings the doorbell. You have to turn back around and go back to the door, open it. And this just happens over and over to the point where you can't do anything else. That's essentially the basic version of a distributed denial of service attacks. If you just imagine that all the neighborhood kids in all the neighborhoods around you are all in

on this, and they're all taking turns doing it. That's kind of what's going on on a the you know, an analogy level well. There are companies like cloud Flare that specialize in mitigating the dose attacks, and some of Ukraine's most critical services, such as those connected to financial military operations, appeared to have weathered the storm a little bit better than you know, just about everybody else. The

malware is a different matter, the Wiper malware. This is software that appears to have been created in late twenty one, which could indicate that this was a planned part of the invasion, and that the invasion itself has been something that's been the work for at least a few months, which honestly, I would be shocked to hear otherwise it The narrative coming out of Russia is that this was something that kind of happened suddenly, but all evidence seems

to contradict that. Moscow so far has denied any involvement in the DIDOS attacks or the malware. But as we covered in a recent tech News episode, much of the hacking activity reported around the world, including nearly three quarters of all ransomware attacks, appears to originate out of Russia or Russia aligned countries. On a relay to note, researchers in Ukraine have been sharing information, photos, and videos on Twitter.

So this includes journalists and security experts, and a lot of them have noticed that their accounts have been hit with suspensions. For example, Oliver Alexander, who has been fighting misinformation during the invasion by trying to cover things on the ground, has had his accounts suspended at least two times in the last twenty four hours. Now, in most cases, the researchers are told that they received a suspension for violating a Twitter policy, but at least in a few

of those, no specific policy was cited. As of the time of this recording. The working hypothesis is that there was and potentially still is, an active campaign, likely originating in Russia, that is identifying and reporting any social media accounts attempting to cover the Ukraine invasion, and that these reports are all made in bad face in an effort to suppress information from being published. So in other words, you know, it's it's people saying, hey, they're spreading misinformation

in an attempt to silence people. Now, a Twitter spokesperson has said that quote, We've been proactively monitoring for emerging narratives that are violative of our policies, and in this instance, we took enforcement action on a number of accounts in error. We're expeditiously reviewing these actions and have already proactively reinstated access to a number of affected accounts. The claims that the errors were a coordinated body campaign or the result

of mass reporting is inaccurate end quote. So in other words, they're refuting that hypothesis, and hopefully that is true, because presumably it will mean that from this point forward we'll see fewer mistaken suspensions and that will just be a little blip in the early days. Uh, if this actually is part of a supper Ashan campaign, maybe that will mean Twitter will develop better tools to detect and prevent those from happening, which again can be a larger benefit

in the future. Switching over to North Korea, Wired has an article titled North Korea hacked him, so he took down its Internet and the pieces about a hacker who goes by the handle Packs that's p the numeral four and X, and North Korea targeted Packs because Packs does cybersecurity work and had been involved in cybersecurity work related to North Korea, and Packs did not like getting targeted and after a year of waiting to see what the US would do about this, and Seeing that apparently the

answer was nothing, Packs decided to take it upon himself to do a effectively a denial of service attack on North Korea's Internet system. Now, you could argue that this is not really an effective strategy because very few people in North Korea actually have access to the Internet. A lot of folks, or at least not a lot some folks can access and intronet, but that has no connectivity to the outside. Internet's fully controlled by the North Korean government.

The Internet sites in North Korea really are mostly for propaganda purposes and are outward facing, So in other words, it's for the rest of the world, not for the people in North Korea. So disrupting those just means that

North Korea's propaganda campaign was somewhat hindered. In fact, a lot of people say, like, the best this does is kind of irritate the government and it could potentially force them to start beefing up their Internet security, which could in theory disrupt say more clandestine efforts that could be going on at the same time. In other words, don't bring attention to these vulnerabilities because someone else might be

using them to do some important work. Uh. Then again, you know, considering the limited use of the Internet and North Korea, you could argue that maybe there's not really any real opportunity through that route, unless, of course, you know, they are really bad at doing things like having air gaps in their system. And air gap, by the way, in case you're not familiar with that term, that's where you make certain that a system has no connectivity to

outside networks. It is a standalone network. It's like an island. It doesn't touch any other network. And uh, that's that's a security measure, right if you If it doesn't interoperate with any other networks, there's no way to get at it from outside. You have to get access to the actual system itself, which really cuts down on the possibility of it being um compromised. It doesn't eliminate that possibility, it just cuts way back on it. And um it

would be shocking to me. I guess not shocking, but you know, if North Korea is not doing that, it's stupid because if it's not using the Internet the way other countries are, then there's no real reason to have any of its you know, crucial systems hooked up to it. But anyway, that's what's going on right now, and I recommend the article again. It's titled North Korea hacked him so he took down its internet. Check out that article. We've got a few more stories to cover, but before

we get to those, let's take a quick break. We're back. You might remember from a couple of weeks back when I talked about how the Dutch Competition Authority was levying

fines against Apple for violating anti competitive regulations. Specifically, we're talking about Apple's payment system in app payment system, and how the company previously required all apps to use Apple's own operated in payment system, and that also meant that Apple could take a chunk out of every in app transaction like up to well, Apple has since change things

up uh. It has announced that developers will be able to use third party payment systems, but Apple will collect a twenty seven percent commission on all in app purchases that use a third party payment method. Now that that's rough, because chances are app developers will have to pay a

cut to whatever third party payment system they're using. So you might start to suspect that while Apple is saying it is going to offer an alternative, the alternatives will likely end up being more expensive to use than the

Apple provided option, and Apple still gets a cut. As such, The Netherlands Authority for Consumers says that Apple has quote refused to put forward any serious proposals end quote, and that furthermore, the company appears to be fine with paying fines even if those fines get up to fifty million euros a week for non compliance, which tells you just how important in app revenue is for Apple if the company is not responding to this stuation with more speed

and seriousness. The a c M says that Apple is purposefully putting in barriers that discouraged the use of third party payment systems and has to come up with a fair alternative. The BBC News investigated how the metaverse is shaping up when a researcher posed as a thirteen year old girl and used a meta quest a k a. The old Oculus quest headset to visit the vr chat virtual space. The researcher witnessed numerous things that were wildly

inappropriate for a child, including simulated sex acts. The researcher was also approached by several adult men. Remember the researcher was posing as a thirteen year old girl, and that is beyond disturbing, and reportedly the researcher even received a rape threat. On top of all that, the researcher said she used a fake identity to create an account, and there was no point where Meta actually verified her age, which meant she was free to wander into virtual space.

Is very much inappropriate for children. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in the UK responded to the report by saying that there is an urgent need to address online safety issues for children, particularly as they're such a hard push to create the metaverse. As it stands, the virtual environments that are sort of a

proto metaverse are very much not a safe space. Um. They actually remind me a lot of very early Internet chat rooms, which could range from just being silly and harmless to outright disturbing and pornographic, depending on the chat room and who was there at the time. The NSPCC said that as it stands, these virtual chat rooms are dangerous by design because of oversight and neglect. Meta's approach so far has been kind of a weird and gross

scientific observation. Essentially, watch how people are interacting in virtual spaces and then address problems that crop up. But that does mean anyone who's adopting the Virtual Space protest, an early adopter, is effectively a guinea pig, and that person's mental health isn't really afforded very much protection. Anyway, don't let your kids use VR chat rooms just yet. The world can be a cruel and dangerous place, and the

online world sometimes it's a billion times more so. Earlier this year, we talked about how Peloton, the exercise company, is going through a really rough patch. After an initial surge in demand at the top of the pandemic, things quieted down and Peloton found itself with warehouses full of product that they couldn't move. In addition, a terrible tragedy involving a treadmill made by the company necessitated an expensive recall.

Shareholders began to lose confidence in Peloton, and apparently a batch of Peloton bikes coming out of a Taiwanese manufacturing facility had rust on them in mostly in non visible parts of the bikes, and the company's response reportedly was to use a chemical to conceal the corrosion. And I've seen this referred to as Project ten Man. I'm not actually sure if that originated from inside the company or not.

Warehouse workers were told to use the concealer, which covered the rust with a black layer, so it wasn't removing the corrosion, it was just covering it up. It's like putting a rug over a dirty spot on the floor. Allegedly, inspectors were encouraged to downplay how badly rusted a bike actually was. Uh. And the company had adopted a policy that would allow lightly rusted vehicles or bikes, I should say,

not really vehicles. They don't take you anywhere their stationary bikes, but they would allow lightly rusted ones to go on to be sold to customers and if it was deemed unsalable then it wouldn't be And the reports suggest that people at least felt pressured to air on the side of selling them to customers rather than to say no,

this is unacceptable. Uh. So Platon has actually said that if anyone pushed something that should not be sold out to a customer, that was against corporate policy, and it actually falls on the person in charge of that inspection, not on Peloton. They said, no, listen, we would never

want to do that. Uh. You know, we don't know where this came from these people are in charge of that, they have the authority to make those decisions, and if they chose to sell heavily rusted bikes to customers, that's that's on them now. Apparently at least six thousand bikes were affected by what Peloton creatively referred to as cosmetic oxidation,

which I guess is glamour rust. The company has issued statements saying no customers have reported problems with the bikes and that the company would be certain to make available replacement parts should any problems pop up down the line due to this issue. That's good, though, I think you can make a strong argument that covering up the corrosion and calling it cosmetic oxidation points to its Peloton really knowing this wasn't a cool move from the get go.

Online shopping has seen a bit of a decline as more people emerge from isolation and start to populate brick and mortar stores once again. Amazon has adjusted its forecast for first quarter sales, and it says that those estimates are now slightly lower than they originally were. eBay has had similar news. In fact, eBay's news was enough to concern shareholders and send the stock price down nearly nine

and extended trading. Stephen Priest, the chief of finance at eBay, told investors, quote, the second quarter should mark the low point for margins during the year as we lap difficult comps and ramp up our pace of investment end quote. So it does sound like things are going to get

worse for eBay before they get better. Andy Maxwell of torrent Freak wrote an article titled Reddit Banned two thousand, six hundred twenty five subreddits for excessive copyright infringement into in D twent d one, which details how Reddit is taking d m c A takedown notices. Seriously, that's the Digital Millennial Copyright Act. Maxwell points out that Reddit reviews these takedown notices and only takes further steps if the

notification follows redd It's rules. So if someone sends in a copyright notice but they don't completely or correctly fill out Reddit's forms, then that notice doesn't count. Reddit will take no action on it because the person did not bother to actually properly fill out the notice in the first place. Then if the notice is filled up properly, Reddit examines the case to see if perhaps it's an example of fair use. So as a reminder, fair use

covers exceptions to copyright exclusivity. Now, fair use is usually a matter that gets decided within a court of law. Arguing fair use on the outset isn't really a force field against d m C A action, But in limited cases, someone can use part of a copyrighted work without getting permission to do so. Anyway, Maxwell mentions that in one read it received copyright notices regarding more than nine twenty

thousand pieces of content. Read It subsequently removed around six sixty five thousand of those pieces, So again, it's not a guarantee that once read It gets a copyright notice that it will strike content. It did so more frequently than it didn't, but like a third of almost a

third of the complaints were dismissed. But Maxwell points out that folks really do need to take copyright more seriously on the platform because repeated violations can result not just in user bands, but even bands of entire sub credits. And imagine being part of a community that gets shut down because too many other folks in that community we're posting copyrighted material without permission. That would stink. Anyway, The article is a good read. I recommend checking it out again.

It is titled Reddit banned two thousand, six d twenty five subreddits for excessive copyright infringement in one and it's on torrent Freak. Okay, we've got a few more stories before we close out today, but first let's take another quick break. Meta, the company that was formerly known as Facebook, has announced that it is developing AI tools dedicated to translating languages in real time any language to any other language.

And right now, we do have tools that can cater to some of the major languages in the world, like Mandarin, English, and Spanish, but a lot of other languages have little to no support in those tools, and Meta says that the company wishes to build out a universal translator like programs, something that could let any two people from any two places in the world have a conversation in real time with each other, no matter what languages each person was speaking.

So if you had one person speaking Portuguese and another speaking Hindi, they could communicate easily with one another through this AI application. And you can immediately understand how this would be a really important component in Meta's vision of its own future, primarily the metaverse. If there is to be a persistent global virtual world. It would be beneficial if there were no communication barriers between people visiting that world.

I should add, however, that while Meta's goal is pretty easy to understand, like we we see what they're aiming for, Meta has not yet shared any information on how it plans to get to that goal, like how long is it going to take, what are the milestones to achieving that goal? None of that has been shared publicly. At least if I replacing a BET, I would aima oult several years, maybe as many as ten to get a

really good handle on this. The tools we have today are pretty amazing, um, at least for the limited contexts in which they work. But they still have a lot of flaws and shortcomings. They're far from perfect. There's a lot of bias in there. There's still a lot of error in there um And a lot of this is because translation is hard. Interpretation is part of translation, and that is hard. So it's gonna take some time to develop something that can work with low latency and high

reliability across all languages. The Center for Countering Digital Hate released research saying that Facebook is falling well short of its responsibility to flag climate misinformation. UH, it's supposed to it's supposed to tag UH posts that contain our links

to articles that are are deemed to be misinformation. But the research states that ten publishers nicknamed the Toxic Ten, are responsible for nearly sevent of all climate change denial posts on Facebook, and that Facebook had only tagged about half of those as containing misinformation. The research sites examples of posts that clearly contained misinformation in the headlines alone, let alone inside the articles themselves, and yet did not

get that climate denial misinformation tag on them. But a Facebook rep addressed the findings and said that part of the problem was that the company was actually in the process of rolling out its labeling platform when this research came out and when it was conducted, suggesting that it was just a matter of timing that the company was

failing to tag of misinformation incidents. The c C d H report included several examples of posts that were made after September of last year, which is when Meta announced it was labeling climate change misinformation posts. So I guess it all just depends on which party you believe. Hopefully it will mean that we will see more accurate tagging in the future and potentially less bultification of misinformation across

Facebook's platform. I know a guy can dream. U S Senator Tammy Baldwin sent a message to Activision Blizzards CEO at least for now, Bobby Codeck, and in that message, Baldwin told Codeck he should quote negotiate in good faith with the workers and suspend any efforts to undermine your employees legal rights to form a union and collectively bargain

end quote. Among the many issues plaguing the company, one is that quality assurance testers working at Raven Software, which is owned by Activision Blizzard, have been attempting to unionize. And you know, we've seen several tech companies face unionization efforts in what I think we can generously refer to

as an adversarial response. Of course, Microsoft is on track to acquire Activision Blizzard and a deal that will not finalize until the by the end of fiscal year three, which doesn't start until this July UM, so that is

probably going to complicate matters. However, it does mean that Baldwin decided to copy Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadela on this letter as well, so you know she saw to it that that Nadela also got this notification to say, hey, we're directing this at CODEC, but we really mean that you should allow your employees to unionize if they want to. Activision Blizzard refused to voluntarily recognize the union, which means that now there are necessary further steps that must be taken,

including a formal vote. UH side note I Heart Media, our our parent company, voluntarily recognize the Heart podcast union, so there are cases where companies will voluntarily recognize unions, but Activision Blizzard did not go that route. So assuming that the QA testers hold such a vote and the vote passes, then the National Labor Relations Board or in l r B would step in an Activision Blizzard would

really have no choice but to recognize the union. Microsoft, i should add, is another company that is not particularly known to be super gung ho on unions. In fact, the acquisition agreement includes a clause that prevents Activision Blizzard from voluntarily recognizing unions without first consulting with Microsoft executives, so, in other words, they have to ask their parents for

permission first. There are also reports that Activision Blizzard was looking to redistribute the QA testers throughout the rest of activision Blizzard perhaps in an effort to head off this unionization effort, if they were incorporate into other teams, than you can make the argument, well, you don't have a high enough concentration of people who are trying to unionize because you have to read a reach a certain threshold

in order to start this process. And if you dilute that by spreading out the employees into other divisions, that could be a way to try and avoid, uh, the whole issue. It's not common for U S. Senators to wait into matters like these, and they don't actually hold any legal authority to change the course of matters, but it could certainly help shape public opinion on the subject.

And finally, on a related activision Blizzard note, Bloomberg reports that the company will delay what was to be the twenty twenty three release in the Call of Duty franchise see activision. Blizzard has put out a new main title in that franchise every year since two thousand five, but now it sounds like the twenty twenty three release will take a little bit longer before players get a chance

to play it. It will not come out in and it seems like part of this reason is that the most recent release, Call of Duty Vanguard, didn't meet company expectations, and that executives were blaming the fact that players were still playing earlier Call of Duty releases and that perhaps they were coming out a little too close together and not offering enough to players to necessitate them moving to the latest title, and so they want to take a little more time both to develop stronger games as well

as to give the market a little time to create demand. So, in other words, you can have too much of a good thing. Of course, some players would argue that good is not the word they would use for certain Call of Duty releases, not all of them have received universal acclaim. Also, there will still be plenty of cod content out there to play before the next major release, because they'll be various expansions. There's the free to play war Zone game mode.

There's war Zone two that's supposed to be coming out in the future. So there just won't be another major release in the franchise in three but that doesn't mean there won't be any Call of Duty content out there. All right. That wraps up this Tech News episode. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, Please reach out to me. The best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W and I'll

talk to you again, really Sion. Tech 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.