Tech News: The FBI Gets Mad at Apple

and photos and that kind of thing. It's something that Apple users and privacy organizations have wanted for a long time, particularly in the wake of things like you know, hackers getting access to people's photos and I Cloud. Having that stuff encrypted would make a huge difference. So the encryption means that if someone else were to gain access to the data, but they don't have access to the ivan key used to decrypt the data, all they will end

up with is gibberish. And that, of course means we need to talk about the US Federal Bureau of Investigation a k. The f b I, because boy howdy, they do not like Apple's move here. The FBI would much prefer that this data remain unencrypted. That way, should the FBI need to access information in an investigation, they could do so without having the whole sticky situation of this data not actually meaning anything to them because it would

be all jumbled up. So the FBI argues that the encrypted data represents a danger to Americans that without access to that data, the FBI is going to have a harder time detecting, investigating, or preventing crimes that could otherwise harm Americans. And there's some truth to that, but this also ignores the fact that people want their information to be safe from prying eyes. So let me give you

a really just simple, honest example. Let's say that you are unhappy with your job, and so you start sending out feelers to your network of contacts to see if perhaps there are any other opportunities elsewhere that you would

like to pursue. Well, you would want those communications to be encrypted so that if your current employer were to somehow come across those transmissions, you wouldn't immediately be called out on it then potentially face retribution anyway, The FBI has long urged companies that use encryption that they should incorporate a system whereby the FBI could decrypt information stored in those systems. This is the so called back door strategy,

giving the FBI a back door into the ecosystem. And I know I have said this a billion times, but I'm gonna say it again. Intentionally putting in a back door is never a good idea full stop never. Now why is that? Well, think of it this way. Hackers are constantly probing systems to find vulnerabilities that they can exploit. So they're looking for ways to gain purchase in a system and to intrude into that system, and that includes

finding ways to decrypt data. So if you build in that capability, presumably with the intent to only allow the FBI to use it, it represents an enormous target for hackers because when you know there's a back door, there's no reason to just keep slamming away at the front door. Right, So putting in backdoor access is equivalent to including a security vulnerability on purpose. It's dumb. Plus, we know that people in positions of power can abuse that power. Now,

not everyone does. I'm sure there's no shortage of decent people in organizations who would never do such a thing, but we have seen plenty of cases where people in positions of power have abused things like access to data see also the n s A. And you can never be certain that everyone in the FBI who would have access to a tool like backdoor decryption in the y cloud wouldn't abuse that access. So, in short, I think Apple is doing the right thing because the company so

far has resisted all calls to weaken its systems. Now over at the Pentagon, a hefty nine billion dollar contract that's billion with a B has gone out to several tech companies to build out a cloud computing network for

the Pentagon's use. And this comes at the end of a really long and messy situation in which various companies had secured parts of a contract, but then there were accusations that flared up that there was some hanky panky going on in the contract phase, meaning that you know, folks suspected there was collusion between Pentagon officials and certain companies as opposed to the Pentagon selecting the best legitimate proposal.

That appears to all be settled now, with Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Oracle all getting a slice of that nine billion dollar pie. The purpose of this new cloud infrastructure will be to hold information of varying degrees of secrecy, although everything from like unclassified information up to top secret stuff, and also to allow the rapid dissemination of information to any parties that need it within like the Department of Defense,

such as troops are stationed in distant countries. As such, the system will need to have robust security to put it lightly, to prevent you know, spies from being able to see critical communications and intelligence. This is a very tall order considering the challenges of making anything digitally bullet proof. So interesting that this is finally moving forward and that it's going to be a confederation of different big tech

companies that will be involved in it. Lawmakers and regulators and the EU continue to be a thorn in the side of big tech. The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that Google is legally obligated to remove search results if users can prove that the search results lead to inaccurate data. Now, I imagine that's going to be an enormous problem moving forward, because anyone who objects to any search result could presumably challenge it as

for proving results to be inaccurate. I think that's also going to be a bit odd because typically the burden of proof is on whatever party is claiming accuracy, like, you know, the whole you can't prove a negative kind of thing. But in this ruling, the court is saying, if someone requests the removal of a search result, that someone must also prove that quote much information is manifestly inaccurate end quote. So this does sound like the burden

is on the claimant. Now, in a way, I guess that makes sense, because really Google is just indexing and displaying search results right. In most cases, Google is not the party that's responsible for the generation of the information. It's just serving up links. Though things do get a little tricky when you start talking about things like ads

that appear in search results. The court is trying to find a way to maneuver the rough waters between the right to be forgotten, which refers to a person's right to not have details of their life published up on the Internet, and the freedom of speech. Now I can appreciate the desire to give people the power to challenge misinformation. We have seen how destructive misinformation can be on lots of different levels. But I imagine this particular approach is

going to necessitate some sort of arbitration. Hardy to determine which claims are legitimate and which are mere attempts to remove, you know, troublesome links. Like for example, if I were an executive of a company and I made decisions that lead to massive economic loss, I would probably want to try and scrub Google of search results that detail my mistakes, that reflects poorly on me. Now, maybe those links are all two stories that are true, but I don't really

want them to show up. I mean, I definitely don't want them to show up if they're true, So I would probably go through the process of trying to challenge that. I imagine we're going to see a lot of instances of that kind of thing as we move forward, and not all cases are going to be as straightforward as my rather primitive example just was. Like that one, you could argue, all right, well, this is clearly someone who's just trying to whitewash their background. That's not a legitimate

example of misinformation. But in other cases it might be harder to make determination. Now you might even argue this is the wrong way to go about doing things, because really the fault lies with whatever site has published the misinformation, and that the EU Court should instead focus on finding ways to address that issue rather than go after a company that just provides links to stuff. It's not like

Google wrote all these things, they just index them. But you know, it's a really tough challenge to go after the source, particularly for sites that aren't located in the EU. Your jurisdiction only goes so far. And how do you enforce a rule for a server that isn't located in your in your jurisdiction. So I don't have the perfect solution here. I just think that this particular approach of punishing Google for publishing links to information um doesn't really

get at the problem. And it's really just going to create a massive administrative mess um and it's going to cost lots and lots of money to go through all of this. So I don't know how long this will be an action, or if it will be you know, tweaked or repealed. It's hard to say. I just I can't see it being successful moving forward. But again that could just be my own my opic limitations. Okay, we've got lots more stories to get through before we go

any further. Let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is merging its ways most of W A. Z and Google Maps divisions into a single division and a cost saving measure. So the plan is still to maintain separate apps and not combine Ways and Maps together. So while the divisions will be consolidated, the apps will not be at least not for now. Google hasn't indicated that they're going to be any layoffs. In fact, the company says there are no

plans for layoffs following this merger. However, the current CEO of Ways Nia Park will have to leave once these two departments have finished that unification process and there's been a sufficient transition period. For those of y'all who are not familiar with Ways, it's a traffic app as in real world street traffic, like the kind that cars and bikes and stuff are on, and it helps you navigate to a destination by suggesting the fastest route and also

giving you real time updates from user generated inputs. So if Ways users up ahead of you note that there is a speed trap, they could use the app to say, hey, the po po or on the lookout for lead foots, so he's off the throttle buster, but you know, probably not. In so many words, and boom, you get a little indicator along your route that the fuzzes out there looking for road demons or something. Since Google purchased Ways back in two thousand thirteen, the company has incorporated some of

ways as features into its own Google Maps app. But you might wonder why did Google keep these two divisions

separate in the first place. Well, that was likely to avoid imperial entanglements, as Obi Wan Kenobi would say, which is really just my cheeky way of saying that the Federal Trade Commission the f TC here in the United States was concerned that the acquisition would lead to decreased competition in the space, and so Google, perhaps in an effort to ward off any regulatory obstacles, decided to operate

Ways as a separate entity. According to Noam Bardon, who is a former CEO of Ways, having Google as an overlord ended up being a bit of a detriment because it really kind of inhibited innovation and growth. He posted on LinkedIn last year that the company probably would have

been more successful had it remained independent. Well, hindsight is and it's not like we can look at an incredibly long list of examples of Google acquisitions that didn't go well, Nope, every single thing Google has ever purchased has gone on to grow and prosper cough cough. One story I haven't really covered and tech stuff yet is about AI generating really compelling text Now. I'm specifically referencing chat gpt. That's

a chat bought powered by open Ai. That's the organization that's also responsible for developing doll E and AI app that can generate images based on text inputs. Chat Gpt has been getting a lot of attention because it's free to use and the AI can create some really cool responses to text inquiries. Now some are arguing that this could be the future of search, in that chat gpt synthesizes information from numerous sources and then generates a response

in real time. Though the app is quick to point out it is not actively connected to the Internet, so it can't address issues that are currently unfolding. Instead, it draws upon a huge database of indexed information. Kind of reminds me of Watson when Watson from IBM went up on Jeopardy. The responses tend to be presented in a way that makes them sound like they're pretty darn legit, though folks have also noticed that sometimes the answers that

chat GPT gives are just plain wrong. That's a problem since the presentation of the information appears to be confident and reliable, like if you expect to get the real answer when you're asking a question, you might trust that what you get is legit, and in all cases that may not actually work right. There might be some outliers, maybe a lot of outliers that if you trust that information,

you'd be going down the wrong path. So it could lead to people thinking that information is you know, inherently trustworthy, or it could lead to people, you know, thinking that all information is inherently untrustworthy. It could go either way. So it's complicated because chat GPT doesn't disclose what sources it used in order to generate the responses that it gives, so you can't go back and check its work. In other words, you can't say, all, right, well, where did

you hear this from? You're just getting an answer. So using chat GPT to get an answer to a question makes me think of the old idea of the semantic web. That concept involves using the web and getting contextual results

based upon your preferences, your needs, your current situation. So, for example, with the semantic web, you might law again to find out how to prepare a specific kind of meal, Let's say, like the Thanksgiving turkey, since in the United States we had Thanksgiving a couple of weeks back, and instead of getting a bunch of links two different recipes the way you would with traditional search, the semantic web would give you a procedurally generated series of instructions, and further,

in the ideal implementation, those instructions would be tailored to your own level of expertise in the kitchen, as well as your own taste preferences. But you know, chat GBT looks like it's a bit of a step in that direction, except obviously it's not able to adapt to each and

every user like that. Anyway, there have been a lot of concerns about chat GPT, ranging from future students are just gonna use AI to outsource homework and thus never learn anything all the way to this will destroy Google's at business because people will get the answers they want without actually having to scroll through a list of links from search results and then click through to them. And I do think there are reasons to be concerned. I'm not quite ready to say that the sky is falling

just yet. But I'd say like cracks are starting to appear. And I do think also just in general, that educators really need to concentrate on teaching kids how to think, because that's way more important than just memorizing dates and stuff. But that's a rant for another time. Carl Rassine, the Attorney General for Washington d C, has filed a lawsuit against Amazon. Not. The heart of the matter is how Amazon between and twenty nineteen was dipping into tips that

customers were leaving for Amazon delivery drivers. Now, Amazon has already had to answer for this once before, because the FTC investigated the matter and said, hey, yeah, you are stealing from your employees. So the company ended up paying nearly sixty two million dollars to drivers and restitution. But Racines point is that customers didn't receive any consideration for the harm that they experienced because of Amazon's actions, and

I can kind of get behind that. I mean, if I leave a tip for a person, I really want that tip to go to the person who was responsible for making the experience whatever it was. When I find out that a place of business forces employees to surrender their tips so that the company can take a cut, I get pretty darn upset about that. I mean, the company already got it's cut from my business. The tip

is on top of that. Right now, there is a case that you can make that in places like the restaurant business here in the United States that you know, sometimes you have to pool tips to divvy them up to cover staff who traditionally don't get tips at all, but they still get paid terrible wages. But again, that's going to send me into a rant of how the restaurant business in the United States is an absolute racket. For those of who are actually in the service industry,

it is a mess. Not across the board, there are places that pay their staff a living wage, but that's not what the law allows. The law allows them to be criminally underpaid and to become completely dependent upon tips. It is messed up anyway. Racine says that Amazon has yet to answer for the harm done to consumers in the DC area for this practice, and wishes to seek civil penalties against the company. Perhaps that Amazon had said, Hey, whoa,

we already paid the drivers. Plus we don't do that anymore. We stopped doing that in twenty nineteen, So where's the problem, Like we don't do what you're are angry about, and we already paid back the drivers. Now, Rasina is saying the lawsuit is necessary to send a message to companies that deceiving customers as well as stealing from employees will

not be tolerated and will be met with penalties. So what Rasina is saying is no, no, no, no no. You you paid back the drivers, but you still deceived the public, and that is what I'm going after you for interesting approach. Todd Rakita, the Orney General for the US state of Indiana, has gone and sued TikTok, claiming the company has violated state consumer protection laws. Now, there are a couple of concerns in this lawsuit. In fact,

there's a pair of lawsuits. So one is really about how the Attorney General says TikTok has failed to ensure the safety and privacy for its younger users, exposing them to inappropriate content and even suggesting such content through the use of its algorithms, and also putting user privacy at risk, which is really bad when those users tend to be

under age. The second lawsuit is one that concerns something we've heard several times over the last few years that TikTok fails to disclose to what degree the Chinese government has access to user data on TikTok. Now reps that TikTok have said that the app has extensive content controls in place, and further that the company is confident it can address quote all reasonable US national security concerns end quote.

TikTok's parent company is Bite Dance, Chinese company, and TikTok has repeatedly been scrutinized with concerns that this association gives Chinese agents access to US citizens private information. That's a concern that TikTok has repeatedly dismissed or denied. As to what I think. I mean, I remain uneasy about TikTok, but then I also feel uneasy about all social networks at this point. It's just, you know, our information is

being harvested like crazy across multiple platforms. So at some level you just start to ask, am I am I just not okay with it in this case, but I am okay with it in this other case? Or am I not okay with it at all? And it turns out as I get older, I get more paranoid and grouchy So I guess what I'm saying is the jury is still out on this. I don't have any evidence that the Chinese government has a says to user data on TikTok um, but I'm also not entirely satisfied with

TikTok's answers for that. So yeah, it's tricky. Okay, We've got a few more stories to get through before we wrap up this episode. Before we do that, let's take another quick break. We're back, and now we have a quick trio of Twitter related stories. Nothing major. First up, as Twitter grew in popularity, we saw the app developer community rise up to integrate Twitter functionality into different apps.

You know, stuff like tweet deck, which allows users to create a single view for multiple Twitter accounts, among other things. In fact, tweet deck was popular enough for Twitter to acquire it back in two thousand eleven. Well, now we're seeing that same app developer community turn their attention to Mastodon, which some people have migrated to as an alternative to Twitter.

Mastodon has an inherently different structure from Twitter. It is decentralized because Macedon is a platform that allows people to set up servers, So joining Masodon means you have to

choose a home server. You can still communicate with people who have chosen a different home server, but your abilities on your home server versus what you can do across all servers are very different, and app developers have seen an opportunity because as millions of people have joined Mastodon, they have discovered that Macedon lacks a lot of the

features and functions that you could find on Twitter. To that end, app developers are working to create apps that either replicate certain Twitter functions or find new ways to add features to the basic Mastodon experience. Now that might end up irritating some Mastodon users, people who have been on the platform for a while, because this could mean that we'll see even more new people flood servers and potentially change the communities that have been place for ages.

But considering people are still wondering if Twitter is going to stand the test of time, it might be a necessary evil. In other Twitter news, the company is reporting going that it's going to charge iOS users a little bit more for Twitter Blue when the service comes back online.

You might remember that Twitter Blue was put on ice for the time being after users and trust me, nobody could have predicted this after users abused the new verification check by creating impersonation accounts and then flooding Twitter with jokes, harassment, and other mischief. Who could have seen that coming? I mean, it was just out of the blue, right Twitter Blue m This appears, by the way, to be a response to Apple's policy of taking a cut of each in

app transaction. So in order to recapture the money that would otherwise go to Apple, Musk and team are upping Twitter Blues subscription fee from seven bucks a month, which is how much it will cost you to subscribe via the EBB, to eleven bucks a month if you subscribe

via the iOS app. I'm not sure how many users will be shelling out for subscriptions at all, but I'm guessing Elon Musk is hoping it's going to be a lot, because reportedly Twitter has been having a doozy of a time keeping its AD revenue going and something needs to be there to help offset costs. I haven't heard whether or not Twitter is going to do this for Google and for Android users, because Google also takes a cut

of an app transactions. When these stories come up, they almost always focus on Apple rather than Android, and I always find that confusing because both companies do this kind of thing. Now, rounding out our Twitter stories is just a quick financial bit of news. Reuter's reports that the banks that helped finance Musk's acquisition of Twitter are looking to margin loans to help take the edge off some of the massive debt that the company has, which is

around their teen billion dollars. Now, part of that debt is three billion dollars of unsecured debt and it has an interest rate of eleven point seven. So not only is Twitter and debt, but the interest payments are enormous, and so the banks are looking for ways to kind of migrate some of that debt into other forms that from a non technical perspective are are just not quite so scary. Now. Originally the plan was to sell debt to investors who would buy the debt in the hopes

of being repaid. Right, you you buy the debt with the hope of the the the company that has the debt paying you back with interest. But then you know, everybody, banks and investors were everybody was looking at the chaos that was going on on Twitter, and essentially everyone said, yeah, maybe not, because who the heck is going to buy up debt when it looks like the company could collapse

in any second. Now, all that could change when we get into three, because if the team at Twitter can keep things afloat, then it could end up building up more confidence in the company and maybe then we'll see investors buy up debt. But for the time being, that's

on hold. Something I didn't talk about last month was how the Board of Supervisors for San Francisco had approved a really scary proposal that would have given police the right to use robots equipped with explosives to use offensively in situations where deadly force was warranted, such as an

incidents involving armed suspects. Now, that decision promptly sparked an understandable critical response, as people worried that the police would potentially abuse that technology or that any mistakes made would lead to absolute tragedy. The initial vote past eight to three in favor, but this particular proposal needs two votes. In fact, all of these proposals need to votes to move forward before it goes to the Mayor's office and

lo and behold. After that initial wave of criticism hit the for this policy, that same group of supervisors then voted eight to three to ban the use of lethal force by police robots, which sends the original proposal back for review where it could be altered or maybe just outright scrapped. But it sounds to me like the board had a real change of heart once folks pointed out the bombs on wheels controlled by police could lead to

truly catastrophic consequences. Speaking of robots, Sony says it has the technology to manufacture humanoid robots quickly. All Sony needs is a reason. Kind of the cdo of Sony Group Corporation essentially said that once the company identifies a good use case for humanoid robots, it could go into manufacturing those robots pretty darned quickly. And moreover, there are several other companies that are in a similar position. It's just that we don't really have a compelling use case yet,

and I can kind of understand that. First of all, though, making a robust humanoid robot comes with a ton of engineering challenges. It turns out that stuff that most people take for granted can be really hard problems for roboticists to solve. But assuming that you have solved most or even just some of those engineering problems, you still have

the question of what does this robot do? Though, usually engineers design robots for a very narrow spectrum of tasks, which reduces the variables that the robot has to contend with and makes the design and engineering processes easier. Now note I did not say easy, only easy. Year. If all your robot has to do is weld four points on a vehicle chassis as it goes down the production line, well you don't have to worry about the robot being able to open doors, or climb stairs or even look

remotely humanoid. None of that matters, And honestly, I think the best use for robots is to tackle jobs that people are not good at, or jobs that are one of the three classic d s and robotics, which is dirty, dangerous, or dull. Otherwise, if a human can already do the job perfectly, well, there's no real reason to make a robot do the job because we've already solved the problem

because a human can do the thing. But if the job is dirty, dangerous, or dull, then making a robot to do that thing makes sense because it spares a human from having to deal with it, and that human can go on to do something that isn't dirty, dangerous, or dull. So those are really the only cases I can think of u apart from maybe some applications in social robotics, which is its own weird kind of of realm. It's it's weird because you don't have to just take

into consideration what can the robots do. You also have to take into consideration how do people react to the robots. And it's the people's side that really can be hard for engineers to tackle because it's not necessarily logical. But that's a matter for a deeper dive than some future podcast. Finally, thanks to Gismoto, I am now aware of the Dyson Zone. The Dyson Zone is the name for a pair of noise canceling headphones from Dyson, you know, the vacuum cleaner company.

These headphones have multiple microphones designed to detect noise from the outside world, and then the headphone speakers counteract that noise by generating sound waves that are in effect opposite to the ones from the outside of the headphones. That's just how active noise canceling headphones work because opposite waves cancel each other out. Anyway, a couple of these noise canceling microphone are unique to Dyson because they are designed to pick up the noise generated by an air filtration

system built into the headphones themselves. Yep, these headphones have an active air filter component. So there's this visor like peripheral maybe I should say it's it's like a face mask, and it extends the active filtration system to fit over the nose and mouth, although it does not make a perfect seal, so Dyson has already said this is not a device that will protect you from stuff like COVID. It connects to the headphones via magnets, so you can

wear the headphones without this if you want to. From what Gizmodo says, it sounds like the headphones are pretty heavy even without the visor, but when you put it on there you know they've got a considerable heft to them. Now, when the visor is attached, you can have filtered air blasted at your breathing holes. So if you like listening to your Thumbosaurus tunes, Do to Do, but you happened to sit next to a stinky co worker, Well I got to your solution right here. Sure, you'll look like

one of those old stock photography images. Of a cyborg or something. And sure you'll need to show out nearly a grand to buy these headphones, but you'll get fresh air for a little bit until the battery wears out. That happens to be about four hours if you have it on the lowest fan setting, or an hour and a half if it's on the highest. And yeah, it is gonna cost you nine dollars, so it's probably gonna

weed out a lot of potential buyers. You can pre order a pair at a Dyson store starting in March. If you've got a grand burning a hole in your pocket and you don't mind looking, I'm gonna say odd as you listen to your music and you breathe your filtered air, Yeah, you should check it out. If you haven't seen pictures of the diceon zone, look it up.

Because I looked at it, and I thought this can't be a real thing, right, and it's certainly it cost a grand, right, And I'm never gonna see someone wearing one of these, right, And I don't know. I mean, in Atlanta, I'm not likely to see someone wearing this unless they're really being like a tech poser or something. But you know who knows maybe maybe it will become the must have Christmas gift next year for people who really have a whole lot of money to spend on

Christmas gifts. That's kind of out of my price range. Okay, that's it for this episode of tech News. Hope you enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions for topics for me to cover on tech Stuff, including suggestions for big tech news items that came out over the year twenty two, because I'm doing a wrap up episode pretty soon, let me know. You can get in touch a couple of different ways. One way is you can download the i

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I'll talk to you again really soon. YEA. 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.