Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and love all things tech. And now it's time for the tech news for Tuesday, March nine, twenty twenty one.
Let's get to it. The New York Times reports that White House Press Secretary Jen Saki indicates the United States will carry out a mix of actions against Russia due to the solar winds hack, which continues to be a massive security problem for multiple companies and government agencies in the United States and beyond. Those actions will be quote
seen and unseen end quote. So I'm guessing some of them are going to be, you know, pretty obvious, such as sanctions against RuSHA, and others will be on the super duper sneaky side, like similar cyber warfare tactics. We should remember that infiltration, espionage, and exploitation of computer systems, it's something that's pretty much always going on between different
nation states with different levels of success. The solar winds hack was pretty darned devastating, so I don't really think of it as news news that such things are going to happen by the US against Russia, because, like I said, that stuff is always happening everywhere, everybody's doing it. It's
one of the reasons why cyber warfare is terrifying. For example, one story I didn't get to last week, and some Twitter followers of mine asked me why I didn't it was a good question, was that hackers were able to exploit some vulnerabilities in a very widely distributed Microsoft product. The vulnerableity was with Exchange Server. Now, this is a product that's an electronic mail and calendar server, and it's used by tens of thousands of companies and organizations around
the world. Now, Microsoft first claimed that these attacks were quote limited and targeted end quote which is kind of similar to the attacks we saw with solar winds. Now. With solar winds, a ton of systems were hit, but the hackers only followed up on a very small percentage of those that were hit for subsequent attacks, because that first attack was really just getting an end into an organization, and then it was the subsequent attacks that did the
real harm. However, I'm seeing estimations ranging somewhere between twenty thousand and thirty thousand compromised organizations in the United States alone, and then there are thousands more in other parts of the world. The working hypothesis right now is that the hackers were from a hacker group that's backed by China, and that they exploited several zero day vulnerabilities that Microsoft
began to patch starting back on March two. A zero day vulnerability is one in which those responsible for the software in question are unaware of the vulnerability, so it represents a way for hackers to potentially take advantage of a flaw and exploit it, as was the case with these particular four. The vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Exchange server gave hackers the chance to create a way to either spread more malware or spy on infected systems, or potentially both.
Microsoft is urging network administrators to apply security fixes right away to mitigate the issue, but for systems that are already compromised, that's too late. It's like shutting the door, but all the windows are open. It doesn't really matter at that point. So for those systems, it's going to require a more thorough approach to identifying and removing malware. In other news, the EU has granted its approval to Microsoft's acquisition of ZeniMax Media that is the parent company
of Bethesda Softworks. Bethesda is the company behind the Elder Scrolls series, you know, the one that includes Skyrim, also the Fallout series. They're also the current owner of the
Doom franchise. The price tag for Zenni Max comes in at a cool seven point five billion dollars a parentsly some the e use finding states that quote, the commission concluded that the proposed acquisition would raise no competition concerns given the combined entities, limited market position upstream, and the presence of strong downstream competitors in the distribution of video games.
End quote. From all reports, Microsoft plans to have Bethesda operate pretty much the way it has been operating, with a largely handsoff approach, though with this acquisition, we should expect to see lots of titles that are in Bethesda's vast library showing up on the Xbox Game Pass service. Based on recent announcements from Microsoft, it really looks like the cloud based game service is the key to their stratag G moving forward, at least for Xbox and Windows.
Gaming and company representatives say they have no intention of turning Bethesda into like an Xbox exclusive or Windows exclusive games developer. It looks like Panasonic is moving toward an acquisition of its own, this one being the supply chain software company blew Yonder. Panasonic had previously secured a twenty percent stake in the company in twenty and while as of this recording, Panasonic has not acknowledged that it is actually moving forward with a full acquisition, that's what it
looks like is happening. And I always think of Panasonic as a consumer electronics company. It's the company that you know owns this huge booth that's always right in the middle of ce s with lots of TVs and stuff. But the truth of the matter is that Panasonic has been diversifying quite a bit and moving further out from the direct consumer market to become more of a components supplier for other companies, and as such, managing supply chains
becomes much more complicated. It so in that regard, this acquisition makes a lot of sense, and it seems like Panasonic would be looking at about a six point five
billion dollar price tag for blue Yonder. And now it's time for another COVID related tech topic, which yea, the Washington Post published an article stating that research organization I p VM tested numerous temperature checking systems, you know, the kinds of stuff that you would find in places like schools or airports or public venues, that kind of thing where they screen people by looking at their skin temperature before letting them in. The organization says these devices aren't
always reliable. In fact, reporter Drew Harrowell word did it as quote, the tools are dangerously ineffective end quote. Making matters worse is that some administrators are using these devices in ways that they weren't intended, such as to measure the body temperatures of multiple people at one time. All of this is super bad news, as lots of places are using these sorts of devices as part of their reopening strategies. While COVID is still running rampant throughout the world.
Here in the United States, several states have eased up on restrictions, and the use of tempt checking devices plays a part in the messaging that hey, y'all, it's all okay, there's a vaccine now, though most of you can't get it yet. And besides, we're totally checking temperatures to see if anyone's got a fever, so we're all over it now.
This report shows that the tech being used isn't always reliable, so it could miss people who actually do have a fever, or have false positives of people who don't have a fever showing up as if they do. It kind of creates the illusion of safety, which might make people feel at ease, but it also opens up the very real possibility of actual COVID transmission. Think of it like this, You've tested negative for COVID. You've taken a test, it's
come at negative. You're good to go. But you need to go to a public space that does tempt checks and you pa us that check no problem because like I said, it came back negative. You're you're healthy. So once you are inside this public venue, you think, hey, everyone else here also had to pass that same test I did, Like they had to get screened before they came in. So maybe you're not quite as careful as you normally would be. You feel like you're in a
safe space. Maybe you don't keep as much distance between you and everyone else as you should. Maybe you don't wash your hands as frequently. You can see how an unreliable piece of technology could feed into a perception that you're safe, when in fact you might not be. Now, I don't say this to send anyone into a panic, but rather to remind everyone we're not outll the woods yet.
We still need to take personal responsibility for our own health as well as show consideration for our fellow human beings. Stay home, if you can, wear masks, practice social distancing, wash your hands. It's no time to throw caution to the wind, though That's what I see way too often on the rare occasions where I do have to leave my house. Ours Technica reported on SpaceX's plans for the
spaceport that it's currently building out in Texas. The company had to file its plans with the Texas government and so they are publicly available on the Army Corps of Engineers site. It's also available for comments from the public.
The full spaceport is going to have two landing pads, one of those is already built, and it will also have two launch pads for suborbital missions, meaning they won't go all the way out into space like not orbital space anyway, and then two other launch pads for orbital missions. So far, they the facility already has one suborbital launch pad, and it's building its first orbital launch pad. Ours Tannica points out that the design of the complex is pretty
darn compact. Stuff tends to be pretty close together, partly because SpaceX has to adhere to certain event restrictions. It doesn't own that many acres of land in this part of Texas, and there are restrictions like you, they have to have stormwater ponds in order to help prevent flooding, for example, so some of that space has to be
set aside for that. SpaceX has to get approval from the Army Corps of Engineers, also has to pass an environmental impact assessment from the f a A, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has also indicated that he would very much like to conquer I'm sorry, I mean incorporate the nearby community of Boca Chica Village, which consists of several dozen homes, and he wants to boost that up to a small city that supports the spaceport. In fact, he wants to take that community and turn into a city
called Star based Texas. Now, I can't decide if that sounds cool or corny. There have been reports that SpaceX has been a bit pushy with the residents of Boca Chica Village, attempting to convince some homeowners to pick up stakes and move, and that sounds, you know, not great. Tech Crunch reports that it has received confirmation from Apple the company is discontinuing it's iMac Pro line of computers.
The iMac Pro is an all in one computer with the computer and display built into a single form factor. It was first produced back in December. The standard Imax seems to be sticking around, but apparently that standard iMac was kind of the go to model for people who are kind of looking at that style of computer, whereas those who were more interested in a computer that had more capability than the standard iMac. We're gravitating towards the
Mac Pro. Now, if you still really want one, you can order one of the remaining models that are currently in Apple stock. It'll set you back a cool five thousand dollars. And a couple of other quick stories. The Guardian has a fun article titled Typographic Attack, Pen and paper fool AI into thinking Apple is an iPod now. As the headline indicates, the article is about an image recognition AI system called clip which should be able to
figure out basic stuff by examining pictures. However, if you were to handwright say the word iPod on a sticky note, and then you were to slap that sticky note on an apple, as in the fruit, and then you took a photo of that and fed it to Clip, that text could be enough to convince Clip that, sure enough, that piece of fruit is in fact an m P
three player from Apple Now. According to the Guardian, a different test involved just typing up dollar signs on top of a picture of a dog, so like just putting a text box there and putting in dollar signs, then feeding that image to Clip, and it was enough for Clip to misidentify it as a piggy bank. The organization behind clip open AI acknowledges that this type of typographic
attack can be effective. The model is able to decipher text and interpret it, and that is powerful enough to push the model towards misidentifying whatever the thing is it's looking at. In some ways, you can think of Clip as being a sweet summer child, a naive innocent that will believe whatever you tell it. If you post a video of an ostrich with the sign Santa clause underneath it. Well, hey, there's a chance that will think that that Ostrich is
in fact Santa Claus. And honestly, who's to say that it's not. I mean, we've all been a bit hasty to judge, right. As for clip, while this report is pretty amusing, it does indicate there's some pretty big opportunities for mischief, including stuff that goes well beyond mischief using this vulnerability. I suspect that a large part of open aiyes work will be refining this AI model so that
it weights the text interpretation against other elements in an image. So, in other words, they're going to have to teach the AI that human beings are liars. And finally, in an interview for the Infra Nation, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about how virtual reality is an exciting field that will play a bigger part in online social presence in the future. He spoke about the work going into creating realistic avatars to represent users and allow them to interact within a
virtual space together. So think of something like Ready Player one, or maybe a more immersive version of Second Life, which has its own implications. It really makes me think that any big shared virtual space is going to be jarring, not necessarily because of the technology, but because of how people can be. Some people just like to push boundaries or worse, and they can make or break an experience.
They can make an experience truly unbearable. Also, the level of VR that Zuckerberg is talking about makes me a little nervous, not because of it being immersive, but because of the technology that would be you to make it happen, technology like eye tracking, for example. Now, Facebook makes nearly all of its revenue from advertising, so I can only imagine that Zuckerberg is eager to roll out tech that let's Facebook track where users are looking within a virtual world,
because that's where you're going to see advertising pop up. Right, everyone, get ready for the next phase or techno capitalist dystopia. But no, seriously, I'm sure it'll be really neat. Well. That wraps up the news for Tuesday, March nine, twenty one. If you folks have any suggestions for future topics I should tackle in tech Stuff, let me know. Reach out on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff hs W, and I'll tell to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
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