Week in Tech: To Catch a Cheater

From Kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is tech stuff. I'm os Volocian and.

I'm Cara Price.

Today we'll get into why websites claiming to catch cheetahs using facial recognition should frighten us all and Trump's crypto empire.

Then unchat me.

Every story has two sides, even chat. This time she has shown her green.

Side all of that on the Weekend Tech. It's Friday, October twenty fourth.

So, Kara, often you come in wearing a baseball cap, that's right. Not today today, I come in wearing a black windbreaker. Yes, I don't normally wear. What does it say on it?

It says the science of genetics, the business of discovery. Colossal Labs.

Colossal Labs. So, a few weeks ago you sent me an article about the company trying to revive the DODO. I did, What did you say?

I said, we should have this guy on.

I'm so glad your session avid listener when you're not on the show, Cara, I interviewed him a few weeks ago.

Yes, I was like, well, that's great, I'm glad you did that.

This is Ben Lamb, the CEO and founder of Colossal Biosciences. Just for some background, this is the company whose mission is to revive the wooly mammoth.

Have they been successful?

They're getting there. So one of their big milestones along the way was to gene edit mice to have wooly mammoth fur. These were the so called they broke the Internet around March April. And then of course you're with the die wolves. Yes, majestic white wolves, beautiful wolves staring out from the cover of Time magazine. Yes, was that colossal Colossal as well?

That was colossal as well.

And now the Dodos is on the agenda, so incredible. Gives something to believe in about just how powerful the new science and tech revolution really is. I got the reason I'm wearing Colossal Bioscience is swag is not because I've become an employee of Colossal Biosciences.

Or a hYP Well, you're a kind of a hype man.

I got to go to the lab yesterday in Dallas.

Cool.

It was really really cool.

Can you describe some of the environs.

Yeah, I think it's a little on the top secret side, but you basically go, you put on a lab code and then you walk past all these different labs. Whether each there's a team of scientists working on all different problems. One is extracting DNA from ancient bones, another is implanting DNA into eggs. Another is working on an artificial womb, essentially growing animals without needing a parent animal. They're trying to grow, growing uff from embryo to maturity. I mean,

So so it depends on who you ask, right, have.

Yeah, you know, because because I'm very passionate about, you know, conservation, which I hope we get into, but you know, for me, it is about the de extinction, right. I think that that we are at this like truly at the the

So it's a little bit of both.

But my heart is still kind of pretty much in love with the pursuit of some of the really large de extinction projects.

And just for the sake of clarity, the term de extinction is defined by Colossal as quote, the process of generating an organism that both resembles and is genetically similar to an extinct species.

All right, as I want to move on to the big headlines of the week. As you know, my beat on this show is dating in the age of tech, and so of course I have to bring you a video that's been replicated many times over. So I'm going to show you a video of a girl who's been interviewed on the street.

You've been engaged for six months?

Yeah, you're out here?

Where's he?

He's in?

That never caused conflict. I know a lot of times military men are like a red flag.

I mean I always have those thous in my mind.

Well, yeah, you're a woman, of course.

Of course.

I have an AI software called Cheeterbuster, and we can find out using spacial recognition if anyone's on a dating app.

What's his name, Cameron?

How old is he? City? He said, Jacksonville, North Carolina.

Can you have a picture of him on your phone right now? Cheetabuster eye is gonna do its thing. And remember it uses a marified photo recognition.

So that selled me. That's on his ID.

It uses that it's real. He's gonna find him. If he's on here, we're gonna find him. Okay, I did find an account.

Is this him?

Yeah?

That's it searching for men? Is this real?

Well, the app is real. I can't promise that the girl in it isn't a plant.

I have to say I definitely avoid the situation. This woman found herself in of a man in the street. Interview being taped to social media. Do it?

Let's see what Cameron's.

This is insane?

Yes, So I just want to start by saying, this is a real app called Cheaterbuster AI. So Joseph Cox, who's a reporter for four or four, noticed that videos like the one I just showed you were like flooding feeds of Instagram and TikTok, and of course was like, what the hell is this?

This is well, this is Jerry's spring of the for the age of Jerry. Jerry exactly, Everyone's Jerry now.

Well, no Jerry is using AI now, which is crazy. So let me just break down how cheater Bus the site asks I would say, OZ thirty six New York, I would upload a photo of you, not all of it has to be precise, by the way, which is really interesting.

You mean you could say, I don't know.

Whatever, it doesn't have to be super precise. Then there's an option called face matches different names to see results of anyone who looks like the photo uploaded.

So, in other words, the name and the age and the location are essentially narrowing criteria that's right to allow the facial recognition matching software to do about a.

Job yes, Okay, then you get a list of Tinder profiles and you can look to see if your person is cheating. All of this twenty dollars a month, wow to use.

Wow. What about really good looking people who other people are using to catfish on Tinder? Their lives could be ruined by this.

That's absolutely that's a very good point. I didn't think of that. So facial reognition, to me is the scariest part of all of this. I mean, we obviously know what facial recognition is. It's the biometric technology that identifies a person by analyzing their features, like the distance between their eyes or the shape of their nose and so. Cheeterbusters is a consumer app and is one of many apps out there that use facial recognition to expose a cheater.

And the police and the police. It's funny appropos the police. I was told to somebody who had attended the No King's protests yeah this weekend, and she said to me, oh my goodness, I realized I probably should have worn a mask, right, No, no, because I don't want to be in a database if people matched to my identity who attended to just totally can you imagine. I mean, like five ten years ago, people said, you know, this is the nightmare of living in a techno authoritarian state.

Eva Galprin, who was actually the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said quote, I think that an app that allows you to find the dating app profile and general location of a person based on just one photo is an excellent tool for stalkers. And I'm like, you think, well, because you make a great point, which is that, like I could come into an office any day catt someone into giving me a photo of them, or just take one, or take one of.

You put on your meta ray bands or your o.

The meta ray bands, that's right, opens us up to something new.

I'm glad you brought this story because I think it's it's a bigger story. Obviously, facial recognition technology in the hands of authorities to do authoritarianism is really bad and something we've been talking about for a while and something we should all be scared of and is basically you're already here. Yeah.

Joseph Cox from four from Media has actually done multiple stories on how ice in law enforcement is currently using this exact kind of technology to track people.

But when any normal person walking around the street can be identified and geolocated by anybody with camera, man.

I mean it makes you feel not like a member of the human race, but a member of the database in a strange way.

What do you use cheap busters? Yeah?

Probably it's I mean that's the thing. It's like, it's the lure of this technology is like too strong. It's the same thing as giving it. Would I give away my data? Yeah, in exchange for something else? Sure? Why not? So caro.

We haven't done too many stories on tech stuff about crypto.

Crypto is something that I should be interested in, but I'm just not.

It's not, honestly, where my curiosity naturally leads me. I prefer wooly mammoths and cheat Cheetahbuster. But it's obviously it's it's impossible to an Yeah, yeah, and I saw a store in the Financial Times that will be a perfect way for us to have a little bit of it.

And if it's in your heart's.

In my heart exactly. The headline is how the Trump companies made a billion dollars from crypto and billion dollars. By the way, there's a billion dollars of pre tax profits last year. The FT asked Eric Trump for some comment on the story. He said, quote, it's probably more's did you have any idea about this?

I did not realize they made this much money?

But he knew that.

I knew that they were involved in crypto. Yeah, but I did not know it was a billion.

And that's a lot. That's a lot of money.

That's a ton of money.

So before we kind of get into the whole story, I want to give you a little bit of background on Trump's own relationship with crypto. As recently as twenty twenty four, he was actually in our camp. He labeled crypto as a quote based on thin air and called bitcoin a scam. But Trump, obviously he has a better risk appetite than I do, and so he's all in

Didn't he have a coin? Wasn't there some sort of coin related to him?

You're exactly right. So there's actually a Millennia coin, right, That's what I thought, and a Trump coin. Before we get to those, there are two quick sort of definitional things. We're going to talk about meme coins, which are like the Trump coin and the millennial.

Trend coin like trend coin.

Yeah, yeah, and their cryptocurrency, but anyone can issue them and they're very much based on like internet hype. And then you have stable coins, do you not? Stable coins are but I don't know.

I've heard of it, but I don't know.

So a stable coin is a coin that's tied to a real asset that the stable coin issuer has to all so own. So, in other words, a stable coin is backed by gold or by US dollars. And if I own a stable coin, I can redeem it at any point for the real asset. Oh interesting, so much, that's White's stable. Let's start with those mean coins, dollar Trump and Dollar Millennia. So these coins were both issued right before the inauguration and have since lost over ninety

Dollars just on fees fees.

Bear in mind these Trump and Millennia coins made all the headlines, but they aren't actually the real play. The ft reports on World Liberty Financial. The company is set up by Trump's sons and Steve Wickcoff sons. Wickcoff is the Special Envoy the Middle East as well as kind of an ambassador at large. Four for Trump the Suns, it's the neo the Nebow crypto. This company, World Liberty Financial, has released two major tokens. WLFI, which gives you governance

Is it legal what he's doing?

I mean, I couldn't appine on that. I'm sure that there will be legal plenty of legal challenges to this, but he's also in a position of changing the laws. Drawing that famous line from Frost Nixon, if the president does it, it is the.

Law that was a good Franklin, thank you.

So we're in that era, I think again. To say the least, this crypto thing has two levers in terms of exerting influence potentially on the president. On the domestic side, American crypto companies donate heavily to the Trump campaign and the World Liberty, Digital Financial Freedom Pack and Go Figure. Basically, there's been post Trump presidents did a lot of inflow of like institutional capital into crypto, which is bolstering the

Again, it just feels us.

I mean, it's as little as to say the least, But I've got some really good reassuring news. Actually, please, The president's crypto adventures are actually in a trust really managed by Donald Trump Junior. Now, this is a quote in the Financial Time from Richard Painter, who was the former chief White House ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush. Quote. Every other president since the Civil War has avoided any

From this, Yeah, that's incredible. After the break, satellites reveal private phone calls. Uber has drivers training, AI and a new health tracker guaranteed to make a splash. Then on chatting me, a listener's life gets a little greener.

Stay with us, Welcome back, Hello again, Kara. Do you remember this sort of phrase the gig economy, Yeah, of course, I mean this idea that you could like also be a number driver for like two hours, or deliver a package or whatever. It may be. So we're now in the meta gig economy, the giga economy. I saw a headline in Axios. Uber wants drivers to train AI in their free time. No, yeah, So basically the idea is you're driving for Uber and you might have some time

You train AI?

Basically you can do like a one to three minute task in the Uber app and get paid, like, you know, a dollar. So average time per task is one to three minutes. Pay is between fifty cents and a dollar per task. So let's see you pull over time for your break, you're having your lunch. You basically you get a notification saying would you like to do some work to get additional income?

And what are they training?

Like?

What are what is the data for?

So there's a separate AI company which is part of Uber called Uber Ai Solutions. It's really to do with the kind of human labeling aspect of data that is required to train.

That a computer can't do exactly.

And then Uber sells their human driven AI data labeling and data to other AI companies. The other thing is some of this data is being sold onto self driving tech companies like Aurora and Tier four. So essentially, the uber drivers in their free time, are training AI companies to replace human drivers.

So they're basically training themselves out of a job.

Do you remember Wiley Coyote.

Who's a coyote? What is that? That's like payota?

What do you say?

Coyote?

Coyote, coyote.

It's like a coy little coyote.

Well, I feel I feel suitably embarrassed now, but you know that the image of the yeah, of course, running coyote cliff, running off the cliff and he's pedaling his feet like crazy. Underneath him, it's nothing but in there, and then he realizes and all of a sudden he's on the floor. Yes, that's us.

That's a very good image.

I saw this week as well as a story in Bloomberg about how Open a Eye has hired one hundred bankers. Do you see this, No, they're paying them one hundred fifty dollars an hour bankers former investment banker to train open Aiy's new product to do financial modeling tool financial modeling. So so bankers are now being paid one hundred fiey dollars an hour to train an open air product to do this instead of them.

So I mean that's putting themselves out of I.

Mean, one hundred few dollars an hour is nice. Yeah, it's better than fifty cents a task. Yeah, But it's the same thing where it's like when an't we going to wake up and realize that this intermediate opportunity of getting some extra cash to train AI is potentially at the expense of putting the entire human workforce out of business as a business.

It's really interesting. I I mean, I guess it's a short term gain for a long term problem for these drivers.

I mean, I think that's exactly right. If you have an opportunity to make some make sure money out of your time while you're in your car, more power to you as an individual. As a society, is it the right thing to be doing?

Well? As you know, I like stories about things that should not be happening that are happening that make me go, wait a minute, that doesn't feel right. And so the story that I want to bring you today is the

Huff half. Wow.

For three years, researchers have developed and used an off the shelf, meaning we could buy it, eight hundred dollars satellite receiver system. They put it on the roof of a university building in San Diego, pointed the dish at different satellites and interpreted the obscure but unprotected signals. And this team accessed all kinds of unencrypted consumer, corporate, and government communications from these satellites. Wow, it's a ton.

What kind of communications of these? I mean, it's like phone calls, texts or the above.

It's all of the above, calls and texts from t mobiles, cell network data from airline passengers, from in flight Wi Fi browsing. And this is the one that I mean, it's all scary, but us and Mexican military and law enforcement communications, which revealed the locations of personnel, equipment and facilities.

This is really remarkable.

But wait, there's more. I should say that some companies in the study, like T Mobile and AT and T Mexico have actually already addressed the issue, but there is like a lot of data still out there. Researchers estimated that what they were able to pick up was actually only fifteen percent of global satellite transponder communications.

Wow.

To me, the craziest part of this story is that anyone can access this data and that's because of two things. The tech the actual satellite receiver system is eight hundred dollars and this is the craziest part. The researchers are releasing their software tool for interpreting satellite data on githubs. So even though this data from satellites comes in obscured, now anyone with access to GitHub, meaning everyone can interpret the data.

Why why would they release it?

So researchers actually argue that this could push companies to secure their data, so they're sort of doing it to force the hand of companies to be like, guys, this is something that's possible. Get your act together. Well, they're kind of like white hats.

Actually that's a good framing, and white hat hackers are people who basically find the vulnerabilities in systems in order that those systems can be repaired and made less vulnerable, rather than to blackmail the people or steal their data and for nefarious purposes exactly. In other words, if these researchers hadn't released the open source tool to interpret the data,

I'd say absolutely no, thank you, Let's stay out of my bathroom.

And this is quite a fascinating story for me. It's about Cola and a new health tracker they've announced called the decoder that lives in your toilet bowl.

I get it as in decoder exactly.

This is a very interesting story to me because it actually harkens back to my childhood watching daytime television in Britain. There was a TV doctor called Gillian McKeith whose concept was to go into people's houses and examine their bathroom to tell them about what they could do to improve their health. Julie McKay's actually had a second life. I recently saw a story about my favorite showbiz publication, Bang Showbiz, with the headline my Pooh tiktoks have saved lives.

Someone just told me their pooh bobs around in the bottom of the toilet bowl.

It does not flash. Your toilet's not broken.

No, no, no, but your digestion is waving a big brown flag and begging for attention.

But now everyone can have a Chillian McKee in their toilet, up their toilet. So the decoder tracks a few things the frequency, consistency, and shape of your waist, which in turn can give you recommendations like are you probably hydrated, are you absorbing nutrients? And of course, to Jillian's point, you know, are you actually sick? Do you have some kind of bowel issue that could be anything up to deadly?

What's effective? In that way it.

Can be effective. The product comes in three parts. There is a sensor that clamps to most toilet bowls don't have to have a color, a wall mount that communicates between the bowl sensors, and has a fingerprint sensor to track different users. So one oh, so.

It's not just it's anyone can lock into the ball. That's just not stuff I want to get stolen data that I don't want.

There's also a health app for phones and per the Verge advanced sensors that use spectroscopy to observe how light interacts with your waist. The sensors are angled down so they can only see the inside of the bowl. They're not looking up to speak. And this is seven dollars a month, or sixty ninety nine per month for single users, or twelve ninety nine per month for family plants chebusters. It's cheaper than cheap bust.

It's just crazy, especially for the whole family.

And your point about privacy, and I'm not surprised you're on the privacy track after our satellite story. The data is end to end ENCRYPTID.

It's as hard as the stool that's in it. I'm sorry I had.

To so, I mean, look, this is this is funny. Health tracking is obviously a huge trend. I mean, I wonder how many how many different do you get? The or ring, the whip band, the decoder, the mattress insert You're.

Just a moving biometric yeah at that point, which I mean, I don't know if I'm that interested in that like do every day. I want to know that something is inspecting my excrement, which it feels like inspector gadget.

And now it's time for Chat and me.

This week we've got a listener's submission. All the way from the Netherlands, Nina sent a recording called the green Side of Chat.

It is often said that the enormous rise of AI poses a threat to the environment due to its high consumption of energy and water, but perhaps you'd like to hear that AI can sometimes also contribute to improving our living environment.

So lovely again. Nina said that the Netherlands is very densely populated, which has caused a lack of green space. So the government has actually been encouraging people for a few years to start replacing the pavement in their yards with more greenery.

This summer, to tackle my garden and replace quite a few square meters of stones with beautiful shrubs, plants and flowers. But I didn't want to just plant any greenery. I thought, why not kill two birds with one stone and choose native plants that also attract bees, butterflies and birds. I just didn't know where to start, because I also wanted it all to look nice, of course.

Well, Anina, thank you for sending this in. I just want to say to you directly, if you're not narrating books already, you should be. You've got to be great. You've got a great voice and a great delivery. And this really hits home to me, Cara, because I had just moved into a house with a yard, with a yard, and it's a landlord owned property, and the landlord has moved to another country, and part of the deal was

Do you have a green thumbers?

Well, my grandmother, my grandmother and my farm they were both big gardeners, so I kind of grown up with care for gardens in mind. But like, oh my goodness, I went to mow of the grass, went to prune the roses, like I don't. The last thing I want is for this beautiful garden to turn into a healthscape. And this for David, So Anina, I'm going to take a leave out of your book haha, so to speak,

Indeed, look what she says.

I gave chat Jipt a description of the layout of the garden, how much some the different parts get each day, and my wishes regarding the types of plants I wanted. To my surprise, I not only received a list of plants that would fit well in my new ecologically responsible garden, but Chap also offered to make a planting plant for me, taking to account the height, color, and structure of the various species.

I'm very curious if this was a Chat hallucination or if the garden was transformed into a paradise.

Well, I will let Anina tell you, because I just never want to stop listening to her voice.

Well, I have now created my AI based garden, and it looks completely wonderful. It meets my expectations in every way. It has become a beautiful green garden where butterflies and bees come and go, and all kinds of birds forage for food. So you see, every story has two sides, even Chat. This time she has shown her green side. Thank you Chat, I.

Like the Chat genders.

Chat. She takes a leaf out of your book. That's true and thank you. That was one of my favorite ever chat That is incredible. It'll be good and personally useful as well, which was part of the idea for doing a segment. So thank you. Just to close, we really want to hear from you, our listeners. Please send us all of your chat stories, the good, the bad, and the ugly, Tech Green and the Green, the good, the bear, the green and the ugly. Tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.

That's it for this week for tech Stuff.

I'm Cara Price and I'm as Voloshin. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis, Tyler Hill and Melissa Slaughter. It was executive produced by me Kara Price, Julian Nutter, and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrian Norvell for iHeart Podcasts. The engineer is Bihid Fraser and Jack Insley mix this episode. Kyle Murdoch wrotear theme song.

Join us next Wednesday for a conversation all about tech induced paranoia.

Please rate, review and reach out to us at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We love hearing from you.