Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the tech are you. It's time for the tech news for the week ending on August sixteenth, twenty twenty four. So for this first news item, I wanted to bring a guest onto the show to talk about it in further detail, joining tech Stuff to give us her expertise is friend of the show, Shannon Morse. She's a hacker, she's a YouTuber, she's a ren Fair enthusiast, and I'm proud to call her a friend. Shannon, Welcome back to tech Stuff.

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and How the tech are you. It's time for the tech news for the week ending on August sixteenth, twenty twenty four. So for this first news item, I wanted to bring a guest onto the show to talk about it in further detail, joining tech Stuff to give us her expertise is friend of the show, Shannon Morse. She's a hacker, she's a YouTuber, she's a ren Fair enthusiast, and I'm proud to call her a friend. Shannon, Welcome back to tech Stuff.

Hi, thank you so much for having me. You kind of surprised me when you said the ren Fair enthusiast. Yes, I am well.

Hi, thank you so much for having me. You kind of surprised me when you said the ren Fair enthusiast. Yes, I am well.

To be fair, so am I I worked ren Fair from nineteen ninety nine to twenty nineteen, so so cool. We're not alone in this. But I've brought you on not to chat about Renfair, although that would be a heck of a podcast, but to talk about next time. Next time we'll talk about that, talk about the tech of Renaissance era Europe. I thought we would talk about this hacking attack that has exposed billions of records for people, not just in the United States, but in Canada and other places as well. I wanted to hear from you sort of what happened, who was involved, and what are the implications of this attack.

To be fair, so am I I worked ren Fair from nineteen ninety nine to twenty nineteen, so so cool. We're not alone in this. But I've brought you on not to chat about Renfair, although that would be a heck of a podcast, but to talk about next time. Next time we'll talk about that, talk about the tech of Renaissance era Europe. I thought we would talk about this hacking attack that has exposed billions of records for people, not just in the United States, but in Canada and other places as well. I wanted to hear from you sort of what happened, who was involved, and what are the implications of this attack.

Well, let's go ahead and start with what exactly happened. So way back in April of twenty twenty four, so this year, there was this Twitter account that found a leak online and they were like, oh, this seems like it came from a cybercrime constituent that is called USDOD and nobody really knew what was going on. It wasn't until July twenty first, twenty twenty four, that about four terabytes of data was released on breach forums. And breach forums is basically this cybercrime community on the dark Web where they often leak private and personal information of regular people. This happens really often, and in this case they figured out and they claim that it was from a data broker called Nationalpublic Data dot com and this was later confirmed. So around mid August, just gosh, yesterday, people started confirming that this was from the data broker Nationalpublic Data dot com. The amount of data did amount to about two point nine billion records. The unfortunate part is a lot of journalistic media outlets are saying that it was the data of almost every American or two point nine billion people had their data leak, and that's not necessarily the case, so that was a little misconstruction. It's actually records, and there could be records on decease people, there could be multiple records on one person, there could be records on businesses, and all of these seem to be the case when it comes to these two point nine billion records. But this does include everything from names and addresses to in some cases, social security numbers and some other personal information. So it's a pretty serious issue.

Well, let's go ahead and start with what exactly happened. So way back in April of twenty twenty four, so this year, there was this Twitter account that found a leak online and they were like, oh, this seems like it came from a cybercrime constituent that is called USDOD and nobody really knew what was going on. It wasn't until July twenty first, twenty twenty four, that about four terabytes of data was released on breach forums. And breach forums is basically this cybercrime community on the dark Web where they often leak private and personal information of regular people. This happens really often, and in this case they figured out and they claim that it was from a data broker called Nationalpublic Data dot com and this was later confirmed. So around mid August, just gosh, yesterday, people started confirming that this was from the data broker Nationalpublic Data dot com. The amount of data did amount to about two point nine billion records. The unfortunate part is a lot of journalistic media outlets are saying that it was the data of almost every American or two point nine billion people had their data leak, and that's not necessarily the case, so that was a little misconstruction. It's actually records, and there could be records on decease people, there could be multiple records on one person, there could be records on businesses, and all of these seem to be the case when it comes to these two point nine billion records. But this does include everything from names and addresses to in some cases, social security numbers and some other personal information. So it's a pretty serious issue.

Yeah, when it comes to if you're just talking about data breaches that affect or potentially could affect the average person, this one seems pretty bad. From why do I understand? The data broker in question typically would do things like background checks for various companies.

Yeah, when it comes to if you're just talking about data breaches that affect or potentially could affect the average person, this one seems pretty bad. From why do I understand? The data broker in question typically would do things like background checks for various companies.

Yes, and that's kind of unfortunate because a lot of businesses probably used this company for background checks, and there's no real way of knowing, like when you first got employed with a company or if you signed up for a credit new credit card if they're using this business for background checks, So you really have no idea which data brokers have your data. And if National Public Data did have your data, well.

Yes, and that's kind of unfortunate because a lot of businesses probably used this company for background checks, and there's no real way of knowing, like when you first got employed with a company or if you signed up for a credit new credit card if they're using this business for background checks, So you really have no idea which data brokers have your data. And if National Public Data did have your data, well.

Clearly the data was unencrypted, because otherwise it would be very difficult to make any use of this information. I don't want to just make an assumption or have my bias informed this, so I thought I would ask you directly, Shannon, in your opinion, is the storage of that sort of data in an unencrypted form? Is that what you would perhaps call bad security practices.

Clearly the data was unencrypted, because otherwise it would be very difficult to make any use of this information. I don't want to just make an assumption or have my bias informed this, so I thought I would ask you directly, Shannon, in your opinion, is the storage of that sort of data in an unencrypted form? Is that what you would perhaps call bad security practices.

I think we could both agree here, assuming that you're of the same opinion as I. Absolutely having any of that kind of data unencrypted or easily accessible on a storage format is really really bad, especially when it comes to a data broker. Unfortunately, data brokers are legal here in the United States, and we really have no safety proponents or no safety like regulations. Regulatory powers control what data brokers can and cannot do with that data. So they should have been taking care of that data in an encrypted format, especially if they want to make money off of it. Because now all this data has leaked, Chances are just from a business standpoint, this data broker will not make as much money using those background checks because people aren't going to trust.

I think we could both agree here, assuming that you're of the same opinion as I. Absolutely having any of that kind of data unencrypted or easily accessible on a storage format is really really bad, especially when it comes to a data broker. Unfortunately, data brokers are legal here in the United States, and we really have no safety proponents or no safety like regulations. Regulatory powers control what data brokers can and cannot do with that data. So they should have been taking care of that data in an encrypted format, especially if they want to make money off of it. Because now all this data has leaked, Chances are just from a business standpoint, this data broker will not make as much money using those background checks because people aren't going to trust.

Them as much. Now, sure, there's going to be class action lawsuits and such directed against the company, I hope so. Yeah, So I imagine that that will have an impact into their revenue as well. Thank you for pointing out the lack of regulation and safety net here in the United States. Obviously in places like the EU, there's been a lot of work done to try and try and get a handle on that because it is tricky. I think here in the US, all of our attention tends to go to the end points, like the social platforms where people are sharing info, but they ignore, like all the big companies in the background that are literally buying and selling that info all the time.

Them as much. Now, sure, there's going to be class action lawsuits and such directed against the company, I hope so. Yeah, So I imagine that that will have an impact into their revenue as well. Thank you for pointing out the lack of regulation and safety net here in the United States. Obviously in places like the EU, there's been a lot of work done to try and try and get a handle on that because it is tricky. I think here in the US, all of our attention tends to go to the end points, like the social platforms where people are sharing info, but they ignore, like all the big companies in the background that are literally buying and selling that info all the time.

I mean, we've seen this since the early Facebook days with Cambridge Analytica, if you remember that big data leak, Like it's very very similar scenario here where this background company that nobody really knows exists, has so much data and so many profiles, and they're building these profiles around us, and we have no say in the matter. They just do it without our knowledge, without our consent. And then we hear about one of these breaches and we're like, well, I've never done business with them, why do they have my information? Why did this happen to me? So unfortunately this is the case in the United States, and luckily we do have some options in terms of what we can do to protect ourselves. But it's not one hundred percent, and I don't know if it ever will be.

I mean, we've seen this since the early Facebook days with Cambridge Analytica, if you remember that big data leak, Like it's very very similar scenario here where this background company that nobody really knows exists, has so much data and so many profiles, and they're building these profiles around us, and we have no say in the matter. They just do it without our knowledge, without our consent. And then we hear about one of these breaches and we're like, well, I've never done business with them, why do they have my information? Why did this happen to me? So unfortunately this is the case in the United States, and luckily we do have some options in terms of what we can do to protect ourselves. But it's not one hundred percent, and I don't know if it ever will be.

Yeah, Like, the suggestions I give to people include things like, when it comes to accounts you already use, if you haven't activated multi factor authentication, you should just do that as a matter of practice on everything that offers it. And if you're concerned about someone making use of say your social Security number and your address, like they have all the details they need for identity theft, you can put a freeze on your credit with the three major companies here in the United States. It's a pain in the butt to do it. It's a pain in the butt to thought if you freeze it, but it's less of a pain of a butt than someone taking out alone under your name. So, yeah, this is bad. It's bad for all of us because there was nothing that the average person could have done to protect themselves from this particular attack.

Yeah, Like, the suggestions I give to people include things like, when it comes to accounts you already use, if you haven't activated multi factor authentication, you should just do that as a matter of practice on everything that offers it. And if you're concerned about someone making use of say your social Security number and your address, like they have all the details they need for identity theft, you can put a freeze on your credit with the three major companies here in the United States. It's a pain in the butt to do it. It's a pain in the butt to thought if you freeze it, but it's less of a pain of a butt than someone taking out alone under your name. So, yeah, this is bad. It's bad for all of us because there was nothing that the average person could have done to protect themselves from this particular attack.

And even though your data may not have been involved in this, and you can go to a website called have I Been Poned that's owned with a p dot com to see if your data was leaked in this one as well as other previous data breaches. You can see if your data was indeed leaked in any of those. That can help you kind of get a mindset of where is my data, who has my data currently? And then you can also, you know, like you said, do the credit freeze at Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. That's extremely important and one of the first steps you should take. I recommend that to anybody who is curious about like if their Social Security number has gotten out there, or any kind of personally identifiable information that would allow for any kind of identity theft. That's really important. And using kind of proper security hygiene online can certainly help as well, because you will run into phishing scams when people find out your email address and your name. You might run into spam texts or phishing texts or spammy calls. You might run into the same thing with people sending you spamming and phishing emails. So if you have these kind of issues, or if you see them starting to rise then looking into signing up for a password manager, which can make your life a lot easier when you're auditing how many accounts you have online and making sure that you're changing those passwords because you can stay up to date and just use like auto generation tools in password managers to make really really good, strong protective passwords that even you don't know, but the password manager does, so it's fine. You won't lose your entry into your profiles. Your password manager will help you using two factor authentication to protect your accounts, especially if passwords get leaked, because even if you are using a different password on every website, if one of your profiles get leaked, that profile could be hacked. So you might as well set up two factor authentication and make sure none of those accounts get hacked. And using proper security hygiene when it comes to public networks like VPNs and making sure you're not logging into accounts on public Wi Fi and using secure networks is a really really good proponent. When it comes to data brokers, it's extremely hard to manually opt out because there's hundreds of them, including Nationalpublic Data dot Com, But you can sign up for a data broker opt out tool like delete me. That's the one that I use, and I have paid for it as a customer long before they knew about my YouTube channel. They will go in and opt you out of having your data on the data brokers, and they do it quarterly because data brokers often will repurchase your data and put it back on their platforms, so people can continuously go to these data broker websites and research for your profile and find your address, your phone number, your name, the names of your kids. Like, it's pretty invasive what they can do. So I've been paying for data broker opt out services for almost a decade now and it's definitely helped with like clearing the kind of data that's out there that I have no control over and just kind of taking a step towards my security.

And even though your data may not have been involved in this, and you can go to a website called have I Been Poned that's owned with a p dot com to see if your data was leaked in this one as well as other previous data breaches. You can see if your data was indeed leaked in any of those. That can help you kind of get a mindset of where is my data, who has my data currently? And then you can also, you know, like you said, do the credit freeze at Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. That's extremely important and one of the first steps you should take. I recommend that to anybody who is curious about like if their Social Security number has gotten out there, or any kind of personally identifiable information that would allow for any kind of identity theft. That's really important. And using kind of proper security hygiene online can certainly help as well, because you will run into phishing scams when people find out your email address and your name. You might run into spam texts or phishing texts or spammy calls. You might run into the same thing with people sending you spamming and phishing emails. So if you have these kind of issues, or if you see them starting to rise then looking into signing up for a password manager, which can make your life a lot easier when you're auditing how many accounts you have online and making sure that you're changing those passwords because you can stay up to date and just use like auto generation tools in password managers to make really really good, strong protective passwords that even you don't know, but the password manager does, so it's fine. You won't lose your entry into your profiles. Your password manager will help you using two factor authentication to protect your accounts, especially if passwords get leaked, because even if you are using a different password on every website, if one of your profiles get leaked, that profile could be hacked. So you might as well set up two factor authentication and make sure none of those accounts get hacked. And using proper security hygiene when it comes to public networks like VPNs and making sure you're not logging into accounts on public Wi Fi and using secure networks is a really really good proponent. When it comes to data brokers, it's extremely hard to manually opt out because there's hundreds of them, including Nationalpublic Data dot Com, But you can sign up for a data broker opt out tool like delete me. That's the one that I use, and I have paid for it as a customer long before they knew about my YouTube channel. They will go in and opt you out of having your data on the data brokers, and they do it quarterly because data brokers often will repurchase your data and put it back on their platforms, so people can continuously go to these data broker websites and research for your profile and find your address, your phone number, your name, the names of your kids. Like, it's pretty invasive what they can do. So I've been paying for data broker opt out services for almost a decade now and it's definitely helped with like clearing the kind of data that's out there that I have no control over and just kind of taking a step towards my security.

That's great advice, and obviously like these are steps that hopefully one day will no longer be necessary, will have the protective measures in place that make the mood man I hope, So I do too. I got hope springs eternal, Shannon, that's I gotta hope or else I wither away. Well, yes, Shannon, thank you so much for joining the show and letting us know more. About this hack and what it means and what people can do. I think that helps alleviate a lot of anxiety when people start to hear about the steps they can take to best protect themselves. I want to thank Shannon again, and we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we have more news to talk about. Mark Zuckerberg probably gets lots of requests being the head of Facebook and all. This week, nineteen of those requests came from members of the United States Congress who would very much like to hear why Meta has allowed ads for such spicy stuff as cocaine and ecstasy to appear on Facebook and Instagram. I mean, these substances aren't legal, so why is Meta allowing advertisers to run ads for them on these very popular platforms. An investigation from the Tech Transparency Project or TTP, prompted this inquiry. In the investigation, the TTP found more than four hundred examples of ads for drugs of varying degrees of legality on these platforms, and lawmakers would like Zuckerberg to explain how this could happen. In a letter to the CEO, the legislators wrote, quote, this was not user generated content on the dark Web or on private social media pages, but rather they were advertisements approved and monetized by Meta. Many of these ads contained blatant references to illegal drugs in their titles, descriptions, photos, and advertiser account names, which were easily found by the researchers and journalists at the Wall Street Journal and Tech Transparency Project using Meta's ad library. However, they appeared to have passed undetected or bid ignored by Meta's own internal processes. End quote. Now, according to the TTP, many of these ads prompted users to click over to a Telegram account to complete any shopping that they wished to do. Meta has until September sixth to respond. Now, I can't say that I'm terribly surprised by this story. Personally, I have encountered so many suspicious ads on Facebook that I suspect the quality control aspect of the Ads division is purposefully lax. Now, in my case, the ads weren't for illegal drugs, but rather they were ads that way that were fake. I mean they were posing as other companies, like some other entity, in an attempt to fool consumers into shopping for shoddy knockoffs. The big example I can think of off top of my head was the sam Ash music stores in the United States. They went out of business and closed down, and I saw ad after ad after ad pose that, but they weren't sam Ash. They were some other fly by night company trying to sell knockoffs or sometimes just boxes of literal trash rather than whatever item you thought you were going to get. Now. I have reported these ads to Facebook, and frequently I received the message that after review, Facebook determined there were no violations of its policies. Meanwhile, the actual legitimate companies like sam Ash would post warnings on their pages about scams like this. I suspect that unless lawmakers make it really hurt to engage in irresponsible ad partnerships, we're not going to see any significant change on this front. In the world of tech and politics, the Trump campaign has been hit with a spearfishing attack that compromised campaign assets. The Trump campaign identified hackers backed by Iran as the party responsible, and now Google's Threat Analysis Group or tag TAG, has released a statement saying that yes, they have observed that the hacker group APT forty two, which is linked to Iran, targeted both the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign. Kamala Harris's campaign, as well as President Biden's campaign when he was actively campaigning. Tag also stated that subsequent attacks have been unsuccessful, but there remains an ongoing attempt to compromise accounts belonging to people who are close to Trump and Harris slash Biden. The assumption moving forward is that all elections will face potential external interference from threat actors, both domestic and foreign. So, you know, that's fun. It's a reminder that democracy isn't something that can just fend for itself. Now, if you want to learn more about this, I recommend Kevin Perdy's article on ours Tetnica. It is titled Google's threat team confirms Iran targeting Trump, Biden, and Harris campaigns. More than a decade ago, New Zealand police officers, responding to a from the FBI rated the massive home of Kim dot com. Dot Com formerly known as Schmidtz, formed the company mega Upload, which allowed users to create cloud based storage for all sorts of stuff and then give other folks access to the files that were in that storage. So obviously a lot of people use the service to serve as kind of a trading ground for pirated material music, TV shows, films, games, software, and more all found a home on mega Upload, while the company is responsible for making that stuff. Seethed they saw dot Com profiting off of piracy, So the FBI called on New Zealand police back in twenty twelve to give dot Com a little visit, and they charged him with racketeering and wirefraud and money laundering on top of all that copyright infringement. And after more than a decade of legal wrangling, the US has now secured extradition of dot Com to fly to the US and stand trial. Now dot Com has denounced the whole thing. He referred to New Zealand as essentially a US colony. It's not, and dot Com still maintains he will not leave New Zealand and that his business was just to provide a service in which people could upload and share files, and therefore he bears no responsibility on the kinds of files that were uploaded and shared. This is a basic principle of the safe harbor defense. But dot Com has also been really vocal and let's say abrasive, and I think that may have hurt his case a little, or at least prodded authorities to really go after him. Now, whether all of this is going to lead to a trial and conviction or not, or if dot Com will successfully appeal the extradition order, we'll just have to wait and see. In the good times are hard times department. Telecommunications company Cisco Systems posted a ten point three billion with a B dollar profit in its last fiscal year, but it's also laying off folks seven percent of its workforce, which could be around five five hundred people. All told, The company said that the move is necessary so it can put full focus on quote key growth opportunities and drive more efficiency in our business end quote. As Stephen Counsel of SFGate reports, this is the second time this year that Cisco has held substantial layoffs. Golly. Back to politics, Donald Trump made headlines after claiming that the Harris campaign or someone on that campaign's behalf, had made use of AI to artificially boost crowd sizes at Harris events. In various images of those stops, and the images that Trump referenced all appear to be legit. Footage from numerous media outlets show that the crowds were actually quite large. However, that doesn't mean that there are no AI generated or enhanced images making the rounds out there. It's just the ones that Trump was citing were not AI generated. And it also means that people are calling into question the legitimacy of actual, real images and visit. So on the one hand, we do know there are AI generated images out there that are competing for our attention and posing as legit, and they are misinformation. On the other hand, we also know that people will now question legitimate sources and argue that they are in fact AI generated. So some refer to this as the liar's dividend. There's a great piece about this. It's again over at Ours Technicuts by Kyle Orland. It's titled the Many Many Signs that Kamala Harris's rally crowds aren't AI creations. We're going to take another quick break, and when we come back, I've got some more news. A story I missed a while back is that code testers came across some interesting stuff while looking at Apple Intelligence, which is Apple's AI project, and that interesting stuff appeared to be prompts meant to guide generative AI to avoid the pitfalls we've seen with other tools, stuff like ucinations or confabulations, you know, the tendency for generative AI to just make stuff up in the absence of real information. And that's potentially good news, assuming that these guidelines actually work. But I have another story this week that makes me worry. It's not about Apple. It's about a research firm out of Tokyo called Sakana AI. So the team had set its AI system to do autonomous scientific research, and they included a function that would essentially say times up on tasks. And what was surprising was the system attempted to rewrite its own code in order to give itself more time to complete tasks. So instead of trying to do things faster, they tried to change the deadline. Now, this is a very low level instance of a type of situation that has fueled countless science fiction cautionary tales. An AI system ignores or alters rules in order to fulfill its function. The cliche version of this is asking a global system that's running on AI to create world peace, and so the AI inevitably decides the only way to do that, the only way to prevent conflict is to kill off all those pesky humans who create it, meaning everybody. Of course, the Sikana AI example is not dangerous like that, but it does illustrate that AI experts have to be very careful in how they design systems so that the systems remain safe and reliable. It may not be enough to create rules if the AI can figure oh, well, here's the problem. These ding dang dearn rules need to go away. And I'm being a little flippant, but to learn more about this, I recommend BENJ. Edwards article research AI model unexpectedly modified its own code to extend runtime and that is on. You guessed it Ours Technica. I swear I use a lot of other sources. It's just Ours Technica really knocked it out of the park. This week, so Ahmed has a piece on tech spot titled Recruiters Overwhelmed as fifty seven percent of young applicants are using chat GPT for job resumes. In this piece, Omed mentions how hiring managers are flooded with more applications than ever before, many of which have clearly been written in part or entirely by AI. Further, the pieces written by the free version of tools like chat GPT contain many telltale signs of AI generation with less natural language and other quirks, while the paid for versions of these tools tend to blend a bit better with you stuff that was actually written by real human beings. And this presents a challenge to hiring managers who need to see what an applicant is actually capable of. Now, that could just mean bringing more people in for interviews, but those take up a lot of time to schedule and actually do so it's not terribly efficient. Moreover, this makes me concerned that folks who have little to know access to AI tools, specifically the types of tools that you have to pay for, they're ultimately going to be at a disadvantage. Maybe it will all shake out, but my fear is that people who are already in a position to at least afford an AI hype man are going to be the people who get these interview slots, while actual human beings who can't afford that type of SOLF report will be applying to job after job with diminishing hope of landing an interview. I am bumming myself out today. The SAG after a union which represents actors, has agreed to conditions in which companies can make use of AI duplicates of actor voices. This is specifically for use in advertisements, and it leverages a platform called Narrative, which doesn't have an E at the end, and actors can license their voices for use in commercials through Narrative. The agreement states that individual actors will have full say on which brands they're willing to work with and how much they can charge for use of their voice. In addition, if an actor decides they no longer want the robots to talk like them, they can sever their relationship with Narrative, and the platform is obligated to delete all their voice data, including the reference recordings that were used to make the digital duplicate in the first place. One thing that concerns me is the possibility of a company making use of an AI duplicated voice for ende dorsements. Here in the United States, we have strict rules about endorsing products and services. The person who's giving the endorsement is legally responsible for actually using the thing in question and being honest in their take on it. It's why I do very few endorsements, because i have very high standards on this and I'm legally obligated to do so. But with AI duplicates, a company could try and do that without the actual original actor's input. If the actor just says, yeah, you know, I'm cool with whatever brand using my voice, but then the brand ends up doing more than just an ad spot and does an endorsement, well, that could bring legal issues into play down the line. However, I have not read the full agreement yet, so it may be that this is already accounted for and the process could be really granular. So maybe I'm complaining about something that isn't even an issue. Just a quick up date on the ongoing issues with the Boeing Starliner crew, who are currently aboard the International Space Station. NASA has yet to decide how to proceed. Currently, the next scheduled docking with the ISS is supposed to happen on September twenty fourth with a SpaceX Dragon capsule, but that obviously cannot happen with the star Liner in the way. So the assumption that I'm mostly seeing online is that NASA is going to opt to have the Starliner return to Earth with no crew aboard the spacecraft, and the two astronauts who flew on the star Liner will have to wait a while before hitching a ride back home. Aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. NASA has previously indicated the agency would make a decision on how to move forward this week, but since then representatives have said the agency is going to take a bit more time to make that call since there is still some time to spare, but not a whole lot of it. It's still possible we'll see the astronauts return in the star liner itself. NASA is taking all factors into account and wants to be certain that any such attempts are well within acceptable risks. Before I sign off, I've got a couple of article suggestions for y'all. First up as another piece by BINGJ. Edwards. This one is titled deep Live Cam Goes Viral allowing anyone to become a digital dopple game and yes it's on Ours Technica. The article tells about tools that let folks use a simple image to create a kind of digital mask, sort of Mission Impossible style only for like webcam live streams, you know, not in the real world, but online. You can use a picture like the one case they used a picture of George Clooney and the guy ended up having a digital George Clooney face and it was pretty impressive. It was reactive in real time. Next is a piece from NPR's Dara Kurr titled Meta shutters tool used to fight disinformation despite outcry. Kerr writes about a tool called crowd Tangle, which researchers use to track disinformation online and how Meta is shutting this down despite the fact that here in the United States we're in an election year and you would think that tools meant to help track and detect disinformation would be particularly useful. So that's what has critics asking Meta to maybe keep it online a bit longer. That's it. I want to thank Shannon Morse again for jumping on the show. I always appreciate having her on. She is a delight. You can see more of her work over at YouTube, So go to YouTube and look for Shannon Morse. Highly recommend her content. She's really a lot of fun, incredibly knowledgeable, and is a great tech communicator. So check out her work, and like I said, check out our Stanka because they knocked it out of the park this week. I hope all of you are doing well and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

That's great advice, and obviously like these are steps that hopefully one day will no longer be necessary, will have the protective measures in place that make the mood man I hope, So I do too. I got hope springs eternal, Shannon, that's I gotta hope or else I wither away. Well, yes, Shannon, thank you so much for joining the show and letting us know more. About this hack and what it means and what people can do. I think that helps alleviate a lot of anxiety when people start to hear about the steps they can take to best protect themselves. I want to thank Shannon again, and we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, we have more news to talk about. Mark Zuckerberg probably gets lots of requests being the head of Facebook and all. This week, nineteen of those requests came from members of the United States Congress who would very much like to hear why Meta has allowed ads for such spicy stuff as cocaine and ecstasy to appear on Facebook and Instagram. I mean, these substances aren't legal, so why is Meta allowing advertisers to run ads for them on these very popular platforms. An investigation from the Tech Transparency Project or TTP, prompted this inquiry. In the investigation, the TTP found more than four hundred examples of ads for drugs of varying degrees of legality on these platforms, and lawmakers would like Zuckerberg to explain how this could happen. In a letter to the CEO, the legislators wrote, quote, this was not user generated content on the dark Web or on private social media pages, but rather they were advertisements approved and monetized by Meta. Many of these ads contained blatant references to illegal drugs in their titles, descriptions, photos, and advertiser account names, which were easily found by the researchers and journalists at the Wall Street Journal and Tech Transparency Project using Meta's ad library. However, they appeared to have passed undetected or bid ignored by Meta's own internal processes. End quote. Now, according to the TTP, many of these ads prompted users to click over to a Telegram account to complete any shopping that they wished to do. Meta has until September sixth to respond. Now, I can't say that I'm terribly surprised by this story. Personally, I have encountered so many suspicious ads on Facebook that I suspect the quality control aspect of the Ads division is purposefully lax. Now, in my case, the ads weren't for illegal drugs, but rather they were ads that way that were fake. I mean they were posing as other companies, like some other entity, in an attempt to fool consumers into shopping for shoddy knockoffs. The big example I can think of off top of my head was the sam Ash music stores in the United States. They went out of business and closed down, and I saw ad after ad after ad pose that, but they weren't sam Ash. They were some other fly by night company trying to sell knockoffs or sometimes just boxes of literal trash rather than whatever item you thought you were going to get. Now. I have reported these ads to Facebook, and frequently I received the message that after review, Facebook determined there were no violations of its policies. Meanwhile, the actual legitimate companies like sam Ash would post warnings on their pages about scams like this. I suspect that unless lawmakers make it really hurt to engage in irresponsible ad partnerships, we're not going to see any significant change on this front. In the world of tech and politics, the Trump campaign has been hit with a spearfishing attack that compromised campaign assets. The Trump campaign identified hackers backed by Iran as the party responsible, and now Google's Threat Analysis Group or tag TAG, has released a statement saying that yes, they have observed that the hacker group APT forty two, which is linked to Iran, targeted both the Trump campaign and the Harris campaign. Kamala Harris's campaign, as well as President Biden's campaign when he was actively campaigning. Tag also stated that subsequent attacks have been unsuccessful, but there remains an ongoing attempt to compromise accounts belonging to people who are close to Trump and Harris slash Biden. The assumption moving forward is that all elections will face potential external interference from threat actors, both domestic and foreign. So, you know, that's fun. It's a reminder that democracy isn't something that can just fend for itself. Now, if you want to learn more about this, I recommend Kevin Perdy's article on ours Tetnica. It is titled Google's threat team confirms Iran targeting Trump, Biden, and Harris campaigns. More than a decade ago, New Zealand police officers, responding to a from the FBI rated the massive home of Kim dot com. Dot Com formerly known as Schmidtz, formed the company mega Upload, which allowed users to create cloud based storage for all sorts of stuff and then give other folks access to the files that were in that storage. So obviously a lot of people use the service to serve as kind of a trading ground for pirated material music, TV shows, films, games, software, and more all found a home on mega Upload, while the company is responsible for making that stuff. Seethed they saw dot Com profiting off of piracy, So the FBI called on New Zealand police back in twenty twelve to give dot Com a little visit, and they charged him with racketeering and wirefraud and money laundering on top of all that copyright infringement. And after more than a decade of legal wrangling, the US has now secured extradition of dot Com to fly to the US and stand trial. Now dot Com has denounced the whole thing. He referred to New Zealand as essentially a US colony. It's not, and dot Com still maintains he will not leave New Zealand and that his business was just to provide a service in which people could upload and share files, and therefore he bears no responsibility on the kinds of files that were uploaded and shared. This is a basic principle of the safe harbor defense. But dot Com has also been really vocal and let's say abrasive, and I think that may have hurt his case a little, or at least prodded authorities to really go after him. Now, whether all of this is going to lead to a trial and conviction or not, or if dot Com will successfully appeal the extradition order, we'll just have to wait and see. In the good times are hard times department. Telecommunications company Cisco Systems posted a ten point three billion with a B dollar profit in its last fiscal year, but it's also laying off folks seven percent of its workforce, which could be around five five hundred people. All told, The company said that the move is necessary so it can put full focus on quote key growth opportunities and drive more efficiency in our business end quote. As Stephen Counsel of SFGate reports, this is the second time this year that Cisco has held substantial layoffs. Golly. Back to politics, Donald Trump made headlines after claiming that the Harris campaign or someone on that campaign's behalf, had made use of AI to artificially boost crowd sizes at Harris events. In various images of those stops, and the images that Trump referenced all appear to be legit. Footage from numerous media outlets show that the crowds were actually quite large. However, that doesn't mean that there are no AI generated or enhanced images making the rounds out there. It's just the ones that Trump was citing were not AI generated. And it also means that people are calling into question the legitimacy of actual, real images and visit. So on the one hand, we do know there are AI generated images out there that are competing for our attention and posing as legit, and they are misinformation. On the other hand, we also know that people will now question legitimate sources and argue that they are in fact AI generated. So some refer to this as the liar's dividend. There's a great piece about this. It's again over at Ours Technicuts by Kyle Orland. It's titled the Many Many Signs that Kamala Harris's rally crowds aren't AI creations. We're going to take another quick break, and when we come back, I've got some more news. A story I missed a while back is that code testers came across some interesting stuff while looking at Apple Intelligence, which is Apple's AI project, and that interesting stuff appeared to be prompts meant to guide generative AI to avoid the pitfalls we've seen with other tools, stuff like ucinations or confabulations, you know, the tendency for generative AI to just make stuff up in the absence of real information. And that's potentially good news, assuming that these guidelines actually work. But I have another story this week that makes me worry. It's not about Apple. It's about a research firm out of Tokyo called Sakana AI. So the team had set its AI system to do autonomous scientific research, and they included a function that would essentially say times up on tasks. And what was surprising was the system attempted to rewrite its own code in order to give itself more time to complete tasks. So instead of trying to do things faster, they tried to change the deadline. Now, this is a very low level instance of a type of situation that has fueled countless science fiction cautionary tales. An AI system ignores or alters rules in order to fulfill its function. The cliche version of this is asking a global system that's running on AI to create world peace, and so the AI inevitably decides the only way to do that, the only way to prevent conflict is to kill off all those pesky humans who create it, meaning everybody. Of course, the Sikana AI example is not dangerous like that, but it does illustrate that AI experts have to be very careful in how they design systems so that the systems remain safe and reliable. It may not be enough to create rules if the AI can figure oh, well, here's the problem. These ding dang dearn rules need to go away. And I'm being a little flippant, but to learn more about this, I recommend BENJ. Edwards article research AI model unexpectedly modified its own code to extend runtime and that is on. You guessed it Ours Technica. I swear I use a lot of other sources. It's just Ours Technica really knocked it out of the park. This week, so Ahmed has a piece on tech spot titled Recruiters Overwhelmed as fifty seven percent of young applicants are using chat GPT for job resumes. In this piece, Omed mentions how hiring managers are flooded with more applications than ever before, many of which have clearly been written in part or entirely by AI. Further, the pieces written by the free version of tools like chat GPT contain many telltale signs of AI generation with less natural language and other quirks, while the paid for versions of these tools tend to blend a bit better with you stuff that was actually written by real human beings. And this presents a challenge to hiring managers who need to see what an applicant is actually capable of. Now, that could just mean bringing more people in for interviews, but those take up a lot of time to schedule and actually do so it's not terribly efficient. Moreover, this makes me concerned that folks who have little to know access to AI tools, specifically the types of tools that you have to pay for, they're ultimately going to be at a disadvantage. Maybe it will all shake out, but my fear is that people who are already in a position to at least afford an AI hype man are going to be the people who get these interview slots, while actual human beings who can't afford that type of SOLF report will be applying to job after job with diminishing hope of landing an interview. I am bumming myself out today. The SAG after a union which represents actors, has agreed to conditions in which companies can make use of AI duplicates of actor voices. This is specifically for use in advertisements, and it leverages a platform called Narrative, which doesn't have an E at the end, and actors can license their voices for use in commercials through Narrative. The agreement states that individual actors will have full say on which brands they're willing to work with and how much they can charge for use of their voice. In addition, if an actor decides they no longer want the robots to talk like them, they can sever their relationship with Narrative, and the platform is obligated to delete all their voice data, including the reference recordings that were used to make the digital duplicate in the first place. One thing that concerns me is the possibility of a company making use of an AI duplicated voice for ende dorsements. Here in the United States, we have strict rules about endorsing products and services. The person who's giving the endorsement is legally responsible for actually using the thing in question and being honest in their take on it. It's why I do very few endorsements, because i have very high standards on this and I'm legally obligated to do so. But with AI duplicates, a company could try and do that without the actual original actor's input. If the actor just says, yeah, you know, I'm cool with whatever brand using my voice, but then the brand ends up doing more than just an ad spot and does an endorsement, well, that could bring legal issues into play down the line. However, I have not read the full agreement yet, so it may be that this is already accounted for and the process could be really granular. So maybe I'm complaining about something that isn't even an issue. Just a quick up date on the ongoing issues with the Boeing Starliner crew, who are currently aboard the International Space Station. NASA has yet to decide how to proceed. Currently, the next scheduled docking with the ISS is supposed to happen on September twenty fourth with a SpaceX Dragon capsule, but that obviously cannot happen with the star Liner in the way. So the assumption that I'm mostly seeing online is that NASA is going to opt to have the Starliner return to Earth with no crew aboard the spacecraft, and the two astronauts who flew on the star Liner will have to wait a while before hitching a ride back home. Aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. NASA has previously indicated the agency would make a decision on how to move forward this week, but since then representatives have said the agency is going to take a bit more time to make that call since there is still some time to spare, but not a whole lot of it. It's still possible we'll see the astronauts return in the star liner itself. NASA is taking all factors into account and wants to be certain that any such attempts are well within acceptable risks. Before I sign off, I've got a couple of article suggestions for y'all. First up as another piece by BINGJ. Edwards. This one is titled deep Live Cam Goes Viral allowing anyone to become a digital dopple game and yes it's on Ours Technica. The article tells about tools that let folks use a simple image to create a kind of digital mask, sort of Mission Impossible style only for like webcam live streams, you know, not in the real world, but online. You can use a picture like the one case they used a picture of George Clooney and the guy ended up having a digital George Clooney face and it was pretty impressive. It was reactive in real time. Next is a piece from NPR's Dara Kurr titled Meta shutters tool used to fight disinformation despite outcry. Kerr writes about a tool called crowd Tangle, which researchers use to track disinformation online and how Meta is shutting this down despite the fact that here in the United States we're in an election year and you would think that tools meant to help track and detect disinformation would be particularly useful. So that's what has critics asking Meta to maybe keep it online a bit longer. That's it. I want to thank Shannon Morse again for jumping on the show. I always appreciate having her on. She is a delight. You can see more of her work over at YouTube, So go to YouTube and look for Shannon Morse. Highly recommend her content. She's really a lot of fun, incredibly knowledgeable, and is a great tech communicator. So check out her work, and like I said, check out our Stanka because they knocked it out of the park this week. I hope all of you are doing well and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.