Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Johnathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And how the tech are you? And it's time for the tech news for February one, twenty twenty two. And I've got an update on the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the video game company. And the update is that the United States Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, will review the deal to determine if, in fact, the deal would negatively impact competition within the video game industry. Microsoft is no stranger to antitrust investigations, having been the focus of several of them over the last several decades. One thing that does make this one a little odd is that apparently the US Justice Department will not review the deal, and typically you see the d o J work with the FTC on these things together. Now, I want to stress that it's way too early to conclude what effect this investigation will have on the deal. It's possible the FTC will just approve the acquisition. It's also possible that it might require certain concessions before allowing the deal to go through. Part of the deal might look at whether or not Microsoft plans to continue releasing Activision Blizzard games for non Microsoft platforms, you know, like the Sony PlayStation. Like if Microsoft said, yeah, from now on, Call of Duty is going to be PC and Xbox exclusive, that could be an issue. But in the early statements that I have seen around this deal, it seems to me that Microsoft is at least indicating that it's not going to shut out PlayStation at least not in the near term, so that might not be an issue at all. In fact, Microsoft will end up owning a former PlayStation mascot should this deal go through. I'm talking about crash Bandicoot, which at one time was kind of a mascot for the Sony PlayStation, and now well that's one of the properties owned by Activision Blizzards. So should Microsoft's deal go through, crash Bandicoot, the former PlayStation mascot will be a Microsoft property. Anyway, we knew that the deal would fall under scrutiny, particularly right now because governments around the world are tightening up regulations on mergers and acquisitions in business in general, like any big company, a lot of governments around the world are really looking more closely at proposed mergers and acquisitions, but they're definitely doing that big time in the tech sector. Now, if I had to make a prediction, I'd say this deal squeaks through. I don't foresee any obvious red flags, at least not from a regulatory standpoint. I don't think it's always great to see consolidation in a market in general. I mean, you're you're talking about a decreased number of choices, and decreased choice typically does not benefit the end consumer, so I don't I'm not a huge fan of it. However, I'm not sure there's a real case to be made that Microsoft would have an unfair advantage in the industry. I mean, Microsoft itself points out quite eagerly that both Sony and Tencent would still be larger video game companies, at least by revenue. So we'll see if the FTC pushes back on this. I would be surprised to see that, but stranger things have happened, and obviously I'm not privy to all the details of the deal. It could be that there's stuff in there I just don't know about. That would be an issue. Speaking of Sony and acquisitions, the Japanese company is making a purchase of its own. It is buying Ge Studios. Current gamers probably think of Bungee as the studio that's behind the Destiny games, but I will always think of Bungee as the game company that originally brought us Halo. Bungee handed Halo off to Microsoft's three forty three Industries in two thousand seven, so Bungee is not involved in Halo anymore. That happened after Bungee left the Microsoft fold and became an independent studio. Also a fun fact, Bungee originally started developing Halo with the Mac platform in mind. It was supposed to be a Mac game before it made its way to become an Xbox exclusive, at least initially. Anyway, Sony is acquiring Bungee for a three point six billion dollars. That's a fraction of what the Microsoft Activision Blizzard deal is, but then that's to be expected. Bungee is uh, It's not a small studio, but it's definitely smaller than Activision Wizard. The company has already released a statement saying that future Bungee games will continue to be available on multiple platforms, So, in other words, this does not appear to be a move to make Destiny a PlayStation exclusive franchise, though we're probably going to continue to see PlayStation exclusive content for the games, and just the game itself will be available on multiple platforms. Reportedly, Sonny plans to take a hands off approach when it comes to overseeing Bungee and allow Bungee to continue to operate as if it were a fully independent studio. We might also see some moves to adapt Bungee intellectual property into other formats like movies. You know, considering the trailer I saw recently for the live action Halo project, I think they should just take their time on that one. I'm throwing a little shade early today. And to round out our trilogy about acquisitions, let's talk about Word All now. If you're not familiar with the game, it's a simple online word guessing game. So the standard version requires players to guess a five letter word, and after you submit your guests, you will see which, if any of the letters you chose are correct. A letter that's highlighted in yellow means that you have guessed a correct letter, but it's in the wrong place in the word. A letter in green matches that It tells you that you matched both the letter and where it appears in the word, and that that should be locked into place, and you get six guesses before you lose around and it's kind of like the old board game Mastermind. I don't know how many of you out there have played that. It used to be one of my favorites as a kid. Very simple to play, um and and interesting to kind of develop strategies for it. And I loved it. And uh, you're and of course you're using letters instead of little pegs Mastermind used pegs had different colors and you would try to guess a I think it was a sequence of four, if maybe six, I can't remember, but yeah, I love that game. Anyway. What helped propel wordle into viral popularity is that you can share your results of each round on social platforms, and typically those those results just show your guests sequences. It doesn't show the actual letters you guess, but instead shows solid blocks that represent the letters. And so I remember seeing it on Twitter several weeks ago and being stopped as to what the all the gray, yellow, and green blocks. Men Like you'd see one line that was mostly gray, maybe there was a yellow or maybe a green block in there, then then a couple of other blocks until you got one solid row of green. I had no idea what it was until I looked further into it. And really that was a brilliant little game mechanic because it got a lot of folks like me into the game, just saying, what the heck are all these blocks that are showing up on my Twitter? And now The New York Times has purchased that game from its creator, a guy named Josh Wardle. Wardle is a software engineer who built the game as a gift to his partner who loves word games, and the deal is reportedly in the quote low seven figures end quote. So we're talking at least a million bucks. So way to go, Josh Wardle. That is awesome for you. However, for fans of the game, well a lot of them are a little nervous that eventually The New York Times will put Wordle behind a paywall. For the moment, at least, the Time says it will keep Wordle free to play, but it will be interesting to see if the Wordle community continues strong, or if the association of a once you know, scrappy little independent game now being owned by a media company is going to be enough to turn folks off of it. Like, there's some people who are who are gonna probably say I'm gonna bounce because I'm not interested now that it's you know, a corporate asset. But we'll see. I kind of hope that it stays free to play and sticks around because I think I really like the community that's kind of built up around word all um, and I enjoy playing the game. I'm I'm decent at it, but then I think most people are, so it's kind of a fun bonding experience. All right. Let's go back to some antitrust talk. According to the Financial Times, several big tech companies, including Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are trying a slightly different approach while funding lobbyists to try and stave off some of the recent trends the U. S. Government has followed regarding you know, curbing big tech acquisitions and mergers and policies. So, for example, Apple and Google have both been trying to sway lawmakers to allow the companies to continue to force app developers to use the App store payment systems, something that various lawmakers and courts have been pushing back on. The new tactic appears to be an attempt at framing these conversations as if you regulate big tech companies here in the United States, then China wins. Now I'm oversimplifying, but yeah, the argument is essentially that the US, you know, if it beefs up antitrust regulations, that will give China the opportunity to capitalize on the situation. Now, I'm not sure how realistic that argument really is. I mean, on the one hand, China certainly is big on pouncing on opportunities. That much is absolutely true. But on the other hand, the current regime in China has also shown that it has grown suspicious of big businesses within China and has started to restrict companies and push back against them. Potentially, that's to make certain that no company accumulates enough influence and power to threaten the government's absolute control over the nation. Of course, whether or not an argument is logically sound doesn't really matter. If the argument just works right, you don't have to make a good argument for people to believe it. See also all the anti facts and COVID denial stuff. So we'll just have to see if lawmakers buy into this premise. All right, We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be back with some more news after this. Apple CEO Tim Cook's house has disappeared, or rather, a blurry digital wall blocks his home in street level views in both Apple Maps and Google Maps, so if you cruise down his street in Balo Alto, California and look at where he lives, you'll just see a big blurry mess. Now. Cook has been the target of some pretty disturbing stalking activity in recent months, so this is likely a move to help avoid future issues along those lines. And at first I was thinking, man, must be nice to be able to remove yourself from folks just being able to look at your stuff. But then I found out that actually anyone can submit a report to have their home blurred out in maps applications. Both Apple and Google have a process for that. So if for any reason you would rather folks not have the oportunity to be nosy, looky, lose on street view, you can apply to have your home blurred out. So I retract my snooty statement. Tesla is issuing a recall a software recall on more than fifty vehicles manufactured between two thousand and sixteen and two thousand twenty two because of a rolling stop feature that, frankly, I'm shocked was even a thing in the first place. So here's the deal. Tesla incorporated a mode and its full self driving beta, which, as I always have to point out, is not really full self driving mode, even though the company calls it that. And this particular little feature was called the assertive mode. And one of the things that cars would do while in assertive mode is they would not come to a complete stop at stop signs under certain conditions. Instead, the cars would slow down and then roll through the intersection. The company's stress this would only happen if the car verified there were no other vehicles or any pedestrians or obstacles detected within the intersection before doing it. But even so, a rolling stop is, you know, illegal in most states. Here in the US, drivers are obligated to come to a complete stop at a stop sign, even if it seems obvious that there are no cars or pedestrians or anything else in the way. It's a basic rule of the road. I found it shocking that Tesla would just ignore that. I mean, I get the fact that tons of human drivers behave that way, but that doesn't make it legal or right anyway, Tesla is rolling back the software update that allowed cars to be this u assertive. We've heard a lot about how hackers have used their skills to make money, but you know, more often than not, we're talking either about white hat hackers who discover a vulnerability and they report it and they claim a juicy bug bounty for their efforts, or we talk about hackers who target a company with like brutal ransomware. But in this case, I'm talking more about good old insider trading. And in case you're not familiar with that term, insider trading describes the situation in which a person who has knowledge inside knowledge about a company's performance acts on that knowledge in the stock market before the information goes public. So, for example, let's say I was working for Microsoft and I heard about the Activision Blizzard deal before it had actually been announced to the public. So I decided to buy up some stock and Activision, thinking well, the price is going to go up once this news goes live, And that's insider trading, and it's a big no no. I would be in huge trouble if folks discovered I had done that, or even if I had just given a stock tip to someone I know so that they could do it for me by proxy or whatever. Well, a group of hackers, allegedly including the head of a Russian cybersecurity firm, managed to intercept reports various publicly traded companies had been filing with the u S Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC. Now, investors always pay close attention to these reports, which companies file quarterly. If a company posts incredible quarterly results, it could lead to a big jump in stock prices. So these hackers were intercepting reports and scouring them before the SEC would make them public, and then they would move to make stock trades in advance of the report's becoming public information, and they made money this way. The SEC said that the trades were so on point that it would be a trillion to one chance to manage to make all those advantageous trades without insider information. Anyway, the group targeted two companies that serve as sort of a liaison between publicly traded companies and the SEC, which is pretty smart. They didn't have to touch SEC itself, and they didn't have to target each individual company. They went with, you know, kind of a sort of a sorting company in a way. It's it's a coming that files on behalf of others. Uh. They're like three big ones in the US that do that, and they targeted two of them. I'm not sure what's going on with the hackers right now, but since the SEC is aware of the scheme, I imagine this particular well has dried up for them. But yeah, I I don't know how. You know what the stats is, whether they're walking free or not. They did make off with more than eighty million dollars in the process. That's a big yaza uh oh. You know. We talked about PlayStation earlier. In additional PlayStation news, Discord, the messaging platform most associated with gaming, is rolling out support to the PlayStation family of consoles right now. This comes several months after the initial announcement that Discord would be coming to PlayStation consoles. So PS four and PS five owners with a Discord account can connect that account to their consoles and then those players activities on their PlayStation will show up and discord um Discords a very handy communication system, again largely associated with games, So welcome PlayStation players to Discord. You know, usually I advocate for harmony. But when the Harmony of the C's, a cruise ship in the Royal Caribbean line, sailed into the hazard zone for a SpaceX launch, it was pretty hard to be on harmon east side. This happened just this past Sunday when a scheduled Falcon nine launch had to be scrapped when this giant cruise ship moved into the launch vehicles downrange hazard zone. Now, the launches take place at Cape Canaveral and the nearby Port Canaveral is a popular departure port for various cruise ships. Before every launch at Cape Canaveral, pilots and mariners you know, people flying planes and people piloting boats, they are supposed to check for notices UH notices to airmen in the case of pilots, and notices to mariners for the case of you know, boat people to make note of hazard zones during specific dates and then avoid those zones. Now, the SpaceX launch scrub meant that the payload and Italian weather satellite would be delayed for the fourth time in a row because the planned launches for Thursday, Friday and Saturday all fell through due to bad weather. Fortunately, SpaceX was able to hold a successful launch yesterday, that is Monday, and delivered payload. No telling yet what if any repercussions Royal Caribbean will face for its ship moving into the hazard zone. I imagine that at the very least the captain of that vessel is going to have a rough time of it in the near future. And finally, some engineers at the University of Maryland outfitted a drone with wings modeled after the air screw as designed by Leonardo da Vinci. The drone is called the Crimson Spin and it has four propellers in that aerial screw shape. So da Vinci proposed the aerial screw as a one person flying vehicle, but it was really more of a thought exercise about lift and the shape you would need in order to generate lift. That was never something that actually took flight, and there has been debate about whether or not you could achieve flight using that design. The engineering team, using modern day materials and a basic quad copter, proved that it in fact does work. They submitted their findings that the Transformative Vertical Flight twenty two conference, which I did not realize was a thing, and while their demonstration used a small quad Copter drone. They suspect that you could actually scale this up to work on a human sized aircraft if you so desired. Now, this is all thanks to our modern access to rigid, lightweight materials. Da Vinci would have had to rely on stuff like leather and wood and rope, and these materials are are too dense and too heavy for craft to generate enough lift to counteract its weight. But with stuff like aluminum and plastics, it's a different story. It's not exactly going to lead us to a new approach to aircraft design, but I think it's pretty awesome that we can say Da Vinci was really onto something. Here and there is your tech news for Tuesday, February one, twenty twenty two. If you have suggestions for topics I actually cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff hs W, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Johnathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And how the tech are you? And it's time for the tech news for February one, twenty twenty two. And I've got an update on the Microsoft acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the video game company. And the update is that the United States Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, will review the deal to determine if, in fact, the deal would negatively impact competition within the video game industry. Microsoft is no stranger to antitrust investigations, having been the focus of several of them over the last several decades. One thing that does make this one a little odd is that apparently the US Justice Department will not review the deal, and typically you see the d o J work with the FTC on these things together. Now, I want to stress that it's way too early to conclude what effect this investigation will have on the deal. It's possible the FTC will just approve the acquisition. It's also possible that it might require certain concessions before allowing the deal to go through. Part of the deal might look at whether or not Microsoft plans to continue releasing Activision Blizzard games for non Microsoft platforms, you know, like the Sony PlayStation. Like if Microsoft said, yeah, from now on, Call of Duty is going to be PC and Xbox exclusive, that could be an issue. But in the early statements that I have seen around this deal, it seems to me that Microsoft is at least indicating that it's not going to shut out PlayStation at least not in the near term, so that might not be an issue at all. In fact, Microsoft will end up owning a former PlayStation mascot should this deal go through. I'm talking about crash Bandicoot, which at one time was kind of a mascot for the Sony PlayStation, and now well that's one of the properties owned by Activision Blizzards. So should Microsoft's deal go through, crash Bandicoot, the former PlayStation mascot will be a Microsoft property. Anyway, we knew that the deal would fall under scrutiny, particularly right now because governments around the world are tightening up regulations on mergers and acquisitions in business in general, like any big company, a lot of governments around the world are really looking more closely at proposed mergers and acquisitions, but they're definitely doing that big time in the tech sector. Now, if I had to make a prediction, I'd say this deal squeaks through. I don't foresee any obvious red flags, at least not from a regulatory standpoint. I don't think it's always great to see consolidation in a market in general. I mean, you're you're talking about a decreased number of choices, and decreased choice typically does not benefit the end consumer, so I don't I'm not a huge fan of it. However, I'm not sure there's a real case to be made that Microsoft would have an unfair advantage in the industry. I mean, Microsoft itself points out quite eagerly that both Sony and Tencent would still be larger video game companies, at least by revenue. So we'll see if the FTC pushes back on this. I would be surprised to see that, but stranger things have happened, and obviously I'm not privy to all the details of the deal. It could be that there's stuff in there I just don't know about. That would be an issue. Speaking of Sony and acquisitions, the Japanese company is making a purchase of its own. It is buying Ge Studios. Current gamers probably think of Bungee as the studio that's behind the Destiny games, but I will always think of Bungee as the game company that originally brought us Halo. Bungee handed Halo off to Microsoft's three forty three Industries in two thousand seven, so Bungee is not involved in Halo anymore. That happened after Bungee left the Microsoft fold and became an independent studio. Also a fun fact, Bungee originally started developing Halo with the Mac platform in mind. It was supposed to be a Mac game before it made its way to become an Xbox exclusive, at least initially. Anyway, Sony is acquiring Bungee for a three point six billion dollars. That's a fraction of what the Microsoft Activision Blizzard deal is, but then that's to be expected. Bungee is uh, It's not a small studio, but it's definitely smaller than Activision Wizard. The company has already released a statement saying that future Bungee games will continue to be available on multiple platforms, So, in other words, this does not appear to be a move to make Destiny a PlayStation exclusive franchise, though we're probably going to continue to see PlayStation exclusive content for the games, and just the game itself will be available on multiple platforms. Reportedly, Sonny plans to take a hands off approach when it comes to overseeing Bungee and allow Bungee to continue to operate as if it were a fully independent studio. We might also see some moves to adapt Bungee intellectual property into other formats like movies. You know, considering the trailer I saw recently for the live action Halo project, I think they should just take their time on that one. I'm throwing a little shade early today. And to round out our trilogy about acquisitions, let's talk about Word All now. If you're not familiar with the game, it's a simple online word guessing game. So the standard version requires players to guess a five letter word, and after you submit your guests, you will see which, if any of the letters you chose are correct. A letter that's highlighted in yellow means that you have guessed a correct letter, but it's in the wrong place in the word. A letter in green matches that It tells you that you matched both the letter and where it appears in the word, and that that should be locked into place, and you get six guesses before you lose around and it's kind of like the old board game Mastermind. I don't know how many of you out there have played that. It used to be one of my favorites as a kid. Very simple to play, um and and interesting to kind of develop strategies for it. And I loved it. And uh, you're and of course you're using letters instead of little pegs Mastermind used pegs had different colors and you would try to guess a I think it was a sequence of four, if maybe six, I can't remember, but yeah, I love that game. Anyway. What helped propel wordle into viral popularity is that you can share your results of each round on social platforms, and typically those those results just show your guests sequences. It doesn't show the actual letters you guess, but instead shows solid blocks that represent the letters. And so I remember seeing it on Twitter several weeks ago and being stopped as to what the all the gray, yellow, and green blocks. Men Like you'd see one line that was mostly gray, maybe there was a yellow or maybe a green block in there, then then a couple of other blocks until you got one solid row of green. I had no idea what it was until I looked further into it. And really that was a brilliant little game mechanic because it got a lot of folks like me into the game, just saying, what the heck are all these blocks that are showing up on my Twitter? And now The New York Times has purchased that game from its creator, a guy named Josh Wardle. Wardle is a software engineer who built the game as a gift to his partner who loves word games, and the deal is reportedly in the quote low seven figures end quote. So we're talking at least a million bucks. So way to go, Josh Wardle. That is awesome for you. However, for fans of the game, well a lot of them are a little nervous that eventually The New York Times will put Wordle behind a paywall. For the moment, at least, the Time says it will keep Wordle free to play, but it will be interesting to see if the Wordle community continues strong, or if the association of a once you know, scrappy little independent game now being owned by a media company is going to be enough to turn folks off of it. Like, there's some people who are who are gonna probably say I'm gonna bounce because I'm not interested now that it's you know, a corporate asset. But we'll see. I kind of hope that it stays free to play and sticks around because I think I really like the community that's kind of built up around word all um, and I enjoy playing the game. I'm I'm decent at it, but then I think most people are, so it's kind of a fun bonding experience. All right. Let's go back to some antitrust talk. According to the Financial Times, several big tech companies, including Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple are trying a slightly different approach while funding lobbyists to try and stave off some of the recent trends the U. S. Government has followed regarding you know, curbing big tech acquisitions and mergers and policies. So, for example, Apple and Google have both been trying to sway lawmakers to allow the companies to continue to force app developers to use the App store payment systems, something that various lawmakers and courts have been pushing back on. The new tactic appears to be an attempt at framing these conversations as if you regulate big tech companies here in the United States, then China wins. Now I'm oversimplifying, but yeah, the argument is essentially that the US, you know, if it beefs up antitrust regulations, that will give China the opportunity to capitalize on the situation. Now, I'm not sure how realistic that argument really is. I mean, on the one hand, China certainly is big on pouncing on opportunities. That much is absolutely true. But on the other hand, the current regime in China has also shown that it has grown suspicious of big businesses within China and has started to restrict companies and push back against them. Potentially, that's to make certain that no company accumulates enough influence and power to threaten the government's absolute control over the nation. Of course, whether or not an argument is logically sound doesn't really matter. If the argument just works right, you don't have to make a good argument for people to believe it. See also all the anti facts and COVID denial stuff. So we'll just have to see if lawmakers buy into this premise. All right, We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be back with some more news after this. Apple CEO Tim Cook's house has disappeared, or rather, a blurry digital wall blocks his home in street level views in both Apple Maps and Google Maps, so if you cruise down his street in Balo Alto, California and look at where he lives, you'll just see a big blurry mess. Now. Cook has been the target of some pretty disturbing stalking activity in recent months, so this is likely a move to help avoid future issues along those lines. And at first I was thinking, man, must be nice to be able to remove yourself from folks just being able to look at your stuff. But then I found out that actually anyone can submit a report to have their home blurred out in maps applications. Both Apple and Google have a process for that. So if for any reason you would rather folks not have the oportunity to be nosy, looky, lose on street view, you can apply to have your home blurred out. So I retract my snooty statement. Tesla is issuing a recall a software recall on more than fifty vehicles manufactured between two thousand and sixteen and two thousand twenty two because of a rolling stop feature that, frankly, I'm shocked was even a thing in the first place. So here's the deal. Tesla incorporated a mode and its full self driving beta, which, as I always have to point out, is not really full self driving mode, even though the company calls it that. And this particular little feature was called the assertive mode. And one of the things that cars would do while in assertive mode is they would not come to a complete stop at stop signs under certain conditions. Instead, the cars would slow down and then roll through the intersection. The company's stress this would only happen if the car verified there were no other vehicles or any pedestrians or obstacles detected within the intersection before doing it. But even so, a rolling stop is, you know, illegal in most states. Here in the US, drivers are obligated to come to a complete stop at a stop sign, even if it seems obvious that there are no cars or pedestrians or anything else in the way. It's a basic rule of the road. I found it shocking that Tesla would just ignore that. I mean, I get the fact that tons of human drivers behave that way, but that doesn't make it legal or right anyway, Tesla is rolling back the software update that allowed cars to be this u assertive. We've heard a lot about how hackers have used their skills to make money, but you know, more often than not, we're talking either about white hat hackers who discover a vulnerability and they report it and they claim a juicy bug bounty for their efforts, or we talk about hackers who target a company with like brutal ransomware. But in this case, I'm talking more about good old insider trading. And in case you're not familiar with that term, insider trading describes the situation in which a person who has knowledge inside knowledge about a company's performance acts on that knowledge in the stock market before the information goes public. So, for example, let's say I was working for Microsoft and I heard about the Activision Blizzard deal before it had actually been announced to the public. So I decided to buy up some stock and Activision, thinking well, the price is going to go up once this news goes live, And that's insider trading, and it's a big no no. I would be in huge trouble if folks discovered I had done that, or even if I had just given a stock tip to someone I know so that they could do it for me by proxy or whatever. Well, a group of hackers, allegedly including the head of a Russian cybersecurity firm, managed to intercept reports various publicly traded companies had been filing with the u S Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC. Now, investors always pay close attention to these reports, which companies file quarterly. If a company posts incredible quarterly results, it could lead to a big jump in stock prices. So these hackers were intercepting reports and scouring them before the SEC would make them public, and then they would move to make stock trades in advance of the report's becoming public information, and they made money this way. The SEC said that the trades were so on point that it would be a trillion to one chance to manage to make all those advantageous trades without insider information. Anyway, the group targeted two companies that serve as sort of a liaison between publicly traded companies and the SEC, which is pretty smart. They didn't have to touch SEC itself, and they didn't have to target each individual company. They went with, you know, kind of a sort of a sorting company in a way. It's it's a coming that files on behalf of others. Uh. They're like three big ones in the US that do that, and they targeted two of them. I'm not sure what's going on with the hackers right now, but since the SEC is aware of the scheme, I imagine this particular well has dried up for them. But yeah, I I don't know how. You know what the stats is, whether they're walking free or not. They did make off with more than eighty million dollars in the process. That's a big yaza uh oh. You know. We talked about PlayStation earlier. In additional PlayStation news, Discord, the messaging platform most associated with gaming, is rolling out support to the PlayStation family of consoles right now. This comes several months after the initial announcement that Discord would be coming to PlayStation consoles. So PS four and PS five owners with a Discord account can connect that account to their consoles and then those players activities on their PlayStation will show up and discord um Discords a very handy communication system, again largely associated with games, So welcome PlayStation players to Discord. You know, usually I advocate for harmony. But when the Harmony of the C's, a cruise ship in the Royal Caribbean line, sailed into the hazard zone for a SpaceX launch, it was pretty hard to be on harmon east side. This happened just this past Sunday when a scheduled Falcon nine launch had to be scrapped when this giant cruise ship moved into the launch vehicles downrange hazard zone. Now, the launches take place at Cape Canaveral and the nearby Port Canaveral is a popular departure port for various cruise ships. Before every launch at Cape Canaveral, pilots and mariners you know, people flying planes and people piloting boats, they are supposed to check for notices UH notices to airmen in the case of pilots, and notices to mariners for the case of you know, boat people to make note of hazard zones during specific dates and then avoid those zones. Now, the SpaceX launch scrub meant that the payload and Italian weather satellite would be delayed for the fourth time in a row because the planned launches for Thursday, Friday and Saturday all fell through due to bad weather. Fortunately, SpaceX was able to hold a successful launch yesterday, that is Monday, and delivered payload. No telling yet what if any repercussions Royal Caribbean will face for its ship moving into the hazard zone. I imagine that at the very least the captain of that vessel is going to have a rough time of it in the near future. And finally, some engineers at the University of Maryland outfitted a drone with wings modeled after the air screw as designed by Leonardo da Vinci. The drone is called the Crimson Spin and it has four propellers in that aerial screw shape. So da Vinci proposed the aerial screw as a one person flying vehicle, but it was really more of a thought exercise about lift and the shape you would need in order to generate lift. That was never something that actually took flight, and there has been debate about whether or not you could achieve flight using that design. The engineering team, using modern day materials and a basic quad copter, proved that it in fact does work. They submitted their findings that the Transformative Vertical Flight twenty two conference, which I did not realize was a thing, and while their demonstration used a small quad Copter drone. They suspect that you could actually scale this up to work on a human sized aircraft if you so desired. Now, this is all thanks to our modern access to rigid, lightweight materials. Da Vinci would have had to rely on stuff like leather and wood and rope, and these materials are are too dense and too heavy for craft to generate enough lift to counteract its weight. But with stuff like aluminum and plastics, it's a different story. It's not exactly going to lead us to a new approach to aircraft design, but I think it's pretty awesome that we can say Da Vinci was really onto something. Here and there is your tech news for Tuesday, February one, twenty twenty two. If you have suggestions for topics I actually cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter. The handle for the show is text Stuff hs W, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. 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