Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and I love all things tech, and it is time for the tech news for Tuesday, September twenty one. First up today is when Apple holds its iPhone event. Now, as I record this, that event has not yet happened. It is scheduled to happen at one pm Eastern, and I'm recording this approximately ten am Eastern, so it's quite possible that it has already happened by the time you listen to this podcast. And in that case, if you could do me a solid and send me an email through some sort of subspace time warp to let me know what's going to be talked about, I would really appreciate it. And just check email. There's nothing there. You have all failed me. But the rumor is that the new iPhone is not going to look that much different from the previous generation, and that it will probably have a relatively modest set of upgrades. Now still undoubtedly going to be more powerful and have more features than earlier iPhones, but the general expectation is that it won't be a guard ganguin leap forward or departure. Other rumors suggest that we're gonna see an updated Apple Watch with perhaps a bigger screen and maybe some updates to the air Pod earbuds. Some real optimists out there are hoping that Apple will finally talk about its VR and a our products and development. Now, maybe that will happen. It would be one heck of a of a one more thing. But I suspect we are not going to get that at this event. I would love to be proven wrong. However, speaking of Apple, late last week, a federal judge granted an injunction against Apple on alf of Epic Games. So, for those of you not familiar with this story, here's the gist of it. Epic Games makes a game called Fortnite, and one way that Fortnite makes money is through in game purchases. Players spend real world money to get in game currency, which they can then use to purchase all sorts of stuff inside the game, like you know, character skins and emotes and that kind of thing. Both Apple and Google have a policy that any app on their platform that has in app purchases is supposed to use the official app store transaction system that gives Apple or Google a cut, and it's typically around the mark. Epic cheekily encouraged players on iOS and Android devices to use a workaround to purchase currency in game directly from Epic bypassing those app transaction systems, and it would give Epic a share of those trans actions, cutting out you know, Apple and Google in the process. Apple and Epic have since been in a series of fights, both legal and public relations fights since that time. This recent injunction would allow developers to use those outside payment solutions for iOS apps. Now, that's obviously a big hit to Apple's revenue stream, although, as I've mentioned on this show before, Apple does not get so granular as to break out how much money the app store brings into the company. It gets lumped in with a bunch of other stuff. But that move in turn prompted a bit of a sell off of Apple stock, which dropped three point three and value. Now, that's less than five percent. It doesn't sound like very much, right, but we're talking about a company that's worth more than two trillion dollars, So that meant Apple lost about eighty five billion dollars in value due to that slip in stock price, and that blows my mind, like billion dollars is an unimaginable amount of money all by itself, let alone the fact that Apple is worth more than two trillion. Anyway, the battles will likely not end here, although I have been seeing more of a tendency for courts to push against companies like Google and Apple with the argument that the in app transaction policies are anti competitive. If you've been listening to my news episodes, you've also heard me talk about the n s O Group and Israeli company that makes iOS malware designed to infect the devices of highly targeted individuals through a zero click message vector I message vector. Now that means that the n s A Group sells this product to various government agencies, at least those that don't have an adversarial relationship with Israel, because so group has to do this under Israel's you know, permission, and those agencies can then send out an attack message via I message to a specific target. Then if the tar get does so much as open that message, it's game over. There's no need to convince them to open a file or click on a link. A flaw and Apple security allowed for that kind of attack. The Citizen Lab out of the University of Toronto has been keeping tabs on these types of attacks and managed to isolate the exploit in the malware to understand how this really works. The lad passed this information onto Apple, and Apple subsequently patched the vulnerability and pushed out the iOS fourteen point eight and iPad OS fourteen point eight updates in order to address this weakness. Now, generally speaking, most iOS users should be fine because these attacks really are targeted attacks. So unless there's a government that's out there that has an AX to grind with you, you're probably okay. But for diplomats, politicians, movement leaders like union leaders and and UH activist leaders journalist for them, it's a different story. It'll be interesting to see if Apple's update renders the NSO group's main product less valuable or if the hackers that the company are even more steps ahead and have you know, contingencies in place in case Apple did address this particular vulnerability. And in Apple adjacent news, Steve Wozniak, the co founder of Apple, who hasn't been part of the company for decades, is launching figuratively and hopefully one day literally a private space company called Privateer. We do not know much about it yet, though by the end of today that might change because he plans to announce further details at the AMOS that's a MS tech conference, and that is going on this week in Hawaii. The general rumor is that Privateer will focus on the problem of space junk. That's stuff that's whizzing around in orbit at super fast speeds. Usually it's stuff from you know, man made satellites and things that or rockets, launch vehicles, that kind of thing that have broken apart, and then service of potential obstacle in space. You know, when it's moving that fast, it can be catastrophic if that collides with something, and it can threaten stuff like satellites, space stations, and other spacecraft. Now, considering that lots of companies are looking to launch thousands of satellites up into orbit in the near future, it's probably a pretty decent motivation to get a company like this going. But I don't know enough details to give an opinion about whether or not the approach makes sense. However, I will allow that Wosniak is orders of magnitude smarter than I am. We'll just have to, you know, make a call once we get more details about this. Now, let us consider Google and how South Korea has hit Google with a fine of nearly a hundred seventy nine million dollars for what the government says are anti competitive practices. According to the Korea Fair Trade Commission, Google has used its dominant market position to pressure certain handset companies to prevent them from allowing anything other than the official Google Android operating system to work on their devices. So at the heart of the matter is that some companies would make Android derivatives, you know, operating systems for handsets that had Android as the foundation, but they had been tweaked so much as you effectively create a new operating system, you create a fork. It's kind of like the timeline stuff in the m c U if you watched Loki uh. And these forks can have proprietary features. They could even have, you know, different user interface approaches and could be different enough from vanilla Android to potentially cause issues. Now, according to the Fair Trade Commission, Google was making companies sign agreement saying they would knock that off and they would just go with pure Android, or else they would lose access to early builds of Android and such, or they might see their own app get buried in the Google App Store. Now, on the one hand, I definitely see how Google's approach can be anti competitive. That's not cool. On the other hand, as a consumer, I really hate having a ton of confusion in the market. I mean, years ago, I made sure that I would just buy Google flagship phones so that way I could be I could be certain that I was having a pure form of the Android operating system without all the stuff I saw as being superfluous from various handset manufacturers and telecommunications providers. Still, I feel like that choice should be left to the individual consumer, and if companies want to muddy the waters, then they can. I don't think they should, but they should be able to. I don't think it's super cool for Google to just muscle in and say, hey, don't do that or else. Amazon continues to build out its enormous database of biometric data with the Amazon One system. This is Amazon's palm scanning technology, which uses a scanner to look for unique details in a palm, including the arrangement and pattern of veins under your skin. This is all as a way to authenticate a person's identity. Amazon has been using the system in some of its physical storefronts, including a few Whole Foods locations. So the way it works as you establish an account and you scan your palm as part of that, and it associates your palm scan with your account. Then you can use your palm scan to act as a way to authorize payments. For example, so in one of these stores, you might be able to just walk in, pick up a product, you walk to a scanner, you hold your palm over the scanner, and boom, you've bought that whatever it is. Well, now Amazon has expanded this technology beyond just those you know, owned and operated storefronts and has offered it as a way to access the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. Presumably you would create a similar account with the Amphitheater and as a part of that you would scan your palm. Then when you buy a ticket to an event, you could have that ticket associated with your identity. Then you just show up at the Amphitheater, you scan your palm, validates your ticket, and you're in your you can go into the the event. Now that could be kind of cool and that it could lead to stuff like a massive decrease in scalping, and I'm all for that. I love the idea of systems that allow people who really want to go to something get the chance to do it, rather than you know, some enterprising folks with a ton of money just buying up all the tickets and then selling those tickets for obscene markups. But then there are other things to think about. One of those is that we could tie tickets to specific mobile devices like our phones. We don't have to make it tied to you know, a palm print or other biometric data, and it's not really any less convenient because most of us never go anywhere without our phones. For another thing, you could argue that the whole scheme is really geared toward giving Amazon access to even more personal data, which could be used in ways that we don't anticipate in the future, and that we would essentially be signing that stuff over to a company for the sake of some convenience without really understanding or appreciating what might be done with that data in the future. That's usually not the best idea for the individual consumer. We have more news to cover, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break, We're back and in news that hits a little close to home. The company Into It, best known for its tax preparation products, plans to acquire mail Chimp for twelve billion dollars. Mail Chimp is a local Atlanta startup that focuses on marketing primarily through email lists, so companies that want to create, say, email newsletters or marketing campaign can lean on mail Chip to put something together for them and to maintain those email lists and handle the distribution for the moment. Mail Chimp has an office space that's close to our own here in Atlanta, though it will soon relocate to a new office building buildings that are currently under construction and are not too far away from where we are right now. But anyway, the announcement caused some folks to engage in some head scratching, as it wasn't immediately apparent how mail Chump would factor into into its strategy, like how would the two companies meld together In a press release, Into It said together, Into It and mail Chip will work to deliver on the vision of an innovative end to end customer growth platform for small and mid market businesses, allowing them to get their business online market their business, manage customer relationships, benefit from insights and analytics, get paid, access capital, pay employees, optimize cash flow, be organized, and stay compliant with experts at their fingertips. That's the end of that quote. And sure, I guess like I'm sure that there are lots of plans on how these companies are going to integrate. Uh. But yeah, like a lot of other people, this was one of those moves that surprised me and puzzled me a little bit. But we'll just have to wait and see how this all shakes out. Now it's cryptocurrency time, So if you've listened to the show for any length of time, you know that I tend to be a little bit wary of cryptocurrency in general for lots of reasons. There are tons of reasons to be a little skeptical about cryptocurrencies, but one of those reasons is that people sometimes go to great links to inflate a cryptocurrencies value in order to make a ton of money in a very short time before hitting the eject button and leaving everyone else holding the bag. That appears to be what happened with light coin. Someone went to a great deal of trouble to fabricate a fake press release that announced retail goliath Walmart would soon accept the cryptocurrency like coin as payment for online transactions. The scammers were able to get this fake press release accepted by Globe Newswire. Globe Newswire distributes press releases and sends them out to various news outlets, but apparently doesn't do a whole lot of quality control or fact checking before they do that. Then the news outlets they get these press releases, and they typically want to get the scoop on major news. A lot of these news outlets will just run a press release verbatim, so there's not even an article written about it. They'll just push publish on the press release and boom, they've got some content up on their sites. So some of these news outlets ran with that story without actually checking with Walmart first to verify that it was in fact true. Well, that initial surge of information ended up pushing the value of l coin. It jumped from around a hundred seventy five dollars per coin, two more than or right around two or and twenty dollars per coin, so pretty significant increase in the cryptocurrency's value. But then a Walmart spokesperson said the whole thing was a hoax, and the value came back down to the amount it was around the time that the hoax was first you know, unveiled. Presumably this was all a pump and dump scheme that worked like Gangbusters for at least a short while. Such schemes typically have a pretty short shelf life, but if you're in the know, you can make a whole lot of money. Of course, you are engaging in some seriously shady practices, and this is the kind of stuff that turns the heat up on all cryptocurrencies as regulatory agencies start to look into them more closely. Well, from Walmart to Walgreens, let's keep the bad news train going. So, security experts criticize Walgreens for a lapse in data security. At the heart of the matter is personal data related to people who registered with Walgreens in order to get a COVID nineteen test. So in this process, you would register with Walgreens, you would create essentially an account, and you would get a unique thirty two digit I D number to associate with your account. Then a back end system on Walgreens you know network would automatically create a patient page, a web page specifically for you, with all of your personal information included on that web page, and the thirty two digit i D that you received would be part of the u r L for this specific web page. So as long as you have a link to that u r L, you can visit the page. And there was no authentication process. There was no like password or anything you needed to use before you saw it, You just needed the link. Well, that means someone could potentially create a means to test out various thirty two digit ideas just like generating them, you know, randomly or in sequence in a brute force attack, and then look to see which ones lead to valid u r l s and use that to scrape some pretty valuable personal information off the website. So you could, you know, essentially make wild guesses and try and find people's personal information. Now, thirty two digits is a big number, so the odds of you actually getting hits are pretty remote, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. But in addition, just having access to someone's browsing history would give you the link to their personal u r L and thus all their personal information. Because again there was no protection on that. Recode published an article about this titled how Walgreen's sloppy COVID nineteen test registration system exposed patient data. According to that piece, re Code alerted Walgreens of this problem. They also said that other security researchers had done the same, and then Recode gave the company some time to address the issue. When that didn't happen, they went ahead and published the article. So there you go. You know, there are certain things that we all know to be true, and one of those is that the rules most of us have to follow don't necessarily apply to everyone, particularly people who have a lot of money and or status. And that's true on Facebook at least. The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook has a system in place that essentially says people in this group are above the law. The system apparently includes around five point eight million Facebook users, and it includes people that Facebook deems as being influential, or newsworthy, or just a pr risk. In other words, if Facebook were to hold these people accountable, those people would make such a stink about it and would be able to get such publicity around it that it would create an enormous headache for Facebook. So I guess it's best to just let them do whatever they want and not be subject to the rules. So when users get added to this list, then moderators will find it more difficult to take any kind of action against those accounts. So let's say that I got added to this list. I'm sure I'm not on it. I'm not nearly important enough. But let's say I was added to this list, and then I started posting stuff that was explicitly against Facebook policies, and someone rightfully flags my post and gets the attention of a moderator. Well, the moderator might find that their normal options, which might include everything from sequestering a post so that fewer people see it, or just blocking the post entirely, or deleting it, maybe even deactivating my account temporarily or permanently, they might find that those are not valid options. Uh andy, that they can actually choose it. That could be what happens in the case of someone in this list getting flagged. Now, not everyone inside Facebook is really a big fan of this particular system, which, according to the article, is called x check, And it does sound a little bit like it was taken out of animal Farm, in which we learned that all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. I've got a few more stories, including a couple more Facebook pieces, but before we get to that, let's take another quick break. We're back and uh, I lied. I only have one other Facebook piece, but here it is. So Also in Facebook News, the New York Times investigated how Facebook was sharing data relating to misinformation campaigns on the platform. So Facebook has been working with various researchers on this matter, and as part of that, Facebook has been giving researchers access to data about misinformation campaigns and how they affect people, like how do people interact with misinformation campaigns? How many people you know like it or share it or comment on it and such, and how does that affect the spread of misinformation? However, the New York Times discovered that Facebook was omitting half of all the user activity of Facebook in the United States in the data they shared, like fifty percent of the data that needed to go to researchers was just not there. And the belief was that Facebook was sharing all that data. So that meant researchers were working under the assumption that they had the big picture, the full picture when in fact, they only had half of it. Now, in the world of research, that's a pretty big problem because it means that any conclusions you have drawn are based off of incomplete data sets, and that those conclusions could be very much faulty. Uh. It appears as though this was an innocent oversight, at least that's the implication I get from reading about it, that this was not a deliberate attempt to create misinformation about misinformation. But you know, I can't say that for sure. It could be that this was at least partly deliberate the whole time. I don't think it was, but I can't I don't have evidence saying one versus the other. But when you do couple this problem with the issue that Facebook recently banned some security researcher accounts, you know, just a few months ago, and was saying that those accounts were effectively scraping data from Facebook and that's against the platforms policies. So as a result, the researchers found their accounts suspended. This all makes it seem as that the company is throwing roadblocks in the way of researchers who are looking into the platform's involvement with misinformation campaigns. Whether that's intentional or not, that isn't great. Uh, It at least seems like Facebook is protecting It's maybe not consciously, but that effectively that's what's happening. And I would say that the the stories point to a need for Facebook to get more proactive in making sure that people have access to the information they need in order to really get to the bottom of this particular subject matter. Now, let's head on over to Pinterest. So Christina Martinez, a woman who claims to essentially be a co founder of the popular site pinterest, is suing co founders Ben Silberman and Paul Schiarra for allegedly stealing ideas and engaging in unfair business practices, as well as a breach of implied contract. Now, Martinez was never an employee of pinterest, you know, she was never officially associated with the company. However, in the lawsuit, she says that she and the co founders had this implied agreement that she would be compensated for her ideas when they were first thinking about creating pinterest, and according to the lawsuit, Martinez consulted with the co founders and gave guidance towards the design and marketing of the site, including the idea of organizing the site into boards as a means of conceptualizing how pinterest is structured. They are essentially like virtual corkboards upon which people can pin stuff related to whatever the board's focuses, often with a heavy emphasis on things like interior design, something that Martinez has worked extensively in, and she says that the co founders had verbally indicated that they would compensate her for her contributions, but that that never happened, and after the company went public in twenty nineteen and Martinez still had not received any compensation, she says she realized those were empty promises and they were never going to follow through on it. Now, the company states it is going to fight the lawsuit and that the charges are without merit. And in semi related news, pinterest has been in some pretty hot water for the last year or so as women in the company have raised issues relating to pay disparities within Pinterest, pointing out that pinterest targets a largely female user base and yet apparently practices unfair compensation policies that show a gap between male and female employees. We will put a pen in this story for now, but we will come back to it as more develops. New York is the latest state to legislate a ban on the sale of all gas powered vehicles beginning in so all new vehicles have to be zero emissions vehicles. Nothing else will legally be allowed to be sold. Nothing new. That is, people will still be allowed to sell their used vehicles that run on internal combustion engines. It's not like if you've got, you know, a pre internal combustion car that you know, you're just stuck with it until it falls apart. However, if you want to sell new vehicles in the state of New York, they have to be zero emissions. This puts a lot of pressure on the various car companies out there to really get their their electric vehicle and zero emission vehicle strategies in gear, so to speak. That that pun was semi intentional. Um New York is not the first state to do this. California has done it already. There are other states that have similar bands in place. There are other places in the world that are talking about this as well. So there's a general move toward this uh forcing companies to migrate away from internal combustion and fossil fuel powered vehicles to move toward vehicles that are electric. And again I've said this many times. Moving to electric on its own is great. However, it does require that you look at the big picture and see where the electric is coming from. If it's coming from like a renewable source, a hydro electric sources, where you know you've got a dawn that's just generating electricity through turbines, that's great, that's not creating carbon emissions. But if you're getting your electricity from, say a coal powered power plant, then while your car is not directly generating carbon emissions, the charging of your car is contributing to carbon emissions. So we always have to remember to keep looking outward. There are ripples in these kind of strategies, and we have to keep looking outward to make sure that we're addressing each piece of that bigger picture, or else we're really just shifting problems from one part to another. And now for a final couple of weird news items. One is that a company called Situs Studio X. I think I'm saying that correctly. It's s I d U S. Anyway, this company has generated an AI created influencer called z r o z Y, and the whole purpose of Rosie, who appears to be a young woman, is to serve as an influencer and brand ambassador for you know, whichever companies decided to use Rosie's services. Rosie will be forever presumably because Forever twenty one was already taken, and will post to various social platforms as part of marketing campaigns. So I guess you could argue the only thing separating Rosie from some other influencers out there is that Rosie isn't quote unquote real, but rather a computer generated entity. But heck, some influencers appear to be nothing more than a persona that's crafted to market and sell stuff. So you can say, well, what's the difference If an influencer is just doing the same thing as this computer generated model, then you know, to the outward facing audience, like to the audience, it's the same. But according to said Studio X, the really big difference is that brands will never have to worry about Rosie going off script. Rosie is not going to engage in some sort of online feud with other influencers. Rosie won't get pulled into a scandal. Rosie is not going to post inflammatory statements about disadvantaged or vulnerable groups. We've seen tons of stories over the last few years of various folks who have become really influential online and how they've sometimes engaged in behavior was at best problematic. Rosie will not do that. Now, the question remains, will people follow Rosie? Will they find Rosie to be influential and interesting? Will folks care to follow an artificial person to see what they post? On the sponsor side, the company says that it's already received a hundred offers then is processing them. But we just don't know if a lot of people are going to eagerly follow the fictional exploits of a computer generated person. Then again, there are entire real world concerts that feature c g I characters per forming in front of a crowd. So stranger things have happened. And finally, a company called Colossal wants to use the gene editing technology known as Crisper c r I spr to clone wooly mammoths, and to do it by cloning those kind of being a little generous. Rather, they really want to take genetic information from wooly mammoth remains and then use that genetic information to edit the gene sequences of elephants to introduce genetic sequences that will allow elephants to take on certain genetic aspects of wooly mammoths, like the ability to adapt to extreme cold weather environments. So this isn't so much a Jurassic Park situation as it is an Island of Dr Moreau situation, except as far as I know, Colossal is not planning on making elephants more human like in the process. The company does say that it's dream goal is the restoration of the wooly mammoth, though I would argue that really this is more of a soft reboot of wooly mammoths as opposed to restoration. According to Ben Lamb, the chief executive of the company, the real purpose for Colossal is to serve in the field of genetic preservation that creating these types of creatures, we can then preserve the genetic info and the populations of various endangered and threatened species. It gives species and evolutionary speed boost to allow them to potentially roam new regions when their traditional homes are under threat due to like human encroachment or climate change, that kind of thing. Lamb argues that the company will protect bio diversity this way and bring more attention to the crisis of biodiversity collapse, which is a real thing for multiple species, you know, not just animals but also plants, Like this is a big crisis. However, there are other people there who are arguing that the money being spent to do this could be better spent toward protecting existing species rather than trying to get a simulacrum of an extinct species up and about. Again, I don't know where I come down on this. I kind of would rather see us protect the stuff that's already out there and perhaps build out you know, kind of genetic repositories so that we do have the capability of potentially helping species that are on the verge of extinction make a recovery. Uh, it's a little it's a little squeaky to me simply because I don't, you know, we can't really understand what the consequences will be of trying to bring an extinct species back, like if we did it and then that species were to die out again because we did a bad job of it. I would say that the whole attempt was rather unethical in that case, right, Like it's tricky. I get the motivation. I just worry about the execution. Anyway. That's it for the news for Tuesday, September one. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me. The best way to do that is over on Twitter. The handle we use for the show is tech Stuff HSW. Look forward to hearing from you, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and I love all things tech, and it is time for the tech news for Tuesday, September twenty one. First up today is when Apple holds its iPhone event. Now, as I record this, that event has not yet happened. It is scheduled to happen at one pm Eastern, and I'm recording this approximately ten am Eastern, so it's quite possible that it has already happened by the time you listen to this podcast. And in that case, if you could do me a solid and send me an email through some sort of subspace time warp to let me know what's going to be talked about, I would really appreciate it. And just check email. There's nothing there. You have all failed me. But the rumor is that the new iPhone is not going to look that much different from the previous generation, and that it will probably have a relatively modest set of upgrades. Now still undoubtedly going to be more powerful and have more features than earlier iPhones, but the general expectation is that it won't be a guard ganguin leap forward or departure. Other rumors suggest that we're gonna see an updated Apple Watch with perhaps a bigger screen and maybe some updates to the air Pod earbuds. Some real optimists out there are hoping that Apple will finally talk about its VR and a our products and development. Now, maybe that will happen. It would be one heck of a of a one more thing. But I suspect we are not going to get that at this event. I would love to be proven wrong. However, speaking of Apple, late last week, a federal judge granted an injunction against Apple on alf of Epic Games. So, for those of you not familiar with this story, here's the gist of it. Epic Games makes a game called Fortnite, and one way that Fortnite makes money is through in game purchases. Players spend real world money to get in game currency, which they can then use to purchase all sorts of stuff inside the game, like you know, character skins and emotes and that kind of thing. Both Apple and Google have a policy that any app on their platform that has in app purchases is supposed to use the official app store transaction system that gives Apple or Google a cut, and it's typically around the mark. Epic cheekily encouraged players on iOS and Android devices to use a workaround to purchase currency in game directly from Epic bypassing those app transaction systems, and it would give Epic a share of those trans actions, cutting out you know, Apple and Google in the process. Apple and Epic have since been in a series of fights, both legal and public relations fights since that time. This recent injunction would allow developers to use those outside payment solutions for iOS apps. Now, that's obviously a big hit to Apple's revenue stream, although, as I've mentioned on this show before, Apple does not get so granular as to break out how much money the app store brings into the company. It gets lumped in with a bunch of other stuff. But that move in turn prompted a bit of a sell off of Apple stock, which dropped three point three and value. Now, that's less than five percent. It doesn't sound like very much, right, but we're talking about a company that's worth more than two trillion dollars, So that meant Apple lost about eighty five billion dollars in value due to that slip in stock price, and that blows my mind, like billion dollars is an unimaginable amount of money all by itself, let alone the fact that Apple is worth more than two trillion. Anyway, the battles will likely not end here, although I have been seeing more of a tendency for courts to push against companies like Google and Apple with the argument that the in app transaction policies are anti competitive. If you've been listening to my news episodes, you've also heard me talk about the n s O Group and Israeli company that makes iOS malware designed to infect the devices of highly targeted individuals through a zero click message vector I message vector. Now that means that the n s A Group sells this product to various government agencies, at least those that don't have an adversarial relationship with Israel, because so group has to do this under Israel's you know, permission, and those agencies can then send out an attack message via I message to a specific target. Then if the tar get does so much as open that message, it's game over. There's no need to convince them to open a file or click on a link. A flaw and Apple security allowed for that kind of attack. The Citizen Lab out of the University of Toronto has been keeping tabs on these types of attacks and managed to isolate the exploit in the malware to understand how this really works. The lad passed this information onto Apple, and Apple subsequently patched the vulnerability and pushed out the iOS fourteen point eight and iPad OS fourteen point eight updates in order to address this weakness. Now, generally speaking, most iOS users should be fine because these attacks really are targeted attacks. So unless there's a government that's out there that has an AX to grind with you, you're probably okay. But for diplomats, politicians, movement leaders like union leaders and and UH activist leaders journalist for them, it's a different story. It'll be interesting to see if Apple's update renders the NSO group's main product less valuable or if the hackers that the company are even more steps ahead and have you know, contingencies in place in case Apple did address this particular vulnerability. And in Apple adjacent news, Steve Wozniak, the co founder of Apple, who hasn't been part of the company for decades, is launching figuratively and hopefully one day literally a private space company called Privateer. We do not know much about it yet, though by the end of today that might change because he plans to announce further details at the AMOS that's a MS tech conference, and that is going on this week in Hawaii. The general rumor is that Privateer will focus on the problem of space junk. That's stuff that's whizzing around in orbit at super fast speeds. Usually it's stuff from you know, man made satellites and things that or rockets, launch vehicles, that kind of thing that have broken apart, and then service of potential obstacle in space. You know, when it's moving that fast, it can be catastrophic if that collides with something, and it can threaten stuff like satellites, space stations, and other spacecraft. Now, considering that lots of companies are looking to launch thousands of satellites up into orbit in the near future, it's probably a pretty decent motivation to get a company like this going. But I don't know enough details to give an opinion about whether or not the approach makes sense. However, I will allow that Wosniak is orders of magnitude smarter than I am. We'll just have to, you know, make a call once we get more details about this. Now, let us consider Google and how South Korea has hit Google with a fine of nearly a hundred seventy nine million dollars for what the government says are anti competitive practices. According to the Korea Fair Trade Commission, Google has used its dominant market position to pressure certain handset companies to prevent them from allowing anything other than the official Google Android operating system to work on their devices. So at the heart of the matter is that some companies would make Android derivatives, you know, operating systems for handsets that had Android as the foundation, but they had been tweaked so much as you effectively create a new operating system, you create a fork. It's kind of like the timeline stuff in the m c U if you watched Loki uh. And these forks can have proprietary features. They could even have, you know, different user interface approaches and could be different enough from vanilla Android to potentially cause issues. Now, according to the Fair Trade Commission, Google was making companies sign agreement saying they would knock that off and they would just go with pure Android, or else they would lose access to early builds of Android and such, or they might see their own app get buried in the Google App Store. Now, on the one hand, I definitely see how Google's approach can be anti competitive. That's not cool. On the other hand, as a consumer, I really hate having a ton of confusion in the market. I mean, years ago, I made sure that I would just buy Google flagship phones so that way I could be I could be certain that I was having a pure form of the Android operating system without all the stuff I saw as being superfluous from various handset manufacturers and telecommunications providers. Still, I feel like that choice should be left to the individual consumer, and if companies want to muddy the waters, then they can. I don't think they should, but they should be able to. I don't think it's super cool for Google to just muscle in and say, hey, don't do that or else. Amazon continues to build out its enormous database of biometric data with the Amazon One system. This is Amazon's palm scanning technology, which uses a scanner to look for unique details in a palm, including the arrangement and pattern of veins under your skin. This is all as a way to authenticate a person's identity. Amazon has been using the system in some of its physical storefronts, including a few Whole Foods locations. So the way it works as you establish an account and you scan your palm as part of that, and it associates your palm scan with your account. Then you can use your palm scan to act as a way to authorize payments. For example, so in one of these stores, you might be able to just walk in, pick up a product, you walk to a scanner, you hold your palm over the scanner, and boom, you've bought that whatever it is. Well, now Amazon has expanded this technology beyond just those you know, owned and operated storefronts and has offered it as a way to access the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. Presumably you would create a similar account with the Amphitheater and as a part of that you would scan your palm. Then when you buy a ticket to an event, you could have that ticket associated with your identity. Then you just show up at the Amphitheater, you scan your palm, validates your ticket, and you're in your you can go into the the event. Now that could be kind of cool and that it could lead to stuff like a massive decrease in scalping, and I'm all for that. I love the idea of systems that allow people who really want to go to something get the chance to do it, rather than you know, some enterprising folks with a ton of money just buying up all the tickets and then selling those tickets for obscene markups. But then there are other things to think about. One of those is that we could tie tickets to specific mobile devices like our phones. We don't have to make it tied to you know, a palm print or other biometric data, and it's not really any less convenient because most of us never go anywhere without our phones. For another thing, you could argue that the whole scheme is really geared toward giving Amazon access to even more personal data, which could be used in ways that we don't anticipate in the future, and that we would essentially be signing that stuff over to a company for the sake of some convenience without really understanding or appreciating what might be done with that data in the future. That's usually not the best idea for the individual consumer. We have more news to cover, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break, We're back and in news that hits a little close to home. The company Into It, best known for its tax preparation products, plans to acquire mail Chimp for twelve billion dollars. Mail Chimp is a local Atlanta startup that focuses on marketing primarily through email lists, so companies that want to create, say, email newsletters or marketing campaign can lean on mail Chip to put something together for them and to maintain those email lists and handle the distribution for the moment. Mail Chimp has an office space that's close to our own here in Atlanta, though it will soon relocate to a new office building buildings that are currently under construction and are not too far away from where we are right now. But anyway, the announcement caused some folks to engage in some head scratching, as it wasn't immediately apparent how mail Chump would factor into into its strategy, like how would the two companies meld together In a press release, Into It said together, Into It and mail Chip will work to deliver on the vision of an innovative end to end customer growth platform for small and mid market businesses, allowing them to get their business online market their business, manage customer relationships, benefit from insights and analytics, get paid, access capital, pay employees, optimize cash flow, be organized, and stay compliant with experts at their fingertips. That's the end of that quote. And sure, I guess like I'm sure that there are lots of plans on how these companies are going to integrate. Uh. But yeah, like a lot of other people, this was one of those moves that surprised me and puzzled me a little bit. But we'll just have to wait and see how this all shakes out. Now it's cryptocurrency time, So if you've listened to the show for any length of time, you know that I tend to be a little bit wary of cryptocurrency in general for lots of reasons. There are tons of reasons to be a little skeptical about cryptocurrencies, but one of those reasons is that people sometimes go to great links to inflate a cryptocurrencies value in order to make a ton of money in a very short time before hitting the eject button and leaving everyone else holding the bag. That appears to be what happened with light coin. Someone went to a great deal of trouble to fabricate a fake press release that announced retail goliath Walmart would soon accept the cryptocurrency like coin as payment for online transactions. The scammers were able to get this fake press release accepted by Globe Newswire. Globe Newswire distributes press releases and sends them out to various news outlets, but apparently doesn't do a whole lot of quality control or fact checking before they do that. Then the news outlets they get these press releases, and they typically want to get the scoop on major news. A lot of these news outlets will just run a press release verbatim, so there's not even an article written about it. They'll just push publish on the press release and boom, they've got some content up on their sites. So some of these news outlets ran with that story without actually checking with Walmart first to verify that it was in fact true. Well, that initial surge of information ended up pushing the value of l coin. It jumped from around a hundred seventy five dollars per coin, two more than or right around two or and twenty dollars per coin, so pretty significant increase in the cryptocurrency's value. But then a Walmart spokesperson said the whole thing was a hoax, and the value came back down to the amount it was around the time that the hoax was first you know, unveiled. Presumably this was all a pump and dump scheme that worked like Gangbusters for at least a short while. Such schemes typically have a pretty short shelf life, but if you're in the know, you can make a whole lot of money. Of course, you are engaging in some seriously shady practices, and this is the kind of stuff that turns the heat up on all cryptocurrencies as regulatory agencies start to look into them more closely. Well, from Walmart to Walgreens, let's keep the bad news train going. So, security experts criticize Walgreens for a lapse in data security. At the heart of the matter is personal data related to people who registered with Walgreens in order to get a COVID nineteen test. So in this process, you would register with Walgreens, you would create essentially an account, and you would get a unique thirty two digit I D number to associate with your account. Then a back end system on Walgreens you know network would automatically create a patient page, a web page specifically for you, with all of your personal information included on that web page, and the thirty two digit i D that you received would be part of the u r L for this specific web page. So as long as you have a link to that u r L, you can visit the page. And there was no authentication process. There was no like password or anything you needed to use before you saw it, You just needed the link. Well, that means someone could potentially create a means to test out various thirty two digit ideas just like generating them, you know, randomly or in sequence in a brute force attack, and then look to see which ones lead to valid u r l s and use that to scrape some pretty valuable personal information off the website. So you could, you know, essentially make wild guesses and try and find people's personal information. Now, thirty two digits is a big number, so the odds of you actually getting hits are pretty remote, but it's not outside the realm of possibility. But in addition, just having access to someone's browsing history would give you the link to their personal u r L and thus all their personal information. Because again there was no protection on that. Recode published an article about this titled how Walgreen's sloppy COVID nineteen test registration system exposed patient data. According to that piece, re Code alerted Walgreens of this problem. They also said that other security researchers had done the same, and then Recode gave the company some time to address the issue. When that didn't happen, they went ahead and published the article. So there you go. You know, there are certain things that we all know to be true, and one of those is that the rules most of us have to follow don't necessarily apply to everyone, particularly people who have a lot of money and or status. And that's true on Facebook at least. The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook has a system in place that essentially says people in this group are above the law. The system apparently includes around five point eight million Facebook users, and it includes people that Facebook deems as being influential, or newsworthy, or just a pr risk. In other words, if Facebook were to hold these people accountable, those people would make such a stink about it and would be able to get such publicity around it that it would create an enormous headache for Facebook. So I guess it's best to just let them do whatever they want and not be subject to the rules. So when users get added to this list, then moderators will find it more difficult to take any kind of action against those accounts. So let's say that I got added to this list. I'm sure I'm not on it. I'm not nearly important enough. But let's say I was added to this list, and then I started posting stuff that was explicitly against Facebook policies, and someone rightfully flags my post and gets the attention of a moderator. Well, the moderator might find that their normal options, which might include everything from sequestering a post so that fewer people see it, or just blocking the post entirely, or deleting it, maybe even deactivating my account temporarily or permanently, they might find that those are not valid options. Uh andy, that they can actually choose it. That could be what happens in the case of someone in this list getting flagged. Now, not everyone inside Facebook is really a big fan of this particular system, which, according to the article, is called x check, And it does sound a little bit like it was taken out of animal Farm, in which we learned that all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. I've got a few more stories, including a couple more Facebook pieces, but before we get to that, let's take another quick break. We're back and uh, I lied. I only have one other Facebook piece, but here it is. So Also in Facebook News, the New York Times investigated how Facebook was sharing data relating to misinformation campaigns on the platform. So Facebook has been working with various researchers on this matter, and as part of that, Facebook has been giving researchers access to data about misinformation campaigns and how they affect people, like how do people interact with misinformation campaigns? How many people you know like it or share it or comment on it and such, and how does that affect the spread of misinformation? However, the New York Times discovered that Facebook was omitting half of all the user activity of Facebook in the United States in the data they shared, like fifty percent of the data that needed to go to researchers was just not there. And the belief was that Facebook was sharing all that data. So that meant researchers were working under the assumption that they had the big picture, the full picture when in fact, they only had half of it. Now, in the world of research, that's a pretty big problem because it means that any conclusions you have drawn are based off of incomplete data sets, and that those conclusions could be very much faulty. Uh. It appears as though this was an innocent oversight, at least that's the implication I get from reading about it, that this was not a deliberate attempt to create misinformation about misinformation. But you know, I can't say that for sure. It could be that this was at least partly deliberate the whole time. I don't think it was, but I can't I don't have evidence saying one versus the other. But when you do couple this problem with the issue that Facebook recently banned some security researcher accounts, you know, just a few months ago, and was saying that those accounts were effectively scraping data from Facebook and that's against the platforms policies. So as a result, the researchers found their accounts suspended. This all makes it seem as that the company is throwing roadblocks in the way of researchers who are looking into the platform's involvement with misinformation campaigns. Whether that's intentional or not, that isn't great. Uh, It at least seems like Facebook is protecting It's maybe not consciously, but that effectively that's what's happening. And I would say that the the stories point to a need for Facebook to get more proactive in making sure that people have access to the information they need in order to really get to the bottom of this particular subject matter. Now, let's head on over to Pinterest. So Christina Martinez, a woman who claims to essentially be a co founder of the popular site pinterest, is suing co founders Ben Silberman and Paul Schiarra for allegedly stealing ideas and engaging in unfair business practices, as well as a breach of implied contract. Now, Martinez was never an employee of pinterest, you know, she was never officially associated with the company. However, in the lawsuit, she says that she and the co founders had this implied agreement that she would be compensated for her ideas when they were first thinking about creating pinterest, and according to the lawsuit, Martinez consulted with the co founders and gave guidance towards the design and marketing of the site, including the idea of organizing the site into boards as a means of conceptualizing how pinterest is structured. They are essentially like virtual corkboards upon which people can pin stuff related to whatever the board's focuses, often with a heavy emphasis on things like interior design, something that Martinez has worked extensively in, and she says that the co founders had verbally indicated that they would compensate her for her contributions, but that that never happened, and after the company went public in twenty nineteen and Martinez still had not received any compensation, she says she realized those were empty promises and they were never going to follow through on it. Now, the company states it is going to fight the lawsuit and that the charges are without merit. And in semi related news, pinterest has been in some pretty hot water for the last year or so as women in the company have raised issues relating to pay disparities within Pinterest, pointing out that pinterest targets a largely female user base and yet apparently practices unfair compensation policies that show a gap between male and female employees. We will put a pen in this story for now, but we will come back to it as more develops. New York is the latest state to legislate a ban on the sale of all gas powered vehicles beginning in so all new vehicles have to be zero emissions vehicles. Nothing else will legally be allowed to be sold. Nothing new. That is, people will still be allowed to sell their used vehicles that run on internal combustion engines. It's not like if you've got, you know, a pre internal combustion car that you know, you're just stuck with it until it falls apart. However, if you want to sell new vehicles in the state of New York, they have to be zero emissions. This puts a lot of pressure on the various car companies out there to really get their their electric vehicle and zero emission vehicle strategies in gear, so to speak. That that pun was semi intentional. Um New York is not the first state to do this. California has done it already. There are other states that have similar bands in place. There are other places in the world that are talking about this as well. So there's a general move toward this uh forcing companies to migrate away from internal combustion and fossil fuel powered vehicles to move toward vehicles that are electric. And again I've said this many times. Moving to electric on its own is great. However, it does require that you look at the big picture and see where the electric is coming from. If it's coming from like a renewable source, a hydro electric sources, where you know you've got a dawn that's just generating electricity through turbines, that's great, that's not creating carbon emissions. But if you're getting your electricity from, say a coal powered power plant, then while your car is not directly generating carbon emissions, the charging of your car is contributing to carbon emissions. So we always have to remember to keep looking outward. There are ripples in these kind of strategies, and we have to keep looking outward to make sure that we're addressing each piece of that bigger picture, or else we're really just shifting problems from one part to another. And now for a final couple of weird news items. One is that a company called Situs Studio X. I think I'm saying that correctly. It's s I d U S. Anyway, this company has generated an AI created influencer called z r o z Y, and the whole purpose of Rosie, who appears to be a young woman, is to serve as an influencer and brand ambassador for you know, whichever companies decided to use Rosie's services. Rosie will be forever presumably because Forever twenty one was already taken, and will post to various social platforms as part of marketing campaigns. So I guess you could argue the only thing separating Rosie from some other influencers out there is that Rosie isn't quote unquote real, but rather a computer generated entity. But heck, some influencers appear to be nothing more than a persona that's crafted to market and sell stuff. So you can say, well, what's the difference If an influencer is just doing the same thing as this computer generated model, then you know, to the outward facing audience, like to the audience, it's the same. But according to said Studio X, the really big difference is that brands will never have to worry about Rosie going off script. Rosie is not going to engage in some sort of online feud with other influencers. Rosie won't get pulled into a scandal. Rosie is not going to post inflammatory statements about disadvantaged or vulnerable groups. We've seen tons of stories over the last few years of various folks who have become really influential online and how they've sometimes engaged in behavior was at best problematic. Rosie will not do that. Now, the question remains, will people follow Rosie? Will they find Rosie to be influential and interesting? Will folks care to follow an artificial person to see what they post? On the sponsor side, the company says that it's already received a hundred offers then is processing them. But we just don't know if a lot of people are going to eagerly follow the fictional exploits of a computer generated person. Then again, there are entire real world concerts that feature c g I characters per forming in front of a crowd. So stranger things have happened. And finally, a company called Colossal wants to use the gene editing technology known as Crisper c r I spr to clone wooly mammoths, and to do it by cloning those kind of being a little generous. Rather, they really want to take genetic information from wooly mammoth remains and then use that genetic information to edit the gene sequences of elephants to introduce genetic sequences that will allow elephants to take on certain genetic aspects of wooly mammoths, like the ability to adapt to extreme cold weather environments. So this isn't so much a Jurassic Park situation as it is an Island of Dr Moreau situation, except as far as I know, Colossal is not planning on making elephants more human like in the process. The company does say that it's dream goal is the restoration of the wooly mammoth, though I would argue that really this is more of a soft reboot of wooly mammoths as opposed to restoration. According to Ben Lamb, the chief executive of the company, the real purpose for Colossal is to serve in the field of genetic preservation that creating these types of creatures, we can then preserve the genetic info and the populations of various endangered and threatened species. It gives species and evolutionary speed boost to allow them to potentially roam new regions when their traditional homes are under threat due to like human encroachment or climate change, that kind of thing. Lamb argues that the company will protect bio diversity this way and bring more attention to the crisis of biodiversity collapse, which is a real thing for multiple species, you know, not just animals but also plants, Like this is a big crisis. However, there are other people there who are arguing that the money being spent to do this could be better spent toward protecting existing species rather than trying to get a simulacrum of an extinct species up and about. Again, I don't know where I come down on this. I kind of would rather see us protect the stuff that's already out there and perhaps build out you know, kind of genetic repositories so that we do have the capability of potentially helping species that are on the verge of extinction make a recovery. Uh, it's a little it's a little squeaky to me simply because I don't, you know, we can't really understand what the consequences will be of trying to bring an extinct species back, like if we did it and then that species were to die out again because we did a bad job of it. I would say that the whole attempt was rather unethical in that case, right, Like it's tricky. I get the motivation. I just worry about the execution. Anyway. That's it for the news for Tuesday, September one. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me. The best way to do that is over on Twitter. The handle we use for the show is tech Stuff HSW. Look forward to hearing from you, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.