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 how the tech are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday, March twenty four, twenty twenty two. Let's get to it. Following up on a story I covered on Tuesday, cybersecurity researchers believe they have identified the source of the hacking attacks on Octa and other companies. Hacking group called LAPSUS, which is spelled l A P S U S followed by a dollar sign, had claimed responsibility for those attacks, stating that the group's goal was really nothing more than just financial gain, as it infiltrated not just Octa and as a reminder, that's a company that provides authentication services to other companies, but also on other big names like Microsoft and The security researchers believe a sixteen year old boy in England is perhaps the ringleader of LAPSUS. Another person identified by the group is a teenager in Brazil, and helping out the researchers work were some rival hackers who effectively doxed this teenager and shared information about him and his family online. So it's a pretty brutal world out there in the the hacker community. As to what will happen next, that is likely a matter for the authorities. Meanwhile, I suspect researchers will seek out more evidence that ties this particular teenager and his accomplices to those attacks. And it sounds to me like the group was extremely skilled and they were very very fast at what they did, but perhaps they were not the best at, you know, avoiding consequences for their actions. It's possible that one of the reasons they commit of these attacks was for notoriety within the hacker community. I mean, there is kind of that part of the community aspect as well. Uh, And it might turn out that the price of that notoriety is pretty darn steep once the authorities get involved. But we'll have to see how this unfolds. Russia continues to clamp down on information as military forces continued to push into Ukraine. The latest service to join the list of suspended platforms is Google News. Russia shut off access to Google News in Russia and was saying that Google News was spreading quote unreliable information end quote. Now keep in mind that Russia continues to contextualize the Ukrainian invasion as a special military operation, which is, you know, certainly whitewashing what is going on. Meanwhile, thousands of people have died, including perhaps more than ten thousand Russian soldiers according to some estimations. I've seen estimations as high as fifteen thousand Russian soldiers, and I imagine that's going to be difficult for Russian officials to explain under the label special military operation. It's not like they can just cover up fifteen thousand deaths, you know, across the entire nation. I'm actually surprised that Russia has hadn't already shut down Google News. I'm surprised it took as long as it did because the control of information is one of the key tools in the Russian government's toolbox, as is often the case with authoritarian regimes. SpaceX has increased the cost of being a starlink customer. Now, if you're not familiar with that service, Starlink is a satellite based Internet service provider or i s p. SO Customers purchase a satellite antenna, a dish in other words, that can connect to and track small satellites that are in low Earth orbit. The plan is to launch tens of thousands of satellites to kind of provide this blanket coverage so that no matter what time of day it is, you've got a satellite that's in view. So the antenna will actually switch from one satellite to another as the satellites move out of sight because of course they're orbiting the Earth faster than the Earth rotates, so they're kind of zooming overhead. The dish has to switch from one to another as it passes across the horizon really out of sight in general, because a tree line will do it too. And UM Startling is in a limited rollout right now. When it first premiered, the cost to purchase the starter kit was four dollars and the monthly service fee to get the internet service was nine bucks a month. But now those prices have gone up to five hundred dollars for the starter kit and one dred ten dollars per month for service. For those customers who have already put down a deposit but have not yet received a kit, now they're gonna have to pay a little bit more, up to nine dollars total before they will get their satellite antenna. Now that's probably gonna frustrate folks who had placed in order, put down a deposit and we're waiting for their their kit and felt that they had already paid the asking price. However, I guess one saving grace is that they're still kind of getting a fifty dollar discount off a brand new Starlink package if you if you hadn't already put down a deposit. And apparently this is not going to impact customers who really dug deep in their pockets to purchase Starlink Premium, which I didn't even realize was a thing until today. Anyway. So one of the drawbacks of satellite internet is that you're typically capped at a fairly conservative bandwidth, and there's also an issue with latency because well, you know, even though radio signals travel at the speed of light, there's still a good bit of distance between an earthbound antenna that's on your property and a satellite that's in orbit overhead. So the basic service for Starlink advertises download speeds of fifty to two fifty megabits for second. That's actually really darn impressive for satellite um and it has a latency of between twenty to forty milliseconds. At least that's the advertised latency. The premium service well has the same latency because you know, you can't actually make light go any faster than it already goes, so there's no real way to cut down on that. But the bandwidth is advertised as a hundred fifty two up to five hundred megabits per second, which is really impressive. However, to get those speeds, you really got to shell out the big bucks. And I'm talking two thousand five dollars for the kit and then the monthly service fee would be five hundred dollars a month. Yells in, I thought my I s P bill was big. Now, to be fair, I think that the premium services really marketed more toward businesses rather than your average household. I mean, I'm sure there are gonna be some, you know, folks who have lots of cash and happen to have a mansion out in the middle of nowhere where this is going to be their preferred method, But most of us wouldn't probably sign on to the premium service. So you might wonder why did Starlink increase the prices for the basic service and it seems to be that the main culprit here is inflation, which is obviously hitting a lot of stuff right now. Also, SpaceX takes a loss on those antenna it sells. So yeah, five hundred bucks is a lot of money. Uh, six d bucks is a lot of money. But that's that's still less than what it costs SpaceX to build the things. According to the Verge, SpaceX spends about to build a single antenna, and originally when they first started, that was closer to three thousand dollars. So SpaceX has been selling these antenna as a loss leader. They make money in the long run through the monthly service fees. So while this new price is steep, it's still less than half of what it costs SpaceX to actually make the kits. So there's that. The Etisphere Institute, which sounds a bit to me like a sinister organization in the Fallout video game Universe, released a report naming the most ethical companies in various industries, and over in tech we had a couple of really big names make that list, including Microsoft and Apple. Those are names that I found surprising to appear on a list of most ethical companies for reasons, but then I think the Atmosphere Institute is really taking a focused, or if you prefer, narrow view when it comes to what it means to be ethical. Certainly, the commitment to ethical sourcing of materials is critically important around the world. You know, I've talked before about how at various points in the supply chain from the point of raw material all the way to a finished product, there are some dark spots. Spots that can include forced human labor, child labor, human trafficking, and more like really dark stuff. So companies that actually go the extra mile to seek verification that the supply chain they rely upon doesn't in turn rely upon human rights violations is a good thing and it should be acknowledged. Though I would also say that we should probably consider that the bare minimum right. I mean, it seems kind of crass to say congratulations on not violating human rights to bring us this gadget that. I mean, yeah, you shouldn't get an award for not causing human misery. But I digress. I do think that from certain points of view, as ob one would say, Apple and Microsoft and some of the other companies named have taken great strides to make certain their processes are ethical, but I happen to view ethics in a more broad context. Uh. These are also companies that have reputations for stuff like clamping down on employees, whether it's discouraging organization or forcing folks to sign agreements that prevent them from going public or seeking external legal help after they encounter violations of workplace policies, or or they they end up being the target of illegal activities and that kind of thing. Now, maybe I'm looking at this from too wide a perspective, but I think it's actually important for us to keep those shortcomings in mind, because otherwise we invite a dangerous situation where we let ourselves think of these companies as inherently ethical, and then we will overlook other transgressions we I think it's perfectly legitimate to say, yes, here is where they are doing the right thing, and still also say and here is where they need to change. I think we can have room for both of those. Okay, we've got some more news stories to cover, but before we get to those, let's take a quick break. One ongoing story that we've been covering relates to companies like Apple and Google being pressured to allow third party payment systems within apps running on iOS and Android respectively, and now we have word that Google is making an allowance for Spotify. Users will have the option to choose to pay for purchases within Spotify using either Google Pay billing or they can opt for Spotify's own billing method. This is a pretty big deal because we have seen Google and Apple long dependent upon the fact that these companies have had to take a chunk out of every single in app transaction, usually between fifteen and thirty per pop and hand it over to Google or Apple, and because there were no other payment options available, that meant the developers had no choice but to accept that a fairly significant of change per transaction was going to go to these companies. Now we're seeing pushback around the world as various courts and regulatory bodies argue that this practice is inherently anti competitive. Uh. In fact, just on this past Tuesday episode, I talked about how Apple was fined for the ninth week in a row for doing this in the Netherlands with dating apps, and whether this new deal with Spotify will market change that will roll out to other apps on the Android platform. That's too early to say, but at least it is encouraging. So I should also add it's not clear yet if Google is still taking some cut of each transaction. That is a possibility. Again with the Apple story, we heard that one of its concessions to the Dutch regulators was to offer up a third party payment option for dating apps, in which Apple would still take a hefty twenty seven cut. Now, considering that payment processing services always take a cut, I mean that's how they make money. So every transaction the these the processing service that actually processes the transaction, they get a percentage of that. It's the same with credit card companies. Well, with a twenty cut on top of whatever the third party is charging, it would mean that no matter what third party you were going with, chances are that option was going to be more expensive than just sticking in house with Apple. Needless to say, the Dutch regulators rejected this concession and called it out for what it is, that Apple was rigging the game in its own favor. Also, remember Apple was one of those ethical companies we were talking about a minute ago. And other Google related news, the company is preparing to sunset the Google Play Movies and TV store section in May. Alright, so Google Play has been Google's kind of all stop shop for online content and apps on Google ecosystems, namely stuff like Android devices and Google Connected television services. So you would go to Google Play to buy all sorts of stuff like e books or games or apps, music, television, and film. But then Google started to migrate some stuff out of Google Play. For example, Google Play Music shut down and shifted to YouTube Music. And it looks like something similar is happening with Google Play TV and movies, where users will be prompted to go to separate apps such as YouTube or Google Tv. And perhaps this is an effort to streamline stuff so that people who are interested in one kind of content but not necessarily other kinds of content can more easily find what they're looking for. And I kind of get that, you know, navigating through Google Play can be a bit clunky. Still, this also feels like another example of Google introducing a feature or a product and then a couple of years later just pulling the plug on it. Instagram has introduced a feature that will let users view in chronological order, which I mean has been long overdue. Also, they can filter their feeds so that they're just looking at you know, uh, entries that are from their favorites, like the the accounts they are most interested in, But in neither case will users be able to set that as their default view of Instagram's feed, So by default, users will still be presented with the jumbled up feed that's arranged not by any kind of timeliness, but by the whims of the feeds algorithm. Now I don't personally use Instagram or Facebook anymore, but back when I did, one of the things I consistently found really infuriating was the lack of ability to just view stuff in reverse chronological order. I wanted to see the most recent stuff posted by my friends and the folks that I followed, and I hated the way content would actually appear in both of those products out of any kind of order. That made sense to me, because I would find myself responding to something that was actually several days old in some cases, and in off often in those cases, it would turn out that whatever it was was now irrelevant, like we had all moved on. I just didn't know about it because the way the feed was sending it to me, I was looking at something that was already out of date. And anyway, for those who still use Instagram. I'm glad that this is now an option if that's something that really would be valuable to you. I think it's still pretty irritating that you can't just set it and forget it. You will have to choose that view of your feed each time you open the app, if that's how you want to see it. I guess we should be thankful for any improvements, even if they're small ones. Also, we should keep in mind that part of the motivation for making this change is that meta Instagram's parent company has been under fire for relying on algorithms that promote certain materials to users in an effort to drive engagement, and that material frequently falls into dangerous categories that can become echo chambers that end up promoting extremist views, or it can end up serving up content that can harm someone's mental health. So you could make a case that the reason Meta slash Instagram did this was really more about trying to take some of that heat off, rather than giving users what they've been asking for for ages. But I guess you don't look a gift horse in the Instagram feed, you just follow it. The United Nations has launched an ambitious project that, if successful, would connect every person to early weather warning systems. And by every person, I mean every person on the planet. According to the u N Secretary General, six of people in Africa lack an early warning weather system. If we look at this from a global perspective, one third of all humanity lacks access to early warning weather systems, and that is sobering, particularly when you consider due to climate change, there is strong evidence to suggest that we're going to see more and more severe weather events across the world on the increase over the following years, and early warning can mean the difference between life and death. As of how this is going to actually progress, that's still being worked out. The u N World Meteorological Organization has the ball now, and we'll need to put together a plan that will achieve this goal within the five year time frame. The w MO is expected to share an action plan at the UN Climate Conference in November. Okay, we've got a couple more stories to go before we get to those. Let's take another quick break al right. So, one other ongoing huge story in tech has been how the world has tried to respond to the ongoing semiconductor shortage, which has happened for numerous reasons, the big one being the pandemic and and Intel has been working on establishing semiconductor fabrication facilities here in the United States, which would help mitigate the necessity to depend upon Taiwan as the main source for semiconductor manufacturing. This is important not just because of the current supply chain issues, but because Taiwan has a let's call it an uneasy political relationship with China. That's being very delicate about things. There's a legitimate concern that one day mainland China forces could attempt to invade Taiwan or at the very least disrupt global supply chains. Now, setting aside the numerous other reasons why a Chinese invasion would be a bad thing, because there are lots of them, we're just going to focus on the semiconductor side for this. That's prompted Intel to invest in building facilities elsewhere, like here in the United States. But doing that is really expensive, and doing that at the cost of profit. It's can sometimes cheese off stakeholders. You know, people who own shares in your company. They expect a return on their investment. That in turn has in a prompted Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger to urge US Congress to grant subsidies to the U S semiconductor industry in order to help offset those costs. So, in other words, Intel is hoping that Congress will allot some taxpayer dollars to help foot the bill for building out Intel facilities here in America, not just Intel, other semiconductor facilities too. And while both the House and Senate in Congress are considering this, and each have their own proposals about this, but they have to work out the differences between the two. That process has been a pretty slow one, and there's been some understandable resistance and concern about using taxpayer money to subsidize a company like Intel. Intel has a market cap of two four point five one billion dollars as of today's recording. Now that that number that represents the total dollar value of Intel's shares, so it's nearly two hundred five billion dollars, So you could argue Intel is worth two hundred five billion dollars. Now, of course, that is not indicative of how much cash Intel has on hand. That's a different thing. That's closer to probably around twenty four billion dollars at least as of last year, and you can see how telling taxpayers. Imagine that you're a politician and you're voting to pass legislation that would subsidize semiconductor facilities in the United States, and then you're asked by your constituents, Hey, um, why did you use my tax dollars to help this two hundred billion dollar company build factories. That's a hard sell, right, Like, that's a hard question to answer, even if there are legitimate reasons for that. Politically, you could see how this would be a very difficult thing to do and end. You know, Intel is a publicly traded company. That means it does have a responsibility to its shareholders. So Intel, you know, can't just spend money that it has and maybe some money it doesn't have, in an effort to build this stuff out. It's not a private company. It can't just shoulder that burden and hope to get out. On the other side, it has shareholders to answer to, So it is more complicated than just saying it's a two billion dollar company, why are we giving it money or why are we giving it enormous tax breaks so it can build out these facilities. Meanwhile, we do have to address the very real problem of the semiconductor shortage. So yes, very complex issue here. Um. I definitely get a little grouchy at the thought of taxpayer money helping out an enormous company like Intel, but I also admit that the issue is far more complicated than that. So I think the subsidy is going to be a tough pill should Congress actually agree upon it and pass it. But it might be that it's a necessity in order to make this come to pass. Without it, we're probably going to get facilities that have less capability than what Intel wants to see. And it may be that whatever facilities we get aren't really a solution to the issues that we are encountering in the industry. So yeah, um, I wish I could say that this was a very simple matter where it's a binary thing, but it, as most things in life, it's actually way more complicated than that. Now here are a couple of other quick news bits to end out this episode. First, Rolls Royce, the aerospace company, not the motor car company, because those are two different entities. Uh. Rolls Royce has broken records with its electric plane. It is named the Spirit of Innovation, which is a cool name for a plane, and as electric plane implies, it has an electric motor, it does not have a combustion engine or jet engine. And it broke a couple of speed records. One was for top speed over three kilometers, which the Spirit of Innovation set at five fifty five point nine kilometers per hour. For those of us in the US, that's about three miles per hour. And it also set a record for fast speed over fifteen kilometers that was five thirty two point one kilometers per hour, or around three per hour. That's pretty darn cool. I mean that's still that's much slower than what you see with like commercial jets, for example, but still really neat that a purely electric flying machine was able to hit those speeds over those distances. Now, of course, right now we're still talking about demonstrating capabilities here, right we're talking about like the proof of concept stage really or maybe one step beyond that. But it's probably gonna be ay before we see those capabilities built into more practical applications. But you know, you gotta crawl before you walk, or I guess you gotta fly before you commercially fly. Perhaps finally, we have a sad story. Stephen Wilhei, who created the g i F file format, recently passed away due to COVID. The format allowed a way to create high resolution graphics and not require huge file sizes. Today we think of g i F files as being animated image files. That was not always the case. It was an alternative to some other image file formats like JPEG. Really really important contribution, especially in the early days of the Internet, where you know, we were relying on things like dial up Internet, so fast transmission speeds. Small files like these were really important things. So in honor of his memory, I am going to pronounce the file format the way he said you were supposed to Jeff, the Jeff file format. I will likely not pronounce this this way ever again, but you know, I definitely respect his contributions to technology in general and the JEFF format in particular. Alright, that wraps up the news for Thursday, March two thousand twenty two. I hope you are all well. If you have any suggestions for topics I should cover on future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. The best way to do that is over on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff H. S W. 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. Eight

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 how the tech are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday, March twenty four, twenty twenty two. Let's get to it. Following up on a story I covered on Tuesday, cybersecurity researchers believe they have identified the source of the hacking attacks on Octa and other companies. Hacking group called LAPSUS, which is spelled l A P S U S followed by a dollar sign, had claimed responsibility for those attacks, stating that the group's goal was really nothing more than just financial gain, as it infiltrated not just Octa and as a reminder, that's a company that provides authentication services to other companies, but also on other big names like Microsoft and The security researchers believe a sixteen year old boy in England is perhaps the ringleader of LAPSUS. Another person identified by the group is a teenager in Brazil, and helping out the researchers work were some rival hackers who effectively doxed this teenager and shared information about him and his family online. So it's a pretty brutal world out there in the the hacker community. As to what will happen next, that is likely a matter for the authorities. Meanwhile, I suspect researchers will seek out more evidence that ties this particular teenager and his accomplices to those attacks. And it sounds to me like the group was extremely skilled and they were very very fast at what they did, but perhaps they were not the best at, you know, avoiding consequences for their actions. It's possible that one of the reasons they commit of these attacks was for notoriety within the hacker community. I mean, there is kind of that part of the community aspect as well. Uh, And it might turn out that the price of that notoriety is pretty darn steep once the authorities get involved. But we'll have to see how this unfolds. Russia continues to clamp down on information as military forces continued to push into Ukraine. The latest service to join the list of suspended platforms is Google News. Russia shut off access to Google News in Russia and was saying that Google News was spreading quote unreliable information end quote. Now keep in mind that Russia continues to contextualize the Ukrainian invasion as a special military operation, which is, you know, certainly whitewashing what is going on. Meanwhile, thousands of people have died, including perhaps more than ten thousand Russian soldiers according to some estimations. I've seen estimations as high as fifteen thousand Russian soldiers, and I imagine that's going to be difficult for Russian officials to explain under the label special military operation. It's not like they can just cover up fifteen thousand deaths, you know, across the entire nation. I'm actually surprised that Russia has hadn't already shut down Google News. I'm surprised it took as long as it did because the control of information is one of the key tools in the Russian government's toolbox, as is often the case with authoritarian regimes. SpaceX has increased the cost of being a starlink customer. Now, if you're not familiar with that service, Starlink is a satellite based Internet service provider or i s p. SO Customers purchase a satellite antenna, a dish in other words, that can connect to and track small satellites that are in low Earth orbit. The plan is to launch tens of thousands of satellites to kind of provide this blanket coverage so that no matter what time of day it is, you've got a satellite that's in view. So the antenna will actually switch from one satellite to another as the satellites move out of sight because of course they're orbiting the Earth faster than the Earth rotates, so they're kind of zooming overhead. The dish has to switch from one to another as it passes across the horizon really out of sight in general, because a tree line will do it too. And UM Startling is in a limited rollout right now. When it first premiered, the cost to purchase the starter kit was four dollars and the monthly service fee to get the internet service was nine bucks a month. But now those prices have gone up to five hundred dollars for the starter kit and one dred ten dollars per month for service. For those customers who have already put down a deposit but have not yet received a kit, now they're gonna have to pay a little bit more, up to nine dollars total before they will get their satellite antenna. Now that's probably gonna frustrate folks who had placed in order, put down a deposit and we're waiting for their their kit and felt that they had already paid the asking price. However, I guess one saving grace is that they're still kind of getting a fifty dollar discount off a brand new Starlink package if you if you hadn't already put down a deposit. And apparently this is not going to impact customers who really dug deep in their pockets to purchase Starlink Premium, which I didn't even realize was a thing until today. Anyway. So one of the drawbacks of satellite internet is that you're typically capped at a fairly conservative bandwidth, and there's also an issue with latency because well, you know, even though radio signals travel at the speed of light, there's still a good bit of distance between an earthbound antenna that's on your property and a satellite that's in orbit overhead. So the basic service for Starlink advertises download speeds of fifty to two fifty megabits for second. That's actually really darn impressive for satellite um and it has a latency of between twenty to forty milliseconds. At least that's the advertised latency. The premium service well has the same latency because you know, you can't actually make light go any faster than it already goes, so there's no real way to cut down on that. But the bandwidth is advertised as a hundred fifty two up to five hundred megabits per second, which is really impressive. However, to get those speeds, you really got to shell out the big bucks. And I'm talking two thousand five dollars for the kit and then the monthly service fee would be five hundred dollars a month. Yells in, I thought my I s P bill was big. Now, to be fair, I think that the premium services really marketed more toward businesses rather than your average household. I mean, I'm sure there are gonna be some, you know, folks who have lots of cash and happen to have a mansion out in the middle of nowhere where this is going to be their preferred method, But most of us wouldn't probably sign on to the premium service. So you might wonder why did Starlink increase the prices for the basic service and it seems to be that the main culprit here is inflation, which is obviously hitting a lot of stuff right now. Also, SpaceX takes a loss on those antenna it sells. So yeah, five hundred bucks is a lot of money. Uh, six d bucks is a lot of money. But that's that's still less than what it costs SpaceX to build the things. According to the Verge, SpaceX spends about to build a single antenna, and originally when they first started, that was closer to three thousand dollars. So SpaceX has been selling these antenna as a loss leader. They make money in the long run through the monthly service fees. So while this new price is steep, it's still less than half of what it costs SpaceX to actually make the kits. So there's that. The Etisphere Institute, which sounds a bit to me like a sinister organization in the Fallout video game Universe, released a report naming the most ethical companies in various industries, and over in tech we had a couple of really big names make that list, including Microsoft and Apple. Those are names that I found surprising to appear on a list of most ethical companies for reasons, but then I think the Atmosphere Institute is really taking a focused, or if you prefer, narrow view when it comes to what it means to be ethical. Certainly, the commitment to ethical sourcing of materials is critically important around the world. You know, I've talked before about how at various points in the supply chain from the point of raw material all the way to a finished product, there are some dark spots. Spots that can include forced human labor, child labor, human trafficking, and more like really dark stuff. So companies that actually go the extra mile to seek verification that the supply chain they rely upon doesn't in turn rely upon human rights violations is a good thing and it should be acknowledged. Though I would also say that we should probably consider that the bare minimum right. I mean, it seems kind of crass to say congratulations on not violating human rights to bring us this gadget that. I mean, yeah, you shouldn't get an award for not causing human misery. But I digress. I do think that from certain points of view, as ob one would say, Apple and Microsoft and some of the other companies named have taken great strides to make certain their processes are ethical, but I happen to view ethics in a more broad context. Uh. These are also companies that have reputations for stuff like clamping down on employees, whether it's discouraging organization or forcing folks to sign agreements that prevent them from going public or seeking external legal help after they encounter violations of workplace policies, or or they they end up being the target of illegal activities and that kind of thing. Now, maybe I'm looking at this from too wide a perspective, but I think it's actually important for us to keep those shortcomings in mind, because otherwise we invite a dangerous situation where we let ourselves think of these companies as inherently ethical, and then we will overlook other transgressions we I think it's perfectly legitimate to say, yes, here is where they are doing the right thing, and still also say and here is where they need to change. I think we can have room for both of those. Okay, we've got some more news stories to cover, but before we get to those, let's take a quick break. One ongoing story that we've been covering relates to companies like Apple and Google being pressured to allow third party payment systems within apps running on iOS and Android respectively, and now we have word that Google is making an allowance for Spotify. Users will have the option to choose to pay for purchases within Spotify using either Google Pay billing or they can opt for Spotify's own billing method. This is a pretty big deal because we have seen Google and Apple long dependent upon the fact that these companies have had to take a chunk out of every single in app transaction, usually between fifteen and thirty per pop and hand it over to Google or Apple, and because there were no other payment options available, that meant the developers had no choice but to accept that a fairly significant of change per transaction was going to go to these companies. Now we're seeing pushback around the world as various courts and regulatory bodies argue that this practice is inherently anti competitive. Uh. In fact, just on this past Tuesday episode, I talked about how Apple was fined for the ninth week in a row for doing this in the Netherlands with dating apps, and whether this new deal with Spotify will market change that will roll out to other apps on the Android platform. That's too early to say, but at least it is encouraging. So I should also add it's not clear yet if Google is still taking some cut of each transaction. That is a possibility. Again with the Apple story, we heard that one of its concessions to the Dutch regulators was to offer up a third party payment option for dating apps, in which Apple would still take a hefty twenty seven cut. Now, considering that payment processing services always take a cut, I mean that's how they make money. So every transaction the these the processing service that actually processes the transaction, they get a percentage of that. It's the same with credit card companies. Well, with a twenty cut on top of whatever the third party is charging, it would mean that no matter what third party you were going with, chances are that option was going to be more expensive than just sticking in house with Apple. Needless to say, the Dutch regulators rejected this concession and called it out for what it is, that Apple was rigging the game in its own favor. Also, remember Apple was one of those ethical companies we were talking about a minute ago. And other Google related news, the company is preparing to sunset the Google Play Movies and TV store section in May. Alright, so Google Play has been Google's kind of all stop shop for online content and apps on Google ecosystems, namely stuff like Android devices and Google Connected television services. So you would go to Google Play to buy all sorts of stuff like e books or games or apps, music, television, and film. But then Google started to migrate some stuff out of Google Play. For example, Google Play Music shut down and shifted to YouTube Music. And it looks like something similar is happening with Google Play TV and movies, where users will be prompted to go to separate apps such as YouTube or Google Tv. And perhaps this is an effort to streamline stuff so that people who are interested in one kind of content but not necessarily other kinds of content can more easily find what they're looking for. And I kind of get that, you know, navigating through Google Play can be a bit clunky. Still, this also feels like another example of Google introducing a feature or a product and then a couple of years later just pulling the plug on it. Instagram has introduced a feature that will let users view in chronological order, which I mean has been long overdue. Also, they can filter their feeds so that they're just looking at you know, uh, entries that are from their favorites, like the the accounts they are most interested in, But in neither case will users be able to set that as their default view of Instagram's feed, So by default, users will still be presented with the jumbled up feed that's arranged not by any kind of timeliness, but by the whims of the feeds algorithm. Now I don't personally use Instagram or Facebook anymore, but back when I did, one of the things I consistently found really infuriating was the lack of ability to just view stuff in reverse chronological order. I wanted to see the most recent stuff posted by my friends and the folks that I followed, and I hated the way content would actually appear in both of those products out of any kind of order. That made sense to me, because I would find myself responding to something that was actually several days old in some cases, and in off often in those cases, it would turn out that whatever it was was now irrelevant, like we had all moved on. I just didn't know about it because the way the feed was sending it to me, I was looking at something that was already out of date. And anyway, for those who still use Instagram. I'm glad that this is now an option if that's something that really would be valuable to you. I think it's still pretty irritating that you can't just set it and forget it. You will have to choose that view of your feed each time you open the app, if that's how you want to see it. I guess we should be thankful for any improvements, even if they're small ones. Also, we should keep in mind that part of the motivation for making this change is that meta Instagram's parent company has been under fire for relying on algorithms that promote certain materials to users in an effort to drive engagement, and that material frequently falls into dangerous categories that can become echo chambers that end up promoting extremist views, or it can end up serving up content that can harm someone's mental health. So you could make a case that the reason Meta slash Instagram did this was really more about trying to take some of that heat off, rather than giving users what they've been asking for for ages. But I guess you don't look a gift horse in the Instagram feed, you just follow it. The United Nations has launched an ambitious project that, if successful, would connect every person to early weather warning systems. And by every person, I mean every person on the planet. According to the u N Secretary General, six of people in Africa lack an early warning weather system. If we look at this from a global perspective, one third of all humanity lacks access to early warning weather systems, and that is sobering, particularly when you consider due to climate change, there is strong evidence to suggest that we're going to see more and more severe weather events across the world on the increase over the following years, and early warning can mean the difference between life and death. As of how this is going to actually progress, that's still being worked out. The u N World Meteorological Organization has the ball now, and we'll need to put together a plan that will achieve this goal within the five year time frame. The w MO is expected to share an action plan at the UN Climate Conference in November. Okay, we've got a couple more stories to go before we get to those. Let's take another quick break al right. So, one other ongoing huge story in tech has been how the world has tried to respond to the ongoing semiconductor shortage, which has happened for numerous reasons, the big one being the pandemic and and Intel has been working on establishing semiconductor fabrication facilities here in the United States, which would help mitigate the necessity to depend upon Taiwan as the main source for semiconductor manufacturing. This is important not just because of the current supply chain issues, but because Taiwan has a let's call it an uneasy political relationship with China. That's being very delicate about things. There's a legitimate concern that one day mainland China forces could attempt to invade Taiwan or at the very least disrupt global supply chains. Now, setting aside the numerous other reasons why a Chinese invasion would be a bad thing, because there are lots of them, we're just going to focus on the semiconductor side for this. That's prompted Intel to invest in building facilities elsewhere, like here in the United States. But doing that is really expensive, and doing that at the cost of profit. It's can sometimes cheese off stakeholders. You know, people who own shares in your company. They expect a return on their investment. That in turn has in a prompted Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger to urge US Congress to grant subsidies to the U S semiconductor industry in order to help offset those costs. So, in other words, Intel is hoping that Congress will allot some taxpayer dollars to help foot the bill for building out Intel facilities here in America, not just Intel, other semiconductor facilities too. And while both the House and Senate in Congress are considering this, and each have their own proposals about this, but they have to work out the differences between the two. That process has been a pretty slow one, and there's been some understandable resistance and concern about using taxpayer money to subsidize a company like Intel. Intel has a market cap of two four point five one billion dollars as of today's recording. Now that that number that represents the total dollar value of Intel's shares, so it's nearly two hundred five billion dollars, So you could argue Intel is worth two hundred five billion dollars. Now, of course, that is not indicative of how much cash Intel has on hand. That's a different thing. That's closer to probably around twenty four billion dollars at least as of last year, and you can see how telling taxpayers. Imagine that you're a politician and you're voting to pass legislation that would subsidize semiconductor facilities in the United States, and then you're asked by your constituents, Hey, um, why did you use my tax dollars to help this two hundred billion dollar company build factories. That's a hard sell, right, Like, that's a hard question to answer, even if there are legitimate reasons for that. Politically, you could see how this would be a very difficult thing to do and end. You know, Intel is a publicly traded company. That means it does have a responsibility to its shareholders. So Intel, you know, can't just spend money that it has and maybe some money it doesn't have, in an effort to build this stuff out. It's not a private company. It can't just shoulder that burden and hope to get out. On the other side, it has shareholders to answer to, So it is more complicated than just saying it's a two billion dollar company, why are we giving it money or why are we giving it enormous tax breaks so it can build out these facilities. Meanwhile, we do have to address the very real problem of the semiconductor shortage. So yes, very complex issue here. Um. I definitely get a little grouchy at the thought of taxpayer money helping out an enormous company like Intel, but I also admit that the issue is far more complicated than that. So I think the subsidy is going to be a tough pill should Congress actually agree upon it and pass it. But it might be that it's a necessity in order to make this come to pass. Without it, we're probably going to get facilities that have less capability than what Intel wants to see. And it may be that whatever facilities we get aren't really a solution to the issues that we are encountering in the industry. So yeah, um, I wish I could say that this was a very simple matter where it's a binary thing, but it, as most things in life, it's actually way more complicated than that. Now here are a couple of other quick news bits to end out this episode. First, Rolls Royce, the aerospace company, not the motor car company, because those are two different entities. Uh. Rolls Royce has broken records with its electric plane. It is named the Spirit of Innovation, which is a cool name for a plane, and as electric plane implies, it has an electric motor, it does not have a combustion engine or jet engine. And it broke a couple of speed records. One was for top speed over three kilometers, which the Spirit of Innovation set at five fifty five point nine kilometers per hour. For those of us in the US, that's about three miles per hour. And it also set a record for fast speed over fifteen kilometers that was five thirty two point one kilometers per hour, or around three per hour. That's pretty darn cool. I mean that's still that's much slower than what you see with like commercial jets, for example, but still really neat that a purely electric flying machine was able to hit those speeds over those distances. Now, of course, right now we're still talking about demonstrating capabilities here, right we're talking about like the proof of concept stage really or maybe one step beyond that. But it's probably gonna be ay before we see those capabilities built into more practical applications. But you know, you gotta crawl before you walk, or I guess you gotta fly before you commercially fly. Perhaps finally, we have a sad story. Stephen Wilhei, who created the g i F file format, recently passed away due to COVID. The format allowed a way to create high resolution graphics and not require huge file sizes. Today we think of g i F files as being animated image files. That was not always the case. It was an alternative to some other image file formats like JPEG. Really really important contribution, especially in the early days of the Internet, where you know, we were relying on things like dial up Internet, so fast transmission speeds. Small files like these were really important things. So in honor of his memory, I am going to pronounce the file format the way he said you were supposed to Jeff, the Jeff file format. I will likely not pronounce this this way ever again, but you know, I definitely respect his contributions to technology in general and the JEFF format in particular. Alright, that wraps up the news for Thursday, March two thousand twenty two. I hope you are all well. If you have any suggestions for topics I should cover on future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. The best way to do that is over on Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff H. S W. 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. Eight