Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Be 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? Sime for the Tech News for Thursday, November two thousand twenty two, And on Tuesday I mentioned that folks were expecting Meta to hold a round of layoffs, and then yesterday that happened. All told, the company handed walking papers over to of its staff. That's more than eleven thousand people. CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent out a memo calling the layoffs a last resort, though I'm not entirely sure he knows what last resort means, because I suspect we haven't actually seen the last resort from Meta. Zuckerberg also said he wanted to take accountability for the decision and that he was a special lee. Sorry to those impacted. So this is the same CEO who back in June said there were people at Meta who probably didn't need to be there, implying the company had more staff than what was needed and that individual productivity was down because of that. Zuckerberg further explained that closer to the beginning of the pandemic, there was a rush to spend more time online, and all of that makes sense, but then he goes on to say that he and his team all thought that that move to be online more frequently would be a permanent thing that people wouldn't ease off once local restrictions lifted and people started feeling safe outside their homes. And who boy, were they wrong about that one anyway, because the prediction was that things were going to be all online all the time, which honestly makes me think of the metaverse concept. Meadow went on a hiring spree. According to the company's earnings report in the third quarter, employee head count was almost larger than it was this time last year. So when you look at it that way, a thirteent reduction in workforce still has met a significantly larger from a headcount perspective than it was at the end of Now I'm being pretty judge of Zuckerberg and his executive team, but if I really want to be fair, Meta did need to make some moves to correct course. I'm not entirely convinced it has actually done that, because Zuckerberg still seems determined to bring his vision of the Metaverse to realization. That's gonna take a lot more time, a lot more money. It's gonna be a really tough road to travel, and even if the company gets there, I'm not yet convinced that enough people actually want to use the metaverse to make it all worthwhile. But then, Meta is a company that is facing an existential crisis, has struggled to attract younger users, and with its current user base steadily aging, it's kind of like a ticking time bomb situation. So I guess what I'm saying is I don't really believe in Zuckerberg's mission. So with that in mind, I do hold him accountable because it was the pursuit of that mission that has really contributed heavily to Meta needing to cut costs and scale down in the first place. All that being said, you should keep in mind I am by no means an expert in this stuff. This is really just my opinion, and it's possible, I mean, it's probably even likely that I'm totally off base. Maybe we'll all be wearing headsets and spending countless hours working and playing in the metaverse in a few years. The well, look, I managed to put the Twitter stuff in the second position for today's news episode instead of leading with it. That's progress, I guess. Twitter launched its new blue check mark verification strategy yesterday and after holding off because hey, folks pointed out that having a verification system that doesn't actually do any verification right before you hold an election could be a bad idea. Of course, I live in the state where we're going to have to have a runoff election later on in December, so I look forward to this broken approach having a massive impact on my local politics in a month. And yes, it is my opinion that the verification system as it now exists is largely worthless, or, as tech crunches Lance Ulanov put it, it's quote about to have as much value as a sticker someone hands a child for behaving at the dentist end quote. Okay, just in case you are not sure what I'm even ranting about here, Previously, Twitter head a system to check and make sure that the Twitter account claiming to represent a known entity. You know, it might be a celebrity, it might be a politician, it could be the the Twitter feed for an official brand. That kind of thing. They had to actually make sure that those accounts belonged to those entities, that this wasn't a case of someone impersonating a notable figure. If Twitter researchers determine the YEP that account is legitimate, then they would award a blue check mark to that account to show everyone that this was the real deal. It gave users the confidence to know that they were following an official account that really represented who they thought they were following. For reasons I still don't understand, I got one of those blue check marks on my personal Twitter handle back when I was still using Twitter. Technically I still have it, but my accounts all protected now and I don't use it anymore anyway. The news system is subscription based. If you pay eight bucks a month, you have access to Twitter Blue, and that includes the little blue checkmark. Twitter briefly rolled out a gray badge that says official to Twitter accounts. Uh. These were sort of like taking the place of the old blue check marks for previously verified accounts, at least for some of them originally. Ell It's reported that the new official verification was kind of rolling out gradually. I mean. Tech Crunch even pointed out that President Joe Biden's personal account had the older blue check mark, but not the official badge. But an hour after official badges began to appear, they began to disappear. Meanwhile, we've already seen folks exploit the new verification system to apparent sidate high profile individuals and companies. For example, so In created an account that was called Nintendo of Us you know of us as a Nintendo America. That account has subsequently been banned, but before it was banned and had the verification check mark on there and uh it. The tweet that they posted showed an image of Mario making a famous rude hand gesture, not something Nintendo would be particularly pleased to see. As Jason Schreier observed, quote, can't imagine why all the advertisers are pulling out of Twitter L m Ao end quote. Considering that Twitter took a huge chunk out of its content ration team during the recent layoffs, I imagine things have got to be really busy over there as folks attempt to exploit the verification system. Behind the scenes at Twitter, Elon Musk has made more changes to the work environment, having now slashed headcount by around Musk has eliminated Twitter's work from home policy and it's days of rest policy, so the work from home policies self explanatory. It's no surprise that Musk has shut that down because he's had a similar stance in his other companies, so stands the reason he would do the same at Twitter. So in playce will have to come into the office. They are no longer allowed to work remotely. The days of rest policy was a benefit that would give employees a little time off between major projects so that they could recharge their batteries and avoid burnout. But now there are half the people to do all the work. Not to mention that Musk has added some projects with really aggressive deadlines, so time off really isn't something Musk is interested in. My guess is there are a lot of folks over at Twitter we're dealing with a ton more stress than they had to endure in recent years. So my heart goes out to y'all. Things are looking grim right now in the cryptocurrency world as numerous digital coins take a tumble in value yet again. Bitcoin is currently valued at around sixteen thousand, four hundred sixty bucks per coin, and y'all, yeah, that's a lot of money. Sixteen grand, almost sixteen and a half per bitcoin. That's expensive, but when you think back a couple of years ago when the currency hit around sixty thousand per coin, it is a huge drop. Bitcoin had hit a low of fifteen thousand, seven hundred fifty bucks yesterday, so it actually dip below sixteen thousand for the first time in ages. That was likely because of the next bit of news that we have to cover, cryptocurrency exchange f t X is in the middle of a real crisis. This require is a little bit of background. So an entrepreneur named Sam Bankman Freed a k A s b F that's what he goes by. UH and Gary Wong co founded the f t X exchange back in twenty nineteen, and an exchange is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies for other assets, which could include a different cryptocurrency or a fiat currency. Similarly, you could buy into a cryptocurrency exchanging fiat currency for a digital coin. That kind of thing. That's what an exchange does. It handles that transaction well. Binance, which is another cryptocurrency exchange and a huge competitor to f t X, had a stake in f t X, but last year Binance essentially converted its steak into f t T, and f t T is the native cryptocurrency on the f t X exchange, so you could buy into f t T and then convert the f t T into other stuff like bitcoin or whatever. As cryptome markets have encountered rough waters, SPF, through his trading firm, Alameda Research, began to save or at least attempt to save struggling crypto firms that were on the verge of collapse and that may have overextended SPF. Then you flash forward to this week when Binance CEO and sometimes are nemesis to SPF, Chong Peng Shao said that the company was going to cash out of its stock of f t T. Now, this would mean that the typically low trading market for ft T would suddenly get flooded by Binances vault of FTT currency once they unloaded their share, that in turn would drive down the value of f t T. Right, if you flood a market with currency, then the currency becomes devalued. So then you had a bunch of folks wanting to cash out of their FTT because they don't want to see their currency lose tons of value. That that's investment for them, and it essentially became a run on the bank, and suddenly fd X found itself in a liquidity crunch. Finance at one point indicate it would actually acquire fd X, which would at least help settle things down, but it would be a real power move because SPF and Chong Peng had been feuding extensively in the past. But then Binance backdown of the agreement, which was, you know, never formalized, so no problem there, and said that fd x is financial situation was way worse than first suspected. Now SBF and f d X are searching for another lifeline, and meanwhile the crypto market in general is taking another hit. Seeing a major exchange in trouble tends to have a ripple effect on people's confidence in the overall market, so crypto continues to have a rough time of it as it has for a while now. Market Watch reports that TikTok has secret scores assigned to influencers. These scores reflect how well content creators are at from products or showing enthusiasm for sponsors, that kind of thing, So it's kind of like a secret system to evaluate how likely a given content creator is to play ball and to do it well. I suppose presumably creators who have higher scores will get more opportunities, perhaps with more prestigious brands. I'd like to think that the score indicates just how influential are you, oh, influencer, but it does look at things like diligence and cooperation, which is just their way of saying how frequently will they post and do they put up a fuss about it. The scoring system apparently doesn't really apply here in the United States because TikTok is really looking to leverage the social network into a shopping experience, and those efforts have not really taken off here in the US. It has in other parts of the world, so in places like Southeast Asia, the system appears to be fully deployed. According to market Watch, TikTok has been holding discussions in the UK about using the scores to partner with creators, and I want to be clear, I don't necessarily think this is a bad system. Uh. Some brands might have a particular influencer in mind when they want to engage in a in a TikTok campaign, but others might not have any idea of who they would want to represent. Their brand, and having a scoring system could be a quick way to at least get eyeballs in front of particular influencers to get an idea who's a good match. It is a little creepy because TikTok's parent company, byte Dance, is in China, and China has been developing a social credit score policy that potentially could see citizens receive social scores that could impact everything from job prospects to travel bands. Now, so far, the social credit program has really applied to businesses, not individuals, and various regions in China have rolled out their own version of this, so it's not like there's a unified national program in place. So I don't want to pay a dystopian picture the way often we will often hear when we talk about the social credit score. But um, yeah, it's possible that that could change in the future. Okay, we have more to talk about, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back. So Variety, which mentally is an outlet that I do not reference often on this show, reported that, according to a YouTube representative, eighty million people are now subscribed to YouTube's music and premium services and that's up from fifty million last year. Subscribers are able to watch videos ad free, though obviously any baked in ads like a host red sponsorship within a video will still be there. They can also do stuff like play videos in the background and download for offline viewing, so you know there's some neat things there. The background video means that you could say, launch a video on your phone and then set your phone screen to sleep mode and still be able to listen to the video, which comes in handy for me because I like listening to a S m R as it go to sleep, and I would prefer the screen not stay lit up so that way it's not distracting me before I can not off. Anyway, While a thirty million subscriber increases great the amount of revenue those subscriptions generate, which is somewhere around eleven billion per year according to Android Headlines, it's still less than half of what the company's reported revenue is. It's understandable why YouTube would push for folks to subscribe. A subscription is reliable revenue month over month. The advertising market fluctuates, particularly in times of economic uncertainty, as companies start to curb spending Plus, YouTube doesn't have to worry so much about pairing ads with a video that the advertiser would object to if you're subscribed, right, so they don't have to worry about the kinds of situations that have happened in the past. You know, there's nothing like a brand getting word that one of their ads has gone up on a video that, for example, includes hate speech or some other objectionable content that causes a big problem. So if you can push people over to subscribe and then rely less and less on ads, then you remove that impediment. Anyway, It'll be interesting to see if YouTube can continue to convince people to subscribe for a service when they can watch the content for free otherwise. I mean, eighty million subscribers, that's a lot, but YouTube has more than two billion active users, so it's it's not even a blink of the eye for the overall number. Also, I feel like, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say, yeah, I am a subscriber to YouTube stuff. I subscribed actually to an earlier Google product that ultimately, surprise, surprise, got shut down and Google kind of rolled my subscription over to YouTube, and I liked it. So I just stuck with it. Last month, Australian health insurance company Meta Bank was hit with a cyber attack that included a massive data breach. Now a hacker or a group of hackers are demanding extortion payments or else they're going to release private medical information belonging to Meta banks clients. The hacker demands that Meta Bank handover a dollar for every customer affected, and that would be nine point seven million dollars. And the hacker has already released what it calls a naughty list, which is beyond messed up. When you hear about the kinds of folks that are on this list, it's a it's able list, to say the least. The list includes names of customers who, according to the hacker, have sought treatments that range from mental health sessions, to drug addiction services, to HIV treatment to abortions. Meta Bank so far has refused to pay the hacker, which I'm sure was a really difficult decision based upon the nature of this information, but in my opinion, it is also the right decision to make. Paying cybercriminals simply reinforces that their activities are profitable, and it also doesn't guarantee that you'll actually see an end to the problems. You might pay and still be tormented. But Meta Bank has had to reach out to customers to apologize for the issue. And it is a difficult fact that innocent people are facing the prospect of public shaming for stuff that frankly is no one's business. I agree with Australia's Home Affairs Minister Claire O'Neill, who is called the hackers quote scummy criminals end quote sounds legit to me. If you're on Cloud nine, you better get off. In this context, Cloud nine refers to a malicious Google Chrome extension that does a lot of nasty stuff like key logging. That's when a program that is on your computer and it records or logs every key stroke you make. Hackers use key loggers to get information like log in credentials, credit card numbers, bank account information, etcetera. It's really really bad news. Cloud nine can also access your copy and paste data. So maybe you don't type in your password, maybe you copy it over from like a password vault. Well, this tool nullifies that approach as well, or at least makes it just as risky. It can also direct your computer to mine for cryptocurrencies, so an infected system could join a larger bought net dedicated to mining for bitcoin or whatever, or you know, more likely some lower value crypto because bitcoin still requires some pretty hefty equipment and it can allow hackers to remotely execute code on your machine. So they could potentially use Cloud nine to run some other form of malicious software on an infected machine. So that's bad news. Now here is the good news. According to zimperium z Labs, which published a report about this extension, you cannot find Cloud nine in the official Chrome extension store. Instead, folks who are trying to infect computers are using other means, such as disguising Cloud nine as a supposed update to Adobe Flash and then including the link to this quote unquote update on sites that claim to have some form of content on them that you might want to see. So a person looking for this particular type of content, which now is not exclusively the domain of adult video, but frequently falls in that category, they end up seeing a little window and says, hey, you can't view this because you're Flash players out of date, So just to click here and download this update and we'll get you all set. Except it's not really an update to a video player. It is this malicious browser extension, which, once installed, starts logging all those key strokes. Now, this is a big reason why folks need to be careful before they install stuff outside of official stores. Like even in official stores can be tricky. Occasionally stuff will slip in without the powers that be noticing, but definitely if you're going outside official stores, which is something Chrome allows, it's called sideloading Chrome. Essentially, what Google is saying is we we expect you're an adult and you can make your own decisions, so just make good ones or else you're gonna regret it, whereas Apple says, we don't think you're adults, so we don't let you make decisions. It's putting words into Apple's mouth, but it's kind of how it comes across to me. Sometimes either way, you have to be really careful, and if you're not, then you can end up with something like Cloud nine installed on your browser and then next thing you know, you've got this enormous headache on your hands or I guess not on your hands. It's in your head about the fact that you've got this um browser that's logging all your key strokes. So yeah, just make sure you're being super careful when you're using your computer, make sure you know what you're getting into when you're side loading. And it's just good to be aware that these kind of tools are out there because it might make you think twice before you download something and install it without really looking into it further. IBM s Asprey is ready to take Flight, which is a a pun that doesn't really work because it's not an aircraft. Asprey in this case is at one of IBMS quantum processors. The company has been using bird names for their quantum processors for a while. I think the one that came out before this one was called Eagle and Osprey is a quantum processor that has four hundred thirty three cubits q U b I T, so the cubit for quantum computers is the basic unit of information. With a traditional computer, your basic unit of information is the bit, the binary digit, which can by be either a zero or a one. It cannot be both. It's one or the other, so it's off or on that kind of thing. But a cubit, because of superposition, can essentially be both zero and one at the same time and technically all values in between. This is because of a quantum effect, and it's not something you you observe in classical systems, but it's possible in a quantum system. So if you have enough cubits and you have the right kind of algorithm designed to run on a quantum machine, you can potentially solve extremely difficult computational problems from a classical computing perspective. That is, and it's only a subset of very difficult computational problems. It's not every computational problem, but for a subset. For example, if you wanted to try and decrypt something and you didn't know the two extremely large prime numbers that were used to multiply together and get a certain product, well, a quantum computer could, in theory solve that problem much much, much more quickly than a classical computer for a really large number. Classical computer might take more time than the universe has been around, whereas with a quantum computer you might be talking about, I don't know, a few minutes, depending upon again how sophisticated that quantum computer is. We are not at that level yet. That's where we're headed towards, but we're not there now. Four three cubits is a brand new record. That's an enormous number of cubits. When I first started talking about quantum systems, when I when I first learned that they were even a thing, we were working our way towards building a system that had just forty cubits. So we've already gone ten times that number since I started talking about quantum computers a few years ago. And i VM expects to release a quantum processor with one thousand cubits on it next year. That's a level of of doubling that that is astonishing. That actually outpaces Moore's law, which is pretty incredible. Now, we still have a lot of other things that have to fall into place before quantum computer has become the new UH defining factor for how we encrypt things moving forward, because obviously one of the things that we worry about with quantum computers is that encryption, the current methods of encryption that we rely upon, will be nullified, and that everything from that point forward could be decrypted assuming it was using this traditional form of encryption. But to do that, you have to have not just a most powerful computer system that can do it, but you also have to have the algorithm, and you have to have a way of reducing error rate so that you're not uncertain of the answer. And we haven't gotten there yet, but this is an incredible achievement and I'm really excited to see what happens next. Speaking of what happens next, let's take another quick break. Okay, we're back and interesting full disclosure of y'all, I was at a training session for most of the day today, and so this bit of news has actually coming out since I started writing the episode, which was early, early, early in the morning. And so we've got some updates that I want to talk about, which means, unfortunately that I have to talk about Twitter some more, which I didn't plan on doing. But there are some updates. One thing is that as of right now over on Twitter, any any account that was made after Wednesday, November nine, will not be able to subscribe to Twitter Blue for now, because there was this rash of new accounts that we're seeking verification and then impersonating notable people and brands, and so Twitter had to do something about that, and the reaction was all right, well, it's locked down any any new accounts from being able to do this right all the Gate. So the question is when will those accounts be allowed to seek Twitter Blue verification. We don't know yet. I don't think anyone at Twitter knows yet. I think that this is all very reactionary, understandably so, because that flood of impersonations obviously posed a real threat to Twitter's revenue, as advertisers do not want to see fake accounts claiming to be them with a little check Martin next to them doing things like posting a picture of Mario flipping off everybody on Twitter. So yeah, not a surprise that this has happened. It does really paint a picture of how quickly things are developing at Twitter, how chaotic things must be over there. Also, I know, I'm pretty sure every single one of you out there, I feel certain, I'll say this, every single one of you out there would have predicted that this would have happened, right that if you have a verification system that the only barrier of entry is having eight dollars a month to spend to have it, you were ultimately going to see a lot of people, a lot of troublemakers take advantage of that, whether it was going to be a ton or you know, just a few thousand or whatever it may be. You knew that was going to happen, right like I knew that was going to happen. It's shocking to me that Elon Musk didn't think that was going to happen, or perhaps didn't care or didn't understand what the consequences of that would be on Twitter's reputation and ability to attract advertisers. So yeah, this is at best a temporary solution to heading off future rushes to to create impersonation accounts, And uh, I think that's wise, But I honestly you think that the whole eight dollar verification thing was a bad idea to start with. It may very will be that we'll see them reverse that decision that the Twitter Blue subscription will no longer include the check mark, or maybe it will include some other kind of badge to differentiate a Twitter Blue subscriber from a normal Twitter user. But yeah, that check mark not a great idea because it just set the stage for that kind of abuse. So that's update number one. In update number two, the US Treasury Department Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has UH posted a filing that shows that Twitter has applied to become a money service business. Now, those of you all who know Elon Musk's history know that he was part of x which would eventually become PayPal, and also that he has talked in the past about aspirations to turn Twitter into a kind of catch all service where there would be multiple things you could do on it, not just send out a tweet, you know, talking about what you had for breakfast, like we used to do in the old days, but to perhaps transfer funds using Twitter. There's also been some speculation that this might mean that Twitter will have some form of of relationship with cryptocurrency, but honestly, I don't know if that is actually the case. We do know, obviously, Elon Musk has been interested in cryptocurrency. There was a while where Tesla would accept bitcoin for payment for for a new Tesla vehicle. Elon Musk famously promoted doge coin um, which did not did not last very long. Like it it, It pumped the doge coin value briefly, but doge coin has since been back down to just a few sense per coin. And uh, yeah, I don't know if this means we're going to see Twitter get more involved in the crypto world or not. I wouldn't be shocked if that were the case. But certainly this is an example of Twitter getting interested in becoming more of a um a payment services platform, and this is the first step to doing it, but obviously a lot more steps have to happen before it actually comes to fruition. Next, Twitter chief information security officer Leah Kissner leaves Twitter, so Casey Newton was the first to report this. Uh. Kissner said that this was a hard decision, so it appears to be their decision to leave Twitter, not the company's, but did not elaborate, did not explain why that decision was arrived at I mean, obviously things are again really chaotic at Twitter, and that many of the departments have been decimated by the layoffs, and I would not be surprised to learn that cybersecurity was one of those. It does sound like a lot of a lot of divisions within Twitter are are working under skeleton crew type situations at this point. But yes, seeing Kissner depart is not, uh, not something that I find very encouraging. Um it is scary because cybersecurity is a very serious matter, and obviously social media in general has been a target for different agencies out there attempting to spread misinformation and disinformation, to so discontent, to spread messages of hate, and to see someone who had seignori in a cybersecurity department leave like that is troubling. Hopefully Twitter is able to account for this and be able to adapt, And I also really hope that Kissner is able to find a new opportunity, a new place to fit in. They indicated that they don't have anything lined up right now. In fact, they said, I'm looking forward to figuring out what's next, starting with my reviews for US next Security. So that, um, that's that's incredible, Like that, it's a it's such a big deal for anyone to leave without having another backup plan. That was always something that when I was in my earlier career, I just felt I couldn't leave something unless I had another thing lined up. So it's got to be pretty a pretty big reason to leave a high ranking, you know, position within a company and not have something else right behind it. Uh, chances are Kisseners going to find other opportunities pretty quickly. Cybersecurity is obviously important for all companies that are in the digital age, so probably going to be okay in the long run. But yeah, another concerning bit of news for Twitter. What else is do now? Twitter, of course, is not the only company that's going through rough times. We talked about Meta being in that same situation. Really, all the big tech companies are looking at making cuts and finding costs savings pretty much across the board, and Amazon is no stranger to this. Reportedly, Amazon is considering making some cuts in their division that involves their voice assistant tool, whose name I won't say in case you happen to be listening on one of those devices, but uh, it's it's a woman's name that starts with A and it ends with A and it has lex in the middle. Anyway, Apparently that division has had an operating loss of more than five billion dollars in recent years, according to the Wall Street Journal, which that's a lot of that's a lot of money. Obviously. It's interesting to me because the voice assistant feature was one that just a few years ago was really being promoted across multiple companies Amazon, Google, Apple as being a game changing technology, a new way to interact with our devices that removes the barriers that would otherwise exist. Being able to speak to a computer system and have it understand what you want and to do whatever it is you were asking of it. That was a big deal, Like that's like Star Trek kind of stuff. But if it's not driving revenue, it becomes harder and harder to justify, especially in times of economic uncertainty. So, uh, here's hoping that there won't be too many people affected by layoffs if there are going to be massive cuts across Amazon, And uh yeah, I'll be really interested to see how we go from here, Like what else are we going to see from voice assistants or will we will those fade away and they just won't have really made a huge impact. I know I use a voice assistant pretty regularly, but I do it to do like three different things, and it's the same three things pretty much every day, and that's it. So arguably I'm not really making good use of the voice assistant feature. And maybe I wouldn't even notice if it were gone, except then I'd have to figure out how to turn my lights on and off. Used to be a time where I knew how to do that. I guess there's that switch on the wall. Anyway. Last little bit of news that I have this is another update that came out while I was in training. The bit of news is that Kaspersky is going to have to stop the operation of its VPN product within Russia. Now, Kaspersky itself is a Russian company. It's known for making security software UH, anti virus, that kind of stuff, as well as VPNs or virtual private networks, and UH, Russia had already cracked down on most VPNs last year. Uh those would be companies that were or VPNs that were from companies that were not themselves located out of Russia, So things like Nord VPN, Express VPN, Proton VPN, you've probably heard of some of these. Those were kind of band last year, and a big reason for that is that Russia was trying to force these companies to make sure that the Russian government would be able to censor information across these VPNs, which isn't really what the VPNs are for. Uh So Russia is trying to control the narrative right there, trying to control the info that their citizens can easily access. Not quite to the same level that we see in China, but there is some pretty heavy censorship going on on the government level in Russia regarding Internet information and UM. Yeah, and also they wanted to be able to see who was seeing what again, that's the VPNs are supposed to be the cure for that. You're supposed to use a VPN so that people who are snooping on you don't know what sights you're going to. It can be absolutely of critical importance in in work right, you might be working for a company where you need to log into a VPN first before you access company assets because the company wants to protect those assets from many snoops. They don't want anyone to be able to figure out uh proprietary secrets. For example, the Russian government does not really like secrets that aren't there's so there was a real push for this. Well, now Kaspersky itself, a Russian company, has decided to end the VPN service within Russia because I guess it has found that it's really difficult to provide VPN services and also meet the expectations of the Russian government. That these two things are antithetical to one another, they counteract each other, and yeah, that's where we're at there. It's pretty severe. Uh, I don't know how many VPN services are legally available bowl in Russia at this point. I'm sure that there are no shortage of people who are accessing them illegally, but that obviously brings with it some risk. Yeah, that's it. That's the last little update that I came across before I was ready to send us off to super producer Tari. So I hope you are all well. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to reach out to the show, there are a couple of ways to do that. One is that you can download the I Heart Radio app. You can navigate over to the tech stuff page. 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Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Be 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? Sime for the Tech News for Thursday, November two thousand twenty two, And on Tuesday I mentioned that folks were expecting Meta to hold a round of layoffs, and then yesterday that happened. All told, the company handed walking papers over to of its staff. That's more than eleven thousand people. CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent out a memo calling the layoffs a last resort, though I'm not entirely sure he knows what last resort means, because I suspect we haven't actually seen the last resort from Meta. Zuckerberg also said he wanted to take accountability for the decision and that he was a special lee. Sorry to those impacted. So this is the same CEO who back in June said there were people at Meta who probably didn't need to be there, implying the company had more staff than what was needed and that individual productivity was down because of that. Zuckerberg further explained that closer to the beginning of the pandemic, there was a rush to spend more time online, and all of that makes sense, but then he goes on to say that he and his team all thought that that move to be online more frequently would be a permanent thing that people wouldn't ease off once local restrictions lifted and people started feeling safe outside their homes. And who boy, were they wrong about that one anyway, because the prediction was that things were going to be all online all the time, which honestly makes me think of the metaverse concept. Meadow went on a hiring spree. According to the company's earnings report in the third quarter, employee head count was almost larger than it was this time last year. So when you look at it that way, a thirteent reduction in workforce still has met a significantly larger from a headcount perspective than it was at the end of Now I'm being pretty judge of Zuckerberg and his executive team, but if I really want to be fair, Meta did need to make some moves to correct course. I'm not entirely convinced it has actually done that, because Zuckerberg still seems determined to bring his vision of the Metaverse to realization. That's gonna take a lot more time, a lot more money. It's gonna be a really tough road to travel, and even if the company gets there, I'm not yet convinced that enough people actually want to use the metaverse to make it all worthwhile. But then, Meta is a company that is facing an existential crisis, has struggled to attract younger users, and with its current user base steadily aging, it's kind of like a ticking time bomb situation. So I guess what I'm saying is I don't really believe in Zuckerberg's mission. So with that in mind, I do hold him accountable because it was the pursuit of that mission that has really contributed heavily to Meta needing to cut costs and scale down in the first place. All that being said, you should keep in mind I am by no means an expert in this stuff. This is really just my opinion, and it's possible, I mean, it's probably even likely that I'm totally off base. Maybe we'll all be wearing headsets and spending countless hours working and playing in the metaverse in a few years. The well, look, I managed to put the Twitter stuff in the second position for today's news episode instead of leading with it. That's progress, I guess. Twitter launched its new blue check mark verification strategy yesterday and after holding off because hey, folks pointed out that having a verification system that doesn't actually do any verification right before you hold an election could be a bad idea. Of course, I live in the state where we're going to have to have a runoff election later on in December, so I look forward to this broken approach having a massive impact on my local politics in a month. And yes, it is my opinion that the verification system as it now exists is largely worthless, or, as tech crunches Lance Ulanov put it, it's quote about to have as much value as a sticker someone hands a child for behaving at the dentist end quote. Okay, just in case you are not sure what I'm even ranting about here, Previously, Twitter head a system to check and make sure that the Twitter account claiming to represent a known entity. You know, it might be a celebrity, it might be a politician, it could be the the Twitter feed for an official brand. That kind of thing. They had to actually make sure that those accounts belonged to those entities, that this wasn't a case of someone impersonating a notable figure. If Twitter researchers determine the YEP that account is legitimate, then they would award a blue check mark to that account to show everyone that this was the real deal. It gave users the confidence to know that they were following an official account that really represented who they thought they were following. For reasons I still don't understand, I got one of those blue check marks on my personal Twitter handle back when I was still using Twitter. Technically I still have it, but my accounts all protected now and I don't use it anymore anyway. The news system is subscription based. If you pay eight bucks a month, you have access to Twitter Blue, and that includes the little blue checkmark. Twitter briefly rolled out a gray badge that says official to Twitter accounts. Uh. These were sort of like taking the place of the old blue check marks for previously verified accounts, at least for some of them originally. Ell It's reported that the new official verification was kind of rolling out gradually. I mean. Tech Crunch even pointed out that President Joe Biden's personal account had the older blue check mark, but not the official badge. But an hour after official badges began to appear, they began to disappear. Meanwhile, we've already seen folks exploit the new verification system to apparent sidate high profile individuals and companies. For example, so In created an account that was called Nintendo of Us you know of us as a Nintendo America. That account has subsequently been banned, but before it was banned and had the verification check mark on there and uh it. The tweet that they posted showed an image of Mario making a famous rude hand gesture, not something Nintendo would be particularly pleased to see. As Jason Schreier observed, quote, can't imagine why all the advertisers are pulling out of Twitter L m Ao end quote. Considering that Twitter took a huge chunk out of its content ration team during the recent layoffs, I imagine things have got to be really busy over there as folks attempt to exploit the verification system. Behind the scenes at Twitter, Elon Musk has made more changes to the work environment, having now slashed headcount by around Musk has eliminated Twitter's work from home policy and it's days of rest policy, so the work from home policies self explanatory. It's no surprise that Musk has shut that down because he's had a similar stance in his other companies, so stands the reason he would do the same at Twitter. So in playce will have to come into the office. They are no longer allowed to work remotely. The days of rest policy was a benefit that would give employees a little time off between major projects so that they could recharge their batteries and avoid burnout. But now there are half the people to do all the work. Not to mention that Musk has added some projects with really aggressive deadlines, so time off really isn't something Musk is interested in. My guess is there are a lot of folks over at Twitter we're dealing with a ton more stress than they had to endure in recent years. So my heart goes out to y'all. Things are looking grim right now in the cryptocurrency world as numerous digital coins take a tumble in value yet again. Bitcoin is currently valued at around sixteen thousand, four hundred sixty bucks per coin, and y'all, yeah, that's a lot of money. Sixteen grand, almost sixteen and a half per bitcoin. That's expensive, but when you think back a couple of years ago when the currency hit around sixty thousand per coin, it is a huge drop. Bitcoin had hit a low of fifteen thousand, seven hundred fifty bucks yesterday, so it actually dip below sixteen thousand for the first time in ages. That was likely because of the next bit of news that we have to cover, cryptocurrency exchange f t X is in the middle of a real crisis. This require is a little bit of background. So an entrepreneur named Sam Bankman Freed a k A s b F that's what he goes by. UH and Gary Wong co founded the f t X exchange back in twenty nineteen, and an exchange is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies for other assets, which could include a different cryptocurrency or a fiat currency. Similarly, you could buy into a cryptocurrency exchanging fiat currency for a digital coin. That kind of thing. That's what an exchange does. It handles that transaction well. Binance, which is another cryptocurrency exchange and a huge competitor to f t X, had a stake in f t X, but last year Binance essentially converted its steak into f t T, and f t T is the native cryptocurrency on the f t X exchange, so you could buy into f t T and then convert the f t T into other stuff like bitcoin or whatever. As cryptome markets have encountered rough waters, SPF, through his trading firm, Alameda Research, began to save or at least attempt to save struggling crypto firms that were on the verge of collapse and that may have overextended SPF. Then you flash forward to this week when Binance CEO and sometimes are nemesis to SPF, Chong Peng Shao said that the company was going to cash out of its stock of f t T. Now, this would mean that the typically low trading market for ft T would suddenly get flooded by Binances vault of FTT currency once they unloaded their share, that in turn would drive down the value of f t T. Right, if you flood a market with currency, then the currency becomes devalued. So then you had a bunch of folks wanting to cash out of their FTT because they don't want to see their currency lose tons of value. That that's investment for them, and it essentially became a run on the bank, and suddenly fd X found itself in a liquidity crunch. Finance at one point indicate it would actually acquire fd X, which would at least help settle things down, but it would be a real power move because SPF and Chong Peng had been feuding extensively in the past. But then Binance backdown of the agreement, which was, you know, never formalized, so no problem there, and said that fd x is financial situation was way worse than first suspected. Now SBF and f d X are searching for another lifeline, and meanwhile the crypto market in general is taking another hit. Seeing a major exchange in trouble tends to have a ripple effect on people's confidence in the overall market, so crypto continues to have a rough time of it as it has for a while now. Market Watch reports that TikTok has secret scores assigned to influencers. These scores reflect how well content creators are at from products or showing enthusiasm for sponsors, that kind of thing, So it's kind of like a secret system to evaluate how likely a given content creator is to play ball and to do it well. I suppose presumably creators who have higher scores will get more opportunities, perhaps with more prestigious brands. I'd like to think that the score indicates just how influential are you, oh, influencer, but it does look at things like diligence and cooperation, which is just their way of saying how frequently will they post and do they put up a fuss about it. The scoring system apparently doesn't really apply here in the United States because TikTok is really looking to leverage the social network into a shopping experience, and those efforts have not really taken off here in the US. It has in other parts of the world, so in places like Southeast Asia, the system appears to be fully deployed. According to market Watch, TikTok has been holding discussions in the UK about using the scores to partner with creators, and I want to be clear, I don't necessarily think this is a bad system. Uh. Some brands might have a particular influencer in mind when they want to engage in a in a TikTok campaign, but others might not have any idea of who they would want to represent. Their brand, and having a scoring system could be a quick way to at least get eyeballs in front of particular influencers to get an idea who's a good match. It is a little creepy because TikTok's parent company, byte Dance, is in China, and China has been developing a social credit score policy that potentially could see citizens receive social scores that could impact everything from job prospects to travel bands. Now, so far, the social credit program has really applied to businesses, not individuals, and various regions in China have rolled out their own version of this, so it's not like there's a unified national program in place. So I don't want to pay a dystopian picture the way often we will often hear when we talk about the social credit score. But um, yeah, it's possible that that could change in the future. Okay, we have more to talk about, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back. So Variety, which mentally is an outlet that I do not reference often on this show, reported that, according to a YouTube representative, eighty million people are now subscribed to YouTube's music and premium services and that's up from fifty million last year. Subscribers are able to watch videos ad free, though obviously any baked in ads like a host red sponsorship within a video will still be there. They can also do stuff like play videos in the background and download for offline viewing, so you know there's some neat things there. The background video means that you could say, launch a video on your phone and then set your phone screen to sleep mode and still be able to listen to the video, which comes in handy for me because I like listening to a S m R as it go to sleep, and I would prefer the screen not stay lit up so that way it's not distracting me before I can not off. Anyway, While a thirty million subscriber increases great the amount of revenue those subscriptions generate, which is somewhere around eleven billion per year according to Android Headlines, it's still less than half of what the company's reported revenue is. It's understandable why YouTube would push for folks to subscribe. A subscription is reliable revenue month over month. The advertising market fluctuates, particularly in times of economic uncertainty, as companies start to curb spending Plus, YouTube doesn't have to worry so much about pairing ads with a video that the advertiser would object to if you're subscribed, right, so they don't have to worry about the kinds of situations that have happened in the past. You know, there's nothing like a brand getting word that one of their ads has gone up on a video that, for example, includes hate speech or some other objectionable content that causes a big problem. So if you can push people over to subscribe and then rely less and less on ads, then you remove that impediment. Anyway, It'll be interesting to see if YouTube can continue to convince people to subscribe for a service when they can watch the content for free otherwise. I mean, eighty million subscribers, that's a lot, but YouTube has more than two billion active users, so it's it's not even a blink of the eye for the overall number. Also, I feel like, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say, yeah, I am a subscriber to YouTube stuff. I subscribed actually to an earlier Google product that ultimately, surprise, surprise, got shut down and Google kind of rolled my subscription over to YouTube, and I liked it. So I just stuck with it. Last month, Australian health insurance company Meta Bank was hit with a cyber attack that included a massive data breach. Now a hacker or a group of hackers are demanding extortion payments or else they're going to release private medical information belonging to Meta banks clients. The hacker demands that Meta Bank handover a dollar for every customer affected, and that would be nine point seven million dollars. And the hacker has already released what it calls a naughty list, which is beyond messed up. When you hear about the kinds of folks that are on this list, it's a it's able list, to say the least. The list includes names of customers who, according to the hacker, have sought treatments that range from mental health sessions, to drug addiction services, to HIV treatment to abortions. Meta Bank so far has refused to pay the hacker, which I'm sure was a really difficult decision based upon the nature of this information, but in my opinion, it is also the right decision to make. Paying cybercriminals simply reinforces that their activities are profitable, and it also doesn't guarantee that you'll actually see an end to the problems. You might pay and still be tormented. But Meta Bank has had to reach out to customers to apologize for the issue. And it is a difficult fact that innocent people are facing the prospect of public shaming for stuff that frankly is no one's business. I agree with Australia's Home Affairs Minister Claire O'Neill, who is called the hackers quote scummy criminals end quote sounds legit to me. If you're on Cloud nine, you better get off. In this context, Cloud nine refers to a malicious Google Chrome extension that does a lot of nasty stuff like key logging. That's when a program that is on your computer and it records or logs every key stroke you make. Hackers use key loggers to get information like log in credentials, credit card numbers, bank account information, etcetera. It's really really bad news. Cloud nine can also access your copy and paste data. So maybe you don't type in your password, maybe you copy it over from like a password vault. Well, this tool nullifies that approach as well, or at least makes it just as risky. It can also direct your computer to mine for cryptocurrencies, so an infected system could join a larger bought net dedicated to mining for bitcoin or whatever, or you know, more likely some lower value crypto because bitcoin still requires some pretty hefty equipment and it can allow hackers to remotely execute code on your machine. So they could potentially use Cloud nine to run some other form of malicious software on an infected machine. So that's bad news. Now here is the good news. According to zimperium z Labs, which published a report about this extension, you cannot find Cloud nine in the official Chrome extension store. Instead, folks who are trying to infect computers are using other means, such as disguising Cloud nine as a supposed update to Adobe Flash and then including the link to this quote unquote update on sites that claim to have some form of content on them that you might want to see. So a person looking for this particular type of content, which now is not exclusively the domain of adult video, but frequently falls in that category, they end up seeing a little window and says, hey, you can't view this because you're Flash players out of date, So just to click here and download this update and we'll get you all set. Except it's not really an update to a video player. It is this malicious browser extension, which, once installed, starts logging all those key strokes. Now, this is a big reason why folks need to be careful before they install stuff outside of official stores. Like even in official stores can be tricky. Occasionally stuff will slip in without the powers that be noticing, but definitely if you're going outside official stores, which is something Chrome allows, it's called sideloading Chrome. Essentially, what Google is saying is we we expect you're an adult and you can make your own decisions, so just make good ones or else you're gonna regret it, whereas Apple says, we don't think you're adults, so we don't let you make decisions. It's putting words into Apple's mouth, but it's kind of how it comes across to me. Sometimes either way, you have to be really careful, and if you're not, then you can end up with something like Cloud nine installed on your browser and then next thing you know, you've got this enormous headache on your hands or I guess not on your hands. It's in your head about the fact that you've got this um browser that's logging all your key strokes. So yeah, just make sure you're being super careful when you're using your computer, make sure you know what you're getting into when you're side loading. And it's just good to be aware that these kind of tools are out there because it might make you think twice before you download something and install it without really looking into it further. IBM s Asprey is ready to take Flight, which is a a pun that doesn't really work because it's not an aircraft. Asprey in this case is at one of IBMS quantum processors. The company has been using bird names for their quantum processors for a while. I think the one that came out before this one was called Eagle and Osprey is a quantum processor that has four hundred thirty three cubits q U b I T, so the cubit for quantum computers is the basic unit of information. With a traditional computer, your basic unit of information is the bit, the binary digit, which can by be either a zero or a one. It cannot be both. It's one or the other, so it's off or on that kind of thing. But a cubit, because of superposition, can essentially be both zero and one at the same time and technically all values in between. This is because of a quantum effect, and it's not something you you observe in classical systems, but it's possible in a quantum system. So if you have enough cubits and you have the right kind of algorithm designed to run on a quantum machine, you can potentially solve extremely difficult computational problems from a classical computing perspective. That is, and it's only a subset of very difficult computational problems. It's not every computational problem, but for a subset. For example, if you wanted to try and decrypt something and you didn't know the two extremely large prime numbers that were used to multiply together and get a certain product, well, a quantum computer could, in theory solve that problem much much, much more quickly than a classical computer for a really large number. Classical computer might take more time than the universe has been around, whereas with a quantum computer you might be talking about, I don't know, a few minutes, depending upon again how sophisticated that quantum computer is. We are not at that level yet. That's where we're headed towards, but we're not there now. Four three cubits is a brand new record. That's an enormous number of cubits. When I first started talking about quantum systems, when I when I first learned that they were even a thing, we were working our way towards building a system that had just forty cubits. So we've already gone ten times that number since I started talking about quantum computers a few years ago. And i VM expects to release a quantum processor with one thousand cubits on it next year. That's a level of of doubling that that is astonishing. That actually outpaces Moore's law, which is pretty incredible. Now, we still have a lot of other things that have to fall into place before quantum computer has become the new UH defining factor for how we encrypt things moving forward, because obviously one of the things that we worry about with quantum computers is that encryption, the current methods of encryption that we rely upon, will be nullified, and that everything from that point forward could be decrypted assuming it was using this traditional form of encryption. But to do that, you have to have not just a most powerful computer system that can do it, but you also have to have the algorithm, and you have to have a way of reducing error rate so that you're not uncertain of the answer. And we haven't gotten there yet, but this is an incredible achievement and I'm really excited to see what happens next. Speaking of what happens next, let's take another quick break. Okay, we're back and interesting full disclosure of y'all, I was at a training session for most of the day today, and so this bit of news has actually coming out since I started writing the episode, which was early, early, early in the morning. And so we've got some updates that I want to talk about, which means, unfortunately that I have to talk about Twitter some more, which I didn't plan on doing. But there are some updates. One thing is that as of right now over on Twitter, any any account that was made after Wednesday, November nine, will not be able to subscribe to Twitter Blue for now, because there was this rash of new accounts that we're seeking verification and then impersonating notable people and brands, and so Twitter had to do something about that, and the reaction was all right, well, it's locked down any any new accounts from being able to do this right all the Gate. So the question is when will those accounts be allowed to seek Twitter Blue verification. We don't know yet. I don't think anyone at Twitter knows yet. I think that this is all very reactionary, understandably so, because that flood of impersonations obviously posed a real threat to Twitter's revenue, as advertisers do not want to see fake accounts claiming to be them with a little check Martin next to them doing things like posting a picture of Mario flipping off everybody on Twitter. So yeah, not a surprise that this has happened. It does really paint a picture of how quickly things are developing at Twitter, how chaotic things must be over there. Also, I know, I'm pretty sure every single one of you out there, I feel certain, I'll say this, every single one of you out there would have predicted that this would have happened, right that if you have a verification system that the only barrier of entry is having eight dollars a month to spend to have it, you were ultimately going to see a lot of people, a lot of troublemakers take advantage of that, whether it was going to be a ton or you know, just a few thousand or whatever it may be. You knew that was going to happen, right like I knew that was going to happen. It's shocking to me that Elon Musk didn't think that was going to happen, or perhaps didn't care or didn't understand what the consequences of that would be on Twitter's reputation and ability to attract advertisers. So yeah, this is at best a temporary solution to heading off future rushes to to create impersonation accounts, And uh, I think that's wise, But I honestly you think that the whole eight dollar verification thing was a bad idea to start with. It may very will be that we'll see them reverse that decision that the Twitter Blue subscription will no longer include the check mark, or maybe it will include some other kind of badge to differentiate a Twitter Blue subscriber from a normal Twitter user. But yeah, that check mark not a great idea because it just set the stage for that kind of abuse. So that's update number one. In update number two, the US Treasury Department Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has UH posted a filing that shows that Twitter has applied to become a money service business. Now, those of you all who know Elon Musk's history know that he was part of x which would eventually become PayPal, and also that he has talked in the past about aspirations to turn Twitter into a kind of catch all service where there would be multiple things you could do on it, not just send out a tweet, you know, talking about what you had for breakfast, like we used to do in the old days, but to perhaps transfer funds using Twitter. There's also been some speculation that this might mean that Twitter will have some form of of relationship with cryptocurrency, but honestly, I don't know if that is actually the case. We do know, obviously, Elon Musk has been interested in cryptocurrency. There was a while where Tesla would accept bitcoin for payment for for a new Tesla vehicle. Elon Musk famously promoted doge coin um, which did not did not last very long. Like it it, It pumped the doge coin value briefly, but doge coin has since been back down to just a few sense per coin. And uh, yeah, I don't know if this means we're going to see Twitter get more involved in the crypto world or not. I wouldn't be shocked if that were the case. But certainly this is an example of Twitter getting interested in becoming more of a um a payment services platform, and this is the first step to doing it, but obviously a lot more steps have to happen before it actually comes to fruition. Next, Twitter chief information security officer Leah Kissner leaves Twitter, so Casey Newton was the first to report this. Uh. Kissner said that this was a hard decision, so it appears to be their decision to leave Twitter, not the company's, but did not elaborate, did not explain why that decision was arrived at I mean, obviously things are again really chaotic at Twitter, and that many of the departments have been decimated by the layoffs, and I would not be surprised to learn that cybersecurity was one of those. It does sound like a lot of a lot of divisions within Twitter are are working under skeleton crew type situations at this point. But yes, seeing Kissner depart is not, uh, not something that I find very encouraging. Um it is scary because cybersecurity is a very serious matter, and obviously social media in general has been a target for different agencies out there attempting to spread misinformation and disinformation, to so discontent, to spread messages of hate, and to see someone who had seignori in a cybersecurity department leave like that is troubling. Hopefully Twitter is able to account for this and be able to adapt, And I also really hope that Kissner is able to find a new opportunity, a new place to fit in. They indicated that they don't have anything lined up right now. In fact, they said, I'm looking forward to figuring out what's next, starting with my reviews for US next Security. So that, um, that's that's incredible, Like that, it's a it's such a big deal for anyone to leave without having another backup plan. That was always something that when I was in my earlier career, I just felt I couldn't leave something unless I had another thing lined up. So it's got to be pretty a pretty big reason to leave a high ranking, you know, position within a company and not have something else right behind it. Uh, chances are Kisseners going to find other opportunities pretty quickly. Cybersecurity is obviously important for all companies that are in the digital age, so probably going to be okay in the long run. But yeah, another concerning bit of news for Twitter. What else is do now? Twitter, of course, is not the only company that's going through rough times. We talked about Meta being in that same situation. Really, all the big tech companies are looking at making cuts and finding costs savings pretty much across the board, and Amazon is no stranger to this. Reportedly, Amazon is considering making some cuts in their division that involves their voice assistant tool, whose name I won't say in case you happen to be listening on one of those devices, but uh, it's it's a woman's name that starts with A and it ends with A and it has lex in the middle. Anyway, Apparently that division has had an operating loss of more than five billion dollars in recent years, according to the Wall Street Journal, which that's a lot of that's a lot of money. Obviously. It's interesting to me because the voice assistant feature was one that just a few years ago was really being promoted across multiple companies Amazon, Google, Apple as being a game changing technology, a new way to interact with our devices that removes the barriers that would otherwise exist. Being able to speak to a computer system and have it understand what you want and to do whatever it is you were asking of it. That was a big deal, Like that's like Star Trek kind of stuff. But if it's not driving revenue, it becomes harder and harder to justify, especially in times of economic uncertainty. So, uh, here's hoping that there won't be too many people affected by layoffs if there are going to be massive cuts across Amazon, And uh yeah, I'll be really interested to see how we go from here, Like what else are we going to see from voice assistants or will we will those fade away and they just won't have really made a huge impact. I know I use a voice assistant pretty regularly, but I do it to do like three different things, and it's the same three things pretty much every day, and that's it. So arguably I'm not really making good use of the voice assistant feature. And maybe I wouldn't even notice if it were gone, except then I'd have to figure out how to turn my lights on and off. Used to be a time where I knew how to do that. I guess there's that switch on the wall. Anyway. Last little bit of news that I have this is another update that came out while I was in training. The bit of news is that Kaspersky is going to have to stop the operation of its VPN product within Russia. Now, Kaspersky itself is a Russian company. It's known for making security software UH, anti virus, that kind of stuff, as well as VPNs or virtual private networks, and UH, Russia had already cracked down on most VPNs last year. Uh those would be companies that were or VPNs that were from companies that were not themselves located out of Russia, So things like Nord VPN, Express VPN, Proton VPN, you've probably heard of some of these. Those were kind of band last year, and a big reason for that is that Russia was trying to force these companies to make sure that the Russian government would be able to censor information across these VPNs, which isn't really what the VPNs are for. Uh So Russia is trying to control the narrative right there, trying to control the info that their citizens can easily access. Not quite to the same level that we see in China, but there is some pretty heavy censorship going on on the government level in Russia regarding Internet information and UM. Yeah, and also they wanted to be able to see who was seeing what again, that's the VPNs are supposed to be the cure for that. You're supposed to use a VPN so that people who are snooping on you don't know what sights you're going to. It can be absolutely of critical importance in in work right, you might be working for a company where you need to log into a VPN first before you access company assets because the company wants to protect those assets from many snoops. They don't want anyone to be able to figure out uh proprietary secrets. For example, the Russian government does not really like secrets that aren't there's so there was a real push for this. Well, now Kaspersky itself, a Russian company, has decided to end the VPN service within Russia because I guess it has found that it's really difficult to provide VPN services and also meet the expectations of the Russian government. That these two things are antithetical to one another, they counteract each other, and yeah, that's where we're at there. It's pretty severe. Uh, I don't know how many VPN services are legally available bowl in Russia at this point. I'm sure that there are no shortage of people who are accessing them illegally, but that obviously brings with it some risk. Yeah, that's it. That's the last little update that I came across before I was ready to send us off to super producer Tari. So I hope you are all well. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like to reach out to the show, there are a couple of ways to do that. One is that you can download the I Heart Radio app. You can navigate over to the tech stuff page. Just put tech Stuff in the little search file and you can use the microphone icon click on that and you can leave a message up to thirty seconds in length and uh that way, I will know what it is you would like to hear. And if you would like me to use that message in a future episode, well just go on ahead and let me know in that message, because it's all about opt in. Secondly, that if you would prefer to reach out in a way that doesn't require you to speak, you can always send me a message via Twitter. The handle for the show is tech Stuff h s W. Now I'll talk to you again really soon, y. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.