Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech are. It's time for the tech news for Thursday October fifth, twenty twenty three. Not an official tech news thing. But I'm feeling a little bit better. I hope I'm sounding better. I know my voice has had quite a journey over this last week. It's not I'm not at one hundred percent by any means, but you got to keep on, keep it on, all right, Let's get to the tech news. First up, let's talk zero day vulnerabilities again. So as a reminder, the term zero day refers to a case where software developers are unaware that the product they've made and released contains vulnerabilities. And to be clear, it's not just software. It can be other stuff too, but we often talk about in terms of software. So they release something, there's a security vulnerability in it that they're not aware of. That means there's a chance for bad actors to discover that vulnerability and then create an exploit that leverages that vulnerability. And since the developers may still remain unaware that there's a problem in the first place. There's no one to prevent that from happening, or even to react in a timely way until someone discovers that something hinky is going on. Now, once developers do become aware of the problem, they can respond, but by then the damage may have already been done, at least to some extent. Now, the reason I mentioned this is that Microsoft released patches to two open source libraries. In this case, a library determined programming that refers to a collection of resources that can be used by various computer programs. So, according to tech Crunch, products that tapped into these two libraries, Microsoft products that had been using these two libraries included the Edge web browser, Microsoft Teams, and Skype. And just to be clear, Microsoft was not the only company affected by this. These are open source libraries, so lots of other programs from other companies also tap into these. Google issued its own patches for Chrome, Firefox did the same. Well, I think we're going to be talking about Apple later doing the same sort of thing. So Microsoft has not commented on whether hackers targeted any of their products through these vulnerabilities, nor has the company indicated whether or not they could even determine that in the first place. A scammy advertisement that featured a deep faked mister Beast popped up on TikTok and has now become part of a larger conversation around AI and deep fake technology and fraudulent advertising. So mister Beast, in case you don't know, is the YouTube handle of Jimmy Donaldson, and he's mostly known for doing stuff like giving away massive sums of money or opening up a burger chain and then later on suing it and being sued by it. But the burger chain story, while fascinating, probably belongs to another podcast. Anyway, mister Beast is super duper Internet famous. I joke about being Internet famous, No, I am unknown. Mister Beast has more than one hundred and eighty eight million subscribers on YouTube. That makes him the most popular individual on YouTube by subscriptions. There is technically another channel that actually has more subscribers. That is a music label in India that has more subscribers than mister Beast. But if you're talking about a single person, mister Beast is like top of the pile. Anyway. In this ad that appeared on TikTok, the AI generated mister Beast claimed that he will sell ten thousand iPhone fifteen pro smartphones for the princely sum of two American dollars. Now, these are phones that usually go for like thirteen hundred dollars or more depending upon what version you buy, and since mister Beast actually has this long history of stunts that involve giving stuff away to people, you can imagine how this ad might actually fool folks into thinking that it's legit and maybe they pay two bucks to try and get an iPhone fifteen pro. TikTok has since removed this ad, but the fact that it went up in the first place despite the platform's review process is concerning because TikTok says it uses both human review and AI to analyze ads before allowing them to go up on the platform. If that's true, this ad somew i managed to slip through those controls and was on the platform. People were reporting it, Mister Beast himself commented on it. So it's another example of how deep fakes can be harmful. Of course, this isn't you know, a surprise. We know deep fakes can be harmful. They've been harmful ever since they were unleashed a few years ago. Other folks who have said that they have been deep faked into ads without their consent include America's Dad you know, Tom Hanks, David S. Pumpkins if You're not familiar, and also an anchor for CBS named Gail King says that that has happened to them. So if you happen to see an ad that features me hawking the latest I don't know sports gambling app, well, someone done darn faked me, because I wouldn't do that. The Wall Street Journal reports that part of the US Federal Trade Commissions lawsuit against Amazon hinges on a quote unquote secret algorithm. Now the algorithm does exist or did exist, and its code name was Project NeSSI. The FTC claims that quote Amazon uses its extensive surveillance network to block price competition by detecting and deterring discounting, artificially inflating prices on and off Amazon, and depriving rivals of the ability to gain scale by offering lower prices end quote. So, according to the FTC, Amazon manipulated the market so that when merchants tried competitive practices such as cutting product prices, the algorithm essentially kicked in to counteract that move so that the competitor would see fewer sales. So, if you are a merchant and you cut prices and your sales don't go up, well there's no reason to keep the prices low. If your sales have remained the same, you might as well sell things for more money, because otherwise you're just cutting into your profit margins. So the FTC is saying this is what Amazon was doing in order to keep competitors to keep their prices higher. Amazon reportedly stopped using this algorithm in twenty nineteen, but the FTC's point is that the company was stacking the deck for its own benefit, a benefit that amounted to more than a billion dollars in revenue according to Wall Street Journal's sources. An Amazon representative told Ours Technica that this complaint is a mischaracterization of what Project NeSSI was all about. The rep says that Nessi's purpose was to prevent Amazon's price matching practice from making unsustainable changes to product prices. So, in other words, you know, making sure that Amazon wasn't going to sell something for less than what it cost Amazon to make or procure it, or ship it. Amazon says that its policy was to try and match lowest prices, and that this is not meant to drive prices up, but rather to be more competitive. They said, it's the exact opposite of what ft claims. The FTC says Amazon was actually manipulating the system so that the lowest prices would be driven up much higher than they would be in a true free market, and that Amazon was again gaming the system. It's all pretty complicated, and it might boil down to the possibility that Amazon was essentially using a powerful algorithm to manipulate weaker algorithms that were belonging to various competitors, all in an effort to fix pricing levels that would favor Amazon. Apple has released an update to iOS seventeen, which means the most current version as of this episode is iOS seventeen dot dot three. The update includes security fixes that address some vulnerabilities, including a kernel exploit, as well as attatched to one of those open source libraries we talked about with the Microsoft story, and the update also addresses a problem that some iPhone fifteen users have reported, you know that their smartphone tends to run a little hot. Apple says that the reason for the hot phones mostly falls to software and also to those darn USBC chargers. You see, Apple tried to warn you that switching away from the company's proprietary charging technology would cause problems, and here it is. I should also add that folks have speculated that maybe the processor in the iPhone fifteen could be partially at fault. Apple says that's not the case anyway. If you do have an iPhone, you might want to check to see if the version of iOS running on your device is the current one. Meanwhile, Google launched its Pixel eight and Pixel eight Pro smartphones this week, as well as the Pixel Watch two. Now smartphones have Google's own Tensor G three chipset to power everything. The Pro model has a fifty megapixel rear camera, a forty eight megapixel telephoto lens with five times zoom, and a forty eight megapixel ultra wide camera. So Google is continuing to embrace the whole photography aspect of smartphones, which you know it's been doing for several generations now. The Pro also has a temperature sensor that Google says you could use to measure the temperature of like a surface, you know, kind of like those gadgets that barbecue enthusiasts use to make sure that their coals are hot enough to I don't know, seer a pig or whatever. The Google Pixel eight Pro starts at nine hundred ninety nine bucks. That's one hundred dollars increase over the previous generation's Pro model. The standard Pixel eight not the Pro, but the regular Pixel eight is a little bit smaller than the previous generation, the Pixel seven. It lacks the telephoto lens that the Pro has, but it also comes with the ultra wide camera, and it starts at six hundred ninety nine dollars. That's also an increase over the previous generation. The phones also launched with Android fourteen, and Google has promised seven years of ongoing OS upgrade support, which is best in class as far as OS support goes in the smartphone industry. The watch, meanwhile, the pixel Watch two, has a few cosmetic changes compared to the original pixel Watch. It also has some updated sensors, and it has a new processor, the snap Dragon W five, and that means that the pixel Watch two should be better at conserving battery life more effectively than the original pixel Watch was. There were a few other announcements that Google made as well, including one that says Google is going to unleash a new AI enhanced version of the Google Assistant on all of us at some point in the near future. And I for one welcome our robot overlords. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be back with some more tech news. We're back. So last week, Meta pushed out an update to Messenger for some users a small group that would allow them to create stickers through AI generation, something that would presumably find its way into various Meta platforms. And it didn't take long at all for people to show that this tool as designed has no real safeguards against stuff like intellectual property infringement, like infringing upon trademarks and copyright and that kind of stuff, because users created stickers where they prompted the AI to make, you know, images of popular characters like Mickey Mouse doing stuff that the Walt Disney Company absolutely would object to, like having Mickey Mouse holding a bloody knife. That's not an image that the Walt Disney Company would be likely to approve of. Several folks pointed out that it seems like the people at Meta a very little, if any thought as to the consequences of rolling out an AI generative sticker tool. Now, on the other hand, you could make the argument that what Meta is doing is essentially a limited beta rollout, and that the whole purpose of the beta is to find exactly what sorts of issues exist with the features before they push it out to the world at large. You know, it's better to find out that your tool is I don't know, violating intellectual property laws with a small group rather than your overall user base, right, I guess there's some logic to that. Now, I personally wonder if perhaps some of this could have been handled before it actually reached the beta test stage. Personally, I see this as another indication that some companies are really rushing a bit too quickly to incorporate generative AI into products, and then the grand scheme of things are actually making it harder on themselves. But again, that's that's just my personfctive. I don't mean to suggest that that's the correct way to look at things, or even that I'm necessarily accurate in my estimation. It's just the way it seems to be unfolding to me. Assuming an early report from Reuters has been accurate. Meta also held another round of layoffs yesterday. This time the division that was said to have been affected the most was Reality Labs. Now that's the part of Meta that's working on future projects, you know, stuff like the metaverse. So according to this report, the specific people who were targeted by these layoffs worked on creating custom silicon products for Meta. So these are the products that power stuff like mixed reality hardware. So think of it like processors and such, and the mixed reality includes stuff like virtual reality, augmented reality, that kind of thing. So this does not mean that Meta has lost confidence in the metaverse concept in general, or even lost confidence with mixed reality in particular. Instead, it may indicate that Meta wasn't seeing positive results as far as developing their own chipsets. They weren't seeing the benefit of doing that versus say, relying upon external providers and purchasing chips from established companies that specialize in that sort of thing. So I think the common wisdom is that Meta just decided that it makes more sense to purchase stuff essentially off the shelf rather than develop it in house for this particular product. Okay, time to head over to the platform X formerly known as Twitter. Elon Musk has made another change, one that strikes me as a little odd, and it was definitely Musk who demanded this change because he said so himself. Anyway, that change is to remove article headlines from posts on X. So let's say that you're on X. Wow, that sounds terrible, right, not ecstasy. You're on the platform X and you're posting an article to your post used to be called a tweet. It's hard to call anything anything these days. So you're posting an article on your X platform. And now that means that people who follow you, instead of seeing a headline, they're going to see a blurb from the article followed by an image and they can click through to go and read the article there. But they're not going to get the headline that actually indicates what the article is about. And that seems really weird, right, because I mean, I don't know a lot of articles bury the lead, so the blurb at the top might not actually indicate what the article itself is really about. You might not actually have a good feeling as to what is this article all about. And of course there are also those terrible articles that will spend five hundred words just rambling about the obvious in an effort to drive more AD impressions, and you have to just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling for like a full minute before you get to the actual point of the article. I hate those anyway. Musk says that this is going to quote greatly improve the esthetics end quote. Now maybe I don't think so. I don't understand what aesthetics are being improved by this, But if I had to guess, I'd say what Musk is actually hoping for is a way to discourage people from posting articles on X in the first place, because clicking on an article takes your eyeballs away from X, and Musk really needs your eyes to stay on X itself. So maybe what he's hoping is that people will just kind of stop posting links and instead they'll summarize an article, or they'll give their own opinion on a topic, and they'll write longer posts, and this will prompt more engagement on the platform. That way, because a lot of reports have said that excessing massive drops in AD revenue ever since Musk took over. That being said, Linda Yakarina, the actual CEO of X, has claimed that ninety percent of x's top advertisers have returned to the platform to place ads there, but all the analysis I've seen has suggested that between like fifty to sixty five percent of revenue is down every month because of various issues that advertisers have with the platform. So if I were a betting fellow, I'm not, but if I were, I would place a wager that this is all really part of a move to try and reverse the bad fortune of x Reuter's reports that BlackBerry is splitting into two companies. I was actually surprised to learn that BlackBerry is still a thing. I haven't been keeping up with that company for ages. But one of the two companies will be focusing on BlackBerry's Internet of Things business that's primarily in car connected systems, and the other one will center around cybersecurity. Now, once upon a time, BlackBerry was synonymous with smartphones. This was actually in the era before smartphones had touch screens and that sort of stuff, before the iPhone. Now, back when smartphones had physical keys that you would use to type on and only business executives typically owned one. Now, according to the Globe and Mail, the driving force behind this decision is to provide more shareholder value and to drum up interest in the investor community because BlackBerry has been kind of stagnating recently. Whether this will actually work and achieve those goals remains to be seen, but the spinoff is supposed to happen at the beginning of the next fiscal year for BlackBerry, and for BlackBerry that means it starts on March first. One story that I've somehow missed over the last month has to do with a company, and I use the term loosely called AOG technics all right, So, several major airlines, which include American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, and now Delta Airlines, have found out that some of the in ees on some of their aircraft contained parts that had fraudulent certification attached to them. So when it comes to the aerospace industry, everything is supposed to be carefully tested and documented and certified. You've got agencies like here in the US we have the FAA that oversees this sort of stuff, and it's all for the protection of the public as well as for the companies right to make sure that everything is as buttoned up as it can be to be as safe as possible. Now, a lot of airlines have aircraft that use a jet engine that was made by CFM International, and there's nothing wrong with the engines, like, the engines are fine. But when it comes time to service or to repair an engine, it's not uncommon for these airlines to rely upon a third party repair company, and those third party repair companies will use various brokers in the industry to acquire spare parts, which then they use to replace stuff that's either ending the nearing the end of its service life, or showing signs of wear and tear, whatever it may be. So AOG Technics was a part of this supply chain. It was one of these brokers and its job was to source and certify parts which it would then sell to these various repair companies. It was claiming that these were certified parts, and as it turns out, that certification was fake. Now this means the reliability of those engine parts is brought into question. It doesn't automatically mean the parts are terrible or that they'll break immediately, but you just don't know because they were never certified. So the company itself, AOG Technics, has a single shareholder, which happens to be the company's founder and director a fellow named jose Zamora Yerralla, who has done a really good job of avoiding the press as this story has unfolded. The consequences of this issue is that the airlines affected have been pulling aircraft that have these engines out of service until the parts involved can be replaced. So essentially they're having to have the whole repair job done again and the fraudulent part swapped out for one that is truly certified. AOG Technics has essentially kind of gone away in a puff of smoke. It's a heck of a story. It really illustrates how complex supply chains can be, and how you can have unexpected weaknesses in those supply chains, and that you know, those weaknesses can include people who are running dishonest businesses. I will keep an eye on this story as it continues, because I'm very curious to hear how this even happened. AOG Technics, from why I understand, has been around since twenty fifteen. It's had a kind of questionable history, you know, with its with its own corporate address, bouncing around the UK, never really staying in one place for any length of time, and not apparently attached to like a actual physical office. So it sounds like there's been some fairly questionable proceedings going on for a while, and I'm curious to learn more. But I'm sure we'll get more information as the story unfolds. Okay, we're going to take another quick break. When we come back, I got a few more stories and a couple of recommendations for y'all, but first let's thank our sponsors. Okay, we're back. So a few years ago, the video game publisher Ubisoft, which is responsible for franchises like Assassin's Creed, had a massive scandal, like a really big, nasty scandal with a Nubisoft that involved you know, corporate culture and sexual harassment and preferential treatment and all these sorts of allegations that are absolutely terrible. The revelations shook the company significantly, with multiple executives being shown the door as a result of the allegations. But you would you could actually say that the problems that were later revealed that Activision Blizzard ultimately kind of pulled focus away from Ubisoft. Like it it was. It was something like a year later where Activision Blizzard story started to break and it just started to look like it wasn't just a terrible systemic problem with an Ubi Solft, but perhaps a wider problem throughout parts of the video game development industry. Anyway. Now, the new part of the news is that French authorities have arrested five former Ubisoft executives. This is according to Engadget, and these include executives who left UBI Soft disgrace in twenty twenty after being named in employee accusations as being guilty of, to put it, lightly, unprofessional conduct. The French authorities said they spent more than a full year investigating the various claims and that that led to these arrests. Like these were serious allegations. A lawyer for the plaintiffs say that the issues indicate a systemic problem with quote unquote sexual violence within the company. I should also add that leadership at Ubisoft, after this scandal had become huge news committed to changing corporate culture. I am uncertain how far that transformation has actually gone to date. I would hope that it's been significant and that there really has been massive change within the organization because the stories that were coming out about Ubisoft around twenty twenty were absolutely disgusting. So I hope that that actually has been a big change, you just didn't see much information about it after the initial scandal made headlines. The United States FCC has told the Dish Network that it has to fork over one hundred and fifty thousand bucks as a fine for littering. Yeah, serious stuff. Specifically, this deals with littering space with a defunct satellite. The FCC says that the Dish network had a responsibility to move a satellite into a so called graveyard orbit at the end of that satellite's functional life. But the FCC says the Dish Network failed to do that, and so the old satellite is now just taking up space in an orbit that could pose as a future hazard for some other spacecraft. It's now space junk, and it's in an orbit that should otherwise be usable. So this is the first time the FCC has actually fined a company for contributing to space debris. The agency only recently got the authority to be able to do that, But now that means we got ourselves a precedent, So I suspect we will see this used more in the future. Okay, Like I said, I got a couple of article recommendations for y'all, but before that, I have one last little bit of news, and again this is Apple news, but it's a little more light and fluffy, so I thought I would leave it to the very end. Apple has allowed the luxury solid gold Apple Watch product to wind down as it were. The company has said it will no longer offer servicing and repairs on the seventeen thousand dollars watch. By the way, this watch has not had software support since twenty eighteen, so we're talking the hardware support at this point. So Apple now has designated this luxury watch as being obsolete, which kind of underlines and bolds a massive issue with smart watches compared to a traditional luxury watch. So a traditional luxury watch is expected to you know, kind of hold on to its value and to operate indefinitely, assuming you treat it well and you know, you know, you occasionally have its service to tune it up in everything. But smart watches lose value when the company that made it no longer offers software or hardware support, or if the company that made it goes out of business because that support goes away, Like the stuff that is powering and enabling the watch isn't necessarily in the watch itself, right, It's provided by a company that pushes that stuff out. So when the company stops doing that and stops offering support and repairs and such, it means that you no longer have a really useful product. So it's almost like all those folks who are saying, hey, paying seventeen grand for a smart watch is a foolish thing to do had at a point anyway. I guess that means now I've just got a really expensive paperweight. I'm just kidding. I can't afford anything more than a TIMEX digital watch. They did, They actually still make Timex digital watches. I don't even wear a watch. I haven't worn a watch since the pebbles ceased to exist. I'm rambling. We're done here. This is what COVID does to my brain. I apologize, but I do have a couple of articles I want to recommend. First up is an article in Wired that's titled Men Overran, a job fare for women in Tech. This article is written by Amanda Hoover, and it tells the story of how the Grace Hopper Celebration found itself absolutely overflowing with quote unquote self identifying males at an event meant to help women and non binary tech workers advance their careers or establish their careers. Now, I'm gonna leave my own commentary right there, except to add in a the little bit that the event took place in Orlando, Florida, and I expect that we're going to see various conventions and conferences, perhaps seek venues in states other than Florida due to various issues within that state. But we'll leave it there anyway, I recommend that article again. That one is titled Men Overran a job fare for women in Tech, and you can find it in Wired. The second article I want to recommend this week is from NPR's Jennifer Ludden, so you can find this on NPR dot org. The article is titled Los Angeles is using AI to predict who might become homeless and help before they do. Now, I wanted to include this article because most of the time, y'all, I cover stories that put AI in a pretty critical or even negative light. But that doesn't necessarily mean AI itself is bad. Right. AI is not necessarily bad on its own, it's how we use it. This article outlines how Los Angeles' Department of Health Services is leveraging artificial intelligence to get much needed aid to people before they find themselves homeless. So I think it's a worthy read because it does remind us that artificial intelligence doesn't have to be the boogeyman. It doesn't have to be something that is putting people out of work. It doesn't have to be something that is, you know, compromising your privacy or security. It can be something that ends up being life changing in a good way if we are using it properly and in applications that have a positive outcome. So I recommend that article as well, especially if you need like a little bit of inspiration in your day to think of, hey, this is a really cool way to try and help people. And it's also very realistic, Like if you read that article, you will see that they are very clear and forthright about how their approach is moving the needle. But it's not like it's a magic pill that solves all problems. So I recommend checking it out. Okay, that's it. I gotta stop talking because I keep having to pause this show so that I can cough my head off, and I just want to be able to go cough my head off without having to start up the show again. Also, I don't know if you could hear it. My dog barked earlier when I was talking. You can tell how tired I am by the fact that I didn't go back and re record and have it without my dog barking in the background. But when I'm coughing this much, I just can't afford to do that. All right, I hope all of you out there are doing really well, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, app podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech are. It's time for the tech news for Thursday October fifth, twenty twenty three. Not an official tech news thing. But I'm feeling a little bit better. I hope I'm sounding better. I know my voice has had quite a journey over this last week. It's not I'm not at one hundred percent by any means, but you got to keep on, keep it on, all right, Let's get to the tech news. First up, let's talk zero day vulnerabilities again. So as a reminder, the term zero day refers to a case where software developers are unaware that the product they've made and released contains vulnerabilities. And to be clear, it's not just software. It can be other stuff too, but we often talk about in terms of software. So they release something, there's a security vulnerability in it that they're not aware of. That means there's a chance for bad actors to discover that vulnerability and then create an exploit that leverages that vulnerability. And since the developers may still remain unaware that there's a problem in the first place. There's no one to prevent that from happening, or even to react in a timely way until someone discovers that something hinky is going on. Now, once developers do become aware of the problem, they can respond, but by then the damage may have already been done, at least to some extent. Now, the reason I mentioned this is that Microsoft released patches to two open source libraries. In this case, a library determined programming that refers to a collection of resources that can be used by various computer programs. So, according to tech Crunch, products that tapped into these two libraries, Microsoft products that had been using these two libraries included the Edge web browser, Microsoft Teams, and Skype. And just to be clear, Microsoft was not the only company affected by this. These are open source libraries, so lots of other programs from other companies also tap into these. Google issued its own patches for Chrome, Firefox did the same. Well, I think we're going to be talking about Apple later doing the same sort of thing. So Microsoft has not commented on whether hackers targeted any of their products through these vulnerabilities, nor has the company indicated whether or not they could even determine that in the first place. A scammy advertisement that featured a deep faked mister Beast popped up on TikTok and has now become part of a larger conversation around AI and deep fake technology and fraudulent advertising. So mister Beast, in case you don't know, is the YouTube handle of Jimmy Donaldson, and he's mostly known for doing stuff like giving away massive sums of money or opening up a burger chain and then later on suing it and being sued by it. But the burger chain story, while fascinating, probably belongs to another podcast. Anyway, mister Beast is super duper Internet famous. I joke about being Internet famous, No, I am unknown. Mister Beast has more than one hundred and eighty eight million subscribers on YouTube. That makes him the most popular individual on YouTube by subscriptions. There is technically another channel that actually has more subscribers. That is a music label in India that has more subscribers than mister Beast. But if you're talking about a single person, mister Beast is like top of the pile. Anyway. In this ad that appeared on TikTok, the AI generated mister Beast claimed that he will sell ten thousand iPhone fifteen pro smartphones for the princely sum of two American dollars. Now, these are phones that usually go for like thirteen hundred dollars or more depending upon what version you buy, and since mister Beast actually has this long history of stunts that involve giving stuff away to people, you can imagine how this ad might actually fool folks into thinking that it's legit and maybe they pay two bucks to try and get an iPhone fifteen pro. TikTok has since removed this ad, but the fact that it went up in the first place despite the platform's review process is concerning because TikTok says it uses both human review and AI to analyze ads before allowing them to go up on the platform. If that's true, this ad somew i managed to slip through those controls and was on the platform. People were reporting it, Mister Beast himself commented on it. So it's another example of how deep fakes can be harmful. Of course, this isn't you know, a surprise. We know deep fakes can be harmful. They've been harmful ever since they were unleashed a few years ago. Other folks who have said that they have been deep faked into ads without their consent include America's Dad you know, Tom Hanks, David S. Pumpkins if You're not familiar, and also an anchor for CBS named Gail King says that that has happened to them. So if you happen to see an ad that features me hawking the latest I don't know sports gambling app, well, someone done darn faked me, because I wouldn't do that. The Wall Street Journal reports that part of the US Federal Trade Commissions lawsuit against Amazon hinges on a quote unquote secret algorithm. Now the algorithm does exist or did exist, and its code name was Project NeSSI. The FTC claims that quote Amazon uses its extensive surveillance network to block price competition by detecting and deterring discounting, artificially inflating prices on and off Amazon, and depriving rivals of the ability to gain scale by offering lower prices end quote. So, according to the FTC, Amazon manipulated the market so that when merchants tried competitive practices such as cutting product prices, the algorithm essentially kicked in to counteract that move so that the competitor would see fewer sales. So, if you are a merchant and you cut prices and your sales don't go up, well there's no reason to keep the prices low. If your sales have remained the same, you might as well sell things for more money, because otherwise you're just cutting into your profit margins. So the FTC is saying this is what Amazon was doing in order to keep competitors to keep their prices higher. Amazon reportedly stopped using this algorithm in twenty nineteen, but the FTC's point is that the company was stacking the deck for its own benefit, a benefit that amounted to more than a billion dollars in revenue according to Wall Street Journal's sources. An Amazon representative told Ours Technica that this complaint is a mischaracterization of what Project NeSSI was all about. The rep says that Nessi's purpose was to prevent Amazon's price matching practice from making unsustainable changes to product prices. So, in other words, you know, making sure that Amazon wasn't going to sell something for less than what it cost Amazon to make or procure it, or ship it. Amazon says that its policy was to try and match lowest prices, and that this is not meant to drive prices up, but rather to be more competitive. They said, it's the exact opposite of what ft claims. The FTC says Amazon was actually manipulating the system so that the lowest prices would be driven up much higher than they would be in a true free market, and that Amazon was again gaming the system. It's all pretty complicated, and it might boil down to the possibility that Amazon was essentially using a powerful algorithm to manipulate weaker algorithms that were belonging to various competitors, all in an effort to fix pricing levels that would favor Amazon. Apple has released an update to iOS seventeen, which means the most current version as of this episode is iOS seventeen dot dot three. The update includes security fixes that address some vulnerabilities, including a kernel exploit, as well as attatched to one of those open source libraries we talked about with the Microsoft story, and the update also addresses a problem that some iPhone fifteen users have reported, you know that their smartphone tends to run a little hot. Apple says that the reason for the hot phones mostly falls to software and also to those darn USBC chargers. You see, Apple tried to warn you that switching away from the company's proprietary charging technology would cause problems, and here it is. I should also add that folks have speculated that maybe the processor in the iPhone fifteen could be partially at fault. Apple says that's not the case anyway. If you do have an iPhone, you might want to check to see if the version of iOS running on your device is the current one. Meanwhile, Google launched its Pixel eight and Pixel eight Pro smartphones this week, as well as the Pixel Watch two. Now smartphones have Google's own Tensor G three chipset to power everything. The Pro model has a fifty megapixel rear camera, a forty eight megapixel telephoto lens with five times zoom, and a forty eight megapixel ultra wide camera. So Google is continuing to embrace the whole photography aspect of smartphones, which you know it's been doing for several generations now. The Pro also has a temperature sensor that Google says you could use to measure the temperature of like a surface, you know, kind of like those gadgets that barbecue enthusiasts use to make sure that their coals are hot enough to I don't know, seer a pig or whatever. The Google Pixel eight Pro starts at nine hundred ninety nine bucks. That's one hundred dollars increase over the previous generation's Pro model. The standard Pixel eight not the Pro, but the regular Pixel eight is a little bit smaller than the previous generation, the Pixel seven. It lacks the telephoto lens that the Pro has, but it also comes with the ultra wide camera, and it starts at six hundred ninety nine dollars. That's also an increase over the previous generation. The phones also launched with Android fourteen, and Google has promised seven years of ongoing OS upgrade support, which is best in class as far as OS support goes in the smartphone industry. The watch, meanwhile, the pixel Watch two, has a few cosmetic changes compared to the original pixel Watch. It also has some updated sensors, and it has a new processor, the snap Dragon W five, and that means that the pixel Watch two should be better at conserving battery life more effectively than the original pixel Watch was. There were a few other announcements that Google made as well, including one that says Google is going to unleash a new AI enhanced version of the Google Assistant on all of us at some point in the near future. And I for one welcome our robot overlords. Okay, we're gonna take a quick break and we'll be back with some more tech news. We're back. So last week, Meta pushed out an update to Messenger for some users a small group that would allow them to create stickers through AI generation, something that would presumably find its way into various Meta platforms. And it didn't take long at all for people to show that this tool as designed has no real safeguards against stuff like intellectual property infringement, like infringing upon trademarks and copyright and that kind of stuff, because users created stickers where they prompted the AI to make, you know, images of popular characters like Mickey Mouse doing stuff that the Walt Disney Company absolutely would object to, like having Mickey Mouse holding a bloody knife. That's not an image that the Walt Disney Company would be likely to approve of. Several folks pointed out that it seems like the people at Meta a very little, if any thought as to the consequences of rolling out an AI generative sticker tool. Now, on the other hand, you could make the argument that what Meta is doing is essentially a limited beta rollout, and that the whole purpose of the beta is to find exactly what sorts of issues exist with the features before they push it out to the world at large. You know, it's better to find out that your tool is I don't know, violating intellectual property laws with a small group rather than your overall user base, right, I guess there's some logic to that. Now, I personally wonder if perhaps some of this could have been handled before it actually reached the beta test stage. Personally, I see this as another indication that some companies are really rushing a bit too quickly to incorporate generative AI into products, and then the grand scheme of things are actually making it harder on themselves. But again, that's that's just my personfctive. I don't mean to suggest that that's the correct way to look at things, or even that I'm necessarily accurate in my estimation. It's just the way it seems to be unfolding to me. Assuming an early report from Reuters has been accurate. Meta also held another round of layoffs yesterday. This time the division that was said to have been affected the most was Reality Labs. Now that's the part of Meta that's working on future projects, you know, stuff like the metaverse. So according to this report, the specific people who were targeted by these layoffs worked on creating custom silicon products for Meta. So these are the products that power stuff like mixed reality hardware. So think of it like processors and such, and the mixed reality includes stuff like virtual reality, augmented reality, that kind of thing. So this does not mean that Meta has lost confidence in the metaverse concept in general, or even lost confidence with mixed reality in particular. Instead, it may indicate that Meta wasn't seeing positive results as far as developing their own chipsets. They weren't seeing the benefit of doing that versus say, relying upon external providers and purchasing chips from established companies that specialize in that sort of thing. So I think the common wisdom is that Meta just decided that it makes more sense to purchase stuff essentially off the shelf rather than develop it in house for this particular product. Okay, time to head over to the platform X formerly known as Twitter. Elon Musk has made another change, one that strikes me as a little odd, and it was definitely Musk who demanded this change because he said so himself. Anyway, that change is to remove article headlines from posts on X. So let's say that you're on X. Wow, that sounds terrible, right, not ecstasy. You're on the platform X and you're posting an article to your post used to be called a tweet. It's hard to call anything anything these days. So you're posting an article on your X platform. And now that means that people who follow you, instead of seeing a headline, they're going to see a blurb from the article followed by an image and they can click through to go and read the article there. But they're not going to get the headline that actually indicates what the article is about. And that seems really weird, right, because I mean, I don't know a lot of articles bury the lead, so the blurb at the top might not actually indicate what the article itself is really about. You might not actually have a good feeling as to what is this article all about. And of course there are also those terrible articles that will spend five hundred words just rambling about the obvious in an effort to drive more AD impressions, and you have to just keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling for like a full minute before you get to the actual point of the article. I hate those anyway. Musk says that this is going to quote greatly improve the esthetics end quote. Now maybe I don't think so. I don't understand what aesthetics are being improved by this, But if I had to guess, I'd say what Musk is actually hoping for is a way to discourage people from posting articles on X in the first place, because clicking on an article takes your eyeballs away from X, and Musk really needs your eyes to stay on X itself. So maybe what he's hoping is that people will just kind of stop posting links and instead they'll summarize an article, or they'll give their own opinion on a topic, and they'll write longer posts, and this will prompt more engagement on the platform. That way, because a lot of reports have said that excessing massive drops in AD revenue ever since Musk took over. That being said, Linda Yakarina, the actual CEO of X, has claimed that ninety percent of x's top advertisers have returned to the platform to place ads there, but all the analysis I've seen has suggested that between like fifty to sixty five percent of revenue is down every month because of various issues that advertisers have with the platform. So if I were a betting fellow, I'm not, but if I were, I would place a wager that this is all really part of a move to try and reverse the bad fortune of x Reuter's reports that BlackBerry is splitting into two companies. I was actually surprised to learn that BlackBerry is still a thing. I haven't been keeping up with that company for ages. But one of the two companies will be focusing on BlackBerry's Internet of Things business that's primarily in car connected systems, and the other one will center around cybersecurity. Now, once upon a time, BlackBerry was synonymous with smartphones. This was actually in the era before smartphones had touch screens and that sort of stuff, before the iPhone. Now, back when smartphones had physical keys that you would use to type on and only business executives typically owned one. Now, according to the Globe and Mail, the driving force behind this decision is to provide more shareholder value and to drum up interest in the investor community because BlackBerry has been kind of stagnating recently. Whether this will actually work and achieve those goals remains to be seen, but the spinoff is supposed to happen at the beginning of the next fiscal year for BlackBerry, and for BlackBerry that means it starts on March first. One story that I've somehow missed over the last month has to do with a company, and I use the term loosely called AOG technics all right, So, several major airlines, which include American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, and now Delta Airlines, have found out that some of the in ees on some of their aircraft contained parts that had fraudulent certification attached to them. So when it comes to the aerospace industry, everything is supposed to be carefully tested and documented and certified. You've got agencies like here in the US we have the FAA that oversees this sort of stuff, and it's all for the protection of the public as well as for the companies right to make sure that everything is as buttoned up as it can be to be as safe as possible. Now, a lot of airlines have aircraft that use a jet engine that was made by CFM International, and there's nothing wrong with the engines, like, the engines are fine. But when it comes time to service or to repair an engine, it's not uncommon for these airlines to rely upon a third party repair company, and those third party repair companies will use various brokers in the industry to acquire spare parts, which then they use to replace stuff that's either ending the nearing the end of its service life, or showing signs of wear and tear, whatever it may be. So AOG Technics was a part of this supply chain. It was one of these brokers and its job was to source and certify parts which it would then sell to these various repair companies. It was claiming that these were certified parts, and as it turns out, that certification was fake. Now this means the reliability of those engine parts is brought into question. It doesn't automatically mean the parts are terrible or that they'll break immediately, but you just don't know because they were never certified. So the company itself, AOG Technics, has a single shareholder, which happens to be the company's founder and director a fellow named jose Zamora Yerralla, who has done a really good job of avoiding the press as this story has unfolded. The consequences of this issue is that the airlines affected have been pulling aircraft that have these engines out of service until the parts involved can be replaced. So essentially they're having to have the whole repair job done again and the fraudulent part swapped out for one that is truly certified. AOG Technics has essentially kind of gone away in a puff of smoke. It's a heck of a story. It really illustrates how complex supply chains can be, and how you can have unexpected weaknesses in those supply chains, and that you know, those weaknesses can include people who are running dishonest businesses. I will keep an eye on this story as it continues, because I'm very curious to hear how this even happened. AOG Technics, from why I understand, has been around since twenty fifteen. It's had a kind of questionable history, you know, with its with its own corporate address, bouncing around the UK, never really staying in one place for any length of time, and not apparently attached to like a actual physical office. So it sounds like there's been some fairly questionable proceedings going on for a while, and I'm curious to learn more. But I'm sure we'll get more information as the story unfolds. Okay, we're going to take another quick break. When we come back, I got a few more stories and a couple of recommendations for y'all, but first let's thank our sponsors. Okay, we're back. So a few years ago, the video game publisher Ubisoft, which is responsible for franchises like Assassin's Creed, had a massive scandal, like a really big, nasty scandal with a Nubisoft that involved you know, corporate culture and sexual harassment and preferential treatment and all these sorts of allegations that are absolutely terrible. The revelations shook the company significantly, with multiple executives being shown the door as a result of the allegations. But you would you could actually say that the problems that were later revealed that Activision Blizzard ultimately kind of pulled focus away from Ubisoft. Like it it was. It was something like a year later where Activision Blizzard story started to break and it just started to look like it wasn't just a terrible systemic problem with an Ubi Solft, but perhaps a wider problem throughout parts of the video game development industry. Anyway. Now, the new part of the news is that French authorities have arrested five former Ubisoft executives. This is according to Engadget, and these include executives who left UBI Soft disgrace in twenty twenty after being named in employee accusations as being guilty of, to put it, lightly, unprofessional conduct. The French authorities said they spent more than a full year investigating the various claims and that that led to these arrests. Like these were serious allegations. A lawyer for the plaintiffs say that the issues indicate a systemic problem with quote unquote sexual violence within the company. I should also add that leadership at Ubisoft, after this scandal had become huge news committed to changing corporate culture. I am uncertain how far that transformation has actually gone to date. I would hope that it's been significant and that there really has been massive change within the organization because the stories that were coming out about Ubisoft around twenty twenty were absolutely disgusting. So I hope that that actually has been a big change, you just didn't see much information about it after the initial scandal made headlines. The United States FCC has told the Dish Network that it has to fork over one hundred and fifty thousand bucks as a fine for littering. Yeah, serious stuff. Specifically, this deals with littering space with a defunct satellite. The FCC says that the Dish network had a responsibility to move a satellite into a so called graveyard orbit at the end of that satellite's functional life. But the FCC says the Dish Network failed to do that, and so the old satellite is now just taking up space in an orbit that could pose as a future hazard for some other spacecraft. It's now space junk, and it's in an orbit that should otherwise be usable. So this is the first time the FCC has actually fined a company for contributing to space debris. The agency only recently got the authority to be able to do that, But now that means we got ourselves a precedent, So I suspect we will see this used more in the future. Okay, Like I said, I got a couple of article recommendations for y'all, but before that, I have one last little bit of news, and again this is Apple news, but it's a little more light and fluffy, so I thought I would leave it to the very end. Apple has allowed the luxury solid gold Apple Watch product to wind down as it were. The company has said it will no longer offer servicing and repairs on the seventeen thousand dollars watch. By the way, this watch has not had software support since twenty eighteen, so we're talking the hardware support at this point. So Apple now has designated this luxury watch as being obsolete, which kind of underlines and bolds a massive issue with smart watches compared to a traditional luxury watch. So a traditional luxury watch is expected to you know, kind of hold on to its value and to operate indefinitely, assuming you treat it well and you know, you know, you occasionally have its service to tune it up in everything. But smart watches lose value when the company that made it no longer offers software or hardware support, or if the company that made it goes out of business because that support goes away, Like the stuff that is powering and enabling the watch isn't necessarily in the watch itself, right, It's provided by a company that pushes that stuff out. So when the company stops doing that and stops offering support and repairs and such, it means that you no longer have a really useful product. So it's almost like all those folks who are saying, hey, paying seventeen grand for a smart watch is a foolish thing to do had at a point anyway. I guess that means now I've just got a really expensive paperweight. I'm just kidding. I can't afford anything more than a TIMEX digital watch. They did, They actually still make Timex digital watches. I don't even wear a watch. I haven't worn a watch since the pebbles ceased to exist. I'm rambling. We're done here. This is what COVID does to my brain. I apologize, but I do have a couple of articles I want to recommend. First up is an article in Wired that's titled Men Overran, a job fare for women in Tech. This article is written by Amanda Hoover, and it tells the story of how the Grace Hopper Celebration found itself absolutely overflowing with quote unquote self identifying males at an event meant to help women and non binary tech workers advance their careers or establish their careers. Now, I'm gonna leave my own commentary right there, except to add in a the little bit that the event took place in Orlando, Florida, and I expect that we're going to see various conventions and conferences, perhaps seek venues in states other than Florida due to various issues within that state. But we'll leave it there anyway, I recommend that article again. That one is titled Men Overran a job fare for women in Tech, and you can find it in Wired. The second article I want to recommend this week is from NPR's Jennifer Ludden, so you can find this on NPR dot org. The article is titled Los Angeles is using AI to predict who might become homeless and help before they do. Now, I wanted to include this article because most of the time, y'all, I cover stories that put AI in a pretty critical or even negative light. But that doesn't necessarily mean AI itself is bad. Right. AI is not necessarily bad on its own, it's how we use it. This article outlines how Los Angeles' Department of Health Services is leveraging artificial intelligence to get much needed aid to people before they find themselves homeless. So I think it's a worthy read because it does remind us that artificial intelligence doesn't have to be the boogeyman. It doesn't have to be something that is putting people out of work. It doesn't have to be something that is, you know, compromising your privacy or security. It can be something that ends up being life changing in a good way if we are using it properly and in applications that have a positive outcome. So I recommend that article as well, especially if you need like a little bit of inspiration in your day to think of, hey, this is a really cool way to try and help people. And it's also very realistic, Like if you read that article, you will see that they are very clear and forthright about how their approach is moving the needle. But it's not like it's a magic pill that solves all problems. So I recommend checking it out. Okay, that's it. I gotta stop talking because I keep having to pause this show so that I can cough my head off, and I just want to be able to go cough my head off without having to start up the show again. Also, I don't know if you could hear it. My dog barked earlier when I was talking. You can tell how tired I am by the fact that I didn't go back and re record and have it without my dog barking in the background. But when I'm coughing this much, I just can't afford to do that. All right, I hope all of you out there are doing really well, and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, app podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.