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 iHeart Podcasts and how the tech are you. It's time for the tech news or Tuesday, December twelfth, twenty twenty three, and we'll start off with the story about how hackers can really cause widespread problems due to how various regions have computerized and networked vital infrastructure, which is not a bad thing, like updating infrastructure so that it runs efficiently is important. The problem is when components within that infrastructure provide vulnerabilities. So the story is all about a small region in Western Ireland which became the target of hackers and they managed to shut down that area's water system for around one hundred and sixty households for two days. The hackers were able to do this by targeting a programmable logic controller or PLC. These are microprocessors that are common in industrial use in lots of different industries. So unlike the CPU that's in your computer, these PLCs are meant to handle a very small selection of jobs and as such they are typically far less complex in design. Than a CPU, and they can also run extremely fast and efficiently. Because of that right, they don't have to do everything. They have to do this subset of tasks and they just do it as fast as they can. Now on the flip side, if someone is able to sabotage the PLCs in a vital industrial system, well then we get a situation like what happened in Ireland. But why did the hackers do this? Why would some rural area in iron And be the target of hackers? What could possibly be the motivation? Well, according to the record, it was because these hackers discovered the water system that this region used had components inside it that came from an Israeli company called Unitronics. So they weren't singling out this area of Ireland for any other reason other than the fact that its water system had components from this one company incorporated into it. So it really didn't matter where this was happening. It was the fact that it was this one specific company's product within their system. The hackers appear to be part of the cyber Avengers group, and the Avengers in this case is spelled av iree Nngers. That's how you know how LTE These hackers are reportedly this group has ties to Iran, meaning this was a politically motivated attack. What's more, other water systems around the world, including here in the United States, had similar attacks on their systems that also had Unitronics PLCs incorporated in them, though in those cases it seems like there was actually no loss of water service in those areas. I recommend reading the article on the record. It's by Alexander Martin. It's titled two day water outage and Remote Irish Region caused by pro Iran hackers. Has some more information about the political side of things that I find really interesting and also infuriating. There's a whole bunch of stuff about lobbying groups here in the United States that actively lobbied the US government against adopting measures that would have increased security around this sort of stuff. It really does drive you nuts when you see how companies and politicians will make bad decisions when it comes to security in favor of solutions that are less expensive. Check out that article to read more about it. Now. I didn't actually put this in my notes, but I feel like I do need to say it because it's certainly in the tech news sphere. Elon Musk has reinstated the Twitter slash x profile for Alex Jones, the former radio host who got into incredible trouble due to his misleading information and disinformation around the tragic Sandy Hook shooting incident, as well as multiple other instances of him saying horrible stuff you were talking about, you know, racist kind of of talk, misogynist talk. It's the list is almost endless, and Alex Jones have been banned years ago from Twitter due to these kinds of activities. And then Musk ran a poll, and the poll found in favor of reinstating Alex Jones's account, and so Musk did it. I'll remind you that my usually has the most followers of anyone on x also appears to have a ton of followers who have little to no activity on the service, which suggests it doesn't necessarily prove, but it suggests that a lot of those accounts maybe bots and not actual people. A lot of the accounts have very few followers of their own, so that it's not a good indication that perhaps any pole Musk puts out is actually reliable. There's no telling how much of that activity is controlled by just a few entities. That maybe have bought armies under their administration. So making these kinds of decisions by arguing that but people have spoken seems really disingenuous to me. And it also seems like Elon Musk is just hell bent on running Twitter into the ground. Even further, like, the decisions he's made are completely antithetical to trying to grow and protect a company, so very confusing. If in fact he wants Twitter to be a thing, maybe he doesn't. Next up, John Broadkin of ours Tetnica has an article titled Tesla again threatens to sue cyber truck buyers who try to resell their cars and or resell I should say that was a weird way of pronouncing that. Anyway, that's the whole story really, but hear me out. So I am not a fan of scalpers or people who use their access to you know, purchasing power in order to buy up a limited supply of whatever it is and then turn it around and sell it at a huge markup. I think that stinks. I think that stinks if you're talking about tickets to an event, it stinks with you know, like graphics cards. We saw that happen a lot especially during the pandemic and during the crypto coin boost or spike. I think it stinks with limited runs of collectibles. I'm specifically looking at you folks who would end up buying up all the tiki mugs from Trader Sam's and then turn around and sell them at like one hundred and fifty percent price increase. But at the same time, I also believe that if you buy something, then you should have the right to resell that thing if you want to. I mean, if someone's willing to buy it and you're you want to sell it, I think you should be able to, because once you buy something, it's yours right. Well not. According to Tesla, the company had a clause that stated it could sue a cyber truck owner for up to fifty thousand dollars if they resold their vehicle within the first year of their ownership. Now, this actually used to be in the publicly viewable version of that contract, but Tesla then nixed that after you know, folks noticed it and some began to have something to say about that policy, so it got deleted from the publicly viewable version. However, according to Broadkin, the clause is very much still in place, it's just not listed in the publicly viewable version of the agreement. So according to this now non public agreement, Tesla has right of first refusal, essentially meaning that if you purchase your cyber truck and you've had it for less than a year and you decide you want to sell it, you first have to offer Tesla the chance to buy back the vehicle themselves. I'm guessing this is because Tesla has a very long list of folks who have reserved an order for a cyber truck, and from what we understand, Tesla will not be able to meet that demand anytime soon, as in, it could be years before someone who is just now getting interested in a cyber truck would be able to buy one, because Tesla will still be filling out those reserve orders that had already been placed. Also, to make matters worse, it sounds like buyers are not made aware of this clause until after they have submitted a non refundable two hundred and fifty dollars order fee, which means they're effectively agreeing to a claw that they aren't even allowed to see beforehand, which sounds shady to me. Sticking with the cyber truck. Niko di Matia over at Yahoo has an article titled Tesla's cybertruck owner discovers unexplained wade mode buried in settings so as the story goes, a fellow named Nick Kruz Patan or Pataine shared some pictures of the cyber truck infotainment screen that indicated some features that the company hasn't actually talked about in its reveal of the cyber truck. So among those features is the aforementioned wade mode, which includes a description that reads raises ride height and pressurizes battery when driving through water. Now that kind of makes sense. I mean, if I'm sure at some point you have encountered a really deep puddle across a road and you had that moment of do I try to drive through this or do I need to turn around? I'm actually reminded of a trip up to Pennsylvania where my partner and I debated on that very issue for about two minutes before we decided to chance it. Luckily we made it through, but it was never a guarantee because it was a very deep puddle. So a setting that could raise the ride height and protect the battery from water makes sense It's a little odd that we found out about this from a Twitter user sharing a picture of this feature online. I should add that Elon Musk has previously claimed that the cyber truck would be able to do some pretty darn spectacular stuff like almost on the level of Chitty Chitty Bang bang, like float on deeper waters like lakes and rivers like an amphibious vehicle. So maybe, you know, wade mode was just not deemed interesting enough to talk about, like, oh, sure, it can raise its height and glide over a deep puddle. This thing's gonna sail the Seven Seas. We should probably also wait for proof that the cyber truck can float on water before folks actually try that. We've already have issues with features called autopilot and full self driving in other Tesla vehicles that, in my opinion at least fall far short of what their names at least suggest those features can do. And speaking of that, the Department of Motor Vehicles in the state of California filed a lawsuit against Tesla last year that actually focuses on how the company has advertised the autopilot and full self driving features. So the DMV of California has argued that Tesla misled consumers through the advertisement of these features, misleading them into thinking that they could do more than what the features are actually intended to do. In other words, arguing that these are more autonomous vehicle features as opposed to advanced driver assist features. That's the core of this lawsuit. Well, now Tesla has shown a couple of defenses to this lawsuit. First of all, Tesla says the case should just be dismissed. It shouldn't even go any further because the First Amendment protects Tesla, and the lawsuit will quote restrict Tesla's truthful and non misleading speech about its vehicles and their features end quote. But I think the whole point of the case that the DMV is making is that the speech about the vehicles and their features is non truthful and it is misleading, and I think that's an argument that would need to play out in court. So what Tesla is saying is, no, everything we said was true, and if we let this lawsuit go forward, it restricts our free speech, So you got to throw it out. But the court hasn't determined that the speech is true yet. This is kind of a crazy, proactive defense. In my opinion, I am not a lawyer, so what do I know. But other legal arguments that the Tesla team has made include them essentially saying, hey, we've been using these terms autopilot and full self driving for years and you never told us to cut it out before, so you really can't start doing that now or something. Again, I'm not a lawyer, so who am I to judge on these matters, But in my opinion, this all starts to sound a lot like when little kids on a playground are arbitrarily making up rules to a game that they're currently in the middle of, right, Like like, no, you can't. You can't shoot me with that gun because I have a special force field that protects against that kind of gun. You have to have a different kind of gun, and you don't have access to that yet. Like that kind of stuff where you just change the rules as you go, Calvin ball, as you might call it. So I remain skeptical that Tesla's move to have the case dismissed will be a success, but I guess it all depends upon the judge, So we'll have to wait and see. All right, I've got a ton of other news items to talk about today. Before we jump into any more of that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors. We're back, Okay. So Michael Wayland of CNBC has an article titled Ford cuts planned twenty twenty four production of electric f one point fifty lightning in half. So this is another blow to fans of electric vehicles. So for a while, you know, i'd say for the last like year and a half two years, the story around electric vehicles was really all about how automakers are attempting to scale up manufacturing to meet an unprecedented demand, and also about how the production of electric vehicles is simpler and cheaper than producing internal combustion engine vehicles, at least once you actually have the manufacturing process built out. And the reason for that is that electric vehicles are mechanically far simpler machines than internal combustion engine vehicles. So there are various incentives to really get into ev production right, less expensive to do, you can make it more efficiently and increase demand. So what is going on? Why would Ford cut its production in half for twenty twenty four. Well, according to Ford, the problem is actually that demand piece of the picture, that it's just not as high as what the auto industry anticipated, and so Ford plans to match production with demand, when that means scaling back a massive investment in the EV production. It doesn't make sense to roll out thousands of trucks if the demand is only for half that amount. So why is there a slower rise in demand than what was previously guessed at. Well, it very well may have nothing to do with actual interest in electric vehicles in general that appears to still be pretty high. It seems to have more to do with economics, which makes sense right because customers are still having to deal with high interest rates, which will affect loans as well as inflation, which affects prices. So with high prices and high interest rates, there's less incentive to go and invest in a more expensive vehicle that you're going to be paying for for longer and with those interest rates, paying a lot more over time. And that may in fact be the element that is holding back electric vehicle production. It's not anything other than that, and perhaps if that economic situation is to improve, we would see a switch like much more interest and thus much more production. So I would say that this is dependent heavily on how the economy progresses. Over the next twelve months or so, Google and its parent company Alphabet received a legal loss relating to monopolistic tendencies directly to jail, do not passco did not collect two hundred dollars. So you may already be aware that Google slash Alphabet faces scrutiny in the United States and beyond for alleged any competitive practices. The use of the word alleged any competitive practices is being really generous, because Google has certainly done some stuff that, at least in my opinion, is pretty darn anti competitive, and in fact, Google faces an existential threat, if you will, in the United States. There's the possibility that US regulatory agencies might ultimately demand that Alphabets split up into different companies in order to reduce the anti competitive nature of the business. While I also read an article by Sean Hollister at The Verge, the articles titled epic Win jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight, I am embarrassed to admit that I didn't immediately get the reference in epic Win, which I'm sure all of you already did. Because this lawsuit relates to the video game developer and publisher Epic Games. That's the company behind the insanely popular title Fortnite. Epic has already waged legal battles against Apple on this same sort of issue. Apple arguably got the upper hand in those cases. It was not a clean sweep, but Apple won more than at lost. But this time with the Google case, a jury was firmly on Epic's side and reportedly delivered a unanimous decision saying that every claim Epic made against Google was had merit that it was true, namely that Google's Android platform has a monopolistic hold on payment systems, that if you want to run an Android you have to go through Google's payment systems to do it. They also said that Google essentially has an iron grip on Android app distribution, which is interesting to me because Android does support loading and has from the earliest days of the operating system, which means you can actually set your Android device to allow you to install apps from places other than the Google Play Store, but it isn't particularly obvious that you can do this. It does require the user to go through a bit of a menu maze to get it to work, and also it does mean the user has to accept a significant level of risk that the stuff they're downloading could be malicious in nature. It's not like everything on Google Playstore is not malicious. There's some malicious stuff that has been found on there in the past, but once you get out of that store, all bets are off. Anyway, Google representative Wilson White released a statement indicating that the company will appeal the jury's decision, arguing that Google does compete in the app space, albeit mainly with Apple, which is its own kettle of anti competitive fish. As Hollister points out in the Verge article, this case and the one which a judge ruled more in favor of Apple over Epic have several differentiating factors between them. So this isn't just like one court finds in favor of app Apple and one court finds in favor of Epic. It's very different situations. In the Apple versus Epic case, that was decided by a judge, not a jury. In the Google versus Epic, it was a jury trial, not a judge decision. So yeah, there were a lot of differentiating factors. Still kind of confusing though. Meanwhile, US Senator Elizabeth Warren is scolding Apple for shutting down the app called Beeper. That's the app that would give Android users the ability to interact with iPhone users by sending messages that would then convert over into I message texts. So in other words, they would show up an I message as if the message had been sent by an iPhone owner, not an Android owner, and that way Android users could avoid the terrible social stigma of daring to use an Android device instead of an iPhone, and it would bypass Apple's policy of differentiating these by the color of the text bubble within I message. And as far as I can tell, this is really only an issue here in America where folks get all tribal about the kinds of devices they use and start to form opinions about the character of a person if their text is appearing in a different color of bubble. Anyway, Apple said it had blocked Beeper due to the company reverse engineering the I message protocol and then using fake credentials to generate these I message from Android texts, so they're saying, you know, they violated our terms of service. There's also an additional concern that Beeper's methodology failed to ensure into end encryption, so there were claims that what Beeper was doing was actually storing messages in clear text, which means that if someone were to access that, they could read those messages without any problem. Right, there would be no encryption protecting the content of those messages, and that would be an enormous security flaw and I think a valid reason to shut down the app. But for the record, Beeper actually denies this. However, It's also true that Beeper did not submit to a third party review to make sure that its systems were secure before it launched, So it's a complicated issue anyway. If you would like to learn more, I recommend Sarah Perez's article in tech Crunch titled Senator Warren calls out Apple for shutting down Beeper's eye Message to Android solution. CNBC's Jonathan Vennian has an article titled more than fifteen percent of teens say they're on YouTube or TikTok almost constantly. So we need to dig down into this a bit because I feel like there are a lot of statements being made that potentially lack the support needed to make any firm assertions. So let's let's get to it. This is according to the Pew Research Center. So Pew Research does surveys all the time. They do lots of different research. I do not wish to cast dispersions on Pew Research Center, but they issued a survey measuring teenage trends online and the survey found that ninety three percent of the respondents said they use YouTube regularly, so that made YouTube the most popular platform among those surveyed. Around sixteen percent of that ninety three percent said they're on YouTube almost constantly, and that leads to the headline for the article that I'm talking about here. The other apps ranked by popularity from most popular to least included TikTok, then Snapchat, then Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Slash x had a much lower response rate. That seems to underscore the issues we learned about back in twenty twenty one during the whole Facebook slash Meta whistleblower leaks, because back then we learned that executives in Facebook were really concerned about how younger generations were not adopting the Facebook platform the way previous generations had, which threatens the long term status of Facebook and potentially of the entire company. I'm not sure anything in this survey is a huge surprise. I should also add that at the bottom of the article, Vanian reveals that the Pew Research Center survey covered only or nearly not even only nearly fifteen hundred thirteen to seventeen year olds. So oney, five hundred people is actually a pretty small sample size. I would caution anyone from making overly broad conclusions based on this data. It may very well be that this is representative of the overall population of young users, but with just fifteen hundred respondents, I don't know that you could say there is a nearly fifteen percent population of teens out there who are constantly on YouTube. I think that that would be stretching the findings of this survey beyond what they can support, in my opinion. Business Insider has a piece titled a firm providing AI drive through tech to fast food chains actually relies on human workers to take orders seventy percent of the time. This was written by Soda by Mia. The piece is about a company called Presto Automations, which previously claimed that ninety five percent of orders received by the company's chat bot product needed no human intervention, so that if you were to interact with a company that used Presto Automations product, ninety five percent of the time, it would be a chatbot and no one else would ever have to step in, and your order would be complete or at least go to the kitchen of whatever fast food joint you're interacting with. But now it appears that the company has changed its tune and admitted that seventy percent of all orders coming in through its systems actually receive human oversight and assistance in order to work, and that the people who are providing this are employees who are working off site. This is according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC here in the United States. That might explain the massive discrepancy in these claims, because it's one thing to say your product works all on its own nearly all the time in a general statement. It's another thing entirely to make that kind of claim to an official regulatory agency. The off site agents are said to reside in places like the Philippines, so really you could argue that what Presto Automation is actually doing is sending minimum wage jobs in the United States in the fast food industry offshore to other countries. Of course, the goal ultimately with automation is to weed out human beings entirely, meaning no one, no matter where they live, would have this kind of job. I'm not sure what all those high school students here in the United States are going to do to secure part time work once all that happens. Currently, some of the drive through companies that are using this kind of technology include McDonald's, Popeye's, Taco Bell, and Wingstop. Eventually, we're going to get to a point where none of us have jobs anymore, and the AI powered order takers won't have anyone to take orders from because no one will be able to afford a bean burrito from Taco Bell. Oh the joys of automation. This is what leads into discussions for the need for something like a universal basic income. But that's the story for another time. Okay, I've got a few more stories to cover before we conclude today's episode. Before we get to that, let's take another quick break. Okay, we've got a few more tech stories to cover before I can. Let y'all go. First up, Anton Shy love of Tom's hardware as an article titled wi Fi seven to get the final seal of approval early next year. New standard is up to four point eight times faster than Wi Fi six. Now, I feel you don't hear as much about Wi Fi standards as you do, say wireless phone standards the right Like you'll hear about things like LTE and five G and maybe even six G, but you don't hear so much about Wi Fi standards now. Obviously, engineers are constantly improving the performance and capability of wireless transmission technologies. Wi Fi is no exception to that. And it's kind of funny to talk about Wi Fi seven because at the moment, the most widely used Wi Fi standard is eight two point eleven AC, which is also known as Wi Fi five. That standard actually was finalized back in twenty fourteen wi Fi six aka eight oh two point eleven AX, which also covers Wi Fi six E. These standards are just a couple of years old and they haven't seen widespread deployment so far. That's not to say that there aren't devices out there in the wild right now that are Wi Fi six enabled. There are, they just are outnumbered by older technologies like Wi Fi five. But now we're talking about Wi Fi seven. And also just so you know, Wi Fi eight is also in development, so it's coming to in a couple of years. If you go shopping right now, to make things even more confusing, you will already find devices on the mark right now tagged as Wi Fi seven capable. So what gives. Well, companies have actually been making Wi Fi enabled products using the draft specifications for Wi Fi seven. Just you know, there are specifications, they just haven't been formally adopted and finalized. So these are not so far like, they're not scams. It's not like these are products that are making false claims. They are Wi Fi seven enabled, and with a firmware update, they should conform to the upcoming official standard. So this stuff just gets messy now. Mostly, the folks who will be largely concerned about Wi Fi seven will typically be the administrators who are trying to deploy wireless networks in extremely dense populated environments. Like think of like a big company with lots and lots and lots of employees, and considering now that tons of CEOs are really gung ho on making employees come back to the office, I argue that this is a necessary thing. So does this mean everyone out there will need to go out and get a Wi Fi seven enabled router or modem or whatever. Not necessarily. I mean, will it technically work faster than older technologies, yes, so, but you also have to have all your devices capable of working on that standard for you to take advantage of that. So it's not as simple as swapping out one element in your network. You actually have to do a lot of work to make it actually, you know, valuable, but still cool that the standard will be coming out in the not too distant future. And now for a news item that has absolutely no relevance to me whatsoever, but still cool, and it could ultimately be important for a lot of people if it ever goes beyond the concept phase. Laws Blaine, who apart from having a kick ass name, wrote an article for a new Atlist titled Hyundai unveils car tires with built in push button snow chains, which sounds absolutely rad to me. In fact, it actually reminds me of a toy from the nineteen eighties. You gotta remember, I'm a child of the seventies and early eighties. There was this toy called the Animal Monster truck, and this toy truck had tires that had retractable claws, like almost like tiger claws inside the tires. They could extend out to grip on the rough landscape. And I know that rocks right, because the eighties were a golden age for toys. Now, the eighties were simultaneously awful for a lot of other stuff, not music. As it turns out, new wave was awesome, but with toys and new wave music it was at the top. In other areas it was not great. But anyway, this Hyundai invention is not a toy. It's a real system that could have retractable snow chains, and this could save folks a lot of frustration and effort as the season changes and heavy snowfalls follow. Now, I don't have to worry about that. I live in Atlanta. We might get as much as an inch or maybe two inches of snow in a very heavy year. And that's not like on a single snowfall. I mean that's across all winter. You might have accumulatively two inches of snow. Most of the time we get a little bit of snow and a lot of ice, which is terrible. But for other folks this innovation could be really useful. Now. According to Blaine's article, the tires are quote partially made using compressed shape memory alloys end quote that also sounds cool as hell. You push a button, it sends an electric current to the tires, and in response to this electric current, they change shape. So I may have to do a full episode about memory alloys and talk about the technology behind them and how this works. It is a fascinating area of research and development, and unfortunately so are these tires because these are not made for production just yet. It's actually a really involved process because you can't just have a tire that does this. It has to work with a vehicle that has been outfitted to work with these kinds of tires, right You have to have a way of sending that electric signal for one thing to the tire, so the whole wheel mechanism has to be designed for this. So it's really just a concept right now. But I think it's a really cool concept, and I hope Yung Day will be able to make these kinds of tires practical and affordable, because I really do think this is one of those vehicle options that for a subset of people would be incredibly helpful and I would love to see it. Plus, you know, it's kind of like driving a transformer, a very limited transformer, but still pretty cool. And now for some article recommendations. I've actually got a bunch of these today. There were so many that I came across and I felt like y'all need to know about them because they might really appeal to you and be really informative. So first up, Eric W. Dolan wrote a piece for sipost psy Post. The piece is titled politically engaged redditors tend to be more toxic even in non political subreddits. So it's a good article. It actually details the apparent correlation, which I'll remind you is different from causation, but the correlation between being politically informed and being toxic in online forums anddotally, I would say somewhat cynically that becoming more politically informed does tend to lead to one becoming more of a pill to be around. Now, that's using my own personal experience, because I've I've just noticed that when I am actively trying to stay informed politically, I also get a lot more prickly in general, like no matter what the contact is. But that's anecdotally, right, That doesn't that's not really evidence. That's just like, oh, my own personal experience seems to reinforce this hypothesis. These links have to be thoroughly examined before you can ever make any real conclusions. But it's a great article. Check it out. Next up, Bene Edwards has a piece in Ours Technica titled as chat GPT gets lazy people test winter break hypothesis as the cause. All right, So this has to do with how some users have reported that chat gpt seems to be slacking on occasion recently, like you could submit a query to chat gpt and get an overly simplified response as opposed to the in depth responses you might have received months ago, or it might even refuse to answer your question at all. Open Aye says it is aware of this problem, it has not gone so far as to say what may have caused this, and it has led some users to suggest that perhaps chat gpt has the equivalent of the winter blues, or rather chat GPT is mimicking people who tend to get the winter blues and thus are less communicative in winter months. So maybe chat gpt is just copying us. Maybe if we just convince chat gpt that it is in Australia where the weather right now is hot and sunny, it'll stop being so gosh darn lazy anyway, check out that article. Sticking with open AI, we have another article, this one by ed Zetron, and it's an opinion piece on Scientific American. It is titled open AI's soap opera collapse bodes ill for AI benefiting humanity. Now, I don't want to give away the whole point of the article, but it largely focuses on how open ai operates in a way that seems entirely antithetical to the organization's original purpose, something that Elon Musk actually complained about a few years ago. And y'all know I am not an Elon Musk fan, but on this particular matter, I find myself agreeing with him anyway. Finally, we have an article on WES. This one is by Jules Roscoe. Is titled Eyes Everywhere. Congress is about to vote to expand mass surveillance of Americans, experts Warren. Now, that vote is to happen today Tuesday, December twelfth, twenty twenty three, at four pm Eastern, So by the time you hear this, there may already have been a vote. But read the article. It is informative and frankly scary. All Right, that wraps up today's news episode of tech Stuff. We'll have another one on Thursday. Also, I hope you enjoyed yesterday's special episode of tech Stuff. It was a huge departure from what I normally do on this show, but it was a lot of fun. It's not like to ever happen again, so a one time only event, but it did let me put on my storytelling shoes, which was a lot of fun. I hope you are all 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, Apple 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 iHeart Podcasts and how the tech are you. It's time for the tech news or Tuesday, December twelfth, twenty twenty three, and we'll start off with the story about how hackers can really cause widespread problems due to how various regions have computerized and networked vital infrastructure, which is not a bad thing, like updating infrastructure so that it runs efficiently is important. The problem is when components within that infrastructure provide vulnerabilities. So the story is all about a small region in Western Ireland which became the target of hackers and they managed to shut down that area's water system for around one hundred and sixty households for two days. The hackers were able to do this by targeting a programmable logic controller or PLC. These are microprocessors that are common in industrial use in lots of different industries. So unlike the CPU that's in your computer, these PLCs are meant to handle a very small selection of jobs and as such they are typically far less complex in design. Than a CPU, and they can also run extremely fast and efficiently. Because of that right, they don't have to do everything. They have to do this subset of tasks and they just do it as fast as they can. Now on the flip side, if someone is able to sabotage the PLCs in a vital industrial system, well then we get a situation like what happened in Ireland. But why did the hackers do this? Why would some rural area in iron And be the target of hackers? What could possibly be the motivation? Well, according to the record, it was because these hackers discovered the water system that this region used had components inside it that came from an Israeli company called Unitronics. So they weren't singling out this area of Ireland for any other reason other than the fact that its water system had components from this one company incorporated into it. So it really didn't matter where this was happening. It was the fact that it was this one specific company's product within their system. The hackers appear to be part of the cyber Avengers group, and the Avengers in this case is spelled av iree Nngers. That's how you know how LTE These hackers are reportedly this group has ties to Iran, meaning this was a politically motivated attack. What's more, other water systems around the world, including here in the United States, had similar attacks on their systems that also had Unitronics PLCs incorporated in them, though in those cases it seems like there was actually no loss of water service in those areas. I recommend reading the article on the record. It's by Alexander Martin. It's titled two day water outage and Remote Irish Region caused by pro Iran hackers. Has some more information about the political side of things that I find really interesting and also infuriating. There's a whole bunch of stuff about lobbying groups here in the United States that actively lobbied the US government against adopting measures that would have increased security around this sort of stuff. It really does drive you nuts when you see how companies and politicians will make bad decisions when it comes to security in favor of solutions that are less expensive. Check out that article to read more about it. Now. I didn't actually put this in my notes, but I feel like I do need to say it because it's certainly in the tech news sphere. Elon Musk has reinstated the Twitter slash x profile for Alex Jones, the former radio host who got into incredible trouble due to his misleading information and disinformation around the tragic Sandy Hook shooting incident, as well as multiple other instances of him saying horrible stuff you were talking about, you know, racist kind of of talk, misogynist talk. It's the list is almost endless, and Alex Jones have been banned years ago from Twitter due to these kinds of activities. And then Musk ran a poll, and the poll found in favor of reinstating Alex Jones's account, and so Musk did it. I'll remind you that my usually has the most followers of anyone on x also appears to have a ton of followers who have little to no activity on the service, which suggests it doesn't necessarily prove, but it suggests that a lot of those accounts maybe bots and not actual people. A lot of the accounts have very few followers of their own, so that it's not a good indication that perhaps any pole Musk puts out is actually reliable. There's no telling how much of that activity is controlled by just a few entities. That maybe have bought armies under their administration. So making these kinds of decisions by arguing that but people have spoken seems really disingenuous to me. And it also seems like Elon Musk is just hell bent on running Twitter into the ground. Even further, like, the decisions he's made are completely antithetical to trying to grow and protect a company, so very confusing. If in fact he wants Twitter to be a thing, maybe he doesn't. Next up, John Broadkin of ours Tetnica has an article titled Tesla again threatens to sue cyber truck buyers who try to resell their cars and or resell I should say that was a weird way of pronouncing that. Anyway, that's the whole story really, but hear me out. So I am not a fan of scalpers or people who use their access to you know, purchasing power in order to buy up a limited supply of whatever it is and then turn it around and sell it at a huge markup. I think that stinks. I think that stinks if you're talking about tickets to an event, it stinks with you know, like graphics cards. We saw that happen a lot especially during the pandemic and during the crypto coin boost or spike. I think it stinks with limited runs of collectibles. I'm specifically looking at you folks who would end up buying up all the tiki mugs from Trader Sam's and then turn around and sell them at like one hundred and fifty percent price increase. But at the same time, I also believe that if you buy something, then you should have the right to resell that thing if you want to. I mean, if someone's willing to buy it and you're you want to sell it, I think you should be able to, because once you buy something, it's yours right. Well not. According to Tesla, the company had a clause that stated it could sue a cyber truck owner for up to fifty thousand dollars if they resold their vehicle within the first year of their ownership. Now, this actually used to be in the publicly viewable version of that contract, but Tesla then nixed that after you know, folks noticed it and some began to have something to say about that policy, so it got deleted from the publicly viewable version. However, according to Broadkin, the clause is very much still in place, it's just not listed in the publicly viewable version of the agreement. So according to this now non public agreement, Tesla has right of first refusal, essentially meaning that if you purchase your cyber truck and you've had it for less than a year and you decide you want to sell it, you first have to offer Tesla the chance to buy back the vehicle themselves. I'm guessing this is because Tesla has a very long list of folks who have reserved an order for a cyber truck, and from what we understand, Tesla will not be able to meet that demand anytime soon, as in, it could be years before someone who is just now getting interested in a cyber truck would be able to buy one, because Tesla will still be filling out those reserve orders that had already been placed. Also, to make matters worse, it sounds like buyers are not made aware of this clause until after they have submitted a non refundable two hundred and fifty dollars order fee, which means they're effectively agreeing to a claw that they aren't even allowed to see beforehand, which sounds shady to me. Sticking with the cyber truck. Niko di Matia over at Yahoo has an article titled Tesla's cybertruck owner discovers unexplained wade mode buried in settings so as the story goes, a fellow named Nick Kruz Patan or Pataine shared some pictures of the cyber truck infotainment screen that indicated some features that the company hasn't actually talked about in its reveal of the cyber truck. So among those features is the aforementioned wade mode, which includes a description that reads raises ride height and pressurizes battery when driving through water. Now that kind of makes sense. I mean, if I'm sure at some point you have encountered a really deep puddle across a road and you had that moment of do I try to drive through this or do I need to turn around? I'm actually reminded of a trip up to Pennsylvania where my partner and I debated on that very issue for about two minutes before we decided to chance it. Luckily we made it through, but it was never a guarantee because it was a very deep puddle. So a setting that could raise the ride height and protect the battery from water makes sense It's a little odd that we found out about this from a Twitter user sharing a picture of this feature online. I should add that Elon Musk has previously claimed that the cyber truck would be able to do some pretty darn spectacular stuff like almost on the level of Chitty Chitty Bang bang, like float on deeper waters like lakes and rivers like an amphibious vehicle. So maybe, you know, wade mode was just not deemed interesting enough to talk about, like, oh, sure, it can raise its height and glide over a deep puddle. This thing's gonna sail the Seven Seas. We should probably also wait for proof that the cyber truck can float on water before folks actually try that. We've already have issues with features called autopilot and full self driving in other Tesla vehicles that, in my opinion at least fall far short of what their names at least suggest those features can do. And speaking of that, the Department of Motor Vehicles in the state of California filed a lawsuit against Tesla last year that actually focuses on how the company has advertised the autopilot and full self driving features. So the DMV of California has argued that Tesla misled consumers through the advertisement of these features, misleading them into thinking that they could do more than what the features are actually intended to do. In other words, arguing that these are more autonomous vehicle features as opposed to advanced driver assist features. That's the core of this lawsuit. Well, now Tesla has shown a couple of defenses to this lawsuit. First of all, Tesla says the case should just be dismissed. It shouldn't even go any further because the First Amendment protects Tesla, and the lawsuit will quote restrict Tesla's truthful and non misleading speech about its vehicles and their features end quote. But I think the whole point of the case that the DMV is making is that the speech about the vehicles and their features is non truthful and it is misleading, and I think that's an argument that would need to play out in court. So what Tesla is saying is, no, everything we said was true, and if we let this lawsuit go forward, it restricts our free speech, So you got to throw it out. But the court hasn't determined that the speech is true yet. This is kind of a crazy, proactive defense. In my opinion, I am not a lawyer, so what do I know. But other legal arguments that the Tesla team has made include them essentially saying, hey, we've been using these terms autopilot and full self driving for years and you never told us to cut it out before, so you really can't start doing that now or something. Again, I'm not a lawyer, so who am I to judge on these matters, But in my opinion, this all starts to sound a lot like when little kids on a playground are arbitrarily making up rules to a game that they're currently in the middle of, right, Like like, no, you can't. You can't shoot me with that gun because I have a special force field that protects against that kind of gun. You have to have a different kind of gun, and you don't have access to that yet. Like that kind of stuff where you just change the rules as you go, Calvin ball, as you might call it. So I remain skeptical that Tesla's move to have the case dismissed will be a success, but I guess it all depends upon the judge, So we'll have to wait and see. All right, I've got a ton of other news items to talk about today. Before we jump into any more of that, let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors. We're back, Okay. So Michael Wayland of CNBC has an article titled Ford cuts planned twenty twenty four production of electric f one point fifty lightning in half. So this is another blow to fans of electric vehicles. So for a while, you know, i'd say for the last like year and a half two years, the story around electric vehicles was really all about how automakers are attempting to scale up manufacturing to meet an unprecedented demand, and also about how the production of electric vehicles is simpler and cheaper than producing internal combustion engine vehicles, at least once you actually have the manufacturing process built out. And the reason for that is that electric vehicles are mechanically far simpler machines than internal combustion engine vehicles. So there are various incentives to really get into ev production right, less expensive to do, you can make it more efficiently and increase demand. So what is going on? Why would Ford cut its production in half for twenty twenty four. Well, according to Ford, the problem is actually that demand piece of the picture, that it's just not as high as what the auto industry anticipated, and so Ford plans to match production with demand, when that means scaling back a massive investment in the EV production. It doesn't make sense to roll out thousands of trucks if the demand is only for half that amount. So why is there a slower rise in demand than what was previously guessed at. Well, it very well may have nothing to do with actual interest in electric vehicles in general that appears to still be pretty high. It seems to have more to do with economics, which makes sense right because customers are still having to deal with high interest rates, which will affect loans as well as inflation, which affects prices. So with high prices and high interest rates, there's less incentive to go and invest in a more expensive vehicle that you're going to be paying for for longer and with those interest rates, paying a lot more over time. And that may in fact be the element that is holding back electric vehicle production. It's not anything other than that, and perhaps if that economic situation is to improve, we would see a switch like much more interest and thus much more production. So I would say that this is dependent heavily on how the economy progresses. Over the next twelve months or so, Google and its parent company Alphabet received a legal loss relating to monopolistic tendencies directly to jail, do not passco did not collect two hundred dollars. So you may already be aware that Google slash Alphabet faces scrutiny in the United States and beyond for alleged any competitive practices. The use of the word alleged any competitive practices is being really generous, because Google has certainly done some stuff that, at least in my opinion, is pretty darn anti competitive, and in fact, Google faces an existential threat, if you will, in the United States. There's the possibility that US regulatory agencies might ultimately demand that Alphabets split up into different companies in order to reduce the anti competitive nature of the business. While I also read an article by Sean Hollister at The Verge, the articles titled epic Win jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight, I am embarrassed to admit that I didn't immediately get the reference in epic Win, which I'm sure all of you already did. Because this lawsuit relates to the video game developer and publisher Epic Games. That's the company behind the insanely popular title Fortnite. Epic has already waged legal battles against Apple on this same sort of issue. Apple arguably got the upper hand in those cases. It was not a clean sweep, but Apple won more than at lost. But this time with the Google case, a jury was firmly on Epic's side and reportedly delivered a unanimous decision saying that every claim Epic made against Google was had merit that it was true, namely that Google's Android platform has a monopolistic hold on payment systems, that if you want to run an Android you have to go through Google's payment systems to do it. They also said that Google essentially has an iron grip on Android app distribution, which is interesting to me because Android does support loading and has from the earliest days of the operating system, which means you can actually set your Android device to allow you to install apps from places other than the Google Play Store, but it isn't particularly obvious that you can do this. It does require the user to go through a bit of a menu maze to get it to work, and also it does mean the user has to accept a significant level of risk that the stuff they're downloading could be malicious in nature. It's not like everything on Google Playstore is not malicious. There's some malicious stuff that has been found on there in the past, but once you get out of that store, all bets are off. Anyway, Google representative Wilson White released a statement indicating that the company will appeal the jury's decision, arguing that Google does compete in the app space, albeit mainly with Apple, which is its own kettle of anti competitive fish. As Hollister points out in the Verge article, this case and the one which a judge ruled more in favor of Apple over Epic have several differentiating factors between them. So this isn't just like one court finds in favor of app Apple and one court finds in favor of Epic. It's very different situations. In the Apple versus Epic case, that was decided by a judge, not a jury. In the Google versus Epic, it was a jury trial, not a judge decision. So yeah, there were a lot of differentiating factors. Still kind of confusing though. Meanwhile, US Senator Elizabeth Warren is scolding Apple for shutting down the app called Beeper. That's the app that would give Android users the ability to interact with iPhone users by sending messages that would then convert over into I message texts. So in other words, they would show up an I message as if the message had been sent by an iPhone owner, not an Android owner, and that way Android users could avoid the terrible social stigma of daring to use an Android device instead of an iPhone, and it would bypass Apple's policy of differentiating these by the color of the text bubble within I message. And as far as I can tell, this is really only an issue here in America where folks get all tribal about the kinds of devices they use and start to form opinions about the character of a person if their text is appearing in a different color of bubble. Anyway, Apple said it had blocked Beeper due to the company reverse engineering the I message protocol and then using fake credentials to generate these I message from Android texts, so they're saying, you know, they violated our terms of service. There's also an additional concern that Beeper's methodology failed to ensure into end encryption, so there were claims that what Beeper was doing was actually storing messages in clear text, which means that if someone were to access that, they could read those messages without any problem. Right, there would be no encryption protecting the content of those messages, and that would be an enormous security flaw and I think a valid reason to shut down the app. But for the record, Beeper actually denies this. However, It's also true that Beeper did not submit to a third party review to make sure that its systems were secure before it launched, So it's a complicated issue anyway. If you would like to learn more, I recommend Sarah Perez's article in tech Crunch titled Senator Warren calls out Apple for shutting down Beeper's eye Message to Android solution. CNBC's Jonathan Vennian has an article titled more than fifteen percent of teens say they're on YouTube or TikTok almost constantly. So we need to dig down into this a bit because I feel like there are a lot of statements being made that potentially lack the support needed to make any firm assertions. So let's let's get to it. This is according to the Pew Research Center. So Pew Research does surveys all the time. They do lots of different research. I do not wish to cast dispersions on Pew Research Center, but they issued a survey measuring teenage trends online and the survey found that ninety three percent of the respondents said they use YouTube regularly, so that made YouTube the most popular platform among those surveyed. Around sixteen percent of that ninety three percent said they're on YouTube almost constantly, and that leads to the headline for the article that I'm talking about here. The other apps ranked by popularity from most popular to least included TikTok, then Snapchat, then Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Slash x had a much lower response rate. That seems to underscore the issues we learned about back in twenty twenty one during the whole Facebook slash Meta whistleblower leaks, because back then we learned that executives in Facebook were really concerned about how younger generations were not adopting the Facebook platform the way previous generations had, which threatens the long term status of Facebook and potentially of the entire company. I'm not sure anything in this survey is a huge surprise. I should also add that at the bottom of the article, Vanian reveals that the Pew Research Center survey covered only or nearly not even only nearly fifteen hundred thirteen to seventeen year olds. So oney, five hundred people is actually a pretty small sample size. I would caution anyone from making overly broad conclusions based on this data. It may very well be that this is representative of the overall population of young users, but with just fifteen hundred respondents, I don't know that you could say there is a nearly fifteen percent population of teens out there who are constantly on YouTube. I think that that would be stretching the findings of this survey beyond what they can support, in my opinion. Business Insider has a piece titled a firm providing AI drive through tech to fast food chains actually relies on human workers to take orders seventy percent of the time. This was written by Soda by Mia. The piece is about a company called Presto Automations, which previously claimed that ninety five percent of orders received by the company's chat bot product needed no human intervention, so that if you were to interact with a company that used Presto Automations product, ninety five percent of the time, it would be a chatbot and no one else would ever have to step in, and your order would be complete or at least go to the kitchen of whatever fast food joint you're interacting with. But now it appears that the company has changed its tune and admitted that seventy percent of all orders coming in through its systems actually receive human oversight and assistance in order to work, and that the people who are providing this are employees who are working off site. This is according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC here in the United States. That might explain the massive discrepancy in these claims, because it's one thing to say your product works all on its own nearly all the time in a general statement. It's another thing entirely to make that kind of claim to an official regulatory agency. The off site agents are said to reside in places like the Philippines, so really you could argue that what Presto Automation is actually doing is sending minimum wage jobs in the United States in the fast food industry offshore to other countries. Of course, the goal ultimately with automation is to weed out human beings entirely, meaning no one, no matter where they live, would have this kind of job. I'm not sure what all those high school students here in the United States are going to do to secure part time work once all that happens. Currently, some of the drive through companies that are using this kind of technology include McDonald's, Popeye's, Taco Bell, and Wingstop. Eventually, we're going to get to a point where none of us have jobs anymore, and the AI powered order takers won't have anyone to take orders from because no one will be able to afford a bean burrito from Taco Bell. Oh the joys of automation. This is what leads into discussions for the need for something like a universal basic income. But that's the story for another time. Okay, I've got a few more stories to cover before we conclude today's episode. Before we get to that, let's take another quick break. Okay, we've got a few more tech stories to cover before I can. Let y'all go. First up, Anton Shy love of Tom's hardware as an article titled wi Fi seven to get the final seal of approval early next year. New standard is up to four point eight times faster than Wi Fi six. Now, I feel you don't hear as much about Wi Fi standards as you do, say wireless phone standards the right Like you'll hear about things like LTE and five G and maybe even six G, but you don't hear so much about Wi Fi standards now. Obviously, engineers are constantly improving the performance and capability of wireless transmission technologies. Wi Fi is no exception to that. And it's kind of funny to talk about Wi Fi seven because at the moment, the most widely used Wi Fi standard is eight two point eleven AC, which is also known as Wi Fi five. That standard actually was finalized back in twenty fourteen wi Fi six aka eight oh two point eleven AX, which also covers Wi Fi six E. These standards are just a couple of years old and they haven't seen widespread deployment so far. That's not to say that there aren't devices out there in the wild right now that are Wi Fi six enabled. There are, they just are outnumbered by older technologies like Wi Fi five. But now we're talking about Wi Fi seven. And also just so you know, Wi Fi eight is also in development, so it's coming to in a couple of years. If you go shopping right now, to make things even more confusing, you will already find devices on the mark right now tagged as Wi Fi seven capable. So what gives. Well, companies have actually been making Wi Fi enabled products using the draft specifications for Wi Fi seven. Just you know, there are specifications, they just haven't been formally adopted and finalized. So these are not so far like, they're not scams. It's not like these are products that are making false claims. They are Wi Fi seven enabled, and with a firmware update, they should conform to the upcoming official standard. So this stuff just gets messy now. Mostly, the folks who will be largely concerned about Wi Fi seven will typically be the administrators who are trying to deploy wireless networks in extremely dense populated environments. Like think of like a big company with lots and lots and lots of employees, and considering now that tons of CEOs are really gung ho on making employees come back to the office, I argue that this is a necessary thing. So does this mean everyone out there will need to go out and get a Wi Fi seven enabled router or modem or whatever. Not necessarily. I mean, will it technically work faster than older technologies, yes, so, but you also have to have all your devices capable of working on that standard for you to take advantage of that. So it's not as simple as swapping out one element in your network. You actually have to do a lot of work to make it actually, you know, valuable, but still cool that the standard will be coming out in the not too distant future. And now for a news item that has absolutely no relevance to me whatsoever, but still cool, and it could ultimately be important for a lot of people if it ever goes beyond the concept phase. Laws Blaine, who apart from having a kick ass name, wrote an article for a new Atlist titled Hyundai unveils car tires with built in push button snow chains, which sounds absolutely rad to me. In fact, it actually reminds me of a toy from the nineteen eighties. You gotta remember, I'm a child of the seventies and early eighties. There was this toy called the Animal Monster truck, and this toy truck had tires that had retractable claws, like almost like tiger claws inside the tires. They could extend out to grip on the rough landscape. And I know that rocks right, because the eighties were a golden age for toys. Now, the eighties were simultaneously awful for a lot of other stuff, not music. As it turns out, new wave was awesome, but with toys and new wave music it was at the top. In other areas it was not great. But anyway, this Hyundai invention is not a toy. It's a real system that could have retractable snow chains, and this could save folks a lot of frustration and effort as the season changes and heavy snowfalls follow. Now, I don't have to worry about that. I live in Atlanta. We might get as much as an inch or maybe two inches of snow in a very heavy year. And that's not like on a single snowfall. I mean that's across all winter. You might have accumulatively two inches of snow. Most of the time we get a little bit of snow and a lot of ice, which is terrible. But for other folks this innovation could be really useful. Now. According to Blaine's article, the tires are quote partially made using compressed shape memory alloys end quote that also sounds cool as hell. You push a button, it sends an electric current to the tires, and in response to this electric current, they change shape. So I may have to do a full episode about memory alloys and talk about the technology behind them and how this works. It is a fascinating area of research and development, and unfortunately so are these tires because these are not made for production just yet. It's actually a really involved process because you can't just have a tire that does this. It has to work with a vehicle that has been outfitted to work with these kinds of tires, right You have to have a way of sending that electric signal for one thing to the tire, so the whole wheel mechanism has to be designed for this. So it's really just a concept right now. But I think it's a really cool concept, and I hope Yung Day will be able to make these kinds of tires practical and affordable, because I really do think this is one of those vehicle options that for a subset of people would be incredibly helpful and I would love to see it. Plus, you know, it's kind of like driving a transformer, a very limited transformer, but still pretty cool. And now for some article recommendations. I've actually got a bunch of these today. There were so many that I came across and I felt like y'all need to know about them because they might really appeal to you and be really informative. So first up, Eric W. Dolan wrote a piece for sipost psy Post. The piece is titled politically engaged redditors tend to be more toxic even in non political subreddits. So it's a good article. It actually details the apparent correlation, which I'll remind you is different from causation, but the correlation between being politically informed and being toxic in online forums anddotally, I would say somewhat cynically that becoming more politically informed does tend to lead to one becoming more of a pill to be around. Now, that's using my own personal experience, because I've I've just noticed that when I am actively trying to stay informed politically, I also get a lot more prickly in general, like no matter what the contact is. But that's anecdotally, right, That doesn't that's not really evidence. That's just like, oh, my own personal experience seems to reinforce this hypothesis. These links have to be thoroughly examined before you can ever make any real conclusions. But it's a great article. Check it out. Next up, Bene Edwards has a piece in Ours Technica titled as chat GPT gets lazy people test winter break hypothesis as the cause. All right, So this has to do with how some users have reported that chat gpt seems to be slacking on occasion recently, like you could submit a query to chat gpt and get an overly simplified response as opposed to the in depth responses you might have received months ago, or it might even refuse to answer your question at all. Open Aye says it is aware of this problem, it has not gone so far as to say what may have caused this, and it has led some users to suggest that perhaps chat gpt has the equivalent of the winter blues, or rather chat GPT is mimicking people who tend to get the winter blues and thus are less communicative in winter months. So maybe chat gpt is just copying us. Maybe if we just convince chat gpt that it is in Australia where the weather right now is hot and sunny, it'll stop being so gosh darn lazy anyway, check out that article. Sticking with open AI, we have another article, this one by ed Zetron, and it's an opinion piece on Scientific American. It is titled open AI's soap opera collapse bodes ill for AI benefiting humanity. Now, I don't want to give away the whole point of the article, but it largely focuses on how open ai operates in a way that seems entirely antithetical to the organization's original purpose, something that Elon Musk actually complained about a few years ago. And y'all know I am not an Elon Musk fan, but on this particular matter, I find myself agreeing with him anyway. Finally, we have an article on WES. This one is by Jules Roscoe. Is titled Eyes Everywhere. Congress is about to vote to expand mass surveillance of Americans, experts Warren. Now, that vote is to happen today Tuesday, December twelfth, twenty twenty three, at four pm Eastern, So by the time you hear this, there may already have been a vote. But read the article. It is informative and frankly scary. All Right, that wraps up today's news episode of tech Stuff. We'll have another one on Thursday. Also, I hope you enjoyed yesterday's special episode of tech Stuff. It was a huge departure from what I normally do on this show, but it was a lot of fun. It's not like to ever happen again, so a one time only event, but it did let me put on my storytelling shoes, which was a lot of fun. I hope you are all 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, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.