Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland, Diamond Executive producer with I Heart Radio and how the tech are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday, August twenty twenty two. We got a lot to get through. Let's do it. Twitter and Facebook recently shut down a network of fake accounts spreading propaganda that was attempting to portray a foreign country in a positive light in various regions. The twist to this story is that for the first time, this campaign was pushing a pro US perspective in places like Asia in the Middle East. We've seen efforts like this originating out of other places like China or Russia, that this is the first time we're talking about this some lar campaign that appears to have been based out of the United States and the United Kingdom. The effort used lots of recently established fake accounts, all pushing pro US narratives in these regions while also criticizing everything from Russia's war against Ukraine to human rights violations in China. But the use of fake accounts is against Facebook and Twitter's policies. No matter what the messaging is, and so those platforms have been taking an active stance in weeding out and shutting down these profiles. Also, NBC reports that the campaign appeared to have a minimal impact and that the posts didn't have much engagement from the general public. Most activity belonged to other fake accounts in an effort to boost visibility. Fortune reports that major companies like Apple, Honda, and Mazda are reevaluating their supply chain strategies. At the heart of the matter is the dependence upon in China. The cheap labor and manufacturing costs in China have long attracted major companies, which look to save on costs while making their products in order to maximize profit, but relying on China for manufacturing has become less attractive in recent years. The country's no tolerance approach to COVID means that operations are routinely interrupted as a region goes into lockdown with every outbreak. The deteriorating relationship between China and the United States is a big threat to the optics are also not great due to the aforementioned human rights violations in China. That's a very real thing. Propaganda campaigns aside, and in Central China, where a lot of these factories are located, a camastrophic drought has dried up rivers. That means that dams are not able to generate enough electricity through hydro power to supply factories, which has forced more interruptions in manufacture ring. And there's this real old saying that I'm sure all of you have heard that says don't put all your eggs in one basket. But the truth is, for a long time, many companies have essentially ignored that age old wisdom when it comes to the supply chain, and as a result, a disproportionate amount of the work involved in many supply chains happens in China. And now we're starting to see companies explore strategies meant to diversify the supply chain, something that has really become critically important as we've seen so many disruptions in supply chains reek havoc on company plans and consumer experiences over the last couple of years. Does this mean we'll see much more robust supply chains in the future. I'm kind of skeptical because I expect most companies will seek out the next cheapest, viable solution to their manufacturing needs, rather than truly diversify their approach to spread out risk. In an ideal world, we would see supply chains that are as robust as the Internet is. Should one part of the supply chain falter, you would be able to route around it with minimal disruption, But I think that's being overly optimistic. Nine to five MAC reports that Apple maybe on the verge of allowing users to delete the Apple Wallet app, which would be a pretty big deal as Apple routinely integrates its own apps into iOS in fundamental ways and doesn't allow users to delete them from their iOS devices. So why would Apple take this step giving users the chance to switch to some other digital wallet, particularly when doing so raises problems when users want to make a purchase through Apple pay Well. This is likely due to the European Union's recent pressure on Apple. The argument is that Apple's integration of Apple Wallet and its refusal to grant other digital wallets the same level of interoperability with Apple processes amounts to anti competitiveness, and actually it reminds me of the massive antitrust lawsuit that Microsoft faced in the nineties, which focused on how Microsoft made its own Internet Explorer browser and integrated part of Windows. That led Netscape to accuse Microsoft of engaging in anti competitive behavior, particularly since at that time Microsoft Windows was by far the dominant operating system in the consumer market. Courts actually agreed, and Microsoft was very nearly forced to break up into separate companies, but a subsequent court decision would reverse that course anyway. One major issue the EU has is that Apple doesn't allow any other digital wallet app but it's own to use the NFC technology that's built into iPhones. NFC is near field communication and this is the short range wireless tech that allows for small data transfers, you know, like contactless payments, and the EU has argued that Apple holding back access to NFC amounts to anti competitive behavior. So we haven't seen anything official yet, at least not as the recording of this podcast, but we're going to keep our eyes on this to see if Apple does allow users to actually fully remove Apple Wallet from their iOS devices. Speaking of Apple and anti competitive allegations, the company Match Group, which owns the dating slash hook up app Tender, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, this time in India. Match Group says that Apple treats dating apps unfairly, that Apple has this in app commission required for any purchase that's made within an app, uh, and that it doesn't do this for some other types of companies like righte haling companies, and I find that argument kind of interesting. See Apple and Google too for that matter. Has restricted its commission to only applying to apps that have in app digital purchases. It does not charge a commission on apps that are designed to purchase real world stuff. So, if you're playing a digital game and you want to pay for some in game content, while Apple will take a cut of that, but if you're ordering a real world pizza to be delivered to your home using an app, Apple does not take a cut of that transaction. Well, what match Group is saying is that right hailing companies get a pass from Apple. Apple does not take a commission if you were to use an app like Lift or Uber. But match Group says that that doesn't make sense because they get charged for Tender but not for Lift or Uber, and that in all cases, these apps are really just about bringing together people in the real world. You know, when you hail a ride, it's about arranging to meet someone at a specific place at a specific time. So match Group argues, that's what dating apps are doing too, and so why should it be fair for Apple to take a cut of tenders in app purchases but not a cut from right hailing company transactions. Now, I'm not convinced that that line of argument is bulletproof, because I think there's a case to be made that right hailing is definitely more than just bringing two or more people together in the same place at the same time. But anyway, match Group is hoping that India's competition regulator will force Apple to change its policies, similar to how regulators in the EU and in the US are pressuring Apple to allow apps to offer alternative payment systems outside of Apple's own system. And Video is getting ready to announce a new generation of graphics processing cards in September. According to The Verge, rumor has it, We're going to get a new generation of GPUs designated by the prefix for zero or forty. So right now you have cards like thirty eight and thirty ninety that are dominating in Video's portfolio from a performance perspective, that's like the top of the line of Invidios products and recently, we've actually seen more availability for those cards. You know, for a couple of years, in Video's most powerful cards were really hard to get hold of, and if you could find one, it was chances are it was on the aftermarket and it was at a huge markup. And this was largely because of cryptocurrency miners, specifically ether miners as an ethereum miners. This was a thing that we saw a lot. Bitcoin had actually reached a level where bitcoin miners were not relying on GPUs anymore. They were not powerful enough. They had switched to a SAC or application specific integrated circuit poward riggs at that time. But cryptocurrency has gone into a massive recession or a collapse or whatever you want to call it, and that meant that the return on investment for running a power hungry mining operation really became too low. I mean, if it costs you more money to run your computer system then you are making out of the mining operation. That's just not a good deal. It means you're just losing money. So this meant that there was less demand for those GPUs, and in Video actually found itself overstocked on graphics cards because demand had dropped and Finally, gamers actually have a decent chance to get their hands on these things as close to m s r P or manufactured suggested retail price, so at the asking price for these things instead of those crazy markups. However, all that being said, with the possible debut of a new generation of graphics cards within sight, presumably with much greater capabilities, it's probably not the best time to scoop up that thirty eight or thirty nine card if you want the best of the best. And keep in mind the that m s RP is still pretty day expensive for the top of the line models. So the Verge reminds us that there might be a significant gap between when in Video announces this next GPU architecture, which has the code name love Lace. I think that's great, and when consumers will actually have a chance to buy a card based off that architecture. So if you've been waiting to finally get one of these top performance cards, you might want to actually wait a little bit longer just to see what comes next and whether that's something you want. Also, when new cards come out, there's a chance, not a guarantee, but there's a chance that those thirty eight and thirty ninety models might get a price reduction. Um kind of hard to say, because when you're talking about teetering on economic recession and supply chain issues and all these other economic issues that are affecting the world, you cannot guarantee that you're going to see a price come down. But it is a possibility. All Right, We've got some more stories to cover, but before we get into that, let's take a quick break. The threat analysis group at Google is warning us that a tool called hyper skate can give hackers the ability to download a target's entire email inbox, and that this tool works with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, and others. Also, this tool does not require the hacker to trick someone into downloading some malware. However, it does mean the hacker does have to get access to the target's account somehow, So that could mean using some other kind of malware in order to get access, or you know, trying to guess or find a target's account password. You know a lot of times if you ever get those messages that your your password might have been compromised in a database breach. This is one of the reasons you should definitely pay attention to that and change those passwords, because if someone has just a file of passwords, they might be able to get access to your account and then download all of your email using a tool like this. So this is also a reason, by the way, why you should always enable multi factor authentication if it's available. I know it can be a hassle, but it really is useful. It means that if someone does attempt to log in as you, they're gonna have a harder time doing it. I'm not gonna say it's impossible, but i will say it's harder, and you are likely to get an alert that's saying something hinky is going on, which gives you a chance to take action. So activate that m F a option in in everything that offers it, y'all. Anyway, the team over at Google reports that it looks like most of the targeting activity that's using hyper escape right now is happening inside Iran. Now to me, that suggests that this could be a state sponsored campaign in order to gain access to high profile targets email accounts. No word on whom be responsible. I've got a few ideas, but you know it would just be pure speculation, so I'll save them for myself. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is urging companies and organizations to be super proactive when it comes to adopting a post quantum cryptography standard. What what alright? So on Tuesday I talked about a Japanese company and its plans to enter the quantum computer market with a sixty four cubit machine, And on that episode, I mentioned that quantum computing has the potential to drastically simplify a certain subset of computational problems that traditionally are extremely difficult for classic computers to solve. So a classic computer might take hundreds or thousands of years to solve some of these problems. But because quantum computing uses a different approach, one that if you have the right algorithm, the right program, you could solve these kinds of problems in a relatively fast and trivial manner. That means things are poised to change drastically and soon. One of those things is really important. It's encryption. It's how we encrypt data so that people can't just see what that data is. Now. I'm not going to launch into a full explanation of digital encryption here. I have done full episodes about that topic. But I will oversimplify a little bit and say that you can think of modern encryption essentially depending upon taking two very very large prime numbers with hundreds of digits, and then taking these two prime numbers, then performing a mathematical operation on the two which gives you a third number, and you use that to encode data, and to decode the data, you need to know at least one of the prime numbers that were used to make that third number. Um really you need both, but you have that ability to decode to reverse the process that was used to encrypt the information. Now, because we're talking about two really really really big prime numbers, figuring out which prime numbers were used to encrypt something is really hard to do. For a classic computer essentially has to go, you know, case by case doing prime number, prime number, prime number, prime number, until it figures out the ones that were used to encrypt, and that can take thousands of years. But a quantum computer, again, if paired with the right algorithm, could do the same process fairly quickly, at least with a certain percentage of uh certainty. So you might get a response that says it's, you know, certain that this particular solution applies to the problem, and that's that's that stands to completely change encryption. It means that should someone actually have access to a quantum computer and that kind of algorithm, they could potentially decrypt everything that's ever been encrypted up to now and have free access to all the secret information that's ever been on digital platforms. So that's obviously a huge security issue, right, I mean, it's the biggest security issue. You can have no more secrets. So this agency is telling companies that they need to start working on migrating to a post quantum encryption strategy, one that's fundamentally different from what we use for today's encryption, and the agency has been working to standardize so far for post quantum encryption algorithms. That in itself is not easy. You might remember from a recent news item that one proposed post quantum computing algorithm turned out to be vulnerable to a classic computer attack. A researcher actually found a way to exploit that algorithm in a non quantum approach, So while it might have been robust from a quantum computing approach, it wasn't from another angle. So making a robust encryption process is pretty darned tricky. Today, the US state of California is issuing rules that regard the state's transition to a ban on new internal combustion engine vehicles or the sale of them, I should say, so, the plan is to have a total ban on the sale of new ice vehicles by five but this is going to happen in stages. So starting in TWI of all new vehicles sold in the state of California will need to be free of carbon emissions, so we're mainly talking about things like electric vehicles here By it will need to be sixty eight percent of all new vehicles sold in California, and by all new vehicles sold in California will need to be free of carbon emissions in their operation. Obviously, the manufacturing of vehicles itself creates carbon emissions, but that's a thing for another podcast. The used car market, as far as I can tell, is going to be unaffected. So in other words, yes, you cannot buy a new internal combustion engine vehicle in California starting in but theoretically, at least you would still be able to buy used vehicles in California. Now it's possible that we're gonna see other states follow California's lead. California traditionally is the most progressive when it comes to these kinds of of measures that are meant to tackle stuff like carbon emissions, you know, the climate that kind of thing. But even if other states are low to adopt California's approach, the size of California alone, you know, they have a huge driving population that's going to really force automakers to shift to more e V production. That's one of the reasons why we're seeing that kind of stuff happen right now, with companies like Ford undergoing dramatic transformations, including thousands of layoffs. Unfortunately, as these companies adjust towards producing more electric vehicles. In Germany, in the state of Lower Saxony, fifteen diesel trains have been retired and have been replaced with trains running on hydrogen fuel cells. So the diesel trains were responsible for the consumption of more than four hundred twenty thousand gallons of diesel fuel each year, and of course diesel engines are a source of carbon emissions. Hydrogen fuel cells do not release carbon dioxide. Instead, the byproducts of a hydrogen fuel cell our heat, electricity, and water, typically water, vapor, because fuel cells operate at a fairly high temperature, so the water tends to be emitted as steam. Now you might wonder why we don't rely more on hydrogen fuel cells. The technology is old, it's proven. There are vehicles out there that are fuel cell vehicles, but we don't see them all over the place. Why is why is it that fuel cells are not the standard if they operate at such a clean level. Well, the big sticking point is that it can get hard to get your hands on pure hydrogen. So hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe. However, it's also super friendly. By that, I mean it's eager to bond with other elements. When that happens, that effectively locks hydrogen away. It forms these molecular bonds. It is not going to let go of those without putting up a fight. So we have to actually spend energy in order to free hydrogen up, to harvest it and then use it. Right now, Germany is harvesting hydrogen as it is produced as a byproduct in various chemical processes. But in the future, Germany says the plan is to use renewable energy to generate hydrogen. And my guess is that they're going to use electrolysis, that is where you direct a an electric current into water in an effort to break those molecular bonds between hydrogen and oxygen and then you harvest the hydrogen. Um. Yeah, so, like, it's it's not that hydrogen is a bad fuel to use, especially in fuel cells. It's just that finding the right strategy to free hydrogen from whatever else is tricky. You know, we are also living in a world where getting access to water can be tricky. You know, look at at places that are undergoing massive drought, like the middle of China or the American Southwest. It is tough to sell the idea of using water to generate hydrogen so that you can have fuel cells when you have people who are depending on just a drinking source of water. So, yeah, this is a complicated issue. It's not something that's so simple to solve. It's too bad because again, hydrogen being so plentiful, if we could easily access a source of it without these other consequences, that would be a huge, huge thing. We would clearly see countries migrating over to hydrogen based economies. We just haven't really found the right balance for that yet. All right, we've got a couple more stories that we want to cover. Let's take another quick break. Mhm. One thing that I've learned about Japan, and full disclosure, I have yet to visit the country, but I really want to go. But one thing I've learned is that people are dependent upon and and count upon trains running on time. Like the fact that Japan is so good most of the time at operating trains, that the various companies in Japan do a really good job of operating trains. It becomes, you know, second nature to just assume that your train is going to be at the station on schedule. It's a huge deal in Japan. Commuters rely on trains heavily in Japan, and they expect the train to be at the station precisely when it's supposed to be, and to leave the station not a second early or late. In fact, there was an incident in two thousand and seventeen in which a train left a Japanese station twenty five seconds early, and the company was obligated to apologize to commuters because a few were left behind on the platform and they had to wait for the next train which got them to their destination. Six minutes late. Meanwhile, I'm over here in Atlanta, Georgia, and sometimes when I go to the public transportation system nearby, the display will say that the next train will arrive sometime in all right, well, let's get back to the news. The Japanese company j R. East, in an effort to modernize operations, chose to digitize train time tables, and then they supplied train drivers with tablets that are meant to access these new timetables. In fact, that's the only thing these tablets are meant to do. The drivers actually have other tablets for other tasks. So the thought was these timetables could be updated in real time automatically and the operators would just have to refer to their tablets to stay on schedule. But a driver for the Fukushima Line UH forgot their password to their tablet, so they weren't able to access the digital timetable, and that gummed everything up. The driver actually had to refer to timetables posted in various stations along the route, and delay started to chalk up, and by the time they got to the final destination at the end of the line, those delays added up, and by the time the train reached the end of the line, the delays had accumulated to twenty three minutes. Now, I can only imagine the level of freak out of a twenty three minute delay if a twenty five second discrepancy prompted an official apology back in Now, the company says it's going to spend more time training drivers on the proper way to create an remember passwords, which honestly is something I think a lot of people could use a refresher course on. But yeah, interesting story. The road to the metaverse, whatever that might be, can be a treacherous one, as Capital Music Group discovered the company famously, as it turns out, signed a digital as in a computer generated rap artist named f N Meka or Maka m e k A. This rappers songs had melodies, beats, lyrics that were at least partially generated by artificial intelligence. So this wasn't some digital avatar being controlled by a human artist who was responsible for creating everything that the digital avatar said, although a black artist did uh contribute the voice for f N make up. But this story is really complex. There's actually a lot of nuance to it, believe it or not. So let's start with what the original plan was. So there is a pro Fortnite gamer who uses the handle clicks c l i X. This pro gamer is also associated with a rap track that's called Florida Water. Florida Water features F and Makeup. Now, initially, clicks Is involvement caused some confusion because you can't actually hear Clicks on the track at all, but the name Clicks appears in association with the track, which, you know, people are saying, well, how is clicks even involved? Well, according to clicks as Manager, the gamer actually purchased the rights to this track, and the rapper Gunna had laid down vocals for the track already, so in other words, this track was already on its way to being fully produced. But then, according to clicks as Manager, Capitol Records demanded that Clicks allow F and Makeup to be included on the track or else the company wasn't going to release it, so they were, you know, effectively holding it hostage according to clicks as Manager, So Clicks, seeing no choice, allowed F and Maker too record lyrics for the track. So F and Maker's contribution included black coded lyrics, meaning that the lyrics are reminiscent of a black artist's work, not a specific black artist, but is indicative or typical from the black artist rap genre, and that brings up a lot of concerning questions. After all, F and Maka is not a real person, and yes, there is a black artist who voices the character, but the character itself isn't real and black artists didn't write its lyrics, or at least not all of the lyrics, because they were at least partially generated by artificial intelligence, and that brings up questions relating to cultural appropriation and racism. I mean, F and Maker uses some racial slurs that are not appropriate for anyone not of that culture to say. And it's an artificial entity, so some critics called F and Make a digital black face. Now complicating matters further is that many outlets have capitalized on black artists throughout history without giving the original artists credit. I mean, this is not a newsplash. This is something that's been going on for for for more than a century, and you've seen company and people making bank off of black artist creations while simultaneously never acknowledging the actual creators themselves. So the controversy surrounding F and Maka prompted Capital Music Group to drop the Digital Rapper from their label. By the way, if you want to read a truly excellent write up of this story, including more insightful analysis of the precarious relationship between big media companies and black artists, I recommend Patricia Hernandez's article titled label drops Ai Rapper with music project from Fortnite pro apologizing to black community. You can find that at Kotaku. It is a truly excellent article. Finally, I have some bad news for folks who want a brand new PS five, unless those folks are in the United States. So announced that it is raising the price tag for the PS five in regions like Canada, Mexico, Japan, China, the UK, and Europe. This is coming nearly two years after the PS five first hit store shelves, or virtually hit store shelves because he can't ever find the darned things. So it kind of reminds me of how Meta recently hiked the price on its VR gear the Quest too. That also was a price high like two years after the technology had been introduced. So why is Sony doing this? Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan said that it's due to global inflation rates and trends in various nations currencies around the world. So in Europe the PS five models are going to go up by fifty euro each. In the UK they're going up by thirty pounds each, and so on. Polygon dot Com actually has a breakdown for every region as far as the price hikes go. And you know that really stinks. If you're out there and you were hoping to buy a new PS five, it's gonna cost you more money now. As I said, in the United States, we don't appear to be affected by this price hike, so presumably you will still be able to buy a PS five at the launch price, assuming you can find one somewhere. That's it for the tech News for Thursday August. Hope you are well. If you have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, please let me know. One way to do that is to leave me a voice message. You can do that by downloading the I Heart radio app. It's free to download and use. Just navigate over to tech Stuff. There's a little microphone icon. Yeah, click on that. You can leave up to thirty seconds of voice message to me. Please be nice. The other way to do it is, of course, to reach out to me on Twitter. The handle we use for the show is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk out to you again really soon YEA. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland, Diamond Executive producer with I Heart Radio and how the tech are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday, August twenty twenty two. We got a lot to get through. Let's do it. Twitter and Facebook recently shut down a network of fake accounts spreading propaganda that was attempting to portray a foreign country in a positive light in various regions. The twist to this story is that for the first time, this campaign was pushing a pro US perspective in places like Asia in the Middle East. We've seen efforts like this originating out of other places like China or Russia, that this is the first time we're talking about this some lar campaign that appears to have been based out of the United States and the United Kingdom. The effort used lots of recently established fake accounts, all pushing pro US narratives in these regions while also criticizing everything from Russia's war against Ukraine to human rights violations in China. But the use of fake accounts is against Facebook and Twitter's policies. No matter what the messaging is, and so those platforms have been taking an active stance in weeding out and shutting down these profiles. Also, NBC reports that the campaign appeared to have a minimal impact and that the posts didn't have much engagement from the general public. Most activity belonged to other fake accounts in an effort to boost visibility. Fortune reports that major companies like Apple, Honda, and Mazda are reevaluating their supply chain strategies. At the heart of the matter is the dependence upon in China. The cheap labor and manufacturing costs in China have long attracted major companies, which look to save on costs while making their products in order to maximize profit, but relying on China for manufacturing has become less attractive in recent years. The country's no tolerance approach to COVID means that operations are routinely interrupted as a region goes into lockdown with every outbreak. The deteriorating relationship between China and the United States is a big threat to the optics are also not great due to the aforementioned human rights violations in China. That's a very real thing. Propaganda campaigns aside, and in Central China, where a lot of these factories are located, a camastrophic drought has dried up rivers. That means that dams are not able to generate enough electricity through hydro power to supply factories, which has forced more interruptions in manufacture ring. And there's this real old saying that I'm sure all of you have heard that says don't put all your eggs in one basket. But the truth is, for a long time, many companies have essentially ignored that age old wisdom when it comes to the supply chain, and as a result, a disproportionate amount of the work involved in many supply chains happens in China. And now we're starting to see companies explore strategies meant to diversify the supply chain, something that has really become critically important as we've seen so many disruptions in supply chains reek havoc on company plans and consumer experiences over the last couple of years. Does this mean we'll see much more robust supply chains in the future. I'm kind of skeptical because I expect most companies will seek out the next cheapest, viable solution to their manufacturing needs, rather than truly diversify their approach to spread out risk. In an ideal world, we would see supply chains that are as robust as the Internet is. Should one part of the supply chain falter, you would be able to route around it with minimal disruption, But I think that's being overly optimistic. Nine to five MAC reports that Apple maybe on the verge of allowing users to delete the Apple Wallet app, which would be a pretty big deal as Apple routinely integrates its own apps into iOS in fundamental ways and doesn't allow users to delete them from their iOS devices. So why would Apple take this step giving users the chance to switch to some other digital wallet, particularly when doing so raises problems when users want to make a purchase through Apple pay Well. This is likely due to the European Union's recent pressure on Apple. The argument is that Apple's integration of Apple Wallet and its refusal to grant other digital wallets the same level of interoperability with Apple processes amounts to anti competitiveness, and actually it reminds me of the massive antitrust lawsuit that Microsoft faced in the nineties, which focused on how Microsoft made its own Internet Explorer browser and integrated part of Windows. That led Netscape to accuse Microsoft of engaging in anti competitive behavior, particularly since at that time Microsoft Windows was by far the dominant operating system in the consumer market. Courts actually agreed, and Microsoft was very nearly forced to break up into separate companies, but a subsequent court decision would reverse that course anyway. One major issue the EU has is that Apple doesn't allow any other digital wallet app but it's own to use the NFC technology that's built into iPhones. NFC is near field communication and this is the short range wireless tech that allows for small data transfers, you know, like contactless payments, and the EU has argued that Apple holding back access to NFC amounts to anti competitive behavior. So we haven't seen anything official yet, at least not as the recording of this podcast, but we're going to keep our eyes on this to see if Apple does allow users to actually fully remove Apple Wallet from their iOS devices. Speaking of Apple and anti competitive allegations, the company Match Group, which owns the dating slash hook up app Tender, has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple, this time in India. Match Group says that Apple treats dating apps unfairly, that Apple has this in app commission required for any purchase that's made within an app, uh, and that it doesn't do this for some other types of companies like righte haling companies, and I find that argument kind of interesting. See Apple and Google too for that matter. Has restricted its commission to only applying to apps that have in app digital purchases. It does not charge a commission on apps that are designed to purchase real world stuff. So, if you're playing a digital game and you want to pay for some in game content, while Apple will take a cut of that, but if you're ordering a real world pizza to be delivered to your home using an app, Apple does not take a cut of that transaction. Well, what match Group is saying is that right hailing companies get a pass from Apple. Apple does not take a commission if you were to use an app like Lift or Uber. But match Group says that that doesn't make sense because they get charged for Tender but not for Lift or Uber, and that in all cases, these apps are really just about bringing together people in the real world. You know, when you hail a ride, it's about arranging to meet someone at a specific place at a specific time. So match Group argues, that's what dating apps are doing too, and so why should it be fair for Apple to take a cut of tenders in app purchases but not a cut from right hailing company transactions. Now, I'm not convinced that that line of argument is bulletproof, because I think there's a case to be made that right hailing is definitely more than just bringing two or more people together in the same place at the same time. But anyway, match Group is hoping that India's competition regulator will force Apple to change its policies, similar to how regulators in the EU and in the US are pressuring Apple to allow apps to offer alternative payment systems outside of Apple's own system. And Video is getting ready to announce a new generation of graphics processing cards in September. According to The Verge, rumor has it, We're going to get a new generation of GPUs designated by the prefix for zero or forty. So right now you have cards like thirty eight and thirty ninety that are dominating in Video's portfolio from a performance perspective, that's like the top of the line of Invidios products and recently, we've actually seen more availability for those cards. You know, for a couple of years, in Video's most powerful cards were really hard to get hold of, and if you could find one, it was chances are it was on the aftermarket and it was at a huge markup. And this was largely because of cryptocurrency miners, specifically ether miners as an ethereum miners. This was a thing that we saw a lot. Bitcoin had actually reached a level where bitcoin miners were not relying on GPUs anymore. They were not powerful enough. They had switched to a SAC or application specific integrated circuit poward riggs at that time. But cryptocurrency has gone into a massive recession or a collapse or whatever you want to call it, and that meant that the return on investment for running a power hungry mining operation really became too low. I mean, if it costs you more money to run your computer system then you are making out of the mining operation. That's just not a good deal. It means you're just losing money. So this meant that there was less demand for those GPUs, and in Video actually found itself overstocked on graphics cards because demand had dropped and Finally, gamers actually have a decent chance to get their hands on these things as close to m s r P or manufactured suggested retail price, so at the asking price for these things instead of those crazy markups. However, all that being said, with the possible debut of a new generation of graphics cards within sight, presumably with much greater capabilities, it's probably not the best time to scoop up that thirty eight or thirty nine card if you want the best of the best. And keep in mind the that m s RP is still pretty day expensive for the top of the line models. So the Verge reminds us that there might be a significant gap between when in Video announces this next GPU architecture, which has the code name love Lace. I think that's great, and when consumers will actually have a chance to buy a card based off that architecture. So if you've been waiting to finally get one of these top performance cards, you might want to actually wait a little bit longer just to see what comes next and whether that's something you want. Also, when new cards come out, there's a chance, not a guarantee, but there's a chance that those thirty eight and thirty ninety models might get a price reduction. Um kind of hard to say, because when you're talking about teetering on economic recession and supply chain issues and all these other economic issues that are affecting the world, you cannot guarantee that you're going to see a price come down. But it is a possibility. All Right, We've got some more stories to cover, but before we get into that, let's take a quick break. The threat analysis group at Google is warning us that a tool called hyper skate can give hackers the ability to download a target's entire email inbox, and that this tool works with Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, and others. Also, this tool does not require the hacker to trick someone into downloading some malware. However, it does mean the hacker does have to get access to the target's account somehow, So that could mean using some other kind of malware in order to get access, or you know, trying to guess or find a target's account password. You know a lot of times if you ever get those messages that your your password might have been compromised in a database breach. This is one of the reasons you should definitely pay attention to that and change those passwords, because if someone has just a file of passwords, they might be able to get access to your account and then download all of your email using a tool like this. So this is also a reason, by the way, why you should always enable multi factor authentication if it's available. I know it can be a hassle, but it really is useful. It means that if someone does attempt to log in as you, they're gonna have a harder time doing it. I'm not gonna say it's impossible, but i will say it's harder, and you are likely to get an alert that's saying something hinky is going on, which gives you a chance to take action. So activate that m F a option in in everything that offers it, y'all. Anyway, the team over at Google reports that it looks like most of the targeting activity that's using hyper escape right now is happening inside Iran. Now to me, that suggests that this could be a state sponsored campaign in order to gain access to high profile targets email accounts. No word on whom be responsible. I've got a few ideas, but you know it would just be pure speculation, so I'll save them for myself. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is urging companies and organizations to be super proactive when it comes to adopting a post quantum cryptography standard. What what alright? So on Tuesday I talked about a Japanese company and its plans to enter the quantum computer market with a sixty four cubit machine, And on that episode, I mentioned that quantum computing has the potential to drastically simplify a certain subset of computational problems that traditionally are extremely difficult for classic computers to solve. So a classic computer might take hundreds or thousands of years to solve some of these problems. But because quantum computing uses a different approach, one that if you have the right algorithm, the right program, you could solve these kinds of problems in a relatively fast and trivial manner. That means things are poised to change drastically and soon. One of those things is really important. It's encryption. It's how we encrypt data so that people can't just see what that data is. Now. I'm not going to launch into a full explanation of digital encryption here. I have done full episodes about that topic. But I will oversimplify a little bit and say that you can think of modern encryption essentially depending upon taking two very very large prime numbers with hundreds of digits, and then taking these two prime numbers, then performing a mathematical operation on the two which gives you a third number, and you use that to encode data, and to decode the data, you need to know at least one of the prime numbers that were used to make that third number. Um really you need both, but you have that ability to decode to reverse the process that was used to encrypt the information. Now, because we're talking about two really really really big prime numbers, figuring out which prime numbers were used to encrypt something is really hard to do. For a classic computer essentially has to go, you know, case by case doing prime number, prime number, prime number, prime number, until it figures out the ones that were used to encrypt, and that can take thousands of years. But a quantum computer, again, if paired with the right algorithm, could do the same process fairly quickly, at least with a certain percentage of uh certainty. So you might get a response that says it's, you know, certain that this particular solution applies to the problem, and that's that's that stands to completely change encryption. It means that should someone actually have access to a quantum computer and that kind of algorithm, they could potentially decrypt everything that's ever been encrypted up to now and have free access to all the secret information that's ever been on digital platforms. So that's obviously a huge security issue, right, I mean, it's the biggest security issue. You can have no more secrets. So this agency is telling companies that they need to start working on migrating to a post quantum encryption strategy, one that's fundamentally different from what we use for today's encryption, and the agency has been working to standardize so far for post quantum encryption algorithms. That in itself is not easy. You might remember from a recent news item that one proposed post quantum computing algorithm turned out to be vulnerable to a classic computer attack. A researcher actually found a way to exploit that algorithm in a non quantum approach, So while it might have been robust from a quantum computing approach, it wasn't from another angle. So making a robust encryption process is pretty darned tricky. Today, the US state of California is issuing rules that regard the state's transition to a ban on new internal combustion engine vehicles or the sale of them, I should say, so, the plan is to have a total ban on the sale of new ice vehicles by five but this is going to happen in stages. So starting in TWI of all new vehicles sold in the state of California will need to be free of carbon emissions, so we're mainly talking about things like electric vehicles here By it will need to be sixty eight percent of all new vehicles sold in California, and by all new vehicles sold in California will need to be free of carbon emissions in their operation. Obviously, the manufacturing of vehicles itself creates carbon emissions, but that's a thing for another podcast. The used car market, as far as I can tell, is going to be unaffected. So in other words, yes, you cannot buy a new internal combustion engine vehicle in California starting in but theoretically, at least you would still be able to buy used vehicles in California. Now it's possible that we're gonna see other states follow California's lead. California traditionally is the most progressive when it comes to these kinds of of measures that are meant to tackle stuff like carbon emissions, you know, the climate that kind of thing. But even if other states are low to adopt California's approach, the size of California alone, you know, they have a huge driving population that's going to really force automakers to shift to more e V production. That's one of the reasons why we're seeing that kind of stuff happen right now, with companies like Ford undergoing dramatic transformations, including thousands of layoffs. Unfortunately, as these companies adjust towards producing more electric vehicles. In Germany, in the state of Lower Saxony, fifteen diesel trains have been retired and have been replaced with trains running on hydrogen fuel cells. So the diesel trains were responsible for the consumption of more than four hundred twenty thousand gallons of diesel fuel each year, and of course diesel engines are a source of carbon emissions. Hydrogen fuel cells do not release carbon dioxide. Instead, the byproducts of a hydrogen fuel cell our heat, electricity, and water, typically water, vapor, because fuel cells operate at a fairly high temperature, so the water tends to be emitted as steam. Now you might wonder why we don't rely more on hydrogen fuel cells. The technology is old, it's proven. There are vehicles out there that are fuel cell vehicles, but we don't see them all over the place. Why is why is it that fuel cells are not the standard if they operate at such a clean level. Well, the big sticking point is that it can get hard to get your hands on pure hydrogen. So hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the universe. However, it's also super friendly. By that, I mean it's eager to bond with other elements. When that happens, that effectively locks hydrogen away. It forms these molecular bonds. It is not going to let go of those without putting up a fight. So we have to actually spend energy in order to free hydrogen up, to harvest it and then use it. Right now, Germany is harvesting hydrogen as it is produced as a byproduct in various chemical processes. But in the future, Germany says the plan is to use renewable energy to generate hydrogen. And my guess is that they're going to use electrolysis, that is where you direct a an electric current into water in an effort to break those molecular bonds between hydrogen and oxygen and then you harvest the hydrogen. Um. Yeah, so, like, it's it's not that hydrogen is a bad fuel to use, especially in fuel cells. It's just that finding the right strategy to free hydrogen from whatever else is tricky. You know, we are also living in a world where getting access to water can be tricky. You know, look at at places that are undergoing massive drought, like the middle of China or the American Southwest. It is tough to sell the idea of using water to generate hydrogen so that you can have fuel cells when you have people who are depending on just a drinking source of water. So, yeah, this is a complicated issue. It's not something that's so simple to solve. It's too bad because again, hydrogen being so plentiful, if we could easily access a source of it without these other consequences, that would be a huge, huge thing. We would clearly see countries migrating over to hydrogen based economies. We just haven't really found the right balance for that yet. All right, we've got a couple more stories that we want to cover. Let's take another quick break. Mhm. One thing that I've learned about Japan, and full disclosure, I have yet to visit the country, but I really want to go. But one thing I've learned is that people are dependent upon and and count upon trains running on time. Like the fact that Japan is so good most of the time at operating trains, that the various companies in Japan do a really good job of operating trains. It becomes, you know, second nature to just assume that your train is going to be at the station on schedule. It's a huge deal in Japan. Commuters rely on trains heavily in Japan, and they expect the train to be at the station precisely when it's supposed to be, and to leave the station not a second early or late. In fact, there was an incident in two thousand and seventeen in which a train left a Japanese station twenty five seconds early, and the company was obligated to apologize to commuters because a few were left behind on the platform and they had to wait for the next train which got them to their destination. Six minutes late. Meanwhile, I'm over here in Atlanta, Georgia, and sometimes when I go to the public transportation system nearby, the display will say that the next train will arrive sometime in all right, well, let's get back to the news. The Japanese company j R. East, in an effort to modernize operations, chose to digitize train time tables, and then they supplied train drivers with tablets that are meant to access these new timetables. In fact, that's the only thing these tablets are meant to do. The drivers actually have other tablets for other tasks. So the thought was these timetables could be updated in real time automatically and the operators would just have to refer to their tablets to stay on schedule. But a driver for the Fukushima Line UH forgot their password to their tablet, so they weren't able to access the digital timetable, and that gummed everything up. The driver actually had to refer to timetables posted in various stations along the route, and delay started to chalk up, and by the time they got to the final destination at the end of the line, those delays added up, and by the time the train reached the end of the line, the delays had accumulated to twenty three minutes. Now, I can only imagine the level of freak out of a twenty three minute delay if a twenty five second discrepancy prompted an official apology back in Now, the company says it's going to spend more time training drivers on the proper way to create an remember passwords, which honestly is something I think a lot of people could use a refresher course on. But yeah, interesting story. The road to the metaverse, whatever that might be, can be a treacherous one, as Capital Music Group discovered the company famously, as it turns out, signed a digital as in a computer generated rap artist named f N Meka or Maka m e k A. This rappers songs had melodies, beats, lyrics that were at least partially generated by artificial intelligence. So this wasn't some digital avatar being controlled by a human artist who was responsible for creating everything that the digital avatar said, although a black artist did uh contribute the voice for f N make up. But this story is really complex. There's actually a lot of nuance to it, believe it or not. So let's start with what the original plan was. So there is a pro Fortnite gamer who uses the handle clicks c l i X. This pro gamer is also associated with a rap track that's called Florida Water. Florida Water features F and Makeup. Now, initially, clicks Is involvement caused some confusion because you can't actually hear Clicks on the track at all, but the name Clicks appears in association with the track, which, you know, people are saying, well, how is clicks even involved? Well, according to clicks as Manager, the gamer actually purchased the rights to this track, and the rapper Gunna had laid down vocals for the track already, so in other words, this track was already on its way to being fully produced. But then, according to clicks as Manager, Capitol Records demanded that Clicks allow F and Makeup to be included on the track or else the company wasn't going to release it, so they were, you know, effectively holding it hostage according to clicks as Manager, So Clicks, seeing no choice, allowed F and Maker too record lyrics for the track. So F and Maker's contribution included black coded lyrics, meaning that the lyrics are reminiscent of a black artist's work, not a specific black artist, but is indicative or typical from the black artist rap genre, and that brings up a lot of concerning questions. After all, F and Maka is not a real person, and yes, there is a black artist who voices the character, but the character itself isn't real and black artists didn't write its lyrics, or at least not all of the lyrics, because they were at least partially generated by artificial intelligence, and that brings up questions relating to cultural appropriation and racism. I mean, F and Maker uses some racial slurs that are not appropriate for anyone not of that culture to say. And it's an artificial entity, so some critics called F and Make a digital black face. Now complicating matters further is that many outlets have capitalized on black artists throughout history without giving the original artists credit. I mean, this is not a newsplash. This is something that's been going on for for for more than a century, and you've seen company and people making bank off of black artist creations while simultaneously never acknowledging the actual creators themselves. So the controversy surrounding F and Maka prompted Capital Music Group to drop the Digital Rapper from their label. By the way, if you want to read a truly excellent write up of this story, including more insightful analysis of the precarious relationship between big media companies and black artists, I recommend Patricia Hernandez's article titled label drops Ai Rapper with music project from Fortnite pro apologizing to black community. You can find that at Kotaku. It is a truly excellent article. Finally, I have some bad news for folks who want a brand new PS five, unless those folks are in the United States. So announced that it is raising the price tag for the PS five in regions like Canada, Mexico, Japan, China, the UK, and Europe. This is coming nearly two years after the PS five first hit store shelves, or virtually hit store shelves because he can't ever find the darned things. So it kind of reminds me of how Meta recently hiked the price on its VR gear the Quest too. That also was a price high like two years after the technology had been introduced. So why is Sony doing this? Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan said that it's due to global inflation rates and trends in various nations currencies around the world. So in Europe the PS five models are going to go up by fifty euro each. In the UK they're going up by thirty pounds each, and so on. Polygon dot Com actually has a breakdown for every region as far as the price hikes go. And you know that really stinks. If you're out there and you were hoping to buy a new PS five, it's gonna cost you more money now. As I said, in the United States, we don't appear to be affected by this price hike, so presumably you will still be able to buy a PS five at the launch price, assuming you can find one somewhere. That's it for the tech News for Thursday August. Hope you are well. If you have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, please let me know. One way to do that is to leave me a voice message. You can do that by downloading the I Heart radio app. It's free to download and use. Just navigate over to tech Stuff. There's a little microphone icon. Yeah, click on that. You can leave up to thirty seconds of voice message to me. Please be nice. The other way to do it is, of course, to reach out to me on Twitter. The handle we use for the show is tech Stuff hs W and I'll talk out to you again really soon YEA. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.