Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and a lot of all things tech. And it's time for the tech news for Tuesday, November one. And yes, it's that time again. No, I don't mean the holidays, I mean it's time for Jack Dorsey, Twitter co founder, to step down as CEO of Twitter again. Dorsey co founded Twitter all the way back in two thousand and six with Biz Stone, Evan Williams, and Noah Glass. He served as the CEO from two thousand six to two thousand eight. Then he stepped aside for fellow co founder Evan Williams to take over, and instead Dorsey assumed the role of Chairman of the Board of Directors. Williams would then step down after two years as CEO, and then Dick Costolo, who was the former CEO of the company, assumed the role of CEO, and when Costolo stepped down in two thousand fifteen, Jack Dorsey returned as CEO. So like Grover Cleveland, Dorsey served two nonconsecutive terms. Anyway, he has resigned and says it's time for Twitter to move away from its founders, and now the former c t O of Twitter, parag Agri Wall, has become the new CEO. For years, Dorsey has faced criticism because he also serves as the head of Square, that is, the the online payment processing company famous for producing the smartphone and tablet peripherals that create a point of sale for small businesses. Investors were concerned that his attention was too divided between these different businesses, and Twitter has stalled out when it comes to user growth. So it was on a steady path of growth up through two thousand and fourteen, but after that the growth began to slow down and even level off. In fact, by the first quarter of two thousand nineteen, Twitter announced it would no longer share its monthly active user account. They had three different months in a row in which the user number was on the decline rather than growth, and yeah, reporting on monthly users would make the company look stagnant and it would probably worry investors and invite comparisons to other social networks like Facebook. So there have been investors calling for Dorsey's resignation. For a while. They've wanted to see Twitter shift into a higher gear and get into growth mode again. So is that actually possible. I honestly don't know. I suppose anything is possible, but it would mean having to find a way to make Twitter relevant for younger users. Twitter excuse older for social networks. Nearly its user base is between the ages of twenty five and thirty five. The second largest demographic group is aged between thirty five and forty nine, so like more than half of Twitter's users are over the age of anyway. At least some investors have expressed approval of Dorsey's resident Nation, but they've also said they were hoping to see someone from outside Twitter take control rather than promotion from Insight, And of course it was promoted from Insight, so we'll have to see what happens. Today, Twitter announced that it had updated its privacy and security policy to extend additional protection towards quote unquote private media. Twitter already will take action against users who publish other people's private information without those people's consent, like you know, a person's address or their phone number, or a picture of their I D or you know, any kind of other personal information. Now that protection also extends towards media of private individuals without the permission from those individuals. So if you snap a photo of that jerk face who lives across the street without said jerk faces permission, and then you share that photo to Twitter, you would technically be violating this policy. Now, to be clear, Twitter hasn't employed an army of reviewers or a ton of AI bots to scour all the tweets and look for media and then seek out the people in that media to find out if they gave permission for that to be shared or not. This is instead a reactive policy. So if I go on Twitter and I see that that jerk face who lives across the street has posted a photo of me and I didn't give my permission, I can contact Twitter and I can say hey, I didn't say jerk face could do that, and Twitter will then remove the tweet. Maybe because the policy actually does not apply to quote media featuring blick figures or individuals when media and accompanying tweet text are shared in the public interest or add value to public discourse. End quote. Now, I don't think I actually quite qualify as a public figure. I'm not nearly notable enough to qualify for that status. But it does mean that if the jerk face who lives across the street from me is I don't know Justin Bieber, and and I snap a photo of him and I share it. You know, you could argue that since Biber is a public figure, that's still fair game, you know, the price of fame. And just because I'm a bad singer and built baby, Baby Baby while I'm walking my dog, you know, and then I get the restraining order. What a jerk face. Once upon a time there was no Alphabet company and Google was just Google. And in this magical time, Google had an official motto, and that motto was don't be evil. And I think that's a pretty good motto to have, particularly when your business depends so heavily upon knowing everything you could possibly know about people who use your search engine. Because, as I and lots of other people have said many many times, Google's business is not search, it's advertising. And pairing advertising with knowledge about the customer makes advertisements way more effective. That means they're more valuable, and that means Google can make way more money from selling them. And being the dominant player in the search engine world means Google has no shortage of revenue generators out there. That is people using Google Search anyway. Don't be evil. It's a good motto. Well, three former Google employees have brought a lawsuit against the company for breach of contract. The employees, all three of whom were fired on the same day, say that Google failed to live up to its own code of conduct, as spelled out an employee agree mints see in twenty fifteen, when Google formed Alphabet as a parent company, it also dropped the don't be evil motto. You know that was strange, wasn't it. But that phrase still exists in the employee agreements, which says, in part, quote remember don't be evil, and if you see something that you think isn't right, speak up end quote. Well, these three employees, Sophie Waldman, Paul Duke, and Rebecca Rivers, say they were fired after they spoke out against Google the company while uh IT was signing a contract with the Customs and Border Protection in the United States in order to provide cloud computing services to that institution. Now, this was during Trump's presidency, at the height of xenophobic propaganda that painted immigrants legal and non legal alike with a fearful and racist brush. Not to mention the department was separating and caging families at the time. The three employees were all fired on November twenty five, two nineteen. Google's explanation was that the employees were leaking confidential information and we're nosing around internal Google systems that was outside their scope of work. The former employees they they deny this, and they also state that they were fired after they circulated a petition among other Google employees asking them to show their disapproval for this cloud services contract. I'll keep an eye on this lawsuit as it moves through the court system to see how it all pans out, though if it does go beyond a settlement, I'll be really surprised. Last week, various news outlets reported that an internal survey at Facebook revealed that a significant number of Facebook staff are losing confidence in the company's leadership, with fewer than half of respondents indicating that they intend to stay with the company. That being said, I would argue the survey is really more of a way to send a message to upper management and executive management. It not necessarily an indicator that we're going to see like more than half of Facebook employees just turn in their two weeks notice anytime soon. I don't expect that to happen. The same survey indicated that most employees like their direct managers, so they like the people who are directly over them. That seems to say that it really is an issue with the executive management level as the source for employee concerns. This isn't that big of a surprise, considering how Facebook has been in the center of some really ugly stories over the last several years in general, and the last few months in particular, positive responses indicating confidence in leadership were down to so more than half of those surveyed indicated a lack of confidence in leadership. Um, that's not great, and I guess I should say that, you know, we're really talking about the company Meta, not Facebook. But old habits are hard to break. I will frequently refer to Facebook the company, um, you know, as Facebook, as opposed to Meta. Anyway, as more outlets cover this story this week, including you know, tech stuff, I imagine that executives at Facebook are paying a little bit more attention to that survey. Now. I don't know that they actually want to change anything at the company. I mean, they probably want to change how they word the questions in the survey so that they get better responses. It might be a little cynical. Speaking of Facebook slash Meta, the company in May of twenty twenty acquired animated gift depository Giffee for a cool three hundred fifteen million dollars and that appeared to be that that is until a UK antitrust regulation organization stepped in that says that Meta will have to now sell off Giffee. After all, they will have to get rid of it. The regulators say that Meta buying up Giffee gives Facebook or rather you know, Meta slash Facebook and avantage over other social media platforms that also use Giffe, like TikTok and stuff like that, and that it would simultaneously remove a potential Facebook competitor from the market. This would be in the ads space. So essentially, what they're saying is that Giffe and Facebook could potentially court the same advertisers. But if Facebook buys Giffe like it did, then that means there's a reduction of choice for those advertisers. They can't choose to go with Facebook or Giffy because Facebook gobbled up Giffe, thus a loss in competition. It's interesting that a UK based regulatory body could enforce an acquisition reversal on two US based companies, but in fact it does have that authority. The regulators have jurisdiction over acquisitions that represent at least a control of a market within the UK, so unless Facebook decides to not operate in the UK, it does fall into this category. The regulators actually say that Meta and Giffee together would control a whopping eight of the animated gift market in the UK. That puts it well over the metric needed for this regulation body to step in. So it looks like the tide is really beginning to turn against big tech in a meaningful way. Meta representatives unsurprisingly released a statement saying they disagree with this decision, which I mean, of course they do, and that they are considering all options, including appealing this decision. They also said that the regulators were sending a message to entrepreneurs that quote, do not build new companies because you will not be able to sell them end quote. Personally, I actually think that's okay. I mean, I get the business plan for like of all startups isn't to create a sustainable business. That's not the plan for most of them. No, the plan is to become attractive enough for some other bigger company to come along and acquire you for oodles of cash, and you cash out. But I'm not sure that's actually a very healthy approach to business in the long runs. So I realized this might mean we might see fewer unicorns, but based on how gross a lot of your unicorns turned out to be, I'm personally fine with that. Okay, we have some more news stories to cover, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. We're back rolling. Stone Magazine reports that an FBI document has revealed that the FBI can easily access a person's WhatsApp or Apple Eye message history as long as the or activity I should say, as long as the bureau first secure as an appropriate subpoena or warrant. That has a little bit of a shocking revelation because both services help the fact that their communications are aren't fully encrypted end to end. So the idea here is that only the people in that conversation should be able to read the messages in the other party, including Meta in the case of WhatsApp or Apple in the case of Eye, message would not be able to read those messages. That's the whole point, right, So, unless you get hold of one of the communicators devices, it should be impossible or at the very least incredibly difficult, to see what messages are being sent back and forth. But the FBI document calls these two services both quote the most popular encrypted messaging apps end quote while also simultaneously being quote the most permissive end quote. So does that mean the FBI is magically able to unlock the encryption, Well, it turns out the answer to that is no. But what the FBI can do is pretty easily monitor activity to see stuff like who is communicating with whom at what time, under what circumstances, in what locations. So, in other words, this document really lays out how the FBI can collect and track meta data about the people who are communicating with each other. Sure, the content of the messages remains unknown, but with other dots that are out there, the FBI can start to build a case against people. For example, let's say that the FBI looks and sees that you've had some communication with someone they've labeled as a person of interest for something like they're this person has been targeted for an investigation, and they see that that person has been in contact with you through one of these apps. They could also see if you have any other people of interest listed in your contacts. So, in other words, they could say, all right, well, we know that you have been in contact with this person that we're targeting. Let's see if you're also talking with anyone else who's on our lists. Or they can also see if the person you're talking with has any other people of interest in their own contacts, and they and start building out networks of context in this way. And you can probably imagine at least a few cases in which this could become a really troubling issue. For example, let's say that you are an investigative journalist and you rely upon contacts who are embedded in various sensitive organizations like government offices, maybe the FBI itself. Well, the FBI could snoop on your communications, and even without seeing what it is your sending, could at least see to whom you are sending information that could lead to a whistleblower being exposed. The Rolling Stone received the FBI document from an organization called Property of the People, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request, and it's all aimed to publicize this practice. And make people aware of how even encrypted messaging services may be less safe than you might think, particularly if they are pretty willing to work with law enforcement on these kinds of requests for metadata. And now here's an update to the Amazon union issue in Bessemer at Alabama. So in case you don't remember that story, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama held a vote on whether or not they should unionize this past April. That vote ultimately ended up being against unionization, but organizers accused Amazon of engaging in illegal misconduct leading up to the vote, and there were allegations of intimidating workers and spreading misinformation about unions. Uh, the National Labor Relations Board has now ruled that the workers can hold a new union election. Amazon representatives have expressed disappointment in the ruling. Allegedly the company went to all this trouble to discourage voting and make it more difficult, and even installing an illegal drop box and more. It really does seem to be a real kick in the teeth for all that hard work to just go to waste. And again I say allegedly, because you know, I don't want to get in trouble here. Also, it's worth noting that Amazon has a very high turnover rate with its employees. Many Amazon employees don't stay with the company for a very long time because the work is pretty brutal, at least in the warehouses and fulfillment centers. As such, it can be difficult to organize people because the folks you're talking to today might not be the same folks that you're calling in to vote next week. That's being I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you get my my meaning right, Like, it's hard to get any kind of movement going when the population is in such flux. Here's a different follow up. I have talked a few times about state sponsored malware on iOS devices, you know, turning things like iPhones into surveillance machines. Uh. Notably, I've talked about the malware from the Israeli backed in s O group. Now, Apple says that the company will send noifications to users who own iOS devices that have been compromised by such state backed malware. Apple will send notifications via I message to affected users. They also send out emails. There will be other notifications as well. It's expected that not very many people will actually receive these notifications because state sponsored attacks are usually really targeted and precise. You know, they have specific people in mind that they go after, rather than casting a wide net like a lot of hackers. They make malware and the whole intent is to infect as many devices as you possibly can, So you're taking a broad approach. That's not the case with state sponsored attacks. They're usually looking at specific people and saying, we want to compromise their device so we can find out what they're up to. So, in other words, unless you are a diplomat or an international journalist or an activist or you know, politician, maybe like the head of some big company, you probably haven't been targeted and you won't get one of these messages probably, you know, just just keep a lookout on those iOS notifications. An I T company called land Sweeper surveyed Windows based devices that were running on various networks. You know, you can get a lot of data about what machines are actually using your network that doesn't involve anything about the people behind the machines, Like you can see what sort of operating system was being used by that machine that accessed your network. So they did this in an effort to kind of see how many machines out there. How many PCs are running the most recent version of Windows, which is of course Windows eleven. It launched last month. Now, according to the firm, an easily point to one percent. That's zero point to one percent of PC users are running the newest operating system a month after its release. That is shockingly low. That's even fewer folks running the Windows eleven than are currently running Windows XP. Windows XP hasn't been supported by Microsoft since like two thousand and twelve, I think maybe even earlier than that, and yet it's still commands more than three and a half percent of all PCs on these same networks. That is really shocking. Uh, The survey should really be a matter of concern not just a Microsoft, which clearly the company has a vested interest in seeing their products get widespread adoption, but it also should be a big concern to I T professionals in general. On various networks, a significant number of machines are running on end of life versions of Windows. That is, versions of Windows that Microsoft no longer supports, like XP and Windows seven. Those are no longer getting support updates. That means that for any of the exploits that have popped up since Microsoft ended support, and any future exploits there's no real chance to rescue there. Right, these machines are going to be vulnerable to that kind of exploitation. So this is why it's a good idea to try and stay up to date with operating systems whenever possible. That being said, I do have a couple of caveats to this. Generally, I suggest that you balance out the need to be up to date with the latest versions of operating systems with waiting a short while once updates come out to make sure that they don't break stuff, because sometimes an update will break things, and depending on what it breaks, it might be something important. Right. However, there's a caveat to that caveat, which is that in the case of urgent security updates. Let's say that there was a a critical vulnerability found within an operating system and a patch is sent out, I think then it is a good idea to update as soon as you have access to that that patch, because vulnerabilities are serious things like you do not want your device to get compromised. However, Windows eleven it has not had widespread adoption, even though like a lot of tech people love to jump on the latest thing. Windows does not appear to be one of those things. Uh. One reason for that might be that Windows eleven also has some relatively hefty resource requirements, so your computer needs to be, you know, a fairly recent machine to run Windows eleven effectively. So for some folks it's just not practical to upgrade to the latest OS because you know, you don't want your operating system eating up all your computer's resources, leaving nothing for anything else. Um. That was my big issue with Windows when it first came out way way back when I was one of those grouchy kids who was, you know, grousing about the fact that we were moving away from MS DOSS to Windows. Because the Windows operating system required so much uh, computational resources, which was granted, a fraction of what you would have in a even a even a modest smartphone would be better than the computer I had back then. But because the operating system was requiring so much processing power, it limited what you could actually run on the machine. And I thought that was ridiculous at the time. I still think it's ridiculous now, but it's just the way of the world. So anyway, that's one reason why a lot of people haven't upgraded the Windows eleven is just that it's not ideal for whatever machine they're running on. Meanwhile, we're still in a supply chain nightmare and a semiconductor chip shortage on top of that. That's you know, part of the supply chain issue, and getting a new computer isn't necessarily easy, nor is it cheap because you know, we've seen those prices start to go up because of these the supply chain issues. So there are a lot of legit reasons why people my be holding back on adopting Windows eleven. It's really seen as the kind of operating system that is coming out with new machines, and there's just not as big of a market for new machines right now because of all those reasons. So this could be a problem that sticks around a little bit and has little to nothing to do with the actual quality of the operating system itself. It's a very frustrating problem to have, I'm sure for Microsoft. Here in the US, lawmakers are introducing, or rather reintroducing legislation that aims to make it illegal for people to use automated bots to buy up retail goods. That issue is the fact that when certain products are on the verge of exploding and popularity or demand, some folks who have a lot of money will use bots to buy up all the available products, and then they might sell them off at marked up prices on like auction sites. I always think this might be a thing that happens with Treasure Truck. Maybe it's just me. I sometimes get notifications from Amazon about Treasure Truck stuff, and occasionally I'll check it out of curiosity, And almost always when I check it, it turns out that whatever the thing was, I mean, even if I click on it, as soon as I get that text message, it says it's out of stock, which either means there's an incredibly small amount of stock that's being on offer, or maybe I'm getting the message too late, or perhaps people are using bots to buy those things up before other folks get a chance to. But you really see this with stuff like video game consoles. This is one of the many reasons why it's hard to get hold of something like a PlayStation five right now. It also is a big issue with graphics cards, even though we've seen bitcoin miners move away from graphics cards, because even the most powerful graphics cards now don't have the oo needed to do bitcoin mining. Even though that has stopped being as big of an issue, we still see graphics cards getting bought up faster than people can even you know, keep them in stock. So this proposed legislation has the cute nickname of Stopping Grench Bots Act. For those who are unaware. The Grench as a character from a Dr. Seuss book, and he famously invades a small town to steal all the Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. Anyway, lawmakers previously introduced this proposal back in twenty nineteen, but it didn't go very far. It kind of stalled out. But that was before the pandemic and before all the supply chain issues that I've been alluding to throughout this episode. And perhaps this year it can get a little more traction as Americans struggled to engage in the rampant consumerism that marks the holiday season. All right, speaking of rampant consumerism, it's time for us to take a quick break for some ads. We will be back with a few more stories after this. We're back, Okay, just a few more stories to round out this episode for us. Of all, the car manufacturing company Nissan has announced plans to budget nearly seventeen point six billion dollars towards electrifying its fleet of vehicles, shifting more resources towards the design and production of electric vehicles in anticipation of more regions throughout the world passing e V mandates. You know, there are a lot of places like the UK that have said that by twenty thirty five, for example, no more internal combustion engine cars will be available for sale, no more new ones. That is, you can still sell older vehicles, but all new vehicles will have to be electric vehicles from that point forward. Uh. Nissan interestingly did not go so far as to make a commitment towards ending production of internal combustion engine vehicles, and in fact, there are a couple of Japanese companies manufacturing car manufacturing companies that have also not gone to that step. Um, perhaps hoping that that either the adoption of electric vehicles will be the aid, or that, you know, maybe it's just too expensive to shift operations to e V production. But whatever the reason, we're seeing a couple of companies kind of drag their feet on this, and Nissan appears to be one of them. Uh. The company said that it will be introducing twenty three new electric vehicles by and more than half of those will be fully electric. The rest will be hybrids of some sort. Right now, the company plans for electric vehicles to make up to its sales by twenty forty here in the United States. That's assuming, of course, that we don't see more states passing these similar kinds of mandates, or even a federal mandate that requires all new vehicles to be electric vehicles. In that case, that entire strategy will have to be rethought. Meanwhile, some BMW models are going to have fewer options than what would typically be offered because of that ding dang darn semi conductor chip shortage I was talking about. It has forced BMW to nix the touch screen that would typically be found in models like the BMW X five or the X six series or X seven or Z four series, as well as others. I think the BMW three and four both have models that have typically the touch screen as an option in the vehicle. Now they're not going to have that. Instead, they will have controls in the center console, kind of like older BMW models. They used a BMW system called I drive Controller and it was all built in the center console. It looks like these new cars are also going to go back to that older design. BMW has recognized that this is a step back and has announced that it will offer a five dollar credit on models that should have had a touch screen but will no longer have them. This has affected other stuff, but sides just an interface in the car. Uh there was a backup assistant feature that was part of the parking Assistant package that the Parking Assistant package is still going to be available in these vehicles, but the backup Assistant feature is no longer an option that would allow you to use a system that would automatically reverse the process of parking when you were backing out so that you could get out of things like super tight spaces or whatever. Now you're just gonna have to do it on your own again. And in South Korea, the National Police Agency is advocating for a new process that would require elderly drivers to apply for conditional driver's licenses before being allowed to drive. This process would include a joy ride in a virtual vehicle, so the idea is to use VR to test the elderly to make certain they can still operate a vehicle. Safely under normal conditions, both day driving and night driving. From why I understand the people who will apply I for this conditional license will have to wear a VR headset and they will go through a scenario, a series of scenarios three both in in day and in night that will introduce things like an incident that happens that you have to respond to common stuff like let's say someone cuts you off on the highway. Um, you would have to be able to respond safely and quickly to be able to avoid any kind of collision. That's the kind of thing that they're going to replicate or simulate with this VR system. So South Korea has an aging population and police are concerned about a rise in accident rates, in traffic accident rates that involved senior drivers. So this is an effort to try and identify potential issues before they become hazardous or deadly. The plan is to have this new process in place by twenty five. And finally, I have an update on the James web Space telescope story. So I mentioned last week that there was an accident that caused a vibration to move through the telescope. The telescope itself is a satellite telescope. It's an incredibly sensitive piece of machinery, very delicate. It's got lots of delicate moving parts. Uh. For example, it has this massive array of mirrors that will have to unfold in space that will end up reflecting electromagnetic waves towards the detector on the telescope. So if those actuators are damaged, well, then the telescope just won't work because you have to have those mirrors in the proper configuration in order for it to focus very weak signals so that we can study them. Well, the little incident meant that at the very least the telescope's launch would have to be delayed from December eighteen to quote no earlier than December twenty two end quote. Well, now NASA has conducted a thorough investigation. Engineers were looking for any signs of damage in the telescope. They reported that they found none. So NASA has now authorized the launch for December twenty second, seven twenty a m Eastern Standard time. So it seems like the very very long journey to launch is coming to an end after more than a decade. I mean, I've got a tattoo that is related to the James Webb Space Telescope, and I got that tattoo a few years ago. Soon after this happens, we'll have another long journey ahead of us, but this time it will be one marked in you know, miles, rather than in years. We're talking about the journey into space itself. The telescope will go into orbit and it will search for answers about how the earliest stars and galaxies took shape in our universe right at the very beginning of time, as well as it will help study exoplanets in our ongoing quest to find out if there are other planets in our neighborhood that could potentially harbor life on them. And by neighborhood, I mean like our galaxy, not our solar system. But that would be really cool, whether to you know, possibly study and search for actual life or just you know, kind of make plans for far off distant future travels that would take generations to complete. Anyway, I think it's pretty exciting. I really hope that the rest of the process goes without any more incidents. This telescope has been through a lot, and the only incident I wouldn't mind having more discussion about is the name of the telescope. But apart from that, like, there have been so many delays associated with this particular device that it would be really nice if we could get it up into space and have it operational, you know, within a few months. That's my hope. We'll have to see if it happens. And that is it for the news for Tuesday, November one. Just a heads up, we will not have a news episode on Thursday. We have another episode of Smart Talks with IBM publishing on Thursday. I think that might be the final one that publishes in tech Stuff, and after that it'll it'll just be me again, you know, just us. I hope you like that. If you have any suggestions for topics I should cover on future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a technology, a company, a trend in tech, anything tech related like that, shoot me a message on Twitter let me know. The handle for the show is text Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio and a lot of all things tech. And it's time for the tech news for Tuesday, November one. And yes, it's that time again. No, I don't mean the holidays, I mean it's time for Jack Dorsey, Twitter co founder, to step down as CEO of Twitter again. Dorsey co founded Twitter all the way back in two thousand and six with Biz Stone, Evan Williams, and Noah Glass. He served as the CEO from two thousand six to two thousand eight. Then he stepped aside for fellow co founder Evan Williams to take over, and instead Dorsey assumed the role of Chairman of the Board of Directors. Williams would then step down after two years as CEO, and then Dick Costolo, who was the former CEO of the company, assumed the role of CEO, and when Costolo stepped down in two thousand fifteen, Jack Dorsey returned as CEO. So like Grover Cleveland, Dorsey served two nonconsecutive terms. Anyway, he has resigned and says it's time for Twitter to move away from its founders, and now the former c t O of Twitter, parag Agri Wall, has become the new CEO. For years, Dorsey has faced criticism because he also serves as the head of Square, that is, the the online payment processing company famous for producing the smartphone and tablet peripherals that create a point of sale for small businesses. Investors were concerned that his attention was too divided between these different businesses, and Twitter has stalled out when it comes to user growth. So it was on a steady path of growth up through two thousand and fourteen, but after that the growth began to slow down and even level off. In fact, by the first quarter of two thousand nineteen, Twitter announced it would no longer share its monthly active user account. They had three different months in a row in which the user number was on the decline rather than growth, and yeah, reporting on monthly users would make the company look stagnant and it would probably worry investors and invite comparisons to other social networks like Facebook. So there have been investors calling for Dorsey's resignation. For a while. They've wanted to see Twitter shift into a higher gear and get into growth mode again. So is that actually possible. I honestly don't know. I suppose anything is possible, but it would mean having to find a way to make Twitter relevant for younger users. Twitter excuse older for social networks. Nearly its user base is between the ages of twenty five and thirty five. The second largest demographic group is aged between thirty five and forty nine, so like more than half of Twitter's users are over the age of anyway. At least some investors have expressed approval of Dorsey's resident Nation, but they've also said they were hoping to see someone from outside Twitter take control rather than promotion from Insight, And of course it was promoted from Insight, so we'll have to see what happens. Today, Twitter announced that it had updated its privacy and security policy to extend additional protection towards quote unquote private media. Twitter already will take action against users who publish other people's private information without those people's consent, like you know, a person's address or their phone number, or a picture of their I D or you know, any kind of other personal information. Now that protection also extends towards media of private individuals without the permission from those individuals. So if you snap a photo of that jerk face who lives across the street without said jerk faces permission, and then you share that photo to Twitter, you would technically be violating this policy. Now, to be clear, Twitter hasn't employed an army of reviewers or a ton of AI bots to scour all the tweets and look for media and then seek out the people in that media to find out if they gave permission for that to be shared or not. This is instead a reactive policy. So if I go on Twitter and I see that that jerk face who lives across the street has posted a photo of me and I didn't give my permission, I can contact Twitter and I can say hey, I didn't say jerk face could do that, and Twitter will then remove the tweet. Maybe because the policy actually does not apply to quote media featuring blick figures or individuals when media and accompanying tweet text are shared in the public interest or add value to public discourse. End quote. Now, I don't think I actually quite qualify as a public figure. I'm not nearly notable enough to qualify for that status. But it does mean that if the jerk face who lives across the street from me is I don't know Justin Bieber, and and I snap a photo of him and I share it. You know, you could argue that since Biber is a public figure, that's still fair game, you know, the price of fame. And just because I'm a bad singer and built baby, Baby Baby while I'm walking my dog, you know, and then I get the restraining order. What a jerk face. Once upon a time there was no Alphabet company and Google was just Google. And in this magical time, Google had an official motto, and that motto was don't be evil. And I think that's a pretty good motto to have, particularly when your business depends so heavily upon knowing everything you could possibly know about people who use your search engine. Because, as I and lots of other people have said many many times, Google's business is not search, it's advertising. And pairing advertising with knowledge about the customer makes advertisements way more effective. That means they're more valuable, and that means Google can make way more money from selling them. And being the dominant player in the search engine world means Google has no shortage of revenue generators out there. That is people using Google Search anyway. Don't be evil. It's a good motto. Well, three former Google employees have brought a lawsuit against the company for breach of contract. The employees, all three of whom were fired on the same day, say that Google failed to live up to its own code of conduct, as spelled out an employee agree mints see in twenty fifteen, when Google formed Alphabet as a parent company, it also dropped the don't be evil motto. You know that was strange, wasn't it. But that phrase still exists in the employee agreements, which says, in part, quote remember don't be evil, and if you see something that you think isn't right, speak up end quote. Well, these three employees, Sophie Waldman, Paul Duke, and Rebecca Rivers, say they were fired after they spoke out against Google the company while uh IT was signing a contract with the Customs and Border Protection in the United States in order to provide cloud computing services to that institution. Now, this was during Trump's presidency, at the height of xenophobic propaganda that painted immigrants legal and non legal alike with a fearful and racist brush. Not to mention the department was separating and caging families at the time. The three employees were all fired on November twenty five, two nineteen. Google's explanation was that the employees were leaking confidential information and we're nosing around internal Google systems that was outside their scope of work. The former employees they they deny this, and they also state that they were fired after they circulated a petition among other Google employees asking them to show their disapproval for this cloud services contract. I'll keep an eye on this lawsuit as it moves through the court system to see how it all pans out, though if it does go beyond a settlement, I'll be really surprised. Last week, various news outlets reported that an internal survey at Facebook revealed that a significant number of Facebook staff are losing confidence in the company's leadership, with fewer than half of respondents indicating that they intend to stay with the company. That being said, I would argue the survey is really more of a way to send a message to upper management and executive management. It not necessarily an indicator that we're going to see like more than half of Facebook employees just turn in their two weeks notice anytime soon. I don't expect that to happen. The same survey indicated that most employees like their direct managers, so they like the people who are directly over them. That seems to say that it really is an issue with the executive management level as the source for employee concerns. This isn't that big of a surprise, considering how Facebook has been in the center of some really ugly stories over the last several years in general, and the last few months in particular, positive responses indicating confidence in leadership were down to so more than half of those surveyed indicated a lack of confidence in leadership. Um, that's not great, and I guess I should say that, you know, we're really talking about the company Meta, not Facebook. But old habits are hard to break. I will frequently refer to Facebook the company, um, you know, as Facebook, as opposed to Meta. Anyway, as more outlets cover this story this week, including you know, tech stuff, I imagine that executives at Facebook are paying a little bit more attention to that survey. Now. I don't know that they actually want to change anything at the company. I mean, they probably want to change how they word the questions in the survey so that they get better responses. It might be a little cynical. Speaking of Facebook slash Meta, the company in May of twenty twenty acquired animated gift depository Giffee for a cool three hundred fifteen million dollars and that appeared to be that that is until a UK antitrust regulation organization stepped in that says that Meta will have to now sell off Giffee. After all, they will have to get rid of it. The regulators say that Meta buying up Giffee gives Facebook or rather you know, Meta slash Facebook and avantage over other social media platforms that also use Giffe, like TikTok and stuff like that, and that it would simultaneously remove a potential Facebook competitor from the market. This would be in the ads space. So essentially, what they're saying is that Giffe and Facebook could potentially court the same advertisers. But if Facebook buys Giffe like it did, then that means there's a reduction of choice for those advertisers. They can't choose to go with Facebook or Giffy because Facebook gobbled up Giffe, thus a loss in competition. It's interesting that a UK based regulatory body could enforce an acquisition reversal on two US based companies, but in fact it does have that authority. The regulators have jurisdiction over acquisitions that represent at least a control of a market within the UK, so unless Facebook decides to not operate in the UK, it does fall into this category. The regulators actually say that Meta and Giffee together would control a whopping eight of the animated gift market in the UK. That puts it well over the metric needed for this regulation body to step in. So it looks like the tide is really beginning to turn against big tech in a meaningful way. Meta representatives unsurprisingly released a statement saying they disagree with this decision, which I mean, of course they do, and that they are considering all options, including appealing this decision. They also said that the regulators were sending a message to entrepreneurs that quote, do not build new companies because you will not be able to sell them end quote. Personally, I actually think that's okay. I mean, I get the business plan for like of all startups isn't to create a sustainable business. That's not the plan for most of them. No, the plan is to become attractive enough for some other bigger company to come along and acquire you for oodles of cash, and you cash out. But I'm not sure that's actually a very healthy approach to business in the long runs. So I realized this might mean we might see fewer unicorns, but based on how gross a lot of your unicorns turned out to be, I'm personally fine with that. Okay, we have some more news stories to cover, but before we get to that, let's take a quick break. We're back rolling. Stone Magazine reports that an FBI document has revealed that the FBI can easily access a person's WhatsApp or Apple Eye message history as long as the or activity I should say, as long as the bureau first secure as an appropriate subpoena or warrant. That has a little bit of a shocking revelation because both services help the fact that their communications are aren't fully encrypted end to end. So the idea here is that only the people in that conversation should be able to read the messages in the other party, including Meta in the case of WhatsApp or Apple in the case of Eye, message would not be able to read those messages. That's the whole point, right, So, unless you get hold of one of the communicators devices, it should be impossible or at the very least incredibly difficult, to see what messages are being sent back and forth. But the FBI document calls these two services both quote the most popular encrypted messaging apps end quote while also simultaneously being quote the most permissive end quote. So does that mean the FBI is magically able to unlock the encryption, Well, it turns out the answer to that is no. But what the FBI can do is pretty easily monitor activity to see stuff like who is communicating with whom at what time, under what circumstances, in what locations. So, in other words, this document really lays out how the FBI can collect and track meta data about the people who are communicating with each other. Sure, the content of the messages remains unknown, but with other dots that are out there, the FBI can start to build a case against people. For example, let's say that the FBI looks and sees that you've had some communication with someone they've labeled as a person of interest for something like they're this person has been targeted for an investigation, and they see that that person has been in contact with you through one of these apps. They could also see if you have any other people of interest listed in your contacts. So, in other words, they could say, all right, well, we know that you have been in contact with this person that we're targeting. Let's see if you're also talking with anyone else who's on our lists. Or they can also see if the person you're talking with has any other people of interest in their own contacts, and they and start building out networks of context in this way. And you can probably imagine at least a few cases in which this could become a really troubling issue. For example, let's say that you are an investigative journalist and you rely upon contacts who are embedded in various sensitive organizations like government offices, maybe the FBI itself. Well, the FBI could snoop on your communications, and even without seeing what it is your sending, could at least see to whom you are sending information that could lead to a whistleblower being exposed. The Rolling Stone received the FBI document from an organization called Property of the People, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request, and it's all aimed to publicize this practice. And make people aware of how even encrypted messaging services may be less safe than you might think, particularly if they are pretty willing to work with law enforcement on these kinds of requests for metadata. And now here's an update to the Amazon union issue in Bessemer at Alabama. So in case you don't remember that story, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama held a vote on whether or not they should unionize this past April. That vote ultimately ended up being against unionization, but organizers accused Amazon of engaging in illegal misconduct leading up to the vote, and there were allegations of intimidating workers and spreading misinformation about unions. Uh, the National Labor Relations Board has now ruled that the workers can hold a new union election. Amazon representatives have expressed disappointment in the ruling. Allegedly the company went to all this trouble to discourage voting and make it more difficult, and even installing an illegal drop box and more. It really does seem to be a real kick in the teeth for all that hard work to just go to waste. And again I say allegedly, because you know, I don't want to get in trouble here. Also, it's worth noting that Amazon has a very high turnover rate with its employees. Many Amazon employees don't stay with the company for a very long time because the work is pretty brutal, at least in the warehouses and fulfillment centers. As such, it can be difficult to organize people because the folks you're talking to today might not be the same folks that you're calling in to vote next week. That's being I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you get my my meaning right, Like, it's hard to get any kind of movement going when the population is in such flux. Here's a different follow up. I have talked a few times about state sponsored malware on iOS devices, you know, turning things like iPhones into surveillance machines. Uh. Notably, I've talked about the malware from the Israeli backed in s O group. Now, Apple says that the company will send noifications to users who own iOS devices that have been compromised by such state backed malware. Apple will send notifications via I message to affected users. They also send out emails. There will be other notifications as well. It's expected that not very many people will actually receive these notifications because state sponsored attacks are usually really targeted and precise. You know, they have specific people in mind that they go after, rather than casting a wide net like a lot of hackers. They make malware and the whole intent is to infect as many devices as you possibly can, So you're taking a broad approach. That's not the case with state sponsored attacks. They're usually looking at specific people and saying, we want to compromise their device so we can find out what they're up to. So, in other words, unless you are a diplomat or an international journalist or an activist or you know, politician, maybe like the head of some big company, you probably haven't been targeted and you won't get one of these messages probably, you know, just just keep a lookout on those iOS notifications. An I T company called land Sweeper surveyed Windows based devices that were running on various networks. You know, you can get a lot of data about what machines are actually using your network that doesn't involve anything about the people behind the machines, Like you can see what sort of operating system was being used by that machine that accessed your network. So they did this in an effort to kind of see how many machines out there. How many PCs are running the most recent version of Windows, which is of course Windows eleven. It launched last month. Now, according to the firm, an easily point to one percent. That's zero point to one percent of PC users are running the newest operating system a month after its release. That is shockingly low. That's even fewer folks running the Windows eleven than are currently running Windows XP. Windows XP hasn't been supported by Microsoft since like two thousand and twelve, I think maybe even earlier than that, and yet it's still commands more than three and a half percent of all PCs on these same networks. That is really shocking. Uh, The survey should really be a matter of concern not just a Microsoft, which clearly the company has a vested interest in seeing their products get widespread adoption, but it also should be a big concern to I T professionals in general. On various networks, a significant number of machines are running on end of life versions of Windows. That is, versions of Windows that Microsoft no longer supports, like XP and Windows seven. Those are no longer getting support updates. That means that for any of the exploits that have popped up since Microsoft ended support, and any future exploits there's no real chance to rescue there. Right, these machines are going to be vulnerable to that kind of exploitation. So this is why it's a good idea to try and stay up to date with operating systems whenever possible. That being said, I do have a couple of caveats to this. Generally, I suggest that you balance out the need to be up to date with the latest versions of operating systems with waiting a short while once updates come out to make sure that they don't break stuff, because sometimes an update will break things, and depending on what it breaks, it might be something important. Right. However, there's a caveat to that caveat, which is that in the case of urgent security updates. Let's say that there was a a critical vulnerability found within an operating system and a patch is sent out, I think then it is a good idea to update as soon as you have access to that that patch, because vulnerabilities are serious things like you do not want your device to get compromised. However, Windows eleven it has not had widespread adoption, even though like a lot of tech people love to jump on the latest thing. Windows does not appear to be one of those things. Uh. One reason for that might be that Windows eleven also has some relatively hefty resource requirements, so your computer needs to be, you know, a fairly recent machine to run Windows eleven effectively. So for some folks it's just not practical to upgrade to the latest OS because you know, you don't want your operating system eating up all your computer's resources, leaving nothing for anything else. Um. That was my big issue with Windows when it first came out way way back when I was one of those grouchy kids who was, you know, grousing about the fact that we were moving away from MS DOSS to Windows. Because the Windows operating system required so much uh, computational resources, which was granted, a fraction of what you would have in a even a even a modest smartphone would be better than the computer I had back then. But because the operating system was requiring so much processing power, it limited what you could actually run on the machine. And I thought that was ridiculous at the time. I still think it's ridiculous now, but it's just the way of the world. So anyway, that's one reason why a lot of people haven't upgraded the Windows eleven is just that it's not ideal for whatever machine they're running on. Meanwhile, we're still in a supply chain nightmare and a semiconductor chip shortage on top of that. That's you know, part of the supply chain issue, and getting a new computer isn't necessarily easy, nor is it cheap because you know, we've seen those prices start to go up because of these the supply chain issues. So there are a lot of legit reasons why people my be holding back on adopting Windows eleven. It's really seen as the kind of operating system that is coming out with new machines, and there's just not as big of a market for new machines right now because of all those reasons. So this could be a problem that sticks around a little bit and has little to nothing to do with the actual quality of the operating system itself. It's a very frustrating problem to have, I'm sure for Microsoft. Here in the US, lawmakers are introducing, or rather reintroducing legislation that aims to make it illegal for people to use automated bots to buy up retail goods. That issue is the fact that when certain products are on the verge of exploding and popularity or demand, some folks who have a lot of money will use bots to buy up all the available products, and then they might sell them off at marked up prices on like auction sites. I always think this might be a thing that happens with Treasure Truck. Maybe it's just me. I sometimes get notifications from Amazon about Treasure Truck stuff, and occasionally I'll check it out of curiosity, And almost always when I check it, it turns out that whatever the thing was, I mean, even if I click on it, as soon as I get that text message, it says it's out of stock, which either means there's an incredibly small amount of stock that's being on offer, or maybe I'm getting the message too late, or perhaps people are using bots to buy those things up before other folks get a chance to. But you really see this with stuff like video game consoles. This is one of the many reasons why it's hard to get hold of something like a PlayStation five right now. It also is a big issue with graphics cards, even though we've seen bitcoin miners move away from graphics cards, because even the most powerful graphics cards now don't have the oo needed to do bitcoin mining. Even though that has stopped being as big of an issue, we still see graphics cards getting bought up faster than people can even you know, keep them in stock. So this proposed legislation has the cute nickname of Stopping Grench Bots Act. For those who are unaware. The Grench as a character from a Dr. Seuss book, and he famously invades a small town to steal all the Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. Anyway, lawmakers previously introduced this proposal back in twenty nineteen, but it didn't go very far. It kind of stalled out. But that was before the pandemic and before all the supply chain issues that I've been alluding to throughout this episode. And perhaps this year it can get a little more traction as Americans struggled to engage in the rampant consumerism that marks the holiday season. All right, speaking of rampant consumerism, it's time for us to take a quick break for some ads. We will be back with a few more stories after this. We're back, Okay, just a few more stories to round out this episode for us. Of all, the car manufacturing company Nissan has announced plans to budget nearly seventeen point six billion dollars towards electrifying its fleet of vehicles, shifting more resources towards the design and production of electric vehicles in anticipation of more regions throughout the world passing e V mandates. You know, there are a lot of places like the UK that have said that by twenty thirty five, for example, no more internal combustion engine cars will be available for sale, no more new ones. That is, you can still sell older vehicles, but all new vehicles will have to be electric vehicles from that point forward. Uh. Nissan interestingly did not go so far as to make a commitment towards ending production of internal combustion engine vehicles, and in fact, there are a couple of Japanese companies manufacturing car manufacturing companies that have also not gone to that step. Um, perhaps hoping that that either the adoption of electric vehicles will be the aid, or that, you know, maybe it's just too expensive to shift operations to e V production. But whatever the reason, we're seeing a couple of companies kind of drag their feet on this, and Nissan appears to be one of them. Uh. The company said that it will be introducing twenty three new electric vehicles by and more than half of those will be fully electric. The rest will be hybrids of some sort. Right now, the company plans for electric vehicles to make up to its sales by twenty forty here in the United States. That's assuming, of course, that we don't see more states passing these similar kinds of mandates, or even a federal mandate that requires all new vehicles to be electric vehicles. In that case, that entire strategy will have to be rethought. Meanwhile, some BMW models are going to have fewer options than what would typically be offered because of that ding dang darn semi conductor chip shortage I was talking about. It has forced BMW to nix the touch screen that would typically be found in models like the BMW X five or the X six series or X seven or Z four series, as well as others. I think the BMW three and four both have models that have typically the touch screen as an option in the vehicle. Now they're not going to have that. Instead, they will have controls in the center console, kind of like older BMW models. They used a BMW system called I drive Controller and it was all built in the center console. It looks like these new cars are also going to go back to that older design. BMW has recognized that this is a step back and has announced that it will offer a five dollar credit on models that should have had a touch screen but will no longer have them. This has affected other stuff, but sides just an interface in the car. Uh there was a backup assistant feature that was part of the parking Assistant package that the Parking Assistant package is still going to be available in these vehicles, but the backup Assistant feature is no longer an option that would allow you to use a system that would automatically reverse the process of parking when you were backing out so that you could get out of things like super tight spaces or whatever. Now you're just gonna have to do it on your own again. And in South Korea, the National Police Agency is advocating for a new process that would require elderly drivers to apply for conditional driver's licenses before being allowed to drive. This process would include a joy ride in a virtual vehicle, so the idea is to use VR to test the elderly to make certain they can still operate a vehicle. Safely under normal conditions, both day driving and night driving. From why I understand the people who will apply I for this conditional license will have to wear a VR headset and they will go through a scenario, a series of scenarios three both in in day and in night that will introduce things like an incident that happens that you have to respond to common stuff like let's say someone cuts you off on the highway. Um, you would have to be able to respond safely and quickly to be able to avoid any kind of collision. That's the kind of thing that they're going to replicate or simulate with this VR system. So South Korea has an aging population and police are concerned about a rise in accident rates, in traffic accident rates that involved senior drivers. So this is an effort to try and identify potential issues before they become hazardous or deadly. The plan is to have this new process in place by twenty five. And finally, I have an update on the James web Space telescope story. So I mentioned last week that there was an accident that caused a vibration to move through the telescope. The telescope itself is a satellite telescope. It's an incredibly sensitive piece of machinery, very delicate. It's got lots of delicate moving parts. Uh. For example, it has this massive array of mirrors that will have to unfold in space that will end up reflecting electromagnetic waves towards the detector on the telescope. So if those actuators are damaged, well, then the telescope just won't work because you have to have those mirrors in the proper configuration in order for it to focus very weak signals so that we can study them. Well, the little incident meant that at the very least the telescope's launch would have to be delayed from December eighteen to quote no earlier than December twenty two end quote. Well, now NASA has conducted a thorough investigation. Engineers were looking for any signs of damage in the telescope. They reported that they found none. So NASA has now authorized the launch for December twenty second, seven twenty a m Eastern Standard time. So it seems like the very very long journey to launch is coming to an end after more than a decade. I mean, I've got a tattoo that is related to the James Webb Space Telescope, and I got that tattoo a few years ago. Soon after this happens, we'll have another long journey ahead of us, but this time it will be one marked in you know, miles, rather than in years. We're talking about the journey into space itself. The telescope will go into orbit and it will search for answers about how the earliest stars and galaxies took shape in our universe right at the very beginning of time, as well as it will help study exoplanets in our ongoing quest to find out if there are other planets in our neighborhood that could potentially harbor life on them. And by neighborhood, I mean like our galaxy, not our solar system. But that would be really cool, whether to you know, possibly study and search for actual life or just you know, kind of make plans for far off distant future travels that would take generations to complete. Anyway, I think it's pretty exciting. I really hope that the rest of the process goes without any more incidents. This telescope has been through a lot, and the only incident I wouldn't mind having more discussion about is the name of the telescope. But apart from that, like, there have been so many delays associated with this particular device that it would be really nice if we could get it up into space and have it operational, you know, within a few months. That's my hope. We'll have to see if it happens. And that is it for the news for Tuesday, November one. Just a heads up, we will not have a news episode on Thursday. We have another episode of Smart Talks with IBM publishing on Thursday. I think that might be the final one that publishes in tech Stuff, and after that it'll it'll just be me again, you know, just us. I hope you like that. If you have any suggestions for topics I should cover on future episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a technology, a company, a trend in tech, anything tech related like that, shoot me a message on Twitter let me know. The handle for the show is text Stuff H s W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. 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