0:04

Welcome to tech Stuff, a production

0:06

from I Heart Radio. Hey

0:12

there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm

0:14

your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive

0:16

producer with I Heart Radio and how the

0:18

tech area. It's

0:20

time for the tech news for Tuesday,

0:23

August twenty three, two

0:25

thousand twenty two. Apple's

0:28

semiconductor chip manufacturing

0:30

company of choice which is t SMC,

0:33

and to be fair, that's kind of the choice

0:35

for pretty much every company that's making

0:37

advanced chips and is

0:39

a problem in its own right, but that's a matter

0:41

for a different podcast episode. It

0:44

is reportedly working on a three

0:46

nanometer chip for upcoming

0:48

MacBook computers. Now,

0:50

the reason I decided to include this was

0:53

because I wanted to do a little deconstruction

0:56

on the nomenclature we use

0:58

for chips, because it

1:01

is wildly misleading. So

1:04

for ages, the semiconductor industry

1:07

has differentiated chips

1:10

by using the size of nodes

1:13

as the naming convention, and by nodes,

1:16

we're really talking about the length

1:18

of transistor gates. So

1:21

the length of the transistor gate in

1:23

whatever unit was

1:25

an indicator of the chips sophistication.

1:29

Generally, think speaking, you know, the more you

1:32

can cram onto a chip, the more powerful

1:34

the chip can be. That's not always the case, but

1:37

that was kind of the rule of thumb. Now,

1:40

does this mean that a three nanometer chip

1:42

has a transistor gate that is three

1:44

nanometers long. No, it

1:47

does not, because for more than

1:49

a decade, companies have shifted

1:51

away from focusing on reducing components

1:54

size almost exclusively

1:57

and looked more at stuff like chip

1:59

arc a texture and increasing

2:01

the density of transistors and that sort

2:04

of thing. So chips

2:06

are still getting more powerful and more

2:08

sophisticated, but the transistor gates

2:11

aren't shrinking at the same crazy

2:13

rate that they were before. However,

2:16

the naming convention that

2:19

we use where we use that

2:21

transistor gate size as the name for

2:23

the next generation of manufacturing processes,

2:26

has stuck around. So if your

2:28

transistor gates aren't getting that much

2:30

smaller, but you're still dependent upon that

2:32

that naming convention, then

2:35

things rapidly stop measuring

2:38

out. So that means that ten nanometer

2:40

chip doesn't necessarily have transistor

2:42

gates that are ten nanometers long. In fact,

2:44

some of them have transistor gates that are

2:46

nearly twice as long as that, so

2:49

it's really just a naming convention. But

2:51

a lot of folks think that this naming convention

2:54

is dumb because for one thing, you know, it's not accurate.

2:57

For another, since we keep going down,

2:59

you know, we're reducing the size, and

3:01

now we're talking about a three nanometer

3:04

process. We're running

3:06

out of nanometers. We're about to get

3:08

down to the atomic scale, y'all.

3:11

Because a nanometer is one billionth of

3:13

a meter. And that also means

3:15

that consumers have been really confused for a while

3:18

and often draw the wrong conclusions

3:21

because you can have a so called ten

3:23

nanometer chip from Company A and

3:26

a seven nanometer chip from Company B.

3:29

And because there's this implication that

3:31

the smaller number means more

3:33

powerful chips, you would naturally

3:36

think the seven nanometer chip is superior.

3:38

But that's not necessarily true because

3:40

we're really talking about things like architecture

3:43

and power efficiency, and

3:46

even the size of the components of the ten nanometer

3:49

chip could be smaller

3:51

than that on the seven nanometer chip.

3:53

Because you're talking about two different companies and you're just talking

3:55

about them using a naming convention to

3:58

market a new generation of

4:00

semi conductor chip, it isn't

4:02

actually measuring anything, so

4:06

a ten ter chip and a seven nimeter

4:08

chip from two different companies could

4:11

be made in such a way that the ten nimeter isn't

4:13

always superior to the seven nanometer.

4:16

That's why I can get confusing. It's this marketing

4:19

strategy that creates confusion,

4:21

and it perpetuates confusion. So

4:24

yes, I just used a news story to give a quick

4:26

lesson on why the semi conductor industry is using

4:29

misleading marketing material and you should

4:31

do research before you choose a processor and

4:33

not just do it based off the supposed node

4:36

size. Former

4:38

Apple employee Xiao Lang Jong

4:41

has pled guilty of charges of stealing

4:43

proprietary information from Apple for

4:46

the purposes of sharing it with another

4:48

company, one in China for that

4:51

matter. Now, this

4:53

story actually started back in when

4:56

Jong was first arrested. Jeong

4:59

had turned to Apple after taking

5:01

a trip to China, and

5:03

then not long after his return, he resigned

5:06

from Apple, and he also started

5:08

sending corporate documents to his wife's computer,

5:12

including documents that, in

5:14

fact, as far as I can tell, exclusively

5:17

focusing on documents related

5:20

to Apple's worst kept secret. It's

5:22

you know, autonomous electric vehicle project

5:25

that everyone knows about, but Apple is never publicly

5:27

at knowledge that included

5:29

a twenty five page document with detailed

5:32

schematics of a circuit board that Apple

5:34

was designing for the vehicle. Moreover,

5:37

Jeong had told Apple that he was

5:39

going to return to China and he

5:41

was also going to work for a company called ex Paying

5:44

Motors, which is an electric vehicle

5:46

manufacturing company that's also

5:48

developing an autonomous vehicle. Jong

5:51

had previously led not guilty

5:54

to the charges after being arrested, but

5:56

now he has changed his flea to guilty,

5:59

and he faces up to ten years in

6:01

prison and a fine of up to two fifty

6:03

thousand bucks. And you might

6:05

remember the story of former Google employee

6:08

Anthony Lewandowski, whom Google

6:10

accused of stealing documents from

6:12

its autonomous car project that

6:14

would become way Mo. Lewandowski

6:17

subsequently worked for Uber, and that led

6:19

to a nasty court battle between Google

6:21

and Uber plus, Uber unceremoniously

6:24

ending its relationship with Lewandowski.

6:27

Lewandowski was subsequently tried and

6:29

convicted of stealing documents,

6:32

but then former President Trump pardoned

6:35

Lewandowski on the last day of his presidency.

6:37

Anyway, it looks like autonomous vehicle research

6:40

is the hottest target for industrial espionage

6:43

in tech right now, so I

6:45

guess it's fashionable. A senior

6:47

fellow for the Irish Council

6:50

for Civil Liberties named Johnny

6:52

Ryan has spearheaded a class

6:54

action lawsuit in the United States

6:57

targeting the computer technology company

6:59

Oracle. Now, in case you're not familiar

7:01

with Oracle, it is primarily

7:04

a A B two B kind of company,

7:06

a business to business like Its clients

7:08

are other businesses, and it works

7:11

in software and database management

7:13

and cloud services as well as hardware. Ryan's

7:16

lawsuit alleges that Oracle has

7:18

illegally been collecting the information

7:20

of around five billion

7:23

people. Essentially that Oracle

7:25

is assembling dossiers on folks,

7:28

and those dossiers can contain information that

7:30

includes stuff like names,

7:32

physical addresses, email addresses,

7:35

political views, purchase history,

7:38

geolocation data, meaning that Oracle

7:40

has been tracking people

7:43

or at least has access to tracking

7:45

information so they know where people

7:47

have been, as well as records

7:49

of online activity. So essentially

7:52

all the personal data stuff that we

7:54

talk about in other you

7:57

know, news articles and such. So Ryan

8:00

disclaiming Oracle is collecting all of that and

8:03

organizing it into what he calls

8:05

dossier's Ryan has brought this lawsuit

8:08

to California, probably because that

8:10

is the U s state that has the most strict

8:12

privacy laws, and this

8:15

is a massive endeavor. It's too

8:17

early to say how it's all going to turn out,

8:19

but some folks at least suspect that this

8:22

is a push to encourage the United States to adopt

8:24

stronger privacy laws more

8:26

in line with what we see over in

8:28

the European Union. Joshua

8:31

Benton at Nieman Lab dot org has

8:33

a great article. It's titled are

8:35

you legally Liable for the contents

8:38

of every web page You linked? To? Australia

8:40

finally gets sensible? All

8:43

right, some backstory on this. So

8:45

back in the first decade of this millennium,

8:48

I just hate saying. The early

8:50

two thousand's, an Australian lawyer

8:53

named George Defterros was arrested

8:56

and charged with conspiring to commit

8:58

murder. Defterro was known

9:00

as a lawyer who represented people accused

9:03

of belonging to organized crime gangs.

9:06

Anyway, an Australian newspaper

9:08

published an article about defter Ros, alleging

9:11

that he was in fact part

9:14

of this conspiracy and such, and Google

9:17

ended up linking to that article and its

9:19

search results because Google indexes

9:22

the web, and when people do searches

9:24

for things, you get the links.

9:26

Right. Well, flash forward many

9:29

many years. The lawyers representing

9:31

Defterros, who by the way,

9:34

had all charges dropped against him,

9:36

so he did not he did not stand

9:38

for those those charges they were dropped. His

9:42

lawyers were seeking to have this article

9:44

removed from the from

9:46

the Internet, and they

9:48

went to the newspaper and demanded that the

9:51

newspaper removed the article, and the newspaper

9:53

said no. So when that proved

9:55

fruitless, they then went after Google,

9:58

and their argument was that Google, by

10:00

publishing a link to this article,

10:02

was kind of

10:05

endorsing the article, that Google

10:07

itself was acting as a publisher, and

10:09

that it was almost as if the offending piece

10:11

had come from Google because it

10:14

was linking to it. So

10:17

that's kind of wild, right, like that

10:19

a link can somehow imply

10:21

that you're responsible for the

10:24

material that the link

10:26

goes to. While initially a

10:29

court in Australia ruled that Google

10:31

was in fact responsible, but

10:33

then it got appealed. It went

10:35

to Australia's High Court and the High

10:37

Court has reversed that ruling and

10:40

essentially said this is ludicrous. If we

10:42

follow this logic, anyone who

10:44

links to anything that is later claimed,

10:46

not even proven, just claimed

10:49

to be defamatory, shares

10:51

responsibility and therefore could be sued for liabel.

10:55

That seems pretty extreme, doesn't it that

10:57

a link alone could make you

10:59

respond constable for libel. So

11:02

what if you were to come across a link

11:04

to a story and you shared it on your

11:07

social media plat platforms

11:09

like on Facebook or on Twitter. Maybe

11:12

you saw the story, you just thought it was interesting you wanted

11:14

to share it. Well, if this earlier

11:16

court ruling had been upheld, it

11:18

would have said a precedent that suggests you

11:20

could be found guilty of libel yourself

11:23

just by sharing the link, and that

11:25

you could potentially face charges for it

11:27

even though you didn't write the

11:30

supposed defamatory material. By the way,

11:32

a big part of this story is that

11:34

while the lawyers were claiming that

11:37

the article was found to be

11:39

defamatory, it never actually went

11:42

to court. It was settled out

11:44

of court. So because

11:46

of that, the claims were spurious,

11:50

and yet they still went through UH

11:52

and got this initial

11:55

decision by the court that was then overturned

11:57

by the High Court. So it's

12:00

good that the High Court saw

12:02

this for what it was, or at least

12:04

five of the seven judges saw it for

12:06

what it was. Two of them dissented and

12:09

argued that Google was in fact responsible.

12:11

Not sure what they were thinking.

12:15

Okay, we've got a few more news stories to go,

12:18

but before we get to that, let's take

12:20

a quick break. We're

12:29

back US automaker Ford

12:31

announced it is laying off three

12:33

thousand employees and includes around

12:36

two thousand salaried positions and one thousand

12:38

contractors, and the company says

12:41

this is all part of its strategy to pivot from

12:43

focusing primarily on internal combustion

12:45

engine vehicles and to change to

12:47

put more emphasis on electric vehicle

12:49

production. Ford CEO

12:51

Jump Farley denies that the cuts

12:53

are a cost saving move, but

12:56

rather they indicate how Ford

12:58

is serious about fundamentally each changing

13:00

course by committing to the future of electric

13:02

vehicles. My heart goes out

13:04

to all the folks who got their walking papers. It

13:06

is an increasingly tough job market,

13:09

particularly when other auto manufacturers

13:11

like Tesla have also been laying

13:13

off employees or making other kinds of

13:16

cost saving cuts. The CEO

13:18

of the cryptocurrency exchange company

13:20

Binance, says that LinkedIn is

13:23

absolutely swarming with people falsely

13:25

claiming to be Binance employees.

13:28

And I'm not joking about swarming. He

13:31

says. There are about fifty real

13:33

profiles belonging to Finance employees

13:36

on LinkedIn, but in total

13:39

it's closer to seven thousand

13:41

claimed Binance

13:43

employees, which is a big old yauza. So

13:46

why would people be lying about working

13:49

for Binance, Well, it's probably part

13:51

of crypto scams. The

13:53

scammers are likely listing Finance on

13:55

LinkedIn to give themselves a

13:57

sense of legitimacy when they're talking to

13:59

their marks, their targets.

14:02

They're tricking people into pouring money into

14:04

various schemes. They're usually

14:06

types of Ponzi schemes. If you don't know what

14:08

a Ponzi scheme is, it's

14:10

a subset of pyramid schemes. So

14:12

a scammer convinces a group of investors

14:15

to pour money into you know, whatever

14:17

it is, in this case, a cryptocurrency scheme.

14:20

Then the scammera convinces a second round

14:22

of investors to do the same,

14:24

and then pays a

14:27

percentage out to the first

14:29

round of investors to keep

14:31

them happy while pocketing

14:33

the rest of the money, and then they keep going

14:35

and so on and so forth, and effective scammers

14:37

can often convince investors to reinvest

14:40

into the scheme, so they take the

14:42

money that they're supposedly getting paid out as

14:44

the scheme is paying off, and they put

14:46

it back into it, which just gives

14:48

more money to the scammers. And

14:50

ultimately these schemes all collapse in

14:52

on themselves. They cannot sustain themselves forever.

14:55

And so the Binance CEO

14:58

is warning followers not to assume

15:00

someone really is a finance employee

15:02

just because it might say so on a LinkedIn

15:05

account, particularly if that

15:07

supposed employee is trying to coerce people

15:09

into pouring money into a crypto investment

15:11

scheme. This is pretty

15:13

tricky because LinkedIn doesn't verify

15:15

work or education history. They do claim

15:18

to respond to reports of false

15:22

accounts, and they say

15:24

that they look for false accounts, but yeah,

15:28

this is a If it's seven thousand

15:30

fake ones out there, that's a that's

15:32

a pretty big problem. And you

15:35

know, folks, fib on resumes all the time.

15:37

I get it, But this goes well beyond that. Japanese

15:40

company Fujitsu has partnered

15:42

with reik In, a research institute, with

15:45

the intent of developing and selling a quantum

15:47

computer boasting sixty four cubits

15:49

starting next year. Now, to brush up

15:52

on quantum computers, the fundamental

15:54

unit of classical computers is

15:56

the bit, and a bit can either be

15:58

a zero or a one. The fundamental

16:01

unit of information in a quantum computer

16:03

is a cubit, which, thanks

16:05

to quantum effects, can essentially

16:08

be a zero and a one at the same

16:10

time under specific circumstances.

16:13

And I'm being very high level with this,

16:16

but when paired with the right algorithms,

16:18

that kind of computer, a quantum computer can

16:20

potentially solve a subset of

16:22

computer problems far faster

16:25

than a classical computer can. Uh.

16:28

It's essentially solving for all

16:31

potential solutions at the same

16:33

time and then presenting

16:35

the one that is most likely

16:38

to be the best. It deals with probabilities,

16:40

not certainties. It gets very wibbly

16:43

wobbly, but uh. It's

16:45

also important to remember quantum computers are no

16:47

better than classical computers for other

16:50

types of applications, other types of computer

16:52

problems. You would not be using a quantum

16:54

computer as a gaming rig for example, but

16:57

they do potentially have

17:00

the ability to change really

17:03

important things that we depend upon,

17:05

like encryption in the near

17:07

future. NASA has narrowed

17:09

down potential future lunar landing sites

17:11

to thirteen regions, all of which are not

17:13

too far from the Moon's south pole. I

17:16

like to think they were on the lunar equivalent

17:18

to Zillo at the time. Scientists

17:20

believe that the region is perfect for future Moon

17:22

missions because the deep craters in the area could

17:25

potentially hold hydrogen and water ice.

17:28

That kind of stuff would be useful if

17:30

you wanted to make your own rocket fuel, for

17:32

example, or if you wanted to perhaps

17:34

process water ice to create not just water,

17:37

but maybe oxygen. This falls

17:39

in line with the goals of the Artemis campaign,

17:41

which has some really ambitious targets,

17:44

including creating a base of operations

17:46

suitable for long term stays on the Moon.

17:49

NASA has been planning this out for years, and

17:51

in fact, the launch of Artemis one,

17:54

which will be an unscrewed Orion

17:56

vessel on top of the Space

17:58

Launch System, which is a super heavy lift

18:01

launch vehicle, is scheduled

18:03

to launch on Monday of next

18:05

week. If everything goes to plan. The

18:07

actual return mission to the Moon in which

18:10

humans will head back up there. That

18:12

one is designated as Artemis three.

18:14

That's not expected to launch until twenty

18:16

twenty five at the earliest. Sony

18:19

has announced via Instagram of all Things

18:22

that's new generation of VR hardware

18:24

for the PlayStation console is likely to launch

18:26

in early This

18:29

generation of hardware is going to work

18:31

with the PlayStation five. It's reportedly softer

18:34

with better ergonomic design than

18:36

the earlier generation of Sony's VR peripherals,

18:39

and Sony says the headset will display graphics

18:41

at a four thousand by two thousand forty

18:43

resolution per eye that

18:46

breaks down to two thousand by twenty and

18:49

it will have a refresh rate of nineties slash

18:52

hurts. It's also gonna have a c through mode,

18:54

so if you get too close to the wall, it'll show

18:56

you so you don't bump your nose in there.

18:59

They have not have any information on how much

19:01

it will cost. My guess is it will be a few hundred

19:03

dollars um, So here's

19:06

hoping that we find out soon. We know that

19:08

it's coming in early, and

19:11

that's about it. Well, that

19:14

is the news for Tuesday, August

19:16

two. Hope you are all

19:19

well, make sure you reach out

19:21

to me with any suggestions you have for future

19:23

episodes of tech Stuff. You can do that on the I Heart

19:25

Radio app or on Twitter at tech

19:27

stuff H s W and I'll

19:30

talk to you again really

19:32

soon. Text

19:38

Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.

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