Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 06/08 – Fastly Takes Down The Internet

Starting point is 00:00:00 On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme right home for Tuesday, June 8th, 2021. I'm Brian McCullough today. Fastly takes down the internet, highlighting how the internet is still really centralized. The U.S. seized most of the Bitcoins those hackers got from the colonial pipeline hack, highlighting how Bitcoin is actually eminently traceable. Facebook pokes Apple in the eye on WWDC Day. And I give you a wrap-up of the bits and pieces we missed from WWDC yesterday. Here's what you missed in the world of Tech. Many of the largest websites in the world went down early today, including Amazon, Twitch, the BBC, the New York Times, Spotify, Reddit, and the Financial Times, all due to an issue

Starting point is 00:01:19 at the Fastly CDN, which has now been fixed. Usually I don't report on things going down, like, you know, when Slack goes down or Gmail goes down, because by the time I do, it's usually old news. But I'm mentioning this outage because for like an hour, like half the internet was dark. There are some huge names involved there. And it's also a reminder that while the internet feels like it's this ad hoc decentralized thing, it's really not. Here's TechCrunch with an explainer, quote, content delivery networks or CDNs are a key part of the internet infrastructure. These companies run global networks of servers to improve performance and availability of web services.

Starting point is 00:01:58 CDNs act as proxy servers and cash some data. as close to the end user as possible. For instance, media content is often cached at a CDN server near you so that it doesn't have to be fetched on the original server every time a user loads a webpage. Even though the web is a digital platform, it's very physical by nature. When you load a page on a server on the other side of the world,

Starting point is 00:02:19 it's going to take hundreds of milliseconds to get the page. Over time, this latency adds up and it feels like a sluggish experience. When a page is already cached, a CDN can usually start sending the content of the page in less than 25 milliseconds. seconds. Over time, CDNs have added more features such as load balancing, DDoS protection, web application firewalls, and other security features. Popular CDNs include Fastly, Cloudflare, Cloudfront on Amazon Web Services, and Akamai. Fastly in particular is quite popular with media websites, end quote. One of the interesting things to come out of this this morning is people saying

Starting point is 00:02:56 Fastly should actually get credit for getting things back up and running so fastly, like, quoting Corey Quinn on Twitter. I'm really hard pressed to be anything but impressed with Fastly today. Rapid recovery, frequent updates as they learn more, clearly used by everyone on the planet, including Amazon, brand recognition skyrocketing, end quote. Indeed, quoting our fellow spacecast host Martin SFP Bryant. Nobody wants to be bad news mentioned all over the media, but they dealt with it quickly, and I'd be surprised if they didn't get a big wave of signups today, end quote.

Starting point is 00:03:32 Sure enough, checking Fastly's stock price as of 11 a.m. Eastern, it's up more than 6% on the day. U.S. investigators have seized nearly 64 Bitcoins, valued at around $2.3 million that Colonial Pipeline had paid in ransom to hackers last month. A source said that the total ransom that Colonial Pipeline paid was 75 Bitcoin, so this is most of that, quoting the Wall Street Journal. Monday, investigators obtained a seizure warrant from a magistrate judge in Northern California that enabled authorities working with Colonial Pipeline to capture the Bitcoin from the virtual wallet linked to the hacking group. The FBI tracked Colonial's ransom payment across several Bitcoin addresses in May court documents show. Law enforcement officials often work

Starting point is 00:04:24 with private sector analysts who can track cryptocurrency transactions across public ledgers known as blockchains. By mapping clusters of virtual wallets and cross-referencing their transactions with intelligence about hacks, analysts say they are able to reliably trace many ransom payments. Upon receiving payouts from victims such as colonial hackers often switch funds among several wallets to cover their tracks or pay affiliates, as well as convert ransoms to different cryptocurrencies or hard money at exchanges. Law enforcement officials can step in with search warrants and seize funds from the exchanges, analysts say. Because Bitcoin transactions are available on a publicly distributed ledger, in many cases law enforcement can trace Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:05:03 payments and track stolen funds, said Sujit Ramon, a former senior Justice Department official. When cybercriminals use Bitcoin, that can sometimes be more traceable than just using cash or fiat currency, end quote. Because the cryptocurrency fluctuates dramatically in value, the dollar value recovered was only a little more than half the dollar value of the ransom payment, end quote. Yeah, because the custodial wallet happened to be in California, apparently the feds could just take it. I'm not sure people. understand this fully, but Bitcoin is actually not the best thing to use for ransom for the reasons mentioned above. I mean, it is better than unmarked bills in a suitcase left on a train platform,

Starting point is 00:05:45 but only because of the ease of the transaction. In terms of ease of tracking, Bitcoin is actually better for law enforcement in terms of seeing where the ransom money goes. Facebook says it will show creators who are using its new tools, how much Apple, Google, and others take as a cut of their earnings through a new payout interface, quoting the verge. Less than two hours before Apple's big worldwide developers conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, announced that the company would be launching a new interface for creators that shows how different fees affect their earnings on the platform. Zuckerberg wasn't clear as to when the new interface would be launching beyond saying that there'd be more to come soon. Zuckerberg also says

Starting point is 00:06:30 the company will keep paid online events, fan subscriptions, badges, and quote our upcoming independent news products free for creators until 2023. This is an extension of a policy announced in August. When Facebook introduced the events feature last year, it had promised that it wouldn't collect fees until at least 2021. The company eventually plans to introduce a revenue share, Zuckerberg says, but when it does, it will be, quote, less than the 30% that Apple and others take, end quote. So cute little bit of counter programming there on Zuck's part, but if you look at the interface, which you can do if you click through the link on the show notes, it is. It is. is disheartening to see how $3,200 in revenue quickly becomes $2,200 in revenue after everyone

Starting point is 00:07:13 wets their beak. Tiny rumor here from Reuters, they claim that Apple is in the early stages of talks with China's C-A-T-L and B-Y-D, two of the world's biggest automotive battery makers to supply batteries for its rumored electric vehicle. Quote, Apple is in favor of using lithium-iron-phosphate batteries that are cheaper to produce because they use iron instead of nickel and cobalt, which are more expensive, the sources said. People familiar with the matter have previously said Apple's planned EV could include its own breakthrough battery technology. It was not immediately clear if the discussions with CATL and BYD

Starting point is 00:07:53 involved Apple's own technology or designs. Chinese battery makers are expected to grow at a faster pace than their foreign peers thanks to further expansion of the world's biggest EV market, S&E research said in a June report. Reuters reported last week that CATL is planning a major new automotive battery plant in Shanghai, continuing a blistering pace of expansion that will cement its lead as the world's number one supplier. The factory would be near Tesla's China manufacturing operations as well, end quote. Adobe is launching more M1 Mac native versions of its creative cloud apps, including Lightroom Classic and Illustrator, claiming that these apps can achieve greater than 80% faster performance than Intel Max, quoting the Verge. Based on the results of a third-party

Starting point is 00:08:45 benchmarking report commissioned by the company. Adobe says that, quote, most operations in Lightroom Classic on an M1 Mac, including launching, importing, and exporting will be about twice as fast as as they were on an equivalent Intel Mac. A new super resolution image enhancing feature that's also been added in this update is, quote, more than three times as fast. Meanwhile, the benchmarks were run on 13-inch MacBook Pro laptops, one with an M1 processor and the other with an Intel Core I-5. Both laptops had 16 gigabytes of RAM and were hooked up to an Apple Pro Display XDR. Other Lightroom updates include the ability to specify custom aspect ratios when cropping, as opposed to using the freehand tool, and a set of new premium presets created by Pro Photographers.

Starting point is 00:09:29 The collection includes options for styles like cinematic and futuristic, as well as portrait presets for various skin tones. They'll be available in both Lightroom and Lightroom Classic on all platforms, end quote. Yeah, no new M1 chip news. yesterday, which was part of my sadness about the dearth of hardware announces. But speaking of that, as ever, after a big developer event, it's useful to pick up some of the odds and ends that slip through the cracks of my summary yesterday, or else are just trickling out after the keynote. For instance, and all of these are in no particular order, starting with iOS 15, iPhones can be traced via the Find My Network, even while powered off or after a factory reset. Quoting a 9 to 5 Mac,

Starting point is 00:10:17 It seems that with iOS 15, the phone is not really fully powered off. It stays in a low power state and acts like an air tag, allowing any nearby iOS device to pick up the Bluetooth signal and send back its location. This also means if your iPhone runs out of battery during the day, you still have a chance of finding its location for several more hours. In fact, Apple says the location tracking will even keep working whilst the phone is reset to factory settings with activation lock enabled. Apple informs users about this new behavior with an alert dialogue.

Starting point is 00:10:47 when the newly updated iOS 15 iPhone is running low on power for the first time, end quote. There's a new digital legacy service that Apple has also announced so your loved ones can access your device and your data when you, well, you know, quoting CNET. Apple is adding a digital legacy service for user accounts, allowing you to assign an administrator who can access your data in the event you die. The administrator will sign in through a legacy contact Apple ID and will need an access key to see password-protected data on Apple devices.

Starting point is 00:11:20 The administrator can also view data stored in iCloud, Apple's cloud service. The data, however, cannot be downloaded, end quote. This sort of legacy data thing, let me make a prediction here. This will be a growing important thing this decade, not just for Apple, but for a ton of services and platforms. Next, unlike with previous iOS releases, Apple will let users choose to stay on iOS 14 and still receive security updates even after iOS 15 is released. 9-to-5 Mac again. iOS always has high levels of adoption from its user base, but some groups prefer not to upgrade right away. With this new

Starting point is 00:11:58 feature in place, those people will no longer miss out on bug fixes and security updates. Previously, Apple would release older security updates to devices that could not upgrade to the latest version. However, if you own the latest Apple devices getting the latest security updates necessitated updating to the latest version for iOS. This was a frustrating. This was a frustrating, obstacle for some users and many enterprises. But now those institutions can keep on the known stable iOS 14 version for a while longer. Presumably at some point, Apple will require everyone to migrate to iOS 15. You can expect that to happen when iOS 16 comes out next year, and quote. Apple also took care yesterday to note that the App Store sees 600 million users per week

Starting point is 00:12:38 from 175 different countries, and that it is paid out $230 billion to developers to date. We know why they're pointing that out, of course. Next, I did a poor job of explaining that ICloud Plus service yesterday. So Jacob Castronadis at The Verge picks up my Slack, quote, Apple is amping up ICloud with a new set of features called ICloud Plus. The cloud storage service will now come with access to a VPN, burner email addresses, and unlimited storage for HomeKit-enabled home security cameras. The VPN called Private Relay.

Starting point is 00:13:11 We'll route your internet traffic through two relays in order to mask who's browsing and where that data is coming from. Apple is trying to distinguish the feature from traditional VPNs. If you ask, Apple will tell you it's not a VPN at all, in part because it sends data through that second hop. The second hop prevents any one party, including Apple, from seeing all of your browsing data, Apple says. The burner email feature called Hide My Email lets you create single-use email addresses that will forward to your actual account. That way you can provide a junk email address to a service you don't trust in case it starts spamming you. Apple already offers a similar feature through sign-in with Apple. And Apple will also

Starting point is 00:13:49 include unlimited storage for video from HomeKit-enabled home security cameras. You currently need to pay for at least 200 gigabytes of iCloud storage to record video from one camera, and you need to pay for a higher tier to support more streams. The features are all supported to be included with existing ICloud plans at no additional cost. Apple didn't say if the feature would be available through its cheapest plans, though, which don't currently support HomeKit video storage. and quote. But, interesting to note that ICloud Private Relay will not work in China, Belarus, Colombia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkmenistan, Uganda, and the Philippines. And finally, more on that Object Capture API that enables developers to turn 2D images of real-world

Starting point is 00:14:33 objects into 3D models, optimized for AR, quoting from Apple's press release itself. Reality Kit 2 introduces object capture, a simple and powerful API on Mac. OS Monterey that enables developers like Wayfair, Etsy, and more to create high-quality, photorealistic 3D models of real-world objects in minutes by taking photos shot on iPhone, iPad, or DSLR, and transforming them into 3D models optimized for AR. These models can be viewed in AR Quick Look or added to AR scenes in Reality Composer or Xcode, making it easier than ever to build amazing AR apps. Developers like Maxen and Unity are using object capture to unlock entirely new ways of creating 3D content within some of the leading 3D content creation apps such as

Starting point is 00:15:16 Cinema 4D and Unity Mars, end quote. I guess the days of crappy low-res shots of that thing you're trying to sell on eBay just sitting on a sheet that you threw on the ground and then tried the light with a nearby lamp are basically over, right? Quick book recommendation for you. It's been a while since I've done one of these. The book is called Network Effect by Martha Wells. I'll put a link at the bottom of today's show notes if you're interested in checking it out. It's actually book five in a series called the Murder Bot Diaries, which I was not aware of as a series until this weekend, when Network Effect won the 2021 Nebula Award for science fiction. So I downloaded it to the Kindle and I am literally tearing through it right now. It's a brilliant

Starting point is 00:16:12 concept, really. You know those quintessential Airports? or Beach Reads about some dude who is trained as an assassin or super soldier or whatever, someone who has a special set of skills, basically, like the Jack Reacher novels or any of the David Baldacci novels. Imagine that, but mixed with sci-fi. So it's got all the action, the page-turning readability, the gunplay, the gore, but on spaceships and in wormholes, it's a robot assassin with all the sort of noir-like detective attitude and quipping that you'd expect. It's really a lot of fun. Highly recommend it. I'm

Starting point is 00:16:50 probably in now for the whole series. Network effect by Martha Wells. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 06/08 – Fastly Takes Down The Internet

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