Tech Brew Ride Home - Tue. 10/10 – The Veil Between Online And IRL Is Thin

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

That whole bungled pricing thing has cost the Unity CEO his job. The big 23andMe breach is a different kind of hack. And it turns out if you fall victim to a scam, it’s probably because you were online. Can you charge enough to cover the costs of AI products? And is the Pixel brand finally having a moment. Sponsors: ipn.ibotta.com/ride TryFum.com code ride Links: John Riccitiello steps down as CEO of Unity after pricing battle (GamesBeat) 23andMe says private user data is up for sale after being scraped (ArsTechnica) Social media scams are costing Americans more than ever (TechRadar) Big Tech Struggles to Turn AI Hype Into Profits (WSJ) Google has shipped almost 40 million Pixel phones since 2016, 10 million last year (9to5Google) Elon Musk’s X Cut Disinformation-Fighting Tool Ahead of Israel-Hamas Conflict (The Information) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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, October 10th, 2023. I'm Brian McCullough today. That whole bungled pricing thing has cost the Unity CEO his job. The Big 23NMe breach is a different kind of hack, and it turns out if you fall victim to a scam, it's probably because you were online.

Can you charge enough to cover the cost of AI products? And is the Pixel brand finally having a moment? Here's what you miss today in the world of tech. Unity CEO John Rissotielo has resigned. in the wake of the company's fee controversy. Unity went ahead and named former Red Hat President and CEO James Whitehurst as interim CEO, quoting Venture Beat. Meanwhile, hoping to avoid a stock panic, Unity said that it is reaffirming its previous guidance for its fiscal third quarter financial results, which will be reported on November 9th. Rolf Botha, lead independent director of the Unity Board, has been appointed chairman. Ritacello will continue to advise Unity to ensure a smooth transition, the company said,

The news isn't a surprise, as Unity angered a lot of its loyal game developers a few weeks ago after pushing through a price increase based on the number of downloads and then retracted it after an uproar. Unity said the board will initiate a comprehensive search process with the assistance of a leading executive search firm to identify a permanent CEO. Whitehurst is a seasoned technology and public company executive. He previously served as senior advisor and president at IBM, after joining. through IBM's acquisition of Red Hat, a leading provider of open source enterprise IT products and services where he served as president and CEO from 2008 to 2020, end quote.

Something big that we missed talking about while I was away, 23 and me was forced to confirm that user data from its platform was circulating on hacker forums. Hackers, possibly the same ones, then posted an initial 23 and Me data sample on breach forums, claiming that the sample had one million data points exclusively about Ashkenazi Jews, quoting Ars Technica. The Crime Forum Post claimed the attackers obtained 13 million pieces of data. 23-Me officials have provided no details about the leaked information available online, the number of users it belongs to, or where it's being made available.

On Friday, the record and bleeping computer reported that one leaked database contained information for 1 million users who were of Ashkenazi heritage, all of whom had opted into the DNA relative service. The record said a second database included 300,000 users who were of Chinese heritage, who had also opted in. The data included profile and account ID numbers, display names, gender, birth year, maternal and paternal haplogroups, ancestral heritage results, and data on whether or not each user has opted into 23 Enme's health data. Some of this data is included only when users choose to share it. The record also reported that the 23 and Me website allows people who know the profile ID of a user to view that user's profile photo, name,

birth year, and location. The 23Mee representative said that, quote, anyone with a 23M account who has opted into DNA relatives, that's the product we're talking about, can view basic profile information of any other account who has also explicitly opted into making their profile visible to other DNA relative participants, end quote. The cause of the leak, the official said, is data scraping, a technique that essentially reassembles large amounts of data by systematically extracting smaller amounts of information available to individual users of a service. Attackers gained unauthorized access to the individual 23-and-Me accounts, all of which

had been configured by the user to opt in to that DNA relative feature that allows them to find potential relatives. In a statement, the official wrote, quote, we do not have any indication at this time that there has been a data security incident within our systems. Rather, the preliminary results of this investigation suggests that the login credentials used in these access attempts may have been gathered by a threat actor from data leaked during incidents involving other online platforms where users have recycled login credentials. We believe that the threat actor may have then, in violation of our terms of service, access 23andMe.com accounts without authorization and obtained information from those accounts.

We are taking this issue seriously and will continue our investigation to confirm these preliminary results, end quote. While there are benefits to storing genetic information online so people can trace their heritage and track down relatives, there are clear privacy threats. Even if a user chooses a strong password and uses two-factor authentication, as 23Mee has long urged, their data can still be swept up in scraping incidents like the one recently confirmed. The only sure way to protect it from online theft is to not store it there in the first place, end quote. Here's a chaser to that shot. Apparently, one in four people in the United States who reported losing money to fraud from January 2021 to June of this year,

said that the contact started on social media. That caused $2.7 billion in losses during that time period. So, Ars Technica just said, don't store it in. genetic data online, but at some point, don't we have to acknowledge that we're through the looking glass here, people? Everything is online now. The distinction between online and IRL is maybe dead. Quoting tech radar. Scammers on social media have stolen $2.7 billion from their victim since 2021. New findings by the Federal Trade Commission have claimed. Just as an algorithm Taylor's content to suit your interests, so too can scammers looking to trick you out of your money.

Unsurprisingly, the younger generations with the highest social media usage are the most susceptible to online scams, with the most common reported losses being no-show goods ordered online. The recent explosion in drop-shipping and cheap but questionable Amazon alternatives could account for a large portion of this fraud, especially when these sellers can use targeted advertising across the full range of social media sites to boost their sales. Investment scams, where self-proclaimed stock market gurus will offer their expertise to multiply your investments are reported to account for the greatest monetary losses. Some of these scams use fake websites to steal your social media login credentials where scammers then pretend to be

you to spread your investment success to your friends, family, and co-workers. And to top it all off in this age of social isolationism, romance scams are second in the list in terms of financial losses, often starting as a simple friend request or random message, they quickly devolve into love bombing and asking for money. AI is becoming increasingly involved in scammer's attempts to steal your money and personal data with a chat GPT catfishing campaign striking up incredibly convincing conversations. In order to steer clear of online scams, there are a few things you can do. Keep your profile private and limited to only people you know.

Don't respond to dubious messages from strangers, only buy from reputable online companies, and if someone you know messages asking for money, try and contact them outside of social media to check it's really them, end quote. Occasionally, you'll hear people comment about how there has to be something beyond the current attention, transformer, large language model AI that has risen to the four this year. If for no other reason, then it's all just so darned expensive. And when you hear people talking about that, they're talking about stuff like this. According to a source, Microsoft's GitHub co-pilot, the $10 a month AI assistant with more than

1.5 million users loses, on average, more than $20 million per user per month for Microsoft and as much as $80 a month for some of those users, quoting the journal. Generative artificial intelligence tools are unproven and expensive to operate, requiring muscular servers with expensive chips that consume a lot of power. Microsoft, Google, Adobe, and other tech companies investing in AI are experimenting with an array of tactics to make market and charge for it. Microsoft has lost money on one of its first generative AI products, though, said a person with knowledge of the figures. It and Google are now launching AI-backed upgrades to their software with higher price tags. Zoom has tried to mitigate the costs by sometimes using a simpler AI it developed in-house.

Adobe and others are putting caps on monthly usage and charging based on consumption. A lot of the customers I've talked to are unhappy about the costs that they're seeing for running some of these models, said Adam Silipski, the chief executive of Amazon.com's cloud division, Amazon. on web services, speaking of the industry broadly. It will take time for companies and consumers to understand how they want to use AI and what they're willing to pay for it, said Chris Young, Microsoft's head of corporate strategy. We are clearly out of place where now we've got to translate the excitement and the interest level into true adoption, he said.

AI often doesn't have the economies of scale of standard software because it can require intense new calculations for each query. The more customers use the products, the more expensive it is to cover the infrastructure bills. These running costs expose companies charging flat fees for AI to potential losses. Microsoft is going with a higher price for its next AI software upgrade. On top of regular monthly charges, starting at around $13 for the basic Microsoft 365 Office Software Suite for business customers, the company will charge an additional $30 a month for the AI-infused version. The AI-powered feature can be instructed to compose

emails, create PowerPoint presentations, and build Excel spreadsheets independently. Google, which is releasing a similar AI assistant feature for its workplace software, will also be charging $30 a month on top of the regular subscription fee, which starts at $6 a month. Microsoft, Google, and others have gone with a flat monthly rate, betting that the higher additional charges will more than cover the average expenses of running the technology. One of the reasons the services can be so costly is some use the most potent AI models available, which require more power and put more strain on computer processors to operate the

standard software or cloud services. Microsoft, for example, is using OpenAI's latest software for its AI features. The version called GPT4 is among the largest and most costly AI models available. Using it to summarize an email is like getting a Lamborghini to deliver a pizza, end quote. A week after the pixel event, I've been hearing various things all week to suggest that after nearly a decade, the pixel lineup itself might finally be catching on with Android users. IDC says Google has shipped 37.9 million pixel phones over its lifetime from 2016 to 2023, suggesting that the company shipped a record 10 million phones or so over just the past 12 months, up from 7.2 million in 2019. Quoting 9 to 5 Google. Google Pixel is still a minor player

in the global smartphone market, but the brand continues to move along as the Pixel 8 series launched this week. Updated figures reveal that Google Pixel has shipped around 40 million phones so far, which is a pretty big leap in the last year alone. According to IDC VP Francisco Geronimo, Google Pixel has shipped 37.9 million phones between 2016 and 2023, the entire lifecycle of the pixel lineup thus far. Geronimo notes that sales have grown in double digits in recent years. While that's not exactly a massive number, Apple, for instance, is estimated to ship over 224 million iPhones per year, it is steadily moving up.

In 2018, Geronimo pointed out that Google had doubled its shipments of pixels in the line's first year, totaling just shy of 4 million units. By 2019, Google had picked things up moving 7.2 million units during that year alone. As of last year, Google was approaching 30 million as a milestone with 27.6 million units sold right before the launch of the Pixel 7. Notably, that means that Google managed to ship around 10 million pixel phones over the course of the last 12 months. That's potentially the best year for the pixel yet, as the previous record, was the aforementioned 7.2 million units. That figure doesn't come as a massive surprise as Google has been actively gaining traction in the U.S. as well as Japan over the last year. Earlier this year, a Q2 report showed that Google Pixel was gaining ground while every other major Android player

slipped downward. In July, it was revealed that Japan is now Google's biggest market for pixel phones, and a later report showed how Pixel is actively taking market share from the iPhone in Japan. Furthermore, Google was also the only smartphone brand that didn't see its shipments shrink year over year in North America, end quote. Finally today, the war in the Middle East. Sources say that X shut down a tool for identifying coordinated disinformation campaigns in recent months as the company moved services off of Google Cloud in order to cut costs, quoting the information. In recent months, the company shut down an internal product that could identify with different accounts shared the same or similar media, according to two people with direct knowledge of the

situation. Such identification is an important part of dealing with coordinated disinformation campaigns where networks of fake accounts posts the same image or video, the people said. The media matching tool was part of a service called Smite that Twitter acquired in 2018 and ran on Google Cloud. The shutdown was part of the company's efforts to cut costs by moving services away from Google Cloud to X's own servers, according to the two people with direct knowledge. At the same time, X has a much smaller staff to confront misinformation at a time when the war in Israel has prompted a surge in questionable posts. Last month, X laid off half the company's threat disruption team, including its final remaining

disinformation specialists, the information first reported. That group is responsible for combating coordinated misinformation and manipulation campaigns. The recent changes at X have allowed organized disinformation campaigns to flourish, said Alex Demos, the director of the research organization, the Stanford Internet Observatory, and a former Facebook chief security officer. For example, Stamos flagged the network of accounts posting the same video of fire spreading across the city with a caption saying that the video was shot recently in Gaza. In reality, the video was a celebration of a soccer win in Algeria. It's the exact same post from dozens and dozens of accounts, the most basic kind of thing your anti-spam system should catch, Stamos said.

Stamos noted that many of the accounts spreading misinformation subscribe to X premium, the company's new verification system, which also awards blue checks and greater visibility to users who pay $8 per month. Recently, X also began sharing some ad revenue with users who pay for X premium, creating a financial incentive to post content that aims to go viral. The media matching tool that X shut down earlier this year would have made it easier to identify similar media on the platform when shared by different accounts, according to the two people with direct knowledge of the situation. The replacement tool the company now uses requires more data and is less powerful at identifying media that are similar but subtly different, according to one of the people. End quote.

On this topic, I can only share a slightly different anecdote, which is, for the first time a major news event has happened and Twitter, I mean X, has been basically worthless for me in my effort to keep up with the event. My problem is not so much the crap posts, the disinformation posts, as mentioned in that piece, because I'm used to waiting through garbage online. No, the problem is rather more about the lack of good posts, good information. It's just not there anymore. Have all of the good sources left Twitter? Certainly starting to feel like that to me. And actually, I have a control that I can point to to make that assertion. When the Ukraine war first started, I was able to cobble together Twitter lists that were absolutely more informative than most professional media outlets. And that was what? Not even two years ago. Casey Newton has a piece

up this morning saying that this might be Thread's last chance to seize a moment for itself to become the venue for real-time news that Twitter always was. Maybe he's right. Thank you to the members of the Mutant Podcast Army who came out to the listener meetup last night here in San Francisco. turns out having the meetup in a quiet hotel lounge was superior to holding it in a noisy bar. The last time we did this, I think that was January, right? I started a habit of following anyone who came to the meetup. So if you were there last night and I don't currently follow you on Twitter or threads or whatever, please ping me on one of those places and make yourself known to me because I want to follow you all.

We had such a good conversation about this very pod last night. I value you all very much as a listening board. Talk to you tomorrow.