Tech News Weekly Episode 227 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show. 

Jason Howell (00:00:00):
Coming up next on Tech News Weekly. It's me, Jason Howell and I, Mikah Sargent. And we got a lot of stories for you to talk about first, a video game that's FDA approved to help children with ADHD and what that might mean for the future of video games potentially. Also we take a look at the history of the lapses extortion gang. You may have heard of them this week, but they've been around for a while. And it's kind of interesting what they've been up to tearing apart the max studio and taking a look at the drives inside. Do you think they're replaceable think again and finally, a brain implant that actually enables people who are paralyzed they're they're in a locked in state to actually commute and have agency over their own decisions. All that more coming up next on Tech News Weekly.

... (00:00:48):
Podcasts you love from people you trust. This is TWiT.

Jason Howell (00:01:08):
This is Tech News Weekly episode 227 recorded Thursday, March 24th, 2022.

Mikah Sargent (00:01:14):
This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by Melissa. The us postal service process is more than 98,000 address change daily. Make sure your customer contact data is up to date. Try Melissa's APIs and the developer portal. It's easy to log on, sign up and start playing in the API sandbox. 24 7 get started today with 1000 records cleaned for free at melissa.com/twi

Jason Howell (00:01:39):
And by compiler, an original podcast from red hat does discussing tech topics, big, small, and strange listen to compiler on apple podcasts or anywhere you listen to podcasts

Mikah Sargent (00:01:51):
And by checkout.com modern businesses need flexible payment systems that can help them adapt to change, to grow and to scale fast. Discover how checkout.com can help your business thrive. Check out.com/tnw. Hello, and welcome to Tech News Weekly. This is the show where every week we, we, yeah, please join us. Have a seat closer. This is the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news, I'm one of your hosts, Mikah Sargent.

Jason Howell (00:02:22):
And I'm the other guy, Jason Howell cow and holy cow, what a morning.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:26):
It has been a morning folks, a morning of change a morning of panic.

Jason Howell (00:02:32):
Sometimes we could just be, I think we can pull back the curtain just a little bit. Yeah, because at the end of the day we're humans and we're doing a show, that's an interview show. And sometimes things don't always go the way you sometimes you're like we're right down to the wire. Like what is this show actually gonna be? And we're like an hour away, but you know what, at the end of the day, it always works out. We make something happen, always make it happen.

Mikah Sargent (00:02:55):
Yes. So in fact, speaking of making it happen, this is how our first interview is going to go. We had originally planned an interview with the co-founders of the company that I'm going to be talking about in a second, but due to some scheduling issues, we were not able to have them join us. So instead, because I think this company is so cool, I'm still gonna talk about it because I want to share this with all of you and I wanna hear Jason's thoughts on it. And I think that what they're doing is really neat. The company is called deep well therapeutics. And what deep well aims to do is be a, a gaming company, both a public, the share, but also kind of a, a person or a group that helps along the way as consultants. And then also game creators themselves.

Mikah Sargent (00:03:46):
It's deep, well DT. It stands for digital therapeutics for mental health. I want to start though by kind of kicking things back, cuz you may go, okay. Mental health for gaming. Tell me more actually back in 2020, and we may have even covered it on the show. I think we might have actually, now that I'm thinking about it. Yeah. The FDA, the food and drug administration approved the first prescription video game. This was a game that was approved for kids with ADHD. And this was mind you TW or no seven years of, of studies that they went through to determine the efficacy of this game. So it's called endeavor RX. It was called project Evo in the early days. And this video game is for kids. It says between the ages of, and 12 years old with ADHD, seven years of clinical trials studied 600 children to see if the game could make a difference.

Mikah Sargent (00:04:49):
In it, the, the quote is that the, they saw improvements in ADHD, impairments following a month of treatment with endeavor RX that were maintained for up to a month. It's important to note that the study that is being quoted, the, the study that the company sites was done by their own research scientists in the study, it says, you know, who did it? So you always need to keep that in mind. However, it did get approval from the FDA to be prescribed as a game to help treat ADHD in kids. So if we start there and then we think about what's possible from that point, you've got ADHD and we know that different parts of the brain activate more or less in ADHD than a person that's neurotypical. And so if you can perform activities that focus on those parts of the brain, then you can start to see improvements in someone's ADHD impairments.

Mikah Sargent (00:05:49):
In fact many folks with ADHD will tend to lack hand eye coordination because that motor cortex part of the brain functions a little differently in a person with ADHD. And so practicing things that require hand eye coordination helped to strengthen that part of the brain helped to strengthen the neurons there. And of course I'm using very generalized terms here. That is not what a neurologist would say, strengthening neurons, they don't have muscles but to, to improve upon the, the communication and the connection that happens there you know, when you start to go, so sort of a plus B equals C, you can understand how this kind of thing works. So the thing about this is that there are, there's so much that goes into being able to get anything approved in the first place by the FDA. Also thinking about how this is a newer field of, of treatment that comes with its whole set of, of concerns and issues.

Mikah Sargent (00:06:52):
And then you think about how do I distribute it? Where does it go? How can I create to game that is both fun and can also be one that can be used for treatment. All of those things are what deep well digital therapy is trying to provide. So what they did is they, one of the co-founders name who were gonna talk to was, is Ryan Douglas. The other co-founder who we were going to talk to was Mike Wilson. Ryan Douglas is a medical expert quote here, a noted expert and innovator in the field of mental health, artificial intelligence and surgical robotics. Ryan has been on the front line of breakthrough therapies in healthcare. And then Mike Wilson, one of the most prolific executive producers in the history of the games industry has a hundred plus game brought to market 75 million sales globally.

Mikah Sargent (00:07:43):
So lots of experience on both sides. So you take a very smart brain guy a very smart health guy, and then you take a very smart games guy and you combine to make this company that is aiming to provide this experience. What's interesting. I, I like on the well DTX side, it explains kind of what their whole process is. And so somebody who is looking to create a game, they submit their game that is then reviewed by veteran game developers. And so at the very beginning, it's kinda like, Hey, does make sense. Is this something that is going to possibly be a good thing for therapy after that? There's actually, they've built a toolkit that helps to incorporate the actual therapeutic technologies. So imagine that you're a game developer, who's just making a regular game, but you go, you know, what would be nice?

Mikah Sargent (00:08:40):
You, if we added some therapeutic benefits to this game, so you can submit a game and they're like, oh, this is a really awesome game. And we can see like, oh, these puzzles that you have in your game, those would be great to help with mental health in some way, then it can get certified for treatment. So the, their team is going to help them with the mental health concerns, including stress, anxiety, depression, PTSD, O PTSD, O C, D, and addiction, and then last but not least, so they can help you get your game published. So I like this is kind of the first big one that I've heard that's working on this. So fully it's. And what I like is that Douglas says in in the verge interview that they says we don't necessarily make the game therapeutic.

Mikah Sargent (00:09:31):
The games are therapeutic and we can deliver it as a therapy. And so the point there is like, we may not know the therapeutic quality that already exists in games. And so it's kind of teasing out. Yeah. Right. The the potential there, because again, let me go back to what I was saying before I, and I should, I should note, I back in college, went to a neuropsychologist and had my brain scanned and did the whole talk therapy part art of things and was diagnosed with ADHD. So I have known I've had ADHD for years and because of who I am, I of course did a lot of research on it. Cause I just like to know as much as possible. And so I know a whole lot about the, I I'm doing this because the hand eye coordination thing is a big thing.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:13):
I never big into sports is a as a youth partially because I was not good at them. And I did not like making a fool of myself. And so come to find out that my brain is a you know, neurodiverse brain is unique in that way and that I can work to strengthen that part of my brain. And that can improve things, even a standard video game. You know, a, a one where you are say a, a soul that's going after zombies or something, the, the, you know, the trigger and the moving the, the joystick to try and line things up, all of that is actually working on the brain. So they're kind of making the point there, look, this is something that may already exist in your game, let us help you bring it to a new audience and in a new way that can then show how it can help with these different things.

Mikah Sargent (00:10:59):
So I'm interested to see cuz right now, you know, ADHD is, and I wanna be clear as I say, it's E it's the easiest. I mean that, in the sense that, as I said, there's a whole history of how games already help someone who has ADHD with the motor cortex functioning, but let's think about PTSD, OC D all of these other ones that may be a little bit more challenging to target, to try and, and and combat. And I'm really interested to see what what they do with that, for sure. I'm curious if your child was prescribed a video game you're in the tech industry. Yeah. You, you know, tech, so I have a feeling that you would be less skeptical about it, but as a parent in general, how do you think sort of the average parent would react to their, their child's therapist saying, you know what, it's time for them to sit down and play this video game, screen time,

Jason Howell (00:11:57):
Baby. Yeah. Right. I know, right. It kind of goes counter to what I think a lot, many parents, I imagine anyways think about screen time and it's effects on children. Right. You know, and as a parent of kids, you know 12 than eight, I mean, they're, I mean, you know, I was having this, this conversation with him literally this morning cuz you know, I had to come here and it's like, please don't be on the TV all morning. Like at 11 o'clock, can you turn it off and just figure out something to do? That's like not technology cuz you've been watching it for a couple of hours, just figure something else out. You know, it's a constant struggle as a pair to try and find that balance and say, Hey, this is actually healthy for you to, to take, to get some distance and to take a step away and to do something else, this kind of goes counter to that.

Jason Howell (00:12:43):
Right. Which is to say, oh, by the way, actually do this screen time activity. And this can actually improve your condition. So, but at the same, like as a parent, I want to trust the medical practitioners in my life and in our life, you know, directing kind of the, you know, their advice on, on what we should do for the health of our children. So if I had concerns with my children, you know, ADHD or whatever it is and my doctor said, Hey, we think this would help. I would certainly try it. And I don't, I don't know if that goes for everybody. Like, yeah, I'm probably more more open to that because technology is something that I've always been, you know, open to and passionate about. So maybe that changes my own perspective on that, but I'm, I'm sure a lot of parents would, would at least try. I mean, I suppose it doesn't hurt to try

Mikah Sargent (00:13:35):
Cry.

Jason Howell (00:13:35):
There you go. And see, you know, I'm, I'm curious to know, you know, how long it takes for, for this in order to get to whatever the other side is. Like what, what is the other side and how long does it take to get there for a child who is prescribed playing this game? You know absolutely.

Mikah Sargent (00:13:52):
Yeah. another interesting point here that the, the verge points out is that it doesn't take as much testing or as rigorous testing obviously to to be able to pass for the FDA to pass and clear these games as it does drugs. Those obviously have a lot more involved. So it does help the, the, the company to be able to help get these through the process and for these companies to be able to do it a little bit quicker. But I mean, we heard seven years for the ADHD game. The ADHD therapy, it could still take a while, but I, again, I do like the idea of then if you've already got a game out there and you are looking at sort of the therapeutic benefits, that could be part of the game. I think as a, if I was a game developer, I would want to go through the process just to see, you know, are there any parts of my game that do lend themselves well to helping with OCD or something like that. Yeah. And then it starts to get your thinking going forward. How could I make games that have even more of this built into it?

Jason Howell (00:14:55):
Yeah. That play mechanic. Exactly. And, and add that in. And you know, if this gets to a point to where there is some sort, like I'm thinking of, you know, game the packaging on games where it has like the rating, right? Yes. Yeah. And maybe, maybe there's a little symbol that signifies, you know, like this, this game actually has, you know, it it's, it passes the threshold of having enough of these elements. Yes. Where we can put this logo on there that says, this is clear, you know, this is beneficial to children with ADHD or whatever that, whatever that looks

Mikah Sargent (00:15:25):
Like, kinda like how Cheerios say can help lower your cholesterol of it. Right. That kind of thing, you know, if you do it right. You know, it can help with that. So yeah, that's that would be interesting, which is

Jason Howell (00:15:36):
Not necessarily to, to say that the ne the next, you know red, dead redemption right. Is going to solve your kids' ADHD. Right.

Mikah Sargent (00:15:45):
Exactly. But

Jason Howell (00:15:47):
If you know that there are elements within the game that are proven actually benefit someone with that condition. That's nice to know. And maybe that gives a parent a little bit of extra peace of mind in the process.

Mikah Sargent (00:16:01):
I agree. Yeah. So yes, that is deep, well digital therapies. We'll be keeping an eye on digital therapeutics. Excuse me, we'll be keeping an eye on that company. And who knows. Maybe we'll have a, the co-founders on in the future when they release their first game. Cuz I know that that's, that's something they're working on, but they're keeping very tight lip about it. All right. Up next, a prolific hacking group that's apparently run by teens. Interesting. But first this episode of Tech News Weekly, it's brought to you by Melissa. You've heard of Melissa to ensure your business is successful. Your customer information needs to be accurate. And Melissa is a leading provider of global data quality and address management solutions. Melissa is both experienced and independent and has 37 years of data quality expertise, which explains why more than 10,000 businesses know them.

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Jason Howell (00:19:19):
So earlier this week you may have heard of a hacking group called lapses. Definitely getting a lot of attention because they, you know, they, they have a lot of big name companies kind of in their wake, right? Microsoft Ubisoft, Samsung Invidia, and then also Okta, which happens to be a very prominent identity management platform. So big time stuff. It's an impressive list for an extortion group as they are. And especially because apparently they're run by a bunch of teenagers. That's what we're fine out. Anyways, joining us to talk about the group and some of the latest news evolving its possible arrest is Joseph Cox from vice who's actually joining us with the equipment that he has on hand right now. So apologies for the lower quality connection, but we're super thrilled to have his insight on the show today. Welcome back to the show, Joseph.

Joseph Cox (00:20:08):
Right. Thank you. So again,

Jason Howell (00:20:09):
Yeah, absolutely. I love your reporting. It's great to get you on. And you've actually been kind of covering and, and writing and thinking about lapses for longer than just, you know, the past week, let's say they, they came into your radar a while back. Why don't you kind of set the scene as far as like where your knowledge of, of what they were up to kind of began? Where, how did that, how did that begin?

Joseph Cox (00:20:34):
Yeah, sure. So last year, either June or July, we revealed a data breach at the gaming platform sorry, the gaming giants, electronics EA and some hackers had stolen a bunch of data and they were freshening to release it, trying to extort the company and very unusually the hackers, trying to get me to deliver their extortion message to EA because they couldn't figure out who to send it to. And then EA me put them in touch with the hackers and basically long story short, it was very messy, very, very sloppy. And that kind of indicative of lapses on the extortion side, but on the actual hacking side, they're clearly very, very effective because after EA, as you said, they then broke into a bunch of other companies including will talk and a bit, but they're simultaneously really bad at what they do and same time exceptionally skilled as well.

Jason Howell (00:21:36):
Yeah. I mean, they might not be so effective at a like at covering their tracks or pulling these things off kind of, it's almost like they, they have a hard time seal the deal, but they can really get through the front gates if they need to now. Yeah.

Joseph Cox (00:21:51):
Oh no, no. That's, that's totally right in that. And I think that's kind of why cybersecurity professionals have maybe not paid enough attention to them. Right. Because they see these sloppy extortion attempts, they seem very unprofessional and maybe, oh, we don't need to take them very seriously. And then fast forward a few months and yeah, they're, they're breaking into Microsoft, Samsung, invi, you know, the biggest tech companies on the planet. So maybe it was a mistake to sort of you know, undermine them or at least not see where they were potentially going here.

Jason Howell (00:22:25):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now the earlier kind of introduction or your earlier introduction had to do with SIM swapping which seems to me on its surface to be very different from where we're at right now, as far as what they're doing with these you know, these most recent kind of breaches are, I mean, or is it like, is that seemingly a part of what they're doing now in some, some way shape or form through social engineering or whatever the case may be, or are they just by, in your estimation kinda leveling up their abilities you know, from, from the previous experience?

Joseph Cox (00:23:06):
Yeah, it's a really good point. So generally in the SIM in stopping community, which is a very loose collective of hackers who will trick a telecom into sending text messages and phone calls, destined for one person into a SIM car, they control and they break into accounts and steal Bitcoin, or they still use names. So the sort of stuff we've spoken about previously on the show, they have started to branch out generally to the tactics. So they'll be buying logging credentials that can be doing more forms of social engineering. And lapses is one of those groups that has done that. But to, but to like a greater extent to the point where they're not just doing SIM swapping they're then buying, logging cookies, and then eventually they're even putting password Steelers inside target networks, which is at that point, that's just straight up hacking, you know, they left the SIM swapper ecosystem to just become hackers, but it's super important to remember where they come from, which is the SIM swap community, because that just puts all of their sort of bravado and targets in context. You know, some of the security researchers I spoke to, they said, oh, it's very unusual. That lapses is so public. And they announced the breaches. And I mean, I totally disagreed, this is what SIM do. They, they break into stuff. They beef on Twitter, they flex each other on discord. And when you approach lapses in that context, everything makes a lot more sense. Just how reckless they're.

Jason Howell (00:24:37):
Yeah. Reckless great word. It really seems that way. So so then, and, and we'll get to the, the arrest, I think in, in a, a little bit, but I'm just kind of wanting to kind of set the stage to leading up to that what exactly has happened in, in the last month, I was gonna say the last week, but really like, it was less than a month ago that we heard about the source code leak this, the Samsung leak. And then, you know, now of course, you know, Microsoft has been big in the news this week, as far as source code there. And of course, Okta, which we can talk about as well, but catch us up on a little bit of the details there. What, what, what have they been targeting? How are they releasing that and how are they being so so vocal about it? Like how are they pulling that off?

Joseph Cox (00:25:20):
Yeah, totally. So, I mean, you're right in that this month specifically is when lapses just ramped up, they almost exponentially. Yes, there was the end video breach where rather than just trying to get money, they ask and video, Hey, we won't release these files. If you agree to remove limitations on your graphics cards. So people can mine, crypto codes and more efficiently, a very bizarre requests and video did not on the own, obviously Samson, as you said, there was the leap there as well, Microsoft where I was investigating the breach and then they confirmed, there was one and lapse us leaped a bunch of the source code for the search engine being as well as obviously the smart assistant called. So that was a rapid series of breaches is what is one of their Chapin as well. But they kind of all make a bit more sense when just most recently, a few days ago, lapis indicated on its telegram channel, which I'll elaborate on a second, but they claim that they breached Okta, which is, you know, it holds the digital keys to get into people's accounts all over the world.

Joseph Cox (00:26:34):
And that would be private companies now be government agencies. And if theoretically, if a hacker gets into Okta, they could then get into those companies as well. We dunno exactly whether the Okta compromise led to, you know, the Microsoft one or the video one or anything like that. But Okta did say eventually that 300 customers have potentially been impacted by that breach, which is huge. You, you know, and we, and we don't know whether how big each those 300 breaches gonna be, but the fact that these hackers could get into Okta and then potentially pivot to other customers is probably the most alarming part of all of us. You know, it shows that, oh, that is actually a thing that could happen.

Jason Howell (00:27:16):
Yeah. Yeah. And I mean the, the level, I mean, this, this is potentially like incredibly bad. I mean, it's, it's, it's bad for a company when anything like this happens when you're talking about a company whose business is security authentication, and they've been breached in the way that this has this has gone down. I mean, Okta's not looking like it's in a really good spot here. I, I don't know. Do you, do you have any ideas or any thoughts about a kind of what, what this kind of impact has for a security company like Okta going forward?

Joseph Cox (00:27:49):
Well, I mean, in some of the screenshots leaked by lapses, there were what looked like access to an internal CloudFlare panel. Cloudflare obviously being the very popular cybersecurity firm, which provides services to websites, Steve auction protection, that sort of thing. But in response to that, CloudFlare said, you know, we're investigating et cetera. And they even floated that we're gonna look for alternatives because clearly Okta has some sort of issue here. So, I mean, that's huge. Cloudflare is one of the biggest and most respected Sam security companies in the world. And if they're thinking about moving away from Okta, you know, what's to say of any other customer, potentially, that's not to say that Okta's dead or anything like that, but clearly customers are scooped enough to at least think about looking for alternative. And they're just a perception thing is, is awful for a security company to get her. Yes.

Jason Howell (00:28:46):
Yeah, yeah, no question. And finally, you know, we've got this late breaking news which, I mean really was this morning, I think last night, you know, I heard the news that I saw a Bloomberg reporter saying, Hey, we've got information that there's this teenager. And you know, in, I think Dublin, I believe it was where it was who might be behind this and then wake up this morning and boom, many arrests. What, what can you tell us about that real quick before we let you go?

Joseph Cox (00:29:13):
Sure. I mean, that name, that Bloomberg reports on has been floating around, not just in the fresh intelligence world, but definitely online as well. You know, I think a few people saw it, but we don't know how that name then got to law enforcement. You know, that that's that's sort of an open question. It would be very easy for them to find no doubt. The actual news of the arrests is that as you say this morning British police arrest is teenagers in the UK suspected of being linked to the lapse group. They wouldn't clarify whether any of the ones arrested with the one was the individual who was named in that Bloomberg report. Maybe, maybe not, but you know, we'll see what happens now with the group, cuz some people suspected they have members also in south America as well. So if the group keeps on going, it'll be interesting to see.

Jason Howell (00:30:04):
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting indeed. And I don't think this is the last we're hearing about this. I think it's gonna continue developing at least, you know, in the coming weeks. So thank you so much for hopping on with us, Joseph. I realize it was kinda last minute. Joseph Cox writes for vice and I love your reporting. So keep it up. We appreciate your time. Thank you.

Joseph Cox (00:30:23):
Thank you so much.

Jason Howell (00:30:25):
All right. Take care. All right. Up next. The beauty, the max studio. Yes. You know all about it gets disassembled gets torn apart at I fix it. That's up next. But first this episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by compiler. That's an podcast from red hats, fantastic podcast discussing tech topics, big, small and strange compiler actually comes from the makers of command line heroes, which also happens to be another of our sponsors. It's hosted by Angela Andrews and Brent Semino technology can be big. It can be bold, bizarre, complicated. We talk about the, those topics on this show all the time and, and to show you all the ways in which they are. All of those things. Compiler also unravels industry topics, trends, and the things you've always wanted to know about tech. And they do that through interviews with the people who know it best on their show.

Jason Howell (00:31:18):
You're gonna hear a chorus of perspectives from the diverse communities by behind the code. Compiler actually brings together a curious team of red hatters to actually tackle the big questions in technology. Like what is technical debt or what are tech hiring managers actually looking for? And do you have to know how to code to get started in open source episode two, in fact, covers what can video games teach us about edge computing, the internet, as you know, it's a patchwork of international agreements, varying infrastructures, but there's something coming to change. The ways that we connect. And in this episode, a compiler hosts explore what edge computing could actually mean for people who enjoy video games and what this form of entertainment could actually teach us about the technology. Another episode, episode nine, how are tech hubs changing traditionally, if someone wanted a career in technology, they actually had to move to a tech hub, right?

Jason Howell (00:32:18):
Like the bay area is, is a, is a huge tech hub. A city that's packed with startups packed talent. You had to actually be there physically, but things are starting to change a lot. As we know, especially in the last couple of years, the hosts of compiler speak to a few of the change makers who are actually thinking outside of the physical and social dimensions that we've come to associate with innovation. And yeah, I mean, as far as this episode is concerned, it's perfectly time because holy cow tech hiring is just completely different now than even a couple of years ago. Things have shifted dramatically. They talk all about in episode nine, you can learn more about compiler at red.ht/twi and new episodes. You know, they're out now you can go and download 'em at any time, make sure and check back for new shows as they publish those, listen to compiler on apple podcasts or anywhere you listen to podcasts. We'll also include a link on this episodes show page and our huge thanks to Tyler for their support of this show. Tech News Weekly. Thank you, compiler.

Mikah Sargent (00:33:24):
All right. So anytime there's a fun new gadget or Gimo it tends, it tends to be that I knock over my water bottle. It also tends to be that I fix it. The folks who are dead set on, making sure everybody can fix their gadgets, their gizmos, and that things are as repairable as possible. Thank you. I fix it. I often am sending links to family members and friends going

Jason Howell (00:33:51):
Yeah, super

Mikah Sargent (00:33:51):
Helpful. Here's what you need to know. They have gotten a Mac studio, the new Mac mini slide MacPro device from apple and we're able to tear one down. This is the second tear down video I personally have seen. There was a tear down video of the M one ultra Mac studio that is the Mac studio computer with the M one ultra chip from apple, which is essentially an M one max and an M one max combined to make one chip called the M one ultra. But I fix it tore down the M one max, which is the one that I think more people are going to be getting than the M one ultra, which is quite a bit more money. So oftentimes with this comes some really interesting tidbits. And in fact, the headline kind of kicks things off.

Mikah Sargent (00:34:48):
It says Mac studio tear down, no upgradeable storage yet. So the reason why they're talking about this is because that they're talking about upgradeable storage is because when the M one ultra Mac studio was torn down by a YouTuber the YouTuber had popped open the inside and saw some ports inside that looked like places where a user could pop in some solid state drive storage space. That was well actually, it's not even quite S I mean the, the, the drives, the, the, the chips are solid. So in that way, it's, it's solidly drive storage, but it's a newer technology. Anyway, point is there were places where you could put more memory, that's what we'll go with or more storage space. And so the person was super excited, oh my gosh, it's user upgradable. They didn't mention this on stage dah, dah, dah da, immediately as a person who watches has been watching apple and covering apple for so long.

Mikah Sargent (00:35:46):
I knew that that was not the case. Something like user upgradable storage would be something that apple would've mentioned on stage and that they did not me. That that was not what those ports were going to be low and behold. Some different folks attempted to install storage into those slots and were unable to get it working. So, one example of this was I believe another YouTuber who had taken, who had two M one Mac studios. They were both ultra models. If I remember correctly and had opened one of the Mac studios and the other Mac studio and taken one of the storage drives out of the Mac studio and tried to pop it into the other one, when they booted it back up, it showed a flashing light, a little Amber light that Amber light meant that it needed to, it was in basically a hardware or a firmware recovery mode which apple call's DFU and that it was not working.

Mikah Sargent (00:36:49):
So ours Technica. And I will give you this link, John Ashley did kind of an expl, a nation of what was going on and why it was not working, why the, the device was glowing with that Amber light. Folks were the, the person that had tried to do this and couldn't get it to work. They were very upset. They said, what apple is doing here is with the Mac studio is simply inexcusable. Apple does not care about your right to repair, make no mistake. What we've seen here today is that apple is intentionally, intentionally, deliberately restricting your access to your own device. In my opinion, this is actually worse than soldering the storage onto a logic board said the quote. No, that's not what's going on. So it turns out that in back in the old days even just as, as old as my Intel MacBook pro the storage in this case, the storage that is in here is soldered to the motherboard.

Mikah Sargent (00:37:53):
Okay. So that it's not user changeable, right. But storage in many PCs. And in earlier max, and by many I'm saying M a N Y PCs and also max, the storage itself had both the raw storage chips and a built in controller that worked with those. Okay. So you can imagine it as a let's say you've got like you're, you're on the beach and you've got five buckets of five buckets in front of you and you with your shovel are taking the sand and putting it into each of the five buckets that you are the controller, the SSD controller. And those five buckets are the raw storage. Okay. These new chips that are in the Mac studio, they don't have the person shoveling the sand in to them. They are just the buckets themselves. And so they need to have the controller, which is part of the system and the, that this design works the way that it does is for security reasons.

Mikah Sargent (00:39:00):
And for performance reasons, if the controller is part of the chip itself, like the main chip as opposed to just being that raw storage space, then you can imagine, now I'm a person I'm an octopus instead. And I've got four buckets over here, four buckets behind me, and I'm able to shovel sand into all of them at the same time. I love this Pixar movie. Yeah, exactly. Right. There you go. Versus what would be the old school way of having two people sitting next to each other? One is shoveling sand into the four and you like are exchanging sand at times, one person shoveling sand into your, your shovel, and then you you're shoveling it into the bucket. And then you go back and forth. That takes more time than just one brain kind of doing it all at the same time. So that is why they are going with this method.

Mikah Sargent (00:39:46):
It's not about sort of cost savings or anything like that. In fact in the arts technical article, there is a person who claims to be a system on a chip or a chip designer who says, you think that it's cheaper to install flash memory without the controller, it's actually quite better to do it this way you save money, but on top of the saving money, you also make for way better performance than I was just mentioning way better reliability and way better security. So let's go back to why the light was flashing Amber. That is because each of the, because of Mac, the max built in security system, each of the sort of storage drives, sort of the, you know, these chips have a U unique encrypted and coding to the system that they're running with. So then the theory is if you can completely reset the Mac studio with those raw storage drives in there, then it would write a new encrypted sort of pairing between the raw storage space and that octopus controller that's shoveling sand into all of the buckets.

Mikah Sargent (00:41:02):
And I fix it, was able to do that. So they were able to take not, they, they have not yet been able to sort of double the storage, so they couldn't take one Mac studio. And then it already had one raw storage drive in one space and nothing in the other. And then they took it and added one. And with those two, even after doing the reset, they were not able to get it to work. However, they were able to take one storage drive out of another Mac studio and pop it into the other one on its own. And where that YouTuber that was very upset, tried to do that and could not because they didn't reset it. I fix it, did reset it, and then they were able to get it running that way. So there are a couple of things to understand here is that as our Technica points out and as I fix it as kind of learning it could be that because these device are so new when the Mac studio runs into this issue and then tries to go online and grab the firmware that firmware is not available yet, because these are still not out to a lot of people that's actually happened in the past with review units for folks who like with press people.

Mikah Sargent (00:42:08):
And the, that could be the case here. It could be that if the chip are made by two different manufacturers, that's enough to make it so that you can't use them both. There's a lot to, to sort of understand there, but just anybody who decides to take the lid off of their Mac studio, if you see those ports and you're like, I can upgrade this. Hmm. Be aware that that may not be possible. And that is because it is, it is not what you're thinking. It is in terms of it being just SSDs, you can sort of click into, into the place. It's just those buckets that, that are there. It could also be, and again, this is speculation, but I've heard this from a lot of folks, right? That this could be an apple serviceable upgrade. So you could potentially at some point in the future when apple has more chips available, because whenever the shortages is less, you could take your device into apple and say, I want to double the storage now. But as it stands, if you want more storage, your best bet is to just start with the more storage in the first place which

Jason Howell (00:43:14):
We're pretty used to on certain models, absolutely. Of apple

Mikah Sargent (00:43:17):
Devices with that. That's typical. Yeah. That's a typical way of doing things. If you are an apple user outside of the Mac pro, which of course is completely upgradeable and swappable

Jason Howell (00:43:27):
Well, and you've got the Thunderball, you know, so you can just keep drives there.

Mikah Sargent (00:43:31):
And that's, that's, that's always been, my method is even though with this MacBook pro it does have a lot of storage. So I haven't had to do that as much in the past with the ones that had less storage. I just had an external drive for that. Right. The other things to note about the, the Mac is the, the new Mac studio is, it's exactly what we thought in terms of how much of the computer is actually computer and how much of it is the huge heat sinks and fans and blades. It's got a little speaker built into it for making beeps at you. So there's some, some stuff going on on the inside, but it's like, there's hardly any computer inside just packed in there. And that is because that is the same chip that is inside of an iPad pro that is essentially the same that's inside of the latest model iPhone. But if you provide more cooling, then you can run it even faster. You can, you know, clock speeds are higher. And so it can do so much more. So that cooling is very impressive. 

Jason Howell (00:44:37):
Yeah, that really inside

Mikah Sargent (00:44:38):
That little device,

Jason Howell (00:44:40):
What, what they're doing, what they're doing right now on this, on this end or this level of their desktops is really impressive to me, just, Wow. You know, I, I really wanna upgrade to one of these, but again, like I'm in a position where I'm like, but I don't need know that I absolutely need. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:44:57):
Like you would even be happy with an, I think an M one Mac mini the, yeah. The Mac mini, as opposed to the Mac studio. Because in fact, I, I just saw an article this morning that was like, you, if you need to get an M one Mac, get the Mac mini, right. I believe it, Leo just got one for his office because the iMac that he has in there right now is so old, it doesn't even upgrade to the latest version of Mac OS. So he replaced it, it replaced it with a M one Mac mini. And that's the thing is, and as Leo points out himself, the single core performance is the same across the board, right? Whether you've got the Mac studio, you've got the M one MacBook pros, you've got the M one Mac mini, or you've got the iPad pro with the M one chip in it.

Mikah Sargent (00:45:39):
And now the new iPad air with the M one chip in it, all of those have the same single core performance. It's only when it comes to multi-core performance that you see a difference. And in that case, if you get the M one Mac mini with the E M one pro, as opposed to just these straight up M one, then you're going to like, you'll see a performance increase, no matter what, and you and I, no matter what, M one devices we get, we'll see an inform, a performance boost over these Intel machines. We have, I was for sure, just trying to record audio yesterday for someone. And I had to sit and wait for the stop. Oh,

Jason Howell (00:46:14):
So brutal. Totally. I know. And there was nothing

Mikah Sargent (00:46:17):
Running

Jason Howell (00:46:18):
And there was, yeah. And there's nothing you can do.

Mikah Sargent (00:46:20):
I had activity monitor open the whole time, looking at it going there. The biggest performance is 4.3%. I don't understand

Jason Howell (00:46:28):
Why you so frustrating. So

Mikah Sargent (00:46:29):
Anyway,

Jason Howell (00:46:30):
For, for me, it's it's music pro music reduction, right? Being able

Mikah Sargent (00:46:34):
To crunch those files,

Jason Howell (00:46:35):
My computer that I have outside of this, which this is not, you know, this is, this is actually a, a work laptop, you know, 2019 work laptop. It was the internals here aren't even meant for like our video editors. You know, it's not like leveled up in any significant way. And I've tried making music on this and I run into the same issue that you, that you're talking about, the fans go. And it's like, okay, well, I can't record anything with a mic right now. Because of that, my computer at home is a two. You're gonna laugh a 2008 Mac pro.

Mikah Sargent (00:47:06):
Oh, wow. It's a Mac

Jason Howell (00:47:07):
Pro. It's a Mac pro like the big cheese grater thing, which I, you know, I don't know how time has packed and that's still my computer at home, but it is. And I've written a lot of music on that, but I'm definitely at the point to where, like, it doesn't update. What's

Mikah Sargent (00:47:21):
Interesting to me is wondering if the new M one Mac mini would outperform.

Jason Howell (00:47:26):
I think that it would, it probably I'm pretty positive. It, it would. So, so I'm kind of in that, in that boat where I need to upgrade that thing. Cause I wanna start, you know, making music again and like, anything's gonna be an upgrade, but I, but I don't wanna upgrade to an Intel. You know, I definitely wanna go, like,

Mikah Sargent (00:47:44):
You're

Jason Howell (00:47:44):
Gonna the jump. Yeah. Maybe the, you know, and, and never for, would I have ever considered getting a mini because I always thought that with, with music production, it, it requires a lot of, you know, right. It's not quite video production, but it requires processing power. If your stacking plugins and everything, and the, the Mac mini just always seemed too low, low performance.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:07):
And at one time it definitely was

Jason Howell (00:48:09):
Now suddenly it's like, well, wait a minute. Maybe that is fine, you know? Yeah. But so I'm, I'm totally trying to weigh my options

Mikah Sargent (00:48:15):
Right now. Two week return. Give it try,

Jason Howell (00:48:18):
I suppose. See. So that's, that's true for you. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:22):
Then you, then you absolutely have a reason to go all the way to the studio. It's like, look, this, it

Jason Howell (00:48:28):
Didn't work. I guess I have too.

Mikah Sargent (00:48:31):
I, yeah, you, you did your due diligence. You gave it the college try. So, all right, folks, up next a brain implant that helps fully paralyzed people communicate. But before we get there, I do wanna take a break to tell you about checkout.com who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly look, text should be groundbreaking and it should promote innovation. We were just talking about that. Traditional payment systems are heavily layered. They're disconnected. They're perceived as a cost center to the business, modern businesses. They need flexible payment systems that can help them adapt to change, to grow and scale fast. I recently came across a company with tech that approaches payments through a radical new lens. It's called checkout.com. And it's spelled with all of the letters. C H E C K O ut.com. Don't let the name fool you. It is radical in its tech.

Mikah Sargent (00:49:24):
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Mikah Sargent (00:50:21):
So they provide local acquiring and multiple geographies, improving authorization rates and lowering costs. Transparency. Their fee structure is clear. It's straightforward. And while their in depth reporting is going to give you visibility, no matter where you operate local expertise. So their dedicated local teams bring regional international and regulatory expertise, allowing you to navigate market complexities with confidence. That's a big one and strategic partnership. They take collaborative, personalized approach to solving complex problems for their merchants and ecosystem partners. I think what makes checkout.com so awesome is it means that I'm more likely to buy from your site. Why, because you're gonna have you have the opportunity that the, the ability to add an apple pay button to your site, and anytime anyone does at it might as well just be a direct line to my bank account because if you make it that simple for me to be able to apple pay on your site, Chances are I'm gonna click that apple pay button. So checkout.com helps enable that. So yeah, if you out there are looking to market directly to me, add checkout.com to your site, discover how checkout.com can help your business thrive at checkout.com/t N w please head to that URL. So they know you were sent by us. That's checkout.com/t N w Jason Howell. Tell us about your story

Jason Howell (00:51:41):
Of the week. Well I guess in, in a roundabout sort of way, this kind of reminds me of a story we talk about not too long ago, where where technology was helping blind people see a little bit, right? And this is, this is kind of a little different. But along the same lines technology, making it possible for a paralyzed man in this case, in a locked in state to communicate. And I guess I hadn't heard that terminology before a, like, what is a locked state, but that's really, that's where, you know, you are so incredibly paralyzed that like, you can literally not move a single anything. Like you can't even move your eyeballs. That's how paralyzed you are into God. I just think about like living life in that state, you know, your, your brain, you are aware your brain is fully functioning and everything, but all you can do is be still, and you can't move a single muscle. It just sounds terrifying and, and horrible. Yeah.

Mikah Sargent (00:52:38):
I, I, I certainly don't want to in saying this, I, I don't think it does, but just putting it out that I don't wanna lessen the the, the fear of it. I think the, as ads to it, that is genuinely like one of my, I, I remember reading about locked in syndrome and to this day, there are days where that's just in the back of my mind, like if I have a fear that just has stayed with me forever. Yeah. It would be this. So I can't imagine what that would be like experiencing that. It just it's terrifying.

Jason Howell (00:53:08):
Yeah. Terrifying for sure. Well, the New York times has a story about a biomedical engineer named Al Shri. I might be mispronouncing your name. I'm sorry. He has a study that just published this week that demonstrates some pretty interesting stuff. He worked with a patient suffering from am, amyotrophic, lateral sclerosis. There we go. I knew the first word was gonna trip me up, which is basically a deterioration of the brain cells that handle motion of the body. Right? So that's the, the paralysis part with that the man could not move at, like I said, couldn't even move his eyeballs eventually completely locked in. Chadri worked with the man at one time during his work with this man or at one time in this man's, you know, life before he became completely locked in, he was able to move his eyeball in a way that he could communicate simple yes.

Jason Howell (00:54:04):
And answers to his family. Right. Well, at a certain point that began to deteriorate even more and the family recognized this. And so they reached out to Dr. Shouty and Dr. Be bomber, who is a brain computer interface, tech pioneer. They basically said, Hey, we're gonna lose contact or communication with him. Is there a way to create an alternate communication system so that we can still communicate with him once he loses movement in his eyeballs? And you know, apparently by the way, the man did give his approval for his work. So he could still kind of, you know, have agency over the decision. That's good. So I just thought the whole process was cool. So I'll just kind of read, read through some of what they did to kind of get to where they got their, their work involved, placing two implants in the brain on directly on those parts of the brain, that involved body movement.

Jason Howell (00:55:01):
And then the man was asked for months to begin with, to imagine moving parts of his body. And they were doing this to see if by imagining moving those body parts, it would stimulate a reliable brain signal. Right. Apparently after months of doing that, it didn't, it didn't really work. So they back to the drawing board, the second step was to play a sound. Or, and so the sound would, I've there be a high note that represented yes. And a low note that represented? No. And those were the target notes essentially. And then over time the man would work on on, I somehow thinking through this to generate the tone in response. So he could basically think enough to create a tone through the system that they created. And if that tone wasn't quite on the same pitch as a yes or no, he could like, detune it up to say yes or down to say no, once he matched, then they would know that was his answer, right? Yes or no to get a match. And, and eventually they were able to do this where he was consistently, it was consistent, right. Consistent outcome. So he was able essentially through that to communicate. And he said later that he, what he was doing to make that happen, how he best described it is he was imagining his eye movement was creating this pitch change, which is just,

Mikah Sargent (00:56:28):
That's so cool.

Jason Howell (00:56:29):
Like, I don't even understand how, how you create systems that do this. Wow. But it's so cool that you can, so eventually the system broadened out and they created groupings of letters that they put five different color buckets. So they might have five colors. Right. And the alphabet has a certain number of letters in red and a certain number of letters, you know, a through E and red, oh D through whatever in blue or whatever. So they grouped them and then each, and then through the system, they would say red and they wait and, you know, would it would he say yes or no? And so if he says yes to red, then it's like a, no B no C yes. Okay. So his first letter is C and they would, you know, wow. They would. And so eventually they created this system and it was slow.

Jason Howell (00:57:20):
I think it was like one letter per minute, you know, and not 100% consistent, but at a certain point, they got to a point to where these sentences were starting to make a whole lot of sense. Right. I think his first sentence was AB. So there was one day where they realized they had the breakthrough and that it was working the second day they asked, they asked him to write out a sentence. And he said, first, I would to think Niles and his be bomber, which is, I mean, it, which kind of makes sense. It makes sense enough. Dr. Ber bomber is the doctor, you know, so there, there was some lost in translation there, but you understand what he's saying? He also said, mom, head massage. So he wanted a head massage. Right. he says, everyone must use gel on my eyes more often. Oh. So now he's starting to get to a point to where, like, even though he's like locked in and can't communicate, he's able to tell them like what his needs are. I need, like, he gives me goosebumps, think about it. Oh man.

Mikah Sargent (00:58:17):
Another,

Jason Howell (00:58:18):
Another one, a craving. He said, goulash soup and sweet P soup. So apparently he was having a craving, you know, to, to eat for, for lunch or dinner or whatever, but just a really cools that's. So kind of exploration and report. And like, it's just one of those things that like, when I read it, I was like, man, technology is cool that you could do that. I

Mikah Sargent (00:58:38):
That's the stuff that makes me love technology. It's not the tear down of the, like, I get excited about that and its own thing. But the stuff that actually makes me love technology is this, this, this, I mean, just imagine if everything works out and you know, people are better about the climate and all of that. And we're here, you know, hundreds of years from now

Jason Howell (00:59:02):
What we could, what we'd be able to potentially achieve

Mikah Sargent (00:59:05):
That maybe locked it in syndrome would not be a thing anymore, you know?

Jason Howell (00:59:08):
Yeah. Or, or yeah. Or maybe it is a thing, but it does it's

Mikah Sargent (00:59:13):
It's not a

Jason Howell (00:59:13):
Completely pre yeah. It's not, it's not 100% locked away. Like you know, this was just as a reminder, this was just one patient, right? This is one study with one patient. There's a ton of research that still needs to happen here, but a lot of really positive outcome on just this one example. The article does point out that this sort of communication tool could actually give locked in patients, agency over their livelihood, like we're talking about, but also could involve their own decisions around euthanasia, which is a hard thing to talk about import, but important, I think, to consider for someone in that situation. Cuz I mean, I'm sure that God, could you imagine being locked in that, in that scenario and having no way to communicate? No. See, and just realizing like, you know, like I don't wanna do this anymore. Like I, I, I could put myself in that position. Yeah. And I, I have to imagine that's where I would be eventually where I'm like this

Mikah Sargent (01:00:13):
100%,

Jason Howell (01:00:14):
I don't know that this is worth it for

Mikah Sargent (01:00:15):
Me, even something as small as not getting enough eye drops, like yes. Yeah,

Jason Howell (01:00:19):
Yeah. So this might be a way to give them that, that sort of control over their lives. Yeah. And everything. So anyways, I thought it was a really cool cool study and I hope that we hear more about that developing over the coming years. Yeah. Interesting stuff. But we have reached the end of this episode at Tech News Weekly. So thank you so much for watching and listening and sticking with us through through some technical difficulties. We do this show every thursday@twi.tv slash T N w. So go to that link. You can subscribe to the show and audio video formats. You can jump out to YouTube. Everything that you need is right there. Twi.Tv/Tnw.

Mikah Sargent (01:00:59):
If you want to get all of our shows ad free, well check out club TWI for seven bucks a month, you get every single one of TWI shows with no ads. You also get access to the exclusive TWI plus bonus fee that has extra content. You won't find anywhere else, including a recent AMA with Mr. Patrick Delehanty himself the web developer and engineer here at TWI. You also get access to the members only discord server. That's a place where you can hang out out with your fellow club, TWI members, and those of us here at TWI. If that sounds good to you, twit TV slash club, TWI seven bucks a month, go check it out, support us directly. Get those warm fuzzy feelings for knowing that your favorite podcasts are supported by you. If you use apple podcasts and would like to support a show directly, you can do that.

Mikah Sargent (01:01:43):
You just type in Tech News Weekly in the search field, find the audio version of the show and subscribe for 2 99 a month. That way you get an audio feed that's ad free 2 99 a month on apple podcasts. If you wanna follow me online or check out the work that I do I'm at Mica Sergeant on many of social media network or head to Chi wawa.coffee that C H shy HOA hoa.coffee, where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Check me out in two days on Saturday for the tech guy with Leo, LePort where we take questions from all over the United States and around the world and try to help you with everything but your printer. Although sometimes printer questions make their way into the show as well. And then you could also check out my show on Tuesday iOS today, which I record with Rosemary orchard. Fantastic. Co-host where we talk all things. Ios TV OS watch OS home pots. It's all the OSS that apple has on offer. Jason Howell. What about you?

Jason Howell (01:02:39):
Well, I'm on Twitter at Jason Howell. Pretty easy to find me there. I'm also here on Twitter, on the Twitter and the TWI twit TV slash AA for all about Android is the Android show that I do every Tuesday. And so check that out and then, yeah, that's really about it for now. Big, thanks to John Ashley, everything, especially today. Big, thanks to Burke for everything, especially today and big, thanks to you for watching and listening, especially today. We'll see you next time on Tech News Weekly by everybody.

Rod Pyle (01:03:14):
Hey, I'm Rod Pyle editor of ad Astra magazine, and each week I'm joined by Tariq Malik, the editor inchi over at Space.com in our new This Week in Space podcast, every Friday Tariq and I take a deep dive into the stories that define the new space age what's NASA up to when will Americans, once again set foot on the moon. And how about those samples from the perseverance Rover? When are those coming home? What the heck is Elon must done now, in addition to all the latest and greatest and space expiration will take an occasional look at bits of space flight history that you probably never heard of and all with an eye towards having a good time along the way. Check us out on your favorite podcast. Catcher.