Tech News Weekly Episode 241 Transcript

Mikah Sargent:
Hey there. It's Mikah Sargent coming up on Tech News Weekly. I am talking to first Android Police's Daniel Bader about that Nothing Phone 1. You may have heard about it, but what's going on there? What is it? What makes it great or not so great? And how can it compete in a crowded Android marketplace? Then I have on Denise Howell, lawyer and tech knowledgeable individual who talks to us about the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision through the lens of tech, through the lens of privacy protections, and really gets into the details about what this means for our privacy going forward and what changes should, can, might be made to make sure that our individual right to privacy is maintained. It's a lot of interesting information there, and then I round things out with Samsung coming forth with a chip to take on TSMC 3 nms baby, it is wild. Stay tuned for a great episode of Tech News Weekly.

Speaker 2:
Podcasts you love. From people you trust. This is TWiT.

Mikah Sargent:
This is Tech News Weekly episode 241 recorded Thursday, June 30th, 2022. This episode of Tech News Weekly is brought to you by Infrascale. Infrascale delivers industry leading data protection through backup and disaster recovery. Whatever your data or environment, Infrascale provides continuity and resiliency for your business. Visit infrascale.com/twit to get the free ebook Five Essential Components of a Ransomware Protection Plan and learn how to protect your business today.

Mikah Sargent:
And buy Cisco Meraki, with employees working in different locations, providing a unified work experience seems as easy as herding cats. How do you reign in so many moving parts? The Meraki cloud-managed network, learn how your organization can make hybrid work, work. Visit meraki.cisco.com/twit.

Mikah Sargent:
And by Drata, security professionals are undergoing the tedious and arduous task of manually collecting evidence. With Drata, say goodbye to the days of manual evidence collection and hello to automation. All done at Drata speed, visit drata.com/twit to get a demo and 10% off implementation.

Mikah Sargent:
Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly. This is the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking the tech news, it's just me this week, Mikah Sargent as Jason Howell is out. I will also be with you next week, but we've got a great show planned despite the fact that it's just me in the pilot's chair. I don't know what we call this chair. Anyway, we're kicking things off with something that is absolutely fascinating to me in the sort of hype cycle, and then maybe the kind of underwhelming introduction of this product. So joining us today to talk about the Nothing Phone 1 is Android Police's, Daniel Bader. Welcome to the show, Daniel.

Daniel Bader:
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Mikah.

Mikah Sargent:
It's so good to talk to you. So good to see you and happy belated birthday to you.

Daniel Bader:
Thank you. Thank you, don't ask me how old I am because I-

Mikah Sargent:
I won't, don't worry.

Daniel Bader:
I'll tell you, and then I'll start weeping for my youth.

Mikah Sargent:
Well, let's not weep for your youth, let's weep for what could have been. I am so curious, pun aside, I know almost nothing about this phone. So I was hoping that you could kick things off by telling us about the Nothing Phone 1. Because I think some people may have heard it fly by, but what is this phone? Who is making this phone? Where did this phone come from? And has the company made products in the past? Are Android people aware of this company and the devices that they make? All of these questions need answers, I hope you can provide them for us.

Daniel Bader:
All right. Let's let's start with what is Nothing? So Nothing is a company co-founded by the former co-founder of a company many listeners will probably know called OnePlus. So OnePlus makes phones, they debuted the OnePlus One back in 2014, the co-founder was Carl Pei. And this gentleman came on board, not just as a co-founder, but as a chief marketing officer and his whole stick is that he knows how to hype products and he did a really good job with the OnePlus phone series and then eventually the brand got bigger and they launched into accessories and many other different products, including earbuds and they created really a very loyal community. Carl Pei then left OnePlus a couple of years ago to start this brand called Nothing.

Daniel Bader:
Now, it's fully tongue in cheek. He is leaning heavily into the fact that it is a pun friendly brand, but realistically, he's approaching it from a very smart business perspective. It raised $150 million, it launched with a pair of earbuds called the Nothing buds 1, and they were a pair of really well designed, decently sounding $99 earbuds that were release last year. And then slowly the company has been teasing the fact that it's going to launch its own phone called the Nothing Phone 1, that not only has a very distinctive design, if you've seen any of these leak renders or any of the information about the device.

Daniel Bader:
It has a very unique glyph LED system on the back. It looks a little bit like a hybrid of a OnePlus phone and an iPhone, it's just got a lot going on. And slowly but surely, Nothing has been teasing this product with Carl Pei giving a couple of interviews here and a little bit of information there just to keep that hype cycle going, as you said. And honestly, this is easily the most hyped phone of the year so far because of that, because he has just managed to capture the attention of the Android faithful in a way that no other company right now has been able to do.

Mikah Sargent:
So, now I kind of understand if this is kind of among Android fans, this is a company or at least a group of people who in the past have made very cool things and are kind of continuing to iterate. I like the idea of trying to step out of what's traditional, what already exists and trying to think of something new. But I am curious, I'm looking on the site us.nothing.tech, do you get a bird when you buy this phone? Because there seems to be a bird attached to every single photo of the phone. Is that included?

Daniel Bader:
I don't think a parakeet is included or a budgie. I don't know what kind of parrot this is, but it is a tropical bird of some sort. I love the fact that it's trying to... So this whole idea that Nothing is going with is like, it's an organic phone design that really blends in with your life and it's all very hottie tottie messaging. But the reality here is the phone today is commoditized, right? Every phone looks basically the same. It's a version of an iPhone or a version of a Galaxy and there are very few differences in that traditional design. We're moving to a more folding phone friendly environment, but those are still niche and they're expensive. But if you buy a smartphone today, it really looks of a piece.

Daniel Bader:
And this is a device that at least from the back, does have some distinguishing hardware design features and I think part of that is just what are we able to do with that traditional phone design today that makes it feel pleasant to hold in your hand, that makes you really want to turn it around and take a look at it, makes you not necessarily want to buy a case just to cover it up. These are the questions that I think Nothing is trying to answer. I think a lot of it will inevitably just be the hype is there and once the phone is out and people are buying it's just, they are going to put a case on it, it's just going to be another Android phone. But until that point we have this hype cycle.

Mikah Sargent:
Then they get to kind of roll along with that. Now, my understanding based on Android Police's coverage is that this device is more of a mid-range or maybe even a budget phone. And so I'm curious from your perspective, because it's also my understanding that nothing that is out there right now is true and official, nothing is locked in yet, I wish I could have a different word to use in that place because that gets very confusing. But we know that they're announcing this phone, we've you see the rendering of it on the site, but the listings aren't out there yet other than the ones that Android Police found through leaks and that kind of thing. So is this all about just the visuals or is Nothing going to have its own unique flavor of Android that's going to set it apart? Like how do you foresee the company making this phone stand out besides the fact that it's clear and has the magnetic coil on the back that you can see through the phone?

Daniel Bader:
Yeah. So, a couple of things, this phone has been announced for all intents and purposes, so it'll have an official announcement on July 12th. But before then, MKBHD, for instance, has done a video hyping up the design, showing off some of those LED light glyphs on the back. So if you turn the phone over, you can actually see that there are LEDs sort of like those light strips that a lot of YouTubers use in the backgrounds of their videos to sort of improve the atmosphere effects, it's the same idea. You have these glyphs and they go off depending on what you're using them for. So phone calls, they can sync up with your ringtones, if the phone supports reverse wireless charging so if you put a pair of earbuds or a smartwatch on the back, the progress bar can show based on the LED surrounding it.

Daniel Bader:
If you plug the phone in, an LED will show you the progress of your phone charge itself, which is neat, so there are some unique features. In terms of the version of Android, we really don't know much other than it's basically going to be stock Android for better or for worse, Nothing will have its own Android launcher and they actually release a version of it for anybody to try earlier this year. But there isn't a lot you can do anymore, especially a company like this which is so new and doesn't have a lot of money to invest in software. They really just have designers that are augmenting Android 12 and making it look a little bit different, but it's really the hardware investment here and the community that Nothing is trying to build that is supposed to help it stand out. And as you mentioned, the mid-range specs are going to keep the price down so that it will be a little bit more accessible to people when it goes on sale.

Mikah Sargent:
One last question for you. Do you think that this hype train risks disappointment, or is this a company that because of the sort of fan base that exists around it won't matter. They will be excited about the device no matter what it happens to be when they get it. Because there are some companies where you get excited, but then you get the thing and it's like, "Oh, actually this does suck and I'm upset about it," but sometimes there are companies and some folks who they get the thing and it doesn't work at first, but you kind of give them a little bit of room to grow and you know they're going to get better, is this a risky move for Nothing or is this kind of their MO?

Daniel Bader:
So, that's a really good question. And it's kind of hard to answer right now because we don't have the product in hand. I think what is obvious is that this will not live up to the hype because unlike in 2014, when it was important to differentiate your hardware and your software and there was a growing number of early adopters and enthusiasts that were carving names for themselves in the Android space. The smartphone market hadn't just bifurcated yet between Apple and Samsung for the most part, it's just a very different environment today. Bringing out smartphone hardware today is not a guarantee of success. We've seen this before with companies like Essential, we've seen it before with companies that are trying to bring back the glory days of their older brands like Nokia and Motorola.

Daniel Bader:
Those companies exist to some extent still, and those brands are recognizable, but the products they make don't help them stand out from the Apples and Samsungs of the world. So I think this will be a big test of the smartphone space to see that if Nothing can carve a small niche, a small audience that is as loyal to the phone and to the brand as OnePlus users were back in 2014, I think that will be a significant win. But the market, the environment is very different today and it's even more different because, and we haven't mentioned this yet, this phone won't actually be officially sold in the US. It will be available to import, but it won't be allow-listed by AT&T and Verizon or T-Mobile, which means that officially none of the carriers in the US will support it, which will hold back sales quite a bit I think.

Mikah Sargent:
Oh, that's too bad. That's really too bad. Well, Daniel Bader, I want to thank you for curving out some time today to talk to us about the Nothing Phone 1. We will, of course, be keeping an eye on that as it is rolled out here in early July. Of course folks can go to androidpolice.com to check out your work. But if they want to follow you online, where should they go to do so?

Daniel Bader:
They can find me on Twitter or Instagram @journeydan, it's like journeyman, but with a d.

Mikah Sargent:
Nice. Thank you, Daniel Bader. I always wanted to say Bader.

Daniel Bader:
Thank you Mikah, it's just such a pleasure. You can call me Bader, we go way back. It's all good.

Mikah Sargent:
We do. We do. All right, bye-bye.

Daniel Bader:
Thank you.

Mikah Sargent:
Up next we talk to Denise Howell about the Supreme Court's decision regarding Roe v. Wade and all of the tech and legal implications therein. But first, we're going to take a quick break so I can tell you about Infrascale, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. The statistics for ransomware attacks are actually quite alarming when you look into them. Cyber criminals can penetrate up to 93% of company networks, according to betanews.com. And it's not just large organizations, 46% of SMBs, that's small to medium sized businesses, have been victims of ransomware attacks. The Infrascale cloud backup solution provides the security you need to manage backups and secure them from hackers or adverse events.

Mikah Sargent:
Backup and protect your end point data, never pay a ransom and sleep easier at night. You can back up SaaS applications, endpoints, and servers, as well as execute disaster recovery on site or in the cloud. Every company needs a secure, simple to configure and easy to manage endpoint data protection solution. Infrascale integrates with the Hyper-V and Vmware, enabling site to site failover with orchestration in the Infrascale cloud. That way you can keep those hackers away, imutability is at the core of how their product is designed. That means your data is encrypted in the storage so no one can alter it. Infrascale backup and disaster recovery, that makes sure that whether you have a server crash, a human error, malicious activity or natural disaster, a localized or sitewide incident means unanticipated costs or unplanned downtime and both of those come with a price.

Mikah Sargent:
According to Gartner, the average cost of downtime across all industry sectors is $5,600 per minute. That's around, if we do the math, $300,000 per hour. Clients and partners alike, including MSPs and VAS trust Infrascale backup and recovery solutions to eliminate downtime and data loss with the most cost effective, enterprise grade data protection solutions to help keep their businesses running. If disaster strikes your applications, your data and your systems are recovered and available in record time. Their award-winning, world class support is there to ensure your business is protected 24/7 now with SSD at no extra charge. Infrascale has a solution for you for your data protection needs, whatever your data, whatever your environment, Infrascale provides continuity and resiliency for your business. Visit infrascale.com/twit, to get the free ebook Five Essential Components of a Ransomware Protection Plan and learn how to protect your business today.

Mikah Sargent:
That's infrascale.com/twit. Thanks so much to Infrascale for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right, we are back from the break and I'm excited to say that we are joined today by the incredible tech lawyer, Denise Howell, who is here to talk to us about the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade, and kind of the data protection privacy and all things related to the tech here. In fact, we've got Denise Howell for two segments today so we're going to kind of get into things in the first segment, the second segment after the break, we'll talk about what we need to know regarding tracking and data protections and how that relates to the Roe v. Wade ruling. In any case, welcome back to the show, Denise.

Denise Howell:
Hi, it's so good to be here. Great to see you, Mikah.

Mikah Sargent:
It is really good to see you as well. As I said before, I loved the education you gave us in the show the last time you were on and so I really love getting the chance to talk to you about this kind of thing, but I want to kick things off with, I think more of a kind of basic question. And that was just in general when the Supreme court ruling officially came through, because of course the draft opinion was leaked a lot earlier, but officially came through. This obviously immediately led to lots of different tech companies and folks in tech kind of looking at the implications therein and kind of looking through it through the scope of tech. And I was hoping to get kind of your reaction from your perspective as a person who kind of sits at the crossway between tech and law with this ruling, just your general thoughts on things.

Denise Howell:
Right. It's interesting you ask it and frame it that way because I may have people come after me from my own gender over this, because one of the first things, obviously, I was concerned about the outcome of the ruling and what it would mean societally about the substance of the ruling. But as soon as the leaked opinion was leaked, I was combing through it going, "Okay, what does this do to privacy overall?" Definitely we're overturning Roe vs Wade and that has all kinds of ramifications and implications, but what does this do to privacy overall? So that was really my main focus as I waited through that long opinion, which really didn't change much between when it was leaked and when it was published. And what I can tell you is it's concerning to be sure, and we can go more into why, but the court was careful to take aim at Roe vs Wade specifically, and the basis for Roe vs Wade.

Denise Howell:
And to distinguish this holding, this overturning of that decision from various other decisions where a constitutional right of privacy has been found, so there's a big asterisk on that because there was a concurrence filed by Justice Thomas in this case where he took dead aim at some of those other cases where a constitutional right of privacy was at the foundation of some of the rights upheld there. So the opinion itself, the majority opinion says we're strictly concerned with this circumstance and this decision will not be the basis of undoing other rights unless we do it specifically in future cases so, that's kind of where we stand. I think that answers your question.

Mikah Sargent:
Yeah, it does. So I would love some clarification on that specifically, how often is something said where this is only concerning this very specific thing and doesn't affect this, that and the other. Do those rulings still get brought up as precedents, even whenever they are kind of stipulated that way where, "Oh, no. We're only focusing on this." How often is that idea of it's a very narrow scope kind of respected in future cases where they're looking at precedent rulings before.

Denise Howell:
That's a good question too. What courts like to do is analogize and so a court saying, "This is a very narrow ruling specific to this circumstance," will certainly be listened to by future courts. But if there's a similar situation where the reasoning applies, they may say, "Yes, the holding was narrow and limited, but we think it applies to this situation too and here's why," and then there can be further review of that down the road, depending on what court is making that decision.

Mikah Sargent:
Now, one of the things that we saw within days of this taking place is a lot of the big tech companies announcing or revealing or trying to let their employees know, "Hey, we will pay to give you..." Or maybe they even already had this policy. "If there's healthcare that you need, that's not available in the place where you work, we provide X amount of dollars to help you get to a place where that healthcare is provided." But I'm curious from the perspective of, again, kind of the legal side of things what is kind of the impact of employees relying on their employers for this healthcare, and does that result in maybe more or less protection should an individual, and I know this is kind of a tough question based on what each state says, but basically let's say I work for a company called Bupel. And Bupel says, "I'll give you $6,000 to be able to go to California to do a procedure that's not available in the states you live in," which in this case would be Missouri.

Mikah Sargent:
And so you take that $6,000 and you go to California, get the procedure you come back to Missouri is Bupel responsible at that point or am I responsible at that point? And what are the protections there, if there are any?

Denise Howell:
We're going to see that play out. There are so many different states with different laws now that are going to treat this situation differently and it's, I think entirely possible that in certain states where you could be complicit in helping someone get an abortion, that you might face corporate liability. If you're a company that does business in that state, if you have such a healthcare plan that provides money to travel and... I think that what we will see is companies being cognizant of that and careful of that, and providing people with healthcare budgets to be used for whatever purpose the employee sees fit, you could see it handled that way so that the company has no idea what is being done with those funds and somewhat protects itself from that kind of liability.

Denise Howell:
I think that would be if not the most taking a stand kind of position to take, to say, "We disagree with this kind of law and we're going to help our employees and we're going to go to bat for them. And if we have to be on the hook along with them, then we're going to have solidarity with them." You might see someone take that kind of approach, or you might see a company be much more conservative and take the kind of approach I mentioned a moment ago where we've decided we're going to provide, and I think they would have to provide it to all employees to do it this way, some discretionary funds related to healthcare that are above and beyond the insurance plan that we provide. And those can be used for uncovered matters that relate to your health that aren't within our health insurance policy. And we don't know what those matters are and they are at your discretion.

Mikah Sargent:
Right. Okay. That makes sense. In a way to sort of separate themselves from that. Now, one of the most interesting things that I saw after this ruling and I wish I had the piece in front of me, but I saw something fly by where a journalist as a test was on Facebook and typed in, "If you comment with your address, I will send you..." In this post, they just called them abortion pills but, "I will send you abortion pills in the mail." And that post on Facebook got removed almost immediately after it was posted. And then the journalist said, "If you comment with your address on this post, I will send you a gun in the mail and that post did not get removed from..." There we go, thank you, Scooter X in the chat.

Mikah Sargent:
So this was on NPR, they covered it. And yeah, they were removing posts on Instagram and Facebook where folks were offering abortion pills, but did not appear to be doing the same for offering guns in the mail. And so this was my question. It's not about that specifically, but if you look at the ruling, the ruling on its face has nothing to do with social media companies having posts about abortions or posts about access to abortions on them, it is about letting states have the choice on whether abortions are legal. So why Denise, are these companies now kind of rushing to have these posts taken down or why does it seem that there's been a change in kind of what speech is allowed on these platforms?

Denise Howell:
So I have no internal insights into Facebook or Instagram and their moderation policies, but if I had to guess, what I would guess happened here is they have some sort of filter in place that prevents people from selling drugs, prescription or otherwise through their platform or even not selling them, sending them for free. I would think that there's some sort of filter that's capturing that and that the filter is not screening for the word gun. So if I had to guess, I think that's what went on there and people are-

Mikah Sargent:
That makes a lot more sense. Yeah. There may be-

Denise Howell:
People are probably scrambling now to figure out in the wake of this, "Okay. What do we want on our platform people to be able to do." If you are a doctor or someone who is allowed to write prescriptions, I actually don't know the legal rules around how you can reach out to people online and offer your services. Clearly, we have precedent for that in medical marijuana situations, where people have been able to do that online in a perfectly legal way and I assume that we'll see that happen with this situation and related contexts. So I think that has to probably develop a bit and then the social media platforms will address or adjust their guidelines and filters accordingly for what they want to have happen on their platform.

Mikah Sargent:
So hypothetically, could this ruling be used as a means for again, we'll go back to because it's my home state so that's why I'm using it, I'm bullying it a little bit but Missouri, let's say that as part of the abortion laws that they have in place, they say that you cannot provide information about access to that form of medical care. And so if different states were to, again, hypothetically adopt this, does that mean that social media companies would have to start sort of looking at the posts and making sure that folks aren't posting ones that do provide that information? Are they held responsible in those cases in needing to remove that from the platform because of the fact that each state now makes its own rules surrounding abortion.

Denise Howell:
They could be. And to answer the first part of your question would be, how much are they concerned about being prosecuted for that in Missouri or elsewhere? And if they're concerned about complying with that state's laws and avoiding prosecution there for things that are against those laws, they're going to have to adjust. And if they want to take a stand on that issue and they could. There's permitting certain speech on your platform could fall under the ambit of corporate free speech so I think we could see some lawsuits that test that.

Mikah Sargent:
All right. Well, let us take a quick break, then we're going to come back and talk about what you really dug into, as you said, the privacy implications and how that overlaps with tech. Denise Howell, thank you for being here. Of course, denisehowell.info, and we will be back with you shortly. But I do want to stop to tell you about Cisco Meraki, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Cisco Meraki, the experts in cloud based networking for hybrid work. Whether your employees are working at home, at a cabin in the mountains, on a lounge share at the beach, a cloud managed network provides the same exceptional work experience no matter where they are. You may as well roll out the welcome mat because hybrid work is here to stay. Hybrid work works best in the cloud and has its perks for both employees and leaders.

Mikah Sargent:
Workers can move fast and deliver better results with a cloud managed network, while leaders can automate distributed operations, they can build more sustainable workspaces and proactively protect the network. An IDG Market Pulse research report conducted for Meraki highlights top tier opportunities in supporting hybrid work. First of all, hybrid work is a priority for 78%, nearly 80% of C-suite executives, leaders want to drive collaboration forward while staying on top of or boosting productivity and security. Hybrid work, well, it also has its challenges. The IDG report raised the red flag about security, noting that 48% of leaders report cyber security threats as a primary obstacle to improving workforce experiences. Always-on security monitoring is part of what makes the cloud managed network so awesome. IT can use apps for Meraki's vast ecosystem of partners. There's turnkey solutions built to work seamlessly with the Meraki cloud platform for asset tracking, location analytics, and more to gather insights on how people use their workspace.

Mikah Sargent:
So in a smart space, environmental sensors can track activity and occupancy levels so you can stay on top of cleanliness, reserve workspaces based on vacancy and employee profiles, this is called hot-desking, which allows employees to scout out a spot in a Snap location and restricted environments can be booked in advanced and include time-based door access and mobile device management. Integrating devices and systems allows IT to manage, update and troubleshoot company owned devices even when the device and employee are in a remote location. You can turn any space into a place of productivity and empower your organization with the same exceptional experience no matter where they work with Meraki and the Cisco suite of technology. Learn how your organization can make hybrid work, work by visiting meraki.cisco.com/twit. That's meraki.cisco.com/twit. Thanks so much to Cisco Meraki for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly.

Mikah Sargent:
All right, we are back from the break and we are joined again by Denise Howell, denisehowell.info, who is here to talk about tech law and the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. So before we went into the break, Denise, you had mentioned that when this ruling first hit, you kind of went straight to the documentation and started reading through it and trying to get an understanding of how privacy was impacted by this ruling. And I have a feeling that a lot of tech companies were doing the same for sure, or their lawyers were at least looking into how this was going down. And since then we've had a lot of different tech companies and a lot of different journalists and publications, all looking at the privacy implications of period tracking apps, for example, of online purchases and shopping, surrounding pregnancy, on trip tracking, all sorts of things.

Mikah Sargent:
And so I am curious to talk to you about... Before we get into that, I think that it would be a great idea if you could provide it a little bit of a refresher, we're going back to civics classes, on how the balance of power is supposed to work between the legislative, judicial and executive branches and kind of what is the judicial branch's role when it comes to our law? What is their role and what is it that other branches might be able to do in the wake of this decision in order to improve privacy and keep people safe with this ruling that's in place? I know that's a lot there, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

Denise Howell:
Yeah. I'm not a law school professor so you needn't worry that I'm going to try and teach a whole class on that right now, but what I... So yes, you mentioned the three branches of government, the executive branch, which is the president of the United States and everything around the administration. There is the judicial branch, which starts, I guess, at the top with the Supreme Court and goes all the way down, there's a federal judicial branch and all the states have their own courts. But the basic thing you need to know about our court systems, whether they're federal or state is they generally not always, but generally have three tiers. You start with a trial court where you have a trial. Then there's usually an intermediate level of review at the state court level called the court of appeals or the appellate court or the court of appeal, not to get too much into the weeds, but there are differences that sometimes it's the court of appeal and sometimes it's the court of appeals.

Mikah Sargent:
That's interesting.

Denise Howell:
So you want to know whether your s is there or not when you're talking about these things. Yeah, it gets that ridiculous. And then there's a Supreme Court in every state, which looks over the decisions of that state's lower courts and the federal system works similarly. There's three tiers there for sure. There's trial court and intermediate review and then the Supreme Court is the last level of review. And every state's supreme court is accountable to the US Supreme Court as well so, if you want to appeal a decision that a state supreme court has made, you appeal it to the Supreme Court of the United States so, that's sort of structurally how it works. And the fourth component besides the three branches of government is of course the US constitution. And let's add in a fifth component, each of the individual's state constitutions.

Denise Howell:
And one of the roles of the court system, importantly here, is to interpret whether or not laws are constitutional. Equally, importantly, courts don't make laws, they apply them, enforce them, interpret them. They do not make them so, that's not their role. So that was ultimately why Roe vs Wade got overturned is because what that decision did and what was in place for all those decades in between, was it found... Actually, I believe it was. So the first Supreme Court decision to find within the four corners of the US constitution, without it being expressly written there a constitutional right of privacy enshrined in our US constitution.

Denise Howell:
And it got there by pulling from here and there and different parts of the constitution, it sort of put them together in a recipe and blended them all up and stuck it in the judicial oven. And when it came out, the court decided all of these ingredients blended and considered by us lead to the finished apple pie, since we're talking about US law, of a constitutional right to privacy, and it applies here back in the Roe case to say that we are not going to let states make laws that interfere with this personal medical decision that a woman is going to make that's covered by the constitutional right to privacy.

Denise Howell:
The reason that was undone here is this court's majority who voted to overturn Roe vs Wade didn't like that recipe. They didn't agree with the recipe. They thought the recipe was not valid legally, and even for judges who respect precedent and have great respect for the prior decisions of the court, this is not the first time the court has undone one of its own decisions so, that's how we got here. It decided that Roe was wrongly decided, that there was, that there still is a constitutional right to privacy, but it doesn't apply in this context. It applies in other contexts and we do have within the four corners of the constitution, as we hone in on things more pertinent to the tech space, aside from all the various equal protection and other clauses of the constitution that Roe relied on, Roe couldn't rely on the Fourth Amendment and in the tech space that tends to come up a lot.

Denise Howell:
And that is the specific express protections against unreasonable search and seizure. So this is where we see a lot of the recent Supreme Court jurisprudence around things like, can you put a tracker on someone's car? And what sort of technological intrusions into someone's data are permissible? And that tends to be where the court goes to find those privacy bases. Now, back to your question about the branches of government and what they can all do, remember courts can't make laws, they only interpret and apply the laws. Congress makes laws and state legislatures make laws. So, where this all leaves us is if Congress had wanted a decision, if the voters had been able to lobby their elected representatives adequately to convince them that what we want as a country is a law that mirrored what Roe vs Wade did, Congress could have and still can enact that law and so can the individual states.

Denise Howell:
So it's going to be much harder to do at the federal level because there's such a huge divide as to whether abortions should be legal or not but if it comes down to, what do we want as a country? That's the place the law should be made. It really shouldn't be made in the court system because when it is, as we just saw, it's vulnerable to being dismantled down the road. Down the roe? That just happened. So this brings us to something I wanted to bring up. And that is Professor Danielle Citron from the University of Virginia who's doing a lot of work in this area and is working on making data privacy a civil right at the federal level and is proposing legislation that would do that.

Denise Howell:
Now, that wouldn't help people who are now left out in the cold and scrambling for how they're going to get their medical care in the wake of this recent decision, but it would apply to the areas that I additionally was concerned about when this decision came out, which is what do we do about the broader privacy question? What is constitutional right to privacy and what are the parameters of it? Since the constitution is not specific, other than in the Fourth Amendment on that point, liberty is certainly a great umbrella under which to put some of those concepts as our pursuit of happiness, et cetera.

Denise Howell:
But what is more useful and useful to courts is when legislatures make laws that say, "Hey, we're not living in the era when the constitution was drafted, we're living in the now, and we're trying to deal with the problems that we're dealing with now and we see this as a problem, and we're going to have some rules about it that are actual laws of the land." And then what the court's role is to decide if those rules conform with the principles of the constitution, that's a much easier job than trying to actually make law using the constitution. So I want to read you something that Danielle Citron wrote for Slate, that sort of frames where we are right now as far as needing to legislate on this issue.

Denise Howell:
She says, "Right now we view the handling of our intimate data as a matter of profits, efficiency and consumer protection. That must change. Our data is ours. It reflects who we are and want to become, what turns us on and where our hopes and dreams lie. Intimate data reveals our vulnerabilities, things that leave us open to coercion, manipulation, and discrimination. It should be vigorously protected, not collected in case it might be valuable someday or sold in the here and now. We cannot develop authentic identities, form close relationships, or engage as citizens without intimate privacy. We should be able to wear health bands, talk to digital home assistance, search adult sites, and message dates without worrying about being surveilled. We should be able to enjoy the opportunities that digital tools and services offer without worrying that the details will count against us. We should be able to share experiences, feelings, and thoughts online and offline expose, our bodies and selves with trusted friends and learn about our health and identities with the reassurance that the firms facilitating our activities and interactions are also protecting them."

Denise Howell:
So those are the principles she's working from and trying to craft laws that would constrain how data is used, as you read further through her piece here and her scholarship on this, what she would like to see happen is a flat out prohibition against the sale of data, that you could not opt into that. You could not contractually agree to that, that the government would say, "Nope, it's just too important of an issue and we're not going to let you sell it." So, something definitely to watch there. Danielle is very smart and has been working in this space for a very long time and knows what she's doing and knows how to approach both private industry and lawmakers in a way that appeals to both their bottom lines and their better angels. So I think that you should watch that space.

Mikah Sargent:
Absolutely. Yeah. We'll link to that document in the show notes as well. And Denise Howell, once again, a pleasure to get to chat with you about all of this. Of course, they can head to denisehowell.info, if folks are looking to check out the work that you're doing. Is there anywhere they should follow you online?

Denise Howell:
dhowell on Twitter. And I've actually linked to Danielle Citron's piece from there, fairly in the top four or five tweets, so you can find it there too.

Mikah Sargent:
Perfect. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.

Denise Howell:
My pleasure. It's so nice to be here.

Mikah Sargent:
All right folks, up next is my story of the week, but first let's take a break so I can tell you about Drata, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. Is your organization finding it difficult to achieve continuous compliance says it quickly grows and scales? Congrats obviously on the growth and the scale, but you've got to figure out that compliance stuff. Is manual evidence collection slowing your team down? As G2's highest rated cloud compliance software, Drata streamlines your SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI, DDS, GDPR, HIPAA, and other compliance frameworks and provides 24 hour continuous control monitoring so you focus on scaling securely. I'm sure the folks out there who are compliance officers are going yes, yes, yes to every single one of those things I just read off so, I know they're very important.

Mikah Sargent:
With a suite of 75 plus integrations, Drata easily integrates with your tech stack through applications such as AWS, Azure, GitHub, OKTA and CloudFlare. Countless security professionals from companies, including Lemonade, Notion, which I use here and BambooHR have shared how crucial it has been to have Drata as a trusted partner in the compliance process. Their deep native integrations provide instant visibility into a security program and continuous monitoring to ensure compliance is always met. Drata allows companies to see all of their controls and easily map them to compliance frameworks, to gain immediate insight into framework overlap.

Mikah Sargent:
Companies can start building a solid security posture from day one with Drata, achieve and maintain compliance as your business scales and expand your security assurance efforts using the Drata platform. Drata's automated dynamic policy templates support companies new to compliance and help alleviate hours of manual labor, trying to get all of that stuff figured out. Their integrated security awareness training program and automated reminders ensure smooth employee onboarding and they are the only player in the industry to build on a private database architecture from day one, meaning your data can never be accessed by anyone outside your organization.

Mikah Sargent:
All customers receive a team of compliance experts, including a designated customer success manager. In addition, they have a team of former auditors who have conducted 500 plus audits and are available for support and council. Your success is their success. With a consistent meeting cadence, they keep you on track and ensure that there are no surprises or barriers, plus your pre-audit calls ensure you are set up for success when your audits begin. Drata is personally backed by SVCI as syndicate of CISO angel investors from some of the world's most influential companies. Say goodbye to manual evidence collection and hello to automated compliance by visiting drata.com/twit. That's D-R-A-T-A.com/twit. Bringing automation to compliance at Drata speed. Thanks so much Drata for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. All right. We're back from the break. And I've got a quick little [inaudible 00:53:38] for you, I wanted to talk about a Reuters report that just hit this morning that kind of shocked me.

Mikah Sargent:
So lots of folks are familiar with TSMC. That's the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, that's the long spelled out version. A lot of people know about TSMC. They make chips for Apple, they make chips for Qualcomm, they make chips for a lot of different companies, a lot of different tech companies. And for a long time, they have been the top of the charts with their smallest 5 nm process. And so because of that, companies go to them for that 5 nm process, and I'll explain a little bit about the way that these chips work. So the size of the process, the smaller it is, the more efficient the chip is and potentially the more performance you can get with that efficiency in mind. So you want smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller processes because with that, you get better speeds, better performance and all over just every everything pretty much gets better.

Mikah Sargent:
And so there are different ways of making these chips that will sometimes result in larger than 5 nm, but TSMC has kind of held the charge at 5 nm and that is why Apple and other companies make use of them. However, on June 30th at 2:21 AM Pacific, that's our time here in Petaluma, in sunny Petaluma, Samsung Electronics announced that they have begun mass production of 3 nm chips. Yes, from five to three, 3 nm chips, they are hoping to beat TSMC and they have beat TSMC to being first to doing this globally. And according to the Reuters report, the newly developed first gen 3 nm process can reduce power consumption by up to 45%, going from five to three, improve performance by 23% and reduce area, of course, by 16%. So what does that mean reduce area? Well, obviously the process is smaller so you get a smaller one, so you're able to fit more in there.

Mikah Sargent:
They haven't talked about who they're going to be working with on this, but as the Reuters report points out, it's likely that Samsung itself will make use of this 3 nm process and other companies in China will make use of these chips for the electronics that they make, that then other companies buy to put inside of the electronics that they make. So it's kind of at the very base of the setup here. And what's wild about this is that again, as the Reuters report shows, TSMC controls just about 54%. So more than half of the global market for the production of chips and are used again by these huge companies. So because they are used by these huge companies, because they control so much of it, they can put all of their focus on making these chip facilities where they can create these smaller and smaller and smaller chips.

Mikah Sargent:
Samsung on the other hand, focuses on a hundred billion things. From washing machines and tower fans, all the way down to smartphones and watches and so for them to also be working on a chip is kind of impressive. Samsung does take the second place in that global market for production of chips at 16.3. Remember that number before was 54. 54 to 16.3, and of course this is according to a data provider called TrendForce so, take all of that with a grain of salt. But it's just wild that there's that much difference between the two and that Samsung was able to beat TSMC to this 3 nm chip. According to that report, the Samsung put $132 billion of an investment, and this was just last year. $132 billion, they invested last year to try and overtake TSMC, they want to be the world's top chip maker by 2030, Samsung does.

Mikah Sargent:
So, I was reading through this report going wow, looking at the photos, there's like this all yellow room where the engineers are holding wafers, which of course are kind of the... Before the chips are themselves created, it starts there at the wafer size. And as I'm reading through then I found an interesting line from Reuters. It says, "While Samsung is the first to production with 3 nm chip production, TSMC is planning two nanometer volume production in 2025. So, Samsung may have stepped forward to get that three out there, but it may be because TSMC is currently working on two nanometer chips, which they hope to release in the next three years. So, this is a fun battle between these two companies that are first and second in line with quite a space between them and it'll be interesting to see.

Mikah Sargent:
Now, I want to read some quotes that are interesting here. Of course, TSMC has the lead on certain kinds of chips, Samsung still maintains the lead on other kinds of chips and here's what it is. "Samsung is the market leader in memory chips, but it had been outspent by front runner TSMC in the more diverse foundry business making it difficult to compete. Non-memory is different because there's too much variety. There are only two kinds of memory chips, Dram, and NAND flash. You can concentrate on one thing, raise efficiency and make a lot of it, but you can't do that with a thousand different non-memory chips." And so that is kind of the argument there is that, Samsung claims that spot as being the best memory chips you can get with that Dram and NAND flash, because you can focus so much of your attention there, but when it comes to non-memory chips, that is where TSMC is shining or at least was up until this point.

Mikah Sargent:
So this is a fascinating thing with Samsung Electronics really doing its best to step in and beat TSMC at its own game. I know I personally will be watching very closely to see how these companies kind of continue to compete and how the important performance, is what I'm trying to say, performance improvements take place over time. That should be a really fascinating thing to watch. And hey, what's the most important to me as the consumer is that there's some competition here because competition breeds better, faster, more performant technologies. So when you've got that compete, even when they look and they say, "Wow, it's 54% versus our 16.3%, we got to try to take out the big guy," and they seem to be doing their best to make that happen. So, I say congratulations to Samsung for their new 3 nm chip and I'll be interested to see.

Mikah Sargent:
I also wonder too, going back to that yellow photo of Samsung Electronics labs, maybe somebody in the chat knows if maybe there's something about yellow that is good for production. And if not, then it makes me wonder if TSMC has their own color, like everybody there wears a slate blue color or something like that and so the labs kind of compete and they've all got their own little get ups that go with them. I can't imagine working in that environment every day where you look around and it's just yellow for days. Anywho, really interesting stuff and we shall see how, as I said, TSMC responds going forward.

Mikah Sargent:
Folks, this has been Tech News Weekly, it will actually continue to be Tech News Weekly, kind of cool, which publishes every Thursday at twit.tv/tnw. If you go there, that's where you can subscribe to the show if you're not, you click to subscribe in audio or video formats, right there, there's a button for you to press. I'm doing lots of different voices today, I don't know why. But anyway, over there on the site, subscribe to audio, subscribe to video and make that happen. And I'm actually going to take a break because Scooter X has provided me with an answer for the yellow and I quote from Scooter X who is quoting from something else. "The process ensures that chips aren't contaminated by tiny particles. Some areas of the factory are even flooded in yellow light to avoid risking light contamination."

Mikah Sargent:
So the reason it is yellow is if you want to avoid white light interfering with the patterns being made on these wafers, we are in the main photolithography bay, photolithography is where the pattern is made on the silicon wafer. It is literally the most important step that we do over and over again to build a semiconductor chip. Okay. So if you're doing photolithography, that will help keep the white light from interfering with that pattern that is being put onto the wafers. Very cool. Thank you, Scooter X, that way everything remains uncontaminated. So, sounds like TSMC is also yellow inside and now I understand and I will be painting all of my house in yellow to stop white light interference.

Mikah Sargent:
I'm curious about the physics there, because why wouldn't you just paint everything black, because I would absorb light? Anyway, it's time to say goodbye. Again, you can subscribe to the show on audio and video formats there. And also if you'd like to get all of our shows ad free, we've got a way for you to do that. You go to Club TWiT, twit.tv/clubtwit, there you can subscribe for seven bucks a month or a great way to join the club is by subscribing to the annual plan. Yes, we've got an annual plan now, $84 a year, that's it. I got to tell you, I am a member of other Memberful plans and they are far more expensive for the annual plan.

Mikah Sargent:
$84 is quite the deal. 84 bucks, the entire year, 365 days of ClubTWiT. Again, you get all of our shows ad free, you get access to the TWiT+ bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else, that's behind the scenes, before the show, after the show, little bits and clips that pop in there that we don't post elsewhere, lots of fun stuff there. And you get access to the ClubTWiT Discord server. That is the place where you can go and chat with your fellow ClubTWiT members and share GIFs and links and have conversations and all sorts of things. I open Discord at all hours of the day, and it is always popping, there's lots of fun stuff going on in there.

Mikah Sargent:
Oh yeah, that's what I was going to mention, that's twit.tv/clubtwit. I want to also mention that you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts. For 2.99 a month, you can get the audio version of the show ad free. So you just launch Apple Podcast, you type in Tech News Weekly, you find the audio version of the show and there'll be a button to subscribe for 2.99 a month ad free, and you'll be supporting us directly, we would appreciate that. If you are looking to follow me online, you could find me @mikahsargent on many a social media network, or you can add to chihuahua.coffee. That's C-H-I-H-U-A-H-U-A.coffee where I've got links to the places I'm most active online. Check me out this Saturday for The Tech Guy, the radio show heard round the world, which I record with Leo Laporte, where we take your tech questions and try to help you out with those.

Mikah Sargent:
And there's been some confusion, I think, about when I will be hosting The Tech Guy, that is not until the TWiT Cruise, which is in late July. So if you thought that I was going to be hosting The Tech Guy radio show this Saturday, that is not the case, it will be Saturday, July 23rd and Saturday, July 16th, will be the two days that I am hosting solo. So this Saturday, Leo and I will be there probably both doing accents and weird voices as we want to do. And then on Tuesdays for iOS Today, which I record with Rosemary Orchard. And if you've been listening this far, then you deserve to hear that, maybe, maybe there's something else around the corner. That's all I'm going to say, though. Thank you so much to our TD, John Ashley, our editor, John Ashley, our studio engineer, which is Burke at this point, thank you, as well as our co-producer who is also John Ashley.

Mikah Sargent:
Yes, John Ashley does it all folks. He's a Jack of all trades, a John of all trades, if you will. And of course we will see you next time on Tech News Weekly. Goodbye, and I give myself a fist bump because there's nobody else here. I'll see y'all next week.

Rod Pyle:
Hey, I'm Rod Pyle, editor of Ad Astra magazine. And each week I'm joined by Tariq Malik, the editor-in-chief 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 has Elon Musk done now? In addition to all the latest and greatest in space exploration, we'll take an occasional look at bits of space flight history that you've probably never heard of and all with an eye towards having a good time along the way. Check us out on your favorite podcatcher.