Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: workshop that for a while. So it is time for
Speaker 1: the tech news for Tuesday, January four, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Actually have to look at the date, because, as is
Speaker 1: the usual, it'll take me about a month to remember
Speaker 1: that we're actually in a new year. And let's get
Speaker 1: to the news. The trial of Elizabeth Holmes has concluded
Speaker 1: with a jury delivering the founder of Sara Nos a
Speaker 1: mixed bag of verdicts. So for those who don't know,
Speaker 1: Sara Nos was a biotech medical startup founded by Holmes
Speaker 1: with the aim of producing a desktop technology capable of
Speaker 1: running more than a hundred medical tests on a single
Speaker 1: micro drop of blood. The company raised somewhere in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood of nine billion dollars in investments and turned homes
Speaker 1: into a Silicon Valley celebrity. She also gained a lot
Speaker 1: of attention for seemingly emulating the late Steve Jobs, including
Speaker 1: adopting the black turtleneck as her signature look. While the
Speaker 1: company received a lot of attention and enthusiasm from investors
Speaker 1: who were sold on the prospect that this tech could
Speaker 1: disrupt the entire medical industry and represent a huge business,
Speaker 1: things were not going so well at the company itself.
Speaker 1: A Wall Street Journal expose a revealed that the company's
Speaker 1: promises stretched far beyond its capabilities and led to investigations
Speaker 1: that bring us up to this trial, Holmes had faced
Speaker 1: eleven criminal charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit
Speaker 1: wire fraud. Of those, the jury found her not guilty
Speaker 1: on four accounts, guilty on another four accounts, and they
Speaker 1: couldn't come to a decision on the remaining three counts.
Speaker 1: The judge declared a mistrial in the case of those
Speaker 1: three counts. That means that technically prosecutors could bring a
Speaker 1: new case against Holmes. She could face up to twenty
Speaker 1: years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
Speaker 1: I would not be surprised, however, if her lawyers appealed
Speaker 1: her case. Meanwhile, her business partner and former romantic interest,
Speaker 1: Ramesh Sunny Balwanni, who served as the chief operating officer
Speaker 1: for the company, is to stand trial facing similar criminal
Speaker 1: charges in February. Throughout the trial, Holmes maintained it was
Speaker 1: Balwanni who was at fault for the crimes. So this
Speaker 1: story isn't over over, but the initial trial is. It
Speaker 1: will be interesting to see what bal Wanne's arguments will
Speaker 1: be when that trial comes to pass. Okay, let's do
Speaker 1: a very quick round up on some news that has
Speaker 1: happened since we went on break, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: start with some news about politicians in the United States
Speaker 1: and social network platforms. First, there's the case of House
Speaker 1: Representative Marjorie Taylor Green from my state of Georgia. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to spare you my personal thoughts about Green,
Speaker 1: and I'll just say I believe there may be no
Speaker 1: position upon which the both of us agree. That's the
Speaker 1: classy way to say it, I guess. Anyway, Twitter recently
Speaker 1: permanently suspended Green's personal account it was a verified Twitter account,
Speaker 1: even after that account received at least five strikes for
Speaker 1: spreading misinformation about COVID nineteen. And y'all, my state's been
Speaker 1: hit pretty hard by COVID, So the fact that a
Speaker 1: rep from my own state is effectively working against her
Speaker 1: own constituents is just playing crazy anyway. Following that, Facebook
Speaker 1: removed a post from Green that was, you know, in
Speaker 1: light of this suspend mention, uh you know, Facebook also
Speaker 1: removed a post saying that it also violated their policies. However,
Speaker 1: they said that Green Green's transgressions did not merit a
Speaker 1: full suspension from Facebook, so she's still active there. The
Speaker 1: move has prompted a total crap storm here in America,
Speaker 1: with some folks like Joe Rogan urging people to leave Twitter.
Speaker 1: On Moss and late night talk show hosts are rejoicing
Speaker 1: in her removal. So you know, that whole issue with
Speaker 1: the left and right growing further apart from each other
Speaker 1: is just going swimmingly well in my country. Anyway. Green
Speaker 1: isn't the only conservative to part ways with a social network, though.
Speaker 1: I should also add that her official account as a
Speaker 1: representative for Georgia remains active, so her personal account has
Speaker 1: been suspended, but she does still have access to her
Speaker 1: you know, official account as a representative of the House
Speaker 1: of Representatives. Anyway. U S Senator Ran Paul, another Conservative,
Speaker 1: has left YouTube, but this time it's Paul's decision sort
Speaker 1: of see light Green Paul was dinged for spreading misinformation
Speaker 1: about the COVID pandemic, and his account was suspended by
Speaker 1: YouTube on two separate occasions. Paul now says he will
Speaker 1: no longer post to YouTube unless it's two dunk on them,
Speaker 1: and otherwise he will post his messages on other places,
Speaker 1: going on to tell conservatives that because they make up
Speaker 1: about half the country, they could put a real hurt
Speaker 1: on networks like YouTube just by not using those those platforms.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how persuasive that argument actually is, either
Speaker 1: to YouTube or to is, you know, the people he's
Speaker 1: speaking to. I do know it's pretty disgusting to make
Speaker 1: arguments about freedom of speech when that speech in question
Speaker 1: is all about spreading misinformation that consequently leads to people
Speaker 1: getting sick and dying. Uh. I think that is pretty abhorrent.
Speaker 1: Something else that happened over the break was the successful
Speaker 1: launch of the James web Space Telescope. According to NASA,
Speaker 1: the mission so far has progressed as smoothly as could
Speaker 1: be hoped, which must be a relief after the numerous
Speaker 1: delays that pushed back the telescope's launch multiple times, including
Speaker 1: that scary moment late last year when vibrations moved through
Speaker 1: the telescope as it was being attached to its launch vehicle. Uh,
Speaker 1: the telescope is so delicate that there was a concern
Speaker 1: that those vibrations could have misaligned things, which means that
Speaker 1: the process of the telescope unpacking itself could have been,
Speaker 1: you know, compromised. So it is currently on its way
Speaker 1: to its destination, which will take it beyond the moon,
Speaker 1: and teams are working on the process by which the
Speaker 1: telescope will unpack and unfold itself. That includes unfolding a
Speaker 1: five layer sun shield layer by layer, and each layer
Speaker 1: is about as thick as a human hair. And also
Speaker 1: you've got all those numerous mirrors that will reflect light
Speaker 1: to the telescope's sensors. According to the BBC, the process
Speaker 1: has three separate quote single point failures end quote involved.
Speaker 1: Now that means that each of those points represents a
Speaker 1: moment where if things don't go well, then nothing that
Speaker 1: follows that step will work. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: if your plan is to go out and go shopping
Speaker 1: and then you want to go catch a movie, and
Speaker 1: then you're gonna go out to dinner, but as you
Speaker 1: leave the house you find out your car has just
Speaker 1: been crushed by a meteor. Well, that medior crushing your
Speaker 1: car was kind of the single point of failure because
Speaker 1: none of the rest of your plans are going to
Speaker 1: work out because your cars been crushed. Same sort of idea. However,
Speaker 1: NASA reps have stressed that there's no reason to be
Speaker 1: tense about this, that they've practiced this numerous times, they
Speaker 1: know what they're doing, and the whole procedure is likely
Speaker 1: to be boring. That's actually their words, and you know what,
Speaker 1: after years of setbacks, boring actually sounds kind of nice.
Speaker 1: While the James Webb is in many ways the successor
Speaker 1: to the venerable Hubble space telescope, that does not mean
Speaker 1: the Hubble is done with adding to our scientific knowledge. Recently,
Speaker 1: NASA released an image captured by the Hubble telescope showing
Speaker 1: the spiral galaxy in GC one oh five aligning with
Speaker 1: a second galaxy. And because it's impossible to really judge
Speaker 1: depth just by looking at a two dimensional image, the
Speaker 1: first impression you might have is that what we're looking
Speaker 1: at is two galaxies colliding with one another. Now, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing does happen, but in this case, the
Speaker 1: image shows the galaxies are just lining up from our perspective,
Speaker 1: kind of like how Mars can line up with Jubiter.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean Mars is crashing into Jubiter, just means
Speaker 1: that from our perspective they're in line with each other.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty cool image, which you can see on
Speaker 1: NASA's website about the Hubble. And while we're talking about space,
Speaker 1: I have a fun story that involves satellites and one
Speaker 1: of the Internet's favorite topics. Not bacon because that pretty
Speaker 1: much fizzled out like five years ago. I'm talking about cats. Okay,
Speaker 1: So space Sex has this project called Starlink, and this
Speaker 1: uses tiny satellites in orbit to provide satellite internet connections
Speaker 1: down here on Earth. They're running a relatively small beta
Speaker 1: program right now in a pretty uh constricted region to
Speaker 1: test it out. So right now, the star Link network
Speaker 1: consists of slightly fewer than two thousand satellites, so there
Speaker 1: are a lot up there, uh, and the company plans
Speaker 1: to add more than twelve thousand additional ones in the future.
Speaker 1: So the goal is to provide internet service to rural
Speaker 1: and underserved regions areas that cannot get reliable internet access otherwise.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, that's all the stuff that's zooming around
Speaker 1: in space, but down here on Earth, you need a
Speaker 1: way to pick up those satellite signals. You have to
Speaker 1: have a way to beam information back and forth between
Speaker 1: the satellites so that you can you know, Internet good.
Speaker 1: So you need an antenna and it's a dish antenna,
Speaker 1: what we used to call us satellite dish back in
Speaker 1: the day. Well, the Starlink dish antenna has a kind
Speaker 1: of nifty feature. So essentially it has a thermometer and
Speaker 1: it can detect if the temperature drops below freezing and
Speaker 1: if it does, the satellite dish will generate a little
Speaker 1: extra heat surface heat on the antenna itself. So the
Speaker 1: idea is that that heat will help melt any snow
Speaker 1: or ice that would otherwise build up on the dish
Speaker 1: in freezing temperatures and could potentially interfere with getting a
Speaker 1: satellite signal. And here's where the cats come in. A
Speaker 1: Twitter user named Aaron Taylor shared an image of a
Speaker 1: group of five cats perched on top of the Starlink
Speaker 1: satellite dish, presumably outside of Aaron's home, stating quote, starlink
Speaker 1: works great until the cats find out that the dish
Speaker 1: gives off a little heat on cold day's end. Quote.
Speaker 1: Trust me, the image is adorable and also very funny.
Speaker 1: All right, we've got some more news stories to go through,
Speaker 1: but before we get to that, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break and we're back. US telecom companies A, T and
Speaker 1: T and Verizon recently agreed to delay their planned rollout
Speaker 1: of five G systems by a couple of weeks uh
Speaker 1: this The request of delay came from the United States
Speaker 1: Federal Aviation Administration or f a A, which sites concerns
Speaker 1: that five G signals could interfere with some airplane systems,
Speaker 1: notably stuff like a radio altimeter. There's been a lot
Speaker 1: of back and forth between the aviation industry and the
Speaker 1: telecom industry about the effects of delays as well as
Speaker 1: the potential effects of five G transmissions. The telecom companies
Speaker 1: are eager to move forward and deploy their five G networks.
Speaker 1: They really want to make good on certain promises they
Speaker 1: have with customers, as well as just to remain competitive
Speaker 1: with companies that have already started to deploy five gen networks.
Speaker 1: And obviously they've also been experiencing delays anyway due to
Speaker 1: problems like COVID and of course, the aviation industry is
Speaker 1: concerned with safety and avoiding problems like flights getting delayed, canceled,
Speaker 1: or diverted, saying that if there is this UH interference,
Speaker 1: then that could severely hamper flight flight control, and that
Speaker 1: would not be great like flight control in the sense
Speaker 1: of everything could get messed up. And once you start
Speaker 1: having flights canceled at one airport, there's this cascade effect,
Speaker 1: right because that plane was on its way somewhere and
Speaker 1: now it's not going to get there at that time.
Speaker 1: So this ends up having like a domino effect, even
Speaker 1: if you have airports that are not being affected by
Speaker 1: this interference. So up until yesterday, A T and T
Speaker 1: and Verizon appeared unwilling to give up their rollout plans,
Speaker 1: but that has changed and now they've agreed to a
Speaker 1: two week delay. I'm not sure what difference the two
Speaker 1: weeks makes, but I will continue to look into the
Speaker 1: story as it develops. In a serious case of deja vous,
Speaker 1: Microsoft has had to release a fix for a bug
Speaker 1: in their Exchange server product that shut down on premises
Speaker 1: email delivery at thousands of locations around the world. So
Speaker 1: what happened, Well, it's all because Exchange Server two thousand
Speaker 1: sixteen and Exchange Server two thousand nineteen have a date
Speaker 1: check feature, and that date check has a maximum value
Speaker 1: of to one four seven four eight three six four seven.
Speaker 1: If I were to read that out, it would be
Speaker 1: two billion, one hundred forty seven million, four hundred eight
Speaker 1: three thousand, six hundred forty seven, also known as two
Speaker 1: to the thirty first power of minus one. But Microsoft
Speaker 1: would use the first two digits of that number, the
Speaker 1: T one in this case. What that's the maximum? They
Speaker 1: would use those first two digits to denote the last
Speaker 1: two digits of the current year, which you know, that
Speaker 1: works fine as long as the last two digits of
Speaker 1: the current year are not greater than to one. And uh,
Speaker 1: the first two digits in the number are you know,
Speaker 1: that's as high as they can go as to one. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm told this year is two thousand, twenty two, so
Speaker 1: we would use twenty two to designate the year. That
Speaker 1: means if you put two two at the end, you know,
Speaker 1: the front end of that very long number, it's actually
Speaker 1: outside the range allowed. So when midnight rolled over from
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve to New Year's Day, the systems attempted
Speaker 1: to verify a date designated as to to zero one
Speaker 1: zero one zero zero zero one, and on premises, email
Speaker 1: servers looked at that and said, oh, heck no, I
Speaker 1: don't get paid enough to deal with numbers bigger than
Speaker 1: I can handle. And they quit, or rather they crashed. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I t professionals around the world, We're trying to suss
Speaker 1: out why the heck their email servers were going offline.
Speaker 1: Microsoft had a fix ready to go on January second.
Speaker 1: So that's some pretty serious hustle right there. But that
Speaker 1: fix has to be initiated it on every single server
Speaker 1: running Exchange two thousand sixteen or Exchange two thousand nineteen
Speaker 1: in order to get them working again. And that deja vue,
Speaker 1: I said, I felt, well. That refers to the old
Speaker 1: y two K panic, in which programmers around the world
Speaker 1: hurriedly tried to fix millions of lines of code to
Speaker 1: account for the fact that the year was going to
Speaker 1: change from nineteen nine or just ninety nine to two
Speaker 1: thousand or zero zero. The fear was that by going
Speaker 1: from zero zero, computer systems would just assume that we
Speaker 1: had somehow flip back to nineteen hundred. I've done whole
Speaker 1: episodes about this. So anyway, this does seem to be
Speaker 1: pretty similar in history has a tendency to repeat itself,
Speaker 1: and I blame the conventions we used to denote what
Speaker 1: the date is. C e S is about to go
Speaker 1: into full swings starting tomorrow, January five. Several high profile
Speaker 1: companies had pulled out of appearing in person at the event,
Speaker 1: citing concerns about COVID. But the show must go on,
Speaker 1: according to the Consumer Technology Association, that's the group that
Speaker 1: organizes the huge trade show, and we're hearing about some
Speaker 1: of the stuff that's going to be shown off at
Speaker 1: the event. One of those things is the new Eco
Speaker 1: remote from Samsung. Last year, Samsung introduced the first Eco remote,
Speaker 1: which has a small solar panel on it, so you
Speaker 1: can actually recharge your your remote batteries by you know,
Speaker 1: leaving it in the sunlight. This year, Samsung has also
Speaker 1: incorporated radio frequency harvesting capabilities, meaning that the remote has
Speaker 1: a small antenna inside it and it can pick up
Speaker 1: radio frequency waves from your home's WiFi network and then
Speaker 1: convert those radio frequency waves to electricity, and that electricity
Speaker 1: can go towards charging the battery. Now, I'm sure lots
Speaker 1: of people will liken this idea to that of Nikola Tesla,
Speaker 1: the one you know he had talked about transmating electricity
Speaker 1: through the air more than a century ago. Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: this is the basis for a lot of wireless charging technology,
Speaker 1: and radio itself actually works on a very similar principle. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Samsung's move is to get away from the use of
Speaker 1: triple A batteries, and using a rechargeable battery could mean
Speaker 1: cutting down on a great deal of waste over time,
Speaker 1: which I think is a pretty good thing to aim for.
Speaker 1: In other ce s, news Wired reports that a company
Speaker 1: called Smarty Pair has introduced Leo's LU two. And if
Speaker 1: you don't know what that is, where the heck have
Speaker 1: you been. So it's a smart cat litter box. Yep,
Speaker 1: it's a self cleaning cat litter box that also monitors
Speaker 1: stuff like your cat's weight and you know how frequently
Speaker 1: your furry little friend is heading to the toilets and
Speaker 1: you can access the information with an app. Now, I
Speaker 1: know that on the surface of it that might sound
Speaker 1: like crazy, but that's actually really useful information to have
Speaker 1: if you need to, say, talk to a vet about
Speaker 1: your cats health. So while on the surface, This might
Speaker 1: seem like overkill or perhaps you know, a gross in
Speaker 1: vage asian of your kitty cats privacy. It's actually a
Speaker 1: pretty smart idea for those who want to make sure
Speaker 1: their pets are healthy. Also, it is compatible with Alexa
Speaker 1: and um a an assistant at rhymes with schmoogle. I
Speaker 1: don't say it because I actually have a smart speaker
Speaker 1: in this room, and when I tried to do it before,
Speaker 1: it activated and interrupted my recording, so this is technically
Speaker 1: the second take of the sentence. Anyway, My point is
Speaker 1: that the cat smart cat litter boxes also compatible with
Speaker 1: those you know, the virtual assistance, so you can control
Speaker 1: settings on the cat litter box using those devices. It
Speaker 1: also has a UV radiation method of sanitizing the cat
Speaker 1: litter box. It also has sensors that can detect when
Speaker 1: a cat is nearby, so it doesn't just automatically turn
Speaker 1: on and scare your kitty cat. So kind of a
Speaker 1: neat idea. I don't own any cats, and I frequently
Speaker 1: smack my head when I run into smart appliances, thinking
Speaker 1: that they might go a little too far or be
Speaker 1: a little ridiculous. But I actually can see the use
Speaker 1: for this one, so while it on the surface made
Speaker 1: me laugh, the more I thought about, the more I thought, no, wait,
Speaker 1: that's kind of a practical use. T. S. Eliot would
Speaker 1: be proud, and I'm sure we'll have a lot more
Speaker 1: to say about C E S later in the week.
Speaker 1: So on Thursday, I'll try and do a roundup of
Speaker 1: some of the more interesting things that were shown off
Speaker 1: during the event. In the meantime, I'll be glad that
Speaker 1: I am covering it from my home rather than in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. Well, we've got a little bit more news
Speaker 1: to cover, but before we get to that, let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. Okay, international news. The German Minister of
Speaker 1: Justice announced that the country is moving to abolish any
Speaker 1: data retention from telecommunications activities if there are no good
Speaker 1: reasons for holding onto that information, or rather that the
Speaker 1: minister is inclined to do as much. The minister said,
Speaker 1: quote I reject data retention without any reason and would
Speaker 1: like to remove it from the law once and for all.
Speaker 1: It violates fundamental rights end quote. This would be bring
Speaker 1: German law more in line with European Union law, so
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff that is in German law
Speaker 1: is superseded by EU law. Anyway, So a lot of
Speaker 1: the elements about data retention have been suspended, and this
Speaker 1: is really more of a move to just say, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and make it our law as well, not
Speaker 1: just EU law. But it also means that if there
Speaker 1: is a specific and presumably legitimate reason to retain data
Speaker 1: that would still be on the table, you would still
Speaker 1: be allowed to do that. But should the Minister's desire
Speaker 1: be made into law, it would be illegal under German
Speaker 1: law for companies to collect any and all data and
Speaker 1: just store it indefinitely while possibly just waiting around for
Speaker 1: a way to exploit that information. This actually reminds me
Speaker 1: of the early days of smartphone apps, in which app
Speaker 1: stores did not place restrictions on developers, and developers could
Speaker 1: essentially create any kind of app that could collect all
Speaker 1: sorts of data, not just the information that the app
Speaker 1: needed to do whatever it was it was doing. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you might download a game on your smartphone
Speaker 1: and it turns out that it's also tracking your location
Speaker 1: and you know, all this other stuff uh in the
Speaker 1: background without your knowledge. And in the early days that
Speaker 1: was kind of you know, just it was happening, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't until you know, Schmoogle and Apple really started
Speaker 1: to crack down on that and say no, you can
Speaker 1: only get access to the data that your app actually
Speaker 1: needs to work, and you have to ask permission first.
Speaker 1: It's only when that happened when we started to see
Speaker 1: this change. In fact, this was kind of what was
Speaker 1: at the heart of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. But we're
Speaker 1: seeing a rejection of that practice in many places as
Speaker 1: there is a growing concern that this data could be
Speaker 1: abused and it could violate the privacy of citizens and consumers.
Speaker 1: Over in China, the government has continued the suspension of
Speaker 1: new game licenses within the country, and this means that
Speaker 1: app developers who are working on games intended for various
Speaker 1: platforms are kind of stuck. The government requires anyone who
Speaker 1: is developing a game or updating a game to first
Speaker 1: acquire a license to sell games within China, so with
Speaker 1: this suspension, there's effectively a halt on all new game
Speaker 1: developers within the country. Apparently, this has led to nearly
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty thousand small game studios to shut down
Speaker 1: because there's just there's no way for them to operate
Speaker 1: a business without obtaining a license, and all licenses are
Speaker 1: currently suspended all new licenses. That is, the suspension actually
Speaker 1: began last year, but a lot of people were hoping
Speaker 1: that China would lift it by two and instead it
Speaker 1: appears to be set to continue at least in you know,
Speaker 1: in the near future, possibly indefinitely. As for why there's
Speaker 1: suspension in the first place, the government has not issued
Speaker 1: a formal explanation, but the general guess is that this
Speaker 1: ties into the government's campaign to battle what it calls
Speaker 1: a gaming addiction. The government has previously passed laws that
Speaker 1: restrict the amount of time young people are allowed to
Speaker 1: spend playing games, so it's probably tied in with that. Again,
Speaker 1: there hasn't been an official explanation. Car manufacturing company hun
Speaker 1: Day has ended all development on internal combustion engine vehicles,
Speaker 1: shifting engineers over to develop new electric vehicles also known
Speaker 1: as e vs. Engineers will refocus to develop new electric
Speaker 1: power trains for cars, and the move makes sense. More
Speaker 1: and more countries are setting deadlines in which all new
Speaker 1: vehicles sold within those countries will have to be electric
Speaker 1: vehicles at some date, and this is on an effort
Speaker 1: to cut back on CEO two emissions and meet global deadlines.
Speaker 1: In the fight against climate change. The general thought is that, uh,
Speaker 1: you will still be allowed to sell used vehicles that
Speaker 1: are internal combustion engine vehicles, but no new cars on
Speaker 1: the market will be allowed to be I sees. They
Speaker 1: have to be electric vehicles or possibly hybrids. Um, that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of the play here. Now, one thing that
Speaker 1: has been part of the conversation around this switch to
Speaker 1: electric vehicles is whether they are actually more quote unquote
Speaker 1: green than internal combustion engine vehicles. Now, it's obvious that
Speaker 1: a gasoline or diesel powered engine is going to generate
Speaker 1: emissions and an electric vehicle isn't. Right, evs don't generate emissions,
Speaker 1: But then you have to take in the bigger picture,
Speaker 1: like the manufacturing processes, and then you have ask okay, well,
Speaker 1: does it still make sense our e vs still more
Speaker 1: environmentally friendly than combustion engine vehicles or is the process
Speaker 1: to build e vs more harmful than operating a fleet
Speaker 1: of gas powered cars. Well, the International Council on Clean
Speaker 1: Transportation recently released a report that shows producing a medium
Speaker 1: sized gas powered car would create around seven point two
Speaker 1: tons of carbon emissions. That's just the manufacturing process. Building
Speaker 1: a similarly sized electric vehicle creates nine point to carbon emissions,
Speaker 1: so an ev would generate two more tons of c
Speaker 1: O two in the production process than an internal combustion car.
Speaker 1: Most of that comes from the production of the e
Speaker 1: VS battery. It's a carbon intensive process. However, the same
Speaker 1: study found that a car in England would make up
Speaker 1: for that carbon debt and electric car after driving just
Speaker 1: seven thousand, sixty one miles. In the UK and in England,
Speaker 1: the average distance traveled per year for the first three
Speaker 1: years of a new car is ten thousand, four hundred
Speaker 1: miles each, So, in other words, for the first three
Speaker 1: years of owning a new car, the average person is
Speaker 1: driving ten thousand, four hundred miles per year. That means
Speaker 1: that the production side of evs is front loaded with
Speaker 1: carbon emissions. It does generate more CEO two than building
Speaker 1: combustion engine cars. However, after just one year of use,
Speaker 1: the electric vehicle would be responsible for fewer carbon emissions
Speaker 1: than a gas powered car would, because, of course, the
Speaker 1: gas powered car continues to emit c O two as
Speaker 1: it's being operated. Of course, there are other factors that
Speaker 1: you have to bring into consideration as well, such as
Speaker 1: where the electricity that charged the EV's battery came from UH.
Speaker 1: This is why stuff like carbon emissions gets really tricky,
Speaker 1: because there's so many different factors to consider. But with
Speaker 1: more of an emphasis on renewable energy sources, the ecosystem
Speaker 1: for evs can be one that produces far less carbon
Speaker 1: than our old gas guzzlind ways. And that is the
Speaker 1: news for Tuesday, January two. We'll be back on Thursday
Speaker 1: with some more news, hopefully some more stuff about c
Speaker 1: e s. I'll keep an eye out on it. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with me, you can
Speaker 1: always drop me a line on Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: the show is text Stuff H s W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.