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 I love all things tech. And this is the
Speaker 1: tech news for Thursday, May six one. For once, I'm
Speaker 1: actually recording this on the day it's going out, because
Speaker 1: if you listen to yesterday's episode or rerun episode, you
Speaker 1: know that I was seriously under the weather with some
Speaker 1: food poisoning, and um, yeah, recording was just not in
Speaker 1: the cards for me yesterday. So I appreciate your patients.
Speaker 1: I apologize for the delay. Let's get on with the news.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot to talk about. One of the
Speaker 1: big tech related stories that broke this week was about
Speaker 1: how the Facebook oversight board upheld the company's decision to
Speaker 1: ban the account of Donald Trump, former President of the
Speaker 1: United States. For those blissfully unaware of all this, I'll
Speaker 1: try to sum up on January six one, though honestly
Speaker 1: it feels like it was a lifetime ago now, insurrectionists
Speaker 1: stormed the US capital in an attempt to overthrow the
Speaker 1: U S election. Trump's behavior and words served as a
Speaker 1: motivator for this group, and Trump was often walking a
Speaker 1: very thin tight rope of plausible deniability while simultaneously encouraging
Speaker 1: his base, some of whom clearly intended to harm members
Speaker 1: of Congress, and so Facebook made the decision to suspend
Speaker 1: Trump's account to reduce the platforms he could use to
Speaker 1: stir up anger and incite potential violence. The ban has
Speaker 1: stayed in place since then. Facebook caught a lot of
Speaker 1: flak from some groups for instituting this ban, though the
Speaker 1: company stated that it was in response to Trump violating
Speaker 1: terms of service on Facebook's platform. Twitter likewise had a
Speaker 1: lot of anger directed towards it for a similar ban.
Speaker 1: In an effort to distance itself from the decision and
Speaker 1: to kind of take the heat off of itself, Facebook
Speaker 1: formed and oversight board intended to review incidents like Trump's
Speaker 1: ban and to determine whether the company acted appropriately or not.
Speaker 1: But now Facebook is going to have to hitch up
Speaker 1: its breeches and make another decision. The board came back
Speaker 1: and said, well, here's your problem. You were justified and
Speaker 1: banning Trump for Violet in terms of service, But while
Speaker 1: y'all did was this fuzzy, indefinite ban, which is an
Speaker 1: issue you're all gonna have to either lift that ban,
Speaker 1: make the band permanent, or decide exactly how long the
Speaker 1: band can last. I don't know why the oversight board
Speaker 1: has the same accent that I do naturally, but it's
Speaker 1: just that's how it is in my head. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, Facebook can't just have a band of indeterminate
Speaker 1: length on Trump. The parameters need to be defined. Mind.
Speaker 1: The board even pointed out that Facebook was trying to
Speaker 1: pass the buck here. Now clearly the company would prefer
Speaker 1: that some other entity swoop in and make this decision
Speaker 1: on behalf of Facebook that way Facebook and say, hey, folks, listen,
Speaker 1: we know, we totally know we're with you, but we
Speaker 1: had to go this way because so and so told
Speaker 1: us to. Except in this case, the so and so said, no, dice, Mr,
Speaker 1: you made this bed, you lie in it, or rather
Speaker 1: they said quote. The board declines Facebook's request and insists
Speaker 1: that Facebook apply and justify a defined penalty end quote.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was paraphrasing. Meanwhile, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: critics who say that the oversight board itself is just
Speaker 1: a bad approach, and there should be a truly independent
Speaker 1: review board that's in place to look at issues like
Speaker 1: Trump's ban. I think this is a case where Facebook
Speaker 1: would be really torn about the idea of regulation. On
Speaker 1: the one hand, regulation would take some of the heat
Speaker 1: off the company when things like this pop up. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, it could force you know, the company
Speaker 1: to act more frequently in cases that involve influential users
Speaker 1: and other entities on the platform when they say controversial
Speaker 1: or perhaps you know, stuff that outright violates terms of service.
Speaker 1: As I've said many times, Facebook's revenue comes from advertising,
Speaker 1: and it makes more money the longer people are actively
Speaker 1: on the platform, so it wants to keep people there
Speaker 1: as much as possible. That means there's a real incentive
Speaker 1: for Facebook to allow controversial, influential people to be active
Speaker 1: on Facebook because they drive a lot of engagement, and
Speaker 1: engagement means more ads get served, and that means Facebook
Speaker 1: makes more money. So I imagine the company is not
Speaker 1: super jazzed about being more proactive in dealing with influential
Speaker 1: people who violate terms of service. Moving on, mining frequently
Speaker 1: has a negative environmental impact, and for that reason, some
Speaker 1: regions have put in a lot of restrictions around mining.
Speaker 1: But what if the mining was virtual, Well, the state
Speaker 1: legislature of New York is considering a bill that would
Speaker 1: put a three year ban on bitcoin mining in the
Speaker 1: state while the state conducts an environmental study looking at
Speaker 1: the impact of bitcoin mining. So let's do a quick
Speaker 1: refresher on what bitcoin mining is. So it's all about
Speaker 1: a proof of work approach to blockchain, and I'll dive
Speaker 1: in just a little bit. There is a network of
Speaker 1: computers that are connected into the bitcoin system. This system
Speaker 1: keeps track of every single transaction that's made with bitcoin
Speaker 1: all over the world, and every computer that's connected to
Speaker 1: this system can see the shared ledger of all transactions.
Speaker 1: These transactions get packed into blocks, and then once a
Speaker 1: block of transactions gets validated by this system, that block
Speaker 1: joins a chain of past transaction blocks that stretches all
Speaker 1: the way back to the very origins of bitcoin. Each
Speaker 1: block that follows builds upon the blocks that were behind.
Speaker 1: That also means there's no way to go in and
Speaker 1: alter a past block, which would mean that you know
Speaker 1: someone's potentially trying to erase or duplicate a transaction. You
Speaker 1: can't do that because if you make a change to
Speaker 1: a past block, it affects every single block that followed.
Speaker 1: It further down the chain up to the most recent one.
Speaker 1: That means everyone would notice the change because everyone can
Speaker 1: see the entire chain of transactions. The process of validating
Speaker 1: these transactions includes mining, and essentially mining involves very fast
Speaker 1: computers trying to guess an extremely large number. Now, how
Speaker 1: difficult that number is to guess depends upon the amount
Speaker 1: of processing power that's being thrown at the bitcoin mining system.
Speaker 1: The goal is to stick to a ten minute cycle
Speaker 1: as closely as possible, and so the system actually dynamically
Speaker 1: shifts the difficulty of this problem. This guessing problem based
Speaker 1: on how much processing power is being thrown at the
Speaker 1: system at that time. The computer that guess is correctly
Speaker 1: gets rewarded a certain number of bitcoins six point two
Speaker 1: five right now, and each bitcoin is worth more than
Speaker 1: fifty dollars apiece. And since there is a chance to
Speaker 1: mind bitcoins every ten minutes, and each successful mining operation
Speaker 1: nets you more than six bitcoins, it can be really
Speaker 1: profitable to own the computer that makes the right guess.
Speaker 1: But these guesses require computers that are ridiculously powerful and fast.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin miners will set up networks of computer systems just
Speaker 1: dedicated to this, using multiple GPUs. GPUs work really well
Speaker 1: because they lean heavily on parallel processing, so they are
Speaker 1: particularly well suited for bitcoin mining. And there is a
Speaker 1: huge incentive to build out these really powerful computer systems
Speaker 1: to do this, which is expensive, but obviously the payoff
Speaker 1: is huge. So if you make the investment and it works,
Speaker 1: then it pays for itself very very quickly. I mean
Speaker 1: every ten minutes you have another chance to net another
Speaker 1: six plus bitcoins. However, running these things requires a lot
Speaker 1: of electricity, and this is where we get to the
Speaker 1: environmental impact. If the source of electricity is a power
Speaker 1: plant that's powered by fossil fuels, the mining operation is
Speaker 1: contributing to carbon emissions and other types of pollution and
Speaker 1: climate change. In upstate New York, bitcoin miners have been
Speaker 1: using converted fossil fuel power stations to set up shop.
Speaker 1: The price of electricity is really low there. That helps
Speaker 1: cap the costs of operation because running these systems means
Speaker 1: you're not just using up electricity, You've gotta pay for
Speaker 1: that electricity too, So you want to have the lowest
Speaker 1: amount of cost per electrical unit in order for you
Speaker 1: to be able to run the business profitably. The weather
Speaker 1: and Upstate New York also plays a factor. It's a
Speaker 1: little cooler than in other parts of the country. That
Speaker 1: reduces the costs of keeping all those processors cool enough
Speaker 1: so that they don't overheat. Now the state is potentially
Speaker 1: banning mining operations for three years in order to make
Speaker 1: sure that the environmental impact isn't more harmful than good.
Speaker 1: And honestly, I think this points at how the proof
Speaker 1: of work approach, that's what I described earlier, it's flawed.
Speaker 1: If the cryptocurrency becomes the center of speculation like Bitcoin did,
Speaker 1: and it has an incredibly inflated value, then you'll see
Speaker 1: the sort of rush to corner of the market on it,
Speaker 1: and you get these unintended consequences. There are other methods
Speaker 1: that blockchains can use besides proof of work, but they
Speaker 1: too can have their own drawbacks. I'll have to do
Speaker 1: a full episode on it in the future to kind
Speaker 1: of just gcribe the different methodologies and the pros and
Speaker 1: cons of each one. And now for our segment called
Speaker 1: News that Continues to Baffle, Jonathan IBM announced it has
Speaker 1: created a silicon chip that has two nanometer architecture, meaning
Speaker 1: the components on this chip measure just two nanometers in
Speaker 1: size on an individual basis. Uh. The nanometer, by the way,
Speaker 1: is one billionth of a meter. Recently, Apple introduced the
Speaker 1: in one chip and its new Imax. These have a
Speaker 1: five nanometer architecture. Other companies are relying on chips that
Speaker 1: have a seven nanometer architecture. Intel is still using architecture
Speaker 1: that's got ten or fourteen nanometer components on it. So
Speaker 1: what's the big deal with all this. Well, smaller components
Speaker 1: means that potentially you can cram more of those components
Speaker 1: onto a single chip. So if you've got a chip
Speaker 1: that measures I don't know, a centimeter per side, well,
Speaker 1: then you could fit way more to nanometer scale com
Speaker 1: opponents on that than you could with fourteen nanometer scale components.
Speaker 1: And more components potentially means more powerful and more power
Speaker 1: efficient chips. Now, it's not quite as simple as shove
Speaker 1: more transistors on there. Uh. The way you lay out
Speaker 1: the transistors matters a lot. In fact, it matters so
Speaker 1: much that Intel, while having those larger components than its competitors,
Speaker 1: is really able to pack those components in at a
Speaker 1: density that allows for a lot of power output. But
Speaker 1: another big element, as I said here, is efficiency, as
Speaker 1: in power efficiency. IBM says these chips will allow for
Speaker 1: greater power efficiency, which means longer battery life. But the
Speaker 1: thing that blows my mind is that when you get
Speaker 1: down to this super tiny scale you have to deal
Speaker 1: with some fundamentally puzzling problems. You're getting down to the
Speaker 1: level of quantum effects, which we don't experience in our
Speaker 1: day to day lives, right, you just don't. You've got
Speaker 1: to get down super super tiny before you start to
Speaker 1: observe quantum effects. And one of those quantum effects is
Speaker 1: called tunneling. And this is a doozy all right, I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you a very high level view of this.
Speaker 1: So circuits, when you really get down to it, our
Speaker 1: channels for electricity, and electricity generally speaking, is the flow
Speaker 1: of electrons. Well, it turns out that we really can't
Speaker 1: say exactly where an electron is at any given moment.
Speaker 1: It's more like we can have a general idea of
Speaker 1: where that electron might be. You can think of it
Speaker 1: as a hazy field, and the electron could be anywhere
Speaker 1: in that field. There's certain probabilities that it's at any
Speaker 1: one position within that general field. All right, So let's
Speaker 1: say we've got this field and it's moving down the hallway. Now,
Speaker 1: the walls on either side of this hallway are pretty thick,
Speaker 1: so the field can't overlap into the space beyond those walls,
Speaker 1: so the electron can only be somewhere within the field
Speaker 1: that's inside hall But then the field gets to the
Speaker 1: end of the hallway and there's a closed door at
Speaker 1: the end. This door is not as thick as the
Speaker 1: walls in the hallway, and so once the field gets
Speaker 1: close enough, some of the field actually overlaps to the
Speaker 1: other side of the door. This means there is a
Speaker 1: small probability that the electron is actually on the opposite
Speaker 1: side of the doorway, and as long as something is possible,
Speaker 1: it means that sometimes it actually happens. So that means
Speaker 1: sometimes that electron is on the opposite side of the doorway,
Speaker 1: as if it had tunneled through the door or if
Speaker 1: the door had opened. Neither of those things actually happened.
Speaker 1: The door remain closed, the electron did not physically tunnel
Speaker 1: through the door. It's just that it was possible to
Speaker 1: be on the other side, so sometimes it is. Now
Speaker 1: this is really hard for us to grasp because nothing
Speaker 1: in our experience behaves this way. But when you start
Speaker 1: making chips that are down at this scale, you have
Speaker 1: to factor these kind of things in with that design.
Speaker 1: For a long time, physicists were leaning toward the end
Speaker 1: of Moore's law, or at least the end of seeing
Speaker 1: smaller components on chips because of these fundamental quantum effects.
Speaker 1: So I always find it astounding when engineers figure out
Speaker 1: ways to work around it. And to be clear, I
Speaker 1: don't know what IBM has done in order to kind
Speaker 1: of avoid these issues, because once you get down to
Speaker 1: one to three nanometers, tunneling is something that I just
Speaker 1: don't know how you avoid it. So I'm very curious
Speaker 1: to learn more about this particular process. Twitter has created
Speaker 1: a new feature that asks if you really seriously want
Speaker 1: to send that mean spirited tweet out into the world.
Speaker 1: The feature scans the words you use in a tweet,
Speaker 1: and if those words are quote unquote mean, then Twitter
Speaker 1: will send a prompt you asking if you really want
Speaker 1: to send that tweet out, and you've got three options.
Speaker 1: You can go ahead and tweet it, you can edit
Speaker 1: the message, or you can just delete it. Now I
Speaker 1: know that in the past I have shot off a
Speaker 1: tweet in anger and then regretted it, and a lot
Speaker 1: of other folks have done way worse than that. Sometimes
Speaker 1: nothing comes of it and you just look a little petty,
Speaker 1: or in my case, a lot petty. But other times,
Speaker 1: sending off a mean spirited tweet brings along with it
Speaker 1: some serious consequences that can have a huge impact in
Speaker 1: a person's life. I'm sure you can all think of
Speaker 1: a few cases in which someone tweeted something that they
Speaker 1: either thought was justified or funny or whatever, and it
Speaker 1: ended up causing them serious problems. People have lost jobs
Speaker 1: over this stuff. So Twitter now has this feature to
Speaker 1: help people take a moment to consider what they're saying
Speaker 1: and how they're saying it before they commit to it.
Speaker 1: And I like this. Twitter has always been a tool
Speaker 1: that allows people to shoot off thoughts without any real delay,
Speaker 1: and that's not always a good thing. I've joked in
Speaker 1: the past that I kind of want to Twitter like
Speaker 1: service where I can type and angry messages and hit send,
Speaker 1: but the messages don't actually go anywhere. It's just a
Speaker 1: way to vent without actually making things worse. This is
Speaker 1: kind of like that, though, of course you do still
Speaker 1: have the option to go through with it and tweet
Speaker 1: out that awful thing you typed. I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: extensive Twitter's filter is or what criteria it uses to
Speaker 1: scan for quote unquote mean language, but the company has
Speaker 1: been testing the feature out with a limited number of
Speaker 1: users for more than a year and says that it
Speaker 1: saw thirty four percent of users revising messages after receiving
Speaker 1: a prompt, and that as a whole, they saw fewer
Speaker 1: offensive messages in general, like people began to adjust the
Speaker 1: way that they would word things after receiving prompts a
Speaker 1: few times. I think that's a step in the right direction,
Speaker 1: and it may mean in the future will really know
Speaker 1: who the jerks are on Twitter. Those are the folks
Speaker 1: who still send out mean spirited messages despite having this prompt.
Speaker 1: They could also be bots, but at least know who
Speaker 1: the jerks and the bots are, so I'm all for it.
Speaker 1: One of the revelations out of the ongoing legal battles
Speaker 1: between game developer Epic and Apple is that Microsoft has
Speaker 1: never made a profit off their hardware sales for the Xbox. Now.
Speaker 1: This doesn't come as a shock, but it is confirmation
Speaker 1: of what was a widely held belief in the industry.
Speaker 1: Lori Right, the VP of Business Development at Xbox, was
Speaker 1: called as an witness for Epic, and the fact that
Speaker 1: the company loses money on every Xbox sold is kind
Speaker 1: of a crucial part to epics argument. So let's break
Speaker 1: this down. So Microsoft sells the Xbox at cost or
Speaker 1: at a loss, making no money on hardware sales. To
Speaker 1: turn Xbox into a revenue generator, the company has to
Speaker 1: make up for that loss in other ways, and one
Speaker 1: way is to develop games and sell them for the console.
Speaker 1: Another way is to offer services through the console that
Speaker 1: require a subscription h this is why the Xbox Game
Speaker 1: Pass is really important and product for Microsoft. And another
Speaker 1: way is to take a cut of in game transactions
Speaker 1: for certain titles like Epics Fortnite. So when players make
Speaker 1: an in game purchase in Fortnite, Xbox takes at cut. Well,
Speaker 1: Apple does the same thing. And yet what started off
Speaker 1: this whole legal battle was Epic trying to sidestep Apple
Speaker 1: by offering users a work around to make in game
Speaker 1: purchases on iOS versions of Fortnite without going through Apple's system,
Speaker 1: which meant Apple would not get the thirty percent cut
Speaker 1: of those transactions. So why did Epic try to sidestep
Speaker 1: this with Apple but not with Microsoft. Well, according to Epic,
Speaker 1: the big difference here is that Microsoft's revenue depends upon
Speaker 1: these sorts of transactions because the company is not making
Speaker 1: money off hardware, whereas Apple isn't taking a loss on hardware.
Speaker 1: When Apple sells an iPhone, it does so at a profit,
Speaker 1: and so argues Epic, Microsoft has a justific cation for
Speaker 1: taking a cut, but Apple does not. Anyway, the interesting
Speaker 1: thing here is getting confirmation that so far Microsoft has
Speaker 1: never profited from the sale of Xbox consoles, though that
Speaker 1: could eventually change with the latest generation of hardware. Also
Speaker 1: this week, SpaceX had a successful test of a Starship
Speaker 1: prototype vehicle. The starship is shaped like a rocket and
Speaker 1: launches vertically from the ground. During descent, the starship maintains
Speaker 1: a horizontal orientation for most of the journey back to
Speaker 1: the surface, but engages its rocket engines to flip the
Speaker 1: spacecraft back into a vertical position before its final descent
Speaker 1: legs so it can land vertically on a landing pad.
Speaker 1: SpaceX has held a few tests of this type of spacecraft,
Speaker 1: but all the earlier tests ended with those test vehicles
Speaker 1: being destroyed, or, as the New York Times tweeted, quote
Speaker 1: SpaceX successfully landed a prototype of a spacecraft it hopes
Speaker 1: to one day sent to the Moon and Mars. It's
Speaker 1: the first time the vehicle didn't explode. End quote. I
Speaker 1: had detect some shade in that tweet. I wonder if
Speaker 1: the New York Times got that prompt before they sent it. HM. Well,
Speaker 1: that wraps up the news for Thursday, May six one.
Speaker 1: I hope you are all well. I am very much
Speaker 1: well on the way to being fully minded, so I
Speaker 1: appreciate that. If you have any suggestions for topics I
Speaker 1: should cover on tech Stuff, send them my way on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is text Stuff H s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
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