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 iHeart Radio. And
Speaker 1: how the tech already done. It's time for the tech
Speaker 1: news for Thursday, February twenty two. Almost totally read that
Speaker 1: date wrong. Um And and first personal update. Uh, those
Speaker 1: who have been listening this week know that I have
Speaker 1: been dealing with COVID. Despite taking every precaution and avoiding
Speaker 1: tons of fun stuff, I still got the darned thing.
Speaker 1: And I'm feeling a little better. So that's that's the
Speaker 1: personal news. Just wanted to get that all the way.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that means I'm on the other side of it.
Speaker 1: Um And that in a couple of days I can
Speaker 1: emerge from isolation and become a butterfly. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that's how that works. I gotta be honest, I haven't
Speaker 1: read up on it. But let's go with some tech news,
Speaker 1: and we'll start off with something fun for a change,
Speaker 1: because I know, I know the news can be pretty brutal,
Speaker 1: and I thought, why don't we do something fun and
Speaker 1: not just bury it. So Nintendo held one of its
Speaker 1: Nintendo Direct events yesterday and announced several upcoming titles. Sadly,
Speaker 1: there was no mention of either a Legend of Zelda
Speaker 1: Breath of the Wild follow up, nor was there any
Speaker 1: talk of a Metroid Prime sequel, but the company did
Speaker 1: share a trailer for Splatoon three, which is another sequel
Speaker 1: to the surprise hit franchise, in which you play as
Speaker 1: part squid, part kid, and all paintball maniac um. Actually
Speaker 1: really fun game, so I'm glad to see that. If
Speaker 1: you are a fan of soccer, or as it is
Speaker 1: known pretty much everywhere else but my home country, football,
Speaker 1: and you happen to love mar EO, you might be
Speaker 1: excited to learn more about Mario Striker's Battle League. It's
Speaker 1: the first Mario Striker's game in fifteen years and will
Speaker 1: feature five on five soccer matches, complete with special moves
Speaker 1: that you're not likely to see in games like FIFA.
Speaker 1: A trailer for Kirby and the Forgotten Land showed off
Speaker 1: the cotton candy ghost like critters tendency to gobble stuff up,
Speaker 1: including cars and vending machines, which was adorable and disturbing.
Speaker 1: As always, Nintendo also announced that Portal and Portal to
Speaker 1: two very good puzzle games that have amazing songs by
Speaker 1: Jonathan Colton, and them are both coming to the Switch
Speaker 1: at long last, though we don't know exactly when. They
Speaker 1: didn't give a date for that. Also, No Man's Sky,
Speaker 1: the game that lots of folks felt initially kind of
Speaker 1: overpromised and underdelivered, is also coming to the Switch. I
Speaker 1: also want to point out that since it's launch, Hello Games,
Speaker 1: the developer behind No Man's Sky, has released lots of
Speaker 1: updates that drastically add to the game's content. So while
Speaker 1: the initial response to No Man Sky was a bit
Speaker 1: like oh, it has since improved. There were several other
Speaker 1: announcements to that were done yesterday, so if you want
Speaker 1: to learn more, you should track down the video. It's
Speaker 1: available on YouTube on Nintendo's channel. It's also available through
Speaker 1: like every video game outlet will have a version of it,
Speaker 1: as well as like probably commentary on on what was announced,
Speaker 1: so check that out if you are a big fan
Speaker 1: of Nintendo. Now a quick update to our update to
Speaker 1: the Peloton story. So on Tuesday, I talked about how
Speaker 1: the beleaguered company famous for its connected stationary exercise bikes
Speaker 1: and treadmills, is going through what David Bowie would call
Speaker 1: cha cha changes. John Foley, the co founder and now
Speaker 1: former CEO of the company, has stepped into the role
Speaker 1: of executive Chairman of the board then, just to be
Speaker 1: clear fully, and his close colleagues control about eight percent
Speaker 1: of the board's voting power, so it's not like he's
Speaker 1: gone and forgotten. He's very much capable of being hands
Speaker 1: on here. Barry McCarthy, who came over from Spotify as
Speaker 1: Spotify's Chief financial Officer or CFO, is the new CEO
Speaker 1: of Peloton, and the company made an announcement that it
Speaker 1: would lay off around employees, or about twenty of its workforce.
Speaker 1: And now we've got a few more details. One is
Speaker 1: that to help take the sting out of those folks
Speaker 1: getting their walking papers, Peloton graciously through in a free
Speaker 1: year subscription to you guessed it, Peloton all to the
Speaker 1: employees who had been let go. And that's a big
Speaker 1: old yikes, Like, can you imagine working for a company
Speaker 1: that says, hey, we gotta fire you, but here's a
Speaker 1: coupon so you can buy some of our stuff. Because remember,
Speaker 1: the subscription is really most useful if you happen to
Speaker 1: also own one of the really expensive Peloton bikes or treadmills.
Speaker 1: Now you could just follow the online exercise routines on
Speaker 1: your own device like a tablet, and use some ordinary
Speaker 1: exercise bike or treadmill like a plebu. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: connected to the rest of the class in that sense,
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't have the ability to tag in with
Speaker 1: all the you know, competitive information, nor would you have
Speaker 1: the dynamic response capabilities of some of the more advanced
Speaker 1: Peloton equipment. So it's definitely not the full experience if
Speaker 1: you do it that way, But it would also mean
Speaker 1: that if you wanted to have the full experience, you
Speaker 1: would have to PLoP down several thousand dollars to buy
Speaker 1: the equipment to do it. So not the best way
Speaker 1: to send off people who have just been let go,
Speaker 1: and as you can imagine, a lot of affected employees
Speaker 1: were a bit miffed about this. So when the company
Speaker 1: held an all hands meeting to introduce Barry McCarthy to Peloton,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of former employees decided that they wanted
Speaker 1: to be part of that meeting too, and they were
Speaker 1: not terribly chipper about it. And this mess was probably
Speaker 1: upsetting to pretty much everyone involved. I'm sure McCarthy was
Speaker 1: a bit taken aback. The former employees were obviously very upset,
Speaker 1: and Peloton's current employees, I mean, that can't be great
Speaker 1: for morale to see a bunch of your former colleagues
Speaker 1: coming in and just like you know, lambasting the company
Speaker 1: and complaining and criticizing it. Not that a lot of
Speaker 1: I mean, there are plenty of people who still work
Speaker 1: at Peloton who also criticized the company. And meanwhile, investors
Speaker 1: who were already concerned about Peloton, some of them feel
Speaker 1: like the changes aren't actually addressing the underlying problems with
Speaker 1: a company. For example, black Well's Capital published a sixty
Speaker 1: five slide presentation criticizing Peloton and its attempts to right
Speaker 1: the ship, and some analysts argue that McCarthy, being a
Speaker 1: former CFO with no CEO experience, is the wrong leader
Speaker 1: for the job. There are a lot of folks wondering
Speaker 1: is this just Peloton trying to tread water until they
Speaker 1: can figure out which, if any suitor they want to
Speaker 1: go with in terms of like a acquisition, because there
Speaker 1: are companies like Amazon and Apple that are rumored to
Speaker 1: kind of be circling the waters. But yeah, that's where
Speaker 1: we are right now. You're probably aware, especially if you've
Speaker 1: been listening to my shows, that online services track a
Speaker 1: lot of your personal information. Facebook is probably the platform
Speaker 1: I think about most often in that context, but a
Speaker 1: study released by the marketing company You Are l Genius
Speaker 1: says that two other apps are really gobbling up information
Speaker 1: about you. One of those is YouTube, which is no
Speaker 1: shock there, and the other is TikTok. So with YouTube,
Speaker 1: we know that a lot of the this data tracking
Speaker 1: is revolving around how YouTube relies on data to both
Speaker 1: serve targeted ads to you and also to recommend more
Speaker 1: videos that are likely to keep you on the platform longer.
Speaker 1: And this is because, and I know I sound like
Speaker 1: a broken record here, the two goals of these kinds
Speaker 1: of platforms is to try and serve as many ads
Speaker 1: to the viewer as that viewer will tolerate, and to
Speaker 1: keep the viewer there for as long as you can
Speaker 1: so that you know, in turn you can ultimately serve
Speaker 1: them more ads. But then what about TikTok. Well, according
Speaker 1: to the study, TikTok is a bit of a different story. TikTok,
Speaker 1: which is owned by a parent company, byte Dance, and
Speaker 1: that's a Chinese company is mostly letting third party data
Speaker 1: trackers collect all that juicy information about users. Uh. The
Speaker 1: study identified fourteen trackers with TikTok, and thirteen of them
Speaker 1: were third party trackers. Now, that in turn means that
Speaker 1: we don't actually have very much information on what trackers
Speaker 1: are actually using TikTok in order to collect data, or
Speaker 1: what those companies are doing with the information that they're collecting.
Speaker 1: And that's probably not going to help TikTok fight against
Speaker 1: the perception that the company could potentially be collecting information
Speaker 1: on say, US citizens and then sending that information back
Speaker 1: to China. That's a narrative that TikTok has had to
Speaker 1: fight against for a few years now, and it really
Speaker 1: came to prominence when former US President Donald Trump tried
Speaker 1: to either force TikTok to shut down in the United
Speaker 1: States or to have an American company come and buy
Speaker 1: the service from byte Dance. Now, neither of those things
Speaker 1: actually happened, and the story gets a little bit worse.
Speaker 1: According to that marketing company, UH that you are l genius.
Speaker 1: TikTok's data tracking apparently persists even if a user goes
Speaker 1: into settings to opt out of tracking. Anyway, it's just
Speaker 1: something for you to think about, for you to talk
Speaker 1: fans out there. Your information is valuable and TikTok and
Speaker 1: lots of third parties are profiting off of it in
Speaker 1: some way. And again, if you want to interact with
Speaker 1: the Internet in any meaningful way, it typically means that
Speaker 1: you're also having to give up information about yourself. So
Speaker 1: it's really up to each person to decide how comfortable
Speaker 1: they are with that personally. I had TikTok for a
Speaker 1: couple of months last year before I decided to uninstall
Speaker 1: it because I'm past my expiration date for that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So it wasn't really so much about the
Speaker 1: dad tracking. It was just about me being old. All right,
Speaker 1: this old guy needs to take a quick break, but
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Apple reported recently to the US
Speaker 1: Securities and Exchange Commission that the company has ended partnerships
Speaker 1: with twelve smelting or refining companies out of concern that
Speaker 1: the companies operate in areas that have armed conflicts going
Speaker 1: on in them, thus making these conflict materials. So you
Speaker 1: may have heard terms like blood diamonds or conflict diamonds
Speaker 1: or conflict minerals or conflict medals. All that gets to
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here. So a lot of these
Speaker 1: kinds of operations take place in regions that are, to
Speaker 1: put it, mildly unstable politically, and there's a real concern
Speaker 1: that funding these operations ends up creating brutal conditions for
Speaker 1: the people who have to work there. Uh. There are
Speaker 1: stories about folks being forced to work in say mining
Speaker 1: operations or smelting or refining operations, and that essentially they
Speaker 1: become slave labor for very powerful company leaders. Those leaders
Speaker 1: might even employ armed forces, like armed guards to oversee
Speaker 1: the operations. And Apple has made a commitment to avoid
Speaker 1: contributing to these situations whenever it can detect them, which
Speaker 1: is different from saying that it can confidently say it
Speaker 1: doesn't support them at all, but rather if if evidence
Speaker 1: comes up that that is going on, the company has
Speaker 1: committed to severing those relationships. The only specific country that
Speaker 1: Apple referenced in this recent report is the Democratic Republic
Speaker 1: of the Congo, which has had a long history of
Speaker 1: oppressive mining and refining operations and also a long history
Speaker 1: of political instability. The company explained that the twelve refiners
Speaker 1: and smelters that cut ties with either did not meet
Speaker 1: standards or refused to participate in a third party audit
Speaker 1: of their operations. We often see issues like this arise
Speaker 1: in the tech sector, where much of the raw materials
Speaker 1: that we depend upon for our technology comes to us
Speaker 1: courtesy of oppressive working conditions in remote regions around the world.
Speaker 1: And back in two I actually did an episode of
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff with my former co host Chris Pallette where
Speaker 1: we talked about rare earth metals. I think it might
Speaker 1: be time to do an update on that, just to
Speaker 1: see where we stand today and why things are the
Speaker 1: way they are. The State of California's Department of Fair
Speaker 1: Employment and Housing has filed a racial discrimination complaint against
Speaker 1: electric car company Tesla. This complaint alleges that Tesla racially
Speaker 1: segregates workforces in its California factory and Fremont. Further, the
Speaker 1: complaint accuses the Fremont factory of having a truly toxic
Speaker 1: work environment that includes racial discrimination and abuses, with employees
Speaker 1: reporting that they have been the subject of verbal attacks,
Speaker 1: including racial slurs, and that they are regularly discriminated against
Speaker 1: when it comes to job assignments, compensation, promotion, and discipline.
Speaker 1: The agency goes on to make more specific and deeply
Speaker 1: upsetting accusations regarding working conditions in the factory, and this
Speaker 1: isn't by any means the first we've heard of these accusations,
Speaker 1: and there have also been related cases. For example, last December,
Speaker 1: six women filed a lawsuit against Tesla, alleging that the
Speaker 1: factory workplace is a dangerous place for women and that
Speaker 1: the factory has a culture of sexual harassment. The company
Speaker 1: released a statement saying that quote Tesla has always taken
Speaker 1: disciplinary action and terminated employees for professional misconduct, including those
Speaker 1: who utter racial slurs or harass others in various ways
Speaker 1: end quote. Tesla also has recently issued a recall for
Speaker 1: more than half a million vehicles, specifically some model S,
Speaker 1: Model X, and Model Y Tesla's from twenty two model years,
Speaker 1: as well as some Model three vehicles from twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty two model years. So what's going on? Well,
Speaker 1: the issue is that the US National Highway Traffic Safety
Speaker 1: Administration or nht s A, has, after more than a
Speaker 1: year's worth of discussions, determined that Tesla's boom box feature
Speaker 1: could obscure important sounds that would otherwise alert people about
Speaker 1: the presence of an electric vehicle coming down the road.
Speaker 1: So by that I mean here in the United States,
Speaker 1: electric vehicle manufacturing companies have to create a method for
Speaker 1: electric cars to make an audible sound while they are
Speaker 1: moving at speeds up to thirty kilometers per hour or
Speaker 1: eighteen point six miles per hour. And the reason for
Speaker 1: that is because electric vehicles can operate much more quietly
Speaker 1: than gasoline or diesel powered vehicles, and the sound can
Speaker 1: alert pedestrians, cyclists, and the visually impaired that there is
Speaker 1: a car coming. But in December twenty Tesla launched the
Speaker 1: boom box function, which lets Tesla drivers pump sound from
Speaker 1: their car based entertainment system through the speakers that otherwise
Speaker 1: the car uses as its pedestrian warning system. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, the speakers that would otherwise indicate, hey, there's
Speaker 1: an electric car coming, would now be saying, you know,
Speaker 1: who let the dogs out? And the nht s A said, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you need to keep that system dedicated to making an
Speaker 1: identifiable noise so that folks know a car is coming. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, how obnoxious can Tesla be. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't mind if a jerk face is listening to awful
Speaker 1: music and the privacy of their own car, but once
Speaker 1: they start pumping it out at the rest of us,
Speaker 1: that is an awful feature. Anyway, Tesla is pushing on
Speaker 1: an update to these vehicles that will disable boom box
Speaker 1: mode while the cars are in motion or in neutral,
Speaker 1: so I guess it will only work if the car
Speaker 1: is in park. So I guess you could use it
Speaker 1: for like a block party or something. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but boy howdy, this just reinforces my perception that Tesla
Speaker 1: is the dude bro of car companies. Many years ago,
Speaker 1: I appeared as an extra in a science fiction horror
Speaker 1: film called The Signal. And just so you know, there's
Speaker 1: more than one movie that has The Signal and its title,
Speaker 1: you would need to find the one that has Justin
Speaker 1: Welburn in it to see the one that I'm in.
Speaker 1: And also you wouldn't see me because I'm on screen
Speaker 1: for less than a second, and it's also in a
Speaker 1: big chaotic crowd scene. And also it's just the back
Speaker 1: of my head. So the movie's worth watching, you just
Speaker 1: won't see me in it. Anyway. The premise of that
Speaker 1: film is that there's this mysterious signal that gets broadcast
Speaker 1: over pretty much every communication channel, and that once humans
Speaker 1: are exposed to it, they go a bit mental. They
Speaker 1: either become incredibly violent or terrified. Well, our next story
Speaker 1: involves a radio broadcast that had a negative effect, but
Speaker 1: not on people. In this case, however, it did affect
Speaker 1: infotainment systems. K U O W ninety point nine, which
Speaker 1: is an NPR station in the Seattle area, broadcast the
Speaker 1: signal that ended up breaking the infotainment system for some
Speaker 1: Mazda vehicles. The affected cars, which included Mazda's with model
Speaker 1: years from TOEV, would get stuck to that radio station,
Speaker 1: which is very clever in pr nice way to absolutely
Speaker 1: dominate the market. I'm kidding, it was not on purpose. Uh.
Speaker 1: The infotainment screens would then go dead and the whole
Speaker 1: system would try and go into reboot mode over and
Speaker 1: over and over again. So it's start the cycle of
Speaker 1: trying to reboot but never actually boot. To make matters worse,
Speaker 1: the fix was to replace these systems Connectivity Master Unit
Speaker 1: or CMU, and that is expensive, likes and more to
Speaker 1: the point, right now, it's practically impossible to find them
Speaker 1: because we have an ongoing chip shortage. So you might
Speaker 1: wonder what the heck actually happened. How did a radio
Speaker 1: broadcast brick an infotainment system. Well, it turns out the
Speaker 1: radio station was sending out image files via radio waves,
Speaker 1: and typically an infotainment system with a screen would handle
Speaker 1: this right. You would get the incoming signal and the
Speaker 1: screen would display whatever the image was. So you can
Speaker 1: do this with advertising all that kind of stuff for
Speaker 1: station identification, whatever it might be. But in this case,
Speaker 1: the image files that MPR was sending out they lacked
Speaker 1: a file extension, and apparently the Mazda infotainment systems from
Speaker 1: those model years just can't handle that, and the systems
Speaker 1: became corrupted. Yells them now. I again, I'm not blaming
Speaker 1: MPR for this at all. This is a fault with
Speaker 1: those infotainment systems right this it's it's kind of crazy
Speaker 1: to think about that a simply a file that's lacking
Speaker 1: an extension would be enough to completely shut down the system,
Speaker 1: and there is no easy fix to this. It pretty
Speaker 1: much means that affected Mazda owners have to take their
Speaker 1: vehicles into a Mazda dealership and work with them to
Speaker 1: solve the issue by submitting a good will request to
Speaker 1: the warranty department in order to get the ball rolling.
Speaker 1: So bad news for MASDA owners in Seattle. UM, I
Speaker 1: guess it can be confident that they're not listening to
Speaker 1: this show on the radio right now, if they if
Speaker 1: they're affected. Okay, well, we have a few more stories
Speaker 1: to cover, but before we get to that, let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. Okay, time to wrap up the stories
Speaker 1: for today. One of those is that SpaceX recently lost
Speaker 1: around forty of its Starlink satellites due to a solar storm. Now,
Speaker 1: let's break that down so we can understand what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. First. What is starlink. Starlink is space X
Speaker 1: is satellite based Internet provider service. The idea being that
Speaker 1: you launched thousands of these tiny satellites into orbit enough
Speaker 1: so that there's consistent coverage over the service areas at
Speaker 1: any given time of day, and customers down on the
Speaker 1: ground will use satellite dishes that will tune in and
Speaker 1: then track satellites, uh switching between satellites when when they're
Speaker 1: starting to pass out of view, and maintain a satellite
Speaker 1: based Internet connection, which is obviously slower or at least
Speaker 1: less responsive, is a lot more latency than you would
Speaker 1: get with say, fiber, but in a lot of rural
Speaker 1: areas it's the only real method you can get to
Speaker 1: get Internet. Heck, I have a little house where that's
Speaker 1: the case, and I just don't have Internet. They're not
Speaker 1: by choice, but by the fact that I don't have
Speaker 1: any options really. So the company has already launched thousands
Speaker 1: of small satellites into low Earth orbit to provide coverage
Speaker 1: for customers, and right now there are very few customers.
Speaker 1: It's more or less in a limited rollout. Solar storms, then,
Speaker 1: are events in which we get a burst of radiation
Speaker 1: and sometimes particles that are sent out from the Sun.
Speaker 1: So these can sometimes but not always, include coronal mass
Speaker 1: ejections or c m s. But in any event, a
Speaker 1: solar storm means that the Earth gets hit by a
Speaker 1: burst of energy and sometimes particles, and fortunately our magneto
Speaker 1: sphere and our atmosphere do a pretty good job of
Speaker 1: shielding us down here on the surface unless it's like
Speaker 1: really intense, and then we can get things like blackouts
Speaker 1: and stuff. Most of the time we're okay, though, but
Speaker 1: for stuff in space it's a different matter. They're outside
Speaker 1: of those protective barriers for the most part, and the
Speaker 1: energy can overwhelm electrical systems in space or pose as
Speaker 1: a potential health hazard to astronauts who might get dangerous
Speaker 1: doses of radiation like gamma radiation and stuff. So that's
Speaker 1: something that we've always been concerned with. But in this case,
Speaker 1: the solar storm appears to have increased atmospheric drag, and
Speaker 1: you might think, hey, space don't got no atmosphere, and yeah,
Speaker 1: in deep space, that's true. There's no atmosphere here on Earth.
Speaker 1: Once you get above a hundred kilometers in altitude or
Speaker 1: sixty two miles up, you reach a point where the
Speaker 1: atmosphere is typically too thin for any aerodynamic lift among
Speaker 1: other things. There are other markers for that altitude as well. However,
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that the atmosphere just stops above a
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers. There still is atmosphere further out, though obviously
Speaker 1: it gets progressively thinner. There's more space between molecules as
Speaker 1: you continue to go higher an altitude. The operational altitude
Speaker 1: for Starling satellites is at five fifty kilometers or three
Speaker 1: d forty miles out from the Earth, but even at
Speaker 1: that altitude there is still atmospheric drag. In fact, SpaceX
Speaker 1: depends upon atmospheric drag because the idea is that these
Speaker 1: satellites will have a limited shelf life and they will
Speaker 1: eventually break down and stop operating. So they're at an
Speaker 1: orbit where atmospheric drag will cause the orbit to decay.
Speaker 1: The satellite will slow down and start to fall back
Speaker 1: to Earth eventually, not immediately, but over the course of years.
Speaker 1: And these satellites are small enough that they will just
Speaker 1: disintegrate upon re entry. Nothing should survive re entry at all,
Speaker 1: so there shouldn't be any danger of it like colliding
Speaker 1: with anything here on Earth, and that way, these satellites
Speaker 1: won't just sit there up in space cluttering it up forever. However,
Speaker 1: in this case, forty out of forty nine satellites that
Speaker 1: were recently launched and were on their way to their
Speaker 1: operational orbit experienced increased drag that slowed them down enough
Speaker 1: to cause them to re enter earlier than desired, so
Speaker 1: they went coutput. Speaking of SpaceX and Starlink, NASA submitted
Speaker 1: a statement to the Federal Communications Commission, or f c
Speaker 1: C here in the United States, saying that the agency
Speaker 1: is a little bit concerned about Starlink's future plans, which
Speaker 1: include launching thirty thousand satellites into low Earth orbit. Starlink
Speaker 1: had received the go ahead for twelve thousand satellites in
Speaker 1: its initial run, but now it's looking at second generation
Speaker 1: of satellites, you know, like thirty thousand of them, and
Speaker 1: NASA has cited concerns that putting so many small satellites
Speaker 1: into low Earth orbit could cause complications for future space missions,
Speaker 1: as they could potentially increase quote the frequency of conjunction
Speaker 1: events end quote. That is, they could be in the
Speaker 1: way and at best that could cause a mission delay
Speaker 1: as launch determines, oh, we can't launch because this is
Speaker 1: going to put the payload in the path of one
Speaker 1: of these satellites. At worst, it could mean that you
Speaker 1: are creating the potential for collisions and those can be catastrophic. Now,
Speaker 1: these Starlet Link satellites are pretty small, but you gotta
Speaker 1: remember everything up in orbit is moving wicked fast, and
Speaker 1: momentum is a heck of a thing. Momentum is not
Speaker 1: just your mass, it's also acceleration. And if you're accelerating
Speaker 1: super fast, then even if it's small, it's going to
Speaker 1: cause a massive amount of of impact because of that
Speaker 1: conservation of momentum. Anyway, several astrophysicists have been expressing concerns
Speaker 1: about plans like starlink, because you know, it's not just
Speaker 1: SpaceX that's doing this. I don't want to suggest that
Speaker 1: there are other companies that are also looking into launching
Speaker 1: thousands of satellites in order to create these sorts of services,
Speaker 1: and that could potentially make it harder for earthbound astronomers
Speaker 1: to get any work done without interference. One astrophysicist, Jonathan McDowell,
Speaker 1: has recommended that maybe we take things a little bit
Speaker 1: slowly and see how we can work with a few
Speaker 1: thousand operating satellites and find out how that affects astronomical
Speaker 1: observations before we open the floodgates to tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of them. And we're gonna stay with space for our
Speaker 1: final story. Last month, a representative from exo Analytic Solutions
Speaker 1: detected something kind of interesting out there in space. So
Speaker 1: exo Analytic is a private company here in the United
Speaker 1: States that uses optic telescopes around the world to track
Speaker 1: the position of various satellites in orbit, which, as I
Speaker 1: was just indicating, that's important if you want to say
Speaker 1: avoid collisions and delays and stuff. Anyway, the rep explained
Speaker 1: that in January of this year, a satellite called s
Speaker 1: J one, which is a Chinese satellite, mosey don up
Speaker 1: to another Chinese satellite called Compass G two. Now Compass
Speaker 1: G two has been in orbit since two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: and it was intended to be part of a navigation system,
Speaker 1: but it stopped working not long after it had been
Speaker 1: launched and has just been dead weight or dead weightless,
Speaker 1: which that dead joke does almost works but doesn't quite whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: s J twenty one approached this dead satellite, apparently connected
Speaker 1: to it, and then the two moved off together, and
Speaker 1: then the dead satellite was tossed toward a different orbit
Speaker 1: three kilometers away, an orbit that's out of the way
Speaker 1: of other stuff. I've seen it referred to as a
Speaker 1: graveyard orbit. It. So the conclusion this rep from Exo
Speaker 1: Analytics made, and which I should add this is a
Speaker 1: conclusion that has not been verified by China, but then
Speaker 1: that's no surprise. The conclusion is that the s J
Speaker 1: twenty one satellite was acting as a space tugboat pulling
Speaker 1: the dead satellite away before the SJ one satellite then
Speaker 1: would return to its operational orbit, which is a geo
Speaker 1: stationary orbit above the Congo Basin. Now a lot of
Speaker 1: countries are creating special spacecraft that are intended to do
Speaker 1: something similar to this. Uh. The idea being that they
Speaker 1: could be used to cut way back on the space
Speaker 1: junk that's in orbit and continuously poses a threat to
Speaker 1: space operations and astronomy and such. And of course there's
Speaker 1: also some concern that countries that are developing this tech
Speaker 1: could lead to weaponizing it, where a space capable country
Speaker 1: launches a spacecraft like this to not move one of
Speaker 1: their satellites out of the way, but to target and
Speaker 1: enemies satellite infrastructure. So imagine using something like this to
Speaker 1: go after the communications satellites that supports, say the United States.
Speaker 1: So far, countries do not seem to be, at least
Speaker 1: outwardly pursuing this as a legit strategy, but I thought
Speaker 1: it was neat anyway. That is the news for Thursday,
Speaker 1: February twenty twenty two. I hope you are all well.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics that I should cover
Speaker 1: in future, episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out. The
Speaker 1: best way to do that is on Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: for the show is tech Stuff hs W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again, Really Sick. Tech Stuff is an
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