Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey there, and.
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech are you.
Speaker 1: It's time for the tech news for Tuesday, July twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. And let's get this out of the
Speaker 1: way first. Elon Musk has rushed into changing Twitter into
Speaker 1: his long talked about it does Everything app called X.
Speaker 1: Musk actually has a long history with X. He actually
Speaker 1: also has a lot of x'es. Back in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, Musk was part of a group that founded
Speaker 1: a site called x dot com. It was essentially an
Speaker 1: online bank. Then they acquired a competing service called Confinity,
Speaker 1: and primarily they became own as a service that allowed
Speaker 1: users to do money transfers over the internet. X dot
Speaker 1: com was purchased by eBay and became PayPal, and Elon
Speaker 1: Musk was subsequently ousted from PayPal when Peter Thiel led
Speaker 1: a coup and his group gave Elon Musk the boot.
Speaker 1: Apparently they found him difficult to work with, but of
Speaker 1: course by that time he had already received his massive
Speaker 1: payout of eBay purchasing the company, so he was well
Speaker 1: on his way from going from being wealthy to obscenely wealthy.
Speaker 1: The domain X dot com remained at PayPal for more
Speaker 1: than a decade. However, in twenty seventeen, Musk purchased the
Speaker 1: rights to the name from PayPal for nostalgic reasons. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: over in China, the company ten Cent had in twenty
Speaker 1: eleven released an app called we Chat. As Stefan would say,
Speaker 1: this app hasing instant messaging, voice messaging, one to many
Speaker 1: messaging like Twitter, mobile payments, and other social media functions.
Speaker 1: Probably the worst Saturday Night Live sketch I've ever done.
Speaker 1: When Elon Musk started talking about acquiring Twitter, he also
Speaker 1: said his long term plan was to incorporate Twitter's functionality
Speaker 1: into an everything app similar to we Chat, but for
Speaker 1: the rest of the world, and that he was going
Speaker 1: to call this app X.
Speaker 2: Well. This past weekend, Musk.
Speaker 1: Started making those changes, So if you visit Twitter dot com,
Speaker 1: you'll see that there's now an X logo in place
Speaker 1: of the once familiar bird logo that had been there
Speaker 1: for ages.
Speaker 2: It's gone now.
Speaker 1: There's been no shortage of criticisms for this move. A
Speaker 1: lot of folks question the wisdom of ditching more than
Speaker 1: a decade of branding and ip. In fact, Twitter and
Speaker 1: tweeting are common words in the text sphere, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people are suggesting that it's just a really
Speaker 1: bad move to just unceremoniously ditch all that the police
Speaker 1: also thought it was a bad move temporarily, or at
Speaker 1: least that the physical act of taking the word Twitter
Speaker 1: down outside the company's HQ was a really bad move
Speaker 1: because that involved a crane that blocked two lanes of
Speaker 1: traffic on a busy street, and there was a question
Speaker 1: about whether or not Elon Musk had bothered to get
Speaker 1: a permit to do that. Anyway, the crew only managed
Speaker 1: to remove the twitt from the logo before the delays
Speaker 1: set in, so the er was still on there. I
Speaker 1: almost said that the crew managed to remove the twit,
Speaker 1: but Elon's still at the company, so I guess that's
Speaker 1: not true. AO, The stompage was just a temporary delay.
Speaker 1: The police determined that no crime was being committed, and
Speaker 1: so you know, they didn't actually charge anyone with anything.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: Musk says that the twins name once made sense back
Speaker 1: in the day when you were limited to sending messages
Speaker 1: of one hundred and forty or fewer characters, but these
Speaker 1: days you can post a lot more stuff, including long
Speaker 1: form video. So he argues Twitter as a name doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense personally. I disagree. I don't think that
Speaker 1: the increase in services and capability and functionality has negated
Speaker 1: the sense of the name. But then again, I also
Speaker 1: don't have even one billion dollars to my name, so
Speaker 1: what do I know. Musk also said that tweets should
Speaker 1: now be called x's, and maybe that'll catch on. There's
Speaker 1: also the possibility that Musk will just gut this newly
Speaker 1: renamed service of some of its features as he pushes
Speaker 1: for X to be the everything app he wants it
Speaker 1: to be. You know. Rumor has it that he doesn't
Speaker 1: really like the retweet feature and that that might just
Speaker 1: be you know, on on borrowed time. Now, there are
Speaker 1: questions remaining that will he be able to succeed, Will
Speaker 1: he be able to create an X app that has
Speaker 1: some but not all, of Twitter's functionality as well as
Speaker 1: other functions and make it a success, or maybe other
Speaker 1: services like Threads or blue Sky or Mastodon will take
Speaker 1: the reins, or maybe people will just come to the
Speaker 1: conclusion that they are fed up with Twitter style social platforms.
Speaker 1: I know I'm one of those. I technically have a
Speaker 1: Thread's account and a blue Sky account and a mastadon account,
Speaker 1: and I very rarely check them because I just find
Speaker 1: them exhausting. Now, I did mention masddon just a moment ago,
Speaker 1: which is a federated approach to social platforms. That means
Speaker 1: that rather than having a centralized corporate structure where you
Speaker 1: have a single entity that dictates the rules and policies
Speaker 1: for the platform, Mastedon consists of multiple in instances called servers,
Speaker 1: and each server can have its own rules and policies
Speaker 1: and vibe and culture. So some servers cater more to
Speaker 1: a specific community than others do, like this community is
Speaker 1: for queer creators, for example, that might be one masted
Speaker 1: On server. Not that you know it's exclusively that, but
Speaker 1: that's who was in mind when they created the server.
Speaker 1: So this kind of system facilitates communication across servers. So
Speaker 1: even if you join server A and your friend joins
Speaker 1: server B, you can still communicate with each other through
Speaker 1: this system. Discovery is a little trickier if you're on
Speaker 1: different servers, but still possible. It's just not as intuitive.
Speaker 1: But Mastodon is in the news for a really grim reason.
Speaker 1: Some researchers at Stanford discovered that after examining three hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five thousand posts, they found one hundred and
Speaker 1: twelve instances of known child sexual abuse material, also known
Speaker 1: as seesam c SAM. Their search covered the twenty five
Speaker 1: most popular servers on Mastodon, and in addition to the
Speaker 1: messages actually containing known seesam, they found more than a
Speaker 1: thousand instances of messages pointing to off site seesam you
Speaker 1: know resources, whether it was a trading site or grooming sites.
Speaker 1: Terrible awful things, and it points to a really big
Speaker 1: challenge with the federated approach to these social networks because
Speaker 1: big centralized companies can have entire departments that are filled
Speaker 1: with content moderators, or actually, more likely they'll outsource that
Speaker 1: to a third party company that is employing people in
Speaker 1: developing countries. We've seen that over and over and how
Speaker 1: that has affected people who are working in those jobs.
Speaker 1: The point is they have a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are working on the problem in these big centralized companies,
Speaker 1: but in the THETA verse. You're talking about instances that
Speaker 1: have only a single moderator running them, and chances are
Speaker 1: being the server's one moderator is not actually that person's
Speaker 1: real job. They've got another job, and they just do
Speaker 1: this on the side, like in their spare time, which
Speaker 1: means that when problems arise, you know, when people are
Speaker 1: violating terms of service or when they are posting outright
Speaker 1: illegal content, it takes time for the moderator to be
Speaker 1: able to address it. And if it's happening a lot
Speaker 1: and you've only got the one moderator, then those problems
Speaker 1: really start to pile up. For these federated services to survive,
Speaker 1: I suspect they're going to have to develop and incorporate
Speaker 1: a lot more automated tools to supplement the work that's
Speaker 1: being done by human moderators. Here's a case where you
Speaker 1: can make a real strong argument for the need for AI.
Speaker 1: You would need AI powered tools that are very good
Speaker 1: at identifying instances that have illegal material or CESAM related
Speaker 1: material on them so that you can respond much more
Speaker 1: quickly and decisively and have a safe community. Otherwise, these
Speaker 1: services will not really be able to take the place
Speaker 1: of these centralized services. That currently dominate the web because
Speaker 1: they won't be able to scale without encountering massive problems
Speaker 1: like being saturated with illegal and harmful content. So it
Speaker 1: is the dark side of the fediverse. Okay, one more
Speaker 1: story before we go to break, and that is you know,
Speaker 1: I talked about PayPal a little bit earlier. I mean
Speaker 1: I was talking about Musk's history with the letter X.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the US Federal Reserve because it has
Speaker 1: a new system being rolled out called fed now. So
Speaker 1: this service coordinates payment between different financial institutions like banks
Speaker 1: and credit unions. So at launch, thirty five banks and
Speaker 1: credit unions are included in this system. But that's just
Speaker 1: the very beginning of this initiative. The goal is to
Speaker 1: create a network work that connects more than nine thousand
Speaker 1: financial institutions together for what purpose well, essentially to make
Speaker 1: it easy for people, at least people who have a
Speaker 1: bank account to transfer money to each other, So forget
Speaker 1: checks or debit cards or even apps like Venmo or PayPal.
Speaker 1: By the way, PayPal owns Venmo in case you weren't aware,
Speaker 1: I remember hearing some millennials talk about, you know, dissing
Speaker 1: PayPal because they want to use Venmo, and I was
Speaker 1: just like you do know PayPal owns Venmo, You're still
Speaker 1: using PayPal right or any of those other cash transfer apps.
Speaker 1: So this would allow you to make direct transfers from
Speaker 1: one bank account to another, as long as the two
Speaker 1: banks or community credit unions or whatever it may be
Speaker 1: are connected within this network, the FED and visions FED
Speaker 1: now to also allow people to access funds much faster
Speaker 1: with fewer roadblocks.
Speaker 2: So imagine, let's say that.
Speaker 1: You run a small business and you invoice another company
Speaker 1: because they've hired you to do some work and you
Speaker 1: did the work, so you send them an invoice and
Speaker 1: they can pay you through FED now. Well, the money
Speaker 1: can go through much more quickly and then you can
Speaker 1: access it right away. And obviously that can be really
Speaker 1: helpful for people who have cash flow issues right where
Speaker 1: you know, it's not that they don't have money coming
Speaker 1: to them, it's just it's not in their account right now.
Speaker 1: This can help cut down on those kinds of situations
Speaker 1: and streamline those financial transactions. So it could be person
Speaker 1: to person, it could be company to person or person
Speaker 1: to company. It's meant to just kind of facilitate all
Speaker 1: of that and to remove the need for these third
Speaker 1: party applications. There's still a long way to go to
Speaker 1: get to that point, obviously. Whether just thirty five initial
Speaker 1: systems that are in place, that's not enough obviously to
Speaker 1: really make a huge difference. Also, the participating institutions are
Speaker 1: not required to fully implement all the services, so some
Speaker 1: are taking it a little more slowly than others, and
Speaker 1: they're only allowing certain services to be used within their systems.
Speaker 1: So fed now has the potential to disrupt stuff like
Speaker 1: PayPal and Venmo and cash apps and things like that,
Speaker 1: but it's not going to happen overnight, and for the
Speaker 1: people who are unbanked or underbanked, this might not prove
Speaker 1: to be a relevant technology. We still have to find
Speaker 1: ways to facilitate them being part of these financial transactions
Speaker 1: because just having a bank account can be a barrier
Speaker 1: to entry for a lot of people. So it still
Speaker 1: needs to address that issue too, And I don't know
Speaker 1: that the system ultimately will. That may not even be
Speaker 1: in the mission statement at all for fed now, but
Speaker 1: it is interesting that it could have a massive impact
Speaker 1: on money transfers using the internet.
Speaker 2: Okay, now we're going to take a quick break when
Speaker 2: we come back.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot more news to cover, all right,
Speaker 1: We're back.
Speaker 2: More than one thousand.
Speaker 1: App developers in the UK I think around fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: actually have joined in on a class action lawsuit against Apple.
Speaker 1: They argue that Apple is using its monopoly as a
Speaker 1: storefront for iOS apps to charge high fees to developers.
Speaker 2: So this is a.
Speaker 1: Complaint we have heard numerous times in the past and
Speaker 1: has been addressed in various court cases around the world. So,
Speaker 1: as you likely know, Apple collects between fifteen to thirty
Speaker 1: percent on in app transactions for most types of transactions.
Speaker 1: There are some that get an exception, but for most
Speaker 1: Apple gets a fifteen to thirty percent cut. So if
Speaker 1: you spend a dollar in an app from a really
Speaker 1: big developer, that developer might only get seventy cents of
Speaker 1: that dollar and the other thirty cents goes to Apple.
Speaker 1: And you know, that doesn't sound like that much, But
Speaker 1: then you start thinking about all the apps and the
Speaker 1: millions of people, the hundreds of millions of people who
Speaker 1: are using iOS apps to do these different transactions. It
Speaker 1: really adds up, and it means Apple breaks in the
Speaker 1: big bucks through this practice. The app developers argue this
Speaker 1: is unfair to them because there's nowhere else they can
Speaker 1: go if they want to get their app in front
Speaker 1: of iOS users. There's no alternative to the Apple App Store,
Speaker 1: so there's no competition in the space, and that means
Speaker 1: Apple holds a monopoly for that market and can dictate terms.
Speaker 1: The lawsuit is seeking a billion dollars from Apple. Is
Speaker 1: a billion dollar class action lawsuit. Recently, Apple has made
Speaker 1: some steps to move away from its kind of iron
Speaker 1: grip approach that it had been known for for years,
Speaker 1: and those steps include things like allowing developers to use
Speaker 1: different financial services to complete transactions instead of Apple's own
Speaker 1: in house financial system, all the way to potentially opening
Speaker 1: up so that competing app storefronts can offer apps on
Speaker 1: iOS devices. One word about the different third party financial
Speaker 1: services thing, Apple, at least in some markets, was kind
Speaker 1: of sneaky about this, Like, yes, they allowed it, you
Speaker 1: could use a different financial services company to complete your transactions,
Speaker 1: but Apple would put essentially like an Apple tax on
Speaker 1: top of it, which means you would actually collect even
Speaker 1: less money per transaction. And obviously a lot of people
Speaker 1: are challenging that, saying Apple is doing this unfairly that
Speaker 1: you unwilling to relinquish control. Apple creates disincentives to use
Speaker 1: any alternatives. So yes, technically there are alternatives, but they
Speaker 1: are less attractive than Apple's own approach because Apple has
Speaker 1: artificially made them more expensive. That's been an argument in
Speaker 1: some regions as well, so we'll have to see how
Speaker 1: this one plays out. Google recently published its Environmental Impact
Speaker 1: Report for twenty twenty two, and the company revealed that
Speaker 1: it is using a truly enormous amount of water every year.
Speaker 1: Last year, the company used five point six billion gallons
Speaker 1: of water, most of it potable water, meaning drinkable water,
Speaker 1: water that's safe to drink. Many of Google's data centers
Speaker 1: depend upon water cooled systems to keep machines in operation
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. The
Speaker 1: general expectation is that twenty twenty three is going to
Speaker 1: see another big jump in water consumption because Google, like
Speaker 1: a lot of other companies, has pushed forward really hard
Speaker 1: in the AI space, and AI requires a lot of
Speaker 1: compute power, so to meet those requirements, it shouldn't be
Speaker 1: a surprise that Google is going to need to consume
Speaker 1: more resources in order to keep machines running. Below critical temperatures.
Speaker 1: According to Google reps, the company is also relying on
Speaker 1: air cooled systems to help reduce the need for water,
Speaker 1: particularly in places that are impacted by a water crisis,
Speaker 1: and Google says it is committed to replenish quote one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty percent of the freshwater it consumes end
Speaker 1: quote by twenty thirty. That's according to Business Insider. However,
Speaker 1: in that same article, the writer reveals that currently Google
Speaker 1: replenishes just six percent of the freshwater it consumes, So
Speaker 1: obviously the company is going to have to make some
Speaker 1: substantial changes to meet that one hundred and twenty percent
Speaker 1: goal within seven years. Considering that large parts of the
Speaker 1: US are either currently in a water crisis or they
Speaker 1: very well may be in a water crisis within a
Speaker 1: year or two, this is a real problem that needs
Speaker 1: a serious solution. Now stop me if you've heard this one.
Speaker 1: Tech companies see a potentially massive market. There's a tiny catch, however,
Speaker 1: this market is in a region that's run by an oppressive,
Speaker 1: authoritarian government, and that government is going to have some
Speaker 1: tight restrictions on any company that works within that region,
Speaker 1: up to and including requiring the companies to share data
Speaker 1: with the government itself. Plus the government has been connected
Speaker 1: with atrocious acts in the past. Yes, we saw this
Speaker 1: actually happen in China. And while a lot of tech
Speaker 1: companies were initially very eager to get across and get
Speaker 1: access to the enormous population of potential users in China,
Speaker 1: a lot of those same companies later abandoned China after
Speaker 1: discovering that sure enough, doing business there came with too
Speaker 1: many downsides. Well, I guess we can say those companies
Speaker 1: learned from their mistakes, because they're ready to repeat them
Speaker 1: almost exactly by the way, I lifted that joke from
Speaker 1: Peter Cook in a Beyond the Fringe sketch. Anyway, Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabian officials are courting tech companies to set up operations
Speaker 1: within Saudi Arabia, partly to create a new technological wonder
Speaker 1: city that some people are really worried is going to
Speaker 1: become like the perfect surveillance city to keep track on
Speaker 1: the movements of everyone who's within it. It's pretty dystopian stuff.
Speaker 1: So the effort is to make Saudi Arabia a global
Speaker 1: center for tech as part of a plan called the
Speaker 1: Vision twenty thirty plan. Companies that have signed on include Google,
Speaker 1: which signed on last year, and Microsoft, which signed on
Speaker 1: this year, both of which are now building cloud centers
Speaker 1: within Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, human rights experts warned that Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabia has some rather vague but powerful laws regarding national
Speaker 1: security which give the government really kind of limitless power
Speaker 1: to make demands of companies that operate within their borders,
Speaker 1: and that those demands could include telling Google and Microsoft
Speaker 1: and other tech companies that they have to share information
Speaker 1: so that the government can do things like track down dissidents.
Speaker 1: And in Saudi Arabia, a dissident can be someone like
Speaker 1: a journalist reporting on the dealings of the Saudi Arabian royalty.
Speaker 1: And as we have seen, the government is not above
Speaker 1: assassinating people like that. It has happened, It happened not
Speaker 1: long ago. You speak out against authoritarian power in Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: you face massive consequences. A woman in Saudi Arabia criticized
Speaker 1: this futuristic technological city on Twitter. She is now serving
Speaker 1: a thirty year jail sentence for speaking out about it.
Speaker 1: So there's this huge concern that Google and Microsoft, in
Speaker 1: an eagerness to tap into the undeniably huge amount of
Speaker 1: money that's in Saudi Arabia are also turning a blind
Speaker 1: eye to the consequences of that deal, and that they
Speaker 1: are becoming accomplices to an authoritarian government that commits terrible
Speaker 1: acts upon its own people. Company representatives for both Microsoft
Speaker 1: and Google have essentially said they're committed to protecting human rights,
Speaker 1: but critics say that doesn't exactly align with them agreeing
Speaker 1: to do business in a country that has an undeniable
Speaker 1: history of violating human rights. So yeah, it's it's hard
Speaker 1: to take these companies at their word when it's undeniable
Speaker 1: that the government has abused its power multiple times in
Speaker 1: order to strike down any who would question that government's,
Speaker 1: you know, authority or its practices. So yeah, pretty ugly stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got a couple more stories to talk about before
Speaker 1: we get to that. Let's take another quick break. So,
Speaker 1: the Entertainment Software Rating Board or ESRB would very much
Speaker 1: like to scan your face before you launch into that
Speaker 1: play session of Doom. So, according to PC Gamer, the
Speaker 1: ESRB and some partners it's working with are planning to
Speaker 1: launch a tool that they're calling the Privacy Protective Facial
Speaker 1: Age Estimation. So the purpose of this would be to
Speaker 1: determine if the person who's trying to buy a game
Speaker 1: or to go through an in app purchase or activate
Speaker 1: some other feature in the game that's meant for adults
Speaker 1: is actually of age that they're old enough to do
Speaker 1: that and not be violating some policy somewhere. And the
Speaker 1: FTC is considering the measure and has opened up the
Speaker 1: matter to public feedback and will continue to accept public
Speaker 1: feedback until August two. First, so, if you're in the
Speaker 1: United States and you have some thoughts about this, you
Speaker 1: should probably go to the FTC's website and find the
Speaker 1: page that is actually about this measure and leave your thoughts,
Speaker 1: whether it's in support or against. I'm not telling you
Speaker 1: how to feel personally, I'm against it, but you know,
Speaker 1: I can also see why there is a call for this,
Speaker 1: because otherwise you're requiring adults to take a very active
Speaker 1: role in overseeing the types of stuff their children are
Speaker 1: getting involved in. And while I think that's necessary, I
Speaker 1: also think it's not always realistic, right, Like, even the
Speaker 1: most loving parents are going to have issues following through
Speaker 1: with that because they have their own stuff they got
Speaker 1: to deal with. I assume I don't have kids, so
Speaker 1: I don't have this issue. My dog isn't a gamer,
Speaker 1: so I don't ever have to worry about this anyway.
Speaker 2: We have talked a.
Speaker 1: Lot in this show about how facial recognition technology in
Speaker 1: general has some really big problem and it makes me
Speaker 1: wonder how accurate the system really is? Right can it
Speaker 1: tell the difference between say, a mature fifteen year old
Speaker 1: and a young looking eighteen year old, Because the eighteen
Speaker 1: year old will be old enough to play games that
Speaker 1: get like a mature rating, the fifteen year old would
Speaker 1: not be. How is this system going to be able
Speaker 1: to tell the difference reliably? Like sure, after a certain
Speaker 1: age it might not have an issue, But for younger players,
Speaker 1: like people who are of age but they look young,
Speaker 1: that's going to be an issue. And it gets really invasive,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of privacy concerns obviously about this.
Speaker 1: It's kind of weird. It reminds me a lot of
Speaker 1: how in Japan there were companies that were making cigarette
Speaker 1: vending machines and they were incorporating cameras and facial recognition
Speaker 1: technology to try and prevent kids from being able to
Speaker 1: buy cigarettes out of these machines. The kids just figured
Speaker 1: they could hold up the face of an older person,
Speaker 1: like a picture of a face of an older person,
Speaker 1: not the actual face that would have been really disturbing,
Speaker 1: but a picture of a face, and that would be
Speaker 1: enough to fool the system. Supposedly, this this system they're
Speaker 1: talking about, would not be fooled by holding up a picture.
Speaker 1: You would have to actually have a three dimensional face there.
Speaker 1: But still it seems weird and invasive, And you know,
Speaker 1: I get that the ESRB is trying to stay ahead
Speaker 1: of governments from regulating the video game industry. That's the
Speaker 1: whole purpose of the ESRB in the first place.
Speaker 2: If you don't.
Speaker 1: Remember, back in the nineteen nineties, the video game industry
Speaker 1: as a whole formed the Entertainment Software Rating Board as
Speaker 1: a way to address government concerns that the video game
Speaker 1: industry was creating games that would, you know, turn children
Speaker 1: into total monsters because they would play Mortal Kombat and become,
Speaker 1: I don't know, gremlins or something. So the ESRB existed
Speaker 1: in order to give rating to these different games. Now
Speaker 1: it sounds like the ESRB is trying to come up
Speaker 1: with ways to ensure that the people who are buying
Speaker 1: games are actually old enough to do it, and maybe
Speaker 1: that's to head off any potential government regulation that would
Speaker 1: otherwise enter into the industry, But in my opinion, this
Speaker 1: particular move is not a good one. Finally, in some
Speaker 1: NIDOS Science News, researchers at North Carolina State University created
Speaker 1: a gel like solution that lets them three D print
Speaker 1: with metal at room temperature. So if you've never used
Speaker 1: a three D printer, generally speaking, three D printers work
Speaker 1: in a way where they take some sort of material,
Speaker 1: like the one that I'm most familiar with is plastic,
Speaker 1: and you get these filaments made of plastic. It's like
Speaker 1: a plastic wire almost, and you feed it through the
Speaker 1: three D printer and it has a chamber that heats
Speaker 1: up that the plastic melts into like a semi liquid state.
Speaker 1: Then that ends up going through the three D printer
Speaker 1: through the print head, which lays down a trail of
Speaker 1: this semi liquid stuff, which when it cools, it hardens
Speaker 1: and solidifies, and that's what lets you create three dimensional structures. However,
Speaker 1: if you're working with materials that have a much higher
Speaker 1: melting point, it gets really hard to print with them, right,
Speaker 1: and metals typically have pretty high melting points, not all
Speaker 1: of them. You know, mercury doesn't, gallium doesn't, but others do,
Speaker 1: and so they require more specialized equipment. When you're talking
Speaker 1: about specialized equipment, well then you're talking about stuff getting
Speaker 1: more expensive, right, because if it has to be built
Speaker 1: to certain parameters, then it gets to be expensive and
Speaker 1: you start to lose any advantages you get through being
Speaker 1: able to three D print right from a financial standpoint anyway,
Speaker 1: so you might as well not do three D printing
Speaker 1: and use a more traditional and cheaper approach, even if
Speaker 1: it's less efficient, because you're not going to spend as
Speaker 1: much money. While these researchers at North Carolina State University
Speaker 1: came up with a way to print with copper that
Speaker 1: doesn't involve heating the copper up to a melting point. Instead,
Speaker 1: they used copper particles that were in suspension in water,
Speaker 1: and they added to that suspension some hydrochloric acid, which
Speaker 1: dropped the pH of the water down to one, and
Speaker 1: they added particles of utectic gallium indium alloy, and as
Speaker 1: a kind of binding agent, they also added methyl cellulose
Speaker 1: and this created that gel like mixture which was liquid
Speaker 1: enough to go through a three D printer. They could
Speaker 1: then print what was essentially a two dimensional shape using
Speaker 1: this mixture, but then by applying heat in specific ways,
Speaker 1: they could get a predictable reaction from the me It
Speaker 1: would bend in ways that were predictable, so you would
Speaker 1: print the shape. You would apply the heat at specific
Speaker 1: points on this two dimensional shape, and as it would
Speaker 1: heat up and dry, it would also change shape into
Speaker 1: whatever it was you wanted to make, and you would
Speaker 1: get a three dimensional metallic object that's electrically conductive. So
Speaker 1: really neat, Like you could make components to very specific
Speaker 1: you know, sizes and measurements using this approach instead of
Speaker 1: having to make do with, you know, something that's off
Speaker 1: the shelf, but isn't you know, ideal for whatever use
Speaker 1: you need. As the object dry is the water and
Speaker 1: the act evaporate, so you are left behind with just
Speaker 1: a mix of those two metals plus the methyl cellulose
Speaker 1: which is kind of binding everything together. So it's really
Speaker 1: cool technology. I'm not sure when we will see like
Speaker 1: a lot of practical uses of it, but it is
Speaker 1: pretty neat. That's it for today's news. I had a
Speaker 1: couple of other news items, but a lot of them
Speaker 1: are still developing, so I'm going to wait and maybe
Speaker 1: cover them on Thursday when there's more to say. And
Speaker 1: I hope in the meanwhile that you are all well
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
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