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 all of all things tech. And this is the
Speaker 1: tech news for Tuesday, June eight, twent d twenty one.
Speaker 1: And if you were up in the wee hours of
Speaker 1: the morning today, if you were in the US, or
Speaker 1: you know, if you're not in the United States, if
Speaker 1: you were just you know, up, you might have noticed
Speaker 1: that some popular websites were not up. They were down,
Speaker 1: big big websites, including sites like Spotify, Twitch, Reddit, HBO, Max, Stripe, PayPal,
Speaker 1: and then news organizations like The Guardian, The New York Times,
Speaker 1: CNN and many more. Also, some government websites in the
Speaker 1: UK were down. So what was going on? One? I mean,
Speaker 1: when this kind of thing happens, clearly something major is
Speaker 1: going down on the back end. The possibility that all
Speaker 1: of these sites would suffer unrelated issues at the same
Speaker 1: time is just too low, right, So what happened? Well,
Speaker 1: apparently the root cause was a problem with a c
Speaker 1: d N provider called Fastly, But that naturally raises a question,
Speaker 1: what in the blue blazes is a c d N. Well,
Speaker 1: that initialism stands for content delivery network, which kind of
Speaker 1: gives you an idea of what it does, but it's
Speaker 1: a little you know, misleading as well. So a c
Speaker 1: d N is a collection of Internet servers that are
Speaker 1: distributed across different regions that collectively work to deliver faster
Speaker 1: Internet content to end users. It's kind of like an
Speaker 1: edge network strategy essentially, you can think of it. It It
Speaker 1: is almost like a dispersed team of experts who are
Speaker 1: all working on the same problem, except, of course we're
Speaker 1: talking about computer servers here. And interestingly, these servers don't
Speaker 1: actually host any content themselves. They aren't like holding the
Speaker 1: videos on HBO Max or anything like that, so they're
Speaker 1: not the repository of information that we find from the
Speaker 1: various sites we visit and services we use. Instead, these
Speaker 1: servers will load content into a cash memory, so you
Speaker 1: can think of this as like very temporary storage, and
Speaker 1: then they can serve that up to end users. So
Speaker 1: if you're trying to watch a movie on HBO Max,
Speaker 1: the host server for that content could be sending out
Speaker 1: data to c d end servers, which in turn consent
Speaker 1: that to you, and that helps relieve the host server,
Speaker 1: the one that actually contains all the stuff for real zs.
Speaker 1: It saves them from having to handle all of that
Speaker 1: load all by itself, and it helps ensure a faster
Speaker 1: experience for the end user. But Fastly apparently had some
Speaker 1: sort of massive malfunction that brought down the c d
Speaker 1: N system, and that meant that the support that these
Speaker 1: these different sites usually have was suddenly gone. As a result,
Speaker 1: millions of people found that numerous websites and services were
Speaker 1: totally unreachable, and in the case of stuff like Stripe
Speaker 1: and PayPal, that could be a really big disruption for commerce.
Speaker 1: Plenty of small merchants depend upon these services, so this
Speaker 1: was more serious than just not being able to watch
Speaker 1: a twitch streamer or have a twitch stream or access
Speaker 1: of Spotify playlist for an hour. Fastly was able to
Speaker 1: resolve the problem after about an hour, with service appearing
Speaker 1: to be restored by noon in UK time. So it's
Speaker 1: a really good thing that Fastly's response didn't move slowly.
Speaker 1: Our next story for today's news makes me feel like
Speaker 1: I kind of got into a time machine and then
Speaker 1: somehow went back to the late nineties and early two
Speaker 1: thousand's and that's because this story involves big music labels
Speaker 1: suing the proverbial pants off of an Internet service provider
Speaker 1: because of alleged piracy committed by that I s P
Speaker 1: s customers. And y'all, we went through this two decades
Speaker 1: ago and the music companies did not come out looking
Speaker 1: real good back then, So what exactly is going on now?
Speaker 1: While back in two thousand eighteen, a group of music
Speaker 1: companies that include Sony Music, no surprise there, Universal, and
Speaker 1: Warner filed a joint lawsuit against Cox Communications, and the
Speaker 1: claim was that Cox did not do enough to curtail
Speaker 1: piracy across its network as an I s P. The
Speaker 1: claim said that despite these companies direct in Cox to
Speaker 1: specific I P addresses that were linked to music piracy,
Speaker 1: the company didn't actually go so far as to ban
Speaker 1: people from its service, and thus Cox was culpable for
Speaker 1: the losses that these companies suffered due to piracy. And
Speaker 1: by the way, it is actually impossible to calculate the
Speaker 1: losses from piracy because there's no way to establish if
Speaker 1: someone would have purchased a piece of media legitimately if
Speaker 1: they hadn't pirated it first. Because this isn't like physical media, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like someone broke into a warehouse and stole
Speaker 1: a palette of albums or something. They took a copy
Speaker 1: of a digital file which can be copied infinitely. And
Speaker 1: so unless you can actually prove that that person was
Speaker 1: going to buy that digital media but didn't, then how
Speaker 1: can you actually say the company was out any money?
Speaker 1: I mean, if I don't buy an album, right Like,
Speaker 1: if I just decide, oh, I don't want that, well,
Speaker 1: it's not like I cost Sony Music money and that
Speaker 1: that seems like a pretty reasonable argument, right I decide
Speaker 1: I don't want that album, I didn't rob anyone of
Speaker 1: that sale. So you can't actually establish how much money
Speaker 1: was lost as a result of piracy. There probably is
Speaker 1: some amount lost, I mean, it's not like it's not
Speaker 1: like it's a victimless crime. It's not that it's you know,
Speaker 1: you just can't actually put a value to that loss
Speaker 1: because there's no way of knowing what it could be.
Speaker 1: And yet the jury in this case back in two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, actually they found uh in the favor of
Speaker 1: the music labels. In two thousand nineteen, not only did
Speaker 1: they agree with the music labels, they agreed to an
Speaker 1: award of nearly one hundred thousand dollars per instance of piracy,
Speaker 1: and there were more than ten thousand instances of piracy,
Speaker 1: which meant that Cox's court mandated fine is that the
Speaker 1: billion dollar mark yaws a one billion dollars in fines
Speaker 1: to pay to these music labels. Anyway, obviously, Cox appealed
Speaker 1: that decision, and so that trial went to appeal, and
Speaker 1: earlier this year that appeals court upheld that first decision.
Speaker 1: So they said, no, the court got it right. And
Speaker 1: now groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation or e f F,
Speaker 1: and the Center for Democracy and Technology and a couple
Speaker 1: of others have issued their own court filing regarding this case.
Speaker 1: These organizations point out that the court decision is incredibly harmful.
Speaker 1: If I s p s potentially face fines in the
Speaker 1: billion dollar range, they are far more likely to boot
Speaker 1: people off their service if they get a notice from
Speaker 1: a music label. But it's never as simple as that.
Speaker 1: For example, let's just take my house, right, I live
Speaker 1: with my wife as long as you know she lets me,
Speaker 1: which so far has gone pretty well. Don't mess this
Speaker 1: up for me anyway. My wife and I use a
Speaker 1: household internet connection, right, It's not like we have two
Speaker 1: separate internet networks, and she uses one and I used
Speaker 1: the other. So if one of us were to run
Speaker 1: a foul because we were, you know, being a dirty,
Speaker 1: dirty pirate and I don't know, we were like trying
Speaker 1: to steal the SpongeBob SquarePants musical soundtrack, our I s
Speaker 1: P could get a notice from the copyright holder and
Speaker 1: then give us the boot. But let's say that I
Speaker 1: was just the one who did this, right, Like it
Speaker 1: was just me that wanted that soundtrack so darn badly.
Speaker 1: My wife is completely innocent. She doesn't know about it,
Speaker 1: she's never listened to it. She certainly wasn't aware that
Speaker 1: I was stealing it. Well, clearly, if the I s
Speaker 1: P boots us, that doesn't just affect me, It affects
Speaker 1: my wife, who is completely innocent of having pirated the music.
Speaker 1: About how a simple sponge say bikini bottom And the
Speaker 1: e f F points this out. It says, this is
Speaker 1: just the tip of the iceberg, and IP address could
Speaker 1: mean that the I s P has to boot off
Speaker 1: an entire college, or a hospital, or a library, or
Speaker 1: even municipality WiFi. I mean, the group rightly points out
Speaker 1: that these damages aren't anywhere close to the realities of
Speaker 1: any harm suffered, and that it punishes the innocent as
Speaker 1: well as the guilty. So essentially, these groups are saying
Speaker 1: that the court got it totally wrong, that the court
Speaker 1: misinterpreted the law, and that allowing for an award that
Speaker 1: is completely out of alignment of any actual damage suffered
Speaker 1: is also unjust, and that the consequences will be catastrophic
Speaker 1: because I s p s will be far more trigger
Speaker 1: happy to boot people off of their service if the
Speaker 1: if the alternative means that these companies are going to
Speaker 1: get you know, hit by bill in dollar fines, so
Speaker 1: this is just a bad situation. They also make the
Speaker 1: point that the internet access these days is really an
Speaker 1: integral component in participating in modern society, and if you
Speaker 1: cut someone off from that, that's a non trivial problem.
Speaker 1: It's like saying, all right, well, because you you know,
Speaker 1: stole a bottle of water at the local convenience store,
Speaker 1: we're shutting waters off at your house. Like that's not cool.
Speaker 1: And Cox has appealed the court's decision, so this is
Speaker 1: going to go to another appeals court. Uh And currently
Speaker 1: the company, the I s P actually has a lot
Speaker 1: of support behind it from various legal scholars and advocacy groups,
Speaker 1: which is interesting. I s p s frequently get a
Speaker 1: lot of flak because of anti competitive stuff that I
Speaker 1: s p s tend to be at least tangentially involved in.
Speaker 1: But in this case, you have a lot of people
Speaker 1: siding with the I s P and we'll have to
Speaker 1: where this goes next. Meanwhile, it's still a bumpy ride
Speaker 1: for bitcoin. Back in March, the cryptocurrency hit an all
Speaker 1: time high value of nearly sixty five dollars per bitcoin.
Speaker 1: Later that value plunged to nearly half of that, in
Speaker 1: fact lower than half of that at some points, hitting
Speaker 1: close to thirty dollars, and after a brief recovery, the
Speaker 1: value took another hit again earlier today. So what's going on, Well,
Speaker 1: there are a few things that are happening all at
Speaker 1: the same time, and it's really impossible to say which
Speaker 1: things are chiefly responsible for this. But one thing is
Speaker 1: we could be seeing a bear market in which the
Speaker 1: value will be on the decline until enough people start
Speaker 1: buying into bitcoin again on a really large scale to
Speaker 1: cause this to switch over to a bowl market again.
Speaker 1: Bull market is where the value starts to climb because
Speaker 1: more and more people are buying into it. But a
Speaker 1: different contributing factor could be that recently, the US government
Speaker 1: managed to recover most of a ransom that Colonial Pipeline
Speaker 1: paid to ransomware hackers earlier this year. Alright, so quick
Speaker 1: summary of that story. Colonial Pipeline supplies fuel to the
Speaker 1: eastern half of the United States, and the company was
Speaker 1: hit with a ransomware attack that shut down its pipeline,
Speaker 1: or really the company shut down its own pipeline sort
Speaker 1: of as a precautionary measure to make sure that the
Speaker 1: malware did not spread throughout the entire system. But this
Speaker 1: caused a short term gas shortage and a massive spike
Speaker 1: in fuel prices in much of the US, and then
Speaker 1: the shortage got way worse because some people decided to
Speaker 1: hoard gasoline, which is both selfish and stupid. Gasoline does
Speaker 1: not keep forever, so if you hoard more than you need,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance that gasoline is going to essentially
Speaker 1: lose its potency before you get around using it. And
Speaker 1: of course it's really dangerous to store gasoline unless you
Speaker 1: have the proper storage containers, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: were filling up all sorts of stuff with gasoline and
Speaker 1: just creating massive potential disasters. Anyway, Colonial Pipeline actually got
Speaker 1: things back in action fairly quickly, but it turned out
Speaker 1: the reason they were able to do so was that
Speaker 1: the company actually complied with the hackers demands and paid
Speaker 1: the ransom, which is something that most people, including me,
Speaker 1: say is a dumb, dumb idea because it reinforces that
Speaker 1: strategy in the first place, and it makes future ransomware
Speaker 1: attacks more likely. Bad move Colonial Pipeline. Now we hear
Speaker 1: that the US government was able to seize most of
Speaker 1: that ransom that was paid to the hackers, which of
Speaker 1: course had been paid in cryptocurrency. And these kind of
Speaker 1: stories definitely are a bad look for cryptocurrency in general,
Speaker 1: which frequently gets associated with illegal and unseemly active ds. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to point out that's not necessarily the fault
Speaker 1: of the currencies. The idea behind cryptocurrency is that it
Speaker 1: should be usable for any sort of transaction, not necessarily
Speaker 1: illegal ones. But just like technologies such as peer to
Speaker 1: peer networks, we see folks associate the technology with illegal
Speaker 1: activity and these kind of stories don't help. And how
Speaker 1: did the US recover more than two million dollars in
Speaker 1: ransom Well, they apparently got access to the decryption key
Speaker 1: for one of the ransomware attackers digital wallets, which is
Speaker 1: kind of like handing someone the key to a vault.
Speaker 1: And hearing that a government managed to take money away
Speaker 1: from someone using cryptocurrency probably has at least some percentage
Speaker 1: of bitcoin enthusiasts upset. Anyway, that may have contributed to
Speaker 1: another slip in bitcoin value, which dipped below thirty dollars
Speaker 1: this morning. Oh I should also mention that just a
Speaker 1: few days ago, Elon Musk once again managed to weigh
Speaker 1: in on this whole thing. He tweeted a breakup meme
Speaker 1: suggesting that he has fallen out of love with bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and the bitcoin value took a little hit at that point,
Speaker 1: to which of course lead to more complaints that Musk
Speaker 1: is manipulating markets. That's something he's been accused of multiple
Speaker 1: times at this point. And what all this says to
Speaker 1: me is that people should just stop following Elon Musk
Speaker 1: on social media. That guy. All right, we have a
Speaker 1: few more stories to get through today, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Having just spoken about, you know,
Speaker 1: government turning the tables on tech, let's continue that for
Speaker 1: a second and talk about the FBI's massive staying operation
Speaker 1: with regard to an encrypted mess saging service. So here's
Speaker 1: the pitch. You got your criminal types right, you got
Speaker 1: your Tony sopranos and whatnot. These folks need to communicate
Speaker 1: with one another, but they also need those communications to
Speaker 1: be secure or else the heat catches on right next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got the FEDS on your case. So
Speaker 1: you seek out services that allow you to communicate over
Speaker 1: encrypted lines so that anyone who intercepts that communication will
Speaker 1: just get absolute nonsense out of it. They'll be unable
Speaker 1: to tell what has been said between the two or
Speaker 1: more parties. But what if it turned out that the
Speaker 1: FEDS were the ones who designed the communication tool in
Speaker 1: the first place. Well that's what's happened here with various
Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies around the world, not just the FBI.
Speaker 1: UH law enforcement in Australia and other places have played
Speaker 1: a major part as well, and they all work together
Speaker 1: in order to make this happen. It started out back
Speaker 1: in and it became known in turn only as Operation
Speaker 1: Trojan Shield. So law enforcement created a what was said
Speaker 1: to be a secure messaging app called a NOM a
Speaker 1: n O M. The phones that a NOM we're on
Speaker 1: couldn't make calls. They weren't enabled to make phone calls
Speaker 1: or really do anything else other than use this app.
Speaker 1: This a no mapp. They could only really communicate that way,
Speaker 1: And the FEDS made sure that these phones would only
Speaker 1: be available through the black market, and that made them
Speaker 1: look real legit shady, like this is this is illegal stuff,
Speaker 1: and so the only way to get it is through
Speaker 1: the black market, and thus it seems in a weird
Speaker 1: way legitimate. Right. So some Australian agents who were deep
Speaker 1: undercover had phones with a NOM on it, and they
Speaker 1: gave those phones out to high ranking profile members of
Speaker 1: various crime groups and syndicates and families so like the
Speaker 1: mafia and outlaw biker gangs and stuff like that, and
Speaker 1: gave them recommendations to use the app for communication. Those
Speaker 1: recommendations filtered through the various organized crime groups with more
Speaker 1: people switching over to it, believing that this would mass
Speaker 1: their activities from government agencies. But in fact, the law
Speaker 1: enforcement groups had backdoor access to that messaging the entire time,
Speaker 1: and they can monitor communications and set up a massive
Speaker 1: sting operation. So law enforcement intercepted millions of messages between
Speaker 1: folks like drug traffickers and weapons smugglers, Asian crime syndicates,
Speaker 1: outlaw biker groups, and more. And the public only learned
Speaker 1: about this operation on Monday, when it was revealed that
Speaker 1: law enforcement had made hundreds of arrests, like around eight
Speaker 1: hundred of them all around the world. Yauza and now
Speaker 1: for a story about Apple, actually a couple of them.
Speaker 1: The company recently announced some privacy related features at the
Speaker 1: Worldwide Developers Conference or w w d C, and one
Speaker 1: of those is called Private Relay, which sounds really interesting.
Speaker 1: It prevents any entity from tracking your browser history that
Speaker 1: includes your I s P and it includes Apple. So
Speaker 1: in other words, you can browse using Private Relay and
Speaker 1: there's no there's no one out there who's tracking which
Speaker 1: sites you have visited during that browsing session. However, this announcement,
Speaker 1: which I think is really cool. I think private Relay
Speaker 1: is really interesting. I'm very curious how it actually works.
Speaker 1: But there is a qualifier, and that is this feature
Speaker 1: will not be available worldwide. Apple is not going to
Speaker 1: make it available in Saudi Arabia, China, South Africa, Belarus, Egypt,
Speaker 1: Kazakhstan and a few other countries. The company so far
Speaker 1: has not actually commented on why these regions will not
Speaker 1: have access to this particular feature, but I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: most of us can make at least some educated guesses,
Speaker 1: because in many of these countries, governments are not too
Speaker 1: keen on citizens having unfettered and thus uncontrolled access to
Speaker 1: the Internet for various reasons. In places like China, accessing
Speaker 1: sites outside of the country itself typically requires you to
Speaker 1: make illegal use of VPNs to spoof where your location is,
Speaker 1: and that way you can bypass the Great Firewall of China.
Speaker 1: But should China come after a VPN service, then the
Speaker 1: user data that that VPN service is steward of could
Speaker 1: be at risk. So let's say that it's a VPN
Speaker 1: that keeps at least a short term record of what
Speaker 1: sites users have accessed. Well, if China goes after that
Speaker 1: VPN service, they could presumably get hold of that information
Speaker 1: and thus ultimately come after citizens who are making use
Speaker 1: of that VPN service. Now, some VPN services are great
Speaker 1: and that they wipe all that data very quickly regularly,
Speaker 1: so that there's nothing for anyone to get hold of.
Speaker 1: There's no there's no uh, no footprints left behind or
Speaker 1: anything like that. But not all VPNs are like that.
Speaker 1: And if you've got, you know, the power of the
Speaker 1: Chinese government coming after you, you might be compelled to
Speaker 1: hand over user data. So a feature like private relay
Speaker 1: could serve as a protection against that. You can use
Speaker 1: private relay in conjunction with a VPN and leave no
Speaker 1: trace behind and thus have better access to information. Well,
Speaker 1: I would hazard a guess that the Chinese government really
Speaker 1: doesn't want Apple to include a feature that would allow
Speaker 1: citizens to potentially bypass national restrictions on Internet access. And
Speaker 1: China represents a truly huge market for any company. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's more than a billion people live in the country,
Speaker 1: so obviously it's an enormous market. So most companies are
Speaker 1: not so firm in their convictions about providing stuff like
Speaker 1: privacy and security in order to give up on that
Speaker 1: lucrative a market. Apple is by no means the only
Speaker 1: company to make allowances for governments that a lot of
Speaker 1: folks would refer to as oppressive. So while I am
Speaker 1: singling out Apple here because that's what the story is about,
Speaker 1: I do want to make it clear they ain't the
Speaker 1: only ones who do this sort of thing. It's not
Speaker 1: like Apple is being particularly disingenuous. Uh, this is pretty
Speaker 1: much across the board. Next, we have a story about
Speaker 1: a lawsuit aimed at Apple. This one claims that the
Speaker 1: most recent versions of iOS have caused older phones to
Speaker 1: encounter performance issues, namely around slower processing speeds and shorter
Speaker 1: battery life. Now, if this sounds familiar, it's because we've
Speaker 1: actually seen this happen a few times before. But the
Speaker 1: argument now is that as Apple releases new hardware and
Speaker 1: new versions of iOS, it is at least somewhat intentionally
Speaker 1: designing the OS to make older iPhones perform at a
Speaker 1: substandard level as part of a planned obsolescence strategy, thus
Speaker 1: incuraging customers to upgrade to the latest version of the iPhone.
Speaker 1: The complaint actually includes this passage quote Apple benefits from
Speaker 1: not having to tell existing and prospective iPhone users that
Speaker 1: updates touted to add desirable features and to fix security
Speaker 1: and other bugs have a significant countervailing downside in the
Speaker 1: form of decreased processing speed and battery life end quote. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, this complaint is saying Apples hyping up
Speaker 1: all the new features of the more recent versions of
Speaker 1: iOS in an effort to convince people to download those updates.
Speaker 1: But then the update allegedly nerves older iPhone models and
Speaker 1: thus pushes customers to have to buy new iPhones. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, they're saying that this is this is
Speaker 1: unfair market practices essentially, is what this comes down to.
Speaker 1: So I'll have to keep an eye on this and
Speaker 1: see how this goes. Typically you see issues like this
Speaker 1: gets settled out of court. It's very rare that it
Speaker 1: actually goes the distance. In drone news, for the first time,
Speaker 1: an unmanned aerial vehicle served as the refueling aircraft for
Speaker 1: a piloted US jet fighter in mid air. The drone,
Speaker 1: manufactured by Boeing, connected via hose to the jet fighter
Speaker 1: as the two flew over the midwestern United States in
Speaker 1: a four and a half hour long test flight. So
Speaker 1: the drone flew ahead of the jet fighter and so
Speaker 1: it extended a hose behind it, and it was the
Speaker 1: jet fighter pilot's job to position the jet so that
Speaker 1: it could follow the drone at the proper distance and
Speaker 1: dock with the end of that hose, and then the
Speaker 1: refueling followed more than three gallons of fuel were transferred
Speaker 1: from the drone to the jet fighter. So the test
Speaker 1: was a success, and it could point to a future
Speaker 1: in which militaries are able to free up pilots from
Speaker 1: flying refueling missions. You know, they could shift that responsibility
Speaker 1: over to unmanned drones and the human pilots could be
Speaker 1: then go on to perform or mother tasks, presumably you know,
Speaker 1: ones that are are more oriented towards specific mission goals
Speaker 1: as opposed to support. So that is interesting. And finally,
Speaker 1: we've talked about autonomous cars and trucks and drones and stuff,
Speaker 1: but now it's time to talk about autonomous boats. Over
Speaker 1: in Amsterdam, the city is testing out autonomous boats in
Speaker 1: its various canal systems. The row boats, which is not
Speaker 1: a rowboat as in row row row your boat, but
Speaker 1: as in a robot boat, are part of a five
Speaker 1: year project to test how the boats will be able
Speaker 1: to navigate the various waterways of Amsterdam and how they
Speaker 1: might become an integral part of Amsterdam's transportation infrastructure. So
Speaker 1: some of the proposed uses for these boats include promoting tourism.
Speaker 1: That's a big one, so allowing tourists to get around
Speaker 1: the city in an interesting way, also to reduce traffic
Speaker 1: congestion Sterdam's roads, because the canals are actually underutilized compared
Speaker 1: to the surface roads of Amsterdam, and because the boats
Speaker 1: are actually modular in design and thus can easily fit
Speaker 1: together to create larger structures. They could possibly serve as
Speaker 1: floating bridges or stages should the need arise. But that's
Speaker 1: all going to be in the future, because as of
Speaker 1: right now, the engineers at M I T and other
Speaker 1: places who are working on this project, they say that
Speaker 1: the boats are probably two to four years out from
Speaker 1: having a sophisticated enough navigation and UH and and motor
Speaker 1: system to get around reliably and safely without having an
Speaker 1: operator on board, So it will be a little while
Speaker 1: longer before they can enter full operation, assuming it all
Speaker 1: works out. But next up, I say, is Venice, because
Speaker 1: I want my robot gondolier baby. I want that that
Speaker 1: robo voice singing out as we go through the canals
Speaker 1: of Venice. A guy can dream. I'm wouldn't a robot
Speaker 1: be cute wearing a little striped shirt and little straw hat.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just saying. Anyway, that's it for the
Speaker 1: news for today. June one. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: topics I should cover on tech Stuff, reach out to
Speaker 1: me on Twitter. The handle is tech stuff hs W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.