Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff, a production from I heart radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I heart radio,
Speaker 1: and how the Tech Are you? It's time for the
Speaker 1: Tech News for Tuesday, September. Two. The epic battle between
Speaker 1: Apple and epic Games continues, and now the U S
Speaker 1: Department of Justice is waiting in all right, so let's
Speaker 1: recap the story so far. Apple has a policy that
Speaker 1: any APP that allows in APP purchases must use apple's
Speaker 1: own payment system, and that means that apple gets a
Speaker 1: slice of the PIE, which, ironically, is not apple pie,
Speaker 1: but instead key line pie epic games. The producers of
Speaker 1: fortnite sidestepped this process by suggesting two players on I
Speaker 1: os devices that they use a little work around that
Speaker 1: would allow the players to purchase credits directly from epic
Speaker 1: games and outside the Apple System, and then use those
Speaker 1: in the IOS game. That would give epic the entire Pie,
Speaker 1: slice of key line. Apple responded swiftly by removing fortnite
Speaker 1: from the APP store and prevented anyone from download to
Speaker 1: get further, although folks who had already had it were
Speaker 1: just fine, and it kind of escalated from there. What
Speaker 1: followed was a lawsuit in which epic argued that Apple's
Speaker 1: approaches anti competitive, that locking developers into this ecosystem was
Speaker 1: inherently unfair. And this is something, by the way, that
Speaker 1: we're seeing play out in courts all over the world
Speaker 1: right now, with different people coming forward, to different companies
Speaker 1: coming forward to say apple's approaches inherently unfair. Now, the
Speaker 1: initial courts decision was a bit of a muddled affair.
Speaker 1: Neither epic nor apple was entirely happy about it, so
Speaker 1: both sides appealed the decision. Now, interestingly, apple one more
Speaker 1: than it lost, because the court decided that apple doesn't
Speaker 1: constitute a monopoly, at least not in this case, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of understandable in the sense that fortnite can
Speaker 1: be played on just about any platform, possibly even your refrigerators.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to point at this and have a
Speaker 1: court understand that this potentially constitutes anti competitive behavior. However,
Speaker 1: the court did rule that apple cannot prevent APPs from
Speaker 1: offering links to alternative payment systems in their APPs, and
Speaker 1: apple really didn't like that. They don't want that to
Speaker 1: happen because the company has really been transforming into more
Speaker 1: of a services oriented company after being a hardware focused
Speaker 1: company for decades. This brings us to what's going on now.
Speaker 1: An appeals court is preparing to hear arguments from all
Speaker 1: sides about the original decision, and the Department of Justice
Speaker 1: and the State of California have both secured a little
Speaker 1: bit of time to present some arguments to the court. Now,
Speaker 1: the D O J is not allowed to take sides
Speaker 1: per se, but the agency hopes to prove that the
Speaker 1: lower court's decisions about apple not being a monopoly were
Speaker 1: shortsighted that apple had in fact violated antitrust laws such
Speaker 1: as the Sherman Act. The D O J says that
Speaker 1: the lower courts interpretation sets a disastrous precedent that weakens
Speaker 1: antitrust law, particularly in the digital landscape, and that this
Speaker 1: needs to be corrected so that the US government has
Speaker 1: the ability to enforce antitrust laws and prevent any company
Speaker 1: from becoming an unimpeachable monopoly. Complicating matters is that the
Speaker 1: D O J is ramping up its own antitrust lawsuit
Speaker 1: against Apple, so it will be important for the lawyers
Speaker 1: to present their case in a way that doesn't come
Speaker 1: across as biased. The State of California, meanwhile, is going
Speaker 1: to present arguments on how the court should treat the
Speaker 1: state's Consumer Protection Law, called the unfair competition law, within
Speaker 1: the context of this lawsuit. The Washington Post reports that
Speaker 1: US Customs has been maintaining a database filled with travelers
Speaker 1: electronic data, some of which dates back fifteen years now.
Speaker 1: It has long been an issue that people entering the US,
Speaker 1: including US citizens returning to America, have sometimes been prompted
Speaker 1: to hand over customs access to their electronic devices. Now
Speaker 1: U S courts have, for some reason deemed this as
Speaker 1: being acceptable. Honestly, I think this very much ranks as
Speaker 1: unreasonable search and seizure, which is something the constitution is
Speaker 1: supposed to protect us against. Anyway, there's no legal reason
Speaker 1: anyone should have to hand over their log and credentials
Speaker 1: to their devices, and finding out that customs has been
Speaker 1: downloading and storing this information for more than a decade
Speaker 1: is a huge red flag. What's worse, the Post reports
Speaker 1: that essentially any employee of the agency can access any
Speaker 1: of that data. So imagine for a moment that you
Speaker 1: are returning to the United States and that you are
Speaker 1: coerced into handing your phone over to customs agents and
Speaker 1: you are further prompted to unlock your phone and then
Speaker 1: they download everything that's on your phone, all without due cause.
Speaker 1: You haven't done anything wrong, or at the very least
Speaker 1: you haven't done anything to warrant this kind of a search.
Speaker 1: And now they have all of the Dat on your phone,
Speaker 1: all your contacts, all your calendar appointments, all of your
Speaker 1: location history, your browsing history, your photos, your documents, everything
Speaker 1: that was on that device has been downloaded and anyone
Speaker 1: within the agency has the capability of potentially accessing it.
Speaker 1: That is unthinkable, right? I mean it doesn't take much
Speaker 1: imagination to come up with dozens of terrible scenarios where
Speaker 1: this could become a problem. Like blackmail alone is a
Speaker 1: terrible possibility. More than that, other agencies like the FBI
Speaker 1: can request and get access to this kind of database
Speaker 1: and it starts to sound a lot like a dystopian
Speaker 1: authoritarian state. U S Senator Ron Widen sent a letter
Speaker 1: to the agency last week raising concerns about this practice
Speaker 1: and saying it amounts to unfair search and seizure on
Speaker 1: American citizens. Whether anything will actually be done about this
Speaker 1: policy or if some court case finally escalates the issue
Speaker 1: so that the Supreme Court weighs in, hopefully to curtail
Speaker 1: the practices again. Seems like a pretty clear cut violation
Speaker 1: of the fourth amendment to the Constitution. All of that
Speaker 1: remains to be seen. A couple of weeks ago, I
Speaker 1: talked about how twitter had cleaned house by deleting a
Speaker 1: bunch of body accounts. They're all pushing propaganda, and while
Speaker 1: that in itself isn't that unusual, in this particular case
Speaker 1: the propaganda promoted the United States and its policies in
Speaker 1: places like Russia and China. Now we often hear about
Speaker 1: coordinating the campaigns meant spread misinformation within the United States,
Speaker 1: and often these campaigns originate out of countries like China
Speaker 1: and Russia, but it's kind of odd to hear about
Speaker 1: the opposite. And now the Pentagon has ordered a review
Speaker 1: of information warfare operations that rely upon social network platforms
Speaker 1: like twitter and Meta across all military branches. So the
Speaker 1: Under Secretary for policy at the Department of Defense, the
Speaker 1: guy named Colin Call, has told all the branches of
Speaker 1: the military that have these kind of operations that they
Speaker 1: have to provide a full report on the scope, scale
Speaker 1: and techniques of those programs by next month, at least
Speaker 1: according to The Washington Post. I think the concern here
Speaker 1: is that it's really bad optics for the US to
Speaker 1: engage in similar tactics that Russia and China are using
Speaker 1: while at the same time the US government has slammed
Speaker 1: social networks for allowing these kind of things to proliferate
Speaker 1: here in the United States. Ends up looking more than
Speaker 1: a little bit hypocritical. Now, maybe the military opts relying
Speaker 1: on these approaches would argue that the narrative they are
Speaker 1: pushing isn't misinformation. Sure, it puts the US and its
Speaker 1: policies in a positive light, but maybe they argued, this
Speaker 1: isn't lying, it's just it's just giving part of the
Speaker 1: story that they otherwise don't get. However, I suspect folks
Speaker 1: in Russia and China would say pretty much the same
Speaker 1: thing about what's going on here and anyway, it'll be
Speaker 1: interesting to see what comes of this. Now propaganda has
Speaker 1: long been a well used and reliable tool around the
Speaker 1: world to spread specific messages and points of view, so
Speaker 1: I wonder if we're going to see the government create
Speaker 1: kind of a framework within which it might be okay
Speaker 1: to use that capability within the digital world. If not,
Speaker 1: one makes the digital world different from, say, dropping physical
Speaker 1: pamphlets from an aircraft onto areas in an effort to
Speaker 1: spread similar messages? That's something the United States has done
Speaker 1: frequently throughout its history, sending messages to citizens in places
Speaker 1: where they can't get access to information in other ways.
Speaker 1: We've made use of those tactics in the past. So
Speaker 1: it kind of raises the question if that sort of
Speaker 1: thing is wrong in the digital space, why? Like, what
Speaker 1: is it that makes it different? These are complicated questions
Speaker 1: and I don't pretend to have the answers. I do
Speaker 1: find it fascinating, however. Something else that is, I hesitate
Speaker 1: to use Laura, fascinating but certainly captivating, is an article
Speaker 1: that I read in Rolling Stone magazine. It is titled
Speaker 1: How many women were abused to make that Tesla, and
Speaker 1: the article goes into detail about the work culture at Tesla,
Speaker 1: the electric vehicle company, as well as Elon Musk's personal
Speaker 1: history with, quote unquote, fratish behaviors from the article, and
Speaker 1: also how seven women have brought lawsuits against Tesla alleging
Speaker 1: sexual harassment the story even goes beyond Tesla and mentions
Speaker 1: how spacex engineer Ashley Kozak wrote about similar issues over
Speaker 1: at SPACEX, another Elon Musk company. I recommend this article.
Speaker 1: I will warn you it has a lot of extremely
Speaker 1: upsetting information and allegations in it, but if those allegations
Speaker 1: are true, it really paints the corporate culture of Tesla
Speaker 1: and other musk companies in a really terrible light, akin
Speaker 1: to the kind of stories we heard coming out of
Speaker 1: gaming companies like activision blizzard and before that UBI soft
Speaker 1: and before that the stuff we heard coming out of Uber.
Speaker 1: For many people out there, news that companies in the
Speaker 1: tech sector have a particularly ugly problem with Misogyny and
Speaker 1: sexual harassment is going to come as no surprise. Right
Speaker 1: this is old news, in fact. I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: listeners of this show who have either experienced or witnessed
Speaker 1: something on those lines at companies in the tech sector.
Speaker 1: But pieces like this indicate that companies really do need
Speaker 1: to work harder at stamping out these kinds of culture
Speaker 1: and that shareholders should demand more from the companies that
Speaker 1: they invest in. I mean, it's a bad investment ultimately,
Speaker 1: because sooner or later the cards come crashing down. You
Speaker 1: would rather invest in a company that has a supportive
Speaker 1: and healthy culture and not one that's predatory. I'm sure,
Speaker 1: or at least I'm sure for listeners of this podcast.
Speaker 1: They're probably people out there who really don't care as
Speaker 1: long as they get a return on the investment, but
Speaker 1: they wouldn't listen to this show. Right. Okay, we've got
Speaker 1: some more news stories to get to. Before we get
Speaker 1: to that, let's take a quick break. We're back over
Speaker 1: in the European Union, courts upheld a ruling that says
Speaker 1: Google must pay a truly annoyed or miss fine of
Speaker 1: about four point one to billion dollars. Now, to be fair,
Speaker 1: that's actually a reduction of the original find. The original
Speaker 1: find from the first court case was closer to four
Speaker 1: point three billion dollars. So Google got a deal, they
Speaker 1: got a break. It's just four point one two billion.
Speaker 1: Now all of this actually stems from a case that
Speaker 1: was originally filed back in two thousand and fifteen, in
Speaker 1: which the European Commission ruled that Google was engaged in
Speaker 1: anti competitive practices with the android operating system, essentially saying
Speaker 1: Google had actively taken advantage of its enormous installed base
Speaker 1: in Europe. Something like of EU citizens have an android device,
Speaker 1: and they forced every android device out there to have
Speaker 1: apps like chrome and search pre installed on them, and
Speaker 1: that this ended up giving Google and unfair advantage in
Speaker 1: those areas, because competing search and browsers were, uh, not
Speaker 1: pre installed. The original decision was handed down in two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, so the case began in t the decision
Speaker 1: in the fine came in because, you know, justice moved swiftly,
Speaker 1: and yeah, that meant that the original case took like
Speaker 1: three years to resolve, but Google then appealed the decision.
Speaker 1: It took another four years for the appeal to work
Speaker 1: its way through the system and for courts to find
Speaker 1: that Google still guilty and still needs to pay a fine,
Speaker 1: although it's slightly lower than what it was originally. And
Speaker 1: that's where we are now. So does this mean that
Speaker 1: Google is going to have to cough up more than
Speaker 1: four billion bucks? Not necessarily. Google can appeal this decision
Speaker 1: as well, which would push the matter up to the
Speaker 1: highest court in the EU, where perhaps it could get
Speaker 1: a front decision or maybe the fine would be further reduced.
Speaker 1: Will have to wait and see. Mozilla, conducted a study
Speaker 1: on Youtube and found that the platforms tools for telling
Speaker 1: Youtube that you don't like a particular video or you
Speaker 1: don't want to have similar content show up in your recommendations.
Speaker 1: They don't work very well, those tools. And this is
Speaker 1: interesting because I have noticed something similar in my own
Speaker 1: use of Youtube, particularly recently. But you know, anecdotal evidence
Speaker 1: isn't real evidence. So I never brought it up on
Speaker 1: the show because I thought, well, this is just my experience.
Speaker 1: What if it's an outlier? But in my case I
Speaker 1: was watching a lot of video essays about different types
Speaker 1: of things, including a ton about pop culture, and it
Speaker 1: was really just, you know, critiques about different things like
Speaker 1: movies or series, and really well thought out and well
Speaker 1: researched arguments. But I noticed that some of the video
Speaker 1: essays that were creeping into my recommendations weren't real video essays.
Speaker 1: They were really just thinly veiled manifestos for right wing
Speaker 1: talking points. Now, I am not a right wing person
Speaker 1: by a long stretch. I'm sure this comes as no
Speaker 1: surprise to anyone who's listening to me. This is not
Speaker 1: me judging that point of view. Rather, it's just me
Speaker 1: saying that's not my worldview or my philosophy, and in
Speaker 1: most cases my opinions are almost the opposite of the
Speaker 1: stuff that was showing up in these videos that were
Speaker 1: posing as critiques on pop culture. So I started tagging
Speaker 1: those videos as don't recommend this channel to me because
Speaker 1: I didn't want to see them anymore. They weren't interesting
Speaker 1: to me, I didn't agree with the point of view.
Speaker 1: I just found them frustrating. But then I would get
Speaker 1: nearly identical videos. Now it might be a different channel
Speaker 1: and a different host, but the videos contained the same
Speaker 1: talking points, the same tactics of presenting right wing ideology
Speaker 1: discusised as a video essay on pop culture, and I
Speaker 1: just felt like I was constantly trying to knock down
Speaker 1: one recommendation and I would just get a different one
Speaker 1: that was essentially the same thing the next day. Well,
Speaker 1: according to Mozilla, my experience is by no means unique.
Speaker 1: The organization used a tool to measure how effective youtube's
Speaker 1: features are. The tool Mozilla used could track when viewers
Speaker 1: were clicking on dislike, not interested, don't recommend channel and
Speaker 1: remove from history to see how much of an effect
Speaker 1: that had on the recommendations engine. Would it prevent similar
Speaker 1: videos from popping up in the recommendations engine, or would
Speaker 1: it not? And it found that hitting dislike would reduce
Speaker 1: only twelve percent of bad recommendations in the future, meaning
Speaker 1: that you would still get those kinds of videos. If
Speaker 1: you clicked not interested, it was worse. It only prevented
Speaker 1: eleven of similar material popping up and recommendations. If you
Speaker 1: chose don't recommend channel, it was a little bit better,
Speaker 1: but only up to forte so you're still less than
Speaker 1: fifty of of reduction of those kinds of videos popping
Speaker 1: up in your recommendations, and removing videos from history prevented
Speaker 1: only of bad recommendations in the future. If you're wondering
Speaker 1: how they came up with those numbers, they had a
Speaker 1: control group that did not hit any of those dislike
Speaker 1: features at all, and so what they were doing was
Speaker 1: seeing how many similar videos were popping up in the
Speaker 1: recommendations of someone who wasn't taking these measures versus people
Speaker 1: who were, and that's how they got those reductions. Now,
Speaker 1: Youtube reps say that the recommendation engine doesn't automatically prevent
Speaker 1: all similar material from popping up, largely to avoid creating
Speaker 1: echo chambers, and that makes sense. I can agree with that. Right,
Speaker 1: you don't want tools to end up funneling people into
Speaker 1: very narrow points of view and then attentially escalating that
Speaker 1: and creating extremists. That makes sense, but at least in
Speaker 1: my case, it wasn't like I was getting videos that
Speaker 1: had well reasoned arguments made in good faith in an
Speaker 1: attempt to convince me that the point of view represented
Speaker 1: in the video was a valid one. Instead, I was
Speaker 1: getting videos that were reinforcing concepts that I fundamentally disagree with,
Speaker 1: and they weren't supporting those concepts. It's not like they
Speaker 1: were creating an argument to support the ideology. It was
Speaker 1: just a repetition of those talking points anyway. The study
Speaker 1: seems to show that Youtube does not prioritize user feedback,
Speaker 1: which could explain why some people have a frustrating experience
Speaker 1: when they're on the platform, me included. Both Uber and
Speaker 1: rock star have been hit by hackers, possibly the same one,
Speaker 1: and in Uber's case, the company has issued multiple statements
Speaker 1: in the wake of the attack. They said that the
Speaker 1: attack gained access to Uber's systems by compromising an Uber
Speaker 1: e x t contractors account. Uber was able to detect
Speaker 1: this intrusion. That's being kind, because they left messages, but
Speaker 1: uber responded by locking out the account and a few
Speaker 1: other accounts that could have been compromised, but they didn't.
Speaker 1: They weren't able to do this until after the attacker
Speaker 1: had already gained access to numerous tools, which included them
Speaker 1: gaining access to, and then posting within, the company's slack channel.
Speaker 1: Hardly a low profile move. It's not the kind of
Speaker 1: thing you do if you're trying to be super sneaky
Speaker 1: and really embed yourself within a targets system. This is
Speaker 1: something you do in order to make a point or
Speaker 1: to needle a target or whatever. Now Uber is investigating
Speaker 1: if there was any material impact to the company. So
Speaker 1: they're looking into what, if any, information the attacker actually
Speaker 1: accessed duringing this incident and maybe potentially downloaded. During the incident,
Speaker 1: some of Uber's customer support features were disabled, but beyond that,
Speaker 1: it sounds like the disruption wasn't that noticeable outside the company. Though, again,
Speaker 1: until Uber has a better idea of what information the
Speaker 1: attacker might have accessed and potentially copied, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to judge how bad this attack was. I mean, the
Speaker 1: attack itself was bad, because getting that level of access
Speaker 1: is not great, but how damaging it was remains to
Speaker 1: be seen. Uber is working with the Department of Justice
Speaker 1: and the FBI in an investigation into this and, as
Speaker 1: it stands, the chief suspect for the attack was the
Speaker 1: hacking group lapsus L A. P S U dollar sign,
Speaker 1: which has been on quite the run this year, having
Speaker 1: been named responsible for hacks into companies like Cisco and
Speaker 1: Microsoft and OCTA, among others. I mean these are companies
Speaker 1: that are own for helping create a more secure environment
Speaker 1: and they were targets of hacks by the same hacker group.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they mean serious business. Okay, we've got a
Speaker 1: few more news items to talk about, but before we
Speaker 1: get into that, let's take one more quick break. All right, y'all,
Speaker 1: by the time you hear this episode in video, will
Speaker 1: have held an event to announce the next generation of
Speaker 1: its gpus, or graphics processors. The code name for the
Speaker 1: new processor architecture is love lace, which is after Ada lovelace,
Speaker 1: the enchantress of numbers. So we expect that these new
Speaker 1: processors are going to have a new kind of architecture
Speaker 1: to make them more power efficient more powerful. That kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Analysts expect that in video will announce a
Speaker 1: new forty series of cards, like an r t x
Speaker 1: forty eight. The current, you know, flagship gpus are the
Speaker 1: R T X thirty eight and the thirty nine. So
Speaker 1: we might be getting two different forty eighties and a
Speaker 1: fort by by the rumor mill. By the time you
Speaker 1: hear this, you'll know because the event will have happened.
Speaker 1: You can just google it with ethereum. Shifting to proof
Speaker 1: of steak and an increased availability for graphics cards in general.
Speaker 1: Maybe this will mean that the most powerful cards in
Speaker 1: the market will actually be something that gamers can more
Speaker 1: easily get their hands on, if they have the cash.
Speaker 1: That is. These cards frequently cost well over a thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: Some of them creep up to around two thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So it's not the type of component for a budget Gamer,
Speaker 1: because that's just the graphics card. That doesn't include any
Speaker 1: of the rest of the computer. But maybe this will
Speaker 1: also mean prices for the last generation of cards will
Speaker 1: go down a little, because I would still love to
Speaker 1: get my hands on a thirty eight. I. The computer
Speaker 1: I use for gaming doesn't have anywhere close to the
Speaker 1: of that thirty eight card. Anyway, I might do a
Speaker 1: follow up on Thursday if the company reveals anything particularly
Speaker 1: interesting the demand for university lester over in the UK
Speaker 1: conducted a study in which researchers found that young children
Speaker 1: are losing the equivalent of a full night's sleep each week.
Speaker 1: So they're losing the equivalent of one night's sleep per
Speaker 1: week because they're staying up to be on social media
Speaker 1: on their various electronic devices. The study found that around
Speaker 1: twelve point five of all ten year olds wake up
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night in order to check notifications,
Speaker 1: which is a big old yikes for me. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the big reasons I got off social media
Speaker 1: was because I found myself bowing to the whims of notifications,
Speaker 1: and over the last couple of years I've really made
Speaker 1: an effort to reduce the number of notifications I get,
Speaker 1: whether it's personal or, much to my coworkers Chagrin, work related.
Speaker 1: That's because I recognized that it was starting to harm
Speaker 1: me to have notifications pop up all the time. It
Speaker 1: was hurting my productivity, my creativity, my mental health. So
Speaker 1: I made a real effort to reduce the notifications, which
Speaker 1: means I'm a little more slow to respond to things
Speaker 1: than some of my coworkers, but you know, it's better
Speaker 1: to be a little slow rather than to just have
Speaker 1: a complete mental breakdown and no longer be able to
Speaker 1: respond at all. Now, young kids, they are not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to be cognizant of the effects of these sort
Speaker 1: of behaviors, of staying up and losing the equivalent of
Speaker 1: a night's sleep each week. And younger children need more sleep.
Speaker 1: They need it in order to recuperate. They need it
Speaker 1: so that they can learn more effectively and grow in
Speaker 1: a healthy way. So interrupting that process is not great. Now,
Speaker 1: I am not a parent. It is not my business
Speaker 1: to tell other people how to take care of their
Speaker 1: kids because I don't have kids and uh, far be
Speaker 1: it from me to give parenting advice. But maybe, if
Speaker 1: you have kids, consider limiting screen time and maybe even
Speaker 1: putting away devices at night so that those devices aren't
Speaker 1: accessible until perhaps the next day. So just make that
Speaker 1: a regular part of the routine. That's what I would suggest.
Speaker 1: I realized that that may not be easy in a
Speaker 1: lot of households, particularly if the kids are already accustomed
Speaker 1: to always having their devices on them, but Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you want your kid to grow
Speaker 1: up healthy, so it's probably a good idea to to
Speaker 1: limit that screen time. Probably a good idea for me
Speaker 1: to do it to myself even more than I already have.
Speaker 1: NASA will be testing the launch vehicle for the Artemis
Speaker 1: one mission and tomorrow running a cryogenic demonstration. So in
Speaker 1: this demonstration they aren't going to be firing up the engines,
Speaker 1: there's not gonna be any sort of countdown or anything
Speaker 1: like that. This test is to see if the team
Speaker 1: has managed to fix the issues that led to a
Speaker 1: hydrogen leak, which in turn forced NASA to delay the
Speaker 1: launch earlier this month. So, as a reminder, the artemist
Speaker 1: program is aimed at going back to the moon and
Speaker 1: artemist one is to be an unscrewed mission, meaning there's
Speaker 1: no crew aboard. I know when I say uncrewed it
Speaker 1: sounds like I'm saying it's not a crude mission in
Speaker 1: the sense of it's, you know, it's egalitarian and refined.
Speaker 1: That's not what I mean, though. I'm sure everyone's on
Speaker 1: their best behavior. But now, in this particular one, the
Speaker 1: Orion capsule, which would normally hold astronauts, will instead be
Speaker 1: carrying some mannequins as well as the snoopy doll, and
Speaker 1: then it will fly off to do an orbit of
Speaker 1: the moon before returning to Earth to touch down own
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Ocean. But, as I mentioned, while the
Speaker 1: original launch was planned for earlier this month, a hydrogen
Speaker 1: leak to one of the four engines in the in
Speaker 1: the launch vehicle, one of the fourth thrusters uh, forced
Speaker 1: NASA to delay things. Engineers have since made repairs to
Speaker 1: the system. They found a possible cause of the leak
Speaker 1: as they discovered an indentation on part of the disconnect
Speaker 1: line and they think maybe that was the problem and
Speaker 1: they repaired that. So on Wednesday's test tomorrow, the launch
Speaker 1: team will use a slower process to feed liquid hydrogen
Speaker 1: to the engines to cool them down to operational levels,
Speaker 1: and they'll do that in the hopes that this kinder,
Speaker 1: gentler approach will let engines reach the proper temperature while
Speaker 1: putting less strain on the system as a whole. If
Speaker 1: that works out, NASA could plan a new artemis one
Speaker 1: launch for as earliest September, with October second listed as
Speaker 1: a backup date should whether or some other event delay things.
Speaker 1: This is, of course, assuming that space force gives them
Speaker 1: the go ahead to do this, because they do have
Speaker 1: to get space forces permission to launch due to the
Speaker 1: fact that this is out of the the original schedule,
Speaker 1: but here's hoping it all works out. Finally, two years
Speaker 1: ago the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program launched a spacecraft called
Speaker 1: the Chong Five. The name Chang references a Chinese moon goddess,
Speaker 1: and my apologies for my pronunciation, but that spacecraft included
Speaker 1: an orbiter which would stay in lunar orbit around the Moon,
Speaker 1: and it also had a lander that had a second
Speaker 1: spacecraft called in a cinder connected to it. So this
Speaker 1: disconnected from the orbiter. The lander then touched down on
Speaker 1: the moon, with the ascender put perched on top of
Speaker 1: the lander. The Lander collected samples from the Moon's surface
Speaker 1: and then transported those samples to the ascender, which then
Speaker 1: launched off the lander, blew up to meet the orbiter
Speaker 1: and rendezvous with it. Transferred the sample to the orbiter
Speaker 1: and then the ascender was de orbited it. It landed
Speaker 1: back on the Moon's surface. It just said my job
Speaker 1: is done and it detached, went back and landed on
Speaker 1: the moon. The orbiter meanwhile left Lunar Orbit, returned to
Speaker 1: Earth and brought the samples back. So China became the
Speaker 1: third country in the world to retrieve samples from the
Speaker 1: lunar surface, the first being America the second one being Russia.
Speaker 1: Well now, two years later, Chinese scientists say that within
Speaker 1: that sample was a very small crystal that contains helium three.
Speaker 1: Now this is not totally unexpected, because scientists have long
Speaker 1: hypothesized that there are large helium three deposits on the moon.
Speaker 1: But you might wonder, well, why is this even important? Well,
Speaker 1: helium three could potentially be the fuel used by future
Speaker 1: fusion reactors. A huge advantage of helium three is that
Speaker 1: the fusion process would not produce any radioactive particles, but
Speaker 1: it would produce a lot of electricity energy. However, helium
Speaker 1: three is pretty darn scarce here on earth, so it
Speaker 1: could mean that the moon becomes a major source of
Speaker 1: fuel for the future. All of that is still pretty
Speaker 1: far off, because the tech for creating sustainable fusion reactions
Speaker 1: remains elusive in general and for helium three in particular.
Speaker 1: But if we were able to solve those issues, it
Speaker 1: would mean that the moon would become a really valuable
Speaker 1: resource for our energy needs here on earth. In fact,
Speaker 1: it could become a battle ground as various nations try
Speaker 1: to establish a presence on the moon for the purposes
Speaker 1: of mining resources that could fuel stuff here on earth
Speaker 1: or beyond. Sounds a lot like a hindland short story.
Speaker 1: Those always turn out great. All right, that's the news
Speaker 1: for Tuesday September two. Y'All, I should also report that
Speaker 1: I will be on vacation next week and so I
Speaker 1: will likely be putting up some reruns. Maybe I can
Speaker 1: record a couple of updates if I have enough time
Speaker 1: to do so, two older episodes. I'm going to do
Speaker 1: a quick look and see if there are anything that
Speaker 1: I can maybe do some short updates for and and
Speaker 1: give you some new content. But yeah, I'll be gone
Speaker 1: for a week and then I will return and I
Speaker 1: will be re energized. Maybe it'll all depend on whether
Speaker 1: we get hit by hurricanes while I'm on vacation. We'll see.
Speaker 1: But if you have any suggestions to send me, then
Speaker 1: there are a couple of ways of doing so. One
Speaker 1: is to download the I heart radio APP, which is
Speaker 1: free to download and use. You can navigate over to
Speaker 1: the tech stuff part of the APP. There's a little
Speaker 1: microphone that you can click and you can leave up
Speaker 1: to thirty second message for me and let me know
Speaker 1: what you would like to hear on future episodes. Or
Speaker 1: you can reach out on twitter. The handle for the
Speaker 1: show is tech stuff, H S W and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Yeah, tech stuff is an
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Speaker 1: visit the I heart radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.