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 is time for
Speaker 1: the tech news for Tuesday, January twenty five, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: and the first item is sort of a good news
Speaker 1: bad news situation. The bad news, at least if you're
Speaker 1: heavily invested in cryptocurrency, is that the value of various
Speaker 1: cryptocurrencies have really taken a serious hit over the last
Speaker 1: several weeks. It's been quite a time for bitcoin. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: saw its value peak to nearly seventy thousand dollars last
Speaker 1: year per bitcoin, So one bitcoin was worth nearly seventy
Speaker 1: grand at its height last year. But as I was
Speaker 1: writing this episode, it's around thirty six thousand dollars per bitcoin. Now,
Speaker 1: that's still a heck of a lot of money on
Speaker 1: a per bitcoin basis, obviously, right, particularly for those of
Speaker 1: you out there who were aware of cryptocurrency back when
Speaker 1: bitcoin's value was a fractions of a dollar, It is
Speaker 1: still a remarkable story. However, it means folks who invested
Speaker 1: when the cryptocurrency was at a higher value, are probably
Speaker 1: not too happy right now. Likewise, ethereum, which nearly reached
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars per unit earlier in the you know,
Speaker 1: last year, now it's currently at around dollars, so less
Speaker 1: than half of that. Now, keep in mind, at the
Speaker 1: beginning of twenty twenty, ethereum was actually below two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per ether so it's still above where it was
Speaker 1: early twenty. So again, I don't want to paint the
Speaker 1: picture of saying crypto isn't worth anything. That's not the case.
Speaker 1: We're just seeing a massive drop off in value. Now.
Speaker 1: There are some people who are predicting that this could
Speaker 1: be the end of cryptocurrency. I think that that is
Speaker 1: way too dramatic a prediction. A lot of other folks,
Speaker 1: myself included, are saying we're probably looking at maybe a
Speaker 1: rough trend for a while. Uh. After all, the crypto
Speaker 1: market collectively has lost around a trillion dollars since that
Speaker 1: high point in bitcoin's history. But there are a lot
Speaker 1: of factors that are contributing to this all around the world.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna make any predictions about what's gonna come next,
Speaker 1: because again, if you actually look at any chart that
Speaker 1: plots the value of major cryptocurrencies over time, you'll see
Speaker 1: that there are periods of wild growth and wild decline.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the reasons why I actually
Speaker 1: get down on cryptocurrency so much, because it's so volatile
Speaker 1: that it's not really an effective currency. It's more of
Speaker 1: a speculative investment. Anyway, that's the bad news. That crypto
Speaker 1: is down right now and it is probably in for
Speaker 1: a rough time in the near future. I suspect we'll
Speaker 1: see it recover, unless you know, things around the world
Speaker 1: developed to a point that really spelled doom for cryptocurrency,
Speaker 1: which could happen. But now let's talk about the good news.
Speaker 1: So Tom's Hardware reports that the price of GPUs, that
Speaker 1: is graphics processing units has come down for most models
Speaker 1: across eBay, and this is most likely linked to the
Speaker 1: decline in cryptocurrency value. So let me explain now, for bitcoin,
Speaker 1: GPUs aren't really in the picture, and that's because bitcoins
Speaker 1: value is so high that people have moved away from
Speaker 1: GPUs to more specialized processors and systems in order to
Speaker 1: get the competitive advantage over other Bitcoin miners. Remember to
Speaker 1: mind cryptocurrency in a proof of work model anyway means
Speaker 1: you're using computer systems to generate the right answer to
Speaker 1: what is the actually a math guessing game, and you
Speaker 1: want to do it first before anyone else does, so
Speaker 1: you need computer systems that generate guesses faster than anyone
Speaker 1: else's system does. With Bitcoin, GPUs just can't keep up
Speaker 1: with the much more expensive specialized hardware that's used by
Speaker 1: serious bitcoin mining organizations. But Ethereum is different. See Ethereum
Speaker 1: isn't worth as much as bitcoin is, so it wouldn't
Speaker 1: make economic sense to use that specialized bitcoin mining equipment
Speaker 1: for Ethereum because the equipment would cost more than what
Speaker 1: you would get out of mining the ethereum. So that
Speaker 1: is where folks typically are relying upon GPU cards for
Speaker 1: their mining rigs. It's in the Ethereum ecosystem, not the
Speaker 1: Bitcoin one. But with Ethereum's price falling, the demand for
Speaker 1: cards has changed, and that means that the price for
Speaker 1: cards has changed, at least on eBay. Uh it's still
Speaker 1: danged hard to find a graphics card on the primary market,
Speaker 1: like the the original points of sale, that is still
Speaker 1: very hard to do, and those cards there are pretty
Speaker 1: much holding their market value. So a lot of folks
Speaker 1: have to look to the secondary market for their equipment,
Speaker 1: like eBay. I should add that when I say the
Speaker 1: price has come down, it doesn't mean that the cards
Speaker 1: are now cheap. For example, the r t X, which
Speaker 1: is kind of the creme de la creme in the
Speaker 1: GPU space right now, it is going for around two thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred fifty bucks on average for just the graphics card.
Speaker 1: Remember that's one component in a computer. You would actually
Speaker 1: have to build out the rest of your computer too.
Speaker 1: Now that is about a thousand fifty dollars above the
Speaker 1: cards M S r P. Meaning you know, you should
Speaker 1: be able to find the the actual card for dollars
Speaker 1: on the regular market. It's just that people have bought
Speaker 1: up all the cards and are trying to sell them
Speaker 1: for a markup on sizes like eBay. So it's still
Speaker 1: a heck of a markup, right, A thousand dollars, a
Speaker 1: thousand plus dollars, that's a heck of a markup. But
Speaker 1: Tom's Hardware points out that if we were to see
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency value decline further and as companies eliminate shortage issues
Speaker 1: in the supply chain, as we start to see those
Speaker 1: ease up, where the supply chain starts to get back
Speaker 1: into a good working order, then we should see prices
Speaker 1: in the secondary market continue to come down. In fact,
Speaker 1: we might even get to a point where people will
Speaker 1: stop buying up the cards in bulk and trying to
Speaker 1: sell them on eBay in the first place, because the
Speaker 1: profit margin will be too low to deal with the hassle.
Speaker 1: At least a gamer can dream. While we're talking about
Speaker 1: graphics cards and processors, let's revisit the story of Nvidios
Speaker 1: quest to acquire ARM, that is, the British chip designer company,
Speaker 1: or at least founded and operated in Britain, currently owned
Speaker 1: by a Japanese conglomerate called soft Bank. Well, we first
Speaker 1: learned of this and acquisition back in September of twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: It was announced it would be a forty billion dollar deal,
Speaker 1: and that deal made news around the world for lots
Speaker 1: of different reasons. There were people who were afraid that
Speaker 1: in Nvidia buying up ARM would consolidate the semiconductor industry
Speaker 1: and limit competition, and that would hurt customers down the line,
Speaker 1: whether those customers are you know, computer manufacturers or end
Speaker 1: users that you know. Consolidation and markets rarely benefits the
Speaker 1: end customer. It really benefits whomever is consolidating all the power,
Speaker 1: but not so much everybody else. And over in the UK,
Speaker 1: where ARM is based, there were worries that a foreign
Speaker 1: company America purchasing a British chip designer could open up
Speaker 1: the possibility of national security issues, ignoring the fact that
Speaker 1: soft Bank already owned ARM. But whatever, and CNBC now
Speaker 1: reports that in Video may be ready to abandon their
Speaker 1: f their f you know this this quest to purchase
Speaker 1: ARM that you know, regulatory bodies around the world are
Speaker 1: maybe putting up a little too much resistance and the
Speaker 1: company is kind of mired and all that and wants
Speaker 1: to extricate itself. CNBC also reports that soft Bank is
Speaker 1: preparing to launch an i p O, that is, initial
Speaker 1: public offering for ARM if this acquisition deal actually does
Speaker 1: fall through. So in that event, ARM would then spent
Speaker 1: off to become a publicly traded company on the market,
Speaker 1: and it would not be acquired by you know, in Vidio.
Speaker 1: The collapse of the deal would be a pretty big
Speaker 1: setback for Invidia. Uh and while in Video would no
Speaker 1: longer be obligated for that forty billion dollar deal, I
Speaker 1: imagine the company has already spent a healthy chunk of
Speaker 1: change and resources on the acquisition efforts to date. The
Speaker 1: news perhaps contributed to Invidious share price, which fell three
Speaker 1: in pre market trading today. The attorneys general for Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. And the states of Indiana, Texas, and Washington
Speaker 1: State are coming after Google. They have filed lawsuits against
Speaker 1: the company alleging that Google purposefully misled users from two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen to two thousand nineteen with regard to location tracking.
Speaker 1: So the attorneys are saying that Google indicated if you,
Speaker 1: or at least implied that if you turned off your
Speaker 1: location history setting on a Android device, for example, that
Speaker 1: the company would no longer track your location and thus
Speaker 1: you wouldn't have to worry about them selling your location
Speaker 1: information to advertisers and the like. But the truth of
Speaker 1: the matter was that you would actually have to dive
Speaker 1: a little bit further into your settings and go to
Speaker 1: the Web and App activity section to turn off location
Speaker 1: tracking for real z s. So, in other words, it
Speaker 1: was like there were two switches. There was a more
Speaker 1: obvious switch labeled location history, but turning that off didn't
Speaker 1: actually turn off location tracking, and the switch that would
Speaker 1: turn off location tracking was a trickier one that did exist,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't as easy to find. It actually reminds
Speaker 1: me of a sequence in the novel and the radio
Speaker 1: play and the television series in the movie Hitchhecker's Guide
Speaker 1: to the Galaxy, where Arthur dent Uh, the protagonist of
Speaker 1: the series, was trying to seek out a a city
Speaker 1: Uh press release essentially, or a city order, and that
Speaker 1: it was purposefully kept in an in an almost inaccessible
Speaker 1: location to avoid people discovering it. Uh. Kind of similar
Speaker 1: to that, And the attorneys say that Google didn't really
Speaker 1: indicate to users that the web and app activity setting
Speaker 1: was even something they should know about until around two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen. Now, the lawsuits that these attorneys general have
Speaker 1: filed are somewhat similar to one that the State of
Speaker 1: Arizona filed against Google back in twenty twenty, But the
Speaker 1: new lawsuit are targeting something that the attorneys general are
Speaker 1: calling dark patterns, and that's starting to sound a little
Speaker 1: bit like an epic fantasy, you know, perhaps a plot
Speaker 1: that used to do or the Wizard would oppose. But
Speaker 1: in this case, dark patterns really refer to choices made
Speaker 1: in user interface or UI design, and these are choices
Speaker 1: that would guide people down certain pathways and de emphasizing
Speaker 1: other pathways. So, in other words, it's a kind of
Speaker 1: UI design philosophy meant to provide all the options that
Speaker 1: you're obligated to provide because of various laws and regulations.
Speaker 1: Like if the law says you have to give users
Speaker 1: the option to turn this off, well, this UI design
Speaker 1: technically fulfills that obligation, but you kind of use like
Speaker 1: smoke and mirrors so that very few people actually take
Speaker 1: the effort to go down the correct pathway to find
Speaker 1: that setting and turn it off. You make it inconvenient,
Speaker 1: and you make other stuff far more accessible and easy
Speaker 1: to understand in an effort to try and discourage people
Speaker 1: from turning off this otherwise extremely lucrative setting. The lawsuit
Speaker 1: also has something that I've never seen before, which is
Speaker 1: that the attorneys general are demanding that Google ditch any
Speaker 1: algorithms that the company created with the money that was
Speaker 1: generated from leveraging this location data collected from users during
Speaker 1: that time frame. That's an addition to surrendering any money
Speaker 1: the Google made during that time from the use of
Speaker 1: location data. I don't think i've ever seen a case
Speaker 1: where lawyers were demanding a company surrender algorithms. I'll have
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on this story as it develops.
Speaker 1: I also wonder, you know, like, how would they hold
Speaker 1: Google accountable to determine exactly what money came from what
Speaker 1: sources and how much would have to be surrendered. It's
Speaker 1: a pretty complicated thing, and I don't know how it
Speaker 1: would all be resolved. I'm guessing that the ultimate goal
Speaker 1: is to force Google to make changes and perhaps pay
Speaker 1: out a settlement. But um, we'll have to wait and see.
Speaker 1: I I this one is beyond me. We have a
Speaker 1: couple more stories about Google, plus a whole lot of
Speaker 1: other tech news after we come back from this break. Okay,
Speaker 1: We've got a couple of other little Google news items
Speaker 1: to talk about before and move on. One is that
Speaker 1: the company announced it would soon block ad targeting for
Speaker 1: users under the age of eighteen. Specifically, a press release
Speaker 1: from Monday says quote, We've already made progress on delivering
Speaker 1: a safer experience to kids and teens online by expanding
Speaker 1: safeguards to prevent age sensitive ad categories from being shown
Speaker 1: to teens, and we block ad targeting based on the
Speaker 1: age gender or interests of people under eighteen end quote.
Speaker 1: I'm actually surprised that it took this long for enough
Speaker 1: pressure to mount against Google to a point where the
Speaker 1: company made this kind of release. But this is another
Speaker 1: example of how big tech companies are feeling a pushback
Speaker 1: from arious governments and agencies around the world. In Europe, obviously,
Speaker 1: there's been, uh for a while, a growing emphasis placed
Speaker 1: upon citizen privacy and security and that the companies have
Speaker 1: to give citizens enough information and options so that they
Speaker 1: can choose whether or not to have their data collected
Speaker 1: by various entities and in what context. And we're starting
Speaker 1: to see that kind of expand to other places in
Speaker 1: the world, including here in the United States. And obviously
Speaker 1: the the safety of children is always something that is
Speaker 1: considered pretty important for obvious reasons, and in recent years
Speaker 1: we've seen a lot more scrutiny dedicated to that, particularly
Speaker 1: towards Google, UH, with things like you know, the Google's
Speaker 1: YouTube algorithms being potentially harmful toward kids. We've also obviously
Speaker 1: seen it applied to other platform was like Facebook. UH.
Speaker 1: Now this is also not to say that Google is
Speaker 1: stopping its practice of pouring resources into developing new ways
Speaker 1: to track and categorize people now. Previously, Google developed a
Speaker 1: project that it called Federated Learning of Cohorts, or FLOCK,
Speaker 1: which aimed to phase out tracking cookies for the purposes
Speaker 1: of gathering information about users as they navigate online. Cookies
Speaker 1: have had a pretty the controversial past as well. The
Speaker 1: whole idea behind cookies is that a browser is able
Speaker 1: to collect certain information through these cookies that remains relevant
Speaker 1: to that user, so that between browsing sessions, or even
Speaker 1: within a browsing session, things are smoothed over, right Like otherwise,
Speaker 1: you might have to log in and adjust your settings
Speaker 1: for a particular web service every single time you visit it,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a hass. But cookies can also
Speaker 1: be used to track your activity and be used in advertisements,
Speaker 1: so that like an advertiser knows that you were looking at,
Speaker 1: I don't know, uh, hiking boots, and so the next
Speaker 1: time you're on Facebook you just see like tons of
Speaker 1: ads for hiking boots because these cookies have tracked that
Speaker 1: activity and Facebook was able to leverage that and serve
Speaker 1: you ads based upon that. Well, now things are changing
Speaker 1: a little bit. See FLOCK was an idea that would
Speaker 1: instead lump users into groups of folks who have similar interests,
Speaker 1: so you would be in independent flocks based upon whatever
Speaker 1: you were showing interested in. Flock however, now is could put.
Speaker 1: Google now has a project called Topics, which doesn't sound
Speaker 1: that different to me. Topics is a project that would
Speaker 1: track a users activities across the web an attempt to
Speaker 1: infer what kind of stuff that user was interested in,
Speaker 1: and Topics will hold on to browsing data for sort
Speaker 1: of a rolling three week periods. Your last three weeks
Speaker 1: of browsing will be what determines which topics are tagged
Speaker 1: to you like, which ones you appear to be interested in.
Speaker 1: And they're starting off, I think with three topics, but
Speaker 1: could potentially expand that, and that would be handy information
Speaker 1: for advertisers, right They would look to see which users
Speaker 1: have specific topics tagged to them and those would be
Speaker 1: the ones that would be most relevant to those advertisers.
Speaker 1: So if an advertiser is looking for someone who like
Speaker 1: has been tagged as having an avid interest in outdoors
Speaker 1: the activities, well, they're likely not going to find me
Speaker 1: on that topics list, and I won't get targeted for
Speaker 1: those ads. Now, Topics will just be one of several
Speaker 1: signals that advertisers can select when they work with Google
Speaker 1: to serve ads to customers. They're not required to use topics,
Speaker 1: and users will have some control over this as well.
Speaker 1: You'll be able to view the list of topics that
Speaker 1: Google has determined your into, and then you can go
Speaker 1: and strike any off the list you would rather not
Speaker 1: see advertising four and for looks like yours, truly who
Speaker 1: I would do pretty much all of my research online.
Speaker 1: That would be handy for me, because I don't want
Speaker 1: to be served ads for say, cryptocurrency, all day every day.
Speaker 1: It's not really my bag. Okay, let's transition to some
Speaker 1: other stories in activism news. A group of hackers have
Speaker 1: infected the state run railway system in Belarus with ransomware
Speaker 1: and essentially locking down the computer systems of the railway system.
Speaker 1: The activists have said their ransom is that the President
Speaker 1: of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, must stop helping Russian forces as
Speaker 1: they amass in preparation for a potential invasion of Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Ukraine is south of Belarus. Belarus is between Russia and Ukraine,
Speaker 1: or at least partly that the borders are longer than that,
Speaker 1: but you get what I'm saying. And the hackers released
Speaker 1: a message that reads, in part quote, as part of
Speaker 1: the Peclo cyber campaign, we encrypted the bulk of the servers, databases,
Speaker 1: and workstations of the bell ZHD being the Belarus railway
Speaker 1: station or system in order to slow down and disrupt
Speaker 1: the operation of the road. The backups have been destroyed
Speaker 1: end quote. The group then goes on to say that
Speaker 1: the automated systems in this computer network have not been
Speaker 1: targeted because the group wished to avoid quote unquote emergency situations.
Speaker 1: In other words, they didn't want to completely cripple the
Speaker 1: system and deny the capability of responding to an emergency
Speaker 1: because that would obviously bring harm upon people. That seems
Speaker 1: pretty darn considerate considering we're talking about, you know, hackers.
Speaker 1: The activists have demanded the release of fifty political prisoners
Speaker 1: that are held in Belarus and whom they say are
Speaker 1: most in need of medical attention, and they also are
Speaker 1: seeking a commitment from the President of Belarus to resist
Speaker 1: Russian invasion forces or what they're what they believe to
Speaker 1: be Russian invasion forces in Israel. A law that would
Speaker 1: give judges within Israel immense power to force websites to
Speaker 1: remove content is back on the table after having been
Speaker 1: rejected back in TwixT. The law, which is casually referred
Speaker 1: to as the Facebook Law, would grant quote Israeli courts
Speaker 1: the power to demand the removal of user generated content
Speaker 1: on social media content platforms that can be perceived as
Speaker 1: inflammatory or as harming the security of the state or
Speaker 1: the security of people, or the security of the public.
Speaker 1: End quote. That's some pretty vague wording. Now, in practice,
Speaker 1: we tend to see these kinds of policies specifically target Palestinians,
Speaker 1: especially Palestinians who wish to hold Israel's government accountable for
Speaker 1: alleged human rights violations, for uh aggress of actions against
Speaker 1: the Palestinian people, for lots of issues surrounding those aspects
Speaker 1: of life in Israel and around Palestine, and Israel's right
Speaker 1: wing government officials have a history of of censoring Palestinian voices.
Speaker 1: Ramsey Borrowed, a journalist and author, has a detailed post
Speaker 1: about this law, its history, and what is intended to
Speaker 1: do in an article titled quote how Israel's Facebook Law
Speaker 1: plans to control all Palestinian content online? End quote, and
Speaker 1: Burud points out that the law, while referred to as
Speaker 1: Facebook Law, would reach far beyond social networking sites to
Speaker 1: potentially any website at all, and warns that should websites
Speaker 1: comply with this, it would set a dangerous precedent. That's
Speaker 1: that's assuming that the law is passed as written, but
Speaker 1: also that you know, if companies actually agree to it.
Speaker 1: The article is a very good read. I recommend you
Speaker 1: seek it out. All right, We've got a few more
Speaker 1: stories to cover before we wrap up this news episode.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, let's take another quick break.
Speaker 1: In Myanmar, the military, which effectively rules the nation after
Speaker 1: a military coup from last year, is preparing to pass
Speaker 1: a cybersecurity law that would make it illegal for citizens
Speaker 1: to use virtual private networks, or VPNs. The regime has
Speaker 1: previously banned the uses of social networking services like Facebook
Speaker 1: and Twitter after the military coup, but people in Myanmar
Speaker 1: can still access those services if they use a VPN.
Speaker 1: You log into the VPN, the VPN then logs into
Speaker 1: the service and it's a work around. But now the
Speaker 1: military wants to outlaw VPNs and close that loophole. This
Speaker 1: is yet another move by the military to control the
Speaker 1: population of the n bar. In fact, last month, the
Speaker 1: regime doubled the amount of tax that the government places
Speaker 1: on mobile internet data, so they're really trying to crack
Speaker 1: down on citizens abilities to communicate with one another and
Speaker 1: to communicate ideas that are in opposition to the military regime.
Speaker 1: The law goes much further than just banning VPNs, however,
Speaker 1: it essentially grants the government unlimited rights to access citizens
Speaker 1: data and to ban any content that the regime objects to.
Speaker 1: In fact, just reading over reports about this law makes
Speaker 1: the Great Firewall of China seem tamed by comparison, at
Speaker 1: least to me. Activists around the world are raising alarm,
Speaker 1: with many saying that the regime should have no power
Speaker 1: to draft and enact laws because it's not a democratically
Speaker 1: elected government in the first place, and thus has no
Speaker 1: authority granted to it by those who are governed. The
Speaker 1: watchdog organization Global Witness recently released a report that says
Speaker 1: the QUEST, which is a carbon capture and storage facility
Speaker 1: co located with Oil Shans operations in Canada, captured five
Speaker 1: million tons of carbon dioxide since opening in However, it
Speaker 1: is also released seven point five million tons during that
Speaker 1: same period, meaning it's emitting more carbon dioxide than it
Speaker 1: is capturing, which isn't great. Shell, which owns the QUEST,
Speaker 1: has released a statement saying that the analysis is wrong.
Speaker 1: General Witness says that the sales pitch for carbon captions
Speaker 1: capture systems is that they'll capture up to say, nine
Speaker 1: percent of all emissions and thus store the carbon dock
Speaker 1: side underground at where it will solidify and not be
Speaker 1: released into the atmosphere. But Shell says, no, the QUEST
Speaker 1: was not designed to eliminate nine of emissions. It was
Speaker 1: designed to capture about a third of the emissions. But
Speaker 1: you know, the reason why I even want to bring
Speaker 1: this up at all is whether you're talking or thirty percent.
Speaker 1: I think carbon capture and storage operations and the emphasis
Speaker 1: put behind them are kind of dangerous. Not because they
Speaker 1: don't work, because they can work, and if they're implemented properly,
Speaker 1: they will store a carbon dioxide in a way that
Speaker 1: doesn't get released to the atmosphere. That's a good thing. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's dangerous because those operations presume that we
Speaker 1: should remain dependent upon fossil fuels in the first place,
Speaker 1: that we shouldn't migrate away from them on a more
Speaker 1: aggressive schedule, so they slow us down from getting away
Speaker 1: from fossil fuels, which are a major contributor to the
Speaker 1: issues that that then result in climate change. So I
Speaker 1: don't like a lot of these carbon capture programs simply
Speaker 1: because it's looking at slapping a band aid on something
Speaker 1: while the wound is still bleeding around the band aid,
Speaker 1: whereas I would like to address the actual wound by
Speaker 1: getting away from the dependence on fossil fuels. So a
Speaker 1: lot of activists and people like myself deal it's just
Speaker 1: a better idea to really push these companies to invest
Speaker 1: more heavily into alternatives to fossil fuels, rather than measures
Speaker 1: that keep us dependent upon fossil fuels indefinitely. Here in
Speaker 1: the United States, the Federal Communications Commission or FCC is
Speaker 1: working to pass a plan that would quote prohibit providers
Speaker 1: from entering into graduated revenue sharing agreements or exclusive revenue
Speaker 1: sharing agreements with a building owner, require providers to disclose
Speaker 1: to tenants in plain language the existence of exclusive marketing
Speaker 1: arrangements that they have with building owners and end of
Speaker 1: practice that circumventced the FCCS cable inside wiring rules by
Speaker 1: clarifying that existing Commission rules prohibits sale and leaseback arrangements
Speaker 1: that effectively block access to alternative providers. End quote. That's
Speaker 1: very wordy and it can be a little dense and
Speaker 1: difficult to parse if you aren't familiar with what's going on.
Speaker 1: But essentially, what this is saying is the FCC wants
Speaker 1: to stop a practice where you have someone who owns
Speaker 1: the building, like an apartment building owner, and that owner
Speaker 1: enters into an exclusive agreement with a specific I s
Speaker 1: P or Internet service provider, and that would mean that
Speaker 1: all the tenants in that apartment building would all have
Speaker 1: to get their service through that I s P or
Speaker 1: they wouldn't get service at all. They would have no
Speaker 1: options when it comes to choosing providers. Uh and a
Speaker 1: lot of these agreements have kind of kickbacks to building owners,
Speaker 1: so they get a little something something from the I
Speaker 1: s P, and in return, the I s P has
Speaker 1: all these dedicated customers that cannot go anywhere else. And
Speaker 1: in fact I s p s over the years have
Speaker 1: had agreements where they would exclusively wire up a building
Speaker 1: for that specific I s P S services. That's something
Speaker 1: else that would be expressly off the table according to
Speaker 1: this FCC plan. The FCC also says that the current
Speaker 1: practices often prevent tenants the chance to take advantage of
Speaker 1: the Emergency Broadband Benefit or the newer Affordable Connectivity Program.
Speaker 1: These are programs that subsidize broadband fees so that people
Speaker 1: from lower income households can afford to have access to
Speaker 1: broadband services. But if they're in one of these apartment buildings,
Speaker 1: they might not have access to those services because that
Speaker 1: exclusive agreement between building owner and i SP prevents it
Speaker 1: from ever happening. UH. The FCC would first have to
Speaker 1: hold an internal vote on this proposed plan before it
Speaker 1: would become a thing, and typically the FCC consists of
Speaker 1: five members on the board, but one seat is currently empty.
Speaker 1: The U. S. Senate has not yet approved the nominee
Speaker 1: for that fifth seat, and right now there are two
Speaker 1: Democrats on the FCC and two Republicans on the f
Speaker 1: c C, so it's kind of in a deadlock. Because
Speaker 1: at least in the United States, were well beyond the
Speaker 1: era where you could occasionally expect two political parties to
Speaker 1: actually work together on something. These days, it seems like
Speaker 1: it's more important to make sure that folks see that
Speaker 1: you're opposed to the other side than it is to
Speaker 1: you know, get stuff done. I'm applying this to both
Speaker 1: political parties, by the way. I know all you know
Speaker 1: that where I fall on the political spectrum, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I give a free pass to the people who
Speaker 1: represent me. Also, I'm grouchy and I apologize all right.
Speaker 1: Scientists in Germany have created technology meant to help the
Speaker 1: blind and other visually impaired people navigate their environments without
Speaker 1: having to make use of something like a cane, and
Speaker 1: to be able to get a sense for what's in
Speaker 1: their environment beyond the reach of a cane. So this
Speaker 1: technology includes a pair of three D printed goggles, so
Speaker 1: you could you know, print goggles that have a fit
Speaker 1: to a specific person. And the goggles contain a pair
Speaker 1: of infrared cameras in them that can get a stereoscopic
Speaker 1: view of the environment around the person who's wearing them.
Speaker 1: The goggles are then connected to a system that has
Speaker 1: an output of haptic feedback vibrating pads UH collected into
Speaker 1: a sleeve that you wear on your arm, so when
Speaker 1: the cameras detect that the person wearing it is near
Speaker 1: an obstacle, The processor sends a signal to those haptic
Speaker 1: feedback actuators in the sleeve and causes them to vibrate. Uh.
Speaker 1: The intensity of the vibration indicates the distance to the object,
Speaker 1: So if you feel a light vibration, it means there's
Speaker 1: an object in front of you, but it's still a
Speaker 1: ways out. It just lets you makes you aware that
Speaker 1: there is an object there, and more intense vibrations tell
Speaker 1: you that it's closer to you, so you can actually
Speaker 1: look at something that's that's moving towards you, and through
Speaker 1: the intensity change, like feeling those vibrations grow more intense,
Speaker 1: you would realize, Okay, not only is there something in
Speaker 1: my environment, it's coming towards me. The vibrations are getting stronger.
Speaker 1: It's getting closer. I may need to move out the way.
Speaker 1: According to the scientists, tests of the system showed that
Speaker 1: wearers could avoid obstacles in a totally dark room with accuracy,
Speaker 1: and moreover that over the course of multiple practice runs,
Speaker 1: their performance would improve, so they would get more used
Speaker 1: to how it worked and more adept and navigating their environments,
Speaker 1: which makes sense and I think of it kind of
Speaker 1: like a tech version of spiky sense, which I remember
Speaker 1: actually reading about a similar technology a few years ago.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad that that work is continuing, and I
Speaker 1: really do hope that we see something like this go
Speaker 1: beyond you know, the research lab and get put into
Speaker 1: actual use so that people who have, say a visual impairment,
Speaker 1: are more easily able to navigate their environments and you know,
Speaker 1: give them even more autonomy. I think that's great. And
Speaker 1: for our final story, the James Web Space Telescope has
Speaker 1: arrived at its new home in space. It's now about
Speaker 1: a million miles away from us and it will remain
Speaker 1: in the lagrange point to or L two orbit as
Speaker 1: it helps scientists uncover secrets of the universe and its origins.
Speaker 1: But we won't be diving right into the scientific observations
Speaker 1: right away. Over the next three months, engineers will run
Speaker 1: various tests to make certain the telescope's functioning properly and
Speaker 1: activating all the instruments, and then they will be able
Speaker 1: to focus on distant galaxies with precision. So this three
Speaker 1: month period is going to include the alignment of all
Speaker 1: the mirrors so that it makes a massive single mirror
Speaker 1: surface um made up of individual mirrors that are all
Speaker 1: angled in just the right way to focus on whatever
Speaker 1: the telescope's looking at, and also again checking to make
Speaker 1: sure all the different instrumentation on the spacecraft is operating properly.
Speaker 1: Not that there's much we can do about it. If
Speaker 1: it's not. The James Webb Space Telescope is located beyond
Speaker 1: our ability to send a crew there. If it's not
Speaker 1: something we can address wirelessly here on Earth, then we
Speaker 1: kind of have to do without it. But so far
Speaker 1: everything has been going according to plan. The engineering teams
Speaker 1: have already spent the last month very slowly unfurling the
Speaker 1: telescope as it made its journey to its new home,
Speaker 1: which had to be pretty tense and also excruciating, because
Speaker 1: it's not just tense for like a moment. It was
Speaker 1: a month worth of tension as you're very carefully going
Speaker 1: through this process and hoping that nothing goes wrong. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty exciting stuff, and I am eager to see
Speaker 1: what the James Web Space Telescope uncovers in the future
Speaker 1: and what what new things we learned about our universe
Speaker 1: as a result of this technology giving us more information
Speaker 1: than we've ever had before. Exciting, all right, that's it
Speaker 1: for this news episode for Tuesday, January twenty two. If
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future
Speaker 1: episodes and tech Stuff, feel free to reach out and
Speaker 1: let me know about them. The best way to do
Speaker 1: that is over on Twitter. To handle for the show
Speaker 1: is text stuff H s W and I'll talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon Y. Tech Stuff is an I
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