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 June nine, two thousand and twenty two,
Speaker 1: which is, as I recall, a Thursday. And for those
Speaker 1: of you who were concerned and reached out, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Feeling much better now. My fever already broke
Speaker 1: so and I've tested negative for COVID, thank goodness. So
Speaker 1: it looks like it was, you know, just a like
Speaker 1: a little bug that I caught, and I'm on the
Speaker 1: better side of it. Now, let's get too news that
Speaker 1: you really care about and not just me grousing about
Speaker 1: feeling nikky, okay. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the committee
Speaker 1: that's investigating the January sixth insurrection here in the United
Speaker 1: States wants to get access to internal Twitter communications, including
Speaker 1: messages sent on Slack between Twitter employees, in an effort
Speaker 1: to determine what Twitter was doing to moderate discourse on
Speaker 1: the platform as it was leading up to the violence
Speaker 1: that happened on January six. Twitter so far has refused
Speaker 1: to comply with that request, at least to the Investigating
Speaker 1: Committee's satisfaction. Anyway. Twitter representatives say that the company has
Speaker 1: already shared some information with this committee. There's been a
Speaker 1: growing awareness that employees at several social networking sites were
Speaker 1: aware of and concerned about the growing momentum that was
Speaker 1: indicating that something was going to go down on January six,
Speaker 1: So presumably the Investigative Committee wants to see to what
Speaker 1: extent Twitter employees were concerned and what the company's response
Speaker 1: to those concerns were like. Was the company dismissing this
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to rock the boat or anything
Speaker 1: like that. Uh committee also suspects that participants in the
Speaker 1: insurrection we're using Twitter to coordinate with one another, and
Speaker 1: that perhaps the platform was then a facilitator for the events,
Speaker 1: although not necessarily an active or willing participant, but you know,
Speaker 1: it helped enable that, and that perhaps it could have
Speaker 1: and should have done more to alert authorities about specific
Speaker 1: plans of action. Twitter has argued that it has a
Speaker 1: responsibility to protect its employees and that the government demanding
Speaker 1: access to internal documents could be a violation of the
Speaker 1: First Amendment. For those of you who are not in
Speaker 1: the United States. The first Amendment to the U. S
Speaker 1: Constitution is the one that guarantees the right of freedom
Speaker 1: of speech, as well as freedom assembly, and religion. In
Speaker 1: related news, the U S State of Connecticut has budgeted
Speaker 1: to create a special position dedicated to fighting back against
Speaker 1: quote misinformation narratives about voting end quote. So the job
Speaker 1: title is Election Information Security Officer, and the budget also
Speaker 1: includes money that is dedicated to educating various communication platforms,
Speaker 1: both in old media and new media, on how to
Speaker 1: recognize and respond to misinformation campaigns, specifically targeting elections. Other
Speaker 1: states in the US have similar departments like this in place. Already.
Speaker 1: Misinformation has become a massive problem in general in the
Speaker 1: United States UH, and elections, of course, are particularly targeted.
Speaker 1: It's not exclusive, though, We've seen misinformation campaigns about COVID
Speaker 1: and vaccinations, for example. On a personal note, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even know how or where to start in order to
Speaker 1: fight back against misinformation. It's so prevalent and so invasive,
Speaker 1: and it involves so many different tactics. I hope that
Speaker 1: the efforts in Connecticut and elsewhere are effective. I want
Speaker 1: to see UH platforms that have trustworthy information on them
Speaker 1: and people who know that the election process is being
Speaker 1: done fair and square and not being you know, fed
Speaker 1: lies that. That's just otherwise, because once you start undermining
Speaker 1: confidence in the system, the system itself breaks down. That's
Speaker 1: how democracy dies, Really, democracy dies when the people no
Speaker 1: longer have faith that the system is doing what it's
Speaker 1: supposed to. Uh, it doesn't even you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be real. Like the system can be working
Speaker 1: just fine, but if people lose faith in it, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if the system is working or not,
Speaker 1: the lack of confidence of the people is what will
Speaker 1: kill democracy. Sticking with the United States, a collaborative effort
Speaker 1: involving the FBI, the I R S, and the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice took down four domains on the web that
Speaker 1: hosted a marketplace called ss N d o B. That
Speaker 1: marketplace was essentially a clearing house of stolen personal information,
Speaker 1: including social security numbers and credit card number. The social
Speaker 1: security numbers explains the s s in bit of the
Speaker 1: name s s in d o B. The database held
Speaker 1: information on more than twenty million Americans, and it's been
Speaker 1: active for several years, perhaps getting started as early as though,
Speaker 1: as you might have guessed, folks who run illegal operations
Speaker 1: aren't super big on documenting their history of it. The
Speaker 1: market was known to have pulled in millions of dollars
Speaker 1: in revenue, a lot of it in cryptocurrency, and I
Speaker 1: haven't seen any information about whether law enforcement has identified
Speaker 1: the folks who are actually behind the database, So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how this will go beyond just shutting down
Speaker 1: the service. Presumably you would have to go further, or
Speaker 1: else those who are responsible might just create a new
Speaker 1: database on another domain and thus only experience a short
Speaker 1: interruption of services. So I'll keep an eye on this
Speaker 1: story as it develops. Business Insider reports that Netflix might
Speaker 1: be making a move to acquire Roku. While Roku was
Speaker 1: one of the early companies in the streaming business and
Speaker 1: has a big reputation in creating really good hardware for streaming,
Speaker 1: like streaming sticks and such, it has been in a
Speaker 1: slump lately. About a year ago, the stock price for
Speaker 1: Roku was higher than what it is today, So that's
Speaker 1: a massive slide obviously, and Business Insiders says that Roku
Speaker 1: employees have been told that they are not allowed to
Speaker 1: sell their stock right now. Companies typically will do this
Speaker 1: when something big is happening behind the scenes. It's usually
Speaker 1: an effort to prevent employees from engaging and stuff like
Speaker 1: insider trading. That's when you take advantage of information about
Speaker 1: a publicly traded company that the general public doesn't have
Speaker 1: access to. Right So, if you know, for example, that
Speaker 1: company A is going to buy a company B, and
Speaker 1: that hasn't been announced to the general public, it would
Speaker 1: be illegal for you to try and use that information
Speaker 1: to your advantage because it's an unfair advantage. It sinside
Speaker 1: or trading. Anyway, If you're wondering what, you know, why
Speaker 1: does Netflix want Roku in the first place, one big
Speaker 1: thought is that it isn't so much the hardware side.
Speaker 1: I mean, Roku does make great streaming platforms, but we're
Speaker 1: seeing more and more televisions come with that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff you know, uh natively installed in them. So as
Speaker 1: time goes on, things like streaming sticks become less relevant.
Speaker 1: It maybe the Netflix really wants Roku because Roku has
Speaker 1: advertising on it. So Earlier this year, Netflix announced that
Speaker 1: it was looking into new revenue sources after the company
Speaker 1: had its first big setback. It had a decrease in
Speaker 1: the overall subscriber number and then investor confidence in the
Speaker 1: company just took a nose dive. With that it took
Speaker 1: was one setback and people were out. So one of
Speaker 1: the revenue sources that Netflix has been looking at is advertising,
Speaker 1: namely that Netflix would introduce a lower cost subscription tier,
Speaker 1: and that that subscription would be subsidized by including ads
Speaker 1: in the streamed content. Roku already has an advertising model
Speaker 1: built out, and in fact, the ads contribute significantly more
Speaker 1: revenue than hardware sales have, so this might be a
Speaker 1: case of Netflix purchasing a solution to save itself the
Speaker 1: trouble of building out one of its own. Now, to
Speaker 1: be clear, neither Netflix nor Roku have commented on this
Speaker 1: rumored deal, so it may not even be a thing.
Speaker 1: An ongoing trend we've been seeing around the world is
Speaker 1: a move to transition from internal combustion engine vehicles or
Speaker 1: i c E vehicles to electric vehicles or e vs.
Speaker 1: The EU Parliament yesterday voted to require automakers to cut
Speaker 1: c O two emissions by by now. Effectively that means
Speaker 1: banning the manufacturing of any vehicle running on gasoline or diesel. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not the same as saying that I see
Speaker 1: vehicles would be illegal, but rather that all vehicles made
Speaker 1: from twive on should not be vehicles that emit CEO two.
Speaker 1: This move has to still be approved by the individual
Speaker 1: EU nations, so it's not a done deal yet. There
Speaker 1: has been some resistance to this push, with Germany's automotive
Speaker 1: industry lobby v d A arguing that the mandate would
Speaker 1: quote unquote hurt innovation. Hurt innovation to me typically is
Speaker 1: is like a smoke screen. I see a lot of
Speaker 1: companies talk about things hurting innovation, which usually just means
Speaker 1: this will hurt our revenue and not necessarily it will
Speaker 1: hurt innovation. In fact, a lot of times you could
Speaker 1: argue that the status quo is what is hurting innovation.
Speaker 1: That's some commentary from yours, truly, I'll just get back
Speaker 1: to the news now. And it might be that German
Speaker 1: automakers are really objecting to this largely because they have
Speaker 1: not been as a gre se in developing alternatives to
Speaker 1: ice vehicles as automakers from other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: so in other words, they're behind when it comes to this,
Speaker 1: and that perhaps that might be part of the reason
Speaker 1: for the objection. The v d A also argued that
Speaker 1: the EU lacks sufficient infrastructure to support fleets of e vs. Now, again,
Speaker 1: to me, that sounds kind of like a cop out,
Speaker 1: because we are talking about the timeline that's more than
Speaker 1: a decade out from today. You know, we have thirteen
Speaker 1: years to to get this sussed out. Now, what I
Speaker 1: will say is that as it stands, the world is
Speaker 1: not yet producing enough EV batteries to meet the needs
Speaker 1: of replacing all new vehicles with e V. S uh.
Speaker 1: That's a challenge that we're going to have to overcome
Speaker 1: or we'll need to see some serious movement on other
Speaker 1: types of vehicles, such as hydrogen powered ones, you know,
Speaker 1: fuel cell vehicles, that sort of thing. But that's where
Speaker 1: it stands right now. The EU nations are now poised
Speaker 1: to determine whether or not they will adopt this approach
Speaker 1: to ban the sale of new I C E vehicles
Speaker 1: starting by when we come back, we'll have a few
Speaker 1: stories about Tesla and then a couple of others as well,
Speaker 1: So let's take a break for these messages. Earlier this
Speaker 1: week I did an Elon update. Now I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: do another one, but I do have a few stories
Speaker 1: that do relate to Tesla, which of course does relate
Speaker 1: to Elon Musk. First up is that Reuter's reports Tesla
Speaker 1: will be holding a hiring event in China. Now, if
Speaker 1: you remember, on Tuesday's episode, I talked about how Elon
Speaker 1: Musk indicated there would be a hiring freeze at Tesla.
Speaker 1: He then subsequently clarified that he really meant hiring freeze
Speaker 1: on the salaried employee or corporate side, not on the
Speaker 1: hourly employee side, which usually means folks who work in
Speaker 1: manufact training plants, like you know, floor workers at factories.
Speaker 1: Reuters states that this hiring event will concentrate mainly on
Speaker 1: engineers and managers, so it certainly sounds like salary jobs
Speaker 1: to me, but I don't know anyway. Just interesting to
Speaker 1: see that while Elon Musk is saying that the company
Speaker 1: is putting a freeze, uh, it doesn't appear to really
Speaker 1: be that, at least not globally. Meanwhile, in Germany, the
Speaker 1: trade union i G Metal has responded to a leaked
Speaker 1: internal email from Elon Musk that essentially told all Tesla
Speaker 1: employees would have to work in the office for at
Speaker 1: least forty hours a week before they could do any
Speaker 1: remote work at all, Like he essentially said, if you
Speaker 1: want to work from home, you can after you put
Speaker 1: in forty hours of work at the office. So this
Speaker 1: union has said, essentially, and I'm paraphrasing here, hey buddy,
Speaker 1: here in Germany, it doesn't work that way. An employer
Speaker 1: can't just you know, act like a dictator to their employees.
Speaker 1: So Musk has been pretty clearly anti union over the years.
Speaker 1: I imagine this is not something he wants to hear.
Speaker 1: And considering that numerous studies have suggested that there's no
Speaker 1: drop in productivity with remote work situations, I feel pretty
Speaker 1: confident that a lot of Tesla employees see his demands
Speaker 1: as being unreasonable. Now, there are people who believe that
Speaker 1: the whole thing is kind of a work in the
Speaker 1: parlance of the squared circle, that is, of professional wrestling uh,
Speaker 1: and that Musk's approach is really just an effort to
Speaker 1: convince at least some people at Tesla to pack their
Speaker 1: bags and leave, because that's one way you can reduce
Speaker 1: overhead without having to worry about paying out severance packages.
Speaker 1: If people quit, then you don't know him severance. That
Speaker 1: pretty cynical observation doesn't necessarily mean it's inaccurate. I can't
Speaker 1: say one way or the other. And meanwhile, here in
Speaker 1: the United States, Tesla's legal team has accused the California
Speaker 1: Department of Fair Employment and Housing or d f e H,
Speaker 1: of skipping some key steps before that organization filed a
Speaker 1: lawsuit against Tesla alleging racial bias and discrimination within the company,
Speaker 1: specifically within the Fremont, California factory. So this all stems
Speaker 1: from accusations that a former Tesla employee faced numerous incidents
Speaker 1: of racial abuse while working at Tesla, and the d
Speaker 1: f e H sued Tesla, But Tesla's legal team says
Speaker 1: that the d f e H failed to take some
Speaker 1: required steps that would normally include an attempt to mediate
Speaker 1: a dispute before it would actually go to court. The
Speaker 1: Tesla team then filed a petition with the Office of
Speaker 1: Administrative Law in California over the matter. And while it
Speaker 1: seems as though Tesla's objections have at least some merit,
Speaker 1: because the d f e H is supposed to follow
Speaker 1: certain protocols that it appears to have skipped, UH, it
Speaker 1: might end up all being moot anyway, because technically the
Speaker 1: legal team would have needed to file this petition before
Speaker 1: the legal case began, So in other words, it might
Speaker 1: just be too late for this to matter. We'll have
Speaker 1: to wait and see. Blizzard has been having a pretty
Speaker 1: rough go of it recently. It's part of the massive
Speaker 1: company Activision Blizzard, which itself is mired in controversy, ranging
Speaker 1: from claims that the company harbored a toxic culture, claims
Speaker 1: that I should say I seem to be largely substantiated,
Speaker 1: to the company's attempts to discourage employees from being able
Speaker 1: to organize into unions. But the problems I really want
Speaker 1: to talk about with regard to Blizzard have to do
Speaker 1: with the actual games that the company is releasing and
Speaker 1: the response to those games. The games have been getting
Speaker 1: pounded by user ratings on Metacritic. So the most recent game,
Speaker 1: dia Blow Immortal, is a mobile game, and it's obviously
Speaker 1: an entry in the dia Blow franchise, a long popular franchise.
Speaker 1: That game currently has a user rating on Metacritic of
Speaker 1: just zero point five out of ten. Now, to be clear,
Speaker 1: the critic review score, at least for the iOS version,
Speaker 1: is sitting at seventy five out of one hundred, so
Speaker 1: not great, but not awful either. However, that user score
Speaker 1: of zero point five that is harsh as all. Heck,
Speaker 1: so why are the reviews so low? Well, it really
Speaker 1: comes down to micro transactions, and we've seen micro transactions
Speaker 1: worm into lots of different games over the last several years.
Speaker 1: They represent a way for a game to continue generating
Speaker 1: revenue indefinitely. You can even have free to play games
Speaker 1: that are only supported by micro transactions, but we've seen
Speaker 1: more and more. Even Triple A titles include micro transaction.
Speaker 1: So you go out and you shell out, you know,
Speaker 1: sixties seventy bucks for a game, and then you are
Speaker 1: faced with all these other micro transactions as you continue
Speaker 1: to play. Some games like Fortnite have thrived on micro
Speaker 1: transactions and have done really well, and when they're implemented properly,
Speaker 1: they typically can be seen as you know, harmless, maybe
Speaker 1: a little irritating, but you know, not not really a problem.
Speaker 1: For example, when all the things that you can buy
Speaker 1: are purely cosmetic, but otherwise they have no impact in
Speaker 1: how the game plays out, most gamers are gonna begrudgingly
Speaker 1: accept that because at least it's not impacting the actual
Speaker 1: game experience. But in cases where the micro transactions can
Speaker 1: give players an advantage. Things get pretty ugly, and it
Speaker 1: appears that in the end game, really post game part
Speaker 1: of Diablo Immortal, where you've pretty much done all the
Speaker 1: content of the game and then you start to focus
Speaker 1: on things like player versus player interactions, the person who
Speaker 1: is more willing to cough up cash for certain items
Speaker 1: is the one who is most likely to win those encounters.
Speaker 1: It becomes a pay to win scenario in other words,
Speaker 1: and gamers really really hate that. So the zero point
Speaker 1: five score reflects this. Now, I should also point out
Speaker 1: Metacritic doesn't have a system in place to determine if
Speaker 1: a person is leaving a review has even actually played
Speaker 1: the game, so it's entirely possible that some or maybe
Speaker 1: even many of the negative reviews are from disgruntled gamers
Speaker 1: who haven't even touched the title anyway. This is the
Speaker 1: third Blizzard game in a row to receive a sub
Speaker 1: one point oh score from users on Metacritic. It's not
Speaker 1: a great reputation to have, and again, it mostly doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be targeted at the quality of the game itself,
Speaker 1: but more due to other things like micro transaction policies.
Speaker 1: You know that feeling that you get when something you own,
Speaker 1: like a car, gets scuffed up for the first time.
Speaker 1: I imagine that's how some folks at NASA feel about
Speaker 1: the James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope, which occupies an
Speaker 1: orbit on the side of the Earth opposite the Sun,
Speaker 1: has been hit with some micro meteoroids, and that was
Speaker 1: to be expected. I mean, it's space. Micro Meteoroids are
Speaker 1: out there. It was going to happen. In fact, NASA
Speaker 1: knew that it would happen, designed the James Webb Space
Speaker 1: Telescope to be robust enough to handle that. But one
Speaker 1: of those impacts appears to be larger than what NASA
Speaker 1: was anticipating. Uh. Now that that impact hasn't ruined the
Speaker 1: technology of the telescope or anything like that, but these
Speaker 1: impacts do degrade the telescope's performance, and so the more
Speaker 1: it gets hit by them, the less well it will perform.
Speaker 1: NASA stresses that right now it's not that big of
Speaker 1: a deal. The telescope is still an incredibly powerful piece
Speaker 1: of technology. It's going to do some amazing science. However,
Speaker 1: it is a reminder that space is a dangerous environment,
Speaker 1: and as I've said many times, in the past, it's
Speaker 1: trying to kill you. NASA has also indicated that during
Speaker 1: more predictable events, such as a meteor shower, engineers can
Speaker 1: actually reposition the telescope so that it can be more
Speaker 1: protective of its optical systems. It's just that in this case,
Speaker 1: this collision wasn't predictable, so it was unavoidable. Um, so
Speaker 1: hopefully we don't see too many of these, especially early on.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've just started using the James Webb Space Telescope.
Speaker 1: It hasn't even really gotten into some serious serious research yet,
Speaker 1: so we definitely don't want to, you know, pull the
Speaker 1: car out of the dealership lot, take a right turn,
Speaker 1: and then immediately scrape up against a fire hydrant. That's
Speaker 1: what this kind of feels like. Okay, that bizarre analogy aside.
Speaker 1: Let's take another quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we've got a couple more stories. I want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Toyota and it's subsidiary company, Woven Planet, demonstrated a prototype
Speaker 1: hydrogen cartridge that could be used in conjunction with fuel
Speaker 1: cells in the future. So this kind of goes back
Speaker 1: to what I was saying earlier about electric vehicles. You know,
Speaker 1: that seems to be the way that the world is moving,
Speaker 1: that that's going to be the next incarnation of the
Speaker 1: personal vehicle will be an electric vehicle. But some companies
Speaker 1: like Toyota have been pushing really hard for a while
Speaker 1: for fuel cell vehicles, which are very similar to electric
Speaker 1: vehicles but with some key differences, the main one being
Speaker 1: that you do have to refuel them, but in this
Speaker 1: case hydrogen rather than say gasoline or diesel. So this
Speaker 1: cartridge is uh cylindrical, and it has a handle on
Speaker 1: one end, and it measures sixteen inches or four d
Speaker 1: millimeters in length and seven inches or a hundred eighty
Speaker 1: millimeters in diameter, and when it's full, it's filled with hydrogen.
Speaker 1: The cartridge weighs about eleven pounds or five kilograms, and
Speaker 1: the amount of hydrogen in one of these cartridges can
Speaker 1: supply about three point three kill what hours of energy.
Speaker 1: The cartridges are one way to really simplify the process
Speaker 1: of refueling fuel cells. So just in case you're not
Speaker 1: familiar with how fuel cells work, they are kind of
Speaker 1: like batteries that a battery contains all the electrochemical components
Speaker 1: it needs to generate electricity, and then a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, the rechargeable ones, you just end up putting
Speaker 1: electricity back into the battery and it reverses that that
Speaker 1: chemical reaction so that it can happen again. So with
Speaker 1: fuel cells, you have to supply the fuel to the cell.
Speaker 1: The fuel undergoes this electro chemical reaction and in that
Speaker 1: process releases electrons, but afterwards you can't reverse that process,
Speaker 1: at least not within the fuel cell itself. So with
Speaker 1: hydrogen fuel cells, this reaction happens between hydrogen gas and oxygen.
Speaker 1: So I won't go into all the details of how
Speaker 1: it works, but what you get out of it is heat, electricity,
Speaker 1: and water. Those are your byproducts. You know, water vapor
Speaker 1: typically because you're using operating temperatures that are high enough
Speaker 1: to evaporate water. But that's it. You don't have any
Speaker 1: carbon emissions or anything else. If you're assuming you're using
Speaker 1: pure hydrogen and pure oxygen in a you know, hydrogen
Speaker 1: fuel cell. So this cartridge approach reminds me kind of
Speaker 1: the way propane tanks work, where you can, you know,
Speaker 1: get a propane tank for something like a gas grill,
Speaker 1: So you go out and purchase a new propane tank,
Speaker 1: or you could take a propane tank to a facility
Speaker 1: to refill it with more propane. I feel like that's
Speaker 1: kind of where Toyota and Woven Planet are going. They're
Speaker 1: also looking at a strategy that could include a delivery
Speaker 1: service as well, so presumably you could order a new
Speaker 1: cartridge when you start running low on hydrogen and they
Speaker 1: would bring it out to you, which is kind of
Speaker 1: a cool idea too. Toyota envisions hydrogen playing a huge
Speaker 1: role in our energy needs in the future, not just
Speaker 1: for our vehicles, but the power of things like homes
Speaker 1: and businesses as well. There's still a lot of challenges
Speaker 1: that are standing in the way of that future. Hydrogen
Speaker 1: is the most plentiful element in our universe, which is great,
Speaker 1: but it also tends to bond with lots of other elements,
Speaker 1: which is less great because in order for us to
Speaker 1: get at pure hydrogen, we typically first have to break
Speaker 1: the molecular bonds that hold the hydrogen onto the other stuff.
Speaker 1: And if the energy we're spending to get at the
Speaker 1: hydrogen is more than what we're going to get out
Speaker 1: of using the hydrogen as a fuel source, that's a
Speaker 1: net loss and energy. So you have to be really
Speaker 1: smart in the way you do this. For example, one
Speaker 1: way that you can get hydrogen is you can take
Speaker 1: water and you can run a an electrical current through
Speaker 1: the water, and that electrical current will break down the
Speaker 1: molecular bond between hydrogen and oxygen and it will release
Speaker 1: both as gases. So it's essentially the opposite approach as
Speaker 1: to what a fuel cell does. And instead of releasing electricity,
Speaker 1: it absorbs electricity in order for this to happen, and
Speaker 1: you have to have a smart way of doing that
Speaker 1: or else the question is, well, you know, why are
Speaker 1: we throwing in these extra stops. For example, if we
Speaker 1: were using solar energy to create the electrical current in
Speaker 1: order to generate hydrogen from water, someone might ask, well,
Speaker 1: why aren't we just using the electricity from the solar
Speaker 1: power directly? Why are we doing this middleman approach where
Speaker 1: we're trying to generate hydrogen out of all this, And
Speaker 1: that's a question you have to be able to answer.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to say, all right, in
Speaker 1: the long run, this makes more sense from an economy standpoint,
Speaker 1: And by economy I don't just mean by financial cost
Speaker 1: but energy economy. These are those those kind of questions
Speaker 1: that if you're able to answer them sufficiently, then you
Speaker 1: can actually pursue this sort of future. Toyota has really
Speaker 1: been all in on this for years. I used to
Speaker 1: do a show that was sponsored by Toyota, and fuel
Speaker 1: cell vehicles was one of the really big pushes back then,
Speaker 1: and that was almost a decade ago. So, um, it's
Speaker 1: still not really I mean, there are a few of
Speaker 1: sell vehicles out there, it's not like it's just in
Speaker 1: the pro type stage. There actually are fuel cell vehicles
Speaker 1: out on the road, but it's not nearly as commonplace
Speaker 1: as I think Toyota was hoping for by this time.
Speaker 1: We'll have to see. I think steps like this are
Speaker 1: important toward getting to a hydrogen based UH energy economy,
Speaker 1: but I don't know yet that that is definitely where
Speaker 1: we're gonna go. It seems to me like the electric
Speaker 1: vehicle approach UH and and relying more on renewable energy sources,
Speaker 1: perhaps relying on fusion, if we can get that to
Speaker 1: work out. Um, that appears to be the path that
Speaker 1: we're taking right now, but who's to say. Finally, Google
Speaker 1: Maps now has an air quality layer overlay that you
Speaker 1: can use in the Android and iOS versions of the app.
Speaker 1: This is really useful if you live in a place
Speaker 1: where air quality can be dangerous, particularly for people who
Speaker 1: might have issues like ab SMA or other respiratory problems.
Speaker 1: So this map will show you what areas within your
Speaker 1: region have the cleanest air. And they determine this by
Speaker 1: using numerous sensors that use lasers to measure the amount
Speaker 1: of particulates in the atmosphere. Essentially, they're shining lasers out
Speaker 1: into the environment and then counting how many particulates passed
Speaker 1: through the pathway of that laser. So lower numbers are
Speaker 1: better because lower numbers indicate fewer particulates. So I decided
Speaker 1: to check it out on my phone to look at
Speaker 1: my area. The closest sensor to where I live here
Speaker 1: in Atlanta was at twenty three, which is in the
Speaker 1: good range. There was another one a little bit further out,
Speaker 1: closer to the middle of the city that was around forty.
Speaker 1: That's still in the good range. The zero to fifty
Speaker 1: is good, fifty range is moderate. There was one spot
Speaker 1: in the Atlanta area I saw that was at moderate,
Speaker 1: and above that you started getting into more dangerous territory.
Speaker 1: With the air quality index on the app, maxing out
Speaker 1: at four hundred. Actually looked at Los Angeles, which has
Speaker 1: lots of these sensors, not a big surprise. The state
Speaker 1: of California has taken a pretty aggressive stance and trying
Speaker 1: to improve air quality in that state. So l A
Speaker 1: has lots of sensors, a lot more densely packed sensors
Speaker 1: than I found in Atlanta, and and even in l A,
Speaker 1: I only found a couple of areas where the numbers
Speaker 1: were up in the above one hundred range, which is
Speaker 1: where you start to get into um areas that it
Speaker 1: could be potentially dangerous for those who have respiratory issues. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. If you have Google Maps on an
Speaker 1: Android or iOS device, I suggested check it out. It's
Speaker 1: just one of the little layers you can choose and
Speaker 1: you can kind of see what the air quality is
Speaker 1: like around where you live, assuming that you know they
Speaker 1: have some sensors deployed in that area. That's it for
Speaker 1: this Tech News episode of tech Stuff. Hope you enjoyed it.
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