Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? It is time for the tech news for Tuesday,
Speaker 1: October twenty fourth, twenty twenty three. First Up the Hill
Speaker 1: reports that both Apple and Google have recently disabled live
Speaker 1: traffic updates in the region around and including the Gaza
Speaker 1: Strip as Israel pursues a ground war against Hamas. In
Speaker 1: the past, companies that provide real time traffic updates have
Speaker 1: suspended operations in conflict areas in order to avoid turning
Speaker 1: into a method for gathering intelligence on things like a
Speaker 1: military presence and troop movements and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg cited anonymous sources saying that the Israel Defense Forces
Speaker 1: or IDF, made this request to both Apple and to
Speaker 1: Google to temporarily disable live traffic notifications and Google Maps.
Speaker 1: Spokesperson Carlone Bordeaux stated that quote anyone navigating to a
Speaker 1: specific place will still get routes and ETAs that take
Speaker 1: current traffic conditions into account end quote, so the navigation
Speaker 1: tools will still have access to this live traffic data.
Speaker 1: They're just not going to display the location of any
Speaker 1: traffic bottlenecks or anything like that. They'll tell you how
Speaker 1: long it'll take you to get to your destination, but
Speaker 1: not what points along the route you should expect slow traffic.
Speaker 1: So that's just an update on things that are going
Speaker 1: on in the tech sphere in that particular conflict. Yesterday,
Speaker 1: the US government announced it has designated thirty one technology
Speaker 1: hubs across America that will focus on innovation and be
Speaker 1: eligible to compete for millions of dollars in grant money.
Speaker 1: The Economic Development Administration, which is a government office I
Speaker 1: had not even heard of before today, said that the
Speaker 1: goal is to encourage regions that are already pursuing innovation
Speaker 1: in quote unquote critical technology ecosystems. The idea is that
Speaker 1: the government is encouraging research and development that will lead
Speaker 1: to technology and organizations that are all about job creation
Speaker 1: and improving national security, like removing our dependence upon other nations,
Speaker 1: for example, and also making the United States a leader
Speaker 1: in various technical fields. Areas of focus include some pretty
Speaker 1: obvious candidates like artificial intelligence and clean energy. That also
Speaker 1: includes stuff like biotechnology, medical technology, and quantum computing, among
Speaker 1: other disciplines. The thirty one hubs span thirty two states
Speaker 1: and Puerto Rico, so it sounds like at least one
Speaker 1: of those hubs state lines. So I hope everybody can
Speaker 1: get along. The International Energy Agency announced today that according
Speaker 1: to its estimates, renewable energy will make up nearly fifty
Speaker 1: percent of global electricity production by twenty thirty and that
Speaker 1: by that time there will be ten times as many
Speaker 1: electric vehicles on the road as there are today. Now,
Speaker 1: that is encouraging, but we should also remember that our
Speaker 1: overall demand for electricity grows every year. It's not like
Speaker 1: it stays stable. So while renewable sources will take up
Speaker 1: a bigger piece of the pie, we're also talking about
Speaker 1: a much larger pie. To that end, analysts expect that
Speaker 1: we'll see peaks in the demand for fossil fuels this decade. Also,
Speaker 1: electricity is just one way that we actually use energy.
Speaker 1: If we take all of our energy needs into account,
Speaker 1: they predict that the share that fossil fuels represents will
Speaker 1: go from eighty percent down to seventy three percent. So
Speaker 1: there's it's a very long way to go in order
Speaker 1: to truly eliminate our dependence on stuff like fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: The agency warns that despite the move toward renewable sources,
Speaker 1: are continuing use of fossil fuels currently has us on
Speaker 1: a trajectory to see a global temperature increase of around
Speaker 1: two point four degrees celsius. That's nearly a full degree
Speaker 1: above the target that was aimed at in the Paris Agreement,
Speaker 1: and it at least implies that we're going to see
Speaker 1: more major shifts than things like climate and then more
Speaker 1: granularly weather patterns and severe weather events. Yesterday, Tesla disclosed
Speaker 1: in a financial filing that it is the subject of
Speaker 1: investigations from the US Department of Justice. So the DOJ
Speaker 1: is looking into the company for a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different reasons, including how the company markets its driver assists technologies,
Speaker 1: which Tesla refers to as autopilot and full self driving
Speaker 1: or FSD. The investigation is also looking into whether Tesla
Speaker 1: purposefully misled customers regarding how far their vehicles can travel
Speaker 1: on a full charge of the battery. It's also looking
Speaker 1: into the company practices, like the ones that relate to
Speaker 1: quote unquote personal benefits and personnel decisions. So one of
Speaker 1: the personal benefits could be the rumored glass house for
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. I had totally forgotten about this story, y'all,
Speaker 1: And when I read that there was a glass house project,
Speaker 1: I thought, huh, I don't think I've ever heard the
Speaker 1: term glass house project. I wonder what that is. Is
Speaker 1: that like skunk works. No, we're talking about a literal
Speaker 1: house with glass walls, you know, the kind of house
Speaker 1: where you don't want to throw stones. The question is
Speaker 1: if Elon Musk was actually using Tesla to fund and
Speaker 1: build this house for himself, that would violate laws regarding
Speaker 1: a company paying out benefits to an executive on top
Speaker 1: of their normal compensation. I'm sure the full investigation has
Speaker 1: a veritable laundry list of concerns, because Musk does have
Speaker 1: a reputation for, let us say, playing fast and loose
Speaker 1: with rules, as well as a history of campaigning to
Speaker 1: have fewer rules in general. Analyst Ming chi Quo, whom
Speaker 1: I mentioned recently in another news episode, has some more
Speaker 1: juicy Apple news for us. Apple juice anyway. He wrote
Speaker 1: a piece on medium that says Apple is kicking into
Speaker 1: gear to get into the AI field. The company had
Speaker 1: lingered behind a bit when compared with competitors like Google
Speaker 1: and Microsoft, but that's pretty much par for the course
Speaker 1: for Apple. If you look back on many of Apple's products,
Speaker 1: like the big revolutionary products that Apple released often, you
Speaker 1: will see they were not the first to market. The
Speaker 1: iPod was not the first MP three player, for example. Instead,
Speaker 1: the company would spend time figuring out how to best
Speaker 1: meet customer expectations, or how to blow them out of
Speaker 1: the water, or how to even create expectations where the
Speaker 1: customer wasn't aware they had any Anyway, Apple has a
Speaker 1: lot of catching up to do, and Quo's analysis says
Speaker 1: that the company will be spending an enormous amount per
Speaker 1: year to get there. So on the conservative end of
Speaker 1: the spectrum, Apple would be spending around a billion dollars
Speaker 1: a year to start working on AI implementations. Quo suspects
Speaker 1: it's going to be closer to five billion dollars by
Speaker 1: the end of twenty twenty four, so five billion split
Speaker 1: over two years, with the vast majority of that really
Speaker 1: spent in twenty twenty four. Even then, Apple will still
Speaker 1: be trailing well behind companies like Microsoft. Those companies have
Speaker 1: been incredibly aggressive while pursuing and developing AI technologies. However,
Speaker 1: at least in the past, Apple has shown that its
Speaker 1: approach can have an appeal that its competitors just can't match,
Speaker 1: so maybe the same thing will be true with AI.
Speaker 1: And speaking of AI, Technology Review has an interesting article
Speaker 1: about how some digital artists are including elements that are
Speaker 1: invisible to human eye, but they're intended to mess with
Speaker 1: generative AI. So generative artificial intelligence has to receive training
Speaker 1: in order to actually generate stuff. So with art, that
Speaker 1: includes feeding millions of images into the AI system so
Speaker 1: that it, in turn can learn to create images. But
Speaker 1: this concerns artists because it's their work that becomes the
Speaker 1: fodder to train these AI systems, and you can end
Speaker 1: up with generative AI that will lift stylistic elements or
Speaker 1: sometimes complete actual imagery from an established artist's work and
Speaker 1: then pass it off as the AI's own creation or
Speaker 1: someone else if they don't even indicate that AI was
Speaker 1: used to make it. Meanwhile, you have artists concerned that
Speaker 1: no one asked them permission to use their art to
Speaker 1: train these AI models. They certainly haven't been compensated for
Speaker 1: the use of their work. And then the artist's own
Speaker 1: portfolio can become the fuel that ultimately robs that artist
Speaker 1: of their livelihood or at the very least diminishes the
Speaker 1: value of the work they produce. So what's the solution. Well,
Speaker 1: some researchers have developed a tool they call night shade.
Speaker 1: Nightshade by the way, that's a family of plants, but
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they're specifically referencing deadly nightshade, a plant
Speaker 1: that is in fact poisonous. And the tool makes changes
Speaker 1: to digital art pixels, and it's changes that we humans
Speaker 1: don't detect, Like it's invisible to us, we don't actually
Speaker 1: see that any changes have happened. However, the AI scraping
Speaker 1: these images totally can see that information, and the information
Speaker 1: is misleading the AI. It's giving the AI the wrong
Speaker 1: implication of how these various elements inside of art are created,
Speaker 1: and it would prompt generative AI to start making some
Speaker 1: mistakes when trying to replicate certain types of stuff. And ultimately,
Speaker 1: the more the AI references works that have this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff in it, the more wrong they get. So,
Speaker 1: for a simple example, you might have some invisible AI
Speaker 1: information there that is instructing AI and how to make
Speaker 1: a picture of a dog, but it's all incorrect information.
Speaker 1: Maybe the thing that it creates ends up looking more
Speaker 1: like a cat than a dog, or maybe it looks
Speaker 1: like a lovecrafty and monster out of the depths of
Speaker 1: horror and imagination. Who's to say. But the point is
Speaker 1: that if AI does start generating images like that just
Speaker 1: upon simple queries, it indicates two things. One, the AI
Speaker 1: company that created that tool trained it on art that
Speaker 1: has been put through this night shade tool, and that
Speaker 1: would indicate that, yeah, that AI company was doing this
Speaker 1: was actually using artists' work, presumably without permission or compensation.
Speaker 1: And the proof in the pudding is that, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: your generative AI isn't creating pictures correctly. And of course
Speaker 1: number two is the generative AI won't be creating pictures
Speaker 1: correctly and thus will be less useful as a tool.
Speaker 1: You can't really use AI to generate art about something
Speaker 1: specific if it thinks that a house is actually a
Speaker 1: boat or something along those lines. By the way, you
Speaker 1: can actually read more about this in the MIT Technology
Speaker 1: Review article titled this new data poisoning tool lets artists
Speaker 1: fight back against generative AI. Okay, I've got more news
Speaker 1: stories to go through today. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. We're back. The Verge reports
Speaker 1: that both AMD and Nvidia are gearing up to produce
Speaker 1: ARM based CPUs for Windows machines soon. So that's significant
Speaker 1: because right now Microsoft is partners with Qualcom when it
Speaker 1: comes to CPUs for Windows eleven based machines. But it
Speaker 1: appears that in the not too distant future there will
Speaker 1: be a lot more competition in that space, and you
Speaker 1: may find yourself shopping for a new Windows PC and
Speaker 1: then you might have to compare different ARM based processors
Speaker 1: with each other. This could also put pressure on Intel
Speaker 1: to innovate in its own processor family or else risk
Speaker 1: losing market share to AMD and to Nvidia, as well
Speaker 1: as to Qualcomm. I really like this news because healthy
Speaker 1: competition tends to mean better products and better prices, both
Speaker 1: of which are great if you happen to be a consumer.
Speaker 1: Gizmoto reports that Microsoft has finally addressed an issue in
Speaker 1: its spreadsheet platform, Excel, that caused a headache in the
Speaker 1: field of genetic research. So the problem is that Excel
Speaker 1: thinks it knows better than the user and will automatically
Speaker 1: make certain changes to data if that data is in
Speaker 1: a particular format. So, for example, let's say you're a
Speaker 1: geneticist and you type in the characters sept and the
Speaker 1: numeral one sept one all together, and of course what
Speaker 1: you mean is septin one, which is a protein coding
Speaker 1: gene that plays a part in cytokinesis and the maintenance
Speaker 1: of cellular morphology. Excel would not know that you are
Speaker 1: creating a spreadsheet about genes, so it would assume that
Speaker 1: when you typed sept one, what you actually met was
Speaker 1: the first of September, and it might change that entry
Speaker 1: so it says one dash SEP. The same is true
Speaker 1: if you happen to be typing about membrane associated ring
Speaker 1: CH type finger one. Geneticis would encode that as March
Speaker 1: one m a RCH one. That of course would turn
Speaker 1: into one dash mr. When your spreadsheet starts changing your
Speaker 1: gene codes into dates, that's a problem. And worse, Excel
Speaker 1: did not have a feature for you to turn that off,
Speaker 1: so you couldn't tell it, hey, stop converting my gene
Speaker 1: code codes into dates. And it meant that when it
Speaker 1: got time for you to publish your work, you would
Speaker 1: have to go through and spend countless hours making corrections.
Speaker 1: Because the spreadsheets you were using had changed all your
Speaker 1: codes into dates, so you had to make sure which
Speaker 1: one of these should be dates, which of these are
Speaker 1: actually codes. You could easily make mistakes and miss stuff.
Speaker 1: It was a huge headache. In fact, it was such
Speaker 1: a huge headache that a few years ago the field
Speaker 1: overall changed its encoding system to work around this problem.
Speaker 1: But now Microsoft has created an option in Excel that
Speaker 1: lets you turn off the autoconversion feature as long as
Speaker 1: you're not running macros on your spreadsheets, because then apparently
Speaker 1: it all breaks down. I'm not sure if this isn't
Speaker 1: a case of it being better late than never, but
Speaker 1: I do think it's an example of how an automated
Speaker 1: process can actually make things harder rather than easier. When
Speaker 1: you extend that to AI implementations, it can raise some
Speaker 1: really serious questions. Obviously, this is a much more simplified approach, right,
Speaker 1: This is a conversion for one tiny instance of data,
Speaker 1: But when you extend that out and you think about
Speaker 1: the sort of things like the conclusions that AI can
Speaker 1: come to based upon the information it has access to,
Speaker 1: you can understand how sometimes the conclusions are not really
Speaker 1: ideal all the time, because sometimes AI makes mistakes just
Speaker 1: like regular I does. And by IY, I mean intelligence,
Speaker 1: not I. I wasn't making a grammatical error. I was
Speaker 1: making I guess joke is being too kind. Uh, let's
Speaker 1: just move on over In the UK, the Public Accounts
Speaker 1: Committee recently highlighted a looming challenge for the energy sector
Speaker 1: in that company. This is according to the Register, and
Speaker 1: it all has to do with smart meters. Smart meters
Speaker 1: are supposed to monitor energy usage and maintain a communications
Speaker 1: channel between customer and the energy provider, and it's meant
Speaker 1: to keep an accurate tally on how much energy a
Speaker 1: customer is using, but also to tech stuff like interruptions
Speaker 1: and service and that kind of thing. Ideally, smart meters
Speaker 1: reduce the need to send actual people out to physical
Speaker 1: locations to take meter readings, and that ends up freeing
Speaker 1: them up to do other stuff. Not too long ago,
Speaker 1: the National Audit Office in the UK found that energy
Speaker 1: companies had rolled out smart meters to around fifty seven
Speaker 1: percent of their customers, so that meant forty three percent
Speaker 1: still did not have smart meters. This, by the way,
Speaker 1: was way behind schedule of the initial plan. Also, about
Speaker 1: nine percent of those smart meters were not working correctly. Now,
Speaker 1: the Public Accounts Committee built on top of this report
Speaker 1: and found that twenty percent of the smart meters that
Speaker 1: have been deployed are living on borrowed time, and that's
Speaker 1: because these meters are only compatible with aging cellular networks,
Speaker 1: primarily two G and three G. Meanwhile, telecommunications companies are
Speaker 1: planning on sunsetting those networks and shutting them down, and
Speaker 1: that means that the smart meters won't be so smart
Speaker 1: after that. These twenty percent of are deployed smart meters,
Speaker 1: so this shows there are lots of challenges that still
Speaker 1: are in front of the energy sector in the UK.
Speaker 1: Nearly half of the businesses and homes in the UK
Speaker 1: have yet to receive a smart meter at all, some
Speaker 1: of those who have one have one that doesn't work,
Speaker 1: and then a whole bunch of them around seven million
Speaker 1: different locations are going to need a new smart meter
Speaker 1: before the cellular networks completely shut down, or else it'll
Speaker 1: be like they have just a regular meter again. And
Speaker 1: considering that this whole project has had to push deadlines
Speaker 1: a few times already, I'm sure this comes as an
Speaker 1: extremely frustrating development. It also just reminds us that connected
Speaker 1: technologies are only useful for as long as the underlying
Speaker 1: connection exists, which I know that's obvious on the face
Speaker 1: of it. We can take that for granted, right when
Speaker 1: we talk about things like the Internet of Things, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of future proofing that needs to happen for
Speaker 1: the Internet of Things to remain useful, because otherwise, if
Speaker 1: the Internet of Things is only compatible with older wireless technologies,
Speaker 1: for example, and we gradually sunset those because we've created
Speaker 1: better processes, better protocols for wireless communication, if we can't
Speaker 1: update those IoT devices, they just become inert and we
Speaker 1: have all the stuff that isn't doing anything. So that's
Speaker 1: just a good reminder for us to have. And it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to future proof things because you never really
Speaker 1: know how far along they're going to go. Sometimes, if
Speaker 1: you're lucky, you have designed your product, not just lucky,
Speaker 1: but smart. You've designed your product in such a way
Speaker 1: where you can update it with things like firmware updates
Speaker 1: to keep it relevant longer. Ultimately, you're always going to
Speaker 1: have to swap stuff out. Your goal is to make
Speaker 1: it as less frequent as you possibly can and to
Speaker 1: maximize the life cycle of the devices you've deployed. Anyway,
Speaker 1: this whole story was giving me flashbacks to the United
Speaker 1: States back when television broadcasts switched from analog to digital.
Speaker 1: It caused no end of confusion. Only a small number
Speaker 1: of people were actually affected by that small in the
Speaker 1: relative sense, because they needed to get a converter to
Speaker 1: convert digital signals to an analog signal to feed into
Speaker 1: an old television in order to still pick up broadcast TV.
Speaker 1: For a while, everyone was thinking that they might need
Speaker 1: one of those converters, and very few people actually did.
Speaker 1: Dating in the modern world is hard, or so I'm
Speaker 1: led to understand. I personally do not date because my
Speaker 1: wife frowns upon it. Jokes. I've been happily married for
Speaker 1: more than twenty five years at this point, so I
Speaker 1: am totally ignorant when it comes to navigating the dating
Speaker 1: world these days. To be honest, I wasn't exactly an
Speaker 1: expert back when I was single. Anyway, What if I
Speaker 1: told you that Tender is introducing a feature that will
Speaker 1: let you turn friends and family into your own personal Yenta.
Speaker 1: Yenta was the matchmaker and fiddler on the roof, to
Speaker 1: be clear, So Tender's introducing this feature where you can
Speaker 1: list up to fifteen people on your account who will
Speaker 1: then be able to review potential matches based upon your
Speaker 1: tender profile, and then they can weigh in on which
Speaker 1: ones they think you should swipe left on or right on. Now,
Speaker 1: they won't actually be able to do the swiping for you,
Speaker 1: which is a good thing because can you just imagine
Speaker 1: giving your parents access to your tender profile to be
Speaker 1: able to vote on whether or not you should ask
Speaker 1: that nice young person out on a date or not.
Speaker 1: What a nightmare scenario that is. I apologize if that
Speaker 1: major anxiety spike just now. They will also will not
Speaker 1: be able to message the other profile, so you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about them reaching out on your behalf.
Speaker 1: What they can do is give their opinion about whether
Speaker 1: or not a person looks like a catch or if
Speaker 1: you should just nope out of that potential relationship, and
Speaker 1: they call this feature Matchmaker again. Getting back to Filler
Speaker 1: on the roof, I'm just having the song matchmaker Matchmaker
Speaker 1: make me a match play through my head, so hopefully
Speaker 1: you are not aware of that song so that it
Speaker 1: doesn't do the same to you. But I know that
Speaker 1: the rest of the day it's going to be playing
Speaker 1: in my head, partly because I was in a production
Speaker 1: of Filler on the Roof. Anyway, I think this sounds
Speaker 1: like Tinder is setting up the stage for a future
Speaker 1: reality television program. Just imagine it's a reality TV program
Speaker 1: where people can only go on a date with someone
Speaker 1: who matches on their tender profile and gets the most
Speaker 1: votes from that person's can unity of matchmakers. So like
Speaker 1: your group of friends and family, I'll say this person
Speaker 1: is right for you, and then you are obligated to
Speaker 1: go on a date with that person. That sounds like
Speaker 1: a reality TV show, Ready to go. I'm just giving
Speaker 1: away ideas for free again, aren't I. You know what,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do some soul searching on that. When we
Speaker 1: come back, I've got a few more stories to talk about. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back, so let me tell y'all a story. Way
Speaker 1: back in twenty twelve, a company called Cloud Imperium Games
Speaker 1: held itself a tiny little kickstarter was for a proposed
Speaker 1: science fiction space game that they called Star Citizen. The
Speaker 1: game's scope was to be astoundingly huge, and it would
Speaker 1: include both multiplayer elements and elements that would be sort
Speaker 1: of a single player campaign, which became known as Squadron
Speaker 1: forty two now as Star Citizen grew and grew and
Speaker 1: grew in development and sold more and more in game
Speaker 1: products for a game that did not yet exist, and
Speaker 1: made more than half a billion dollars in funding, no joke,
Speaker 1: like they they something like six hundred million dollars I
Speaker 1: think at this point. Anyway, the company decided to spin
Speaker 1: off Squadron forty two to be its own standalone single
Speaker 1: player campaign. But that campaign, just like the larger Star
Speaker 1: Citizen game, kind of just stayed in development year after year.
Speaker 1: And while supporters for Star Citizen have enjoyed releases of
Speaker 1: some content, like there's been limited releases where you've got
Speaker 1: some gameplay elements that people can actually play. I don't
Speaker 1: want to I don't want to suggest that nothing has
Speaker 1: come out. That's not the case. But they were still
Speaker 1: waiting for the full promised title, and for Squadron forty two,
Speaker 1: that weight might and I stress might be getting close
Speaker 1: to the end because the company has announced it is
Speaker 1: now feature complete, so that means that the developers are
Speaker 1: done adding in features into Squadron forty two. They're not
Speaker 1: adding in any more gameplay elements or anything like that. However,
Speaker 1: it's not quite ready to ship yet. The developer set
Speaker 1: it's working toward a beta and ultimately a release once
Speaker 1: they are done finalizing the game, polishing the content that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. They did not give a window for
Speaker 1: when that might be. They did release a new trailer,
Speaker 1: and I hope that the stars Citizen community that's been
Speaker 1: waiting for this content for more than a decade at
Speaker 1: this point are happy with the result, and that the
Speaker 1: rest of Star Citizen also ultimately comes out. I do
Speaker 1: not have a stake in this. I never supported the campaign,
Speaker 1: I didn't pre order anything, and I have some very
Speaker 1: strong feelings about how this whole project has progressed over
Speaker 1: the years. Like I have been very critical of Star
Speaker 1: Citizen in general, but I genuinely hope that the people
Speaker 1: who have poured money and their own hopes into this
Speaker 1: project end up being very happy. I would hate for
Speaker 1: this to continue on as just a never ending development,
Speaker 1: and I worry about people being disappointed with the final
Speaker 1: product simply because they've been waiting so long and have
Speaker 1: put so much money into it. I'm reminded a little
Speaker 1: bit of Bethesda, where they had their own Starfield product
Speaker 1: come out, and there were a lot of people who
Speaker 1: felt that it did not live up to their expectations.
Speaker 1: Other people really like that game. I have yet to
Speaker 1: play it, so I haven't formed my own opinion. I
Speaker 1: know people who think it's a great game, and I
Speaker 1: know people who feel that it was a total disappointment.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure most people fall somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1: But yeah, here's hoping that the folks who support Star Citizen,
Speaker 1: when they do get access to Squadron forty two, are
Speaker 1: not left disappointed. Now, imagine that you have to provide
Speaker 1: tech support to a spacecraft that has left your Solar System.
Speaker 1: That would be quite the long distance service call. That's
Speaker 1: what NASA engineers are doing with Voyager one and Voyager two.
Speaker 1: So both of those spacecraft are now in interstellar space,
Speaker 1: they have left the Solar System, and NASA has sent
Speaker 1: some instructions to each of them in order to extend
Speaker 1: their ability to communicate with us all the way back
Speaker 1: here on Earth for as long as possible. So last year,
Speaker 1: Voyager one started to send some pretty weird communications about
Speaker 1: the spacecraft's telemetry. Voyager sends telemetry data through a system
Speaker 1: called the Attitude Articulation and Control System or AACS. But
Speaker 1: it was passing this data through a computer system that
Speaker 1: wasn't working properly, and it was odd because it wasn't
Speaker 1: supposed to be passing the data through that specific computer system,
Speaker 1: and so sending back garbled data nothing exciting. It's not
Speaker 1: like the garbled data said, Hey, Earth, send more I
Speaker 1: love Lucy episodes, which would have been cool because then
Speaker 1: aliens would be looking at us. Now it's just like
Speaker 1: just gibberish, really, And so the engineers have now beamed
Speaker 1: a patch to fix this issue with Voyager one. It's
Speaker 1: a software patch. There is the lingering question as to
Speaker 1: why Voyager one was routing the data through this computer
Speaker 1: system in the first place. We still don't know that answer,
Speaker 1: but hopefully this will at least be a temporary fix
Speaker 1: for the problem. The team also came up with a
Speaker 1: new schedule for firing spacecraft thrusters for both Voyager one
Speaker 1: and Voyager two in order to reduce the frequency of
Speaker 1: those thrustering ignitions for a couple of reasons. One, obviously,
Speaker 1: there's a limited amount of fuel, right like, you don't
Speaker 1: have infinite fuel on the spacecraft. But the other one
Speaker 1: is that each time you fire the thrusters, it builds
Speaker 1: up a little bit of residue on the inlet tubes
Speaker 1: that feed into those thrusters. So the concern is that
Speaker 1: if they kept up with a more frequent schedule, that
Speaker 1: build up would reach a point where it would interfere
Speaker 1: with the thrusters. So now they'll do it less frequently
Speaker 1: and hopefully extend the useful life of the spacecraft. And
Speaker 1: they're obviously not going to work forever, but the hope
Speaker 1: is to extend their lifespans a little bit more as
Speaker 1: they continue on into interstellar space. Now I have a
Speaker 1: couple of articles that I'm going to recommend, but before
Speaker 1: I do, I do have one final story, and that
Speaker 1: is Martin Getz has passed away at the age of
Speaker 1: ninety three. Gets was the first person to secure a
Speaker 1: US patent for software. He did that back in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight. Now, I've talked about this before when I
Speaker 1: did an episode about the Patent Office, because the idea
Speaker 1: of patenting software was one that had some major hurdles
Speaker 1: to overcome. And that's because the US Patent Office has
Speaker 1: rules on what you can and cannot patent. One thing
Speaker 1: that you cannot patent is a mathematical process, and there
Speaker 1: are arguments to be made that software ultimately is really
Speaker 1: just a series of mathematical processes, and as such, software programs, etc.
Speaker 1: Are not viable candidates for patents. That was the argument. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the Patent Office rejected this idea, at least within certain parameters,
Speaker 1: and Gets his work in data sorting software became the
Speaker 1: first to receive a patent from the US Patent Office.
Speaker 1: Gets really campaigned for this in large part because independent
Speaker 1: software developers had no protection for their work. So let's
Speaker 1: say that someone came up with a really useful program
Speaker 1: like sorting data in a mainframe computer system, Well, nothing
Speaker 1: would stop a massive company with practically unlimited resources from
Speaker 1: just copying or reverse engineering that software and using it
Speaker 1: for themselves and never paying the developer anything. So Getz
Speaker 1: pointed out that would be unfair. It's not fair to
Speaker 1: just stand by while very powerful tech companies could steal
Speaker 1: the work from independent programmers just because there are no
Speaker 1: protective measures in place. So his patent set a precedent,
Speaker 1: and it meant that programmers had a chance to secure
Speaker 1: their work and protect their livelihoods. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a good thing, So rest in peace, Martin gets Now
Speaker 1: that wraps up our stories. But there are a couple
Speaker 1: of articles that I would like to recommend you check
Speaker 1: out if you have the time. Again, I have no
Speaker 1: connection to these media outlets. I do not know the
Speaker 1: writers personally or professionally. I just thought these were good
Speaker 1: articles and you should check them out if you've got
Speaker 1: time and you're interested. So first up is a piece
Speaker 1: by Jennifer Pattinson Twoey of The Verge. It's titled Matter
Speaker 1: one point two is a big move for the smart
Speaker 1: home standard. Now I'll have to do a full episode
Speaker 1: about Matter in the future and how the goal is
Speaker 1: to create a foundation for smart home technologies, but this
Speaker 1: article gives a great overview of where we're at currently
Speaker 1: in that effort. Secondly, I recommend Ashley Bellinger's article in
Speaker 1: Ours Technica titled will chat GPT's hallucinations be allowed to
Speaker 1: ruin Your Life? This article covers how AI companies are
Speaker 1: trying to insulate themselves against stuff like defamation lawsuits, so
Speaker 1: that if their AI chatbot claims that I don't know
Speaker 1: that you go around kicking puppies or something, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to sue them for ruining your reputation. I
Speaker 1: think it's valuable to read that as well because it
Speaker 1: very much plays upon the concepts of accountability and artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence agents very important, really, and it highlights something that
Speaker 1: is kind of in this gray area when it comes
Speaker 1: to the law. You know, we're starting to define AI
Speaker 1: in a legal sense through various court cases. For example,
Speaker 1: the court case that determined that AI is incapable of
Speaker 1: holding a copyright. You cannot copyright a work that was
Speaker 1: created by AI because human authorship is a key component
Speaker 1: of copyright as it is defined today. So that's kind
Speaker 1: of how you know, we have to define things in
Speaker 1: the court system. It has to be done by the
Speaker 1: decisions of judges in various trials. So a very important
Speaker 1: part of the adoption of artificial intelligence inside the United States.
Speaker 1: And that wraps up the tech news for Tuesday, October two,
Speaker 1: twenty forth twenty twenty three. I hope you are all
Speaker 1: well and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
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