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 iHeart Podcasts and How the
Speaker 1: tech are you. It's time for the tech news for
Speaker 1: the week ending December sixth, twenty twenty four. And my apologies,
Speaker 1: but we have some heavy stories both at the beginning
Speaker 1: and the end of this one because of the way
Speaker 1: news unfolded this week. One of the top stories this
Speaker 1: week was that the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson died
Speaker 1: after being attacked by a gun wielding assailant in New
Speaker 1: York City and what was clearly a premeditated act of violence. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not a true crime podcast, so I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna dwell on the extraordinary facts about this case, the
Speaker 1: ones that have been shared with us so far. You
Speaker 1: can read up all about that if you like. Rather,
Speaker 1: what I wanted to talk about is how the reaction
Speaker 1: online to this act of violence has been pretty brutal,
Speaker 1: and not just among your typical Internet trolls. Over on Reddit,
Speaker 1: moderators had to shut down a thread in which doctors
Speaker 1: were criticizing Brian Thompson and the insurance industry as a
Speaker 1: whole for practices that prioritize profits and shareholder return over
Speaker 1: human life. The participants in a thread in the subreddit
Speaker 1: r slash medicine took United Healthcare to task for allegedly
Speaker 1: denying coverage to patients, all in an effort to squeeze
Speaker 1: out more value for shareholders. It got so spicy that
Speaker 1: moderators chose to nuke the thread from orbit, because it's
Speaker 1: the only way to be sure. I've been seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of response to this killing online and there's a
Speaker 1: very dark core of eat the rich fueling a lot
Speaker 1: of these reactions. And y'all, don't get me wrong, I'm
Speaker 1: very much in the camp of eat the rich, but
Speaker 1: I think there's a very small number of an incredibly
Speaker 1: privileged people who wield far too much wealth and power
Speaker 1: in the United States and beyond, and that strikes me
Speaker 1: as wrong. However, I'm also very much in the let's
Speaker 1: not kill anybody camp when it comes to those sorts
Speaker 1: of things. I have deep compassion for the countless patients
Speaker 1: who found themselves lacking coverage despite having insurance. Like that
Speaker 1: should never happen. That's why we have insurance Obviously, denying
Speaker 1: patients in need is wrong, and it's a problem that
Speaker 1: does need to be rectified. But I also, at the
Speaker 1: same time think that killing someone is wrong as well.
Speaker 1: You know, both things can both be you know, simultaneously
Speaker 1: be true. Anyway, I guess this is where I say
Speaker 1: the compassion part of my philosophy of compassion and critical
Speaker 1: thinking comes in. I don't think those who create and
Speaker 1: foster systems that profit off the suffering of others should
Speaker 1: get away with that. They should be held accountable and
Speaker 1: be required to participate in the fixing of those systems. However,
Speaker 1: I also think gunning someone down in cold blood isn't
Speaker 1: a reasonable solution to those kinds of problems anyway. One
Speaker 1: other thing I want to mention about this is that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of misinformation going around regarding this attack.
Speaker 1: I have seen numerous posts quoting people, primarily Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: about this incident. In fact, I saw one post getting
Speaker 1: a lot of traction on Facebook being shared by multiple
Speaker 1: friends of mine, and in that post it appeared that
Speaker 1: Elon Musk was tweeting out essentially that CEOs keep the
Speaker 1: world going round and that without CEOs everything falls apart.
Speaker 1: The only thing is I could actually find no evidence
Speaker 1: that he ever tweeted that message, and you know, he
Speaker 1: tweets a lot, and there was no record of him
Speaker 1: actually tweeting that out. There were these photos of a tweet,
Speaker 1: but they looked weird, like the font wasn't right, the
Speaker 1: kerning wasn't right on the typeface. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: at least to my eyes, it appeared to be fabricated
Speaker 1: in order to support a narrative. Of that narrative apparently
Speaker 1: being that Elon Musk is a billionaire with no consideration
Speaker 1: or awareness of what normal folks go through, and that
Speaker 1: he has an overinflated opinion of himself, which you know,
Speaker 1: I agree with that perception. I think it's accurate, but
Speaker 1: I don't think that means people should go around inventing quotes.
Speaker 1: The guy has plenty of real quotes that give us
Speaker 1: insight into his beliefs and thoughts. There's no need to
Speaker 1: make up new ones just to support a particular point
Speaker 1: of view. So yeah, I guess ultimately what I'm saying
Speaker 1: when I'm bringing up this whole story is one try
Speaker 1: and keep compassion in mind. I understand if your capacity
Speaker 1: for compassion is stretched due to the impact the insurance
Speaker 1: industry has had at people at large, particularly people who
Speaker 1: need it most. But also keep using critical thinking when
Speaker 1: you're seeing you know memes and stuff shared about this
Speaker 1: because often the people who are creating them have no
Speaker 1: real consideration for you know, reality. They might saying things
Speaker 1: that are accurate depictions, but not actual quotations, and I
Speaker 1: think it's important to make the distinction, by the way.
Speaker 1: To stick with the tech theme, one story that has
Speaker 1: resurfaced in the wake of the killing of Brian Thompson
Speaker 1: is how some ultra wealthy folks have been worrying and
Speaker 1: preparing for a tumultuous upheaval brought about by one of
Speaker 1: many potential things like climate change or a social revolution,
Speaker 1: or just war in general, or another pandemic, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Douglas Rushkoff wrote about this for The Guardian
Speaker 1: back in twenty twenty two, and even then he was
Speaker 1: referencing an event that had happened years earlier, and the
Speaker 1: article is titled the super rich Preppers planning to save
Speaker 1: themselves from the Apocalypse Now. In that piece, rushkov explains
Speaker 1: he was lured to speak at an event, only he
Speaker 1: discovered this event was actually a group of billionaires who
Speaker 1: wanted to know about practical considerations they should be, you know,
Speaker 1: making their designing constrs, structing, maintaining and operating a shelter
Speaker 1: or a bunker that's designed to keep their precious bodies
Speaker 1: safe while the rest of us suffer out in the
Speaker 1: hellscape that is the apocalypse. And he claims that at
Speaker 1: one point, the fat cats asked him how best to
Speaker 1: keep control over their security details. After all, the people
Speaker 1: working security would be coming from the commoners and they
Speaker 1: might share some of those sentiments with the struggling and
Speaker 1: the dying, dirty people outside. Rushcoff suggested that they actually
Speaker 1: extend a hand and become friends with their staff, you know,
Speaker 1: before the world falls apart, because human cooperation is necessary
Speaker 1: for survival. But the rich folks, according to Rushkoff, favored
Speaker 1: approaches like controlling the food supply or even requiring their
Speaker 1: security detail to wear electric shock collars. And I'm not
Speaker 1: being dramatic here. You should read the article now. The
Speaker 1: reason I bring up this article, which is a couple
Speaker 1: of years old, more than two years old at this point,
Speaker 1: is that new articles are popping up about very similar
Speaker 1: topics in the wake of Thompson killing. Natasha Tiku of
Speaker 1: The Washington Post has an article titled Fearful of Crime,
Speaker 1: the tech elite transformed their homes into military bunkers. That
Speaker 1: article published just yesterday, and she also talks about a
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley startup company the designed security systems for the
Speaker 1: uber rich. And the company has a name that pretty
Speaker 1: much tells you everything you need to know the name
Speaker 1: of the company, sourn. Now, I wish I were making
Speaker 1: that up. It's already insane to me that there's a
Speaker 1: tech company out there with the unironic name Palanteer. And
Speaker 1: here you have companies catering to the ultra wealthy or
Speaker 1: the defense industry, and they're eagerly adopting names from J. R. R.
Speaker 1: Tolkien's works, particularly the Lord of the Rings series, and
Speaker 1: these are often names that are associated with bad guys.
Speaker 1: So they're saying the quiet part out loud, y'all. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you want to get angry at rich people who
Speaker 1: seem to think that it's better to live in a
Speaker 1: world that's falling apart as long as they personally continue
Speaker 1: to accumulate wealth, rather than live in a world where
Speaker 1: they don't accumulate so much wealth and the rest of
Speaker 1: the world starts to patch itself up, like, oh, well, no,
Speaker 1: I want to have money, So why would I deny
Speaker 1: myself all that money just so that the world could
Speaker 1: potentially fix some problems. Let the world sort itself out.
Speaker 1: I need mine. Well, these two articles are a pretty
Speaker 1: darn good start for you to go down your journey
Speaker 1: of decrying the rich. It's interesting because, like, there's definitely
Speaker 1: been a growing sentiment and in the world in general,
Speaker 1: at least the world I'm familiar with that has been
Speaker 1: anti wealthy because of these sorts of issues. And when
Speaker 1: I say wealthy, I mean like ultra wealthy, the people
Speaker 1: who are benefiting from others, you know. And it sounds
Speaker 1: like folks are worried that it's coming to a head.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's coming to a head yet, but
Speaker 1: you know, pressure does seem to be building, and I
Speaker 1: expect that's going to continue over the next few years.
Speaker 1: Another big story here in the United States involves more
Speaker 1: details around the Chinese hacking operation known as Salt Typhoon. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that we talked about Salt Typhoon months ago,
Speaker 1: that we had talked about the discovery of a naming
Speaker 1: of this operation earlier this year, but more details have
Speaker 1: emerged recently that indicate the project is far broader in
Speaker 1: scope than first imagined. So, according to the FBI, Chinese
Speaker 1: hackers have infiltrated telecommunication systems here in the United States,
Speaker 1: and we're talking the big guys like AT and T, Verizon,
Speaker 1: and T Mobile, although T Mobile claims there's no evidence
Speaker 1: hackers accessed customer information on their network. Further, these hackers
Speaker 1: have accessed call information and texts and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: The matter is severe enough that the Senate had a
Speaker 1: classified briefing on the matter this past Wednesday. According to Reuter's,
Speaker 1: Senator Rick Scott was angry that the briefing didn't detail
Speaker 1: information on why the FBI didn't catch this intrusion and
Speaker 1: what they could have done to prevent the intrusion. Well,
Speaker 1: I think i'll handle this one, Senator Scott. I think
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible that the manner in which the hackers
Speaker 1: use to intrude upon these systems is not yet known.
Speaker 1: And if you don't know how someone got into your house,
Speaker 1: you can't really address how you would have prevented it
Speaker 1: from happening, Right, So I would argue that perhaps more
Speaker 1: germane at least for the immediate future, is how do
Speaker 1: we oust the hackers from the systems and then shut
Speaker 1: off access so they can no longer spy on people
Speaker 1: here in the United States. However, I admit I am
Speaker 1: no politician anyway, this sort of thing, you know, state
Speaker 1: impact hackers from China infiltrating telecommunication systems on a widespread basis.
Speaker 1: It's one of the big reasons why several politicians voted
Speaker 1: to ban TikTok in the United States unless it's Chinese
Speaker 1: parent company Byte Dance divests itself of TikTok, And I
Speaker 1: understand that line of reasoning, but I'll point out once
Speaker 1: again that the issue of China spying on the United
Speaker 1: States is way way bigger than TikTok, and there's a
Speaker 1: real danger of using TikTok to be an example of
Speaker 1: patching a very small hole while ignoring a huge crater.
Speaker 1: And if we focus exclusively on TikTok, we're going to
Speaker 1: ignore the larger problem that continues to be an issue. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got more news stories to get through before we
Speaker 1: move on. Let's take a quick break to thank our sponsors.
Speaker 1: We're back, and you know what, here's another story that
Speaker 1: involves tech, the United States and China. We left off
Speaker 1: with one of those, let's pick up with a different one.
Speaker 1: This one revolves around rare earth metals and other raw materials. Also,
Speaker 1: just as a reminder, rare earth metals tends to refer
Speaker 1: to a class of metals that aren't necessarily actually rare.
Speaker 1: They might be plentiful in the Earth's crust. The problem
Speaker 1: is they don't typically appear in concentrated forms, so getting
Speaker 1: hold of a lot of it is hard. It requires
Speaker 1: a lot of work. Often it requires a lot of
Speaker 1: work that is environmentally dangerous, also dangerous to the health
Speaker 1: of the people who are working there. Like you're using
Speaker 1: a lot of caustic chemicals to leach away metals from
Speaker 1: other material So it's dangerous stuff. But the word rare
Speaker 1: is a little bit misleading anyway. These are materials that
Speaker 1: are very important for different aspects of the tech sector,
Speaker 1: and recently the United States instituted new restrictions on products
Speaker 1: that contain US made semiconductor chips from being sold to
Speaker 1: Chinese businesses, essentially saying China is desperate to get their
Speaker 1: hands on US designed semiconductors in order to steal the
Speaker 1: technology and then repurpose it for other stuff. This is
Speaker 1: been an ongoing concern for many years now, and so
Speaker 1: one way that the United States tries to address this
Speaker 1: is by banning the sale of certain materials and certain
Speaker 1: products to China so that they can't just harvest the
Speaker 1: semiconductors and use those to create knockoffs. But in retaliation
Speaker 1: of this increased restriction on certain products to China, China
Speaker 1: itself has announced that it is going to ban the
Speaker 1: export of several rare earth metals and other minerals and
Speaker 1: materials that are used in industries including military applications, as
Speaker 1: well as the tech sector in general. So you may
Speaker 1: be aware that many of our devices rely in part
Speaker 1: on stuff that requires this kind of material, stuff like batteries,
Speaker 1: for example. So this is a case of two superpowers
Speaker 1: squaring off against each other in an attempt to deny
Speaker 1: access to technology or the materials used to build technology,
Speaker 1: and I suspect we're going to see more of these
Speaker 1: kinds of conflicts during the Trump administration, assuming the tariffs
Speaker 1: that Trump has promised actually come to pass. To read
Speaker 1: more about this, I recommend Ashley Bellinger's article in Ours Technica.
Speaker 1: It is titled China hits US with ban on critical
Speaker 1: minerals used in tech manufacturing. Oh hey, let's get another
Speaker 1: Tolkien reference in here. Why not? I mean, I'm leaving
Speaker 1: the show in a month, so I might as well
Speaker 1: sneak in as many as I can. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: got a Tolkien tattoo on my arm for goodness sakes. Actually,
Speaker 1: in this case, I'm not really sneaking anything in the
Speaker 1: tech sector has me covered. Palmer Lucky, the guy who
Speaker 1: created the Oculus VR headset and then who subsequently made
Speaker 1: headlines with some very edge Lord activities, also has a
Speaker 1: military defense company, because of course he does. And it's
Speaker 1: called and Uril, which at least is not a reference
Speaker 1: to a villain in the Lord of the Rings books. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's the name of a sword anyway. And Uril has
Speaker 1: announced a strategic partnership with open you know, the company
Speaker 1: that's behind Chad GPT. And if you are thinking, well
Speaker 1: that sounds bad, then you and I were on the
Speaker 1: same page. And if you're also thinking, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I thought open AI was founded to be an organization
Speaker 1: dedicated to the peaceful, responsible development of artificial intelligence. Well,
Speaker 1: my dear sweet summer child, I've got some bad news
Speaker 1: for you, because that version of open AI hasn't really
Speaker 1: been a reality for quite some time at this point. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Rob Thubren of tech Spot has a piece on this
Speaker 1: that's titled open AI partners with Palmer Lucky's defense firm,
Speaker 1: paving the way for AI driven military tech, And yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't really see a positive way to spend this.
Speaker 1: Apparently the initial focus of the partnership will be to
Speaker 1: develop military platforms that can identify, target, and destroy unmanned drones.
Speaker 1: But apparently they mentioned that they could also use that
Speaker 1: same technology to deal with quote unquote legacy threats. Legacy
Speaker 1: threats is a euphemism. It's a nice way to obfuscate
Speaker 1: the fact that what they're talking about our aerial vehicles
Speaker 1: with an actual human crew, you know, like aircraft, And
Speaker 1: this would be a case of robots killing human beings.
Speaker 1: And yes, we have all seen this movie, and yes
Speaker 1: we do know it turns out poorly, and yet here
Speaker 1: it is happening. Anyway. Yes, early this week, Intel announced
Speaker 1: that CEO Pat Gelsinger is retiring from the company, but
Speaker 1: as Stephen Vaughn Nichols a Computer World puts it, that's
Speaker 1: a line that very few in the tech sector are
Speaker 1: actually buying. So von Nichols has an article that's titled
Speaker 1: Intel's CEO, Pat Gelsinger retires right. That's actually the name
Speaker 1: of the article. His right has like five eyes in it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it indicates there's a certain level of skepticism around how
Speaker 1: much of this was actually Gelsinger's own decision versus a
Speaker 1: corporate move in an attempt to right the course of Intel.
Speaker 1: And as you know, von Nichols writes, Intel's board of
Speaker 1: directors has grown impatient and allegedly gave Gelsinger the choice
Speaker 1: to either retire or face just being outright canned. Von
Speaker 1: Nichols has a great treatment of what has happened at
Speaker 1: Intel since two thousand and seven. Two thousand and seven
Speaker 1: was when Intel fumbled a deal that would have seen
Speaker 1: Intel chips inside Apple iPhones instead. That deal would end
Speaker 1: up going to Samsung at the time, and von Nichols
Speaker 1: makes a case that this was sort of the beginning
Speaker 1: of a decline for Intel, and he says the company
Speaker 1: has been in that downward trajectory ever since, and the
Speaker 1: board apparently feels that Gelsinger didn't do enough to reverse
Speaker 1: company fortunes. Whether anyone else can succeed in that job
Speaker 1: remains to be seen, although against Stephen Vaughan Nichols at
Speaker 1: the very least is not optimistic about it, and I
Speaker 1: am inclined to agree with his assessment. Hailey Welch achieved
Speaker 1: Internet celebrity with her response to a Man on the
Speaker 1: Street interview that well, let's just say, if you don't
Speaker 1: know Hailey Welch, if you don't know who that is,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to go into it here because this
Speaker 1: is a family show and I'm an old man, and
Speaker 1: I just I just don't have the energy, y'all. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, she gave like a flippant, little funny answer
Speaker 1: to a question and then became an Internet celebrity. And
Speaker 1: apparently she wanted to leverage her newly won celebrity status
Speaker 1: by lending her brand to a meme coin cryptocurrency that
Speaker 1: was called a dollar Sign hawk Hawk. But that meme
Speaker 1: coin experienced a dramatic decline in value, or, as Meredith
Speaker 1: Clark of The Independent put it, dollar Sign hawk Quote
Speaker 1: crashed by more than ninety percent just hours after it
Speaker 1: hit the market. End quote, and in the wake of
Speaker 1: that glorious failure, Welch is now facing accusations that she
Speaker 1: was involved in essentially what was a pump and dump
Speaker 1: rug pole scam. So a rug pole, in case you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with the term, is a scheme in which
Speaker 1: someone puts forward an asset that they invite people to
Speaker 1: invest in. That asset could be anything. It doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be digital, it could be whatever. The scam artist
Speaker 1: owns steak in this asset, and that asset could effectively
Speaker 1: be worthless, but the goal is to build up excitement
Speaker 1: for this asset, to get people to buy in, and
Speaker 1: that drives up the selling price of the asset, and
Speaker 1: then the scam artist sells off their steak and essentially
Speaker 1: they make money off of nothing at all. And then
Speaker 1: typically they head for the hills. And that's your classic
Speaker 1: rug pole. You pull the rug out from under the investors,
Speaker 1: You build up excitement around something, you get people eager
Speaker 1: to buy in out of fear of missing out, and
Speaker 1: then you cash out before the whole thing comes crashing down. Now,
Speaker 1: Welch ha said her mean Coin was never intended to
Speaker 1: be a rug pull. That was not her aim. That however,
Speaker 1: has not stopped an early investor from filing a complaint
Speaker 1: with the US Securities Exchange Commission or SEC against Welch.
Speaker 1: Welch maintains she never tried to pull a pump and up,
Speaker 1: and in fact says her stake in Dollar Sign Hawk
Speaker 1: is something that she's not even allowed to sell for
Speaker 1: a year. And if that is true, then this just
Speaker 1: might be a case of snipers and such taking advantage
Speaker 1: of a meme coin launch and everyone else is ending
Speaker 1: up left holding the bag, including Welch, which stinks but
Speaker 1: also pretty predictable outcome. If I'm being totally honest, It's
Speaker 1: not like this is unprecedented. It is very much precedented.
Speaker 1: Waimo has announced that it is bringing its driverless cab
Speaker 1: service to Miami, that the driverless vehicles will start trolling
Speaker 1: around the streets in twenty twenty five. In fact, the
Speaker 1: company says it will quote began reacquainting waymos all electric
Speaker 1: Jaguar eye pieces to Miami's streets quote in a recent
Speaker 1: press release. Now, the actual service, the driverless cab service
Speaker 1: would wait until twenty twenty six to get into business.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there are many people in Miami who
Speaker 1: could benefit from improved transportation options. I'm thinking of like
Speaker 1: seniors in Miami who might not have easy ways to
Speaker 1: get around, and I am glad that they will have
Speaker 1: more options. However, I'm also worried that adding more cars
Speaker 1: to the streets isn't really the ideal solution. But what
Speaker 1: do I know? I mean, hasn't stopped us from doing
Speaker 1: it in other markets too, even though I think ultimately
Speaker 1: that there are other solutions that could not only give
Speaker 1: more options for those who need transportation, but also have
Speaker 1: a smaller impact on overall traffic in cities. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, I think adding more cars does not really
Speaker 1: address the traffic issue. In fact, I mean this might
Speaker 1: be ignorant speaking, but it seems to me like it
Speaker 1: just exacerbates that problem. All right, we've got more headlines
Speaker 1: to get through before we get to that. Let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break to think our sponsors. Google has also proclaimed,
Speaker 1: through the AI arm of Google called DeepMind, that an
Speaker 1: AI research laboratory called Gencast has developed a weather predicting
Speaker 1: AI model that is more accurate than existing models, the
Speaker 1: models that meteorologists typically depend upon, and that this model
Speaker 1: can better predict extreme weather events up to fifteen days
Speaker 1: out and in less time than it would take a
Speaker 1: traditional model. This is interesting, and if it is true,
Speaker 1: it could potentially lead to a rather drastic improvement in
Speaker 1: weather forecasting and disaster preparedness. Now, I'm sure it's going
Speaker 1: to take a lot more time to analyze gen casts,
Speaker 1: systems and results to make certain that in fact, what
Speaker 1: appears to be an improvement is really the case, right,
Speaker 1: Because it could just be that it looks like it's
Speaker 1: an improvement, but maybe over the long run, when you
Speaker 1: get a larger sample size, those advantages might wash out.
Speaker 1: We don't know. I hope they don't wash out, but
Speaker 1: you need a lot of testing to make sure that
Speaker 1: these things are actually more accurate. But this is the
Speaker 1: sort of AI application I can actually really get behind.
Speaker 1: If we can develop AI that is more effective at
Speaker 1: analyzing data and patterns than we are in order to
Speaker 1: do stuff like forecast the weather, I think that's great.
Speaker 1: I think if people have an accurate or at least
Speaker 1: a pretty accurate forecast, that if there are signs of
Speaker 1: severe weather on the horizon, they can have more time
Speaker 1: to prepare for that. I think that could save countless lives.
Speaker 1: But we have to understand also that weather is an
Speaker 1: extremely complex phenomena, and even a really effective model is
Speaker 1: going to get things wrong sometimes. I know people who
Speaker 1: get mad when it's been predicted that there's going to
Speaker 1: be really traumatic, like severe weather, and then it turns
Speaker 1: out to not be so bad, and they get angry
Speaker 1: about it, And I'm like, y'all are angry about the
Speaker 1: wrong things. I would be angry if I were told
Speaker 1: it was just going to be a little bit of
Speaker 1: a sprinkle outside and then a tornado tore my house down.
Speaker 1: That's when I would get mad. I don't get mad
Speaker 1: the weather's not as bad as I was told it
Speaker 1: was going to be. I don't know, I'm probably a weirdo.
Speaker 1: Bill Nelson, the administrator for NASA, announced that the agency's
Speaker 1: Artemis program is going to experience a bit of a delay,
Speaker 1: and I think this comes as a surprise to absolutely
Speaker 1: no one. I'm pretty sure that I've mentioned a few
Speaker 1: times this year that I thought NASA's earlier plan for
Speaker 1: Artemis was overly ambitious. But right now, the Artemis mission
Speaker 1: the next one, which is to send astronauts on a
Speaker 1: trip that will take them around the backside of the
Speaker 1: Moon and then back to Earth, not landing on the Moon,
Speaker 1: just going around it. That mission has now been pushed
Speaker 1: back to April twenty twenty six. The Moon landing mission,
Speaker 1: which would return astronauts to the lunar surface for the
Speaker 1: first time since nineteen seventy two, has now been pushed
Speaker 1: back to twenty twenty seven. Further, Trump's pick for the
Speaker 1: new head of NASA is Jared Isigmann, who is a
Speaker 1: filthy rich businessman who back in twenty twenty one paid
Speaker 1: SpaceX and undisclosed amount of money, but I imagine it
Speaker 1: was a princely sum to fly aboard a SpaceX mission
Speaker 1: in an all civilian space tourist mission. He would later
Speaker 1: on fly in a second space tourist mission to become
Speaker 1: the first space tourist to participate in an EVA. That's
Speaker 1: an extra vehicular activity or spacewalk. Do you and me?
Speaker 1: And In very sad news, we learned not too long
Speaker 1: ago that Marshall Brain, the founder of HowStuffWorks dot com,
Speaker 1: committed suicide in his office at the campus of North
Speaker 1: Carolina State University. Brain founded how stuff Works in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. He used his passion for learning and communicating
Speaker 1: to build a site that aim to explain how everything works.
Speaker 1: He would later launch a podcast called brain Stuff that
Speaker 1: would become the first of many stuff shows to launch,
Speaker 1: including tech Stuff, and the story obviously has a big
Speaker 1: personal impact on me. I literally would not have the
Speaker 1: career I am in right now without Marshall Brain. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be doing this podcast. I
Speaker 1: met Marshall Brain several times, but we never actually worked
Speaker 1: together on any projects. Some of my colleagues spent much
Speaker 1: more time with him, and all of us from the
Speaker 1: Stuff era are still processing this and grieving for his family.
Speaker 1: I have no real details to share about his story
Speaker 1: and what led up to him deciding to take his
Speaker 1: own life. There are pieces in outlets like Ours Technica
Speaker 1: that shed a little more light into what was going
Speaker 1: on leading up to his death, but I don't feel
Speaker 1: like this is the right place to dive into that.
Speaker 1: I would just like to say that if you are
Speaker 1: struggling with thoughts of suicide, reach out for help. There's
Speaker 1: no shame in reaching out for help, and I, for one,
Speaker 1: would prefer a world that has you in it. That's
Speaker 1: a very heavy note to end on. I do have
Speaker 1: a couple of additional reading suggestions for all of y'all
Speaker 1: before I head out. First up is a piece in
Speaker 1: The Verge by Elizabeth Lopoto titled stop using Generative AI
Speaker 1: as a search engine. Lopato details incidents in which people
Speaker 1: have used generative AI to answer questions only to receive
Speaker 1: incorrect answers, often with invented details that just never really
Speaker 1: happened in the real world, which is really similar to
Speaker 1: what I found when I use chat GPT to quote
Speaker 1: unquote write an episode of Tech Stuff. You know, if
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to that episode, you should, because I
Speaker 1: bring up some big concerns I have as a result
Speaker 1: of what I got when I use chat GPT to
Speaker 1: do that. But check out Lopato's piece for more insight
Speaker 1: into that issue. And finally, I recommend reading Tim Cushing's
Speaker 1: piece in Tech Dirt titled Federal Court says dismantling a
Speaker 1: phone to install firmware isn't a search, even if it
Speaker 1: was done to facilitate a search. So essentially what the
Speaker 1: story is saying is that a court has decided that
Speaker 1: law enforcement officials do not need to secure a search
Speaker 1: warrant before attempting to compromise a phone or other device
Speaker 1: like a laptop. But once they do get access to
Speaker 1: that device, they then would need to get a search
Speaker 1: warrant in order to actually search the device. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: be allowed to search it after breaching it unless they
Speaker 1: had the warrant. They just don't need the warrant to
Speaker 1: start the process of breaching the device. Moreover, the essentially
Speaker 1: hold on to the locked or defunct or broken device
Speaker 1: for as long as they need to before they're able
Speaker 1: to crack it open. So check out that article. He
Speaker 1: brings up some pretty interesting arguments about the good and
Speaker 1: the bad of that, and he advocates for more of
Speaker 1: a more clarity around this from a court perspective, which
Speaker 1: I think makes sense, Like we live in that world
Speaker 1: where this is a very real possibility and the laws
Speaker 1: that guide us around illegal search and seizure were not
Speaker 1: equipped to handle those kinds of scenarios, so we really
Speaker 1: do need more clarification on that. That's it for this
Speaker 1: episode of the tech News of tech Stuff. I hope
Speaker 1: all of you out there are doing well, and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.