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 I love all things tech. And this is the
Speaker 1: tech news for Thursday, January seventh, twenty twenty one. And
Speaker 1: we are going to pick up with a story that
Speaker 1: really got started in twenty and that is the mysterious
Speaker 1: disappearance of Jack Ma. And that's a billionaire co founder
Speaker 1: of the Chinese company Ali Baba, which is an e commerce, retail, internet,
Speaker 1: you name it, tech company. And he made a speech
Speaker 1: in October of twenty twenty criticizing industry regulators in China
Speaker 1: as well as the financial industry in that country, and
Speaker 1: then regulators went kind of nuclear on the company. The
Speaker 1: company had been in preparation of launching its initial public offering,
Speaker 1: or i p O when it becomes a publicly traded company,
Speaker 1: but regulators canceled the scheduled i p O for Ali Baba,
Speaker 1: and then they mandated that the company had to go
Speaker 1: through some major restructuring and it is now under antitrust
Speaker 1: investigation in China. Ma has not been heard from since
Speaker 1: that October speech now he may be laying low in
Speaker 1: China to avoid further retaliation. China's Communist Party might be
Speaker 1: reeling ma in a bit to restrict him a little more.
Speaker 1: He had been enjoying a lot of leniency due to
Speaker 1: the importance of his business and how it helped elevate
Speaker 1: industry in China in general. But his absence has led
Speaker 1: to a lot of speculation. There are people who wonder
Speaker 1: if he's just laying low like like a lot of
Speaker 1: analysts have suspected to potentially more sinister outcomes, like he
Speaker 1: might be in custody now. We just don't know. And
Speaker 1: this kind of illustrates the difficult situation in China for
Speaker 1: companies in general, not just Chinese ones, but American ones
Speaker 1: that are operating within China. The Communist Party has a
Speaker 1: delicate balance between the power it wants to retain and
Speaker 1: the moves it needs to make in order to build
Speaker 1: China's economy and make it an even more powerful world power.
Speaker 1: That is something that the Communist Party has been struggling
Speaker 1: with for a while, and we have seen multiple instances
Speaker 1: of the Communist Party becoming more involved directly with company procedures,
Speaker 1: and it's a general rule of thumb that if you
Speaker 1: operate a business, particularly a large one in China, you
Speaker 1: are required to have a member of the Communist Party
Speaker 1: on the board of directors. There has to be a
Speaker 1: presence of the Communist Party in that company. So while
Speaker 1: Ma had enjoyed a great deal of freedom for quite
Speaker 1: some time, that looks like it has at least come
Speaker 1: to a temporary end, and we will continue to update
Speaker 1: the story as we learn more over the year. Sticking
Speaker 1: with China, there is more to talk about with the
Speaker 1: trade war. That's one thing that's been consistent during President
Speaker 1: Trump's term in office is that ongoing trade war with China. Recently,
Speaker 1: the President signed an executive order that bands transactions with
Speaker 1: a group of Chinese apps, among them we Chat Pay
Speaker 1: and Ali Pay. And that last one is a digital
Speaker 1: wallet app that's part of the Ali Baba Empire, being,
Speaker 1: you know, the company that Jack Ma is associated with.
Speaker 1: So this new executive order is kind of similar to
Speaker 1: a previous executive order Trump signed earlier in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: That band deals with the wee chat messaging app as
Speaker 1: well as the social media video platform TikTok. Now. The
Speaker 1: order calls for this new band to go into effect
Speaker 1: forty five days after it was signed, but that actually
Speaker 1: means that the start date would be after the day
Speaker 1: that President elect Joe Biden takes office, which is January twenty.
Speaker 1: So it remains to be seen if this new band
Speaker 1: actually has any impact. It could be that Biden reverses
Speaker 1: it or just doesn't enforce it. And the TikTok and
Speaker 1: we chat stories are also still playing out the ones
Speaker 1: from earlier in twenty like that was over the summer
Speaker 1: of the U S government had been pushing very hard
Speaker 1: for an American company to take over the operations of
Speaker 1: TikTok from TikTok's parent company, Bite Dance, which is in China,
Speaker 1: but that hasn't actually happened yet. Oracle and Walmart were
Speaker 1: set to take over some, but not all, of the
Speaker 1: stock in TikTok. It would give them quite a bit
Speaker 1: of influence over TikTok, but not necessarily full control of
Speaker 1: the company. However, that process stalled out in November twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: largely because the US government failed to do anything to
Speaker 1: enforce the executive order. But then I guess the US
Speaker 1: government has had a lot on its mind lately. One
Speaker 1: thing that did happen that relates back to this trade
Speaker 1: war is that the New York Stock Exchange announced that,
Speaker 1: in accordance with a Trump executive order, it will delist
Speaker 1: three Chinese telecommunications companies from the Stock Exchange starting on
Speaker 1: January eleven, two thousand twenty one. And those three companies
Speaker 1: are China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom. Now I
Speaker 1: need to kind of hedge this a bit because at
Speaker 1: the time of this recording, that's what the New York
Speaker 1: Stock Exchange says it's going to do. However, last week,
Speaker 1: the last week of December twenty twenty, that same entity,
Speaker 1: the New York Stock Exchange, said they were going to
Speaker 1: bar those three companies. Then they reversed course and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, we thought it over and no, we're
Speaker 1: not going to bar them. And now they say, you
Speaker 1: know what, we are going to bar them after all.
Speaker 1: So by the time you hear this, things might have changed.
Speaker 1: And if you listened to Tuesday's episode of Tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: you heard me talk about how a UK judge denied
Speaker 1: a US request to extradite Julian Assange to stand trial
Speaker 1: for multiple charges, including a computer intrusion charge and several
Speaker 1: allegations in an indict men charges them, not allegations that
Speaker 1: are related to the US Espionage Act of nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 1: Julian Assange, in case you don't know, is often credited
Speaker 1: as the founder and leader of Wiki Leaks, the organization
Speaker 1: dedicated to publishing leaked reports from companies and governments. Usually
Speaker 1: it's stuff that people don't want other folks to see.
Speaker 1: And Assange had sought asylum at the Ecuador embassy in London,
Speaker 1: but the embassy revoked his asylum privileges and UK officials
Speaker 1: arrested him. And they arrested him because he had jumped
Speaker 1: bail for a charge that stemmed out of a two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve case from Sweden. Will the judge who denied
Speaker 1: that extradition claim, has also denied Assange's request for bail
Speaker 1: as the court awaits a U S appeal. The US
Speaker 1: has two weeks to file an appeal since the judge
Speaker 1: had denied the extradition request, and the reasoning behind this
Speaker 1: denial of bail is that the judge has declared that
Speaker 1: Assange represents a flight risk and considering the fact that
Speaker 1: the reason why he got arrested by UK officials is
Speaker 1: that he had previously jumped bail and sought asylum at
Speaker 1: the Ecuador embassy. I guess you could say there's some
Speaker 1: good reason for that logic. And while we're on the
Speaker 1: subject of legal issues, do you know those terms of
Speaker 1: service that come along with pretty much everything you sign
Speaker 1: up for these days? You know, I'm talking about the
Speaker 1: ones that are like twenty pages long and hardly anyone
Speaker 1: ever bothers to read them. Some people do, but most
Speaker 1: of us, and I include myself in this group, we
Speaker 1: just kind of scroll all the way down past them
Speaker 1: so that we can get to the next page and
Speaker 1: sign up for whatever it is we're interested in. Well,
Speaker 1: a court in Massachusetts recently told Uber that Uber cannot
Speaker 1: rely on its own approach with terms of service to
Speaker 1: force a case that involves discrimination into arbitration. So here's
Speaker 1: what happened. And Uber user named Christopher Cauters filed this case.
Speaker 1: And Cauders is blind and he has a guide dog,
Speaker 1: and on at least three occasions when he was using
Speaker 1: Uber to hail a ride, he was denied by drivers
Speaker 1: to get into the car because he had a dog.
Speaker 1: And the lawsuit states he's being discriminated against and Originally
Speaker 1: Uber pushed back on Deskin. He put they pushed it
Speaker 1: to go into arbitration, and they had two big arguments.
Speaker 1: One is that Uber drivers aren't employees of Uber. This
Speaker 1: was the whole crux of the Proposition twenty two argument
Speaker 1: out in California. The goal to make sure that these
Speaker 1: drivers are thought of as contract workers not as full
Speaker 1: time employees. That relieves Uber of a lot of accountability
Speaker 1: and responsibility with them being contract workers. And the second
Speaker 1: big argument Uber was making was that Cauters had agreed
Speaker 1: to the terms of service. But here's the thing. To
Speaker 1: sign up for Uber, Cauters never had to agree to
Speaker 1: any terms of service. There were links to the terms
Speaker 1: of service, and they were mentioned on a couple of pages,
Speaker 1: but there was never a requirement that he actually visit
Speaker 1: a page that had the terms of service on it.
Speaker 1: There was never a box he had to click to
Speaker 1: say I agree to these terms of service. So the
Speaker 1: court has ruled that Uber cannot hold Cauters accountable for
Speaker 1: a contract that he never signed. Now, this does not
Speaker 1: mean that Cauters will necessarily win his case in the future,
Speaker 1: but it does mean Uber cannot get out of going
Speaker 1: to court over the matter, and it might serve as
Speaker 1: a lesson for other services out there to make sure
Speaker 1: that when they presented terms of service that there is
Speaker 1: a way of tracking that people have actually read it
Speaker 1: or at least agreed to it. That's why you see
Speaker 1: that little box typically in the bottom that says agree
Speaker 1: before you can go any further in the process. It
Speaker 1: relieves those companies of that burden of responsibility. They can say, hey,
Speaker 1: you agreed to those terms. Here's the proof. Uber did
Speaker 1: not have that in this case, and that's where the
Speaker 1: problem lies. There's a lot more to be said about
Speaker 1: terms of service in general and how enforceable they are
Speaker 1: and how legally binding they are. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of terms of service out there that are questionably legal,
Speaker 1: but that's a matter for a full episode of tech
Speaker 1: stuff that I'll probably tackle future. I have a lot
Speaker 1: more news to cover, but before we get into any more,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Well, we're at the beginning
Speaker 1: of twenty one and next week we see the official
Speaker 1: kickoff of c e S one. Now. C e S
Speaker 1: is the big consumer electronics showcase. It's a industry trade
Speaker 1: show and companies from all over the world would typically
Speaker 1: gather in Las Vegas, Nevada for a week in January
Speaker 1: in order to show off what they have to offer
Speaker 1: for the following year. And you have all these different
Speaker 1: industry professionals come to c e S. There are of
Speaker 1: course the media people like me who go to cover everything,
Speaker 1: but there are buyers, retailers, all sorts of folks going
Speaker 1: to see what sort of things are going to be
Speaker 1: on offer that year, to get customers excited and engaged
Speaker 1: so that they go and spend all their money buying electronics. Well,
Speaker 1: this year, with the pandemic, it's going all virtual. This
Speaker 1: was a decision that the the organization that throws c
Speaker 1: e S had made back in and I think it
Speaker 1: was the right call. Will likely have lots of stories
Speaker 1: to talk about next week as the show actually unfolds.
Speaker 1: But one thing that we know for sure already is
Speaker 1: that five G is going to play a big part
Speaker 1: of the various announcements at this event. It would played
Speaker 1: a big part in we expected to be even more
Speaker 1: prevalent at one and five G just as a refresher
Speaker 1: refers to the next generation of wireless data technologies. And
Speaker 1: there is a ton of confusion and misinformation about five
Speaker 1: G and largely that's fueled by some misleading marketing claims
Speaker 1: as well as some crazy conspiracy theories that we will
Speaker 1: cover in a minute. Five G comes in a couple
Speaker 1: of different flavors depending upon which band of the frequency
Speaker 1: spectrum you're talking about. Because five G actually covers three
Speaker 1: different general speaking bands of frequencies, you could get, you know,
Speaker 1: good data transfer rates that are faster than what we
Speaker 1: would typically see with four G, or you might hit
Speaker 1: data speeds equivalent to a fiber connection. We're talking super
Speaker 1: fast data transfer rates, but that super fast connection depends
Speaker 1: upon frequencies that don't have a lot of penetration power,
Speaker 1: meaning they can't go through walls very effectively, and they
Speaker 1: don't go very far from the source, so you have
Speaker 1: to be close to the antennas that are transmitting those
Speaker 1: signals in order for you to take advantage of it.
Speaker 1: So you're only likely to find that super fast five
Speaker 1: G connection and really dense areas where companies can put
Speaker 1: up a lot of different five G antennas around the space.
Speaker 1: So you might have a little pockets of super fast service,
Speaker 1: but it's not likely to extend throughout entire cities, and
Speaker 1: it would be very difficult for you to get it
Speaker 1: even for your home, unless you were to mount an
Speaker 1: antenna on the outside of your house. It's pointed right
Speaker 1: at one of these five G towers. The five G
Speaker 1: signals at lower frequencies will still deliver speeds better than
Speaker 1: what we've seen with LTE, and those signals will travel
Speaker 1: further than the high frequency ones, but we won't see
Speaker 1: the results we hear about from marketing materials. It won't
Speaker 1: be you'll be able to download a four K film
Speaker 1: in a matter of minutes kind of speed. Anyway, at
Speaker 1: c E S, we expect to see a lot of
Speaker 1: devices with built in five G capabilities. Samsung is expected
Speaker 1: to launch at least one true five G phone while
Speaker 1: c E S is going on, although technically that will
Speaker 1: be an event that's running concurrently with c E S
Speaker 1: but isn't officially part of c E S. That's something
Speaker 1: that we frequently see at CES as well, companies holding
Speaker 1: their own little events, sometimes just adjacent to where ce
Speaker 1: S is happening. Uh, that's not unusual. It's one way
Speaker 1: for companies to try and stand out from all the
Speaker 1: other news that's coming out. So we'll cover more of
Speaker 1: that next week. Now, longtime Tech stuff listeners know that
Speaker 1: I advocate for critical thinking, and this next story is
Speaker 1: an illustration of why that's important. A software engineer named
Speaker 1: Mario Fusco blew the lid off of a really dumb
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory involving a diagram of an electric circuit. Now,
Speaker 1: according to this diagram, the actual lagabel on the diagram
Speaker 1: the circuit was a quote COVID nineteen five g chip
Speaker 1: end quote. So the suggestion was that this was some
Speaker 1: sort of nano chip microprocessor that is somehow housed within
Speaker 1: a dose of COVID nineteen vaccine, so that if you
Speaker 1: were to go and get the vaccinated against COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: you would be injected with a substance that would include
Speaker 1: this microchip, and somehow this microchip would directly interface with
Speaker 1: your brain, with your nervous system, and it would allow
Speaker 1: somebody else to control you. And I don't think I
Speaker 1: really need to say this to you guys, but that
Speaker 1: is impossible and it's dumb. There is no means for
Speaker 1: this to magically integrate with anyone's nervous system. There's no
Speaker 1: conspiracy to control people through vaccines, and likewise, five gen
Speaker 1: networks have nothing to do with controlling you other than
Speaker 1: the fact that it's a communications network which allows for
Speaker 1: the transfer of data. So if you do want to
Speaker 1: get super lucy goosey, you could talk about how such
Speaker 1: a network can facilitate the ability for companies to keep
Speaker 1: track of what we're doing when we do it. But
Speaker 1: in that case, no one's controlling us. We are voluntarily
Speaker 1: giving up information about who we are and what we
Speaker 1: do and what we're interested in. We do that just
Speaker 1: by carrying our phones wherever we go. That's us being complicit.
Speaker 1: There's no need for this kind of conspiracy for folks
Speaker 1: to get a look at what we're doing. Moreover, the
Speaker 1: FUSCO pointed out that the circuit that was in that picture,
Speaker 1: it was a real circuit, wasn't a COVID nineteen five
Speaker 1: g chyp No. That circuit was a drawing of circuit
Speaker 1: found in the boss metal zone empty two guitar pedal.
Speaker 1: So this is a guitar effects pedal, one that you
Speaker 1: would plug into an amplifier in your in your power chain,
Speaker 1: so that when you're playing guitar you can really have
Speaker 1: all these different effects on it, in this case metal effect,
Speaker 1: So you wouldn't be able to control people, but you
Speaker 1: might be able to shred on guitar. Moving on, but
Speaker 1: sticking with phones for a bit, we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: Verizon deciding to hold off on shutting down its three
Speaker 1: G networks. The Verizon first started rolling out four G
Speaker 1: LTE service way back in two thousand twelve, but it
Speaker 1: continued to support legacy cellular networks in the three G
Speaker 1: range because there were a lot of people who had
Speaker 1: three G phones that would not be compatible with four G.
Speaker 1: The company had previously announced plans to shut down those
Speaker 1: three G networks by the end of twenty nineteen, but
Speaker 1: then Verizon pushed that back to twenty twenty, and now
Speaker 1: the company says it's holding off on any plans to
Speaker 1: shut down the three G network, probably out of a
Speaker 1: concern that a lot of the company's customers are still
Speaker 1: relying on older three G devices that again are not
Speaker 1: compatible with later generations of cellular networks. Verizon stopped activating
Speaker 1: new three G devices on their network way back in
Speaker 1: eighteen and an effort to kind of sunset the technology,
Speaker 1: but there must still be a significant number of customers
Speaker 1: that are on three G handsets, Otherwise Verizon wouldn't delay
Speaker 1: shutting down the network because it costs money to maintain
Speaker 1: these networks, and that means that Verizon wants to shut
Speaker 1: it down if there's no reason to keep it going,
Speaker 1: then you can consolidate and save cash not having to
Speaker 1: maintain these older pieces of technology. It's really likely that
Speaker 1: Verizon is going to spend much of its marketing budget
Speaker 1: on convincing customers to upgrade two more current handsets this year.
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll see some interesting deals in order to create
Speaker 1: an incentive for customers to move from one hand set
Speaker 1: to another. That might be the case because Verizon stands
Speaker 1: to save a lot of money by shutting down that
Speaker 1: that old network. Speaking of data and networks, Comcast, the
Speaker 1: mega corporation that is, among other things, and internet service provider,
Speaker 1: has come under fire from politicians in Massachusetts. Back in
Speaker 1: mass again, uh, the company has recently extended their one
Speaker 1: point to terabyte data cap to customers in Massachusetts. The
Speaker 1: company has similarly done this to customers and lots of
Speaker 1: other states, including the one I live in. That data
Speaker 1: cap has been a thing for a long time here
Speaker 1: in Georgia. And if you go over this data cap,
Speaker 1: if you consume more than one point to terabytes of
Speaker 1: data in a month, you face overage fees. And the
Speaker 1: politicians in Massachusetts objected to that. They said that in
Speaker 1: a pandemic where you've got people working from home, it
Speaker 1: is far more common for folks to exceed that data cap.
Speaker 1: And considering the difficult financial situation a lot of people
Speaker 1: are finding themselves in, you know, people have lower incomes,
Speaker 1: are already struggling to be able to meet the cost
Speaker 1: of broadband. This is the worse time to have that
Speaker 1: kind of policy in place. And the politicians further argued
Speaker 1: that according to Comcast executives themselves, the company had no
Speaker 1: trouble meeting the increased demands of service during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: So they said, you've already argued that the data cap
Speaker 1: is not necessary. If there's a greater demand and you're
Speaker 1: meeting it, then why is the data cap there. Is
Speaker 1: it just there to demand more money? And if so,
Speaker 1: that's not super cool. So Comcast is currently on the
Speaker 1: defensive in Massachusetts. We'll have to see how that shakes out.
Speaker 1: I don't expect my own data cap to go anywhere
Speaker 1: anytime soon. And to round out this bit of news,
Speaker 1: Vota Phone has a subsidiary in Italy called Ho Mobile,
Speaker 1: and it confirmed. Ho Mobile confirmed that it was the
Speaker 1: target of a severe data breach that compromised the consumer
Speaker 1: data and the company is now offer to swap out
Speaker 1: the SIM cards in the phones of all those who
Speaker 1: are affected by the data breach, and that would be
Speaker 1: two point five million handsets. According to zd net, people
Speaker 1: first begin to learn about this breach in late They
Speaker 1: didn't notice it by looking at the data centers for
Speaker 1: Home Mobile. No one at Home Mobile, as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, was aware that this was going on.
Speaker 1: The thing that tipped people off was that someone noticed
Speaker 1: that the company's internal data was up for sale on
Speaker 1: the dark web. Yikes. Well, we have a few more
Speaker 1: news stories that we want to close out this day with,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break. We're back, and
Speaker 1: our first story is that David Recording, best known for
Speaker 1: his work in open source and open Eye d Technologies,
Speaker 1: will be the White House Director of Technology under President
Speaker 1: elect Joe Biden's administration, and Recorded is wicked smart. He
Speaker 1: received an award for his work and open source and
Speaker 1: became the youngest recipient of that award in that awards history,
Speaker 1: and he has led many initiatives over the years. Open Source,
Speaker 1: for those who do not know, is a philosophy of
Speaker 1: design where the source code for whatever it is you're
Speaker 1: building is open for other people to see. They can
Speaker 1: take it, they can manipulate it, they can make their
Speaker 1: own versions of it, they can help add to it,
Speaker 1: they can help improve it and test it. The idea
Speaker 1: being that if you have an open source project, then
Speaker 1: the entire world can be your collaborator. And this is
Speaker 1: a different philosophy from the way a lot of companies
Speaker 1: developed their software because with a lot of companies they
Speaker 1: go a proprietary approach is by nature a closed garden.
Speaker 1: They don't want their competitors seeing what they're doing. But
Speaker 1: that means that those projects can only be as good
Speaker 1: as the people who have been hired by that company,
Speaker 1: whereas an open source project has the benefit of being
Speaker 1: open to everybody. I'm oversimplifying. There are different types of
Speaker 1: open source, but the idea being that with this approach,
Speaker 1: you're getting the best ideas no matter where they happen
Speaker 1: to be. You don't have to worry about having the
Speaker 1: smartest person in the room. You have the smartest people
Speaker 1: in the world who can all potentially contribute anyway. Recording
Speaker 1: worked extensively with Facebook on open source initiatives. There he
Speaker 1: was a software engineer with Facebook. He has also served
Speaker 1: as an advisor and technical officer in various government positions.
Speaker 1: Before I recommend checking out one of his talks. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of them on YouTube, but be warned
Speaker 1: if you're not, you know, fair really well versed in
Speaker 1: open source technology in general, a lot of it might
Speaker 1: go right over your head. I mean it went right
Speaker 1: over my head. And I've written and talked about this
Speaker 1: stuff a lot, but Recording is the real deal when
Speaker 1: it comes to expertise in this area. And he has
Speaker 1: said that the United States and the world face enormous
Speaker 1: challenges from the pandemic to cybersecurity threats and beyond, but
Speaker 1: that he has confidence in our ability to rise and
Speaker 1: meet those challenges, which is just nice to hear, and
Speaker 1: I sure hope it's true. Sticking with Facebook, back in fourteen,
Speaker 1: Facebook made a nineteen billion dollar acquisition when it bought
Speaker 1: the messaging service What's App, and that was a shock
Speaker 1: to a lot of Americans, including myself, because a lot
Speaker 1: of us were unfamiliar with What's App has a huge
Speaker 1: user base outside of the United States, but had a
Speaker 1: relatively small reach inside the US well. Recently, Facebook update
Speaker 1: did the privacy policy on WhatsApp, and that has raised
Speaker 1: some eyebrows in the tech community. The new policy takes
Speaker 1: effect on February eight one, and it gives the app
Speaker 1: permission to share user information from within the app to Facebook.
Speaker 1: That includes stuff like information about the device that was
Speaker 1: used to access the app, so in other words, your phone,
Speaker 1: uh the IP address, service related information, interaction information, and more.
Speaker 1: WhatsApp users will not be given the choice on whether
Speaker 1: or not to accept those terms because it's all mandatory.
Speaker 1: If you plan to keep using WhatsApp, you have to
Speaker 1: just accept the fact that this is going to happen.
Speaker 1: The only way for it to not happen is for
Speaker 1: you to not use WhatsApp. Facebook says it plans to
Speaker 1: use the information to improve user experience, but I expect
Speaker 1: we'll see people raise privacy concerns in response to this move.
Speaker 1: Let's move on to space. NASA has a proved the
Speaker 1: preliminary design for the sphere X space telescope, which will
Speaker 1: be a satellite telescope that aims to study cosmic stuff
Speaker 1: like the origins of galaxies than the Big Bang itself.
Speaker 1: The space telescope will weigh one point two tons, but
Speaker 1: um only here on Earth, because in space it will
Speaker 1: be in you know, microgravity, so that's different. It will
Speaker 1: analyze light in the near infrared spectrum and will be
Speaker 1: capable of detecting the different frequencies within that spectrum, which
Speaker 1: in turn will tell very smart scientists more about what
Speaker 1: stuff out in space is actually made out of. One
Speaker 1: thing the scientists are going to be looking for is
Speaker 1: evidence of inflation. Now, that's not the inflation we deal
Speaker 1: with in our currency. In this case, inflation is talking
Speaker 1: about an instant, a fraction of a fraction of a
Speaker 1: fraction of a second, like a billionth of a billionth
Speaker 1: of a second, when space itself experienced exponential expansion. Imagine
Speaker 1: that you've got a golf ball and before you can
Speaker 1: even blink, that golf ball turns into a ball the
Speaker 1: size of Yankee Stadium. That's the sort of thing we're
Speaker 1: talking about. But even that scale doesn't even come close
Speaker 1: to what happened in inflation. Now, there is broad acceptance
Speaker 1: that cosmic inflation was part of how our universe came
Speaker 1: to be, But there's a lot that we don't actually
Speaker 1: know about cosmic inflation or why it happened or why
Speaker 1: it stopped happening, or if it happened, we think it did,
Speaker 1: but we need to learn more. So this telescope could
Speaker 1: help us learn more about the fundamental laws that govern
Speaker 1: the creation of our universe, which is pretty darn nifty.
Speaker 1: And it also reminds me that, barring any more delays,
Speaker 1: we should also see the James web Space Telescope finally
Speaker 1: launched into orbit in October this year. I sure hope
Speaker 1: that happens. Heck, I've got a tattoo because of the
Speaker 1: James Webb Space Telescope. In fact, there's a video of
Speaker 1: me talking about the James Webb Telescope while I got
Speaker 1: the tattoo, and it's over on the Forward Thinking YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: so you can search for that if you want to
Speaker 1: see me getting tattooed on video while I talk about telescopes.
Speaker 1: Slightly related to space travel is supersonic travel. Supersonic aircraft
Speaker 1: are those that, by definition, fly faster than the speed
Speaker 1: of sound. As such, they create a sonic boom that
Speaker 1: travels with them as they move. At those speeds, the
Speaker 1: aircraft builds up shock waves as it travels faster than sound,
Speaker 1: and these waves call cause a build up and then
Speaker 1: a release of pressure air pressure which then causes that boom,
Speaker 1: and the Concorde was an example of one of these.
Speaker 1: It was a supersonic aircraft, but the Concorde has long
Speaker 1: been out of service. It turned out that it was
Speaker 1: not economically viable in the long run. But now the
Speaker 1: f a A, the Federal Aviation Administration, has set new
Speaker 1: rules to allow companies to test supersonic aircraft in the
Speaker 1: United States, and numerous companies, including startups, are looking to
Speaker 1: bring them back to the skies. Supersonic travel can cover
Speaker 1: great distances in relatively very little time. For example, a
Speaker 1: Concorde aircraft made the flight from London to New York
Speaker 1: in less than three hours back in ninet. That's a
Speaker 1: trip that usually takes between seven to eight hours or
Speaker 1: sometimes longer, depending upon conditions. So companies have been designing
Speaker 1: aircraft to do supersonic travel and bring it back for
Speaker 1: a while, and they've focused on ways to minimize the
Speaker 1: effects of sonic booms, which is an important consideration because
Speaker 1: that effect is disruptive and it tends to lead to
Speaker 1: restrictions regarding where such aircraft are allowed to go supersonic,
Speaker 1: like typically you're only allowed to do it over the
Speaker 1: oceans because otherwise you're going to be causing a boom
Speaker 1: that travels with you. So if you fly over communities,
Speaker 1: everyone here's the boom. Now, perhaps in a few years
Speaker 1: will have new airlines with supersonic service offered to various locations.
Speaker 1: I don't know where we're going in the future, but
Speaker 1: we're going to get there faster. And finally, video game
Speaker 1: analyst Dr Circon Toto predicts that at some point Nintendo
Speaker 1: will introduce a new, souped up version of the Switch
Speaker 1: console capable of pushing out four K resolution video. Dr
Speaker 1: Toto had previously predicted Nintendo would launch such a console
Speaker 1: in twenty but that did not happen, though perhaps the
Speaker 1: pandemic had something to do with that. Dr Toto guesses
Speaker 1: that such a console would have a three dollar price point. Now, again,
Speaker 1: that's all conjecture, everything from Nintendo actually doing it to
Speaker 1: the price would be if Nintendo does it. Nintendo hasn't
Speaker 1: said anything about any of this. Now. I suspect that
Speaker 1: if the company does have such a console planned, we're
Speaker 1: not going to hear anything official until probably spring or
Speaker 1: maybe early summer, because that's the time of year when
Speaker 1: video game companies in general start to ramp up and
Speaker 1: start to market heavily their new products in preparation for
Speaker 1: the following holiday seasons, to get people excited and to
Speaker 1: start the process for people to think ahead about, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get that for so and so for
Speaker 1: the holidays. The Switch continues to perform well in the market.
Speaker 1: Nintendo has sold more than sixty eight million units around
Speaker 1: the world as of November of and it can still
Speaker 1: be hard to find them in stock, So maybe don't
Speaker 1: hold your breath for a Switch pro. Even if Nintendo
Speaker 1: does follow through, it might be really, really hard to
Speaker 1: get hold of one. And that wraps up this news
Speaker 1: round up for Thursday, January seven, twenty one. Tomorrow we
Speaker 1: will have a classic episode of tech Stuff. Join us
Speaker 1: next week for more tech Stuff episodes, tech Stuff news episodes,
Speaker 1: and more me because he can't get enough Kenya, but
Speaker 1: don't worry, I'll talk to you again really soon. Y
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