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 it is time
Speaker 1: for the tech news for Tuesday, May twenty one. Over
Speaker 1: the weekend, China celebrated the successful landing of a rover
Speaker 1: on the surface of Mars. That means that as of now,
Speaker 1: China and the United States are the only two nations
Speaker 1: to have landed rovers successfully on the planet. Other countries
Speaker 1: have sent missions to Mars, but these are the only
Speaker 1: two countries that have landed rovers that have landed safely.
Speaker 1: The rover arrived housed in a lander which used a
Speaker 1: parachute and retrorockets to slow its descent through the Martian
Speaker 1: atmosphere before touching down on Martian soil. So this is
Speaker 1: a different approach from what NASA was using with the
Speaker 1: Perseverance Rover and the Curiosity Rover before that, both of
Speaker 1: which used a sky crane technique in which the descent
Speaker 1: stage of the spacecraft used rockets to kind of hover
Speaker 1: over a landing zone and then lower the rovers down
Speaker 1: to the surface on cables. The Chinese lander touchdown at
Speaker 1: around eight pm Eastern time on Friday, but it was
Speaker 1: another hour before China scientists could confirm a successful touchdown.
Speaker 1: This really illustrates just you know, how hard it is
Speaker 1: to get a successful landing on Mars. The delay between
Speaker 1: when something happens and when we can know about it
Speaker 1: is significant, even if everything is working properly, it's significant.
Speaker 1: That's partly because the distance between Earth and Mars is
Speaker 1: great enough that it actually takes light or you know,
Speaker 1: radio communications, seven role minutes to make the journey from
Speaker 1: one point to the other. The rover named you're wrong
Speaker 1: after a Chinese got a fire, and I apologize for
Speaker 1: my pronunciation. I tried looking it up, but the source
Speaker 1: I could find had middling responses from people as to
Speaker 1: whether or not it was accurate. So my apologies for
Speaker 1: for butchering that anyway, you're wrong. Will rove across Mars
Speaker 1: for about three months if all goes well, possibly beyond
Speaker 1: that if things go really well. NASA has had a
Speaker 1: history of missions lasting well beyond their projected lifespan. The
Speaker 1: rover will use various instruments to look for evidence of
Speaker 1: the past existence of life on Mars. In other Chinese
Speaker 1: space program news. Back in April, China launched a rocket
Speaker 1: carrying a module for China's space station. The country plans
Speaker 1: to assemble that station and have it ready for occupation
Speaker 1: by the end of next year. The rocket that carried
Speaker 1: that module up, unfortunately, had an un controlled return to Earth,
Speaker 1: which caused a lot of concern along the various paths
Speaker 1: of potential descent before it ultimately plummeted into the ocean.
Speaker 1: But for a while, people along those pathways were a
Speaker 1: little worried that perhaps a Chinese rocket might just fallen
Speaker 1: and collide with the Earth and cause massive damage. So
Speaker 1: while China has a big win with the landing on Mars,
Speaker 1: the country also has faced some criticism because of that
Speaker 1: rocket issue. You might remember a story from last week
Speaker 1: about how Elon Musk, who has been a big supporter
Speaker 1: of cryptocurrencies, helped send bitcoin values into a downward spiral
Speaker 1: after announcing that Tesla, the company you know that makes
Speaker 1: electric vehicles, would no longer accept the cryptocurrency bitcoin as payment. Now,
Speaker 1: the reasoning behind that decision, according to Musk, was because
Speaker 1: of the environmental impact of bitcoin mining. Now I've covered
Speaker 1: this in the past, but that is definitely an issue.
Speaker 1: Bitcoin mining requires an enormous amount of electricity to run
Speaker 1: the powerful computers that rush to solve the guessing game
Speaker 1: that ultimately determines which computer gets the next batch of bitcoins. Now,
Speaker 1: some of those computers are getting electricity from renewable energy
Speaker 1: sources like wind power, which is you know, good, except
Speaker 1: it is taking up electricity that could potentially be going
Speaker 1: to other places. However, some bitcoin mining operations are sucking
Speaker 1: down juice from power plants that rely on fossil fuels,
Speaker 1: so these are helping to contribute toward climate change and
Speaker 1: carbon emissions. For a company that sells electric vehicles, which
Speaker 1: depend partly upon at least marketing that you know, electric
Speaker 1: vehicles are an environmentally cleaner alternative to gasoline or diesel
Speaker 1: powered combustion engines, you know, it wasn't a good look
Speaker 1: hard to sell an electric vehicle as being environmentally friendly
Speaker 1: if you're also accepting a cryptocurrency that is perceived as
Speaker 1: being environmentally unfriendly musk SA. At the time that Tesla,
Speaker 1: the company had no plans to divest itself of its
Speaker 1: own bitcoin investment. It had a substantial amount of bitcoin,
Speaker 1: but even so, the announcement meant that bitcoin took a
Speaker 1: hit and value after already having a dip earlier in
Speaker 1: the year. Then over the weekend, Musk had a Twitter
Speaker 1: exchange that some people thought implied that Tesla had divested
Speaker 1: itself of its bitcoin, and then the cryptocurrency took another hit.
Speaker 1: So at the height of its value this year, a
Speaker 1: single bitcoin was valued at around sixty five thousand bucks.
Speaker 1: As I write this, the value is closer to forty
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars. Now, don't get me wrong, forty thousand
Speaker 1: bucks is a lot of money, and if you got
Speaker 1: in on the bitcoin train at the very beginning, you're
Speaker 1: still looking at a pretty amazing return on your investment,
Speaker 1: just less than what it was a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 1: But this does mean that bitcoin's value has dropped more
Speaker 1: than twenty thousand dollars per bitcoin in the span of
Speaker 1: a few weeks, and that kind of volatility shows that
Speaker 1: bitcoin can be a very dangerous investment. It's definitely not
Speaker 1: a good currency as it stands right now, like you
Speaker 1: wouldn't really be able to use this to make purchases
Speaker 1: in any effective way. It also indicates that Elon Musk
Speaker 1: has way too much influence when, even if he didn't
Speaker 1: mean to, his tweets can send a commodity's value into
Speaker 1: a sharp decline. On Monday, Musk clarified that the company
Speaker 1: Tesla had not divested itself of bitcoin. But as I
Speaker 1: record this, the currency hasn't seen much of a recovery.
Speaker 1: So what is going on here? Well, if I were
Speaker 1: to give an armchair analysis, and let me start this
Speaker 1: by saying I am, by no means an expert in
Speaker 1: these matters, I would say that what's probably happening is
Speaker 1: you've got a sizeable group of bitcoin investors who probably
Speaker 1: hold a relatively all percentage of bitcoin collectively. We're not
Speaker 1: talking about the whales who owned enormous amounts of bitcoin.
Speaker 1: But they see must tweet something, and they perceive the
Speaker 1: possibility of bitcoin's value dropping, so they rush off to
Speaker 1: sell off their bitcoin assets to you know, minimize the
Speaker 1: amount of loss they might experience, and that in turn
Speaker 1: actually causes the dip to go lower. The dip becomes
Speaker 1: something of a self fulfilling prophecy. Because so much of
Speaker 1: Bitcoin's value is based in perception and speculation, you could
Speaker 1: argue that the real people at fault here are those
Speaker 1: investors who panicked in response to something that Musk tweeted,
Speaker 1: and not Musk himself. But however you assign the responsibility,
Speaker 1: the outcome is pretty much the same. Now, will Bitcoin
Speaker 1: recover Probably, I'm guessing it will at some point, but
Speaker 1: I would be foolish to predict how low the value
Speaker 1: will go when it does turn around. Some people think
Speaker 1: we're still in a bowl market, which means that will
Speaker 1: see the value go up. Others think we have entered
Speaker 1: a bear market and that the value is going to
Speaker 1: continue to go down. There doesn't seem to be any
Speaker 1: sort of agreement on that, and far be it from
Speaker 1: me to be able to make any kind of pronouncement.
Speaker 1: Sentiment could change quickly enough to make any guess. I
Speaker 1: could hazard a total whiff. Anyway, this is a continuation
Speaker 1: of my series that I'm calling Jonathan is Old, and
Speaker 1: he thinks cryptocurrencies are inherently unstable investments, and more importantly,
Speaker 1: they're very lousy currencies. Plus, the proof of work style
Speaker 1: cryptocurrencies are just incredibly wasteful. Proof of steak has its
Speaker 1: own problems. Again, I'm gonna have to do a full
Speaker 1: episode about these in the future. In mergers and acquisitions news.
Speaker 1: It looks like a T and T is planning to
Speaker 1: spin off Warner Media, which will then merge with Discovery Communications.
Speaker 1: Now I find the story particularly interesting since once upon
Speaker 1: a time I worked for Discovery Communications how Stuff We're
Speaker 1: x the company that I started at when I started
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, Uh, that was part of a private company
Speaker 1: called the Convex Group way back in the day. So
Speaker 1: this was two thousand seven was when I joined How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. Discovery acquired Convex and thus How Stuff Works
Speaker 1: the following year two thousand eight. A few years after that,
Speaker 1: Discovery sold off how Stuff Works to a different company
Speaker 1: called Blue Cora. Then Blue Cora sold us to another company,
Speaker 1: which took on the name System One. System one spun
Speaker 1: off the podcast arm of How Stuff Works as a
Speaker 1: separate podcast media company, which was then acquired by iHeart Media.
Speaker 1: So I've been in the same career path this entire time,
Speaker 1: the same you know, like job path. However, the names
Speaker 1: at the top of the organ charts kept changing. But
Speaker 1: that wild ride is nothing compared to the various properties
Speaker 1: that are under Warner Media that includes HBO, Cinemax, Warner Brothers,
Speaker 1: and much much more. A T and T appears to
Speaker 1: be moving away from the vertical strategy in which a
Speaker 1: single company serves as the delivery system that is a
Speaker 1: telecommunications style company, uh and content generation or you know,
Speaker 1: like a studio. This is what we see with other companies, though,
Speaker 1: I mean, like NBC Universal is owned by Comcast, and
Speaker 1: that's like a unified approach, so it is interesting to
Speaker 1: see a T and T split off from that. The
Speaker 1: announcement came as a surprise not just to folks like myself,
Speaker 1: but apparently it also surprised Warner Media CEO Jason Keeler.
Speaker 1: The Verge reports that Keiler is negotiating his departure from
Speaker 1: Warner Media. He became CEO of the company in April
Speaker 1: of last year, so he served as leader for just
Speaker 1: over a year now, and according to sources who spoke
Speaker 1: with The New York Times, he was kept in the
Speaker 1: dark about the decision to merge with Discovery. The announcement
Speaker 1: makes it sound as though Discovery CEO David Zaslov is
Speaker 1: going to oversee this new merged entity, which would mean that,
Speaker 1: you know, Keiler's role would largely have become redundant. Anyway,
Speaker 1: most estimations say the merger will take more than a
Speaker 1: year to complete, so we're looking at twenty two before
Speaker 1: this all settles in. What this means for the media
Speaker 1: landscape in general is a big open question. It'll be
Speaker 1: interesting to see how things shift around. Uh. I know
Speaker 1: that Discovery has got to be really interested in this.
Speaker 1: They were looking for digital solutions when they purchased How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I mean, that was a big reason why
Speaker 1: they purchased the company back in the day, and I
Speaker 1: get the feeling that they never quite nailed it. So
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if this is another approach to not just
Speaker 1: adding an enormous amount of of you know, capability to
Speaker 1: the company, because Warner Media is huge, but also get
Speaker 1: that digital delivery system tightly integrated into Discoveries practices. Moving on, So,
Speaker 1: one of the stories that's been developing in tech is
Speaker 1: that Bill and Melinda Gates are divorcing and that this
Speaker 1: process has been going on for a while now that
Speaker 1: you know, at least since two thousand nineteen. And I
Speaker 1: wasn't initially going to report on any of this because
Speaker 1: while Bill Gates is an important person in tech, you know,
Speaker 1: he was the co founder of Microsoft and served as
Speaker 1: the CEO for many years and then was chairman of
Speaker 1: the board for years more and still on the Board
Speaker 1: of Directors up until but I figured the personal struggles
Speaker 1: of a married couple making the decision to end their
Speaker 1: marriage wasn't something I should cover in a tech podcast.
Speaker 1: But the plot has considerably thickened as more details have
Speaker 1: emerged during this process. For one, Bill Gates apparently pursued
Speaker 1: a romantic relationship with the Microsoft employee back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and just in case you're curious, Bill and Melinda
Speaker 1: Gates married in n Beyond the extra marital affair aspect
Speaker 1: of this is the huge issue of a man who
Speaker 1: had been serving as CEO until January two thousand and
Speaker 1: who remained on as chairman of the Board of Directors
Speaker 1: for Microsoft while simultaneously pursuing a relationship with a Microsoft employee.
Speaker 1: Even if Bill Gates had been single, that would have
Speaker 1: been an enormous problem. The Board of Directors initiated a
Speaker 1: probe after receiving a letter from an employee who stated
Speaker 1: that Gates had sought an intimate relationship with her in
Speaker 1: two thousand and that the relationship that resulted had lasted
Speaker 1: several years. Bill Gates resigned from the board of Directors
Speaker 1: in twenty before that investigation was concluded. It was also
Speaker 1: only three months after he had been re elected to
Speaker 1: the Board of directors. Now, I'm not here to speculate
Speaker 1: on things, but according to various sources, at least six
Speaker 1: current or former and Microsoft employees have said that his
Speaker 1: actions in the workplace made them uncomfortable and that language
Speaker 1: is open to a lot of interpretation. But again, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to, you know, speculate as to what that
Speaker 1: might actually mean. I feel like that's a disservice to
Speaker 1: all parties involved. Another element to this sordid proceeding is
Speaker 1: that Bill Gates had met with Jeffrey Epstein at least
Speaker 1: as early as two thousand eleven and as late as
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven was three years after Epstein had already
Speaker 1: been found or had pled guilty to charges for soliciting
Speaker 1: an underage girl, which is truly horrifying, and of course,
Speaker 1: Epstein would later be linked to sex trafficking operations and
Speaker 1: trafficking of underage girls, and Gates's meetings with Epstein reportedly
Speaker 1: contributed to Melinda Gates's decision to seek a divorce from
Speaker 1: from Bill. The whole thing paints a very ugly picture
Speaker 1: that is still unfolding as I recorded this, and it
Speaker 1: appears to have had large consequences regarding Gates's association with Microsoft. Now,
Speaker 1: I say a pears because Bill Gates as representatives have
Speaker 1: issued numerous denials regarding the various speculations and allegations linking
Speaker 1: Bill Gates to Epstein, as well as allegations that Gates
Speaker 1: created an uncomfortable atmosphere for Microsoft employees. So this story
Speaker 1: I'm sure will continue. It doesn't look good, um and
Speaker 1: I'm certainly more inclined to believe the accusers. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, you know, obviously you want to try
Speaker 1: and maintain objectivity as best as possible. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: complicated issue and a terrible, terrible story. We have a
Speaker 1: couple of Apple stories to cover today as well. One
Speaker 1: is that Apple and Amazon Music have both announced services
Speaker 1: that would allow subscribers to their music services to listen
Speaker 1: to lossless audio for no extra cost. So that means
Speaker 1: we should quickly go over what lossless even means. When
Speaker 1: it comes to digital audio. There are a few ways
Speaker 1: to go about encoding data. Some encoding formats are lossy formats.
Speaker 1: This helps keep file sizes down. Essentially you are losing
Speaker 1: some of the data associated with that sound file. Raw
Speaker 1: sound files get pretty big, which you know, until recently,
Speaker 1: meant that streaming them was a nonstarter just because most
Speaker 1: people didn't have the broadband throughput that you would need
Speaker 1: to be able to do that effectively. They were also
Speaker 1: so large that they would take up a ton of
Speaker 1: storage space if you were trying to save them to
Speaker 1: a device or something. So there are sound formats that
Speaker 1: can serve file size by getting rid of some of
Speaker 1: that data in an effort to compress the file sizes.
Speaker 1: These are lossy formats, and the process means that depending
Speaker 1: on what hardware you're using to listen to the music,
Speaker 1: you might be able to tell the difference between lossy
Speaker 1: versions and the lossless version. The goal of lossy versions
Speaker 1: is to only eliminate data that, in theory at least
Speaker 1: doesn't affect the listening experience of the audio file. In practice,
Speaker 1: it can affect it. So generally speaking, lossless just means
Speaker 1: you get a better quality of audio, but you do
Speaker 1: have to have the right kind of equipment to listen
Speaker 1: to it, or else it won't pick up on that well.
Speaker 1: Apple Music subscribers will be able to listen to more
Speaker 1: than seventy five million songs in lossless audio and Amazon Music,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned as doing something similar, Apple also announced
Speaker 1: spatial audio support, which sounds a lot to me like
Speaker 1: bin arl or three D audio. Essentially, it's a way
Speaker 1: for producers to create sound mixes that make it sound
Speaker 1: as if audio is coming at you from specific directions
Speaker 1: around you, assuming again that you're listening on appropriate hardware.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that hardware thing. Apple says that
Speaker 1: if subscribers want to listen to the top tier of
Speaker 1: loss less audio, so the best of the best, you
Speaker 1: would need to have a USB digital to analog converter
Speaker 1: to thus convert the signal properly before feeding that to
Speaker 1: a pair of wired headphones. Now, such a converter would
Speaker 1: be an external gadget that you would have to plug
Speaker 1: into whatever device you're using to access Apple Music. But
Speaker 1: this also means that Apple's own air Pods, AirPods Max,
Speaker 1: and air Pods Pro gadgets won't support this level of
Speaker 1: lossless audio playback, at least not wirelessly. These devices typically
Speaker 1: pair with an iPhone over Bluetooth A a C codec
Speaker 1: that does not support this lossless audio format, So you
Speaker 1: can technically listen to lossless audio on an iPhone, but
Speaker 1: you will need to connect the iPhone to some sort
Speaker 1: of external USB digital to analog converter, and then use
Speaker 1: a different pair of wired headphones to be able to
Speaker 1: experience it. That being said, nine to five Mac reports
Speaker 1: that air Pods Max will support high resolution lossless audio
Speaker 1: if you're using them as wired headphones, not wireless ones.
Speaker 1: That takes a little wind out of the sales of
Speaker 1: this announcement. But on the flip side, both Apple and
Speaker 1: Amazon are putting a lot of pressure on Spotify, which
Speaker 1: is also beginning to offer lossless audio. But Spotify is
Speaker 1: doing it at a premium subscription, so you have to
Speaker 1: actually pay extra to get that access. Apple and Amazon
Speaker 1: using lossless audio as a free upgrade is a kind
Speaker 1: of a big kick in the teeth to Spotify. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm just sitting off to the side over here. I'm
Speaker 1: just eating my popcorn and watching this whole you know.
Speaker 1: Shake it Loose, also related to Apple Parley or Parlor
Speaker 1: if you prefer, is once again available on the Apple
Speaker 1: app Store. Parlor, for those who do not know, is
Speaker 1: a social media platform that positions itself as a champion
Speaker 1: of free speech, but funding for the service, leadership for
Speaker 1: the service, all these things that are a key to
Speaker 1: the service being in operation come from sources that are
Speaker 1: either the right wing political appointees or or politicians, or
Speaker 1: they're coming from people who have funded right wing political efforts,
Speaker 1: and Parlor's user base skewed pretty hard toward the right
Speaker 1: wing of the political spectrum and certainly was dipping pretty
Speaker 1: hard into extremism. The platform saw itself ousted from Google
Speaker 1: and Apple app stores, as well as from Amazon Web
Speaker 1: Services UH and their hosting system after the January sixth
Speaker 1: assault on the US Capitol, and the company repeatedly failed
Speaker 1: to moderate content that included hate speech and calls for violence.
Speaker 1: Mark Meckler, who was an interim CEO who stepped in
Speaker 1: to replace a former CEO who got fired from Parlor,
Speaker 1: is now leaving the company to be replaced by George Farmer,
Speaker 1: who since March has been the chief operating officer for
Speaker 1: the company and previously who was a candidate for the
Speaker 1: Brexit party over in the UK. To get back into
Speaker 1: the app store, Parlor had to update its app and
Speaker 1: content moderation policies, and it looks like there will effectively
Speaker 1: be a different flavor of Parlor on iOS. iOS users
Speaker 1: will see a more paired down version of the content
Speaker 1: of the app, material that would violate the terms that
Speaker 1: Parlor has had to agree to in order to come
Speaker 1: back to Apple's App Store. All that content has to
Speaker 1: be hidden away from iOS users. Those who are on
Speaker 1: the web based version or who have sideloaded the Android
Speaker 1: app on their devices would see everything, not just the
Speaker 1: stuff that iOS would allow. Sideloading is the process of
Speaker 1: adding an app outside of an authorized app store. Apple
Speaker 1: does not allow for this. You cannot sideload apps on
Speaker 1: a not out of the box Apple device without altering it. Google, however,
Speaker 1: does allow for sideloading apps. It advises against it, but says,
Speaker 1: if you want to, you can load apps that we
Speaker 1: will not carry in our app store, but we kind
Speaker 1: of disavow ourselves of what might happen to you if
Speaker 1: you do it. So, while Parlor is still not in
Speaker 1: the Google Play Store officially, Android users can sideload it
Speaker 1: onto their devices. Parlor had a spike of popularity in
Speaker 1: the fall of twenty twenty, but it was kind of
Speaker 1: in decline even before it started getting banned from app
Speaker 1: stores and hosting services. I'm not sure what it's numbers
Speaker 1: look like now, but from what I understand, uh, it's
Speaker 1: you know, not nearly as popular as it was leading
Speaker 1: into the election. Stuff of and that's it for the
Speaker 1: tech news for Tuesday one. We'll be back later this
Speaker 1: week with more news updates, as well as other episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff. If you have suggestions for topics I
Speaker 1: should cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me let
Speaker 1: me know what those are. The best way to do
Speaker 1: that is on Twitter. Our handle is tech stuff H
Speaker 1: s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Y tex Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.