WEBVTT - Tech News: When tech, politics and money meet 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.160 --> 0:00:15.120 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:19.040 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:19.360 --> 0:00:23.239 and I love all things tech. And it is Tuesday, 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:27.360 June twenty two, twenty one. Time for some tech news, 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:32.760 and time for yet another cryptocurrency update. I should probably 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:35.559 get like some music or a sound effect to go 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:38.880 with that, so you might remember that. Earlier this year, 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:42.880 the Chinese government began to shut down bitcoin mining operations 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:46.000 within the country. It has continued to do that. And 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:51.120 bitcoin mining involves running very fast computer networks to essentially 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:55.480 guess a very large number before any other computer system 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:59.160 is able to do it, and doing so, being successful 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:01.760 in guessing that number, or which happens every ten minutes 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.440 or so. Nets use some bitcoin well. China has been 0:01:05.440 --> 0:01:09.640 one of the top regions for bitcoin mining until recently. 0:01:10.160 --> 0:01:13.920 Bitcoin mining requires an awful lot of electricity to run 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.360 those powerful computer systems they are, They are in need 0:01:17.400 --> 0:01:20.160 of quite a bit of electricity, and that can actually 0:01:20.200 --> 0:01:24.000 have a pretty massive environmental impact, and that might have 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:29.360 factored into China's decision. But bitcoin also is a decentralized 0:01:29.440 --> 0:01:34.120 form of currency, and the Chinese government traditionally isn't super 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:38.280 keen on stuff that you know, isn't directly under its 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:42.800 own control. Anyway, there are likely a lot of different 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:46.600 reasons that the Chinese government shut down bitcoin mining. The 0:01:46.600 --> 0:01:50.040 fact that bitcoin also is associated with a lot of 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:54.040 black market activity maybe part of it. And now China 0:01:54.160 --> 0:01:58.600 is also requiring the financial sector to stop supporting cryptocurrencies, 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:01.920 so banks and aim at services within China are all 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:06.360 to halt support for any cryptocurrency, including any and all 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:11.639 transactions through cryptocurrency that are made within the country. Consequently, 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:15.200 the value of bitcoin has taken yet another hit. Early 0:02:15.240 --> 0:02:17.880 in the spring, the cryptocurrency hit an all time high 0:02:17.919 --> 0:02:22.120 value of nearly sixty five thousand dollars per bitcoin. Today, 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:25.400 it dipped below twenty nine thousand dollars, although as I 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:28.680 record this it is slightly recovered to around thirty thousand 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:32.680 and granted, thirty grand for a single unit of currency 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:35.360 is still a lot of money, but bitcoin has lost 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:39.040 more than fifty in value since its height this spring, 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:42.840 and some analysts are worried that more countries might follow 0:02:43.000 --> 0:02:47.400 China's lead and further restricts bitcoin mining and bitcoin transactions. 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:50.519 That would likely cause the currency to suffer yet another 0:02:50.600 --> 0:02:54.520 hit to its value. And as Bitcoin's value drops, so 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:59.520 do other cryptocurrencies. Ethereum, which had hit a high of 0:02:59.560 --> 0:03:02.320 more than two thousand, five hundred dollars earlier this year, 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:06.360 was trading at around sevent d dollars earlier today, and 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:10.200 the poor doge coin, which enjoyed a brief spurt of popularity, 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:14.640 is hovering around sixteen cents per coin right now. Cryptocurrency 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:19.440 investors are feeling the squeeze and they're all screaming hottle 0:03:19.560 --> 0:03:22.560 at the top of their lungs. Hottle or h O 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:26.040 d L stands for hold on for dear life, and 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:30.760 essentially it's saying, please, don't dump your cryptocurrency now, because 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:33.200 that's going to drive the value lower and then my 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:38.080 own investment will get even worse. That's essentially what hottle is. Ostensibly, 0:03:38.120 --> 0:03:40.520 it's if you hold on and you wait out the 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:43.280 bad times, the good times will be even better on 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:45.680 the other side of it. But really I think it's 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:48.800 more of please don't make me regret this investment more 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.400 than I already do. In related news, however, gamers might 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:56.920 soon have something to celebrate because Bitcoin mining benefits from 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:00.040 massive parallel processing. That's when you have a bunch of 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:03.920 processors that are working together, that is in parallel, in 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:08.680 order to solve specific kinds of computational problems. That's something 0:04:08.680 --> 0:04:12.960 that GPUs or graphics processing units do really, really well, 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:17.400 and for that reason, bitcoin miners often scoop up GPUs 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:20.640 as quickly as they possibly can, which reduces the overall 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:24.000 supply and it drives up prices, which makes it harder 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:26.760 for gamers to get a GPU in order to build 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:29.400 out a gaming rig. But with the price of bitcoin 0:04:29.520 --> 0:04:34.040 falling and with entire sectors shut down due to government regulation, 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:38.960 we're seeing a reduction in miners going after GPUs and 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:41.919 it just doesn't make sense to spend an enormous amount 0:04:41.960 --> 0:04:45.920 of money purchasing graphics cards if the return on investment 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:49.159 is starting to look bad. Over in China, the price 0:04:49.160 --> 0:04:53.320 of GPUs has plummeted. For example, the Asus g Force 0:04:53.520 --> 0:04:56.800 r t X thirty sixty had been selling for around 0:04:56.839 --> 0:05:00.599 two thousand eighty seven dollars in China but for the 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:04.080 clamp down, and now it's being sold at around seven 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:07.320 hundred sixty three dollars, which you know, obviously that's still 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:11.679 expensive to buy a computer component for seven sixty three dollars, 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:14.400 but it's less than half of what the price had 0:05:14.440 --> 0:05:18.440 been just a few months earlier. Hopefully this means that 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:21.479 it will be easier to find and less expensive to 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.080 buy a GPU if you want to build out a 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:26.599 gaming rig. I kind of want to build out a 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:29.400 gaming rig, so I guess this is good news for me, 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.040 particularly since I don't have a bunch of money sunk 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:36.520 into bitcoin. In space news, the Hubble space Telescope has 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:42.080 been struggling this month. On June, the Space Telescopes payload computer, 0:05:42.279 --> 0:05:45.800 which controls the various scientific instruments aboard the Hubble and 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:48.760 also monitors them to make sure that they're working properly 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:52.120 and you know, they're in good health. Essentially, it went offline. 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:55.760 NASA has attempted to restart the computer a couple of times, 0:05:55.800 --> 0:05:58.640 but with no success. This week, the agency tried to 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:01.640 switch the computer from one memory module to another. It 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:05.920 has four, each of them is an independent unit, and 0:06:06.080 --> 0:06:09.479 it's there for redundancy, but that also hasn't worked. There 0:06:09.560 --> 0:06:13.360 is a second onboard computer, again for the purposes of redundancy, 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:16.039 so NASA might be able to rely on that while 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:19.520 trying to restore the primary computer to operational status. In 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:22.560 the meantime, the scientific instruments connected to the computer are 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:26.200 in safe mode. The Hubble Space Telescope has been in 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:29.920 service for decades, and the last maintenance mission took place 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:34.520 way back in two thousand nine. The James Webb Space Telescope, 0:06:34.839 --> 0:06:37.640 which in many ways is this successor to the Hubble, 0:06:38.120 --> 0:06:42.320 should launch this November. If all goes well, and this 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:46.440 particular space telescopes launch date has slipped several times already, 0:06:46.520 --> 0:06:49.239 I am very eager to see it actually enter into orbit. 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:52.640 Also in space news, it's time to talk about the 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:56.839 intersection of space politics and money. All right, So here's 0:06:56.880 --> 0:07:00.880 the deal. NASA has the Artemis program, which is supposed 0:07:00.880 --> 0:07:03.239 to send astronauts back to the Moon for the first 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.200 time in more than half a century. The last moon 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:09.880 landing with astronauts was in nineteen seventy two. The goal 0:07:09.960 --> 0:07:12.480 is to do this by twenty four, which is right 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:15.880 around the Ding Dang corner. But the agency is to 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:19.320 do this with very little in the way of additional budget. 0:07:19.840 --> 0:07:23.520 Setting a lofty goal with little financial support seems like 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:28.000 it's a recipe for failure right anyway, Faced with this 0:07:28.360 --> 0:07:33.200 seemingly impossible situation, NASA chose to work with SpaceX to 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:36.440 develop a lunar landing module that could land on and 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:40.480 take off from the Moon's surface. It's pretty much what 0:07:40.640 --> 0:07:44.560 NASA could afford. Then the US Senate approved an additional 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:47.680 budget of ten billion dollars to help NASA fund the 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:51.080 development of a second lander so that the agency would 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.480 not be totally dependent upon SpaceX, And all seemed to 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:57.680 go well until we got to the House of Representatives, 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:01.000 that's the other half of the US Congress. US there, 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:04.840 NASA saw some opposition, with the House Science Committee skipping 0:08:04.880 --> 0:08:08.440 over supporting those extra funds. The heart of the matter 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:11.960 is that NASA would look to Blue Origin, which is 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:15.920 the Jeff Bezos private space company, and that you know, 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:19.680 the representatives aren't necessarily a fan of using taxpayer money 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:23.400 to make the world's richest man even wealthier. And NASA 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:27.520 wants to pursue a fixed price contract, while Congress would 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:31.480 prefer a cost plus contract. Fixed price means what it 0:08:31.480 --> 0:08:35.439 sounds like, the parties inside the contract they all agree 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:38.840 ahead of time as to how much goods and services 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:41.200 are going to cost right at the front end of 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:44.719 the agreement, and even if the materials or the services 0:08:45.160 --> 0:08:48.440 increase in the amount that they you know, are required, 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:51.040 the cost doesn't go up. The cost is fixed at 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:53.720 whatever level it was said at, and same if the 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:56.440 cost goes down, like if materials suddenly get cheaper, well 0:08:56.800 --> 0:08:58.600 they're still gonna cost the same because that was the 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:04.239 agreed upon price. Cost plus reflects the actual cost of production, 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:07.600 which can vary over time. So at some points in 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.480 the project it might be that you're paying more per unit, 0:09:10.760 --> 0:09:12.960 and at other times you might be paying less. And 0:09:12.960 --> 0:09:16.040 in government jobs, the cost plus approach typically means that 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:18.920 the government has some leverage when it comes to where 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:23.240 these projects can happen, and that can mean jobs. And 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:26.120 congress folks love to make sure that the regions they 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:29.000 represent get lots of jobs. That's the way you get 0:09:29.040 --> 0:09:31.800 a lot of voters is you deliver jobs to that region. 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:35.160 And that makes sense, but it might also mean that 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:37.920 it might not be the best thing for the actual project. 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:41.040 This is complicated because you've got a lot of factors 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:43.840 that come into play. At the same time. You've got 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:46.760 a race to meet deadlines, you've got the desire to 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:49.760 be efficient with use of taxpayer money, you've got the 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:52.920 desire to bring jobs to your constituents. All of these 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:57.240 things aren't bad necessarily, but they don't necessarily work together 0:09:57.280 --> 0:10:00.920 in harmony either, and that's where we see friction. Also, 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:03.760 there seems to be a lot of disdain being directed 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:07.120 towards the private space industry in general, like SpaceX and 0:10:07.120 --> 0:10:10.840 Blue Origin. But really, once you strip away the veneer 0:10:10.920 --> 0:10:13.560 of the space industry, you've got to admit that it 0:10:13.640 --> 0:10:17.360 has always depended upon private companies. It's not like NASA 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:20.600 is filled with engineers who are actually making all the 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:23.080 rockets and stuff. They do play a big part in 0:10:23.120 --> 0:10:26.720 design and making the specifications and all that, but NASA 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:30.920 signs contracts with various aerospace companies that end up making 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:34.600 the actual stuff that goes into space. So, in other words, 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.800 NASA has always depended upon the private sector, just you know, 0:10:38.960 --> 0:10:43.560 through government contracts. So I find it a little disingenuous 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:48.960 to specifically point out the private space sector. They're just 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:51.839 doing essentially the same thing, but in a different way. 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.760 Over in Ohio. Here in the United States, we're also 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:59.920 seeing politics, money, and tech conflict in another way. Over 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:03.480 the last twenty years, various communities within the US have 0:11:03.559 --> 0:11:08.000 attempted to build out local community broadband infrastructure. Some places 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:12.760 have been wildly successful. Chattanooga, Tennessee. It's a jewel in 0:11:12.800 --> 0:11:16.320 the crown when it comes to community broadband. Right now, 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:19.720 in the US, the national metric for meeting broadband speeds 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:23.319 is twenty five megabits per second. That's actually pretty low 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:25.679 when you look at things globally, it's definitely low. When 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:28.640 you look at Chattanooga, they're looking at ten gigabits a second. 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:31.960 And there are many places that have tried to build, 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:36.480 you know, out a broadband connectivity on a municipal or 0:11:36.520 --> 0:11:41.079 regional level, only to meet resistance within local politics. So 0:11:41.160 --> 0:11:46.920 why is there resistance, Well, it's probably because really big 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:52.520 telecommunications companies would rather they're not be regional options for 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:55.640 folks in order to get their internet service, because those 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:59.240 regional options usually mean that the big companies are going 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:02.280 to have to invest more money to build out infrastructure 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:05.360 and to service those communities in order to be competitive 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:09.320 with the local option. And competitiveness is something that the 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:14.760 big telecommunications companies traditionally aren't big fans of, particularly when 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:17.400 it comes to I s P s NOW. I've spoken 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.120 before about how in my own neighborhood the options for 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:23.600 internet services are really limited. There's only one provider that 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:27.440 actually offers a service that's faster than twenty five megabits 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:32.120 per second. Anyway, in Ohio, some politicians inserted an amendment 0:12:32.200 --> 0:12:35.880 into the state budget that would limit community broadband to 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:39.200 areas that had less than ten megabits per second as 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:43.600 a download speed. That means that would restrict communities that 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:47.600 weren't even at the low national standard for broadband. If 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:50.600 that community was between ten and twenty five megabits per 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:54.719 second for downloads, they would be ineligible to set up 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:58.960 their own broadband network. It also limits how communities could 0:12:59.040 --> 0:13:02.080 actually fund those initiatives. It would ban them from seeking 0:13:02.200 --> 0:13:05.680 federal or state aid. They'd have to just fund it locally. 0:13:06.520 --> 0:13:11.760 Such an amendment is um let's say, incredibly unpopular, and 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:15.080 now the politicians who introduced the amendment aren't really willing 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:18.440 to step forward and you know, vocally support it. There's 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.840 a general avoidance to holding public forums to discuss the matter. This, 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:25.240 by the way, is nothing new. There are other areas 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:27.880 where we've seen exactly the same thing, where these sorts 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:32.000 of amendments get buried into otherwise unrelated bills in an 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:37.800 effort to preserve telecommunication companies dominance in a region. So 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:40.959 we've seen it over and over again, and it'll be 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:43.360 interesting to see how it plays out in Ohio. There 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:46.640 are some places where this just hasn't come out in 0:13:46.679 --> 0:13:52.319 the telecommunication company's favor, like Chattanooga. Now let's go underground, 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:56.120 as in the London Underground, the famous subway system that 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:59.040 makes getting around London a breeze, that is, if you're 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:01.560 paying attention to all maps and stuff. Now, I love 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.680 the Tube as it's also known, and I always mind 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:07.360 the gap, but I need to get to the story, 0:14:07.440 --> 0:14:11.520 all right. So the Transport of London, that's an agency 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:13.920 in charge of these things, has a plan to provide 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:18.280 mobile phone connectivity throughout all of the London Underground by 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:22.240 the end of two Much of the Eastern Jubilee Line, 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:25.880 one of the many lines as part of London's underground, 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:28.840 already has a lot of coverage. So to provide this 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:31.640 kind of service, the Transport of London authority actually has 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:34.720 to work with providers to build out the equivalent of 0:14:34.800 --> 0:14:39.920 cell towers underground, and collectively these provide uninterrupted service as 0:14:39.920 --> 0:14:42.440 you wind your way under the city streets of London, 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:45.040 and considering that some of these trains feel like they've 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:47.560 been around since the subway first opened, I think that's 0:14:47.600 --> 0:14:52.080 pretty darn nifty. Boston Dynamics, the robotics company famous for 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:56.280 viral videos showing four legged robots either being mercilessly shoved 0:14:56.720 --> 0:15:00.480 or engaged in dancing routines, as a new owner, Young Day, 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:04.440 the South Korean car company, announced it has completed its 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:08.200 acquisition of a majority stake in Boston Dynamics. This was 0:15:08.240 --> 0:15:12.240 a process that began last December. Day has a division 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:16.080 focused on mobility, and presumably Boston Dynamics will play a 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:19.320 part in that regard moving forward, and I'm sure we'll 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:22.960 continue to see more adorable and or terrifying videos of 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:28.000 Boston Dynamics robots. In the world of virtual reality, Facebook 0:15:28.040 --> 0:15:29.960 saw a bit of a hiccup as a company that 0:15:30.000 --> 0:15:33.360 had previously agreed to host ads within the Oculus VR 0:15:33.480 --> 0:15:37.360 experience has since backed out of that agreement. The developer 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:40.560 in this case is Resolution Games, which has a paid 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:44.400 for title called blast On. So blast On is a 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.720 game that players purchase with their own dollar dollar bills. 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:51.280 Y'all and once it became known that blast On would 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:54.960 also act as a pilot for Facebook's AD project. In 0:15:55.080 --> 0:16:01.200 VR gamer's got a wee bit upset, they provided let's 0:16:01.200 --> 0:16:04.880 call it feedback to Resolution Games on the matter. My 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:07.960 guess is that people felt that it's not really cool 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:10.840 to see ads in a game that they had already 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:14.960 actually purchased. Some of them are may be likely concerned 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:18.200 about Facebook's rather shoddy passed when it comes to data 0:16:18.240 --> 0:16:22.400 collection and advertising, and surely when the experience involves you 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:25.640 wearing a headset that provides everything you see and hear, 0:16:26.000 --> 0:16:29.880 the idea of targeted, personalized advertising kind of gets pretty 0:16:29.960 --> 0:16:33.840 darn creepy. Anyway, the response was strong enough to commence 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:36.760 Resolution Games to back pedal on the agreement, though the 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:39.760 company says it may use a different free to play 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:43.080 game as the testing grounds for ads. I think many 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:46.680 gamers would be somewhat mollified by that choice. No one 0:16:46.800 --> 0:16:49.680 is super eager to see advertisements, but there does need 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:52.320 to be a revenue model in place for a company 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:55.240 to continue to make games. We'll follow up on this 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:59.000 story as we see how the ad project unfolds, and 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:02.880 finally have be twenty five birthday to the first person 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:07.640 shooter computer game Quake YEP. Quake launched on this day, 0:17:07.880 --> 0:17:13.280 June twenty two. Way back in the title revolutionized the 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:16.679 computer games industry. While there had been other first person 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:20.959 shooters before Quake, like Wolfenstein three D and Doom, it 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:24.639 was Quake that introduced not just three dimensional environments, but 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:28.800 three dimensional characters as well. No longer were you running 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:32.560 around and shooting the equivalent of a cardboard cutout, and 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:36.200 the underlying game engine would become an incredibly popular one 0:17:36.280 --> 0:17:39.679 for video game developers over the following years. While I 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:41.960 was never a big Quake player, I mean I played 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:45.359 a lot of Doom in Wolfenstein, I definitely recognized the 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:49.520 incredible contribution the game made to the entire industry. So 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:53.800 happy birthday, Quake. And that's it for the tech News 0:17:53.920 --> 0:17:57.600 for Tuesday, June twenty two, twenty twenty one. If you 0:17:57.640 --> 0:17:59.399 have any topics you would like me to cover in 0:17:59.440 --> 0:18:01.800 future EPISO SuDS of tech Stuff, reach out to me 0:18:01.960 --> 0:18:04.919 on Twitter. The handle is tech Stuff h s W 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:13.720 and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y text 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:17.199 Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:19.960 from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app 0:18:20.119 --> 0:18:23.280 Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.