Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'mond executive producer with I Heart Radio. And
Speaker 1: how the tech are you. It's time for the tech
Speaker 1: news for Tuesday, May twenty four, two thousand twenty two.
Speaker 1: We have a whole bunch of stories, although most of
Speaker 1: them are pretty short. Let's jump to it. And in
Speaker 1: a news item that prompted me to actually double check
Speaker 1: the date on the article, the Attorney General for Washington,
Speaker 1: D C. Carl Racine, has sued Mark Zuckerberg because of
Speaker 1: the Cambridge Analytica scandal. All right, let's do a quick
Speaker 1: overview of what Cambridge Analytica was really all about. First,
Speaker 1: you start off with a guy, a researcher and professor
Speaker 1: named Alexander Cogan, who created an app for the Facebook
Speaker 1: platform that was called This is Your Digital Life and
Speaker 1: it was a personality quiz. So Cogan was conducting research
Speaker 1: into social relationships in general, and he offered a small
Speaker 1: payment for folks to take the test, and more than
Speaker 1: two fifty thousand people installed the app and took that test,
Speaker 1: and that generated a whole lot of information. But Beyond that,
Speaker 1: the app was also able to access the data of
Speaker 1: the friends of the people who took the quiz. Now,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar, Facebook lets you create profile settings
Speaker 1: that can limit who can see what is on your profile.
Speaker 1: You could have a public profile, which means anyone can
Speaker 1: see everything that you've posted on there, or you can
Speaker 1: have a profile that's restricted just to the people who
Speaker 1: are on your friends list. Well, Facebook's app interface would
Speaker 1: allow app developers to view profiles as if they were
Speaker 1: friends with all those people. So, in other words, let's
Speaker 1: say you activate an app like this on your Facebook profile.
Speaker 1: Now that app can view your friends profiles as if
Speaker 1: the app were you. That was a huge problem because
Speaker 1: your friends never had an opportunity to consent or deny
Speaker 1: consent to the app gathering their personal information. They they
Speaker 1: never even saw anything about it. You as a user,
Speaker 1: saw an agreement and you could agree to it, but
Speaker 1: your friends never did so. As a result, the app
Speaker 1: sucked up data from millions of users. Uh. Initially the
Speaker 1: belief was around eighty million, and then later the investigation
Speaker 1: said it was closer to thirty million people. Still huge
Speaker 1: number considering that around I think two seventy thousand people
Speaker 1: took the test, as so the vast majority of people
Speaker 1: who had their information pulled into this database never even
Speaker 1: took the quiz anyway. Cogan's research company partnered with the
Speaker 1: parent company of an analysis slash campaign strategy company, and
Speaker 1: that was Cambridge Analytica. That that being the strategy company.
Speaker 1: Cambridge Analytica ended up getting access to all this data
Speaker 1: that was pulled from this quiz, and Cambridge Analytica claimed
Speaker 1: that the data provided valuable information for political campaigns, that
Speaker 1: using the data from this quiz would mean that political
Speaker 1: candidates could target prospective voters with incredible accuracy, that campaigns
Speaker 1: could be really effective because they could tailor the campaign
Speaker 1: to trigger specific responses from those people. It turned out
Speaker 1: that a lot of those claims were more hype than
Speaker 1: substance anyway. All this happened around two thousand fourteen into
Speaker 1: two thousand sixteen, but the world at large remained ignorant
Speaker 1: about it until two thousand eighteen, when various expose a
Speaker 1: pieces brought the matter to global attention. It was clear
Speaker 1: that Facebook, Cogan, and Cambridge Analytica had all been involved
Speaker 1: in some questionable activity, uh to the extent that those
Speaker 1: activities were criminal. Remains sort of an open question now, Racine.
Speaker 1: The Attorney General of Washington, d C. Previously sued Facebook,
Speaker 1: the company which is of course now known as Meta,
Speaker 1: and later in that process he wanted to add Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: as a defendant in the case, but the judge ruled
Speaker 1: that it was too late in the proceedings for the
Speaker 1: Attorney General to do that, and that Meta case is
Speaker 1: still ongoing. So meanwhile, the Attorney General has now named
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg in a new lawsuit about this, and the Attorney
Speaker 1: General argues that Zuckerberg bears responsibility for sharing user data
Speaker 1: without those users consent, and further that he withheld information
Speaker 1: about the subject rather than divulging the info in a
Speaker 1: timely manner. Essentially, this accounted to a data breach and
Speaker 1: he had a responsibility to report that, but he did
Speaker 1: not do it. The Attorney General says Zuckerberg has violated
Speaker 1: the Consumer Protection Procedures Act. Now, some of y'all might
Speaker 1: remember that Zuckerberg previously had to testify before Congress about
Speaker 1: the matter of Cambridge Analytica, so I'm sure this lawsuit
Speaker 1: will bring up all sorts of bad memories for Old Mark.
Speaker 1: Last week, I talked about how the Fifth Circuit Court
Speaker 1: of Appeals lifted an injunction that was against Texas's controversial
Speaker 1: bill that allows social network users to suthe the social
Speaker 1: networks themselves if they get banned. If the users argue
Speaker 1: that they were banned because of their political views and
Speaker 1: that this was infringing on their free speech, that means
Speaker 1: that that law is now in effect in Texas. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: over in Florida, a somewhat similar bill has received the
Speaker 1: opposite treatment. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld
Speaker 1: in order to block a Florida law that would have
Speaker 1: otherwise allowed politicians to sue platforms for banning them or
Speaker 1: for moderating their content. So if a political candidate we're
Speaker 1: posting something that was demonstrably false and the platform then
Speaker 1: labeled it as misinformation, they would be able to sue
Speaker 1: the platform under this law. That law got blocked. So
Speaker 1: here we've got to somewhat similar laws and two dissimilar outcomes,
Speaker 1: which is fun times right. Anyway, the Court of Appeals
Speaker 1: in the Florida case found that the Florida law was
Speaker 1: unconstitutional because social network companies have protection under the First
Speaker 1: Amendment that means the social networks can create and enforced
Speaker 1: content moderation rules, and moreover, the government cannot restrict the
Speaker 1: company's content moderation practices because if the government did that,
Speaker 1: that would be the same as the government censoring a company,
Speaker 1: and that is not constitutional. It seems as though the
Speaker 1: Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has not come to the
Speaker 1: same bizarre conclusion as the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals,
Speaker 1: in which one judge stated that platforms like Twitter and
Speaker 1: Facebook are quote unquote Internet provide leaders and thus should
Speaker 1: be treated as common carriers. That is patently absurd, especially
Speaker 1: since I s p s, the actual companies that provide
Speaker 1: Internet access, have had their common carrier status stripped away
Speaker 1: during the Trump administration, and so it goes quality assurance.
Speaker 1: Employees at Raven Software, which is a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard,
Speaker 1: have now officially formed their union. The employees began their
Speaker 1: attempts to organize last year and recently held their union vote,
Speaker 1: which passed, and that makes their union, the Game Workers Alliance,
Speaker 1: the second official union in the video games industry here
Speaker 1: in the United States. It's a significant achievement, in no
Speaker 1: small part because Activision Blizzard reportedly took several steps to
Speaker 1: discourage the unionization attempt. Those steps included splitting up the
Speaker 1: QUA team and placing them in different departments in order
Speaker 1: to kind of keep them from organizing, allegedly, or arguing
Speaker 1: that any union vote should really fall on the entire
Speaker 1: staff of Raven Software, not just the q A department.
Speaker 1: The q A department is twenty something people, whereas the
Speaker 1: entire staff is like three hundred and fifty, so people
Speaker 1: have argued that that attempt was really to try and
Speaker 1: dilute the q A department's ability to unionize. Despite all
Speaker 1: those efforts, the employees did form their union, and they
Speaker 1: sent a statement to the verge and said it's their
Speaker 1: hope that they inspire further employee organization efforts within the
Speaker 1: video game industry. Meanwhile, it's Sony's u S division of PlayStation.
Speaker 1: Former employee m m Ayo has filed a lawsuit against
Speaker 1: her former employer, and this is the second time that
Speaker 1: she has done this. Judge dismissed her earlier complaints, saying
Speaker 1: that the scope of her complaint was far too wide
Speaker 1: that she needed to restate her complaint in a way
Speaker 1: that was more narrow and focused. So this new lawsuit
Speaker 1: has done that, and it alleges that women working for
Speaker 1: Sony PlayStation within the state of California have been the
Speaker 1: subject of sexual discrimination and systemic sexism. So we will
Speaker 1: have to see how that lawsuit unrolls as time goes on.
Speaker 1: I've done several stories about various tech companies running into
Speaker 1: friction as they tried to create policies that require employees
Speaker 1: to come back into the office. Recently, Apple postponed its
Speaker 1: plans to require corporate employees to come into the office
Speaker 1: three days a week. They currently have are required to
Speaker 1: come in two days a week, and the company cited
Speaker 1: concerns about rising COVID nine team cases as the reason
Speaker 1: for postponing that plan. Meanwhile, over at Google, employees who
Speaker 1: are in the Google Maps division are circulating a petition
Speaker 1: asking the company to extend work from home benefits. Google
Speaker 1: currently plans to require those employees to come back into
Speaker 1: the office five days a week starting in early June.
Speaker 1: The employees objections include concerns about how much it costs
Speaker 1: to live near Google offices and how much inflation and
Speaker 1: supply issues have caused gas prices to skyrocket. So, in
Speaker 1: other words, these employees are saying it's too expensive to
Speaker 1: work for Google if they are required to come into
Speaker 1: the office five days week, And yeah, that's not how
Speaker 1: employment is supposed to work. When it's too expensive for
Speaker 1: you to work somewhere, things are broken anyway. According to
Speaker 1: the New York Times, some sixt of Google Maps employees
Speaker 1: have already signed the petition. Whether that makes a difference
Speaker 1: remains to be seen. Okay, we've got a bunch more
Speaker 1: stories to get through. Let's take a quick break. We're
Speaker 1: back and it's time to talk about TikTok. Now, for
Speaker 1: a while, there was no real easy way for creators
Speaker 1: on TikTok to monetize their work and their popularity. So
Speaker 1: you have folks who are getting really well known on
Speaker 1: TikTok super fast, but they didn't have an easy way
Speaker 1: to leverage that into making money. Like, yeah, they were
Speaker 1: getting a lot of notoriety, but notoriety don't pay the rent. Anyway.
Speaker 1: They started to figure out ways to kind of indirectly
Speaker 1: make money. Creators could try and lure followers to other
Speaker 1: platforms where they could get support, whether it's Patreon or
Speaker 1: something else, or they could try and land sponsor deals,
Speaker 1: and they could get paid by sponsors for creating special
Speaker 1: content on TikTok, which TikTok would later help support, and
Speaker 1: then later still TikTok added a tip feature that lets
Speaker 1: users leave a tip for their favorite creators, And now
Speaker 1: TikTok is introducing a subscription service to some of the
Speaker 1: more popular creators on the platform. Users will be able
Speaker 1: to pay a subscription to access live stream sessions from
Speaker 1: those creators, so it's kind of a way of getting
Speaker 1: some exclusive content. And the whole system right now is
Speaker 1: invitation only, so we're gonna likely see a gradual rollout
Speaker 1: before it becomes you know, platform wide, and at the
Speaker 1: time of this recording, I don't have any info on
Speaker 1: what kind of subscription tiers we might be looking at,
Speaker 1: you know, how expensive they are and whether there are
Speaker 1: multiple levels. But in addition to that initiative, TikTok had
Speaker 1: also earlier announced that it is going to have an
Speaker 1: ad revenue sharing program with creators. So while early on
Speaker 1: the most you could hope for from being popular on
Speaker 1: TikTok was to be famous, now we can add the
Speaker 1: sibling getting rich to that. Nicks at least for some
Speaker 1: creators more power to y'all, I can never do what
Speaker 1: y'all do. I If I were to really adopt TikTok um,
Speaker 1: I have no doubt it would be a infrequently viewed,
Speaker 1: pathetic display of me trying to be relevant. And um,
Speaker 1: I think there's plenty of that on TikTok already, so
Speaker 1: there's no need for me to jump in on that.
Speaker 1: Amazon continues to sunset features on older Kendall models. The
Speaker 1: company sent out an email to folks who own older
Speaker 1: Kindle devices like the second generation Kindle, the fourth and
Speaker 1: fifth generation Kindles, and a couple of other models. The
Speaker 1: message indicates that these Kindle devices will soon no longer
Speaker 1: be able to purchase or borrow titles directly from the device,
Speaker 1: so you won't be able to buy a new book
Speaker 1: from the Kindle itself. Instead, those owners will have to
Speaker 1: go to the Amazon web page. You know, use like
Speaker 1: a computer or smartphone to go there. You can purchase
Speaker 1: things on the web page and then use the web
Speaker 1: page to share that content to your devices, so it
Speaker 1: adds some extra steps and becomes less convenient now. The
Speaker 1: likely reason behind this is that older Kindle models are
Speaker 1: running on systems like essentially operating systems that Amazon can't
Speaker 1: update anymore because the the hardware of those older Kindle
Speaker 1: models aren't really able to support later versions of that system,
Speaker 1: so features are getting left behind. Previous the Amazon Kindle
Speaker 1: owners who had purchased units with three G connectivity found
Speaker 1: their devices severely restricted because tell, the communications companies have
Speaker 1: been shutting down their old three G networks, so there's
Speaker 1: nothing to connect to. You know, if there's no infrastructure
Speaker 1: to support connectivity, there's no connectivity. Really, these stories illustrate
Speaker 1: how the stuff we buy has a limited lifespan that
Speaker 1: is not necessarily related to how well the hardware works
Speaker 1: over time. Like everything on the device might still be
Speaker 1: in perfect working order, but the back end no longer
Speaker 1: supports that device. Uh, it's because the rest of the
Speaker 1: system is evolving, whereas that device is stuck in that
Speaker 1: form factor. We've seen this in tons of technology. In fact,
Speaker 1: like this is old news, right, because there's a long
Speaker 1: running joke in the computer world that you go, you
Speaker 1: buy a PC, you bring it home, and by the
Speaker 1: time you get out of the box, it's already obsolete.
Speaker 1: That joke has been around forever. But this is the
Speaker 1: sort of thing we can expect happen as we rely
Speaker 1: on more products that lean on cloud services, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it's one of the reasons that folks can get a
Speaker 1: little antsy about buying into a new product because the
Speaker 1: product might work fine, but if that back end system
Speaker 1: that provides the features shuts down or changes in some way,
Speaker 1: you could be left with a useless pile of electronics
Speaker 1: that technically still works but can't connect to anything. So
Speaker 1: it's a risk, and it's a tradeoff. So the risk,
Speaker 1: of course is that your device may no longer work,
Speaker 1: but the other benefit to it is that, you know,
Speaker 1: we end up getting devices that end up having far
Speaker 1: more capabilities then they're on board electronics would allow all
Speaker 1: on their own, So it's a given take. As the
Speaker 1: world pivots to lean more heavily on renewable energy sources
Speaker 1: and battery technology, we've seen some pretty big obstacles pop
Speaker 1: up recently. I've mentioned before how the electric vehicle industry
Speaker 1: is under intense pressure because more and more countries are
Speaker 1: setting a deadline for migrating away from internal combustion engine vehicles.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, we are producing far too
Speaker 1: few batteries in order to support a total switch to
Speaker 1: e vs, like, if we wanted to produce as many
Speaker 1: electric vehicles as would be necessary to replace all internal
Speaker 1: combustion engine vehicles, we couldn't do it because we don't
Speaker 1: have enough battery production to cover that well. The International
Speaker 1: Energy Agency reports that the price for raw materials that
Speaker 1: are being used in stuff like batteries and renewable energy
Speaker 1: technology has really gone up recently, and it's due to
Speaker 1: a lot of different factors. You've got you know, COVID issues,
Speaker 1: You've got supply chain problems, and you've got Russia's war
Speaker 1: in Ukraine. Russia currently is the source for a massive
Speaker 1: amount of material that's used in various renewable energy technologies,
Speaker 1: and the war has cut off access too much of
Speaker 1: that supply. As a result, the price of those materials
Speaker 1: has increased dramatically. Lithium alone jumped up seven eight percent
Speaker 1: in cost from Anuary to March. Many people have pointed
Speaker 1: out that this is really a huge wake up call.
Speaker 1: The underlines a fairly obvious conclusion, and that conclusion is
Speaker 1: don't put all your eggs in one basket. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have an old folks saying that really nails this
Speaker 1: home right. So in other words, it is critical to
Speaker 1: diversify where you get your materials from, as depending too
Speaker 1: heavily on a single source spells doom when something interrupts
Speaker 1: that supply. Over the last several years, we've seen the
Speaker 1: cost of renewable energy come down because manufacturing facilities have
Speaker 1: created more efficient processes and started to produce at larger scales.
Speaker 1: So the cost of renewable energy has declined over time.
Speaker 1: But there is concerned that these rising costs in raw
Speaker 1: materials is going to slow or perhaps even reverse that
Speaker 1: trend in the not too distant future. Perhaps next Sunday
Speaker 1: a d Airbnb has become the latest US company to
Speaker 1: pull out of China. Uh And I know it's weird
Speaker 1: to include Airbnb in a tech podcast, but it is
Speaker 1: one of those companies that often gets treated like a
Speaker 1: tech company, seeing as how the interface for Airbnb is
Speaker 1: Internet dependent. Anyway, Airbnb's reason for pulling up stakes is
Speaker 1: a little bit different from companies like LinkedIn and Yahoo.
Speaker 1: Those companies primarily left over concerns about how the Chinese
Speaker 1: government was demanding access to user information. In Airbnb's case,
Speaker 1: it appears that the main motivator for leaving China was
Speaker 1: because of a rise in so called super apps, which
Speaker 1: provide multiple services to users. They can range from stuff
Speaker 1: like online shopping services, to ride hailing services to yeah
Speaker 1: booking a place to stay, so more Chinese citizens have
Speaker 1: been relying on these kind of catch all apps rather
Speaker 1: than on those that focus on a single service. Airbnb
Speaker 1: will continue to provide Chinese citizens who travel abroad access
Speaker 1: to booking places when they are staying outside of China,
Speaker 1: but you'll no longer be able to pop on Airbnb
Speaker 1: to find a place to crash the next time you
Speaker 1: had to Shanghai. Speaking of China, the country has an
Speaker 1: app called wi Bo, which is sort of like Twitter.
Speaker 1: It's spelled w e i b O, and I apologize
Speaker 1: if I am completely mispronouncing it. I very likely am.
Speaker 1: But that app recently banned an account belonging to James Liang.
Speaker 1: He is a co founder of a company called trip
Speaker 1: dot com, which is a travel services company in China,
Speaker 1: and according to Wibo, Liang had violated quote relevant laws
Speaker 1: and regulations end quote. Wibo did not go into more
Speaker 1: detail about exactly what Liang's violations were. The current hypothesis
Speaker 1: is that Wibo band Liang because Leang had posted criticism
Speaker 1: of China's zero tolerance policy when it comes to COVID outbreaks. Now,
Speaker 1: as you probably know, the practice in China is to
Speaker 1: lock down a region anytime a COVID outbreak is detected
Speaker 1: within that region, which shuts down everything for a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks at a time usually, and it grinds all
Speaker 1: activity to a halt. And we've seen stories of companies
Speaker 1: like Tesla trying to work around this by encouraging employees
Speaker 1: to essentially move into the manufacturing facilities so that they
Speaker 1: literally live where they work. Anyway, Lang argued that the
Speaker 1: practice of shutting down regions is causing enormous economic disruption
Speaker 1: and that it's becoming increasingly difficult to recover from that disruption,
Speaker 1: and that seems to have been enough to get him
Speaker 1: banned from Wi Bo. Now, on the one hand, I
Speaker 1: do feel China's response has been way too strict. It's
Speaker 1: it's gone over the top. On the other hand, I
Speaker 1: worry that the workarounds are putting people in danger simply
Speaker 1: to avoid disruptions in business. So companies like Tesla and
Speaker 1: others that are trying to get around these issues, I
Speaker 1: worry that it's disregarding people's health just for the sake
Speaker 1: of keeping things going. Goodness knows, you know, I really
Speaker 1: hate seeing people in my own country behave like there
Speaker 1: is no pandemic. There never was a pandemic. Shut up,
Speaker 1: you mask wearing freak. You're the problem. I'm not the problem.
Speaker 1: I do not like that attitude. I suspect there's probably
Speaker 1: a pathway that's somewhere in between these various extremes that
Speaker 1: could potentially be the most responsible, keeping the most people
Speaker 1: healthy while creating the smallest amount of economic disruption. But
Speaker 1: what the heck do I know? I'm a podcaster. All Right,
Speaker 1: we have a few more stories to wrap up before
Speaker 1: we get to that. Let's take another quick break. Okay.
Speaker 1: I do have a positive story about China that I
Speaker 1: definitely wanted to share, and that is the country plans
Speaker 1: to launch a space telescope named shun Chian, which means
Speaker 1: to study the heavens in three and shun Chian will
Speaker 1: be a lot like the Hubble space telescope, but with
Speaker 1: a significantly larger field of view. According to one source
Speaker 1: I was reading, it will be three fifty times the
Speaker 1: field of view of the Hubble telescope, and this space
Speaker 1: telescope will be used to expand our understanding on big
Speaker 1: questions like why is the universe expanding at an accelerated rate?
Speaker 1: Like we understand that it's expanding, but why is that
Speaker 1: expansion accelerating. It's also going to be used to try
Speaker 1: and help get more information on really tricky things like
Speaker 1: dark energy and dark matter. China plans to insert the
Speaker 1: telescope into a similar orbit with the Tiangong Space Station,
Speaker 1: which would allow the station and telescope to doc with
Speaker 1: one another in the event that the telescope requires service,
Speaker 1: which is a good plan. You might remember that the
Speaker 1: Hubble initially had a flaw in it that affected image
Speaker 1: resolution and required NASA to send up some service crews
Speaker 1: in Space Shuttle missions to address that problem. Starlink, the
Speaker 1: satellite internet service provider from space Sex, has introduced a
Speaker 1: new subscription model for those who want to travel around
Speaker 1: and bring their Starlink antenna with them. Currently, subscribers pay
Speaker 1: a hundred ten bucks per month to subscribe to starlink,
Speaker 1: and a few Starlink users discovered that when they initially
Speaker 1: signed up for service, they had to uh specify an
Speaker 1: address they could actually bring their Starlink antenna with them,
Speaker 1: set it up wherever they stop, and still access service
Speaker 1: while they are traveling. And so folks began to do that,
Speaker 1: they were traveling around and bringing connectivity with them. Well,
Speaker 1: SpaceX took a look at that and thought, hey, I'd
Speaker 1: like to make money off of that. So now the
Speaker 1: company is going to offer a more expensive plan that
Speaker 1: outright supports this type of use. For one five bucks
Speaker 1: a month. Starlink customers can take their set up with them,
Speaker 1: making it a portable connectivity solution as long as they're
Speaker 1: traveling within areas that Starlink provides service. The company is
Speaker 1: not going to support and activity on the move, so
Speaker 1: you are not meant to, you know, set up your
Speaker 1: star Link at the back of a van or something
Speaker 1: and try and get uh Internet connectivity while you're driving
Speaker 1: down the streets, so you're really meant to set it
Speaker 1: up wherever you stop and then pack it up when
Speaker 1: you're ready to move on. I'm wondering how many folks
Speaker 1: out there have adopted a nomadic lifestyle and how that's
Speaker 1: worked out for them, and also how much money they
Speaker 1: had before they jumped on that, because while the idea
Speaker 1: sounds really interesting to me, whenever I actually start to
Speaker 1: think about it, I come to the conclusion that I
Speaker 1: just don't make enough money to make that kind of
Speaker 1: thing work out, at least not without becoming a drifter.
Speaker 1: And I'm not cool enough to be a drifter. And
Speaker 1: Video announced that is shifting toward liquid cooled graphics cards
Speaker 1: for data centers. So, in a data center, you've got
Speaker 1: hundreds or maybe even thousands of computers and they're all
Speaker 1: packed close together. These machines generate a lot of heat,
Speaker 1: particularly when they're working hard on processor intensive operations like
Speaker 1: really intense AI processes and electronics in general do not
Speaker 1: perform well in heat, so that means data centers have
Speaker 1: to rely heavily on cooling systems, typically air cooling systems,
Speaker 1: to bring operational temperatures down so that machines don't start
Speaker 1: failing left and right now. That in turn costs money
Speaker 1: and takes up a lot of space. So in Video's
Speaker 1: plan is to use water cooling technology, which is more
Speaker 1: energy efficient and takes up less space than air cooling tech,
Speaker 1: for their graphics cards for these data centers. The ideas
Speaker 1: that the data centers won't have to use quite as
Speaker 1: much energy to air cool the computers, though of course
Speaker 1: in videos, approach really just covers the graphics cards and
Speaker 1: not CPUs or other types of processors. Still, the move
Speaker 1: could end up saving energy and money, which are pretty
Speaker 1: good goals to shoot for. Finally, Superman will have to
Speaker 1: find another place to change when in New York City
Speaker 1: as he goes from mild mannered reporter to a man
Speaker 1: who can leap tall buildings in a single bound. And
Speaker 1: that's because New York has removed the lasked of its
Speaker 1: public pay phones this week. We are at the end
Speaker 1: of an era. Now, some of y'all might be asking,
Speaker 1: what the heck is a public pay phone? Well, young Padawan.
Speaker 1: In the old days before cell phones, cities would install
Speaker 1: public payphones as a type of convenience. You can walk
Speaker 1: right on up to one of these payphones, some of
Speaker 1: which were housed in booths, complete with a door that
Speaker 1: you could close to black out the sounds of the
Speaker 1: city and prevent nosey types from listening in. On your
Speaker 1: telephone call, you'd plunk in some coins and a coin
Speaker 1: slot and you would make your call. Long distance calls
Speaker 1: cost more, and you would have to plunk in more
Speaker 1: coins if your call ran along an operator would tell
Speaker 1: you that you need to add more coins if you
Speaker 1: wanted to continue the conversation, or you could call collect
Speaker 1: as we used to say, and the person on the
Speaker 1: other end of the line could choose to accept the
Speaker 1: charges and talk to you, or deny the charges, and
Speaker 1: you would be left there forlorn in a payphone with
Speaker 1: a dead receiver in your hand. Also, Superman could change
Speaker 1: in phone booths. Uh, I should mention, however, the pay
Speaker 1: phones that New York removed weren't actual phone booth payphones,
Speaker 1: so my Superman joke doesn't really work anyway, but I
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to include it. Back on track. Now
Speaker 1: that we are in an era where pretty much everyone
Speaker 1: has at least a cell phone, if not a smartphone,
Speaker 1: public payphones have become largely obsolete. New York has been
Speaker 1: replacing them with kiosks that include stuff like ports where
Speaker 1: you can charge your own phone, WiFi signals so you
Speaker 1: can connect via the kiosk, and an interface that lets
Speaker 1: you make calls over the kiosk itself free of charge.
Speaker 1: It's a very different world these days. Also slight tangent.
Speaker 1: This end of an era makes me a little sad
Speaker 1: because I remember an a r G in an alternate
Speaker 1: reality game in which players who solved clues would discover
Speaker 1: coordinates that would lead to a public payphone, and a
Speaker 1: phone call would come in on that public payphone at
Speaker 1: a particular time, So you would be prompted to go
Speaker 1: to this pay phone at a certain time so that
Speaker 1: you could receive a call. So you would go to
Speaker 1: that location, you'd stand by the phone, and sure enough
Speaker 1: it would ring and you would answer it and you
Speaker 1: would end up speaking with a character within the A
Speaker 1: r G. That kind of thing was super cool to me.
Speaker 1: I actually helped solve some of the clues that led
Speaker 1: to some of the phones, though I was never able
Speaker 1: to get to one of the phones at the specific time,
Speaker 1: which I really regret. I did listen to some of
Speaker 1: the recordings of the calls, and some of them were
Speaker 1: truly delightful and weird and um some of them cringe e,
Speaker 1: but lots of fun. Anyway, that approach has become less
Speaker 1: viable as more locations have eliminated public pay phones, so
Speaker 1: you're not likely to run into that kind of thing
Speaker 1: these days. Obviously, you could still have a r G
Speaker 1: S where you get calls on your own personal device,
Speaker 1: but that just you know, it doesn't get you out
Speaker 1: in the world. It doesn't make you feel more immersed
Speaker 1: the way this particular approach did. I just thought it
Speaker 1: was really cool idea. Anyway, that's it. That's the news
Speaker 1: for Tuesday, May twenty four, two thousand, twenty two. Hope
Speaker 1: you all are well. If you have any suggestions you
Speaker 1: would like for future episodes of tech Stuff, or any
Speaker 1: questions or anything like that, you have two ways to
Speaker 1: get in contact with the show. The first is you
Speaker 1: can use the I Heart radio app and UH and
Speaker 1: navigate to the Text Stuff profile on I Heart Radio's app,
Speaker 1: which is free to download, and there you will see
Speaker 1: a little microphone icon. If you touch that, you can
Speaker 1: record a voice message up to thirty seconds long, and
Speaker 1: only Tary and I can listen to it, and we
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Speaker 1: in touch with us is to use Twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: for the show is text Stuff h s W and
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