Speaker 1: Welcome to tex 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 how the tech are you. It's time for the
Speaker 1: tech news for Thursday, June twenty twenty two. Let's get
Speaker 1: to it here. In the United States, Senator Elizabeth Warren
Speaker 1: has introduced the Health and Location Protection Act. This proposed legislation,
Speaker 1: if it's passed into law, would place tight restrictions on
Speaker 1: companies regarding user location and health data. As it stands,
Speaker 1: Warrent argues, data brokers can buy and sell that kind
Speaker 1: of information, which obviously compromises people's privacy. And in light
Speaker 1: of the expected Supreme Court decision to overturn Row versus Wade,
Speaker 1: there's also a concern women who live in states that
Speaker 1: outlaw abortion might be persecuted should they seek an abortion
Speaker 1: in another part of the country. In fact, some states
Speaker 1: might consider passing laws that would make it illegal for
Speaker 1: citizens to leave the state in order to get an abortion,
Speaker 1: which is a complicated topic. It would undoubtedly face multiple
Speaker 1: tests in court, but in the meantime, Senator Warren is
Speaker 1: concerned that people will be struggling while the political system
Speaker 1: actually hashes everything out. So part of the impetus for
Speaker 1: this legislation is the desire to protect those who need
Speaker 1: to travel in order to seek out a medical procedure
Speaker 1: that would otherwise be illegal for them. But generally speaking,
Speaker 1: there's been a need for better protections for data for
Speaker 1: a very long time for US citizens. We've seen other
Speaker 1: parts of the world, notably the European Union past broad
Speaker 1: legislation aimed at protecting citizen data, but here in the
Speaker 1: US that really hasn't been a thing, at least not
Speaker 1: at the federal level. Warren's proposal would give the FTC
Speaker 1: the power to enforce rules regarding location and health data,
Speaker 1: and it would also give citizens a path to sue
Speaker 1: data brokers that are found to violate that law. Of course,
Speaker 1: a lot has to happen before a proposal becomes law,
Speaker 1: so there's no guarantee that this will actually get to
Speaker 1: a point where you know, we can rely on it.
Speaker 1: We'll have to see. While we're on the subject of
Speaker 1: data brokers and user privacy, let's talk about a change
Speaker 1: that Firefox has made recently. The browser has been employing
Speaker 1: numerous protective features for several years now, back in Tighten
Speaker 1: it launched the Enhanced Tracking Protection or e t P feature,
Speaker 1: and initially that was an option you could activate, but
Speaker 1: Firefox later would turn it on by default. ETP blocks
Speaker 1: web cookies from known trackers. These are entities that attempt
Speaker 1: to track user brow your behavior from site to site
Speaker 1: in an effort to build out dossiers on those users,
Speaker 1: typically so that the tracker can then sell that data
Speaker 1: to data brokers, and they in turn typically sell the
Speaker 1: information advertisers. Of course, there are a lot of other
Speaker 1: things that can happen with your data, most of them
Speaker 1: are not good. But the most recent feature that Firefox
Speaker 1: has turned on by default is one that protects against
Speaker 1: cross site tracking. That means this feature prevents cookies from
Speaker 1: tracking where you came from and where you're going to
Speaker 1: across different sites, and it's called total cookie protection. The
Speaker 1: concept is that each website cookie will be siloed from
Speaker 1: everything else. In fact, bleeping computer dot com has a
Speaker 1: great way of putting this that each websites cookies will
Speaker 1: be kept in that website's own cookie jar and they
Speaker 1: won't mix with the other websites, so you'll still be
Speaker 1: able to take advantage of what cookies can offer on
Speaker 1: an individual site. So for example, uh, it could keep
Speaker 1: your browsing history on a specific site, like a shopping site,
Speaker 1: so that way you can easily navigate to stuff that
Speaker 1: you had shown interest in, or it might keep you
Speaker 1: logged into a site between sessions. Those are useful things.
Speaker 1: So cookies are not all bad, but it will prevent
Speaker 1: trackers from being able to build a browsing profile or
Speaker 1: fingerprint on you. So this has led to some people
Speaker 1: declaring Firefox as being the most secure browser when it
Speaker 1: comes to user data, that there are the most protections
Speaker 1: in place, many of them on by default that will
Speaker 1: prevent your data from falling into the wrong hands, especially
Speaker 1: without your knowledge, because a lot of that stuff happens
Speaker 1: without us necessarily being aware of it. I don't often
Speaker 1: talk about benchmark tests on this show, but I've got
Speaker 1: a couple of stories that relate to them today. So
Speaker 1: a benchmark test is one in which the test administrator
Speaker 1: puts whatever technology it happens to be through a series
Speaker 1: of tasks to measure it's actual output. Because sometimes actual
Speaker 1: output and what was, you know, theoretically possible on paper
Speaker 1: are two very different things. So Our first benchmark story
Speaker 1: is about Apple's mto processor. Apple had been relying on
Speaker 1: Intel up until a couple of years ago to provide
Speaker 1: the processors for Apple's computers. But now the second generation
Speaker 1: of Apple's own processor, the M two UH, is out,
Speaker 1: and the tests say that the new one is twelve
Speaker 1: percent faster than the M one processor in the same
Speaker 1: sort of machine if it's used in a single core
Speaker 1: processor mode, but when used in multi core functions, the
Speaker 1: M two processor is twenty percent faster. That's actually even
Speaker 1: better than what Apple was saying. And it's w w
Speaker 1: d C presentation about its upcoming computers it had more
Speaker 1: conservatively placed the M two as being eighteen percent faster
Speaker 1: than the M one, So this is really good news
Speaker 1: for folks rely on Apple machines. Now we just have
Speaker 1: to hope that Worth's law doesn't muck things up. And
Speaker 1: in case you're unfamiliar, Worth's law is actually a kind
Speaker 1: of a cheeky observation that says software is getting slower
Speaker 1: at a rate that outpaces how computers are getting faster.
Speaker 1: Essentially that programmers, when they're given the leverage of better hardware,
Speaker 1: end up making even more bloated software. The other benchmark
Speaker 1: test story I wanted to cover is about Samsung and
Speaker 1: it's television's Vincent Teo of h D TV Test discovered
Speaker 1: that the s nine five b q d O led
Speaker 1: TV that he was testing in gosh, I just I
Speaker 1: love model names, don't you. It's so easy anyway, that
Speaker 1: this particular television he was testing was acting a little peculiar.
Speaker 1: You see, Typically, the way that test administrators check on
Speaker 1: televisions is that they create a test window that only
Speaker 1: takes up a certain percentage age of the full screen
Speaker 1: of the television. You know, they're focusing on a sector
Speaker 1: of the TV screen in order to do their tests,
Speaker 1: and the typical test uses ten percent of a television screen.
Speaker 1: These tests tend to measure everything from luminosity as in
Speaker 1: how bright the images can get, to contrast which is
Speaker 1: the range of colors between true black and true white,
Speaker 1: and resolution, among other things. Teo documented that the Samsung
Speaker 1: TV he tested appeared to be boosting performance within the
Speaker 1: test area, which meant that the television was inflating its score.
Speaker 1: It was cheating, in other words, was using an algorithm
Speaker 1: to give unrealistic results that could not be replicated on
Speaker 1: the television as a whole. This actually reminds me of
Speaker 1: Diesel gait, which was the Volkswagen scandal from a few
Speaker 1: years ago, if case you don't remember that. In that scandal,
Speaker 1: people discovered that several diesel powered Volkswagen models would switch
Speaker 1: into kind of a low emissions mode when the car's
Speaker 1: computer system detected that the car was being tested for emissions,
Speaker 1: But then once it was disconnected from the test system,
Speaker 1: the car would then switch into a performance mode, presumably
Speaker 1: one that would not have passed the emissions test because
Speaker 1: it was going to create more emissions, it was going
Speaker 1: to output more power. Well, Samsung sounds like it was
Speaker 1: doing something similar, and when tested, the television would send
Speaker 1: more power to that little test region to boost stuff
Speaker 1: like luminosity, But it wouldn't be able to do that
Speaker 1: for the television screen as a whole, at least not
Speaker 1: sustainably without risking damaging the TV itself. Teo and others
Speaker 1: found that by using a non standard test window, one
Speaker 1: that didn't take up ten percent of the screen, say
Speaker 1: just nine of the screen, that the television would perform
Speaker 1: and its normal pacity, and that this the so called
Speaker 1: cheating algorithm, would be foiled. So Samsung came under fire
Speaker 1: for trying to fudge its television benchmarks, at least allegedly
Speaker 1: trying to do that. The company's response has not exactly
Speaker 1: been an admission of wrongdoing. Rather, when responding to a
Speaker 1: query posted by flat Panels h D, the company repped
Speaker 1: from Samsung wrote quote, to provide a more dynamic viewing
Speaker 1: experience for the consumers, Samsung will provide a software update
Speaker 1: that ensures consistent brightness of HDR contents across a wider
Speaker 1: range of windows size beyond the industry standard end quote.
Speaker 1: Now what they're saying is, oh, we didn't account for
Speaker 1: people using other sizes besides ten percent window because that standard.
Speaker 1: So we're just gonna update this so that when you
Speaker 1: do your test window, no matter what the sizes, you're
Speaker 1: gonna get the right results. It kind of sounds like
Speaker 1: they're updating the cheating algorithm, as flat Panels a D
Speaker 1: called it, in order to fool any kind of test.
Speaker 1: But you know, maybe maybe that's just a misinterpretation on
Speaker 1: my part. You know, we'll have to wait and see
Speaker 1: if there's any follow up to this, and you know,
Speaker 1: if if it turns out that the whole TV screen
Speaker 1: actually is capable of the same things that the benchmark
Speaker 1: tests were saying. There's a moot point, but flat panels,
Speaker 1: HD and others have suggested that according to their tests,
Speaker 1: that just wasn't what they were seeing. So we'll have
Speaker 1: to see if this story develops. We have some more
Speaker 1: stories for today. Before we get to those, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. We're back. It's time to get boring. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Boring Company, which if you weren't familiar, is an
Speaker 1: Elon musk Endeavor, has received the go ahead to day
Speaker 1: more tunnels beneath the city of Las Vegas, Nevada. So
Speaker 1: the Boring Company previously built a tunnel system under the
Speaker 1: Las Vegas Convention Center with the goal of making it
Speaker 1: easier to get across the lvc C during busy conferences
Speaker 1: like C s now way back in the day. In
Speaker 1: the earliest days of the Boring Company, we largely associated
Speaker 1: the idea of the Boring Company with the idea of
Speaker 1: the hyper loop transportation system. But these days that vision
Speaker 1: has been whittled back to essentially underground roads, at least
Speaker 1: in the case of the Las Vegas Convention Center, because
Speaker 1: they're rather than having passengers and cars moved through tunnels
Speaker 1: on trains or even on sleds within tunnels where much
Speaker 1: of the air has been pumped out in order to
Speaker 1: reduce air resistance and increase the rate of travel. Instead,
Speaker 1: passengers hop into human driven Tesla vehicles. So really it's
Speaker 1: ride hailing, but underground and with only Tesla vehicles driven
Speaker 1: by humans. So this isn't even that first compromised vision
Speaker 1: where we went from the hyperloop train to a moving sled,
Speaker 1: so that you would drive your vehicle onto a sled
Speaker 1: which would then take you and your vehicle to wherever
Speaker 1: it was you wanted to go. Instead, this is just
Speaker 1: getting into a vehicle and writing to a stop, at
Speaker 1: least at the convention center. I don't know that that's
Speaker 1: how it's going to be for Las Vegas as a whole,
Speaker 1: but the City of Las Vegas has approved the boring
Speaker 1: company's plan to dig a system that will spend nearly
Speaker 1: thirty miles and will include more than fifty stops on it.
Speaker 1: And maybe that system will incorporate the sled devices we
Speaker 1: heard about in the past, or maybe it'll just be
Speaker 1: an underground road system that adds more traffic to Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: Is just traffic that's happening underneath the city. Many critics
Speaker 1: have argued that an alternative like a train system would
Speaker 1: have been a much better option. But I suppose we're
Speaker 1: just gonna have to wait to find out like it's
Speaker 1: Once it happens, we'll be able to say more clearly
Speaker 1: if it was a success or not. Of course, by
Speaker 1: then it might be too late. But who knows. Maybe
Speaker 1: the tunnels will be really effective. I'm a little skeptical,
Speaker 1: but I hope that I'm proven wrong. The Washington Post
Speaker 1: recently published an article about how the US National Highway
Speaker 1: Traffic Safety Administration, or n h t s A, released
Speaker 1: a report showing that within the last year or so,
Speaker 1: Tesla vehicles in autopilot mode have been involved in two
Speaker 1: hundred seventy three crashes. That's a lot more than had
Speaker 1: been previously reported, and according to the nh t s A,
Speaker 1: Tesla vehicles made up almost seventy percent of all crashes
Speaker 1: that happened while a vehicle was operating in an advanced
Speaker 1: driver assistance mode, which is what we would call Tesla's
Speaker 1: autopilot system. Now, I want to walk through a few
Speaker 1: things before we really draw any conclusions. Y'all know, I
Speaker 1: am not a big fan of Tesla the company, but
Speaker 1: I think it's only fair that we really consider all
Speaker 1: the different factors before we just say, oh, that means
Speaker 1: Tesla vehicles are inherently unsafe. I don't think that's a
Speaker 1: fair conclusion, because one is that you know, of all
Speaker 1: accidents in driver assistance mode being Tesla vehicles. That is huge,
Speaker 1: you know, saying that nearly three quarters of all vehicles
Speaker 1: that are involved in crashes, all vehicles that were in
Speaker 1: advanced driver assistance mode while being involved in crashes are Tesla's.
Speaker 1: That does paint a bad picture. But does that actually
Speaker 1: mean that Tesla system is inherently more dangerous than any
Speaker 1: other manufacturers system. Not necessarily, because to draw that conclusion
Speaker 1: we would need a lot more data. For example, you know,
Speaker 1: Tesla is a really popular car model that has those
Speaker 1: sorts of features. Not every car has advanced driver assistant features, right,
Speaker 1: So you would first need to know what percentage of
Speaker 1: the overall market of vehicles with these features does Tesla occupy, right,
Speaker 1: Because if Tesla has of the cars with these features
Speaker 1: on the road, but only accounts for seventy of accidents
Speaker 1: involved with these features, enabled. That's different than saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Tesla makes up of the market. Right. You have to
Speaker 1: know all these things in order to be able to
Speaker 1: draw some conclusions. Tesla maintains that its systems reduced the
Speaker 1: likelihood of crashes, and it could be that Tesla's driver
Speaker 1: assistance features have actually prevented way more accidents than otherwise
Speaker 1: would have happened. So like, there's no way for us
Speaker 1: to know that, right. We can't look back and say
Speaker 1: how many accidents didn't happen because of autopilot. It could
Speaker 1: be that if autopilot had not been a factor, lots
Speaker 1: more people would have been in a lot more accidents.
Speaker 1: It's impossible for us to say. So. Again, we can't
Speaker 1: draw firm conclusions because we lack the data to be
Speaker 1: able to do it. One other thing I did find interesting.
Speaker 1: According to the Washington Post, regulators discus heard that Tesla's
Speaker 1: autopilot system would automatically shut off a second before impact
Speaker 1: when the system detected an imminent crash. So the implication
Speaker 1: there is that Tesla may have built in kind of
Speaker 1: a plausible deniability switch that technically, when a Tesla vehicle
Speaker 1: gets in a crash, autopilot wasn't in charge because autopilot
Speaker 1: shut off a second before the truck the crash actually happened. However,
Speaker 1: the nh T s A accounted for this by demanding
Speaker 1: data for any accident that happened within thirty seconds of
Speaker 1: an advanced driver assistant system being active. So you couldn't
Speaker 1: ignore those cases. Right, if the autopilot shut off one
Speaker 1: second before an accident, that would still qualify for the
Speaker 1: nh T s A. UH and a thirty second gap
Speaker 1: is long enough where you could reasonably say, well, the
Speaker 1: auto pilot system or whatever the driver assist system was
Speaker 1: couldn't have been responsible because there was a long enough
Speaker 1: gap there between when it was on and when it
Speaker 1: was switched off. So it had to be you know,
Speaker 1: human responsibility, not not machine responsibility. So that was how
Speaker 1: the nh T s A kind of got around that issue. Now,
Speaker 1: this information about these accidents have prompted some lawmakers to
Speaker 1: say they need to look more closely at this sort
Speaker 1: of technology, and that does make sense. I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone is going so far as to say these features
Speaker 1: are a bad idea, but rather that the implementation and
Speaker 1: deployment can put people at risk, particularly if people rely
Speaker 1: too heavily on systems that are meant to assist, but
Speaker 1: not replace, human attention and action. And now for a
Speaker 1: couple of stories about censorship the web, misinformation abuse, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And first up is Turkey, which may
Speaker 1: soon pass a law that will make it illegal to
Speaker 1: read fake news and misinformation on the Internet, primarily targeting
Speaker 1: social media companies. And here's where things get really tricky.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, yes, misinformation is a very
Speaker 1: real and global problem. We frequently talk about it on
Speaker 1: this show, and there are countries all around the world
Speaker 1: grappling with ways to hold platforms accountable for how they
Speaker 1: respond to reports of misinformation. I myself am in favor
Speaker 1: of measures that can detect and respond to misinformation. That
Speaker 1: being said, we also have to remember that you always
Speaker 1: have to ask the question who determines what is and
Speaker 1: isn't misinformation? Because in Turkey that falls to a government
Speaker 1: that has for years cracked down on various communications platforms
Speaker 1: in an authoritarian approach to control the narrative. Now, this
Speaker 1: is the sort of scenario that free speech absolutists often cite,
Speaker 1: that any frictions on speech are going to be dictated
Speaker 1: by an authority, and that authority might not have your
Speaker 1: best interests at heart. So therefore restrictions on free speech
Speaker 1: are bad and certainly, should this proposed legislation become law
Speaker 1: and Turkey, I expect the government will use it as
Speaker 1: a justification to censor any voices that oppose that government
Speaker 1: in any meaningful way. However, we also have seen the
Speaker 1: incredible harm that misinformation campaigns can cause, and shrugging your
Speaker 1: shoulders and saying well, people just need to make up
Speaker 1: their own minds, as Zuckerberg once said, that absolutely ignores
Speaker 1: the truckloads of evidence we have gathered about how things
Speaker 1: like echo chambers can help radicalize people. Anyway, long story short,
Speaker 1: I am concerned about this law, although I also think
Speaker 1: the Turkish government has effectively been censoring stuff online for years,
Speaker 1: so in a way you could just say that this is,
Speaker 1: you know, just a formality, and I, you know, I
Speaker 1: also struggle with this. This is a complicated issue where
Speaker 1: I definitely want to see misinformation get pushed back, but
Speaker 1: at the same time you have to worry about who's
Speaker 1: doing the pushing. Meanwhile, over in Japan, there's a new
Speaker 1: punishment for people who are found guilty of insulting someone online.
Speaker 1: And first, by insulting, I mean insulting with the intent
Speaker 1: to harm someone. So presumably the way Ben Bolan and
Speaker 1: I insult each other would not qualify, because actually we
Speaker 1: like each other, we're friendly with one another, but we
Speaker 1: do insult each other on occasion. Secondly, I need to
Speaker 1: say this isn't a new law. Instead, it's more of
Speaker 1: an expansion of an existing law that's meant to deter
Speaker 1: people from insulting each other and for those insults to
Speaker 1: ultimately cause harm. So this expansion means that now if
Speaker 1: you were found guilty of insulting someone with the intent
Speaker 1: to harm that person, you can face up to a
Speaker 1: year are in jail. Yikes. Now, there's already a plan
Speaker 1: in place to revisit this law in three years, to
Speaker 1: review it to see what kind of impact it has
Speaker 1: on free speech versus civility. So it's possible that in
Speaker 1: the future Japan will remove the jail time sentence. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta be careful who you call baca, y'all. All right,
Speaker 1: we've got a couple more news stories to go before
Speaker 1: we get to that. Let's take another quick break. We're
Speaker 1: back so some so nos customers got a little more
Speaker 1: than what they bargained for, literally after they ordered products
Speaker 1: from the company. So in a few cases, so nos
Speaker 1: Is ordering system accidentally sent some customers extra products. So,
Speaker 1: in one case reported on by the Verge, a customer
Speaker 1: who ordered like six different things from so Nos ended
Speaker 1: up receiving six of each of those items. Also, Sonas
Speaker 1: charged people for the extra stuff it's sent. So this
Speaker 1: isn't a case of so no Nos makes an error
Speaker 1: in your favor or anything like that. That's not like
Speaker 1: Sonas made uh an accidental mistake and as a result
Speaker 1: charged you for one stereo system but sent you six. No,
Speaker 1: it's more like it charged you for all six of those.
Speaker 1: The company said that the system update it recently had
Speaker 1: on its internal systems accidentally caused quote some orders being
Speaker 1: processed multiple times end quote. Sonas has said it will
Speaker 1: refund customers their money, which I mean, of course sons
Speaker 1: is going to refund customers their money. They have to
Speaker 1: do that because otherwise they would be breaking a federal
Speaker 1: law that says you cannot charge customers for products that
Speaker 1: they didn't order. Now, according to the Verge, for that
Speaker 1: poor soul who ended up with more than thirty boxes
Speaker 1: of stuff. It gets more complicated because so Nos, according
Speaker 1: to the customer who was not named, Sons, has said
Speaker 1: it will not issue a refund until it receives all
Speaker 1: of the products that it accidentally sent out, which come
Speaker 1: on so NOS. I mean, I understand wanting to get
Speaker 1: the product back because that is a real cost to
Speaker 1: the company. But this was so nos Is mistake. It
Speaker 1: was not the customer's mistake, and it sounds to me
Speaker 1: like the burden of getting everything set right is falling
Speaker 1: more on the victim of this rather than the company
Speaker 1: that made the dumb mistake to begin with. So this
Speaker 1: is me officially wagging my finger at you, Sons. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you can hear it. It's good audio. Finally,
Speaker 1: you might have seen some news reports saying that Chinese
Speaker 1: scientists thought they had detected radio signals that may have
Speaker 1: come from aliens using a telescope RAO telescope called fast
Speaker 1: f A s T, and that initial report, which originally
Speaker 1: published on state sponsored media in China, has subsequently been
Speaker 1: removed from said media source, so it's no longer up there. Secondly,
Speaker 1: before we start flipping out that we've picked up I
Speaker 1: don't know, TV signals from Alpha Centauri or something. We
Speaker 1: need to employ some critical thinking. Radio antenna often pick
Speaker 1: up odd signals. Sometimes those radio signals are extraterrestrial in nature,
Speaker 1: but by that I mean the radio signals originated somewhere
Speaker 1: other than here on Earth. And there is a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff out in space that generates radio waves. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's why we have radio telescopes, is to you know,
Speaker 1: measure those kind of things and learn more about our galaxy.
Speaker 1: It's a natural phenomenon. In other words, it's not being
Speaker 1: generated by an intelligent species out there. And several scientists
Speaker 1: have already said that what this Chinese group most likely
Speaker 1: detected was radio frequency interference or r f I, and
Speaker 1: that was actually something the scientists themselves said was a possibility.
Speaker 1: So our i f I is just that's just radio
Speaker 1: frequency interference that comes from Earth. It's something that all
Speaker 1: radio observatories have to take into account. That's why a
Speaker 1: lot of radio observatories, most of them in fact, are
Speaker 1: located in pretty remote areas where they're far enough out
Speaker 1: from sources of radio frequencies that though that doesn't end up,
Speaker 1: you know, interference isn't as big a concern. But that's
Speaker 1: certainly something that does happen. And if we employ Acam's
Speaker 1: razor here, which is where we say, if you've got
Speaker 1: more than one potential explanation for something, it's best to
Speaker 1: go with the simplest explanation or the one that requires
Speaker 1: the fewest unproven assumptions. You know, if if you feel
Speaker 1: a cool breeze in your house, you could think, well,
Speaker 1: I might have a window open. You know, there could
Speaker 1: be a draft here, or maybe it's a ghost. Well, drafts,
Speaker 1: you know, that's something we know that exists. It really
Speaker 1: does exist. We we are aware of it. Ghosts are
Speaker 1: unproven to exist, So it makes way more sense to
Speaker 1: assume that it is a draft, like maybe there's a
Speaker 1: crack in the wall, or maybe there's a window or
Speaker 1: door open or something. Then it makes sense to say, oh,
Speaker 1: it's old Aunt Bertha and she has unfinished business here
Speaker 1: on this plane. So if you detect strange radio signals
Speaker 1: and your conclusion is that it could either be aliens
Speaker 1: or it's radio interference, then r if I is the
Speaker 1: simplest solution. We know rf I is a thing, we
Speaker 1: encounter it all the time. It's far more likely that
Speaker 1: we're picking up radio signals from here on Earth then
Speaker 1: picking up some sort of radio signal of alien origin.
Speaker 1: For us to conclude that the signal actually is alien,
Speaker 1: we would need some sort of incredibly convincing proof, proof
Speaker 1: that secured our confidence that it could not have originated
Speaker 1: as our fi. You've probably heard the saying extraordinary claims
Speaker 1: require extraordinary evidence. This is one of those cases. So
Speaker 1: while I would love to say we picked up evidence
Speaker 1: that there are alien intelligences out there that communicate via radio,
Speaker 1: it's too too early to have said that. It is
Speaker 1: uh an incredibly unlikely that that is what the Chinese
Speaker 1: radio telescope picked up. So sad to burst that bubble
Speaker 1: because I would. I would also love to find out
Speaker 1: we're not alone out here. I don't think we are alone,
Speaker 1: by the way. I just also happen to know. Space
Speaker 1: is so large that the odd of us picking up
Speaker 1: radio signals from another intelligent species are just incredibly low,
Speaker 1: because if that intelligent species is on the other side
Speaker 1: of the galaxy, it will take hundreds of years for
Speaker 1: any signal to make its way over to a point
Speaker 1: where we can detect it. So the odds are very
Speaker 1: much low for that to happen. All right, that's it
Speaker 1: for the tech News for Thursday, June two thousand twenty two.
Speaker 1: If you have anything you would like to send me,
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a suggestion for a future episode, maybe it's
Speaker 1: commentary about aliens. Who knows. Then you can do that
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Speaker 1: launch an episode or answer a question, but I won't
Speaker 1: actually use the audio within an episode. The other way,
Speaker 1: of course, is just to send me a message on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,