Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Be there
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: Diamond Executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech are you.
Speaker 1: It's time for the tech news for Thursday March sixteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, and we're back on the Big Topic
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty three AI, although artificial intelligence should really
Speaker 1: watch it's back because if more tech related financial institutions
Speaker 1: fail this year, I think there's going to be a
Speaker 1: new contender for the Big Topic of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: But this week open ai announced the release of GPT four.
Speaker 1: This is the large language model that is now multimodal.
Speaker 1: All right, let's break this down. So first of all,
Speaker 1: GPT stands for generative pre train transformer. The word transformer
Speaker 1: in this case doesn't refer to either a robot in
Speaker 1: disguise or the device that can step voltage up or
Speaker 1: down with alternating current. Instead, this kind of transformer is
Speaker 1: a type of machine learning model that Google first introduced
Speaker 1: back in twenty seventeen. The word generative indicates that it's
Speaker 1: capable of creating something generating something as for a multimodal
Speaker 1: that means this new version of GPT can accept different
Speaker 1: kinds of input prompts to create output. So previously GPT
Speaker 1: could only accept text, but now it can also accept images,
Speaker 1: and it can give analysis of those images or presumably
Speaker 1: incorporate those images into responses, like maybe you could ask
Speaker 1: GPT who is the person in this picture? Or how
Speaker 1: many elements are in this photograph? Or can you tell
Speaker 1: me a story about what is in this picture? That
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. GPT four also seriously ups the word
Speaker 1: count on its responses. So the previous version GPT three
Speaker 1: point five, that's the version that actually powers chat GPT,
Speaker 1: it could create a response of around three thousand words max.
Speaker 1: But GPT four can get positively low quacious and provide
Speaker 1: deep responses to queries that could go up to twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand words. So now we're getting into like Jonathan
Speaker 1: in a casual conversation level here text stuff episode. In
Speaker 1: other words, it's also apparently better at playing by the
Speaker 1: rules that open ai has set. That is, it is
Speaker 1: less likely than chat GPT three point five to respond
Speaker 1: to requests that would break policy, you know, stuff like
Speaker 1: generating hate speech or responding to requests to cause problems
Speaker 1: within a community, it is less likely to do that,
Speaker 1: not completely impervious to it, but it's better than the
Speaker 1: previous generations were. Developers will also have a lot more
Speaker 1: options when they use GPT as part of their apps.
Speaker 1: They can even shape how the AI will respond to
Speaker 1: a user. They can adjust stuff like the tone and
Speaker 1: the style of responses. So if you have something that's
Speaker 1: like a say, a fun and silly app that for
Speaker 1: some reason needs to tap into the power of GPT,
Speaker 1: you could adjust the tone to be more lighthearted and
Speaker 1: playful rather than stick with the standard tone and style
Speaker 1: of the normal response, which is what previous generations of
Speaker 1: GPT were stuck with. And in a demonstration, open Ai
Speaker 1: showed that GPT four can even do some pretty astonishing stuff,
Speaker 1: some advanced tasks. So, for example, you could write an
Speaker 1: idea for a basic website right like you're using a
Speaker 1: notepad and you're writing out your concept or your website.
Speaker 1: You can then feed that concept to GPT and it
Speaker 1: could actually create the website complete with basic functionality. So
Speaker 1: the example I saw had GPT produce a website based
Speaker 1: around jokes, so you would get the setup of the
Speaker 1: joke appearing as text and then to get the punchline,
Speaker 1: you would have to click on a little box that
Speaker 1: would reveal what the punchline was to the joke. And
Speaker 1: this was all prompted by some pretty simple notes about
Speaker 1: the parameters for this website. Like it wasn't copying the note,
Speaker 1: it was taking the notes as directions and then making
Speaker 1: the website based on those directions. That's pretty cool. Now,
Speaker 1: it still has a lot of the problems of earlier
Speaker 1: generations of GPT. Its responses can still be inaccurate and misleading.
Speaker 1: The common term I've seen in this are hallucinations, where
Speaker 1: the response ends up not being an accurate representation. It's
Speaker 1: a hallucination. I don't really like that term personally. I
Speaker 1: just I think it ends up kind of sugarcoating what
Speaker 1: we're actually talking about here, which is trustworthiness and accuracy
Speaker 1: and hallucination. I don't know, it seems a little too
Speaker 1: it seems like it's letting GPT off the hook a
Speaker 1: little too much. That's my own personal opinion. It's kind
Speaker 1: of similar to how I feel about Tesla and naming
Speaker 1: its driver assist feature full self driving. I don't think
Speaker 1: that is an accurate representation of what it actually does
Speaker 1: same sort of thing, right, Like names and words mean things,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you have to ask why are these words
Speaker 1: being used to describe this? Is it in an attempt
Speaker 1: to kind of take some pressure off. And that's just
Speaker 1: my own personal take on this. I could be way
Speaker 1: way off base. Anyway, it's still pretty cool. But obviously,
Speaker 1: if GPT produces information that is misleading or inaccurate, but
Speaker 1: the presentation is put across in such a way as
Speaker 1: to seem authentic, that's a real problem. And it could
Speaker 1: also still be used to do stuff like promote ideologies
Speaker 1: and create propaganda in ways that are perhaps not entirely ethical.
Speaker 1: So while the new features are really impressive, the challenges
Speaker 1: that we face with these kinds of AI models haven't
Speaker 1: magically been dismissed. They still very much exist. However, one
Speaker 1: issue that apparently we do not need to worry about
Speaker 1: is GPT for's ability to destroy us all. So I'm
Speaker 1: being a bit glib here, but Open Ai actually did
Speaker 1: allow an AI research group called the Alignment Research Center
Speaker 1: or ARC, to test the Large Language Model to make
Speaker 1: sure it doesn't show signs of being capable of starting
Speaker 1: the robot uprising and learning all of us into batteries
Speaker 1: or something Specifically, the AI group was looking into possibilities
Speaker 1: like the model's capacity to copy itself or to acquire resources,
Speaker 1: whether digital or real world or whatever, or maybe its
Speaker 1: ability to manipulate people with stuff like phishing attacks and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Also whether or not it can
Speaker 1: make high level plans and then maybe follow through on
Speaker 1: those plans. So this kind of gets into some of
Speaker 1: the scary stuff around AI that we typically think of
Speaker 1: as being science fiction, right, like Terminator style stuff. The
Speaker 1: thought of a sufficiently intelligent AI could be capable of
Speaker 1: escaping whatever constraints we try to put on it, because
Speaker 1: by definition, if it's super intelligent, then it's smarter than
Speaker 1: we are, right, So if it's smarter than we are,
Speaker 1: then there it stands to reason it would figure out
Speaker 1: a way to get out of whatever box we try
Speaker 1: to put it in, including the possibility of manipulating people
Speaker 1: to essentially set it free. There have been thought experiments
Speaker 1: that have shown this is entirely possible. The AI researchers
Speaker 1: concluded that GPT four doesn't measure up to this kind
Speaker 1: of dangerous AI, But then, as Ours Technica reports, there
Speaker 1: are scarce details on the nature of the tests that
Speaker 1: the research group actually conducted, so it's hard to judge
Speaker 1: whether or not their findings are trustworthy themselves. Also, I
Speaker 1: think we need to remind ourselves that whether or not
Speaker 1: AI poses an existential threat to humanity, we can acknowledge
Speaker 1: that AI contributes to real problems in the here and now. Now.
Speaker 1: Usually this comes as an unintended consequence, such as the
Speaker 1: inclusion of bias within a system that leads to one
Speaker 1: group of people being disproportionately affected by negative outcomes, facial
Speaker 1: recognition technologies being a great example of that, but it
Speaker 1: could also be included by design, right, someone could make
Speaker 1: an AI applicant designed to create harm in some way.
Speaker 1: The alignment part of Alignment Research Center refers to the
Speaker 1: goal of making sure that AI is in alignment or
Speaker 1: agreement with basic principles that are meant to benefit humanity.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. Bias can come into that sort
Speaker 1: of decision making process too, and you have to ask
Speaker 1: tough questions of who decides that criteria, who is it
Speaker 1: that's defining what is beneficial because believe me, there is
Speaker 1: not a universal or objective truth to what that actually
Speaker 1: even means. And even an effort to create an quote
Speaker 1: unquote aligned AI could result in one that benefits a
Speaker 1: small group at the expense of everyone else. Earlier this year,
Speaker 1: I mentioned that the Chinese megacompany by Do was hard
Speaker 1: at work on its own aipowered chatbot that it had
Speaker 1: called ernie Bot. Well earlier Today, by Do showed off
Speaker 1: ernie Bot, but did so with prerecorded videos in showing
Speaker 1: off its capabilities. Obviously, prerecorded videos can be fudged a
Speaker 1: little bit, so that brought some concern. It also didn't
Speaker 1: launch any sort of public access to the tool. It's
Speaker 1: keeping access very much limited. And dissatisfaction followed, and Bydu's
Speaker 1: stock shares dropped as much as ten percent initially, though
Speaker 1: that leveled off a little bit later, so the company
Speaker 1: only lost around three billion dollars in value. Yikes. Bydu
Speaker 1: seems to be taking a more measured approach to deploying
Speaker 1: its AI chatbot, which I actually argue is the responsible
Speaker 1: thing to do. We have seen numerous stories of how
Speaker 1: GPT has caused problems with premature deployments, such as homophobic
Speaker 1: jokes on the endless computer generated Seinfeld episode that's on Twitch.
Speaker 1: All way to creating a concern among teachers that their
Speaker 1: students could be using a chatbot to cheat on assignments,
Speaker 1: and more so, a more deliberate rollout seems like it's
Speaker 1: a good idea to me. But then I guess there's
Speaker 1: this perception that Baidu is trailing behind companies like Microsoft
Speaker 1: and Google, and there's this fear that it's not being competitive.
Speaker 1: I think not being competitive in this case also means
Speaker 1: you're sidestepping some potentially really troubling problems down the line.
Speaker 1: But I'm not an investor, So there you go. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more stories to cover, but before
Speaker 1: we get to that, let's take a quick break. We're back,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about TikTok. We've got a couple of
Speaker 1: stories about that. Again. The government of the United Kingdom
Speaker 1: is following the latest trend of banning TikTok on government
Speaker 1: owned devices, or at least it's considering that option. By
Speaker 1: the time you hear this podcast, the matter may have
Speaker 1: officially been decided, but as I was recording it, it
Speaker 1: was still something that was being considered, but we were
Speaker 1: expecting an announcement sometime today. The UK would follow in
Speaker 1: the footsteps of the United States, Canada, the Netherlands, the
Speaker 1: European Union in general, and several other countries if they
Speaker 1: were to do this, and yes, the heart of the
Speaker 1: matter is the security concerns of data potentially filtering to
Speaker 1: TikTok's Chinese owned parent company, Byte Dance, and by extension,
Speaker 1: to the Chinese government. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported
Speaker 1: that the United States could send TikTok and byte Dance
Speaker 1: and ultimatum, which is essentially, you must sever all ties
Speaker 1: between TikTok and bitte Dance. By Dance would have to
Speaker 1: spin off TikTok as an entirely independent company and not
Speaker 1: be the parent company anymore, or TikTok risks being banned nationwide.
Speaker 1: This echoes what former President Donald Trump tried to do
Speaker 1: a few years ago. He tried to force TikTok to
Speaker 1: divorce itself from its parent company and become a truly
Speaker 1: US organization. During Trump's presidency, the push was for TikTok
Speaker 1: to sell itself to some larger American company, but this
Speaker 1: never came to fruition, partly because TikTok argued in court
Speaker 1: that this directive from the president would violate a law
Speaker 1: called the Burman amendments that prevent presidents from using economic
Speaker 1: pressures to force international communications platforms from doing stuff. So essentially,
Speaker 1: they were saying this is against the law, and now
Speaker 1: we're seeing a similar push from the Biden administration. I'm
Speaker 1: not exactly sure how that same law wouldn't apply in
Speaker 1: this case, Like, I don't know that there's a new
Speaker 1: argument to be made if it's coming straight from the president. Anyway,
Speaker 1: TikTok reps argue that a massive one and a half
Speaker 1: billion dollar program meant to secure data in the US
Speaker 1: and to allow third party security companies a chance to
Speaker 1: monitor TikTok's operations to look for anything hinky going on.
Speaker 1: They're saying that's more than enough to solve the worries
Speaker 1: that TikTok is serving as a threat to national security.
Speaker 1: And then further, reps for TikTok have said that if
Speaker 1: by Dance did divest itself of TikTok, that wouldn't actually
Speaker 1: prevent the transmission of data from TikTok to China. I'm
Speaker 1: not entirely sure how all this tracks, but then I
Speaker 1: haven't been given a glimpse of all the details, so
Speaker 1: I doubt I would even understand all of it if
Speaker 1: I did, because this is wrapping into things like finance
Speaker 1: and trade more than the technology itself. Anyway, it looks
Speaker 1: like we're heading to an impass and I'm not entirely
Speaker 1: sure where it's going to go from there. But my
Speaker 1: guess is we're not going to see the pressure on
Speaker 1: TikTok going away anytime soon. Hey, y'all remember FTX, You know,
Speaker 1: the company that used to be the second largest crypto
Speaker 1: exchange in the world before word got out that the
Speaker 1: team behind it was practicing some creative accounting that you know,
Speaker 1: you might be able to look at another point of
Speaker 1: view and call it, you know, fraud. But more bad
Speaker 1: news has emerged about the company and its high profile
Speaker 1: co founder, Sam Bankman Freed aka SBF. So the new
Speaker 1: folks in charge of FTX, who are mostly going through
Speaker 1: the process of selling the company off for parts in
Speaker 1: order to return as much value to investors and customers
Speaker 1: as possible, have said that they have uncovered transfers that
Speaker 1: collectively amounted to around two point two billion dollars and
Speaker 1: that this money was sent to SBF through various means,
Speaker 1: primarily through Alameda Research, the hedge fund company that was
Speaker 1: you know Yen to ftx's yang. An additional billion seemed
Speaker 1: to be pulled from FTX to go to other key
Speaker 1: members of FTX, and yeah, Alameda Research handled those transfers,
Speaker 1: according to the new owners of T and that you know,
Speaker 1: it's been going on for a while. And I personally
Speaker 1: consider the report shocking but not surprising. By that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not at all surprised that SPF was trying to
Speaker 1: pull as much cash out as he could before FTX
Speaker 1: came crashing down. It is shocking exactly how much money
Speaker 1: that was, right like to pull out two point two
Speaker 1: billion dollars in various means as you're trying to salvage
Speaker 1: as much as you can from a ship that's sinking.
Speaker 1: Incredible Anyway. SPF is currently out on bail awaiting his trial, which,
Speaker 1: according to the current court schedule, will not begin until
Speaker 1: October this year because justice is super swift. The Verge
Speaker 1: has an article titled the Silicon Valley bank fallout is
Speaker 1: just beginning. It's a great article. You should go read
Speaker 1: it on the Verge and the articles mostly about how
Speaker 1: tech companies are trying to figure out where to go
Speaker 1: for word from here, what's the safest place to bank
Speaker 1: now that SVB has gone under, because if you remember,
Speaker 1: SVB was like a financial pillar for the tech industry.
Speaker 1: So this piece lays out the challenges that tech companies
Speaker 1: currently face, including how to mitigate risk while ensuring that
Speaker 1: tasks like making payroll aren't interrupted. Like you might argue, hey,
Speaker 1: it'd be really good to make sure you're depositing in
Speaker 1: different banks so that way you're not having all of
Speaker 1: your eggs in one basket, and if that basket goes
Speaker 1: belly up, you're still all right because you've got eggs
Speaker 1: and other baskets, right, Except that if you're trying to
Speaker 1: do things like pay out a large group of employees,
Speaker 1: having that money dispersed makes it much more difficult to
Speaker 1: do those kind of tasks. So that's the sort of
Speaker 1: challenges that tech companies are looking at. The piece also
Speaker 1: mentions that we're probably going to see a change in
Speaker 1: how startups are funded and how they operate, and part
Speaker 1: of me thinks that a reevaluation of startup culture is
Speaker 1: long overdue. I have often worried that the tendency for
Speaker 1: startups to launch without first creating a firm business plan,
Speaker 1: instead essentially having a desire to get acquired by some
Speaker 1: other company has really led to irresponsible behavior, and that
Speaker 1: this has gone unchecked for too long. This created too
Speaker 1: many companies that ultimately produced very little value. Right. You'll
Speaker 1: hear about a company like Google or Meta or Amazon
Speaker 1: scooping up some of these companies, and sometimes nothing really
Speaker 1: seems to come of it, right, and you're just like, well,
Speaker 1: what good did that startup due apart from make the
Speaker 1: founders rich? And then you see the founders go off
Speaker 1: and do the same thing again, where they'll start up
Speaker 1: a new company, perhaps one that also has very little
Speaker 1: business plan element to it, also with the hope that
Speaker 1: they are going to get scooped up by another company,
Speaker 1: and they do it again and again and again, because
Speaker 1: coming up with an idea that sounds attractive is way
Speaker 1: easier than making that idea work. And if you are
Speaker 1: good at selling ideas, you can just do a serial
Speaker 1: approach to create cool sounding idea, sell it off to
Speaker 1: someone else, rents, and repeat and by an island somewhere,
Speaker 1: I'm hoping that this represents a reality check moment where
Speaker 1: we will see a more thoughtful and careful approach to
Speaker 1: funding startups that might be a vain hope, because you know,
Speaker 1: historically investors have shown a really strong desire to get
Speaker 1: in on the thing that's possibly going to take the
Speaker 1: world by storm, so that you get so rich that
Speaker 1: you make Scrooge mcdock look like a pauper. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: article in The Verge is a good one again, it's
Speaker 1: called the Silicon Valley Bank fallout is just beginning. It
Speaker 1: also takes time to point out that the collapse of
Speaker 1: SVB was in large part the fault of some of
Speaker 1: the venture capitalist investors themselves. Like you had the leaders
Speaker 1: of big investment fund groups saying, hey, you should probably
Speaker 1: pull your money out of SVB because if you don't,
Speaker 1: someone else is going to do it, and then you
Speaker 1: won't be able to get your money, and so they
Speaker 1: ended up creating the very crisis that they were warning
Speaker 1: people about. So I think a lot of financial institutions
Speaker 1: may still view loans to the tech sector as being
Speaker 1: risky because the venture capital community have proven themselves to
Speaker 1: be self destructive. It's hard to trust in an industry
Speaker 1: when you see the tendency to act in self interest
Speaker 1: to the point where you harm everybody else. Very difficult
Speaker 1: to put your trust into that group. Okay, still have
Speaker 1: a few more stories to cover before I get to that.
Speaker 1: Let's another quick break, Okay. The Federal Trade Commission or FTC,
Speaker 1: has finalized its judgment against Epic Games regarding the company's
Speaker 1: practice of enticing or perhaps even fooling Fortnite players into
Speaker 1: making in game purchases through what the FTC calls dark patterns.
Speaker 1: So essentially, dark patterns refers to creating an interface that
Speaker 1: makes it really easy, far too easy, most would argue,
Speaker 1: for a player to make an in game purchase, perhaps
Speaker 1: without even knowing or understanding that it is a financial transaction.
Speaker 1: One of the ways the FTC argued Epic Games did
Speaker 1: this was that it ended up playing fast and loose
Speaker 1: with button inputs, so that you might have a button
Speaker 1: that normally has you back out of a menu option, right, Like,
Speaker 1: maybe you've had your menu UI set up so that
Speaker 1: when you hit B, you're backing out of that part
Speaker 1: of the menu and you go to a larger part.
Speaker 1: But then in a transaction, maybe you suddenly make B
Speaker 1: confirm instead of backout, and so people who are used
Speaker 1: to using bing and backout hit B, but now they've
Speaker 1: just made a payment, and that might not be something
Speaker 1: you could easily reverse or cancel out of, like maybe
Speaker 1: there's no confirmed feature. You just boom, you've done it.
Speaker 1: Another part of the problem is that a lot of
Speaker 1: the folks who are playing Fortnite are kids, So the
Speaker 1: FTC argued that Epic Games didn't include enough protections to
Speaker 1: prevent kids from making in game purchases without parental consent,
Speaker 1: so they just started racking up enormous charges on parents
Speaker 1: credit cards that were associated with the account, and if
Speaker 1: a player did go so far as to contact their
Speaker 1: credit card company to dispute charges, Epic Games would then
Speaker 1: lock that person's player account so they couldn't play the
Speaker 1: game anymore. So now the FTC is telling Epic Games
Speaker 1: to cough up two hundred forty five million dollars as punishment.
Speaker 1: The FTC plans to use that money to provide refunds
Speaker 1: to affected players. Plus, Epic will not be allowed to
Speaker 1: block people who dispute credit card charges anymore per the
Speaker 1: terms of this agreement. If you think you were affected
Speaker 1: by Epic Games practices. In other words, if you feel
Speaker 1: you were tricked into making a purchase on Fortnite and
Speaker 1: you are a US citizen, you can go to the
Speaker 1: website FTC dot gov slash fortnite that's foart n Ie,
Speaker 1: and you can fill in a little online form to
Speaker 1: start the refund process. South Korea and Samsung announced plans
Speaker 1: to build a truly enormous semiconductor manufacturing campus this week.
Speaker 1: It's one that Samsung is going to invest two hundred
Speaker 1: thirty billion dollars in two The effort will make South
Speaker 1: Korea much more competitive with Taiwan's TSMC as a semiconductor
Speaker 1: manufacturing company that's responsible for more than half of all
Speaker 1: the semiconductors used in advanced electronics today. It's also a
Speaker 1: move to create a better supply in a world that
Speaker 1: not so long ago was in a serious crunch due
Speaker 1: to many factors, in the big one being the COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen pandemic. Samsung was one of several companies hit hard
Speaker 1: by supply chain issues, and by investing in semiconductor manufacturing
Speaker 1: facilities within South Korea, there are hopes to head off
Speaker 1: future problems like what we saw on the recent past.
Speaker 1: This is not that different from what we're seeing here
Speaker 1: in the United States. The US government has poured billions
Speaker 1: of dollars or at least earmarked billions of dollars for
Speaker 1: similar investments here in the US again to try and
Speaker 1: alleviate some of these bottleneck points for supply chain issues
Speaker 1: in the future. Over in Japan, the US startup Lift
Speaker 1: Aircraft Incorporated held its first test flight of the Hexa
Speaker 1: flying car vehicle with an actual human being piloting it.
Speaker 1: So it was the first time it had a piloted
Speaker 1: test flight. So it looks like like an oversized quad
Speaker 1: copter that has a cockpit in it that can hold
Speaker 1: a single rider. Now, the plan is to have flying
Speaker 1: vehicles give rides to passengers in time for the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five Osaka Kansai Expo. And from what I read,
Speaker 1: it is a single seater vehicle, so I'm guessing that
Speaker 1: for passenger rides it must be either controlled remotely or
Speaker 1: possibly autonomous. I think remote control is far more realistic,
Speaker 1: but there's no way you would just hand over control
Speaker 1: of a flying car to some rando and then just
Speaker 1: say good luck out there. Anyway, this particular vehicle isn't
Speaker 1: meant for the long haul because according to Asahi dot Com,
Speaker 1: it can fly for about fifteen minutes, so you don't
Speaker 1: even get twenty minutes of travel out of this thing,
Speaker 1: so it's meant for very short distance as it travels
Speaker 1: at speeds top speeds at around one hundred kilometers per
Speaker 1: hour that's about sixty two miles per hour. Japan's Transport
Speaker 1: Ministry is now hashing out the regulations that lift aircraft
Speaker 1: and other vendors that are also planning similar services for
Speaker 1: this particular exhibit. These are going to be the rules
Speaker 1: that they'll have to follow, which is good because this
Speaker 1: is really one area where I don't want to see
Speaker 1: regulation trail too far behind the technological innovation. People's lives
Speaker 1: are involved here right, their lives and their safety and
Speaker 1: their health. I think that it's very good that there
Speaker 1: is serious work being done in the regulation side. Richard
Speaker 1: branson satellite launch company Virgin Orbit, has effectively closed up shop,
Speaker 1: at least for now. According to BBC News, Virgin Orbit
Speaker 1: has stopped all operations and put staff on furlough. This
Speaker 1: is in the wake of a failed launch attempt that
Speaker 1: happened off the coast of Ireland earlier this year. And
Speaker 1: by a launch attempt, I mean an actual attempt to
Speaker 1: launch a payload into orbit. I believe it was nine
Speaker 1: satellites in total that were part of this payload. So
Speaker 1: in early January, Virgin Orbit attempted to launch a launcher
Speaker 1: one rocket which rides on an aircraft, especially fit seven
Speaker 1: forty seven, and the seven forty seven reaches a certain altitude,
Speaker 1: then it deploys the launch vehicle, which ignites its engines,
Speaker 1: and then it goes from there. But something somewhere went wrong.
Speaker 1: So at the time, Virgin Orbit said the first stage
Speaker 1: rocket fired exactly as it was supposed to, it shut
Speaker 1: down exactly as it was supposed to, and the second
Speaker 1: stage ignited just like it was meant to. In fact,
Speaker 1: that initially Virgin Orbit said that the payload had even
Speaker 1: achieved orbit, but by the time you got to about
Speaker 1: half an hour after launch, they changed their tune. They
Speaker 1: said the payload failed to reach orbit, and there wasn't
Speaker 1: much information about why. Later on we heard that apparently
Speaker 1: an engine had overheated due to a filter becoming dislodged,
Speaker 1: so that was possibly the reason for the failure to
Speaker 1: reach orbit. Now, it's not unusual for young rocket companies
Speaker 1: to have problems like this, and we indicate that something
Speaker 1: isn't that difficult by saying, well, it's not rocket science.
Speaker 1: And the reason we do that is because rocket science
Speaker 1: is bloody difficult, so it should not come as a
Speaker 1: surprise that there will be failures. But whether you think
Speaker 1: of rocket science as being difficult or not, investors want
Speaker 1: results when you're talking about companies, and if you fail
Speaker 1: to provide good results, then the investors are more likely
Speaker 1: to bail on you, and that seems to be what happened.
Speaker 1: Virgin Orbit needed a real win back in January, and
Speaker 1: the launch failure hit the company really hard. Ours Tetnica
Speaker 1: predicted back in January that Virgin Orbit would face a
Speaker 1: potential existential crisis as a result of it, and now
Speaker 1: that crisis seems to have hit. And again this did
Speaker 1: not come as a surprise because it wasn't just Ours
Speaker 1: Tetnica predicting that Virgin Orbit was going to be in
Speaker 1: real trouble as a result of this failure. Multiple analysts
Speaker 1: had projected that at the rate that the company was
Speaker 1: burning through money, it would be out of business this month.
Speaker 1: And while we can't say that Virgin Orbit is really
Speaker 1: most sincerely dead, it certainly has a rough road ahead
Speaker 1: of it and if it wants to return to solvency, Finally,
Speaker 1: NASA and a company called Axiom showed off the stylish
Speaker 1: new moon suits yesterday. I've done full episodes about the
Speaker 1: evolution of the space suit, including discussions about the differences
Speaker 1: between astronaut and cosmonaut suits. While space suits have evolved
Speaker 1: over time, for the most part, changes have been small iterations.
Speaker 1: But these new suits have a lot of improvements and
Speaker 1: more significant changes than earlier models. For one thing, they've
Speaker 1: got a lot more joints in them, as in joints
Speaker 1: that allow for movement, not you know, for twenty just blaze,
Speaker 1: and these allow for greater freedom of movement when you're
Speaker 1: galumping across the surface of the Moon, so you can
Speaker 1: do things like crouch and squat, you know, important stuff
Speaker 1: when you're playing a first person shooter. Also important stuff
Speaker 1: if you're doing things like doing science on the Moon.
Speaker 1: So yeah, astronauts are going to have a lot more
Speaker 1: freedom of movement while they're wearing these suits. Another big
Speaker 1: change is that previous suits required you to get into
Speaker 1: a lower half first, so it's like you're putting on
Speaker 1: a pair of space pants. Then you had the upper
Speaker 1: half attached to you, and they would attach to the
Speaker 1: lower half and create a seal. But yeah, the suits
Speaker 1: were in two pieces, right, a lower in an upper half.
Speaker 1: These new suits don't do that. Instead, they have an
Speaker 1: entrance through the back, so you open up the back,
Speaker 1: you get in, you get zipped up, essentially like you're
Speaker 1: secured by your team, and then you're wearing your own
Speaker 1: little space onesie that way. It's not little. I don't
Speaker 1: know why I said little. These are big suits. They
Speaker 1: also come equipped with some cool stuff like HD cameras,
Speaker 1: so you can get that awesome high definition point of
Speaker 1: view shot while someone's walking across the Moon. They have
Speaker 1: also improved thermal insulation so that astronauts are going to
Speaker 1: be able to wander the Chili regions of the South Pole.
Speaker 1: That's the area that NASA has identified as the potential
Speaker 1: site for a long term space colony type thing or
Speaker 1: a moon base, and it's important to have that kind
Speaker 1: of insulation if you don't want to freeze your tootsies off.
Speaker 1: They are officially called the Axia Extra Vehicular Mobility Unit
Speaker 1: or AXIMU for short. The versions NASA showed off had
Speaker 1: this dark gray cover on them, but when used by
Speaker 1: the astronauts, they will be white space suits and Interestingly,
Speaker 1: NASA will not own these suits. They're not purchasing the suits. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a lunar tuck's rental. NASA will
Speaker 1: go to Axiom and rent space suits for missions starting
Speaker 1: with the planned lunar landing that right now aims to
Speaker 1: return people to the Moon's surface by twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Side note, I remain a little pessimistic about that timeline.
Speaker 1: I think twenty twenty five is probably a doubt we're
Speaker 1: going to make that, but I hope I'm wrong. It
Speaker 1: would be great If I am, I will not be
Speaker 1: upset at all if we do manage to get back
Speaker 1: to the Moon by twenty twenty five. I think that's
Speaker 1: a very exciting prospect. I think it's a very inspiring thing.
Speaker 1: It gets people, especially kids, really excited about space and
Speaker 1: science and engineering, and that's always wonderful. Not to mention,
Speaker 1: we stand a chance to learn more, which is always cool.
Speaker 1: And to this day this is true. I find when
Speaker 1: I look up at the Moon, inevitably I just sit
Speaker 1: there and marvel at the fact that we put people
Speaker 1: up there. We put humans on the surface of the Moon.
Speaker 1: They walked around on the Moon, they played golf, on
Speaker 1: the Moon. Then we were able to get those same
Speaker 1: people back home to Earth safely. And then Noel Brown
Speaker 1: goes and says, yeah, but Stanley Kubrick shot the whole
Speaker 1: thing on a sound stage and I lose my ever
Speaker 1: love in mind. Y'all. This sounds like a joke, but
Speaker 1: it happened repeatedly this past weekend. When I was in Austin,
Speaker 1: Texas for South By Southwest, I would tell this story
Speaker 1: about finding the moon really inspirational and they'd say, yeah.
Speaker 1: I was just talking to Noel about conspiracy theories, and
Speaker 1: it took everything in my body not to lay into Knoll.
Speaker 1: Of course, I went Null's the sweetest person in the world,
Speaker 1: but man, I was going bonkers by the end. All right,
Speaker 1: enough of all that. That's the news for Thursday, March sixteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three. I hope you are all well. If
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for future topics of tech stuff,
Speaker 1: please reach out to me. You can do that by
Speaker 1: going over onto Twitter and tweet at tech stuff hsw
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Speaker 1: into the little search bar, it'll take you to the
Speaker 1: tech stuff page. You can click on the little microphone
Speaker 1: icon and leave a voice message up for thirty seconds
Speaker 1: and like, let me know what you'd like to hear
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tex Stuff
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