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'm an executive producer with iHeart Radio. And
Speaker 1: how the tech are you. It's time for the tech
Speaker 1: news for a Thursday, December one, two thousand twenty two.
Speaker 1: Where did the year go? Yet again? I at the
Speaker 1: end of a year. I feel like the previous year
Speaker 1: both lasted an eternity and was over in the blink
Speaker 1: of an eye. I don't know how that is possible.
Speaker 1: I guess it's cause Einstein found out time is relative. Man,
Speaker 1: that guy was the worst. Okay, let's get to it.
Speaker 1: I am I'm kidding about Einstein. Let's get to the
Speaker 1: tech news so far this week, and um, it's getting
Speaker 1: little quiet, which is fine. Usually we do see tech
Speaker 1: news quiet down towards the end of the year, gearing
Speaker 1: up to c e s and then things get back
Speaker 1: into crazy town. So, first up, we have a scary
Speaker 1: situation here in the United States. I think it's pretty
Speaker 1: well understood by just about everybody that cyber attacks and
Speaker 1: cyber warfare are a constant threat. Really, they're constantly happening,
Speaker 1: whether it's from state sponsored hacking groups that are working
Speaker 1: on behalf of a government, or quote unquote independent groups
Speaker 1: that claim to merely be aligned with some nations goals
Speaker 1: but not actually you know, sponsored by that nation, or
Speaker 1: maybe it's a cyber criminal organization. But we've seen tons
Speaker 1: of attacks on various high profile targets all around the world. Well,
Speaker 1: the scary thing I read is that, according to cybersecurity researchers,
Speaker 1: eighty seven per cent of US defense contractors failed to
Speaker 1: meet basic cybersecurity regulations. Eighty seven per cent failed. That
Speaker 1: is a sobering thought. Infosecurity Magazines James Coker explains that
Speaker 1: to get a passing grade, they must achieve a score
Speaker 1: of seventy on the Supplier Risk Performance System as designed
Speaker 1: by the Pentagon. Only of defense contractors managed to do that.
Speaker 1: By the way, to be considered fully compliant, you would
Speaker 1: have to achieve a score of one ten. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a little like flunking your big math test,
Speaker 1: except in this case, your math test describes how prepared
Speaker 1: you are for cyber attacks and security intrusions. And considering
Speaker 1: we're talking about key contractors in the supply chain for
Speaker 1: the U. S Department of Defense, and that We've had
Speaker 1: so much conversation of the last two years about importance
Speaker 1: and delicacy of supply chains. This is a huge problem now, y'all.
Speaker 1: I have complained in the past about how the average
Speaker 1: person it's pretty bad at practicing basic infosecurity measures, but
Speaker 1: this is unfathomable to me. You would think that these companies,
Speaker 1: given the business that they are in, would be particularly careful,
Speaker 1: as they would clearly be high profile targets for hackers.
Speaker 1: But it appears the opposite is true now. In James
Speaker 1: Coker's article, which is called majority of US defense contractors
Speaker 1: not meeting basic cybersecurity requirements, well, he explains part of
Speaker 1: the problem is that traditionally the US government hasn't been
Speaker 1: super good at cracking down on these requirements. And you know,
Speaker 1: you just have to look at kids to know if
Speaker 1: a rule is not being enforced, well, you might just
Speaker 1: feel like there's no need to observe the rule in
Speaker 1: the first place, Like it's almost the same as no
Speaker 1: rule being there at all. Coker also points out that
Speaker 1: some of these contractors are, you know, smaller companies, They're
Speaker 1: not like huge defense contractors, and not all of them
Speaker 1: have the assets or experience or knowledge base that you
Speaker 1: find in some of the larger organizations, and that the
Speaker 1: learning curve to adopting proper security measures is a pretty
Speaker 1: steep one. It can be tough to do, and that
Speaker 1: may well be the case, but I maintain that when
Speaker 1: you consider the potential consequences of a security intrusion into
Speaker 1: the supply chain of national defense, having to buckle down
Speaker 1: in order to meet regulations is a tiny price to pay.
Speaker 1: While we're on the subject of infosecurity, I have in
Speaker 1: the past recommended that people adopt password vault systems so
Speaker 1: that they can create and store strong passwords for all
Speaker 1: the online services they use, and I still think that's
Speaker 1: a really good idea. I use one myself. You know
Speaker 1: you don't want to reu is the same password at all?
Speaker 1: You don't. I mean, you might want to for the
Speaker 1: sake of convenience, but you don't for the sake of security.
Speaker 1: You also want each of your passwords to be difficult
Speaker 1: to guess, and that means making each password really hard
Speaker 1: to remember. Because by difficult to guess, we're not just
Speaker 1: talking about for humans. We're talking about for computers too.
Speaker 1: Now you can do something really clever like you can
Speaker 1: pick say, three unrelated words for each service, and you
Speaker 1: string these three words together and that makes your password.
Speaker 1: This is actually a really good way to make a
Speaker 1: strong password. But even then, as you add more passwords,
Speaker 1: like as you have more and more services that you're
Speaker 1: doing this for, it can get a little tricky to
Speaker 1: remember which string of words you used for which service.
Speaker 1: So password vaults help out in this case, right, Typically
Speaker 1: you use one master password in order to access the vault,
Speaker 1: and then everything else is stored in the vault so
Speaker 1: you don't have to remember it well. One such password
Speaker 1: vault is last Pass, and unfortunately, hackers were able to
Speaker 1: access a cloud storage service used by last pass, and
Speaker 1: they were able to access quote unquote certain elements of
Speaker 1: last pass users information. Now, there hasn't really been any
Speaker 1: clarification on what that means exactly, like what information was accessed,
Speaker 1: and very little on if anything was even you know, taken.
Speaker 1: But presumably any passwords accessed are heavily encrypted, which at
Speaker 1: the very least makes it unlikely that the hackers are
Speaker 1: able to do anything with the information they stole, at
Speaker 1: least not right away. Further, last Pass says it does
Speaker 1: not store master passwords at all. That instead, when you
Speaker 1: put in your master password, it goes through what's called
Speaker 1: a one way salted hash. So this is an encryption
Speaker 1: process that is not reversible, and it generates this jumble
Speaker 1: of characters that can then be used as a key. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you use last Pass, you might want to look
Speaker 1: in to see just you know what, if anything the
Speaker 1: service is recommending you do. It might be to change
Speaker 1: your master password, which you know you should be doing
Speaker 1: on the rag anyway, and I still think password vaults
Speaker 1: are a critical security tool for the average person. By
Speaker 1: the way, I actually use one myself. I used to
Speaker 1: use last Pass, but now I use a different one,
Speaker 1: So I mean I didn't have any issues with last Pass,
Speaker 1: I just kind of switched to a different service. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I still think that they're all, you know, important elements
Speaker 1: to personal data security. A few weeks back, the Washington
Speaker 1: Post published an article linking a software company to a
Speaker 1: US military contractor that raised a lot of eyebrows. So
Speaker 1: this software company is called trust Core Systems. That's a
Speaker 1: t R U S t c O R Systems, and
Speaker 1: it's in the business of issuing digital certificates, which is
Speaker 1: an important part of making sure that the sites you
Speaker 1: visit are in fact legitimate. So certificates are what tell
Speaker 1: browsers that a site is trustworthy, that there's been this
Speaker 1: designated authority or hundreds of them actually that ends up
Speaker 1: generating this certificate that says, yes, you can trust this website.
Speaker 1: So there are hundreds of these companies that you know,
Speaker 1: issue these kinds of certificates, and trust Core is one
Speaker 1: of them. But according to the Washington Post, trust Core
Speaker 1: has the same slate of officers, agents and partners as
Speaker 1: a company that's been known to make spywear and is
Speaker 1: in turn connected to a defense company called Packet Forensics. Now,
Speaker 1: when you hear the name packet Forensics, that suggests a
Speaker 1: company that's in the business of analyzing data transmissions, possibly
Speaker 1: to intercept communications and pass intelligence along to US government agencies.
Speaker 1: So this starts to paint a pretty ugly picture. You've
Speaker 1: got a company it's in charge of certifying trustworthiness that's
Speaker 1: tied to a company that is effectively spying on digital transmissions.
Speaker 1: The association has been enough for both Microsoft and Mozilla
Speaker 1: to stop trusting certificates from trust Core, which kind of
Speaker 1: seems to have an ironic name now doesn't it, and
Speaker 1: other browsers are likely to follow a suit anyway. Everybody's
Speaker 1: a spy, kind of like how in the john Wick
Speaker 1: movies everybody is an assassin. I mean, seriously, the entire
Speaker 1: economy in the john Wick universe must be assassin based.
Speaker 1: I guess that's a discussion for a different podcast. Across
Speaker 1: the pond, in the UK, more than one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: small businesses have joined in a class action lawsuit against Google,
Speaker 1: and they are seeking more than thirteen point five billion
Speaker 1: British pounds and lost ad revenues. So these are mostly
Speaker 1: publishers and related businesses, and they're saying that they cannot
Speaker 1: come peat against Google when it comes to the online
Speaker 1: ad business, which is a business that Google definitively dominates.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just can't deny that claim. It is
Speaker 1: obvious that Google dominates online advertising. But these companies also
Speaker 1: say that Google, through this domination, can essentially dictate pricing
Speaker 1: and other terms of ad deals, and that this affects
Speaker 1: the overall ad industry, that these other companies have no
Speaker 1: choice but to follow Google's lead because Google is so
Speaker 1: powerful and has so much weight in the industry that
Speaker 1: all terms are defined by Google, and that Google is
Speaker 1: acting more or less as a monopoly, at least as
Speaker 1: far as settling these terms. So the lawsuit argues that
Speaker 1: these smaller companies have had to sell ad space for
Speaker 1: much less than they should, losing out on up to
Speaker 1: of their AD revenue since January one, two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 1: Now we'll have to keep an eye on this lawsuit
Speaker 1: to see where it goes, But in general, this falls
Speaker 1: in line with this larger trend we've been seeing in
Speaker 1: tech as more regulators, politicians, and even smaller companies are
Speaker 1: pushing back against big text dominant position in various markets. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the first section of tech News. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break. When we come back, it's everybody's favorite
Speaker 1: guy to talk about in tech. Things are about to
Speaker 1: get muskie, but first this break. Okay, we're back and
Speaker 1: it's time for the Elon Must section of the show.
Speaker 1: But this will be relatively short. We've only got a
Speaker 1: couple of stories. So first up, and this is a
Speaker 1: tiny one, but over in China, Tesla has had to
Speaker 1: issue a recall or recall, I guess that's how we
Speaker 1: should say that on more than four five thousand Tesla
Speaker 1: vehicles in order to address a problem with side marker
Speaker 1: lights on the cars, which were determined that you know,
Speaker 1: under extreme circumstances, could potentially contribute to catastrophic car accidents.
Speaker 1: But a recall ain't a recall, at least not like
Speaker 1: it was in the old days, because in this case,
Speaker 1: the recall is actually an over the air firmware update,
Speaker 1: So owners are not going to have to take their
Speaker 1: vehicles anywhere. They're not gonna have to go back to
Speaker 1: like the dealership or something and give up their car
Speaker 1: for any length of time. It'll actually be issued over
Speaker 1: the air, and it still qualifies as a recall legally,
Speaker 1: even though you know the drivers just it just means
Speaker 1: that their their lights will behave slightly differently from one
Speaker 1: day to the next. Honestly, I do think it's super
Speaker 1: cool that cars have reached a level of sophistication in
Speaker 1: which at least some issues can be fixed just by
Speaker 1: sending out an update and you don't have to take
Speaker 1: it back. It is kind of odd that we have
Speaker 1: this sort of antiquated system where we have to designate
Speaker 1: that as a recall. Because as much as I dog
Speaker 1: on Elon Musk and on Tesla. Uh. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's really fair to just say, hey, almost half a
Speaker 1: million Tesla's were recalled in China, because I feel like
Speaker 1: that paints a very inaccurate picture of what's actually happening.
Speaker 1: So I personally think we need to kind of update
Speaker 1: our definitions of what a recall is and isn't, or
Speaker 1: have some other term for these kinds of fixes where
Speaker 1: recall does not bring up this idea that people had
Speaker 1: to surrender their vehicles or that Tesla had to take
Speaker 1: them back or anything like that anyway. Next up is Neuralink,
Speaker 1: which is the Elon Musk backed company that is developing
Speaker 1: brain computer interfaces or BC eyes. Now, as Brain computer
Speaker 1: Interface suggests, this is a type of technology that would
Speaker 1: allow a human to interact with a comp you directly
Speaker 1: through thought through brain activity. And Elon Musk has been
Speaker 1: known to get all futuristic with this vision and talk
Speaker 1: about how one day human intelligence is going to merge
Speaker 1: with AI. To me, that sounds like he's kind of
Speaker 1: falling into the philosophy of Ray Kurtzwil, a known futurist
Speaker 1: who known famous futurist who has really pushed forward the
Speaker 1: idea of the singularity being on the horizon. I think
Speaker 1: he most recently said he thinks it will be here
Speaker 1: by two thousand forty five. I just can't shake the
Speaker 1: feeling that these really rich people are just terrified at
Speaker 1: the thought that one day they are going to cease
Speaker 1: to exist, so they're kind of feverishly predicting and hoping
Speaker 1: for a get out of death free card. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: being totally unfair. I could just be so cynical and
Speaker 1: skeptical that that's how I feel about it now. But
Speaker 1: you know, they could be onto something, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't want to dismiss the concept, but we are definitive, far,
Speaker 1: far far away from being able to merge AI with
Speaker 1: human intelligence. Musk did say he hopes that the neuralink
Speaker 1: interface will be implanted in a real human brain within
Speaker 1: six months or so, because so far the company has
Speaker 1: been testing this tech out on animals like monkeys and pigs.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, there are other bc I devices
Speaker 1: out there, including some that are, you know, attached to
Speaker 1: real human brains. People are really using these kind of
Speaker 1: interfaces to interact with computers for very specific use cases,
Speaker 1: and neural links design is particularly sophisticated. It's a really
Speaker 1: cool design and it has benefits over other implementations of
Speaker 1: this technology, including a smaller surgical footprint, which is obviously important.
Speaker 1: You want to reduce or ideally eliminate the risk of
Speaker 1: things like infection or surgery complications because you have to
Speaker 1: implant these things into brains, which means you've got to
Speaker 1: get to the brain, and that means going through either
Speaker 1: the skull or I saw one suggestion that had going
Speaker 1: through the jugular to feed a chip up into the brain.
Speaker 1: That way. Either way seems pretty extreme to me, right,
Speaker 1: And you know, it also is going to allow for
Speaker 1: wireless transmission of data because a lot of the BCIs
Speaker 1: that exist right now, you have to be tethered to
Speaker 1: a machine. Now in the case of b C I
Speaker 1: S the way we're seeing it used in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases are for people who have limited or no mobility,
Speaker 1: right So being tethered to a machine, while not ideal,
Speaker 1: also does not have a huge impact on quality of
Speaker 1: life in the sense that these are people who otherwise
Speaker 1: aren't capable of moving anyway. But what there are able
Speaker 1: to do now is to use thought to control electronics
Speaker 1: in some way, either by moving a cursor and typing
Speaker 1: things out, or some other form of communication where they're
Speaker 1: able to interact with their environments and with other people
Speaker 1: when previously they were not capable of doing that. And honestly,
Speaker 1: that is the use that I can get behind, and
Speaker 1: that's in fact what the Neuralalink teams are working toward. Really.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is talking about AI and human intelligence merging,
Speaker 1: but these teams are looking at a more pragmatic approach
Speaker 1: and one that could have a transformative effect on a
Speaker 1: person's life who otherwise would be facing incredible challenges that
Speaker 1: most of us can't even imagine going through. To me,
Speaker 1: that is the inspiring thing about this technology, way way
Speaker 1: more energizing and and inspiring than thinking that one day
Speaker 1: I'll be able to complete the New York Times crossword
Speaker 1: puzzle and pen in just five minutes. I don't see
Speaker 1: that as being the huge benefit. And lastly, in our
Speaker 1: Muskie section, Terry Breton, and I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: pronouncing that name correctly anyway, This is an EU official
Speaker 1: in charge of implementing the upcoming Digital Services Act or
Speaker 1: d s A in the EU once that Act has
Speaker 1: been finished and approved. That is it's still not complete anyway.
Speaker 1: Bretton has indicated that Twitter is going to have a
Speaker 1: lot of work to do in order to comply with
Speaker 1: EU laws to operate in the EU, the implication being
Speaker 1: that if Twitter fails to do that, it could potentially
Speaker 1: be banned from the EU. However, I should add that
Speaker 1: the EU really focuses on very large operating platforms or
Speaker 1: v lops, and as of now, Twitter has not yet
Speaker 1: been designated a v LAP, so it's possible that Twitter
Speaker 1: won't be won't be subject to the most restrictive rules
Speaker 1: in the EU. It still will have to follow some,
Speaker 1: but not maybe all, of the super tight restrictions. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that Musk would much prefer not having to follow
Speaker 1: every single restriction that will be coming up from the
Speaker 1: d s A. Elon Musk actually had a meeting with
Speaker 1: Breton and it seemed to go pretty well. Musk said
Speaker 1: that he thought that the rules were all very reasonable.
Speaker 1: But this puzzles me a bit simply because of what
Speaker 1: Musk says and what he's been doing appear to be
Speaker 1: at odds of each other. Because, like the d s A,
Speaker 1: is going to require transparent and thoughtful sets of policies
Speaker 1: on things, for example, like banning and unbanning accounts. But
Speaker 1: must just recently announced that, you know, thousands of banded
Speaker 1: accounts would be allowed back on Twitter, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: transparent or thoughtful about that approach it. It seems, at
Speaker 1: least on the outside, that Musk is ruling Twitter mostly
Speaker 1: by whim, which is antithetical to the requirements of the EU.
Speaker 1: But Musk also has said that he plans to hand
Speaker 1: control of Twitter over to some other CEO at some
Speaker 1: point in the future, So may be by the time
Speaker 1: the d s A is actually in full effect, it
Speaker 1: will be a moot point because Musk won't be the
Speaker 1: one calling the shots. I don't know. I just feel
Speaker 1: like the narratives here are are at cross purposes with
Speaker 1: one another. The two things cannot be an alignment based
Speaker 1: upon what we have seen so far with Musk's version
Speaker 1: of Twitter. But yeah, confusing stuff, and that is it.
Speaker 1: That's it for the Elon Musk section this week. Thank goodness.
Speaker 1: We do have a couple more stories Before we get
Speaker 1: to those. We're gonna take another quick break and we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Okay, got a few more to wrap up.
Speaker 1: Andy Jase, this CEO of Amazon has indicated that the
Speaker 1: Prime video streaming unit of Amazon could potentially spin off
Speaker 1: to become its own company. This really confused me at first, because,
Speaker 1: like the headlines were saying Prime to become standalone owned company,
Speaker 1: and Prime refers not just to the streaming video service
Speaker 1: but to the Amazon Prime program, which is one that
Speaker 1: gets you like free shipping and all that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff for a yearly subscription. But yeah, anyway, he said
Speaker 1: this during an interview during the deal Book Summit, which
Speaker 1: just concluded. A lot of stuff happened there, including some
Speaker 1: stuff about f t X and its implosion, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to get into all that. Maybe I'll talk
Speaker 1: about that and into the year episode. So it would
Speaker 1: be interesting to see Prime Video kind of spinoff and
Speaker 1: become its own standalone company. But I've got a lot
Speaker 1: of questions. For example, if the video streaming division becomes
Speaker 1: a standalone company, would that mean an Amazon Prime membership
Speaker 1: would no longer serve as access to the streaming content
Speaker 1: on the standalone company the separate company, or would Prime
Speaker 1: members be able to use their membership both on Amazon
Speaker 1: and the standalone video a service. If not, would that
Speaker 1: mean they'd have to subscribe to yet another streaming service.
Speaker 1: I don't know the answer to this. These are all
Speaker 1: just hypothetical questions. Anyway, Jesse did not outright say that
Speaker 1: this is definitely going to happen. He just said that
Speaker 1: over time the company has looked at opportunities to follow
Speaker 1: this kind of approach, so I wouldn't be surprised to
Speaker 1: see it happen. I am very curious about the implementation
Speaker 1: and whether or not that would affect how you access
Speaker 1: either the Amazon Prime features that have become very popular
Speaker 1: at Amazon or the streaming video, because if they split
Speaker 1: that out, then they're gonna be people asking questions like, well,
Speaker 1: are you going to reduce the cost of Amazon Prime them?
Speaker 1: Because if I'm not getting the streaming video, then you're
Speaker 1: taking stuff away from the subscription, So why would I
Speaker 1: pay as much when you're taking things away? These are
Speaker 1: all questions that I just don't have answers to. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm sure most of y'all are familiar with the concept
Speaker 1: of focus groups and entertainment. These groups, which usually consist
Speaker 1: of you know, just average people, are gathered together by
Speaker 1: market analysts, end up watching early cuts of shows or films,
Speaker 1: and then they give feedback to studio representatives, who might
Speaker 1: then take that feedback and send it to producers, who
Speaker 1: might then phone up directors and demand that the directors
Speaker 1: make the movie less sad or whatever, you know, like, hey,
Speaker 1: what if Old Yeller just gets better by the end.
Speaker 1: That kind of thing. Now, in some cases, focus groups
Speaker 1: can really help set a project on the right path,
Speaker 1: Like maybe it turns out that motives are muddled and
Speaker 1: people don't understand why characters are doing things, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't the intent of the director for that to happen,
Speaker 1: it's just how it came out in the edit. Well,
Speaker 1: if people are confused, it may not be a very
Speaker 1: satisfying experience. Maybe it's something the director can fix even
Speaker 1: by having an alternative edit, or maybe they have to
Speaker 1: go and do reshoots. Those can all be good things,
Speaker 1: but it also could lead to a director's vision being
Speaker 1: totally compromised. We've heard stories of that to where a
Speaker 1: director essentially loses all control of a film or an editor,
Speaker 1: and because really, when you get down to it, the
Speaker 1: finished film, the editor's touch is at least as important
Speaker 1: as the directors, sometimes more important. Anyway, all that aside,
Speaker 1: Netflix is actually going to expand its focus group program
Speaker 1: right now that consists of around two thousand subscribers who
Speaker 1: are allowed to watch Netflix original content early and give
Speaker 1: feedback on it. So the company plans to expand this
Speaker 1: to quote tens of thousands of users around the world
Speaker 1: end quote, and that's going to happen starting early next year.
Speaker 1: So if you're a Netflix subscriber, maybe you'll become a tastemaker.
Speaker 1: Then you can be the one to tell Tim Burton, hey,
Speaker 1: please stop messing with the Adams family's interpersonal dynamics so much.
Speaker 1: Or Tega is doing a phenomenal job, but you're messing
Speaker 1: with one of the greatest families and American fiction. Stop it.
Speaker 1: I might be projecting. Rolls Royce, the aviation company, not
Speaker 1: the luxury car, recently demonstrated a jet engine using hydrogen
Speaker 1: as fuel. So the engine was a Rolls Royce A
Speaker 1: twenty one A and it was modified to accept hydrogen
Speaker 1: as combustion fuel. And you know, hydrogen can be used
Speaker 1: as combustible fuel, but it can also be used in
Speaker 1: stuff like fuel cells. Fuel cells use a totally different
Speaker 1: physical process from combustion, and Garzia Vitadini, the CTO of
Speaker 1: Rolls Royce, said, quote we are pushing the boundaries to
Speaker 1: discover the zero carbon possibilities of hydrogen, which could help
Speaker 1: reshape the future of flight. End quote. Now, it is
Speaker 1: true that burning hydrogen does not produce carbon dioxide, so
Speaker 1: that's great, But I will have more to say about
Speaker 1: combusting in a little second. Further rolls. Royce said that
Speaker 1: they got the hydrogen by relying on renewable energy. This
Speaker 1: is also critically important. So hydrogen is the most abundant
Speaker 1: element in our galaxy, but hydrogen also bonds with other
Speaker 1: elements very very readily, and it forms compounds. Uh it.
Speaker 1: We typically do not encounter hydrogen in its pure form.
Speaker 1: If we did, and we could just harness it, things
Speaker 1: would be way easier. Instead, we have to harvest hydrogen
Speaker 1: from some other source. Now, one way to do this
Speaker 1: is to add kind of a secondary process to something
Speaker 1: like natural gas mining operations, because that produces a lot
Speaker 1: of hydrogen in the process. However, if we do that,
Speaker 1: then we tie our source of hydrogen to ongoing fossil
Speaker 1: fuels operations. That really just extends our reliance on fossil fuels, right,
Speaker 1: and said of it, saying like, let's let's move away
Speaker 1: from relying on fossil fuels and depend more on sources
Speaker 1: like hydrogen. It says, oh, well, while we're depending on
Speaker 1: fossil fuels, let's also get hydrogen. That means that we
Speaker 1: become less less likely to just move off of fossil
Speaker 1: fuels entirely. So really, any solution quote unquote that just
Speaker 1: assumes that fossil fuels are still going to be part
Speaker 1: of the picture is not great, generally speaking from an
Speaker 1: environmental perspective. But that's not the only way to get hydrogen.
Speaker 1: Another source of hydrogen is water. You know, good old
Speaker 1: h that's the hydrogen to oh two hydrogen atoms to
Speaker 1: every oxygen atom. If you run an electric current through water,
Speaker 1: you can break those molecular bonds and you release oxygen
Speaker 1: and you release hydrogen. But in order to do that,
Speaker 1: you have to generate an electrical current, right, you have
Speaker 1: to use energy to do this to break these molecular bonds.
Speaker 1: So Rolls Royce was looking at renewable energy systems like
Speaker 1: wind turbines and uh and and tidal turbines to generate
Speaker 1: the electricity needed to harvest the hydrogen. So that way
Speaker 1: they're not relying on like a coal powered power plant. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's good. That's a pretty good ecosystem to get
Speaker 1: your hydrogen through means that are not carbon emission systems.
Speaker 1: But here's where we start to encounter a problem because, yeah,
Speaker 1: burning hydrogen doesn't create carbon dioxide. However, burning hydrogen in
Speaker 1: our atmosphere, specifically at higher temperatures, does create other byproducts. Now,
Speaker 1: the main byproduct is water, and people say, oh, well water,
Speaker 1: that's that's fine, right, It's just water, and that's true.
Speaker 1: But it also at high temperatures can create nitrogen oxides.
Speaker 1: You know, because there's a lot of nitrogen in our atmosphere,
Speaker 1: nitrogen and oxygen, So burning at these high temperatures can,
Speaker 1: as a byproduct, produced nitrogen oxides that is also a pollutant.
Speaker 1: It can cause respiratory problems. It's a big contributor to
Speaker 1: stuff like smog. So while you could convincingly argue that
Speaker 1: using hydrogen and jet engines is cleaner than typical jet fuel,
Speaker 1: I'd have to look at all the analysis to make
Speaker 1: that conclusion. But it seems, you know, sensible, It's still
Speaker 1: not totally free of pollutants, and I think it's a
Speaker 1: heck of an engineering achievement. Don't get me wrong. I
Speaker 1: think it's a great engineering achievement, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to to diminish that or dismiss it or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But I also don't want to ignore one pollutant just
Speaker 1: because this new approach could eliminate emissions of some other pollutant. Right,
Speaker 1: we have to keep the whole picture in mind. Otherwise
Speaker 1: we just trade one problem for a different problem. If
Speaker 1: we're able to reconcile all of at and to determine, okay, well,
Speaker 1: does this approach make sense? Um is the pollutant significant?
Speaker 1: If it's not significant, then maybe it makes perfect sense
Speaker 1: to go this way. But if it is significant, if
Speaker 1: all we're doing is trading carbon emissions for nitrogen oxide emissions,
Speaker 1: then we still have some tough questions we have to answer. Still,
Speaker 1: Anything that is pushing us away from fossil fuels and
Speaker 1: toward an approach that is less environmentally dangerous, I think
Speaker 1: is ultimately a good thing. And that's it. That's it
Speaker 1: for this news episode of tech Stuff. Hope you are
Speaker 1: all well. As I said earlier this week, I am
Speaker 1: working on an end of the year kind of wrap
Speaker 1: up of the big news stories that unfolded in tech
Speaker 1: in two, if you have any favorites that you would
Speaker 1: like me to cover, let me know. Uh, some of
Speaker 1: the major stuff I'm obviously going to tackle, like Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: Twitter obviously is going to have to play a part
Speaker 1: in that. Meta's crisis is gonna play a part in
Speaker 1: that um But you know, if there are specific stories
Speaker 1: that happened within tech that you think are really important,
Speaker 1: even if they weren't necessarily huge, but you think they
Speaker 1: have important implementations for tech or consumers or anything like that,
Speaker 1: feel free to let me know. You can get in
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Speaker 1: thirty seconds in length. Let me know what you think.
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