Speaker 1: Welcome to tech 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 held the Tech Area. It is time for the
Speaker 1: tech news for March twenty two, thousand and twenty two.
Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, and you know, most of the time I
Speaker 1: talk about how people practice bad security behaviors and etiquette online.
Speaker 1: That that's kind of a common thing to talk about
Speaker 1: in tech in general. Is just that people tend to
Speaker 1: be the weakest link in any security system, and way
Speaker 1: too many people are very bad at protecting themselves digitally.
Speaker 1: In fact, that's how fishing attacks are a thing, right
Speaker 1: That attack depends upon the targets not being cautious enough
Speaker 1: to avoid getting scammed, and some fishing it acts can
Speaker 1: be really sophisticated. But here's the thing, they don't have
Speaker 1: to be, right Like, even an unsophisticated phishing attack is
Speaker 1: going to find a few hits. The more sophisticated is
Speaker 1: the more likely it's going to get hits. But then
Speaker 1: the more time you're spending developing your attack. However, there
Speaker 1: are also people who actually use a bit more restraint
Speaker 1: they are a little more cautious, and then sometimes it
Speaker 1: turns out that they weren't getting scammed at all, and
Speaker 1: instead they find themselves locked out of their Facebook accounts.
Speaker 1: All right, So at the heart of the story is
Speaker 1: that Facebook has the Facebook Protect initiative, and and this
Speaker 1: project that's spearheaded by Facebook was really aiming to convince
Speaker 1: Facebook users whom the company had identified as being particularly
Speaker 1: vulnerable to attack, to enable extra security measures stuff like
Speaker 1: two factor authentication, to protect their accounts from being compromised.
Speaker 1: So we're talking about people who are you know, high
Speaker 1: profile individuals like activists or journalists or politicians. You know,
Speaker 1: people that could easily be targeted by bad actors. You know,
Speaker 1: the the folks who have ill intentions to use those
Speaker 1: accounts to spread misinformation or to otherwise cause harm. So
Speaker 1: Facebook said, you know, these are high value targets. We
Speaker 1: want to let them know. We want them to switch
Speaker 1: over to these enhanced security measures to protect them and
Speaker 1: everybody else from them getting compromised. So they send out
Speaker 1: an email saying that these users need to turn on
Speaker 1: the Facebook Protect feature or else they would get locked
Speaker 1: out of their accounts. Now, the email included a link
Speaker 1: to turn that feature on an active link inside an email. However,
Speaker 1: the email also came from an address that was called
Speaker 1: security at Facebook mail dot com. Now, I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, but if I had received this email, and
Speaker 1: I didn't, but if I had, I definitely would have
Speaker 1: second thoughts on clicking on any kind of link contained
Speaker 1: in a message coming from that address, because it sounds
Speaker 1: us right like. It does not sound like that. You
Speaker 1: would expect it to come from Facebook dot com, not
Speaker 1: Facebook mail dot com. So that immediately would raise red
Speaker 1: flags in my mind. I would think, oh, this is
Speaker 1: not legit, this is a phishing attack. So there were
Speaker 1: some other folks who felt the same way. Plus that
Speaker 1: email address probably ended up having messages get sent to
Speaker 1: junk folders in a lot of cases. So either people
Speaker 1: a lot of people didn't see the message, or they
Speaker 1: rightly suspected or not rightly, they understandably success suspected that
Speaker 1: the message was in fact a phishing attack. They did
Speaker 1: not activate these protect features, and then last week they
Speaker 1: found them selves locked out of their Facebook accounts, apparently
Speaker 1: for at least a subsection of those who got locked out.
Speaker 1: The steps they then received to take in order to
Speaker 1: regain access and to enable Facebook Protect didn't work, So
Speaker 1: that didn't happen to everybody who got locked out. You know,
Speaker 1: people were able to appeal to Facebook and then start
Speaker 1: going through the process to recover their accounts and to
Speaker 1: enable Facebook Protect. At least for a few that didn't work.
Speaker 1: So the company has issued a statement saying it's going
Speaker 1: to work with those particular users to address the problem.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, I actually think Facebook was
Speaker 1: taking a good approach here. I think that this was merited.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to enable to factor authentication. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think everybody should be enabling to factor authentication for
Speaker 1: platforms like Facebook. But definitely if you're someone who could
Speaker 1: you know, more likely be targeted by hackers and other
Speaker 1: bad actors, you absolutely should enable that. So I think
Speaker 1: that Facebook was coming from a good place in this case.
Speaker 1: I just feel the method of carrying out the initiative
Speaker 1: was maybe not thought through enough. Meanwhile, Apple continues to
Speaker 1: be hit with fines from regulators in the Netherlands. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to my tech News episodes recently, you
Speaker 1: are probably aware that Dutch regulators were demanding that Apple
Speaker 1: allow third party payment methods within apps on iOS devices,
Speaker 1: specifically within dating apps, although you could extrapolate that to
Speaker 1: be I mean other apps as well, but they were
Speaker 1: specifically talking about dating apps and that for dating apps
Speaker 1: that have in app purchases there should be alternatives to
Speaker 1: Apple's own payment system. Now, Apple has of course been
Speaker 1: resisting these kind of of moves all over the world.
Speaker 1: Right in the United States, there have been court cases
Speaker 1: that have targeted Apple for very similar reasons, with the
Speaker 1: company then appealing decisions. I mean, you know, courts have
Speaker 1: decided against Apple, and Apple has appealed those decisions and
Speaker 1: continues to argue that its own approach, which requires that
Speaker 1: all in app purchases go through Apple's own payment system,
Speaker 1: is actually there to protect users and isn't somehow anti competitive. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Dutch regulators disagreed, saying no, it absolutely is anti competitive,
Speaker 1: and in fact, Apple, when proposing changes, has has failed
Speaker 1: to satisfy the regulators. So far, Apple has been found
Speaker 1: guilty of failing to meet those standards for nine weeks
Speaker 1: in a row and has accrued forty five million euro
Speaker 1: worth of fines. Now, the regular leaders are actually only
Speaker 1: authorized to find a total of fifty million euro. That's
Speaker 1: that's the cap, so Apple has one more week to
Speaker 1: go before it maxes out the fine, assuming that company
Speaker 1: continues to fail to meet regulators demands. Um As an
Speaker 1: example of something that Apple did that did not satisfy
Speaker 1: the regulators, the company allowed for alternative payment systems on
Speaker 1: in app purchases for dating apps in the Netherlands. However,
Speaker 1: the company also demanded a twenty seven commission on all
Speaker 1: in app sales. So yes, you could, if you were
Speaker 1: an app developer, go with a third party payment system,
Speaker 1: but you would have to surrender of your your of
Speaker 1: each sale to Apple, and that would mean that using
Speaker 1: a third party payment processing system would end up being
Speaker 1: more expensive than just using Apple's own method, which is
Speaker 1: a move that the Dutch regulators identified as being anti competitive.
Speaker 1: As I'll get out and I happen to agree. If
Speaker 1: your policy that is supposed to allow for fair competition
Speaker 1: makes anyone who engages in that that approach how have
Speaker 1: to pay more than your method, then you're not really
Speaker 1: making it competitive, right, You're still using your your power,
Speaker 1: your leverage. Two, you know, push people into your own aisle,
Speaker 1: your own pathway. And even if they don't, if they
Speaker 1: do go with a third party you still get instead
Speaker 1: of of every and app transaction. It's pretty ridiculous. Well,
Speaker 1: if Apple's proposals failed to satisfy the regulators, in the
Speaker 1: future of the company will be hit with the max
Speaker 1: fifty million euro fine and the stage will be set
Speaker 1: for a lawsuit that will pit Apple against the regulatory
Speaker 1: body in the Netherlands. And considering that's kind of what
Speaker 1: Apple is doing in other parts of the world, it
Speaker 1: might well be that that was Apple's plan all along.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't work at Apple, but you know,
Speaker 1: from the outside, that's kind of what it looks like
Speaker 1: switching over to Google. The company reached a settlement agreement
Speaker 1: with six former employees who claimed that they were the
Speaker 1: targets of retaliation after they attempted to lead employee organization
Speaker 1: efforts at Google. Specifically, three of the employees had organized
Speaker 1: against Google's projects with the U S Customs and Border
Speaker 1: Protection Agency, you know, like circulating UH surveys and documents
Speaker 1: to other employees to kind of gauge resistance to Google's
Speaker 1: agreement to work with US Customs and Border Protection. And
Speaker 1: they say that they were subsequently fired in retaliation for
Speaker 1: leading those efforts. Details of the settlement remain private, so
Speaker 1: we don't know how much money is changing hands here. Google,
Speaker 1: like many companies we've talked about in recent months, has
Speaker 1: been accused numerous times of trying to discourage employees from
Speaker 1: organizing in various ways. But as we have seen recently,
Speaker 1: there's a general movement, particularly here in the United States,
Speaker 1: that is building around unionization and organization and employee empowerment. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's possible that Google will end up just encouraging more
Speaker 1: employee organization efforts in the future. Um Typically that seems
Speaker 1: to be what happens is that the harder they clamped down,
Speaker 1: the more people want to resist. And on another Google story,
Speaker 1: the U S Department of Justice alleges that Google makes
Speaker 1: it a practice to train employees on using legal counsel
Speaker 1: as a shield against sharing business communications. So essentially, what
Speaker 1: the d o J is saying here is that when
Speaker 1: Google wants to make sure that certain internal communications remain
Speaker 1: confidential and within company control, they tag that with a
Speaker 1: request for legal advice. So even documents that would not
Speaker 1: need any kind of legal advice at all, at least
Speaker 1: according to the allegations, would get this tag on them,
Speaker 1: and by getting that tag and sending the communications onto
Speaker 1: legal counsel makes the communication a legal matter and the
Speaker 1: subject of attorney client privilege, and as such, uh, they
Speaker 1: could be withheld from discovery. I mean, it's attorney client privilege.
Speaker 1: It's not something that gets shared beyond those two parties.
Speaker 1: So the d o J is saying this isn't a
Speaker 1: legitimate use of legal consultation, that in many cases legal
Speaker 1: counsel never responded to any request for advice because there
Speaker 1: was never a an actual earnest request, that it was
Speaker 1: really just a way to kind of sidestep any investigative abilities.
Speaker 1: So the d o J says that Google has been
Speaker 1: relying on this method since at least two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: and the d o J is seeking to sanction Google
Speaker 1: and compel the company to share quote all withheld or
Speaker 1: redacted emails where no attorney responded to the purported request
Speaker 1: for legal advice end quote. Now, Google, for its part,
Speaker 1: denies the allegation that it improperly relied on legal counsel.
Speaker 1: So we'll have to see where this goes next. We've
Speaker 1: got several more stories to go before we get there.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break. Washington, d C aka the
Speaker 1: District of Columbia is suing the food delivery service grub Hub,
Speaker 1: claiming that the company engages in deceptive trade practices in
Speaker 1: violation of the District of Columbia's Consumer Protection Procedures Act. Now,
Speaker 1: the d C Attorney General has said that grub Hub
Speaker 1: was adding in a ton of hidden fees and also listening,
Speaker 1: you know, numerous restaurants that didn't actually have a contract
Speaker 1: agreement with Grubhub. So, in other words, grubhub was advertising
Speaker 1: that it had access to restaurants that it had not
Speaker 1: made any kind of contract with. That could lead to
Speaker 1: incidents where business rejects an online order because it never
Speaker 1: created that relationship, which obviously has an adverse effect on
Speaker 1: the customer. I have used a food delivery service a
Speaker 1: few times during the pandemic, a few being a drastic understatement,
Speaker 1: and I've encountered similar things, and I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's an honest mistake or if it's similar
Speaker 1: to what is going on in the District of Columbia.
Speaker 1: According to the Attorney General. Grub Hub also, according to
Speaker 1: the accusations, pumped up the prices for restaurant items, So
Speaker 1: in other words, you would be spending more to buy
Speaker 1: that burrito through grub Hub than you would if you
Speaker 1: just went to the restaurant just for the base price, um.
Speaker 1: And that's before you factor in all the other fees
Speaker 1: that grubhub throws in, like the delivery fees and service
Speaker 1: fees and whatnot. So the base burrito cost alone would
Speaker 1: be higher than you would find in the restaurant. And
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that's true across nearly all third party
Speaker 1: delivery services. I've definitely, at least, you know, in my
Speaker 1: own experience, I've observed this is the case where I
Speaker 1: know the price of a thing at a restaurant and
Speaker 1: I look at it on delivery services, and it's typically
Speaker 1: at least a couple of bucks more expensive there. And
Speaker 1: there are a lot of other parts to this lawsuit,
Speaker 1: to including an accusation that grub hub has created websites that,
Speaker 1: at least on the surface, appear to belong to specific restaurants,
Speaker 1: but in fact they redirect customers to grub Hub's own services,
Speaker 1: and that further, these sites can leave people with the
Speaker 1: implication that there's no other way to get a delivery
Speaker 1: ordered from that specific restaurant, when that might not be
Speaker 1: the case. There may be cases where restaurants have their
Speaker 1: own delivery services or they rely upon some independent group
Speaker 1: and that you can order directly from them, but according
Speaker 1: to the lawsuit, Grubhub's approach is to try and and
Speaker 1: uh overshadow those so that people go through Grubhub instead.
Speaker 1: We've seen similar complaints raised against Google's order online option
Speaker 1: in search results, and there's no question that the delivery
Speaker 1: industry has adopted some let's call them questionable business practices,
Speaker 1: but it remains to be seen if they go far
Speaker 1: enough to be considered illegal. The identity authentication company oct
Speaker 1: To announced that it might have experienced a data breach,
Speaker 1: which is a big old yaalza. So Octa is a
Speaker 1: business that provides authentication services to other businesses, big ones
Speaker 1: like T Mobile UH. Companies outsource authentication to Octa and
Speaker 1: then rely on Octa to verify that, say, an employee
Speaker 1: is who they claim to be before they are allowed
Speaker 1: to access whatever they're trying to access. So a lot
Speaker 1: of companies might use like their own VPN or virtual
Speaker 1: private network for internal systems, and a company like Octa
Speaker 1: can act as sort of like a bouncer. You know,
Speaker 1: it's making sure that the people who are trying to
Speaker 1: access those internal systems actually have the credentials saying they
Speaker 1: can do it, or rather you know, authenticating that those
Speaker 1: credentials are in fact legit. So, according to OCTA's CEO,
Speaker 1: the company had identified an intrusion attempt back in January,
Speaker 1: but contained the situation. He said that it did not
Speaker 1: result in a massive breach. But meanwhile, a hacker group
Speaker 1: called laps US where the last s there's it's l
Speaker 1: A P S U S dollar sign because of course
Speaker 1: it is. That group has claimed to be responsible for
Speaker 1: the attack and did so in an effort to access
Speaker 1: the systems of an Octa client, So, in other words,
Speaker 1: not to necessarily compromise Octa itself, but in order to
Speaker 1: get at one of the clients that Octa services. According
Speaker 1: to laps us, uh, the hackers are aren't part of
Speaker 1: some cyber war group. They're not like a state sponsored
Speaker 1: hacker group. They're just in it for the money, so,
Speaker 1: you know, honest crooks. In Israel, the Israeli National Cyber
Speaker 1: Directorate issued a report that says sixties six thousand closed
Speaker 1: circuit television systems in the country aren't very secure and
Speaker 1: could be hacked relatively easily. In fact, hacked is being
Speaker 1: too generous based upon what's going on here. Hacked is
Speaker 1: is suggesting a level of effort that you really don't
Speaker 1: even need to consider. Uh. And you know, there there
Speaker 1: are a lot of drawbacks to living in a surveillance state, um,
Speaker 1: which you could argue, you know, Israel could kind of
Speaker 1: qualify for that. There are a lot of places in Europe,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of CCTV systems. So one complaint
Speaker 1: you might have of living in a surveillance state is
Speaker 1: that big brother is watching you. But another is that
Speaker 1: you aren't sure who is watching you, but you're pretty
Speaker 1: darn sure you're being watched. And that's the case here right.
Speaker 1: So according to the directorate, the problem stems from a
Speaker 1: dead simple solution. Uh. The systems all come with like
Speaker 1: default login and passwords so that you can you know,
Speaker 1: administrate the system. And apparently tons of people who install
Speaker 1: these systems never bothered to go in and change the
Speaker 1: default loggin it. So maybe you've heard security experts advocate
Speaker 1: that you know, you change your standard logging and password
Speaker 1: for your home network, for your you know, your router,
Speaker 1: for example, and that's a very good idea because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of equipment manufacturers, not as many now
Speaker 1: as there used to be, but still happens. But there
Speaker 1: are manufacturers that rely on a relatively small number of
Speaker 1: default passwords. So if a hacker knows this, and a
Speaker 1: hacker has a dictionary list of all the known default passwords,
Speaker 1: they can attempt to gain administrative level access to your
Speaker 1: network pretty quickly, like if you haven't changed it, then
Speaker 1: it's just you know, a brute force attack can be
Speaker 1: pretty darn fast if if it's a fairly small list
Speaker 1: of possible passwords. So that same issue is in play
Speaker 1: with these CCTV systems in Israel, and those are meant
Speaker 1: to provide physical security, so clearly they're failing in their purpose.
Speaker 1: If the people who are using them haven't changed those passwords,
Speaker 1: you cannot be certain that system is secure. If someone
Speaker 1: can access it just by using a default password right there,
Speaker 1: that that's no security at all. It could lead to
Speaker 1: an Ocean's eleven kind of high situation where thieves compromise
Speaker 1: the security system by typing in a default password and
Speaker 1: then disabling or otherwise interfering with the system while they
Speaker 1: rob a place blind and in the movies that could
Speaker 1: be really fun and exciting, but in the real world
Speaker 1: it is totally not plus. I mean, folks could compromise
Speaker 1: systems for a much more violent and tragic reasons, and
Speaker 1: that would be truly terrible. So the reason why the
Speaker 1: director even made this pronouncement of the fact that there
Speaker 1: are tens of thousands of potentially vulnerable systems in Israel,
Speaker 1: it's because they had actually been receiving reports from CCTV
Speaker 1: owners that they had been hacked. So clearly a big problem,
Speaker 1: and obviously the solution to that problem is not that difficult.
Speaker 1: It just involves law ugging in as an administrator and
Speaker 1: then changing the password information to something that's a strong
Speaker 1: log in, you know as a strong password, something that
Speaker 1: is not going to come up in a dictionary attack,
Speaker 1: and that's going to discourage more than of all hacker attempts,
Speaker 1: Like there is no such thing as a hack proof
Speaker 1: system that does not exist. But the more difficult you
Speaker 1: make it for someone from outside to access your system,
Speaker 1: the fewer people are actually gonna go through the trouble
Speaker 1: of seeing it through all the way, especially if you're
Speaker 1: in a target rich environment where you might say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they changed the password, but the place next door didn't,
Speaker 1: so let's just target them instead. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of the where Israel is seeing itself right now.
Speaker 1: Tesla opened its first European Giga factory today. Elon Musk
Speaker 1: was on hand in Germany for the event and the
Speaker 1: company delivered thirty model y SUVs two customers in the
Speaker 1: region as part of the celebration. Tesla had a bit
Speaker 1: of an uphill battle getting this giga factory online. Uh.
Speaker 1: It faced numerous questions about the environmental impact of the facility,
Speaker 1: something that some people might find ironic. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: all about developing electric vehicles, which at least you know,
Speaker 1: in in use, should be uh more environmentally friendly than
Speaker 1: internal combustion engines, But you still have to build out
Speaker 1: the facilities to make them, and that itself can have
Speaker 1: a tremendous environmental impact. Musk and his team sort of
Speaker 1: dismissed the environmental concerns, saying that they would be using
Speaker 1: up very little water in the region. Um And The
Speaker 1: Verge has an article about this that has a bit
Speaker 1: that actually made me laugh out loud when I read it,
Speaker 1: namely that in order to build the giga factory in Germany.
Speaker 1: Tesla first had to clear a forest. However, the article
Speaker 1: states Musk and company said that was fine because the
Speaker 1: forest was or wasn't natural, quote unquote wasn't natural. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a natural forest. Now. I don't know if Musk
Speaker 1: said that or if that's just how John Porter, who
Speaker 1: wrote the article put it in their article, but that
Speaker 1: wording made me laugh, that it wasn't a natural forest. Now,
Speaker 1: the meaning behind that was that the this forest was
Speaker 1: planted by humans for the purposes of supplying raw materials
Speaker 1: to a cardboard manufacturing facility. So that's what they mean
Speaker 1: by it's not a natural forest. It wasn't a pre
Speaker 1: existing forest. It was a group of trees that had
Speaker 1: been planted by people expressly for the purposes of industry. Still,
Speaker 1: the idea of Tesla clearing out an unnatural forest seems
Speaker 1: right for a sci fi horror movie to me anyway.
Speaker 1: It will take some time for the Giga factory to
Speaker 1: scale up to full production, and Musk projected that the
Speaker 1: facility will produce at most thirty thousand vehicles for the
Speaker 1: first half of this year. The goal is to get
Speaker 1: it up to producing as many as half a million
Speaker 1: vehicles per year once it is going at full blast.
Speaker 1: We have a couple more stories to cover before we
Speaker 1: get to those, let's take another quick break. In an
Speaker 1: effort to hold companies accountable for their impact on climate change,
Speaker 1: the US Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed new rules
Speaker 1: that would require publicly traded companies, as companies that have
Speaker 1: their stock traded on some stock market, they will have to,
Speaker 1: as part of their filings with the SEC, disclose their
Speaker 1: greenhouse gas emissions each year um that includes indirect greenhouse
Speaker 1: gas emissions. And to me, this makes total sense because
Speaker 1: the US has a goal to cut emissions by more
Speaker 1: than half by but in order for you to know
Speaker 1: whether or not you hit that goal, you first have
Speaker 1: to know how much you're emitted, right, Like, you've got
Speaker 1: to know the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in order
Speaker 1: to judge whether or not you actually cut back by
Speaker 1: half or really because it's more than half. You can't
Speaker 1: say that one way or another if you have no metrics, Right,
Speaker 1: You've got to have the metrics in place in order
Speaker 1: for any kind of policy that that is meant to
Speaker 1: achieve this goal to make any sense. So the rules
Speaker 1: would also require companies to submit to third party consultants
Speaker 1: to verify their numbers, so they couldn't just slap a
Speaker 1: number on their SEC filing and have that be that.
Speaker 1: It has to be verified by an outside party, one
Speaker 1: that's not affiliated with the company itself. Uh, there are
Speaker 1: some steps between now and when these rules might actually
Speaker 1: become official, and they might not like that's there's no
Speaker 1: guarantee here. So, for one thing, part of the SEC
Speaker 1: process is to publish rules on its website, and at
Speaker 1: that point, the general public has sixty days where they
Speaker 1: can comment on those rules, so that includes people who
Speaker 1: support or people who criticize the rules, and it even
Speaker 1: supporters might have suggestions for ways to make the rules
Speaker 1: more effective or more fair or or whatever. So that
Speaker 1: process is there for sixty days, and after that the
Speaker 1: SEC takes those comments into consideration. They might go back
Speaker 1: to the drawing board and draft a new version of
Speaker 1: the rules in light of the comments received, and then
Speaker 1: it would go on to a final vote. And of
Speaker 1: course we would likely see opposition to the rule from
Speaker 1: the business sector and those who represent it like lobbyists
Speaker 1: and certain politicians. So in other words, like even if
Speaker 1: this does come to pass, it's likely that we'll see
Speaker 1: various parties challenge it in a court of law arguing
Speaker 1: whether or not it is you know, a legal set
Speaker 1: of rules. So again, no guarantee that this will become
Speaker 1: official or stay official. UM. I honestly think it's a
Speaker 1: good first step because I feel like we really do
Speaker 1: have to make some serious moves in order to mitigate
Speaker 1: climate change. I mean, it's there's no way to stop
Speaker 1: climate change at this point, and that that ship sailed
Speaker 1: a long time ago, but we can still mitigate it.
Speaker 1: We can still limit the extent of climate change, and
Speaker 1: by extension, we can limit the damage that climate change
Speaker 1: is going to do. I think everybody has a responsibility
Speaker 1: to play a part in that, honestly, And I say
Speaker 1: that as someone like I don't have kids. I do
Speaker 1: have a couple of nieces who I adore, But I
Speaker 1: really think that, you know, older generations owe it to
Speaker 1: younger generations to make these kinds of changes in an
Speaker 1: effort so that the planet that the younger generations, you know,
Speaker 1: when they take adulthood and they're taking leadership roles, that
Speaker 1: they have something, they have something, they're there. So I
Speaker 1: know I'm on a soapbox. I'll get off my soapbox,
Speaker 1: But I think this SEC ruling is a good one.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to hold companies accountable. You can't
Speaker 1: just expect that they're going to do the right thing
Speaker 1: just cause. There has to be this kind of of
Speaker 1: system in place in order to make sure people and
Speaker 1: companies are doing their part. Otherwise, um, we're playing a
Speaker 1: very dangerous game. Finally, NASA says that we now know
Speaker 1: of more than five thousand planets beyond our own Solar system. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously there have to be billions of planets out there.
Speaker 1: After all, there are billions and billions, as Carl Sagan
Speaker 1: would say, of stars, like they're billions of them. Uh,
Speaker 1: and at least some of those stars. A good number
Speaker 1: of those stars are likely to have one or more
Speaker 1: planets orbiting them, So by extension, there must be billions
Speaker 1: of planets out there. However, knowing the statistical probability and
Speaker 1: then actually having evidence of a planet orbiting a star,
Speaker 1: those are two very different things. So while we should
Speaker 1: expect to identify countless more exo planets in the years
Speaker 1: to come, it's pretty cool to reflect on the idea
Speaker 1: that we have so far identified more than five thousand
Speaker 1: exo planets. We have discovered more than five thousand outs
Speaker 1: at our own solar system. That is incredible to me. Now,
Speaker 1: there's no telling how many of those might inhabit the
Speaker 1: Goldilocks zone around their respective stars. Uh. It's so called
Speaker 1: the Goldilocks zone because it's not too far and not
Speaker 1: too close to a star. Uh. It's the zone where
Speaker 1: we would say a planet could inhabit and partly support
Speaker 1: life as we know it here on Earth. Right, the
Speaker 1: temperature wouldn't be too hot or too cold to allow say,
Speaker 1: liquid water to be on the planet. Doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: liquid water is on the planet, just means that, you know,
Speaker 1: if it were closer than we would know, all the
Speaker 1: water would boil off it, or further away, all the
Speaker 1: water would freeze. So it's in that just right zone.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, even if we did
Speaker 1: magically know how many of those five thousand planets were
Speaker 1: definitively within their Goldilocks zone, we wouldn't necessarily know if
Speaker 1: any of those could or do support life. But it
Speaker 1: is really neat to think about some other cool facts
Speaker 1: about the planets that scientists have discovered. More than a
Speaker 1: third of those five thousand planets are the size of
Speaker 1: Neptune or Uranus. Both of those are about four times
Speaker 1: larger than the Earth, so they're much bigger than Earth.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of makes sense that when you think
Speaker 1: about it, Yeah, of course it's going to be easier
Speaker 1: for us to detect planets that are larger. Right, small
Speaker 1: our planets are gonna be a lot harder to detect.
Speaker 1: Um a little less than a third of the discovered
Speaker 1: planets are between the size of Earth and Neptune and
Speaker 1: are considered to be rocky planets. So in other words,
Speaker 1: that's the kind of planet where we might expect to
Speaker 1: find life if the conditions were just right, like if
Speaker 1: it were in that Goldie Lug zone. And again doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean it even if there's water on the planet,
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean there's life there. But there's the potential,
Speaker 1: which is super neat. I think it's just a matter
Speaker 1: of time before we eventually detect life on some other planet.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to be like super advanced
Speaker 1: life necessarily, but you know, life in some fashion, whether
Speaker 1: it's you know, multicellular or not. I think eventually that's
Speaker 1: just a guarantee that we will find it, assuming that
Speaker 1: we're still around, we will find it. Um, I don't
Speaker 1: think we're gonna be discovering any e t s out
Speaker 1: there like nothing intelligent, least not anytime soon. We've been
Speaker 1: listening for a while, although there are a lot of
Speaker 1: arguments to be made about that that kind of can
Speaker 1: explain why we haven't picked up any evidence of that
Speaker 1: so far. But I'll have to dedicate a full episode
Speaker 1: to that in the future. Maybe I'll get some of
Speaker 1: the guys from Stuff they Don't Want You to Know
Speaker 1: to come onto the show and talk about it from
Speaker 1: a technical perspective. Uh, because I like them a lot
Speaker 1: and it would be a lot of fun to have
Speaker 1: them on and talk about aliens and stuff. Anyway, that's
Speaker 1: it for today's episode. If you have suggestions for topics
Speaker 1: I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please
Speaker 1: reach out to me and let me know what those are.
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is over on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle for the show is tech Stuff hs W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
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