May 18, 2021 • 23 mins
China lands a rover on Mars. Elon Musk contributes to another dip in Bitcoin's value. Apple and Amazon Music offer lossless audio options to subscribers at no additional charge. And more!
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech and it is time
for the tech news for Tuesday, May twenty one. Over
(00:26):
the weekend, China celebrated the successful landing of a rover
on the surface of Mars. That means that as of now,
China and the United States are the only two nations
to have landed rovers successfully on the planet. Other countries
have sent missions to Mars, but these are the only
two countries that have landed rovers that have landed safely.
(00:50):
The rover arrived housed in a lander which used a
parachute and retrorockets to slow its descent through the Martian
atmosphere before touching down on Martian soil. So this is
a different approach from what NASA was using with the
Perseverance Rover and the Curiosity Rover before that, both of
which used a sky crane technique in which the descent
(01:14):
stage of the spacecraft used rockets to kind of hover
over a landing zone and then lower the rovers down
to the surface on cables. The Chinese lander touchdown at
around eight pm Eastern time on Friday, but it was
another hour before China scientists could confirm a successful touchdown.
(01:37):
This really illustrates just you know, how hard it is
to get a successful landing on Mars. The delay between
when something happens and when we can know about it
is significant, even if everything is working properly, it's significant.
That's partly because the distance between Earth and Mars is
great enough that it actually takes light or you know,
(01:58):
radio communications, seven role minutes to make the journey from
one point to the other. The rover named you're wrong
after a Chinese got a fire, and I apologize for
my pronunciation. I tried looking it up, but the source
I could find had middling responses from people as to
whether or not it was accurate. So my apologies for
(02:19):
for butchering that anyway, you're wrong. Will rove across Mars
for about three months if all goes well, possibly beyond
that if things go really well. NASA has had a
history of missions lasting well beyond their projected lifespan. The
rover will use various instruments to look for evidence of
the past existence of life on Mars. In other Chinese
(02:42):
space program news. Back in April, China launched a rocket
carrying a module for China's space station. The country plans
to assemble that station and have it ready for occupation
by the end of next year. The rocket that carried
that module up, unfortunately, had an un controlled return to Earth,
which caused a lot of concern along the various paths
(03:05):
of potential descent before it ultimately plummeted into the ocean.
But for a while, people along those pathways were a
little worried that perhaps a Chinese rocket might just fallen
and collide with the Earth and cause massive damage. So
while China has a big win with the landing on Mars,
the country also has faced some criticism because of that
(03:26):
rocket issue. You might remember a story from last week
about how Elon Musk, who has been a big supporter
of cryptocurrencies, helped send bitcoin values into a downward spiral
after announcing that Tesla, the company you know that makes
electric vehicles, would no longer accept the cryptocurrency bitcoin as payment. Now,
(03:47):
the reasoning behind that decision, according to Musk, was because
of the environmental impact of bitcoin mining. Now I've covered
this in the past, but that is definitely an issue.
Bitcoin mining requires an enormous amount of electricity to run
the powerful computers that rush to solve the guessing game
that ultimately determines which computer gets the next batch of bitcoins. Now,
(04:10):
some of those computers are getting electricity from renewable energy
sources like wind power, which is you know, good, except
it is taking up electricity that could potentially be going
to other places. However, some bitcoin mining operations are sucking
down juice from power plants that rely on fossil fuels,
so these are helping to contribute toward climate change and
(04:31):
carbon emissions. For a company that sells electric vehicles, which
depend partly upon at least marketing that you know, electric
vehicles are an environmentally cleaner alternative to gasoline or diesel
powered combustion engines, you know, it wasn't a good look
hard to sell an electric vehicle as being environmentally friendly
(04:52):
if you're also accepting a cryptocurrency that is perceived as
being environmentally unfriendly musk SA. At the time that Tesla,
the company had no plans to divest itself of its
own bitcoin investment. It had a substantial amount of bitcoin,
but even so, the announcement meant that bitcoin took a
hit and value after already having a dip earlier in
(05:15):
the year. Then over the weekend, Musk had a Twitter
exchange that some people thought implied that Tesla had divested
itself of its bitcoin, and then the cryptocurrency took another hit.
So at the height of its value this year, a
single bitcoin was valued at around sixty five thousand bucks.
(05:36):
As I write this, the value is closer to forty
three thousand dollars. Now, don't get me wrong, forty thousand
bucks is a lot of money, and if you got
in on the bitcoin train at the very beginning, you're
still looking at a pretty amazing return on your investment,
just less than what it was a couple of weeks ago.
(05:56):
But this does mean that bitcoin's value has dropped more
than twenty thousand dollars per bitcoin in the span of
a few weeks, and that kind of volatility shows that
bitcoin can be a very dangerous investment. It's definitely not
a good currency as it stands right now, like you
wouldn't really be able to use this to make purchases
(06:18):
in any effective way. It also indicates that Elon Musk
has way too much influence when, even if he didn't
mean to, his tweets can send a commodity's value into
a sharp decline. On Monday, Musk clarified that the company
Tesla had not divested itself of bitcoin. But as I
record this, the currency hasn't seen much of a recovery.
(06:41):
So what is going on here? Well, if I were
to give an armchair analysis, and let me start this
by saying I am, by no means an expert in
these matters, I would say that what's probably happening is
you've got a sizeable group of bitcoin investors who probably
hold a relatively all percentage of bitcoin collectively. We're not
(07:02):
talking about the whales who owned enormous amounts of bitcoin.
But they see must tweet something, and they perceive the
possibility of bitcoin's value dropping, so they rush off to
sell off their bitcoin assets to you know, minimize the
amount of loss they might experience, and that in turn
actually causes the dip to go lower. The dip becomes
(07:24):
something of a self fulfilling prophecy. Because so much of
Bitcoin's value is based in perception and speculation, you could
argue that the real people at fault here are those
investors who panicked in response to something that Musk tweeted,
and not Musk himself. But however you assign the responsibility,
the outcome is pretty much the same. Now, will Bitcoin
(07:47):
recover Probably, I'm guessing it will at some point, but
I would be foolish to predict how low the value
will go when it does turn around. Some people think
we're still in a bowl market, which means that will
see the value go up. Others think we have entered
a bear market and that the value is going to
continue to go down. There doesn't seem to be any
(08:08):
sort of agreement on that, and far be it from
me to be able to make any kind of pronouncement.
Sentiment could change quickly enough to make any guess. I
could hazard a total whiff. Anyway, this is a continuation
of my series that I'm calling Jonathan is Old, and
he thinks cryptocurrencies are inherently unstable investments, and more importantly,
(08:29):
they're very lousy currencies. Plus, the proof of work style
cryptocurrencies are just incredibly wasteful. Proof of steak has its
own problems. Again, I'm gonna have to do a full
episode about these in the future. In mergers and acquisitions news.
It looks like a T and T is planning to
spin off Warner Media, which will then merge with Discovery Communications.
(08:51):
Now I find the story particularly interesting since once upon
a time I worked for Discovery Communications how Stuff We're
x the company that I started at when I started
tech Stuff, Uh, that was part of a private company
called the Convex Group way back in the day. So
this was two thousand seven was when I joined How
Stuff Works. Discovery acquired Convex and thus How Stuff Works
(09:16):
the following year two thousand eight. A few years after that,
Discovery sold off how Stuff Works to a different company
called Blue Cora. Then Blue Cora sold us to another company,
which took on the name System One. System one spun
off the podcast arm of How Stuff Works as a
separate podcast media company, which was then acquired by iHeart Media.
(09:36):
So I've been in the same career path this entire time,
the same you know, like job path. However, the names
at the top of the organ charts kept changing. But
that wild ride is nothing compared to the various properties
that are under Warner Media that includes HBO, Cinemax, Warner Brothers,
and much much more. A T and T appears to
(09:59):
be moving away from the vertical strategy in which a
single company serves as the delivery system that is a
telecommunications style company, uh and content generation or you know,
like a studio. This is what we see with other companies, though,
I mean, like NBC Universal is owned by Comcast, and
that's like a unified approach, so it is interesting to
(10:21):
see a T and T split off from that. The
announcement came as a surprise not just to folks like myself,
but apparently it also surprised Warner Media CEO Jason Keeler.
The Verge reports that Keiler is negotiating his departure from
Warner Media. He became CEO of the company in April
of last year, so he served as leader for just
over a year now, and according to sources who spoke
(10:43):
with The New York Times, he was kept in the
dark about the decision to merge with Discovery. The announcement
makes it sound as though Discovery CEO David Zaslov is
going to oversee this new merged entity, which would mean that,
you know, Keiler's role would largely have become redundant. Anyway,
most estimations say the merger will take more than a
(11:04):
year to complete, so we're looking at twenty two before
this all settles in. What this means for the media
landscape in general is a big open question. It'll be
interesting to see how things shift around. Uh. I know
that Discovery has got to be really interested in this.
They were looking for digital solutions when they purchased How
(11:28):
Stuff Works. I mean, that was a big reason why
they purchased the company back in the day, and I
get the feeling that they never quite nailed it. So
I'm wondering if this is another approach to not just
adding an enormous amount of of you know, capability to
the company, because Warner Media is huge, but also get
(11:50):
that digital delivery system tightly integrated into Discoveries practices. Moving on, So,
one of the stories that's been developing in tech is
that Bill and Melinda Gates are divorcing and that this
process has been going on for a while now that
you know, at least since two thousand nineteen. And I
wasn't initially going to report on any of this because
(12:12):
while Bill Gates is an important person in tech, you know,
he was the co founder of Microsoft and served as
the CEO for many years and then was chairman of
the board for years more and still on the Board
of Directors up until but I figured the personal struggles
of a married couple making the decision to end their
marriage wasn't something I should cover in a tech podcast.
(12:35):
But the plot has considerably thickened as more details have
emerged during this process. For one, Bill Gates apparently pursued
a romantic relationship with the Microsoft employee back in two
thousand and just in case you're curious, Bill and Melinda
Gates married in n Beyond the extra marital affair aspect
(12:58):
of this is the huge issue of a man who
had been serving as CEO until January two thousand and
who remained on as chairman of the Board of Directors
for Microsoft while simultaneously pursuing a relationship with a Microsoft employee.
Even if Bill Gates had been single, that would have
been an enormous problem. The Board of Directors initiated a
(13:21):
probe after receiving a letter from an employee who stated
that Gates had sought an intimate relationship with her in
two thousand and that the relationship that resulted had lasted
several years. Bill Gates resigned from the board of Directors
in twenty before that investigation was concluded. It was also
only three months after he had been re elected to
(13:43):
the Board of directors. Now, I'm not here to speculate
on things, but according to various sources, at least six
current or former and Microsoft employees have said that his
actions in the workplace made them uncomfortable and that language
is open to a lot of interpretation. But again, I'm
not going to, you know, speculate as to what that
(14:03):
might actually mean. I feel like that's a disservice to
all parties involved. Another element to this sordid proceeding is
that Bill Gates had met with Jeffrey Epstein at least
as early as two thousand eleven and as late as
two thousand eleven was three years after Epstein had already
been found or had pled guilty to charges for soliciting
(14:27):
an underage girl, which is truly horrifying, and of course,
Epstein would later be linked to sex trafficking operations and
trafficking of underage girls, and Gates's meetings with Epstein reportedly
contributed to Melinda Gates's decision to seek a divorce from
from Bill. The whole thing paints a very ugly picture
(14:50):
that is still unfolding as I recorded this, and it
appears to have had large consequences regarding Gates's association with Microsoft. Now,
I say a pears because Bill Gates as representatives have
issued numerous denials regarding the various speculations and allegations linking
Bill Gates to Epstein, as well as allegations that Gates
(15:11):
created an uncomfortable atmosphere for Microsoft employees. So this story
I'm sure will continue. It doesn't look good, um and
I'm certainly more inclined to believe the accusers. But at
the same time, you know, obviously you want to try
and maintain objectivity as best as possible. Um. So, yeah,
(15:36):
complicated issue and a terrible, terrible story. We have a
couple of Apple stories to cover today as well. One
is that Apple and Amazon Music have both announced services
that would allow subscribers to their music services to listen
to lossless audio for no extra cost. So that means
we should quickly go over what lossless even means. When
(15:59):
it comes to digital audio. There are a few ways
to go about encoding data. Some encoding formats are lossy formats.
This helps keep file sizes down. Essentially you are losing
some of the data associated with that sound file. Raw
sound files get pretty big, which you know, until recently,
(16:19):
meant that streaming them was a nonstarter just because most
people didn't have the broadband throughput that you would need
to be able to do that effectively. They were also
so large that they would take up a ton of
storage space if you were trying to save them to
a device or something. So there are sound formats that
(16:40):
can serve file size by getting rid of some of
that data in an effort to compress the file sizes.
These are lossy formats, and the process means that depending
on what hardware you're using to listen to the music,
you might be able to tell the difference between lossy
versions and the lossless version. The goal of lossy versions
(17:01):
is to only eliminate data that, in theory at least
doesn't affect the listening experience of the audio file. In practice,
it can affect it. So generally speaking, lossless just means
you get a better quality of audio, but you do
have to have the right kind of equipment to listen
to it, or else it won't pick up on that well.
(17:25):
Apple Music subscribers will be able to listen to more
than seventy five million songs in lossless audio and Amazon Music,
as I mentioned as doing something similar, Apple also announced
spatial audio support, which sounds a lot to me like
bin arl or three D audio. Essentially, it's a way
for producers to create sound mixes that make it sound
(17:46):
as if audio is coming at you from specific directions
around you, assuming again that you're listening on appropriate hardware.
So let's talk about that hardware thing. Apple says that
if subscribers want to listen to the top tier of
loss less audio, so the best of the best, you
would need to have a USB digital to analog converter
(18:08):
to thus convert the signal properly before feeding that to
a pair of wired headphones. Now, such a converter would
be an external gadget that you would have to plug
into whatever device you're using to access Apple Music. But
this also means that Apple's own air Pods, AirPods Max,
and air Pods Pro gadgets won't support this level of
(18:31):
lossless audio playback, at least not wirelessly. These devices typically
pair with an iPhone over Bluetooth A a C codec
that does not support this lossless audio format, So you
can technically listen to lossless audio on an iPhone, but
you will need to connect the iPhone to some sort
of external USB digital to analog converter, and then use
(18:53):
a different pair of wired headphones to be able to
experience it. That being said, nine to five Mac reports
that air Pods Max will support high resolution lossless audio
if you're using them as wired headphones, not wireless ones.
That takes a little wind out of the sales of
this announcement. But on the flip side, both Apple and
(19:15):
Amazon are putting a lot of pressure on Spotify, which
is also beginning to offer lossless audio. But Spotify is
doing it at a premium subscription, so you have to
actually pay extra to get that access. Apple and Amazon
using lossless audio as a free upgrade is a kind
of a big kick in the teeth to Spotify. Now.
I'm just sitting off to the side over here. I'm
(19:36):
just eating my popcorn and watching this whole you know.
Shake it Loose, also related to Apple Parley or Parlor
if you prefer, is once again available on the Apple
app Store. Parlor, for those who do not know, is
a social media platform that positions itself as a champion
of free speech, but funding for the service, leadership for
(19:57):
the service, all these things that are a key to
the service being in operation come from sources that are
either the right wing political appointees or or politicians, or
they're coming from people who have funded right wing political efforts,
and Parlor's user base skewed pretty hard toward the right
(20:19):
wing of the political spectrum and certainly was dipping pretty
hard into extremism. The platform saw itself ousted from Google
and Apple app stores, as well as from Amazon Web
Services UH and their hosting system after the January sixth
assault on the US Capitol, and the company repeatedly failed
(20:43):
to moderate content that included hate speech and calls for violence.
Mark Meckler, who was an interim CEO who stepped in
to replace a former CEO who got fired from Parlor,
is now leaving the company to be replaced by George Farmer,
who since March has been the chief operating officer for
the company and previously who was a candidate for the
(21:05):
Brexit party over in the UK. To get back into
the app store, Parlor had to update its app and
content moderation policies, and it looks like there will effectively
be a different flavor of Parlor on iOS. iOS users
will see a more paired down version of the content
of the app, material that would violate the terms that
(21:28):
Parlor has had to agree to in order to come
back to Apple's App Store. All that content has to
be hidden away from iOS users. Those who are on
the web based version or who have sideloaded the Android
app on their devices would see everything, not just the
stuff that iOS would allow. Sideloading is the process of
(21:50):
adding an app outside of an authorized app store. Apple
does not allow for this. You cannot sideload apps on
a not out of the box Apple device without altering it. Google, however,
does allow for sideloading apps. It advises against it, but says,
if you want to, you can load apps that we
(22:12):
will not carry in our app store, but we kind
of disavow ourselves of what might happen to you if
you do it. So, while Parlor is still not in
the Google Play Store officially, Android users can sideload it
onto their devices. Parlor had a spike of popularity in
the fall of twenty twenty, but it was kind of
(22:33):
in decline even before it started getting banned from app
stores and hosting services. I'm not sure what it's numbers
look like now, but from what I understand, uh, it's
you know, not nearly as popular as it was leading
into the election. Stuff of and that's it for the
(22:53):
tech news for Tuesday one. We'll be back later this
week with more news updates, as well as other episodes
of tech Stuff. If you have suggestions for topics I
should cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me let
me know what those are. The best way to do
that is on Twitter. Our handle is tech stuff H
s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
(23:16):
Y tex Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
and I love all things tech and it is time
for the tech news for Tuesday, May twenty one. Over
(00:26):
the weekend, China celebrated the successful landing of a rover
on the surface of Mars. That means that as of now,
China and the United States are the only two nations
to have landed rovers successfully on the planet. Other countries
have sent missions to Mars, but these are the only
two countries that have landed rovers that have landed safely.
(00:50):
The rover arrived housed in a lander which used a
parachute and retrorockets to slow its descent through the Martian
atmosphere before touching down on Martian soil. So this is
a different approach from what NASA was using with the
Perseverance Rover and the Curiosity Rover before that, both of
which used a sky crane technique in which the descent
(01:14):
stage of the spacecraft used rockets to kind of hover
over a landing zone and then lower the rovers down
to the surface on cables. The Chinese lander touchdown at
around eight pm Eastern time on Friday, but it was
another hour before China scientists could confirm a successful touchdown.
(01:37):
This really illustrates just you know, how hard it is
to get a successful landing on Mars. The delay between
when something happens and when we can know about it
is significant, even if everything is working properly, it's significant.
That's partly because the distance between Earth and Mars is
great enough that it actually takes light or you know,
(01:58):
radio communications, seven role minutes to make the journey from
one point to the other. The rover named you're wrong
after a Chinese got a fire, and I apologize for
my pronunciation. I tried looking it up, but the source
I could find had middling responses from people as to
whether or not it was accurate. So my apologies for
(02:19):
for butchering that anyway, you're wrong. Will rove across Mars
for about three months if all goes well, possibly beyond
that if things go really well. NASA has had a
history of missions lasting well beyond their projected lifespan. The
rover will use various instruments to look for evidence of
the past existence of life on Mars. In other Chinese
(02:42):
space program news. Back in April, China launched a rocket
carrying a module for China's space station. The country plans
to assemble that station and have it ready for occupation
by the end of next year. The rocket that carried
that module up, unfortunately, had an un controlled return to Earth,
which caused a lot of concern along the various paths
(03:05):
of potential descent before it ultimately plummeted into the ocean.
But for a while, people along those pathways were a
little worried that perhaps a Chinese rocket might just fallen
and collide with the Earth and cause massive damage. So
while China has a big win with the landing on Mars,
the country also has faced some criticism because of that
(03:26):
rocket issue. You might remember a story from last week
about how Elon Musk, who has been a big supporter
of cryptocurrencies, helped send bitcoin values into a downward spiral
after announcing that Tesla, the company you know that makes
electric vehicles, would no longer accept the cryptocurrency bitcoin as payment. Now,
(03:47):
the reasoning behind that decision, according to Musk, was because
of the environmental impact of bitcoin mining. Now I've covered
this in the past, but that is definitely an issue.
Bitcoin mining requires an enormous amount of electricity to run
the powerful computers that rush to solve the guessing game
that ultimately determines which computer gets the next batch of bitcoins. Now,
(04:10):
some of those computers are getting electricity from renewable energy
sources like wind power, which is you know, good, except
it is taking up electricity that could potentially be going
to other places. However, some bitcoin mining operations are sucking
down juice from power plants that rely on fossil fuels,
so these are helping to contribute toward climate change and
(04:31):
carbon emissions. For a company that sells electric vehicles, which
depend partly upon at least marketing that you know, electric
vehicles are an environmentally cleaner alternative to gasoline or diesel
powered combustion engines, you know, it wasn't a good look
hard to sell an electric vehicle as being environmentally friendly
(04:52):
if you're also accepting a cryptocurrency that is perceived as
being environmentally unfriendly musk SA. At the time that Tesla,
the company had no plans to divest itself of its
own bitcoin investment. It had a substantial amount of bitcoin,
but even so, the announcement meant that bitcoin took a
hit and value after already having a dip earlier in
(05:15):
the year. Then over the weekend, Musk had a Twitter
exchange that some people thought implied that Tesla had divested
itself of its bitcoin, and then the cryptocurrency took another hit.
So at the height of its value this year, a
single bitcoin was valued at around sixty five thousand bucks.
(05:36):
As I write this, the value is closer to forty
three thousand dollars. Now, don't get me wrong, forty thousand
bucks is a lot of money, and if you got
in on the bitcoin train at the very beginning, you're
still looking at a pretty amazing return on your investment,
just less than what it was a couple of weeks ago.
(05:56):
But this does mean that bitcoin's value has dropped more
than twenty thousand dollars per bitcoin in the span of
a few weeks, and that kind of volatility shows that
bitcoin can be a very dangerous investment. It's definitely not
a good currency as it stands right now, like you
wouldn't really be able to use this to make purchases
(06:18):
in any effective way. It also indicates that Elon Musk
has way too much influence when, even if he didn't
mean to, his tweets can send a commodity's value into
a sharp decline. On Monday, Musk clarified that the company
Tesla had not divested itself of bitcoin. But as I
record this, the currency hasn't seen much of a recovery.
(06:41):
So what is going on here? Well, if I were
to give an armchair analysis, and let me start this
by saying I am, by no means an expert in
these matters, I would say that what's probably happening is
you've got a sizeable group of bitcoin investors who probably
hold a relatively all percentage of bitcoin collectively. We're not
(07:02):
talking about the whales who owned enormous amounts of bitcoin.
But they see must tweet something, and they perceive the
possibility of bitcoin's value dropping, so they rush off to
sell off their bitcoin assets to you know, minimize the
amount of loss they might experience, and that in turn
actually causes the dip to go lower. The dip becomes
(07:24):
something of a self fulfilling prophecy. Because so much of
Bitcoin's value is based in perception and speculation, you could
argue that the real people at fault here are those
investors who panicked in response to something that Musk tweeted,
and not Musk himself. But however you assign the responsibility,
the outcome is pretty much the same. Now, will Bitcoin
(07:47):
recover Probably, I'm guessing it will at some point, but
I would be foolish to predict how low the value
will go when it does turn around. Some people think
we're still in a bowl market, which means that will
see the value go up. Others think we have entered
a bear market and that the value is going to
continue to go down. There doesn't seem to be any
(08:08):
sort of agreement on that, and far be it from
me to be able to make any kind of pronouncement.
Sentiment could change quickly enough to make any guess. I
could hazard a total whiff. Anyway, this is a continuation
of my series that I'm calling Jonathan is Old, and
he thinks cryptocurrencies are inherently unstable investments, and more importantly,
(08:29):
they're very lousy currencies. Plus, the proof of work style
cryptocurrencies are just incredibly wasteful. Proof of steak has its
own problems. Again, I'm gonna have to do a full
episode about these in the future. In mergers and acquisitions news.
It looks like a T and T is planning to
spin off Warner Media, which will then merge with Discovery Communications.
(08:51):
Now I find the story particularly interesting since once upon
a time I worked for Discovery Communications how Stuff We're
x the company that I started at when I started
tech Stuff, Uh, that was part of a private company
called the Convex Group way back in the day. So
this was two thousand seven was when I joined How
Stuff Works. Discovery acquired Convex and thus How Stuff Works
(09:16):
the following year two thousand eight. A few years after that,
Discovery sold off how Stuff Works to a different company
called Blue Cora. Then Blue Cora sold us to another company,
which took on the name System One. System one spun
off the podcast arm of How Stuff Works as a
separate podcast media company, which was then acquired by iHeart Media.
(09:36):
So I've been in the same career path this entire time,
the same you know, like job path. However, the names
at the top of the organ charts kept changing. But
that wild ride is nothing compared to the various properties
that are under Warner Media that includes HBO, Cinemax, Warner Brothers,
and much much more. A T and T appears to
(09:59):
be moving away from the vertical strategy in which a
single company serves as the delivery system that is a
telecommunications style company, uh and content generation or you know,
like a studio. This is what we see with other companies, though,
I mean, like NBC Universal is owned by Comcast, and
that's like a unified approach, so it is interesting to
(10:21):
see a T and T split off from that. The
announcement came as a surprise not just to folks like myself,
but apparently it also surprised Warner Media CEO Jason Keeler.
The Verge reports that Keiler is negotiating his departure from
Warner Media. He became CEO of the company in April
of last year, so he served as leader for just
over a year now, and according to sources who spoke
(10:43):
with The New York Times, he was kept in the
dark about the decision to merge with Discovery. The announcement
makes it sound as though Discovery CEO David Zaslov is
going to oversee this new merged entity, which would mean that,
you know, Keiler's role would largely have become redundant. Anyway,
most estimations say the merger will take more than a
(11:04):
year to complete, so we're looking at twenty two before
this all settles in. What this means for the media
landscape in general is a big open question. It'll be
interesting to see how things shift around. Uh. I know
that Discovery has got to be really interested in this.
They were looking for digital solutions when they purchased How
(11:28):
Stuff Works. I mean, that was a big reason why
they purchased the company back in the day, and I
get the feeling that they never quite nailed it. So
I'm wondering if this is another approach to not just
adding an enormous amount of of you know, capability to
the company, because Warner Media is huge, but also get
(11:50):
that digital delivery system tightly integrated into Discoveries practices. Moving on, So,
one of the stories that's been developing in tech is
that Bill and Melinda Gates are divorcing and that this
process has been going on for a while now that
you know, at least since two thousand nineteen. And I
wasn't initially going to report on any of this because
(12:12):
while Bill Gates is an important person in tech, you know,
he was the co founder of Microsoft and served as
the CEO for many years and then was chairman of
the board for years more and still on the Board
of Directors up until but I figured the personal struggles
of a married couple making the decision to end their
marriage wasn't something I should cover in a tech podcast.
(12:35):
But the plot has considerably thickened as more details have
emerged during this process. For one, Bill Gates apparently pursued
a romantic relationship with the Microsoft employee back in two
thousand and just in case you're curious, Bill and Melinda
Gates married in n Beyond the extra marital affair aspect
(12:58):
of this is the huge issue of a man who
had been serving as CEO until January two thousand and
who remained on as chairman of the Board of Directors
for Microsoft while simultaneously pursuing a relationship with a Microsoft employee.
Even if Bill Gates had been single, that would have
been an enormous problem. The Board of Directors initiated a
(13:21):
probe after receiving a letter from an employee who stated
that Gates had sought an intimate relationship with her in
two thousand and that the relationship that resulted had lasted
several years. Bill Gates resigned from the board of Directors
in twenty before that investigation was concluded. It was also
only three months after he had been re elected to
(13:43):
the Board of directors. Now, I'm not here to speculate
on things, but according to various sources, at least six
current or former and Microsoft employees have said that his
actions in the workplace made them uncomfortable and that language
is open to a lot of interpretation. But again, I'm
not going to, you know, speculate as to what that
(14:03):
might actually mean. I feel like that's a disservice to
all parties involved. Another element to this sordid proceeding is
that Bill Gates had met with Jeffrey Epstein at least
as early as two thousand eleven and as late as
two thousand eleven was three years after Epstein had already
been found or had pled guilty to charges for soliciting
(14:27):
an underage girl, which is truly horrifying, and of course,
Epstein would later be linked to sex trafficking operations and
trafficking of underage girls, and Gates's meetings with Epstein reportedly
contributed to Melinda Gates's decision to seek a divorce from
from Bill. The whole thing paints a very ugly picture
(14:50):
that is still unfolding as I recorded this, and it
appears to have had large consequences regarding Gates's association with Microsoft. Now,
I say a pears because Bill Gates as representatives have
issued numerous denials regarding the various speculations and allegations linking
Bill Gates to Epstein, as well as allegations that Gates
(15:11):
created an uncomfortable atmosphere for Microsoft employees. So this story
I'm sure will continue. It doesn't look good, um and
I'm certainly more inclined to believe the accusers. But at
the same time, you know, obviously you want to try
and maintain objectivity as best as possible. Um. So, yeah,
(15:36):
complicated issue and a terrible, terrible story. We have a
couple of Apple stories to cover today as well. One
is that Apple and Amazon Music have both announced services
that would allow subscribers to their music services to listen
to lossless audio for no extra cost. So that means
we should quickly go over what lossless even means. When
(15:59):
it comes to digital audio. There are a few ways
to go about encoding data. Some encoding formats are lossy formats.
This helps keep file sizes down. Essentially you are losing
some of the data associated with that sound file. Raw
sound files get pretty big, which you know, until recently,
(16:19):
meant that streaming them was a nonstarter just because most
people didn't have the broadband throughput that you would need
to be able to do that effectively. They were also
so large that they would take up a ton of
storage space if you were trying to save them to
a device or something. So there are sound formats that
(16:40):
can serve file size by getting rid of some of
that data in an effort to compress the file sizes.
These are lossy formats, and the process means that depending
on what hardware you're using to listen to the music,
you might be able to tell the difference between lossy
versions and the lossless version. The goal of lossy versions
(17:01):
is to only eliminate data that, in theory at least
doesn't affect the listening experience of the audio file. In practice,
it can affect it. So generally speaking, lossless just means
you get a better quality of audio, but you do
have to have the right kind of equipment to listen
to it, or else it won't pick up on that well.
(17:25):
Apple Music subscribers will be able to listen to more
than seventy five million songs in lossless audio and Amazon Music,
as I mentioned as doing something similar, Apple also announced
spatial audio support, which sounds a lot to me like
bin arl or three D audio. Essentially, it's a way
for producers to create sound mixes that make it sound
(17:46):
as if audio is coming at you from specific directions
around you, assuming again that you're listening on appropriate hardware.
So let's talk about that hardware thing. Apple says that
if subscribers want to listen to the top tier of
loss less audio, so the best of the best, you
would need to have a USB digital to analog converter
(18:08):
to thus convert the signal properly before feeding that to
a pair of wired headphones. Now, such a converter would
be an external gadget that you would have to plug
into whatever device you're using to access Apple Music. But
this also means that Apple's own air Pods, AirPods Max,
and air Pods Pro gadgets won't support this level of
(18:31):
lossless audio playback, at least not wirelessly. These devices typically
pair with an iPhone over Bluetooth A a C codec
that does not support this lossless audio format, So you
can technically listen to lossless audio on an iPhone, but
you will need to connect the iPhone to some sort
of external USB digital to analog converter, and then use
(18:53):
a different pair of wired headphones to be able to
experience it. That being said, nine to five Mac reports
that air Pods Max will support high resolution lossless audio
if you're using them as wired headphones, not wireless ones.
That takes a little wind out of the sales of
this announcement. But on the flip side, both Apple and
(19:15):
Amazon are putting a lot of pressure on Spotify, which
is also beginning to offer lossless audio. But Spotify is
doing it at a premium subscription, so you have to
actually pay extra to get that access. Apple and Amazon
using lossless audio as a free upgrade is a kind
of a big kick in the teeth to Spotify. Now.
I'm just sitting off to the side over here. I'm
(19:36):
just eating my popcorn and watching this whole you know.
Shake it Loose, also related to Apple Parley or Parlor
if you prefer, is once again available on the Apple
app Store. Parlor, for those who do not know, is
a social media platform that positions itself as a champion
of free speech, but funding for the service, leadership for
(19:57):
the service, all these things that are a key to
the service being in operation come from sources that are
either the right wing political appointees or or politicians, or
they're coming from people who have funded right wing political efforts,
and Parlor's user base skewed pretty hard toward the right
(20:19):
wing of the political spectrum and certainly was dipping pretty
hard into extremism. The platform saw itself ousted from Google
and Apple app stores, as well as from Amazon Web
Services UH and their hosting system after the January sixth
assault on the US Capitol, and the company repeatedly failed
(20:43):
to moderate content that included hate speech and calls for violence.
Mark Meckler, who was an interim CEO who stepped in
to replace a former CEO who got fired from Parlor,
is now leaving the company to be replaced by George Farmer,
who since March has been the chief operating officer for
the company and previously who was a candidate for the
(21:05):
Brexit party over in the UK. To get back into
the app store, Parlor had to update its app and
content moderation policies, and it looks like there will effectively
be a different flavor of Parlor on iOS. iOS users
will see a more paired down version of the content
of the app, material that would violate the terms that
(21:28):
Parlor has had to agree to in order to come
back to Apple's App Store. All that content has to
be hidden away from iOS users. Those who are on
the web based version or who have sideloaded the Android
app on their devices would see everything, not just the
stuff that iOS would allow. Sideloading is the process of
(21:50):
adding an app outside of an authorized app store. Apple
does not allow for this. You cannot sideload apps on
a not out of the box Apple device without altering it. Google, however,
does allow for sideloading apps. It advises against it, but says,
if you want to, you can load apps that we
(22:12):
will not carry in our app store, but we kind
of disavow ourselves of what might happen to you if
you do it. So, while Parlor is still not in
the Google Play Store officially, Android users can sideload it
onto their devices. Parlor had a spike of popularity in
the fall of twenty twenty, but it was kind of
(22:33):
in decline even before it started getting banned from app
stores and hosting services. I'm not sure what it's numbers
look like now, but from what I understand, uh, it's
you know, not nearly as popular as it was leading
into the election. Stuff of and that's it for the
(22:53):
tech news for Tuesday one. We'll be back later this
week with more news updates, as well as other episodes
of tech Stuff. If you have suggestions for topics I
should cover on tech Stuff, reach out to me let
me know what those are. The best way to do
that is on Twitter. Our handle is tech stuff H
s W and I'll talk to you again really soon.
(23:16):
Y tex Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For
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