June 15, 2021 • 19 mins
The 2021 E3 is going on right now, and Microsoft is taking the opportunity to dominate conversations. A ransomware hacker group targeted a nuclear weapons contractor. And a group of tech companies wants the SEC to require corporations to submit a regular climate change performance report.
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Episode Transcript
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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 this is the
Tech News or Tuesday June one. Let's get to it.
(00:27):
E three, also known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is
going on in full swing right now, at least virtually speaking.
E three started out as a trade show event when
the video game industry was actually finding it really difficult
to get mainstream media attention at more generalized trade shows
(00:49):
like ce S. There are a lot of stories about
game companies being sent out to be intense in the
parking lots outside of the convention centers, you know, where
there was very little foot track fake. So the industry
as a whole came together. Uh actually the whole story
pind E three is really fastinating, But it all came
together in order for video games to get a more
(01:09):
prominent place within the media landscape. These days, however, that's
not so much of a problem, right The video game
industry is a multibillion dollar industry with huge companies that
can easily grab headlines, whether there's a trade show or not. However,
E three still stands as a time when various video
(01:33):
game publishers and developers can get together to make announcements
and show off progress that has been made on anticipated titles. Now,
I've done lots of episodes in the past about whether
or not the three is still relevant, and I think
you know that depends on what you believe the three's
purpose is. That determines whether you think it's still relevant
or not. But this year, we've already seen a lot
(01:55):
of announcements from particular companies that should have some gamers
excited it. And I'm just going to cover this from
a very high level because trust me, there is more
than enough content on the internet right now about E three,
and if you are interested, you should seek out the
various video presentations because that's way better than some guy
in an audio podcast saying and then you see this
(02:18):
picture of a bunny rabbit, but it's a bunny rabbit
with a flamethrower like that just you know has a
limited appeal. And a little bit before E three officially started,
Microsoft announced that the Xbox Game Pass service is expanding
to a variety of different devices, including streaming plugin gadgets,
you know, kind of like the old rocou sticks and
(02:39):
stuff that you can connect directly to compatible television's iPhones
that's going to stream to iPhones now and smart TVs
that will have the x Cloud version of the game
Pass service built into the televisions themselves. It will be
one of those options you can pick from and you
just connect to controller to your television. Game Pass is
(03:00):
a subscription service, and it lets subscribers play a rotating
list of game titles from various publishers, a lot of
which are part of Microsoft's growing video game empire, Bethesda
being one of the crown jewels in that empire. The
basic service costs nine dollars n cents per month here
in the United States, but the ultimate tier, which includes
(03:21):
both game Pass and Xbox Live Gold plus x Cloud
game streaming service, is fourteen dollars cents per month, and
it gets a little bit more complicated than that. There
are other features, but we're gonna leave it at that
because this is not a you know, this is not
the Xbox game Pass podcast. But at E three, Microsoft
unveiled a ton of announced games and new games, many
(03:44):
of which will be available through Game Pass on day one,
and clearly this is a huge drive to grab subscribers who,
for fifteen dollars a month will have access to a
selection of games that individually might retail for sixty to
eighty dollars a pop. Now, the plan is to bring
at least one first party game to game Pass every quarter,
(04:05):
according to Microsoft, and out of the thirty games that
Microsoft featured in its presentation, more than twenty five of
them will be available on game Pass, most of them
available on the day of launch, and that includes titles
like Halo Infinite or Yakuza Like a Dragon, or Bethesda's
new science fiction game star Field, which um looks interesting.
(04:27):
I don't know what to think about that one yet. Also,
the Xbox port of the popular game Hades will be available,
Psycho Nuts too will be available, and many many more.
Oh and Microsoft also showed off a teaser video for
a new Xbox branded mini fridge, because of course they did.
The fridge looks a lot like an Xbox Series X console.
(04:49):
It's cute. Sony hasn't really been part of E three
for a few years now, choosing to have its own event,
and Nintendo is holding its Nintendo Direct event later today,
so I don't have anything to report on that front yet,
and so it really does feel like E three has
kind of become the Microsoft show, though there are plenty
(05:10):
of companies like actual game companies like Ubisoft and Square
Enix and Gearbox that are showing off stuff too for
multiple platforms, not just Windows or Xbox. However, that's enough
for video game news. Like I said, the web is
jam packed with E three videos and commentary. So I'm
gonna leave off here and move on to other tech news.
(05:32):
And how about some scary news. First, a nuclear weapons
contractor company called soul Orients is at the focus of
a cyber attack. A ransomware group calling itself REvil r
e v i L claims responsibility and says that the
group stole data during the attack and it's going to
auction off that information to the highest bidder on the
(05:54):
black market. Uh. The same group has claimed responsibility for
other ransomware attacks in the in the recent past, and
according to Reveal, the data they took from soul Orients
include stuff like employee data like salary information and personal
information like social security numbers and stuff about the employees
of the company. Now that could represent not just a
(06:16):
threat to each employees privacy, you know, the typical identification
you know, i D stealing threat. It's also a potential
security threat both for those individuals and for the country
and and the company as well because of the nature
of the work, right. I mean, if it's a foreign entity.
Let's say it's a foreign government that decides it wants
(06:37):
to have the information of people who work for a
nuclear weapons contractor, you can see how that could quickly
become a pretty nasty threat to those people's security. Now,
according to the company, the attack did not appear to
compromise any classified information or security related info regarding their
clients or their business dealings. I would say that the
(06:59):
information that stolen was pretty bad enough already. But the
general belief is that Revel, like many ransomware groups, is
based out of Russia, which is why a lot of
countries have recently been pressuring Russia to crack down on
these groups, something that the country seems slightly less you know,
(07:19):
enthusiastic about doing. The U. S. Supreme Court recently declined
to hear a case involving LinkedIn and a company called
hick Labs that's h i Q and the heart of
the matter here is that hick Labs scraped data off
of linked In profiles in order to build out a
database of its own, and that information on LinkedIn is
(07:40):
publicly accessible. That means it's not behind any sort of
password protection or anything. So you could, in theory, achieve
the same result by just manually going to linked In
and viewing profile after profile and just copying information down
that way. Obviously that would take forever to do, but
you could do it. There's nothing stopping you. Microsoft, however,
(08:03):
sued hick Labs and claimed that the company violated the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or c f a A.
Now that is a law that I'm going to have
to cover in a future episode of Tech Stuff to
actually talk about that law, what it was intended to do,
and how it has been used since it's uh, it's
passing because it's a pretty contentious piece of legislation. Some
(08:26):
people refer to it as the worst law in tech law. Anyway,
the lawsuit went through the court system. It went all
the way up to the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,
and that court found in favor of hick Labs and
said that the c f a A does not apply
to publicly accessible data on the Internet. In other words,
(08:47):
you can't say that this was fraud or anything like that.
They were just copying information that was available for anyone
to see just by going to the site. Microsoft then
pushed for this case to go to the Supreme Court,
but as I mentioned at the beginning, the court has
declined to acquiesce to Microsoft's request. Instead, the Supreme Court
has said that the Appeals Court will have to hear
(09:08):
the case again in light of a different court case
that relates to this. So I'll probably touch back on
this because it is interesting. I also do need to
do an episode about c F A A, so that
will come up sometime in the future. Also in the future,
more rowboats or robo boats, if you prefer. The U. S.
(09:29):
Navy is slowly building out what it calls its ghost
Fleet Overlord program, which sounds like it came straight out
of a Tom Clancy novel, but I assure you this
is real. The fleet refers to ships that can operate autonomously,
and there are at least four such ships in San
Diego's harbor right now. There's the Nomad and the Ranger,
(09:51):
which both took a long distance journey to get to
San Diego, and most of that journey was taken under
autonomous power, with with a human pilot's taking over for
things like passing through the Panama Canal. And then there's
also the Sea Hunter and the Seahawk, and these vessels
are all taking part in various trials where the Navy
is testing out the feasibility of pairing autonomous vessels with
(10:15):
ships that have traditional human crews on them and to
see how they all work together in various scenarios, essentially
like you know, kind of a war games type of thing.
They also include aerial drones in this approach, and a
submarine that can launch smaller unmanned submersibles through the submarine's
torpedo tubes, which really sounds like science fiction and a
(10:37):
little bit scary because whenever the topic of autonomous weaponry
comes up, I get a bit uncomfortable. I'm not crazy
about autonomous weapons. The tests, however, are still just that
this is not an indication that robo warfares around the corner.
In fact, the Navy says that actual deployment of unmanned
systems is likely at least a decade of off a
(11:02):
group of big tech companies, including Intel, Autodesk, sales Force,
Alphabet that's Google's parent company, Amazon, and Facebook are petitioning
the Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC, to require companies
to publish a climate change performance report. So these big
companies are arguing that there needs to be some more
(11:22):
accountability within industries and that the SEC needs to make
certain that companies are following through on their their plans
to reduce carbon emissions and to curtail other activities that
are potentially harmful to the environment. And you might wonder
why these big tech companies are pushing for the SEC
to do this, Like what's in it for them? I mean,
(11:45):
most companies are not big fans of regulation, so asking
for more government intervention in these matters to require companies
to produce reports seems counterintuitive. However, it may be that
this is both too you know, actually make moves to
reduce harm with regard to climate change. In other words,
it might be a sincere effort to try and do
(12:07):
something about the climate crisis. And it may also be about,
you know, making certain that other companies are not breaking
the rules and getting an unfair market advantage because unlike
these companies, Uh, the little ones that are breaking the
rules aren't actually taking the more expensive route of being accountable.
They're taking the shortcut, the carbon rich shortcut, and thus
(12:32):
getting an unfair advantage. But that's just a guess on
my part. I don't know for sure. In Pakistan, the
Punjab government has announced a plan that is downright astonishing
and it all has to do with COVID vaccinations. So
various companies and governments around the world have created different
incentives to encourage more people to go and get vaccinated.
(12:54):
Um and as someone who lives in a state that
still has an embarrassingly low number of vaccinated adults, I
can understand that move. But Pakistan is going a step further.
This isn't a get vaccinated and you might win a prize.
This is get vaccinated or we shut off your phone.
According to zd net, the Punjab government will block mobile
(13:17):
sim cards that belong to people who refuse to get vaccinated.
So if you don't get your jabs, you don't have
a working mobile phone. Now, on the one hand, I
feel like everyone who can get vaccinated should get vaccinated.
But on the other hand, cutting off mobile phones is
a pretty tough penalty. Particularly in a world where many
(13:38):
of us use our phones as our primary means to
connect to the internet and thus to interact with basic
stuff in our lives. So I personally lean towards this
being a little too extreme for my tastes. But on
the other hand, I can't deny that vaccinations are absolutely
critical and that a lower vaccination turnout means there are
more opportunities for COVID to spread and you take and
(14:00):
potentially get worse, which could set the whole world back
to square one or even further back when it comes
to fighting the disease. So I didn't know how to
feel about this one. I do know that if any
politician tried to do something similar here in the United States,
there would be riots. According to the e f F
fifteen universities have formed a consortium that is, in effect
(14:22):
a patent troll. So what is a patent troll? Well, first,
let's talk about patents. A patent is sort of like
a copyright for an invention. So if you invent something new,
you can apply for a patent and a patent office
will review your application and then decide whether or not
your invention meets the requirements for a patent. So, in
(14:42):
other words, is it actually a new invention, could it
potentially actually work? Does it rely upon any existing technologies?
And if so, did you credit those technologies in your application?
But assuming that your application does meet all the requirements,
you can get a patent and that protects your invention
and design for a certain amount of time. And during
that time, no one else can legally produce your invention
(15:06):
unless they first get your permission, which is typically through
a license deal. You are allowed to exploit your invention
however you like, so you can go and make you know,
products based off your invention if you if you like,
or you can again license it out to other people
or both. A patent troll is an entity that scoops
up patents. It doesn't necessarily make patents itself, although it might,
(15:28):
but it may go around and purchase patents from other companies.
And often these are low value patents, ones that haven't
really been you know, exercised very much. Uh, And they're
not they're not doing it for the purposes of creating
anything with the patents, like, they're not going to make
any products or services based off of it. Instead, they
seek out companies that are making stuff that potentially could
(15:50):
infringe upon one of those patents that the troll owns.
So patentrols will buy up as many of these low
value patents as possible. On cast of wide net and
threatened litigation against companies that the trolls claim are relying
on technology that is covered by the trolls patents. Litigation
is expensive. I mean, even if you win the lawsuit,
it's expensive. So a lot of companies will just pay
(16:13):
a licensing fee. Meanwhile, the troll isn't actually doing anything
useful with those patents, and it's generally thought of as
a pretty skiezy thing to do. According to the e
f F, this new company is going to follow a
very similar approach, and the group of universities includes Harvard, Cornell,
Columbia University, cal Tech, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania,
(16:36):
among several others. Finally, Airbus is now working on hydrogen
fuel tanks for a planned new type of airliner called
the Zero E. The E stands for emissions, so hydrogen
can be used as a fuel in a couple of
different ways. You could create fuel cells, which are sort
of like batteries, except that you have to replenish the
(16:57):
fuel in them. So typically you're talking about oxygen on
one side of the fuel cell and hydrogen on the other,
and there's like a semi permeable membrane between the two
that allows ions to flow through from one direction to
the other, but electrons have to flow through a different pathway,
and thus you harness the electrons for you know, electricity. However,
(17:18):
those would not really be strong enough to power like
an airliner, so air Bus is looking at hydrogen as
more of a traditional fuel, the kind that could be
used in combustion engines. Hydrogen is the most plentiful element
in our galaxy, but that doesn't make it super easy
to get hold of. Hydrogen bonds readily with other stuff
(17:38):
like carbon compounds, and that means that getting hold of
hydrogen usually requires you to pour some energy into the
effort first, So you have to make sure that you
know the amount of hydrogen you're getting out is going
to represent more of an energy storage than however, however
much energy you needed to get hold of it in
the first place. Moreover, hydrogen has some other challenge, and
(18:00):
just for one thing. To make efficient use of hydrogen,
air Bus needs to have it in liquid form in
order to you know, hold enough of it to fuel
a plane. Now, that requires keeping hydrogen at the temperature
of minus four eighteen degrees fahrenheit, which is pretty chilly,
much colder than any airplane air conditioner I've ever felt, thankfully,
(18:22):
And hydrogen is also very, very flammable, so those storage
tanks need to be strong and capable of withstanding temperature
fluctuations and temperature cycles and that kind of thing. But
this is all in an effort to reduce carbon emissions,
because burning hydrogen doesn't generate carbon emissions the way gasoline does,
(18:44):
or jet fuel for that matter, and reducing carbon emissions
is something the airline industry is really looking at carefully
because it's no secret that your typical flight has a
pretty awful carbon footprint associated with it. So getting that
reduced is a big, big incentive for airline companies that
(19:06):
are in a world that is increasingly moving towards a
carbon neutral approach to doing business. And that's it for
the tech news for Tuesday, June one. We'll have some
more tech news on Thursday, and in the meantime, if
you have any suggestions for topics I should cover, like
the cf A A let me know over on Twitter.
(19:29):
The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
Stuff is an I heart Radio production. For more podcasts
from my 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 this is the
Tech News or Tuesday June one. Let's get to it.
(00:27):
E three, also known as the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is
going on in full swing right now, at least virtually speaking.
E three started out as a trade show event when
the video game industry was actually finding it really difficult
to get mainstream media attention at more generalized trade shows
(00:49):
like ce S. There are a lot of stories about
game companies being sent out to be intense in the
parking lots outside of the convention centers, you know, where
there was very little foot track fake. So the industry
as a whole came together. Uh actually the whole story
pind E three is really fastinating, But it all came
together in order for video games to get a more
(01:09):
prominent place within the media landscape. These days, however, that's
not so much of a problem, right The video game
industry is a multibillion dollar industry with huge companies that
can easily grab headlines, whether there's a trade show or not. However,
E three still stands as a time when various video
(01:33):
game publishers and developers can get together to make announcements
and show off progress that has been made on anticipated titles. Now,
I've done lots of episodes in the past about whether
or not the three is still relevant, and I think
you know that depends on what you believe the three's
purpose is. That determines whether you think it's still relevant
or not. But this year, we've already seen a lot
(01:55):
of announcements from particular companies that should have some gamers
excited it. And I'm just going to cover this from
a very high level because trust me, there is more
than enough content on the internet right now about E three,
and if you are interested, you should seek out the
various video presentations because that's way better than some guy
in an audio podcast saying and then you see this
(02:18):
picture of a bunny rabbit, but it's a bunny rabbit
with a flamethrower like that just you know has a
limited appeal. And a little bit before E three officially started,
Microsoft announced that the Xbox Game Pass service is expanding
to a variety of different devices, including streaming plugin gadgets,
you know, kind of like the old rocou sticks and
(02:39):
stuff that you can connect directly to compatible television's iPhones
that's going to stream to iPhones now and smart TVs
that will have the x Cloud version of the game
Pass service built into the televisions themselves. It will be
one of those options you can pick from and you
just connect to controller to your television. Game Pass is
(03:00):
a subscription service, and it lets subscribers play a rotating
list of game titles from various publishers, a lot of
which are part of Microsoft's growing video game empire, Bethesda
being one of the crown jewels in that empire. The
basic service costs nine dollars n cents per month here
in the United States, but the ultimate tier, which includes
(03:21):
both game Pass and Xbox Live Gold plus x Cloud
game streaming service, is fourteen dollars cents per month, and
it gets a little bit more complicated than that. There
are other features, but we're gonna leave it at that
because this is not a you know, this is not
the Xbox game Pass podcast. But at E three, Microsoft
unveiled a ton of announced games and new games, many
(03:44):
of which will be available through Game Pass on day one,
and clearly this is a huge drive to grab subscribers who,
for fifteen dollars a month will have access to a
selection of games that individually might retail for sixty to
eighty dollars a pop. Now, the plan is to bring
at least one first party game to game Pass every quarter,
(04:05):
according to Microsoft, and out of the thirty games that
Microsoft featured in its presentation, more than twenty five of
them will be available on game Pass, most of them
available on the day of launch, and that includes titles
like Halo Infinite or Yakuza Like a Dragon, or Bethesda's
new science fiction game star Field, which um looks interesting.
(04:27):
I don't know what to think about that one yet. Also,
the Xbox port of the popular game Hades will be available,
Psycho Nuts too will be available, and many many more.
Oh and Microsoft also showed off a teaser video for
a new Xbox branded mini fridge, because of course they did.
The fridge looks a lot like an Xbox Series X console.
(04:49):
It's cute. Sony hasn't really been part of E three
for a few years now, choosing to have its own event,
and Nintendo is holding its Nintendo Direct event later today,
so I don't have anything to report on that front yet,
and so it really does feel like E three has
kind of become the Microsoft show, though there are plenty
(05:10):
of companies like actual game companies like Ubisoft and Square
Enix and Gearbox that are showing off stuff too for
multiple platforms, not just Windows or Xbox. However, that's enough
for video game news. Like I said, the web is
jam packed with E three videos and commentary. So I'm
gonna leave off here and move on to other tech news.
(05:32):
And how about some scary news. First, a nuclear weapons
contractor company called soul Orients is at the focus of
a cyber attack. A ransomware group calling itself REvil r
e v i L claims responsibility and says that the
group stole data during the attack and it's going to
auction off that information to the highest bidder on the
(05:54):
black market. Uh. The same group has claimed responsibility for
other ransomware attacks in the in the recent past, and
according to Reveal, the data they took from soul Orients
include stuff like employee data like salary information and personal
information like social security numbers and stuff about the employees
of the company. Now that could represent not just a
(06:16):
threat to each employees privacy, you know, the typical identification
you know, i D stealing threat. It's also a potential
security threat both for those individuals and for the country
and and the company as well because of the nature
of the work, right. I mean, if it's a foreign entity.
Let's say it's a foreign government that decides it wants
(06:37):
to have the information of people who work for a
nuclear weapons contractor, you can see how that could quickly
become a pretty nasty threat to those people's security. Now,
according to the company, the attack did not appear to
compromise any classified information or security related info regarding their
clients or their business dealings. I would say that the
(06:59):
information that stolen was pretty bad enough already. But the
general belief is that Revel, like many ransomware groups, is
based out of Russia, which is why a lot of
countries have recently been pressuring Russia to crack down on
these groups, something that the country seems slightly less you know,
(07:19):
enthusiastic about doing. The U. S. Supreme Court recently declined
to hear a case involving LinkedIn and a company called
hick Labs that's h i Q and the heart of
the matter here is that hick Labs scraped data off
of linked In profiles in order to build out a
database of its own, and that information on LinkedIn is
(07:40):
publicly accessible. That means it's not behind any sort of
password protection or anything. So you could, in theory, achieve
the same result by just manually going to linked In
and viewing profile after profile and just copying information down
that way. Obviously that would take forever to do, but
you could do it. There's nothing stopping you. Microsoft, however,
(08:03):
sued hick Labs and claimed that the company violated the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or c f a A.
Now that is a law that I'm going to have
to cover in a future episode of Tech Stuff to
actually talk about that law, what it was intended to do,
and how it has been used since it's uh, it's
passing because it's a pretty contentious piece of legislation. Some
(08:26):
people refer to it as the worst law in tech law. Anyway,
the lawsuit went through the court system. It went all
the way up to the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,
and that court found in favor of hick Labs and
said that the c f a A does not apply
to publicly accessible data on the Internet. In other words,
(08:47):
you can't say that this was fraud or anything like that.
They were just copying information that was available for anyone
to see just by going to the site. Microsoft then
pushed for this case to go to the Supreme Court,
but as I mentioned at the beginning, the court has
declined to acquiesce to Microsoft's request. Instead, the Supreme Court
has said that the Appeals Court will have to hear
(09:08):
the case again in light of a different court case
that relates to this. So I'll probably touch back on
this because it is interesting. I also do need to
do an episode about c F A A, so that
will come up sometime in the future. Also in the future,
more rowboats or robo boats, if you prefer. The U. S.
(09:29):
Navy is slowly building out what it calls its ghost
Fleet Overlord program, which sounds like it came straight out
of a Tom Clancy novel, but I assure you this
is real. The fleet refers to ships that can operate autonomously,
and there are at least four such ships in San
Diego's harbor right now. There's the Nomad and the Ranger,
(09:51):
which both took a long distance journey to get to
San Diego, and most of that journey was taken under
autonomous power, with with a human pilot's taking over for
things like passing through the Panama Canal. And then there's
also the Sea Hunter and the Seahawk, and these vessels
are all taking part in various trials where the Navy
is testing out the feasibility of pairing autonomous vessels with
(10:15):
ships that have traditional human crews on them and to
see how they all work together in various scenarios, essentially
like you know, kind of a war games type of thing.
They also include aerial drones in this approach, and a
submarine that can launch smaller unmanned submersibles through the submarine's
torpedo tubes, which really sounds like science fiction and a
(10:37):
little bit scary because whenever the topic of autonomous weaponry
comes up, I get a bit uncomfortable. I'm not crazy
about autonomous weapons. The tests, however, are still just that
this is not an indication that robo warfares around the corner.
In fact, the Navy says that actual deployment of unmanned
systems is likely at least a decade of off a
(11:02):
group of big tech companies, including Intel, Autodesk, sales Force,
Alphabet that's Google's parent company, Amazon, and Facebook are petitioning
the Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC, to require companies
to publish a climate change performance report. So these big
companies are arguing that there needs to be some more
(11:22):
accountability within industries and that the SEC needs to make
certain that companies are following through on their their plans
to reduce carbon emissions and to curtail other activities that
are potentially harmful to the environment. And you might wonder
why these big tech companies are pushing for the SEC
to do this, Like what's in it for them? I mean,
(11:45):
most companies are not big fans of regulation, so asking
for more government intervention in these matters to require companies
to produce reports seems counterintuitive. However, it may be that
this is both too you know, actually make moves to
reduce harm with regard to climate change. In other words,
it might be a sincere effort to try and do
(12:07):
something about the climate crisis. And it may also be about,
you know, making certain that other companies are not breaking
the rules and getting an unfair market advantage because unlike
these companies, Uh, the little ones that are breaking the
rules aren't actually taking the more expensive route of being accountable.
They're taking the shortcut, the carbon rich shortcut, and thus
(12:32):
getting an unfair advantage. But that's just a guess on
my part. I don't know for sure. In Pakistan, the
Punjab government has announced a plan that is downright astonishing
and it all has to do with COVID vaccinations. So
various companies and governments around the world have created different
incentives to encourage more people to go and get vaccinated.
(12:54):
Um and as someone who lives in a state that
still has an embarrassingly low number of vaccinated adults, I
can understand that move. But Pakistan is going a step further.
This isn't a get vaccinated and you might win a prize.
This is get vaccinated or we shut off your phone.
According to zd net, the Punjab government will block mobile
(13:17):
sim cards that belong to people who refuse to get vaccinated.
So if you don't get your jabs, you don't have
a working mobile phone. Now, on the one hand, I
feel like everyone who can get vaccinated should get vaccinated.
But on the other hand, cutting off mobile phones is
a pretty tough penalty. Particularly in a world where many
(13:38):
of us use our phones as our primary means to
connect to the internet and thus to interact with basic
stuff in our lives. So I personally lean towards this
being a little too extreme for my tastes. But on
the other hand, I can't deny that vaccinations are absolutely
critical and that a lower vaccination turnout means there are
more opportunities for COVID to spread and you take and
(14:00):
potentially get worse, which could set the whole world back
to square one or even further back when it comes
to fighting the disease. So I didn't know how to
feel about this one. I do know that if any
politician tried to do something similar here in the United States,
there would be riots. According to the e f F
fifteen universities have formed a consortium that is, in effect
(14:22):
a patent troll. So what is a patent troll? Well, first,
let's talk about patents. A patent is sort of like
a copyright for an invention. So if you invent something new,
you can apply for a patent and a patent office
will review your application and then decide whether or not
your invention meets the requirements for a patent. So, in
(14:42):
other words, is it actually a new invention, could it
potentially actually work? Does it rely upon any existing technologies?
And if so, did you credit those technologies in your application?
But assuming that your application does meet all the requirements,
you can get a patent and that protects your invention
and design for a certain amount of time. And during
that time, no one else can legally produce your invention
(15:06):
unless they first get your permission, which is typically through
a license deal. You are allowed to exploit your invention
however you like, so you can go and make you know,
products based off your invention if you if you like,
or you can again license it out to other people
or both. A patent troll is an entity that scoops
up patents. It doesn't necessarily make patents itself, although it might,
(15:28):
but it may go around and purchase patents from other companies.
And often these are low value patents, ones that haven't
really been you know, exercised very much. Uh, And they're
not they're not doing it for the purposes of creating
anything with the patents, like, they're not going to make
any products or services based off of it. Instead, they
seek out companies that are making stuff that potentially could
(15:50):
infringe upon one of those patents that the troll owns.
So patentrols will buy up as many of these low
value patents as possible. On cast of wide net and
threatened litigation against companies that the trolls claim are relying
on technology that is covered by the trolls patents. Litigation
is expensive. I mean, even if you win the lawsuit,
it's expensive. So a lot of companies will just pay
(16:13):
a licensing fee. Meanwhile, the troll isn't actually doing anything
useful with those patents, and it's generally thought of as
a pretty skiezy thing to do. According to the e
f F, this new company is going to follow a
very similar approach, and the group of universities includes Harvard, Cornell,
Columbia University, cal Tech, Yale, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania,
(16:36):
among several others. Finally, Airbus is now working on hydrogen
fuel tanks for a planned new type of airliner called
the Zero E. The E stands for emissions, so hydrogen
can be used as a fuel in a couple of
different ways. You could create fuel cells, which are sort
of like batteries, except that you have to replenish the
(16:57):
fuel in them. So typically you're talking about oxygen on
one side of the fuel cell and hydrogen on the other,
and there's like a semi permeable membrane between the two
that allows ions to flow through from one direction to
the other, but electrons have to flow through a different pathway,
and thus you harness the electrons for you know, electricity. However,
(17:18):
those would not really be strong enough to power like
an airliner, so air Bus is looking at hydrogen as
more of a traditional fuel, the kind that could be
used in combustion engines. Hydrogen is the most plentiful element
in our galaxy, but that doesn't make it super easy
to get hold of. Hydrogen bonds readily with other stuff
(17:38):
like carbon compounds, and that means that getting hold of
hydrogen usually requires you to pour some energy into the
effort first, So you have to make sure that you
know the amount of hydrogen you're getting out is going
to represent more of an energy storage than however, however
much energy you needed to get hold of it in
the first place. Moreover, hydrogen has some other challenge, and
(18:00):
just for one thing. To make efficient use of hydrogen,
air Bus needs to have it in liquid form in
order to you know, hold enough of it to fuel
a plane. Now, that requires keeping hydrogen at the temperature
of minus four eighteen degrees fahrenheit, which is pretty chilly,
much colder than any airplane air conditioner I've ever felt, thankfully,
(18:22):
And hydrogen is also very, very flammable, so those storage
tanks need to be strong and capable of withstanding temperature
fluctuations and temperature cycles and that kind of thing. But
this is all in an effort to reduce carbon emissions,
because burning hydrogen doesn't generate carbon emissions the way gasoline does,
(18:44):
or jet fuel for that matter, and reducing carbon emissions
is something the airline industry is really looking at carefully
because it's no secret that your typical flight has a
pretty awful carbon footprint associated with it. So getting that
reduced is a big, big incentive for airline companies that
(19:06):
are in a world that is increasingly moving towards a
carbon neutral approach to doing business. And that's it for
the tech news for Tuesday, June one. We'll have some
more tech news on Thursday, and in the meantime, if
you have any suggestions for topics I should cover, like
the cf A A let me know over on Twitter.
(19:29):
The handle for the show is tech Stuff H s
W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text
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Karah Preiss
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