June 9, 2022 • 29 mins
The committee investigating the January 6th insurrection reportedly wants Twitter to hand over more internal communications about what folks in the company knew about the planned event. Tesla is facing some opposition for its required office attendance in Germany. And the James Webb Space Telescope gets hit by a micrometeoroid.
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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 how the tech are you? It is time for
the tech news for June nine, two thousand and twenty two,
which is, as I recall, a Thursday. And for those
(00:27):
of you who were concerned and reached out, thank you
so much. Feeling much better now. My fever already broke
so and I've tested negative for COVID, thank goodness. So
it looks like it was, you know, just a like
a little bug that I caught, and I'm on the
better side of it. Now, let's get too news that
you really care about and not just me grousing about
(00:49):
feeling nikky, okay. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the committee
that's investigating the January sixth insurrection here in the United
States wants to get access to internal Twitter communications, including
messages sent on Slack between Twitter employees, in an effort
to determine what Twitter was doing to moderate discourse on
(01:12):
the platform as it was leading up to the violence
that happened on January six. Twitter so far has refused
to comply with that request, at least to the Investigating
Committee's satisfaction. Anyway. Twitter representatives say that the company has
already shared some information with this committee. There's been a
growing awareness that employees at several social networking sites were
(01:36):
aware of and concerned about the growing momentum that was
indicating that something was going to go down on January six,
So presumably the Investigative Committee wants to see to what
extent Twitter employees were concerned and what the company's response
to those concerns were like. Was the company dismissing this
(01:57):
because they didn't want to rock the boat or anything
like that. Uh committee also suspects that participants in the
insurrection we're using Twitter to coordinate with one another, and
that perhaps the platform was then a facilitator for the events,
although not necessarily an active or willing participant, but you know,
it helped enable that, and that perhaps it could have
(02:19):
and should have done more to alert authorities about specific
plans of action. Twitter has argued that it has a
responsibility to protect its employees and that the government demanding
access to internal documents could be a violation of the
First Amendment. For those of you who are not in
the United States. The first Amendment to the U. S
Constitution is the one that guarantees the right of freedom
(02:42):
of speech, as well as freedom assembly, and religion. In
related news, the U S State of Connecticut has budgeted
to create a special position dedicated to fighting back against
quote misinformation narratives about voting end quote. So the job
title is Election Information Security Officer, and the budget also
(03:03):
includes money that is dedicated to educating various communication platforms,
both in old media and new media, on how to
recognize and respond to misinformation campaigns, specifically targeting elections. Other
states in the US have similar departments like this in place. Already.
Misinformation has become a massive problem in general in the
(03:24):
United States UH, and elections, of course, are particularly targeted.
It's not exclusive, though, We've seen misinformation campaigns about COVID
and vaccinations, for example. On a personal note, I wouldn't
even know how or where to start in order to
fight back against misinformation. It's so prevalent and so invasive,
and it involves so many different tactics. I hope that
(03:49):
the efforts in Connecticut and elsewhere are effective. I want
to see UH platforms that have trustworthy information on them
and people who know that the election process is being
done fair and square and not being you know, fed
lies that. That's just otherwise, because once you start undermining
(04:10):
confidence in the system, the system itself breaks down. That's
how democracy dies, Really, democracy dies when the people no
longer have faith that the system is doing what it's
supposed to. Uh, it doesn't even you know, it doesn't
have to be real. Like the system can be working
just fine, but if people lose faith in it, and
(04:30):
it doesn't matter if the system is working or not,
the lack of confidence of the people is what will
kill democracy. Sticking with the United States, a collaborative effort
involving the FBI, the I R S, and the Department
of Justice took down four domains on the web that
hosted a marketplace called ss N d o B. That
(04:52):
marketplace was essentially a clearing house of stolen personal information,
including social security numbers and credit card number. The social
security numbers explains the s s in bit of the
name s s in d o B. The database held
information on more than twenty million Americans, and it's been
active for several years, perhaps getting started as early as though,
(05:16):
as you might have guessed, folks who run illegal operations
aren't super big on documenting their history of it. The
market was known to have pulled in millions of dollars
in revenue, a lot of it in cryptocurrency, and I
haven't seen any information about whether law enforcement has identified
the folks who are actually behind the database, So I'm
not sure how this will go beyond just shutting down
(05:39):
the service. Presumably you would have to go further, or
else those who are responsible might just create a new
database on another domain and thus only experience a short
interruption of services. So I'll keep an eye on this
story as it develops. Business Insider reports that Netflix might
be making a move to acquire Roku. While Roku was
(06:03):
one of the early companies in the streaming business and
has a big reputation in creating really good hardware for streaming,
like streaming sticks and such, it has been in a
slump lately. About a year ago, the stock price for
Roku was higher than what it is today, So that's
a massive slide obviously, and Business Insiders says that Roku
(06:26):
employees have been told that they are not allowed to
sell their stock right now. Companies typically will do this
when something big is happening behind the scenes. It's usually
an effort to prevent employees from engaging and stuff like
insider trading. That's when you take advantage of information about
a publicly traded company that the general public doesn't have
access to. Right So, if you know, for example, that
(06:47):
company A is going to buy a company B, and
that hasn't been announced to the general public, it would
be illegal for you to try and use that information
to your advantage because it's an unfair advantage. It sinside
or trading. Anyway, If you're wondering what, you know, why
does Netflix want Roku in the first place, one big
thought is that it isn't so much the hardware side.
(07:10):
I mean, Roku does make great streaming platforms, but we're
seeing more and more televisions come with that kind of
stuff you know, uh natively installed in them. So as
time goes on, things like streaming sticks become less relevant.
It maybe the Netflix really wants Roku because Roku has
(07:32):
advertising on it. So Earlier this year, Netflix announced that
it was looking into new revenue sources after the company
had its first big setback. It had a decrease in
the overall subscriber number and then investor confidence in the
company just took a nose dive. With that it took
was one setback and people were out. So one of
(07:53):
the revenue sources that Netflix has been looking at is advertising,
namely that Netflix would introduce a lower cost subscription tier,
and that that subscription would be subsidized by including ads
in the streamed content. Roku already has an advertising model
built out, and in fact, the ads contribute significantly more
revenue than hardware sales have, so this might be a
(08:17):
case of Netflix purchasing a solution to save itself the
trouble of building out one of its own. Now, to
be clear, neither Netflix nor Roku have commented on this
rumored deal, so it may not even be a thing.
An ongoing trend we've been seeing around the world is
a move to transition from internal combustion engine vehicles or
(08:38):
i c E vehicles to electric vehicles or e vs.
The EU Parliament yesterday voted to require automakers to cut
c O two emissions by by now. Effectively that means
banning the manufacturing of any vehicle running on gasoline or diesel. Now,
this is not the same as saying that I see
(09:00):
vehicles would be illegal, but rather that all vehicles made
from twive on should not be vehicles that emit CEO two.
This move has to still be approved by the individual
EU nations, so it's not a done deal yet. There
has been some resistance to this push, with Germany's automotive
industry lobby v d A arguing that the mandate would
(09:24):
quote unquote hurt innovation. Hurt innovation to me typically is
is like a smoke screen. I see a lot of
companies talk about things hurting innovation, which usually just means
this will hurt our revenue and not necessarily it will
hurt innovation. In fact, a lot of times you could
argue that the status quo is what is hurting innovation.
(09:48):
That's some commentary from yours, truly, I'll just get back
to the news now. And it might be that German
automakers are really objecting to this largely because they have
not been as a gre se in developing alternatives to
ice vehicles as automakers from other parts of the world,
so in other words, they're behind when it comes to this,
(10:10):
and that perhaps that might be part of the reason
for the objection. The v d A also argued that
the EU lacks sufficient infrastructure to support fleets of e vs. Now, again,
to me, that sounds kind of like a cop out,
because we are talking about the timeline that's more than
a decade out from today. You know, we have thirteen
years to to get this sussed out. Now, what I
(10:34):
will say is that as it stands, the world is
not yet producing enough EV batteries to meet the needs
of replacing all new vehicles with e V. S uh.
That's a challenge that we're going to have to overcome
or we'll need to see some serious movement on other
types of vehicles, such as hydrogen powered ones, you know,
fuel cell vehicles, that sort of thing. But that's where
(10:56):
it stands right now. The EU nations are now poised
to determine whether or not they will adopt this approach
to ban the sale of new I C E vehicles
starting by when we come back, we'll have a few
stories about Tesla and then a couple of others as well,
So let's take a break for these messages. Earlier this
(11:27):
week I did an Elon update. Now I'm not gonna
do another one, but I do have a few stories
that do relate to Tesla, which of course does relate
to Elon Musk. First up is that Reuter's reports Tesla
will be holding a hiring event in China. Now, if
you remember, on Tuesday's episode, I talked about how Elon
Musk indicated there would be a hiring freeze at Tesla.
(11:48):
He then subsequently clarified that he really meant hiring freeze
on the salaried employee or corporate side, not on the
hourly employee side, which usually means folks who work in
manufact training plants, like you know, floor workers at factories.
Reuters states that this hiring event will concentrate mainly on
engineers and managers, so it certainly sounds like salary jobs
(12:10):
to me, but I don't know anyway. Just interesting to
see that while Elon Musk is saying that the company
is putting a freeze, uh, it doesn't appear to really
be that, at least not globally. Meanwhile, in Germany, the
trade union i G Metal has responded to a leaked
internal email from Elon Musk that essentially told all Tesla
(12:34):
employees would have to work in the office for at
least forty hours a week before they could do any
remote work at all, Like he essentially said, if you
want to work from home, you can after you put
in forty hours of work at the office. So this
union has said, essentially, and I'm paraphrasing here, hey buddy,
here in Germany, it doesn't work that way. An employer
(12:55):
can't just you know, act like a dictator to their employees.
So Musk has been pretty clearly anti union over the years.
I imagine this is not something he wants to hear.
And considering that numerous studies have suggested that there's no
drop in productivity with remote work situations, I feel pretty
confident that a lot of Tesla employees see his demands
(13:15):
as being unreasonable. Now, there are people who believe that
the whole thing is kind of a work in the
parlance of the squared circle, that is, of professional wrestling uh,
and that Musk's approach is really just an effort to
convince at least some people at Tesla to pack their
bags and leave, because that's one way you can reduce
(13:37):
overhead without having to worry about paying out severance packages.
If people quit, then you don't know him severance. That
pretty cynical observation doesn't necessarily mean it's inaccurate. I can't
say one way or the other. And meanwhile, here in
the United States, Tesla's legal team has accused the California
Department of Fair Employment and Housing or d f e H,
(14:00):
of skipping some key steps before that organization filed a
lawsuit against Tesla alleging racial bias and discrimination within the company,
specifically within the Fremont, California factory. So this all stems
from accusations that a former Tesla employee faced numerous incidents
of racial abuse while working at Tesla, and the d
(14:22):
f e H sued Tesla, But Tesla's legal team says
that the d f e H failed to take some
required steps that would normally include an attempt to mediate
a dispute before it would actually go to court. The
Tesla team then filed a petition with the Office of
Administrative Law in California over the matter. And while it
seems as though Tesla's objections have at least some merit,
(14:44):
because the d f e H is supposed to follow
certain protocols that it appears to have skipped, UH, it
might end up all being moot anyway, because technically the
legal team would have needed to file this petition before
the legal case began, So in other words, it might
just be too late for this to matter. We'll have
(15:05):
to wait and see. Blizzard has been having a pretty
rough go of it recently. It's part of the massive
company Activision Blizzard, which itself is mired in controversy, ranging
from claims that the company harbored a toxic culture, claims
that I should say I seem to be largely substantiated,
to the company's attempts to discourage employees from being able
(15:27):
to organize into unions. But the problems I really want
to talk about with regard to Blizzard have to do
with the actual games that the company is releasing and
the response to those games. The games have been getting
pounded by user ratings on Metacritic. So the most recent game,
dia Blow Immortal, is a mobile game, and it's obviously
(15:49):
an entry in the dia Blow franchise, a long popular franchise.
That game currently has a user rating on Metacritic of
just zero point five out of ten. Now, to be clear,
the critic review score, at least for the iOS version,
is sitting at seventy five out of one hundred, so
not great, but not awful either. However, that user score
(16:13):
of zero point five that is harsh as all. Heck,
so why are the reviews so low? Well, it really
comes down to micro transactions, and we've seen micro transactions
worm into lots of different games over the last several years.
They represent a way for a game to continue generating
revenue indefinitely. You can even have free to play games
(16:34):
that are only supported by micro transactions, but we've seen
more and more. Even Triple A titles include micro transaction.
So you go out and you shell out, you know,
sixties seventy bucks for a game, and then you are
faced with all these other micro transactions as you continue
to play. Some games like Fortnite have thrived on micro
transactions and have done really well, and when they're implemented properly,
(16:57):
they typically can be seen as you know, harmless, maybe
a little irritating, but you know, not not really a problem.
For example, when all the things that you can buy
are purely cosmetic, but otherwise they have no impact in
how the game plays out, most gamers are gonna begrudgingly
accept that because at least it's not impacting the actual
(17:18):
game experience. But in cases where the micro transactions can
give players an advantage. Things get pretty ugly, and it
appears that in the end game, really post game part
of Diablo Immortal, where you've pretty much done all the
content of the game and then you start to focus
on things like player versus player interactions, the person who
(17:40):
is more willing to cough up cash for certain items
is the one who is most likely to win those encounters.
It becomes a pay to win scenario in other words,
and gamers really really hate that. So the zero point
five score reflects this. Now, I should also point out
Metacritic doesn't have a system in place to determine if
a person is leaving a review has even actually played
(18:02):
the game, so it's entirely possible that some or maybe
even many of the negative reviews are from disgruntled gamers
who haven't even touched the title anyway. This is the
third Blizzard game in a row to receive a sub
one point oh score from users on Metacritic. It's not
a great reputation to have, and again, it mostly doesn't
(18:24):
seem to be targeted at the quality of the game itself,
but more due to other things like micro transaction policies.
You know that feeling that you get when something you own,
like a car, gets scuffed up for the first time.
I imagine that's how some folks at NASA feel about
the James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope, which occupies an
orbit on the side of the Earth opposite the Sun,
(18:47):
has been hit with some micro meteoroids, and that was
to be expected. I mean, it's space. Micro Meteoroids are
out there. It was going to happen. In fact, NASA
knew that it would happen, designed the James Webb Space
Telescope to be robust enough to handle that. But one
of those impacts appears to be larger than what NASA
was anticipating. Uh. Now that that impact hasn't ruined the
(19:11):
technology of the telescope or anything like that, but these
impacts do degrade the telescope's performance, and so the more
it gets hit by them, the less well it will perform.
NASA stresses that right now it's not that big of
a deal. The telescope is still an incredibly powerful piece
of technology. It's going to do some amazing science. However,
(19:31):
it is a reminder that space is a dangerous environment,
and as I've said many times, in the past, it's
trying to kill you. NASA has also indicated that during
more predictable events, such as a meteor shower, engineers can
actually reposition the telescope so that it can be more
protective of its optical systems. It's just that in this case,
(19:52):
this collision wasn't predictable, so it was unavoidable. Um, so
hopefully we don't see too many of these, especially early on.
I mean, we've just started using the James Webb Space Telescope.
It hasn't even really gotten into some serious serious research yet,
so we definitely don't want to, you know, pull the
car out of the dealership lot, take a right turn,
(20:15):
and then immediately scrape up against a fire hydrant. That's
what this kind of feels like. Okay, that bizarre analogy aside.
Let's take another quick break and when we come back,
we've got a couple more stories. I want to talk about.
Toyota and it's subsidiary company, Woven Planet, demonstrated a prototype
(20:39):
hydrogen cartridge that could be used in conjunction with fuel
cells in the future. So this kind of goes back
to what I was saying earlier about electric vehicles. You know,
that seems to be the way that the world is moving,
that that's going to be the next incarnation of the
personal vehicle will be an electric vehicle. But some companies
like Toyota have been pushing really hard for a while
(21:01):
for fuel cell vehicles, which are very similar to electric
vehicles but with some key differences, the main one being
that you do have to refuel them, but in this
case hydrogen rather than say gasoline or diesel. So this
cartridge is uh cylindrical, and it has a handle on
one end, and it measures sixteen inches or four d
(21:22):
millimeters in length and seven inches or a hundred eighty
millimeters in diameter, and when it's full, it's filled with hydrogen.
The cartridge weighs about eleven pounds or five kilograms, and
the amount of hydrogen in one of these cartridges can
supply about three point three kill what hours of energy.
The cartridges are one way to really simplify the process
(21:43):
of refueling fuel cells. So just in case you're not
familiar with how fuel cells work, they are kind of
like batteries that a battery contains all the electrochemical components
it needs to generate electricity, and then a lot of
you know, the rechargeable ones, you just end up putting
electricity back into the battery and it reverses that that
(22:06):
chemical reaction so that it can happen again. So with
fuel cells, you have to supply the fuel to the cell.
The fuel undergoes this electro chemical reaction and in that
process releases electrons, but afterwards you can't reverse that process,
at least not within the fuel cell itself. So with
hydrogen fuel cells, this reaction happens between hydrogen gas and oxygen.
(22:29):
So I won't go into all the details of how
it works, but what you get out of it is heat, electricity,
and water. Those are your byproducts. You know, water vapor
typically because you're using operating temperatures that are high enough
to evaporate water. But that's it. You don't have any
carbon emissions or anything else. If you're assuming you're using
(22:50):
pure hydrogen and pure oxygen in a you know, hydrogen
fuel cell. So this cartridge approach reminds me kind of
the way propane tanks work, where you can, you know,
get a propane tank for something like a gas grill,
So you go out and purchase a new propane tank,
or you could take a propane tank to a facility
to refill it with more propane. I feel like that's
(23:11):
kind of where Toyota and Woven Planet are going. They're
also looking at a strategy that could include a delivery
service as well, so presumably you could order a new
cartridge when you start running low on hydrogen and they
would bring it out to you, which is kind of
a cool idea too. Toyota envisions hydrogen playing a huge
role in our energy needs in the future, not just
(23:31):
for our vehicles, but the power of things like homes
and businesses as well. There's still a lot of challenges
that are standing in the way of that future. Hydrogen
is the most plentiful element in our universe, which is great,
but it also tends to bond with lots of other elements,
which is less great because in order for us to
get at pure hydrogen, we typically first have to break
(23:52):
the molecular bonds that hold the hydrogen onto the other stuff.
And if the energy we're spending to get at the
hydrogen is more than what we're going to get out
of using the hydrogen as a fuel source, that's a
net loss and energy. So you have to be really
smart in the way you do this. For example, one
way that you can get hydrogen is you can take
(24:13):
water and you can run a an electrical current through
the water, and that electrical current will break down the
molecular bond between hydrogen and oxygen and it will release
both as gases. So it's essentially the opposite approach as
to what a fuel cell does. And instead of releasing electricity,
it absorbs electricity in order for this to happen, and
(24:37):
you have to have a smart way of doing that
or else the question is, well, you know, why are
we throwing in these extra stops. For example, if we
were using solar energy to create the electrical current in
order to generate hydrogen from water, someone might ask, well,
why aren't we just using the electricity from the solar
power directly? Why are we doing this middleman approach where
(25:00):
we're trying to generate hydrogen out of all this, And
that's a question you have to be able to answer.
You have to be able to say, all right, in
the long run, this makes more sense from an economy standpoint,
And by economy I don't just mean by financial cost
but energy economy. These are those those kind of questions
that if you're able to answer them sufficiently, then you
(25:22):
can actually pursue this sort of future. Toyota has really
been all in on this for years. I used to
do a show that was sponsored by Toyota, and fuel
cell vehicles was one of the really big pushes back then,
and that was almost a decade ago. So, um, it's
still not really I mean, there are a few of
sell vehicles out there, it's not like it's just in
the pro type stage. There actually are fuel cell vehicles
(25:45):
out on the road, but it's not nearly as commonplace
as I think Toyota was hoping for by this time.
We'll have to see. I think steps like this are
important toward getting to a hydrogen based UH energy economy,
but I don't know yet that that is definitely where
we're gonna go. It seems to me like the electric
(26:07):
vehicle approach UH and and relying more on renewable energy sources,
perhaps relying on fusion, if we can get that to
work out. Um, that appears to be the path that
we're taking right now, but who's to say. Finally, Google
Maps now has an air quality layer overlay that you
(26:28):
can use in the Android and iOS versions of the app.
This is really useful if you live in a place
where air quality can be dangerous, particularly for people who
might have issues like ab SMA or other respiratory problems.
So this map will show you what areas within your
region have the cleanest air. And they determine this by
(26:49):
using numerous sensors that use lasers to measure the amount
of particulates in the atmosphere. Essentially, they're shining lasers out
into the environment and then counting how many particulates passed
through the pathway of that laser. So lower numbers are
better because lower numbers indicate fewer particulates. So I decided
(27:09):
to check it out on my phone to look at
my area. The closest sensor to where I live here
in Atlanta was at twenty three, which is in the
good range. There was another one a little bit further out,
closer to the middle of the city that was around forty.
That's still in the good range. The zero to fifty
is good, fifty range is moderate. There was one spot
(27:32):
in the Atlanta area I saw that was at moderate,
and above that you started getting into more dangerous territory.
With the air quality index on the app, maxing out
at four hundred. Actually looked at Los Angeles, which has
lots of these sensors, not a big surprise. The state
of California has taken a pretty aggressive stance and trying
to improve air quality in that state. So l A
(27:54):
has lots of sensors, a lot more densely packed sensors
than I found in Atlanta, and and even in l A,
I only found a couple of areas where the numbers
were up in the above one hundred range, which is
where you start to get into um areas that it
could be potentially dangerous for those who have respiratory issues. Anyway,
it's pretty cool. If you have Google Maps on an
(28:17):
Android or iOS device, I suggested check it out. It's
just one of the little layers you can choose and
you can kind of see what the air quality is
like around where you live, assuming that you know they
have some sensors deployed in that area. That's it for
this Tech News episode of tech Stuff. Hope you enjoyed it.
If you have any suggestions for topics I should cover
in future episodes or anything else you want to shout
(28:38):
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(29:01):
W and I'll talk to you again really soon Y.
Text 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 how the tech are you? It is time for
the tech news for June nine, two thousand and twenty two,
which is, as I recall, a Thursday. And for those
(00:27):
of you who were concerned and reached out, thank you
so much. Feeling much better now. My fever already broke
so and I've tested negative for COVID, thank goodness. So
it looks like it was, you know, just a like
a little bug that I caught, and I'm on the
better side of it. Now, let's get too news that
you really care about and not just me grousing about
(00:49):
feeling nikky, okay. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the committee
that's investigating the January sixth insurrection here in the United
States wants to get access to internal Twitter communications, including
messages sent on Slack between Twitter employees, in an effort
to determine what Twitter was doing to moderate discourse on
(01:12):
the platform as it was leading up to the violence
that happened on January six. Twitter so far has refused
to comply with that request, at least to the Investigating
Committee's satisfaction. Anyway. Twitter representatives say that the company has
already shared some information with this committee. There's been a
growing awareness that employees at several social networking sites were
(01:36):
aware of and concerned about the growing momentum that was
indicating that something was going to go down on January six,
So presumably the Investigative Committee wants to see to what
extent Twitter employees were concerned and what the company's response
to those concerns were like. Was the company dismissing this
(01:57):
because they didn't want to rock the boat or anything
like that. Uh committee also suspects that participants in the
insurrection we're using Twitter to coordinate with one another, and
that perhaps the platform was then a facilitator for the events,
although not necessarily an active or willing participant, but you know,
it helped enable that, and that perhaps it could have
(02:19):
and should have done more to alert authorities about specific
plans of action. Twitter has argued that it has a
responsibility to protect its employees and that the government demanding
access to internal documents could be a violation of the
First Amendment. For those of you who are not in
the United States. The first Amendment to the U. S
Constitution is the one that guarantees the right of freedom
(02:42):
of speech, as well as freedom assembly, and religion. In
related news, the U S State of Connecticut has budgeted
to create a special position dedicated to fighting back against
quote misinformation narratives about voting end quote. So the job
title is Election Information Security Officer, and the budget also
(03:03):
includes money that is dedicated to educating various communication platforms,
both in old media and new media, on how to
recognize and respond to misinformation campaigns, specifically targeting elections. Other
states in the US have similar departments like this in place. Already.
Misinformation has become a massive problem in general in the
(03:24):
United States UH, and elections, of course, are particularly targeted.
It's not exclusive, though, We've seen misinformation campaigns about COVID
and vaccinations, for example. On a personal note, I wouldn't
even know how or where to start in order to
fight back against misinformation. It's so prevalent and so invasive,
and it involves so many different tactics. I hope that
(03:49):
the efforts in Connecticut and elsewhere are effective. I want
to see UH platforms that have trustworthy information on them
and people who know that the election process is being
done fair and square and not being you know, fed
lies that. That's just otherwise, because once you start undermining
(04:10):
confidence in the system, the system itself breaks down. That's
how democracy dies, Really, democracy dies when the people no
longer have faith that the system is doing what it's
supposed to. Uh, it doesn't even you know, it doesn't
have to be real. Like the system can be working
just fine, but if people lose faith in it, and
(04:30):
it doesn't matter if the system is working or not,
the lack of confidence of the people is what will
kill democracy. Sticking with the United States, a collaborative effort
involving the FBI, the I R S, and the Department
of Justice took down four domains on the web that
hosted a marketplace called ss N d o B. That
(04:52):
marketplace was essentially a clearing house of stolen personal information,
including social security numbers and credit card number. The social
security numbers explains the s s in bit of the
name s s in d o B. The database held
information on more than twenty million Americans, and it's been
active for several years, perhaps getting started as early as though,
(05:16):
as you might have guessed, folks who run illegal operations
aren't super big on documenting their history of it. The
market was known to have pulled in millions of dollars
in revenue, a lot of it in cryptocurrency, and I
haven't seen any information about whether law enforcement has identified
the folks who are actually behind the database, So I'm
not sure how this will go beyond just shutting down
(05:39):
the service. Presumably you would have to go further, or
else those who are responsible might just create a new
database on another domain and thus only experience a short
interruption of services. So I'll keep an eye on this
story as it develops. Business Insider reports that Netflix might
be making a move to acquire Roku. While Roku was
(06:03):
one of the early companies in the streaming business and
has a big reputation in creating really good hardware for streaming,
like streaming sticks and such, it has been in a
slump lately. About a year ago, the stock price for
Roku was higher than what it is today, So that's
a massive slide obviously, and Business Insiders says that Roku
(06:26):
employees have been told that they are not allowed to
sell their stock right now. Companies typically will do this
when something big is happening behind the scenes. It's usually
an effort to prevent employees from engaging and stuff like
insider trading. That's when you take advantage of information about
a publicly traded company that the general public doesn't have
access to. Right So, if you know, for example, that
(06:47):
company A is going to buy a company B, and
that hasn't been announced to the general public, it would
be illegal for you to try and use that information
to your advantage because it's an unfair advantage. It sinside
or trading. Anyway, If you're wondering what, you know, why
does Netflix want Roku in the first place, one big
thought is that it isn't so much the hardware side.
(07:10):
I mean, Roku does make great streaming platforms, but we're
seeing more and more televisions come with that kind of
stuff you know, uh natively installed in them. So as
time goes on, things like streaming sticks become less relevant.
It maybe the Netflix really wants Roku because Roku has
(07:32):
advertising on it. So Earlier this year, Netflix announced that
it was looking into new revenue sources after the company
had its first big setback. It had a decrease in
the overall subscriber number and then investor confidence in the
company just took a nose dive. With that it took
was one setback and people were out. So one of
(07:53):
the revenue sources that Netflix has been looking at is advertising,
namely that Netflix would introduce a lower cost subscription tier,
and that that subscription would be subsidized by including ads
in the streamed content. Roku already has an advertising model
built out, and in fact, the ads contribute significantly more
revenue than hardware sales have, so this might be a
(08:17):
case of Netflix purchasing a solution to save itself the
trouble of building out one of its own. Now, to
be clear, neither Netflix nor Roku have commented on this
rumored deal, so it may not even be a thing.
An ongoing trend we've been seeing around the world is
a move to transition from internal combustion engine vehicles or
(08:38):
i c E vehicles to electric vehicles or e vs.
The EU Parliament yesterday voted to require automakers to cut
c O two emissions by by now. Effectively that means
banning the manufacturing of any vehicle running on gasoline or diesel. Now,
this is not the same as saying that I see
(09:00):
vehicles would be illegal, but rather that all vehicles made
from twive on should not be vehicles that emit CEO two.
This move has to still be approved by the individual
EU nations, so it's not a done deal yet. There
has been some resistance to this push, with Germany's automotive
industry lobby v d A arguing that the mandate would
(09:24):
quote unquote hurt innovation. Hurt innovation to me typically is
is like a smoke screen. I see a lot of
companies talk about things hurting innovation, which usually just means
this will hurt our revenue and not necessarily it will
hurt innovation. In fact, a lot of times you could
argue that the status quo is what is hurting innovation.
(09:48):
That's some commentary from yours, truly, I'll just get back
to the news now. And it might be that German
automakers are really objecting to this largely because they have
not been as a gre se in developing alternatives to
ice vehicles as automakers from other parts of the world,
so in other words, they're behind when it comes to this,
(10:10):
and that perhaps that might be part of the reason
for the objection. The v d A also argued that
the EU lacks sufficient infrastructure to support fleets of e vs. Now, again,
to me, that sounds kind of like a cop out,
because we are talking about the timeline that's more than
a decade out from today. You know, we have thirteen
years to to get this sussed out. Now, what I
(10:34):
will say is that as it stands, the world is
not yet producing enough EV batteries to meet the needs
of replacing all new vehicles with e V. S uh.
That's a challenge that we're going to have to overcome
or we'll need to see some serious movement on other
types of vehicles, such as hydrogen powered ones, you know,
fuel cell vehicles, that sort of thing. But that's where
(10:56):
it stands right now. The EU nations are now poised
to determine whether or not they will adopt this approach
to ban the sale of new I C E vehicles
starting by when we come back, we'll have a few
stories about Tesla and then a couple of others as well,
So let's take a break for these messages. Earlier this
(11:27):
week I did an Elon update. Now I'm not gonna
do another one, but I do have a few stories
that do relate to Tesla, which of course does relate
to Elon Musk. First up is that Reuter's reports Tesla
will be holding a hiring event in China. Now, if
you remember, on Tuesday's episode, I talked about how Elon
Musk indicated there would be a hiring freeze at Tesla.
(11:48):
He then subsequently clarified that he really meant hiring freeze
on the salaried employee or corporate side, not on the
hourly employee side, which usually means folks who work in
manufact training plants, like you know, floor workers at factories.
Reuters states that this hiring event will concentrate mainly on
engineers and managers, so it certainly sounds like salary jobs
(12:10):
to me, but I don't know anyway. Just interesting to
see that while Elon Musk is saying that the company
is putting a freeze, uh, it doesn't appear to really
be that, at least not globally. Meanwhile, in Germany, the
trade union i G Metal has responded to a leaked
internal email from Elon Musk that essentially told all Tesla
(12:34):
employees would have to work in the office for at
least forty hours a week before they could do any
remote work at all, Like he essentially said, if you
want to work from home, you can after you put
in forty hours of work at the office. So this
union has said, essentially, and I'm paraphrasing here, hey buddy,
here in Germany, it doesn't work that way. An employer
(12:55):
can't just you know, act like a dictator to their employees.
So Musk has been pretty clearly anti union over the years.
I imagine this is not something he wants to hear.
And considering that numerous studies have suggested that there's no
drop in productivity with remote work situations, I feel pretty
confident that a lot of Tesla employees see his demands
(13:15):
as being unreasonable. Now, there are people who believe that
the whole thing is kind of a work in the
parlance of the squared circle, that is, of professional wrestling uh,
and that Musk's approach is really just an effort to
convince at least some people at Tesla to pack their
bags and leave, because that's one way you can reduce
(13:37):
overhead without having to worry about paying out severance packages.
If people quit, then you don't know him severance. That
pretty cynical observation doesn't necessarily mean it's inaccurate. I can't
say one way or the other. And meanwhile, here in
the United States, Tesla's legal team has accused the California
Department of Fair Employment and Housing or d f e H,
(14:00):
of skipping some key steps before that organization filed a
lawsuit against Tesla alleging racial bias and discrimination within the company,
specifically within the Fremont, California factory. So this all stems
from accusations that a former Tesla employee faced numerous incidents
of racial abuse while working at Tesla, and the d
(14:22):
f e H sued Tesla, But Tesla's legal team says
that the d f e H failed to take some
required steps that would normally include an attempt to mediate
a dispute before it would actually go to court. The
Tesla team then filed a petition with the Office of
Administrative Law in California over the matter. And while it
seems as though Tesla's objections have at least some merit,
(14:44):
because the d f e H is supposed to follow
certain protocols that it appears to have skipped, UH, it
might end up all being moot anyway, because technically the
legal team would have needed to file this petition before
the legal case began, So in other words, it might
just be too late for this to matter. We'll have
(15:05):
to wait and see. Blizzard has been having a pretty
rough go of it recently. It's part of the massive
company Activision Blizzard, which itself is mired in controversy, ranging
from claims that the company harbored a toxic culture, claims
that I should say I seem to be largely substantiated,
to the company's attempts to discourage employees from being able
(15:27):
to organize into unions. But the problems I really want
to talk about with regard to Blizzard have to do
with the actual games that the company is releasing and
the response to those games. The games have been getting
pounded by user ratings on Metacritic. So the most recent game,
dia Blow Immortal, is a mobile game, and it's obviously
(15:49):
an entry in the dia Blow franchise, a long popular franchise.
That game currently has a user rating on Metacritic of
just zero point five out of ten. Now, to be clear,
the critic review score, at least for the iOS version,
is sitting at seventy five out of one hundred, so
not great, but not awful either. However, that user score
(16:13):
of zero point five that is harsh as all. Heck,
so why are the reviews so low? Well, it really
comes down to micro transactions, and we've seen micro transactions
worm into lots of different games over the last several years.
They represent a way for a game to continue generating
revenue indefinitely. You can even have free to play games
(16:34):
that are only supported by micro transactions, but we've seen
more and more. Even Triple A titles include micro transaction.
So you go out and you shell out, you know,
sixties seventy bucks for a game, and then you are
faced with all these other micro transactions as you continue
to play. Some games like Fortnite have thrived on micro
transactions and have done really well, and when they're implemented properly,
(16:57):
they typically can be seen as you know, harmless, maybe
a little irritating, but you know, not not really a problem.
For example, when all the things that you can buy
are purely cosmetic, but otherwise they have no impact in
how the game plays out, most gamers are gonna begrudgingly
accept that because at least it's not impacting the actual
(17:18):
game experience. But in cases where the micro transactions can
give players an advantage. Things get pretty ugly, and it
appears that in the end game, really post game part
of Diablo Immortal, where you've pretty much done all the
content of the game and then you start to focus
on things like player versus player interactions, the person who
(17:40):
is more willing to cough up cash for certain items
is the one who is most likely to win those encounters.
It becomes a pay to win scenario in other words,
and gamers really really hate that. So the zero point
five score reflects this. Now, I should also point out
Metacritic doesn't have a system in place to determine if
a person is leaving a review has even actually played
(18:02):
the game, so it's entirely possible that some or maybe
even many of the negative reviews are from disgruntled gamers
who haven't even touched the title anyway. This is the
third Blizzard game in a row to receive a sub
one point oh score from users on Metacritic. It's not
a great reputation to have, and again, it mostly doesn't
(18:24):
seem to be targeted at the quality of the game itself,
but more due to other things like micro transaction policies.
You know that feeling that you get when something you own,
like a car, gets scuffed up for the first time.
I imagine that's how some folks at NASA feel about
the James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope, which occupies an
orbit on the side of the Earth opposite the Sun,
(18:47):
has been hit with some micro meteoroids, and that was
to be expected. I mean, it's space. Micro Meteoroids are
out there. It was going to happen. In fact, NASA
knew that it would happen, designed the James Webb Space
Telescope to be robust enough to handle that. But one
of those impacts appears to be larger than what NASA
was anticipating. Uh. Now that that impact hasn't ruined the
(19:11):
technology of the telescope or anything like that, but these
impacts do degrade the telescope's performance, and so the more
it gets hit by them, the less well it will perform.
NASA stresses that right now it's not that big of
a deal. The telescope is still an incredibly powerful piece
of technology. It's going to do some amazing science. However,
(19:31):
it is a reminder that space is a dangerous environment,
and as I've said many times, in the past, it's
trying to kill you. NASA has also indicated that during
more predictable events, such as a meteor shower, engineers can
actually reposition the telescope so that it can be more
protective of its optical systems. It's just that in this case,
(19:52):
this collision wasn't predictable, so it was unavoidable. Um, so
hopefully we don't see too many of these, especially early on.
I mean, we've just started using the James Webb Space Telescope.
It hasn't even really gotten into some serious serious research yet,
so we definitely don't want to, you know, pull the
car out of the dealership lot, take a right turn,
(20:15):
and then immediately scrape up against a fire hydrant. That's
what this kind of feels like. Okay, that bizarre analogy aside.
Let's take another quick break and when we come back,
we've got a couple more stories. I want to talk about.
Toyota and it's subsidiary company, Woven Planet, demonstrated a prototype
(20:39):
hydrogen cartridge that could be used in conjunction with fuel
cells in the future. So this kind of goes back
to what I was saying earlier about electric vehicles. You know,
that seems to be the way that the world is moving,
that that's going to be the next incarnation of the
personal vehicle will be an electric vehicle. But some companies
like Toyota have been pushing really hard for a while
(21:01):
for fuel cell vehicles, which are very similar to electric
vehicles but with some key differences, the main one being
that you do have to refuel them, but in this
case hydrogen rather than say gasoline or diesel. So this
cartridge is uh cylindrical, and it has a handle on
one end, and it measures sixteen inches or four d
(21:22):
millimeters in length and seven inches or a hundred eighty
millimeters in diameter, and when it's full, it's filled with hydrogen.
The cartridge weighs about eleven pounds or five kilograms, and
the amount of hydrogen in one of these cartridges can
supply about three point three kill what hours of energy.
The cartridges are one way to really simplify the process
(21:43):
of refueling fuel cells. So just in case you're not
familiar with how fuel cells work, they are kind of
like batteries that a battery contains all the electrochemical components
it needs to generate electricity, and then a lot of
you know, the rechargeable ones, you just end up putting
electricity back into the battery and it reverses that that
(22:06):
chemical reaction so that it can happen again. So with
fuel cells, you have to supply the fuel to the cell.
The fuel undergoes this electro chemical reaction and in that
process releases electrons, but afterwards you can't reverse that process,
at least not within the fuel cell itself. So with
hydrogen fuel cells, this reaction happens between hydrogen gas and oxygen.
(22:29):
So I won't go into all the details of how
it works, but what you get out of it is heat, electricity,
and water. Those are your byproducts. You know, water vapor
typically because you're using operating temperatures that are high enough
to evaporate water. But that's it. You don't have any
carbon emissions or anything else. If you're assuming you're using
(22:50):
pure hydrogen and pure oxygen in a you know, hydrogen
fuel cell. So this cartridge approach reminds me kind of
the way propane tanks work, where you can, you know,
get a propane tank for something like a gas grill,
So you go out and purchase a new propane tank,
or you could take a propane tank to a facility
to refill it with more propane. I feel like that's
(23:11):
kind of where Toyota and Woven Planet are going. They're
also looking at a strategy that could include a delivery
service as well, so presumably you could order a new
cartridge when you start running low on hydrogen and they
would bring it out to you, which is kind of
a cool idea too. Toyota envisions hydrogen playing a huge
role in our energy needs in the future, not just
(23:31):
for our vehicles, but the power of things like homes
and businesses as well. There's still a lot of challenges
that are standing in the way of that future. Hydrogen
is the most plentiful element in our universe, which is great,
but it also tends to bond with lots of other elements,
which is less great because in order for us to
get at pure hydrogen, we typically first have to break
(23:52):
the molecular bonds that hold the hydrogen onto the other stuff.
And if the energy we're spending to get at the
hydrogen is more than what we're going to get out
of using the hydrogen as a fuel source, that's a
net loss and energy. So you have to be really
smart in the way you do this. For example, one
way that you can get hydrogen is you can take
(24:13):
water and you can run a an electrical current through
the water, and that electrical current will break down the
molecular bond between hydrogen and oxygen and it will release
both as gases. So it's essentially the opposite approach as
to what a fuel cell does. And instead of releasing electricity,
it absorbs electricity in order for this to happen, and
(24:37):
you have to have a smart way of doing that
or else the question is, well, you know, why are
we throwing in these extra stops. For example, if we
were using solar energy to create the electrical current in
order to generate hydrogen from water, someone might ask, well,
why aren't we just using the electricity from the solar
power directly? Why are we doing this middleman approach where
(25:00):
we're trying to generate hydrogen out of all this, And
that's a question you have to be able to answer.
You have to be able to say, all right, in
the long run, this makes more sense from an economy standpoint,
And by economy I don't just mean by financial cost
but energy economy. These are those those kind of questions
that if you're able to answer them sufficiently, then you
(25:22):
can actually pursue this sort of future. Toyota has really
been all in on this for years. I used to
do a show that was sponsored by Toyota, and fuel
cell vehicles was one of the really big pushes back then,
and that was almost a decade ago. So, um, it's
still not really I mean, there are a few of
sell vehicles out there, it's not like it's just in
the pro type stage. There actually are fuel cell vehicles
(25:45):
out on the road, but it's not nearly as commonplace
as I think Toyota was hoping for by this time.
We'll have to see. I think steps like this are
important toward getting to a hydrogen based UH energy economy,
but I don't know yet that that is definitely where
we're gonna go. It seems to me like the electric
(26:07):
vehicle approach UH and and relying more on renewable energy sources,
perhaps relying on fusion, if we can get that to
work out. Um, that appears to be the path that
we're taking right now, but who's to say. Finally, Google
Maps now has an air quality layer overlay that you
(26:28):
can use in the Android and iOS versions of the app.
This is really useful if you live in a place
where air quality can be dangerous, particularly for people who
might have issues like ab SMA or other respiratory problems.
So this map will show you what areas within your
region have the cleanest air. And they determine this by
(26:49):
using numerous sensors that use lasers to measure the amount
of particulates in the atmosphere. Essentially, they're shining lasers out
into the environment and then counting how many particulates passed
through the pathway of that laser. So lower numbers are
better because lower numbers indicate fewer particulates. So I decided
(27:09):
to check it out on my phone to look at
my area. The closest sensor to where I live here
in Atlanta was at twenty three, which is in the
good range. There was another one a little bit further out,
closer to the middle of the city that was around forty.
That's still in the good range. The zero to fifty
is good, fifty range is moderate. There was one spot
(27:32):
in the Atlanta area I saw that was at moderate,
and above that you started getting into more dangerous territory.
With the air quality index on the app, maxing out
at four hundred. Actually looked at Los Angeles, which has
lots of these sensors, not a big surprise. The state
of California has taken a pretty aggressive stance and trying
to improve air quality in that state. So l A
(27:54):
has lots of sensors, a lot more densely packed sensors
than I found in Atlanta, and and even in l A,
I only found a couple of areas where the numbers
were up in the above one hundred range, which is
where you start to get into um areas that it
could be potentially dangerous for those who have respiratory issues. Anyway,
it's pretty cool. If you have Google Maps on an
(28:17):
Android or iOS device, I suggested check it out. It's
just one of the little layers you can choose and
you can kind of see what the air quality is
like around where you live, assuming that you know they
have some sensors deployed in that area. That's it for
this Tech News episode of tech Stuff. Hope you enjoyed it.
If you have any suggestions for topics I should cover
in future episodes or anything else you want to shout
(28:38):
out to me, let me know best way of doing that. Well,
there are a couple of ways, really. One is you
can use the i heart Radio apps read to download.
You can just go straight to the tech Stuff podcast
page within that app and use the talk back feature.
It's a little microphone icon you click on that leave
a message up to thirty seconds in length and I'll
hear it, or you can let me know on Twitter.
The handle for the show is text stuff h s
(29:01):
W and I'll talk to you again really soon Y.
Text Stuff is an i heart Radio production. For more
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TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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